Nobody Talks About How Chilling Like A Villain Can Lowkey Get Really Existential

Chilling is the liminal space of moods. Some say chilling is relaxing. I don’t think so. Relaxing is an active effort. You have to find the right show, or the right park bench, or the right album. If I’m chilling, I didn’t choose anything. Somehow, I found myself in a space and I’m doing nothing in that space. I’m not particularly happy or sad, I’m waiting to be either.

It’s like, yeah, I’m chillaxin’, but at what cost? What are the costs of this total spiritual, physical, and mental freedom? I’m over here thinking things no one should think. I’m over here pondering forces larger than our control. I’m over here wondering about the way things sometimes are.

Chilling got me doing dumb shit. I’m in this bitch eating ice cream naked while bumping two different Gucci Mane songs off of two different JBL speakers. I’m in this bitch tryna unlock the hidden secrets of Gucci Mane.

Saw an old friend today. He asked how I was doing. Said I’d been chilling. “Is that it?” he asked. “Yep,” I replied. Chilling is all that I do when I’m not doing anything. Before lunch that day I was chilling. I was chilling yesterday too. After lunch, I went home and chilled until the next day.

I’ve been chilling almost a week now. Haven’t felt anything the whole time. Don’t expect to feel anything tomorrow. Got feelings and existence planned for next Friday. Gonna keep chilling until then.

I’ve amassed a cultural knowledge that could rival a Vanity Fair editor purely through osmosis. An osmosis caused purely by sitting on the couch. Is scrolling on Reels for two and a half hours a state of consciousness? Am I awake?

What if I put grenadine in this La Croix? What that be like? What’s that hitting for?

Is Eric Benét French? This bitch ass nigga is from Mobile, Alabama. Where the fuck did he get “Benét” from? Fuck Eric Benet. Bitch ass nigga.

Rod Wave look like an AI baby.

I’m finna practice my walk. I feel like my walk is pussy. I want my walk to have more Big Dick Energy. When I walk in a room, bitches need to know what the fuck is up. Like, I’m really not no regular ass nigga. And I feel like on first impression, bitches really be thinking I’m a regular ass nigga. It’s cause of my walk. I don’t command my space enough.

My parents are getting older. I don’t want them to leave. I miss my grandma like a motherfucker.

She used to say, “you know I ain’t gonna be here forever,” like she was looking forward to it. And, knowing what I know now, the circumstances life handed her, I understand why.

She was a heavy-set woman with her head on right. She would dance—in her quasi-African garments, flowing long and hard and determinedly for what seemed like forever, at least until forever wasn’t—like she had been touched (visited?), by God.

She would have claimed so, at the very least.

“God didn’t take me out of a man's back, he took me out of a woman’s stomach,” and other lyrical proclamations like these were frequent in our house.

She spoke like Southern Shakespeare. Sang, too, southernly, like what Shakespeare would sound like if he sang. Molasses on the the living-room floor, for instance, was not an uncommon sight. In our house. Even long after the impromptu church services and spontaneous pleas for holy release.

In the months before Grandma’s death, I can remember a cascade of bright-eyed idiots who’d all say the same thing. “Wow! You look amazing.” And she did. But, one comes, eventually, to be compelled to hear “amazing” as synonymous to “salvation”. And it isn’t.

Grandma looked amazing, and she died anyway.

I wonder if I can make my balls clap along to the beat of Single Ladies.

You can learn a lot about a person by chilling with them. How do they handle gazing into the void? If I’m chilling with someone, and they get to asking me questions like, “Why are we just sitting here?” or “So what do you want do?” I know they need to get the hell away from me.

Don’t come around me poking and prodding about plans. My plan is to forget everything that’s ever happened to me. And get a really, really good look at this coffee table.

I’m chilling.

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