notes from april: concussion SPONSORED BY UBER®

<3 hi you silly goose, hope all is well with you <3

April, you made me feel everything. You took me to Canada. You cut my hair. You embarrassed me. You tried to kill me via Uber. My head is hurting while I write this, but maybe I kinda needed this. I had my photo taken, I pissed my bed, I had a 17-course omakase, I was concussed- I lived.

Maybe this is a preview of months to come?

Here are my notes from April:

• Obsessed with that feeling I get when I accidentally use bitch as a term of endearment in front of another woman who doesn’t play about third-wave feminism.

• My roommate Taryn loves to prank. We’ve lived together for two April Fool’s Days and she always threatens weeks in advance to pull a massive prank on me, but she never has enough time or money to commit. I used to be friendly about the idea of being pranked but now I’m just fully raw about it. I tell her “if you pull a prank on me, you pull a prank on you, “I had a psychotic break in college”, “do not challenge my reality, I will call the police on you”. Because her pranks have never fully gone through she always threatens me with April Fool’s Day 2 which is a holiday she made up that can happen whenever, cause of this I’m always on edge.

• On 3rd, I had anxiety before bed that was so intense I had to watch Elmo, which isn’t a regular thing for me, but something I could 100% accept in the moment but telling my new therapist about it was so hard but also necessary.

• I’ve decided I’m ready to start letting gay men into my life again.

• I stopped a man on the street because I noticed his fly was down, I would hope a stranger would do the same for me. He was thankful and I felt good about my deed until I walked away and realized I just kinda told this man pretty directly that I was looking at the area around his penis. I suppose every model citizen is a pervert in disguise.

• Nobody knows anything about hair.

• I was flown to Toronto, Canada to audition for a TV show. It was my first time acting, and I actually made it to the final four girls. I didn’t end up getting it but I was put up in a nice hotel room where I was able to take a bath for the first time in a while. I’ve been so accustomed to roughing it these last few years that taking a bath felt borderline surreal. I kept checking the bottom of the basin for holes, or a faulty plug. It felt so odd being in such a nice place doing something so nice. I mean, I’ve lived in places where I could’ve taken baths, and I’m no stranger to the classic shower-bathtub combo, but in recent history, I’ve never lived anywhere clean or beautiful enough where it feels hygenic enough to sit- think bathtub scene Gummo (x). I also ordered room service and got grilled octopus for dinner, unlike the bath, I’ve had grilled octopus many times, but never in a king-sized bed in a white robe.

• I’ve accepted that different iterations of the same type of man will probably haunt me for the rest of forever: loud, feels deserving of the room’s attention, makes everything feel like liberal arts college, snide, not attractive enough to make their shtick charming.

• This one is all my fault. I ended up in a situation that felt a little like a recycled plot from any Disney channel show circa 2009. I attended a costume party with a theme that was pretty open for interpretation, but mostly could’ve been interpreted as “dress how you wanted in high school”. A few years ago I worked at Iguana the vintage/costume shop on Sunset and Vine, which has been a blessing and a curse for me, because now whenever I attend costume parties I just assume that everyone else has put in their 10,000+ hours in quick-and-easy yet elaborate-looking costuming. I decided I was going to dress as the president of a Catholic School’s anime club with a gothic edge. My mistake. My huge mistake. After walking into the party it was clear that everyone decided to ignore the dress code and dress extremely normal (more normal-er than usual). Do you know how embarrassing it is to walk into a room of people normal people dressed like The Crow?

  

• Yes, I felt the earthquake - my boyfriend thought it was someone moving a couch upstairs.

• Yes, I saw the eclipse - I yelled at a girl for looking directly into it without eclipse glasses, she thought the glasses were just a suggestion and squinting was just enough to protect you. God bless her.

• My dad thinks Instagram stories are an extension of text messages so sometimes we will respond to stories I post with a nonsequitur about something we spoke about two days ago, or just whatever is on his mind at the current moment.

  

• My boyfriend and I are playing this new game where we don’t allow each other to Google something mid-conversation instead we have to figure it out ourselves with the resources we have inside our minds. It took us 7 blocks to remember the name of Oprah’s husband. (it’s Stedman)

• mystified by the “grilled ice” street food fad that is taking off in China. (x)

• It’s strange becoming older and meeting new people who didn’t know the previous versions of myself. It’s weird that people don’t know the version of me that was a dork or the version of me that was hopped up on different types of anti-anxiety medication. The other night at a party my mouth kinda hit the floor when a friend was surprised to find out that I used to run a Bill Hader fan blog on Tumblr in my early teens. I thought that was just something people could smell on me, and even if they didn’t it wouldn’t be a big surprise, but I guess I’m not dork-passing anymore.

• I like feel perfume doesn’t stick to me like it does to others. I don’t know what I am doing wrong, I’ve tried all different types, I even ask people “Do I smell like anything?” and the answer is always no. It must be something about the particles of air I choose to surround myself with.

