Kamala wants to fill the empty spaces of her loneliness.

The Heart · ONE: Sometimes It's Lonelier In Relationships pt 1

The Heart · ONE: Sometimes It's Lonelier In Relationships pt 2

Part 1 of One, a mini series about loneliness.

This episode was written by Kamala Puligandla, produced by Phoebe Unter, edited by Nicole Kelly, advising by Kaitlin Prest. Kamala is the Editor-In-Chief at the queer website Autostraddle and her first novel, Zigzags, is coming out on October 19th, 2020, from Not A Cult. Order her book here. Read more of Kamala’s writing here.

Kamala, NK and Phoebe adapted this episode for radio from two essays Kamala wrote: Courting Loneliness for Autostraddle and Happiness Sounds A Lot Like A Lie for The Establishment.

Kamala created a lot of the music you heard in this episode. You heard the voices of many wonderful people in this episode (in order of appearance): Maryam Gunja, Isa Knafo, Nicole Kelly, Ashley Kelly, Phoebe Unter, Sarah Sarwar.

transcripts

Kaitlin Prest:

From Mermaid Palace and Radiotopia… welcome to The Heart.

[theme music starts, a drum beating like heart]

I'm Kaitlin Prest. This is... One, a mini series. In this season, we are bringing you stories about learning how to be alone.

[Aimee Mann One acoustic guitar version begins]

Vinh;Paul Ha:

In some ways, I think the, like the way that I try to live my life is one that is pretty solitary…

Kaitlin:

Stories about finding pleasure in loneliness and solitude.

Kamala Puligandla:

Dear self, on the occasion of your thirty fourth birthday, I'm writing to remind you that I love you incredibly and immovably that you are our greatest work of art.

Kaitlin:

Stories that go deep into the lessons of those experiences.

Michelle Parise:

Fear, futility. They may as well say your husband cheated on you. Now you think no one can love you.

Kaitlin:

The relationships that we have with ourselves.

Kamala:

I believe in your inspiring power and your elegance. And I wake up every day convinced that we will build the most amazing life together.

Kaitlin:

Kamala Puligandla is a writer. She's been a regular on the Heart show this year.

Kamala:

I'm Kamala, I like to talk to people. That's like one of my biggest skills [laughter].

NK:

[laughing] Conversing?

Kamala:

Being in conversation, I feel like I'm perpetually in conversation.

Kaitlin:

She's a regular member of Phoebe and NK's Quarantine Pod.

Kamala:

Today I saw a tweet. I forget who it was but they were like, you know what tastes really good right now? Something cooked by anybody else.

[collective laughter]

Kaitlin:

Kamala has been thinking and writing about loneliness long before we all became trapped in our apartments for months on end. [Aimee Mann One acoustic guitar version continues]. This story begins many years ago in a one bedroom apartment with a giant lady vampire painting over the bed, a cabinet full of fermenting lemons and limes, and a closet full of men's shoes.

Here's Kamala.

[One theme fades out]

Kamala:

The first time I lived alone, it gave me a certain kind of relief. It was August in Oakland.

[optimistic pop synth beat begins]

I was freshly out of a breakup and the summer had finally warmed up. I liked to open all of my windows and pretend the rush of freeway traffic was the ocean.

[synth fades out and we hear the sound of waves]

Before this, I had never passed whole sets of days without anyone knowing whether or not I took a shower or ate a can of sardines for dinner. Suddenly, there were whole swaths of my life that nobody knew about.

[The first chords of Melissa Etheridge's “I'm the Only One” play]

If I say to you, I'm drowning in my desire, do you imagine me leaving my computer several times a day to masturbate? [sounds of solo carnal pleasure] Do you think of me crying on my couch because I wish someone would hold me? Do you see the anguished face of Melissa Etheridge as she's about to walk through a fire, which is a perfectly good lesbian answer. All these things were true.

[I'm the Only One fades out]

On nights when I wanted to be among strangers, I walked down telegraph to a loud dive where it seemed like they had pool tournaments every night. [people talk loudly over bar clatter] I drank whiskey on the rocks slowly, so the ice melted, watched people and chatted with the bartender. Nobody else talked to me except to tell me they liked my soft mohawk, which only seemed to reinforce that I was in a separate world. Otherwise, I'd spend my time at home: truly my own world.

[percussive and pensive beat with rising synth piano begins]

I put pieces of bacon outside to lure the ants in my kitchen to my deck. [percussive beat gets a dreamy synth melody] I made up songs on my keyboard that got stuck in my head.

[Kamala sings and it sounds retro like it's being played from a tape recorder “Back in time again”]

And sang them to myself loudly while I washed my dishes.

[sounds of water running and Kamala sings: “I made you promise that we would always be best friends.”]

