press II pause
The parking lot is holy ground. Cracks snake sinuously, the blacktop weathered and gravelly. Painted white lines every nine feet. Luke Bryant plays from tinny truck radios. Concrete overpasses cut across the blue sky and their shadows offer the only forgiveness from September heat. Ahead of me, a row of portable toilets. There is no line but, instead, a crowd with a dubious ranking system. I wait until I gingerly pry open the plastic door with one finger, take a breath and pee as fast as I possibly can.
Hobart Pulp
Two years earlier, I call a boat rental shop in Jensen Beach, Florida. It’s my first day on the phones at my shiny sales job. My pitch script is on my desk in front of me: crisp white double-sided paper with a staple in the top left at a precise forty-five degree angle. At my last job, I stapled a lot of paper and fixed a lot of staplers. I felt ready to leave, genuinely excited by this new opportunity. It’s not until the owner of this boat rental shop picks up the phone with a rushed HelllOOO? that I realize I never understood what I’d actually be doing here.
Finding Harmony in the Dichotomies of Lorde’s Solar Power
The Pittsburgher
Lorde’s third studio album Solar Power navigates irreconcilable opposites and murky in-betweens. Celebrity or homebody. North or South. Happy or sad. City or countryside. Summer or winter. I’m fascinated with Lorde herself as a prism for the ideas she unravels on her album. Lorde or Ella.
Hobart Pulp
New York City is my homecoming. I’m careful always to clarify where I grew up: outside New York City. Outsider. New York City is where my parents work in glass towers. New York City is a foggy smudge against the blue sky at the state park near my house. New York City is where I slip peach flavored vodka into Starbucks iced tea on a commuter train, gnawing on a green plastic straw.
Nowhere
A narrow hallway with yellow walls. Canary yellow, like a ripe lemon or a taxicab. Faux-hardwood laminate flooring, rapping echoes from shoes at all hours. The kitchen, modern and clean. Shiny, candy-apple-red cabinets, barren. The bedroom windows overlook a lazy, serene courtyard. One large tree is visible outside among the nearby apartment buildings, a tree so remarkable that I wonder if it is older than the city itself. Four beds, one nightstand. I live here.