encounters with sonic youth, camera obscura, and haley blais: 6 months alone in a preserved teenage girl's bedroom to become a warrior, a red wine supernova, and the coolest fucking bitch in town
encounters with sonic youth, camera obscura, and haley blais: 6 months alone in a preserved teenage girl's bedroom to become a warrior, a red wine supernova, and the coolest fucking bitch in town
from november 2023 until may 2024, i spent all my time taking care of my baby, listening to music, and reading about many topics from religion, history, art, science. i lived in a teenage girl room.
disaster struck in august 2023:
suddenly my apartment in brooklyn was flooding with sewage: constantly. a brand new building, and my apartment flooded with sewage from a broken connector: 4 times in two weeks. i needed to get back to michigan: so i booked movers, packed everything up in my apartment, and relied upon my partner to care for my son, which she did excellently as she always does. he is always happy when he is with her and i know that she will always provide excellent care for him whenever he is with her.
but what did this move back to my home state of michigan unleash for me?
from november 2023 until may 2024, i spent virtually all of my time doing the following while being alone almost 24/7 (other than the companionship of my baby son, who fulfilled many of my needs for loving interaction during this introspective time):
💖 reading coffee table books, usually cover-to-cover but not always (ancient greece, ancient rome, natural history — i stopped after the flowers lol), earth science (i prioritized the innards of the earth), art & architecture, and world religion.
💖 reading about buddhism (an introduction to buddhism by peter harvey was critical: so many paragraphs from that book constantly flow through me and guide me)
💖 reading history (especially about the ancient world, china, and latin america). i focused on these because in the preceding years i had already covered rome, greece, india, central asia, the united states, and europe: i still need to really dive into african & also into general indigenous history… i understand i will always have gaps!)
💖 i did not watch any television because i had already covered and internalized what i felt to be the most crucial shows for understanding both how i could act in the world and the dynamics of western culture: buffy the vampire slayer, powerpuff girls, lizzie mcguire, the office, new girl, crazy ex-girlfriend, cable girls, velvet, el tiempo entre costuras, chilling adventures of sabrina, 90 day fiance, love is blind, jersey shore, etc. but i did watch 80s romance movies as i felt these to be a gap in my preparation, and i do still need to watch sailor moon for inspiration on new tactics for combatting evil in our society
eloise: she’s not just reading anymore darling 💖 but she needed to 💖
thanks bridgerton!
💖 i did not read many novels because i had already immersed myself in so many of these since early 2021 when i first started listening to phoebe bridgers: the moment i started listening to phoebe bridgers was the moment i first started really wanting to read romance novels and the moment i first openly and relentlessly embraced feminine art on my social media: a “concerning behavior” which would only escalate and now has my sister and mother demanding i see a new doctor and find a new therapist if i ever want to talk to them again
essay: observations about my parents and sisters
what i have concluded after 36 years of experience conversing with my parents and sisters is that they are simply incapable of seeing detail.
they are incapable, at least for now in terms of the attachments to empty concepts which bind their perception and behavior, of ever actually seeing a single detail i write or say.
why are they so enraged by my blog? just think about it.
their criticisms never have to do with a single actual detail in and of itself.
you’ll only ever hear them deploying abstractions:
there are absolutely no specifics in their language;
they are describing a phantom — “manic,” “lashing out,” “vindictive.”
their criticisms only relate to the abstract concepts into which they relentlessly categorize me and my writing, as they have done since the day i was born:
🦋 bad
🦋 man
🦋 disrespectful
🦋 ungrateful
🦋 embarrassing
🦋 weird
🦋 manic
🦋 evil
🦋 bad brother
🦋 disobedient (lmao you’re damn fucking right)
what i have learned from interactions with these people is that they will never simply look at a detail. they will always see nothing but an abstract implication which they attach to the detail. because of this, we are incapable of having conversations: they want me to admit that i am weird and manic and need help, and every time they speak to me, this is their only objective.
i give them details and instead of responding to my details they jump to some implication they have taken from my details and become upset about this implication.
