The Fracture: October 2024
Rejection therapy, a sex work memoir, and getting my burlesque routine critiqued
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Welcome to October’s The Fracture. Hopefully, what inspired and broke me has some impact on you in fabulous, intricate, and/or pliable ways.
The articles
Of course, our brain divides our day into chapters. Like we needed psychology to tell us that we’re all melodramatic writers: “The brain is, in fact, actively organizing our life experiences into chunks that are meaningful to us."
We have officially entered an age where if you see an image on a glowing screen, you need to ask yourself: “Is it fake?” Such as this synthetic one that is meant to serrate your heart and then broil your brain into a conspiracy theory-fueled tirade. Fact-checking doesn’t even matter to some people anymore.
Yay, another wonderfully weird Yorgos Lanthimos movie with his favorite doll, Emma Stone. Okay, we’ll invite Jesse Plemons… but Alicia Silverstone?
So, Feeld has a magazine. Big whoop. The app was significantly better back in the day (2021, for me) when it was populated with people who wanted genuine sexual exploration. (I’m not the only one who feels this way; see this story from Cosmo.) Now, it’s just full of fuckboys who need Kink 101 primers, so I never got to feed my tantric sex curiosities. 😭 I’m done with all the apps anyway. I did my time, and I suppose I chose poorly. Next time, I’m going with Care.com.
Big props to Rachel Cohn, and I understand her Substack’s premise, but this just convinced me that closure and fulfilling answers in post-relationship/ghosting situations are really just for the movies. But as you know, fair readers, I’m an enneagram 8.
From USA TODAY: “We’re in the ‘undetectable era’ of plastic surgery. It’s a beauty revolution.” I’m still trying to figure out if this is a good thing. I didn’t know how I should have felt at the end of the article. Moral of the story: Be honest, I guess… ???
I was intrigued by reading about this woman’s growth while trying out rejection therapy. (Business Insider, which seems to feature more lifestyle pieces than business pieces, is now paywalled. I read this before I used up my freebie, I suppose. I love gifting articles from my NYT subscription, but I’m not going all in for a pub like BI.)
Back to rejection therapy, I occasionally make random requests to strangers and acquaintances just for the sake of improving my confidence. (Little superpowers are very sexy.) You would be surprised how much this scares people. To—checks notes—ask. People are afraid to ask other people questions or for favors. I was once like this, especially in ministry.
Apparently, rejection therapy is a BIG thing… and I’m tempted to take the assessment.
The music
“Blood” - ANIMA!
I’m kind of obsessed with this song. I drove to, around, and from Renton-Tacoma-Gig Harbor with this on repeat. If I had a TV show, I would want this as my theme song with shots of me in lingerie, my legs dangling from a (safe) ledge, taking sips from a coffee mug with my big eyes staring right at the camera, a screenshot of all of my rejections in Submittable, and pretending my pillow is a lover in some sort of wrestling match while my ramen is heating up in the microwave.
You, too?
I gotta stay one step ahead of a losing game
I'm a slave to the pages I throw away
To create, complicate, it's the same damn thing
Once it's made, I'm too good to appreciate
So I try to put a little piece of myself in
Keep the pretty people listening
Keep in mind all the negatives and positives
Charges floatin' around the audience
I'm biting my tongue
But the words don't come
I'm bi-, b-b-biting my tongue
“Fly” - Chicano Batman (because I’m such a damn flirt)
This was my #2 (distant second) most played song on my Westside trip earlier this month.
Do you feel that
Drippin' wet love to play with your body
Slip and slide water fallin'
Ridin' high within your hair
I'm gonna get it everywhere
Die a little bit in my arms
Don't care what the limits are
You, too?
The art
Find more Larry Madrigal here and here.
The books
Still reading Gillian Anderson’s Want, as referenced at the end of my sex club evening.
The short blurbs of kink and fantasy have served as nice little bedtime stories. Nice is nice, but it makes me wonder why I’m taking so long to finish it. I should have flown through this. What is going on?
Popular books I DNF: Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Grief is for People. The latter is (of course) highly recommended and for the exceptionally pensive crowd, but I lost interest fast. The sad piano music at the beginning of the audiobook was painfully stereotypical for a book on grief.
Liked An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane. This author is also exceptionally pensive and used the word “profundity” twice, but the behind-the-scenes look at escorting kept me interested. The continual theme from sex worker memoirs: you have to be a doctor of psychology and emotional intelligence for this type of work. And from my ENM heyday, even some of the most casual sex seekers wanted some sort of emotional connection. People are heart-hungry.
The random
Dancing to Miike Snow’s “My Trigger,” I performed my routine for my burlesque teacher. She gave me some good tips, compliments, and encouragement. I just want my horizontal chair balancing act to look natural. (I have an epic core.) I just want my reveal to look seamless. (She gave me concave/slightly coned pasties because my boobs disappear when I have regular pasties on.) It’s nice to realize in the moment that certain inhibitions have melted away, and with a big smile, ask: “Who the heck am I?” But I was always here… or there.
I set my Instagram to private. I just don’t get a lot of movement on it, and I felt it was a way for people in my area to be nosy. The only reason I kept it is because Instagram is now a Groupon/event calendar for me. The algorithm on Threads feels like a water hose on polyamory. Kind of overwhelming. I like Notes on here. It reminds me of the good Twitter of yesterday. Not as fun, but we can’t have it all.
I joined a Toastmasters chapter where I gave my Icebreaker speech. I started it by telling my audience about my writing beginnings where I conjured up the courage to ask the media specialist for the long-arm stapler, constructing mini stories with folded loose-leaf paper. I was coming off of the high from placing in an essay contest sponsored by M.A.D.D. where I was invited to read my piece in front of a large crowd at Miami Children’s Hospital. I blubbered into the mic with tears and wished I could stop my voice from shaking. I was in sixth grade.
The speech brought up a continuing trope: I’m not the same person, but I am. I was just hidden underneath it all. My life has been a dance. Instead of quick-quick-slow, it’s been pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-leap-pitter-leap-pat-leap-leeappp-leap-leeeaaap. Major cardio workout—in more than one way.
A big part of my job is public speaking, improvising questions, redirecting conversation, and motivating. I’m surprised that the girl who was dying at the mic in sixth grade, does what she does Monday through Friday, but she craves more, especially where she doesn’t have to delineate, fold over, and edit herself.
I want to unravel with others and pick apart the human condition through my writing, a medium I control.
I was also forced to participate in Excel training at work, and I don’t have time for that shit.
My husband and I met on November 1, 1999 when I walked into a Rack Room Shoes, my new after-school job at the crappiest outlet mall off of I-95, outside Savannah, Georgia. To celebrate the occasion, he made reservations for dinner tomorrow at a new restaurant I want to try out. With our life and drama, I feel like we should be going to the moon or signing paperwork to get our brains frozen after we die.
But nice is nice.
Where were you 25 years ago?
I have paid offerings, and I’m so thankful to those who decided to support me. For details:
And finally, make sure to vote. No complaining if you don’t. Hope to see you after the apocalypse, my lovelies.