To make your great-grandmother’s raspberry bars, you’ll first need to ask someone for the recipe, because you only remember half of it by heart. Everyone half remembers it, your grandmother, your aunt, your sister, and conveniently, none of the parts each person remembers match up. You still need the recipe, the words in front of you. You need the recipe because you remember the ingredients but not the exact amounts. You remember the faces but not the words spoken.

You’ll be handed the card out of her old recipe box. The recipe box with the butter logo on the top, the woman sitting with her knees tucked under her. The card is decorated with a gaudy 50’s print, yellowed edges, and slanted handwriting. Laugh at the outdated terminology, (“What’s ‘salad oil?’” you’ll ask.)

You’ll need flour, butter, sugar, eggs, pecans, raspberry jam. For the jam it has to be Smuckers. It has to have seeds in it. The jar is not quite big enough with the red and white checkered cap. You know the jar because there’s always a half empty one in the fridge. Buy a new jar so at the end there’ll be another half empty one in the fridge for next time.

Take out the nut chopper that has been collecting dust at the back of the cabinet. There’ll be two, and they’re only used to make raspberry bars. Take out the white and red one with the crank handle, it’s more efficient. Toss a few pecans into the green one with the manual slap chop top for the resident small child, (a cousin, probably,) to entertain themselves. Try not to think about how said small child will never know your great-grandmother, whose handwriting you are following. So talk with the child about how it’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and aren’t they excited? Make an off handed remark about how your great-grandmother’s birthday was close to Thanksgiving, so you would celebrate it then. Wonder how old she’d be now. Calculate the age she was when she died. You were eight? Nine? In third grade? Fourth? Try to add up the years. Stop before you reach the answer. It’s time to make the dough.

Take the nuts you’ve either over- or under-chopped and mix them into the butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. The dough should be soft but crumble apart. Eat a third the dough raw, because it tastes so damn good and you’ll make do anyways. You always manage to. Press half of the diminished dough supply into the glass baking pan that you’ve coated with cooking spray. You know that no matter how much you put in, it will always stick.

Your grandma will hand you three different spatulas to get the jam out of the jar. Only use one of them or all three, it doesn’t matter. They’ll all end up in the sink anyways.

“We’ll need to open the other jar,” your grandma will say as she takes the fresh jar of jam out of the fridge. Try to open it. Take a dish towel and try to open it. Wet the dish towel and try to open it. Take a jar opener and try to open it. Try to open it with your bare hands again. It should pop right open.

Spread the jam over the crust. Have the small child help you crumble the rest of the dough on top when the layer is perfectly uneven. Giggle as they sneak small pinches of raw dough from the bowl. It’s like they’re moving through your old motions, and you find yourself moving through your aunt’s and you don’t know to feel about that.

“There won’t be enough if you keep eating it,” you or your aunt might say. But have everyone take another pinch anyway. Put the baking pan in the oven and let it cook. Turn on the oven light.

Sit at the kitchen table with your flour-caked apron. Lie your head down on the cool marble and ask about how it was when your great-grandmother made the raspberry bars. Your aunt will start talking, but you’ll only half listen. You’ll be too busy thinking about how strange it is that you never knew her the way your aunt knew her, the way your grandma knew her. Because they remember her occupying the kitchen with homemade cookies, and you remember her in a wheelchair at the nursing home with fun size Hershey bars. Someone will pull out photos and you’ll be struck by the strangeness of seeing everybody younger with smoother faces and outdated clothes. Poke fun at the 60’s hair and 80’s pants and share a laugh.

Look down at the child playing on the floor with the toys you used to play with, the Tinker Toys and stuffed bulldog named Lane who’s the perfect hugging size for them. Lane is too small for you now. They’ll never know your great-grandmother just like you never knew her. Wish that you got to cook with her just once, instead of standing next to your sisters and mother at the nursing home.

Instead of thinking about how isolated you felt when your family shared stories of her at the funeral, go and check the raspberry bars. Take them out of the oven when the jam boils at the edges. It’ll get chewy as it cools. It’s the best part. Cut out a corner before they’re set and taste it even though you’ll burn your tongue. Because you can taste the same taste your great-grandmother did, even if you didn’t have the chance to make them together. You can hold onto her face, her handwritten words even as her spoken ones fade away.

Raspberry Bars

2 ¼ cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup softened butter

1 egg

1 jar raspberry preserves

Grease a 9 x 13 inch pan. In a bowl, combine all but raspberry preserves. Beat at a low speed until the mixture is crumbly. Set aside 1 ½ cups of the crumb mixture. Press the rest of the crumb mixture into the greased pan. Spread the preserves to within ½ inch of the edge, crumble the remaining crumb mixture over the preserves. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 40-42 minutes or until lightly brown.

I remember what Taysha told me the very first night.

“It’s no use, Rindy. After the first time, you’ll always end up back in Swamp City.”

The night she said that we were sitting at the back of Chacha’s, right where all the lingering drinkers sat, growing ever more familiar with our glasses of whiskey. I liked how it burned right down my throat. It practically cleared my sinuses. It was April, and my pollen allergies were making it so my nose was useless.

Taysha isn’t stupid. I don’t know how she’d got into it all. Into the whole thing with Swamp City. A name that encompases the substance and the place. I wonder where she got her first dose. Did she get it in tab form or powder? There’s a dealer down on Jasper Street that sells the powder in little baggies, like packets of Kool-Aid. Everyone knows that the powder stuff isn’t that legit, that the dealers could water it down with chalk or flour, that tabs are the way to go. Those perfect little circles that you can take whole like an Asprin or grind up, mix into drinks, snort, whatever, but if you have an itch you don’t care. Taysha isn’t stupid, and I wonder how she got dragged into Swamp City. As for me?

