#037 : AMPHETAMINE LOGIC x BEAUTYSHAMBLES / Art Basel Burnout 2021
Publication date: Jan 18, 2022
Last November, life felt so bad—like a knife fucking my brain—and I didn’t want to tell anyone.
I’m a fighter until I’m not. I have energy until I don’t. I’m healthy until I’m sick.
I’m close to God until I’m raging at Him. Why won’t you help me?! What have I done to deserve to wake up every day with terrible dread?
I needed a break.
I went to Art Basel instead.
*****
If I close my eyes, I can slip back into Amphetamine Logic...
Clown makeup on the keyboard. Skyy vodka and UFOs. Sex bruises and sleeping pills. Huffing ennui. Cigarette smoke like morning fog when I was too hopped up on nail polish dreams to sleep.
The Ambien were white and my Christmas lights were blue. My face masks were white and my Ultra-Lights were, too.
It was Cool World. I was self-tan mom.
I was snorting Roxicet with Blu Jemz: touching his soft hair, and floating down the stairs of his Brooklyn loft without any clothes on.
I was emaciated at ELLE...
…and by the East River with REMO.
With the Fat Jew in Venice Beach...
…and with Riff Raff in Soho.
I was up late on Laight and grandiose on Grand. I was bleach-blonde on Bond and at W.I.P. with Chrissie Miller and Stam.
I was jonesin’ on the Jitney and jamming to Britney. I was pregnant in Thailand with an editor in chief’s baby.
I was Lady Gaga vomiting four times on a Barcelona stage without missing a beat.
I was spinning amphetamine into gold. I was getting famous in my sleep.
Addiction was bey. My coke dealer was a Virgo. I was with the MIRF at Vito Schanbel's beach house spying on Lauren Santo Domingo.
I was in Central Park after dark...
...in the Ramble, listening to Babyshambles. Edie was drowning in Bethesda Fountain. Andy was laughing in the trees.
It was unstoppable how—one by one—the Warhol flowers rolled off of the assembly line in my brain.
Then the electric chairs came.
*****
I missed two flights to Florida. Finally, I made it to my hotel room in Fort Lauderdale. A podcast was paying for it.
I showed up shaking to tape a podcast the next day. I told them I couldn't go through with it.
Then I hit South Beach.
The first night, I missed the Cultural Counsel party at the Esme Hotel.
That’s when I realized...this trip probably wasn’t going to go well.
The next night, I missed the David Zwirner yacht.
I missed Offset at the FLAUNT party, too.
Julia Cooke and Gutes kept texting me. Where are you?
I left my debit card at Twist.
Then, at the Deuce, I dodged the lovely Jared Leto, who was so nice.
“How To Murder Your Life,” he greeted me. “I know exactly who you are.”
But I was so shut down. I just ran back into the bar.
*****
In November 2021—when I crashed—I’d been doing very great for many years.
Then I became exhausted and depleted from a period of prolonged stress. From two moves in three months, and a breakup with a now-ex.
I couldn’t rummage through my Cookies Hoops tote one more time looking for my scotch-taped Bank of America Business Visa.
I couldn’t untangle my headphones to listen to Icona Pop on Lafayette.
So I was in silence all of the time and in my head.
I didn’t have a sofa at home yet so I was in my bed.
There were dirty dishes a tray on the Tempur-pedic California King. I was watching the Talking Sopranos podcast.
Poor you.
I’ll never relapse on drugs but I’d kinda relapsed on everything else: the high-end squalor. The gory medical procedures; the eating disorder. The despair over my dead friends. The Garbage Pail Id.
And…on Amphetamine Logic. That bitch entered my life when I was a kid.
And now it was beside me again.
*****
On my fourth day of Basel Burnout 2022, I got a pedicure at the Nail Pub—across from the 11th Street Diner.
“All the beach bunnies are getting Super White,” the aesthetician said.
So I did.
The next day I went to the Convention Center.
Nate Freeman texted me a barcode to get in.
I saw an Urs Fischer Marilyn.
Then they kicked everyone out.
Design Miami was still open...
...but I didn't feel like going.
I walked back to the Fritz and closed the curtains.
What the fuck is wrong with me, I thought.
*****
Back during my Vice column, Amphetamine Logic, my friends were my whole world.
The NYPD Vandal Squad was always after SAME.
Ten years ago, we came to Miami together.
It was our first Art Basel. We flew to Florida…
…and stayed in the Design District with the MIRF.
On Christmas Eve that year, SAME couldn’t go home to his family's crib uptown—on account of the cops. So he came downtown to Avenue C.
“I don’t think I know how to take care of anything,” I told him once—talking about maybe being a mother someday.
“You take care of me,” he pointed out.
We smoked dust until dawn.
Now he’s gone.
Now I just take care of myself.
*****
Strange child-woman,
a familiar voice interrupted my thoughts.
Why don’t you talk a walk
There’s a 24-hour Walgreens
glowing in the dark.
Two years ago you found an opening in the fence
At Lummus Park
and snuck inside
At 12 am to find your phone
By the race track.
Then you walked home alone.
"I'm so thin I can slip through a storm like a model ship into a bottle," I wrote in my VICE column, 'The Cockroach and the Cokehead’.
I can still wriggle though the rails of any fence that I want to.
You're so slim and
childless,
my old friend crowed.
That you can fit into any dress
On Lincoln Road.
Yes.
I got up and put on my Fit Flops.
*****
I put my headphones in, cued up a little Glory, stepped out into the Miami night...
...and headed for the shore.
I knew that if I just kept moving, soon enough, I’d be in an endorphins trance. The whole world would be enchanted, and I would feel less lonely.
Cinematic / take it right back with a bottle of perfume lotion, Britney sang in my ears. Where'd you come from talking like that? / Butterfly from the bottom of the ocean...
I stepped onto the beach. The sand looked gleamy and gorgeous, like a big schmear of Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream.
I felt better.
It was 2 AM in the nightclub of the world. The gang was all there: the black sky, the white moon, the shimmering sea. Jellyfish; phosphorescence. Amphetamine Logic and me.
This was some great writing.