My Week of Caffeine and Oversocialization
A party diary—from Ottessa Moshfegh’s auction to the Chelsea Hotel, an erotic reading, recessioncore at the strip club, and a surprise appearance from Candace Bushnell.
In My Year of Rest and Relaxation,
’s disillusioned protagonist drugs herself to sleep for an entire year in hopes of fixing her life. I’ve been feeling a bit stir-crazy lately, so after interviewing Ottessa the other week, I tried the opposite: hitting every party in the city, running entirely on caffeine and dirty martinis.It didn’t fix my problems, but it was entertaining. So, for my paid subscribers, I’ve chronicled a particularly unhinged week in my life: from an X-rated erotic reading to philosophical debates in the strip club to the launch of a new matchmaking service, and a surprise appearance from Candace Bushnell—the original Carrie Bradshaw. Plus, behind-the-scenes gossip from Ottessa’s auction of strange and unexpected items, and a late night partying together at the Chelsea Hotel.
Enjoy!
It’s 10:02am and I’m late to the podcast studio, lugging an absurd assortment of objects—plants, books, candles, and vintage Playboys—meant to outfit my new set: a sexy, ’70s-inspired conversation pit that I’d arranged the night before. When I arrive, the lighting techs are aghast at the transformation; turning a sterile studio into a seductive lair is no small feat, but when my friend Tony Notarberardino offered to help, I knew we were in good hands. He’s a lighting whiz, and his home at the historic Chelsea Hotel was once described as “the lair of a well-traveled, horny Victorian” by the writer Legs McNeil. You get the vibe.
Upon arrival, Ottessa flips through an old Playboy, then says archly that she hates Playboy. She has what the TikTok girls might call “black cat energy”—measured, self-contained, potentially intimidating if you’re insecure. But it’s not personal; she’s just smart, and wasn’t raised to pander. As she once told me: “Do you think I believe my book is a piece of shit? No. I worked extremely hard on it! Why should I be broadcasting insecurity?”
People often conflate authors with their characters, and Ottessa writes the kind of women people love to hate: self-obsessed and self-loathing, convinced they’re both better and worse than everyone around them. It’s easy to assume these thoughts come from her. But as we spend more time together, I’m convinced she’s not confessing, but channeling. She’s always believed that creativity is conjured from something beyond the self—and in her writing, she tries to attend to that belief. “It’s not about me, but about letting the book be extruded through my mortal form,” she says. “I take some responsibility, but I’m not in charge.”
In real life, Ottessa is funny, and disarmingly generous. “There’s nothing I own that I wouldn’t immediately give away to a woman who wanted it,” she says during our podcast episode, and I believe her: When I was profiling her, she sent me a scarf in the mail, and later this week, offers to buy a lost-looking 24-year-old a reading from her own Vedic astrologer.
Of course, people are willing to buy her things, too: that’s the premise of tonight’s Substack auction, which features an array of odd and unexpected items hand-selected by Ottessa and her co-host, Eddie Huang. From a lightly used toothbrush to a signed box of laxatives, a painting she did at age 27, and a martini date at the Chelsea Hotel, there’s something for everyone—but Ottessa urges me not to place any bids, especially on her time. “We can just have drinks,” she says, and I make a mental note to take her up on it.
As I later learn, this is a several-hundred-dollar value—won by a group of girls who didn’t know each other before the auction but, in the heat of the moment, banded together to purchase a martini date with their idol. It’s far from the highest bid: A writing therapy session goes for several grand, and even her toothbrush—“lightly used”—goes for an admirable $110.
If you’re woozy at the thought of these prices, you’re not alone: halfway through the auction, a man passes out, and a hush falls over the crowd as we turn to see him on his back, head lolling on the carpet.
, Substack’s event producer and proud owner of Ottessa’s lightly used toothbrush, nurses him back to health. After a beleaguered thumbs-up, attention shifts back to the auction. The show must go on!The energy is chaotic, but also strangely sweet: All these people crowded together to eat greasy Chinese Food and bid on their favorite writers’ castaways, a form of parasocial proximity akin to Chloe Sevigny’s closet sale. It is, I assume, a driving force behind Ottessa’s thriving Depop—though it’s not to say that people aren’t there for the actual goods. Case in point: The day after the auction, my friend Avery texts me a picture of a package addressed to her by Ottessa: “I never look at names on Depop, so I had no idea who I was buying from!”
The next day, I spend the afternoon writing, then take a walk with a friend and unpack her recent date. She’d had sex with the girl for the first time last night; then, this morning, her dermatologist wrote her to tell her the mole on her nose is actually skin cancer. We decide God is punishing her for being gay.
While we’re on our walk, another friend texts me an invite: X-rated erotic philosophy reading at KGB, hosted by Stella Barey, aka “Anal Princess.” Who am I to say no? When I arrive, it’s already packed. The readings are both filthy and familiar—historic dispatches from literary kinksters like Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and the Marquis de Sade, whose names gave us the terms “masochism” and “sadism,” alongside musings from Bataille, Freud, Foucault, and Paglia on everything from desire and disgust to the erotics of discourse, surrender, and vagina dentata.
Afterward, I head to the Chelsea Hotel to meet up with Ottessa after her martini date. Killing time at the bar, I meet an older woman named Dorothy, fresh from a screening of the new show Dying for Sex. “You have to see it,” she says, apropos of nothing. When I tell her I write about sex, she’s delighted. “Who are you, Carrie Bradshaw?” (More on that later.)
We talk about sex and death, desire and destruction. I pull out my pamphlet of erotic readings, reminded of a line from Bataille: “Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life to the point of death.” She cites historian John Boswell, who wrote that in medieval times, people always wanted to fuck after a beheading. “Sex is how we grapple with mortality,” she says. We exchange numbers.
I expect to extract Ottessa from a mob of sycophants, but by the time I arrive, everyone’s giggling like old friends. We exchange notes about Paris, witchcraft, and why losers are always the best in bed (“it’s, like, all they have.”) One girl regales us with the story of her date the night before, casually noting she’d bumped it for a martini date with Ottessa. Power move!
We’re laughing too loud. Other patrons shush us. I meant to whisk Ottessa away, but the girls are cool, so I bring them upstairs to Tony’s apartment, the last bastion of bohemia in NYC. Formerly shared by him and the musician Dee Dee Ramone, it’s dimly lit in a perpetual red light and exudes an old-world romance that’s hard to find anywhere else. “Welcome to what’s left of the Chelsea,” he says, aware, as ever, of the effect his apartment has on people. The girls, predictably, are agog. “I feel like I just entered another world,” one says. “I see why you brought us here,” Ottessa nods.