I spent the summer in New York. You may have wondered where I’ve been, why I haven’t sent updates through this award-winning newsletter in a while — or you may have forgotten you subscribed to this at all and are wondering why I’m showing up in your inbox. However you feel, here I am.
I spent the summer in New York, living out a variety of nightmares that seemed uniquely designed to throw me headfirst into a pit that ended at rock bottom. When I hit it, I cracked my head open and bled out. A part of me died.
But it wasn’t all bad — there’s always something good and beautiful that comes from tragedy, and in this case it was realizing that I have people all around the world who care about me and want me to be okay. There are people who understand me on a level that maybe no one else ever will, simply because we’re from the same place or we grew up together or we passed through some early, cloudy trauma together and only realized it years later. I know I’ve spent a lot of time abroad these past few years, and I think that prevented me from realizing the importance of being immediately understood. When I’m in Spain, I constantly have to explain myself. With strangers, I need to explain where I’m from and why I’m there and how I’m there and what I think about being there. While I was home, I reconnected with a lot of friends that I hadn’t seen or been super-close to in years, and it was just easy.
Against my will, I’ve been thinking about my inner child lately. I hate that term, “inner child” — I don’t like picturing a smaller version of myself running around. Maybe it’s because I didn’t like my childhood and spent that entire time waiting to become an adult, but my instinct when I consider my inner child is to avoid, not protect her. I don’t want to tell her that someday everything will be okay, because now it’s someday and that’s not true. Like, she’d definitely be proud of parts of who I am now (I make a living writing…kinda…I have a small but gratifying life, I have huge boobs, etc.), but there are plenty of mistakes I’ve made and things I’ve done that I really wouldn’t want to have to explain.
My inner child is a lot like who I am today, actually. When I picture her, I see her with the same expression I sometimes put on when I’m looking at myself in the mirror and realizing that I am a real person who exists. She’s confused, and scared, and hurt, but she has to keep going. If her life is turned upside down, or she’s abandoned by someone she trusted, or she learns that someone isn’t the person they claimed to be, she stares straight ahead.
Friends who knew me in grammar school or high school are able to speak to this inner child in the right way, something I no longer find as I get older. Realizing the importance of family and friends like that is probably the cheesiest conclusion I could’ve drawn from my Clown Girl Summer, but I guess the Tin Man has a heart after all. Pagliacci cries.
What I really wanted to come here to talk about was my two songs of the summer, songs that carried me when there was just one set of footprints in the sand. My friends and I spent a chunk of the last few months contemplating butt rock, a genre of music I hadn’t given much thought to ever. If you can imagine us kinda-seriously listening to Creed on drives around Brooklyn in the year of our Lord 2023, you can imagine the mindset I was in while this was happening.
So Scott Stapp is grunting, my life is falling apart around me, and I’m spending a lot of time with people who were in my top 8 on MySpace back in the day. In the middle of all that, my friend Sam introduces me to a song that changes my trajectory.
Corey Feldman, an 80s child star, released an album in 2016 called Angelic 2 the Core, and Sam sent me the first song, “Ascension Millennium,” with this disclaimer:
She had no idea that she was about to unleash this song on me at the exact (and probably only) time I needed it. I listened to it expecting it to be funny and quirky (and don’t get me wrong, it is) and thinking I’d have a laugh and never listen to it again. But I liked it so much that I added it to my playlist. And then I just kept listening to “Ascension Millennium” every single day.
Whether I was in a state of pure mania or dizzying euphoria, “Ascension Millennium” was what I wanted to hear. It accompanied me on walks around the many neighborhoods I lived in this summer, on trips to the bodega for my emotional support breakfast sandwiches, on commutes to New Jersey and Westchester. It became like a fight song, motivating me to drag my suitcase harder up the sidewalk. It tickled my ADHD brain in the perfect place. I don’t expect anyone to understand.
For some reason, this song truly made me feel like I would get out of the horrible situation I’d been put in and maybe even…ascend. It was so hypnotic that it put me into a trance where I felt almost completely numb, minus my lizard brain processing the noises in the background. I could feel the power of Corey Feldman coursing through me as I schlepped my shit around New York, not sure of where I was supposed to be going but knowing that I would get there, because nothing mattered.
My other song of the summer was preordained even before summer began. It took root when I decided to make a playlist of songs from the late 2000s and early 2010s that I wished I had been able to hear in clubs. I mean, sure, they still play plenty of these songs in clubs once in a while, but I wished I could have been like 23 years old when “Like a G6” or “Hotel Room Service” came out, popping bottles and getting slizzard. In making this playlist, I rediscovered a lot of songs from my youth, but none made more of an impact than “Love in This Club” by Usher.
I remember when that song came out — I was deep in my emo/punk/scene phase, to the point where I owned pink raccoon hair extensions. I definitely wasn’t into pop music, and hated whatever was in the top 40 on principle. Then I heard “Love in This Club.” I had never been in a club. I hadn’t even made love. But something about it spoke to me, and it got put into the rotation.
When I rediscovered it a few months ago, I was struck by how beautiful the song is, how big and optimistic. It’s like Usher is calling me into battle and I’m lining up obediently. It has that enormous, complete production that hits from the 2000s tend to have, the kind that physically seems to fill your ears, and the melody alone can bring a tear to my eye.
Well, I’m older now, and I have to say that I rarely, if ever, have the desire to make love in a club. But the way that Usher approaches the idea is enticing — he’s saying all the right things! Whatever you want to drink, he’s got it. If your friends are worried, they don’t need to be…he’s got them too. All you need to focus on is making love in this club, right here and right now. As for Usher, he doesn’t care where it happens or who’s watching.
I think the reason I like it so much is that despite the silly lyrics, “Love in This Club” kinda does convey the way it feels to lock eyes with someone and feel an immediate animal attraction, a loosening of inhibition. In those moments, you feel so crazy that you would make love in the club if you could, on the couch, on the table, on the bar, or on the floor. It’s scary but thrilling, and I can’t speak for everyone, but I need more of that in my life.
So when I wasn’t listening to Corey Feldman growling about heaven and earth, I was listening to Usher’s ode to club hookups. It was very unserious, but it was real to me.
The thing is, I’d rather be a clown than a sad sack. Bad things happen to both types of people, but I’ll take self-deprecating over self-pitying any day. When I saw a friend recently after months apart, she said, “It sounds like you had a terrible summer, but when these things happen to you — I hope this isn’t offensive — at least you’re really hilarious.” I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Con mucho amor,
Kim