F L A U N T
We’re leaving the city for a moment. Away from the blacktop jungle to a place where we know it will be serene. A place that always welcomes us home. When we arrive we park the car. There are other people around and they are enjoying their escape too. We proceed to the trail and start to walk. The birds. The occasional snake. The very rare bobcat. They welcome us home. We walk and walk and don’t ever want it to end. But of course it does. And when it ends we arrive back at our car. We can’t bear to look, but we have to. We have to find our car and head back to the black top jungle, back to “civilization.”
Upon arrival, however, we see broken glass. Everywhere. It surrounds our car. The windows are smashed. Robbed. Violated. We can’t believe it, but as we get close enough to see through the windows we know. Our hearts sink. We were just so peaceful and now we are pulled back to that seemingly endless pit of angst.
We left our wallet and cell-phone in the car. And they are now gone. We left them because we wanted to escape and enjoy the serenity fully. And now we are fucked. You can’t imagine life without a cell phone until you lose it. And you really can’t imagine life without a cell phone and without a wallet with your credit card and driver’s license in it until you lose it (or it’s stolen). You cannot buy a new cell phone without a driver’s license. You cannot access your bank account without a cell phone. Our life was just so perfect. And now we are caught inside of it. Far inside this jigsaw we feel we will never escape from.
We feel like we have been injected into a scene from the movie Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985). Papers are everywhere. Filing cabinet after filing cabinet. We want to vomit and we want to convulse. But nothing happens. Nothing except dredging. We can’t avoid it. We must go on. Because if we don’t go on and figure out a way to disentangle the Catch-22, we will not be able to participate. Cell phone to get email to get paid to get food to survive and do the same thing again the next day. Forever. We play that sequence backwards and forwards as we use our friend’s phones, we use our friend’s cars, we use our friend’s patience. We’re sorry, all we wanted was some peace and quiet.
Bird of paradise flowers are sprinkled elegantly along the valley sidewalks—orange and green and feathers made of pointed blue. Night-blooming jasmine fills the air, wisps of the most rapturous fumes, exuding from dainty white buds. We are just over the hills of Hollywood, in the environs of the valley, swooning with towns that time forgot. That is why we shed crocodile tears for landmarks that are gone with the industrial wind, taking our precious flora and fauna with them.
Case in point: the Weddington Golf Course and driving range located in Studio City, California. It is dying. Weeping as we speak. Hands clawing and begging for peace, we hear it, we see it–cracking, breaking, shedding its final skin. Its oak trees, its cat-o’-nine-tails, its hummingbird nests, its weeping willows, all displaced now, treated like organic flaws under perfect blue skies.
It has been taken over by Harvard Westlake High School. Notable PTA meeting attendees at the Harvard Westlake High School have included Dr. Phil. Needless to say, deep pockets. So they have decided to start bulldozing the Weddington Golf Course and driving range to build what they say is something like ‘more usable property for the surrounding areas,’ but we believe they are just building a parking lot.
The Weddington Golf Course was nine holes of chunky, half-brown and half-green fairway, but it was lush nature. The course ran parallel to the LA River, so at night various homeless people would walk onto the course in nothing but their skivvies and party down, all to be cleaned out at 5AM for the earliest tee-times. And the great shining light of Weddington was the driving range, which used to be filled to the brim with local valley yokels fresh out of Carney’s, loaded up on chili dogs and chili burgers and chili fries—we can smell the grease like it was yesterday.
Ah, the history. Gasping for more decades of saccharine breaths. Like we said, they are supposedly making the whole area nicer and more available to the public. We didn’t even really frequent Weddington, we just liked to marvel at the giant green net used for catching balls on the range. And we always wondered how errant golf balls that flew over the driving range net didn’t destroy car windows and hit people in the head every day. No clue.
Now it’s just truck after truck. Piles and piles of earth scooped out. Ripped out. The bleeding heart of Weddington shoveled and poured by the ton. Bleeding thick valley dirt and golf balls and rejected scorecards and alcoholic detritus. Don’t forget the dreams. The dreams of those who ached for the mythological hole-in-one. What was it, that lofty seventh hole?
We sob. We shriek. As the trucks drive by. Making way for Harvard Westlake’s new neighborhood dream. A dream that we fought against in city hall, tooth and nail. Our fight was not strong enough, as we were outmatched in lawyer firepower. We will soon be putting flowers in our hair and marching down Ventura Blvd., and we want to see you there–hopefully wearing perfumes of nearby magnolia trees and rosemary bushes, burning with passion made from our local history.
