A Visitor’s Day Pass into Girl World

A February blizzard-like slash is deflected by a brown sugar kiss-- the memory of a Summer Friday; the pseudo-spray tan coat lips like a Frenched salivary glaze. Straightened waves are grilled into a hurricane spiral, while the burned-off split ends begin the condensation of the Sol De Janeiro fog into a black-tar-heroin-vanilla slurry. A trio perch in front of a vanity as Hollywood light bulbs boil the minority of blackheads in a warm white nuclear winter. The majority of hyperpigmentation, however, is massacred by way of a concealing powder, pores belting out hymns of makeup removal requests. Their shrill songs go unheard, for the ever-present repetition of Rich Baby Daddy (feat. Sexyy Red & SZA) will silence with an ASTROWORLD-worthy bass boost.

This is girlhood, or at least my participation award anecdote of it.

Since 2018, I’ve survived between major highways-- one where uber-masculine Wranglers dressed in American banners go deep-sea-fishing and beer battling, and the other displays an assembly line of pastel pink Porsches.

Those mid-apocalyptic BMW and RV trails have Hollywood Illuminati clones. Out of the four lanes exists an outlier-- Ken, Barbie, Allen, and Zirui.

You can guess which crosswalk I’ve decided to jaywalk, but regardless of your greatly appreciated opinion, I still don’t have a permit. I’ll always remain as that one homeless guy who's flashing traffic with his cardboard statements.

But at least once a leap-month, I dip my toes into a stoplight clash. Pulling them out results not in a Rare Beauty-reflected foot, but a maroon fleshy mound where skin melts; revealing muscular lanes as pus magnifies insecurity.

It doesn’t matter which asphalt domain I decide to swim in, my decision will always end up with leeches latching onto me and bleeding me out. 

They could be pink or blue, but regardless, the finale always ends in a scarlet curtain clamor.

On select weekends, you and I would parade through a masquerade of black t-shirts and grey sweatpants, ignorance fleeting as the environment dissolves into a grey, red, and midnight Jackson Pollock. Svedka-sweltered push-up bras muddy the divine influence of ultraviolent LED lights; each of those supporters shivving my ribcage as Charli XCX’s I Love It initiated a tremor rivaling that of an overage Fortnite player’s monitor mashing.

Through my lenses (hair), I’d view blacked-out teenagers releasing a wry grin into the wild that would eventually be hunted down and torn into intertwined tendons by a regretful salivary exchange. That same person will either return home or be found in an abandoned NYC byway, White Claw marks tearing through their liver and erupting from their tonsils. 

I  paraglided through sweat-lubricated torsos, repeating your name till my vocal cords were grilled by an eardrum-eviscerating speaker. I guess even owned letters aren’t recognizable when oppressing strobe lights force you into a black-and-rainbow hallucination. My continued desperate calls lost consistency after I was left ringing, and the EXIT sign was the only constant comfort during that Saturday night.

Confidants eventually became convoluteds, and I lost my accompanied way home.

You can promise you won’t ditch me to fill another blank space in your lipgloss-smeared records, but no oath is sacred enough once you’ve been poached into a sexual selection. You could also tell me to fuck myself and batter your way into a herd of 19-year-olds, but by the time the moon falls out of its cancerous black emperor-sized mattress, we’ll go back to soul-siblings. 

And the thing is, I could stare through saltwater at my reflection in the sink at 3:00 AM after wishing you the worst as overhead fluorescent beacons split my face into porcelain shards, but chinks in our relationship could never vandalize our collective Ming Vases.

Maybe the dim green haze I’d taste in a gas station bathroom whispers elegies of how I’d wander Harlem alleyways half-dead if we ever had the Siamese twin surgery, and how you’d be found in one, without that promiscuous halter-top and with an anti-AED heartbeat.

Maybe that’s true girlhood; An alcoholic’s apothecary married into abstinence, a child behaved 25.

But femininity is not a quality that we share. Mine’s all been spent on you, you’re a black hole broadway-costumed as a star. You’ve left me (and others) with no reciprocated love-- you’ve picked a premium A5 cut of guys over a costless friendship. Again.

I want my weekends back; my isolation will forever be more valued than a free trial of your companionship. And while the roses I’ve gifted you will eternally remain, the band of sterling you’ve sent me was a rusting iron dome. An intercepting and blame-avoiding memory is all I’d get out of us, but I’ll continue to lift your feet through ballrooms even if we drifted.

And though you’ve granted me a silent bouquet of backslashes in response to genuine concern, I still have enough blood to leave a legacy. Our parasitic relationship is mutual and malignant; your infinite landslide of micellar water could never wash that away. 

I’ve built you silent cathedrals out of semicolumns and mosaics of voice memos, but you were the sole shatterer of our stained glass displays.

And you had pride in that. See, the difference between us is I left crumbling apartment complexes without reaping in their living rooms. And I NEVER slithered across arachnid-amplified welcome mats searching for bones inside closets. 

If I ever found out what you’ve said about my clown-car confessionals, you and your testimonies of terror would finally have me as a witness, and like a vampiric paparazzo, you’ve yet again leeched me for my crumpled post-its and my lacklovester ways. 

So keep infecting others with your fecal fallacies and keep mimicking my jaundiced journal entries. If there’s anything faker than your falsified anecdotes, it’s your received attention. Your crystalline casino was cracked since construction, and it’s your cards that deal a tattooed destruction. But I’ll continue to watch your perverted poker game with a bundle of barbed roses in hand, because after you return from your futile conquest for a Chateau Marmont of relevance, you’d have found nothing more apathetic than my bloodstained middle finger.