On The Nutrient Rich Bitch
"Drizzle commenced just as I got to Clemente Field but I wasn’t about to have my $10 go to waste."
December 16, 2018
I was 25 years old
Boston, Massachusetts
We got back to Kyéra’s place and she pretty immediately turned on an episode of Westworld and I pretty immediately fell asleep. Didn’t even try to feign interest in the proceedings of that show. Just conked the fuck out. She very sweetly set me up with blankets and pillows out on her couch as she and Sarah drifted off to bed. Prayed for no hangover and set an alarm that got me up this morning at 9:30 and out of there, without a goodbye, by 9:45. I found out later that Sarah was already awake by then but it’s okay—I didn’t want a whole production.
Kyéra is Cleveland Circle-adjacent but it wasn’t too long a walk back to Allston, where I’d parked dad’s car. It, thankfully, didn’t have any tickets and was parked exactly where I’d left it. And despite the rain in the forecast, I knew today would be as good a day as ever to make a “Nutrient Rich Bitch” Sweetgreen video. Especially being back in Boston for the weekend, with access to my classic “background.” Of course, the drizzle commenced in earnest just as I was walking over to Clemente Field but I wasn’t about to have my $10 go to waste.
Did bits about White Elephant versus Yankee Swap (“‘Oh, I grew up calling it a Yankee Swap.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, you also grew up eating margarine.’”), Green Book, resolutions, etcetera. Posted them to my Instagram Story just as I was getting into the car and turning the ignition—and very purposefully. Delaying the gratification of responses. And they were plentiful. And so very kind. I do think there’s power in doing these videos, that most everyone in my life loves so much. I just haven’t found a Sweetgreen-adjacent place in New York that’s quiet and secluded enough, with a high enough “table” for the perfect angle, to do them nearly as regularly as I used to. But I have to say—it was a comforting little pat to the ego, hearing from people who were so happy, so excited to have “him” back. Now, I just need to finally get those headshots I’ve been talking about…and my life can REALLY begin.
December 15, 2021
Brooklyn, New York
I am 28 years old
A satisfying origin story for The Nutrient Rich Bitch, I have not. I don’t even remember when I posted its first installment, zero recollection of whatever inspired the inaugural Instagram Story triptych of a character who became—and quickly—a cherished figure to the friends, family, and faggots who follow me online. I had to pour through no less than six different journals, chronicling my post-graduate years in Boston, to find even the sparsest mention of this shtick that I’d effortlessly film during my half-hour lunch breaks from The Verb Hotel, on the one day per week that I worked during daylight hours at that godforsaken place. A shtick that, week after week, would prompt immediate, dare I say rave responses from people who found so much to enjoy in those 45-total seconds of me, violently eating a Harvest Bowl from the Sweetgreen on Brookline Avenue, talking to some constant stranger, unseen and unknown, about a mutual friend of ours who—over and over again—proved to be such a hapless, feckless, reliably-incompetent idiot. The Nutrient Rich Bitch was rageful, he was cutting, more than occasionally misogynistic with allusions too regularly ripped from the headlines of my own friend group—and he was adored.
But not in my diaries, he wasn’t. In those journals where I devoted entire contents of G2 pens to mere ideas for essays that I was just thinking about pitching to Hazlitt or McSweeney’s or an academic symposium on Transparent, I’d written maybe one or two sentences about people being “really into my Stories lately.” I was dabbling in front-facing camera comedy long before it earned, and rightfully, the ire of my online peers but evidently I didn’t find much value in reflecting on it. I could applaud my humility, my 23-year-old restraint, staying so level-headed about the doting reactions from my 950 total Instagram followers. But in the same way that self-deprecation is just the flip side of self-obsession’s coin, I don’t think these omissions had so much to do with staying humble as staying very, very still. Staying in control. Staying this dog walker who felt such a thrill on those days when the owner happened to be home and, during banal back-and-forth, was privy to some remark of mine that was clever or witty enough to make them laugh but, more importantly, laugh almost by surprise. So eager to stay this serious person who could be funny when the time was right but so scared of trying to be a funny person who just might be found out as serious.
“Tell him we need new Salad Stories!” became a refrain I started hearing, and regularly. Mostly from my mom, delivering the message from her hairdresser or some friend from the gym. And while the logistics of finding a Sweetgreen in New York City that had its own “Roberto Clemente Field” nearby did, indeed, seem futile, it was more than just location scouting that brought about my eventual separation from the character. At some point in my final couple months in Boston, after publishing an essay to my blog about the 20th anniversary of Ray of Light that accrued about as much traction as one might imagine, I told myself that that was it, that I was done, that I would no longer identify as a “writer.” In such an event that the three entirely self-edited posts I’d share per year to said blog was enough to warrant such a title to begin with. I was frustrated by how few people were reading my stuff, embarrassed by the torturous amount of time I’d devote to writing something from the heart only for three people to throw it a “like” on Twitter. And I figured, despite those misgivings about being a funny person trying to be funny, that the universe was telling me something. That if people weren’t exactly lining up to read my 3,000 words about Madonna’s 1998 masterpiece, they needed no encouragement to watch my Instagram Stories and direct message a “hahahahaha” in response. And so, logically, I decided I’d be an actor. I took improv classes in Boston, and then in Chicago, signing up for a straight-up acting class somewhere along the line. Going so far as to arrange a meeting with an agent within my first couple weeks in New York. She was brutal, but in a Tri-State Woman kind of way that somehow ends up feeling warm. And after I emailed her the self-tape she very sympathetically requested, she got back to me a couple days later to say, “I’d suggest some on-camera classes. You’re a bit over the top. Thanks!”
And so, still brutally new to New York, telling myself I wasn’t a writer and getting told I wasn’t much of an actor, I made it very easy to lose my spark. The big fish in a now-massive pond who still felt like he was coming across so serious but finding less and less opportunity to shock anyone with a sense of humor they didn’t see coming. Turning, consciously or not, into that feeble, irritating friend who the Nutrient Rich Bitch always had so much to complain about. And really, all along, couched in the stands of that field, my ass on the craggy stone floor of the bleachers with my Harvest Bowl set high up on the row, keeping myself as low down as possible to accomplish an angle that felt ridiculous but looked real, I always was that friend. So certain that I was fumbling, and naively, through so many situations and opportunities in life, and providing in the process more than enough material for that other side of myself, that effusive and performative me who was so hungry for so much. And if I ever seemed angry or truly bitter about any of these shortcomings, if I ever jabbed those forkfuls of sweet potato and kale hard enough into my mouth for the mask to slip for even a moment, luckily, for me, I could say it was all just a joke.
My writer my Lovey 👍❤️