It wasn't that I wasn't happy, though it wasn't quite happiness either.

I felt an absence I wasn't sure how to name. I really wanted to share these rituals with someone else who'd appreciate the delicate joys. Someone who would add to and not take away from my own ridiculous enjoyment of myself.

[synth fades out]

I mean, this might seem obvious to you. It's obvious to me now.

But at 30 years old, I was really good at taking care of myself and not that great at letting anyone else in. [moody piano plays a mournful tune]

It wasn't that hard to make myself look cool on dating apps. Hmmm, [phone typing sound of Kamala crafting a text message] Hello.

And to send relatively well received messages. [texting] You have a great smile. Donna Tartt's The Secret History, we need to discuss! [party synth rock song begins and we hear the sound of a text message flying into the either] I knew how to flatter, how to flirt. I knew how to get people interested in me.

[texting sound]

What's up? That tattoo on your thigh looks...rad. What does the rest of it say?

So I went in a lot of first dates.

[music fades out, bird song fades in]

Sometimes I made an elaborate sandwich for a picnic at Lake Merritt to find out she just wanted to take a nap.

[bee buzzes and synth beat plays]

Sometimes she wanted to come over

Kamala’s Date 1:

But not for sex —

Kamala:

Just to watch Empire. And then wordlessly lead my hand into her leggings anyway.

[Cookie from Empire: You just threw away our legacy!]

Sometimes she thought my jokes were too mean and I pretended I didn't mind her dog.

When we finally made out, it was so maddeningly lackluster it was like kissing a wet paper towel.

[exasperated groan: Ughhhh]

Sometimes we truly actually liked each other. And after we'd spent the night together, after we had brunch, I'd find myself asking her to take a walk with me and she'd stop and say:

Kamala's Date 2:

Yeah, I just don't want you to think that that means we're dating.

Kamala:

[bar sounds in the background fade in, silverware clinks]

[in scene] Soooo this place has a really good Manhattan…

Kamala:

[narration] One night I was at a bar in downtown Oakland having a plum Manhattan with a beautiful woman.

[in scene] I know you like tequila. That's what you had last time. There's also like a cool margarita.

[beguiling minimal flute music begins]

Second Date:

No, I'll go with the Manhattan, that sounds great.

Kamala:

[narration] It was our second date and I knew to order a side of fries before our second drink.

Kamala:

[ordering] Yeah, we'll do the shoestring fries, with a side of mayo.

[narration] The way she smiled at me, felt promising.

Second Date:

So how's your writing going?

Kamala:

[in scene] Oh, it's going really well. I'm working on a novel. I'm pretty much done.

Second Date:

Oh, wow cool. So in five years, you'll be...?

Kamala:

[in scene] I don't know. I think there's like a lot of different possibilities.

Second Date:

[quizzically] Uh Huh?

Kamala:

[narration] My dread must have shown because she narrowed her eyes at me.

Second Date:

But you have a plan, right?

Kamala:

[in scene] Yeah.

Second Date:

Okay.

Kamala:

[narration] I did. But saying aloud that I wanted to publish my novel manuscript and get paid to be a professional writer. Felt less like a plan than a fantasy. One too vulnerable to share with strangers on dates unless they were writers too, and familiar with planning to be lucky. Later, I walked her to her car and she turned her pretty eyes on me.

Kamala:

[in scene] Well, it's cool to see you again. I mean, maybe next time we can —

Second Date:

No. Yeah, I think you're really cool. I don't know that we have chemistry, though.

Kamala:

[in scene] Yeah. Um, okay.

Second Date:

Yeah, but I'm sure we'll cross paths at some point.

Kamala:

[narration] I walked back to my car to look at myself in the visor mirror and try to imagine what it was people wanted to find in me.

[synth pop song plays]

Ashley:

Yeah, how was your thing? [laughter]

Kamala:

[in scene] Well, I went on a date last night. Ummmm….

I think it went well to a point and then it felt like a job interview and the job was to be her very successful girlfriend, at which I failed. [giggling] And she asked me a lot of pointed questions that I don't think she liked the answers to.

But I think we just want different things.

Ashley:

Well, what different things. What did you notice? Because you don't know this person that well right?

Kamala:

[in scene] No...

[narration] I wanted someone to make me feel like I never had before. To gently fill my loneliness like tulle under a skirt, to puff up my balloon heart so it was shiny and ready to pop. And that did not mean that I wanted to be adored by just anyone.

[in scene] How are you going to find this amazing, extra extraordinary thing? Right. If it's just like based on chance?

Ashley:

Right.

Kamala:

[narration] That's what my closest friend and I like to wonder over elaborate snack spreads of oysters, olives and tinned fish that we carefully selected to impress each other.

[in scene] Ashley, where did you get this wine?

Ashley:

Oh my god, at the wine yard. It's so cute over there. I joined the wine club…

Kamala:

[narration] The intimacy and my friendships was reliably fun and satisfying. And so I invested myself in that.

Ashley:

I bring you flowers and wine. What else is here?

Kamala:

[in scene] We have these Portuguese...

[narration] Love had so often been a force in my life that drew me away from plans with myself. And my latest friendships were the exact opposite.

Ashley:

It also, this feels embarrassing, but I'm like, why do I keep finding myself being broken up with when I don't think I'm in a relationship?

Kamala:

[in scene] Do you think there's sort of breaking up with you just because they preemptively don't think they're good enough?

Ashley:

I hope so, but, no. [Kamala and Ashley laugh]

Kamala:

[narration] Maybe nobody was sharing my most delicate personal rituals with me, but I did feel cared for in a way I hadn't expected.

[bar sounds fade in]

Sitting at the loud bar by myself, watching these pool players in another world and wanting so badly to be moved, the knowledge that I wasn't truly alone only made my desire for romance stronger.

[rock song plays softly in the background]

Kaitlin Prest:

After a few words from our sponsors, we will be right back with you.

[soft rock song fades out]

Kamala:

There are cliches in everyone's life.

[electronic tune]

But sometimes mine are particularly embarrassing. I like to think I'm unique, but in fact, I live in a weirder adult world of a teen rom-com. Where I'm the fat dyke with glasses who turns out to be hot when it's revealed that I'm smart and funny and not very nice.

As soon as I stopped caring if people loved me. Of course some people did. Or maybe people had always been interested in me and I was just too inexperienced to know what it looked like.

Last summer, I felt like I tipped into something new.

[fast paced dancey music plays in background]

I found myself with an abundance of love and attention from the kind of brilliant and sweet and cutting and funny and beautiful women I'd always wanted in my life. [fast paced dancey music continues]

I was in an intense but fanciful attempt at an open relationship with my young, brash girlfriend, who, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, wanted to claim me as hers forever. In our best moments it was 3:00 a.m. and we were cruising empty roads after a party, hands down each other's outlandish outfits, singing loudly to bad songs we loved.

[Red Hot Chili Peppers Under the Bridge plays and Kamala and her girlfriend sing along raucously]

Time stretched and bent when we were together. And there were seemingly unlimited kinds of fun to bump into.

[Kamala's girlfriend sings along to the tale end of Under the Bridge which then fades out and late night city street sounds fade in, signaling a new scene]

Kamala:

[in scene] Well. Where are you taking me now?

[crickets and footsteps]

Kamala’s Longtime Crush:

I'm usually in bed by now.

Kamala:

Already?

Kamala’s Longtime Crush::

Mm hmm.

Kamala:

[narration] Later, on a sultry night in Brooklyn, I plucked a faltering joint from the gorgeous lips of my longtime crush to light it properly for her. She took a long drag and looked at me.

Kamala’s Longtime Crush:

You know, I'm really good at making out.

Kamala:

[in scene] Okay, that's great information.

[narration] She demonstrated this with impressive technique from my lap inside the next bar.

[techno fades in]

We spent a long romantic weekend together. The way she reached her hand out to catch mine as she deftly slipped to the front of the bus line, the gentle swipe of her finger across my sweaty upper lip before placing a weed mint on my tongue.

[pulsing house music fades into chopping sounds]

Kamala:

One afternoon, we were chopping broccoli in her kitchen. It was silent, except for the uneven thuds of our knives.

Kamala’s Longtime Crush:

I like being quiet with you.

Kamala:

[in scene] Me too.

[narration] It was the first time in a long time, that someone had shared a simple, delicate ritual with me.

[pulsing techno- kissing sounds]

Kamala:

We were on her couch late one night passing another joint, our legs wrapped together like a pretzel. Our fingers water falling through each other. When she caught my eye.

Kamala:

[in scene] What?

Kamala’s Longtime Crush:

[sighs] You know, sometimes it's lonelier in relationships.

Kamala:

[narration] Maybe she brought up loneliness as a gentle way of showing me my own. But I think she was also warning me that despite the sweaty evenings we just discovered we wanted to share, she, too, wouldn't promise any better.

Is this what loneliness feels like, I wondered.

What I did know was this, when I got back to L.A., I would miss the press of her thighs against mine just like this, and there would be a twinge in my heart that somewhere she was spouting off about how her bodega how displays the same old rotten produce in new baskets. And I would be missing out on it.

[introspective high pitched tune]

I took her comment to mean that loneliness within a relationship is in contrast to the moments of deep connectedness. And so it feels more acute. [introspective high pitched tune fades out]

Kamala:

But the idea took on a new life for me that fall, [Under the Bridge fades in] my young, brash girlfriend and I were still together. But she didn't call me unless she needed help with writing. [Under the Bridge fades out] She didn't come over. I only saw her out with friends and she was offended at the suggestion that I might go home with her.

