Beat Poetry on Amphetamines: 10 Years of Ultraviolence
Reflections on a very strange time in my life
It’s a warm summer night in 2014, and I’m barreling down the 405 freeway in Long Beach, California, on the way home from my friend’s house, where we had spent the majority of that day and night doing coke lines and bong rips and enjoying the particularly never-ending buzz of July. My friend, who is about ten years older than the rest of us, actually owns their house, and it makes them seem very mature and cool, in my (then) 20-year-old eyes. The windows are down, the air is warm and whipping, and “Florida Kilos” by Lana Del Rey is blasting through the speakers of my dark purple 1999 Toyota Tacoma.
I feel free. Unspeakably, immeasurably free.
I know that I am not actually free. I am headed home to the house I share with my dad, who was relapsing on meth at that time and thought I didn’t know. This is laughable. Everybody knows. But no one knows what to do about it.
My dad’s addiction is not the point of this story. The point of this story is Lana Del Rey—more specifically, her album Ultraviolence, which is celebrating its tenth birthday today, and the extremely personal relationship I have with it.
I am not a big fan of disclaimers, but for the purposes of this article I would like to take the firm stance that what I’m discussing is the art project and musical masterpiece made by a woman named Elizabeth Grant. I am not actually talking about Elizabeth Grant, nor am I endorsing every single choice she’s ever made.
Feeling connected to the stories told by Lana Del Rey, through Lana Del Rey, is not necessarily about idolizing one particular woman (for me anyway), but rather about accepting the multitudes that will forever clash within ourselves. Lana’s music is an attempt to thwart the fig tree metaphor by living many lives, albeit vicariously, through the music. Which parts of these stories blend with the real life of Elizabeth Grant are inconsequential to me. I’m more concerned with the parts of my own real life that overlap with those of the characters embodied by Lana throughout her entire discography, and this album in particular. Okay, disclaimer over.
Back to me in my Tacoma. At the time, Ultraviolence was only about a month old, but I found myself completely wrapped up in it. Truth be told, I didn’t like every single song right away.
But I did find myself—after the first couple of listens—swept up in the echo-y, emotionally wrought warbles, big stadium drums, steel-stringed guitars, rough around the edges aesthetic that shone through on this new album, building on top of the cinematic, string-heavy, genre-bending sound Lana had established on Born To Die. The influence of The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who co-produced Ultraviolence, was not lost on me, as a Black Keys fan at the time (and still to this day).
To put it lightly, I grew obsessed with the immersive dream world of Los Angeles that Lana constructs inside Ultraviolence. Even though she still makes her New York roots known in songs like “Brooklyn Baby,” the stories, themes, and characters Lana plays in this album are very much those of an LA girl, in the land of gods & monsters indeed.
Fun fact: for the longest time, in “Money Power Glory,” I thought she was singing “LA, New York, I’m gonna take them for all that they’ve got”. Turns out she’s just saying “hallelujah.” I’m gonna stick with my version.
Ultraviolence opened wide a narrative that I had been attempting to stick my elbow into until I could eventually squeeze my whole body through, and live there.
A month prior to its release, in May 2014, several things happened to me in quick succession: my cat Zee died unexpectedly, my dad’s relapse worsened and became unignorable, and I had my first foray into sex work. When Zee died, I was driving home from my mom’s house in Northern California, and I arrived at the pet hospital with just barely enough time to say goodbye to him.
After returning home and moping for a few days in a row, as to be expected, my dad decided I needed to get over it and stop mourning because it was “just a cat.” This was how I knew for sure he was on drugs, because my dad is and has always been a cat guy. At the time, he had two cats of his own. I’ve been told that as a Pisces child, he would often return home after playing in the woods with armfuls of feral kittens he had found. This was not my father speaking.
I refused to stop feeling my feelings even as he harassed me about it, and after a day or so of continued arguments over the fact that yes, I was still sad about my freshly dead cat, I left. Or he told me to leave. I don’t remember. I had friends nearby who would’ve been happy to let me crash on their couch as I often did, but this felt too difficult and shameful to bring to them. I still hadn’t told any of my friends explicitly about my dad, even though they all knew what was happening, and admitting it out loud felt too big to handle at the time.
