Imaginary Socialite

[EMAIL ME - IMAGINARYSOCIALITE@GMAIL.COM]

I don’t like you anymore, but my gut doesn’t believe it.

It slinks into a straight line through my stomach whenever I see you, then hangs a left and heads for my heart. What the hell.

I don’t really want to care who you’re touching or what you’re drinking, but the residue of something we used to know won’t wash off my mind. I leave fingerprints of dissolved conversations on my glass. I cough blood on your old sweatshirt and swear I’ll throw it out. I haven’t yet.

It would all be okay if I were in ninth grade, but I’m not. It would all be okay if I thought we should be together, but I don’t. Instead it’s just the ghost of a feeling that I strangled and kicked and sliced, until finally I convinced myself that it was done.

Is this because of the Super Moon? I’m shutting my windows. I’m cranking Led Zeppelin. I’m kicking you out of my guts.

[GIOVANNA BATAGLIA - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]

An actual email from my Inbox.

Dear Imaginary Socialite,

I need help ,

So let’s say you’re once again an imaginary sophomore at an imaginary school. Looks like your hard work at boarding school has paid off as you can now bask in the sunlight of a nice Bay Area afternoon. Suddenly, an evil little storm cloud obscures the sky, preemptively ending your tanning sesh’ before it even starts.

Of course, that little fucker is a metaphor for the 20 page creative piece of fiction you’ve just been assigned. No worries though, you’re little miss sunshine and no cloud is going to ruin your day. You trek to the library to abolish this little guy. Unfortunately, as soon as you get there, you’re struck with writer’s block. You’ve got the plot: An ultra-luxe, fabulous girl from Andover, Massachusetts and her gay best friend from that one school in New Hampshire. They’ve graduated high school, gone off to college and graduated there as well, and now they’re living it up in NYC. MisShapes anachronisms aside, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of, doesn’t yet seem to have a conflict for these two characters which is why I seek your advice.

If you were writing a paper like this in order to get one step closer to graduating, resulting in you being one step closer to becoming a super cool, imaginary editor at some nonfigmentary magazine— Vogue perhaps?— what would you use as the conflict in your story?

Sincerely,
Imaginary Schoolboy

[JON CRYER - AM I THE IMAGINARY SCHOOLBOY?]

So. Anyone want to write an Alloy manuscript and mail it to Stanford?

[EMAIL ME - IMAGINARY SOCIALITE AT GMAIL DOT COM]

How desperate are you to go to Fashion Week?

Someone on eBay is betting you’re panting pretty hard.

They’re offering a pair of tickets to the Betsey Johnson and Mackage shows… for $2000.

(That’s the cost of about forty Betsey dresses, just to compare.)

The tickets are in the “SkyBox” – a cool but removed section of Lincoln Center where show sponsors can buy tickets. It’s a great seat, but a long way from Lauren Conrad or Kelly Osbourne or whoever else shimmies their Hollywood bottoms into the front row, US Weekly smiles blazing.

Meanwhile, someone else is offering up their Monique Lhullier ticket, in an unspecified row, for $200. How… reasonable.

[JENNI FARLEY - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]

[DAISY DE VILLENEUVE - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]

I rarely get manicures, because I feel like if someone should get pleasure from peeling my skin, it should be me.

But when I got to Hollywood, I forgot to pack polish. Also: I was bored and I wanted to sit down. I’d walked for five miles. On purpose, I mean, I really just wanted a nice long hike. But then someone told me that if you walk in LA, people think you’re homeless, so I immediately strolled to the Marc store and bought jeans. I figured if a designer shopping bag chafed my back, it would scream “New Yorker” and not “despondent.” Although I think the kids in LA consider them the same thing.

The manicure was fine. But the girl next to me really wasn’t. She and her nail guru were bonding over their uneven breast implants. The manicurist kept chirping, “You have to push it down; you have to massage it!” Then she reached over her table and demonstrated. On her client’s fake boobs.

Perhaps this was the least of the issues. The girl’s boobs were fake – cantaloupe fake. The hair was acrylic. The nails were plastic. The nose was shaved into her skull. Don’t get me started on the “Gucci” purse.

Despite myself, I got a little obsessed. I couldn’t help it. I looked at this girl’s license when she opened her wallet. She was 26. She looked like she was 40. I wanted to ask her “why?” I wanted to ask her, “Who pays for your synthetic cheek bones?” I wanted to ask her everything but I was afraid if I opened my mouth, it would be way too obvious that I was horrified.

Instead, I turned back to my manicurist. She held up my freshly painted nails and announced, “Now you are so pretty!”

I looked at the girl next to me. For whatever sick reason, it made it easier to believe that maybe my manicurist was right. Maybe I really was pretty. I spent the rest of the day in bright sunshine.

Disclaimer: If I am not actually pretty, that’s fine. It was a $15 manicure and they used Chanel Jade polish. Still totally worth it.

