I miss my therapist.

He wasn’t terribly good at his job. He mostly asked me things like: “Well, what do you think you want to do?” Or: “Tell me how I can help you?”

I suppose I saw him because he was a very nice guy who got both my banal and obscure references, had an Eames chair (which he said wasn’t comfortable), and a lovely Rothko on the wall.

I’m a sucker for Rothko.

But mostly, he gave me somewhere to go after my cat died, my kid left for college, and my apartment permanently yawned at me.

“Well, what would you like to do?” the walls would ask.

And: “Who are you?”

I couldn’t answer.

I did some redecorating.

I bought a boho pouf and a large, overpriced cream-colored wool rug. I hung up a lot of art—only to pretty much get rid of everything a few months later when I decided to abandon the idea of staying in L.A.

During my manic purging days, I met a lot of cool neighbors through the local Buy Nothing group and got a reputation for giving away amazing finds.

A few guys asked me out. A woman invited me to see her band. Some people came over again and again, eventually knowing my address by heart.

Everyone was so nice.

One woman picked up all my plants and later sent me a picture of her living room jungle. She told me my babies would be very happy there.

Another woman, obsessed with all things black and white, rescued some café au lait mugs I’d had for almost thirty years. She sent photographic proof from her sparse space. They looked great there.

Aside from my cat and my kid, I mostly miss my books. Especially the ones I lost “by accident.” A first edition of Oscar Wilde’s Salome with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. All of Anaïs Nin’s journals. Andy Warhol’s fat, tedious, but brilliant diary.

I miss my yellow bedroom and the two replacement cats I fostered for a while, Alistair and Penny. They had been rescued from a hoarder house, and I nursed them after they had to have most of their teeth pulled. They didn’t look as cute afterward. But they were my weird foster cats. We coexisted happily, them curled up by my feet under the duvet.

And yes, I miss my therapist because I don’t want to whine to my friends. Even if he had very little actionable advice, I felt like he really listened. A silent witness. Someone to tell all my repetitive and trivial musings to without worrying that I was being repetitive and trivial.

One of our big to-dos was to get me to cry in his office. Catharsis. But I couldn’t. I’d cry afterward, in my car and back home with the kitties. They’d lick my tears. Probably fiending for salt.

But more than him, I miss Dr. S.

No one comes close to Dr. S., with his soft Indian accent and thick, now-disgraced tomes of Osho and Winnicott on the bookshelf, walking around in expensive socks on thick, luxurious rugs. The rugs were the first thing I felt when I crawled into his office twenty-five years ago. And I mean literally crawled.

I had just been “released” from the psych ward at Glendale Memorial Hospital, and I was afraid to stand up and take up too much space. I also had extreme vertigo. He led me to one of his plush couches and said: “Everything will be OK.”

I instantly believed him. He broke my heart when he decided to retire, move back to India, and devote his life to yoga. I don’t blame him. I just miss him.

Soon after, I found Dr. S. number two. Chubby and jolly in blowsy, large-print kaftans, promising the soothing embrace of a sturdy “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” earth mama, she looked like she might own an art gallery in Taos.

I never called her Dr. S. number two. She just became the new Dr. S. Now she’s retired, too—ensconced in the foothills of Altadena. It’s nice and calm there. Woodsy. You spot pretty (not mangy) coyotes, and people have fine, shiny horses.

Anyway, now there was Mister B. I want to call him Dr. B., but he doesn’t even have a Ph.D. We made an anti-suicide pact in the first session. The first time I walked into his office, it was a sweltering L.A. October day. When I parked, I scraped my shiny black rental car, a Toyota Corolla, against the white curb. My GPS said: “You have arrived.” But it’s always wrong. Premature.

I parked and walked along a very pretty street in Los Feliz with some very shabby and some very gorgeous houses with nonexistent numbers. I was trying to guess which one was his. I was hoping it would be nice—but not too nice or, you know, EXPENSIVE and out of my league.

I wore a pretty sundress and had done my hair to make a good first impression. Look! I am mentally at death’s door, but I’m a stylish quasi-hipster. I finally found the house because it actually did have a small number on it. All I remember is that it was white and up on a hill a bit.

There was a gate that didn’t latch well. But inside—oh, inside—I was greeted by cool, crisp air conditioning and a vast and stylish waiting room with colorful, abstract paintings on the walls. Blue velvet couches and lounge chairs. The Paris Review on a coffee table. A bit show-offy, but he got brownie points for his choice in magazines.

I was early, of course, and while I waited, I saw a couple of other patients—or clients, or whatever they’re called—come and go. The matcha-latte-bearing kind.

The ones who look like they have good jobs in marketing, which is what I should be doing.

There were doors all around leading to bright offices where therapists met with their $250-and-up-an-hour clients for fifty minutes. At one point, a really chubby, smiling man with glasses came out to fill his Hydro Flask. I was hoping he would be Dr. B. False alarm. The real Dr. B. is skinny and sporty, sneaker-wise. I liked him. Although my dwindling bank account couldn’t afford him.

Enough about him.

What about me?

I’m a work in progress.

I’m sourdough rising.

I’m in the waiting room, waiting to be seen.

I’d like to run some ideas by him.

I still don’t think I could answer his questions.

How could he have helped me?

Discussing art and Gaspar Noé films and the homeless situation. It distracted me from my sorry-ass self.

Seeing him was a reprieve from being me.

Even if it only lasted for fifty minutes.

I was thinking of him again today, as I washed my hair and put on some perfume.

Maybe that’s what progress looks like.

Thierry had been coming to Madame Dubois’ for about six months. He found the whole idea of a salon rather antiquated and slightly ridiculous, but the liquor was free, the “snacks” were exquisite, and he often had nothing better to do on a Thursday evening. Besides, you never knew.

He needed connections—and someone to finance one of his many app projects. Madame Dubois was no Gertrude Stein, but she was a nice lady and friends with his mother. He also liked that casually mentioning he frequented the salon of a well-regarded socialite sometimes impressed new acquaintances.

Tonight he had been excited because Madame Dubois had hinted there would be a newcomer, an American girl who had just arrived in Paris and knew nobody. He had pictured a blonde Malibu Barbie with fake tits who’d be easy to get drunk and schlepp back to his apartment.

So he was surprised when a pale, fragile girl with short black hair showed up. She was actually very beautiful, and within minutes every man had drifted toward the fireplace where she stood, circling her like moths around a flame. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Monsieur Moreau watching them with a sour expression.

There was Moreau again, polishing his ridiculous waxed mustache as if anyone cared. The potbelly strained against another bespoke jacket. He carried himself like an aristocrat despite looking like a provincial lawyer who’d inherited a little money.

He had a Roman nose and dressed well enough, but he was too short, looked as though he wore a hairpiece, and that dreadful Dalí-esque mustache made everything worse. Every time Thierry spotted him, he felt an irresistible urge to torment the man. Then again, why bother? He was too easy a target.

So Thierry devoted his full attention to the new arrival, topping off her champagne even though she had already said several times that champagne gave her a headache. He asked what she preferred, and she said a vodka tonic.

Before she arrived, they’d been discussing the scandal surrounding Madame Pelicot, which beat playing charades or debating whether Michel Houellebecq possessed any literary merit. Madame Dubois always came up with such tired games and questions.

The girl, though, was interesting. She was rather intelligent—for an American. She was quick with a repartee and ignored all his advances, brushing away his hand when he let it rest lightly on her pale, exposed shoulder. She had the most beautiful collarbones.

And her accent was incredible.

He asked her why her French was so good, and she explained that her mother was French and that she’d lived in Paris as a child. As she talked, he only half listened. Something about Woodstock and a poet laureate. Instead, he undressed her in his mind, hoping to find red panties. He had a thing for red panties. They were beautifully slutty. Maybe they’d even be crotchless. He would definitely find out.

