I’m drunk and I’m listening to the Doors on my walk home. Not even the New York wind whipping me in the face and coursing through my hair has broken me out of my drunken stupor. I must have another glass of wine when I get home, before I lose the words in my mind.
This wine tastes like nail polish. I understand now why Eve Babitz needed to be drunk when she did this. I can’t write when I’m pushing my hair back and sucking my stomach in and posing as if he is going to walk through the door at any moment. Did I ever really love him if I was posing for him constantly? And maybe that’s why he couldn’t love me. He wanted me unposed and real and serious and I could never do that. At the same time, though, what is more serious than getting on my knees? What is more serious than sleeping together, more serious than being fully unconscious in another person’s presence?
Maybe I’m just drunk. This “unserious” business, I suspect, is just another excuse so that I don’t have think of the fact that it could be that I just am not what I think I am, which is honest-to-God perfect. And honestly, I’m a couple of Cosmos and a heavy wine pour deep. I don’t trust any of this, even though it’s the truest thing I’ve ever written.
Anyway, I have no unrealistic ideals of L.A. nor San Francisco; rather the complete knowledge that California is the still point of the turning world. I miss the freedom to be completely consumed by oneself, not like it is in New York, how you have to want to “better yourself”. It’s this cat and mouse game of going to the gym under the guise of “self-care” so that no one has to say out loud that they want a flat stomach. Maybe it’s the fact that you go to the beach in L.A. that makes it okay to obsess over your body. Lately I’ve been on a diet of crisp white wine and whatever I have laying around (usually some combination of bread and olive oil or butter). Sometimes I get it together enough to make pasta with red sauce. It’s the Californian in me, my coworker told me, that makes me return to this default, though I imagine he only said that because I had told him that I will sometimes eat a whole avocado by itself if I’m in a particularly low mood.
I have naturally been spending a significant amount of time analyzing my physical appearance. The terrifying thing about it isn’t what looks back at me in the mirror; no, it’s that of the few people I have allowed to see me fully nude and unposed (as in, post-sex) every last one has ended things with me for one reason or another. This is actually categorically untrue, but all of the ones I’ve cared about have. I miss being a beautiful California girl basking in the golden glow of the afternoon sun, not even wary of male glances, because I know they’re looking. And why shouldn’t they? Now I’m tightly wound, hiding my too-big thighs under loose jeans and trench coats. It’s like people can smell the California-ness on me, and they sneer as I walk by because they know I’m not from here. Besides the fact, I can’t even pretend that I’ve just thrown myself together, it looks like I’ve tried (a cardinal sin in New York).
I’m finishing tonight’s glass of crisp white (a Chablis if you’ll believe it) before Jessie gets here so I can pretend I’m having my first glass of the night with her, though she will obviously know this is not the case, as the bottle is half-drunk. The theatrics are just to avoid that conversation. You know the one, the “I’m just worried about you, it’s because I care”. Though I don’t doubt that, I’d rather not ruin a perfectly good evening, so I’ll put on a not particularly convincing performance for both of our sakes.