the Eye of Sauron is in downtown brooklyn and my sinuses
really in my dying victorian child era
Remember how I said I was going to start posting one of these each week?
Okay, maybe I didn’t actually write that down, and just said it out loud to myself. So never mind, doesn’t count! We’re doing great!
I’ve been attempting to spend all my spare time with novel rewrites. Key word attempting. It had been going fairly swimmingly (which for me means something a little different because I quit swimming lessons when I was eleven because I didn’t like being bad at it, more on that later). A lot of my energy for the past month has been going to my body, which seems to be breaking down with impressive speed.
Several weeks ago, I got the flu. Seventy-two hours, the entire fourth season of Desperate Housewives, and a sleeve of Saltines later, I was fine. Filled with the only kind of energy you get when you finally leave your rot bed, I got my tetanus shot, which I meant to do three years ago at my actual ten year mark but you know, who really does those things on time anyway besides my parents and a lot of other people I know?
Then I got an allergic reaction from the tetanus shot. Or at least, I think. I started breaking out in hives and once Google told me that was a sign to call 911, I instead called my dad, blubbering. Then I went to urgent care when, of course, the hives went away. The doctor, not satisfied with my panic selfies for evidence, prescribed me Benadryl and steroids. But despite the hives not starting till post tetanus vaccine, I only got them whenever I started sweating, which is super cool and chill, because that’s definitely not something I do often, not whenever I’m nervous or walking or thinking about things like climate change and Kristin Stewart.
I was supposed to set up an appointment with an allergist, which I’ve been putting off, obviously. The hives are happening less frequently (I should still set one up). (Eh.) But now I’m preoccupied with something else entirely: a sinus infection delivered straight from the depths of hell. The pressure in my head is pushing down on my gums — my GUMS — and my roommate swears by his Neti Pot but those freak me out and I can’t get myself to do it even though it’ll probably be a big help. I’m sticking with nasal spray for the time being.
I’m masking up more and testing to make sure it’s not Covid (it isn’t). Regardless, I feel like walking death and my brain has turned into the consistency of wet graham cracker.
It’s almost as if my body is directly protesting against my life choices, when really I am just a girl trying her best, so it’s all incredibly unfair. I did redownload Hinge recently, so honestly, yeah, sending a plague on all my houses is valid.
Nothing much has come of that, by the way. Still living like a nun (but in a sexy way, like the Aubrey Plaza in The Little Hours kind). I’ve matched with a few people, all followed by silence, despite having what I think is the most charming dating profile to ever exist. Now that I’ve read approximately 1.2 out of the 3 Lord of the Rings books, I wrote this for one of the prompts:
Very low effort joke, but it’s done well. Those fuckin nerds eat it up. Little do they know I solely relied on my memory of the movies to make the first book make sense, ‘cause wow what a doozy. A recent sucker for this was a 36-year-old filmmaker (shut up), to which he commented:
it’s in downtown Brooklyn
I rolled my eyes. Approximately ten guys have already said this joke to me. Amateur. Then I, charming and effervescent, say back:
I was thinking more Times Square
if it’s something that’s the equivalent to Mount Doom
Then he, charmed and already in love, sends:
For sure
But do you know the building in BK?
Gotta google eye of Sauron Brooklyn
So I do. Turns out saying “it’s in downtown Brooklyn” wasn’t a joke. There’s actually a skinny skyscraper, The Brooklyn Tower, that was built last year that uncannily resembles the fortress of Sauron. I write to him that this whole time I was fully unaware, but isn’t that so funny? He has not responded.
Last weekend a good friend of mine invited me to her new official boyfriend’s birthday party. “I want you to meet him! Plus he has a lot of hot single friends,” she lured, because as a good friend she knows I would make an excuse otherwise to avoid going all the way to Greenpoint.
The party was at a dive bar, cash only, which was playing a Natalie Portman movie on mute, and as soon as I get introduced to my friend’s very cute, very sweet boyfriend, a 6’3” man with dark eyes asks me if I want a beer. Now that’s what I’m talking about. After casually flirting with him a while, he goes on his phone and leaves the group without saying a word. Now riding that high, I talk to one of the boyfriend’s cute brown-haired roommates for a few minutes, then the other, also brown-haired, everyone at this bar is brown-haired. I make jokes and try to be looked at. Then I get to know the boyfriend more for a while. I look at him look at my friend, drinking her in like she’s a gift, as he should, because she is. Then my Dayquil starts wearing off and I call an Uber home.
I’m trying not to feel guilty. I haven’t worked out in what feels like forever, the writing is lagging, the industry I desperately want to be a part of is circling down the drain Saltburn style, and you know, the world is…NOT GOOD, and I’m trying my best, always trying my best, but my best is looking so much different from others’ bests. Throughout all this, I’m trying my absolute DARNDEST to avoid that cozy, dark, oh so familiar cave, the one I always trip and fall into when other cups aren’t being filled, the cloying and sickly obsessive trap of needing a boy to like me. And the patriarchy and the white supremacy and the capitalism all really need me to need that, but naming and blaming all those crumbling societal structures doesn’t make me need it — or, at least, think I need it — any less.
But honestly, this swirling black hole of obsessing over whether or not a person I’m attracted to is attracted to me has been narrowly avoided by me for the last couple of months. Which is good. It feels good. I’m proud of myself. But it’s still there, always there, ready to swallow me, like a sinkhole in a suburb. The house I’m working so hard on maintaining may have been built on weak ground. So maybe I move out and build another house, put the foundation on something that won’t erode so easily. Or maybe I just keep living in this one and wait it out, because what are the odds? I can’t think about a potential sinkhole anyway, not when the house is leaking and stuffy and the insulation is filled with fluff and half-finished crossword puzzles.
I got really carried away with that metaphor so now the oatmeal in my microwave has cooled down to brick form. I’ll still eat it, but first I have to limp to the bathroom to blow my nose for the tenth time this morning. Does anyone still look at their tissue after they blow their nose to see what just came out of their head? If not, then ha ha ha just kidding I don’t do that, gross.
Why limp, you ask? Well, as a really smart really cool girl, I sometimes have to have moments of sheer stupidity to balance things out. This week, I chose to wear my new-ish Doc Martens without the special Doc Marten padded socks, which I sort of thought was a scam until I wore regular thick socks two days ago and am now sporting a perfect sphere of raw skin on my right heel. Feel sorry for me! You know, I’m pretty confident that when I eventually am on my death bed, my last words will be some form of complaining. Wouldn’t have it any other way.