Please get me home, though I don’t know where it is

Transcribed from a journal entry dated 07/11/2017.

Lately I’ve been crying for no reason. It’s fine.

It usually happens when I listen to Johnny Gallagher’s music—not from his album, but from the bootlegs people have been posting to Mediafire as though they were full-length live albums. I downloaded them all in one go one night and listened to them as I fell asleep. They faded into one another, and into my subconscious. It was like that night years and years ago when I became a goner for the Strokes and—I remember this so vividly—drifted in and out of consciousness with Julian Casablancas insisting, “You’re no fun, you’re no fun, you’re no fun, you’re no fun,” in my ears.

The recordings came complete with the little spiels Johnny would give between songs, so it felt to me like I was listening to him do stand-up, too. He can be pretty funny, and it could be comforting, too, to listen to him just talking.

But the songs themselves, they take me someplace else. Not just because they’re live and raw so you feel like you’re in the room with that crowd. They’re just so heartfelt, and unfiltered, and real. I hadn’t really been listening to bootlegs for a long time, not since I was 12 and I had no other way to hear the Jonas Brothers’ yet-unreleased songs, particularly their cover of “Take On Me.” (I’m still waiting on a studio version.)

The Johnny recordings brought me back to that time of pure adoration and compromise: I would listen to imperfect, low-quality audio for you, because I love your music that much.

It’s interesting to me, getting to hear several different versions of certain songs at a time. I like being able to point out lyric changes, or shifts and hitches in his voice, or faster and slower takes. I especially like it when he makes a mistake and soldiers on, or when he has to start over. I’ve come to know the individual versions so well that I can pick out favorites—but parts of each of them are so endearing that I keep listening to them all anyway.

In his songs, Johnny’s a mess. He’s fucked up, and lost, vulnerable, self-deprecating. Lonely, heartbroken, and in love. He’s hard on himself. He’s defined by his mistakes. He’s in awe of the world around him. He’s sad and he’s going through something; he’s having the time of his life. He wants to be, he used to be, he is.

It’s the kind of confessional, open introspection that I’m always striving for in my own writing. Johnny has no problem admitting that he’s not always happy or that he has trouble holding his liquor most nights. And his melodies are deceptively simple, but emotionally complex and so beautiful. He’s mentioned that music is an extension of his identity, that he’d lose his head without it—and you can hear that feeling in him, even if it’s just him onstage with the guitar he’s had forever with the faded lightning bolt on the strap. He just has this way of putting words and lines together; you feel like you’re reading his journal and the writing is bleeding through the pages.

And obviously, I identify a lot with what he’s singing about, and it’s been helping me process some feelings and insecurities I can’t name. When I was first listening to Six Day Hurricane, I read some interviews where he talked about “Sarasota Someone”—how he’d written it during a time of inner turmoil and it became this escapist anthem disguised as a sunny pop song. “The irony [was],” he’d said, during one of his in-between talks, “I wrote this song in the summer, but it was winter, um, inside. So I was longing for a warmer place in my soul.”

I loved that. It was reassuring, the idea that he too has had that feeling of nobody loving him or caring about him, at least it seemed like. “No, don’t tell me who does,” he sings on “Why Oh Why Am I This Way?” which he’d written based off a note a friend had left in his apartment after staying overnight that simply said: Why, oh why, am I this way, why? It’s a song, he explained, about talking to himself in the mirror and questioning everything he does wrong—which can feel like all of them some days. And I think it’s the perfect companion song to “Imagine If,” where he’s tracking how much he’s changed, not knowing exactly when he did, and how much can still happen. That kind of ability to look inside yourself and be so honest about it is just something I can’t quite wrap my head around.

My favorite kind of writing makes use of concrete, ordinary details. The sublime, I learned in critical theory class, but it’s been so long and I’m probably bastardizing Longinus’ ideas. Point is, Johnny can deliver a one-sentence summary regarding certain moments in his life that led to his songs, and you can map them out and feel them unfurl in the music, and especially the lyrics.

“Those Wild Woods,” for example, takes memories from when he went with his family to Wildwood, New Jersey when he was 13 and lost his teddy bear Arthur, and combines them with reflections on a trip he made there himself when he got older. Cue vivid imagery of boardwalks, saltwater, and things burning down.

I don’t know. I guess I’m just so used to songs being esoteric, months spent stylistically analyzing Julian Casablancas’ lyrics for my (doomed) thesis, and all. Which must be why Johnny’s are so refreshing to me. I like knowing that “So Many Things,” which reminded me early on of The Academy Is...’ “After the Last Midtown Show,” is about unrequited love at a punk rock concert held inside a Unitarian church in 2002. Or that “Red Hook Romeo,” a.k.a. “Blood Orange Red Hook Baby,” is about a NyQuil-induced fever dream he’d had when he was down with a cold that wouldn’t go away. That “Came and Went” deals with being in your late 20s and not knowing what the hell is going on, or that “Jane’s House” is a love letter to an apartment he was moving out of and leaving behind. (“I’m a sentimental person.”) That “Constance” is a song he calls his most confessional, full of longing pretending to be contempt, about a time during which he made “no earthly sense.” That “Suburban Girl” came to fruition because he’d had a rough night he was wishing he could take back when he chanced upon the Facebook status of a family friend—a teenaged girl who was lying on the floor, playing with her cat—and, oh, how he wished things were still that simple.

