Love and Whatever is Confusing
“I don't want another pretty face
I don't want just anyone to hold
I don't want my love to go to waste
I want you and your beautiful soul”
Euston Estate 26 by SS
Standing over a frame clamp, hands covered in wood glue, tears steadily streamed down my face. I hurriedly wiped off my hands to hit ‘replay’ on the Jessie Maccartny hit. A warm breeze that felt like Easters in San Clemente meandered through the double door leading nowhere. I’m on the fifth floor of an abandoned council estate in Euston, blue paint peeling off bars on the walk up , nets to keep people from jumping, one of those lifts that fit only fit two and feel like a sinkhole to PS2 graphics IRL. Looking out from the front door, new rail lines are being worked on. The old estate isn’t exactly abandoned, it’s just been overtaken by artists. Not suited for regular dwelling, re: the black mold eruption in the ceiling of the room I find myself in. My friend’s studio was a double bedroom, still with fifties doors that have giant glass windows on them. Walking in that morning, all I could think was how beautiful and authentic it all was. I love this area, the grit. Since moving to the UK in 2020, I’ve barely left Kings Cross, Somers Town, Euston, Camden Town, Angel. Gazing down at the workbench, my eyes slowly close as I let out an exhale. Rewind. “I don't want just anyone to hold, I don't want my love to go to waste.”
Summer 2025 while visiting Peggy last summer ‘back in the 714 days,’ I lied through my teeth “Yeah I don’t know, I’m just looking to have some fun. Isn’t it just a numbers game? I’m gathering as much data as possible across profession, income, personality, lifestyle, among other factors. I’m really excited about this thing right now, but I don’t really have expectations.”
“You’re looking for someone.”
“I am not!”
“You are. In you heart of hearts you’re looking.”
Anahiem 2022 by SS
The summer before that conversation, we went on a long drive from Anaheim to San Diego. On the way back, the best 2 person inter-generational Sex in the City coded symposium occurred in my cousin’s crossover vehicle. I had just ended a long term relationship, the kind where everyone in your life is confused that you’re dating them but say nothing. Peggy being one of them, she insisted that “you would’ve just done what you wanted anyway. It was comfortable , but not a good fit at all.” Peggy’s a tough lady. Worked in factories when industry was still in Anaheim, every Christmas, every holiday. 911 calls and emergency operations department. She was around when women were first allowed to get birth control and credit cards without men’s consent. Her generation gave us Roe v Wade.
“Men of your generation, or should I say boys, they don’t know how to deal with you women. You’re more educated, more driven, empathetic, emotionally intelligent. Women are badasses and they know what they want. We’ve come so far since the seventies. It’s like, the age of women is finally upon us. And the men don’t really know how to respond.” I think back to my data points. They all spent a lot of time talking at me about their money, how tough they are, their aspirations. But they get a little scared when I tell them my dad put a shotgun in my hands when I was eight.
There was a lawyer, he was sweet. At first. Oxford or Cambridge I can’t remember, some sort of boarding school just shy of Eaton. Marathon runner. Army reserves. First date? Forgettable. Second date? Reservation at an underground wine bar est. 1890 with a winding line down the block. My face still rail thin from the nights dancing, with long green talon nails. He ordered me port cause he remembered I liked it, sweet things. On the Northern Line home after a long walk, I decided to follow him further north past my place and towards his. The flat was stuffed full of antiques, with black and white checked marble floors. South of France vacations were being tossed around, archery competitions, news of the imports and exports business going well. Though it wasn’t the status that caught my eye. He treated me like I had a brain. He said things like “what are your protein goals I think I have something in the fridge…”
Though as the nights and days wore on, alarm bells began to ring. More often than not he pressed me when I didn’t want it. There was touch that was too rough past when I said stop. Kindness was now formalities. He expected me to pity him when he said something like “my nanny used to x y z, I miss her dearly,” and expected me to admire him when he says “in the reserves we…” I’m not easily swayed by fake gun play in a domestic forest when I wrote my cousin crayon scribbled letters on his infantry tours in Afghanistan.
