Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover

A Saturday morning is the perfect time to finish Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover, the new novel by Mila Jaroniec, because you have the whole day to be upset that it's over.

I found myself turning a page this morning, hoping to gorge myself on more of Jaroniec's painterly, poetic prose, often inspired by ecstatic prose writers like Michelle Tea and Jack Kerouac, only to find that I had finished the book. I would be lying if I did not say a beat of despair pulsed through my chest, then dissipated.

Described by essayist Chloe Caldwell as "deceptively slim," Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover's mere 127 pages are bursting with a revelatory, soul-plunging, image-rich, non-linear narrative and it's almost mind-boggling how Jaroniec has been able to pack so much into a small space.

Throughout PVBS, we travel with Jaroniec's nameless narrator as she navigates New York as a young queer woman, her days and nights out with too-open-hearted-for-her-own-good best friend Mischa alongside lovers detached, invested or both, and chemicals of all varieties pouring through their bloodstreams. Told in a series of portraits that either anticipate the future, flash back to the past, or get lost in the present, they describe not just single moments, but the depth with which the narrator experiences them. Much like the book Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar which appears and is referenced periodically in its pages, Jaroniec's book too can be read in and out of order, the strength of each portrait making it stand alone and as a part of a whole.

The narrator's namelessness is an act of liberation, a way to explore and tell tales of lovers in the winter chill of East Village apartments, fights outside of bars or drugs inside of bathrooms, tying neither praise nor judgment to such a meaningless construction (Jaroniec will say in a book talk later) as a name. It happened. There becomes universality to the character because of this, relatability whether you've ever ordered a vodka gimlet at a lesbian bar in the West Village or not. The narrator's loneliness and desires for hope thereby run deeper, feel closer. Her fiercely bubbling, post-cocaine veins are my veins, her spins on the way up the stairs after a night of one too many shots are my spins, her indecision over perfume in an airport duty-free kiosk becomes my indecision. You say 'I have felt that, I have seen that, I have wanted that' even if your haves, seens, and wants are not exactly the same as the narrator's. For example, after a one-night-stand she writes:

"My body looked blue in the melancholy daylight, equal parts ethereal and run-through, Cimabue's Madonna. The cool-eyed blue of a holy streetwalker taking of her wig after a long night, russet, blonde, whatever color the john preferred, not the half-trusting Pretty Woman with the apple pie smile but a beat woman, a Beat Madonna, howling Courtney on her knees dripping manifestos and mascara, underworld saint-girl and her web of synthetics between he world and those threads of blue veins. All the holy women were blue." Her feelings are palpable and poetic.

Jaroniec also has the keen ability to make what would normally be a mundane experience and explode it with comedy, meaning, or both one might never have felt otherwise…or said aloud that one was feeling. For example, she encounters a woman eating in an airport restaurant:

"The woman beside me is crunching her way though a box of chicken nuggets….these resonate with such a deliberate, infernal crack that it makes me wonder if even she is thinking about it, if at this moment she is taking it as a warning that her food is making such an unnatural sound. I picture the lipid molecules, microscopic grease balls floating around in her viscera, and think about the word, lipid, how the object recalls the sound, banana-shaped fat deposits emergency yellow on either side of a dissected frog."

The book is filled with kind of prose one can appreciate not just as a reader but as a writer, its assemblages of words inspiring and writer's-block-loosening, relieving one of that miserable mental sloshing-through of molasses or cement to produce a phrase or passage that moves oneself forward. There are lines in it I imagined reading aloud to others as poetry. Sitting, reading on the train, I wanted to speak them to everyone. Instead, I heard them in my own head and they were still magic, an incantation imbuing the world with more beauty than it had before I started reading.

