Two doors down from my apartment in Chicago live two little girls, ages 4 and 5, who love my dog, and every time I go outside with my dog and see them, they run up to me and ask to pet Mira and tell me about their day. A couple of weeks ago, this was happening, and their aunt came out of the house and chatted with me for a bit and then said, “okay, I have to go inside and watch my show now,” and then just stared at me. So I asked her, “do the girls have to go inside, too?” and she nodded her head. I thought, why wouldn’t she just say “we all have to go inside now”? I don’t get this. Just say what you mean. It at best enervates me and at worst makes me feel rude to live in a place where people constantly say things that slide just past the thing they actually mean.
It makes me sort of sad to know and now be able to say that yeah, I don’t really like it here. There’s nothing wrong with it, and still I don’t like it. People ask me why I am leaving, and even though there are lots of reasons, the truest thing I can say is “because I want to.”
One time a friend of mine was telling me that his partner would get really freaked out every time he said he was unhappy in their relationship because she thought it meant he was going to leave her, and I was like, well, maybe she’s right, maybe that is what it means that you’re so consistently unhappy. I have been thinking about that conversation in parallel to thinking about how every time I would complain about Chicago to my ex-boyfriend, whom I moved here to be with, he would get really freaked out that I would always hate it here, that there was no fixing this problem. And I would reassure him that no, I was working on it, that one day I would like it, but he was right — there was no fixing it.
I am on the train home from O’Hare. I have just flown in from Brooklyn, where I spent the weekend picking up keys to my new apartment and seeing some old friends and making some new friends. I got there Saturday morning. As the cab from LaGuardia pulled onto the highway I felt, suddenly, deeply at peace. I texted my friend Eva about this and she was like, yeah, that’s probably because you’re not working so hard every day to make something work that just doesn’t.
I’m listening to the new War On Drugs song, “Living Proof,” from an upcoming album that’s going to be called I Don’t Live Here Anymore. The track’s got a reference to Chicago, by which I mean that Granduciel sings “I’m in Chicago.” It all feels way too on the nose, but whatever. I listen to it a few times in a row, looking out the window at the cars driving south. I spot a moving van, write down the name of the company. They’re coming to my house on Thursday to estimate how much it will cost to move my belongings 800 miles. My life, however, will cost nothing to move. It is already there.
I, meanwhile, am somewhere in between. Over the weekend I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before a shower and in new, unfamiliar light, saw more ribs than I usually do. I don’t think about it very much, but I’ve been having trouble eating. If you don’t want to read about that — I get it — just skip this paragraph and the next. I know why I’m having trouble eating, but ultimately the reason doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact of it: I sit down in front of food, or food is set down in front of me, and I can either put it in my mouth or I can’t. I don’t know which is going to happen when.
Last week, I gently simmered lentils with onions and garlic and ginger and curry paste and anchovies and coconut milk until it was all silky and thick and fragrant, then I mixed in some greens, then I placed it all over rice, squeezed some lemon, sprinkled some flaky salt, sprinkled some chopped cilantro, and became nauseated after taking one bite. I set the plate down, paced around my apartment.
I put on Perfume Genius’s Live from the Palace Theatre while Mira slept next to me, saw Mike Hadreas stand in an oversized suit and a white tank top, wrestle against and play with his body on the stage, croon “Jason” while crouched on the floor with one leg sticking out, stand forcefully in the middle of the stage to deliver “Describe,” which then melts into “Wreath.” The two songs are on the opposite ends of a spectrum, “Describe” an adamantly physical track, almost lacerating in its metal-guitar grandeur and its imagery — his loving felt like ribbons — while “Wreath” vibrates with a manic desire to escape all that — burn off every trace / I wanna hover with no shape. But there they were, together, bleeding into one another, one’s pull making possible the other’s push.
I cried a little, surprised myself, kept watching. The performance is gorgeous and precise, Hadreas moving around constantly, the sound of his voice dependent on the shape of his body — versatile tool, inescapable vessel. I drank a glass of water. I tried again: no nausea. I ate dinner. I only ever want to be able to try again.
This is one of several pieces on Perfume Genius. You can read the other ones here, here, here, and here.