[OLYMPIA CAMPBELL - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]

[EMAIL ME - IMAGINARYSOCIALITE@GMAIL.COM]

I keep my feet on solid ground

And use my wings when storms come around

I keep my feet on solid ground

You’re free but in your mind.

[AMY HERZOG - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]

“You’re really nice,” she says, right before she offers me two bags of cocaine “because I quit but I still have some, because I just stole it from my friends, because they should quit, too.”

Circular logic. Love it.

I look at her and say, “Why would you spend money on drugs when you could get the new Celine bag?” and then I explain that 1) I don’t do drugs; I mean, I can barely do Pilates. 2) I am not nice; I am good.

Things nice people do: Give hourly compliments. Write Christmas cards. Say “nice to see you” if they don’t remember your name. I usually won’t do any of these things. I’d rather not; anyway.

Being good is a different story. Being good is having faith that if you react as best you can, whenever you can, it might help the darkness and the light fall in line with each other. This has nothing to do with whether or not you have patience for everyone and everything that thinks it needs your time. This has nothing to do with whether or not you send thank you notes. At least, I hope it doesn’t, since I suck at those.

Last weekend, I crashed into this girl. Her existence makes me a ghost, but it’s not her fault – as usual, it’s about a guy, and a bed, and a lie, and the way feelings lace your gut like smoke from the cigarette you swore you wouldn’t have.

My heart stabbed my ribs for about five minutes, and once I could breathe I was grateful for The Good, or the belief that it can exist, somewhere, everywhere, if you try to clamp it close.

I think that’s what got me through it. Well, either that or the vodka. Who can tell when Fleetwood Mack is playing so loud…

[DANIELLA VITALE - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]

[EMAIL ME - IMAGINARYSOCIALITE@GMAIL.COM]

Like most people who know me too well, he moved to Calfornia.

People asked if I was sad, and I said, “Not really.” They thought it was because he’d kissed my friend, in front of me, on Nicholas Routzen’s couch.

No, actually, because I was kissing someone else, at the same time, on Nicholas Routzen’s roof. The real reason is because, this one time, we were smoking on my bed. “This one time” means “my birthday,” and “my bed” means “downstairs when everyone else – like thirty people – were upstairs.” Horribly rude, right? I can’t argue.

And while we were on my bed, I stretched my cheeks across his shoulder and looked him dead in the heart. “Here’s our problem,” I growled, and I told him everything that would make him happier. And everything that would make me greater. And a slew of magic words that pressed through cherry chapstick like an incantation, or an order, or a truth. We let it sink into the sheets, this new and heightened revelation. We played records on the floor. We smeared glitter on each other’s faces. We fell, in a graceless “thud” off the bed. We laughed so hard I couldn’t feel my lungs. And then the door banged hard and I was like, “Okay, let’s go.”
The next day, he called me.

“Do you remember what you said? The important stuff.”

I didn’t. “Me neither,” he sighed. But we both agreed it was the most fun we’d ever had with each other, ever.

Then he packed his stuff and drove away. And I said, “No more smoking anything, ever.” Sometimes I break the rule, hoping a little bit of poison can make me hack up something gorgeous from my guts. But usually, I can stretch out on my covers and realize my hair isn’t tangled from someone else’s hands, and that’s enough.

[MICHAEL FRIEDMAN - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]

Or as Atlanta DeCadenet says, one of them is “definitely one of the dumbest bitches out there.” Yeah, guess which one.

[MATTHEW BIRES - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]

[email me - imaginarysocialite@gmail.com]

“Be my girlfriend,” he thuds.

It’s 5 AM and I’d think I was dreaming, except the waitress heard us. She was laughing, and not on the inside.

“What does that even mean?” I laze. I don’t mean to be all 500 Days of Summer but the truth is, I need to stall.

“Don’t play Philosophy Major,” he snaps. Actually, I studied art. Actually, I can bullshit way better than those metaphysics kids. “You know what I mean,” he continues. He tugs on his t-shirt. I think he only wears one, but maybe he has multiples, like Superman. “A girlfriend. She should be cool, and she should get me, and she should be really nice. She should be you, maybe.”

Laughter behind us. The waitress. I order Lo Mein Then I look out the window.

Here’s what my guts do: They splurge on pink and purple slime, and churn the threads of glee and “gross!” into a sticky knot that scrapes above my ribs. I can feel rainbows and hearts and sunshine jabbing into my stomach. I can feel hands on my thighs even though I’m twisted up. And the happy and the horror zip themselves together and finally fold away.

Here’s what my face does: It hatches into a daylight grin and a stream of laughing air. I learned how to do this when I was fourteen, but as I grew up, it got harder to tell when it was fake. I’m not grown up yet. I shouldn’t have just typed that. Anyway.

“I’m tired,” I hiss. “But you’re funny. Can you pass me the hot sauce?”

We live a block from each other. We take separate cabs home. I sleep dreamless, and with my fingers in my hair.

[AURELIE BIDERMANN - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]