[intense buzzing dronish music begins]

The reasons for these things seemed less important to me than the sense of emptiness I felt. The loss stung, but even more. I felt the deep desolation of leaving a space for someone to be close to me that was never filled.

I was tormented by the cold, hollow echo of my loneliness. My girlfriend and I had always been strongest when we were away in the fantasy land of our romance. But in October, in a cabin, during our chance to reconnect, I was adrift in the dry, windswept plateau inside of me.

[morose piano arpeggio]

After I'd bought her a plane ticket so she wouldn't lose precious time driving with me, after she'd clearly not prepared for our sex roleplay, after she'd fallen asleep in the middle of my read aloud to her… I listened to her deep breaths while she slept soundly. [sounds of rhythmic breathing] The moon and stars and the skylight over our bed left my stark shadow pressed onto the covers. I guess it didn't have to be devastating that I was the person best suited to enjoy my own voice laughing knowingly at Ocean Vuong's words on his frustratingly distant white lover. It could have been a ritual of delicate beauty.

[piano arpeggio fades out]

It might have been romantic if I had been alone.

These days, I walk around the lake at night, eyes on the stars, and want for nothing.

I sing loudly at my kitchen sink, letting my heart careen around swoony, sentimental and nostalgic songs. [Kamala sings wildly to Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing "I don't want to hurt anymore-stay in my arms"] with no fear of what hidden desire or despair I might discover in myself.

[Singing Whitney Houston: "You there, don't walk away from me, I have nothing, nothing nothing"]

But it's not gone.

[introspective synth piano]

I still smoke a joint in my bedroom watching the sun sink into a hot pink glow over the Hollywood Hills and bask in my deep sense of longing.

Who gave us the idea that loneliness was unexpected? A sign of incompletion, something to be solved. It ghost to escape at two a.m. in the heart of something transformative. It's always here. It never leaves. It doesn't have to weigh on me so badly. It can indeed feel like the gentle swipe of a finger on my upper lip. It can too sound like me rereading my most recent birthday love letter to myself:

“I'm writing to remind you that I love you incredibly and immovably that you are our greatest work of art. Even in your flaws, even in your failures.”

In tears as I fumble my way through making my favorite curry. My point, I suppose, is that there was never any less love because loneliness was there, never any less beauty.

That fall, my crush — the MVP of make outs — opened an installation that included a sign that read: You might want so much more than you know.

I'd always thought of the desolation I felt of the reverberation in my empty spaces as loneliness.

It didn't occur to me that it might also be want so much of my want. [intense buzzing droning music begins] I'm starting to get comfortable with both my unwavering loneliness and my unending desire. I can see that they are not indications that I'm lacking so much as proof that I'm alive.

[intense buzzing droning music fades out]

And now as I open all of my doors and windows to fall in love with someone new, I know not to expect these feelings to vanish. That instead, I have to fall in love with my loneliness too.

[Melissa Etheridge I'm the Only One plays]

Kaitlin Prest:

This episode was written by Kamala Puligandla, produced by Phoebe Unter and edited by Nicole Kelly.

Kamala is the editor in chief at AutosStraddle.com. And her first novel, called Zigzags, is coming out on October 19th. You can purchase the book from her publisher at Not A Cult Dot Media. That's Not A Cult dot media find the link at our Website. Thank you to the voice actors you heard in this episode: Ashley Kelly. Sarah Sarwar. Maryam Gunja. Nicole Kelly. Phoebe Unter. And Isa Knafo.

The heart is Nicole Kelly. Phoebe Unter. Sharon Mashihi. Chiquita Paschal and me Kaitlin Prest. It is a production of Mermaid Palace and is distributed by Radiotopia. The Heart is now a more than 10 years old queer and feminist institution that once in the long past went by the name of Audio Smut. The show originated on CKUT ninety point three. I am in Montreal went indie in 2011 and was picked up by Radiotopia in 2014. We encourage you to dive down deep in the feed and listen to the audio that we've done over the years. It's a trip and it's worth it. Thank you to all of the artists and audio producers who have helped this show become, you know, who you are. If you like this show, tell your friends we need listeners to keep the show alive. And there are many people who I suspect would love this show but don't know about it yet. So share it.

Also, we pay ourselves to make the show with generous donations from people like you who listen. If you have dollars to share, please go to the heart radio dot org and share them with us so that we can make more bad ass shit. You can follow the heart at the heart radio. You can follow Mermaid Palace at Mermaid Palace Art. You can follow me. kaitlin Prest. The Heart is a proud member of Radiotopia. Okay. Bye.