BLOG #12: ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏

 

Woke up Wednesday morning in the cursed Ye merch.

I was examining my tanlines in the mirror this morning while trying to peel the rest of the burnt skin off my back from a nearly two week old sunburn. The lines are a little uneven but so is my body, because I have scoliosis and also am a human woman. It’s kind of a ki. 

It will never not be weird to me that the different kinds of bathing suits you wear influence the shape of your tan and then when you wear certain clothes the tan will show, like, specifically with shirts that have different necklines...this is literally science. And as a former swimmer I know this. But as an adult I am peeved. The tanlines don’t feel like a badge of honor for being in a bathing suit and being outside and absorbing so much vitamin D. They feel like an outfit nuisance! Might do a “My Swimwear” post on my bathing suit philosophy as someone who spent ages 9-16 practically living in one. Anyways. 

I went to Atlanta for the first time for a brand trip with adidas. It was hot. Ate Zaxby’s for the first time. We were in Buckhead and I kept thinking about that one interlude from southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. There are a lot of things that I have to say about the experience that I don’t know if I want to write down/can write down but if you guys see me on the street ask me about it and if I know you like that I will tell you. Context: adidas flew me and a whole bunch of other beautiful Black media-influencer types down south to cover the capstone event for their objectively-helpful initiative called Honoring Black Excellence (whole bunch of grants adidas gives out to entrepreneurs/non-profits by/for Black people. FUBU and whatnot). I wrote about it here

Seen leaving Magic City. Thanks adidas.

At the end of the experience the PR team wrangling us media people took a few of us to Magic City. My friend Erin and I were on true writer mode meaning we were being quiet and observant while people assured us that we “like, totally” didn’t have to go if we didn’t want to. I wanted to. I didn’t want to let them know that I was totally there for the experience and the ass. I told this chick Amber that I was scared of looking like a lame tipping the strippers so she went up with me when I saw a shorty I liked. That was kind. I came back to NYC and immediately developed a raging sinus infection which I am pleased to announce that I beat as of the publication of this piece. 

And the second I landed NYC, after an insane bout of gridlock from Laguardia to my home, I arrived to a 100-Fahrenheit room, feet sticking to the wood floors whose sealant was partially melted from extreme heat. No AC because I fucked up. Dyson fan working on overdrive. By the time I showered not only was I already sweat-slick again, but unable to make it to dramaturgical genius Maya Martinez’s book launch performance extravaganza at KGB. Since I missed, I pinged my absolutely brilliant writer friend, champion, and former editor Drew asking if he’d lend a bit of his perspective. I also banged writer friend (and the only person who I like wearing Raf Simons) Geoff’s line for a testimonial. Here’s what they had to say about Maya’s performance:

Maya Martinez is a comic genius and a philosopher. When she performed ego death in the mirror of her mother (I mean her mother came on stage, and the held hands; her mother stayed silent) I nearly cried, and maybe Maya did too? But of course she reconstituted herself—the show must go on. In psychoanalysis last week, we ended on the phrase “I didn’t want the show to end.” If Maya performed all seven of the play-poems collected in Theatrics I would have been rapt, but as it was she performed four plays, or four as one. Having seen many of them before at various venues over the years, it was exciting to experience them done differently: linked together, featuring other people, featuring props. Outside and in, direction and dialogue, solitude and connection. The show must go on, and Maya knows how to perpetually renew the language she finds and conjures from our strange world and make it even stranger, and thus more true.”—Drew Zeiba

“It’s amazing to see Martinez make no formal compromises to her writing and remain compulsively hilarious. If Aristotle said the purpose of theater was affective, essentially therapeutic, there was something of an emotional cleanse of sitting there broke in the naked city, watching Martinez scream at the top of her lungs, ‘God just give me that money!’ The subtitle of the event could have been Theatrics: An American Lyric.”—Geoff Mak

Maya sent me an advance PDF of her book, Theatrics, which I devoured. Comprised of seven plays, Theatrics to me is about spirit holes—the want to fill and be filled, to dilate for the right force, let the world in and, in turn, let the world open up and swallow you whole. She does this through a series of “winks,” to reference Chloe Watlington’s foreword. Where there is rapture we find a car crash in ‘Stage Directions for a Car Crash,’ the beginning play of the collection. The two-page long work is about the crash in detailing its set-up. There is no gore no ejection through the windshield. You have the set-up as directions for a car crash you know is coming, you can have anticipation, you can have anxiety. You’re also set up for the following six works; this is Maya’s way of showing readers the hole, so to speak. Then there is ‘Hole Play,’ about a character, Girl, on the phone with her friend Janine as she discovered a gaping hole in the ground. Now, we interact with it. We question it like you’d question a live report from your friend you’re on the phone with. One of my favorite parts from this play, and the whole collection: 

And how selfish of me to make the whole about me, to make the
world ending about me, and how silly to project myself onto catastrophic metaphors but, if you were the center of the earth, with all that anxiety, wouldn’t you open up too?
A destructive release is needed. 
Luster, reflect light from the surface of a mineral. 
Luster, reflect light from the surface face fucked Earth. 
Luster, reflect light from the surface. 
100,000 sinkholes and we still don’t understand control 
and bending. 

Jesus, I am possessed by this. Maybe it’s my own myopia, maybe it’s the innate cosmic tie I feel all Mayas have with one another (Maya M. and I have texted about this before). I don’t want to give any more away but you should buy Theatrics. 



I am also elated to be reading Hole Play with some very fabulous writers and thinkers mid-month. There is also a screening of John Waters’s Multiple Maniacs afterwards which is so fabulous. You should totally come. 

Ok, so while I was not at Maya’s opening, I survived the truly extreme heat by taking three cold showers before falling asleep, which is generous to call what I did that night “sleep” especially because I kept waking up in the middle of the night to spray myself with water so I didn’t die. And I did some very important things in the middle of the rain and humidity and the slight cool-down. 
  • Bought a CDG Speedo collab one piece on eBay because I’ve decided to start swimming again
  • Found a new signature scent because I can’t afford my old one anymore (still jobless). This combo is cheap and makes me smell like clean vanilla smoky ambery sex
  • Resumed my Pilates routine
  • Started wearing a waist belt to work out so I DIY cure my scoliosis 
  • Released my very first piece of fiction in No Erotica. You can buy it here.

Responsible Gun Owner sticker seen at Equinox Orchard.

I also made Responsible Gun Owner stickers. Just cus I was bored. LMK if you want one.

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