June, More or Less

June arrives with a specific kind of cringe I can’t shake—the fear of being embarrassing, mostly to myself, in front of no one in particular. Maybe it’s the heat. Everything is too sweet this month, the food especially, and I’ve spent too many June evenings dying of thirst in apartments where nobody thought to put drinks in the fridge. I’m done with Chuck Norris jokes and every lazy cousin of the Chuck Norris joke. Done with a certain local rapper who should have stopped two albums ago and is apparently unaware of this. The Two and a Half Men season finale happened and I felt nothing useful. Being stuck indoors when the sun is right outside doing that particular thing it does in June is a small daily failure I’m actively working on. Mediaspree keeps getting built and I keep being quietly furious about it.

But June gives back. I’ve been watching Mariko Takahashi’s Fitness Video on repeat—the one where the entire absurdist promise of early internet culture is compressed into four minutes of spandex and existential bewilderment. Big Buck Bunny on a Friday night when thinking is too much to ask. Cold McNuggets from the fridge at two in the morning, which is a legitimate pleasure and I’ll stand by it. The name Sakura, for no reason I can explain. Karen Abad Loves Dinosaurs, and so do I, apparently. Alphabeat’s Fascination still going through my head a year later. Lying on a patch of grass somewhere with the smell of cut grass pulling me backward through every summer I’ve ever been half-asleep in. The lips of Sash, which I keep coming back to for reasons that are not complicated.

I need to get a tattoo. I keep saying this. June feels like the month. It’ll probably be July.