Famous People #48: She loves Craigslist!
Kaitlyn: “I think when I hit my four year anniversary of living in New York I’m going to start telling people I went to Cornell,” Tamar told us.
It was in the basement of the confusingly-named Lower East Side bar Arlene’s Grocery, which is just one of those places you end up going eventually if any of the people you love are trying to play guitar and sing about websites. I don’t know why Tamar decided this but I know we don’t speak of her actual alma mater (for good reason), and that the room we were in had so many Cornell alumni in it that it probably just makes sense — conversational expediency-wise. I think what I liked best about the statement is that there’s almost nothing more embarrassing than graduating from Cornell, a school with a name that you can say only three times before you’re technically referencing The Office. She’s willing to put up with the humiliation in exchange for cutting out a minor time-waster and paving a smoother road to intimacy with the assorted Llenroc boys and girlfriends of Llenroc boys we so often come into contact with.
Asked about the specificity of the four-year anniversary, Tamar pumped one fist and said “It’s my graduation!”
Okay, so that’s settled.
James and Sam’s band is of course called Golf Lexapro, and is very famous to me. As I have said many times before, if the One Direction girls are looking to elevate some new boys to fame just to keep the muscle active they are absolutely the ones. James loves Four!
When we got there I saw that James was selling t-shirts to two young women and got very excited, thinking, oh my, it’s happening! Everything will be alright! These elegant songs about using credit cards and getting old will have 1 billion streams on Spotify and we’ll never talk about dreams in the abstract ever again! This is where the fact that I lost my glasses on a first grade camping trip and convinced my parents not to replace them does not come in handy, because it wasn’t until many minutes later that I realized one of the women was James’ girlfriend and the other was a friend of James’ girlfriend. This is not to say that Golf Lexapro doesn’t have fans, which it of course does, more and more every day! Only that the One Direction phenomenon isn’t happening yet and I need an eye exam.
In my defense, the last time I’d seen Sarah was in an upstate Wegmans in February 2016 while I was in the middle of a ten month long panic attack about whether to break up with my college boyfriend, who was even younger than I was, which was so young I don’t even want to think about it. Also why was James charging his own girlfriend for a t-shirt!
Anyway, the famous band Golf Lexapro announced a song called “Craigslist” and Tamar cheered very loudly in the empty space before it started. “She loves Craigslist!” I explained, and everyone understood. Stephanie said to me “This is our song!” because we met on Craigslist. I was touched but I’ll have to double-check the lyrics to verify whether that’s appropriate.
There was a song called “WebMD” and a song called “Toblerone.” There was of course the cover of “Be My Baby” that has buoyed my dumb little heart and kept it above water for close to three years at this point. Near the end, James said something about tipping the bartender because “good tippers are good lovers” and Rachel and I looked at each other like “…Not what we want our dad to talk about in public.”
Oh yes, Rachel was there and she sent me a Google calendar invite for dinner with her and James exactly one month from today. She is a busy professional woman who has an office and clients. I hadn’t seen her since Valentine’s Day. I teared up at the smell of her hair, and told her I just don’t know what to do. Anybody who actively wants to be my boyfriend makes me sick. Anybody who doesn’t text me back after a second date is my husband. She crouched into a plié and tucked her chin into her neck, which is how she dances. She was right!
We wandered out onto Stanton Street. Tamar pointed out a block where she had some painful but ultimately edifying experiences. I pointed out a corner where I’d thrown a temper tantrum in front of my parents — I don’t think this was more than four months ago. We walked back the way we came and stopped in the same McDonalds we’d stopped in before. Everybody had a cheeseburger! Except Katie, who ordered one, but was handed a hamburger, and when she brought it back up to the counter and asked for cheese, the woman took it, said yes, walked away for a minute, came back, and handed her the very same hamburger.
I played the new Taylor Swift song “I Think He Knows” on my phone while we waited for the F train and Stephanie worried aloud about me dancing in the yellow strip. But there was nothing to be done — I was riding too high on the red meat and my new tattoo of a thigh bone. “You know what,” I’d texted Tamar earlier in the day, “Taylor is the most important musician of my life.”
I forget it sometimes, or lie about it, but it’s true. She can’t help herself and neither can I! Some of these other pop stars are too relaxed even when they’re pretending to be on edge. When Taylor does her own corny scream-harmonies, your fingers simply itch to tweet “I felt that.” I find it frustrating that she talks about her “feminism” now in such simplistic terms — as if anybody cares about her getting her money or scolding music industry men — when the most important thing she did for women was write those diary songs, which changed my life, erased the shame of blogging and thinking circular thoughts. It’s so dumb to walk around the Lower East Side playing Taylor Swift’s seventh studio album out of your phone speakers for your own enjoyment and yet it feels really good and rude to me, like sucking your thumb in an all-hands meeting.
I’m saying I’m sick of everybody acting like everything has to be cool or it’s not worth it. We don’t have time for that anymore and even the alt girls are going to brunch these days. The foibles are crucial to the charisma. The cringe is part of the thing too. Love is camp! And what, other than graduating from Cornell University, is more embarrassing than feeling strongly about another person? If someone turned your stupid iMessages into pop songs you’d want to die, but Taylor Swift has no self-consciousness whatsoever and that is her gift, which you and I are jealous of.
Anyway, Stephanie bought a Golf Lexapro t-shirt and wore it around the house all day today. We have no choice but to stan!