I could go on forever, and, god, I probably have. My point (I can almost swear I have one, besides what has become an embarrassing show of devotion for one John Gallagher, Jr.) is: These songs have been moving me to tears when I pause and really listen to them, because, well, the obvious answer is I’ve been empty and lonely and sad and in need of an outlet, and I can’t write since everything feels pointless, so I’ve been letting what I feel (and can’t feel) out through them. Does that even mean anything? It’s like I’m living through John, who was able to process his hang-ups, and even though I’m consuming rather than creating, I’m able to understand myself a little and turn all this negative energy into something that feels like...something.

But I also cry because of secondhand sentiments of finality, aching, wistfulness, self-loathing. (Firsthand, too.) I cry because of his wisdom and because it amazes me how he can write so well. (I WILL NEVER BE OVER THIS.) I cry because these songs may be a little old, but they’re new to me—they’re so new. I cry because I want to express myself like that, I do, but I don’t quite remember how.

I cry because the songs make me believe in romance when I’ve lost faith in so much else. I cry because we seem to be equally lonely, but a little less so precisely because of the music.

I cry because he gets it, and I get him.

Seen it all but I’ve seen nothing yet

The gate was open.

That was the first thing I noticed when we got to the campsite. The gate was unlocked, and beyond it the waters were relatively calm, rolling onto shore in quiet bursts of bubbles and spray. I felt a familiar twitch in my fingers—it was instinct. Want. I wanted to get out there.

A few weeks ago, I never would have guessed that I would find myself on the coast of Batangas, gone camping for a PE class. I never would have guessed that I would find myself anywhere.

I hadn’t been to the beach in thirteen years.

The sun beat down on my back, filtering through the palm trees, as I shook off the twitch and snapped back to attention. I had waited approximately 117,000 hours for a chance to be near the beach again. A few more wouldn’t hurt.

I had a mountain to climb. Quite literally, in fact.

It was my first attempt at such an activity, and who am I kidding? Very likely my last. I spent the entirety of it clinging onto the rocks for dear life and unleashing an entire arsenal of creative, completely unwholesome expletives I didn’t even know I’d been storing in the back of my mind.

On the way up, a boy from my group took it upon himself to help me find my footing. I’d never spoken to him before, never even met him. (We kept missing each other in class.) I didn’t see his face the whole time, just reached for his hand—which he kept holding out to me despite rule number one, Save yourself first—and listened as he told me, “You can do it!” over and over.

I didn’t find out until much later that he was very, very cute. And I was absolutely mortified, for obvious reasons.

I took a shower as soon as we made the (even more life-threatening) descent and got back to the campsite, ditching my muddied running shoes for flip-flops. Everyone had plunked themselves down on the grass, downing their water bottles and taking deep breaths. Did that just really happen? It wasn’t even sundown.

But my mind was already elsewhere. I dusted myself off, and despite my pained limbs and distorted sense of self, I stepped around the backpacks and sleeping bags and made my way over to the gate.

I stepped out, already feeling lighter at the thought of being able to steal some alone time, slow and careful as though any sudden movements might make the beach disappear. But it stayed right where it was, where it’s always been and will be for all time, even when I took a bigger step and felt the lightness become a rapid giddiness.

The pier stretched before me, at its end an open structure with a straw roof and some beach chairs. And beyond, only the sea and the clouds. God, I’d forgotten that, too, the vastness of it. How it feels like it just goes on forever, and how blue it is, and how clear. I looked down and saw a school of fish, gathered together in a small patch of the endlessness.

I took it all in: the lush mountains, the boats painted in outrageous colors that reminded me of classic sorbetes carts, the flags, the shacks, the houses. The specks of people dotting the surface of the water, bobbing along, the sun glinting off their skin.

My body ached. The sound of the waves felt like the constant pulsing in my ears multiplied by a thousand. I had just survived reaching unfathomable heights, pulling myself up using my own two hands. (And, okay, clutching a reasonably attractive someone else’s for support.) I felt monumental and overwhelmed, and therefore alive.

I sat on a beach chair and caught my breath. It had been so long and I had been so young the last time that it felt like a first, somehow. My body no longer knew what saltwater felt like, or real waves, unpredictable, ones that weren’t fabricated in a giant pool.

The cell signal was strongest out there, which was funny to me. I sent a quick text to my parents to let them know I was okay. Then I made a Spotify playlist with every “sea” song off the top of my head: “Plastic Sea” by Minks, “The Sea” by Swim Deep, “Sea of Love” as covered by Cat Power, and a curveball, “Those Wild Woods” by Johnny Gallagher, because of a chorus that goes:

My feet in the sand 
Locked up by the land 
Believe I just might leave 
If I could

And to start it off, “A Beautiful Sea” from the Sing Street soundtrack.

It left me reeling, that happy-sad song whirling in my ears, the sight of an actual beautiful sea before me, with no one else around. It was cold and it smelled like the ocean.

I went down to the beach, took off my flip-flops, rolled up my leggings, and walked out to the surf. I sank my toes into the sand, felt it shift beneath me to support my weight. It was rocky and it hurt a little, but I didn’t care. I was waiting for the spray to hit. And it did, the waves came crashing, washing over my feet.

