i,Sophie

Kaye Kagaoan
Creative Writing Honors Workshop
Professor Jane Springer
Fall 2014

i,SOPHIE: ARCHIVE
I. #THROWBACKS

II. TUMBLING OVER #LOVE

21

BIRTH OF SADGIRL69

FIRST DATE, FIRST MISTAKE

23

SOPHIE AND THE BOOBS

HONEYMOON PERIOD HESITATION

25

INTERLUDE

INTERLUDE 2

26

FOOD PLAY ON THE EVE OF 1/1/00

10

PERO LIKE

27

AFTERSCHOOL SUBWAY: NO PLACE

LIKE HOME PAGE

11

WITHDRAWAL/HANDWRITTEN

28

A.I.M. (ADVENTURES IN INTERNET

MATCHMAKING)

13

SNAPCHATS FROM MADRID

30

INTERLUDE 3

33

MOBANDWIDTH, MOPROBLEMS

14

PROSPECT PARK EQUINOX

34

12/21

15

INTERLUDE 4

35

DAD DIES ON A SUNDAY (2008)

16

REUNION (#AWK)

36

DAD DIES ON A SUNDAY (2012)

18

III. NEW PAGE

38

ADVENTURES IN INTERNET
MATCHMAKING (TINDER EDITION)

20

LO(n)GIN(g)

39

#THROWBACKS

BIRTH OF SADGIRL69

Sophie types into a small black box

behind cotton curtains of a fort
shed built herself. Locks doors,
logs on, waits for the
SIGN UP! screen to finish
staggering. Each new form shared
her secret brand of fiction:
handle handpicked from an old
chain letter, a sideways pisces
that toyed with touching.
In her d.p.i. darkness she pictures
the high-res skyscrapers of her GeoCities,
fakes age to fit into forums,
signs each post with a frown,
cuts the cord
so the phone doesnt ring.

SOPHIE AND THE BOOBS

Dads dinner lecture,

a Last Supper from Hell:
his April succubus
seduces the once-empty seat,
plastic oranges shine
like winters bald ornaments,
steamed vegetables wilt
in oil-stained bowls.
He spits search histories over seaweed salad,
yells plagues of pop-ups like a CPUs
abnormal restarts, curses the Dell
like a mothers mistake. Buddha balances melons
as he watches.
Sophie looks up Trojan. Y2K. Worm.
How to run away from home.
Her firewall can only swallow so much;
an antivirus cant cure everything.

At 11pm her parents reveal new stereo system

can I borrow this Sophie says, then
screams into microphone
high-pitched pop hits
- so her parents take it away.
She writes a note. H A T E Y O U
They probably thought,

thats cool,
we hate each other too.

FOOD PLAY
ON THE EVE OF 1/1/00

AFTERSCHOOL SUBWAY:
NO PLACE LIKE HOME PAGE

Breakfast is eggs and toast and Times,

and Sophie picturing planes and satellites

The rush leaves passengers immobile: coolgirls

huddle over Airheads and Teen Pop,
undergrads in Buddy Holly glasses
balance crosswords on their Walkmans -

as bacon. She crushes bacon

onto her plate, concocts a bacon
apocalypse,
clocks reset and charred debris
crash through ceilings,
seasoning eggs,
toast, Times,
breakfast grease smearing
todays headline: 1/1/00
like bacon and eggs
burnt on paper,
bacon as steel, bursting
through concrete
like salty hellfire
precipitation.
In the future, Sophie imagines
how people will talk about the time
when it rained planes and satellites
and Nostradamus ROFLd in his grave.

10

Sophie, age nine, sandwiched

between a sweaty vicar and an old womans
guitar, types passwords into the air.
Wall Street bursts into a standstill:
suits sporting antennas and talk of stocks
distil the preachers words to a silence.
Metrocard in one hand, broke for the week
off cheap prepaid cards that creep
at dial-up speeds, Sophies wrists tremble,
want to reach for the Bible, fold prayer hands
that shed be home before Dad, while
rubber, leather, the vicars B.O.,
beepers, Gameboys, subtle vibrations of
the static six-string commingle
in underground humidity. She escapes
automatic doors, clutching broken
backpack straps, makes for a six-block sprint
to romantic reunion with her P.C.

11

A.I.M.(ADVENTURES IN
INTERNET MATCHMAKING)
dialog box invites sadgirl69 to chat. house to
self, clicks [OK] to
Loading...
windows cascade into a pixel staircase of
Meet New --- Hot Horny Teens Near -Close, Close.
a spinning hourglass, fear of a frozen screen.
her first boyfriend (lemon_gatorade92)
lives in a los angeles basement,
status quoting overplayed radiohead,
video stream is
Loading...
Watch Webcam --- Hardcore sex -[autoplayed moaning]
hit Close until cursor stops clicking.
her first kiss, cold plastic skin,
the convex surface of a computer screen
but webcams lie, too (hes a creep,
hes a weirdo)
YOUR AD HERE-find task manager, force quit.

