If I were a more playful person to whom mitgefühl (empathy, feeling-with) for the inner whimsical workings of creatures nearer the ground came naturally, this would be some sort of fairytale about a frog and a creek. The frog would find the most perfect wheatgrass crown among the blades and rule over the creek, learning important lessons about hubris and friendship along the way. There would be an endearingly childlike illustration. That is not what this is. The crown is real, the frog is probably not. The crown was made by a pair of rosy hands I’ve been holding lately. It is not important. It has become the motif for everything. The imaginary frog has got hold of an oil pastel and scribbled everything GREEN GREEN GREEN. I’ve been waiting for green since September. Last week, at the Somatic Silent Disco Resonant Writing Workshop, we had to sit cross-legged and say one word and I said ‘frog’ because I didn’t realise we were supposed to say an emotion. I tried to explain that it was the only word available to me at the time. When we were supposed to draw with our bodies, I crayoned a rendition of the frog prince because I don’t know how to draw with my body.
I don’t know how to eat either. This is something else I learned last week when I served myself defrosted tortellini with a meal deal salad. I am angry that I can’t cook. I spend my time ranting about men’s weaponised incompetence only to discover that I am weaponlessly incompetent.
***
Picture this: two lovers. Between them, a creek. She is standing, hand on forehead, palm to the heavens catching a sequin star.
He is laid out across a mossy rock. The frog prince is the storyteller in this scenario, or perhaps the poison in the creek. He is not pictured. Above the two lovers is a word printed in serif, paper edges frayed. The word is bratpop. Bratpop is green. These components can only be collaged in hindsight. Like a migraine, indescribable when you try to get it.
I keep telling people that I’m writing a book about a frog prince. People keep asking me who the frog prince is like I’m some sort of singer-songwriter on his stadium sellout sophomore album. I get defensive. The frog prince is the frog prince. The frog prince is green. That is all.
In all likelihood there is more to it than that. I’m getting closer but I don’t quite want to catch him and so I won’t tell.
When I play him my radio show, the frog prince ribbits at the original boy version of Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I can tell by the way he ribbits that he doesn’t like it. I trim the song to just the good bit.
***
I’m making things again in real-time like a vlogger, like a voyager, like a food critic. In order to write things, they have to happen first. I think that’s why I tell my Friend-And-Collaborator (FAC) that today is the day we must have lunch in a pasta restaurant I’ve been meaning to go to since I moved to Glasgow. It’s suddenly essential. Things will happen, Ferris Bueller-style. Sure enough, they do. The waiter greets us with howareyoutodaylovelypeople. My FAC is telling me that she’ll always be too indie twee for art school because she never takes black and white pictures of her own bum. I reassure her that I don’t think she needs to do that sort of thing to be taken seriously and that I don’t see her as the human embodiment of a ukulele, though the word is a convenient pseudonym. When we’ve finished our pasta, the waiter asks if we would like any coffeeteadessert or [he points at my head] a glass of milk? I never know how to respond to banter or performance art. I say no thank you with a smile that I hope could be either ironic or sincere depending on how he meant it.
Ask me about my day and I’ll tell you the Green Party candidate’s favourite biscuit.
When we’re walking to the restaurant, I tell my FAC, now called Ukulele, that I’m cooking for the rosy-handed boy tomorrow. He doesn’t like mushrooms, and this is suspicious. Ukulele looks at me and asks if I like this man. I ask whether she likes him, which isn’t the point. I tell her that sincerity is embarrassing. I write to him to warn him that he hasn’t met the version of me who swears in the kitchen yet. He writes back saying he’s excited to meet her. I haven’t been able to eat on any of our previous dates. On our second date I told him the story of the Italian boy I went to Pizza Express with at seventeen who was so embarrassed about not finishing his pizza that he never spoke to me again. Now, at nearly twenty-four, I fundamentally understand. How can I cook when I don’t know how to eat? I message my culinary flatmate and she gives me precise instructions. All I have to do is what I’m told.
Sincerity is embarrassing. I think this is why I’ve been so entranced by reels of small-time pop songs that seem like parodies but aren’t. You can tell they are sincere when the caption is earnest and the comments are vitriolic. I sent one of these videos to Ukulele to make her laugh. I, a proponent of sincerity!! I think of the boy I loved for a time who told me he wanted to put his ex-girlfriend in a metaphorical box to keep her safe. I think I want to do this with sincere pop singers. They write to us in yellow, we write them back in true blue.