don’t feel like reading? listen here xx.
Lena’s dad watches the finals in a bright orange jersey.
I don’t understand why this middle-aged man is in bright orange.
“He’s dutch,” Lena tells me.
He’s also an alcoholic, nursing a glass of Maker’s Mark. Neat.
Spain defeats the Netherlands in the finals 1-0 in overtime.
Her dad is pissed and properly drunk off the same Maker’s Mark we’ll dip into later that night while he’s fast asleep.
It’s midnight.
We raid the liquor cabinet with our other friend, Nat.
We were only fourteen, freshmen in high school, but we were old for our age. Raised on a diet of Gossip Girl and Lohan Crash-Outs.
Last weekend, Lena’s older brother told us we could get high if we smoked black tea. We tried it by peeling the metallic outside off a Five gum wrapper. A makeshift rolling paper. We ripped open a Lipton bag and sprinkled in the leaves.
We inhaled and inhaled but felt nothing.
This weekend — as we sipped a little from various liquor bottles, carefully replacing what we drank with water, like they did in SUPERBAD —
We definitely felt something.
That night we did more than what friends do to each other.
And it felt good. Fuck, it felt great but we never talked about it again.
I never forgot the feeling. Ecstasy then shame.
I think about that night every time I see Maker’s Mark.
My older sister is a junior at NYU and lives in Union Square.
I walk to her shoe-box apartment from my parents’ hotel and think to myself, “yuck, I will never live here.”
We go to the Chelsea High Line. I’m in high-waisted American Apparel acid wash shorts I got at a Downtown LA warehouse sale. I make my sister take a photo of me on my Lomography film camera.
It’s hot and sticky and crowded and smelly.
It’s Pride.
We get swept into the West Village crowds and somewhere between the naked bodies and glitter and firecrackers and marijuana smoke — I have a panic attack.
I can’t breath, I physically break down.
I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE
My family jokes that “I’m homophobic.”
Little do they know.
I swear it’s just the crowd.
We sit at the BIG GAY ICE CREAM SHOP for air conditioning. My sister gets me a “Salty Pimp.” The ice cream drips down my hand.
I avert my gaze from the women making out next to us.
My sister decides that’s enough gay for the day. We go to Houston Hall. They don’t check my fake-ID, proclaiming I’m a twenty-two year old from Ohio.
I get served a beer in a stein. We eat a gargantuan pretzel as two South American teams duke it out. Crowds of Frat Boys cheer.
I get warm and giggly from the lager, I think I could live here.
We’re at a bar in seating that spills onto the street. On little plastic stools at a little plastic table. Drinking Angkor beer in the thick humidity. Our hair’s frizzed up, our skin’s flushed. Our drinks cost fifty cents but we pay in bills marked by the thousands, feeling richer than ever before.
The game is projected on a wall outside.
We’re in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We just finished college and are back-packing South East Asia as graduates do. But everyone’s a little uptight. There’s five of us — to my chagrin, we’re reading our Kindles more than hitting the clubs.
We’re all a little traumatized from trying to financially cut too many corners. On our previous leg, we booked a “two-dollar” a night hostel on the decrepit party island of Phi Phi.
I split a mushroom shake with my most adventurous friend. We figured “when in Rome,” the other girls were scared, rightfully so — we bought the shake from a bar that sold nitrous oxide balloons.
We swore we didn’t feel anything.
Until it was midnight and the moon glints off the shimmering sea. We wade into the bathtub-warm water. I slice my toe on a rock, but feel nothing as blood seeps out of me. It looks like my nail polish color, OPI Big Apple Red.
I am outside myself, like I’m in one of the movies that I so desperately want to make.
I still have a scar today.
We sleep on the beach instead of the scary hostel — mostly to avoid our drunken stranger Australian roommate who lost her passport and may be scamming us.
We leave the island as soon as we can. On the first ferry out, we know more about ourselves than when we arrived — which is the whole point of this trip.
We are not party island girls.
Cambodia’s our last stop, then everyone’s starting a corporate job — except me. I’ll go on to Australia alone for two weeks, then Bali. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing with my Ivy League degree yet.
A team scores a goal; the street ERUPTS.
We do too; we cheer for whoever’s winning.
And while I feel different, I feel fucking great.
I don’t remember anything about soccer from this summer — I’m attempting polyamory (more here) and in graduate school.
I live a block away from my sister’s old apartment in Union Square… the place I swore I’d never be in 2014.
I am so sucked up in myself and sex and love and work that nothing else matters.
A new chapter of my life is beginning.
I can feel it, I just don’t quite understand it.
I walk to dinner with a friend I haven’t seen in years but keep up with through Instagram DM’s and Close Friends stories.
A heat dome is descending on the city.
I pass the French bistro on my Boerum Hill corner. They play World Cup games on an outdoor TV daily. Somehow, they’ve managed to keep their COVID-sanctioned outdoor seating.
Zidane jerseys, red and white and blue, face paint and glitter, spill onto Smith street. I walk through cigarette smoke and aperol spritzes and bisous as France plays Sweden.
I live with my love, I am thirty, and I just had a big professional win as a screenwriter.
My friends are having babies on purpose. It doesn’t scare me to talk about getting married. And it’s the World Cup again.
I think about the last time it was the World Cup.
And the time before.
And the time before.
And before.
I never really watch it, but I always remember it.
Reflecting on your life in four year increments? Let me know in the comments.
xx, Emily
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