Quote of the Week: “Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots, and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you're so cool, you're so cool, you're so cool.” —Alabama Worley, True Romance
Eating: A Caramel Delight Girl Scout cookie, the perfect ending to my spontaneous 9:30 PM Valentine’s Day feast of paneer tikka masala and aloo paratha.
Thinking: Every Valentine’s Day, I contemplate the pressure to make the day romantic. My second favorite holiday. I (unsurprisingly) had myself a little meltdown this year. I was cleaning the apartment, all sweaty in a sports bra with dirty hair and a huge pimple and I thought: on this day, in this moment, I could not possibly feel less sexy. Here I am scrubbing the tub that I asked my partner to scrub the other week to no avail, looking like someone who smokes Newports with the windows up in their busted Civic, trying to subdue my pettiness. I’m wondering why February 14th does not feel like February 14th, why I’m smelling bleach instead of roses, why my brain is too busy memorizing email marketing jargon to enjoy a good love poem.
The truth is that life is moving really fast right now. Finding the stillness for romance requires breaking your stride—a pause I don’t currently have the luxury to take, but will soon enough. It might not have been the sexiest Valentine’s Day, but I have a clean tub and leftover Indian and a partner whose shitty handwriting on a drugstore greeting card sets my heart ablaze. Someone still calls me their dream girl all sweaty in a sports bra with dirty hair and a huge pimple. Roses make me sneeze, anyway.
Weekend Recap: I remember pre-pandemic I was traveling home alone from Sicily. There are no direct flights to the island from the US, so travel is a bit of a doozy. (The magic is in the remoteness, anyway.) I got up at 5 AM to my friend’s mom making me un po’ di caffè before sending me off in a car to the airport with a family friend, both of us tearful. From there, I stayed a night in Rome and got myself to a long layover in Madrid and home to Philly independently with unfamiliar ease.
Since then, I’ve traveled a few places alone, easy jaunts like Nashville and New Orleans, and it always reminds me to savor solitude in transit. Having a partner and travel-loving friends doesn’t mean you can’t hit the road alone when the mood strikes.
And so I finally picked a weekend to visit my friend Cass in NYC. Traveling to New York from Philadelphia is so easy and blasé, it’s criminally pathetic to mention you did it alone. But for some reason the whole Megabus experience (my first time) scratched an itch for solo travel that I’d been ignoring. I sat beneath the apocalyptic green overhead lighting, sprawled between two seats watching Susan Sontag interviews from the 90s. Before I knew it, I was in New York.
Cass lives alone in this mysterious corner of Manhattan that touches Chelsea, Greenwich Village, and Flatiron. I don’t know what you call a location like that other than “lucky.” Cass has been to over 80 countries, mostly solo, two of which we’ve traversed together. It only makes sense that I visit her alone because to show up with a friend would be like offering Franzia to a sommelier.
New York is such a fucking playground for the senses. And when we get together, it’s always high jinks. So one minute we’re sipping herby g&t’s and eating kafta and the next we’re zipping around empty hotel corridors, sneaking into a club with a $120 cover charge. (Side note: if you’d pay $120 cover anywhere, you should Venmo me $5 right now on principle.) The next day it was two carafes of mimosas at Pardon My French. Then a sex store where some sultry, androgynous Latina coaxed me into spending $200. Then beer in coffee cups on the subway to a foggy techno dungeon in Brooklyn. Ubering to Taco Bell afterward. One cheesy gordita crunch, two chicken chalupas, a giant lemonade. Needless to say, now that I’ve mastered the Megabus and remember how nice it is to head elsewhere with no one to please but myself, I will be back to New York in no time.
Listening to: “I Was A Fool To Care” by James Taylor. Because in the frenzy of being clueless at a new job, there’s always 70s soft rock to throw on like an old tshirt.
Just Read: The cool thing about Substack is the support community that connects you to a bunch of hidden gem publications. Kelton Wright writes Shangrilogs, a newsletter about her life relocating from LA to a log cabin in a tiny mountain town of 180 residents. I recently read her piece on breathing through your mouth. That sounds wellnessy and prescriptive but it’s really the opposite, brimming with stories about her life as a mouth breather, and eye-opening research from the book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (it’s now on my list). I highly recommend making this your lunch break read today (you know, after YOUR FAVORITE NEWSLETTER EVER SO DON’T YOU DARE GO ENJOYING HERS MORE).
Feeling: 1.) Like an unstoppable beam of light. Now that I have a true 9-5 and I’m forced to manage my time thoughtfully, I’ve been getting up early and exercising before work. Some mornings, like today, I even take a little extra time to write or take an Italian lesson. The p*ndemic annihilated any sense of routine from my life, so this return to order feels overdue. I was also reminded that seven hours of sleep is my perfect sweet spot. I wake up energized and ready to pound my knees into dust on the treadmill like a good little self-optimizing cyborg.
2.) A little disappointed as I watch my paid subscriber list dwindle on here. It’s cringe to admit, but I think it’s valuable insight for anyone thinking about starting an independent publication or a podcast with a Patreon or something. You. Will. Lose. Subscribers. You will have done nothing differently, and that list will still shrink before your eyes—a fraught bit of subtraction for your bank account and self-esteem. It says nothing about who you are as a creator. Keep going. At least that’s what I’m going to do.
Excited for: This week is the first edition of my Ask BBM advice column. The theme for all newsletter content this month is sex and love, so I’ve picked a couple questions that address common relationship problems. Stay tuned!
Sounds like an exhausting, full, and filling time in NY. I’ve been planning to take a trip alone there and sprawl out on cold sheets by myself and wander Soho to all the spots I love. Mmm. Fuzzies.
Valentine’s was very unromantic for me too. A lot has been going on and I just didn’t have the bandwidth for a sumptuous meal. I wanted cookies and a book. 🙃
The megabus experience. You could do more to sell it. Valentine's Day, like most of of the holidays, is a wholly unpalatable manufactured, artificial, and non-life affirming thing.