stripped: the gods want panties

sat­ur­day
Woke up ear­ly to get acupuncture. 

It’s the only thing that helps me and I of­ten for­get be­cause it seems like mag­ic, there­fore not a vi­able or tan­gi­ble so­lu­tion for the myr­i­ad of bizarre health prob­lems I’ve ac­quired since hav­ing Covid. 

I also for­get about mag­ic, in gen­er­al. Acupunc­ture isn’t mag­ic. It’s a sci­ence and has been used in Chi­nese med­i­cine for thou­sands of years. Maybe mag­ic is also a sci­ence that just hasn’t been stud­ied enough to be le­git­imized. The “man” doesn’t want us mag­i­cal witch­es to know how much pow­er re­sides with­in us. So, to de­ter us they mock the idea of it as child­ish, and place it in the same cat­e­go­ry as sleight of hand card tricks and rab­bits in hats.

My acupunc­tur­ist is an ac­tu­al doc­tor and to heal the in­flam­ma­tion in my gut, she has strong­ly en­cour­aged me to elim­i­nate many won­der­ful things from my diet, the most prob­lem­at­ic for me, be­ing coffee. 

Cof­fee might be my rea­son to live. We’ll see. I’ve gone a week with­out it and my symp­toms do seem to be im­prov­ing, though my men­tal health is on the decline.

If I was hav­ing sex, the lack of sug­ar, gluten, corn, dairy and now COF­FEE prob­a­bly wouldn’t both­er me so much. You see, I’m a plea­sure seek­er. We hu­mans are here on earth in bod­ies, so why wouldn’t we be soak­ing up all life has to offer? 

I’m not re­al­ly sure where I’m sup­posed to de­rive my plea­sure from now. Work, I sup­pose. I would shop friv­o­lous­ly and that might help but I can’t af­ford to right now. I’m go­ing to have to read­just my hi­er­ar­chy of needs:

What it was.

A more ac­cu­rate de­pic­tion of reality.

Maybe this is ac­tu­al­ly a hi­er­ar­chy of ad­dic­tions … I won­der what the sci­en­tif­ic dif­fer­ence is be­tween an ad­dic­tion and a need.
 

sun­day
I’m sit­ting at a cof­fee shop, killing time be­fore yoga, drink­ing stu­pid matcha. I guess I’m sur­ren­der­ing. Maybe all of this sur­ren­der is an ex­change for the great suc­cess I’m about to have. Per­haps I need to see this more as an of­fer­ing to the Gods.

I gave up al­co­hol, and hard drugs. Cig­a­rettes. Ca­su­al sex. I gave up tox­ic re­la­tion­ships, in­clud­ing the one with my own moth­er. I gave up my fa­vorite foods: Domi­nos, Ore­os, Dori­tos. Pas­ta. Piz­za. Now coffee. 

These are all things that poi­soned me. But then, I re­cent­ly purged be­long­ings too. My clothes. I got rid of all the dress­es, jeans, t‑shirts, sweaters, skirts and shoes that no longer bring me joy. Which was near­ly everything.

A cou­ple months ago, when I was mov­ing, I had three sec­tions of box­es and bags. One was to keep, one to sell and one to donate. 

Some­how all my sexy, ex­pen­sive lin­gerie – you know, the lacy num­bers, frilly stuff, bras with buck­les, met­al adorn­ments, un­der­wires, bows, re­al­ly hot but not prac­ti­cal un­less you’re hav­ing sex – all that stuff end­ed up ac­ci­den­tal­ly get­ting donated.

Then, last week a man from the in­ter­net asked if he could buy a pair of my un­der­wear and I ne­go­ti­at­ed a pret­ty good deal with him. If this con­tin­ues, I’ll have to start go­ing commando. 

It seems the Gods want panties. “Give up your panties,” they de­mand. The Gods are greedy for used un­der­wear and I’m be­ing stripped of all my crea­ture comforts.

Oh yeah. Also, the back, spare tire got stolen from my Jeep. 

*Shakes fists at the sky* What more do you want from me? Maybe I’m meant to just be so grate­ful for what I have. My fin­gers and my brain and my lap­top. And matcha. 

My body – even if it is void of pleasure.
 

mon­day
This morn­ing I went to the DMV, be­cause it’s al­most my birth­day and my li­cense is about to expire. 

It was chill. I’m mem­o­riz­ing a mono­logue for the act­ing class I just start­ed, so I worked on it while I waited. 

I fig­ured the DMV was the per­fect, most so­cial­ly ac­cept­able place to mum­ble-talk to your­self. Every­one in there is kind of crazy, which is crazy, be­cause ab­solute­ly every­one needs to go to the DMV. 

The DMV doesn’t dis­crim­i­nate, al­though I do think there are spe­cial rooms for celebri­ties. Some­day I’ll get my­self into those rooms. Watch me.

