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Drinking Dreams

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Drinking Dreams

NOTE: this letter is too long for email - view event calendar on browser or Substack WHAT I DID Monday, August 24 Lay with filthy tangled hair hanging off the edge of the roof for a while last night, watching the Chase Clock Tower lit up too royal blue and the Empire State Building lit up the nicer sort of baby blue. I’ve been collecting shades of blue. Kind of navy blue Frankie’s Bikini little number reflecting some

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NOTE: this letter is too long for email - view event calendar on browser or Substack WHAT I DID Monday, August 24 Lay with filthy tangled hair hanging off the edge of the roof for a while last night, watching the Chase Clock Tower lit up too royal blue and the Empire State Building lit up the nicer sort of baby blue. I’ve been collecting shades of blue. Kind of navy blue Frankie’s Bikini little number reflecting something sort of aqua off my Diet Pepsi on the D-line towards Coney Island. Screaming children on the D-line. Naked man running around trying to steal pedestrians pants on Coney Island. He keeps on saying to the other guy, Darby says - “I like those pants ! Gimme those pants!” And it was all these beautiful friends coming and going last night. Coming and going until it was late, really late, so taxi home and then I ate the toppings off a slice of pizza on the floor with a spoon. I spent the morning alone doing Rituals. Tretinoin before sleep and I did wake up screaming for the first time in a while. Red light therapy and copper multi peptides and avocado eye cream and mineral sunscreen and now I’m on the Subway. Kind of braindead on the subway. It sometimes takes it out of you. This sort of thing can really take it out of you. It’s been summer for forever, now. I have a lot more friends now. Connectivity, connected tissue, I walk down Brighton Beach by myself, walk to Tashkent Supermarket for a towel and carrot salad and on the phone I’m saying it is not that I wish for death and even sometimes I fear it but things have become a lot less Risk Averse. I’m a lot less Risk Averse now. It would be better to be dead , someone was saying at the bar last night. She was looking at me eyes all intense and no one was really listening, I could tell no one was really listening but everyone was watching her all the same and I could see them all clenching their bodies and kind of pulling away.. Me particularly, pulling away. Perhaps I’m being self absorbed. It wouldn’t be better to be dead , someone else said. He looked at me then, locked eyes which usually makes me kind of uncomfortable but I felt inclined to agree. It’s definitely better when nobody is dead , I said. The bar was full of plants and glass. Like a glass jungle , I told my nameless friends at the bar.. That’s not very astute , a nameless friend told me. Tonight, the cocktail menu is flavored and priced like a full course meal, and so tonight I order Cold Pizza for dinner. Cold Pizza in a crisp glass bottle, plus greasy fried chicken after that, which comes in thick paper cups. And everyone is so grateful to be alive, tonight. Everyone is so grateful for one more year of life for themselves and for their dear friends particularly. Purple sunrise if I hadn’t slept through it. Yellow sunset if I hadn’t gritted my teeth and clenched my eyes shut through it. Planted two feet firmly in the ground and screamed through it. First, I made one thousand promises I couldn’t keep. Second, I sat on the stoop with an energy drink, water, cool minty menthol gum and the antiseptic kind of sore throat with some bodega spray gripped tight in my hand to heal all my problems. My ailments and the other things. My organs and my mind. Overjoyed to be alive again after leaving my apartment , I told Amelia. It does make things better again , Amelia told me. Tuesday, August 25 Bartending school feels kind of like an alcoholic’s vision of a drinking dream. Like holograms of condensation, dim lighting, one takes a sip to the tune of disappointment. Water and food coloring dye. Bowery Park and Whole Foods and JPress nearby and inside; Christmas is coming. Smooth jazz. Everything has felt a bit the same for a time, but my room is clean. Summer is passing. Three months is not so long. Would a functional alcoholic lace up black ankle boots at seven in the morning with a clear mind and bright eyes to catch the train towards midtown towards Bartending School, at the top of the week, at the tail end of August? I am not so good at pretending like anything is changing. Like habits stack towards something greater. It might as well be yesterday , I sigh on the phone. For you, it might as well be yesterday , Amelia agrees. I do the things a person should. Cake for friends’ birthdays and the waiter keeps stacking on fees at Union Square Cafe. Cut the cake fee, sit at the table fee, big group of people fee, bring your own food fee. There are other tables next to us all inhabited by people who all appear to be exactly the same, though perhaps I am being