to the girls playing taylor swift at the dive bar
on partying in a rural town, the easy bond between girls, and homesickness for a place that no longer feels like home
this summer, i found an unexpected sense of comfort while staring into the dark, murky waters of the lake behind my town’s dive bar. the red lighting from the patio cast an eerie tinge over the water and condensation from the beer glass holding a vodka soda dripped down through my fingers and onto my legs. i would stand quietly on the patio while the sounds of northern new jersey locals and people who went to my high school echoed as they stomped around the pool table in their work boots or chugged beer together. i knew i was out of place in my reformation top and skirt. i felt no place in this community, even though i grew up here. i don’t think i ever felt that.
i was homesick for a city that no longer belonged to me, a place i missed every day. even though i had lived there for four years, fell in love there, cried there, DC didn’t feel like home anymore. my childhood house, where i spent the last 7 months reassessing my entire life, didn’t quite feel like home either. i spent winter and spring wallowing in this feeling, this inability to feel settled. i refused to unpack my clothes, kept my DC apartment keys in my purse, and rather than accept that i no longer lived in the city, i just let myself feel incredibly melancholy and lonely.
i had been hesitant to start going out in my town. when i lived in DC “going out” meant dinner and drinks, pregaming in my apartment, a night in a bar or a club, picking out cute outfits, and spending time with the girls, so to come back to my small town, with its 1.5 bars felt like torture. i wouldn’t consider myself a current party girl, i got a lot of that out of my system in college, but i love a night out with my friends, and living back with my dad saw my social life completely dissipate. i missed the crowded dance floors in DC bars. i missed the casual comfort of sitting in an uber home with my friends, my eyes feeling heavy and my body feeling warm. i missed walking from one bar to another, feeling happy and alive and like my life was perfect.
it wasn’t until this summer, when my friend alyssa came home, that i started going out. we would pregame in my childhood bedroom with wine or alyssa’s homemade limoncello and then find ourselves at my local bar, wearing our chic little outfits, and making random small talk with the locals. we joked that they pandered to us when they played britney spears instead of the usual country hits playlist. we took ourselves out of the cramped, loud space and sat in the chairs by the lake when we needed a moment to breathe, and i slowly started feeling comfortable. the cool breeze from the lake washed over me and staring out into the water, i finally found something i loved about going out in my small town.
last weekend, i watched my worlds collide when i brought sofia up to visit. i introduced her to alyssa, merging the parts of my life that had always felt distinctly separate. i drove us to the state fair, the sun setting next to us, warming the car and tinting everything with gold. we spent the evening wandering from the vibrantly lit carnival rides to the small barns filled with goats, inhaling the scent of fried food and kettle corn and beer. it was fun and casual, the perfect blend of my friends, and afterwards, sofia and i decided to go to my local bar for a bit.
she knew of it from the stories i told: the obnoxiously loud locals, men in their 70s unironically wearing cowboy hats while they smoked their cigarettes on the patio, an amalgamation of the worst political takes you could overhear, but when we got there, she was greeted by a version of my bar i had never seen. it was lively, people closer to our age were everywhere. of course, there were still the locals and the people from my high school, but sofia and i scooped up our drinks and sat by the lake, reveling in the peace and quiet and beautiful view. i was constantly telling sofia how unusually calm it felt, but maybe i had just adapted to the chaos.
we sat quietly, laughing at inside jokes, forming new ones, and looking into the windows. taylor swift started playing over the speakers and i don’t know if sofia or i noticed first, but once we did we couldn’t stop laughing. in no world was taylor swift meant to be playing in my hometown bar, especially not the version of it sofia had heard stories of. we made our way inside and sat at the bar, a group of girls close to us in age sitting across from us. “miss americana and the heartbreak prince” started playing and i looked up, meeting the eyes of one of the girls sitting across from me.
i could only describe that moment as an expression of the purest form of womanhood. we had never met before, we would likely never see each other past the time we pulled out of the parking lot, but in those moments we were best friends. we lip-synced the words, pointing at each other, and by the end of the song, we found ourselves chatting. instagrams were exchanged, and we learned that our new best friends had taken over the touchtunes for the bar and decided to play charli xcx and chappell roan and in the small and dingy corners of my local dive bar, sisterhood prevailed.
it was something i didn’t realize that i so intensely missed. every time i would go out in DC i would somehow find myself chatting with another woman. we would often exchange phone numbers or instagrams with a promise to remain in touch or get coffee in the coming weeks, but more often than not, those declarations of friendship would never exist outside of that one night. i didn’t realize how badly i needed to meet those girls in my hometown bar. i needed the easy love women share when they’re a little drunk, and the reminder that these women exist everywhere. it’s like we’re made to love and support and have fun with each other whether we’re in the chicest club or the bar off of the one main road in my town.
there’s no world in which we should go without that feeling of pure joy and connection that fills a room when women find each other. we can talk about the most trivial of topics, and compliment each other up and down until suddenly we have the links to every item of clothing on each other’s bodies, or we somehow end up crying to each other and bonding over shared trauma. minutes feel like hours and hours feel like we’ve known each other forever. i want to bottle up that feeling. those nights spent in corners just talking, the girls whose instagram stories i see weeks later, remember our time and smile.
i’m moving back to DC in a couple of weeks, and for the first time since i initially left to go to college, i’m sad to leave my hometown. i don’t think you can erase years of contempt and wishing you lived somewhere else with just one night, or even a summer full of really good nights, but i think i started to heal something in me, something i don’t even know if i fully realized wasn’t whole.
i know that even though it doesn’t feel exactly like home anymore, i’m ready to rediscover all of the little details i love about DC and find new ones to file away in my heart. i can’t wait to stand in line at a bar and chat with a girl about the clip in her hair or the perfect way to evade an annoying man. i’ll go back to the city and i’ll miss my hometown and i’ll come to realize that home doesn’t have to be just one place.
writing this essay had me thinking of ’s essay, “in line for the women’s bathroom.” she’s one of my favorite writers (and people) i’ve met through substack, and i would definitely give this piece a read ♡:
before & during my writing time, i exclusively listened to this playlist that i made a while ago but always add songs to:
for more people’s princess, you can find me on instagram @peoplessprincesss!
p.s: weekly favorites
my fantasy premier league that consists of all of my favorite people in the world
stuffed yellow lab (i miss max)
daily chats with
this summer will be different by carley fortune (mostly i loved the setting)
tea instead of coffee
paul is an every-second of my life favorite but this week he is getting bonus love
okay, that’s all for now, love you all to pieces & i’ll see you soon!
sarah 💌
sarah!!! i love that women in bars being kind towards each other is a universal experience and i love that your hometown felt more like home by the end of the summer and i love that you’re moving back to the city and i love your writing!!
my heart <3333