The Leanover.

I'm weary of this life I've created for myself, full of too many moments alone. These queer personal moments only result in shivers. There is the euphoria and then there is the regret. At the end, I curl over to my side and fall asleep.

My mother called and I missed it, so I called her back. She said they would be gone for the evening and I complained about walking home alone, but really, I was upset over the solitude, the moments of quiet. I can read a book but everything now feels like something to skim over. I don't know the context.

First, we drank a bottle of champagne that was cheap but good. I finished my first glass in mere seconds, but waited until my friend finished before I grabbed another. I ranted about a different friend, whose unreliability and personal choices were annoying me. The friend wasn’t doing anything to personally irritate me, but sometimes I take out my personal frustrations on the target closest to the root of my problems. My other friends don’t begrudge this sentiment. They’ve acted the same way. I think, during those times when I don’t see them for days even though we live in the same city, they feel like how I felt and are taking distance to calm their nerves.

Outside, the humidity was thick yet the air was cool. My hair was a curly mess for weeks. The bus almost passed us by but we got on and chatted on the short ride over to Uncommon Ground. Colleen complained a bit as well, but her complaints always sound justified. I wonder if we do this too much, if our complaints - or rather, my complaints - define me in a way that is undesirable. Earlier that night, my mother described me as a grown woman and I was surprised yet pleased. Do my complaints, my obsession with the little things, negate the maturity I continue to work hard to grasp?

At Uncommon Ground, a group of men flirted from the outside patio. And later, I drank a glass of rose champagne, which is gaining popularity at the perfect time, the time I crave it most.

Before I was first laid off, I created a list of bars and restaurants I wanted to go to in order to make up for the winter that felt cruel and abusive, like most winters feel. So far we’ve gone to those places and added more sporadically. The trip to Uncommon Ground was not on the original list but I’m glad I got a chance to go there and feel a part of the city that is only particular to locals. The lighting was rich and luminous, the kind that makes any space seem more important than it probably is, and the kind that makes people look beautiful in the way that an urban environment can only provide.

Outside, we waited for the bus again. The wait was shorter. We were starting to get to that point once you’ve started drinking - the breaking point - where people are either brilliant or terrible. There is no in between. A man tells you you’re sexy and you can’t imagine being anywhere else but his arms. A man tells you you’re sexy and you can’t imagine doing anything else but slapping him, hard, and perhaps repeatedly.

The doorman at the bar was my type during those moments when I feel loneliest and am attracted to large, striking men who would have no problem carrying a girl who is all woman. Meaning, he was big and not really fit but strong and striking.

In the back room, we greeted, Nick, the DJ.

“What have you girls been up to?” he asked. He had that look in his eyes like he knew we were past the point of jovial and bordering obnoxious. I ignored it because he was probably right, but also, because it’s nice to have friends in good places. Not that we use him for anything, just that its nice to know. I used to be in that position, with jobs that opened up back rooms but now I do the same thing over and over, everyday of the week and pretend that I’m somehow okay with this. I tell myself that it will give me the focus to work on my creative pursuits, but once I leave work, I don’t know what those creative pursuits are, and if I did know, I wouldn’t have the energy to pursue any of them. Everyone at my job has other creative pursuits and I can’t help but resent them, just a little bit, because they are able to make that separation that makes a day job so financially responsible. Once they leave, they leave, but I find myself drained and even angry by my lack of energy, by the fact that work efforts stay with me long after I’ve left the building. I wonder what the people, who are able to make the separation, think about those of us who have vague writing goals, how we all stumbled into something that is close enough in the realm of what we want to do that we don’t entirely hate ourselves, just a little bit. If I was one of them, I would feel a little better about my situation, I would find inspiration in my ability to break free from the tyranny of the work day, that my life has a clear goal and clear pursuits and that eventually I would go somewhere. I am not really one of the nicest people in the world.

It was an off night. Sometimes you just know that something will go wrong but the risk is in figuring out what that is and when it will occur.

Then it was three in the morning. We walked to the bus stop.

The more I write, the more my handwriting looks like my own. It used to take a while for my hands to cramp while writing but now, I grip a pencil as if I’ve never felt it before. It hurts everywhere and all of the time. Writing feels more like a chore. I tell myself that it’s just a phase of unfamiliarity born out of typing and clicking all day most days, but really, the loss of comfort takes away a fundamental way in which I think and then articulate my thoughts. Where do they go now that it hurts to write what came so easily? Typing is not the same, or at least it not gotten to the point of connection that I built between my hand and a pencil over five, ten, fifteen years.