uncharitable. Imagine them as skeletons. Imagine them as children. My parents used to tell me this when I was little. Kind of a hack against boredom. I imagine myself as a psychic, looking out on things overpriced and people all exactly the same. You will have a small child and feed her nothing but buttered noodles. You will advance in age but stay exactly the same through invasive surgical facial intervention and stunted social development. You will spend evenings eating french fries with caviar for One Hundred Dollars despite a rich inner world and a childhood pumped full of extracurricular stimulation designed, specifically, to avoid a fate like this. You will fear God more than death and you will understand self destruction to be akin to suicide hence rendering you too, on a trajectory like this, a rather hellish creature. You will wake up in the middle of the night in a small box criss-crossed wood roof apartment in New York City to the sense that there are No Loopholes Left. You will go to bartending school. You will recognize that, while you can be cruel there were other factors at play. There were worse factors at play. Wednesday, August 26 Walking from Greenwich Village to Long Meadow in Prospect Park with a bag filled up with white linen and Thomas Pynchon and a plan to celebrate sweet Sylvie’s birthday. A different sort of nostalgia in the air today. Nostalgia of all sorts being kind of a form of mental illness, of course but once - we were woodland fairies. Once, there were fall morning running races and cranberries that crunched under bare feet on Massachusetts roads. Once, there were rounds of Tom Collins in a kind of jazzy jungle garden restaurant in the tropics that my boyfriend who liked gender-roles enjoyed because they wouldn’t let girls order their own drinks. Once, I went to the Yankees game in late August, blue and pink hazy skies, the sort of advertisements that blare out notes about Fast Food and Safe Driving in the stadium, and the sort of crowd that is so big it starts inspiring feelings of Life and Spirit rather than Homogoninity and Dread. Once, I walked from bartending school full of Tom Collins, Chambord, a sip of walnut martinini, frangelico liquor. Walked to Caffe Reggio for egg white omelet, toast, a creamy cannoli. Walking to Prospect Park a little bit tipsy. Thinking about the sort of things I used to pretend to care about. Writing about the sorts of things I used to pretend to care about. Writing it all down. Writing and walking. Writing it everywhere. Writing it on the walls. Though, I’m not so bad at keeping secrets anymore. Thursday, August 27 Amelia and I sat at Caffe Reggio until close last night, and now I have returned. Tomato soup and side grilled chicken and creamy cannoli and mint tea because things feel decadent again. Limited consumption. I haven’t really been limiting consumption. The waitress is complimenting the gray sweatpants on the boys at the table over from me, and the waitress seems to be vaguely annoyed with me, though I am trying to be pleasant. Thanks the sweatpants cost enough , the boys are saying, at the table over. Thanks we didn’t realize we couldn’t split the bill , Amelia and I were saying, last night, our tea was four dollars total and everything was starting to feel a little bit hazy. Sitting on the floor at sunrise, this morning, Amelia and I were watching videos from Miami. Videos from Bahamas. Videos from New York City, 2022, we’d been at all the same parties, but I hadn’t known a soul. BAHAMAS , we are beaming, in one video, in the back of a taxi cab, streaking over MacArthur Causeway, Miami-Dade County, Florida, and so, as I recall, the driver was confused. I’m putting on makeup in the photo booth webcam on the floor of a hotel room and Amelia is talking in the background. It’s Opposite Day in the background. Who had a mental breakdown , someone is saying in the background. From an outsider’s perspective, who was it who had a mental breakdown? Friday, August 28 6:30pm, and I am back at IFC for my third viewing of Diva (1981) in twenty-four hours. I came to view Diva (1981) for the third time in twenty-four hours, because I became very sick of thinking about myself. This is a desirable alternative. The film is beautiful, and I wish to live in places like the apartments pictured. A large and wrecked studio in a car park with painted walls and recording equipment or, a hotel in Paris or, a castle by the sea or, the best one of all is a large blue flat full of puzzles and high ceilings and echoing sea sounds and an aqua glow and a man who wants to learn to stop the waves. They are fighting crime in the film. They are entrapping the criminals and they are doing it kind of like performance art. I don’t wish to spoil the ending. It really is the perfect little film. So; I will send out the recipe for zucchini (courgette) soup, and I will explain away the things I did in breathless optimism as things I did while bored. I will go to The Scratcher, Killarney Rose, Funny Bar, then Gospel then Caffe Reggio again - these are the decadent places to which I continue to return. I will draw my name with Riley on the table