The last night he pressed me, I had panic attack. The open field when I was 16, the ‘friend’ that pressed closer and closer to in my own home when I had asked them by to take a look at some work. The nail in the coffin for the seemingly perfect yet 5 3’ man was what he dared to say about another woman. “You know I took her home, and then realized her tits were uneven, one was saggy, and her bum was flat. But you…” I tuned out , he finished the sentiment with some unoriginal pre-Raphaelite bullshit like everyone else uses when referencing my own form. No one, especially a misogynist that close to the ground, can speak about a woman’s body that way - or try to place us in competition with on another.
In the pub on night after I very obviously cleared out a drawer at his house,
“You know what, this isn’t working out”
“… why? This is a little out of no where. I was just starting to fa…”
“You pushed me. Multiple times. And you know what? Your physical capabilities in the bedroom aren’t really the skill level that I’m used to.”
The woman he was slagging off. I don’t know who or where she was, but I tried to hold her close as I spoke.
Hellcat Jeans 2026 by SS
I wore my ‘Hell Cat” jeans on an angry walk to a gallery opening. I was elated to be going out, but frustrated at my own loneliness. I wear them on two kinds of days: either when I am spittin’ vicious, or to ward off encounters, to give strength to the girl inside crying in the art studio. Standing in the gallery, playing with giant wool balls hanging from the ceiling, I spot my dear friend Jess across the room. Unwarranted, I blurt out “god there’s a lot of stupid fucking men with stupid fucking hats and the same balloon pants in here right? Look around, it’s an ocean of these fucking hats, mini key rings and counter fit Type I’s that have never seen a days worth of work.” Jess and I have the salmon bites that we hate the longer the taste lasts. “Fuck man these guys in their stupid fucking hats probably have trust funds and are depressed because they paint and have feelings or some shit.” … Sorry Jess. I was mad at men before I walked in... and got more emotional watching the football film about women’s inequality.
Earlier that day, the tarot reader stopped by the boat I work on. Sayin’ something about dating and old Cockney phrases about seeing ya in your stockings. Everyone was talking to me about the past weekend, my Beach Boys strip act, complete with surfboard. An oddity for the general public in Central London. The most I’ve gotten harassed on public transit has been while carrying a surfboard, people think you’e approachable. A woman walking her dogs along the towpath looked at me with instant realization, and then shrunk her excitement. She whispered tentatively, “… are you the stripper from Saturday night?”
Aside from this, love was a major theme rolling through the conversations of the day. I tell the man sitting next to me in a folding chair with two pairs of glasses on, red hair dye setting in his hair, and a scooter laid beside him something about being done with dating.
“My heart is burnt out from other things.”
“Love?” I ask him.
“No, drugs.”
A sigh. “My heart is burnt out falling in love too fast.”
UGH I could vomit that something so cheesy came out of my mouth. He chuckled, voice cracking like a mix between a Camden seagull and Peter in 1972’s Brady Bunch episode Dough Re Mi.
“…I don’t know man, I just keep meeting freaks.”
“Have you ever thought about the fact that you’re hanging out in the wrong places?” He broadly gestured around him.
Flashbacks to my last weekend at a dungeon, and the following weekend of getting locked out of my house and waking up on a boat. This morning’s observation two people crouched next to a brick wall shooting up.
“Excuse you, does that gesture include me?”
“You wouldn’t be down here if you weren’t one too.”
“I love how much of a lover girl you are.” Cailin said between bites of hummus. Bloomsbury pub full of corporate goons, but one of my most treasured impromptu evenings together.
She had caught me in the hallway of The Place, greeted me with a hug and “how are you?” Overwhelming sadness must have flushed my face, as she immediately responded to the nonverbal cue: “okay yeah… I’ll see you at 6:00pm. We’re going out. I have a mountain of work, but we need this.”