It’s July now and the air is muggy. I’m sweating through the armpits of my jean jacket. I shouldn’t have even brought a jacket, I don’t need it. There’s a whistle of a breeze, but it’s faint and warm. All it does is make my hair stick to my lip gloss. I’m glad I wore sneakers tonight or else I wouldn’t know how I would manage to make it home. That’s right. Home. I’m going home. Just three more blocks up Foster, turn right onto Harrison, cross at the bridge onto Olson, and then halfway up the block you’ll find my apartment. It’s not that far, Rindy, just keep walking. I shouldn’t have had that last drink.

My stomach is raging in protest, threatening to spill itself onto the curb in front of me. That’s how starfish eat, I think. They barf up their stomach to absorb all their food and then swallow it back down.

Back in third grade when they took us to the aquarium the lady with the blonde pixie cut and blue uniform had told us that. You’re supposed to call them sea stars, because they aren’t technically fish. Her voice had that tone of practiced patience that adults often used with a group of kids that was getting restless. We had been standing in front of the giant glass wall of the main tank, the small cluster of us, and she sent us to go off and look at whatever we wanted, so long as we stayed in that room. Streams of sunlight wavered through the towers of aqua hued water and cast wavering lines onto the floor. The main tank was just normal fish, so the other kids had wandered off to gawk at the hammerhead sharks or sea turtles, jelly-sticky hands and cheeks pressed up against the glass.

But I stayed in front of the main tank and watched the swarms of silver fish, it must have been hundreds of them, as they swam in circles, whirlpools going around and around. They appeared to form a gilded Christmas garland, tinsel in the glistening water, bodies slipping past one another, a never ending spiral going nowhere fast.

◯ ◯ ◯

One foot in front of the other. Each step is one step farther away from The La Bebida strip, from Chacha’s and Corner Stop Mart where me and Taysha go get Hostess Ho Hos when it’s late and we’re starving.

“It’s dumb that they call it ‘The La Bebida,’” Taysha once said. She was picking off the chocolate, no, chocolatey coating with shallow bites, like she always did. First the coating, then the cake, nibbling with her front teeth. “‘La’ is ‘the’ in Spanish in this context. It’s like saying ‘The The Drink.’”

“Oh.”

I first met Taysha a few weeks into living in Los Angeles. I was sitting in the back of Chacha’s. The bar packed with people, slicked with sloshed drinks and crowded with pointy elbows and crumbled dollar bills. I was wearing a cardigan and swirling the ice in a vodka cranberry, trying to look classy. In hindsight I probably just looked lonely and out of my element, with that naive glimmer still present in my eyes. At that point I couldn’t tell that that was how I appeared, but Taysha could tell. She could also tell that a girl like me wouldn’t last more than an hour in The La Bebida. Just as I was about to take a sip of my drink, she rushed up to me and snatched it from my hand.

“There you are,” she greeted me. She was wearing a silky silver slip dress that seemed to reflect any light that passed over it. Her honey gold skin seemed to radiate, as if she was some polished bronze artifact plunked into the middle of this dumpster of a club. “It’s so nice to see you.” Her tone was sing-song, casual, but there was something fearful in her large brown eyes.

“What the hell?” I demanded, flustered. Taysha grabbed my wrist with her long, slender fingers and pulled me to my feet.

“That guy over there dropped something in your drink while you weren’t looking,” she hissed into my ear. “Pretend that I’m your best friend.”

My stomach dropped to my feet. I turned and saw the guy sitting next to me looking dejectedly into his bourbon glass.

“It’s so nice to see you too,” I exclaimed, spreading a wide smile over my face. Some small part of me was glad I could finally act. I followed her onto the dancefloor and we exchanged names. After a while, she took me over to one of the bouncers and had them kick the guy out of the club for good. From that moment on I knew I could trust Taysha. She showed me the ropes of The La Bebida.

“Ginger Punch waters down their vodka,” she’d say. Or “the DJ that Chacha’s has on Fridays is terrible. They only play mindless EDM. The Friday DJ at Ginger Punch plays nothing but straight fire.”

The first time she came over to pregame at my apartment she told me that the cardigans would have to go.

“They’re cute,” I insisted.

“You look like a preacher’s daughter,” she told me. “Or a kindergarten teacher. And not in the sexy way.”

“There’s a sexy way to look like a kindergarten teacher?”

Taysha raised an eyebrow and smiled at me.

“There’s a sexy way to look like just about anything.”

God, how much time has passed since that first time I met Taysha? How many times have we pregamed and partied since that moment? And how far deep were we when she told me about Swamp City?

Each step is one step farther away from all the other bars and all the other alleyways that are always spitting out a slimeball with the latest batch of whatever it is that makes you feel fucking great and takes you across the threshold on Charon’s gondola and into Swamp City.

◯ ◯ ◯

At first I didn’t believe it. That there could be a drug that could take you to one specific place over and over again. A place that stayed put, a landscape. And Taysha wasn’t stupid, and she said that it was legit, that it was, what was it that she said? Magical.

“Really,” she told me. “I’ve done it a bunch of times. It was the same place.”

“Yeah?” I retorted. Back then I had the sense to be skeptical, or at least act like I was. “And what makes it so special?”

Taysha had to think a moment longer.

“You know how some hallucinations, even when the stuff is really good, never quite feel full? There’s always that waver, that glitch in the system, the swinging in and out of reality like you’re on some kind of roller coaster. Swamp City doesn’t have that. Once you’re in Swamp City there’s no waver. You’re just there. I don’t know how they did it, what whack chemical they mixed in, but whatever it is, it works.”

“Really?” I asked. No waver. Nothing to break you back to reality. It was that promise that arose the first flicker inside me, the spark that set the ongoing flame of need.