“okay wait so are you saying” and their faces darken with concern.
i give them more details! but they become even more concerned because in their minds:
these details are inseparable from an arbitrary and made up abstraction to which they cling.
they will never only look at detail: detail itself simply directs them into the unreality of abstraction because they feel safer there. abstraction is easy to define; abstraction is a box.
so of course they never respond to my details: i give them details, and they say — “we are your parents and we think you need help.”
they truly believe that a doctor would be able to make me understand why my blog is insulting to women, why my behavior online is “manic,” and why i should post fewer screenshots to my instagram stories.
so this is what my parents really taught me about the world:
what i finally understand is that they are so deeply delusional,
and they need so much fucking help,
that they truly believe all these things.
they truly believe that i have declared on this blog that “men edit more than women.”
why? because this is the abstraction they assign automatically to my details:
i, eloise andrew butterfly, am an “insult to women.”
they look at the abstraction — the “insult to women” — not the details.
they do not believe me when i tell them my feelings because as they have said many many times, it’s my “behavior” they find concerning.
“not your identity!’ they always reassure me. “your behavior!”
“not your feelings!” they imply when they ignore me. “your behavior!”
and when i ask my mom,
“what is it about my behavior you find so concerning?”
she says,
“you are very manic and vindictive and you are lashing out”
and then i say,
“can you give me a specific example?”
and then my mom says,
“you know what andrew we’re not getting into it with you.”
once i called them after sharing details online about how my dad treated me (my dad has yet to say sorry for ONE SINGLE THING, nor does he acknowledge ANY of it).
my mom answered.
she said.
“why are you calling us?”
they told me that my online behavior was “inappropriate” and that i did not understand the “true purpose of LinkedIn.” they told me that my dad had to block me on LinkedIn because my behavior was jeopardizing his professional connections.
my parents do all this because they see me as an object which is required to perform a certain set of behaviors based upon the abstract concept which they are intent upon assigning me,
and they are embarrassed by me because my being in the world does not reflect their values.
they have loved me when i have been the object they wanted,
and they have hated me when i have been something else.
listen:
i know it’s hard to believe.
but my parents literally think that there is a doctor out there who would be able to “treat me” so i would stop “manically” posting screenshots & songs & lyrics on my blog, so i would stop “vindictively” sharing details about my trauma, so i would stop claiming my parents hate me.
if you want proof that boomers are fucked, just look at my parents: they are the worst of them.
every time i go home,
my mom is binge-watching anti-woke youtube channels, listening to anti-woke podcasts, and she has an enormous stack of anti-woke books beside her hair. “there’s no such thing as a non-binary person,” she once told me.
i mean:
i think my mom actually believes that a doctor would be able to explain to me:
“of course they love you; they are your parents and they say that they love you.”
so now i know why haley blais was so special to me during all those hours i was walking beneath the moon at night, listening to music on my headphones, incubating in a preserved teenage girl’s bedroom.
i remember i said once,
“doesn’t it seem like this was meant to happen?”
“i was meant to end up spending 6 months living in a teenage girl bedroom?”
i added, “it seems like i am actually turning into a teenage girl.”
that was in march 2024, deep into my introspective incubational period.
but my friend responded uncomfortably,
and i never brought up the topic again.
to become a teenage girl, i didn’t need my friend:
i needed haley blais.
haley helped free me forever!!!
from that awful cis-heteronormative world,
into which my family locked me the day i was born,
and that’s why i needed to listen to her when i was living for six months inside my cis-heteronormative house where my “in-laws” never asked me for details about my feelings a single fucking time.
and she taught me that i do not have to define myself according to the terrible things i did years ago and which my family will absolutely never allow me to grow away from:
Can I be responsible for things that I did years ago
I guess it could be good for just a laugh
Is it just a privileged thought
I ask you once but I forgot
I'm not the only one that's split in half
guess what?
i’m not split in half anymore darlings.
i’m the:
continued descriptions of my incubational activities
💖 i also listened to so much music!!!! CONSTANTLY!!! clairo was there when i cared for my little baby and so were all the other girlies: lucy, haley blais, olivia rodrigo.
but three stand out most of all (good things come in threes):
haley blais and how she taught me to be a cool fucking bitch
know what haley blais taught me when i found her in that lonely time of introspection???
haley, i listened to you AGAIN AND AGAIN.
