Every Happy Ending Is Normative

So what’s the point of a crush?

The Heart · Every Happy Ending Is Normative

This episode was produced by Nicole Kelly, with anise cinquepalmi. anise is a poet teaching in LA. Find her workshop info on Instagram by following @bashfulhole. This episode also contains excerpts from a poem called “(my fears are) vvversions of mothers.” 

Music by: “Nature Shuffle’ by Ketsa, Nctrnm by “Parade” and “Plasticity” by Blue Dot Sessions. 

transcript

Kaitlin Prest: 

From Radiotopia and Mermaid Palace, welcome to The Heart. 

[light drum sounds like a heartbeat]

I'm Kaitlin Prest. A crush. Oh, a crush. A crush, a crush. The currents of electricity underneath my skin and around my body. When I think of a person or get near them, when they walk in to a room. To find spending time with them inexplicably pleasurable, no matter what you're doing, to find their jokes inexplicably hilarious, to see the very specific and special kind of magic somebody has. This story is about a crush. It's about NK's crush. Here's NK.

NK:

[whispering] My fears are, my fears are, my fears are, my fears are...my fears are [repeats and continues underneath] 

anise: 

My fears are my fears are my fears are my fears are my fears are my fears are my fears are my fears. and evers external tank fall away. It has to crash in the ocean calculated trash. It does a dance on the atmosphere. As it falls. I can suffer you imagining me, letting it go like this. 

NK: 

[whispering] My fears are my fears are my fears are

NK: 

The first time we met. 

[sound of performance, testing mic "okay, hi!"]

NK: 

We were one of a few people performing at an opening for a white male artist.

[sound from performance stage: "Peter invited me organize a reading for the opening, so I invited…] [fades out]

NK: 

“I'm going last,” she told me before the reading began. “Because I'm that bitch.” I was not that bitch. And so I kept making involuntary noises, these deep sighs because I was so nervous. She laughed and produced a little bottle, a tincture from her purse. And she said it would calm me down. I watched while she poured it into my tequila cocktail. 

[crowd applause]

I went first, but I didn't really perform. 

I didn't really know how. 

As I nervously read a prose poem about my sister, I had no idea what to do with a mic or how to move my body. I was used to reading in libraries and used bookstores. I stood in the glare of a projector while I read, a murky image I imagined I could hide behind. I hadn't yet learned how to interact with an audience. Actually, I was afraid of the audience. And so I did what I had always done. Never looked up at them and pretended they weren't there. [light applause]

When it was finally her turn to read, she asked the audience to come closer. We were standing around the perimeter of the room and we moved to where she was in the center and sat on the floor around her. 

[anise into the mic: hi! audience replies: hi!]

She asked us if we liked our poetry hard or soft. Then she laughed at us for thinking that she cared about the answer. As she walked among us, over us, my eyes tracked her slow, deliberate movements. After weaving through everyone sitting on the floor. She approached a gallery wall. 

anise: 

Until then, I'm taking it allll personal. 

NK: 

[narrating] Pressed her back against it and slid down towards the floor like a drop of water. 

anise: 

personalll than you can ever take it, stretch me out! with how personal, our fractured belonging

[beneath NK comes in whispering my fears are my fears are my fears are]

NK: 

I really admired her ability to take control of a room, to command an audience, to draw all of the attention to her and hold it. She just didn't seem nervous about it at all. 

[phone conversation, laughter]

NK:

[on the phone with her sister, Ashley] So. Yeah. So I had that performance I was telling you about at the gallery. I read that essay about being... 

NK: 

[narrating] And I really wanted to be like that. I wanted to be a person who could do that, but had not figured out how to be that person. 

Phoebe:

the people that are like, I have an attraction. And they immediately think that they know what that means? 

NK: 

[narrating] I thought she was really hot. she had a cool look. She seemed smart and funny, like someone I really wanted to be around. 

Kamala: 

[talking to NK] I feel like you're perpetually looking for the next thing to teach you where your boundaries is, or like where your definition is. 

NK: 

[narrating] I wanted to be seen, but I was also really afraid of being seen. Of putting myself out there the way that she did. 