The images sometimes tell better stories than the clothing or the actual show itself. They invoke ideas and possibilities that don’t seem trivial in the context of fashion as “elitist” or “unapproachable.” There is a great sense of quiet that allows the viewers to get closer to the story that is being told, that seems envious and then, possible. Up close, the models are not just accoutrement for the clothing. They look like the people I know.

I live in Chicago, where we have fashion, but it is casual and practical. I anticipate New York Fashion Week because it is a hyper-realized idea of glamour that does not (and probably can not) exist in a city that toils and stumbles as much as Chicago does. The photographs I am most enamored with are not the shots on the runway but the candids, now a quiet, welcome glimpse into the performative nature of fashion shows, of style in general.

Berlin was so packed Friday that I had trouble breathing, but it was the best feeling, one that I was not frightened of but overjoyed with as the night continued.

The evening was a love letter to Robyn and Bjork, two musicians with seemingly clashing aesthetics. I was afraid before attending the event, not because I disliked either musician, but because it had the potential to go terribly wrong because all of the joy and heartbreak in each woman’s music overwhelms the senses. I didn’t realize this until we were packed on the dance floor, consuming whatever space we could find.

That morning, I texted Barrett and told him that I would be attending the event. A few days earlier, he sent me the invitation, but I hesitated in saying whether or not I would attend. Work sucked. And my irritable nature towards work left me tired and angry. I wanted to stay at home and do nothing and find pleasure in the fact that my nothingness was more rewarding than what I do during the day.

Sometimes the music was euphoric and with my eyes clasped, I let the music overtake me. Sometimes I forgot where I was, on that dance floor with these great friends who felt deeply. There was a visceral connection to those around you, and I wanted the feeling to last forever. The promise of the next day was fleeting. A moment that good soaked up the energy of the weekend.

I realized that, while powerful, Bjork’s music is best accompanied with visuals.
“She’s so beautiful,” I said in while watching the “Pagan Poetry” video. Sheathed in a white lace Alexander McQuen gown with beads sewn into the flesh of her upper body, she literally suffered for her art and to tell the stories that we relate to, that make us press our hands to our hearts. The physicality of her images worked well with Robyn’s music. This was supposed to be a battle, but I found more similarities in the layers of their music than dissimilarities.

At the club, I noticed that we all began to place our hand over our hearts while singing along to the music. Very little contemporary music provokes this gesture, at least for twentysomethings who’ve seen and done it all. But it kept on happening, over and over again, and I couldn’t help but think about it. It’s an involuntary gesture born out of an artist’s lyricism and intonation. That night, I did it most frequently during the quieter moments, the ones that spoke to familiar emotional states of the past months.

As I get older, my connection to music changes. I need it less. I appreciate it less. What I hold on to is largely what I treasured when I gave a damn. Mostly, I miss the emotions of being a teenager. Everything was overwhelming because it was at the surface and it was resolved within minutes. I cried a lot, but without the tears, the frustrations of being sixteen would not have resolved themselves almost instantaneously. Now, I largely feel numb, or I bottle my feelings until they manifest as “unbecoming” angst.

I remember the way music held precedence over most anything else. You will never love a song as much as when you were sixteen years old. It is so difficult to articulate grievances at that age but a really great song - a really brilliant album - seems to do it in this indescribably significant way.

The DJ played “Show Me Love.” It reminds me of a simpler time, when expectations were reasonably obtainable. It was pre-puberty, pre-high school, pre-millennium, pre-angst.

“Everyone’s singing!” Barrett exclaimed, and it was true. The lyrics are simple enough, but for most of the people in the room, the song’s greatness is measured in the weight of emotions tied to memory. I looked around. A hand across the heart was more common than not.

I think, sometimes, you need music that is emotional, relatable, and overwhelming. Music is primal, rhythmically building off the sounds of nature and the human heart beat. A good beat rattles the nerves because it is so familiar, and in its familiarity, you also find something comforting. For me, that comfort is the difference between a good day and a bad day.

• I currently dislike my job a lot. It makes me extremely tired and frantic.
• I went to the emergency room. Without going into specifics, rather than having a mental breakdown, mu body had a physical breakdown. It no longer operated the way it should. I could not move, could not feel without feeling pain.
• I am now 23 years old. I celebrated quietly, and over a long period of time.

I could have done more, in terms of capturing the moment in words and through photographs, but I’ve never been the sort of person that is good at that sort of thing. It usually takes me a couple of hours, or even days, to process something as interesting or surreal as the Maximalism fashion show last Friday. 

I went by myself, and wore a vintage shirt as a jacket and a cropped bustier and high-waist black shorts. This whole outfit sounds horrible but it wasn’t, I don’t think so. My mother just said, “Well, you’ve certainly got a lot of skin to show,” which wasn’t as bad as that look she used to give me in high school that said enough.

