The New York City Journals, Part X: Simpler Times at Rivington High
Indie Sleaze A-lister wants her Blackberry back, says we’re all a bunch of anti-socialites with offbeat algorithm unfit for the dancefloor.
Are you new here, or were you anticipating the title of this piece to match the content contextually?
Headlines, by design, educate and manipulate—a solution and a threat, a party invitation and a ransom note. Now, the click matters more than the bait; keywords keep up first-page search result appearances.
I shouldn't diss the cyber-system; we wanted worldwide, and we weaved a web.
Everywhere became our immediate surroundings, and every one, our neighbor; the latter showed exponentially dire consequences over a relatively short time.
In 2006, the twenty-something population residing in New York City, particularly on the Lower East Side, cliqued and gaggled, betrayed, and debauched in a manner I can only assume paralleled that of every public high school in America. I received my secondary education from a secondhand store from freshman to senior age.
I’d show you our yearbook, but we skipped picture day. I’m sure there is a Vice magazine laying around somewhere, just flip to the page titled: Dos & Don’ts.
Looking back, I see a version of myself ill-equipped for a future, yet an ideal past participant;
I still shoot the shit the girl I was with often—in the mirror mostl;y; she likes the attention.
I stopped hating her, blaming her, erasing her. Now, I meet her where she is; she'd never survive where I am at.
She wasn’t supposed to survive, end up here, lest every version succeeding here would cease to exist. Me wouldn’t exist.
Every version of me lived for a lesson, and learned just enough to lead us to accept that the shedding of layers never ends.
Ashley, circa 2006, hangs with the popular crowd and gets invited to parties until everyone at Rivington High gets tired of cleaning up her puke.
She is not crowned Indie Sleaze Queen, but she was voted most likely to catch an STD and least likely to live past twenty-seven.
That girl never got what she wanted because no one knew what that was, especially not her.
Did you know her? Love her? Sleep with her?
Were you there when she fell—off her feet, out of love, into addiction?
Did you cut her off, or did you pick her up?
Joe is still hot, by the way.
I am still proud of you Iris Duvall, whoever you became.
Is anyone still living in a fantasy or is everybody dying to go viral, now?
Who needs the underground, when you have overstimulation?
Last one is rhetorical.
Someone I know, intellectually,, little about, showed me today that, emotionally, she is my kin.
After learning she’d spent the weekend baking multiple desserts, beautifully crafted and delicious, I half joked, “I wish I had your energy!”
She said…
“It’s not mine; I borrowed it from a future version of me.”
xo,
ACC