Kamala: 

[talking to NK] Something that either like strikes you enough for you to have like an adverse reaction to it or something that's going to pull you deeply in some other direction. And I feel like that really defines your art. 

NK: 

[narrating] And so her lack of fear was very attractive to me. She seemed supernaturally confident, and as crushes normally go, she began to take up a lot of space in my mind. 

NK: 

[on the phone with Ashley] I was like, who is this??? Phoebe was like, you don't know if you wanna be her or be in her and I was like, I do not know!! [laughter]

NK’s sister, Ashley:

You are wild when you're on this energy. 

NK:

[to Ashley] I know! I'm just like looking at her instagram stories and like - can she see how many times I'm watching her instagram stories? [laughter]

NK:

In the days after the performance I can't stop thinking about her. I wonder what she'll think of what I'm wearing? [slightly underneath, quietly] I wonder what she's wearing. I wonder what she's reading. I wonder what she would think of what I'm reading. I would get self-conscious about what I was reading and pick up a new book attempting to guess what her taste might be. I would try to imagine where she lived, what her space must be like. Everything I do becomes a question about her. [slightly underneath, quietly] Is she also the kind of person who likes alone time? Does she also drink coffee and prepare it in a french press? Does she eat meat or is she vegetarian? Does she also pump gas like this? What is she doing right now, at this moment? 

Mostly I wondered what would happen between us. I imagine what it would be like when we finally hung out. Wouldn't it be like to spend time, be friends, to get close to be allowed into her intellectual space? 

Finally, I text her and ask her if she wants to hang out and she suggests we eat oysters at sunset on the roof of a hotel. I arrived on time and got a table. She was 30 minutes late, but promised me her outfit would be worth it. I was sure it would be. I drink a Bloody Mary, and got a tiny bit drunk while I waited for her. We're both the kind of people who carry notebooks around. And when she finally arrives and sits down, we each pull our notebooks out and placed them on the table. I notice every object that she pulls out of her bag. This rose quartz stone, the Japanese day planner. At one point she falls out her glasses case and the case is really pretty. And she puts on her glasses and they're really delicate and really pretty. I haven't seen her wear glasses before. I love girls in glasses. I kind of like how I feel in relief to her. I'm wearing an old jean jacket with like a hole in the sleeve and queer and feminist political buttons on it and ripped jeans. 

And I walked to the bar and I got kind of sweaty, but I don't really mind feeling that way. Around her. I actually just kind of like it. I like being in the position of admirer. I almost don't even care what she thinks of how I look or how I am because I'm so interested in her. 

anise:

I could tell that you were into me, but that you weren't only into me, you weren't into me because you wanted to fuck me. That wasn't like the entire — that wasn't like the sole and or most obvious, like edge of the blade that you were trying to insert into me. Like the more apparent edge was that you were captivated by my ability to persist. 

[light guitar and shimmering sounds]

NK:

That spring and summer, we see each other in between not seeing each other for long stretches. A few weeks will go by and we'll text occasionally. I invite her to parties at my house and she demurs. I'm not sure why. I want to hang out. But as long as she remains distant, as long as she remains kind of mysterious to me, I can also get really into the feeling like, luxuriate in the feeling of wanting something that I can't yet have. I really like that feeling. 

But I ask her to meet me at one of my favorite date spots, a dimly lit bar in Koreatown. And she agrees. The bar still has its original decor from the 60s. These circular red leather booths to call a waiter, you press a little button. The bar is wood and circular. My favorite kind of bar. 

anise:

[at the bar] It just feels, cheeky to me. Like it doesn't generate... 

NK:

She orders fernet and something, something Italian. And I order a boilermaker: a beer and a whiskey shot. 

We talk about a panel that I want her to be on, poets talking about the relationship between gender and available language. What becomes possible when you can give definition to an experience because someone else has given it a name, a shape. 

anise:

Maybe saying something is not the goal, maybe it's just about sharing experience. 