It reminds me now of Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara, how it said the waves always seem to sound like they’re reciting Begin afresh, afresh, afresh from the Philip Larkin poem “The Trees.”

But right then my only thought was: I want the sea to swallow me whole.

That night it rained, sudden and unrelenting. It was a storm, really. The safest place for us to stay was the shack that held the showers, so we found ourselves huddled on the slightly flooded tiles, telling stories and singing silly songs. Immediately it was clear that our tents would not be habitable—luckily I had thought to chuck my stuff into the giant plastic bags I’d brought for the exact purpose of protecting them from rain—and soon our professors were ushering us into the large, fancy rest house they were staying in. When I think about it now, it makes me feel warm: dozens of students, piled on top of each other on every available surface in a way that was more cozy than claustrophobic, finally sheltered and dry. Someone brought out a guitar and started another singalong, others were playing card games and maybe truth or dare. 

I was on the floor next to Andrea. She had noticed my wrists at dinner, and I had gone still. We’d met a couple of years before taking an Art Studies class and had even gone to a spoken word show together for a group project, and by a stroke of fate we were groupmates again for this class. But still—we barely knew each other, and I didn’t know how to respond to having her know me like this. Vulnerable, raw. 

But then she said, “It’s okay. Me, too.”

And that was a lot. It was so important to be seen and understood like that, when I didn’t even have a diagnosis and when it felt like I was being gaslit into thinking I was just making everything up, that there was nothing wrong with me. 

We talked the whole night. 

I don’t think Andrea and I have spoken since the class ended, which is a shame. But I’ll always be grateful to her for sharing her own stories with me and for helping me make sense of myself when nothing else ever did. 

The next day the skies were clear and pristine, like the night before hadn’t even happened. I was glad, because the water activities were the last thing on our schedule before we had to go home to the city.

It was surprisingly easy for me to fall back into old habits, like collecting shells and sitting at the very edge of the shore, crushing sand with my fists and letting the waves wash over my legs.

I had been planning to do my own thing, but my camping buddies convinced me to go on a banana boat ride with them. That thing was surprisingly fast—just enough to be a rush, thrilling, so you’d be on the edge of fearing for your life. The wind was in my face. I’d never been that far out in the water before.

We decided we wanted to flip the boat over at the end. The driver made the turn and gave us the signal. I let go at the very last second, before everything went upside-down.

We all went underwater. In those few seconds of complete suspension before my life vest propelled me back to the surface, I thought about Althea and Oliver by Cristina Moracho, that last line about how jumping into the ocean hurt, but also felt good.

Soon enough we were saying goodbye—some of us for good. I pretended I wasn’t standing around waiting to talk to the boy who had helped me, but in the back of my mind, I knew. I mean, if he was always going out of his way to say hello and check up on me, even at the gas station on the drive back, or on the banana boat where he sat in front of me and we made nice perfectly pleasant small talk, the least I could do was say goodbye.

I can see it on a dumb souvenir shirt: I climbed a mountain and all I got was this lousy schoolgirl crush. 

We fist-bumped. I said it was nice to meet him, because I wanted to be as obvious as humanly possible. He said my name. He’s always saying my name. I don’t know how he knows my name, I never told him. And just like that, we’d all gone our separate ways.

Years from now I’ll say we shared a life-or-death experience, and then we never saw each other again. But at the time I hoped I was wrong about the second part.

Looking back it feels surreal. I was miles from home with only near-strangers for company, and I had to pretend I wasn’t in the middle of my worst depressive period yet. The physical and social exertion was draining.

But I learned so much, about mountains, about the ocean, and about myself. I learned that human beings can be nice, more decent than I give them credit for most days. And if people I just met can show me kindness, then maybe I can afford to be a little kinder to myself as well.

On the beach I walked out, all the way into the water, and didn’t stop until it reached up to my chin. I looked ahead at the horizon, tried to make out anything, the farthest my eyes could see. It was all sky, and water, and light. I floated on my back, closed my eyes, the glare of the sun dazzling even through my eyelids. I tasted the salt and kept my palms up.

The waves came. They carried me, threatened to pull me under and anchored me at the same time. I was lighter than air.

The sea was finally swallowing me whole.

Let's try this again

Two months ago I was at an archaeological exhibit in school and I started crying. 

I was alone, surrounded by artifacts that have been around for centuries and millennia: earthenware, ceramics, and rocks thought to be extraterrestrial materials, uncovered ninety years ago. I remember how they were illuminated by fluorescent lights, glowing as though they really were otherworldly and magical. I remember the way they blurred together when the tears came, desperate and feverish. 

All of them, I thought, matter more than I can ever hope to. All of them will outlast me. 

It was a nice reminder of my insignificance in the larger scope of things, and even on the ground I walk. I felt more impermanent, more temporary, than ever. 

The seven months that have passed since I last wrote on here have been tough. Let's just say I really thought I wouldn't make it this time. 

But by some cosmic force, I held on. There were journal entries, the beach, sad songs, sad songs that sound like '90s discotheques, and something a total stranger said on the internet: Hopefully, over time, you can learn how to care for yourself in safer, more loving ways.

And friends, and family, and realizing that saying it out loud, physically, person to person, made a difference. 

I'm writing a lot and I'm experiencing things I wanted so badly to live for. I'm not actively destroying my own body, and the parts of it I thought I'd destroyed are healing. I want to get better. I'm getting better. 

