Julia Fox Isn’t a Writer

Someone made the mistake of referring to her as such - as a writer - on Twitter
Julia Fox went on a date and wrote an email to Interview magazine abt it

I didn’t see much art in that

My new husband was a beautiful yeller
But he wasn’t anybody Interview magazine wanted to photograph

On Xmas Eve I sat in my car in his driveway 45 minutes
Waiting for him to come out 

He stood in the door, his foot propping it open,
Smoking cigarettes and thumbing his phone instead

It was ten thirty, ten forty five, eleven, eleven fifteen …

It was almost Xmas morning by the time I called my husband from the car on my cellphone:
“Please come help me, I have to pee”

After I peed we argued forty five more minutes over who
had been responsible

there weren’t any Balenciaga clothes for me to try on
the house was 900 square feet;
We parked in the drive

We’d been married just under two months
Things were going well
Or not well
Depending on how you looked at them

I didn’t like looking – I knew it was all dependent on how much Adderall he was snorting
I tried not to look

Someone on twitter said Julia Fox was an artist because she was
Writing about her experience as it happened; “Genius”

That same person’s husband had recently texted me and asked me to call him
In order to get me to stop writing about my experiences as they happened

I just wanted to be a genius
I just wanted to be post alt lit

I didn’t reply to the text; didn’t make the call

I’d been wearing a Balenciaga dress the night her husband propped himself
Over my mouth two years earlier in a hotel room in -----

I hadn’t notified Interview magazine abt it
I hadn’t tweeted abt it either
I wasn’t post alt lit
Or a genius

I bought my own Balenciaga dresses
I didn’t snort Adderall

On Xmas evening my new husband yelled again
He bellowed beautifully at me from the top bunk of his son’s bed
I left his house at 11:30 pm, almost 24 hours to the minute I’d left my car
The night before

I drove the hour home, my dog in a crate in the back,
Drank and smoked cigarettes in the basement
Same shit, different husband

No one from Interview magazine wanted to interview me

This is my art.
 

 

 

BIG DICK ENERGY

Three months later we are in a metro park north of Detroit
Me in my REI snowpants, you in garments you normally reserve for hunting
Shuffling over the ice, hand in hand, to inspect what you tell me are muskrat dams

You say honey this and honey that
Pulling me forward, crouching us down beside the twigs
And my eyes are filled w hearts
My brain done remembering 
Only here in the present metropark moment w you
My (third) husband 

And no one understands 
I don’t even try to explain

Birds land on our hands,
Palms flat and raised uncomfortably above our heads
To peck at the seed that cost a quarter from the machine they installed
After realizing so many ppl were bringing seed from home in plastic baggies

Later this week I will watch as a woman in a popular Netflix show tells the show’s protagonist:
“It takes on average five tries for a woman to leave for good.” 

I will already have leased a house in Ohio at this point

Earlier this morning, before driving to the metropark in my VW
(“Not a domestic automobile in the lot,” you are fond of noting outside Ann Arbor restaurants and convenience stores)
We fucked twice in my bed
You’d left work early
Your partner Jazz covering for you as you cover for him when he leaves the plant to go to the casino every other morning …

Six a.m., seven

Another reminder you can leave at any time
Go to someone else’s house, trailer, manufactured home, bed
In Romeo or wherever (not Ann Arbor)

After you aborted our honeymoon 
Flew back to DTW two days in, in January
I told myself, “                     “!

Instead, we are making masks out of avocado and coconut oil
In my kitchen
gigglingly spreading them over each other’s faces
Your hair in a tiny elastic band atop your head

Later I’ll cut it in my bathroom
Snipping pieces near your ear, on top,
Leaving the back long like a country singer’s
Like you want it

Big dick energy

We’ll dance to David Bowie and Chumbawamba and The Proclaimers
In my bathroom
Fuck again before falling asleep, me spooning you after your arm
Starts to ache, holding me

I won’t bother wondering now if I’ll give you the address of the house I leased in Ohio
Or the number to the burner phone I bought when I decided never again to talk to you

I’ll just sleep
And at five a.m. when your alarm goes off
I’ll feel the old pain of parting
Of wondering where you’re leaving for
To the plant in Sterling Heights
Or a double wide in Romeo

It’s this pain, the familiar one, that is sending me to Ohio
My home state
A buckeye for luck forever in my purse

The state outline on a friend’s neck.

