when i was fourteen and goth my parents dragged me to the cote d’azur despite my best efforts, i tanned and was expelled from the goth community on my return. i wanted to kill myself so bad but couldn’t —— no longer goth
my longevity protocol is built around the concept of ‘ageing like a fine wine’ it involves steady cellar rest in a pupitre , & periodic quarter rotations by a white-glove remueur until i am ‘sur pointe’
a stench recommends a man; as it precedes him, carries the outward sign of his obduracy. you scrubbed masses; you chronic, soap-mongering ablutionists; make yourselves scarce, and are gone: lingerless, aeriform, asomatous
Knowing it will quicken his want for bubble tea, I forbid my son from having any. I monitor his dot on FindMy and soon catch him in the act of purchase. I'm out the car before he can draw his card. Equable, I tell the boy behind the counter to take a maxi cup and fill it to the rim with bobas. He acquiesces. My son, smart boy, knows what’s about to happen. He starts crying. I tell him if he hurls, doesn’t matter, suck the bobas back. Canted back in a plastic chair, I sip my own—lychee oolong—now and then troubling to blow a boba at his head. ‘That one too.’ People stare. ‘I’m sorry, he’s autistic’, I offer. This kind of unilateral bonding activity has relieved my ennui and even imbued my days with a certain je ne sais quoi.