The evening of New York’s heavy rainfall last Friday, I ventured into Manhattan with my friend Dylan. We had considered staying in that night given the drama of the day, but ended up making good on our plans in the city: dinner at the Metrograph, followed by a screening of “To Live and Die in L.A.” We met on the M train. My usual portal, the L, was down due to the extreme weather. Prior to meeting, I had laughed over text about the irrationality that goes along with living in New York, especially at this stage of climate crisis: “idk i feel crazy. living in nyc is like adopting insanity as default.” Here we were, pressing on with plans despite a storm warning extending into the following day. The storm had let up, but the area had already seen the most rainfall since Hurricane Ida in 2021.
It was after that storm, having watched the videos of flooded subways and basements from Seattle, I would get a series of text messages from the friend of a friend I was to sublet from. Having belatedly checked on the basement apartment, he was having misgivings about me moving in a week later. The apartment had flooded and something resembling black mold covered swaths of the walls where the water had gotten in. Hardly concerned with the threats presented, I remember being distressed, asking my then boyfriend what I should do. I was inconsolable. Nature loomed over my life path and desperate, I looked to the man I loved and the man who had promised me a home to tell me what I was supposed to do. Neither of them could give me a satisfying answer. There were no promises to be made.
This move had already been delayed a year and a half due to Covid and the slow closure of the company I had been working for, my original pathway. That’s not to mention all of the ways and times I chose Seattle for many years, despite a longterm intention to move to New York, the ways I felt tethered to that future. Everything panned out with my move-in, but the specter of the storm and the difficulties of living in a basement would dog me for nearly a year and a half. There was a baseline of insecurity and stress that came with living in that basement, which I’m beginning to recognize as influential in my early experience of New York.
It had been weeks since I returned from Los Angeles after driving cross country with a lover to his new home. Dylan and I had hardly caught up and I was feeling a bit adrift since my return. His presence is typically anchoring for me. We share a closeness, an intimacy that is notable among my personal relationships. He’s kind of like a platonic boyfriend (we tried the romantic route and it didn’t work). This lends our relationship a lot of insight. We were processing my trip and the inevitable conflict that coincides with seeing someone through a big life change, lovers going different directions (in this case literally). Dylan was reflecting back the way my feelings can feel massive in a way that doesn’t always mesh so well in heated moments with those driven by logic, like himself. Framing it astrologically, he said something like,
“Something I love about cancers and cancerian people is that they have this huge emotional well and sometimes when you get triggered by something, you don’t only feel the present feeling, but you feel every memory of the feeling at once.”
Certainly emotional through lines need not be defined in purely astrological terms, but to be clear, I’m a taurus sun with a cancer stellium. I find myself tempted to write off this emotional connectivity as a symptom of unresolved personal issues. I wonder about the detriment of it, the scourge of carrying that through one’s life, and the disservice this does to those we love in the present moment. The hermit crab carries its home. Flash to a memory of an ex helping me move: “You don’t have to take everything with you.” Erykah Badu’s “Bag Lady.” I wonder how to approach this without judgement, what can be gleaned from it. If it is my habit to “circle back” as my friend Jackie calls it in jest, how does one honor that? Or does it need to be transcended? I’m writing about it now in the hopes of release.
The ripples of memory have been feeling charged of late. I’m obsessed with loops and anniversaries. Time, despite its tyranny, has provided me a measure for personal progress. Two days after the conversation with Dylan was my anniversary of moving to New York. The turn of September into October also shares space with a previous visit two years before, which marked the end of another, more flagrantly dysfunctional relationship, a return to myself, as well as to the city. I had arrived so many times.
I wanted to move to New York to make a living in a place that granted me more options, to be closer to enriching cultural happenings, and admittedly, to find love. There is also a piece here about destiny and the way one can feel called to a place. For the better part of two decades, it has been the place that I feel most alive, most connected to. It has literally scarred me and been a place of serendipity, magical possibility. To be entirely corny, New York has been my longest-running betrothed.
So I moved and the relationship I left behind continued to tug at me. We broke up, but we were still entangled. I met his family over the holidays. We visited each other with some regularity. I pushed for what I had pushed for when we were in the same city: to be in a relationship that felt of consequence. Love is a seismic feeling for me and I want that mirrored in my beloved. I wanted to feel chosen, acknowledged, and this new form had largely exacerbated the ways I felt unappreciated, taken for granted while we were living in the same city. But I kept extending the story, despite the heartbreak.
