Weekly Diary: Shy Watson

May 19, 2020

I sat in the park eating veggie lo mein, eyes watery with the rotten pleasure of being alive. It had only been minutes since I had complimented the man in the doorway at Ho Wah, telling him that the snake around his neck, which had startled me at first, was beautiful. The trees in the park looked like broccoli, and several people appeared to be in love. A couple played cards in the grass. On the walk home, I noticed a woman whose eyebrows looked tired from trying to say something. 

As you can tell, I’ve been getting high and reading Dodie Bellamy. Lorrie Moore too, but for her, I don’t get high. Lorrie is a sober daytime read, Dodie stoned before bed. The beach chair I ordered two months ago was in my living room all along, in a box I assumed was another computer part for my roommate. I’ve been taking the chair out back, folding it out into a reclined bed, along with the six books I’m reading, and each time I do this I think “summer school!” 

A tuxedo cat showed up on our doorstep. We let him come inside, and I named him Brandon. We didn’t let him sleep over though, for lack of litter box. The next day I bought one in case he came back, which he did. After holding my hands while I ollied, K drank with me on the roof of my old apartment building. When we returned home tipsy, I yelled “Brandon!” by the stoop until he pounced out of the flowers my upstairs neighbors tend to. That night he slept on my floor while K read Dodie Bellamy to me in bed. That’s what started it. But, Brandon may have started my weepiness for simply being alive. Or was it the sun?

Chariot bleached my hair back to blonde. I feel better this way, more myself. In Bucket’s hair kit, he included a miniature catalog of tooth gems, which, I decided, I want. He is of course not taking appointments now, but as soon as he is, I will book one. The only person I know with a tooth gem is Allie Rowbottom, whose book, Jello-O Girls, is part of the six I am reading for “summer school.” I recommend it.

Someone sat next to me and Sam in the park on Friday and asked to borrow their phone. Sam, as we were sitting six feet apart and abiding by social distancing rules, wouldn’t allow that, but did offer to message whoever they were looking for. The person, whom I’ll refer to as N, became increasingly agitated by not being allowed to touch the phone, then left. Later that night, Alex came into my room and said somebody knocked on our door and asked to use his phone. I stayed in my room, half listening through the wall, until I realized it might be N. I texted Alex with a description of the person I had seen at the park, which he confirmed matched. I stayed hidden in my room, worried I had been followed, as my house is a solid two blocks from the park, the chances of a double encounter being next to none. Alex returned to my room over an hour and a half later to explain what had happened. N had wrapped tin foil around their stomach, nervous about electromagnetic waves, and had written a note to Alex about how the government had sprayed them with COVID-19, that it is “not contagious but chemical,” and that they had found an underground child sex ring after refusing to join a cult. I felt bad for N, and worried about all of the people who might not have access to healthcare right now, during a time already marked by heightened paranoia and distress. Alex ordered N an Uber to a friend’s place and relayed their compliment about the quality of my sage bundle, which sat on the coffee table, burning a bit into the air before they left.

May 12, 2020

Thank God the moon left Scorpio. Last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were HARD. It’s important to set boundaries against what you foolishly want in honor of what your higher self needs. I’ve felt better since doing that. Sad, but better. I was sick with longing, but what I want is to be sick with skateboarding. Blair and I did magick in the park. My sigil was for something writing-related, but I spoke at length about becoming my own fuckboy. I wrote a list of the hottest traits, which includes: skateboards, plays synth, has good taste in music, has tattoos, can cook well, occult interests, smells good, perhaps owns a camcorder. The skateboarding has been great, and I found $250 in a jacket pocket, which means God wants me to buy a synth. I can’t ghost myself.