AGAIN AND AGAIN.
AGAIN AND AGAIN.
here is what you taught me about myself haley,
and for this i will always fucking love you:
But if you see me out
Know I'm the coolest fucking bitch in town
You want to drink a drink that's watered down
It'll just take you longer
see haley:
know what you helped me understand?
fucking finally?
after 36 years of my parents and sisters telling me that i am embarrassing, telling me that i am weird, telling me that i was a bad kid, telling me that i need help,
i finally woke up to the fact that i am
the coolest fucking bitch in town.
so that’s why when i talked to my parents on the phone and they told me i was unwell,
i said,
“hang on i gotta go send a video of me masturbating to my friend on snapchat.”
and then that’s what i did!
was it inappropriate?
no, because she wanted me to send her that video, and she liked my video!
that’s the pink pony club darlings: ethical and consensual pleasure, open expression.
and unfortunately for my family, there is no longer anything my mommy or daddy or sisters can do to stop me from acting on my identity:
the coolest fucking bitch in town
they are shocked by this only because they truly believe they can make me behave by throwing made up concepts at me. they still do not understand that i am a goddess who does not react to concepts like “friend” “family” “parent” “sibling.”
they do not understand that because i am a goddess,
i see through the nothingness of these concepts,
and i focus on feeling.
and what else they do not understand is that i am not the only person who sees through the emptiness of these concepts and looks at detail.
i am not the only goddess in this world.
far from it.
but even people who haven’t necessarily unlocked their inner goddess can see detail and feeling:
they forgot about lawyers.
they forgot about girls.
they forgot about therapists.
they truly have no clue how delusional they are: they truly think that the “law” and “medicine” and “mental health services” mandate i be respectful to my parents, accept my family’s “love for me,” and “act like a 36-year-old.” they think a treatment program will somehow succeed in convincing me that i am not a teenage girl.
yes, i get it now:
these people are so delusional, so removed from their goddess natures, that they truly believe: a judge, a therapist, or a doctor will give two shits about getting me to speak respectfully to my parents, believe my sisters when they tell me they love me, and act like a respectable 36-year-old.
they truly believe i am delusional for claiming they do not love me.
they truly believe that a medical program would find reason for concern in the actual details of this blog.
they truly believe it would go well for them if we sat down together with a mediator.
they tell me,
“it’s not about your identity: it’s about your behavior!”
but i told you my identity now darlings:
i’m the coolest fucking bitch in town.
don’t you get it daddy?
don’t you understand my “identity” now?
i’m a fucking midwest princess bitch,
and i’m here to kill vampires.
on patrol
i’m not “split in half” anymore like haley helped me see that i was.
i don’t have one foot in the pink pony club and one foot in Northville or Rochester Hills. i don’t have one foot in the bed and one foot out anymore as clairo would say.
no darlings,
my whole fucking body, my whole fucking soul is in the pink pony club now.
but embracing myself as the coolest fucking bitch in town,
and running away to become non-binary and live inside the pink pony club forever,
was not all i learned how to do from you haley.
no, you taught me this too:
[Verse 1]
God, what a mess I must seem
In the back of a theatre
The scene where the dog has to die
I'm upset, but, at best
Keep your hands off my chest
[Refrain]
Can't a girl mourn the death of a dog
In the back of a theatre in peace?
[Verse 2]
The carpet left marks on our face
I remember the sun was still out
As if nothing had changed
I could see through the window at minimal height
No obstructions at all, just the pure virgin light
[Refrain]
Can't a girl mourn the death of a dog
In the back of a theatre in peace anymore?
Can't a girl mourn the death of a dog
In the back of a theatre in peace anymore?
you taught me how to see through the emptiness, how to only see the light.
you know i was constantly listening to you while just laying on the ground and looking out the window while my baby crawled all over me?
the light inside me: my own inner goddess, my virgin light that’s always been shining and which my family has spent 36 years trying to obscure.
and you taught me:
i have a right to mourn the trauma inflicted on me,
i have a right to be with my feelings in peace,
i have a write to talk about what happened.
so daddy darling:
you’re going to be pushing your way through so many fucking naked bodies and so many naked beings to find me if i’m free and i’m out after midnight,
unless i’m on patrol: in which case i’ll be wearing my red coat.
i’m so sorry about it daddy.
print this out and take it to your doctor.
tell me how he diagnoses me darling.
wasn’t he my doctor too?