The show started late, and what I felt most thankful for at the moment was the fact that I stepped up my show game, as all of the girls there wore beautiful heels, the kind you whisper about, blatantly, only seconds after having seen them. But then, like a lot of girls my age, like a lot of women in general, they walked like little children trying on their parents’ clothing. More often than not I wear flats. I’m a tall girl. I don’t need to overcompensate. But when I do put on something higher, I can walk in them, and not feel clumsy and not look uncomfortable. 

The clothing was mostly black and gold and beige and white. For someone as frequently monochromatic as I am, I appreciated the aesthetic. It was comforting to observe in the sense that I finally saw clothing that appealed to my rather straight-forward color palette. 

The show was titled Maximalism, but Constructionism would have been just as applicable. I enjoyed the silhouettes, which were challenging but still draped across the models’ bodies in a way that made me believe that I could emulate the look. Although that is not the primary purpose of the fashion industry, it is a selling point for the magazine editors and fashion brands. They create the looks and tell a story through their sartorial choices, and the story is good. The story draws you in, and captivates, and then lingers until you begin to focus on the basics of what you observed: the makers of the clothing, the silhouettes of the clothing, the idea or the lifestyle or the livelihood that you can grip because of the power of the clothing.

In that sense, observing the show was like witnessing a very particular, very powerful manifestation of an ideal, one in which the clothes are interesting and the people are interesting, and their lives, the lives that you can only glorify or demonize, are interesting.

The music - before and after the show - leaned more towards 90s dance and alternative jams. I don’t know why I was surprised as I was. It was at that point that I realized that I was, presumably, one of the oldest people in the room. When I was younger, our events were soundtracked by New Order, almost exclusively it seemed, and in reflection of our obsession with the 80s. But now things have changed, the cultural adoration has changed. I don’t find it disturbing as much as I find it eye-opening. Because I have an older sister, the music was music I knew, and I wondered if for some of the people there it was music they had to discover on their own terms. 

After the show, after saying hello to Alysse and congratulating Diamond who opened the show, I walked around Wicker Park a bit. I changed out of my A-game heels in to a pair of beige flats that are beginning to wear and tear because of how often I walk, and how aggressively I move when walking, and how excessively long I travel on foot before I realize what I’ve been doing.

“Trying tog et comfortable, baby girl?” a man asked as I unbuckled the straps of my heels on a quiet part of Milwaukee Avnue.

I didn’t say anything at first, but then turned back to him and said, “Yeah, something like that.”



It has become a predictable formula for a photograph: reckless youth, beautiful girls, wild parties, hipster fashion and vague nostalgia, all illuminated with bright flash and hazy light. Spontaneity captured by a subcultural insider and ultimately eliciting our envy of a lifestyle, which, if the camera tells the truth, is more fearless, more exciting and more poignant than ours will ever be. 

Leah Turner’s essay in C magazine on the aesthetics and, more importantly, the semiotics of Tim Barber’s (and Ryan McGinley’s and Terry Richardson’s) photographs is an important one. If not important, it is certainly relevant and something that reflects a visual that continues to fester on the internet.

I am reminded of the culture of tumblr, the images that constantly pop up on the screen and the proliferation of said images. In general, they are still blurry and beautiful snapshots of the young, the white white, the thin and abled. But speaking beyond the obvious physical characteristics of the subjects of the images, what always struck me was the exploitation of an aesthetic, and the underlying sense of self satisfaction that runs through every scene. Turner writes, “the photographer has that particular ability to mediate the everyday, and transform it into the marvelous.” 

And it is marvelous! They are marvelous and interesting and subsequently beautiful, simply because they are seemingly existing and doing so in a manner that is riveting. The images also exists in a manner that achieves two purposes: to be both familiar and unknown. I recognize that they are having a good time or getting into trouble or living with a sense of spontaneity, but they also “have” lives that I don’t possess or recognize as similar to my own or my friends’ or even the casual acquaintances I know only through parties and openings. Does anyone own those lives? Turner writes:

“The deliberate blurring of autobiography and fiction often leads to compelling art, but when it comes to snapshot aesthetic photography of this nature, the acknowledgement of fiction instead leaves one feeling cheated.”

And: “Why might a savvy viewer of contemporary photography in all its various pictorial constructions respond this way, without raising the antiquated motion of the camera’s objectivity? It suggests that we may want to believe in the fantasy. Part of the joy that comes from looking at this genre of photography comes from our belief in it, howevernaïve that may be, as an example of a more extraordinary way to live.”

