քǟʀȶʏ ɢɨʀʟֆ ɨռ ռʏƈ (excerpt)

Peyton Gatewood

I was checking up on my friend Renata’s cat while her new roommate, Anastasia, was back home in Jersey for a funeral, and Renata was home for the summer in LA. Renata was a perfect friend for me because she went to my old college on the Upper West Side, and I went to my current college in Brooklyn, distance. And because she was from LA, it meant she couldn’t tell I was hiding who I really was.

I admired Renata. She was cool, generous and very funny. If the bouncers bounced us, she would yell: Do You Know Who I Am? I am a ROCKEFELLER!!!! She’d grown up between León, Mexico, with her mom, and the City of Angels with her old dad—who was a costume designer for movies, had a lot of different daughters with different wives, and knew a lot of people. Renata was born to work in PR.

Her apartment was in Dimes Square before I knew what that was, wedged between the Lower East Side and Chinatown. Internet famous residents host intellectual anorexia podcasts. They are admins of TikTok accounts that inform: at which cocktail bar there are prospects of meeting “hot finance daddies? They prized “lived fiction” over quality. The art’s all edgy, offensive if it wasn’t so unserious. They have reverted back to saying retarded and fat (negative connotation).

The apartment was shaded by the Manhattan Bridge. The walls would vibrate with each train passing. We were North Dumpling and Kiki’s and 169 Bar, and we had a fire escape where we (they) liked to smoke capri cigarettes and watch the sun rise and set. (I don’t smoke cigarettes). The view of Dumbo was only partly blocked by the luxury skyscraper newly built on the water, which was unoccupied because no one could afford it and because it was right next to a strip of projects.

They had roof access. Loose big wires ran across, uneven, and other tenants had abandoned decaying Amazon furniture like it was a dump—ugly but beautiful. One could graffiti tag the bridge if they dared to leap.

My girls would tan in bikini tops and chain-smoke capris, sunscreen reflecting like strobes or shooting stars. At night, you could see the actual stars and the lights flickering down below and out across the water. Made you wanna reach out and grab them like fireflies. Made you wanna believe in the New York City of the movies.

Renata’s bedroom had one tiny window facing brick, walls covered in Virgin Mary postcards—one from me, from New Orleans. Her bedframe blocked the closet door; I nudged it open. I touched the fabrics of her clothes. Found a wad of cash in the pocket of one of her furry coats. I didn’t take it—I wouldn’t—but a strange pleasure expanded in my chest. Knowing it was there. Knowing a secret of Renata’s. Examining her belongings like a specimen. I think it made me feel closer to her.

Bass from a crazy rap song pulsed from behind the front door. Their neighbor across the hall was a fat ass white girl from Louisiana who we inferred was a hooker. She would wake up around 8PM and blast music, sometimes 4AM she blasted it. One time the ring camera picked up her running down the hall, fighting with a boyfriend, naked. One time Ember and Renata ran into her at Mr. Fong’s and they smoked a capri together, to start over on the right foot. They both woke up with sore throats.

My boots dropped with a thud. I stretched out on her sofa like a cat in the sun; her actual cat, Pixie, joined me, purring. She was a mischievous little black thing. ‘You guys are like twins!” Renata used to say. Beams of light streamed in from the front bedroom’s fire escape. I didn’t mind the music—it was white noise. It felt like a luxury, being comfortable in a friend’s space. I had failed hard at making any friends at my new school; I didn’t fit in there. Those kids were really into Berlin. Renata had been my only girlfriend in the city.

Renata didn’t want a new roommate. She wanted to live with her old roommate, Ember, her best friend, forever. I met Renata through Ember. I met Ember freshman year in the dorms. We really like to sing that song “BFF” by Slayyyter: “You are my best friendddd till the fucking world endsssss.” We each have a matching LES tattoo somewhere on our bodies. Renata paid for half of mine. At the start of this summer, Ember left New York and moved to Alaska to be with a military boy from New Jersey that she married right after her 20th birthday for benefits. Military benefits paid her rent while she was here. They met on a dating app. “Paris Hilton has been engaged three times!”

Anastasia took over the lease. I’d been promoted to sidekick, and I liked feeling crucial. Renata asked me to take pictures of the apartment and send them to her, so she could see the state of things while she was away. To see how dirty her new roommate, Anastasia, was, basically.

Renata was a clean freak. Half a summer in L.A./Mexico, and her new roomie had managed to dust everything, except Renata’s bedroom, with ash. Cheap tapestries from Amazon and printed-out photos everywhere.

It wasn’t as bad as some roach-bait apartments I’d seen. Obviously Renata was looking for a problem because she missed Ember. I swiped my hand over the gray smudge on the plastic coffee table. Anastasia was home for a funeral, too, which I felt sympathetic about. That’s why I was feeding the cat, remember? I knew Renata wouldn’t be sympathetic. But I did what I was told. Talking shit about Anastasia brought me closer to Renata.

Snap, snap, send. I didn’t know Renata’s dad would try to evict Anastasia over it, but eventually, it all became water under the bridge. Anastasia replaced me as the sidekick when Renata started to see me as more than a pet. Girls!

I felt like an alien pretending to be a girl. I pieced together that the ash probably came from some mix of saging, weed and cigarettes smoked inside. Bottles of vodka, bottles of wine, empty pizza boxes. Anastasia—if you’re reading this—I smoked a little bit of your weed. Sorry.

I picked up her copy of How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell, thumbing through for underlines. Anastasia was newly sober from hard drugs but we still drank and smoked. The book was a memoir about being addicted to angel dust and adderall while editing the beauty section of a Y2K fashion magazine.

Marnell’s memoir about angel dust and Adderall and editing the beauty section of a fashion magazine was mythic. Girls who don’t read read Marnell. She was one of the first pictured in The Cut’s “It Girl Issue,” listing off and officially crowning the It Girls of New York City over the years in print. All of them were whitish and tiny. I’d just finished it myself, researching writers I wanted to emulate. Her advance was half a million dollars. I tried to imagine that kind of money.

I liked being in their bedrooms—my girlfriends, these party girls—when they weren’t. Because...I was a freak. It was like looking through windows, or old Facebook posts, or watching reality TV, or people-watching or—whatever. I read their rooms the same way I read chronicles of party girls. I was sooo Prozac Nation.

I compared it to my own basement bedroom under Moot Bar—fairy lights, turquoise velvet, voodoo dolls, old photographs. If my room had a scent, it would’ve been stale weed, Nag Champa, vanilla. I was being so weird about all of this—so stupid and rigid and caring so much. I poured the cat’s food into her little bowl and told her goodbye.

Peyton Gatewood is an All-American Dallas/NYC girl. She lives on instagram as @funkydelphi where she posts snippets of her upcoming memoir, “The Fool,” along with thot images.