In Happy Together, two men flee from themselves by moving to Argentina. There exists a second where Man #1 buys Man #2 cigarettes so he can’t leave the house anymore, destroys his passport so he can’t go home. Later, they play soccer in the hungover afternoon, the fallow fields like chess boards, the men no longer grieving the ache that comes with loneliness, but instead the novel emptiness in the space between two bodies. 

After the film ends L asks why are you doing this blah blah blah and I can’t find any reception, can’t find an answer, the streetlights in the distance turning on at the same time, I didn’t get it.
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Self-proclaimed “seeker” @backfromtheborderline writes: “As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love”. I screenshot this, then screenshot the screenshot. I smoke my last Double Happiness, then watch the Melbourne winter like a hollowed palimpsest of itself through the window.
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K-Ming Chang, talking about visiting Taiwan again in Yilan: “I dream about being loved in another timezone”. It’s December, I’m taking the train to Manchester, visiting T tomorrow. I text him asking if he thinks I’m pretty AGAIN, I’m fucking anxious, etc. Then something about how I’m the love of his life, don’t you get it I LOVE YOU, Sharon, a picture of us together, :))). We look happy. I allow myself to be temporarily calmed by this, then open up a poem I never bothered submitting anywhere. Someone probably said it was ‘great’ at some point.
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I have this kind of repeated dream where I’m in a car, fleeing from the kind of thing that Clementine Kruczynski manic-pixie-sex-dolls flee from, something stupidly tenuous and up for interpretation — I load my purple gumboots in the trunk, I load up the Toyota Yaris with Unleaded 91. On my dashboard, a copy of I Wished, Dennis Cooper, blah blah blah blah, I’m craning my neck like I’m being kissed, steering with one hand. In this dream, I own a manual car, and I drive on a tanned road next to the pastures, sky artificially blue and blocky like a video game, like I’m just someone’s Minecraft girlfriend, until the stop signs blend into each other, blurred and hazy against a too-cliche rural backdrop. 

When I wake up, I wonder what Lacan would think.
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R buys a pack of cigarettes, then drives me to the fish and chip shop. I’m watching TikToks on my phone, she’s playing The Veronicas. She tells me this story about a guy who watches a movie while his girlfriend gives him head.

Shit, I say, not looking up from my screen.
Anyway, they break up in the end, so–
Right.

The sound of more Subway Surfers/Reddit stories, or something else apropos of nothing.
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Photo of valley separated by a river captioned “love is when we sit in water together and go where the horses graze”, @moonflowerette, Instagram, October 2nd, 2022. 
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In a chicken place in Manchester, freshly eighteen, freshly ironed Smiths graphic t-shirt on, holding hands with T. We’d had sex earlier that day, I’d joked about how long it took him to take off his shoes beforehand. Afterwards, he’d spent the afternoon watching me sleep, then finger-combing my hair as I blow-dried it post-shower. Nick Cave in the background as we’re dancing. By dancing I mean watching the rotation of the Earth, noticing how it doesn’t make me dizzy. Nothing else is that revolutionary.
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I think I just wanted to earn something separate to myself. I’m thinking early summer, outside, drinking Strongbow with M, “voice memo + guitar 7 :)” playing over top. Him hitting a vape while we walk up a hill. Or maybe we were already on top, I’m not sure. The sun so yellow the grass looked like haloed lights. I’m not tall enough to see anything beyond the knoll. He asks about me, T, going to university. I answer in sentences of some kind. We walk until we’re damp, until the streetlight next to me turns on and so on. 

Listen, I know I wrote about it earlier and there must have been some kind of recollection along the way, but I swear, T, Tom, Tom, right then I couldn’t remember the last time I saw it happen, I guess that’s how it goes.

I watched it for a second, turned away, kept walking, I kept walking, I promise I did.