But after a quick trip to the bathroom to check his cheekbones in the mirror, he returned to find her gone.

Monsieur Moreau had disappeared too.

He couldn’t believe it.

What a stuck-up, frigid little putain.

Thierry spent a lot of time looksmaxxing. He read every paper there was on skincare, testosterone optimization, and facial aesthetics. He craved and deserved attention.

After the girl left, the soirée ceased to be fun. All the other women were middle-aged and laughed too loudly. They were feminists and terribly academic and accomplished, which he couldn’t abide. Of course, he’d never admit that in public.

He would have to go home and watch porn. A good gangbang. And he was going to get the girl’s number from Madame Dubois. He’d invite her to a bar, fill her with gin and tonics, then show her a side of Paris she definitely wouldn’t have expected.

He caught himself rubbing his hands.

When he got home, he was too horny for porn and rang one of his booty calls. Colette was a single mother. She was a redhead, which he wasn’t particularly fond of, but she was easy. He’d use her and then pretend to fall asleep so she’d leave.

Colette said she’d be right over, but as he waited, he couldn’t get the American girl out of his head.

Julia.

Not a bad name, although he was no Romeo.

When Colette texted that she was outside, he simply didn’t answer.

Fuck them all.

He did seventy-five push-ups, completed his elaborate nighttime anti-aging routine, and went to bed.

Alone.

THE SALON SERIES:

Part I: A Small Romance - Monsieur Moreau is desperate
Part II: Almost Midnight - Julia flees and fantasizes
Part III: Fresh Meat - Thierry’s Take

Remember when there used to be actual magazines? I devoured them. Highbrow and lowbrow. Glossy fashion tomes, gossip rags from the grocery store checkout aisle. The New Yorker. (It used to stress me out because it arrived every week and piled up faster than I could keep up. Mostly I read Shouts & Murmurs and the movie reviews.) I also adored Vanity Fair—especially for the Proust Questionnaire at the back.

It’s a set of 34 questions designed to reveal the personality, values, tastes, and inner life of the person answering them. It began as a Victorian-era parlor game and supposedly became famous after Marcel Proust answered his own version several times as a young man. Eventually, Vanity Fair turned it into a literary tradition, asking the same questions of writers, artists, actors, and politicians.

The list of people who have taken it is a cultural who’s who: David Bowie, Joan Didion, Gore Vidal, Salman Rushdie, Patti Smith, and so many others have subjected themselves to this little psychological excavation.

The appeal, I think, is that the questions are less about facts than fragments. What do you fear? What do you love? What do you admire? What do you regret?

Which brings me to the question: Who in their right mind answers their own Proust Questionnaire?

Me, naturally.

It might seem narcissistic. There is something ridiculous about “interviewing” yourself. Then again, why should famous people have all the fun? I’d argue it’s even more interesting when the subject isn’t famous. I’d rather know what keeps my neighbors awake at night. Also I’m absolutely obsessed with lists and personality tests.

So I just had to answer it the other day, when once again my elevated cortisol levels or whatever kept me up at 3 a.m.

The first question asks about your greatest fear. I decided not to answer that one—not because I don’t know the answer. I do. But I have a superstitious streak, and saying certain fears out loud feels like tempting fate in a self-fulfilling-prophecy kind of way.

The question about the trait I most deplore in myself was easier. Well, not easier exactly. There are sooo many options. I settled on ennui—the French word for a peculiar kind of existential boredom. I sometimes think I was born with it. Not arriving in the world screaming like a normal infant, but looking around like: la-di-da, what’s all the fuss about?

My greatest achievement?

Staying alive.

I hesitated before writing that because it sounds overly dramatic. Surely I should have chosen something more presentable: raising my son, publishing a book, building a “career.” But then again, none of those things would have happened if I had failed at the first one.

Some questions simply refused to cooperate, such as Who are your favorite writers?

Impossible. After decades of reading, how does one choose? Writers aren’t competitors. They are companions. They arrive when you need them and quietly leave again. I could give the intimidating literary answer and name someone like David Foster Wallace. I did enjoy approximately 20 percent of Infinite Jest. My fantasy is to edit it down to the brilliant parts and throw away everything that makes you wonder if Wallace secretly hated his readers.

My favorite writers belong to different eras of my life. As a child, I devoured Stephen King—not because I loved horror, but because he was such a fantastic chronicler of America. As a teenager, I discovered Bukowski. My twenties belonged to Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Milan Kundera, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In college, I found André Gide and Boris Vian.

But I’ve never been loyal to one literary neighborhood. I’ve read everyone, including the writers people feel obligated to confess they enjoy: Joan Collins, Jacqueline Susann, V.C. Andrews, Jackie Collins.

I refuse to apologize for the pleasures of a good scandal, a sexy plot twist, or a woman in a fab dress making terrible choices. Someone can read Proust and Valley of the Dolls. These things are not mutually exclusive.

But I digress.

The question about a living person I admire also stopped me. I couldn’t think of one definitive answer. Maybe Brian Cox. Maybe Michelle Obama. Maybe someone I’ve never heard of such as someone who quietly keeps going despite impossible odds. Maybe admiration says less about the person being admired than about the qualities we are trying to cultivate ourselves.

The questionnaire asks how I would like to die.

My answer:

By choice in Switzerland.

My grandmother had a similar plan when she was approaching triple digits, but even at that age, life proved stubborn.

The remaining questions were a strange little archaeological dig through my personality. The historical figure I most identify with? Hmmmhhh…. Simone de Beauvoir? Maybe Joan of Arc. Maybe the Blood Countess. (A concerning trio, perhaps.) My favorite names? Nico, Vida, Gala, Alistair, Milosz.

My hero of fiction? Alice in Wonderland. Who wouldn’t want to fall down a rabbit hole and discover an alternate universe where everything is strange and nothing makes sense? And finally:

What is your motto?

Après moi, le déluge.

If you’ve never answered the Proust Questionnaire yourself, I recommend it. Not because anyone else needs to read it. The world is already overflowing with people explaining themselves.

But because there is something strangely revealing about discovering which answers arrive instantly—and which ones make you pause, dig through the archives of your mind, and wonder who exactly has been living in there all along.

Also, it’s fun to do.

Some people get off on porn,
which is fine by me.

I prefer a vodka tonic,
watching the Atlantic wash
pastel-colored jellyfish
onto the shore,
luxurious naps in fresh sheets.

My mum, though, has a special kink:
a running commentary
on every way I’m wrong.

She buys me things:

dresses and jewelry,
vacations,
and an inordinate amount
of tea towels.

She has always bought me things.

I am so privileged.
I am so sensitive.
So spoiled.
An ingrate non pareil.

But yesterday,
at the gas station aka truck stop,
she asked me about
the “travel pussy”
in the bathroom dispenser.

I made her laugh.

I’m happy I still can.

My friend A. warned me not to publish things that sound like journal entries.

Which, naturally, is exactly what I’m about to do.

I’m visibly floundering through life, and everyone keeps asking about my plan. I don’t have one. Usually I pretend I do. I tell people I’ll figure it out after I publish the book. After Germany. After a week in Holland. Always after. Then after arrives, and I still have no clue.

I don’t even know where to begin. My mind goes blank. The only thing that comes to mind is that Einstein quote about how we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. The problem is, I know I created them, but I can’t remember what thinking I used.

I’m not very good at thinking lately, and I’m not particularly good at doing, either. I’m not entirely sure what I’m good at anymore. I wish I had a grand reveal. Veni. Vidi. Vici. Mine is more like: Veni. Panicked. Dissociated.

I do know that I like watching the seagulls here on the beach in Holland. My dad says there are twelve different kinds. I haven’t verified this. It sounds like something he’d know.

I can’t answer questions like: Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world? I don’t even know if I want to live anywhere in the world. I can only imagine what home would feel like.