in crayon writing Best Friends Forever and listen to Feryquitous ft Sennzai and Sigur Rós and John Maus and think about Switzerland, Iceland, having a lot of dreams about places that are lush, lush, lush. Thinking about places that are quiet quiet quiet. Thinking about places that are green green green. Feels like Fall, outside, after church. Amelia woke me up in a living room that looked like a library and she was screaming that the air was poison. I was difficult to awaken, because it is my own delusions of poison air that wake me up screaming on other nights. Different from tonight. I was reminding myself of reality. I was reminding myself of delusions and keeping my eyes clenched shut while Amelia screamed. Well, the air wasn’t poison after all, just late night and late august and heavy with mosquitos and dust from renovations and revelations and; we walked back to the cafe. I walked through Washington Square Park at dawn. The doorman wished me good night at seven in the morning and the cycles repeated. It isn’t opposite day and we aren’t in hell, just working on things like bed time and emotional regulation. Working on archiving the things that happen outside of my head. It becomes good to have been an archivist all along. It becomes good to become sick of dealing with things mainly in repetition. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, September 4 - From 6pm at Carinito — Saloon is throwing a party . Drinks from Dio. Dancing, DJ, tacos, etc - From 6:30pm at IFC — Jean-Jacques Beineix Diva (1982) screens again . I watched this film three times last week and I might just go again. (additional showtimes every day through September 11). - From 7pm - 10pm at 171 Henry Street — Alyssa Davis Gallery and Problem Child Advisory present Q3 - a group show serving up a crude account of the current state of affairs.” - From 7:30pm at Anthology Film Archives — Marjorie Cmaeron, PGM 2: Mock Up on Mu (2008, Craig Baldwin ) screens - “a (mostly) true tale of the occult goings-on at the heart of the American space race.” This is the second Marjorie Cameron screening at Anthology, in conjunction with the Marjorie Cameron solo exhibition at Nicole Klagsbrun . I attended PGM 1: Night Tide (1963, Curtis Harrington ) last night, which was fabulous. - From 8pm at Night Club 101 — Marie K Stotz launches her new free screening series - presenting films that are 99 minutes or less. The first one is Hotel New York (1984, Jackie Raynal ). Afterparty to follow at 9:30pm . - From 10pm at Slipper Room — Onos presents Cirque du Kiss - the last night of their summer residency, featuring Joel Watson, Lily Burgess, Maria Pucciarelli, and more. The theme is circus. Do with that what you will.” - From 10pm at 131 Chrystie St – The Dare and Sexy Damion host Frequencies. Free. - From 11pm — Donna Francesca and Cade Alami DJ Laissez Faire . Night Club 101 free screening series | Jean-Jacques Beineix - Diva (1982) | Q3 at Alyssa Davis Gallery Friday, September 5 - Robert Bresson’s Four Nights a Dreamer opens at Film Forum (12:30pm, 2:30pm, 4:30pm, 6:30pm, 8:30pm showtimes ) - From 6pm - 8pm at Foreign Domestic — Aeronauts Aimed for Altitude, Even… opens. An aerial exhibition. - From 6pm - 8pm at IRL Gallery — GIFT opens - a group show featuring Alexandra Rubinstein, Danielle Kosann, Elizabeth Bergeland, Jordan Sears, Marisa Regante, Michael McGregor, Rebecca Storm, Shawn Huckins, and Tariq Oliver. - From 5pm - 10pm at Le Bain — Club Chess hosts the last sunset chess party of the season. - *addendum - YATTA FATHAGOD.EXE opened at Blade Study on Wednesday, September 3 - “ The installation proposes the unique treatment, use, and reliance on wearable technology by aunties and uncles along Fulton street.” Worth stopping by this one too if you are downtown for the other openings tonight. Aeronauts: Aimed for Altitude at Foreign Domestic | GIFT at IRL Gallery | Club Chess Saturday, September 6 - From 6pm - 8pm at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery — Sam Mckinnis Law and Order opens. - “Sam McKinniss could be called a great painter of modern life, if we were to assume that life is still modern. - From 7pm at Book Row — The New York Review of SMUT launches Issue #1 with readings from Dale Corving, Emily Mitchell, Geoff Dembicki, Kevin Gonzalez, and Mani Mekala. Also featuring my brilliant friend Alexa Ferrer on Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s Dirty Havana Trilogy . - From 7pm - 10pm at 54 Barrow St — Roman D’Ambrosio presents This Woman’s Work: a night of three plays . Directed by Roman D’Ambrosio. Starring Meg Spectre and Agnes Enhktamir. RSVP here - From 9pm at Hell Phone — Stop1 returns - “a party between dinner and dancing.” Ft Kettle, b2b, and conduit. RSVP here . - LOS ANGELES: From 5pm - 9pm at 3110 W Sunset Blvd — Megan O’Dell presents WET , ft Brittany Menjivar, Sabra Binder, Kris Barit, Isabela Costa, and Shannon Evans. - “ an invitation to submerge yourself into the emotional depths of self-discovery, a celebration of our capacity for self-evolution and a testament to the power of feminine energy.”

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