Rec | VIRGIN SUICIDES

by Olivia Gatwood what I mean is that when my grandmother called to ask why I didn’t respond to her letter, all I heard was, Why didn’t you text me back? Why don’t you love me? And how can I talk about my grandmother without also mentioning that if everyone is a teen girl, then so are the birds, their soaring cliques, their squawking throats, and the sea, of course, the sea, its moody push and pull, the way we drill into it, fill it with our trash, take and take and take from it and still it holds us each time we walk into it. What is more teen girl than not being loved but wanting it so badly that you accept the smallest crumbs and call yourself full; what is more teen girl than my father’s favorite wrench, its eternal loyalty and willingness to loosen the most stubborn of bolts; what is more teen girl than my mother’s chewed nail beds, than the whine of the floorboards in her house? What is more teen girl than my dog, Jack, whose bark is shrill and unnecessary, who has never once stopped a burglar or heeled on command but sometimes when I laugh, his tail wags so hard it thumps against the wall, sometimes it sounds like a heartbeat, sometimes I yell at him for talking too much, for his messy room, sometimes I put him in pink, striped polos and I think he feels pretty, I think he likes to feel pretty, I think Jack is a teen girl. and the mountains, oh, the mountains, what teen girls they are, those colossal show-offs, and the moon, glittering and distant and dictating all of our emotions. My lover’s tender but heavy breath while she sleeps is a teen girl, how it holds me and keeps me awake all at once, how I sometimes wish to silence it, until she turns her body and the room goes quiet and suddenly I want it back. Imagine the teen girls gone from our world, and how quickly we would beg for their return, how grateful would we be then for their loud enthusiasm and ability to make a crop top out of anything. Even the men who laugh their condescending laughs when a teen girl faints at the sight of her favorite pop star, even those men are teen girls, the way they want so badly to be so big and important and worshipped by someone. Pluto, the teen girl, and her rejection from the popular universe, and my father, a teen girl, who insists he doesn’t believe in horoscopes but wants me to tell him about the best traits of a Scorpio, I tell him, We are all just teen girls, and my father, having raised me, recounts the time he found the box of love notes and condom wrappers I hid in my closet, all of the bloody sheets, the missing socks, the radio blaring over my pitchy sobs, the time I was certain I would die of heartbreak and in a moment was in love with a small, new boy, and of course there are the teen girls, the real teen girls, huddled on the subway after school, limbs draped over each other’s shoulders bones knocking, an awkward wind chime and all of the commuters, who plug in their headphones to mute the giggle, silence the gaggle and squeak, not knowing where they learned to do this, to roll their eyes and turn up the music, not knowing where they learned this palpable rage, not knowing the teen girls are our most distinguished professors, who teach us to bury the burst until we close our bedroom doors, and then cry with blood in the neck, foot through the door, face in the pillow, the teen girls who teach us to scream.

@stinkylittleman27

Jul 2, 2024

📰

Dissociative girlhood through the eyes of a millionaire twice my age

"the internet, or Sofia Coppola films, or Lana songs, or the multitude of fallen girl, women, tropes can cause a dissociative kind of excitement in living through your own degradation (????)"