Neon Webs
Nothing and then something. Things coming out of the water. Growing legs. Walking with headphones on, listening to hyperpop. Listening to Malaysian baseball metal. Temu t-shirt that says ‘CRITICAL THINKER.’ Nutrient enhanced flavoured water paired with beef, cheese, and bacon pie. Guided meditation on YouTube by a girl who spent six months in a monastery. The same dust and stuff as there always was, rearranged and uploaded to the internet in neon webs.
My friend has a finsta with 54 followers (@yung_hikikomori). In the bio, it says “Thisistherealme”. There are 790 posts, dating back to January 10, 2021. Cats, family photos, sushi, stockings, a weird chair, a meme that says “the joker is nothing but a party clown to me”, blue Takis, a Hunter Biden mirror selfie, a 100,000 year old Paleolithic stone tool, an empty bowling alley. She posted a picture of me on it once, holding a stack of 50 dollar bills in front of my face. Sometimes when we talk in person we end up staring mutely at each other, making our eyes big and then small and then big again.
I was in bed, doom scrolling, and eating strawberries when @didion_sunglasses posted a collage on her story with pictures of her mum. Her mum as a young girl, smiling in pigtails. Her as a teenager, standing against a brick wall. As a twenty-something-er, backpacking through Rome. A new mum and her baby in a dark living room. The caption was: “I’ve finally come to terms with my Freudian fate… Happy birthday mum, I love you” (white heart emoji<3 – pink heart emoji<3). Underneath that, a sparkly, pink Hello Kitty .gif. There was no one tagged. Her mum probably doesn’t have an Instagram. Part of me thought “who is this for?”, but I still considered responding. Maybe with something like “Aww I feel the same way about my mum!” (white heart emoji<3 – double-sword emoji<3). I couldn’t be bothered to type out the message though, so I just liked it instead.
I used to follow a meth user from Adelaide called @Puppyloerd until his account got deleted. He had a beautiful, possum-like face that was covered in tattoos; a Star of David in the middle of his forehead, barbed wire crowning his hairline, and whiskers on either side of his nose. I have a few posts of his screenshotted in my camera roll. One of them is a photo of a page in his journal where he wrote “I get into online feuds and bcos I’m highly intelligent wiv words and have a sharp sense of humour the opps get epic pwnd and end up deleting their comments and blocking me :)”. Next to his black Sharpie scrawl is a drawing of a dog baring its teeth that sort of looks more like a sea lion. I saved another one he did of Jesus riding a donkey, titled “The Underwhelming Entry of Jesus of Nazareth”. He once made a post about an NDIS trip to Adelaide Zoo with his support worker where he said the animals were “demented from being institutionalised”, pacing in circles around 10 by 10 cages, and “not even interested in sex”. He described a moment where a zoo worker threw a platter of dried lettuce and grain into the iguana enclosure, yelling ‘Ziggy Star!’, “as if these prehistoric reptiles actually feel an affectionate first name basis with her, a swine”. I wondered if he would feel the same way about me, admiring him through a screen when I would probably cross the street to avoid him in the wild.
We tripped at the beach on a warm day in August. My body went numb in the water as I swam out to the net. As I was drying myself off with my skirt, she asked me to take a photo of her. I could barely see the phone screen in my hands with the sun shining down on me, reflecting off the glass and the water. I pressed the button and took a dozen frames of her silhouette as she shifted poses. While she flicked through the pictures, I went for a walk to fill our water bottles up, feigning dehydration as an excuse to be by myself for a minute. When I got back, she was face-tuning the photos I’d just taken of her. Zooming in on pimples, stretch marks, cellulite. Normal stuff that looks more intense when you’re high. She tucked her phone away when she saw me looking. I didn’t say anything. It got worse when we went back to her house. A lot of looking in mirrors and trying to stop looking in mirrors. I didn’t realise I was spiralling until I’d already lost control. We took a shower together and she asked why my skin was turning so red. I said it happens all the time, don’t worry about it. She said no like I’m actually worried you need like medical help. I looked down at my hands and they were glowing. Whatever.
Sometimes I want to delete my account, but then I think about all the people I’d be leaving behind. No more boys sending me reels of men in foreign countries building swimming pools, or building automaton hands from scrap metal. No more progress pics from the girl I played soccer with in primary school who became a bodybuilder. And what about the guy I met at a rave who got my Instagram after I complimented his Underworld t-shirt that said “I’m invisible I’m invisible I’m invisible”? He posts about being suicidal at 4am every second Saturday when he’s coming down on the walk home through Marrickille. I haven’t responded to him yet but what if he needs my help one day?
I like looking at faces. I want to look into your eyes without you looking back at mine. Just give me a second to take all of you in. To imagine what your parents look like. To imagine what you’d look like as the opposite gender, as a 90-year-old, as a morbidly obese person, or a skeleton. Use a filter so I don’t have to imagine. Just don’t use the elf one because that’s my favourite and I want to keep it for myself. I like the way it raises my cheekbones, widens my eyes, sprays perfect freckles over my nose. I wish I looked like that all the time.
Sometimes I wish I had a million followers. I want people to listen to the songs I post. To think about the lyrics and how they might relate to me. Relate to me!!! So I can figure out who I am. I’ve been paying a girl from Philadelphia $16.50 a month to teach me how to manifest. She says I can attract whatever I want if I just have faith and meditate. To recognise beauty is the fruition of good karma. It is within me. I hear running water in the background of her recording.
I feel doomed. I can’t remember the last time I went to the park. I wish to express the divine fully and completely. I feel like I don’t have enough time. My last to-do list said: Eat tuna salad, Edit reels, Call Centrelink. I don’t know how to let go. I get embarrassed when I blush. I don’t know what my mum does all day. I fantasise about melting into everything. Some things look like they taste good but that doesn’t mean you should eat them. Like Tide Pods. Like snow.