Safe. Cozy. Full of sunlight, with one very dark bedroom for nesting. Lots of art. Cats, obviously. Preferably Maine Coons. Maybe near the sea. Frida Kahlo had monkeys and parrots at Casa Azul. I could settle for cats.

Every evening, one visits the house here. Its fur is impossibly glossy. I meow, and it rubs against my legs before allowing itself to be picked up. My mother hates it. She claps her hands until it runs away with its tail held high. She finds this hilarious. I don’t.

Anyway. If we’re designing my imaginary future, there should be a striped hammock. My mother has fallen out of the hammock here six times. She claims her ass is black and blue. I have remarkably little sympathy. Not because I’m vindictive. I’m simply out of fucks to give.

...

Sometimes it’s nice being looked after like a child. Last time I was here, about 5 months ago, I desperately needed it. This time I wish people would treat me like an adult. But that’s difficult when you’ve spectacularly dismantled your own life. So we’re back to Plan B. Or Plan C. Or whatever letter we’re on now.

When I was younger, I told everyone I wanted to start a commune for old people. We’d grow vegetables and hold healing circles. I’ve reached the age I imagined when I invented that fantasy. The only problem is that unless I’m running the cult, I no longer want to join it.

...

I’m writing this lying on a bed in one of my favorite places in the world—a tiny dot on the North Sea. It used to belong to my brother. He sold it, but the new owners let him rent it every summer. I know I’m lucky. I know exactly how lucky I am. Gratitude and despair are terrible roommates, but they seem perfectly happy living together.

My parents are healthy. They’re energetic. They have the combined stamina of two sugar-high toddlers. People assume ADHD looks like that. Mine mostly looks like freezing. I bump into doorframes. I sleep with dinosaur hands and wake up with cramps. Not exactly the inspirational LinkedIn version.

...

Everyone else went shopping today. I stayed behind because I felt too barfy. My dad just looked at me, genuinely bewildered. How can one person be this complicated? I tried explaining, once again that I’m “highly sensitive.” That got a good laugh.

Meanwhile, this is the same man who spread blueberry jam on a ham-and-cheese croissant yesterday and drives like he’s completing side missions in Grand Theft Auto.

I love him.

I love my mother, too.

Even when she tells me I’m effing stupid. It’s amazing how a sentence can survive decades. Maybe that’s why my nervous system permanently assumes it’s about to be called an imbecile.

...

My body hurts. Eventually it won’t. We’ll visit another charming Dutch town. I’ll walk ten steps behind my family to avoid questions about my future. Maybe I’ll finally rent that boat.

If nothing else, it’s one decision.

BUY ME A COFFEE

Maybe it will trigger an epiphany.

I’m visiting my parents, and while they have impeccable style and taste, they have also accumulated lifetimes of clutter. I’ve made it my mission to streamline their entire second floor, which has slowly transformed into a three-bedroom storage unit.

I started with my own crap: childhood toys like Smurfs and hordes of stuffed Steiff animals, mixtapes from old boyfriends, fading music magazines, and cringe-worthy journals.

The weirdest part has been rediscovering old writing I don’t even recognize as my own. It’s like finding a stranger who somehow has my handwriting. She was dramatic, horny, ridiculous, romantic, occasionally insightful, and honestly much more entertaining than I remembered.

This little roundup made me laugh so much that I decided to share it.

The Yoga Teacher

I have my eyes on this yoga teacher. He is a sex god. He can do insane poses — all those impossible arm balances that make normal people look like broken furniture. Turns out he’s also an acupuncturist and Chinese medicine doctor. Very smart. Deep, sexy voice. The whole class has a crush on him.

I was supposed to meet him for lunch. I wanted to be fashionably late and seem mysterious and nonchalant, but instead I was a full hour late. He was just getting his check and standing up from the table.

I told him I got stuck at the pharmacy.

“For what?” he asked.

“Oh, just some stuff,” I said.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Um… cream for eczema.”

“Eczema?” he said. “Really? Let me see.”

So I showed him my hands.

And instead of a sexy lunch, I got a diagnosis, an appointment, and a lecture about my bowel movements.

Now I see him regularly, but not in the biblical way.

He dabs ointment on my belly button and bleeds my toes. Occasionally he grazes my boobs while trying to get a giant needle into my heart chakra.

The Sprite

The Sprite has long black hair down to his waist and looks Indian. His skin is flawless. His body is flawless.

The Sprite also looks gay, acts gay, talks gay — but is irresistible because he’s androgynous and ambiguous.

I call him Sprite because he’s a trickster, like Ariel in The Tempest. He’s also a little bit like a tiny, nagging Chihuahua nipping at my ankle.

He talks in riddles. He has no address, phone, or car. I suspect he is someone’s boy toy.

He is incredibly smart and knows pages of poetry by heart, from Dante to Rilke.

I also think he might be a sociopath.

I let him hand-feed me dark homemade chocolate on top of a waterfall after a hike where I almost fell to my death. Then I allowed him to spank me in an alley.

He tried to make me cry and got very frustrated when I didn’t.

Later he sent me emails with images of rubber duckies in bondage gear.

Obviously, this didn’t go anywhere.

The Foot Fetishist

The foot fetishist is young, dumb, and sexy. He has an IQ of maybe 80.

Yet he has incredible style and promised me he doesn’t shop at Hot Topic. In fact, he makes his own leather pants and thinks my body is perfect.

I love him for that.

One time we got really high in the park and he pretended my feet were dinosaurs. He made them growl at each other.

The Sex Addict

This lovely specimen must have slept with 500 women and received blowjobs from even more.

He’s my soulmate and unfortunately my brother.

I want to move to Ukraine with him.

That’s assuming he doesn’t die of syphilis first.

My Husband

My husband is a rock star and cares more about music than he cares about me.

That’s why we might get a divorce.

Vince Vaughn

He’s with Jennifer Aniston now, I think.

I’ve sat on his lap a few times.

He doesn’t know we belong together.

I would lick his puffy alcoholic eyes and tuck him into bed at night.

He doesn’t know I exist, which is really kind of a problem. He must have a very short attention span.

I don’t know how many times we have flirted at the counter of La Poubelle where my friend Michael bartends.

And that night, when Twiggy Ramirez DJed and I kissed Dave Grohl on the mouth with whiskey breath, he said:

“There you are, sweetheart.”

“Sugar”

Sweet. And sad.

Hunky, sultry, Omar Sharif-y.

I meet him for fondue for some reason.

I come straight from work wearing a gray suit. He doesn’t like girls to look too sexed up. Neither do I.

There’s this new log cabin place with a delicious, thick, Burberry-inspired carpet, antlers, and fondues.

I’m an hour late, and he’s flirting with the very short but very busty brunette waitress and drunk on two Cabs.

I slink into the seat next to him and immediately drown in his huge Arabic eyes.

He’s wearing a Hugo Boss jacket and a very tight New York Dolls T-shirt.

I explain my theory about white picket fences and how they used to serve a purpose. They weren’t just symbols of bourgeois contentment back in the day.

“What day?” he asks.

I ignore the rude interruption.

They used to have exceedingly sharp points so if people tried to scale them, they would be impaled.

“What people?”

“Marauders.”

“No, the neighbors.”

“Why would the neighbors try to climb your fence?”

“To pick your cherries!” I say.

M.

One day there will be a very lucky representative of the female race who ends up with M.

She better be good to him.

I would claw her to death if she were unable to see his subtle beauty and the preciousness of his mind.

He is both my child and my lover, which sounds insane when I write it down. Every time I leave M., it feels like the last time — like a small death.

I feel weird calling him Matthew.

When the good thoughts come—the exquisite, luminous ones worth keeping, the ones worth sharing—they come too fast. So rapid and in such an epically beautiful, hot mess of an avalanche that the only logical response is to give up rather than write them down. To sit there just thinking them, savoring having them at all: these brilliant epiphanies and illuminating insights.