Then, I hit the post of­fice and mailed off my un­der­wear. If you’d have told me that at near­ly 42 years old I’d be sell­ing my dirty un­der­wear to pay for act­ing class­es and then telling the world about it … 

Maybe it would have scared me straight. Maybe I would have made bet­ter choic­es as a young per­son, fo­cused more on my ca­reer, and less on hook­ing up with hot guys and snort­ing cocaine.

Though, I did re­al­ize re­cent­ly that in or­der to be­come a fa­mous author/tv creator/ show run­ner, every­thing I do in my every­day life must align with get­ting me clos­er to those goals OR be good for the plot, which ul­ti­mate­ly also serves my goals. I guess I just need to live all the storylines.

I just want to do what I want to do. 

I’ve al­ways been like this. You can ask any boss or any par­ent I’ve ever had. My plea­sure-seek­ing ten­den­cies dri­ve me. 

I guess it’s the plea­sure mon­ster that got me here, sell­ing un­der­wear in ex­change for act­ing class. I’m not even sure why I’m tak­ing an act­ing class, it just sound­ed fun. 

The plea­sure mon­ster strikes again! “WE WANT FUN!” it says. It’s a good thing I’m re­leas­ing it all to the divine. 

It’s time to get se­ri­ous. I am dead se­ri­ous. A se­ri­ous­ly se­ri­ous per­son, who is ready to take over the world in a su­per se­ri­ous way.
 

tues­day
I went to Blue Bot­tle this morn­ing at 7:30 for my matcha, aka rea­son for get­ting out of bed, aka rea­son for living. 

That’s a lot of pres­sure to put on a bev­er­age. Has any­one ever told you you’re their rea­son for liv­ing? I’ve been told that and it felt scary.

I com­plained to my acupunc­tur­ist the oth­er day that my usu­al morn­ing *ahem* evac­u­a­tion has slowed down since sur­ren­der­ing cof­fee, so she gave me some herbs. 

This morn­ing, as I took my first matcha sip, it seemed my prob­lem in that de­part­ment was solved. Ur­gent­ly. The bath­room re­quires a code, and the code the barista gave me wasn’t working. 

I slinked back to the counter to dou­ble check that I had the num­bers right, just as three gen­uine­ly hot men came in. 

I was ex­cit­ed to re­turn from the bath­room, so I could sit and look cute as I wrote in my jour­nal, hop­ing maybe one of them would talk to me. But when the barista joined me in try­ing the door him­self, the code still wouldn’t work. So I had to jet. 

And I mean JET.

I was less than a mile from home but traf­fic was sud­den­ly bonkers. Every street I turned on in an at­tempt to avoid the mess en­tan­gled me deep­er in a labyrinth of Tes­las un­til I was dead stopped on an LA side street for a good long while. 

I won­dered if this would be the day. Nev­er in my adult life, have I shit my pants. I’ve nev­er peed my pants either. 

I once had a boyfriend who wet the bed and blamed it on me. The wet spot was on his side of the bed, and I tried to tell him, I don’t do that. No shame, I just don’t. Still, he tried to put it on me. He was such a fuck­ing baby.

Alas, my record for ‘least-amount-of-pant-shits’ remains. 

I made it home in time to use a toi­let like the civ­i­lized woman I am, feel­ing wist­ful about the hot guy in­ter­ac­tions I near­ly had. That would be an amaz­ing missed con­nec­tions: dear hot guys at Blue Bot­tle. I saw you see me, and I bet we would have flirt­ed but I was go­ing to shit my pants if I didn’t leave im­me­di­ate­ly. Let’s link up!

A few hours lat­er, I got into the show­er to dis­cov­er the hot wa­ter was out. I took a cold show­er on a cold day, but I felt grate­ful. Be­cause, imag­ine if I had shit my pants, and then had to take a cold shower. 

I’m so good at find­ing sil­ver linings.
 

wednes­day
My friend came over last night to give me a Rei­ki session. 

She is mag­i­cal and so was the session.

Since so many as­pects of my life are get­ting stripped, re­moved and of­fered to the Gods, I thought an en­er­gy clear­ing would be good too. Get it all out. I’m ready for the new-new. 

I woke up feel­ing hope­ful and rejuvenated.
 

thurs­day
Some­thing hap­pened when my friend did Rei­ki on me. She opened a vor­tex. A por­tal. I am not ready to write about it, and this is get­ting too long any­way, so stay tuned. 

Re­mem­ber what I said at the be­gin­ning about mag­ic be­ing real?

 

—hol­ly solem

Flom­mist Hol­ly Solem is a singer/songwriter, mod­el, ac­tress and writer known for her work on Amazon’s orig­i­nal se­ries Hand of God, as well as play­ing, tour­ing and writ­ing with nu­mer­ous bands and artists. Copy­right © 2024 Hol­ly Solem.

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