*

This past Tuesday I went to the Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover launch party at powerHouse Books in Dumbo. I have been acquainted with Mila Jaroniec for several years by this point, always entranced by her thoughtful, powerful prose, while never knowing her all that well. The first time I met her her eyes were painted an electric blue, the color of the beings in that Avatar movie I've never seen, in what I've now learned was an Urban Decay eyeshadow called Radium. The second time her lids bore a coating of Astroturf-like green. I was intimidated not just by her devastatingly good skill with eye makeup, but by the MFA she was working toward in fiction at The New School. She sat regally on a couch, blonde hair underlaid with a bold gash of turquoise, philosophy and literature spilling from her mouth. A black sweater, dress and tights covered her many tattoos. She had seen much more of the world than I had, lighting cigarettes that filled her friend's apartment with a tobacco scent and world-weary intellectualism. But she wasn't unwilling to share her experiences, exhaling smoke with tales of writing workshops and former lovers. What a rad gal, I thought to myself. I would see her periodically and always enjoyed conversations with her, thinking of her when writing opportunities arose and having her read twice at Miss Manhattan.

Tonight Mila's eyes are a lavender-y chrome color and her hair is blonde underlaid with bright purple. Visiting Brooklyn for a few days, she lives in Ohio now and has a four-month old baby named Silas. Copies of her book are on display in the store, and she offers as party favors minibar-size bottles of vodka emblazoned with her book cover and name instead of their original logo. She reads from sections of the book I had not gotten to yet and the words jump off of the page and into my imagination with such speed that I feel like I have done the cocaine she is reading about. I know this woman only a little, but I am so proud of her. Mila, it is my promise to you that I will always share your work whenever I can. The world needs as much beauty as it can get.

Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover, $16, is available from Split-Lip Press here.

Word.

"I don't know where I'm going!"

A girl is standing on Bedford Avenue next to a gentleman of some nature, her phone in front of her face. Her finger swipes down repeatedly on the screen as if trying to find herself on a map.

It was an interesting phrase to hear as I walked past them toward the L station from Greenpoint, as it perfectly summed up my day.

A big, if not arguably the biggest, part of my job is to pitch articles and photographs to various publications. Once they're accepted, I then get to write or photograph (or both) whatever topic I've submitted. The weeks where I have to do this, though, are often quite taxing. Not because coming up with ideas and sending emails is difficult, of course, but  because it can feel as if my ability to pay my rent and all of my bills rests within a single email to an editor or even a subject at a given time. It's stressful, spending sometimes literally hours on a website to understand their content only to have the ideas you've spent all this time on, sometimes days at a time, get unanimously rejected or not even acknowledged. This is the nature of the beast, of course, a thing that every writer deals with all the time. It's a life I chose and ultimately I'm happy to be living it and making a living doing it. But that doesn't mean that some days I don't want to kneel in front of my computer and pray to Moses or Jesus or RuPaul or whoever runs the universe for this pitch or that pitch to be accepted. Because often, if not most of the time, that is what I want to do and the sole fact that I am in a coffee shop surrounded by people with interesting tattoos and sneakers is often the primary reason I do not end up doing so. Please just let this go through, I think to myself instead. Please.

Today was one such day, in one such week. I spent hours agonizing over a food website to make sure my pitches were tuned in to what they might want, and ultimately I think I made some good decisions. I submitted them around 5pm, so I imagine/hope I'll see sometime later this week. I left the coffee shop once I finished this task to head to Word Bookstore in Greenpoint. The event tonight was "Ask Polly Live" where "Ask Polly" advice columnist Heather Havrilesky of New York Magazine's The Cut would be discussing her new book, a collection of her column entitled "How to Be a Person." Heather's column has developed a cult following, and soon the bookstore will be flooded with 20-something women all seeking their own interaction with Polly. Joining her would be two more very well-respected writers, Meghan Daum and Kate Bolick. I had even studied Meghan Daum's work in college, when a professor assigned her delightful essay "Music is My Bag" for a class. I was excited to be in a room with so many inspirational writers at once.

As is my MO, I arrived early, mostly to peek around at the bookstore--I lust after books in a way that most certainly lacks sanity; the Louisa May Alcott quote "She is too fond of books and it has addled her brain" always blares in the back of my mind whenever I enter a bookstore of any kind, and I am often left wondering to myself how to pick just one to take home. Shortly after perusing the stacks, I felt the back of my throat close up the way it does when it is trying to suppress water from spilling out of my eyes, my tongue springing to the roof of my mouth to hold my jaw closed. I was surrounded by ravishing cultural critiques, essays, and histories by celebrated authors, memoirs in hardcover by people perhaps a decade younger than me, anthologies I would have longed to contribute to bearing the names of writers I know on their covers. It was no different than any other trip to a bookstore, really, but today I internally prayed for an article about breakfast food to be accepted to a magazine. How was I supposed to go downstairs now and listen to these giants talk about writing? I felt an inch tall. I wanted to run out of the store, find a stoop to sit on, unhinge my tongue from the roof of my mouth and release saltwater down my face in fits and starts until I couldn't breathe. Breakfast food.

