I’m sitting at a party.
It's a friend's party.
Naturally, the way things can when it's intimate enough groups have broken off into factions and we have formed our own cohorts of laughter and joy, confessionals and drunkards. Two men are on the floor, they’re roommates and they stare up at us three women who have taken the couch and there isn’t any tension between us though we have all just met. For whatever reason we’re talking about almost nothing. Authors we like, the specific works we couldn’t stand by them, movies we saw, oscar nominations that surprised us because we’d never heard of the films to begin with, the activities we do at home when we’re alone.
“Do you know what I love?” My friend says and we all stare at her. The back of the couch so low I look like I’m about to go to sleep, but I’m not I’m interested greatly in what she is about to say because she’s my friend and I enjoy knowing what people love.
“What?” someone says
“Earnestness. There’s nothing cooler to me than people who are just so earnest about the things they love or what they obsess over.”
We all agree. I think most people would. And the conversation moves again onto something else. Only I can’t help but begin to stare at that wall where the television is. Her own earnestness seems to strike me, perhaps because it is answering a question that I had been asking for a long time without realizing.
What is the void in my chest? What is missing from the place it used to be?
I know that I used to do it all the time.
The only time I can really remember then, however, happens at an apartment that I have not seen in a long time, in a year I have not thought about in forever. Before I was even allowed in bars, before I think we were so sure that there were other people in other places who we figured would love us intently and instantly. The last of a time where I remember we were willing to meet people where we were.
A boy and I would lie in his bed facing each other with our coats still on sometimes and be tired. We’d known each other for a few months by then and certain secrets had been exchanged and compliments which were readily available and thus were not shared as we lay there. Not as we waited for the second energy of the night to hit us where laughter was more available. He would say something to me, something about school or the place he’d been before he called me and I would tell him about the poem I’d written since I’d last seen him which was about the last time we’d done the thing we were doing.
We’d talk for a few minutes after, cheeks pressed to the bed, and I remember that distinct clearing of emotions where it didn’t matter to me what he thought about my writing about him, it only mattered that he knew it. That we were in a mutual act of sharing information about ourselves which was often scary and revealing, but I was being brave, I was going to go first.
What's the title? He’d ask and after I told him he would close his eyes and repeat it back to me before he might tell me, “that's good. That’s really good.” When he opened his eyes I’d watch that last of his energy replenish through a story he’d tell that took place in the future. In it, he is talking with friends about the book he saw at our favorite bookstore by a girl who used to lay in bed tired with him.
I could feel his sincerity twofold. Both the admittance that one day I would be a stranger to him and the doubt he didn’t have within it. That yes we would run into each other again, but I would only ever be in the best of places. Not even places I had spoken of wanting to go, but that he himself independently had decided I’d be.
And then it's upon me in an instant, the disillusionment I feel for the present moment. Not the party but the context with which it exists. In looking around the room I’m aware of a kind of rareness that I think is a disparity I had gotten used to. Only noticing it now, the conversations at the start which had been fueled by orange wine and the brief immunity of strangers we might never encounter again, was really the earnestness we’d only just agreed we desired. Perhaps not in great risks, but proportionate little ones which were leading to the thing my friend had said.
The party feels distinctly unlike the thing I am used to. The way that even when we’re sharing spaces no one is really holding anyone else, everyone is talking and no one is saying anything.
We sit inside bars making eye contact with people in the hopes they’ll know what we mean even though we ourselves are almost exclusively unwilling to clarify. How they say the rewards of being loved, how they say the mortifying ordeal of being known. No one will risk mortification or embarrassment. A look that does not end in the crossing of a bar, we hope, can be excused enough ways that the revelation of our cards looks more or less like a sleight of hand. That the person who had received it might assume we hadn’t meant it anyway. We’re happier to be misunderstood.
It's so barren here, that even when people face the possibility of rejection they almost never put enough in the pot. They approach with a cool attitude of, if you guess the number I’m thinking of I’ll buy you a drink, which is a kind of irony, because it would have been much cooler just to say hello. Most people would be glad, even if it isn’t returned, to at least know why you were interested in the first place. What gave you the courage to come here? What is it you like so much about me?
It's all a game that no one wins, no one gets the upper hand and thus no one feels the distinct gratitude of not having it used against them. Even when it's not explicitly a game it's a game. People waiting and masking, not wishing to seem too eager, putting up a piece on a board as collateral. It's so bankrupt of any real sincerity and intention it has become difficult to recognize the opportunity as it arises to you.
So even as I think about the pain of realizing that this person who I used to write poems about did not see me in the future, at least there was a conversation being had in which we were aware of each other. He’d seen my risk, what I’d admitted, and met it with his own. I was saying, I like you enough to create you over and over again. He was saying, I like you enough to tell you that in a few years, all you’ll have is those words, so write them good, and I’m sure I’ll see ‘em real soon.
The party then seems seeped with gratitude to me, and I feel the danger of being known somewhat idle in my mind. The confessions of the earlier night are now understood by me in a different way. I’m risking something here, I’m telling you what I don’t know, I’m telling you what I like please don’t laugh at me. One of the boys on the floor says something about John Steinbeck.
“He’s my favorite writer.” I say which is not much a risk at all given the time that has now passed between us all because in all my time alive it is not unusual or strange or even unpopular a thing to think. It is not so much earnest as it is honest. So I continue, but instead of going on I say,
“I honestly also love to read erotica.”
And the girl next to me sits up and no one laughs about what I’ve said. I tell her about the strange stories I’ve encountered from grocery store books that brought me joy. I start to say something about how I studied English and I realize now it would have been better not to say that at all, because it’s collateral for the risk which dulls the sincerity of what I’m saying, but we talk for a good few minutes about it all anyway which ends with me repeating the notion. I like to read it.
At the end of the night, the girl and I end up leaving together walking home for a while in the same direction only to separate on the tail end of a joke we exchanged about the people we’d met and the boys sitting on the floor. The next morning my friend tells me she liked me a lot and wants to hang out just the three of us.
Before that though, before the morning comes, before I make it into my apartment, I return to the ghost of the one I had not been to in a long time. I think about that mattress with which two people exchanged their real selves like currency and I feel a similar bittersweet gratitude for what existed there and how I can recognize it now that my friend had said the word.
There was a time of course in which I was trying to be earnest between that party and the long-gone night of a year I don’t think about. It hadn’t come to mind then, but it seems more realized now. I was with someone telling them the same story I just told you, of this boy who used to tell me the title of my poems were good. In an attempt to establish the narrative at hand, to convey the sincerity, I go back to the beginning. When its all over and I think it's clear that he was being kind, the person I’m telling says,
“I wouldn’t have fallen for that.”
And I wonder if anyone knows what they mean anymore.
“Who could love me for this? It’s so obvious. I could. I could love me!” April 27th, 2023 4:16 PM
“No we would not see each other again and if we did I wouldn’t recognize him and if we did it’s all how it goes. Not the same person, not the same river as they say.” April 21st, 2023 11:20 AM
Here is the mood board for May! Oranges and greens are what I thought of as the weather begins to get warmer.
The paid newsletter is a more narrative exploration of each month’s theme. They all come with their own little goodies, a look at what I’ve been mulling over that month etc etc. If that’s not your thing, don’t worry about it. We’ll see each other somewhere groovy soon.
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Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, to the ache for sincerity, and for its surprising delivery
Love always,
Chloé
oh she does it again . just as i am going through it, just as i am co-experiencing that very same scary earnestness, she does it again. wow chloé !
chloé!!! this is my new favourite newsletter from you, it came at such a perfect time. thank you so much for your words every month:)