We drove out to Ojai for a camping trip. The two of us. Together. Time enough at last. Stars and sunshine. Ocean views and tall trees. Surrounded, the east and the west enveloped us in perfection. We arrived just on time with firewood in the back of the car and plenty of snacks to last what felt like a lifetime.
Some other cars were there. Parked. Trucks. We looked around. We looked at the other humans. We wondered. We couldn’t help but wonder. We had seen too many movies. Weird how things change so fast. From perfection to concern. Budding. Humming. Vibrating beneath our feet was a mild concern. Why? Why does this happen? Nature compels us to think about danger, to wonder, to fantasize and ruminate. Thoughts intrude the organic matter surrounding us.
We went for a hike and smelled a dozen different kinds of sage and rubbed it between our fingers and released even more scent and we loved it. Then we heard footsteps. Up ahead. They came closer and revealed other humans. They were the humans that owned the truck back there at the campground. They grunted and didn’t say hello, they just walked by. We shrugged, but we wondered.
It’s like going on a first date, and the person across from you asks: Are you actually a murderer? This was nature. Wonder. Beauty and wonder and concern. Taking over. Would they kill us? Or were they peaceful?
And the night fell, we got into our tent and listened. We heard them over there, fire lit and laughing. We wondered if they would approach us and kill us. Why were we thinking this? We looked around at things that could be used as weapons. A brick used for keeping the tent tamped down. A monkey wrench for fixing tires. Alcohol that we could turn into molotov cocktails. We didn’t know. But we closed our eyes and thought about our weapons.
Asleep. Dreams filled with concern. We hear noise. Our eyes opened. Pat pat pat. Drops of rain. Then heavy rain. Then torrential rain. We were wide awake and we opened our tent door and water poured in and we could see nothing but sheets of rain. We remembered we were in a valley. Then a face appeared. “Hey! You have to get the fuck outta here!” It was a face belonging to one of the people we thought might kill us. The face sprinted away, gone through the sheets of rain. We got out of our tent to find that the valley is flooding. We got in the car and drove. Back. Back. Back. Home. Bright lights big city. Back in her arms.
#VANLIFE. You have probably seen us. We are lovers. We have rejected modernity. We create a new world every day. A world that vehemently rejects mechanization. We live for the expansive and liquid vistas of Bali and Costa Rica. Of course, if we have to get to Bali we take an airplane and leave the van in Columbus, Ohio. #VANLIFE has been so good to us. We no longer deal with the plebs who populate metropolitan places. We abandoned our dreams of being movie stars and pop musicians long ago.
We now post on Social Media every morning at 9AM. This is the cycle. We eat coconuts and mangoes and dragon fruit and star fruit. Our bodies glisten upon contact with each other, as our skins are bathed and oiled down in the finest of Bondi butters exported from our good Aussie friends. Have you read Bret Easton Ellis’ novel Glamorama? That was actually based on us, or so we heard. We used to go hard in the paint of after-hours parties, line after line of the purest snow, all ours. Can you imagine?! That was us?! And we are here now. Injecting nothing but the finest NAD+ into our veins, while those at the after-hours are injecting the most awful lab-grown concoctions known to Mother Earth.
Oh, Mother Earth. We worship you. We open the doors of our Mercedes Benz Sprinter van decked out with a V8 engine and we bask in the glory. We have even set up a place for us to take photographs of our everyday life. Day after day and night after night we document everything we do. From eating to shitting to reading in the hammock under twilit stars to making sweet love—echoing sounds reminiscent of peacocks.
We use nature and nature uses us. For profit. How does nature profit off of us? Is that what you ask? We don’t know. We…um…we give back. By…taking photos of it. And spreading it like organic peanut butter onto the cracker of your mind. Force-fed down your gullet by Social Media. Doesn’t it taste so good?
To be waterboarded by our lives? To be waterboarded by the reminder that you just aren’t as holy as we are? You are not here. Don’t worry, at any moment you can make it out too. Check your clocks, look for 11:11 and 12:12, or the mythological 4:44, and use those as numerological signs that it’s time to shift. We will be waiting here…naked…and by that we don’t necessarily mean sans clothing, but sans fear and loathing, rather, basking in the light of hope, dreams, and a fairytale existence most don’t even know is possible. BREATHE IT IN!!!. #VANLIFE
We have been given a phone number. Street vendor. Standing outside of the gym. Strange place to stand but now we understand why. We see what he is selling. The ASS-PILL. At first we think it’s a joke. But we start talking to him about it and he is dead serious.
