When I was in my 20s, amidst a big break up, I wanted to blow myself up to take up space the size of an entire universe as backlash from a relationship and group of friends making me feel so very small. I spread my wingspan across basement stages across Manhattan and on top of men with bad haircuts across Bushwick. I let myself go anywhere at any time. I ordered burgers for delivery at 3am and spent all my cash on weed and cheap whiskey. I flat ironed my hair and religiously got my mustache threaded- two things I haven’t done in years. Once I moved into my own apartment, a small studio in Bay Ridge where mice frequently crawled out the stove top, I called National Grid and told them to turn off my gas because I didn’t need it. I was rarely home and when I was, I was too hungover, too tired, too in my notebook writing jokes about bad dates and my adult onset acne to be worried about poring over a stove. Too busy to care. I stuck to cooking in my instant pot or microwave. I was a girl on the go, pussy in tow! I had strangers to make out with and chopped cheeses to inhale!

I also had shows to PERFORM. Multiple shows per night, running from place to place then spending an hour and a half+ to travel all the way back to my studio apartment. I was BOOKED, honey! Trump had just become president and I was ready to cash in on all the white liberals who needed me to represent diversity. I performed countless shows for white audiences where I poked fun at my hairy arms, bushy eyebrows, and sexual trauma. I pandered to them while navel gazing, unable to expand issues beyond myself for quite some time, unable to contextualize the many books I read alongside the abuse I have experienced. I felt myself growing larger and larger but more and more meaningless. Just a disarray of organs and cells dispersing from each other in a multitude of different directions across a vast city where my abusers frequently popped out of corners, unbothered by what they have done.

Sometimes I misremember myself as someone who got tired after the runaround for so long- I tell people that now, I am tired, I am old. But I think the reality is I am angry, I am focused. Every morsel of abuse and mistreatment carves a path directly to fascism. Sorry to be that guy but it is true. And in carving those paths in my brain to a much larger world, I have carved a path back to my bare bones, back to my body. At one point in life, I was being written about for sharing my abuse and now I am writing and thinking about how my abuse is a reflection of a system never meant to protect us. I am angry and anger shows up so often in humor but it also shows up in becoming task oriented. It comes to fruition in my focus on taking my time to learn and understand. Sometimes my ego misses those days of receiving frequent applause and being lauded for my bravery in such a white world.

In recent years, I have the gas turned on in a new home. I have said no so much that the expansive universe I once felt was mine no longer exists for me. Being a Leo stellium, there are days remembering that hurts my ego- the idea that no one thinks of me to perform jokes for 5-10 minutes in exchange for a drink ticket and some neoliberal gaggle of women coming up to me after telling me how they relate so much to my bad dating stories. I miss it. Writing is a very private activity. So is organizing. Not private in the form of seclusion as I am constantly bouncing my writing to my friends and organizing with, quite literally, the millions. Private in that there is no public praise for writing 1000 words of a novel that may never be published and there is no applause for filling out a spreadsheet for the org you are in. Sometimes I miss the immediacy of it all- feeling like you did something impressive after speaking into a mic about your pussy for 5 minutes which is not to say that that can’t have impact but it is to say it can’t be the only thing.

I am suddenly smaller and yet, there is more density in my marrow. Everything holds a stronger more particular weight. I love the flippancy I felt in performing comedy, doing some crowd work then eventually telling a planned joke but I also love the agony of writing and rewriting the perfect pussy joke to fit into a longer form, a longer narrative, a story to tell. A story that isn’t necessarily about me but perhaps uses me as a vehicle to think about something bigger. What if I ended this Substack saying “every wrongdoing thats ever incurred to my pussy hole has direct correlation to capitalism?”

Because TO BE HONEST it does but I am going go ahead and save the expansion of that theory for my novel filled with horny thoughts about ex-coworkers and labor organizing that may never see the light of day. I suppose what I really want to get at is there is something meaningful I have found in shrinking. Not my personality- I have remained a loud cunt in public making inappropriate jokes. Shrinking as in lessening the need to be seen beyond my direct communities. Lessen need for immediate praise (again, I do miss it so if you have any for me, I’ll never deny it) Shrinking the amount of output, creatively and otherwise. Taking time to cook before sharing. It has made my skin healthier and my relationships more profound.

I feel more myself and closer to home despite complaining to my boyfriend during the height of my cycle that I can never have enough attention :)