Everyday is an exercise in self restraint, in regimenes and routines, curating calories, assembling outfits in your head. You are battling an invisible war for the world, armed with pilates poses and ring light shields. You try to perfect your product, without becoming a cliche. What do you want to emanate? Clean-Mob-Wife-It-Girl-California-Cool-Trad-Tagedy? 60’s? 70’s? Futurist Femcel? Manic Pixie Dream Hurl? Old money or nouveau riche? You must be less animal, less carnal. Try to speak less. Master the art of tip-toeing in high heels, and apologetically slouch in the presence of short men. You learn beauty tips, consume enough counterculture to keep you cool, and stifle through conflicting health advice. Your expertise ranges from archival Gaultier to the precise movements of the planets. You watch A24 films, so you can keep up in conversation. Screen-time guilt drives you to meditate, or rather, recite silent to-do lists, as you assess your flaws and faults. You end the day hauling your ass up a mountain, where you touch grass, until you feel like it's touching you.
You try to unfuck yourself with Youtube subliminal sounds, in hopes that you can eradicate your loser fetish. Scathe away your sins with a guashua. Recite affirmations in your head. Your nightly rituals are held in bathrooms, where you liberally anoint yourself in oils and lotions. You apply lip gloss fervently, and you wonder if it is entering your blood stream, adding a sleen to your insides. You master the precise brushstrokes of makeup, until you are all dolled up like a Christmas ham, ripe and ready for consumption.
Congrats, you have disguised your defiance, surrendered to the Princess-Prostitute Propaganda. Perhaps even prepared to enter the government allotted arena of a bar or nightclub.
Which way western woman? Do you return to your night-time wellness regime, or cross the threshold into an evening escapade? Even when you are resting, you are accelerating. You only sleep to regenerate and improve. You don’t want to miss any cryptic messages from your dreams, or the chance to reconvene with God. But maybe you’ll find him, out there. Disguised as a silverlake suitor. Maybe it's time to sacrifice a perfect tomorrow for the unknown, enter the field of probabilities, packaged like a porcelain plaything.
You have two choices, to Present or Repent. You can subdue your rage with adaptogenics, or augment it with aphrodisiacs. Mayhem or melatonin? Wellness or wilderness? Maybe you’ll wallow in bed, wincing at the thought of your decaying embryos, wrestling the desire to commit skinny suicide via Ubereats. You are aging without an audience. If you stay in, you are antisocial, drab, predictable. Irrelevant, and missing out. If you leave, you're too eager, reckless and dirty. Who wants a wife that has ever been outside?
In the Cave of a club, you can come undone, briefly forfeit the feat of self improvement. Let the liquor abdicate your agency, plunge into the current of carbon clouds and cultural commentary. You make a beautiful work in progress. Your doe eyes send subtle signals across the room, agile microflirtations, providing invitations but never commands. You courtesy to acquaintanceships, brush past people until their bacteria becomes yours, and you are lulled into normalcy. You drink something without sugar, just enough to make yourself unfurl, but not enough to make you stutter. Men drink to alleviate feelings, but women drink to surrender control. You need an excuse to unbutton, to omit the uncomfortable, true thing. To return to your natural stasis of utter chaos.
You study the electricity of a stranger, wondering if you could plug your heart into his sockets. He has that atypical silverlake stature, sporting tight jeans and a concave chest. If you grind up against him, his hip bones might alleviate your aches, stretch out your kinks and knots. Maybe he’ll save your life. You could fall apart, just so long as you leave him clues about how to reassemble your contents. You are wanted. Thats what you wanted right? To be wanted. Now you are wanted and it naseuates, it feels like cheating. Either on yourself, or God, or your future husband.
But who wants a wife who has ever been outside?