It’s 3 p.m…in the Passenger Seat
Welcome to “It’s 3 p.m. at…” a new column here at Very Famous Inc. where we report on that late afternoon hour when the day has been determined in one way or another. It’s sort of the opposite of the witching hour, a hazy limbo where you just want to sit and stare somewhere. We’re doing just that — sitting and staring somewhere.
According to the suspiciously ebullient radio host, it is nineteen degrees outside. If it’s cold, I don’t feel it. I’m in the passenger seat of my father’s car as we drive towards the grocery store. Bay Parkway flashes past us in smears of rapid browns. A great, white sun blears over our heads as though God were pointing a flashlight into a closet he doesn’t remember opening. I’m wearing a black coat I bought three years ago. One of the buttons is broken. What lives I’ve lived in this cotton. Last night, I fell asleep to a video of Lorry Hill 1 detailing the possible plastic surgeries Kylie Kardashian has had. Lorry says she thinks Kylie had her first surgery – a possible rhinoplasty – at seventeen. This makes me sad. Kylie, pop culture savant. Martyr of false goods. How much she has given over for the camera she has made us out to be. How that camera never stops flashing. What does it feel like to wake up and see that you’ve been revised? And that you were the one who has done it? These ideas make me nervous. We pass a Harbor Motor Inn. I hurry to take a picture. What a beautiful sight! From the menacing orange font to the odd, random placement of the building itself alongside a DMV and facing the road upon which the onslaught of minivans and traffic is endless. A poster on the building reads: “Now Offering DIRECTV”. But what really draws me in is the heart-shaped inflatable out on the lawn. The heart has little white wings. Valentine’s Day is exactly a month away. But Harbor Motor Inn 2 wants to cover all the bases. Harbor Motor Inn is with it. I make a grocery list in my head as the radio host, who has not lost his enthusiasm for one moment, warns about the incoming snowstorm heading along the East Coast this weekend. Monday could mean frigid temperatures and heavy snowfall. Arugula, avocados and a possible ten degrees. New York feels most like New York when it has snowed overnight as you slept and dreamt wonderful dreams of syrup and grandfather clocks. I can’t stop thinking about the mechanisms of plastic surgery – how clean-cut (ha) the after photos are yet how violent the procedures remain. A sliced septum. The shaving down of unwanted, stubborn cartilage. Every few blocks, there is an American flag waving in the cold, brittle wind. It is three in the afternoon. And you can go anywhere. You can stay overnight. You can post yourself online. You can fall asleep with the television on. But there is no escaping your pulse. And your beaming, hideous night light of a soul.
1 Lorry Hill is so beautiful. I love the way she speaks, in the exact grin-and-bear-it voice in which a young, easily startled teenager gives presentations to a class drowning in ennui.
2 When I got home, I googled the Harbor Motor Inn. It is a two-star hotel with fifty-six rooms and free parking. One of the reviews from a man named Jay read: It’s always good when i come into town. I thought this was nice. I thought it had rhythm. Another reviewer posted a photo of a table in one of the rooms, the TV playing what is undoubtedly Judge Judy overhead. The room is filled with the kind of orange light you can only get at hotels.
Jasmine Ledesma lives in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared or is set to appear in places like Borderlands, Vice, Rattle and [PANK] among others. Her work was also nominated for both Best of The Net and the Pushcart Prize in 2020. She was recently awarded a fellowship with Brooklyn Poets.
February 9, 2022
In "Features"
