Yolk(12)

I stare out the window. What’s the point? The planet is on fire and everything is random. June is one of the smartest people I know and she got a job at a prestigious hedge fund without a master’s because her first roommate was a finance scion who also happened to be obsessed with Animal Crossing and shojo manga.

I start clicking through the spring collection slideshows for next year. During last fashion week some rando Ivy was dating got us onto the list for an after party at Le Bain, that club with a hot tub in the middle of it. But of course she didn’t show up and I was her plus-one so I didn’t get to go.

I know that attending college is like praying to God. It’s not that you believe in it; you do it just in case. Because other people are. Design school in Manhattan is Hunger Games for East Asian kids with severe haircuts. I can’t tell if I’m the racist one for feeling like we’re interchangeable, but all the incentives seem scammy to me.

I’ve never met a single person whose job I can remotely admire.

I google “who is the richest Asian in the world” for sport. Jack Ma’s up there. He’s the founder of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce site. I had no idea he looked like that. His features look like they should be on a much smaller face. He needs longer bangs. It’s eerie how much he resembles a fetus.

Then I google image uteruses, thinking of June; turns out ovaries are outside the uterus. The uterus is weirdly small, too. Picture the goat head: it’s the nose.

I check the time. I’ve only been here for twenty-three minutes.

Jeremy texts. I wonder if he’s going to say something about last night, apologize or at least acknowledge in any way what an asshole he is.

He wants to know where I am. Class. He wants to know if I can do him a favor. My mouth drops open. What? He wants a high-res TIFF of a portrait I took of him. Jeremy’s shockingly bad at technology. I once accused him of being homeschooled by Mennonites and he didn’t speak to me for days. He says he needs it for a magazine that’s doing an article on him.

I don’t respond, seething. Instead I check Tinder. I swipe and swipe and swipe and swipe. It’s dazzling how disposable we all are.





chapter 8


“It’s why everyone thinks the Monopoly man has a monocle, but he doesn’t.”

“Does he not?”

“No, we’re mixing him up with the Planters peanut guy. And it’s called the Mandela effect because everyone believes Mandela died in prison, but he didn’t.”

On Tuesdays at 1:00 p.m., I have therapy. I love therapy so much. Mostly because I’m an excellent patient. Gina Lombardi’s a social worker, not, like, a psychiatrist or psychologist, which made me dubious at first, but she’s soothing to spend time with. She’s super tanned with a deep side part, and sometimes I just pretend that I’m talking to Miuccia Prada.

“Does that make you question your own long-held beliefs? What you thought you knew?” she asks.

I shrug. “Sure.” I mostly want her to know that I’ve read entire Wikipedia pages about South-African political revolutionaries. “Don’t you find it fascinating that we don’t know what we don’t know?”

Gina gets my best material if I’m honest. For the past two months I’ve been saving up clever bon mots for her benefit. For our initial appointment, I’d spent the whole ride reading up on the news and world events because her office is on the Upper West Side. She’s in the garden apartment of a town house, and you can see everyone’s calves and purebred dogs on the street level out her windows. She has built-in bookcases and a white-noise machine, and though I’ve only ever seen the little waiting area by the downstairs entryway and her office, I like to imagine this is her actual home. I feel giddy at the possibility that there could be an Egyptian cotton pillowcase with her silvery-blond hairs on it mere feet from where I’m sitting. I bet she wears a pajama set. And that it’s monogrammed.

It’s moments like these when I wish we could be real friends. I’ve only made her laugh out loud once, but I felt high all day. When we first met, she said she didn’t know who Rihanna was, which made me almost walk out until I thought about what that signifies. She has no loyalties. To not know about Rihanna means she’s a total nihilist.

Gina’s constantly telling me that it’s my negative self-talk that’s derailing my productivity, not a debilitating laziness. The first time we met, I tried to ice her out because I was so pissed that student services made me wait five weeks for the appointment, but then I forgot I wasn’t talking to her and complained about a stupid documentary. It was about violin prodigies. Gina mentioned that I was responding with undue hostility that someone would dedicate themselves to a single pursuit and then she said something that blew my mind.

She said that there was more than one type of perfectionist. And that I qualified because the kind of perfectionist I was, was the kind that abandoned everything if I wasn’t good enough at it. And that’s why I couldn’t finish tasks. Meanwhile, I thought you had to be Natalie Portman from Black Swan to be a perfectionist, all shivering from malnourishment and eighteen-hour practices, but she’s right. I’d rather fail outright than be imperfect. It’s why last year, when I was on academic probation, I couldn’t bring myself to cram for finals and end up with a C average. I just kinda gave up. There’s nothing more humiliating than trying so hard for everyone to see and still ending up a loser. Right now I have As and Bs, and I like to think that’s due to Gina.