THE FIRST HOT DAY IN NEW YORK (CITY)

came after nearly a week straight of rain. While the sun-streaked sky ushered in skimpy spring outfits and the promise that both literal and metaphorical brighter days were ahead, it also brought the menace of the warmer months with its balmy weather and long days, goading one to ensure enough time is spent if not outdoors (parks, boardwalks, beaches) then, at the very least, out in the world (museums, bars, brunch in a well windowed establishment). It isn’t that I don’t enjoy leaving my home. I resent the ambient pressure to make the most of nice weather, to regale others with an update on my summertime excursions as we silently panic about the finite nature of the season that is yet to even formally arrive.

So I was grateful to have the birthday party of my roommate and her twin brother to punctuate an otherwise uneventful afternoon and evening; a tidbit to offer in the upcoming week of how I spent the first hot, sunny day. In truth, most of it was spent doing what I’d been doing for weeks: watching reality television. Though I’d always watched competition shows and docu series—both of which often seen as a sort of elevated subcategory of the reality genre—over the past year, I became a more consistent and earnest viewer of programs focused on dating (Love is Blind, Love Island) and the dynamics of engineered friend groups (Summer House). Watching this strain of television has proven useful during the throes of a recent breakup with the crafted, trivial drama either numbing me to the inflated stakes of my own, or providing a surprise catharsis. 

One joins the audience of a reality show, especially a love-oriented series, expecting to see people who make great TV by performing exaggerated versions of themselves. Yet in the hall of mirrors of onscreen caricatures, I catch glimpses of recognition. Some women, clad in high heels and bikinis, tear up over potential partners not matching their energy. Others, eyes wide with hope and delusion, argue with silent men in gutted and renovated gray, plastic kitchens. I’m just like other girls—the nagging bitch of a fiancé, the girlfriend clinging in desperation, the withholding girl who won’t put out, she who is too serious, who is not crazy per se but sort of kind of. I go from laughing at a show’s ludicrous premise to a sob lurching in my throat. Who signs up for reality television? Someone who has the judiciousness to at least get paid to be heartbroken.

The other portion of my afternoon on the first hot day in New York was spent collecting dirty clothes from my closet and hauling them to the laundromat. Before stepping outside, I placed headphones into my ears and queued up The Replacements’ Let It Be which has also accompanied me in recent weeks. I first became familiar with the band in undergrad with their songs circulating across the playlists of friends who held the group’s frenetic angst in reverence. Unlike bands I discovered as a teenager who I studied with dedication, I knew nothing of The Replacements much discussed lore but I got the gist. In addition to rocking hard they fought and they partied. We fought and we partied. With beers safely cradled in the nook of an arm, we climbed fire escapes to roofs, with a blithe disregard for the ladder’s stability. Long nights of inebriated debauchery were immortalized with glory. For years I couldn’t name a Replacements song or differentiate them from Bruce Springsteen, whose reign over east coasters I regarded with an unfounded suspicion. But I recognized the catchy riffs of “I Will Dare” and “Alex Chilton” that upped the tempo of crowded functions as voices overlapped with increasing excitement.

With their association of my east coast friends I assumed The Replacements were from somewhere in New England, likely Boston like their peers Mission of Burma. Yet learning they are from Minneapolis is intelligible when listening to Let It Be, with songs reflecting a small town malaise found even in mid-size cities of the midwest. This restlessness can be heard in Cleveland natives Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s “1st of tha Month” which rejoices the arrival of public assistance checks, though as Wish Bone reminds, for most people, the money will have to stretch uncomfortably to the fifteenth of the month. And in Cloud Nothings’ (also from Cleveland) “Wasted Days” with Dylan Baldi lamenting how he thought there’d be more to the stretches of days. There are ways things could be worse but the sense that something could be better unsettles the mind.