“What is this for?”
“What do you mean what is it for? It grows your ass. You take one pill and you have the influencer ass…guaranteed!”
He has pictures of influencer asses. We can’t believe it. We don’t believe it. But we take his card and his number anyway and we leave it on the dining room table beneath a vase full of flowers. Time goes by. Shadows and dust. Time falls through our blistered fingertips.
We are drinking creatine. We are swallowing capsules of amino acids. We drink only the purest whey protein powder available. We take maca for virility. We take fish oil and collagen for joint lubrication. We take CoQ10 for our cardiovascular system. We take taurine for even more enhanced sex drive. We take glycine mixed with magnesium to sleep.
We are doing all the things. We are doing leg presses—which, mind you, we initially started out using 25 pound plates, but we are now up to a solid and stout 45 pound plate on each side. We do Romanian dead lifts. We do hack squats, which are absolutely insanely hard. We do Bulgarian split squats. We do lunges. We do leg extensions for 5 sets at 10 reps each. We do calf raises. We do back extensions to target the upper glutes. But…but…we are not growing as quickly as we would like.
So, after weeks at the gym, we arrive back home. The card from the ASS-PILL guy is still sitting there underneath the vase of flowers. Daffodils, to be exact. The card is now pretty worn out and brown but we can still see the number to call.
We…call the number.
“Hello. We would like two orders of ASS-PILLS, please.”
And we wait and wonder if this is a good idea. We have been following all of the social media ass regimens, and we are just not getting the results, so what do we do? Is the ASS-PILL safe? Does it work? Is this real?
It arrives in the mail. We sit on the toilet and feel our ass against the cold porcelain and we stare at the ASS-PILLS. Blue cylinders filled with some translucent liquid. We wonder. We wait. We breathe. Ugh. Is this what it has come to?
We place the ASS-PILL on our tongue. It has no taste. We think about swallowing it. We do. Finally…we swallow it. We wait. We feel our ass against the cool porcelain toilet and we wait. It is supposed to kick in about 45 minutes after digestion…. We watch the clock. We feel something. We start panicking, of course, because we aren’t even sure if we are going to like the new ass, and we wonder if it even counts because we didn’t exactly earn it. We lay down. Close our eyes. We don’t want to be awake for it. Too much to bear. We drift off to a sleep we have never had before–dreams of peach emojis flood our mind.
Upon awakening, we feel a new weight attached to us. A density. We know. Something is there. Behind us. We stand and walk toward the bathroom, we don’t put our hands on it because we are scared. We reach the mirror and we see it. The influencer ass. Guaranteed. It was true. We look like we have The Rock’s ass, or something. It doesn’t quite match our small frame but we will take it. We will. We will. We repeat this mantra over and over…we will. As gentle tears fall from our eyes. Wondering how we will ever fit into our pants. It is time to go shopping.
We have this chair. It’s called “the cuck chair,” but that is deeply unfair. Actually, someone named it “the cuck chair.” They walked into the bedroom and said: Is that your cuck chair?
Why did they say that? Well, the chair sits in the corner. Alone. Quietly. Waiting. There is something unusual about this chair. It is very small, and you cannot actually sit in it. Maybe 16 inches high. Made for an elf. Decorative, though it doesn’t seem decorative. It seems to breathe. To speak. To live. And wait.
Sometimes we pile books on it, but it doesn’t like that. Sometimes we place a little stuffed animal on it. It sort of likes that, but it doesn’t love that. What it loves is to be left alone. To think. This chair. This chair that has been unfairly called “the cuck chair.”
The person who called it “the cuck chair” immediately lent it this rich history of sex. When, after all, it had no history of sex prior to that. It only had a history of Morocco. It was made there, just outside of Marrakesh, carved by gnarled hands, attached to grey eyes and dark beards. It is made of a certain type of wood that is dense and serious, we think it is cherry.
It is interesting. This label. “The cuck chair.” As soon as it was called that we fell deeper in love. Our relationship grew. Between us and the chair. It was imbued with this funny mystique. The thought of losing this little chair hurts. We think: what if we lost it and it actually became a cuck chair? Banished to a horrible existence of cuckery. It would be awful.
Even now, as we consider it, we get closer. It never moves. It never speaks, yet it holds such a powerful place in the house. People laugh at it. People try and interact with it, but can’t because of its size. We don’t introduce it as “the cuck chair.” We let that sort of blossom out of its own accord.
Photographed by Asato Iida
Styled by Alexa Polanco
Written by Augustus Britton
Produced by Annie Bush
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