Notes from December
The bare minimum of a year's reflection is knowing what color the year was for you.
The holiday season began for me the only way it could: being heckled by a Christmas tree. In line for the bathroom at a Williamsburg bar, I stood patiently, perfectly drunk, nearly saintly, in front of women impersonating a Christmas tree. The lights wrapped around her waist glowed against the looming booze cloud of darkness emanating from her, her beady eyes staring at me as if I were about to chop her down. When the bathroom door finally swung open, I barely made it seconds into peeing before she turned from a Christmas tree into Home Alone robber, breaking in and locking me in the bathroom with her and her hurling slurred insults. I can’t remember what they were now, but how bad could they have been? Did it matter? My pants were down. Everything hurts a little more when your pants are down.
When I got up to wash my hands, she sneered, “Ew, is that your pee?” pointing at the toilet. I told her it was champagne and she should take a sip.
For me, the last days of 2024 washed down the sink with red wine and period blood. Proving that for me, it was the year of red. The bare minimum of a year's reflection is knowing what color the year was for you.
I met an enigmatic drag queen who wouldn’t let my champagne glass go one sip less than full. I said, “Thank you, I love you. What’s your name?” her eyelashes batted “I’m Annill, short for Annihilation.” I was relieved to have met perfection.
Rebranding yourself as someone who has incredibly high standards for everything can be exhausting, sometimes I wanna pick up the phone to talk to the wrong person and I want to lay my head on the smooth surface of familiarity though it’ll grow hot though it’s never not burned me
December is full of necessary crimes: shoplifting little gifts, getting off in your parent’s house, taking a roadie, gorging on the past year with an appetite big enough to begin again, and ending things for good—before trying them on one more time when the air of change is cold enough to take your breath away.
My hair is growing progressively silver and all I hope is that it’s a sign to men who have secretly always loved me that I will not be around forever.
My period app tells me I am sexy, I am divine. The news says I'm bound to get the bird flu. I feel that the energy I exude is somewhere between the two.
I asked a tarot card reader how I could feel more connected to my spirit guides, and she told me to “lean on my best friend because, in many ways, she plays the role of a soulmate for me”. I think that's unfair and a cheap excuse for them not to show up. I imagine them smoking cigarettes, busy playing cards, phoning in my ancestral support through shared dirty gin martinis. I have felt more support from a Keep Calm and Carry On mug.
I keep thinking I’m dying from something growing silently inside of me, from something I did when my skin was impenetrable, shielded by the youthful disregard of my teenage years. From nights layered with cigarettes, painting with my hands, and smoking from a can. From afternoons spent with my fingers interlocked in a friend's palm, spinning our bodies in circles so quickly they had no choice but to let go, hurtling back into the fields of upstate, little plane crashes on impact. With our limbs laid out like pieces of debris, the tops of the pine trees spun around the open sky, the wet grass pricking our backs, the fresh air of the mountains filling our lungs. A woman I worked with suddenly dropped dead at the restaurant we used to work together. One of her last words was asking if the pasta tasted okay. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like the trees are still spinning.
Are we still allowed to dream during such devastating times? Is there still room for little dreams? Do I have to discard my dreams of expensive mahogany tables and organic, flower-scented candles I’ll light when the people I love most sit down beside me? It’s not that I don’t have an eye — or a hand — in the growing resistance. It’s just that nice cutlery in a room filled with those I love has been a long-held dream. And if we give up the little dreams, do the big ones stand a chance?
I threw away a bra I’ve had since my first year of college and replaced it with a Skims bra. My tits are tipping their hat off to you, Kimberly Noel Kardashian.
Once a month my body says “ I see you didn't get pregnant, have you considered you're a fugly bitch?… food for thought <3!”
If all civilizations burned down and aliens had questions about the real behavioral differences between men and women, I wish they would find an archive of the park I live beside. Women are drawing maps, learning dance, and raising children. Men are yelling BABY GIRL LEMME AT YA and picking their noses. I just think everyone deserves the credit for what they contributed.