12

13

MO BANDWIDTH,
MO PROBLEMS

12/21

Day one on DSL

is Sophies great rebirth:
no more phone lines
to decline the files
that fill her drive;
LimeWire satisfies each new mp3
streams a surge of euphoria
through her WinAmp library.
Day one of puberty,
she builds her MySpace page
from scratch - copypastes HTML
and CSS tags to a custom <body>,
fills each sidebar
with chapters of facts
(except her age or anything
traceable to Dad) her profile changes
with each new refresh,
Gimp-edited userpics,
growing friend lists,
more excuses to hide
from new girlfriends.
Her bedroom window
shrinks into the darkness,
pupils dilate, distracted
from her lifes mess,
poring into the LCDs
maximal brightness.

She sits in the back of the computer lab

during the first flurries of winter, head stuck
evading superscripts: tracing pipeline
screensavers, avoiding mines,
deactivating proxies -no time to process
Astrophysics exercises
or admitting futility of life.

14

Theres enough out there to fear

after Googling Mayan theories, conspiracy
behind the decades tragedies, recession
and estranged mothers -- still,
a phonecall can change
everything, steal thought,
freeze fingers silent.

15

DAD DIES ON A SUNDAY (2008)

I.
She hears the news
via voicemail:
A blood clot, a stopped heart.
An intern calling time of death.

SOPHIE @_sadgirl69 6 months ago

finally got twitter. should make self-expression easier

but is condensing myself to 140 characters any
healthier? will it make me skinnier??

At his funeral, she scores her grief

with iPod instrumentals. A Christmas present.
A life in boxes. A hard drive crashes.
A five-year mental flatline.

16

Sophie is moving into college & needs to filter

out unnecessary shit (Im not terrible at
goodbyes)

17

DAD DIES ON A SUNDAY (2012)

II.
Reboot: a new Macbook. A blank slate.
Moms spare loft on Prospect Park West.
A hurricane, a flood.
Leaving Red Hook was a blessing in retrospect.
On the anniversary of Dads death,
a failed apocalypse.
Sentences spin into the present progressive a Facebook status.

Sophie is wondering why she cant use simple

verbs in her Facebook statuses.

SOPHIE @_sadgirl69 2h

definitely gained weight in the last week. going to

the gym this weekend while everyones bonding with
their parents :(

18

19

ADVENTURES IN INTERNET
MATCHMAKING (TINDER EDITION)
Sophie meets #Love
with a single fingers swipe
flirts with #Love
by thumbing glass instead of skin
eyefucks #Love
with the gaze of a pinprick lens #Love is a tug-of-war,
a round of #tag
she just might win.
Sophie wonders
what would have been
if way back when
shed gotten lost four blocks south
and Stumbled Upon his stoop instead.

20

TUMBLING
OVER #LOVE

FIRST DATE, FIRST MISTAKE

Love kissed me in the back of an UberX

while we spun through the streets of South
Williamsburg, hands in pants,

Sophie is ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

sticky from the swell of summer -- and

I kissed Love back, lip on red lip
and bourbon breath from the nights
last call. Our thumbs fumbled like matchsticks,
fingers on pixels traded for skin. We stopped
at my place, split the fare, forgot to
tip -- we crept through the fire escape,
folding over each other like paper
cranes. I felt Love for
the first time (but Love did not feel
his phone, stiff and rising through
the tough of his jeans,
falling five floors). We hear it crack
on the roof of a car - through the alarm
Love kissed me again.

50 Notes 75

23

HONEYMOON PERIOD HESITATION

Sophie
stepped on broken iPhone glass and Im
even mad. #HurtsSoGood

SOPHIE @_sadgirl69 2h

The problem is always

the same:
Not enough seeds.
Too many leeches.
Must
dig
deeper.
The
deep
web
has
no
diameter.
#torrentproblems

The Brooklyn-bound Q dips back

below the surface,
blocking cell service,
suspending our sentences,
mocking our mobile addictions.
I ignore
the sharp transition from daylight
to pitch black,
cursing the frozen progress bar that
suspends our texts
while I distract myself with the bass of
Loves mix,
staring into the pitch black, feeling each
transition,
resting pulse syncopated with the 140-beat rate
but the bass can only distract me so much.
Ive learned
to gauge the range of #Loves tastes,
memorized his style,
yet Ive barely faced the sinking pulse
of our syncopated
reality. #Love, for five months, an eighthour flight away
unreal. Its hard to gauge whether thats my
style Ive had
shit luck with men, but whatever. We still
have Brooklyn.
Five days are enough to delay reality, so I
ignore these thoughts and wait,
addicted, until the screen says
Message Sent.

