Two Things I’ve Been Thinking About (And Then I’ll Stop Talking About This)
By Katie Mather
A VERY BAD THING HAPPENED
I saw an article in passing the other day about how the whole “rosé all day” movement is sort of perpetuating alcoholism and making it seem chic and normal to be drunk regularly. And not that I’m an alcoholic—I have met and know real alcoholics—but whenever I meet up with friends in this city, I do always end up getting tipsy or drunk off rosé because New York Summers™ are like living on the surface of the sun (but somehow worse?), and the only way to tolerate the weather and everything else going on is to drink bubbly rosé out of a can. But then the other day I got too drunk and I was very, very happy—which is something to celebrate!—except I have this weird thing where I subconsciously do not agree that I should be or deserve to be happy ever. I unearthed his phone number from deep in my call history and thought about how easy it would be to pretend like I’m not angry and just watch the text under his phone number change from “calling” to “connecting” to “0:00” and how I’d probably feel fine if he didn’t pick up. So I watched as it changed from “calling” to “connecting,” and to my absolute terror, it started adding time to the “0:00,” indicating how long we were on the phone together for. This is the closest I’ve been to him in weeks. I was so surprised he answered and even remembered who I was, that I promptly hung up and immediately fell asleep with all my bedroom lights on. He never called back.
A VERY GOOD THING HAPPENED
The heat finally cracked yesterday and it started pouring around the time I headed into Brooklyn to see a friend. It’s been almost exactly a year since I moved back to the East Coast and the one thing I had missed the most is how people will not cancel plans over rain. Everyone and everything in LA shuts down the second it becomes overcast—which is a fact I still find incredibly charming. Honestly, hating LA is so exhausting to me, I’m glad I don’t hate it anymore. I never think about the future because I’m insane and the thought of planning out anything makes me want to break out in hives—I’ve had “call dentist” in my planner for three months and “book flights” scribbled on several different surfaces around my apartment—but my friend and I were sitting outside, under this tiny ledge on some steps and surrounded by cigarette butts and half of our bodies were getting soaked because the rain was dumping down on us and it’s all very cliché to describe, but at the time I felt like this was okay enough to be what the rest of my life could look like. And the thought didn’t make me break out in hives.