Rihanna found love in a hopeless place. A place covered in tattered denim, needles, and drunk blood. I found it in Milwaukee, in the summer, where it’s hard to stay too sad for too long.  There was and is this guy, and he was and is an American Blondhair. I still can’t believe that people naturally sprout yellow from their heads. What a funny man whose hand to hold.

Lana’s pussy tastes like Pepsi cola. I don’t know what mine tastes like, but I’m nearly certain it’s nothing like high fructose corn syrup. Somebody would have said something by now.  

Queen Bey tried (and succeeded) to make three from that two, but I’m bi-annually staring at the bathroom tiles, test strip in hand, hoping that I’m not pissing for two. Consuming more than my fill at the dinner table, counting on luckless stars that I’m only eating for one. For one unusually hungry one.

Katy, forever sparkling, is coming at you like a dark horse, while millions of people are thinking about her tits. The only person thinking about my tits is my girl, worrying that they could house Cancer one day. Worrying about my skin and my brain. My heart, my bones, my susceptible little liver. The herd of upsets on our horizons aren’t sexy-scary. They’re plain-old-scary.

Miley came in, naked, like a wrecking ball. I came in naked, too, and surely demolished soft parts of my mother on the way. I seem to have slowed pretty quickly, though.  I live quietly. I spend my energy wisely on smart, kind, idea-filled friends and family. They swing, if at all, like slow, easy pendulums, always hovering around center.  They don’t plan to wreh-eh-eck me or I them.

The famed remainders, they’re on stage, basking in the lights, the tween obsession and the mom love, the deafening universal scream that rings from sold out city to sold out city. I am in a light peach haze because I just finished reading The Virgin Suicides. My vision is soft and my sounds are dumb. I think I’ll buy some ill-fitting white dresses and stop combing my hair, all in honor of fictional girls who were too hidden to survive. Spoiler alert.