I wrote a platonic poem about a non-poet, and I think it freaked him out. I’m rereading A Sand Book by Ariana Reines. Today I sat at Herbert Von King against the lamp base and continued to smell a smell I couldn’t place. It washed over me occasionally with the wind. It smelled like cum trees but also like childhood. I grabbed the flowers next to me and squished their petals under my nose, but that wasn’t it. Then a group of girls sat nearby, and someone’s fruity floral perfume overrode my olfactory mystery. I watched The Seventh Seal, Wings of Desire, and Love & Saucers this week. Despite being on a Wim Wenders kick, I wasn’t a huge fan of Wings of Desire. I liked Paris, Texas a lot more. Sometimes it’s difficult to pay attention to subtitles. This is the second indication I have encountered during quarantine that I am dumb. Love & Saucers is a touching documentary about a talented painter who lost his virginity to an extraterrestrial when he was seventeen. The Seventh Seal was freakishly relevant with regards to COVID. I biked to get a bleach kit from Bucket. Chariot’s going to do my hair on Thursday. If there is enough bleach left over, I’m going to bleach a spiral into their hair.

I ran into Mitch again, and he showed me how to ollie. Then I skated with Theo who also showed me how to ollie. I know how to ollie now, but I’m scared to jump high enough. I accidentally tripped on Friday. I had microdosed my usual amount of psilocybin, but it had been a while, and all I’d really had to eat was Soylent. It hit me an hour later as I was trying to read. I couldn’t. My eyes and hands rejected the book until I set it down and lied in bed. I decided that the world is a Chinese finger trap, and my problems are spiders with claws. My favorite tarot card right now is The Hanged Man.

May 4, 2020

I’m high on unconditional love, and I have a sunburn. I have to be careful about what I say. The blowjob song played over the speakers at the grocery store. When the cashier wouldn’t speak to me, it felt cosmic, so I left a $1 tip in the small to-go container at the edge of the register. Tony put our symbolic chocolate bar into my plastic bag. I looked up flights to Hawaii just because I was curious. After drinking a whole 375 mL bottle of Espolon and some mezcal, I slept through my alarm and failed to retrieve my vegetables from the neighborhood farm stand. On Thursday, I made a difficult decision concerning my dad. My former/past sunburn became an itchy stomach rash. Benadryl helped me sleep. I had a nightmare that an acquaintance of mine went down on me, said my pussy tasted “acrid,” and then we rode a waterslide together. There was nothing to talk about. In real life, they right-swiped me on Tinder last night. The psychic dance is a maddening hell. 

Quarantine has given me more perspective on life’s malleability, and, consequently, responsibility. If I can will anything, I need to be careful about it, make sure that it serves my higher self. But I’ve also gained perspective on the value of capital E “Experience.” Even if something is a terrible idea, I want to do it if it will enrich my life Experience. Maybe. My ex told me that they’ve been referring to me as their Super Ex. I love them. I am so full of love. My cool new trick is an adamant refusal to grip onto anything, to leave so much room for god. I hereby designate all of my room for god! If you ignore your phone for hours, everyone sends you texts. 

April 27, 2020

I ordered more paneer tikka masala but this time I added a special request for “no glass.” This week’s personal tragedy, however, was burning plastic. For the new moon, I manifested goals with a candle I bought in Mexico. I put it on a little plate and wrote my intentions onto journal paper before lowering them into the flame. The paper burned strange. Bright white still lightening pulsed in streaks along the intentions. I fell asleep with the fire and woke up with it, too. All day my room smelled. It didn’t occur to me until 5pm that the plate was not microwave safe, and that that could mean it had been coated in toxic chemicals. The fire wasn’t a natural fire from natural paper burning on natural dried clay. The paper must have had some kind of flame retardant, as it was still burning, and the plate was synthetic, too. I panicked, ran to the kitchen, and put the fire out with the lid of a pan. All day I thought I was witnessing a miracle, sure proof that my wishes would be granted, but I was just inhaling poisonous gas in a small bedroom void of ventilation.

I bought a skateboard and did abdominal exercises. I decided to become “my own dream boy” during quarantine. That includes cooking. I successfully poached eggs. Every time I told a partner I couldn’t cook, it was a lie. I’m a great cook—I just assume the worst of myself, too. Alex thinks we should form the dirt in the backyard into a “hill” on top of the random, dangerous chunks of concrete by the fence. Chariot is team hill too. I could use the hill for skateboarding, if we cover it in new concrete. I’ll just need to accept that one day it will crack and become rubble on top of the rubble that’s already there.

