As I remember it
20.10.2025
Trying to write this has left me agitated.
False start, false start, false start.
Perception. Impression. Connection. I’ve tasked myself to write about me; what has shaped me, what has made me, who I think might be watching, and what I would like them to know.
But there’s a version of myself reading over my shoulder, watching as I type. And she’s eighteen and she’s twenty-five, twenty-two, and she’s even eleven years old. And right now I’m sitting by the Brunswick River, but then the breeze shifts directions and I’m smelling oak thistles on the baseball fields in Providence, or the warm rancid subway fumes from grates at my feet.
It smells like New York City smog as I watch the cormorants diving deeper into the river, moving slowly with the low tide. The late afternoon is overcast and the water is dark, reflecting the green tint of trees at the shoreline and what little light is left.
I thought I could write this, at twenty-seven. But these girls at my shoulder, they keep reading along. And we wince together in hot blushes. Back to rooms where we missed the mark. Why did you say that? Back to his car. Did you see the way he looked at you? Back to that meeting. Is that really what you wore?
I can’t write this about me without writing this about them. And they’re listening, they remember in sharp detail.
“To notice the way we show up, the way others perceive us,” a well-meaning someone once explained to me, “is self-preservation. It’s your subconscious taking care of you”.
Taking care of me? I’m not so sure. Let me put it to you like this:
There’s a version of me that’s nineteen and she’s somewhere on Bedford Avenue just underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, frantically making it through her first shifts at a swanky Williamsburg cafe-meets-jazz-club-meets-vinyl-shop-meets-you-get-the-gist. She’s fresh to New York, fresh to dressing the part, fresh to heartbreak and side-eyes from strangers, bad first impressions and crying and kissing in public.
The manager pulls her aside to say he appreciates that she keeps her cool while serving the C-list celebrities. She almost tells him she has no time to lose her cool; she’s hyperfixating on if these pants make her look fat, does Emily Ratajkowskie thinks she’s dressed okay, what’s the difference between bourbon and scotch, why is the woman in the corner staring at her like that, did she get the entree she ordered, was it the pear salad or the ceviche, shit?
This is the girl’s first ‘fine-dining’ gig. She struggles with the balancing. You’ve gotta get the salad plates to nestle against the soft tissue of your upper arm and the serving bowl’s weight managed solely by the upper bicep. It takes time. But in a swanky Williamsburg restaurant-meets-speakeasy-meets-brunch-spot-meets-yada-yada-yada, no one gives you that.
And then suddenly–the girl almost misses her third step, barely catching herself. Shit. The jolt of momentum sends a dismantling breeze through the carefully crafted gravity she’s established in those amateur hands.
In those heartbeats of a moment she has a second to make a split decision: send the fine china clattering and inevitably shattering down the steps and at the peoples’ feet, or does she flip the cups back at herself, stick her thumb straight into peppermint tea, let the boiling liquid soak her shirtfront, campari stain her slacks?
And so she makes her call, saves the room the clatter and shatter, and beelines it to the bathroom, a dripping mess.
So now you understand.
There’s a version of me, with stained clothes and a red face, somewhere on Bedford Avenue underneath the bridge, hiding in the bathroom.
Taking care of me?
She snuck out the back exit and I let her. She wiped down her shirt, slowed her breathing, and forced a smile. I let her, and now I want to write about it. As if I shouldn’t have just pulled up a chair, insisted she leave the mess, and sit down.
I can’t write this, so I go on to watch the river tide shift along instead. I can’t write this, but I’ll make sure we enjoy the last of today’s sun.
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