"I don't know where I'm going!" indeed.

But I knew I was just feeling sorry for myself, and I certainly wasn't going to turn around and go home after I had gone all the way to Greenpoint. "Suck it up," I thought to myself. "You will learn something and it is important for you to be here to listen to strong, smart women who once were where you are talk about writing."

And listen I did. To Heather Havrilesky's deliciously sharp, confident tongue that mirrors her worldly, tell-it-like-it-is "Ask Polly" column; to Meghan Daum's advice to celebrate one's comfort zone--but to go deep into it and not stay on the surface--because "the things that work are the things that feel authentic to you" and the trouble starts when you force it; to Kate Bolick's celebratory "courage of her eccentricities" and "This is the cake I bake!" a personal manifesto for self-acceptance encouraging those who don't like your cake to visit another bakery. They made me think about the writing I want to do and why I don't do more of it, about emotional truth in writing, about the steps I need to take to get where I want to go. They can seem like daunting steps, of course, but they are required if this is what I want.

I got the most hope, though, from a story Kate Bolick told about Heather Havrilesky, when she discussed one of the first columns Heather did something like 20 years ago. One of the first. 20 years ago. "Oh!" I thought to myself. "I have time!" It seems like a 'duh' point to say so, but of course nobody who has been at anything for 6 years has mastered it. In another 14 years if I don't have my shit together then we can worry. Maybe in 14 years, if I just keep doing what I'm doing but also make the changes I need to make, breakfast food and all, I will have a career like one of these women. The event ends and they are milling about, but I don't have the guts to say hello and I love your work and you inspire me like I normally would. I am unfortunately still hearing breakfast food in the back of my head, simultaneously feeling dwarfed by their accomplishments and knowing how far I still have to go, while trying to think, based on their advice, how to grow next.

I go to leave the bookstore and by the door is Heather, who is signing books for a long line of young women. They say things to her like "You changed my life," and "You saved me," and she smiles a true, genuine smile to each of them and says thank you. I press the door open and her eyes meet mine. I have noticeably not been in the line of the tiny bookstore to come face to face with her before now. "Thank you for coming!" she says. I can only manage a nod and a half-smile before exiting, but I think, thank you.

I walk past McCarren Park, chasing twilight as the sky quickly turns from lavender to heliotrope to navy back to the train, when I walk past the girl whose face is in her phone. "I don't know where I'm going!"

Me either, I think. But I think that's okay.

