Door Dash in a Snowstorm

    Its snowing, hard. Allen is at my house and we are sitting in bed waiting for the food to arrive. Someone should be posting our faces on social media, grilling us for making the 'minorities drive in the snow', like the Instagram reels say, half-joking.

    Boards of Canada's "roygbiv" floods my pumice-stone-colored walls, I feel seventeen again. 

    Allen is a kind person. I like when he sits next to me, even now, silent, focused on using ChatGPT to do his school work. Its cute, endearing. He says his college encourages AI use, I'm not convinced. 

    My purple, velvety comforter pushes back against my feet while I'm tapping my toes to the beat. I'm supposed to be doing my physics homework. Instead, I write. Normal force, Newton's first law of forces, force of gravity, centripetal force. 

    I just learned that centrifugal force isn't something that I haven't learned about yet (like I have assumed since I heard it in Frank Zappa's song), but that it doesn't truly exist. It's an imaginary force caused by a true centripetal force.

    I wonder what Allen is learning.

    Sometimes I wonder what I would be learning if I went to a different school... If I had applied to Northeastern, would I have gotten in? 

I'm so nineteen. That's what my best friend's roommate makes a point to tell him every single time I'm over the apartment. God I love Jamaica Plain. How different it is from Allston. I have never felt such opposite ways about two places so geographically close.

    Allston and I have an ambivalent-to-enemy relationship. I used to date a drummer who lived in Allston. He once asked me if I would walk to North Station from his apartment so he didn't have to drive me.(See how long of a walk here (it was 9PM in the middle of November)).On our first date, at Cafe Mirror in Brighton, a girl I would soon learn existed walked in, I took note of her pink hair and her striking tattoos. I read her most recent blog post before starting my writing tonight. I have a bit of a friend-crush on her. But, I also learned to steer clear of anyone residing in Allston-Brighton. 

    Allen gets upset when my friends and I mention that drummer, Fern. I'm not really sure why. We went out for three weeks total, he had erectile dysfunction, and the inability to make me laugh. I hope Allen knows how much I like him, and how much I generally just didn't care for Fern. 

    Our Door Dash arrived, after 35 minutes. I grabbed it and there was just a dusting of new snow on my stairs. 

    I love when it snows at night, the sky glows and it's just quiet, everywhere. Allen appreciates the quiet and I appreciate him. Boards of Canada is quiet music, I think. 

    I also like a lot of the not-so-quiet music, though and I think that's where Allen and I differ.

    I went to the Sue album release show yesterday and bought their new merch. Truthfully, I like their EP and singles a lot more than Northeast Emo. 

    Allen wasn't invited, I knew Fern would be there and Nick (from hinge) and our old friend. I also know that even though we met at a Told Not to Worry show, that he doesn't know a single song that isn't made by or affiliated with Drain Gang or Haunted Mound. I think its cute, how sheltered he is, music-wise.

    I don't like the scenesters. They're rude, egotistical, masochists, at least that I have found. I used to hope to meet the one different scenester. Yet, the only ones that are "different" are also posers when you really talk to them. They live in Allston and call themselves punk while their mothers pay their $2k/month rent. They work part-time, or not at all, because they need time to practice with their bands. The worst of it all is that they don't know anything. You try to talk to them about Gaza and all they can say is Free Palestine/End Genocide and not a word more. They don't truly know any details, because life is too fun to learn. 

    This is why I feel like a poser when I prefer the company of people like Allen, people that don't listen to the music, but at least can hold a conversation about Epstein's atrocities. 

So we sit on my purple comforter, I feel guilty for Door Dashing in the snow, I feel guilty that we use ChatGPT for homework, I feel guilty that Allen drives an hour and a half each way to see me, and I feel guilty, most crucially, because I can't name a single Boards of Canada song and I think all of it makes me just as much of a poser as the rest of them.

My Rapist’s Best Friend (Ziggy Stardust)

*trigger warning: this post features mentions of rape and the invalidation of a victim*

​Two days ago was the four year anniversary of my sexual assault.

Now, it’s been four years, and they have been extremely turbulent and chaotic in terms of healing. Every year has been characterized by becoming a crazed maniac for the whole month of February, having panic attacks in the middle of stores or when I smell something that reminds me, and, most killer: nightmares. Cold-sweats, wake-up-shaking, Can’t-go-back-to-sleep nightmares. 

Every year (up until this one) that had been true. I went into hypomania for a week or two starting February first this year, but it ceased. I started to think that I was safe and this was going to be the year that I was all healed up. 

Then it happened, the night of February 19, the day before the anniversary.

I closed my eyes and there it began: I took out my phone and saw a text, Ziggy. Ziggy is my rapist’s best friend, someone who, when they heard my story told me “I don’t want to be caught in the middle of you two’s drama.” Their denial hurt, in the moment, about as much as being violated in the first place. 

