Escaping into someone else's world

Enter my cave.

LIFE IS A LOT RIGHT NOW. I went to Melbourne once. And it was the hottest day they had that year. It was like 45 degrees. Hammy was extremely chubby and sweaty and pink. He was so overwhelmed by the heat. Eddie was terrified of the trams and cried silently as we carried him. His legs stuck to my top which stuck to my chest.

We were outside only half an hour before we gave up. The noise. The heat. The smell of sweat and the smoke from fires. It was just too much.

That’s what life feels like right now. Too much. A friend told me about this gross doctor who runs purity camps for girls just out of Wellington. You know the full on Marry Your Dad Until He Gives You To Some Guy At The Church type. And I just looked at it and thought yes, I want to write about this but right now? NO. It’s too much.

Instead - let’s talk about THIS LADY who had sun-powered orgasms in a cave. This lady’s experience is extremely relatable because whomst among us has not desired to escape to a Californian commune “armed with only a solar charger, a vibrator and some marijuana gummy bears”?

The entire first-person essay is fantastic in a what the actual fuck kind of way:

Exhibit A: “In June 2020, I visited a man called Garth, who lives in a tipi, and said that I’d like to move into one of his caves, “because I want to conquer my fear of spiders”. - I mean?! What have we done to be blessed with this?

TELL ME EVERYTHING ABOUT GARTH solar-powered vibrator lady! Tell me!

Garth’s father bought him 640 acres of California’s Mojave Desert for $140,000 in 1980! He belonged to a niche Christian organisation! He also used to be a Mormon! Gath likes boiled and pureed flank steak! Garth’s ethos is: “Live simple. It makes life a lot easier.” I feel like maybe it is easier to live simply if you have 640 acres of California free-hold but heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey this isn’t about me.

Anyway, back to Stephanie AKA the cave lady, she was on a “vision quest” in the Pyrenees (don’t tell me you haven’t been on a vision quest in the Pyrenees?) and she found out she was afraid of spiders. Something you think you’d work out before you got into a cave? Or into the Pyrenees, for that matter?

Stephanie says that in “Shamanic thinking” fear of spiders actually means you’re not afraid of spiders you’re afraid of “the feminine (the dark, the damp, the hidden)”.

They mean vaginas, right? Imagine describing a vagina as dark and damp (I mean maybe it’s dark - but does it need a light-switch? You’re not moving in there?) Is damp really the word you’d use? It’s so negative? Would you really describe a vagina as hidden? I mean, I know exactly how to get to a vagina - I don’t need a map.

Anyway, I’m on a tangent. Stephanie had an epiphany in her cave (not that cave). She said: “It struck me that fear of spiders was weird. Why aren’t we afraid of, say, rabbits?”

Uh..spiders bite you. Spiders can kill you. They have eight legs. Bunnies are soft. And they have cute feet. Are you genuinely unsure of why we fear one and not the other?

She answers her rhetorical question with “Whatever”. I can only agree wholeheartedly.

Did you know Stephanie used to be the society editor of Harper’s Bazaar? She “flew way too close to the dazzling flame!” She wrote a memoir about masturbation!?

The essay ends with her friend telling her maybe it’s OK for her to not like spiders?? Anyway, what a joy.

She looks absolutely exactly how I would think a woman who wrote a memoir about wanking and now lives in a cave would look. And I mean that as a compliment.

Here’s another great article in the series of THIS IS HOW PEOPLE LIVE??!!

Inside Lena Dunham’s Whimsical, Whirlwind London Wedding

Yes. Yes. Yes. Lena Dunham married Peruvian-British musician Luis Felber AKA Attawalpa AKA Lu. Here are my FAVOURITE pieces of intel.

• The wedding was organised by “gallerist Amanda Wilkinson’s child, Donna” and their partner Jacob Mallinson Bird. Donna’s name isn’t actually gallerist Amanda Wilkinson’s child Donna. It’s actually Donna Marcus Duke. Almost everyone involved in this wedding goes by three names. Except Taylor Swift who was a bridesmaid. I am particularly fond of “Honey Kinney Ross” and “Autumn de Wilde”.

• The guest list was hard and it “undulated” a lot. But the plus side was that Lena Dunham realised Covid is still a thing! “Hearing from a wedding guest that they can’t make it because they have COVID is a great reminder that this is still going on”.

• Lu’s “best human” smuggled the groomsmen a plate of smoked meat.

• “While Lu was getting ready with his best man/musical partner, Matt Allchin, he was filling his room with palo santo vibes.”

• Their venue wasn’t only legally equipped for weddings. It was also “emotionally equipped for weddings”.

• The cakes were from a place that approaches baking from a “very spiritual and literary perspective”.

• There was a Kama Sutra cake with figs and jams.

• There was social distancing so don’t worry:

  

• Lena wore three dresses, but Lu stayed in his blue suede suit. Sort of. “For the last bit, I took the Bode shirt off and just played with the band in my custom suit, with my guitar on my naked chest”.

Happy wedding you crazy kids!

Genuinely, those two stories have given me joy. There’s something about remembering that other people live in entirely different worlds to me that brings me great comfort.

It’s like the obsession I had with #BamaRush or #RushTalk videos on TikTok.

If that sentence makes no sense to you - HI, I’M OLD TOO! Basically, they’re hashtags used to group videos from sorority pledges from the University of Alabama on TikTok. I usually have zero interest in so-called American “culture” but I find these Rush videos fascinating.

It’s like these people are speaking an entirely different language to us - and the layers of me not understanding what is going on, is kind of weirdly thrilling.

I love the culture shock of first-person essays of rich hippies and bespoke weddings and white girls chanting (BAMA! BAMA!).

I have always been fascinated by cults and conformity and I’m hardly alone in my obsessions. Lena Dunham’s wedding will probably be everywhere by the time I share this. The Cave Lady is on the top 10 most read Guardian stories right now. And some of the Bama Rush videos have been viewed more than 80 million times.

Maybe the appeal is that in these fucked up times it helps to know that we can never truly understand why people do the things they do. I feel like we all spend such a significant amount of time just trying to work out why our fellow humans are acting in such bizarre, brutal, selfish, and awful ways. And usually, it’s overwhelming. You feel like a part of you is splitting open trying to reconcile why things are the way they are.

We are all yearning for: low-stakes weird. It feels harmless to mock these people because these are people who society can’t touch normally. These 30 second clips or earnest essays take us to some bizarro world so far from our current reality. We can laugh at the ridiculousness of it without feeling terribly depressed by it all.

Because who could fault anyone for wanting to crawl into bed and hide from the too muchness of it all?

I read, I donate, I protest, I try. And it’s never enough. I’ve never felt so helpless as I have this year.

We float through this world knowing that everything we touched is bruised and there’s so much hurt everywhere. And to feel it all, it’s so much.

So, we pick up our phones and transport for a few minutes to Bama and wonder what it would be like to be Mickaela-Rae whose biggest problem is whether Kapa Delta will choose her. Wonder what it would be like to say your third wedding dress was painted with an image of your face on it while keeping a straight face. Wonder what it would be like to say you can’t work out why people are questioning why you live in a literal cave.

Imagine your greatest challenge is being Madeseyn Ayn who must choose what white dress will appeal to the sorority judges. Imagine you are Lena’s friend Yorkie Kingston Jortsesen who had to somehow ensure the wedding flowers were all hand dyed. Imagine you are Kevin an orthodontist who lives in the dessert now and is friends with a rattlesnake.

Imagine something else. And escape into the dark, damp vagina of your mind.

Love EM x