Something wild happened yesterday, my first stroke of genius. I had been working on a short story, and it hit me, exactly what I needed to do. I don’t want to publicly express what it was, but I will say that I didn’t even know about it. A new name for a character popped into my head, I Googled the name, found out that it was the name of a prophet who had foreseen a historical event that directly parallels the entire plotline of my story, and it felt like God had spoken directly to me. Then I watched a 5-hour movie called Until the End of the World.

April 20, 2020

I think, in the process of eating paneer tikka masala leftovers last night, I swallowed glass. It’s trapped in my throat. When I swallow, it hurts, but only if I swallow a certain way, down a certain path. The insides of my throat now feel like a complex dam where each stream of gushing water slides down through a different crevice. I shoved my finger down my throat, craned it around a flapped area, and plunged it into the muscly, vaginal parts in search of the sharp thing. I didn’t find it—it’s still there. But I did remember that I don’t really have gag reflexes, that I used to show that off to boys back when I was an insufferable undergraduate student, grabbing their hands at parties and shoving their fingers down my throat. As if I had to perform tricks. I opened beers with lighters for the same effect. That Twitter trend of posting pictures of ourselves when we were twenty kind of fucked me up. My sister messaged me on Facebook. She wants me to interview her about her trauma and to write books about it, she says, that will become movies, she says, so that we can “get rich.” I don’t know who the fuck she thinks I am. I told Ivanna all of this and she said, “You have a sister?” 

Alex won’t let me get fake grass for the backyard because the neighbors have fake grass in their backyards and he doesn’t want it to look like we are “keeping up with the Joneses.” I don’t care if the neighbors think we are copying them. But my backyard vision contains a pool. If we can make a pool happen, I don’t care what’s under it. Chariot moved in. He told me some batshit stories already. We went to the roof yesterday with Ivanna and danced. Chariot’s part of the Twin Peaks cult now. He’s been sitting in Alex’s bed with me watching it and eating Twix. I’m still eating mashed potatoes. I spent so many hours this week reading Planets in Transit by Robert Hand. It hurts my brain to read nonfiction. I’m glad to realize this. I’m glad to know that so I can make a plan to stop being dumb. I’ve been taking vitamins and eating the vegetables I buy from the neighborhood CSA stand. I spent a long time looking for an edible this morning that a guy had given me on what I thought was a date but wasn’t, because he had a girlfriend. I didn’t find the edible. It definitely felt like a date.

April 14, 2020

I wanted to add “It’s Cool, We Can Still Be Friends” by Bright Eyes to the playlist, but it’s only available on YouTube. Mitch walked by while I was on the stoop, so I told him about the aliens in my backyard. The other night, I got high with X & we watched music videos shot in California. I could have cried. I was born in Vallejo, but my family moved to Missouri when I was a baby. I wasn’t meant to grow up where I did. So God demanded I move there, to California, that I reclaim my stolen potential youth. I can’t now, obviously, so I made a painting of a picture I took in Echo Park last June. X told me that the music video for “Loser” by Beck reminds him of me. I just watched it again and now I’m crying. Twin Peaks made me cry yesterday, too. The part where Sheriff Truman says that Dale Cooper is the “best law man” he has ever met. All I do is eat mashed potatoes and watch Twin Peaks. Charlie and I were picking characters for our friends like “Oh my God, Alex is Dr. Jacoby,” and we decided that I’m Laura Palmer. My favorite song this week is “All My Little Words” by The Magnetic Fields, thanks to X. I love my lawn chair. I got my bike fixed, and I never want to be inside again. The sun is so powerful. It’s inhumane that people work during the day. I’m never going to work again. Today is the second time I’ve missed Elaine’s workshop during quarantine, straight-up because I mistook a Tuesday for a Monday. My upstairs neighbor wouldn’t rent strike with us. He wears a Green Lantern t-shirt and those cheap sunglasses they hand out for free at music festivals. I was mad at him, but he chills on the stoop like I do, so we are slowly becoming friends. He laughs hard at almost everything I say, which feels great. I want roof access. I still have keys to my first Brooklyn apartment, which has a roof. It would be so unchained if I saw my old roommate there. She neglected her cat, Eldridge, who humped my pillows. She was evil. She locked the front door with the chain so I couldn’t get the rest of my belongings while I was still on the lease, so I kicked the door in and the chain flew out of the wall and plaster went everywhere. I almost took the cat. She teaches art at a high school and never has sex with her boyfriend. I made X smell all of my perfume ingredients. People keep asking to FaceTime me, but they aren’t giving me time to prepare. People will say “Do you want to FaceTime right now?” Absolutely not! I’ve been so alone that I need at least three hours to prepare for any kind of social situation. I have had so many nightmares. The worst was that people were shining flashlights through my windows. I finished the 6th draft of DRIVE-THRU. It’s so much better now. The other day, I noticed that my ex added two songs to the playlist, so I spent the whole evening in bed listening to “69 Love Songs” by The Magnetic Fields. I’d be fine with never meeting anyone again.