“nothing good ever happens after midnight” - keith jelinek, my father
the girl music was so vital for me that this happened just one week before i finally left my life reading, listening to music, and learning to see in a teenage girl bedroom:
extract from phoebe bridgers and the music that blossomed my queerness
i’m wearing my purple beanie and my hair is just flowing in beautiful locks.
a girl looks at me and says, “oh wow he is pretty, maybe i should be talking to him.”
the girl beside her says, “yes i think you should be.”
“pretty” — the word activates something in me.
i am struggling to contain myself as i stand beside W.
mannequin pussy is playing the song “aching,”
and i feel the words chilling down my spine:
i was aching with desire
i felt bit of rush (i got to be)
i just wanted to feel human
i was starving for some touch
i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be freei wanna feel it from the top
so what?
i wanna feel it from the top
i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to be free(mannequin pussy, “aching”)
i needed to be free.
i had incubated for long enough:
it was time to go supernova.
💖 caring for my baby — every aspect makes me happy!
this was the most special aspect of my incubational period.
here is what i wrote about my caring for my baby:
extract from above:
because in the end my real issue with the word “father” is that “father” seems to restrict me from actually being a good parent to my son.
i know of a man who has four children and has never changed a single diaper. even during extended family functions he snaps his fingers at his wife when there’s a poopy and summons her to the task. apparently he has absolutely no shame about this behavior and no one says a word about it. why? because he is the father.
i don’t understand this attitude toward caring for your children.
i love caring for my baby so much. i have such a deep bond with him. i love to have him in my lap and read to him for 30 minutes. i love when he picks a book off the floor, looks at the cover, smiles eagerly like he can’t even believe what he’s found, and walks toward me giggling. i pick him up into my lap and he nestles into me and i read and he is so happy.
i love changing his poopy diapers and feeling the satisfaction of knowing that i made him feel more comfortable and i am keeping his butt safe from rashes.
i love to just sit with him in the rocking chair and tickle him. tickle his toes, his chest, his shoulders. he giggles and giggles and he especially thinks it’s soooo funny when i go “zzzzzzzz” and then rub my beard into his cheek. he likes this so much that when i stop, he will lung forward laughing, trying to shove his cheek into my beard. i did briefly shave my beard but i think these moments are a part of what makes me want to keep my beard.
feeding him is also fun. honestly some people make me feel bad for still bottle feeding him. but like, i just love having him in my lap while he drinks his milk. he’s so peaceful and he just looks up into my eyes. i love to just stare into his eyes and sing to him. his favorite songs are twinkle twinkle little star, old macdonald, and the itsy bitsy spider. he especially loves the itsy bitsy spider because i always squeeze him just a little after each verse and he’s always ready for it and he just thinks it’s soooooo funny he giggles so hard. he also loves twinkle twinkle little star and if you don’t sing him that song before putting him down he gets upset: he wants twinkle twinkle! he’s also just getting into blocks now and walking around picking up what seem like enormous objects, piling them up on each other, so proud of himself. i always clap and he looks at me so happily and sometimes he claps too.
he loves my bracelets and my necklaces. sometimes he points at the charm on my necklace and makes these noises where i think he’s asking, “what is that?” then one day i forgot to wear my necklace and he noticed! he put his finger in my chest hair and looked up at me with confusion. he made these noises that felt like he was asking me where my necklace was.
i think sheepies are his favorite farm animals. (i always call them sheepies).
sonic youth makes me a Kool Thing
so what my baby taught me,
is also what sonic youth taught me when i spent six months listening to these lyrics from “kool thing” over and over and over, alone in a teenage girl bedroom:
lyrics to “kool thing”
(yeah, tell 'em 'bout, hear the way we hear this)
Hey Kool Thing
Come here
Sit down beside me
There's something i gotta ask you
I just wanna know
What're you gonna do for me
I mean
Are you gonna liberate us girls from male white corporate oppression?
