The song 26 by Paramore is something I’ve been listening to for years in anticipation of what this age might bring for me.
It’s the age my parents got married, the age I thought I’d get married. 25 felt like teetering on either side of the 20s, and I’m enjoying a gentle descent into the falling action of the hellscape of my late 20s.
I started the year off on a bad omen. I’d planned for a long distance lover to come visit me for New Years, but the distance became more palpable when we were in the same place. Right before she arrived, she told me she’d been seeing someone else. It wasn’t anything serious and we lived in different countries. What, did I think, we’d seriously date? It wasn’t like I’d fantasized about my life with her in the UK already, imagined what our shared apartment in East London would look like, how our decor styles could mesh, how I’d tell my roommates that I was breaking our lease to pursue the only great thing in life: love. They would have to understand.
At my New Year’s party, I saw her texting her new girl right in front of me. I hated this ethical non-monogamy bullshit, whatever happened to hiding things? We kissed at midnight, mostly because the flight was so expensive. I didn’t care that I was mad at her, at 25 I thought I would rather be kissed half-heartedly than not kissed at all. At 26, I’m choosing to not be kissed at all.
After getting dumped in British, I did some pondering. When I say pondering, I mean crying in the bathtub. I also started working as a nanny. On the third day of my job, I decided to get back in the game. I had a crush on someone I briefly met at a poetry reading, maybe something would happen.
I put on my jeans, a sweater from an ex-lover, no makeup, and biked to a poetry reading she’d invited me to. She was also a pisces, had a weird gay haircut and a very magnetic energy—a confidence and charisma I wanted to be around. The poetry reading was packed and weird yet sort of cool. I read a piece of my own about my British lover, a poem called “american girl doll”, and got some laughs. She read off a massive scroll. Everyone there had inside jokes, I was on the outside, I wanted to be in. Someone took a photo of me. Afterwards, I wanted her attention. I didn’t realize it, but the reading was at her house. I asked for a tour. She showed me her room. Stuff everywhere. I picked things up. I put them down.
I looked around. There were lighters, cigarettes, loose tobacco, canvases, dirty paint brushes, dust bunnies, braids of hers she’d cut off and attached to skulls, glittery stickers of dinosaurs. I asked if I could have one.
“Take the lot,” she said. It looked like my room if I’d been unmedicated. I was fascinated, a little scared. We sat on the hardwood floor. We talked.
She told me about her paintings. Her art. I saw a painting with horses. I told her I had a horse themed kitchen. Over 30 horse items. The more you look, the more you see. In the painting, there were two red horses, two blue ones, one yellow. She told me everyone was a red or a blue horse. She asked if I wanted to be a yellow horse. To be honest, I liked the blue ones. She said men paid her for her art. We talked about poetry while she nursed a tall boy.
She asked if I wanted to hook up or work together. I said work. She decided we were going to hook up.
She kissed me, and at first I was impressed with how forward she was. She wrestled me all over the floor and I couldn’t tell if we were playing or fighting. I felt confused– did I want this? She asked if I was really gay, the last time a woman had made me cum, and over and over asking me what I wanted, while ignoring my reply which was to get off the hardwood floor.
She asked if I knew how beautiful I was, that I was the kind of beautiful men invaded countries for. She asked if I was even into this. She pushed and pulled me. She straddled me and smoked a cigarette in my face. I hate cigarettes. She ashed it on her tall boy. I don’t drink, I haven’t for four years. She smelled like a fraternity. She put noise canceling headphones on my ears and played a scary song. She went to the bathroom and I texted my friend Zoe. I’m having the weirdest experience right now.
She threw my jeans at me and before leaving her own house, she gave me the horse painting: “Horse Parade- for Brooke” she scribbled on the back as she slurred her words. I took a sheet of the glittery dinosaur stickers. I called Zoe on the bike ride home. Do you want to be a yellow horse? The canvas flailed under my arm in the mild winter wind and I tried balancing on my bike while simultaneously looking over my shoulder. It felt like she was everywhere. Through my Airpods Zoe asked if I had a safe way to get home. Wobbling side to side, I laughed.