NK:

I really love spending time with her and getting to know her and becoming actual friends and playing around with metaphors and language. She would talk a lot about how she was always poeticizing everything. She meant her personal metaphors and analogies for the things she was experiencing. We talked a lot about one of the metaphors from the poem I'd seen her perform. It was about the huge amount of energy required for fundamental change. The effort that it takes to move away from things that are familiar and toward something more authentic. 

anise:

[at the bar] Instead of annoyed I'm trying to stay fixated now. [NK laughs] I was fixated with...

Kaitlin Prest:

Please forgive this brief interruption. We'll be right back. 

NK:

I'm pretty sure she knows I'm into her, but I actually can't tell if the vibe between us is romantic or something else and I resist defining it. It seems better not to. 

[NK whispers "my fears are my fears are my fears are"]

anise:

My fears are my fears are my fears...[repeats]

NK:

I keep saying I'm over her, and then seeing her perform. 

anise:

…are my fears are my fears are my fears and evers external... 

NK:

This time she's on her knees. 

anise:

It has to crash, in the ocean. 

NK:

We're seated on chairs in a circle around her. 

anise:

calculated trash. 

NK:

She's wearing a black turtleneck, high waisted black jeans. 

anise:

it does a dance on the atmosphere. 

NK:

Her performance begins when she turns out the lights. 

anise:

I can suffer you imagining me letting it go like this. 

NK:

She gives us instructions to repeat the phrase "my fears are my fears are" for the duration of the poem. 

She also tells us not to look at her. 

anise:

The spent engines plummet. It's like me. Intense pressure against a surface until coordinated burnout. 

NK:

I'm sure that other people in the room are various levels of committed to both repeating the phrase she's told us to say and not watching her crawl around, thrash around on the floor in front of us. She's moving around a lot. She's making kind of a spectacle. But I don't look. I don't look. I'm just like, yes. Like, tell me what to do. Tell me what not to do. And I'll do it or not do it. And I'll take great pleasure in following instructions. 

anise:

This is still life as peace optional protest. My fear is opener to its disavowal fear it's repurposed to you . Open your fear like a mine. 

NK:

The most heightened moments of my crush are when I see her perform, when I see her be the center of attention. I experience the performances with my entire body. 

anise:

Blossom's took one behind my ear. Our versions of Mother Earth balanced by the clock of my hair. Every happy ending is normative. 

NK:

By winter, I'm reluctantly letting my crush fade away. I've done some more performances. Some were good, some were terrible. We both start dating other people. I run into her at a bar and she tells me about her girlfriend and it deflates the sense of mystery about her, the sense that she was untouchable, unattainable. We're friendly, but we don't meet up as much. We don't really talk. Until one day she calls me and says she wants to meet up. 

[light strings and bells music comes up]

NK:

The bar has a special drinks menu for the finale of a popular TV show. The menus are printed on little scrolls. Black crows stapled to the paper. I haven't seen the show. She has. We order Negronis and split a burger. And I feel how I always feel when we're alone together: alert and vaguely aroused. Exactly like before. I find myself choosing my words carefully, tasting each one for the right meaning and musicality, holding each one in my mouth before I speak. She said, Are you now or have you ever been into me? And I didn't rush to say anything. Even though I had an answer, I slid a clean fork into my mouth and smiled, holding a feeling. 

anise:

I want to present a couple of the forces that were at work when we met. I liked a lot of people who I honestly couldn't tell if they liked me or not. I was really concerned with that initially. I think as a means of validating that what I was doing was right for me. 

And what I was doing was moving from Iowa City, having been made to feel like I could not be a faggot there, so I had to like run away from it in a way. So where do I go to put myself where I can, like, do what I need to do? So I came to L.A. and opened the Pandora's box of transness here. There are a lot of like social pursuits, one of which was like, how do I like myself in a way that is is more self created. Like, how do I respect — like figure out how to respect that I'm, I’m — this is my body. The re-socializing process was horrible. Around that time I had gotten a lot of feedback from people, whether via action or via word, that that I was intimidating. It felt so like thoroughly tethered to their not being able to be around or having experienced being around trans people. The prerequisite for me desiring to continue existing is that I have to be really ridiculously honest. People were like, oh, it's like too much. Or that that that rubs me, you know, it's like catalyzing. I can't. Oh. And that just is like, oh, you. So you don't want to be there. Okay. It's the only place where I can exist is like that level of pushing. That's that escape velocity thing that comes up in the versions of Mother's poem. My experience of recognizing and reckoning with having to break through your own conditioning or patterning. 