The message read “Hey Flora, I’m thinking about you, I know it’s been forever. I took the train today from Reading into North Station and it reminded me of you! Anyway, I started a band and I think you might like it. [insert stupid hair metal band name Spotify link here].” 

Of course dream-Flora opened the link. It was Ziggy, my rapist, my rapist’s new girlfriend and someone else all decked out in hair metal gear, leather and fringe. Ziggy was holding a bass, which I never knew them to play. It was bizarre. I woke up with a pit in my stomach and by then it had been four whole years. 

Music Elitism and the Search for God

    So I start by saying that I had an old friend that started dating a bassist in a semi well known local screamo band and went Hollywood on us! In the aftermath of the friend breakup, one of our shared friends revealed some things she said about me behind closed doors. What was the silliest was the direct quote “I love Flora but, god, she is such a poser.” And after getting got like that I feel as if I need to issue a public notes app apology on my Instagram. Holy crap. One of my favorite things about her was when I would put on one of my playlists she would look at me with this majorly maternal look in her eyes and say, “wow you like all the music I liked in the sixth grade!”… We are nineteen. 

    So the funny thing is:

I have never listened to emo music until, I'm not sure, October of last year? So I have probably 4 months of emo music under my belt. Before then, it was new wave, cold wave, dark wave, goth rock, death rock, and then some indie, alternative, and classic heavy metal. Now I haven’t forsaken my past, but I will say I have strayed pretty far. I was upfront with Ms. emo about the fact that I am new to the whole sub genre and asked her if she wanted to give me any recommendations, I would be just freaking overjoyed. Not once did I get a song or band from her, probably because she didn't want a poser infiltrating her new, awesome boyfriend’s band. 

    I mean I knew music elitists existed before her but I don't think I've really ever encountered any, (except for a chronic one-upper of a freshman I knew in my senior year of high school). And it wasn't like I was walking around wearing Orchid T-shirts or Dystopia patches, or even more stealthily, in local merch of bands that I don't know. I wore a Told Not to Worry wristband that I bought at the second show of theirs I saw. Every time she spotted it, she would show me hers, a much older, thinner-banded, black wrist band and compare it to my 4-month-old lime green one. 

    Anyway, although it may sound like I'm justifying or defending myself, I'm not! I'm doing my best to paint a picture. Is that girl a poser? Abso-Fruit-Ly not. But… is she insufferable to anyone forced to talk about music with her? Yes. 

    I had her and her little musician boo thing over my house just after the new year and I had Silk playing. Suddenly, I hear Ms. emo say “This song is ruined by the screams she does.” Which doesn't even make any sense! It would be a completely different song if they weren’t in it! (it was Amber Welts by Silk). I heard her say this from the other room and when I came back, they were chatting and the whole reason she said this, was because he had said first that he doesn't like the band much.

 

    I just have a hard time understanding what makes me a poser when she the one who folds in half and forgets her so-called “elite” music takes when a stupid bassist says a band isn't good. 

    What was ironic was that I always said “I love her but, god, she smokes too much weed." behind her back.

    Ultimately I think that's the explanation to elitism. It comes from a lack of a life. I’m not saying this from being bitter, either. This girl is nineteen, out of school, lives with parents, doesn’t work, and doesn’t have hobbies (besides going to shows). I think that has the ability to drive just about anyone a little insane. She enjoys sitting around, smoking weed, and assuming herself superior to her peers for listening to her bands with 500 monthly streamers. In this godless time, what are we supposed to do except find places where we excel. And no, I was never offended when she would make the comments about my liking of her middle school music, or when she would offer me the Oso Oso merch from when she saw them in the eighth grade, even though I can confidently say now that it was meant to demean me. Maybe I am a poser because I am not insecure about the fact that I don't really know anything about emo, I made fun of it for years before I got my heart broken enough to start to understand it. 

    What I have begun to understand even more is the fact that the most punk-rock, emo motherfuckers that you know go home to their condos with gardens in the heart of the city, and get mad that their step-moms don't let them smoke weed inside. 

    

    A lack of understanding sneaks up on us, all of us. We have lost our ability to empathize with one another. Yes, she's wealthy and I am not, yes, she lives with her dad and I do not, but also yes, I love myself and she does not. I have a hard time cutting her slack because of her economic position, because what is more punk rock than having daddy's credit card and no job? But ultimately, she is just as lost as you and I. Except I don't really feel lost at all and I haven't since maybe 16? So I guess she is more lost than you and I.

    And because of this, I have the ultimate privilege, much more than financial success, much more than freaking elite music taste. And I was still talking behind her back, too. At the end of the day, it’s not like either of us were saying things that weren't true.