I'm still here, somehow. 

I saw you last night and got that old feeling

Though sometimes you cross my mind from time to time, 

I don’t think that the stars are ours to have.

– Very Truly Yours, “Things You Used to Say”

As I left the house I saw that Melissa Broder, as her So Sad Today persona, had tweeted, “got over you but then saw you again.” I put my phone back in my pocket and tried not to view it as a sign.

I was in the middle of asking myself whether I really wanted to break my streak of not seeing you, not being around you, and not talking to you. It had been three years, five months, two weeks, and six days. (Approximately.) It was such a good run—I didn’t want to ruin that.

I didn’t particularly want to return to our high school after five years just to see an amateur production of Cinderella, either. I’d convinced myself that I was going for completely different reasons than having seen your name on the list of people attending. It was a fundraiser. It was an excuse to have a night out with friends; at least, the very, very few I’ve kept in touch with. I didn’t have anything better to do, except I did.

I had put on my favorite denim jacket and worn dark matte lipstick. (Not for you.) I had slicked on some eyeliner. (Not for you.) I had brushed my hair and made sure my neck smelled like peaches and apricots. (Not for you.)

During the play I sneak-studied for my English history exam and felt weird about familiarity and change, or lack thereof. When it was over I stood back, watched the crowd, and made myself invisible. I didn’t dare look over my shoulder for you.

You weren’t there, anyway.

Not until the very last minute, when I spotted the jacket that let people know you were going to medical school. You stood among your classmates from our senior class, fresh off a late lecture, I guessed. I could only see you from the back, but the second my eyes landed on you, I knew. You were already walking away.

“His hair is ridiculous,” I told Alyssa, when the doors closed behind you. (It is. Look at yourself. But whatever.) 

We ended up having dinner in the same restaurant across the street—it had been an entirely different place before we graduated. Separate tables, of course. You were upstairs, because there were probably twenty of you in your group, and downstairs I was relieved, because the room definitely would’ve been too small for the both of us. (Not to mention two of your ex-girlfriends.)

When the plates were cleared and the bill was paid I sat outside with my friends while they smoked. And because I’m being honest, here: I didn’t want to go without seeing you and saying hi.

Obviously, because history is doomed to repeat itself, I never got to. We always were awful at keeping up with each other, even within the same space, even at the right time. Looking back, it’s funny to me that it’s how things turned out. Like, was it ever going to be anything else? 

My back was turned to the restaurant entrance, so when Camille and Alyssa waved to someone leaving, I didn’t see who it was until it was too late. You were in a hurry, fishing your car keys out of your pocket, your glasses threatening to fall off your face. I watched you get into your car—now I’ll flinch every time I pass a black sedan. You wear glasses, I thought. You can drive, I thought. We’re not sixteen anymore, I thought, we’re twenty-two. You walked right past me, I thought.

You drove away. Gone again until who knows when. Oblivious as ever. Makoto Shinkai would be proud.

The girls and I took an Uber, and I didn’t care that the driver could hear me calling you an asshole. They dropped me off along Roosevelt, and my mind was still on you as I bought a cake from a family bakery and rode the jeepney home.

I wanted to leave you a voicemail. Isn’t that ridiculous? I wanted to call you and have your prerecorded message play and probably feel my breath hitch when I hear your voice and tell you everything in one long and nervous tirade after the beep. I wanted to confess. If only for the act itself, nothing more. I wanted to be reckless and loud and unapologetic.

But I couldn’t, because we don’t leave voicemails. And because I don’t have your number. So I settled for the next best thing, which was to send you a message request on Messenger (because we’re not Facebook friends, and fuck me if I sent you a friend request). I thought twice about adding an exclamation point. My finger hovered shakily over the little blue arrow as I told myself what a bad idea this was. My entire life was a bad idea.

I hit send.  

I said: Hey! This is probably gonna sound stupid, but I saw you tonight and we didn’t get to say hi and for some reason that bothered me. So. Hi, belatedly. Hope you’re well.

I immediately muted notifications.

I tweeted about what I’d done.

I went to check Alyssa and Camille’s messages, after which technology decided to betray me and let me know that you’d accepted the request and replied. The preview for your message flashed on the screen: you should’ve tapped me…

Shit. Shitshitshit. I locked my phone and put it away. I didn’t check it again until I was home, practically choking on the chocolate chiffon I’d bought.

You said: FIEL!! where did you see me? in the auditorium?

You said: Hello!! Long time no talk!

You said: hahaha

You said: you should’ve tapped me or something haha

I wanted to say: I’m on my period and I’m lonely and this irrational sentimental bullshit has nothing to do with you.

I wanted to say: You still owe me a mix CD.

I wanted to say: Do you remember when I told you I was starting to doubt the God you and I grew up with? “Don’t waver,” you said. I’m sorry. I don’t believe in any gods now, especially not the ones that take the shape of humans. I believe in a movement that’s bigger than all of us, and I believe that it exists out there in the greater scope of the Universe. Does that make any sense?

I wanted to say: You missed out. I was pretty.

In the end all I said was: It was nice seeing you.

Neither of us said anything after that.

We’re never going to get any closure, are we? Almost-relationships are the weirdest. Maybe there’s really just nothing to close. 

