From the moment I moved into my dorm, I knew I wanted to be a studio art major. While my friends bounced around poli-sci, psych, and sociology, I felt lucky that I had such a specificcallingat a young age. I loved drawing. I loved that I wasgoodat drawing.
Then, in the middle of sophomore year, I got a B-minus in Drawing II and changed majors out of embarrassment. Somehow, the positive comments on my DeviantArt profile failed to translate to critique sessions in my studio art courses. None of my pieces were selected for the spring gallery show. My professor explained that I hadn’t developed my own style—I was simply imitating other artists. He called me “a competent draftsman.”
I cried in the bathroom. Then I walked back to my dorm and cried in the bathroom there.
Being an artist felt less like my calling when I struggled. I couldn’t bear to fail at something so important tome.
The achievements I craved came much more easily in art history. Turns out I excel at sitting in dark lecture halls andwriting analytical papers about obscure Belgian surrealists. I couldn’t argue with my new grade point average.
I moved to New York for a very expensive master’s program, intending to continue for my doctorate. During the last year of my master’s, my adviser suggested that research experience would make me a more attractive candidate for PhD programs.
I was set to spend ten months in Verona, on a fellowship studying a huge archive of paintings done by the little-known, self-taught artist Giuseppe Baggio. My adviser said he could be the Henry Darger of Italy—an “outsider” artist who toiled in obscurity when he was alive, but whose work is now sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at Christie’s. I would have full access to Baggio’s papers and effects, none of which had ever been properly cataloged—the perfect project for someone who’d grown up assisting her dad with reselling people’s personal belongings at estate sales.
Baggio had the kind of life story made for an insightful PBS documentary: after a traumatic adolescence, he spent over ten years in a psychiatric hospital where he declined to speak to anyone. Eventually, a therapist provided him with paints. He was compelled to paint for hours each day, producing thousands of canvases that apparently communicated with the world in a way he could not. He left thousands of paintings—bold works featuring bright colors, repetitive patterns, and silhouetted figures—to be cataloged and analyzed. Some art historians have argued that his output was simply a form of art therapy. Others believe there’s genius in his artistic vision.
And I—a twenty-two-year-old student—stood to betheauthority on his works.
I booked a plane ticket for May 21, 2020, the day after graduation.
A few days after I purchased the ticket, the world shut down.
Columbia held a virtual graduation ceremony and offered us Instagram filter mortarboard caps. My mom picked me up from my tiny apartment in Morningside Heights and drove me back to Columbus. The fellowship was, obviously, postponed.
I waited.
In 2021, it was postponed again.
I waited.
In 2022, the foundation that had agreed to sponsor me closed its doors. I wrote new grant applications, only to discover that Baggio’s nephew—the man who had arranged for me to work on the estate—had passed away. The remaining family members were not interested in the project and sold his work to a private collector.
Flailing, I latched on to the only feasible path for someone with esoteric academic interests and little job experience: I applied to four doctoral programs and got rejected from all of them. Last year, I applied again and had two very promising interviews with a professor who really wanted to work with me but didn’t have funding for another student. I came just close enough to an acceptance that I couldn’t bear to give up and “find something else to do.”
I’ve coauthored papers with some of the world’s foremost experts in outsider art. I completed a summer internship at one of the world’s top auction houses. I’ve handled drawings from the hands of Michelangelo. Yes,Michel-fucking-angelo.We basically touched hands across time, like old-bearded-white-man-God touches Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I even got a tattoo to commemorateit.
I can’t crumple up my expensive education into a ball and throw it into the trash. I owe too much in student loan debt for all that work to add up to nothing.
And yet, every morning, as I shut off my alarms and continuesleeping, I feel further away from that person who communed with Michelangelo. She had a purpose. Without a purpose, I’m nothing. I’m inconsequential.
I’m a loner who lives in my mom’s apartment and spends my productive daytime hours doomscrolling and zoning out to audiobooks. By night, I wear a coconut shell bra and set fire to mai tais for tips.
5
Oh, did my slothlike morningroutine lure you into the assumption that I’m not gainfully employed? I’m not sure of the actual definition ofgainfully,but I acknowledge that my job at Lokahi Lounge doesn’t feel “gainful.” What’s the opposite of gainful? Loseful? My job is loseful, but it’s a paycheck.
I got my first job at Lokahi Lounge when I was fifteen because of my dad. I’m a central Ohio tiki theme restaurant nepo baby. The Lily-Rose Depp of serving Singapore Slings. Dad was friendly with the owners, Marty and Shep, because he sold them a lot of their tackiest décor at his estate sales. He cut them a deal on some carved masks in exchange for hiring me as a busser.
Lokahi was one of those places Dad would take me to celebrate a birthday or apologize for missing a birthday, which was an increasingly common occurrence as I got older. In my twelve-year-old mind, drinking virgin daiquiris and eatingsweet-and-sour chicken nuggets from a hollowed-out pineapple made up for any absenteeism.
Lokahi Lounge is a twenty-thousand-square foot A-frame building with a black-and-white roof designed to look like a South Pacific war canoe. I have dozens of photos of my parents and me posing next to the flaming Moai-inspired statues flanking the front entrance. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places. You can see it from a mile away. You can probably see it from space.
And the exterior is the tasteful part. One can only imagine the level of Marty and Shep’s commitment to cultural sensitivity as the current owners of whatTheColumbus Dispatchcalls “a faded, but venerable themed dining attraction.” I do not love this place unabashedly. I’m very abashed.
When I realized that my stay in Columbus would be longer than a couple of months, I turned the casual summer job I had in high school into my Job-with-a-capital-J. I could earn more at a fine dining restaurant where I wouldn’t have to set drinks on fire all night. But I have my reasons.
“I can’t contain it anymore, Samantha.” Hal swizzles two blue hurricanes—one with each hand. “It’s time. It’s happening. Must. Kill.”
“Who?” I nestle a pineapple frond into a piña colada.