Birthed months before lockdown, there is a history of our connection being tinged with disaster logic, like if I didn’t make it work, there would be nothing else. This, of course, was replicated by the fact trans women are told this all the time, most brutally by each other: Hold on to that one, you’ll never get a chance like this again. It didn’t help that despite the pure volume of dates I went on, I hadn’t met anyone I was interested in. It was rare that interest in me extended beyond hollow fetishism and when it did, I didn’t find myself moved.
The terms of the relationship changed more than once, time passed, we became involved with other people. One of his relationships developed into something serious. None of mine did. After more than a year of struggle, I eventually ended it. I was tired, unsatisfied, distracted, not feeling cared for, not giving my full attention to the life in front of me.
This playlist is about what happens after a leap of faith, put together over a period of probably a year or so. Built during and for long meandering walks. It’s all over the place, just as I was.
It’s also born of: Leaving behind love and loss for a hopeful if largely abstract future. Breaking up with your boyfriend and also the city that raised you. Finally heeding the call after countless false starts. Booking dates like they were my livelihood (they have never been). The ego and arrogance of look at me now, anger fueled by the fumbling of too little too late. The fickleness of memory and of wounding. The ugly turns of love and longing. The back and forth of a suspicious heart. The erratic rhythms of the city. The self righteousness of knowing better. 10 mile walks and smoking mystery pre-rolled joints from Smoker’s World. Multi-hour emotional benders. Tethers and bondage. Confusing what has been with security. Attachment across time and place. Wishing things were different. And figuring it out.
apple music | spotify
tracklist (broken up into sections in case the 4+ hour binge isn’t for you)
morale... you’ve lost that loving feeling - the human league
shopping cart - parallel dance ensemble
drowned world / substitute for love - madonna
megan’s piano - megan the statllion
second life (feat. john fm) - omar s
make me - borai & denham audio
contagious - young thug
black bathing suit - lana del rey
inside of me - madonna
meta angel - fka twigs
fuck and run - liz phair
get another plan (feat. monique bingham) - abstract truth
mind flight - flying lotus
reason - pinkpanthress
found (feat. brent faiyaz) - tems
what happens next / way back when (feat. Lafawndah) - future utopia
transition - galaxy 2 galaxy
good morning gorgeous - mary j. blige
fellowship - serpentwithfeet
elevator (going up) [feat. monique bingham] [louie vega mix] - louie vega
lens - frank ocean
some day (acr rework) - a certain ratio
people (from “funny girl”) - nancy wilson
we’re still friends (live at the union chapel) - amy winehouse
bless the telephone - serpentwithfeet
surrender - suicide
late at night - roddy ricch
quarantine (prod. by adrian) - iamddb
wet dreamz - sevyn streeter & jeremih
wild side (feat. cardi b) - normani
hentai - rosalia
bpw - jazmine sullivan
back together (feat. ron caroll) [copyright reprise] - hardsoul
hold you (hold yuh) - gyptian
raqueletta - junglepussy
call me home - sasami
the distance - gavin turek
sugar - brockhampton
flowers (sunship edit) - sweet female attitude
i don’t do drugs (feat. ariana grande) - dojo cat
faultline - girlpool
paper bag - fiona apple
circle the drain - soccer mommy
oh my love - fka twigs
if you like down with me - lana del rey
insane - summer walker
all the way down (kahn remix) - kelela
all for me - mariah the scientist
pain - pinkpanthress
don’t be cruel - billy swan
i hate u - sza
jellyhead (motiv8’s pumphouse remix) - crush
do you - ryan destiny
throw it away - summer walker
hospital - the modern lovers
4 in the morning - gwen stefani
woman like me - adele
sorry daddy - the sweethearts*
a lie - kelela
mango (feat. adeline) - kamauu
i will be your friend - sade
bunny is a rider - caroline polachek
so far ahead > empire - gunna
higher ground (prelude) (lp version) (hidden track) - missy elliot
can’t take that away (mariah's theme) [morales revival triumphant mix] - mariah carey
no more tears - teedra moses
(*not on spotify)
(A note: My dear friend, sister, mother Davora recently remarked on some recent writing that it was imperious, daddy-like, refusing to give much, which stands in stark contrast with how I consider myself to be generally, and certainly in writing historically. I read this back and am astonished how matter-of-factly I experience my own recounting, as if it’s just something that happened, not something that saw me in deep turmoil. This suggests to me that I have more to do here, that I may have to circle back, yet again. I feel such frustrated ambivalence here, with an urge to work with a more present moment, and a squeamish regard for this particular type of self-reflection. I wonder if there is any point, if this is productive, and not keeping me bound to the wound. I hope the music lends this work greater weight without feeling like an imposition.)
"The self righteousness of knowing better" (sting!)