How An Article Happens in 83 Easy Steps

1. Have an idea.
2. Do some research about your idea.
3. Pitch your editor.
4. Have your editor accept your pitch and give you guidelines, a deadline, a word count, a rate.
5. Say yes, those things sound great, and move forward (or ask if some things can be changed and then see what your editor says and eventually arrive at a scenario that works for both of you).
6. Do on-site reporting.
7. Go to the class your subject is teaching.
8. Take lots of notes. 
9. Photograph the class. 
10. Eat a blueberry bagel with mixed berry tofu cream cheese.
11. Make sure you can read your notes.
12. Have a glass of sangria with your subject.
13. Interview your subject and collect many minutes or even hours of interview. 
14. Go to see your subject give a lecture. 
15. Participate in their lecture. 
16. Take more notes. 
17. Spend more time with your subject, enough where you can pick up on their mannerisms and know what color and brand of lipstick they wear (or the equivalent tiny detail). 
18. Eat a cheeseburger loaded with sauteed mushrooms with some steak fries on the side.
19. Go to your friend's birthday party and hang out.
20. Kiss everyone goodbye and take a cab home because fuck it, it's late and you're tired.
21. Take the second part of the class your subject is teaching.
22. Photograph the class again.
23. Take more notes again. 
24. Do another interview. 
25. Drink many cups of mint black tea with milk and Splenda. 
26. Do another interview. 
27. Eat a prosciutto, mozzarella, fig jam and arugula sandwich on whole wheat bread that's delicious but far too expensive.
28. Photograph your subject.  
29. Go to a coffee shop with WiFi in the East Village to work on your article.
30. Get an iced black tea because the weather outside makes you wonder how you did not melt, Wicked Witch of the West-style, on the way there.
31. Ask if your editor would like to push the deadline up to one day later instead of three days later to break the story before another publication.
32. Have your deadline pushed up to one day later.
33. Tell yourself not to worry, don't be scared, you know you can do it and you know you're right about knowing these things, plus it was your idea.
34. Sit hunched over in a coffee shop editing your photos. 
35. Eat an arugula salad with olive oil, grilled halloumi cheese, pumpkin seeds and tomatoes; add some salt to it, for taste.
36. Continue sitting hunched over in a coffee shop editing your photos. 
37. Wonder why your shoulder is bothering you.
38. Don't realize you've been sitting for six consecutive hours on a barstool.
39. Head home.
40. Go grocery shopping first because you have no food and will have no other time this week to go and there's only a bag of old shredded mozzarella, a chicken carcass you've been meaning to throw out, and a bottle of spicy honey mustard in the fridge. 
41. Come home and get your mail.
42. See that you received a check addressed to 'Elyssa Brown.'
43. Roll your eyes and say Fuck. 
44. Put away your groceries.
45. For dinner, eat the crackers and guacamole you just bought; throw in some sliced turkey for good measure because you need protein, too, right?
46. Start to transcribe your interviews, which you discover altogether are 75 minutes' worth, not 45 as you had originally anticipated. 
47. Get eight minutes into transcription when your shoulder starts to burn and cramp so badly you have to lie down. 
48. Take four Advil. 
49. Lie down again.
50. Ask your friend who transcribes interviews professionally to help you with 45 minutes of it because there's no way your shoulder is going to let all 75 happen right now. 
51. Send her the digital interview files and praise your digital recorder for being digital and allowing such a feat. 
52. Lie down again.
53. Get nervous.
54. Call your friend who is a physical therapist.
55. When she doesn't pick up, call your friend who is an orthopedic surgeon.
56. When she doesn't pick up, post on Facebook asking, does anyone know any stretches because my shoulder is freaking out and I have a deadline tomorrow and I can't type?
57. Get some responses, some of which are helpful.
58. Look up shoulder stretches on the internet. 
59. Do them.
60. Get annoyed when they don't work and your shoulder is now throbbing. 
61. What the hell?
62. Lie on the floor and stretch some more.
63. Get scared and cry a little because you have no idea what the hell is going on.
64. When your orthopedic surgeon friend calls you back and tells you to rub the crevice of your shoulder against the wall, do it and make involuntarily obscene noises and tell her how good and better it feels. 
65. Take four more Advil, and then do this every four to six hours as she says.
66. Tell her you'll go out tomorrow and get a heating pad, though you will actually forget. 
67. Transcribe your 30 minutes of interviews. 
68. Go to bed at 1am.
69. Wake up at 8am.
70. Print out the transcription from your goddess friend who finished the work in less than two hours the night before.
71. Make a note to buy her a margarita.
72. Sit down to read the 11 pages of transcription.
73. Get about halfway through and pass out for two hours. 
74. Wake up.
75. Say to yourself, FUCK, then stumble out of bed to the stove to make yourself some tea and wake the hell up because IT'S TIME TO WRITE, dammit. 
76. Finish reading the interview transcription. 
77. Turn out a 2000+ word article you're really proud of in about four and half hours. 
78. Upload your photos to Dropbox.
79. Send the photos and text to your editor. 
80. Take a fucking nap.
81. Anticipate your parents and their friends asking why you say fuck so much in your blog as they read this. 
82. Post it online anyway. 
83. Laugh at the absurdity that is your life and how happy you are that it's never boring.

SNEAK PEEK: Women of Letters!