• I do not respond to stress well (Ex: Pooping 9 times in a row before something important even when the pieces I am pushing out are smaller than my fingernail, crying in front of my boyfriend’s boss on a Zoom call, washing my mouth out with soap before group therapy because someone I tangentially know has joined the group). I’ve been trying to work on this, but the only method that seems to be sticking is forcing myself to think about this Pomeranian from YouTube named Melvin. Melvin is owned by one of my favorite YouTube users of all time dog groomer extraordinaire Girl With Dogs (x). When Melvin is being bathed he often tries to jump off the wash table to kill himself because he’s not very smart and he feels like death is his only option in moments of stress. I Recognize my own behavior in Melvin and it disgusts me. I’m not a Pomeranian, I’m a woman. (x)

  

• had a dream that I was peeing and peed a little bit in real life.

• since the term “influencer” was invented I’ve noticed fewer people have been referring to me as an “old soul”.

• Sometimes in the morning, my neighbor will play music, usually current indie stuff. The way the sound comes through my wall reminds me a lot of that now-dead subgenre of YouTube videos that simulated the sound of hearing music through the wall of a party from the bathroom. (x)

  

• Sat next to three children on the F train, all siblings. The youngest couldn’t stop crying unless he slapped the oldest on the butt.

• I accidentally ordered the cum-dump supreme at the crepe shop.

• I was asked to have my picture taken for a magazine by an Instagram mutual of mine. Originally, I thought this was gonna be a low-pressure thing because the first line of the email my mutual sent me was “Hi silly goose”. But, when I arrived on set I was shocked to find out this was an actual high-pressure thing on an actual set with makeup, nail, and hair people. I showed up unprepared in my Levi’s (that I know are out of style now and I need new ones but I haven’t felt like inflicting jean-shopping level pain on myself lately) and a Conan O'Brien t-shirt, which made me feel extremely out of place. Every girl with the same call time as me was devastatingly gorgeous and spent 30 minutes in the makeup chair, as opposed to my two hours. I got my nails done too, and they cut them so short that I can’t pick my nose, which is heartbreaking but probably for the best. The hair people were sweet though, so sweet that I let them cut off an inch of my hair without giving it a second thought- also, It was 8 am, which is the perfect time to say yes to a bunch of nice gay men with scissors. Also, when went back to wardrobe the interns were instructed to put me in anything nerdy which reminded me that, right- I’m not a beauty hire, I’m just here for a little extra personality.

• I received a long text from an unknown number a few days ago, to my surprise it was Caroline Calloway requesting that we have lunch. It took me two days to respond before I decided- yes, okay actually I would love to go to lunch with Caroline Calloway. A few days later, I’m in Greenwich Village deep into a 17-course omakase (which Caroline made very clear she was going to pay for because she had only been eating ramen noodles for a month in her apartment in Florida in financial anticipation for this meal) opposite Caroline and two friends. I ended up drinking 9 shots of yuzu-infused sake, which impressed everyone except me because I knew I was bound to get sleepy before we moved to our second location. I called an Uber and let the yuzu-infused sake talk, I tweeted “The way the bond of being a egirl outweighs economic status, gender and race. We are united”. Thank you, Caroline for painting my portrait, I like it even though you insisted that I didn’t.

• I’ve gone through three tubs of Country Crock Plant Butter With Olive Oil (THE TUB NOT THE STICKS) (x) this month. I’m addicted to it. It’s better than real butter. It’s literally one of the best tastes I’ve ever had. Every time I open the fridge I have to talk myself out of eating a spoonful. I’m making up recipes so I can eat it more, making my own version of Grimes’ “butter toast” from her 2020 Harper’s Bazaar What I Eat in A Day video (x). I have to stop consuming so much of this because it’s getting ridiculous at this point, I cannot go into the grocery store to purchase a tub of butter for a third time in three weeks.

  

• Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter (x) is awakening something in me that is similar to whatever possessed me in 2008 when Katy Perry’s Hot and Cold came out. I want to call all my friends and make a music video. Plan outfits, wind, choreo. I texted two friends saying I wanted to create my own “me espresso” merch- no response.

  

• Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay in 1781 called “Fart Proudly” that history is trying to hide from you. You should read the Wikipedia page about it (x).

• Had an hour-long conversation in the kitchen with my roommate Blizzy about family. We talked about learning to be the bigger person at a young age which is always painful, but it’s sometimes it’s what’s best. We concluded that the only thing you can do to nurture that feeling is listen to Sad Dream by Sky Ferreira and move onward. (x)

• I don’t understand SKA. I wasn’t alive for its birth and the minimal traces it’s left behind in the culture leaves me wondering okay so what was that all about?

• I saw a girl do her thing from the window.

• I am concussed now. Yes. I was headed home from my boyfriend’s and stepped into an Uber too quickly. I hit my head on the exterior of the car door, and fell to the pavement, hitting my head a second time. Sorry if that explanation is clunky, I don’t know how else to explain such a Tom and Jerry-style accident without it sounding hobbled together. I was out cold and face down in my fur coat, in the middle of the road for an unintelligible amount of time. I was woken up by a woman filming me on her iPhone *flash on* asking if I needed help up, and when I declined she gave me a look that was so nasty even my post-TBI brain could tell she thought I was trying to pull an insurance scam. I changed the Uber’s drop-off location to the nearest hospital and my boyfriend joined me later in the emergency room, where I peed in a cup and got emotional over the fact that I’ll probably never be my boyfriend’s “clear pee-girlfriend”. The doctor told me that I had a mild concussion. Nothing is wrong neurologically I just probably shouldn’t write or look at my phone.

Be fucking careful getting into that car.

-Mackenzie