Had I Come Undone?

Something pulled from a document titled "words on paper"

*this is a work of fiction

It is a truth universally acknowledged that writers are obsessed with cities in which they do not live. And more often than not – especially if you are a young, British woman of romantic pretension and nostalgic whimsy – these cities are usually either New York or Los Angeles. Which is why the night before my 30th birthday, I find myself sitting at the bar eating steak at a New York-style bistro, two hours after flying into LA from London. I’ve never been one to make clear choices. 

Let’s say before I arrived I was a person. With a job I was good at. A partner who cooked for a living. An actual coffee machine. A bookshelf filled with books. House plants. A piece of art that wasn’t a print bought at IKEA. An average credit rating.

And now? Still a person, I guess. To be confirmed. Fractured in the heart. All in all, a little ripped up. Prone to crying in public places (read: right here, right now). The coffee machine, books, bookshelf, and lone piece of art now belong in storage. Minus a job. Minus a boyfriend. But still in possession of an average – maybe even slightly below, thanks to the plane ticket and lack of income – credit rating.

As a Writer (I have to capitalise it to either remind myself it’s a noble profession even when you don’t partake in it all the time; and to make myself feel mildly important on days when I am hopelessly numb and it feels like my whole body is a void where words seem to enter and then just never reappear), I’ve come to realise that there are two steps.

One is that there is no real, guttural part of your being that makes you want to write. I’m all too happy to partake in the notion that writing is basically just narcissism on paper and that people wouldn’t be wrong to say the page is your mirror as it shines back anxiety-inducing self-reflective essays that are sometimes called ‘fiction’, but really are just different facets of my personality that are thinly veiled through combinations of letters; so that if you stripped them back, merely reveal my oftentimes vacuous, empty nature.

The second is to acknowledge that I’ll hate 98% of what comes out of my brain and through my fingers, but to do it is part of The Thing We’re Trying To Achieve Here (i.e. organise thoughts, experiences and feelings into stories that are one part palatable, two parts interesting and equal parts revealing and relatable). But the main outcome of this second step is that there was a reason the Romantics smoked opium in order to create, because reality is boring and stepping out of your body whilst on a moderate amount of MDMA is tantamount to peaking in the literary sense.

Of course it’s not only the Class A drugs that will do. Hallucinogens are famously celebrated as a way of accessing what I guess is your brain’s natural storytelling abilities, by building entire worlds through your eyes, so as to create a technicolour layer on top of The Real World that feels bouncy and delicious, like a macaroon made with rose water. One trip and a novel might emerge, but you’ve got to be disciplined enough to take this trip and simultaneously translate it into words, which can be hard enough to do verbally, let alone produce inky thoughts that will sound vaguely intelligent and insightful. Which is why my chosen tool is several tightly rolled joints laced with hash, for that mildly sedative effect. The room becomes squishy and colours soften and the music that plays and usually messes with my ability to form sentences becomes the background noise, the soundtrack to effortless, shiny writing. The kind that looks like sun glimmering on water through a Super 8 lens.

I sail through two vodka martinis before dinner. I’m contemplating ordering another, but my jet lag is making me think twice. I’m at the bar because it felt like the right thing to do. My legs dangling while my life sat at my feet. Everything that I could fit into 90 litres. I left most of my clothes in London because there were too many of them to fit into my duffel bag. This morning, I was a person whose entire life was built around a city, a person, a narrative. Until I wasn’t. This morning, staring into the far reaches of an alarmingly organised wardrobe, I struggled to know what to pack. How to define myself. What to leave behind and what to take with me. I’m intrigued to discover what comprises this bag when I open it later tonight. For all I know – or remember – it could be filled with kimonos and odd socks. 

I check my phone every five minutes. Messages from family and friends. And nothing from him. He who I have slept next to for two years. He who cooks me dinner after work every night. He who was mine forever until he wasn’t. 

I catch the bartender’s eye. A glass of red. Tannic, bright, bursting.

Everything I know about food, I learned from him. How flavours collide. When to turn the heat up or down. Why texture matters. How to hold a knife. How to use a knife. How food tastes different when just one thing is added or taken away. Like salt on a tomato. When things are in season. Why that makes a difference. And then there was the politics of food. Long debates on the long haul flights restaurants depend on to get the perfect leaf. Our society’s dependence on plastic-wrapped food. Our lack of connection with the earth, the soil, the toil, the growth. Then plans to change it all. Allotments and polytunnels and getting out of London and never and never and never. 

It must be seared just right. Four minutes on one side. The salt and pepper colliding with fat. The oil of the cast iron sealing it. Two minutes on the other side. Then rosemary and thyme, crushed garlic. And butter. More than you think. You spoon the mixture over its charred skin. It darkens and deepens. It hisses at you. The salt pops and burns your skin. It doesn’t leave a mark. Lay it to rest. The heat will stay. We all need time to soften.

I step out of the bistro and remember that it’s not the middle of the night. It’s sunset now. The city is slick, the sky a bruised peach. Pearlescent in places, yet a darkness simmers. I’m sure that somewhere beneath that soft surface lies a bed of gold. But not today. A song called Dust echoes in my ears. When we were young, I lost you to the sun. When we were young, you watched me come undone. Had I come undone?