Emchap's Shit from the Internet 6/6/18 🍠
I have been back in Atlanta since Saturday, which has been—as trips to Atlanta often are—filled with people and places and things that I love with the whole of myself while also feeling like I can't ever quite relax. I have not once regretted leaving Atlanta when I did, even if I didn't much like New York. There was no other way I was ever going to feel like I could build a sense of self separate from the expectations of everyone who knew me from 12-24, which is a span that should contain three or four selves but for me only contained the one. But every time I am back here, I wonder if and when I will return home.
I am so, so happy in Los Angeles right now, but I am someone who loves home and stability and community, and I know those are things that I could have in Atlanta that I don't have in quite the same way there. It's so hard to escape the constant background narration that whispers: I could buy a house here! But beyond that there are whole lives I can imagine as I sit in the back of Lyfts noodling from one end of town to the other: I could get an MPH, or start a theatre, or have a bigger impact than I can in a bigger city and one where I don't have 14 years of roots and adolescent networking to pull on.
It's hard for me (in general) to hold in my mind that no choice I make aside from having an child is a permanent one. I'm 27. I am so young in the scheme of things. There are people I know now whose whole entire lives as I know them were completely different before that point. I can do any number of things that I want, assuming I get at least a few more decades—just not all at once. But of course none of that ever feels true, because human brains are truly terrible at conceptualizing timescales of more than a few days, and I am particularly bad at it even within the bell curve of human ability.
So, I look at Atlanta and I wonder what it would be like to live here now. (Which of course I don't know, not really, because when I come back here I stay at my dad's house—a house he bought like a year ago—and learn only that I don't particularly want to be in high school again no matter how much I love him and the well-appointed home.)
I have a few more days of the trip left, and I am interested to see what I think of it once I've returned to my own apartment in my own low-humidity current state and my hackles are not permanently a little bit up the way that they are here. We have many different selves, and I am curious if I've finally been away long enough that I'll feel like a truer one could withstand my returning here, or if I'd collapse back to the version of me from 12-24 that I have been so happy not to carry the weight of quite so much these last few years.
Shit to read
One of the more relaxing things I have gotten to do on this trip is read. This week I've knocked out Theft By Finding (a collection of David Sedaris's diaries, which periodically would prompt me to say things like "oh, I forgot how much meth he did") and Love and Estrogen, a beautiful little Kindle single from a trans woman about falling in love with her wife as she began taking hormones as part of her medical transition. I recommend both entirely.
I am entirely in love with Zach Woods, a man who I want to have sex with while also acknowledging that he looks legitimately like a space alien.
This André Leon Talley interview is great and sad.
New Orleans cops tried to fuck with strippers and they fought back.
Remember the Awl? Read this piece on pretend.
Amanda Mull is so good and commercial body positivity is a scam.
Fuck Bill Clinton, though. (And fuck the middle-aged folks who haven't revisited their relationship to him and to Lewinsky.)
Straight dudes who watched Sex and the City are a good crop.
Shit to eat
Tour a bunch of midcentury modern homes in what feels like 100 degree heat and wonder how you didn't just lay down and die when you lived here for most of your life.
At the end, realize you are starving.
Remember you are also near a completely wonderful shitbox pizza restaurant where you spent a lot of 2014-2015.
As you are seated, remember that part of why you loved this particular shitbox pizza restaurant (aside from the patio, which is a choice that you are regretting as you feel your swamp ass growing to DC proportions) is that it has $4 pitchers of Miller Lite.
Order a pitcher of Miller Lite and a slice of forgettable pizza and get reminded of the fact that there were in fact good things in your hometown before you left, and some of them are still here (even if they are almost certainly fixing to be turned into some sort of artisanal soap store in the next five years).
Shit to listen to
When everyone on Twitter was freaking out about looking at their tweets from 10 years ago (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you live a better-constructed life than me) I was reminded of the Pork and Beans video, which I had totally, totally forgotten. The internet and memory are so strange.
YouTube autoplay also reminded me of (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To which I 1000% assumed was an All American Rejects song until, like, now.
Shit to buy
Buy some R. Land art for your wall.
And some Ruby Redbird for your parties.
When I get home, I have these slides to try on from my Trunk Club trunk, and I'm real excited.
I kind of love these tassel keds.
I dig this Boden jumpsuit.