24

10 Notes 13

25

PERO LIKE
[Thursday night #nowplaying Lord of the Mics]
Outside, two faint gunshots, pero like
I dont see thumbs up, link shares none show me the next viral trend, even though, like,
the hashtags lost its character. 140
sets the new standard for self-filtration, like
a Valencia-tinted lens of life. Distraction is
more productive than I miss you, pero like
ten open tabs cant translate real tears. Online
me is only as good as my followers and likes the live stream is
always
delayed
somewhere.

numbers stored in the cloud, live through every

abnormal restart and reset profile likes. Now
I live to be quantified (though the content is
trash.) See also: #OOTD selfies. #TBT 90s (likes
everyone pretends they had). Tonights date can
wait. Must refresh the feed. Must collect likes.

26

90 Notes 214

27

WITHDRAWAL/HANDWRITTEN

Im trying to extract
the sure from closure.
Three days dont suffice
to reset memory foam,
ruins of shifting bodies
behind unfolded blinds
that exposed
our realness:

written letters on spiral

notebook sheets, naked Polaroid
selfies I shot while blackout drunk,
flash drives of leaked techno tracks
I figured youd love,
random litter that
I would have sent you
if we werent so undefined.

I can still see

loose threads you pulled
from my purple kimono,
my mascara-stained pillowcase,
traces of your muddy sneakers
on one edge of the mattress, bits
of glass from the iPhone
you dropped when we first fucked,
your crumpled old
pack of Parliaments
(Im sure its yours.
I dont smoke Parliaments.)
and the room still smells like you,
I think, equal parts sweat, pot
and honey whiskey. I left the bottle
open as incense.
Still I cant decode why
we never shared a proper
goodbye, just a fucked up
fist bump, a half-assed frat hug.
I stole one last look at the hazel
swirl of your eyes your clich
that drew me in and foresaw the wreck
youd leave behind:

28

20 Notes 88

29

SNAPCHATS FROM MADRID

#Love is
an American boy
in a Spanish
motel. At 7pm he
whips out his 7-inch cock
(it looks the same, like a
slanted spear,
I give it five stars)

but my sentence is longer

than the space
allows and the screen
is only ever
buffering

but Im at lunch, I say,

sourdough fingers
smearing glass in
haste. He grips it
tighter, wants me
to come
join in. I trace my lips
with the taste of my
excuse, suck grease
off my fingertips.
I never want #Love
until hes in bed
and I forget hes
five hours ahead:
Look at me,
#LOVE! I promise
I WANT YOU
THIS TIME!!!
My nipples are
HARD

30

37 Notes 69

31

her wi-fi access is another persons

dropped connection.

SOPHIE @_sadgirl69 5h ago

lets not get all our @klout scores in a bunch

her latest download is

anothers virus.
everything is a sample.
everything is a parasite.

SOPHIE @_sadgirl69 4 months ago

gonna call my next project Electrolights of Death and
it will be an installation of liquid photons in Gatorade
bottles idk #hangover #RIPdad

32

33

PROSPECT PARK EQUINOX

My feet kiss dew

in mid-September
while my mind drifts
to the wet
of early summer:
coincidences sculpted
our sentences, my body
made your music, your mixes
scored subway rides. I tried

But maybe
she knew
even

to optimise
the lines of your smile,
keep its image in my pocket

then
she was

so I could take you everywhere

after distance kept you to itself,

always
sad-

transcend the space

where our words

der
than
she

intersect in midair,

let on.

but lose their meaning

before reaching either side.
The daydream loses
rhythm, fades to
shallow regret as my toes
dig into grassless dirt: I forget
your favorite liquor, wonder
how much memory
will wither
in your
absence.

34

6 Notes 6

35

K)

AW
#
(
ION
REUN

below my fifth floor window the first cars stir,

hungover. it is 30 degrees outside,
the coffee cools while you come up.
i know you share
my #anxiety.
our distance was too real,
leaving data dust:
every text, selfie, pixel in the cloud,
shelved meme, trending topic
buried in archives hashtagged love.
we coded ourselves 4 ourselves,
deleted shitty profile pics
and proof of CraigsList psoriasis, built
firewalls in our brains,
forced filters that kept us from being us

SOPHIE @_sadgirl69 6 months ago

give me the next new trend

beyond seapunk and difference clouds
(or burgers on shirts);
the scene is my disease

i open the door and my speech

shortens into silence.
in seconds we flip from an <is> to an </is>,
a <was?> lost on a string that makes no sense
as our story hovers, open-ended, in encrypted
virtual space
a billion search pages deep.

36

3 Notes 4

37

LO(n)GIN(g)

Last night I deleted my

history. Erasure liberates
memory exiles the rest across
oceans, elsewhere,
sighs
clears its throat of
cookies and ghosts,
pauses restores. Behind
a blank reflection
the cursor blinks
like it pleads, regrets,
a chant or prayer,
a hard reset:
Remember Me.

0 Notes 0

39

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