Jeffree Star

Red and black lanternflies in Greece, sibilant, resting on my face

the way sunglasses rest on a face, the contour, highlight, hyper

saturated tones, the highlight on a high cheekbone, an influencer.

He's always in makeup that he sells and sells and sells in a

constellation of goods across the land. He is a stranger to me, and

I to him, and also strangers of strangers like friends of friends.

In Greece, fluent lands where I don't speak the language, I see his

face on my phone, familiar from years ago, the pigeons pecking their

dry pieces of bread, retching; a dark web video that begins with

Jeffree Star's aquiline face that so perfectly fits within the frame,

looking very young, maybe early twenties. I'm in a hotel with a

dozen lost bricks and my laundry hangs red on the line. I discover I

cut my elbow, probably when I climbed up an orange tree to pick its

fruit, the opening now crusted and dry. The orange was bitter and

fragrant, juicy, holding the rains, tasting of liqueur. Two please, no

thank you, no, two at first, Jeffree and a young woman, triumphant

in the camera. He's triumphant, "Bitches all hate me because I look

this good without makeup." All hate me, all hate, all, all, all, the camera

moves away, there's a third, a man puking, wretched, and here the soul

recoils from anxiety's percussive weight. Sadism, life-threatening,

cruel. Dehumanizing behavior, dehumanizing, his behavior, dehuman-

izing. He laughs at the man, still vomiting, assaults him, pushes the

man, still vomiting, half-dressed, down the stairs pushes the man,

down the stairs. A pendulum takes me back and forth. Pain behind

the eyes. A mind tries to fill in the features of a face in the dim light.