As a comedian, I see every experience through a lens of the absurd, thank god these crazy things happen to me so I can talk about them on stage. I recounted the details to her: the cigarette, the headphones, the wrestling, the canvas, the stickers. How bizarre. I started to piece together my next set in my head, but instead of the punchlines coming, I started to have the realization that what happened wasn’t funny at all, and it wasn’t weird, it was just wrong. Take the lot.
I crawled into bed on the phone and began dissociating, I couldn’t hear Zoe anymore I could just hear the voices of every woman who’d hurt me. Are you actually gay? I told Zoe I had to go and as soon as I hung up I couldn’t stop sobbing. I finally understood what they meant by the body keeping the score.
I woke up to an Instagram post of a photo of me reading my poem, american girl doll. I get photographed so much for comedy shows, street photographers in Manhattan astonished at my cartoonish aesthetic. I have blue hair, I love to wear bright colors, big tutus, clogs, painted boots, outfits that make tourists stop me on the streets and ask for photos, as if I’m a character from a children’s show they haven’t seen.
My dad is also a photographer, partially by profession, but mostly by passion. He and my mom own a small women’s clothing business, and for as long as I can remember my dad has done all the photos for it, working on concepts for the latest collection. I’ve met all these models. I have rummaged through bins of jewelry, size 9 shoes (models are tall and have big feet), and walked barefoot on the white studio floor so as not to drag footprints. My dad also obsessively photographed us as children, often to the point of annoyance. I felt awkward, I didn’t feel like I looked like these models at all. I remember standing next to them and feeling so tiny, more like a footstool than a beautiful girl. I’d don sweatpants to set and make funny faces to my dad when he’d turn around and snap some pictures of me and my friends for fun. I had dreams of being a hairstylist and makeup artist when I grew up. I live this dream when I dye my roommate’s hair in our bathroom and do my makeup for shows. People asked if I would ever model for my parents clothes, to which I smartly would reply “I’m not tall enough, I don’t have the right measurements.” I stopped growing when I hit 5’5” and developed one A-cup breast, and wasn’t even small enough to be a flyer on the cheer squad. Always a bottom.
I got so used to being photographed, I never even really thought about trying to look pretty. My dad took photos of us all the time. I was never camera ready, I was just on camera. It was like the lens was an extension of my dad’s eyes, and that’s how he saw us. I remember walking by Pier 39 in San Francisco as a kid on a family trip into the city from the suburbs. My dad shot us dramatically from across the street with his huge camera that looked like an old fashioned cannon, ironically a Canon. People stared at us trying to figure out who we were, and why this paparazzi was following us. I felt embarrassed and also cool. Like a celebrity halfheartedly swatting the paparazzi away like flies. We watched the seals clap and ate clam chowder out of bread bowls in Gap sweatshirts and when we got annoyed about the obsessive photos my dad said we’d be glad to have them when we were older—an idea we always rejected. Something I took for granted was him capturing our reality, our emotion. It wasn’t a photo shoot, we weren’t products, or models. As said in Ugly Betty “models are like hangers, and no one wants a fat hanger”. But when I was a kid, I was allowed to be whatever I wanted. My dad would keep the cameras rolling no matter what. There’s an infamous photo of me having a meltdown in Lake Tahoe over god knows what, and it made me miss having someone authentically capturing me, instead of this idea of who I am, this “brand”. I looked at this photo of me reading my poem with the same innocence of the photos of me as a child. If only she knew what was coming.
I didn’t stop crying for about two days. I disassembled my bed frame, fearing it was bad luck. I slept on the floor and had someone from the internet pick up the bones of the bed frame.
I had to call out of work on my fourth day at the job, but when something like that happens you just have to abandon this idea of being good. I don’t care about being good, I want to feel good, and I felt awful. I spent a good two months crying in the bath tub, and also got extremely sick. I noticed a bruise the size of a grape on my wrist. I drank Emergen-C packets every day but nothing would wash it away. For the first time, going out to events felt completely unbearable. I stopped doing stand up.