If you haven't already heard of Women of Letters, you're missing out. Founded in Australia by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire in 2010, Women of Letters is a live storytelling event in which distinguished women artists, writers, and entertainers come together to share personal, intimate stories in the form of a letter, to, as the founders say, "revive the lost art of letter writing." Before the event each of the participants--which, in the past have included the likes of actress Edie Falco, musician Martha Wainwright, fashion designer Rachel Antonoff, and author Meg Wolitzer, among many renowned others--writes a letter along the lines of the night's theme and reads it aloud. Past themes include "To The Person I Misjudged," "A letter to the night I'd rather forget," and more. It provides a forum for creatively minded women to share their work and continue their evolution as artists in their fields while bonding with other women in a truly unique setting. Since it began, Women of Letters has gained a following that stretches from Los Angeles to Indonesia and back, and has spawned five books. All the proceeds from the shows go to charity, as well.

Tomorrow night, Women of Letters will be live in Manhattan, at Joe's Pub at The Public Theatre in the East Village, with readers Melissa Auf Der Maur (musician, singer/songwriter and former bassist for band Hole), Rayya Elias (filmmaker, musician, hairdresser, author of Harley Loco), Janelle James (writer, director, standup comedian), Maggie Ryan Sandford (scientist, researcher, writer for Smithsonian, Slate.com, The Onion and A.V. Club), Deborra-Lee Furness (actress, producer, director) and Megan Amram (screenwriter for Parks and Recreation, author of Science...For Her!). It will be hosted by writer Sofija Stefanovic. Tickets are $20 and the evening begins at 7pm.

Event founders Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, who are both writers in their own right, were kind enough to answer a few questions for me about the event. Take a look below to learn more, and be sure to attend tomorrow night!  

 

Miss M: How did you come up with the premise of Women of Letters? How did it gain such a following? What was your goal when you started the event?

Women of Letters: We were inspired to start an event that would regularly showcase the work of brilliant women in some way, but it took a little while until we came up with the letter-writing concept. We’re both writers ourselves, and thought it was a nice device that other people might get excited about. Our goal was just to have more than 20 of our friends show up to the first event! From that first sold-out show we’ve gained a very loyal following, who love the event enough to keep telling their friends to buy tickets.

What made you decide to bring the event not just to New York, but to LA, Austin and Indonesia? How did you choose those locations?

In a way, they chose us - we got put on the SXSW bill in 2013 thanks to our dear friend Glenn Dickie, and then figured since we were flying so far we should do shows in other major cities in the US. Indonesia as a result of the wonderful Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. We love traveling the show.

Why do you think women need an event like this? 

As artists, women need more events where they can showcase their work to new audiences. The shows themselves are about a lot more than that though, and to be given an opportunity to openly share or bear witness to personal, intimate experiences, is incredibly powerful and unifying.

What effect do you hope it will have on your audiences?

Overwhelmingly Women of Letters events create a very tangible, human connection between reader and audience.  To be a part of something that exists only in that moment is a privilege, and we hope that the honesty inspires people to go home and write letters of their own!

How do you choose who will read at each event? 

We program women who are intelligent, interesting, hilarious and wise, in a manner that isn’t too dissimilar to formulating our dream dinner party guest list. We’ve got a long series of wishlists, starting with the most outlandish lineups to the more realistic. We’re constantly surprised by who agrees to take part in our shows, and that inspires us to keep asking because we can never predict who might say yes.

How long does it take you to assemble each reading? 

Anywhere between six to eight weeks in advance we start putting out invitations for a show.  Sometimes it gets right down to the wire, trying to lock in our final reader but we get there eventually!

What is one/ are some of your favorite moments from past Women of Letters events? 

Oh gosh, there’ve been so many shows, let alone so many favourite moments… Our first NYC show last year was extraordinary. 400 New Yorkers had lined up in the snow, on a Tuesday night in Gowanus, and those were the only people in the world who will ever hear Edie Falco talk about ‘The night I’d rather forget.’ The room was so quiet while she read, and I think everyone realised instantly that what she’d spoken about was never going to leave that room.  

What can audiences expect to experience at Joe's Pub on the 14th?

We're careful about how we curate every show - there's always a mix of comedians, writers, actors, and musicians.  The readings will range, as they always do, from heartfelt to hilarious to emotionally raw.

What is the most rewarding aspect of putting on this event? What about the most challenging?