“Just try it once,” Taysha insisted. “what’s the harm?”

Maybe I was a little stupid. Maybe I was a little tipsy. Maybe I was clutching at that promise of unwavering escape. Maybe she was leaning in real close to me, and she was wearing that turquoise dress with the sequins on it that made her look like a mermaid, and when the light bounced off of the sequins she seemed like some sort of angel delivering something holy.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Taysha gave me the tab and I took it. So lo and behold I was crashing on the couch at some friend of hers feeling my insides float up into the clouds and into somewhere, well, Taysha wasn’t wrong. If I didn’t know any better I would say that it was real life Tinkerbell magic.

“So,” Taysha had asked me when we’d landed from the first time, on the couch in that friend’s apartment. “How was it?”

“It was…” I felt all giggly, like a child hyped up on Halloween candy. I looked at her, at the sequins. “It was easy.”

◯ ◯ ◯

Swamp City. The name is terrible. It makes it sound gross, like it’s, well, swampy and all the same shade of burped up green, but it’s not. It’s streets swarming with people but you never feel like you’re in a crowd. It’s the burning orange of city skyscraper windows against the cool dark of the night, lighting up the sky like a thousand lanterns. It’s the crash of the ocean, the color of it is so blue it looks sweet and tempts you to dive in. It’s the rustle of the deep forest, the quiet of the clouds, and it feels tangible, concrete, real. It’s not the kind of real that hurts you or nags you or stresses you out, though. It’s a real that keeps you cradled. It’s a real so blissful that the crash back down to Earth feels all that much harder.

So you take it again, just so you can go back to that beautiful place, walk down the streets that make them familiar to you, like the ones back home, swim in that same ocean. You take it again. And again. And again. And-

My stomach lurches up to my throat, and I have to stop walking, settling down onto the curb instead. I just need a bottle of water, or a slap in the face, something to make me feel alive. I press my forehead deep into my knees, hoping the pressure will help. There is nothing I want to do less than walk right now. Goddamit Rindy, you could’ve gotten a taxi. You could’ve found someone who seemed nice enough and gone home with them.

My breathing comes up in dry, rugged scrapes. I need to focus on my breathing.

◯ ◯ ◯

“Breath in deeply,” Dr. Rebos had said with her concern-pinched penciled in eyebrows. “Feel your chest fill up, then hold it for a moment, and then let it go. You’d be surprised how much just that helps.”

It had been our first meeting together. I could already tell that I didn’t like her all that much, and she could tell that I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t. Mom had made the appointment for me. It was before she had given up on me and stopped calling. We had never really gotten along. I really had moved to California to pursue acting to spite her straight-and-narrow, keep-it-in-the-suburbs-with-two-kids-and-a-golden-retriever way of life.

“Don’t waste your money on it,” I had told Mom. “It’s not worth it.”

“Everyone can find something of worth in therapy,” she said with exaggerated patience.

Dr. Rebos’s office smelled like peach Yankee Candle, and she had a habit of bouncing her leg up and down. It made the creases in her clothes crinkle, which distracted me.

“Focus on your breathing,” she told me.

She’d also say to locate things that will keep you grounded in reality. Something you can smell. Something you can taste. Something you can see, hear, feel.

◯ ◯ ◯

I smell the burned rubber on the concrete. I taste the bile on my tongue. I see the flashing lights in the distance. I hear the music drifting toward me from The La Bebida clubs. I feel... like complete and utter shit.

“I don’t like it,” Mom had said when I called her from my new place. “Places like these are crawling with… people looking for trouble.”

“It’s just temporary,” I told her.

She made a “huh” sound. I could practically see her pursing her lips, the way she did whenever she disapproved of something. “You don’t have to worry,” I continued. Back then I still cared that she cared.

“I know honey,” she said. “I just don’t want you getting mixed up in anything nasty, you know?”

“I won’t.”

“Everything has been so nasty lately. Did you see that story in the newspaper? About that house they found in San Francis with all the kids in it? All of them were drugged out of their minds. Writing all over the walls about how the world has gone to crap. They took a test and found out that some of it was written in blood, thought they didn’t find out whose blood, not yet.”

“I didn’t see it.” I didn’t even get the same newspapers as Mom did, but that hadn’t been her point. San Francis was only a half hour drive or so from where I was.

“I’m always just a ring away if you need anything. We’ll keep your room open in case your plans change.”

“Right.”

Back then I had loved how close my apartment was to the beach, to the strips of shops. “I’ll never be bored,” I had told Mom. I’d find a way to make friends, get jobs, it was everything I had planned. But the thing about plans is that sometimes they just don’t pan out, do they? So you find a reprieve from the disappointment, the loneliness, the fact that the world has gone to crap, all those things I should’ve told Dr. Rebos about.

Well Mom, I guess you can say “I told you so,” just like you always wanted to. Not that you’d get the chance to. How long has it been since I last called you? I guess I got tired of pretending that everything was okay just to prove you wrong. The whole acting thing might not have panned out like I hoped, but I sure was a damn good actress. And I guess you were tired of sitting in on the show.

Right now my apartment feels so, so far. I just need it to all go away. I need to feel good again. I feel myself picking myself up off the curb, standing, walking again.

What happened tonight? There were drinks, there was some talking, surely. But who was I talking to? Was it Taysha? My feet are moving, right left right left, heel to toe like I’m the line leader in kindergarten. I remember that turning things into a song makes them easier to remember. Two more blocks up Foster, turn right onto Harrison, cross at the bridge onto Olson. It fits some kind of jaunty melody, like what comes from a music box. It’s not that far, Rindy, just keep walking. Two more blocks up Foster. I’m so tired. It’s no use. It’s no use.