In a stretch where I hadn’t left the house at all - or even showered - I was booked on a new material show called Ruff Around at Fiction Bar. I read some poetry, which felt cathartic. I didn’t share anything about what had happened, even though as a comedian it’s my instinct to talk about what happened right after it did. I wore a shirt with horses on it, the jeans she threw at me. I did really well. Afterward, I was booked to read 30 minutes of poetry at a dinner party in lower Manhattan. I felt nervous going into a stranger’s house, but they were paying me $200. I joked with myself, I’m the only poet in this town making money. It was 6 people with inexplicable wealth and incredible artwork I wasn’t educated enough to appreciate. They were all entangled in some sort of polycule. They played my favorite song at the time, Ones Who Love You by Alvvays, as I walked from the couch to the living room “stage” for my performance. I could see them tearing up while I read. They’d stop me after each poem to tell me their favorite lines. They offered me donuts, I had one with sprinkles. They paid me in cash.
Going back to work was extremely hard, I found myself crying a lot when the kids were focused on the TV or the monkey bars, and I really turned inward. I hate spending time alone and being with my own thoughts, but for once it became the only thing I wanted. I couldn’t be around groups. I couldn’t perform, on stage or socially. An old lover came over and held me on my floor mattress while I cried. I had taken for granted this feeling of safety.
I have been a woman for 26 years. I know what to say to someone when they have experienced something like this, “you’re not alone, it’s not your fault, you did nothing wrong, you didn’t deserve this.” Yet all the cliches felt true for me. I wondered if my poem was too suggestive, if I’d been flirting too much, if I shouldn’t have gone alone. I thought of all the ways it could’ve been worse.
People asked me what happened. Part of me still doesn’t know—brief flashes of memories come up in the shower, in my dreams, in a moment of shared intimacy, and I find myself completely catatonic, spaced out, crying. People wanted to know if I’m going to the police. I think about my cousin who was assaulted in college. She went to court. His punishment was to transfer schools. No longer a danger to the state of Georgia, he’s Indiana’s problem now. Ball State University.
I don’t even feel the need to seek vengeance on this person, I just never want to see her again.
I have been in a lot of bad relationships, a few good ones, many horrible jobs, bad friendships, weird living situations—and this felt like a jolt to my system that told me I don’t have to be accepting this treatment. There is a way to demand better. My dad is always telling me to advocate for myself, my therapist tells me to not abandon myself, to live my truth. That night I felt like a complete failure.
A well meaning friend asked me if I “fought back,” and as a girl you imagine what you would do if you were in these horrible situations. I always imagined I’d fight back. But I froze. I didn’t even know what was happening to me was wrong.
I refuse to be treated like that ever again. I’m not saying assault is preventable, but there were flags I ignored—flags, I was in fact, attracted to—because of my past, or my trauma, or whatever. Flags that I now know aren’t funny to ignore, they are genuinely dangerous. There are a lot of things I will do for the plot, but I am finally seeing my life as too valuable to risk. There is enough plot without us trying to intervene. We can live healthy, stable, functional lives and still be artists, still create. I deserve better, and if you’re reading this, you probably do too.
I may not be getting married, or even being close to finding true love, but this made me
realize that I do deserve it—I do deserve love. With the help of my community and the support of my recovery, I can become comfortable with myself, I can be independent, I can have higher standards, and I can fall in love. Even if it doesn’t end in marriage, even if it ends, I deserve love.
As March rolled around, I was searching for a way to celebrate my 26th. I initially wanted to do a huge party, but I couldn’t stand to be in groups. I wanted to do something for myself. I reached out to my friend Alex to shoot some portraits of me for my birthday, and I wanted to do something completely different. I hadn’t been photographed since I’d been assaulted (save one comedy show) and wanted to capture the true essence of where I was at that moment.