(tell it like it is)
Huh?
(Yeah)
Don't be shy
(Word up)
Fear of a female planet
(Fear of a female planet, fear baby)
I just want you to know
That we can still be friends
(Let everybody know)
When you're a star
I know that you'll fix everything, everything
(sonic youth, “kool thing”)
did you know i was incubating sonic youth?
were you trying to wake me up to the mission?
did you want me to use all my skills, experience, and education to help liberate girls from white male corporate oppression?
well i’m ready for that now.
but i wasn’t always:
i was sad and depressed and lonely.
i was angry and upset and believed the whole world hated me.
all i had was my little baby.
camera obscura and the sadness within
but i also had camera obscura, and they helped me process my feelings and figure out how to be okay with them and what to do about them.
so many nights, i walked around a lake beneath the moon, so full of sadness,
camera obscura my companion in the night.
“pen and notebook” helped me understand that i could use my pen and notebook to blow the world away and make a positive impact
You saved for a bass guitar
And you knew you'd made a mistake when you first saw Marr
With your pen and notebook you've blown me away
It's the smallest words we cannot sayYour favourite colour is that of red wine
Which brings me around to your favourite pastime
With your pen and notebook you've blown me away
And I won't be blamed for not feeling the sameAre the stars out tonight?
From the south-side, oh the prettiest side
Will you stumble or fall tonight?
Are you watching, wrapped up cosy and tight?We're not the same
We're not the same
We're not the same
“let’s go bowling” helped me think about my sadness and the refusal of those around me to listen or ask about the details without penetrating beneath abstraction.
I don't believe in anything so you may as well forget about me
It's time you took it upon yourself to go join the other team
Forget about me
Anyway, I got myself some bowling shoes
An' they are all that I can see
With all my might I scored a strike
My friend you wouldn't believe
My teenage years were wasted all on me
On Saturday I watched a film
It was black and white with Clark Gable in
I've seen that film one hundred time or more
How am I going to tell my friends
I won't be coming out with them no more?
Don't you know that I feel sad?
You only know how to get mad
Don’t you know that I feel sad
Don’t you know that I feel sad
Don’t you know that I feel sad
double feature helped me realize my purpose: to play with the words you can’t sing
Close comes the winter
Summer is no longer
Things seem much bleaker
We'll see a Catherine Deneuve double feature
And our lives will fade
As in darkness, we will bathe
Close comes the winter
Summer is no longer
And things, they seem much bleaker
We'll see a Catherine Deneuve double feature
And our lives will fade
As in darkness, we will bathe
Double feature, you will survive
Last forever, so rest your eyes
Play with words when we cannot sing
This double feature means everything
And our lives will fade
As in darkness, we will bathe
Double feature, you will survive
Last forever, so rest your eyes
Play with words when we cannot sing
This double feature means everything
And our lives will fade
As in darkness, we will bathe
Double feature, you will survive
Last forever, so rest your eyes
Play with words when we cannot sing
This double feature means everything
so thank you camera obscura,
like scripture, you taught me one thing i am supposed to do in this world:
play with the words you can’t sing until i’ve helped everyone become a goddess by using examples from your music and my own experience.
thank you chappell roan,
you taught me that i am a fucking midwest princess and a red wine supernova.
thank you haley blais,
you taught me that i am the coolest bitch in town.
and thank you sonic youth: you gave me the manifesto.
lyrics to “kool thing”
(yeah, tell 'em 'bout, hear the way we hear this)
Hey Kool Thing
Come here
Sit down beside me
There's something i gotta ask you
I just wanna know
What're you gonna do for me
I mean
Are you gonna liberate us girls from male white corporate oppression?
(tell it like it is)
Huh?
(Yeah)
Don't be shy
(Word up)
Fear of a female planet
(Fear of a female planet, fear baby)
I just want you to know
That we can still be friends
(Let everybody know)
When you're a star
I know that you'll fix everything, everything
(sonic youth, “kool thing”)
those are the words that woke me up to this: