volume 8: my fucking pacifier
vanderpump rules as praxis
Where have I left you? Smack dab in the middle of the dance floor. Wondering where dear old me ran off to. The bathroom? Or maybe a quick smoke somewhere in November 2022? A year and some time ago. Sorry about that. (With a well of wet in my big, but not in a thyroid disease-y kind of way, (my mom checked) eyes.) I just found it so hard to be honest. To be honest about how much I needed to pacify. I needed a whole year of pacifying. Sucking on my iPhone 11. Or was it my work phone, the iPhone 14?
I’m so sorry about all this time. I say mostly to myself.
I ran into an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in almost two years in the summer. He told me he’d still check in on me from afar and wonder who all these new faces were. I know I’m 26 now, but do you think I grew any taller last year? It’s okay; you can tell me. I can handle it!
Last year, somebody broke my heart (redacted for *motions pulling trig* reasons), but more importantly, they really pissed me off, and I didn’t know how to talk about it. But now I’ve come to realize that if I really want to smoke indoors, pedal pushers and kitten heels at my keyboard, à la Carrie Bradshaw, it will require me to be honest about things that have to do with other people. And I just couldn’t sit in the discomfort of being watched while I did that. But then I realized that life comes from watching and being watched. And if I’m ever going to allow myself the joy of Substack micro-influencing, then I’m going to have to talk about how people have made me feel.
I sat down many times to try to write:
The big gymnasium doors to “being watched by others and potentially judged and/or rejected and sentenced to eternal super, uncunty damnation for trying something earnestly and not being received exactly as I wanted” were slammed shut. Locked for winter break or maybe indefinitely. There was no room for anything else to go how I didn’t want it to.
I found myself sparking a friendship with a teenage version of myself who was similarly disconnected, picking things up right where I left off. Both of us appreciative of the cradle of a city bus daydreaming session.
From March’s drafts: “The closer I feel to the crud of a bus window, the closer I feel to when I needed it. I think I need it again. Or maybe I just want to be the crud.”
Last November, I started a new job, went through a breakup, and got a kitten in a mere 36 hours, sidelining the path I was heading down and trading it in for one of the most joyous and disconnected years of my life.
After the crumbling of my university friend group a few years ago, all I wanted was to find people who made me laugh so hard that it hurt again. The laughs I participated in with those friends were some of my favourites, and it took a long time to find something that even somewhat resembled what had fallen apart. When I first met Richard, Mia, Julio, and Jordan and reported back to my last partner how much I loved how enormously and frequently my new friends and I laughed together, they said, “I know you like that.” I remember feeling a pang as I struggled to understand why anyone wouldn’t be on a judicious eternal search for the biggest/ugliest/wetest/bottomless bucket of laughter. A clear judgment, however small, I hope where I didn’t qualify that need through my mouth, my eyebrows were at least able to boomerang the judgement backwards on my mouth’s behalf.
That’s sort of how a lot of their sentences felt.
Of course, I know this comment was about more than laughter. Actually, probably, a worse dig at the intellectual, social justice quality of the conversation in my friendships, but sorry, Daddy Roy; I would hate to be such a serious person.
I’ve recently graduated from the Vanderpump Rules School of Forgiveness, Violent Communication, and Solving Conflict in Community, and lately, it’s been hard not to use this time capsule of mid-2000s LA restaurant culture as my reference for everything, but if you’ll humour me…
My therapist and I have been working on my ability to allow myself to be loved even when I feel like I’ve been bad or done something wrong. A mistake so mundane and human that, in my mind, is worthy of my shaming and ostracization. The same goes for others; other people can make mistakes that are so low-medium on the scale of spilling a glass of water to vehicular manslaughter that I will villainize them in my mind and sentence them to an unchangeable label of bad.
For 2.5 months as I binged all 10 seasons of Vanderpump Rules, I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing my forefathers and foremothers at SUR Restaurant (yes, Sur stands for Sexy Unique Restaurant, Restaurant) cheat, lie, assault, steal, backstab, character assassinate, violate, and scheme, all for them to demonstrate that not only can you be redeemed and forgiven over and over again, but you can heal your boo-boos in practice and within community. The few times someone attempted to heal alone and isolate themselves, they came to realize it caused more harm, and they should have faced the music vis-à-vis a table for 20 at a #sponsored Mexican all-inclusive resort. Watching Jax, who before meeting his Kentucky muffin Brittany, was a pure evil coked-out idiot, become a half-decent candidate for fatherhood and holy matrimony was seemingly miraculous to the untrained eye, but was simply part of Vanderpump Forgiveness Praxis™ in action.
What started as pop culture curiosity surrounding Scandoval, turned into me accidentally putting myself through vulnerability boot camp. I witnessed a bunch of mid-30s drunkos royally fuck up, be held accountable, and come out the other side worthy of girlboss marriages, friendships based in podcasting, and Yaasified babies named Ocean, Hartford and Summer Moon. Earnestly, it felt like if they could be so incredibly vulnerable, warts and all, I could let the walls come down too and ultimately get back to something far less public and vulnerable: writing.
Thanks for reading! Especially after all this time inactive. You rock my socks off. Here are my gifts and offerings to you in this 2024th year under G-d (aka Lisa Vanderpump). If you’re new here, I’d love to take things to the next level…
Ok, first offering is this song. You should watch the music video too, because woof. I want to write a murder song (@Carley).
Speaking of Carley, I’m going to offer a song we wrote together for our band vviolet, because a lot has happened and we are finally getting back to the band this year. Listening to and loving it would really encourage us to persevere.
Watch Vanderpump, duh.
Lastly, how it feels to be me:
How you got to "vehicular manslaughter" from spilling a glass, I don't know. But it was worth every ounce of that sentence and every moment of vulnerability you poured into this post.