I’m in a tower in the sky and it’s snowing outside.

These are the days when my neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen morphs into heaven’s most exclusive hotel bar. There’s nothing I love more than an exclusive hotel bar. I like to sit in an exclusive hotel bar alone and drink a heavy pour of Sancerre. Which is very high-end hooker of me. In my next life maybe I’ll be a high-end hooker. I think I’d be *brilliant* at it. Don’t you?
Anyway, my mind can’t stop fixating on my ~new~ baby pink coat I just ordered on the internet — it arrives this afternoon! It’s very cute and perfect for the snow and it’s on sale for $80. You should order yourself one! Enough with the over-priced Canada Goose nonsense! Those coats are deeply ugly and wildly unethical, which is a dismal combination (if you’re going to be unethical at least be pretty). Plus, they make you look like an uptight bitch! I don’t know why — they just do. Every girl traipsing around Manhattan in a Canada Goose jacket looks like she has a giant metal rod up her ass. On the contrary, a pink, affordable, velour puff coat says: I’M A GOOD FUCKING TIME, BABE. Don’t you want to be a good time girl, like moi?

But then again “I’m a deeply superficial person” like my boy Andy Warhol. (I also ordered this Playboy sweatsuit — because my mother happens to be an original London bunny from the 60s and it’s only right for one to honor one’s roots. It’s my version of wearing a sweatshirt from a parent’s college alma-matter).


I’m also apocalyptically hungover. I drank in excess last night as a respectful nod to the perpetually hungover legacy of the great Lindsay Lohan because some people tell me I look like her — which I’m pretty sure is a back-handed compliment but I’ll take it.

I *guess* I can sort of see the resemblance.

But it’s strange. Normally a hangover fills me with anxiety so severe only valium can soften the razor-sharp edges of doom.
I think it’s the weather. If it’s not one thing it’s your mother — or the weather. Today my hangover feels comforting. My fuzzy brain is moving “slow like honey” like the Fiona Apple song (listen to it — it’s sick). And I like it. It feels safe like a weighted blanket. Snug like a glove. Cozy like a crackling fireplace juxtaposed against a blizzardy backdrop. Warm like gun. Just kidding! I hate guns.
Nothing soothes me to the spleen like a blizzard. In New York City. I mean —

Even my usually hyperactive dogs are still in the snow.

I feel the buzz of boundless creativity burst through me when it snows in the city. I feel like I have everything I need right in front of me, when it snows in the city.

Maybe I feel so free because snow in the city feels like me. Cold and pretty. “Fluffy” in the words of a former editorial superior who didn’t care for my long-winded articles about meaningless sex.
Snow in the city feels like me. She can’t quite stick her landings. Blows through the air, disrupts the ecosystem, but never touches the ground. Prefers to stay suspended in a polluted sky.
Snow in the city feels like me. Annoying but Instagram-worthy. Looks better on social media than in real life.
Snow in the city feels like me. A warm teen hookup in an ice-cold basement. Playtime. A moment to fuck off — because fuck it — it’s snowing, babe.

Everything is shut down and everything outside is mother-fucking glowing so who fuck cares about growing? I certainly don’t. Never have. This is why I’m trapped in adolescence. Stuck in the un-heated basement of my youth.

Stuck in that snow day back in ’02 when I invited all the boys over and we all made-out. Awkward, slippery teen kisses. The thrill overriding the chill — holy-shit was that fun.

Bodies entangled, minds expanded, the wet energy of newfound sexuality creating a steam so dense my Smashing Pumpkin’s poster slid off the wall of my teenage bedroom.
The taste of stale cigarettes in my mouth.

The smell of boy on my body. The stench of Victoria’s Secret body lotion on her body. My feet soaked and sore from running through the slush in my Dr. Martin boots. I refused to take them off because I didn’t like my socks. They were mismatched and I was a cool girl back then. I didn’t want to expose my deepest truth. It was vulnerable to confess the truth. The truth was that I never met a pair of socks without holes in them. The truth was my socks were mismatched, always and forever. The truth was that if I took off my boots I lost my power. Hot girls never take their shoes off during their high school tenure. It’ll reveal something they don’t want you to ever know, trust me. Their true height. Their un-manicured toes. Their primal scent. The gaping wounds in their ugly mismatched socks. Or the most embarrassing truth of all: They don’t wear socks. Despite those perfectly preened locks. Who has time for buying socks when you have forty-five minutes a morning dedicated to blow-drying your hair? All this for the male stare.
I feel sad for the kids today. The teens, namely/lamely living in the age of the COVID-19. Sixteen in quarantine. Nothing is cool about having to go to virtual school on a snow day I say! The meticulous girls and the long-lashed boys who are robbed of a day when it’s okay to just make-out and be bad and screw around and not feel sad just do stupid shit like steal condoms out their slutty sister’s thong drawer and try on sex without worry as they pass around amateur-ly rolled joints snatched straight out of the weed stash of someone’s drug-dealing older brother. The suburban kids who won’t get to swig Stoli right out the bottle with ease, no pressing fear of contracting a disease that could render their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and immunocompromised sister dead. (Everyone has an immunocompromised sister. She’s usually super hot and popular too).
The teens — even the grossly over-indulged ones from wealthy towns – the ones the internet hates despite their deadly eating disorders and sociopathic parents — they too deserve to hang out in the FLUFF of THE PUFFS of SNOW today.
Fuck the SATs. Fuck learning. What about kissing? What about getting bleary-eyed and high while gazing into the snowflakes sifting through the alabaster-white sky?
My wife.

She’s from the Bronx. She says that the boys in The Bronx would shovel snow so they could make money and buy kegs for the girls. I grew up in Westport, Connecticut. No boy I ever knew shoveled snow. Which is probably why I was such a ho!

The boys never had to work for me — I gave it away for free. Oh, The Plight of a Privileged Town. You become a girl who is always down to clown. You become a smooth-handed boy brat who is afraid of a subway rat.
Maybe that’s why I’m gay. I never met a boy who worked a day.
But who cares. It’s a snow day. Come on bitches. Let’s play!

My debut book GIRL, STOP PASSING OUT IN YOUR MAKEUP: THE BAD GIRL’S GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR SH*T TOGETHER is available NOW on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, AUDIBLE, and BAM! If you send me a screenshot of your order, I’ll send you swag!

Also have you checked out my new podcast with Dayna Troisi: GirlZ, InterrupteD? It’s available on all podcast platforms and it’s lit as fuck — I swear to Lana Del Rey.

Interested in writing? I offer one-on-one coaching services at all levels! Email me: zarabarrie@gmail.com to set up your free consultation today! Check out this video for more information:
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