Ok so like. He had this pale light green bathroom. It was that really lovely minty-sage shade of light green that you’d see in the waiting room of a dentist’s office. Except this was a maybe 100 something year old apartment complex (or at least it smelled like it in the hallways). There was a little light green bar of dove soap sitting on a wall-mounted soap dish. And a window in his shower that overlooked Massachusetts Ave. Cold air came in from the window. I kinda just thought like damn, he has a nice view and so does everyone walking by on Mass Ave.

 

He told me he was a writer and I was like hmm makes sense, he seems smart. I guess I’ve always thought about writing as something that smart people do. Like you must be so certain of your ideas and how you see the world in order to write. You probably believe you are so correct about everything or at least have an inkling of that conviction. Maybe you want to prove it all to the world. Isn’t that the point of writing it all down? Why else would you take what’s floating around in your mind and solidify it into something as concrete as language? 

 

Ugh so now I guess I have to tell you more about guy w/ green bathroom. It’s basically just... the older I’ve become, the more of a lurker I’ve become. I am going to tell this story in the most roundabout way possible because it’s kinda embarrassing on my part. I sit places alone. When I’m not working, I lowkey loiter. I’m so serious. Like I get coffee and walk around and honestly that’s just about all I do in my life as an adult woman. Erm so as you can imagine it was a Saturday, I wasn’t working so there I was, I was sitting at a coffee shop. 

 

I had a cappuccino with oat milk and a little vanilla. This cafe serves their espresso drinks with a little hexagon-shaped piece of dark chocolate on the saucer next to the mug, but it's always slightly melted from the heat of the drink. It's like this every time, so I'm not sure why they don't try to place the chocolate further away from the drink. A little smear of melted chocolate appears on the side of your pinky finger. You lick it off. It's somehow also on the semicolon key of your keyboard? On the {}|\ keys too? All seems harmless. 

 

This hot rando walked up to me and was all like “Are you Olivia?", so I’m like shit!!! Some guy thinks I’m his hinge date! probably? or something? I was like “No, I am not Olivia, but who is Olivia?” For a moment, I assumed he would show me this mysterious Olivia's hinge pictures. Maybe I could even help look for her. But no, he told me that he moved to D.C. for work recently, la la la, and that I look like a coworker that he hasn’t met in person yet. Turns out his vision isn’t the best and the whole story was true - but initially I didn’t buy it at all.

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Obviouslyyyyy A led to B, and yeah he is like ~hot~ so we hung out and we got into talking about art, filmmaking, and everything under the sun. He said that he studied creative writing and told me about his work, and he asked some questions about mine. He asked with this very earnest curiosity and I felt a little bit of sadness boil up within me knowing that if I said how I really felt about artmaking, it probably wouldn't be the answer he wanted to hear.

 

“I just feel like I’m in this purgatory of sorts” ----- “Cynical” do they call it? Then I just explained. It's not even that complicated, I just have survival anxiety. And one too many months of overdrafting my card after paying rent, knowing I'm going to eat garbanzo beans and oatmeal until my next paycheck comes along. How can I have the space in my psyche for expression when I have so much anxiety about existing? and job security? and feeling valuable to the machine?

 

Money is one thing and the comfort it buys is another. I guess you could say I can simulate that comfort, but I haven't done a very good job of it. I'm so infatuated with the things I want to make. Sometimes I mourn the things I’ve never created. Sounds so dramatic, but it's true.

 

He said "why don't you start with writing it all down." I was like because I'm not a writer? Duh. Pls. He swore that as a creative writing major he had the authority to crown me as a writer so I was like okay I will TRY to be a writer and feel like a writer. He said he spends his weekends working on screenplays and writing stories. And that he doesn't have the resources to make his work into films, but writing helps ease that weight of feeling like it's just an idea that doesn't exist.

 

It's interesting to me that writers write for a job and then they go home and also write for themselves. And animators animate at their job and then they go home and also animate for themselves. In the creative world, you're always burning the candle from both ends, and if you don't burn the end you have to burn, you can't ever burn the end you want to burn. 

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I don't even know if this essay is complete, but it's the first one I've ever written so it's good enough for now. Thank u very much green bathroom boy.

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XOXO

 

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