Unsatisfied. Dissatisfied. Am I? Are you? I’m so

Lately, my most listened to track on Let It Be has been “Unsatisfied.” The cheap cables of my headphones have been causing music to pause suddenly or skip ahead, extending the time of each song as I rewind rewind to missed parts. To my annoyance, sometimes a track starts over entirely without my input. When this happened with “Unsatisfied” I left it alone, content with its incessant repetition. A perfect medley of frustration, resignation, and despondency permeate the song. At the laundromat I stood in front of a washer long after I had loaded my clothes, listening to the blues-tinged guitars swaying underneath Paul Westerberg’s vocals. Because it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon there were few people in the laundromat for which I was thankful, though famously, no one in this city is bothered by public displays of crying.

Everything goes, well, anything goes all of the time

It isn’t only the dissolution of a two-year relationship that has me feeling down. Maybe it’s the rings of Saturn burrowing down on me in my age of its return, but there are questions now paramount as I ascend into my thirties that didn’t hound me with quite the same ferocity in my early twenties. When did New York actually become unaffordable? Do I really have to decide between having good state healthcare and moving further from the poverty line? People talking about paying back their student loans—are you fucking for real? To these questions I have no sound answers. The muteness of the stagnation produces a simmering anxiety. 

And it goes slowly on, everything I ever wanted

I imagine Westerberg felt his own festering disquiet, grappling with ingroup tensions over the evolution of the band’s sound as they also resisted the constrictions of increasing mainstream success. Following “Unsatisfied,” on Let It Be is “Seen Your Video” which turns the internal dissatisfaction back outward, casting scorn over contrived rock-n-roll.” The vocals don’t begin until more than half-way through the song, almost at its end and after a progression of chords strummed hard and fast, in a direct turn from “Unsatisfied.”

Stories of the confrontational Replacements’ penchant for performing while heavily intoxicated, often cast the band as tortured geniuses, equally set on alienating audiences and winning them over. The tales of their friction could make for a reality docudrama series not too dissimilar from the shows of Andy Cohen’s warring housewives where producers let the booze flow and encourage stand-offs between brash women who, despite their meticulous makeup and wrinkleless gowns, are unafraid of mess. Consider that for some men, reading the unauthorized and official accounts of bands marred by drugs and excessive drinking and memorizing the break and make-ups and group restructurings is how they get their fix of sensationalized drama. Maybe they too, see parts of themselves splattered across chronicles of self-sabotage.

Everything you dream of, right in front of you

Punks are also unafraid of mess. Though I concede that the chaos of a mosh pit feels cooler than the going-ons of weekenders in a Bravo-subsidized beach house. I’ve continued to dance before, after an elbow connected with my face in a whirlpool of bodies colliding. Spitting out blood, I felt stronger. It’s a  brute strength, different in contrast to the resonance I’ve experienced witnessing a rageful reality star tearfully recount the wounds of a failed relationship. 

I’ve wondered if my increasing reality TV habit contributed to the dissolution of my own relationship. Was spilling the blue light of my laptop across my bed at night an act of aggression? While I narrated the intricacies of onscreen couples I highlighted the conflicts that reflected my own frustrations I’d grown wary of asserting. But by then he’d given up, turned away from the light of the screen, and my voice spoke only to myself.

Look me in the eye then tell me

Let It Be concludes with a warbled answering machine and an automated voice suggesting to hang up and try again. Westerberg asks, how do you say good night, that you’re lonely, that you’re missing someone to an answer machine? Today, there are too many ways to skirt absence and innumerable places to carry messages of longing. Texts, DMs, voice notes, video calls, email, Venmo if you're creative. Good-bye is never ending. 

In the immediate aftermath of the breakup I told my friends that I had nowhere to place the loss. In terms of grief, my real estate was maxed out. There was no room, I felt, to ruminate on something new, to wade through new regrets, to filter new devastation. But of course, space is always found. The body contracts into painful distortions before expanding. The mind, initially overwrought with remembrance and remorse, begins to clear. Ceasing to agonize, you instead seek to understand and to forgive. You let go. You continue to love again, again, again, and again. 

For Eli and Ryan

Edited by Bayley Blaisdell