Sit and let them wash over me while maybe scratching a patch of eczema on my leg. Perhaps staring at the textured landscape of a wall while, somewhere inside me, I’m watching the best movie ever made.

The feeling of thinking becomes enormous. I grow too big for myself. Something inside me is trying to escape the container of my body, and my skin feels impossibly thin, like the smallest membrane separating me from everything.

Too flimsy to contain this swelling, this cresting, this cocaine-like high of expansive revelations. I almost feel myself lifting, levitating, vertiginous. I need to hurl myself from a cliff like a lemming from all this spilling over and spilling out. It is the closest thing I’ve ever known to ecstasy. To the brief, terrifying sensation that I have finally arrived somewhere.

I could die then. Actually, I’d prefer it. Someone simply switches off the light. First: brightness. Then: nothing. A delicious nonbeing. All this instead of actually opening my laptop. Because the tragedy is that I want to explain this. I want to build a bridge from inside my head to inside someone else’s head and have them stand there with me for a moment.

I want someone to read my words and think: Yes. Exactly this. But I can’t. The moment I reach for the experience, it collapses. The air leaves the room. The room itself becomes strange—deflated like a birthday party balloon or a flaccid penis I need to flee. And then I sink.

The ephemeral ecstasy becomes an exercise in utter futility. Because I cannot write the way I want to write. I want to create that impossible recognition: the feeling that someone else has reached into your own mind and pulled out a thought you didn’t know you had. I want the reader to think: I could have written this. Except they didn’t. I did!

Unfortunately, this never seems to happen.

Because:

See above.

BUY ME A COFFEE

Image Credit: Lars von Trier’s “Orgasms”

There are many things men get wrong about women.

One of the biggest is the idea that women exist primarily through the male gaze—that we dress, decorate ourselves, and shape ourselves to attract attention, win approval, or capture some mythical tall, dark, and handsome trophy stag.

I have always suspected something different.

Women look at other women.

We notice each other constantly. The dress. The shoes. The haircut. The lipstick. The way someone carries herself. The woman who somehow manages to look effortless while the rest of us are wondering how she did it.

And yes, there are moments when we absolutely get dolled up for a man. There is a certain theatrical pleasure in the cliché: the slinky dress, the high heels, the come-hither lingerie.

But everyday beauty is a different conversation. Most of the time, we are speaking to each other. The compliments that stay with me are almost always from women. Women understand the details. They know the difference between looking beautiful and looking like yourself.

Beauty is a strange and fickle thing anyway. It changes with time, culture, age, and personal history. What one person finds breathtaking, another might barely notice. So I started thinking about what I find beautiful in a woman. And I realized the women who stay with me all have something in common.

They are not interchangeable.

They have faces with stories. Voices with character. A kind of ease that cannot be manufactured. They are sensual without performing sensuality. They seem curious, independent, and completely themselves.

Beauty, to me, has never been perfection. It is presence. It is a woman who walks into a room already comfortable inside her own skin. A woman who seems mysterious because she belongs entirely to herself. I think my ideas about beauty were formed much earlier than I realized. They came from my childhood. From the movies my parents and grandparents loved. Not the films of my own generation, but the older ones that appeared on television during quiet late evenings.

European cinema.

French and Italian glamour.

The 1960s and 1970s.

Women with minimal makeup and natural hair. Smoking cafés. Old hotels. Riviera summers. Art museums. Black eyeliner. A little melancholy. A little mystery. Those women had confidence without trying too hard. Sensuality without effort. Intelligence and self-possession. Individuality over conventional perfection.

They had faces with character. They had stories.

Here are the women who shaped my idea of beauty, in no particular order:

• Brigitte Bardot

• Raffaella Carrà

• Monica Vitti

• Britt Ekland

• Nico

• Monica Bellucci

• Anna Karina

• Romy Schneider

• Veruschka

• Lauren Bacall

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot was my first movie crush. I watched And God Created Woman one late night with my grandparents and was completely transfixed. How could a woman be so animalistically sexy?

But what fascinated me wasn’t just her beauty. It was her freedom. She seemed untamed, almost as if she belonged more to the sea and the sun than to society. She moved through the world with a kind of natural confidence that felt impossible to imitate.

Raffaella Carrà

Raffaella Carrà was everywhere on German television when I was growing up. I remember watching her perform “Far l’amore”—the blonde bob, the mischievous smile, the playful sexuality, the complete lack of apology. She had this incredible combination of sweetness and danger. She was sexy, but she was also funny. She was glamorous, but she never seemed trapped by glamour.

As a shy and bookish girl, she represented the person I wanted to become. And in some ways, I did. Inside, I remained an introvert. But outside, I developed a certain energy—a little armor that said: don’t underestimate me. I may be soft, but I am not fragile.

Monica Vitti

Monica Vitti changed my idea of what beauty could be. She wasn’t just a classic beauty. She could be elegant, strange, funny, distant, and vulnerable. She didn’t seem to be performing femininity for anyone.

There was intelligence in her face. She made me understand that beauty wasn’t about being perfectly pleasing. Sometimes the most captivating women are the ones who make you curious.

Britt Ekland

Britt Ekland bewitched me in The Wicker Man. She wasn’t simply beautiful. She seemed mythical. When she sang and danced in that film, with her ethereal voice and otherworldly presence, I wanted to become some kind of woodland creature. I wanted to live in a cottage, collect herbs, and join a mysterious forest community.

Nico

Christa Päffgen is my forever muse. She fascinates me because she represented another kind of beauty entirely. She was severe, mysterious. She looked like she perennially belonged in black-and-white photographs, underground clubs, forgotten European cities—and obvs the Velvet Underground. She wasn’t warm or approachable. She was haunting. She taught me that beauty could be intellectual, strange, and even a little intimidating.

Monica Bellucci

Monica Bellucci carries a kind of old-world Italian glamour that feels almost impossible to replicate. She is undeniably sensual, but never seems to be performing sensuality. There is confidence there. Ease.

What I admire most is that her beauty feels like an extension of who she is, not the entirety of who she is. She reminds me of the women from another era who understood that being beautiful and being interesting were never opposites.

Anna Karina

Anna Karina always looked like she knew something you didn’t. There was a playfulness in her face. A curiosity. A mischievousness. She wasn’t polished into perfection. She was expressive. Alive. She taught me that charm can be far more powerful than conventional beauty.

Romy Schneider

Growing up in Germany, Christmas meant one thing: Sissi. Every year, the television stations showed Sissi and its sequels, and every year I watched. As a child, I loved the dresses, the romance, the fairy-tale world. As an adult, I see something deeper in Romy Schneider. There was always a vulnerability beneath her beauty. A hint of sadness. A sense that she was carrying a whole inner world.

Veruschka

Veruschka never looked entirely real. She was less a model than a work of art. Tall, dramatic, almost surreal. She transformed herself into images rather than simply posing for them. She taught me that beauty could be theatrical. It could be strange. It could be something you create.

Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall had presence. Before she even spoke, she owned the room. It wasn’t only the famous voice, the eyes, the elegance. It was the feeling that she was completely at home in herself. She understood something essential: Beauty is not just how you look. It is how you inhabit yourself.

Come to think. I believed this list was about beautiful women. Now I think it is about beautiful ways of being. These women come from different countries, different decades, different worlds. They don’t look alike. They don’t represent one single version of femininity. But they all possess the quality I have always been drawn to. Presence. A face that has lived. A confidence that doesn’t need permission.

That is the beauty I recognize. Not perfection. Not sameness. Something much rarer. Someone completely, unmistakably herself.

I set a timer.

In ten minutes I will wash my hair.

I need outside motivators to do pretty much anything because my dopamine sitch is all effed up. If I do the thing before the alarm goes off, I win and get a treat.

The options are getting slim. I can’t keep shopping on Amazon, and too many shots of espresso turn my stomach into a permanent acid bath. So the reward is usually doomscrolling.

But I have curated my Instagram to mostly deliver poetry, art, cats doing weird shit like karate fighting, and elderly overweight German influencers trying on outfits or recording personalized greetings.

“Hallo, hier ist Carla Lagerfeld. Heute grüße ich Olli in Travemünde.”

I hope you enjoy my big tits and my tight ponytail facelift.

They’re probably my age, but many look like they’ve spent forty years marinating in tanning beds and smoking Virginia Slims. I don’t look so hot these days either, but definitely not like I survived a hard-knock life at Ballerman Beach.

Meanwhile, the timer has gone off.

It keeps beeping.

No reward.

The time isn’t auspicious anymore. I need to reset it for something neat and clean, like 4:20 p.m.

In the meantime, I take a power nap.

I once read that Salvador Dalí used to nap holding a set of keys. When he drifted off, the keys would fall to the floor, wake him with a clang, and his nap was over. I have never verified this story and I’ve never tried it. I just like the idea of it.

So I nap.

I dream that I’m being chased by zombies. Or former French bosses armed with paper clips. Or that I’m some small woodland creature being torn apart by alligators in a mud pit.

The alarm goes off.

I’m disoriented for a few minutes.

Long enough to miss my window to wash my hair again.

I think about the last time I had sex.

I can’t remember.

The last date?

Nothing.

Well...there was Mosen.

He wore too much cologne and had a thick accent.

Five minutes into lunch he pulled out his phone to show me the three pairs of Gucci sneakers he’d just bought.

“Gucci has changed a lot recently,” I said. “Did you see Billie Eilish at the Emmys?”

“Yes,” he said. “Models don’t look like models anymore. They have big ears now.”

He pulled out his phone again.

“Let me show you.”

He searched for runway photos and handed me the screen.

The girl did, in fact, have very large ears.

“Well...” I said.

He just shook his head.

The whole thing was a waste of time.

I drank a Paloma and got a little dizzy in the heat on the restaurant patio.

I’d actually made an effort for once.

Fresh mani and pedi in an almost-noir oxblood.

I had just discovered a shimmery dark green eye shadow that somehow makes my blue-green eyes look properly green. Like I’d been issued a whole new eye color. More exotic. Less Northern European.

My blonde roots were also growing in so dark—and increasingly gray—that, together with the green eyes, I felt like an entirely different creature.

I had even bought one of those tingly lip plumpers at Sephora.

And when I vacuumed my car the week before, trying to make it pass my boss’s inspection as the vehicle of an upper-management professional fashionista, I found a lost nude lip pencil under the passenger seat.

Between the eyes and the lips, I figured I could probably go a whole week without complete self-loathing over my aging face.

Mosen seemed to like it.

He walked me to my car.

He kissed me without asking.

Then he took my left hand and put it on his hard cock.

I froze.

Something like that hadn’t happened to me since I was a teenager.

I drove home feeling violated and filled with loathing.

Time to wash my hair.

Fuck the timer.

I do the ADHD trick of walking into the bathroom and just turning on the shower without putting any pressure on myself to get into it.

But I’m distracted.

I set another alarm.

The first real sentence Papi spoke to me, as we drove to the train station in Stuttgart to pick up M, was: “So what are you going to do for work in Palm Springs?”

I had no answer.

I mumbled something about maybe selling clothes in a boutique.

He pressed. “Do you have any leads? Any prospects?”

I went quiet.

We drove in silence through fragrant July air, past rolling green hills and vineyards. I looked out the passenger window and tried to account for myself.

✔ Survive a nervous breakdown. Check.
✔ Get rid of all my belongings and relocate to the desert. Check.
✔ Publish a book of poetry. Check.

I had brought my parents a signed copy.

Mami said she was proud.

I left it on the dining table in plain view.

Papi didn’t glance at it. Didn’t open it.

We kept driving.

I kept thinking about what counts as a life.

A life that can be explained. A life that can be measured.

At some point, about two years ago, I stopped swimming with him.

Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t want him to see me in a bikini. I didn’t want to see what it did to the air between us. The embarrassed judgment.

There are things he doesn’t say and there are things I still hear him say.

“If you’re hungry, eat a few slices of cucumber.”

Another time, I dragged him to Dr. S’s office.

He sat on the overstuffed couch of my beloved shrink and didn’t speak.

Not once.

Afterwards, he kept both hands on the steering wheel for a long time before starting the car.

Neither of us said anything on the way home.

I keep biting my tongue.

There are things I want to ask him.

About his time in Berlin and why he moved to a Swabian village.
About whether he thinks my brother is autistic. Just a little.
About when things shifted and I became persona non grata.

But I don’t ask.

I watch people instead. I make up stories about them.

We are still in the car.

The road continues through vineyards and past mountains I don’t know the names of.

The silence holds longer than anything we say.

I think about the book again.

Still on the table.

Still unopened.

I have become someone he doesn’t know how to read.

Not a version of success or failure he recognizes.

I am a ghost in the house.

A ghost with a laptop who writes things no one is waiting for.

BUY ME A COFFEE

It’s the tiny things that count.

I was trying to read this book, a highly lauded bestseller about a woman whose husband cheated on her. I really tried, meaning I skipped the lengthy ruminations about ospreys, hoping it would get better, hold some universal or at least some practical truth.

But I had to give up. I simply did not care. I was mostly interested in the fact that her mother or grandmother was famous. I think it was Bebe Buell. But I’m not even sure now. Is this why she got a contract?

It’s not that I’m jealous. I certainly didn’t wish I had written the story about recurring osprey motifs and a younger replacement. It’s an old tired fucking hat and the birds only served to hold the ramble together, to symbolize something.

Which brings me to my question: what is even worth writing about? What doesn’t bore people? I just can’t do it. I’m too impatient. I hate backstory and too much detail.

In my story, a woman in a yellow coat walks down a cobblestoned street smoking a Parliament. She has a mild form of Tourette’s but people find it charming, refreshing, because she is the daughter of someone famous. It helps that she’s skinny too. If she were fat and blousy in old stained sweatpants and diabetes, who would pay attention?

Does it matter where she’s headed? A subway stop? A church to weep in the pews? A film premiere? Or home to heat a frozen lasagne from Trader Joe’s and watch Love Island?

I’m in my bed in a crisp white cotton nightgown my mum left on the pillow for me. I slipped into it and then into the crisp white sheets with red poppies. There’s nothing wrong with me, but my whole body aches. I want this night to last forever even though I have nothing to say.

The birds just woke up. It’s already 5 a.m. Soon my mum will get up, grab the paper, read the obituaries, do the crossword. She’ll worry about my dad, his tumor recurring. He has an appointment tomorrow.

If I stay here I can stretch time and postpone bad news. I can take the woman with the yellow coat and her stupid cigarette and do whatever I want to her. Get her mugged or murdered. Fall in love in a café. Get swallowed by a wormhole. I don’t know yet.

She might make a friend today, a potbellied man with a moustache called Monsieur Moreau. Or a pale suicidal girl named Julia.

You see my problem? It’s infinity. It’s jet lag. It’s being an impostor.

And maybe that’s the problem with books like that too—nothing ever arrives fast enough to feel necessary.

Everything is held up just long enough to feel like meaning might be coming, but it never quite lands.

Or I’m just not patient enough to wait for it.

Julia was bored and the champagne wasn’t helping. It usually gave her a headache and she would have preferred something stronger, like a martini. But Madame Dubois had handed her a flute of champagne upon arrival, and now she was cornered by the fireplace by a pack of insipid hyenas mansplaining Paris to her.

They were conventionally handsome but in an undistinguished way. They all seemed to wear the same suit jacket and use the same pomade. Their hands were soft and delicate as they gesticulated in her face. The apartment was stuffy. She counted the minutes until she could leave.

The reason she was there was that Madame Dubois was an old friend of her maman and occupied something like the role of a godmother. Since Julia didn’t know anyone in Paris, she figured she might make an appearance at the soirée to please them both.

She had arrived in Paris two days ago and was still disoriented. Granted, she’d been slightly disoriented ever since her third nervous breakdown. After convalescing at maman’s house in Woodstock, the family had decided a change of scenery would benefit her nerves.

Since she had nothing better to do with her life, she got on a plane and departed for the city of her childhood, of which she remembered very little. She had lived there until she was four. Then maman and papi turned their marriage into a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and maman returned to the States, daughter in tow.

Papi stayed in Paris for a while and then drifted from place to place, sending postcards. An ashram in Rishikesh. A kibbutz in the Negev. A fishing village in Cuba, pretending to be Hemingway. She had no idea where he was now. Maman called him a scoundrel. He had pretty much vanished.

So here she was at Madame Claire’s shindig, a quasi salon, except the guests were tedious. The young men had nothing of interest to say, but she felt their burning lust on the back of her neck and her arms. Soon she’d break out in hives. She looked around. Parisian chic everywhere.

The only interesting character was an odd little man with a waxed moustache and a pointy potbelly staring into his cognac glass. He looked stricken and out of place, as though he had wandered in from another decade. He spoke to no one, but she could feel his eyes on her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

To entertain herself she pictured his life. He must have a small dog. No, a cat. A white Siamese named Loulou. She was allergic to cats but liked them. She related to them, their slinky independence. She pictured him overfeeding Loulou with fresh liver and pâté, maybe a raw egg to make her fur shiny. She pictured him taking lonely strolls. She couldn’t picture him with a woman.

She figured he had had a tragic love story a long time ago and, after his beloved died, he was never able to love again. Some awful disease. Like in that Boris Vian novel. The girl with the water lily growing in her lung. Fresh flowers everywhere to save her. She died anyway.

The potbellied man became melancholy and morose. He got the cat. He talked to no one unless absolutely necessary, like the butcher or a shop attendant. She, Julia, didn’t talk much either. Not because of the lithium but by choice. She just didn’t have anything to say to most people.

She wondered if that strange bowlegged man would understand her. He could be the only kindred spirit in the world. She found him physically repulsive but still more appealing than the slick ogres clamoring for her attention.

Maybe he had a piano. Maybe he would play Chopin for her and bring her fresh croissants in the morning. He’d read her only the pleasant news. Or invent pleasant news to cheer her up. He’d bathe her in an old claw-foot tub filled with milk and essential oils.

She pictured the mélange curdle.

She pictured cottage cheese, that abominable American invention maman was so fond of, along with a sliced tomato for lunch.

She pictured telling him she needed rocks, heavy rocks and a lake. He would understand. He had experienced loss before. He’d carry the rocks for her, gently place them into the deep pockets of the dress she’d have to buy for the occasion. He’d watch until she disappeared beneath the surface. Then he’d go home and tell Loulou, who would meow and demand pâté.

Maybe she should go up and talk to him.

But when she looked, he was gone.

It was almost midnight.

THE SALON SERIES:

Part I: A Small Romance - Monsieur Moreau is desperate

Part II: Almost Midnight - Julia flees and fantasizes

Part III: Fresh Meat - Thierry’s Take

BUY ME A COFFEE

To fuel the next episode :)

He hadn’t dared approach her as she held court by the fireplace. She was ringed by strapping young admirers, refilling her champagne flute, clinging to her every witty word. He assumed she was witty. She had the kind of haircut that was smart rather than sexy. A short black pageboy cut. A hairdo from another time. A smart girl’s hair.

She hadn’t even noticed him, sipping a large Cognac, trying to blend in with his waxed moustache, his pot belly sucked in as much as one could suck in a pot belly. The pot belly was new, and he kept forgetting it was there.

But oh, the girl. How he’d worship her. But he was invisible. He had slipped out of the apartment without a word, not even stopping to thank Madame Dubois, and no one had registered his departure.

As he considered his café crème in his dressing gown, he could think only of the girl. The things he would do for her. Serve her fresh croissants in bed. He was against eating in bed, but he would permit it for her. Help her with her bath. He assumed she bathed rather than showered. Put up with her cat if she had one, even though he was highly allergic. He pictured a white Siamese called Loulou.

He’d buy cat food and flowers and juicy steaks and plump scallops. He’d read her the pleasant news each morning. There was never any pleasant news, but he’d invent some. He’d reshape the world until it behaved.

He’d gut a chicken. He’d go on a diet.

Beyond that he dared not think.

Or perhaps he did.

Could he picture her nude? A milky shoulder. A sharp collarbone. Slim hips. Delicate ankles.

No further. He closed the blinds against the vulgar morning sun, the pornographic insistence of the day.

His shoulders drooped. No. His desire would defile her. But then—what was allowed? Who decided? Serge Gainsbourg was no Adonis. The beauty and the beast. The frog and the princess.

He felt faint. Took a bite of brioche. A sip of café crème gone cold. He realized he didn’t even know her name. He imagined she’d be called Yvette or Yvonne. Something feisty.

He pictured her strolling the Quai Voltaire, suddenly caught in an impromptu downpour. He would be there. Take off his coat. Lift her over a puddle. Then carry her… where exactly? To his apartment, of course. He’d warm her with a Cognac.

But it would be too late.

She would fall ill. Something with her lungs. The kind of illness novels prefer.

She would have to stay in bed. Doctors would lose their confidence. He would take care of her. Play her Satie. Read her Proust. Bring expensive perfumes. Learn devotion as a discipline.

She would slowly recover into love. She would say no one had ever loved her properly. That this was the first time anything had been arranged correctly.

And then—

He stopped.

Because there was always a moment where the story became indecent.

He shook his head. What frivolity. What utter nonsense.

Yvette or Yvonne was most likely in a stylish loft, wearing someone else’s shirt, laughing at something he would not understand. An American, probably. A filmmaker. Or worse, a photographer.

She would take a selfie and send it into the world like proof.

And he—

Monsieur Moreau finished his brioche.

Downed his cold coffee.

And went to buy socks.

Not ordinary socks. Argyle. From BleuForêt.

Because even desire, eventually, has to dress itself and go outside.

THE SALON SERIES:

Part I: A Small Romance - Monsieur Moreau is desperate
Part II: Almost Midnight - Julia flees and fantasizes
Part III: Fresh Meat - Thierry’s Take

BUY ME A COFFEE

After writing about Thierry, I could use one.

The book is out. In the world. On Amazon, which apparently counts as the world.

It is one of the best things I have done, and also one of the more unnerving. There is something slightly surreal about releasing something so personal and vulnerable.

I don’t call myself a poet. I never studied poetry formally. I studied journalism and comparative literature, which feels relevant and irrelevant at the same time. What I do know is that I’ve finally stopped trying to write like someone else.

That took a while.

When I was younger, I was writing through other writers. Bukowski, Nin, Miller, Hemingway, Kundera, Murakami, Millay.

Later Babitz, Didion, Sexton, Lispector, Sedaris. At different points, I copied their voice. Not intentionally. It just sort of rubbed off on me.

Even my speech does this. With some people, my accent shifts slightly. It switches from French to Southern. Not on purpose. Not in a performative way. It just happens. I’ve stopped trying to figure it out it. It’s a form of extreme mirroring.

But I have found my own voice, and that’s why it felt OK to publish it. Unapologetic and not giving two fucks. It’s actually always been there. I was just afraid to use it.

My book was originally called Ode to LA. That felt true at the time. Then I realized there isn’t a single ode in it. I don’t even know how to write an ode! So I changed it to Take Fountain, which is both of a direction and a declaration.

“Take Fountain” is an old piece of Los Angeles advice—an instruction for getting across the city in …

A. the most efficient way
B. without losing your mind.

I like that. It also feels like the closest thing I have to a thesis: moving through a place while often feeling a tad unmoored in it.

So what is Take Fountain?

It is about Los Angeles, yes. But also about dating, and time, and the small, ordinary rituals of getting through a day. Peeling fruit. Sitting in traffic. Talking to neighbors. Making meaning out of things which on the surface aren’t terribly meaningful.

Some of it is true. As in: it really happened. Some of it is twisted and tweaked for effect. Reshaped. A few people became composites along the way. One person’s record collection or car make merged with another’s ticks and icks.

If you’ve ever felt slightly out of place in a city you lived in for a long time, or if you’ve ever been surprised by how much can happen in an otherwise ordinary afternoon, I think you’ll understand the tone of it.

And if not, that’s okay too.

If you’d like to read it, it’s here:

Take Fountain

I bite my nails and peel the skin from my lips as I wait for Amazon’s self-publishing algorithms to approve my “low content” poetry collection.

What if it gets rejected by a blind machine that doesn’t know how to read?

I scroll through hundreds of poems that didn’t make it into the book.
I choose three at random, like opening the Tao Te Ching for instruction.

I land here:

Gift Boy

I gifted him a lick of spit,
a moment of lust—
amuse-bouche

He didn’t know shit
from Malibu to Marina del Rey

Heard through the grapevine:
he choked
on sticky-sweet love bombs
and vanished like a ghost

He kept his towels neatly folded

Belly Portals

Late for lunch at the Thai place—

Instead of erotic innuendos,
I get a monologue
about my intestines.

He says my belly button
opens portals,
bleeds into my toes,
drives a needle
into my heart chakra.

He makes his own pants.

They shimmer like fish scales.

Venus in Paneer

“I want to hold you so tight it hurts,”
he says.

But I hear caged birds
three hours ahead,
our shared dark slightly misaligned.

His voice softens until I lean in
just to keep it real.

I am a Venus in paneer,
dreaming saffron tea,
curry kisses,
rice pudding with anise.

I say, “I get bored easily,”
and wonder
where that leaves us.

The lights announcing the big house off Barham Drive twinkle, warm and inviting. There’s a faint scent of weed or maybe skunk. I hobble up the hilly driveway from where the Lyft dropped me off. I consider ringing the doorbell and stare at it for a while.

I study the antique knocker. I take a deep breath and decide to see if the door is unlocked. It is. Right—it is a party after all. I’m wearing a black asymmetrical dress and a silver jacket with long tassels. My feet already hurt in my tall ankle booties.

I walk through the empty foyer and living room and realize there’s a backhouse with huge floor-to-ceiling windows. That’s where everybody is hanging out. I need a drink first before I can handle the small talk. What have you been up to? What do you do? I don’t have canned responses today.

In the kitchen, I study my options. Bourbon, soda, absinthe, a refrigerator full of beer. I hate beer. No ice cubes. Ugh. I open a cabinet and shut it again.

“Looking for something?” a deep, slightly affected voice says.

I turn, my left hand with the broken fingernail still resting on a box of chocolate-flavored protein powder.

“Uhm, yes,” I say.

“Did you lose something?” he says.

“Ha, no. I was just wondering if there was some vodka or something,” I say, leaning back against the counter, propping myself up on my hands.

“I don’t think so,” he says, looking at me.

Then: silence.

I can’t quite tell what he’s looking at. My face, yes—but maybe more my chin. My lips? My lips feel dry. I feel suddenly thirsty. He just keeps staring, saying nothing. So I stare back.

I stare at his pale face, his powder-blue blazer, his mouth. His lips are perfect—so full and pink they look almost like a girl’s. Rosebud. Luscious. Vampire. Blood-sucking. Moon. Howling wolves.

I could bite his lower lip, taste its metallic earthiness. Ridiculous. I laugh out loud.

He laughs too.

“What?” he says.

“Blood and wolves,” I say.

“Good name for a band,” he says.

“Something gothy and ’80s?”

“Yes, but with an orchestra.”

“Too cliché,” I say.

“Huh,” he says.

I look at him again.
He looks at me.

Like locking antlers. We’re both… stags. I’m a female stag (??), and he is supposed to be fighting for my attention, and then he steps forward and takes my hand.

“You hurt yourself.”
“Yes.”
“No—I mean, you’re really hurt. Someone hurt you very badly.”

He lifts my hand toward his lips, and for a moment I think he’s going to lick the bandage, but he laughs again, drops it, and opens a cabinet for cups. Two small English teacups with a floral pattern. He grabs a bottle of Stoli and pours two large shots.

“Here you go,” he says. “For your lifetime of pain.”

He hands me a cup. I take it, about to drink the warm vodka, when he says, “No. You must look me in the eyes.”

So I do. He’s barely taller than me in heels. We’re almost the same height. Usually I find that unsexy. But his eyes—his eyes look like a cat’s, like instead of pupils he has vertical slits. What color are they? Violet. Like Liz Taylor. In fact, he sort of looks like Liz Taylor, for some reason.

Our cups clink.

“Cheers,” he says.
“Nastrovya,” I say.

I drink it down. Warm and sharp in my throat, but I don’t cough. He takes a small, delicate sip. What a wimp. Then he sets his cup down, steps toward me, and kisses me, sucking on my lower lip.

“You taste just like I thought you would.”

Then he saunters out of the kitchen toward the backhouse and the party and the fabulous people and David Bowie singing about Mars.

Oh hi. There you are! A reader.
I didn’t notice you at first.

I was having a self-absorbed “sad me” moment, and when I have those, I don’t really notice much else.

A lot of my life consists of repetitive sameness—the same five obsessive thoughts I’ve had since I was about sixteen. And I’m thinking: oh god, this is so boring. And immediately, because everyone knows only boring people are boring, I am so boring. But I feel like writing something.

Of course, no one wants to read about a boring person—not even other boring people. But there must be 2 or maybe 500 humans out there who recognize the very odd and unsettling and deeply uninteresting person that is me. Not always. But often.

What is remotely interesting about me curling up in a catatonic state and staring at the wall, clutching a misshapen greyish-pink IKEA pig named Wilbur? Returning shopping carts at Ralph’s? Things like that.

I think about this as I watch wilting daffodils in a pink crystal carafe. They’re still beautiful, still insisting on themselves—heads turned toward the sun like a small choir of yellow dames.

The light through the long gauzy curtains is soft. David Hamilton dreamy. The room smells like an Indian temple courtesy of Nag Champa. Everything looks slightly unreal, as though it’s already been remembered instead of lived.

The Santa Anas are blowing, and I am itchy and headachy from those stupid hot overwritten Chandler-and-Didion winds. Still, it’s perfect outside. Of course I have not yet been outside. I’m on the couch, wrapped in two blankets, wearing nothing but my old Pink Floyd panties.

Anyway.

I move to the porch with my vape. Take another “Baby Ritalin.” Two big sips of iced latte.

The day is so beautiful in a way that feels slightly accusatory, and I start going down rabbit holes—Gobi Desert landscapes, goats that make cashmere in Mongolia, fragments of information that feel like they belong to a more coherent version of me.

Teenage hashish in forest light with the cute skinny doe-eyed boys from Italy and Greece. College rave acid. The occasional weed. A little opium pipe. That night with V this past summer when we did two fat lines and fucked all night.

Oops. Apologies. I’m back here again. Trying.

I used to think I was building something by returning to the page.
Now I’m not sure I am building anything at all.

Everything I try to write becomes atmosphere instead of argument, image instead of structure, drift instead of purpose.

Still, I keep beginning. I ramble on. It’s worth trying.

BUY ME A COFFEE

A coffee a day keeps the doldrums at bay.

Hurtling west on the I-10, dodging the big-rig sandwich,
listening to songs that make no sense
and make me cry—
LA-bound, sentimental fool.

I’ve been feathering my new nest,
putting an orange mug in the pantry
that’s maybe also mine.

Still I catch myself
observing myself like a character in a film,
going through strange motions—
moving things back and forth:

art,
chairs,
candles,
flowers,
the little white cat statue I love.

All the while I wonder:

Who is this heavy blonde
who hung a macramé plant on the rafter
and bought a moss-green pillow
with two swans kissing?

Where is she going?

But then I got to the city—
saying a prayer at every left turn—
the people got younger,
the detritus thicker,

and LA responded:

long time no see.

I had my eyebrows waxed,
got a lemon-yellow manicure,
checked into humble Hotel Glendale
with the tufted headboard
and the swirly gold bedspread.

I took off all my clothes,
sipped a triple espresso,
settled into whatever presented itself

without asking why or how,
or whether I should arrange my limbs just so,
rehearse party talk for my back pocket,
overthink my eternal return.

I simply existed

on utilitarian starched sheets—
a faint whiff of bleach.

I used every single towel.

Tried the little orange shower gel.

And I thought:

Sometimes you shouldn’t judge in advance.

Or probably never.

Later I sank into the balmy patio
under the purple paper lantern
with an iced vodka,
watching tiny sparkly spiders
build hanging bridges between Coronas—

We chatted lazily
about Northern Soul,
Diddley bows,
and the invention of tikka masala.

The moon showed its face.

The guitar came out.

A Gibson?

A Fender Stratocaster?

The strong arms.

I said, you can play,

but not like Elizabeth Cotten.

And a few hours later
I placed my body next to me—

the boobs,
the butt,
the tree trunks.

I stopped rehearsing.

Because I can be amenable.

Glamorous.

Smart.

I can be the muse.

I think I did a pretty good
Lynyrd Skynyrd impression.

And when A. said
I look like Romy Schneider,

I simply said:

Thank you.

I do.

Sophie thought she was my boss—
her papa was.

A Chanel socialite,
she had one talent:

sabring Champagne, SHLONK!

She muttered putain all day,
accused me of hoarding dishes
and hiding the bathroom key.

Once she made me look for it
for two hours.

Once she told me,
I was skinny
because I hadn’t had a baby.

She convulsed when I left
a coffee ring on her cherry desk.

So I made her something special:

Cocaine Pocky
that doubled as firecrackers.

She blew herself up.

This list is, by design, deeply subjective—and it has to be. Sexiness isn’t a fixed metric, it’s part projection, part mythology, part someone stepping onto a stage and completely rearranging the atmosphere.

My taste leans toward the androgynous, the larger-than-life, the slightly untouchable—poets, troublemakers, and men who look like they might disappear into the desert (or Berlin) for a week and return with a masterpiece or a warning. It’s less about conventional attractiveness and more about presence: swagger, shadow, voltage.

Inspired by and her post The 10 Sexiest Male Voices in (Mostly) Rock Music.

David Bowie — The Alien

David Bowie is my forever love and ultimate crush. The peerless chameleon: Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, the Berlin-era. Growing up, he was my favorite aunt’s favorite—her record collection, courtesy of my uncle the music critic, became my entry point into the magical musical galaxy of David Robert Jones.

Not conventionally attractive but utterly striking, with one blue eye and one brownish one (due to anisocoria and an injury), imperfect vampire teeth and delicately carved face, Bowie gave the impression of someone entirely self-authored—intelligent, strange, stylish, and unconcerned with anyone else’s idea of a rock star. His beauty is almost extraterrestrial, a quality that carried into The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Hunger, where he seemed to exist outside human definition.

Robert Plant — The Golden God

Robert Plant belongs to something more primal, more elemental. Growing up in the ‘80s, like good little existentialist Teutons, we listened to new wave—Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Cure, Bauhaus—dressed in emo black and perfected emotional distance as identity.

But underneath it all, I felt a magnetic pull toward something wilder: Led Zeppelin. Plant, with his blond curls, open shirts, and bare chest, was instinct made visible. His voice could shift from whisper to primal scream in seconds. Everything about him felt raw, mythic and deliciously untamed. “Immigrant Song” will forever be my battle anthem.

Jim Morrison — The Lizard King

Jim Morrison was an obsession. I used to quote him constantly, even if later I couldn’t find accurate info that he ever said “Let’s fuck death away, baby.” I placed flowers at his grave at Père Lachaise. I took a class in college called “The Doors to Perception.”

Inspired by Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake, the rebellious rider on the storm embodied the idea of the poet as prophet and the performer as shaman Leather pants, bohemian white shirts, an animal silhouette—his style became a blueprint for rock sensuality. Desire, poetry, and self-destruction. Swoon.

Prince — The Erotic Genius

Prince was contradiction perfected: eyeliner, heels, lace, ruffles—petite and delicate on the surface yet completely commanding. He controlled every detail: mystery, discipline, erotic intelligence. His virtuosity made sexuality structural rather than merely decorative. Surrounding himself with striking women—from Apollonia to Sheena Easton—he created a universe where beauty, power, and desire were indistinguishable from the music itself. I mean, just look at him!

Jack White — The Wild Stripe

Jack White plays guitar like an archaeologist of sound—pulling something ancient and unstable out of an instrument that always feels on the verge of collapse. I could watch him forever, screaming into a microphone but in a way that is somehow different from the way everyone else does it.

With his pale Victorian gentleman looks, he refuses polish and exudes delicious distortion. His music lives inside limitation, and that limitation becomes language—every note deliberate, tense and wildly alive. I miss the days with Meg White, and even though “Seven Nation Army” devolved into a global sports chant, it still does it for me.

Iggy Pop — The Iguana

Iggy Pop is my favorite human animal, the punk iguana, the closest thing rock has to pure instinct. I was nine months pregnant and about to pop the last time I saw him humping an amp on stage. He is pubk in the way that I like punk—writhing, collapsing, throwing himself into drum kits. Even now, at 79, his bare, contorted torso feels less like style and more like rock reduced to nerve, skin, and defiance. Maybe it’s time he put on a shirt, but I always did and still want to be his dog.

Lenny Kravitz — The Velvet Sun

Lenny Kravitz is pure sex and style. Immaculate bone structure, perfect physique, long dreads—an immediate visual language of confidence. He doesn’t perform seduction; he inhabits it. Confidence, elegance, and desire as a single uninterrupted state.

Elvis Presley — The King

Elvis Presley was my childhood love, filtered through my grandmother’s records and her collection of fan postcards. The full-body performance style, the sexual charge that shocked 1950s television, the waist-up censorship on The Ed Sullivan Show—all of it marked the moment rock became dangerous.

From slim suits in the early to outlandish rhinestone jumpsuits with capes, his evolution mirrors fame itself expanding outward: from body to myth.

Michael Hutchence — Aussie Sex Siren

Michael Hutchence was smoldering, seductive, impossibly charismatic—pure sex without effort or artifice.

As the frontman of INXS, he didn’t just sing Need You Tonight—he inhabited it. Loose, magnetic movement, quiet intensity, a voice that balanced invitation and control. He made sexuality feel immediate and chemically altering.

Dave Gahan — The Dark Romantic

Seeing Depeche Mode at 16 was life-altering. It was the only time I cried at a concert. He embodies restraint: dark elegance, industrial minimalism, stillness that makes every gesture feel inevitable. His face holds quiet intensity, but it’s his voice that carries everything—deep, smoky, immense.

A balance of control and vulnerability that creates a different emotional physics entirely: atmosphere, longing, contained ache.

What ties these personas together is not sexiness in any conventional sense. They are versions of masculinity pushed to different extremes—erotic, unstable, divine, transcendent. It’s sexiness as pure force and entirely idiosyncratic.

Honorable mentions:

Billy Idol, David Gilmour, Syd Barret, Bryan Ferry, Jimmy Page, John Cale, Peter Murphy, David Lee Roth, Marc Bolan, Simon Le Bon, Scott Weiland and Brett Anderson of Suede.

I’d love to read about yours!

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Turning rock stars into essays is thirsty work.