By Rachel McKay Steele
I’ll speak to you here.
The problem is that you understand everything.
Last night at a party I saw a man who looked like a man I had a crush on, for a long time, a long time ago. I knew it wasn’t him, but it could’ve been him because he had friends at this party. His group of friends are all so attractive and wildly successful in all their endeavors. It’s maddening. I was talking to the husband of the director, he is lovely and kind, and I’ve always loved their love story.
So I text Are you at a bar in K town wearing a straw hat? And later that man breezes past me saying, Excuse me I love Justin Bieber, on his way to the dance floor.
Later, I met a French colorist who didn’t understand what I meant when I said the bar looked like a jalopy had a love child with a Colorado ghost town, but he that he liked that I said it.
So we go to K town and get a private room and order Korean pancakes and beer. And he pushes me up against the wall and rubs me over my short black jumpsuit while he sings in my ear, and it’s steamy and cinematic, and if I’m going to be single and not with you, then I will have fun.
I come home alone and snap selfies in a white thong and no bra. I don’t have anyone to send them to, but I think about Cindy Sherman and how I want to actually take a naked selfie that is art, so I take these ones by taking a screenshot of the photo made down to 9 smaller images as if I’m choosing a filter, and I know that doesn’t make sense when I explain it like that.
And I know I need lots of attention, but I also like looking at myself naked, but also when I’m single, I cant come from sexting with someone while I masturbate and that’s one of my favorites ways to come now that I’ve learned how to come.
And I want to take a photo that says all those things. A photograph that says 125 words.
In the morning, he texts me back. I’d texted him in June asking if he wanted to play tennis, and he’d never replied, and I see that now. He wasn’t at the bar in K town, he’s upstate with his newborn son. And there’s the photo. And I tell him he’s going to a great Dad because he will be, and I think that maybe I didn’t really know him that well after all because he gave his perfect child a celebrity baby name, and now I’ve become unbearably sad.
Overwhelmingly sad.
And I think you’d understand.
And I can’t tell you everything, anymore. So I’m telling you here.
Â