Caterwauling

I was introduced to this concept in terms of investments.

Oversimplified, it’s where one is on par with the other. Like, if you want to buy a crypto ETF, you can trade BITW or BITB. (Or one of many others that are, or are currently coming, online. Give me a SOL one any day. And I hate ETFs.)

As someone who’s a bit more than a crypto neophyte, it’s not that simple to say they are pari-passu. But I’m in blog mode, not analyst mode, so don’t construct anything I say as investment advice.

After all, if I knew fuck-all of anything about how to get rich off the markets, you’d never see my pudgy pork roast ass again.

In any event, I’ve met a lot of new people recently. Not at or through work. Unless you count the Agora invasion.

When I say I’m Agora-phobic, it’s not all people but specific people who used to work there.

What I have met are Swifties. Manhattanites. Feminists. Like, getting the fuck out of the maga microcosm that Palm Beach has become is good for the soul.

I’ve sent some of my Swiftie friends pics from Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.

From Electric Lady Studios in the West Village.

From Key West.

And stories to match.

I get nothing but love and support about my travels.

One made a nice and well-intentioned comment about my shopping bags. Like I look totally like a New Yorker with my beautiful printed bags.

And I thought … these people have no idea about me.

I don’t mean in a bad way. I just mean, I was going to say oh that’s just one bag I acquired.

And the other bag is holding my gutchies because I am not paying for the hotel, so I couldn’t drop my shit off.

I didn’t say that. They are happy for me and … guess what?

I am happy for me, too!

Also I do say I work in finance. Almost like an apology sometimes, that my life is actually pretty good if you don’t know everyone I love is dead.

Am I rich? No. Am I close? Also no. Do I have enough if I need it? Ask me after I get out of the car dealership.

Do I still have a full belly and joys in life that only money can buy? With gratitude, I can say yes I do.

I kind of like being someone that anyone can admire or aspire to.

I think they talk about me as their worldly friend Goddess.

Someone who was sweet to them when she — they later learned — was in the throes of grief.

Someone who does fun things and includes them in it with photos and souvenirs.

Someone who deserves the joys because she’s nice and also because “She looks like she’s been through it.”

“Are we only biding time ’til I lose your attention
And someone else lights up the room?
People love an ingénue.”

Yes there is a Taylor Swift song for everything.

In any event, it’s not that I am in love with whatever image I hope people might have of me.

On the other hand, I am no longer quick to qualify it.

Sure I’ll always enjoy a compliment and say “I got it at Ross!” if that’s in fact true.

But nothing wrong with saying, yes, thank you, I do love Hotel Indigo because it’s worth the price tag for the toiletries alone.

My adopted nieces call me their cool Aunt Dawn.

And honestly, if I give people a little hope that a little girl from the projects could grow up and have some fabulous things and experiences between heartbreaks …

And that they absolutely can too (and should before FOTUS throws a burqua over us all) …

Then really, that would make me as fabulous as my people make me feel by celebrating and not begrudging me.

In any event, I live for those moments when I equate feeling fabulous with being fabulous.

I was a big PJ Harvey fan back in the Lilith Fair era. Huge fan.

That said, I was always so frustrated by “You Said Something.”

Heard the song on my way to the car dealership this morning.

It’s been probably 30 years and I remembered why I didn’t get it.

I get it now.

“I am doing nothing wrong
Riding in your car
Your radio playing
We sing up to the eighth floor
A rooftop, in Manhattan
One in the morning
When you said something
That I’ve never forgotten
When you said something
That was really important.”

My main frustration was WHAT DID THEY SAY TO HER.

On a base level, I got that artists have to keep music universal enough that anyone can identify with it.

This morning, on a higher level, I finally got it …

We aren’t supposed to know.

I got to thinking about the small handful of super fans I have.

I am under no illusion with at least three of them that they aren’t here for the Taylor Swift song references.

They want clues. They want to see themselves.

They are thrilled with any sort of allusion that feeds THEIR illusion that they are rooted by even just one shrub in the labyrinth of my mind.

If I type “When your Brooklyn broke my skin and bones,” someone probably starts rubbing one out. “Alone time,” did he call it?

I remember six years ago posting, “Do the girls back home touch you like I do?” And hearing thirdhand that one of my fans had a meltdown, thinking it was about her man.

Gurl. No.

Actually it wasn’t about Toad, either. But it’s a good memory and I feel like posting it.

I miss Toadlet. Before he showed his true colors, anyway. Which were beige on his best day and shithead on the rest.

Like someone else I know. Who is here searching or hints about details she missed.

I mean, maybe she beat all the details out of someone. But she knows I have a very good memory.

So she must think I still hold some info that’s in the ether.

We will never know, will we?!

In any event, I’m not going to elaborate on what I thought PJ Harvey meant then or what I believe now.

20-year-old me and 30-ish-year-old me have two wildly different eyeglass prescriptions. I imagine PJ did, too.

As for me, only one had rose-colored lenses.

And it isn’t the one who is about to spend $1,000 at the dealership.

One strange parallel is that both of those mes ALSO just returned from Manhattan.

I was at a rooftop bar in lower Manhattan. And on the top floor of a lower Manhattan hotel.

“We lean against railings
Describing the colours
And the smells of our homelands
Acting like lovers
How did we get here?
To this point of living?
I held my breath
And you said something.”

I just hope I always remember.

Even if for no other purpose than to run the other way next time I hear it.