Mixtape Diaries #3

Beginning of Pride Edition and Editing Season

Sunday | June 1st, 2024

I christen the beginning of pride by going to a Trans Masc Rager in SF and make out with a cutie with three shots of tequila and a cigarette and a sweetie named Adam who says hi to me while we wait for the bathroom together.

I thoroughly enjoy being gay.

Thursday | June 6th, 2024

I do a photoshoot. My first in over a year. I twirl and the photographer asks me if I am a dancer. “It’s because you spot yourself well”. I don’t have the words to tell her I have been spinning like this alone for years. That some nights, my head spins, and the only way to calm it is to spin with it. Find the headphones. Spin. Lyrics knocking the wind out of me. Euphoria, the way it felt at 17, a little drunk, swimming in the pool of a friend’s house late at night. I would throw my body forward to front flip underwater just to let all of me float to the top on it’s own, slow, time.

There’s something special about being weightless, only held by the water. It was baptism. It was nirvana.

Tuesday | June 11th, 2024

I press snooze on my 5:15 am alarm once, then twice before I stumble into the bathroom to pee, crawl back into bed to read, and attempt to meditate without falling back asleep. I’m supposed to be editing my manuscript but there is not a creative juice in my bones this morning. I sit here and question How the fuck did Toni Morrison do this?

She would awake at 4 am to finish her writing because it was the only time between her 9-5 and the children she had.

Maybe it’s the scenery. Maybe I’ve dedicated my bed to be a place of rest so hard that doing anything but feels like a sin. Maybe I’m less of a morning person as I’d like to think. Maybe working on this manuscript scares the shit out of me because that means I have to put it out. I have to expose myself to the world once more. Maybe I’m just tired.

I feel a pang in my heart.

The quiet mornings are the most vulnerable time of day. It’s the sleep-eyed version of me pulling at knotted strings to try to unravel words I don’t even have at the tip of my fingers yet.

Maybe Toni woke up at 4 AM instead of 5 AM because she needed an hour just to feel. To let the thoughts that run rampant at night decompress before she made magick.

Who knows. It’s now 7 AM and all I want to do is run. I’ll figure out what that means later.