April 7, 2020 

Quarantine is bad for scoliosis—I feel creaky. I ordered a sewing kit for X’s cardigan, which arrived in the mail today. The air outside feels like Seattle, like I live by the ocean, which I do and have. My chin is scabbed, and my neck is bruised. Fat bumblebees guard my stoop. The other morning, I woke up and my skull ached. The pain came from the bone. When I opened my jaw, it clicked. I want energy to want to ride my bike. Today is Josh’s birthday. He doesn’t have Co-Star, but if he did, he wouldn’t add me. I did his birth chart out of boredom, and assigned compatibility emojis to each planetary pairing. There were zero smiley faces. The first time he met me, he thought my blonde hair was green because of the patio lighting. The first words I said were, “Hey, what’s your sign?” I can’t listen to music now without tuning it out unless its lyrics tell a story, like Leonard Cohen or Jeffrey Lewis. I keep blaming my attention span on my phone. I want Adderall and the drive to paint again. Imagine if I were still painting, if I had patience. The birdsongs have been louder than ever. Or is it that the streets have been quiet? It’s a funny sound, when a car drives by blasting Young Thug and it comingles with the birds in the trees. I feel like I’m under a weighted blanket made of water. I got my unemployment direct deposit today. I can’t tell whether or not I have a crush.

April 1, 2020

APRIL FOOLS

I want to play beer pong while listening to Wilco until I get pregnant. My feet have been dirty because of my apartment’s floor. I matched on Hinge with the hottest person I have ever seen a photograph of, but he wants to do FaceTime karaoke, and I’m a coward. This shit is making me gen x. I have been fantasizing about marriage, about house parties in places like Iowa, a sweetheart who can sing Bright Eyes with me. Sex every hour of every day. I’m wearing scrubs from the science store on the outskirts of Chicago. They’re white, and I accidentally put my pen on them. A little streak winks at me from the cuffed-up ankle. I think I regressed for an entire year and nine months: intellectually, artistically, in terms of taste and style. It breaks my heart that I spent so long throwing pennies into a well. Better late than never. Alex gave me weed, and I am grateful. Sat in the sun today while my Soylent order showed up. Steven and I have been having ~9 hour workshop sessions with each other’s fiction over FaceTime. I was addicted to online chess for 48 hours then I had to quit. I have a backyard, but she’s in disrepair. Since I kicked my ex out, I’ve been cuddling IKEA sharks. Today the neighbor, before stepping inside, asked me to text him an update about the ice cream man. He wanted to know whether or not he was wearing a mask. I forgot to text him, but he wasn’t. He had gloves though. They were clear, not blue. He looked just like my drug dealer. Big child support energy in the driver’s seat.

shy watson wrote Cheap Yellow (CCM 2018), co-founded blush lit, & is now working on a novel. find more of shy's work at places like New York Tyrant, Hobart, & [PANK]. follow @localsingle69 on twitter for updates.