[thunderstorm, sounds of motor, people talking on a radio] 

It started with me walking around my room for hours saying my fears are my fears are my fears are my fears are my fears are my fears. Just like on and on and on. Figuring out like, okay, if this is where I'm at in my life, what comes next? What comes after? How do I move through simply waking up every day and and like being at the step of just knowing that I am afraid. Or like knowing I have these fears. And so I would  just watch these videos for hours and saying my fears are my fears and watching these like empty engines, the engines of spaceships falling for like eight minutes or something. They just like fall. There's minutes of video of it being in like the center of the frame, like turning on an axis. The phrase is, my fears are. It's my fear, therefore, no one else is gonna get through it for me, no one else is going to breach it for me. So what are- what does it mean for me to move through it? I met a couple people, yourself included, who had helped me do that. And I hadn't seen you in a while and I wanted to take stock like take inventory of what mattered to me and who I wanted to be around. 

[soft sexy tones]

anise:

I would say that like the same mind blowing-ness that you ascribe to the stuff that I said I was experiencing with regards to your activation of, like space around me, thus that I felt like I could say things. We had like a terrarium together or something, and we would check in on the terrarium of our crush, see like what had spawned what had like moved, what had mutated, taken root, etc.. And I was like, oh, this this thing is like interesting and complicated, too. And I'm — I'm wondering. I know that I know that you're thiNK:ing about it. So what if we put that on the table? 

I must believe that, like whenever we're getting into it, that's something about how I'm sitting or looking at you is probably like throwing the, you know, throwing the eyes, like we're getting into it, aren't we? 

Like, mmm. let's get like, I love getting getting into it. When "into it", when we're in it, it doesn't really matter to me if we're fucking each other in the, let's say, classic sense. 

The sex that's the most fun is like to me like a little bit wonky, like it's just like, like the sexiness of it is sustaining, but like it's also like, I don't know, like asking questions and like kind of like thinking through stuff together. While like you're in someone or someones in you, whether we're fucking in that way or whether we're like, you know, Rubik's cubing our intellects... 

NK:

Yeah, I feel...first of all I'm like turned on right now [laughter]

anise:

Yeah. I'm, I'm warmed. There's like 20 versions of this thought that just flipped through me and lit on fire. The terrarium is cute and vivid because it is a container that isn't hurting us. And I thiNK: the desire to protect that was my crush on you. And is my crush on you. 

What's that Robert Duncan line, certainly these ashes could have been pleasures? And sometimes there are moments where I'm like, certainly these pleasures are not going to be ashes. And yeah, there's delight. There is delight. 

Kaitlin Prest:

This episode was produced by Nicole Kelly with anise cinquepalmi. 

anise:

like so enamored [moaning sound]

Kaitlin Prest:

anise is a poet teaching in Los Angeles. You can find out where to reach her in the show notes. 

The Heart is Nicole Kelly, Phoebe Unter, Sharon Mashihi and me, Kaitlin Prest. It is a production of Mermaid Palace and is distributed by Radiotopia. 

Follow us on Instagram at the Heart Radio. If you like supporting art that moves you with your cash dollars, you can donate to us at the heart radio dot org. This show is a more than 10 years old queer feminist institution that once in the long past went by the name of audio smut. The show originated on CKUT 90.3  FM and has been touched and loved by many creative geniuses in order of appearance: Jess Grossmann, Nora Roman. Britt Ray, Beansi Zaretski, Mitra Kaboli, Jen Ng, Rider Alsop, Ray Duly, Samara Breger, Megan Dietrie, Sharon Mashihi and Phoebe Wang. Special honor to Mitra Kaboli, the original senior producer and artist. The Heart is a proud member of Radiotopia. Thank: you for listening. Thank you for supporting. Thank you for being. I hope that this episode keeps you company.