There have now been two nights in my life that involve booze, cheap cake, and a boy, blissfully unwitting. Sadness, also, but. There’s this strangest hyper-awareness that the earth is moving. I’ll live.

I was over you. I saw you again, and I still fucking am.

(All I ask is, this better not be a recurring theme in my life.)  

all hallow's blues

10/31/15

We'd been in the same room once, at a music club in the basement of a Chinese restaurant, where a tribute show for some it-band was being held until well into what was called the "vulnerable hours" in a book I'd read.

It sounds cooler than it was.

I turned twenty-one that night, staring at my dying phone in the middle of a raging song. I watched the numbers change on the clock portion of my lockscreen. And at midnight on Halloween, for a moment, I was the only one who knew.

It was a strange feeling—I'd spent many newly-minted birthdays alone before, but never in a room full of people. I tried sensing a certain change, any change, within me, but I was as unremarkable and still as ever. I downed some of my beer (it was horrible and I hated it and I probably wasn't built for drinking of any sort) and tried to focus on the musicians on the makeshift stage, their faces half-hidden in the dimness. I felt out of place, like I always did, because everyone seemed to know everybody else but me.

But you were there, and you were a sight, with your cellophane eyes and your unruly hair, and I just knew I would never see you again. You were one of them, of course; you fit in.

I slipped away and left halfway through the show, already the slightest bit irrationally sad that I was losing you, a total stranger. I spent the rest of the night slowly finishing off the cheap caramel cake my parents had gotten me from the local bakery and wondering if I'd ever been truly drunk before.

(I probably have, once. I found out I was the space-out kind; lots of unfocused distant stares, speaking less and sinking even deeper into my head.)

I wasn't then, I don't think. But I was something.

Here I was, dying inside, and they were talking about perpetual motion.

On fanaticism, girlhood, moving beyond, and the endless search for 

emptiness, prompted by my life's collision with Nicholas Hoult's.

At seventeen, I was invincible and stupid. 

I was a year out of high school and, having finally left behind the suffocating (and very limited) confines of my Catholic secondary education, I was eager to discover what else was out there for myself. I was reading over ten books a month. I was writing poetry almost compulsively. I was exploring my city and getting mugged and learning to love both train rides and walks home. I was starting to become preoccupied with planning and putting together a webzine with a small team composed of my friends, which in a couple of months would become Elision, its name picked out of a list of obscure music terms, referring to the occurrence in which a note begins where another note ends.

I hadn’t fucked up my life yet, but I would. 

I wasn’t dating or rounding up the requisite vices of a reckless youth—not for a lack of trying, mind you. That kind of thing just didn’t come naturally to me, I guess. It still doesn’t. Instead, like a true-blue loser, I busied myself with a slew of come-and-go fixations, live music, bands, and the internet. My days turned into a series of hotel lobbies, fiction and indiscretion, and close encounters, too close, with false heroes who no longer matter to me as much, if at all. Years have passed since I deleted their music.

This part of my life is very well documented. I feel like it’d be redundant at this point to recount it all here, and, if I’m being honest, downright embarrassing, although I know it sort of makes no sense without context to the people who have no idea what I’m talking about. But I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t miss it. I miss my friends most of all. “Look at our lives,” we’d say in jest, echoing some cyber-phrase we had learned off of Tumblr back when it was socially acceptable to be on it. “Look at our choices.” 

And I do look at them now, and I think, Well, shit. All those horrible decisions. All that wasted time. 

But what’s a past self if not the most ideal recipient of a swift kick in the face? 

The friends I made on the internet because they liked the same bands that I did, we’ve come to look back on these days as though we were buddies who’d been through war. We were, for lack of a better word, part of a scene. It felt at the time like it would never end, but a subculture—especially one rooted in music—was always going to be ephemeral, a you-had-to-be-there kind of thing. Eventually, of course, we were pulled apart by differing interests, college, and whatever else. For me, I suppose, it was Elision and having outgrown the very musicians I once cried over and claimed I would love for the rest of my life. Somehow, we turned into our very own “Where are they now?” 

We began to think of ourselves as “veterans” of a dying movement. We’d seen it all and done it all. We were growing up and we were ready to move on. 

*

When I think of the year I turned seventeen, I look at it in terms of markers—what I was listening to, what I was obsessed with, what I loved. One of these things was Nicholas Hoult. 

I first became truly conscious of who he was two years earlier when I found him in an issue of Teen Vogue. I remember finding it endearing that he’d had no idea who Tom Ford even was, aside from his cameo in Zoolander, before filming A Single Man. The article mentioned that he’s 6’3”, and in the accompanying photo, his pale blue jacket and the sky around him brought out the color of his eyes. 

That was the year I really started paying attention to Skins, already a couple of years too late. I had been too young and a little too un-hip to have been able to fully appreciate it at the time of its original release. His turn as Tony Stonem, the Sartre-reading, choir-singing, ambiguously bisexual (and equally ambiguously sociopathic) antihero with a heart of gold, gave me all kinds of epiphanies. 

He became Hank McCoy, he read a Nick Hornby audiobook and did funny voices, and he played a zombie in love. In real life, he was shy, sweet, and self-deprecating. He was the ultimate: this impossible dreamboat, this great ideal, on whom I projected my hopeless teenybopper admiration. He would never be within my reach. 

Magazines I’d read had called his type “cotton candy.” You could fall in love with him, and you could move on with your life. 