Us 2025 by SS
Perched on a barstool I sneered, “I am SO not a lover girl. Me? Concerned with MEN?”
Cailin proceeds to rattle off names of a couple ex lovers.
“… hear me out those were different.”
“nah dude when you’re into somebody you’re into them. I think it’s cute!”
“I’m trying to be better. I think that whole chemical 6 months to fall in love thing is real, but I think I’m just open to connecting and being vulnerable and generous if I like you. No one is making it past date two anymore though.”
Peggy am I really looking? Or being open to what comes? Proactive openness. Openness as an active state of being… Cailin and I keep chatting among courses of delectables in this pub neither of us can really afford at the minute.
“What are you even after then? Because you could find someone easily but what’s REALLY going on?”
I tell her what I tell each person I’m seriously interested in the context in which I exist:
Realistically, I grew up down the street from Disneyland, my parents met at a double feature showing The Little Mermaid at 1989 while they both worked in Disneyland entertainment. I don’t care where in the world you place me, how many people I’m dating, each Dworkin 2nd wave feminist book I consume, or how many data points are added to the spreadsheet, that’s where my head is at. Magic, fantasy, forever. (Gross.)
P and M at Epcot 1990s courtesy Mike Sullivan
Magic Kingdom Korp 1990s courtesy Mike Sullivan
Donald Duck Birthday Parade 1980s courtesy Mike Sullivan
… Or, at least it was. I’ve stopped looking. It’s all just too painful. I’m still hurting from a couple of untimely ends. I’m hurting from having to wrap my heavyweight chain around my fist on the way home past 3:00am, the energy spent telling men too ugly to be that confident to fuck off. I’m hurting from the men who leer at me when I run, the one who tried me while I was carrying a 2 x 4 full of nails for work. How stupid do you have to be to catcall a woman holding what could actually do some damage? It doesn’t matter how little I wear, how much I wear, wherever I go - theres no one. No men, no women, no theybies. No meet cutes. In man x woman configurations, they’re just on the apps trying to treat us like sex workers without proper compensation, or just plainly inciting violence against women. They’re all the same font of stupid fucking hat men with either the conservative font of misogyny or the blue hair gay rainbow skittles misogyny.
You're the one I wanna chase
You're the one I wanna hold
I won't let another minute go to waste
I want you and your beautiful soul
Peggy never got married. No kids. My brother and I sitting up late at her house in Anaheim playing N64 Mario Kart was her maternal experience, and for her that was enough. ‘There was no one I met that I was willing to compromise my life for, those quiet moments in the morning having coffee especially. You’ve gotta really like someone to gamble those kinds of precious moments that make life worth living.’ The more women over 60 that I’m friends with, the more they’re adamant that I stop looking for someone. They’re telling me how badly they want to just live alone, have adventures, get on with their creative work. I’d like a beautiful soul, there’s been one or two bets placed on quiet moments already. When the ‘Hellcat’ jeans come off, and I mute the noise from the streets, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit I’m still in Fantasyland watching Snow White or consulting Emily Post’s 1922 etiquette book. At 27 in the year of our Lord 2026 I’m finding it really difficult to negotiate the tension between these points of fairy tale and feminism versus cold the lines of misogony that I face on a daily basis.
The closest thing I’ve come to negotiating an answer is guarding my time, but allowing whatever feelings of anger love sadness and even loneliness to develop fully. The last time I was in love, it was really only something my friends knew about. Rather than taking feelings I had and crafting them into an ultimatum to deliver to another person, I rechanneled them into bounding down the street with a chain wallet like a skinhead Disney princess. Channeling the emotional intensity into my own art making and creative practice. But being careful not using these methods as means of distraction, actually being in the trenches with your feelings via different mediums. You’re never wasting your time if you’re exploring who you are, who you love and why, being really honest and generous with your feelings. Love doesn’t ever go to waste, because if you’re channeling the lessons the universe wants you to explore, it’s going back out into the world in one way or another.