Week 7, 2026: Tank top season
On Monday, I browsed furnishing shops for a frame suitable for my beautiful moon phase calendar. I’m so excited to become a lunar girl and have full moon rituals. It must be easy to become a lunar girl when you're already a cycle girl. I already have a period tracker, wearing red when it’s the winter and my best smile when it’s summertime. One of the furnishing shops had a billiards table. It's fascinating what having a lot of money and friends can look like. It reminded me of the time I saw a bunch of rich Gulf students bringing in their own full-size fridges into their dorm rooms. Each room came stocked with a mini-fridge and each floor had two communal kitchens (and four fridges).
I’ve taken up running again, amid tank top season, with the hopes of building up my endurance and getting myself into a regular sweat. Every once in a while, I feel my body get all wound up from the lack of exertion and running seems to be my favorite type of outdoor cardio. I’m doing Couch to 5K, with Huw Williams this time. Steve Cram's audios are terribly missed but he's on the NHS app and you can't get the NHS app out of the UK. I'll have to repeat his mantra myself: Looking good, feeling good. I run along the beach, passing tourists, stray cats and trees in terrible condition. The stray cats get fed in the late afternoon by butch Filipino women and the trees carry stapled notes that say Under Treatment.
It's better to jog in tank top season than it is to sit on the shore. If you sit on the shore in tank top season, a stranger may come up to you while you are solemnly listening to Lana Del Rey and yell hello, hello, excuse me. And you’ll take out an earbud and say yes? because you are a sweet angel, to which he’ll declare that he’s going to perch a blanket right next to you and demand you stop being shy and join him. That will be your sign to dust off your velour sweatpants from the damp sand and walk away because you have been reminded that some public beaches are the straight man’s Grindr.
I’m looking at old photo-albums. You can tell how bratty I was as a teenager. Packing pink fingerless fishnet gloves on a trip to Turkey? Manspreading as a means of combating misogyny in a way that only serves to increase the suffering of other girls? My mother told me that I could ask Allah for anything, any wish in the world, and he would grant it as long as it didn't hurt anyone. So I prayed for an eyebrow piercing. My prayer was never granted, as it turned out that that would bring great emotional harm to my mother.
I’m glad that on my thirteenth birthday, the coolest girl in my class, this Lebanese Christian that I idolized because she had tattoos and only spoke in English, published a sweet poem on my Facebook wall. It made me decide against drinking an entire bottle of nail polish remover. I think I thought it would kill me but it probably would have just ruined the family trip. I’m so much happier now, even when I’m at my saddest. I used to be so many different people and I love them all so much because they got me here but I wouldn’t re-live any of it. I hope I’m making them proud or whatever.
On Saturday, I got all pretty while listening to a mixtape. Kohl eyes, hair updo, red lipstick on my Oratene-chapped lips. A valedictorian class of nerd, I love a dress code. Like, Valentine’s. My rule with low-cut tops is they’re okay to wear if they’re from my mother’s wardrobe. She caught me on my way out and said I always wore this top with a jacket, you know and I didn’t have time to fact-check her because I was running late for my meeting with the biologist.
When I saw her, I pointed out that we last saw each other on Halloween. We seem to be creating a pattern here, I said, and what are we doing for Easter? She laughed and said, what about Eid? Oh yes, Eid is on the come-up. Dates and Vimtos are being moved to the front shelves. Eid is coming, which means Ramadan is coming. It’s time to care about Ramadan again.
We sit in a quirky little cafe in a small village-esque area. I picked it for us. It's the perfect kind of place to recommend to someone looking for a hidden gem, not because it is a gem but because it is hidden. When people ask for hidden gems, they often care more about the hidden part than the gem part. Her friend, who we ran into later, said it makes a great spot for secret dates. Secret dates are cute when you're a teenager, I guess, but I'm now at the age where a secret date means a degree of infidelity is involved. Not so cute.
But we're still at the part of the story where we're sitting in the quirky little cafe. We've not even run into that friend yet. It's a very busy day for them here. They’re hosting a baby shower and a kid’s birthday party. We sit outside, swatting flies and sun rays. It's hard to shut us up once we get started talking. We don't even mind that twenty minutes pass with no one coming to pick up an order. Chat into brunch. Into a location change, an iced latte and a hibiscus tea on chairs that are not back-friendly. Into an eight-hour hangout that has me saying I think you’ve spent more time with me than you’ll get to spend with your boyfriend on Valentine’s. We did have to part at some point, so she could spend any time with said boyfriend.
She ordered a taxi and offered to drop me off mid-way. Mid-way was a random Asian market, not too far from the post office. I passed by because I'm waiting on some mail from America and hoping for other unpromised mail. Nada. To go home, it’s 10 minutes by car, 30 minutes by bus or an hour on foot. I'd rather walk an hour than take the bus, let alone wait for it, so I walked, listening to Bo Burnham’s old material. Looking good, feeling good.