So when it was announced that Nick was coming to Manila for AsiaPOP Comicon, I was, as the kids say, shook. 

I found myself weeks later in a hotel lobby, alone and uncertain. Call it a Fangirl’s Lament: How do I unlearn the obsessive tendencies that anchor me to overemotion? How do you like something casually without needing to experience more? The days leading up to the Con and Nick’s arrival had come and gone, leaving me an unruly, unraveling bundle of nerves. This combination of excitement and unease manifested physically—I could feel it at the tips of my fingers, and dead center in my chest. The weirdness of it all settled over me and clung to my skin. 

Like I said, I was “retired.” I’d left that life behind a long time ago. My old crew was gone; when I asked my friends to come with me for old times’ sake, none of them were free. Four years ago, I didn’t even have to ask. I was too old for this shit, I no longer belonged. Well-adjusted, stable adults did not go to hotels to orchestrate meet-cutes with the boys of their girlhood dreams. I knew this, and yet at that moment I had become very convinced that I must take a photo of Nick on film. To do that, I needed to rely on old habits and attempt to make it happen. 

But the whole time I was there all I did was ask myself, “What am I doing here?”

My exploits as a teen superfan had never been so existential. 

I walked out of there at half past noon with nothing to show for it. I wasn’t disappointed—I was relieved. My body lagged with the after-effects of an unwarranted adrenaline rush that went to waste. I could live with it, but the blue-moon aspect of the situation, almost farcical in its far-fetched reality, followed me around. This was never going to happen again, and I’d be foolish to let it pass me by.

I needed closure. 

Before I knew it, I was standing second in line for a photo session with Nick, having spent over two thousand bucks for the assurance and the opportunity. All around me were people in costume. Talk about surreal: I was psyching myself up, telling myself that I was really doing this, in the presence of an inflatable velociraptor and the Winter Soldier and a Power Ranger and Prince Gumball and Jubilation Lee and BoJack Horseman. Cons are something else. 

What took place after has been playing and replaying on a loop in the back of my mind since that day, always happening, happening, happening in its own little Groundhog Day universe, so I’m going to write the next part in the present tense. 

The photo session starts fifteen minutes early. My first real glimpse of Nicholas Hoult arrives in the form of a silhouette, seen through the sheer black curtain of the makeshift booth. The ushers set the curtain aside to prepare for the oncoming chaos, and there he is. His eyes are blue even from where I’m standing, several feet away. I let out a “Holy shit” without realizing, and the chatty usherette guiding me goes, “Same!” and high-fives me. 

When it’s my turn, Nick gets into a faux fighting stance and motions me over, all silliness and charm. The first thing he does when I get to his side is literally pull me into a hug, romance novel clinch cover-style. (It’s at this point that my sanity and composure go out the window.) Note that I’m not allowed to touch him unless he touches me. His shirt feels very soft under my fingers—that much I will remember clearly. He untangles himself from me and says, “Hello, how are you?” 

And I swear I can’t answer for five seconds. 

I’m so far gone that the automatic “I’m doing well, how are you?” failed to initiate in my faulty system. “This is so surreal for me, I’m sorry,” I tell him when I remember how to speak. “I’ve loved you since Skins.” I rehearsed this moment probably a hundred times from the second I was made aware that it could happen. And here I am, fucking it up spectacularly. Still, he tilts his head, body language for I’m flattered, and says, “Aw, thank you so much.” From the delivery, I get the feeling that he means it, even though he’s probably used to it. 

I start to tell him that I loved his Happy, Sad, Confused podcast episode, to let him know I’m not messing around, but he cuts in and asks me what my name is. 

You have to understand. I decided early on not to bother saying my name unprompted, because it wouldn’t matter, anyway. No celebrity I’ve ever met, save for William Beckett, has ever asked me for my name, not even when signing autographs. And now Nicholas Hoult is looking at me, waiting to know what I’m called. It feels so, so nice.

“Fiel,” I croak. 

“Fiel,” he says back. 

We take the photo. Then another. The flash is disorienting. I thank him profusely. I have zero presence of mind. I think I mutter, “See you around.” Which is absolutely ridiculous. I’m never seeing him again. 

It’s over before I know it, of course. 

It will never be over, of course. 

The realizations and regrets hit me as soon as I walk out of the booth and claim my glossy picture. They come to me, at first in singular bursts, then all at once. Not enough eye contact—I’m the worst at it. I never got to ask him about his favorite book, or his favorite Salinger. I might have walked away too soon. The light glinted off my glasses unflatteringly in the photo, and I can’t ever re-do it or fix it. I was already forgetting details: what it was like to look into his eyes up close, the sound of his accent, how it felt to have his head resting in the crook of my neck. 

I was alone. I didn’t have this to look forward to anymore. I didn’t have any war buddies that knew exactly what I was feeling. I was empty, all too suddenly. 

I took the bus home and didn’t dare attempt to make any sense of it. 

*

When I got home from my first day on my first real job, I cried at the dinner table. 

“Why are you crying?” my mom asked, more out of amusement than anything. I had no answer, and to this day I still don’t. I think it had to do with the idea, plain as day, that my life was changing, and I couldn’t hold on to the comfortable constants I’d grown attached to. I couldn’t hide behind ignorance anymore. I was just overwhelmed and exhausted. But it also had to do with the fact that something huge and something wonderful had just happened, and now I didn’t know what to do with myself. All the overthinking and mixed feelings were getting to me. 

