MUSINGS: A Soft Collapse in a Custom Vera Wang

Dripping in Nostalgia, Starving for Relevance

Elise wasn’t famous, exactly. She wasn’t anonymous either. She was something in between; a soft blur in the periphery of every good party photo, half-remembered in conversation, name-dropped but never really known. You might have seen her in the background of some Cobra Snake album circa 2007, cigarette in one hand, digital camera in the other, eyes dead behind oversized vintage Versace sunglasses she insisted she “borrowed from Gia Coppola and never gave back.”

We met through a mutual friend, an actual artist, the kind of Los Angeles figure who gets retrospectives at MOCA and occasionally tweets cryptic things that get turned into neon wall pieces. Elise told everyone they met on MySpace, “back in the day,” like it was a noble war they both survived. She said they “had a thing,” like that meant anything. No one cared. Not even the artist, who referred to her in private as “that trust fund phantom who always shows up three hours late and leaves with someone else’s drugs.”

She liked to say she was “indie sleaze before it was cool,” which was, of course, exactly when it was cool. 2007. American Apparel bodysuits, American Spirits, that grimy Polaroid flash aesthetic. She lived in Laurel Canyon then, or said she did, in a house that belonged to her mother’s third husband, some line producer who once got a thank you at the Spirit Awards. The house was mid-century and haunted by the kind of money that comes from being adjacent to actual power. You got the sense she had grown up somewhere you needed a gate code to enter, but was never quite let inside herself.

Her first marriage was in Georgia, for some reason. Or maybe it was the Carolinas? Who can remember? It had that uncomfortable Southern-gothic-overcompensation energy, like she wanted to cosplay sincerity. Custom Vera Wang. Lace sleeves. Honey-colored lighting on rented oak trees. She posted filtered photos of peonies in mason jars, used the hashtag #blessed without irony. The guy was a hedge fund failson, or maybe a country musician’s second cousin. It didn’t matter. The marriage lasted six months. She cheated the whole time. With men, women, sometimes both in the same evening. I once saw her leave the Chateau Marmont arm-in-arm with a couple from Berlin who didn’t speak English.

There were parts of her I recognized. That restless need to curate chaos. The pathological performativity of aloofness. The way she said things like “I feel like I was just born in the wrong decade” or “I don’t really do brunch” like they were mantras. I saw myself in the hollowness, which is maybe why I kept her around for longer than I should have.

Once, at the back patio of some house in the Hills, both of us holding melting drinks and pretending not to be bored, she turned to me with this look flat, catlike, unreadable and asked:

“You ever just feel… like none of this is real?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” she lit a cigarette, even though it was 2013 and no one was doing that anymore, “like we’re all just playing some glamorous version of ourselves until someone better walks in the room.”

I looked at her. Really looked. Her foundation was cracked and peeling at the edges, like old paint on a forgotten wall. One of her acrylic nails was missing, the others dulled and chipped. She looked puffy, the kind of bloated that clings to you after a stint in rehab—the water weight of withdrawal, the shame of still being visible. She was desperate to shed it, you could tell. Desperate to be the version of herself she believed people remembered. And yet, as always, she was trying to look like she hadn’t tried at all.

“Do you ever not think like that?” I asked.

She blinked slowly, smirked. “Of course not. That’s the trick, right?” she said, exhaling. “You have to believe the performance.”

And then she turned and floated off toward the bar, like she always did just when it started to feel like something real might be happening.

Elise had a bad energy. You could smell it before she walked in a room, like Le Labo Santal mixed with static and something vaguely rotten underneath. She made you nervous without doing anything. Made your skin itch. She was the kind of girl who would borrow your lipstick, tell you she loved you, then flirt with your boyfriend while you were in the bathroom. And the thing is: she didn’t even want him. She just wanted you to know that she could.

Sometimes she’d disappear for a few months and resurface with new bangs, a fake British accent, and a capsule jewelry line she swore was inspired by Joan Didion. It was always something. Her life was one long, unending mood board that got sadder the closer you looked. She never worked, not really. Her family had some kind of legacy in the business; old money that didn’t like to be discussed. One of her uncles was a casting director who died mysteriously. Or maybe it was a cousin. There was always an air of glamour and tragedy tangled into her bloodline.

She didn’t have friends so much as rotating satellites. Girls who admired her style, boys who mistook her cruelty for mystery. I was probably one of them. I used to think she was fascinating. But fascination eventually gives way to dread, especially when someone starts to resemble a warning.

Now she lives somewhere on the east side, I think. Wears big hats. Posts about healing. Dates men who DJ for fun and have three roommates. Says things like “boundaries are hot” while still texting her married exes. She’s softened in all the ways people do when they’ve been ignored too long.

I scroll past her stories now and then. Still not famous. Still not anonymous. Just Elise. A girl with bad energy in a beautiful dress, standing under a chandelier she didn’t pay for, with no one really looking.