Coachella

I couldn’t stop thinking about The United States being nuked while I was at Coachella. These thoughts were present long before we passed the Fallout billboard intently placed en route to festival parking. I imagined everyone getting text alerts at once, but scattered, because of spotty service. The hysteria would start, influencers calling managers, managers calling their parents, parents calling the Coast Guard. Would we become a society? Weekend One, Survivors Remorse? How would clout hold up in Nuclear War? Would the brand deals hold up? Would the lucky few get flown to a remote island on an emergency brand trip by Revolve? Anyways.

Additionally, I didn’t tell a single soul, but I was experiencing intense vertigo on and off for the entirety of the festival. Every five minutes I felt like the world was spinning. I took no drugs. A little weed. No alcohol. My delicate body simply could not handle the traverse.

✝️

Before I even stepped foot onto the Polo Grounds, I lost something special. A favorite piece, a large bejeweled cross pendant from the Parisian flea market. It had been adhered to my purse strap with a green velvet ribbon, also from Paris, when it slipped off my purse. It was likely somewhere in the Indian Wells Tennis Garden parking lot field, where we stopped to pick up the passes. 

My acquiescence in that moment was astounding. I could have cried. Starting Coachella with mascara tear stained cheeks would be fitting. I could have dwelled on it, searched for it, whined, mewled the whole afternoon long about it— instead I let it go with the desert winds. Someone else was meant to have my beloved bejeweled cross. A very special person.

Additionally, I had taken an adderall and I knew some acquaintance would see me acting tweaked out, examining the grassy plain of Indian Wells Tennis Garden with the expertise and focus of an extra playing a forensic scientist in the blurred background of a CSI: Coachella wide shot.

🌴

My body was splayed across the backseat, over bags bursting with outfit options, like a dormant puppet staring out the expansive Tesla sunroof, releasing my attachments to material belongings. The items of my life, despite once imagining them as sentient, were just things. How lucky I was to have things. I don’t need them. A thing is a luxury.

My first mission inside the festival was to buy a satanically priced $18 iced latte, and while waiting, I saw none other than the infamous Hockey Boy, doing the same thing. Both waiting for an iced coffee, it felt like we lived on the same planet, for a moment. He stared me down from the other side of the stall. I couldn’t lock eyes. Not after writing about him.

He came over, standing directly behind me in the coffee pick-up section. I think he was about to say hi, but was sidetracked as a Tiktok fan recognized him. I giggled softly to myself as he graciously introduced himself to the fan. He was doing that thing that boys do when they want attention and you aren’t looking at them—they talk loudly and about nothing of much importance, making their sentences as long and meaningless as possible. I didn’t look over. I got my iced latte and I left. Sorry Hockey Boy, for leaving before anything good could start, I’m good at that. I still think about the red heart you left underneath a now archived instagram post.

🔆

My mom finally showed up, around dusk, in a bright caftan with two bananas and a joint in her silver hobo bag. The one bag I covet most and she lets me borrow the least. She forced me to eat a banana. We smoked her joint. 

Mother found the Coachella live stream room. I had a feeling this room was supposed to be for staff, with a snack cubby and various Macbooks sitting out, under a row of screens, each monitor projecting a different performance on a different stage. Mother clearly felt entitled to be here, and I always go along.

“Have some chips,” she shoved a bag of nacho cheese doritos into my lap, pointing up at the screen, “Can we go see Shakira?”

“It’s a mile away,” I lied, enjoying the crunch of processed tortilla chip and the soft office chair beneath me. The streaming room was an oasis and the zen I experienced through the bite of a dorito made me feel like one of those guys who eat and review expired military rations on YouTube.

🤡

On our way to the next destination, we sat down for a moment of rest on a psychedelic art installation. Some guy offered me his slice of pizza. I declined. I could feel his acid like secondhand smoke. I was doing my soft glam clown makeup look for the next performance. My Mom said it looked great. 

I found half a joint in a crevice in my purse, so we smoked as we walked to our next destination, watching Clown Core. I think the trippy art and the Mary Jane made me wooly and a bit too free-spirited because my mom kept asking, “Are you okay?”, as I floated with her on a cloud across the grass towards the Sonora tent. “You keep losing things,” she went on. It was true. 

Someone liked soft glam clown makeup at Clown Core, and handed me what I first perceived to be a beauty blender, but was actually a foam clown nose. He didn’t even know I went to clown school. I told him. 

We then went to see Justice, and my mom pulled out a bag of dried Trader Joe’s mango slices. If we get nuked I want to be with my Mom. She is my God.

🏜️

The best Coachella outfit you could possibly find is already in your closet. You just need old boots, white lace, and a dream. Anything else is silly. 

I did appear like a veteran…One of my friends said they assumed I’d attended the festival multiple times. Flattering. I have spiritually attended many Coachellas. 

After a certain point I stopped revealing that I was a novice. “It’s my first real Coachella.” I would say to someone and their eyes would shift. From, We are here collectively riding this wave until it becomes dirty seafoam, to a more guarded, She is not one of us and hasn’t gone to battle.

☯️

On Day 2, nothing was lost. Mentally, I had no possessions. It took one lost item and two French electronic performances to truly rid me of any attraction to materials. I wanted to squish my already decaying Chanel bag into the brown dirt. I wanted to lose my grandmother’s gold hoop earrings, that I wear everyday, just to see how bad it would sting, if it even would. Everything is sacred but no things matter.

🌅

I had to see Sublime because my dad played it during my youth and he also produced the video to their song that Lana covered, “Doin’ Time”, full circle. Sublime is so deeply Southern California, like drinking a tall boy on Venice beach with a tall boy who went to jail once. Sublime is the soil that Norman Fucking Rockwell grew from.

I felt vertiginous, so I went to the Calm Room. This is a part of the Artist’s Compound. The room was lit with a warm glow, adorned with neatly placed velvet couches and armchairs, and “vintage” Coachella posters were framed on the wall. An interior space, for the overwhelmed and slightly whelmed. I closed my eyes in a dark blue velvet wingback chair, when I finally heard Doin’ Time. I drifted somewhere in between vertigo, sleep, and sober ecstasy. I technically had nowhere to be except here now. 

Everyone kind of looks the same if you blur your eyes. Swimming through oceans of bodies and beads of glittery sweat and reflective belts and fishing sunglasses.

😵‍

I half heartedly showed up to an after party. Ambitious, to pre-game, festival, afters, in the desert. 

Influencers were scattered on the lawn, dormant pretty puppets, just like me but different, laying on giant blow-up pizza slices, oversize sweatshirts acting as Coachella burkas, sacrificing a well thought out outfit for comfort in the final morning hours of Day One.

It was time to go home. 

I made it to Joshua Tree, and was about ten minutes from the house, when I saw blue lights flood my mirrors. I pulled over, tossing my lit joint into a ginger ale can. 

“Have you been drinking?” The cop asked.

“No. But I’m tired.”

“Do you have any illegal substances in the car?”

“No,” I giggled, “I have this, but it’s legal.” I held up an eigth of weed that was sitting shotgun. 

“Alright. Get that headlight fixed.”

🧸

I didn’t go to Day Three.

<3

Photos:

Soft Glam Clown

True Religion Jeans Party

Vertigo

Hiding

Ootd

Teresa Guidice

Hockey Boy (Hat)

Items