I remember livejournal, high school, and a blog I followed by a young man in Canada who worked by day (and rarely spoke of this), but who was beautiful and enigmatic and surrounded by friends who were much the same. It was different and exciting to track his existence in places that were full of “exciting” people, doing the sort of things I romanticized at sixteen. I remember their faces in the way that I usually remember photography of this sort: blank but amusing. And in my home in the suburbs, in my days of honors classes and dance practices and note taking, I could go home, turn on my computer, and be reminded that there was another world out there, one that was exciting and full of activities that took on an air of glamour. It was an aspirational and hopeful experience. 

And there was a sense of freedom that I craved beyond just leaving home for more school. And there was a sense of freedom that I craved because it was a freedom I could not find, a freedom to exist without the narratives of my class, my gender, my ethnicity.

This photographic aesthetic became ubiquitous. It was no longer a new “thing” in reaction to the growth of the internet, but a means of exploiting an idea about one’s life and using it to gain admiration among the potential eyes viewing one’s work around the world. The images appeared more and more alike, either in reflection of the time passed since I saw my first photo set, or in relation to the glut of visual cues: soft lighting, thin white bodies, natural and wooded scenery or curated urban desecration, alcohol and weed and pills. It all became similar, and because it was similar, it was no longer vital.

I no longer praised the ideas I created (and the photographer created) about the images. I am less resentful and more bored. At 22, I can say that this will never be my life. It bothers me as much as I spend time thinking about the images, which is in fists and bursts, sporadically. The narrative no longer matters. Or, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve quickly realized that the narrative no longer exists, perhaps never existed, and that if it does exist, the story being told is one I’ve heard for the past decade, from numerous people in numerous settings. There is a gleam in their eye that makes me doubtful, even if their stories are true. Everything that mattered, happened, I think. Eventually the debauchery is just fantasy. 

I snapped today.

A group of Black teenage girls sat across from me on the bus. An older Black man, much older, at least in his 50s, began hitting on them, blatantly and disgustingly and physically. They were obviously turned off, because he was crass and because they were young, and this man thought that he could say and do anything he wanted to because these young women tickled his fancy. One girl, clearly agitated, yelled, “I don’t care. Leave me alone! Leave us alone!” And then he too became agitated, yelling to all who would listen, that he didn’t understand why they were so rude to him. He tapped me on the shoulder.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked. I rolled my eyes. I knew wherever this was going, I didn’t want to be a part of it.

And after a long pause, I finally said, “What?”

And he said, “I just want to know why Black women hate Black men.”

I turned around, not even wanting to acknowledge his statement. 

“No, REALLY!” he shouted. “I just want to know why Black women like you and them (pointing to the girls) hate Black men!”

To which I said, “It’s not that Black women hate Black men. It’s that old ass gross men like you start hitting on them when they’ve barely reached puberty.”

“No, that’s not it!” he said.

“No, that’s exactly it. You’re a lonely pathetic fuck who preys on young women. Like me, they’ve probably had to deal with this shit since they were 10. In a sense, they’ve lost their childhoods.”

The girls shook their heads in agreement.

“I overheard their conversation. They were just going to Water Tower. But then you had to come here, acting a fool, causing a scene.”

And he said, “All I know is that when I see a Black woman, she’ll go right up to a white man and be like, “Oh hi!” but they’ll never do that to a Black man.”

“I think you’re confusing all Black men with yourself. Just because you get reasonably shot down because you’re weird and crass does not mean that all Black women hate all Black men. It means that most Black women don’t have the time, energy, or patience, to deal with you. Period. And they shouldn’t have to.”

And then I got to my stop and exited the bus. But really, it was the culmination of years of frustration and annoyance. And by years, I mean decades. Luckily, I had the kind of parents who did not blame me for the men who hit on me as a little girl who unfortunately, started developing at a young age. But this has been an ongoing thing, a frustrating thing. There are slight come-ons, cheesy pick-up lines, cat calls which in hindsight, is child’s play, and then there is harassment - physical and verbal - much like these teenage girls on the bus were suffering from, and what I’ve faced numerous times in the past. Harassment is different, and terrifying, and traumatizing. But once you’ve faced it, in all forms, whether it is a man calling you “A stupid stuck-up bitch” or another grabbing you off the street, a block away from your own home, attempting to rape you before you’ve even gotten your first period, you learn to toughen up, to always be aware, to call out the aggressors from the get go in the hopes that this time won’t turn dire. It’s not about hate but about safety and street smarts. As a Black woman, unfortunately, I believe it’s something we become accustomed to at a young age and that is what is frustrating, that is what makes me angry.