verified

i’m sick of these kids and their instagram followers. i want to be more than a screenwriter, i want to be more than my mental illness, and fine, i’m lying, but maybe i want to be more than a fucking liar. no, what i want is to be more than broke. i want currency. i want time. i want a wife. i want a reason not to write, to be more than a reflection on my phone screen as i glare at the instagram page of the next new 23-year-old brunette it girl with good collar bones and even better homegrown-passing symmetry. i want to be misunderstood, not cowering behind my stanzas. i want to lie and get paid for it. if i wanted to be honest, i’d move somewhere else.

i want to be sexy like a poet who doesn’t care about getting to read their work at a poetry reading hosted by one of those elite new york pseudo alt types who moved to la and opened a bookstore a lit mag a curated experience on what fucking income on the e*st s*de and loves god ironically because they were popular enough to have an ask.fm and scrubbed all their racist tweets and pics of problematic halloween costumes or maybe they deleted twitter altogether because they’re “happy” now, not to brag, and totally don’t have a coke addiction anymore but yeah, if anyone had some, they’d do a bump, also don’t forget to venmo me for the uber.

i want to be nonchalant like a poet who doesn’t care about her eating disorder and only ever forgets to eat in a non mentally ill way – well, still a mentally ill, but a cool mentally ill way, not like my obsessive obsessive obsessive way where i think about every single thing i put in my mouth and every single thing everyone around me and every single thing everyone online puts in their mouths – like a poet who never thought her thighs were too big she just wanted them to be smaller – like a poet who’s always been a size two – i promise i’m gonna stop talking about weight now because i’m not obsessive anymore i’m just in recovery.

i want to be famous like a poet who doesn’t care about young hollywood up and comers in their ig comments, like a poet everyone knows won’t come but she’s still invited out because she’s pregnancy belly in mood lighting, naked in bathtubs, and breastfeeding with perky tits on the gram kinda hot and she’s married to a sexy slinky tall dark handsome type who’s brooding with a cigarette in hand or mouth or tow and he’s a writer he’s a photographer he's an author he’s an ARTIST and NO HE DOESN’T HAVE AN INSTAGRAM, or he does, but he only uses it for his polaroids, he’s really talented, but it’s request only, stop asking, is that all you fucking care about were you even listening to what i was saying, god those phones are rotting your fucking brains where did i put my vape pen, i’m so fucking sick of these kids and their instagram followers.

it’s me. i’m their instagram followers.

if i have to suck one more director’s dick while he tells me i’m beautiful, the marrying type, while he’s looking at my ass, and wait for him to come even though he said he could only come from sex which i knew was a lie he somehow believed because he has bad taste and if i have to swallow his sour spunky ego as he strokes my head and tells me i have a gift for prose while i wonder how many of his greys are still swimming in the back of my throat because he actually is well endowed which sucks because it feels so much better to lie to a man and tell him he’s got a big cock than to mean it but it’s nowhere near as bad as when he’ll make me read his script and i’ll have to lie because directors can’t write but they all still do and it’s killing the polar bears it’s killing this town it’s fucking killing me but we live in a place where lies get you laid they get you paid they get emotionally enslaved to a member of the dga who resents you for not fucking him but not that he took you home from a wrap party blackout drunk when you were five years shy of half his age and you fucking resent him, how he still hasn’t gotten you reps even though it’s “such a great time for women in film,” because the feature he paid you to write, he didn’t really “get into” because he only understands you when you’re choking on his throbbing

if i have to explain that cock gobbling doesn’t make me any less of a faggot to the queers at the party who wince when i say faggot because they’re better than me ‘cuz they had their gender identity crises back in third grade or at fucking reed liberal oberlin arts rhode island school of suck my dick and design, well good for you and your ethically non monogamous bubble of eco conscious bullshit some of us grew up in closets that smelled like shoplifted burnetts vodka and the opioid epidemic and weed laced with horse tranquilizers and yes the white middle class but fear and i can’t get that putrid stench of how scared i was out of my pierced nostrils so wouldn’t they like to know that when i got my nose pierced my dad said i looked like a carnie and when i got my belly button pierced my sister said i looked like white trash and when i got my nipple pierced my mom told me to put a bra on so yeah i’m gonna fucking say faggot because it’s what everyone was thinking while i rotted in the closet in a state that these faggots couldn’t pick out on a map, but they’re still raging on their ig story about how kids THERE don’t have rights and how fucked america is because we’re not in america we’re in los angeles where nothing bad happens because here there’s only good and then there’s ART

if i have to have one more conversation about late stage capitalist mortality in a city full of apartments and homeless people where we’re all obsessed with death by comparison and getting on raya just to complain about it and harvey and ellen and thank god they fell from power it’s so different now because it’s, scream it with me now, SUCH A GOOD TIME FOR WOMEN IN FILM and eating the rich without feeding the poor and if the grid makes sense and being professionally insecure and the only thing that separates us from THEM is that here we’re all fucking verified onscreen on camera on your phone but seriously save your money close your eyes throw your phone into the pacific, but only if you have apple care, because we shouldn’t have this power this attention this love we don’t deserve it, save it for yourselves, your estranged mothers, your therapists, because if we don’t get it we’ll keel over, and our death wouldn’t be cinematic or heart wrenching or for your consideration it would just be worm food and that’s what we deserve: to be nobody

because we hate ourselves just as much as the 20-somethings in the heartland but as long as we stay skinny stay pretty stay playing ten years younger and dating thirty years older you can know that we’re better because WE HAVE TO BE BETTER and that we deserve every second of love you give us, and i’m comforting a struggling artist, who struggles mostly with her weight, her pervy acting coach, and the thought of a new haircut because it means she needs to know who she’s gonna be, maybe a lesbian, definitely not a brunette even though they’re in right now ‘cuz who knows how long that’ll last, and when she should get her new headshots, before or after her mental breakdown, and she’s jealous of her bipolar screenwriter neighbor who should be famous but isn’t yet because the academy fucking hates trans people even more than usual right now because it’s such a good time for faggots in film and god they miss harvey and the golden age of cinema and i’ll write this in my notes app later, but i’m trying to think over the sound of being offered organic k fair trade coke anything short of fentanyl because we’re not junkies we’re just elitist upper downer popper level it out it’s all the same get outside your body for two seconds five minutes three hours well i’m already outside, i’ve never been inside, you bitches couldn’t pay for this kind of disassociation since we’re all misusing that word these days

and when i’ve found a moment to myself in the bathroom because i always have to pee in a desert climate or maybe my bladder is trying to tell me to GET OUT, i’ll look into one of the five mirrors in front of me because we are a town that is many things but at least we’re honest about our narcissism, and i’ll avoid my own reflection because existing has always been the scariest thing in my life and if i ever fucking catch my eye, i’ll have to answer the hard questions like what am i doing, will anyone ever care enough for me to go LIVE because if that never happens what was all of this for if not the unconditional love from people who have never met me in real life, and am i the sluttiest cousin or do i just have the most instagram followers?

Elizabeth Burch-Hudson is insane.