 

 

IG Poem

I don’t need to host a sex party or get butt implants to show you my ass on Instagram

I can’t remember ever having seen Bukowski’s ass
Though I’ve seen Madonna’s plenty of times
In her Sex book she wrote abt fucking a teenager -
Fiction, but still

(art should make you cringe sometimes)

Lolita is fiction …
Saul Stories is fiction.

(It is a common misconception there is sex in Saul Stories)

We are all poets
In a way; those of us
Who jot words
On computers
Show our asses online and in art books and so forth

We are all porn stars,
Sex workers –
Anyone identifying as female
Anyone identifying as having genitalia, a creative mind,
A heart.

Bukowski, Madonna, Kanye

Anyone who needs tips on blowjobs
My husband says I need to use more saliva
Am I the only one who finds drooling antifeminist?
Maybe I’m just too old to care

Why stop now?

My last two IG poems garnered the ire of two men
And, indirectly, a woman

I think that bodes well - or whatever
For my ‘art’

If my husband has to look like someone
I’m glad it’s Nicolas Cage

For the record:
I’m not trying to make anyone seem like a cuck
Or anything
here

That’s never been what this is abt

 

GEARHEADS
 
I spend the morning googling your ex instead of writing
I find some old modeling shots
The cover of some auto magazine, 2004
American flag bikini, neon green American lowrider truck
 
This must have been before her breast augmentation surgery
Her breasts just look natural, nice
 
“To tell you the truth, I don’t really like fake tits,” you tell me
All your lies start out the same  –
“To tell you the truth, …”
 
I find her Linked in
Updated to reflect the pandemic
Updated to note the death of  both of her parents, back to back,
cancer
 
I study the interview she gave the auto magazine when she was twenty-three
Two years younger than my daughter now
 
What makes your motor rev?
Big muscles!
What makes you put on the brakes?
Lying!
 
I think abt our first date,
You showing me one of the pictures of her
In her bikini, on your phone;
you telling me she is a liar, you telling me more than I want to know
abt auto shows, liars
 
I find her Instagram, which hasn’t been updated in years
There you are in 2012, shirtless, holding a cat
 
“To tell you the truth, I can’t stand cats!”
 
Shirtless, on a couch
Smiling; next to her, on a boat,
Holding up a fish,
Matching sunglasses
 
Sometime between our wedding day, Halloween, and Christmas,
Your son says to me, “I don’t think my mom likes you”
 
I still have the text she sent me October 20th, saved on my phone:
“And you can call me, I’m actually a very nice person!”
 
I remember years ago wanting to write a novel about a young woman
Who lived in Detroit and modeled at auto shows
 
I remember I was going to go to auto shows
To do “research”
 
I could have just talked to your ex
I could have talked to you
 
Now you tell me everything I never wanted to know,
Abt auto shows, abt your ex,
“research” I no longer need (I’m not writing that novel now, or am i?)
 
She flips you off when we go to pick up your kid
Her smoking on the deck outside her trailer,
You smoking as you make your way around the car with your kid
“Oh, fuck me?” you say to yourself as you get in the car. “Okay.”
 
And I know there is more than one way to say I love you;
more than one way to flirt w your ex. 

 

 

Shitty Emails

professional writing is not about self-expression, you said
you told me this in 2020
I didn’t read the email until almost 2022

I always procrastinate reading shitty emails (sorry, dude!)

who ever said anything abt professional writing tho anyway

another friend said, professional writing is an oxymoron

I never claimed to be a professional writer
I don’t know who you think you are talking to
That’s not what any of this is abt

Sorry If I’m expressing myself
Madonna told me to years ago
All the way back in 1989

Megan Boyle wrote Liveblog sorta this way
Maybe you don’t think Megan Boyle is a professional writer either
Maybe you’re the only one making any $$$ around here, bro