hot sugar gave all kinds of things to me. perfume, drink tickets, french candy that tasted of flowers. when i behaved, he gave me things. when i didn’t, it gave him sinkies.
“i thought you didn’t want to talk and i got sinkies ._.”
i would clock out of the register and hurry down the mall corridor, fumbling with the keyboard. it was 2012.
“nooo of course i want to talk to u ),: i was just at work all day.”
as a small, anonymous 19-year-old, i snatched up any opportunity to lie about my age. to nightclub bouncers, i had just turned 21. to the orgy of critics dissecting my youtube videos, i was at least 13, probably 16, not even close to legal. and on my next birthday, i turned whatever age nick liked best. on his next birthday, he turned 27.
i don’t think i’d used the word “infantilized” before we met, but once i moved to new york city and settled into nick’s apartment i began to hear it everywhere. my body kept on shrinking, soon too small to wear a sample size, then small enough to fit a child’s easter dress. but my baby voice stayed sweet, and i tossed aside my college girl vocabulary in favor of nick’s kindergarten language. i’d lay naked in the airy living room of the 14th street apartment his parents had bought and let him decorate in pastel pinks and greens. i felt all warm and fuzzy when he’d coo “aww, you’re such a sweet little thing! so small and cute, like a little child.”. i’d missed feeling like a child. it felt good.
but sometimes, i gave him sinkies.
the word itself, as it was defined to me by it’s ~brilliant, genius~ creator:
the hollow feeling of your stomach sinking deep into itself; a symptom of crushing emotion, most often a result of mixing heartache and disappointment. the sensation in your gut when you find out you didn’t make the team, when you see your crush holding hands with someone else.
these illustrations resonated. i thought he was the smartest man i’d ever known, and the most exquisite too; a man so delicate and whimsical he somehow turned me back into a child, taught me cute new names for pain and sadness. he played vulnerable like a possum. i vowed to never be the one to give him sinkies, and i did my best.
you see, sometimes you lose yourself. you starve her and you hurt her and she leaves you, stuck in just the skin you’ve got stretched around your skeleton. emptied out, you lay on sheets from bootleg chinese websites and allow someone to pump you up with guilt and self-reproach. you fall in love with someone who knows how to tell you “shhhh, hush now” with such a gentle voice that in your desolation, you can only hear a lullaby. you listen.
he would watch me like a hawk as i spilled secrets to my online followers, posting idle thoughts and telling funny stories. because i had been lucky with a song, my following was large enough for nick to consider me worthy of parading to his fans. i’d dress up in fake fur and let him photograph me sleepy-eyed. i didn’t mind his posts about my body and the things he liked to take from it. i was young and figured this was all just part of growing up. “they call me our generation’s mozart,” he would brag. he liked to cloak his genius in dark velvet and spend all day turning noises into quirky beats, sometimes handing them to me like great rewards. i was to appreciate these gifts; any perceived lack of reverence was sure to end in sinkies.
i began to think of sinkies as a unit of measurement, a gauge for how much guilt to feel for my frequent transgressions. complimenting male friends’ selfies, praising other musicians who weren’t up to nick’s standards, hanging out with friends who weren’t quite cool enough. when he made a mixtape with a company who demanded he censor it’s explicit lyrics, he boasted to the press of how he swindled them by using sounds of me in bed to mask the F-words. i’d agreed to this, but never thought the world (and, in turn, my family) would hear so much about my part in his principled crusade against corporate censorship. when the company disaffiliated themselves with nick and his music, my humiliated silence on the matter gave him sinkies. when the same company offered to pay for one of my music videos, my acceptance gave him sinkies so severe he presented an ultimatum; turn the money down, or leave him. penitent, i drafted up an email: thank you for your offer, but i have to turn this down.
soon the sinkies would become a millstone, weighing more and more each day as i grew too weak to carry my own head. i’d trudge through new york city in nick’s shadow, reticent and pale as i stepped lightly over garbage in the street. i felt sinkies of my own during his concerts, where i obediently waited in some corner so as not to be seen by his adoring fans. it was for the sake of his brand, he’d say, to uphold the illusion that i didn’t exist. our music-blog honeymoon had ended months ago, and he was hoping to seem fuckable again. i’d nod quiet understanding, stepping far out of frame for the fantasy. it sort of hurt to play the ghost, but when i suggested skipping one of his performances he got those sinkies, so i told him never mind. i painted my lips blood red and kept them firmly pressed together.
there were countless days like this. it took me years of therapy and self-reflection to call sinkies what they were; a tactic used for discipline, to grab my heart like reins and yank me back into submission. i had followed my first love into his handcrafted reality, let his violet-flavored candies melt on my tongue, curled up in a childish captivity. everything outside had gotten older; in my pastel bedroom, i’d grown only more naive.
when our relationship inevitably shattered, i was sent off on my own into the city. i searched new york desperately for reasons to go on, frantically catching up to learn adulthood. i was introduced to my true ignorance in a railroad apartment in greenpoint, crying through the winter with a broken radiator. sometimes when i’d check my phone, there’d be a new message from nick. sometimes it would be an invitation to come spend the night, and i would rush down the stairs into a cab. more often, the messages were filled with ways i’d still, from far away, managed to catalyze his sinkies.
a few weeks ago, i met some girls whose stories echoed mine. i let hours turn to days as i pored over every single horror, typo-filled and neatly sorted on a grid. i felt every ache again like stubbing broken toes a second time. as my guts plummeted deeper, deeper, deeper i let my fingers type on their own into an open google tab:
“hot sugar sinkies”
of course, i found a song. a video. a sexy girl demurely places one pill on her tongue. Hot Sugar and his “Sinkies”, with a hired porn star to elucidate them, glowing in magenta. i couldn’t help but laugh.