Getting to meet the most extraordinary women, many of whom are our personal heroes, is endlessly rewarding. The charitable aspect of our shows is also obviously incredible rewarding. We’ve raised over $600,000 in Australia for an animal rescue shelter, and hope to turn a similar profit in NYC for the New York Women's Foundation. The most challenging aspect these days is dealing with the heartbreak of not being able to commute from Melbourne to New York for each show!

How has the event changed since you first started doing it?

Very little!  Since March 2010 Women of Letters has been a safe space for storytellers and a forum to share and listen.  With sold-out events across the world and five published books, we're not going to fiddle with a successful formula!

What Would Sir Harold Do?

"You want to be a journalist? Or you are a journalist?" Sir Harold Evans looks at me with his glassy, cornflower blue eyes before he signs the interior of the book I just purchased. I imagine he asks because the book, My Paper Chase, chronicles his life as a writer and editor in print media.

"I am a journalist," I say, though the assumption that I want to be is a fair one. We are in a lecture space at a local university, Hunter College, and on nights like tonight when I am not wearing makeup I easily look 18. Hearing myself say the words, having just been made aware of the breadth and depth of his career in his lecture, sounds not so much like a lie, but an inadequacy. But then again, at this stage in my career, it is by no means fair to compare myself to the man.

Sir Harold Evans has been working in media for about 70 years. He is the author of twelve books; he is one of the International Press Institute's 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years; he was "knighted by the British Crown for his services to journalism,"; he is the founder of Conde Nast Traveler, a former editor-in-chief at the Atlantic Monthly, a former editorial director of the U.S. News and World Report, a former president and publisher of Random House, and the list goes on and on. Though I like to think I walk around New York with a certain swagger at times (I mean, you have to or you won't survive, right?), I am floored and humbled, as I should be, by the man's presence.

Surprisingly, I was one of the few people in the audience under the age of 30. I would have thought people in the beginning stages of their careers would be quite literally tripping over themselves to hear such a man speak about his life and his work. I have been on a "revisiting academia" kick these days to be fair, but my goodness, being in his presence alone is an education. I felt like I was soaking up inspiration and knowledge just sitting there.

Throughout his lecture, a part of the "Great Thinkers of Our Time" Series held by Hunter's Writing Center, he offers several stories of a bewilderingly amazing life in publishing, including but not limited to stories in which Marlon Brando asked Evans to get on his knees and beg for rights to the actor's book (he of course refused), exposing the lives of the people affected by the now-infamous, disfiguring Thalidomide drug, and publishing Obama's Dreams From My Father. He also shared a few bits of wisdom about writing in general, which at this particular moment I think were things I needed to hear.

"When you struggle as a writer, you learn really good writing."
"Anyone who tells you writing is easy isn't a very good writer."

And most importantly: "The only advice I can give about writing is: write!"

It is that last one that I've been needing to hear more than not these past few weeks. In a city like New York, it is so easy to get "busy." As in, "I can't, I'm too busy," or "I didn't have time, I was too busy." I learned a long time ago that "busy" is an excuse we New Yorkers, and people everywhere really, use to cover up their lack of willingness to make time for any activity at all. The fact of the matter is people will only make time for something or someone they want to make time for. If they don't want to make time, they won't, and that's the end of the story. It's one of the few situations I've found that's purely black and white.

I have not been making enough time for my writing. The essays I aspire to work on, the articles I dream to write. And I will fully admit here that the delay comes from fear. Fear of not living up to my potential, fear of not producing something I'm proud of, fear of becoming one more nameless writer who fades away into nothing in the city that tests any creator on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

Sir Harold Evans looks up at me and asks me how to spell my name. In his British accent he jokes, "It's quite difficult, you know!" I laugh. But underneath my name he writes, "Good luck!" A warm yet fairly trivial greeting, usually, but to me it really means something. While Sir Evans may not directly "believe in me," as it were, I do think he believes in the idea of me: a writer working hard in what may be the hardest of all cities to become..something.

I can do more. I must do more. Harold Evans didn't become Sir Harold Evans by being scared, after all.  And I don't know if I ever will be Sir Harold Evans, but I can absolutely be the best Miss Manhattan possible.