Whatever it was, I’m almost certain it was the same reasoning that prompted me to cry, once again at the dinner table, when I got home from meeting Nicholas Hoult. 

Sometimes I almost wish it never happened, that APCC never brought him here in the first place. If you had asked seventeen-year-old me to list things more likely to happen to twenty-one-year-old me than being within zero inches of Nick Hoult, she would have said things like going to the moon or winning the lottery, and she would have been convinced that she wasn’t lying. It was too real, too much, and it left me drained. 

It gets me thinking, now that I’m older, would it always be this way? What if I’m just setting myself up for disappointment every time? Every good thing is probably just escapism in disguise: thirty seconds of brilliance followed by a lifetime of disillusionment.

Then I snap out of it and tell myself: You’ve conversed with Nicholas Hoult! Nicholas Hoult knows your name! Then I snap out of that and tell myself: There’s an entire universe out there. 

I think it’s easy to read this piece and write it off as shallow and juvenile. I’m already doing it, myself. But I also think people shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the emotions experienced by anyone who’s ever loved something fanatically—it’s not being irrational, it’s being unflinchingly honest. Unrestrained. Real. And nobody should ever have to apologize for that, even if it does make us do some pretty screwed-up things.

Maybe I’ll never attain that level of “chill” that allows me to gush over my obsessions without being so emotionally vulnerable all the time. Maybe I’ll never learn to contain what I feel. Maybe next year I’ll be writing this exact same essay about someone else. Maybe I’ll never be too old for any of it, not really. And maybe I don’t really want to be. 

*

Before entering the booth for the photo session with Nick, I left the voice recorder app running on my phone and snuck it into my back pocket while the ushers reiterated that we weren’t allowed to bring anything in. 

I listened to it afterwards. He was so soft-spoken that his voice hardly registered. It makes me think of The Day the Dancers Came, and sometimes I imagine how I would lose the recording. I could accidentally delete it. I could lose track of where to listen so I’d understand what he was saying. I could stop caring altogether, and it wouldn’t matter what happened to it.

The audio is a mess of squealing fans, idle chatter, and white noise. The first time I heard it, I almost thought Nick wasn’t on it at all. But if I strain and really listen for his voice, I can just barely make out that nanosecond in which he spoke my name. 

No matter what I do, it comes and goes fast, and for a second I’m dazed and disappointed all over again. But for what it’s worth, I’ve come to appreciate it for what it is: a beautiful, imperfect, endless moment, now gone. 

photo diary #3

I've been thinking that I should get back to sharing actual concrete moments about my life, even the most minute, boring things, the way I used to when I first started Wonderless. five years ago. (Also, shit, five years?!) So, here's a summary of how I've been for the past few months, as told mostly through shitty phone pics. 

I finally started a real zine collection when I attended Lit UP 4 in June. It was a fundraiser for when the Faculty Center was destroyed by a fire in April, with a mini-bazaar held by independent presses and zine purveyors. There were performances by bands and spoken word poets, too, but once I got what I came for, I bolted out of there and waited for my dad at a McDonald's like a loser. (Double loser, because I saw people from school and pretended I was invisible.) Then I came all the way to Escolta for some zines by Sarah McNeil. Then in July I attended Local Loca's Kontrabando at Cubao X.

I'm obsessed with everything I've gotten so far—they're all so interesting and funny and well-written and intricate and creative. The illustrations and photographs are really good, too, of course. Some of my favorites are Strangers and さまよいます by Aga de los Santos, featuring film photographs taken in Japan; I've Gone Away by Alyssa Africa, a glossy, gorgeous collection of snapshots from her travels; and Feels;21 by Shin, which is full of drawings that convey existential dread, sadness, and dry humor.

Nothing much to say about this, really. I just love the lighting and I was pretty excited to have brought Annie out again, since I hadn't really used her since Singapore.

I was out grocery shopping with my parents at this place in Valenzuela and they had all these plastic cats and dinosaurs scattered throughout. I caught these cuties in a compromising position. I wasn't having the best night at the time but I really want to go back to that supermarket!

I saw the prettiest minimalist repurposed plastic dinosaur planters outside shoemaker and designer Maco Custodio's studio, which happens to be located right along Tandang Sora, very close to where I live. I was there to interview him. It amazed me, and we talked about this, how burgeoning creatives can be found right in the far north, in areas like Novaliches, among auto shops and everything. His studio, which is near his apartment, is in a really home-y compound. You never would have guessed. We were surrounded by his sketches and works in progress, listening to slightly outdated pop music on his radio, safe from hard rain. It was a really cool day for me.  

I got to do a behind-the-scenes/fly-on-the-wall feature on AlDub that I think turned out pretty well—I was never a fan but it was pretty cool witnessing all those raw moments and writing about them. I got to sit (well, stand) in while they filmed an episode of Real Talk and kind of felt like I was Rachel McAdams in Morning Glory. People said the whole Harvest Moon thread felt a little too convenient, but I swear that was the real deal! They also said they liked the piece, and it made our little "10k Club" with thirty thousand views (!), so I was really giddy about that, even if I did make a mistake that went viral thanks to an oversight when I was transcribing what they said during the interview. (I was mortified, of course.)

