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ellerkayIn the book I Was A Teenage Fairy, Francesca Lia Block describes several cities as if they were women. They're wonderful metaphors and I love her writing, so I decided to try and do it with Boston. I've quoted two of the passages from I Was A Teenage Fairy first, to give you all an idea of what I'm talking about, and because they're just so much fun to read.
by Francesca Lia Block:
“If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, then the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister. The teenybopper sister snaps big stretchy pink bubbles over her tongue and checks her lip gloss in the rearview mirror, causing Sis to scream. Teeny plays the radio too loud and bites her nails, wondering if the glitter polish will poison her. She puts her bare feet up on the dash to admire her tan legs and the blond hair that is so pale and soft she doesn’t have to shave. She wears a Val Surf T-shirt and boys’ boxer shorts and she has a boy’s phone number scrawled on her hand. Part of her wants to spit on it and rub it off, and part of her wishes it were written in huge numbers across her belly, his name in gang letters, like a tattoo.”
by Francesca Lia Block:
“If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn red or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Saunder suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant. She is always carrying bags of clothes, bouquets of roses, take-out Chinese containers, or bagels. Museum tags fill her pockets and purses, along with perfume samples and invitations to art gallery openings. When she is walking to work, to ward off bums or psychos, her face resembles the Statue of Liberty, but at home in her candlelit, dove-colored apartment, the stony look fades away and she smiles like the sterling roses she has bought for herself to make up for the fact that she is single and her feet are sore.”
And this is mine, about Boston. It's a longer, sort of a cross between a (very) short story and what Block did with hers. It's a purposeful imitation of her style, as well.
Boston
by Elle Kay:
When Boston was in college she was a hippie intellectual, reading poetry and classic literature and Hunter S. Thompson, going to movie marathons at the Brattle Theater, dressing in flowing skirts and T-shirts with funny sayings on them. She went to parties in Mission Hill and got drunk on cheap beer and Jell-O shots. Late at night she’d get stoned on the Common and discuss politics and philosophy over greasy Chinese food with boys sporting goatees and plastic frame glasses.
A few years after graduating Boston finds herself suddenly grown up. She lives in an apartment in Cambridge with hardwood floors, and wears suits and skirts to an office job, dark brown hair worn high (she doesn’t know it, but this style, though severe, makes every man who passes her want to press his lips to her graceful neck). She has gotten paler. She works out at a gym, instead of taking the long, rambling walks that used to fill her free time.
The men who take her out now are older, and sophisticated. She drinks wine and eats sushi, or pasta in the North End, before seeing plays in gilded theaters with plush seats. The lights are dazzling and the ceilings tower over her; sometimes, she feels tiny, and she seeks out little black box theaters that only seat fifty people. Secretly, she likes the performances there better.
As she puts on plum-colored lipstick, Boston laments that she doesn’t read so much anymore. It takes a few months to get through a book; so much easier after a long day to put on the television or a Charlie Kaufman movie. There are weeks when she devours a novel in front of a flickering fireplace, but they are few and far between. And how long since she did any writing?
But Boston’s heart still beats faster when she hears the opening notes to a symphony or wanders the MFA, imagining that she is in ancient Egypt, wishing that she could take photographs like Edward Weston. Sometimes on weekends she wears a black wifebeater and torn, faded blue jeans. She gets on the Red Line, examines the other passengers by looking at their reflections in the plastic windows and imagines what they are thinking about. She is oddly thrilled, as always, by the dirtiness of the stations, their basement smell, the squealing of the train’s breaks and the vibration on the platform and in the car.
She considers riding the train to Alewife and then returning, just for fun, but she gets off in Davis Square and spends the day in the Diesel Café, sipping soy milk lattes and reading Nabokov and trying to remember exactly who it is she’s meant to be.
by Francesca Lia Block:
“If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, then the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister. The teenybopper sister snaps big stretchy pink bubbles over her tongue and checks her lip gloss in the rearview mirror, causing Sis to scream. Teeny plays the radio too loud and bites her nails, wondering if the glitter polish will poison her. She puts her bare feet up on the dash to admire her tan legs and the blond hair that is so pale and soft she doesn’t have to shave. She wears a Val Surf T-shirt and boys’ boxer shorts and she has a boy’s phone number scrawled on her hand. Part of her wants to spit on it and rub it off, and part of her wishes it were written in huge numbers across her belly, his name in gang letters, like a tattoo.”
by Francesca Lia Block:
“If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn red or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Saunder suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant. She is always carrying bags of clothes, bouquets of roses, take-out Chinese containers, or bagels. Museum tags fill her pockets and purses, along with perfume samples and invitations to art gallery openings. When she is walking to work, to ward off bums or psychos, her face resembles the Statue of Liberty, but at home in her candlelit, dove-colored apartment, the stony look fades away and she smiles like the sterling roses she has bought for herself to make up for the fact that she is single and her feet are sore.”
And this is mine, about Boston. It's a longer, sort of a cross between a (very) short story and what Block did with hers. It's a purposeful imitation of her style, as well.
Boston
by Elle Kay:
When Boston was in college she was a hippie intellectual, reading poetry and classic literature and Hunter S. Thompson, going to movie marathons at the Brattle Theater, dressing in flowing skirts and T-shirts with funny sayings on them. She went to parties in Mission Hill and got drunk on cheap beer and Jell-O shots. Late at night she’d get stoned on the Common and discuss politics and philosophy over greasy Chinese food with boys sporting goatees and plastic frame glasses.
A few years after graduating Boston finds herself suddenly grown up. She lives in an apartment in Cambridge with hardwood floors, and wears suits and skirts to an office job, dark brown hair worn high (she doesn’t know it, but this style, though severe, makes every man who passes her want to press his lips to her graceful neck). She has gotten paler. She works out at a gym, instead of taking the long, rambling walks that used to fill her free time.
The men who take her out now are older, and sophisticated. She drinks wine and eats sushi, or pasta in the North End, before seeing plays in gilded theaters with plush seats. The lights are dazzling and the ceilings tower over her; sometimes, she feels tiny, and she seeks out little black box theaters that only seat fifty people. Secretly, she likes the performances there better.
As she puts on plum-colored lipstick, Boston laments that she doesn’t read so much anymore. It takes a few months to get through a book; so much easier after a long day to put on the television or a Charlie Kaufman movie. There are weeks when she devours a novel in front of a flickering fireplace, but they are few and far between. And how long since she did any writing?
But Boston’s heart still beats faster when she hears the opening notes to a symphony or wanders the MFA, imagining that she is in ancient Egypt, wishing that she could take photographs like Edward Weston. Sometimes on weekends she wears a black wifebeater and torn, faded blue jeans. She gets on the Red Line, examines the other passengers by looking at their reflections in the plastic windows and imagines what they are thinking about. She is oddly thrilled, as always, by the dirtiness of the stations, their basement smell, the squealing of the train’s breaks and the vibration on the platform and in the car.
She considers riding the train to Alewife and then returning, just for fun, but she gets off in Davis Square and spends the day in the Diesel Café, sipping soy milk lattes and reading Nabokov and trying to remember exactly who it is she’s meant to be.
