trying to be vulnerable (+ annie hamilton)
Hey! I hope you are all well! In case you missed the entry from July 17th, I have attached a link here.
I made a few edits to the July 17th newsletter to make it sound a bit less judgemental. Remember, these letters are imperfect reflections of my already deeply imperfect thoughts. Please always feel free to write in response! I have been thoroughly enjoying all of your responses.
A few nights ago during a casual conversation a homeless man told me, “We have met before. I knew you once, but called you by a different name.” He asked me about the future, if I had any hope. I told him, “I try and focus on taking care of myself and the people around me,” which I say as a knee-jerk response whenever people ask me big questions. He said he has hope for the world, that things will get better. I said goodbye and he said he was sure we would meet again. He gave me back the food I had given him.
After that conversation, I just walked around the neighborhood. I called a friend a few times, but he didn’t pick up. When I got back to the hotel, I laid in bed for hours unable to sleep.
That story is 100% true, not that it really matters.
When was the last time you were truly vulnerable?
I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Brooklyn right now listening to an older woman with purple hair try to talk to the barista over Arcade Fire’s “Funeral” playing at a modest volume. She drops her wallet and I offer to pick it up for her. She says, “No! You know what my father used to say when he was golfing in his seventies, about where I’m at now? He would say, ‘If you pick all the balls up, how am I supposed to get any ass?” I laugh, but I have no idea what she means.
It is so humiliating to do anything at all. Everything takes a little or a lot from me. When you do nice things, it’s less humiliating because you put yourself in a kind of position of power. They better thank me! Doing anything is an accomplishment and doing nothing is neutral, so destroying something must be a failure or is destroying doing something?
Sometimes when I’m bored, I try to ruin my life.
Every conversation feels impossible, like at any moment I’ll just start crying. Often, I feel more comfortable talking to strangers than I do my closest friends. I like talking to children because they have so many questions and if they don’t, it’s because they don’t like you! It’s like, every time I’m asked a question by an adult a part of me dies. I get so frustrated with small talk. I get so frustrated with big talk too. Sometimes, my friends will confide in me their deepest secrets and traumas and I feel annoyed. I don’t know if this makes me a bad person. I am being vulnerable now, see? Sometimes I think I’m a bad person, so I do something good and then I think I’m a bad person who just did something good.
Do you think you have the propensity to do good in this world? Does it matter?! Sometimes I wonder, what have I really changed? Everyday I feel this urge to do something nice for someone I’ll never see again. Everyday I feel this urge to never again talk to the people I love. I guess I wonder if I do nice things to be nice or if I do nice things to feel good. I guess it doesn’t really matter so long as I’m doing nice things. When I’m roaming around the Financial District trying to find a homeless person to give my leftovers to, am I doing a good deed or am I just looking for someone disheveled and sweaty enough to take my scraps?
I was with a friend at a brewery in Brooklyn the other day chatting with the barman and watching “From Dusk Till Dawn”. My friend said, “I wish I had desires that were easily fulfilled. Like, I want to make oak barrels or something. No, instead, it’s like, I want to experience pure annihilation and come out on the other side…or be subsumed by a great force.” I think I almost understood what she meant. Sometimes I can’t tell if my deepest desires are to cure world hunger or to be Joan-of-Arced. “I am I, and I wish I wasn’t.” Do you remember that line from Brave New World? It’s a bit on the nose, yea, I agree. I don’t know if I would end world hunger if I was given the chance. I think I would probably just call my mom or scroll through Twitter. I like audiobooks sometimes too.
About a week ago, my brother took me to a random show in West Village. All he told me was that the show was put on by someone he follows on Twitter named Annie Hamilton. I had never heard of her, so I just assumed she was some froufrou comedian socialite type. I was right in some ways, but wrong in most.
We show up at a black box near some of West Village’s most expensive bars. There are countless twenty-somethings lined up outside the theater wearing the best outfits that they could put together to look stylish, but not like they’re trying too hard. They all looked fabulous. I remember a guy in front of us in the line introduced a friend to his “assistant”. I have a funny feeling his “assistant” paid for her own ticket to the show.
The show starts with an organ rendition of the wedding march. Annie Hamilton walks down the aisle towards the stage barefoot, wearing a wedding dress, and hitting a Juul.
She takes the stage and starts with telling a story about the show she had been trying to write called, “Looking for Papa”. Apparently, the concept of the show was to audition various older male actors to be her father in an attempt to get the fatherly validation needed to attract a boyfriend.
The story was funny and entertaining, but she was not getting many laughs. It felt like there was a certain amount of desperation in her voice, especially when telling punchlines. She also asked her director for lines a few times. She would walk across the stage and put her Juul on a side table only to retrieve it minutes later. Her thoughts meandered out loud. It felt increasingly desperate as she chronicled her failed attempts at relieving her daddy issues (she said hated that phrase, but used it frequently throughout the show). I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was all part of the act.
The thing is, “Looking for Papa” is not about Annie Hamilton trying to find a stand-in father or even a boyfriend. In fact, about halfway through the show, Hamilton talks about how she did actually find a boyfriend. She loved him and he loved her. He treated her well, better than anyone ever had before. She tells us about how amazing he made her feel. She says she broke up with him. Annie exits.
This is about halfway through the show now. A body double walks on stage and monologues about how she thinks she is unlovable, if she even believes in that stuff. Real Annie comes back on stage dressed as her dad and you see a lot of Annie in her dad and that scares her so she stops. She tells us about a married man she fell in love with. She says he was the reason she broke up with her good, great boyfriend who treated her right. She says she told him how she felt and he stopped talking to her. She says maybe the only kind of love she has ever known is unreciprocated.
Annie finishes the show monologuing about why she’s even on stage at all. She wonders aloud if she is performing this as an act of art or of self laceration or group therapy.
(I forgot the last line of the show, but it was amazing. I asked Annie via Instagram DM what the last line was and she said she likes to keep her scripts private which I understand.)
I’ve never seen a show so uniquely engaging. I’ve never seen a show question its own purpose. She asked, “why am I here?” but I could tell she was wondering “why are you here?” I wonder what the downtown socialites expected to get from that show. I wonder what I expected to get from that show.
Upon exiting the theater, I was greeted with dozens of very hot twenty-somethings smoking. It’s funny how much our generation loves self laceration. I smoke when I can’t not smoke. Sometimes it feels like a punchline or a piece of punctuation, a book end, “Fin”, “The End”, TV turned off.
Annie came out, still barefoot, and joined the audience in casual, muted reverence. Don’t thank Annie, she won’t think you’re cool! Just smoke your cig and give her a wave. Maybe she recognizes me…she follows me back on Twitter.
I’m no different than these socialites I dully criticize. I’ve spent the last few weeks in New York City mostly on my Dad’s dime. I’ve been hopping from couch to couch of my wealthy friends who live in nice apartments. It’s like I’m LARPing being a bum. I smoke when I can’t not smoke and I drink two days a week. Usually I like to drink whiskey or gin and tonics, but sometimes I go with a glass of wine or even a beer. What do you think Annie drinks? Oh right, she’s sober. Good for her.
In other words, being vulnerable is impossible for me. When people share their darkest secrets with me, I tell them something almost true in return. I love talking to strangers.
I want to be honest with you:
I can barely handle myself. Please don’t depend on me. I love you in my own way.
Once again, please forgive any typos. I try not to proofread. If I did, this newsletter would not exist.