I wore black and white, no makeup, and had no props. I usually have my photo taken at these big events, shows, and highlights of my life that display how colorful, fun and awesome I am—but I haven’t been feeling any of these things. My mom told me I don’t need makeup, as mothers do, and I felt inspired by Pamela Anderson not wearing makeup. I wanted to be able to look back at the photos and see what I really looked like at this age. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, and be vulnerable. I felt ugly.
Looking at the photos Alex had taken on his camera, I couldn’t stop noticing the bags under my eyes, the dark circles—the wrinkles my sister advised me to get preventative botox on. I hated the shirt I picked, and even tried on some of his but they didn’t feel like me. I didn’t know how to be me on camera without the tutus, without the clogs and glittery eyeshadow.
When I walked into Alex’s apartment I noticed all the photos on his exposed brick wall. He does mostly concert photography, and I noticed a familiar bald head in headphones and a tie-dye t-shirt and put my finger on the photo. “This is my ex. I was there.” My college boyfriend invited me to his Williamsburg rooftop DJ show when I lived in NY for the summer in 2022, which Alex had shot by coincidence. He has all his press patches saved onto a corkboard by his kitchen. While he made us coffee, I looked at his coffee table books. Inside the photo books were all personalized messages “Alex—you’re the man!” with a rock star looking signature next to it.
We started on the stool. A stool, a white backdrop, a white shirt, black pants, bare face.
He mentioned some people will do a “no makeup makeup look”, to achieve the vibe I’m going
for with the contouring I’m used to seeing. I thought how that defeated the whole point, but
I wished I had done it. I didn’t want to see what I really looked like, I wanted to look pretty in a way I was used to looking pretty. I wore a white button down and told Alex my goal was to look “gay and 26”. I’m confused about how I want to present myself on the day to day, for shows I like being in costume almost in a drag version of myself that’s so over the top—but on the day to day I get confused. Sometimes looking like a gay clown makes me feel dysphoric, but I’m also not really the King Princess type. Being femme is confusing.
I hated the stool. I kept slipping off it and didn’t know what to do with my hands. I kept
looking around frantically for a prop. Alex told me I was being hard on myself. He put on the bisexual lighting and I asked if we could change from pink and blue to pink and orange. More lesbian but also, I just feel sort of over bisexual lighting. It felt slightly too “on-brand.” Alex suggested we move to the floor. The hardwood floor.
I didn’t know what to do with my face, so I asked for directions. He gave some, but when photographers are more focused on the lighting than your feelings, it’s easy to take it personally. I told him I needed major support. He told me I seemed like I was upset with myself. I was. I felt ugly, I felt directionless, I felt like I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. I didn’t expect it to be hard to get out of my comfort zone and be vulnerable.
Somehow getting on stage in a crazy get-up and talking about intimate details of my sex, dating, and family life feels totally normal, but being quiet and honest in front of a camera and one person is impossible.
I laid down on the hardwood floor and I started to feel tears coming. The last time I was on the hardwood floor was the night I was assaulted. I still couldn’t say what I wanted. I felt so out of touch with who I was. I was too afraid to speak up.
So I started to cry. Right on camera, tears streaming down my face, I cried and I cried and I laid on the floor and I closed my eyes and I stopped trying to be pretty and I stopped trying to keep it together and I let it out and Alex didn’t miss a beat, he just started snapping, like my dad would when I was having a meltdown. It didn’t feel like a new experience, just like one I hadn’t had in a long time.
Alex didn’t say anything, which was oddly comforting. He just let me cry on his floor under the lesbian lights without stopping to see if I was okay. I wanted these photos to show that I was beautiful and 26, I wanted Instagram likes, I wanted to distort reality. The reality is, I have been crying in the bath for two months, unable to get out of bed or purchase a bed frame. The horse painting is sitting behind my couch, paralyzed with indecision. 26 has brought some of the worst months of my life, and I have been cracked open in a way I never have been. I’ve never felt so isolated, so lonely, so sad, and simultaneously so in touch with who I am, so in touch with that crying little girl melting down on the beach pier in Lake Tahoe.