◯ ◯ ◯

“How have things been with the…” Dr. Rebos said the next word with a twinge of disgust, holier-than-thou, “substances, recently?”

She sat with her left leg folded over her right. I couldn’t imagine how much thigh sweat there must be between the panty hose legs pressed together and that pencil skirt. She never went to many parties in high school. She was the kind to have one glass of wine and call herself tipsy.

“I’ve been fine,” I told her. I had been taking trips to Swamp City for around a month at that point. My dreams of being an actress were but a blip in the distant past at that point, not that I had told Mom about that.

“I need you to be honest with me, Rindy. I’m here to help you, and the more you tell me the more I can help you.” She widened her eyes a bit, trying to make them look kinder. I was supposed to trust her, tell her everything, that’s what therapists are for.

“It’ll make things easier for me,” Dr. Rebos said. “It’ll also make things easier for you.”

In that moment I almost told her about it all. I held it in my throat. All I had to was open my mouth and exhale it, watch all my confessions splash forward onto the floor like a tidal wave, watch Dr. Rebos scribble all the details into her notebook. Then she’d pour her advice into me, hand me a pamphlet with more breathing exercises or show me the website to a program where everyone sat in a circle and drank watery lemonade and introduced themselves and said one fun fact. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

But then something in me wondered if she would tell someone else, shattering that promise of confidentiality. I had heard it said that a therapist could contact someone if they believed a patient was in danger right? Or had committed a crime? In the clubs Swamp City had been labeled “half-legal.” Meaning “not legal but fine so long as everyone kept their mouth shut.” The cops didn’t really know about it because it had been cooked up in the streets. It had originated as some mashup of the best parts of all the other drugs. The dealers were pretty good at hiding the stashes, everyone knew to keep quiet, and few people had been caught with it. No one wanted to be that one snitch who busted everybody.

“Please me honest, Rindy,” Dr. Rebos pushed.

“I am being honest,” I said, too indignant. Come on Rindy, be respectful, she’s just trying to do her job. “I cleared all the alcohol from my apartment,” I continued. “I’m going to keep it that way. No drinking unless I go out.”

It wasn’t a lie. Dr. Rebos raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. The pencil she used to fill them in was just a shade too red, it was driving me nuts. Regardless, it was kind of nice to see her some form of impressed, even proud?

“That’s a very productive step to take, Rindy,” she said. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard, I told myself. To go out with Taysha one less time per week. To find solace in that little white tab. It wouldn’t be that hard, right? That was back when I had tried.

◯ ◯ ◯

Suddenly, I feel my phone vibrate against my right hip. With fumbling fingers, I fish it out of my pocket and peer at the same on screen. It’s a name I’ve gotten tired of seeing. Mom. My stomach sinks at the sight, I can’t move in the moment, I just stare at the screen, at the name. It’s been months since I’ve answered a call. She knows in her heart I never check my voicemail, either. Still, some unusual force within me drives my finger down to press against the screen and answer the call. I bring the phone up, feeling the warmth against my sweaty hair.

“Mom?” My voice comes out as the faintest crackle.

“Rindy?” She sounds the same, just overwhelmed with relief. I can feel it radiating from the phone, it sends a shiver down my spine. “Oh my god, Rindy, I was-”

She cuts herself off. I can see her walking that tightrope that she always has with me, wanting to show that she’s right but also not wanting to intrude too much.

“You don’t have to worry,” I reassure her, “I’m doing fine.” Is it her I’m reassuring?

“Good, good,” she says. “I’m so happy to hear that.”

Despite it all, there’s a warmth to her voice, a warmth that brings everything from home crashing back all at once. The plush lawn that Mom tended to like a fine decorative rug. The chipped blue teacup with the daisy sprig painted on the bottom that she would fill with milk, hot chocolate, Oolong tea that I couldn’t have too much of because it had caffeine and caffeine would stunt my growth. The box of old clothes in my closet filled with feather boas, masks, old baggy shirts, my very first costume closet that I would spend hours sorting through. I feel hot tears pricking at my eyes. Why did I ever leave it all behind? And if there was a good reason, why do I want it back so badly right now?

“Are you all right?” Mom asks.

“Yes. What’s going on with you?”

“I was thinking,” she pauses for a moment, balancing on a swaying line, “that you should come home. Not permanently or anything, just for a visit. Blythe is getting married on the twenty fourth, and I think it would be very nice if you came down for that.”

Cousin Blythe, the daughter of Mom’s younger brother. Shining, rose-tinted Blythe, with her little business job and her little house and her little shining boyfriend, now a little shining fiance. I used to hate her, when I was little, when I was Drunken Townsfolk #3 in my school production of Les Miserable and she was winning debate competitions. I couldn’t for the life of me understand the appeal of debate.

“It sounds so exhausting,” I’d say to Blythe whenever our families would get together for dinner. “All you do is fight.”

“That’s what makes it fun,” Blythe would insist, fork poking at her Brussels sprouts. “The fight is what makes it exciting. The struggle. It’s what pushes you forward, it’s invigorating.”

“It sounds hard,” I’d grouch into my potatoes.

“Well, you can’t just float through life expecting everything to be easy,” Blythe would reply, not at all malicious in intent, just that wise. And Mom would look at her shining face with pride and also maybe mention if I reminded her that Rindy was doing Les Miserable, maybe everyone should come and see it some time?

I feel that hurt inside me, that kind of hurt from childhood that you know you should let go of but just can’t for some reason. The kind of hurt that makes you fake conversations in your head for you to win. The kind that makes you who you are. Like a small paper cut that never fades but is too miniscule to bandage. I just want it to go away.

“Blythe wants you there, Rindy,” Mom insists.

“I can’t go,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“She wants you to help organize everything, she wants you to be a bridesmaid, maybe make a toast or something-”

“I can’t.”

“Rindy-”

“I’m busy with work.” My head is throbbing so violently I have to bend slightly at the waist to try and ease it.

“Work?”

“Yes, Mom, work. What, are you surprised?” It might be a small cut but it’s still red, and talking about work, the work she thinks I manage to do, is my own way of making it hurt.

“No honey, I’m just happy to hear that-”

“I have to go. I’m sorry.”

I hang up the phone before she can say another word. Then I’m walking again. I remember all the reasons for leaving all at once, power washing all those happy memories from my brain with a foul swoop. How I would get up every morning and struggle as hard as I could and it would never be enough. Goddamn, all this fucking feeling, I need this to all fade away, I need to numb it. All at once. Easily.

Am I walking up Foster or down Foster? Which way to Harrison? My feet feel like being disobedient, they fall into step in a familiar route, one that goes backwards.

I’m hearing music again. Someone must have left on their radio or something, or they’ve gotten past caring about noise complaints. There are people talking, glasses clinking, the roar of a car engine. Why is everything so loud again? It’s so loud, it’s so bright, there are so many people. Two more blocks down Foster, then turn onto Harrison. Which way onto Harrison?

Everything is blurry. Someone is approaching me, taking me by the shoulders, but their touch doesn’t startle me. It’s warm. It’s familiar. It’s warmer and more familiar than the thoughts of home.

“Where did you go, Rindy?” Taysha asks me, and her voice is low and warped, like time has slowed. “I was looking everywhere for you.”

“I’m back,” I say. I’m swaying on my feet.

“You shouldn’t have gone off on your own.” Taysha’s brown eyes are wide and swirling, fondue pots full of milk chocolate. She pulls me into a hug. Her arms are so soft and so snug around me, she smells like vanilla body spray and bar smoke. “That’s a real dumb move.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” I say as she releases me. “I was going away, home. Mom…”

Those tears start to prick again. I swipe at them with the back of my hand before Taysha can see. No more. No more. I need all this hurt to stop. I need it to be easy again.

“Ssh, it’s going to be alright,” Taysha reassures me.

I can barely breathe.

“I know something that’ll make you feel better,” she says with that smile that dazzles. Back to her old self. “Guess what I managed to get my hands on?”

She holds it out to me. The answer. Like all the other times.

◯ ◯ ◯

She held it out to me. We were sitting on the roof of Taysha’s apartment building, late December. It was the depths of the California winter, meaning that day we had pulled out our leather jackets instead of our denim ones. Taysha’s jacket was fake leather, fading into gray patches wherever it creased when she moved, but she still managed to make it look like a million bucks. Our hair was whipping about in the wind.

“Wearing your hair down in the wind always seems like a sexy idea until you actually do it,” Taysha had grumbled. “I’m sorry Jen was being such a bitch back there.”

Jen, her roomate, had kicked us out of the apartment that they shared, saying “I don’t like the smell” but really meaning “I don’t like you.” Okay, I guess I wouldn’t say “apartment.” It was more like the room at a hostel, two beds, two cramped closets, a bathroom in the hallway, a shared kitchen. Taysha hated cooking. She also hated Jen.

“Swamp City doesn’t even have a smell, it’s a tab, idiot,” Taysha had grumbled in the hallway, stomping up the staircase to the roof. She flipped a bird back at the slammed door. “It’s not like we smoke it up, then it does stink. But tabs don’t even have a smell.”

I didn’t mind the fresh air, to be honest. Sure, it smelled like smog and the trash cans that lined up in the alleyways like smart little soldiers, lids tilted at the ready, but if I focused my sense of smell close in enough, I could almost make out the faint tang of sea water.

Taysha reached into the folds of pleather and came out with the infamous plastic baggie. Instantly the roof faded away, even Taysha faded, the wind-blown hair sticking to my face became an afterthought.

Inside the bag were two little tabs, white circles. They looked like shrunken moons. Like miniature communion wafers. I turned my hands into a throne, one hand under the other, ready to receive my share. I watched the tab fall from the bag into Taysha’s hand, head bowed in concentration, eyes narrowed to slits. From her hand to mine.

I savored the weight in my mouth, the imprint of the shape on my tongue. Small, but salient, slowly dissolving, slightly bitter but tasting sweet. I felt it fade into my skull. Fizzy, almost, already swaying. Taysha said something to me, but I didn’t listen to her. I placed my palms flat on the ground, as if to brace myself. Like someone might clutch the armrests on an airplane during takeoff.

I could see it already, swirling into view. The orange lights of the city, the brilliant blue of the sky. Just a few moments in the in-between, straddling the line between the here and the there, and the roof was completely gone. I was sitting next to Taysha in the middle of a busy city sidewalk, swarms of people moving all around us. Their way parted to allow us to sit. No one’s knees or feet bumped into us. We were coexisting in perfect harmony.

“Are you here?” I asked Taysha.

“Yeah,” she replied, awed.

We stood and began to walk together down towards the ocean. We always went to the ocean on our trips to Swamp City. We liked to watch the waves.

“If this is what a swamp is like,” Taysha quipped, “I actually might consider moving to Florida.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Hell no, but you know what I mean. Why go to Florida when I could just go here?” The world moved around us, smooth, malleable, accommodating. The people flowed around us in rivulets, allowing us to walk in a pair. There was no smog, no filth, no trashy piss smell of a real city. The air was crisp, ocean salt tinted, so pure it seemed to filtrate my lungs. The sky was a patchwork of different colors, shades of blue, tints of pink and yellow, some purple. A marble sunset in constant motion, unobstructed by the tall buildings.

The ocean sprawled out in front of us when we eventually got to it. The walk had been lengthy, but my feet didn’t hurt. Taysha and I shucked off our shoes and buried our toes in the sand as we approached the shoreline. The sea was a glittering jade green, lapping up against our feet in little licks smooth with pearly foam.

“Here it comes,” I said, grabbing Taysha’s arm to get her attention. Our gazes fixed upon the wave coming in to shore. It arced up high, nearly tsunami high, but we didn’t panic. No disasters occured in Swamp City, and if they ever did, we were sure they’d be magnificent. The wave stilled as it peaked, freezing in air, just inchest in front of us, like a long, whorling glass sculpture. It gleamed in the late afternoon sun, dazzlingly bright. I gave my eyes a minute to adjust, and then I could see it.

Caught inside the stilled wave were wisps of green kelp and a handful of beige toned shells, but we weren’t here to see that. What we were here to see were the hundreds of swimming silver fish. The water was frozen in time, but they were ever-moving, like independant waves themselves. They looped and swirled, rose up to the surface to touch the quavering edge where the water ended and then sank back down, like coins dropping down to the bottom of a wishing well.

“Jesus Christ,” Taysha said. She held a hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the wave-reflected sun. Other people around us had stopped to gawk at the display as well, extending pointing figures and letting out pleased sighs. I knew some of them from the other times. There was the tall blonde woman with the skeletal arms and pallid, sunken cheeks that we always saw wandering the beach. In the distance I could make out the squat, round man with large, glassy gray eyes that I had passed on the streets a few times, smiling in toothless awe at the spectacle before him. They were like the people you see in dreams, the ones that hold a feeling of familiarity despite being a stranger. To see someone in a dream you have to have seen them in real life. Swamp City made it so that real life didn’t matter. I felt I knew these people, in a way.

The wave held still for a minute or so before rewinding itself back into the water with not so much as a splash. The fish were gone. I guessed that they were still swimming under the surface.

◯ ◯ ◯

I watch the people moving. They’re dressed in slippery purple satin, gold sequins, bronze bangles, large hoop earrings, heeled boots that snake up their thighs to kiss the hems of mini dresses. They grip their metal clutch purses and each other’s shoulders. It all blends together, a swirl of bodies turning over one another, forming a loop. Moving in a circle. Around and around. The blinking screens of cell phones cast lights against the wall, like bubbles rising up towards the edge of a tank. They’re dancing, they’re smiling, they look so happy. They look like they feel good. They make it look easy.

“Here,” Taysha says. Like all the other times, she holds it out to me. It lies in the center of her palm and it has a pulsating glow to it, like a golden goose egg from the fairy tales. It promises as much.

“Good,” I tell her. I take it. “Good.”

This will make me feel good. I feel the tab sink down into my gut. One sip of something as a chaser and I can see it already, those orange lights swirling, it’s all getting closer. They really should come up with a new name for it, something less ugly, something that reflects what it really is. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. After the first time, it’s only gotten more and more beautiful. Why bother walking away when you can follow everyone else into the circle?

After the first time, you’ll always end up back in Swamp City.

Pop is my favorite genre of music. I think it gets too much flack. The assumptions that pop is frivolous and shallow is frustrating to me, because I find it to be one of the best mediums when it comes to telling stories in an inclusive and immersive way. Pop music, in its nature, is popular. I mean, it’s right there in the name. Because of this, it must appeal to the many. And it is this requirement that brings about one of my favorite aspects of pop music: it’s relatable.

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Relatability is key for music to connect with an audience. And for a song to be relatable, or for anything to be relatable for that matter, it must be specific. The sentiment seems counterintuitive. One might think platitudes would be the most relatable way of reaching an audience. After all, the more people a sentiment applies to, the better, right? However, I find the opposite to be true. The more detailed and specific a situation is described, the more relatable I find it to be. This is because specificity implies humanity, and there is no trait more relatable than humanity. Take the following example. If someone were to tell me “he broke my heart,” I would feel bad for them, yes, but I wouldn’t understand their pain. If someone instead told me “he ghosted me after two years of a committed relationship, and I miss our weekly movie nights sharing Oreos on the couch,” well now I’m heartbroken too. I may never have had that situation happen to me, but from the empathy that comes from relating to a specific situation I can buy into whatever emotion a person wishes to convey.

Pop music, due to its condensed structure, requires an artist tap into this quality in its most distilled form. An artist must do in a few words what other writers would have pages to accomplish. Because of this, some artists use outside context as a tool to boost the meaning of their music. This can happen in a myriad of ways, whether that be with artists rejuvenating their style with defined stylistic eras, using their music as a platform to comment on social issues, or pulling from the drama of their personal lives for their songwriting. There are different levels to which this context can be applied to music, producing songs that can be enjoyed in several ways. The first are songs that can be understood without context. The second are songs that can be better understood in context. Finally, there are songs so entangled in their context that it is impossible to separate them from the drama from which they are pulled.

This usage of context in relation to relatability is a synthesis that has fascinated me since I started looking at pop music critically, and there are three different songs I feel can illustrate these ways of enjoying pop songs: “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn, “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” by Mike Posner, and “Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift.

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I’ll cut to the chase. “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn is one of the best pop songs of the 2010s. NPR has written about its ability to foster community. Billboard named it as a song that defined the decade. Pitchfork put it third on their best songs of the 2010s list. Rolling Stone put it at number one. But it’s also one of the best pop songs of the 2010s because I say so. I guess I should have a reason for that belief, right?

I pinpoint the strength of “Dancing On My Own” to its usage of simple, vivid details to communicate immense sadness in the midst of a happy pop atmosphere. The lyrics of the song are straightforward, even minimal, but they sting like nobody’s business. Lines like “Stilettos and broken bottles / I’m spinning around in circles,” and “I’m in the corner, watching you kiss her / I’m right over here, why can’t you see me?” are able to communicate such a specific situation and state of mind in just a few words. As a listener, I am able to connect with Robyn’s plight instantly. The added detail of standing in the corner and shattered glass on the floor is just enough to envision a night of loneliness and longing on the dancefloor. This makes the song relatable enough that I apply my own experiences of rejection and unrequited love every time I hear it, and I barely know anything about Robyn as a person. In fact, I feel personally attacked.

“Dancing On My Own” manages to achieve a relatable feel not only through its lyrics, but through its production as well. It opens up with a flurry of glistening synths reminiscent of the electronic pop of the eighties. At the same time, it also sounds distinctly modern. The synths feel crisper, and the stomping drum beat that propels the song is an element right out of the club boom of the early 2010s. Most importantly, the song’s production accentuates the meaning of its lyrics. At first, it might seem like glittery synth production would undermine the melancholic sentiments in the lyrics, but I often find that there’s nothing like a good dance beat to make sad lyrics all the sadder. (You’re supposed to have fun at parties, but this singer is not having fun at this party. I’d say that’s pretty sad.) Through her production choices, Robyn transports the listener to the dance floor she finds herself alone on, and invites them to share the experience with her. Overall, the production emphasizes the song’s relatability because it helps convey the emotion in the lyrics. Not only that, but it both bucks any possible outside context through its decade-inspired yet decade-defiant sound.

“Dancing On My Own” is a pop song that can be fully understood and loved without the slightest hint of context. You don’t need to know a thing about Robyn or how her life was going when she wrote the song to enjoy it. It is universal in every sense of the word. It is so universal that the Calum Scott cover of the song has four times the streams the original does on Spotify. (It’s an acoustic guitar ballad, and in its earnestness manages to not be nearly as sad as the danceable version. I cannot stress enough, sad lyrics + dance beat = undeniable misery.) I’m pretty sure there’s quite a few people that think his version is the original version. The two versions of the song combined amass over half a billion streams on Spotify, so it’s clear that the song strikes a chord with a lot of people.

The fact that “Dancing On My Own” is still being listened to and praised a decade after its initial release shows a quality that comes with songs that aren’t married to context: timelessness. “Dancing On My Own” is a song that could belong in nearly any decade, and its appeal will likely last for years to come. It sounds like you could’ve danced to it in the 1980s, and like you will be dancing to it in the 2080s. Robyn may have sacrificed the ability to make her song inseparable from her as an artist by not having it be tied to her with context, but in exchange she made her song a classic that will last.

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Mike Posner is a name you may only have a passing memory of, and Mike Posner knows that. In 2009, Mike Posner hit it big with the song “Cooler Than Me,” an electropop smash that peaked at number six on the US Billboard Hot 100 and went on to make the year end Hot 100. It dominated countless other international charts as well. It went on to be certified two times Platinum in the United States and three times Platinum in Australia. It was a hit that seemed to promise a long, fruitful career for Posner, until it didn’t. Now, being seven years old at the time of the song’s release, I thought “Cooler Than Me” was the pinnacle of musical achievement, (you were right Posner, she did wear designer shades to hide her face. She was obviously the worst.) But sadly, the rest of the pop world didn’t comprehend Posner’s genius like my second-grade mind did. His other attempts at singles floundered, and Posner went on to be remembered as a one hit wonder for years.

This was the sentiment Posner built his second smash hit, “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” around, a song that hit unexpected success seven years after many thought his career had peaked. Unlike “Dancing On My Own,” “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” is a song that is unabashedly Posner’s. Some of the most notable lines include “I took a pill in Ibiza / To show Avicii I was cool / And when I finally got sober I felt ten years older / But fuck it it was something to do,” and especially “I’m just a singer who already blew his shot / I get along with old timers / ‘Cause my name’s a reminder of a pop song people forgot.” These lines paint situations that are painfully specific, so specific that only Posner could have written them. The song feels like a man bearing his soul to the world, and because of that, the emotions are potent and relatable. I may never have taken drugs to impress a DJ that was endlessly more famous and successful than me, but I have been at parties where I just wanted to fit in.

The version of “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” that got popular on the radio was a dance remix by the Swedish production duo Seeb. The sound of the remix helps communicate the sentiment of the lyrics amazingly well. Posner’s voice echoes in layers of reverb, further emphasizing the loneliness and isolation he sings about. And the drop actually drops, the song building up a chorus of anthemic synths and a vocaloid sample of Posner’s voice dwelling on his fate of only knowing “sad songs.” It’s a sound that feels viscerally 2016, incorporating elements of electronic dance music and tropical house popularized by acts like The Chainsmokers and Kygo.

Like with its lyricism, the song doesn’t feel especially timeless because the sound is anchored to a very specific place in time. I listen to “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” and I’m taken back to 2016 so fast I nearly get whiplash. However, I believe that works to the song’s benefit. The remix’s production gives the song a hollow, empty feeling, (hey look, it’s a dance beat under sad lyrics makes to them all the sadder,) and the specificity of the song’s sound gives it a fleeting quality that matches the fear Posner expresses through his lyrics. He already blew his shot once. Will he blow it again? (Also, Posner’s original version of the song is an acoustic guitar ballad, and it isn’t nearly as good as the remix, for many of the same reasons the Calum Scott version of “Dancing On My Own” isn’t as good.)

Despite the fact that “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” is braided with the backstory of Mike Posner’s life as a one hit wonder, this context only serves to give the song more emotional depth. It is slightly less timeless than “Dancing On My Own.” It is a song that could not exist in any decade, because Mike Posner could not exist in any decade. But it is still relatable regardless, because of how it brings its context in through detailed songwriting and smart production choices to deepen the emotions communicated in the song.

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“Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift is a song that is nearly impossible to discuss without mentioning the context surrounding it. It was the first single off of Swift’s sixth album Reputation, an album dealing heavily with themes of Swift losing favor in the public eye. This shift stemmed from the drama surrounding her and rapper Kanye West, beginning with West interrupting Swift onstage at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. After making up for a brief period of time, Swift and West once again fell into a feud after West included a lewd lyric about Swift in his song “Famous.” Swift claimed to be horrified by the lyrics, while West’s wife Kim Kardashian released footage of Swift agreeing to the lyrics being included in the song. This was followed by a social media uproar of Swift being sent an onslaught of criticism. Along with that, Swift was also engaged in an ongoing feud with singer Katy Perry at the time. These conflicts lead to a public change in persona for Swift, with her shedding her “good girl” image and playing a more villainous role in her music.

“Look What You Made Me Do” derives nearly all its meaning from its context. In form, the song is written nearly all in platitudes, with no specific details to communicate a story upon first listen. One of the most specific images comes from the opening line: “I don’t like your little games / Don’t like your tilted stage.” It isn’t especially specific, and the meaning comes from knowing that Kanye West used a tilted stage set piece on his Saint Pablo tour. Even so, this is just fun speculation, and the line might not even mean that. Another memorable moment comes during the bridge, when Swift announces: “I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now / Why? Oh, ‘cause she’s dead!” This lyric applies to Swift’s change in persona with the release of the song.

Both in context and out of context, the main problem with “Look What You Made Me Do” is that the songwriting is too generalized to be relatable. The song lacks concrete details or specific sentiments to latch onto. Because of that, it is unable to convey a compelling emotion. Unlike in “Dancing On My Own,” it is too tied to context to be universal. Unlike “I Took A Pill In Ibiza,” another song that is elevated by the context of the artist’s career, it does not use that context to convey an emotion to a greater extent because it does not tell the story of what happened in its lyrics, (with West, Perry, the public backlash, the shift in persona,) but rather, assumes you already know. You could listen to Posner’s song, not know who Posner is, and still take away meaning from it. It is difficult to say the same for Swift’s song. “Look What You Made Me Do” uses context as a crutch to boost a song to a level that it does not achieve on writing alone.

Along with that it’s difficult to discern what the production on “Look What You Made Me Do” is trying to achieve. The song begins with eerie synths, moves into churning bass on the verses, accumulates substantial steam on the pre-chorus all to build up to.. a chorus where, in a possible attempt at timelessness, the song samples the ultimate beloved timeless classic, “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred. Right on its chorus. Other production elements include a ringing siren, robotic backing vocals, and strings. It adds a bit of atmosphere to the song with its more macabre elements, but overall, the production is too jumbled to convey a clear emotion. Similar to the lyrics, it is built of vague ideas that are unable to tell a specific story. It also fails to achieve a timeless quality because the sounds it pulls from aren’t ones that have proved themselves to be tried and true. With the exception of “I’m Too Sexy,” (a song I will reluctantly admit is a bop, and a classic,) the music “Look What You Made Me Do” most reminds me of is the glitchy electronic pop of the early 2010s. More specifically, the songs in that genre that lacked focus or cohesion, like “The Time (Dirty Bit)” by the Black Eyed Peas, (another song that samples an older classic and melds it with jarringly different instrumentals in its various sections.) Overall, “Look What You Made Me Do” doesn’t capture any emotion through its production at all. It sounds hollow, but not on purpose. It just sounds unfocused.

Despite this, “Look What You Made Me Do” was still successful. It flourished on several charts worldwide, including the Billboard Hot 100. The music video was picked apart by Taylor Swift’s fans for its several hidden meanings, and the internet was abuzz with the sudden shift in Swift’s sound. However, this flurry of interest in the song hasn’t lasted. “Look What You Made Me Do” ended up being too anchored to a place and time in its lyricism, and too unfocused in its production, to achieve a timeless quality. It also asks you to care more about Taylor Swift’s life more than the quality of the song itself. As someone who tends to care more about the sound of the music I’m listening to than the personal life of Taylor Swift, this isn’t something that I, and a majority of the pop listening public for that matter, was able to do. One is far less likely to hear that song on the radio compared to Swift’s other successful singles.

I do not want this to look like a slight against Taylor Swift. What is most disappointing to me about “Look What You Made Me Do” is that if there is any artist I would have expected to translate the emotion of this context into a specific and relatable song, it would have been her. Using vivid details to illustrate personal situations is a skill she built her career off of. There’s a reason why everyone in America was shouting along to “You Belong With Me,” wondering why their crush was getting with the cheer captain when we were all sitting right there on the bleachers. (Ironically, Swift went from singing about bleachers to working with Bleachers. Jack Antanoff produced a lot of the music in her Reputation and Lover eras, including “Look What You Made Me Do.”) Even from the Reputation era, the later single “Delicate” became a sleeper hit that managed to land a higher spot on the following year’s year-end Hot 100 list than “Look What You Made Me Do.” That song also happened to articulate the trials and tribulations of the Reputation era in a far more specific way, featuring several images and details that flesh out a narrative.

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Context is a powerful songwriting tool, but when it is used it must be in both moderation and in tandem. If one relies on context too heavily in a song, it can become alienating to the listener. When context is used to flesh out a narrative, it can make an emotional situation all the more powerful. And sometimes, all that matters is finding the right words and production elements to make the feelings flow. Pop music might have to be relatable to be popular, but it is also popular because it is relatable. It’s a genre that opens its arms up to everyone, and is at its core about telling a good story everyone can dance along to, whether that be one their own or in a crowd.