On July 30th, CNN Life partnered with Ayala Museum for its annual Inspire Every Day event, which doubled as the website's official launch. In the morning I attended a talk by Keiji Ashizawa about his project, Ishinomaki Laboratory, at the Met. Then I had lunch at Harrison Plaza's Village Square, which has an indoor koi pond surrounded by benches and bisected by a tiny bridge under a skylight. I loved that it was practically deserted, and, again, how it feels frozen in time. I wish I could've stayed longer, but I was on a pretty tight schedule.

I arrived at Ayala Museum a few minutes before my afternoon shift and visited the exhibits before clocking in, so to speak. I helped give away free totes at our interactive booth (more of a box, really). It was three hours of standing and speaking to all kinds of people, but I surprisingly had a really great time and I'd do it all over again, no questions asked. Near the end, I got to meet the other girls manning the booth with me and, honestly, it was just so nice hanging around with and speaking to them. They helped me rearrange the huge 3D Life logo to form my name; easily one the day's highlights. Then I took the P2P (a double decker!) on the way home and discovered the magic of Wendy's chicken nuggets. Really.

So, about those darn MSTs. Despite being saddled with regular priority for preenlistment, I actually got the three I needed. "You're lucky," the really kind woman who printed my Form 5 told me. And I guess I am—but more than that, I was someone who spent two days lining up for those slots in the middle of the night. I spent the first night with Cheska and the second alone with Saturday Night Live and two kind night guards.

I learned that hard work pays off, but there's a lot of luck involved, indeed. I learned that I love any kind of endless night in general, no matter who I'm with or where I am or what I'm doing, because I kind of had the time of my life. Also, dawn's favorite habit is sneaking up on you.

This little guy can be found near the bike racks outside the Math building! He is quite the big ball of fluff. I should visit sometime.

I love how matchy-matchy the colors are! The photo on the left is the cover of an academic study published by SUNY that I found in Booksale. The photo on the right features a pair of adorable tiny snails I hung out with while waiting for a jeep in the rain. The waiting shed was (slowly) crawling with them.

I wanted to replace Enid Coleslaw on my sidebar with actual-me. And I wanted to give myself the reverse coloring book treatment for a change. I just wish I could fill in the lace details on my top! I have to say, though, that it turned out to be a nice little exercise in self-actualization. I'm not usually big on self-portraiture or anything like that. (Unless you count all the confessional me-me-me writing, ha!) 

This is a screencap from when I watched The Nice Guys last month and really liked it. I thought the subtitles were a nice touch. And, well, yep. Me too, bud.

the further i go, the more that i know

It dawned on me the other day that since I started carrying my Aqua Pix around with me all the time, I've been unwittingly uncovering a love for this city I grew up in.

This rediscovered hobby has documented the recurring themes in my life (loneliness included) and, in my effort to look for subjects worth keeping in picture form, has led me to really stop and look at Metro Manila from a new perspective. And for every exposure, I keep finding new favorite things about it.

It's taught me to say, "Fuck it," and bring my camera out at a busy intersection to capture a moment, a person, an object I find too interesting for words. It's taught me to stay alert and to get off my phone and to remember why I love long bus rides and window seats. Sometimes, when I'm trying to finish a roll of film, I would take a detour on my way home and walk around somewhere in search of anything that sticks out—like this game I would play with myself on car rides, where I try to look for something I think is beautiful every ten seconds. Turns out it's not hard at all, and I'm never disappointed.

I feel like I've known how to define something—being a part of Manila—for years, but it's only now that I'm understanding it.

So, here, again, is a glimpse into my own personal Metro Manila.

I don't know if you can tell, but that's a cat.

my loneliness is killing me

I'd never heard of Perfect Blue until I read about it on, of all things, a list of '90s horror films. 

I've never been an in-deep anime fan, sticking to the Ghiblis and the Cardcaptor Sakuras and the Sailor Moons, but last year my professor showed Whisper of the Heart in our creative writing class (I hadn't seen it before) and I just garnered this sudden deep appreciation for it. I haven't branched out, still. (Sorry, Cheska!) But I've definitely become less likely to write anime off from the start. I love the fantasy and sci-fi ones as much as the next person, but I find that I'm most amazed by the titles that are more realistic, like She and Her Cat: Everything Flows, because of what the creators can do with such apparent simplicity. 

Anyway, the list I read had described Perfect Blue as a mind-screwy thriller that was the inspiration for Black Swan. It's about a former pop idol, who leaves her girl group behind, hoping to be taken more seriously as an actor. She gets cast in an intense murder mystery series that pushes her beyond her comfort zone—to, you guessed it, dire results. Soon the lines between reality and illusion are horrifyingly blurred. The tight jump cuts and sequences that are equal parts dreamy and nightmarish (as only the Japanese can manage) will stay with you and leave you mulling over them long after the film is over.

It's so unique in its concept, and so haunting. Plus, it's meta and firmly rooted in true-to-life situations, which might just be the scariest part of all. I'm still trying to process. 

Perfect Blue tells of a descent into madness, punctuated by paranoia, the loss of identity, obsession, and fan culture. But more than that, it's about loneliness.     

And obviously, I identified with that. 

(Don't let these screen caps fool you, by the way—the film has its fair share of creepy get-me-brain-bleach visuals.)