I’m stronger than all my men, except for you
Pretty When You Cry
I left and drove my Tacoma to the only place that felt like freedom to me: Los Angeles. A few weeks before this, I had successfully survived my first real sex work transaction, and it was exactly as seedy as you’d imagine: I found a guy on Craigslist, and we met at a motel that charged by the hour somewhere out in East Los Angeles so he could fuck me for $80 before his shift began. I spent half of that $80 on filling up my gas tank and the other half at Target on whatever I wanted. I remember some leggings and liquid lipstick. I remember a poem I wrote, likely about this very experience, in May 2014:
Maybe I’ll get really thin and stay inside Los Angeles
because I like her gravity.
From further south I hear a voice
too familiar, wailing away things like,
“I used to say I loved New York City,
now I curse myself for thinking that way.”
But I don’t know her, so I don’t ask her
for her hand, or the time, or to text me back,
rather wait on a death wish to gain momentum.
Maybe I’ll get eaten alive by her churning bowels
or maybe I’ll become the monster.
I like that.
On top of the obvious trauma I was in the midst of incurring, I was also grappling with becoming internally devastated about a man. Boring, I know, but it added a certain layer to my experience of Ultraviolence, because at the time, I could attach all of Lana’s yearning for this man who doesn’t give a fuck about her, who treats her like she’s special but then reminds her that she’s simply one of many to him, to my own story about this (admittedly very boring) man.
All those little times you said that I’m your girl
You make me feel like your whole worldPretty When You Cry
A few days after my 20th birthday, I got a DM from a mutual on Tumblr, and our conversation quickly moved over to texting daily. He was a devastatingly handsome & charming 27-year-old Singaporean from Chicago—flight attendant by day, musician and prolific bisexual lover by night. This man, who I’ll just call Q, was always regaling me with tales of his sexual adventures across the continental 48 states, and we were constantly painting pictures together of all the sucking and fucking and music-making we were going to do when he finally came to visit me in LA (you know where this is going, don’t you?).
I’ll wait for you, babe
It’s all I do, babe
You don’t come through, babe
You never doPretty When You Cry
Eventually, though, he became neglectful, even after we had gotten to the point of giving each other pet names and coming dangerously close to “I love you” on several occasions. Mind you, I was 20 years old; of course I had it BAD for Q. Even my friends knew about it. I really felt like he was a perfect potential match for me, as my jet-setting polyamorous lover and artistic collaborator. But he let me down one too many times, including one time when I sat outside LAX all day waiting for a plane that would never arrive, and I had begun the process of pulling away from him.
Hot, hot weather in the summer
High, high, neglectful loverShades of Cool
This, combined with the growing pressure from my mom to Do Something With My Life, had already set me up for a certain level of summertime sadness—well before Zee ate our neighbor’s lilies—and with Ultraviolence around the corner, I was about to have a summer soundtrack to go with it. What I wasn’t prepared for, on the other hand, was the wild and brazen and intoxicating levels of freedom I was about to be experiencing as I dove headfirst into drugs and sex work, bolstered by the melodies and fictional fantasies inside this album.
Not a single soul besides me and that man from Craigslist knew what had transpired between us on that overcast morning in May, and I kept it that way.
I knew the ways people would balk at me, even my most open-minded friends, if they heard that story. But on the inside, I was aflame. I was unstoppable. I had just discovered a new superpower, and I knew if I could learn to wield it correctly, it could give me absolutely everything I wanted—and then some.
Watch what you say to me
Careful who you’re talking to
I’m on fire, babySad Girl
There’s many reasons why sex work was intoxicating to me, and some are more obvious than others. Many people who have traveled down this path will tell you that the access to quick money (and lots of it) which comes from sex work can become a drug of its own; a type of hit, where you’re always seeking the next one. I was not immune to this phenomenon; it was everything to me. Especially considering that my dad’s addiction was worsening by the day and I very desperately needed a way to move out of his house. That money was freedom, in its purest, most distilled form.
Life is awesome, I confess
What I do, I do bestFucked My Way Up To The Top
On top of that, I was finally experiencing the thrill of being desired—lusted after, even. I grew up a fat kid who was always in turmoil about her body, and it’s like as soon as I reached my twenties, I—and everyone else—realized that I was hot. Like, sexy hot. Very, very fuckable. HOT. And very shortly after that, I realized I could monetize my hotness. But this was before OnlyFans existed, so I knew I was gonna have to venture offline for the particular job I had just given myself. This was also pre-SESTA/FOSTA, so it was a lot simpler to find sugar daddies or pay-to-play situations on Craigslist (I have a lot of strong opinions on SESTA/FOSTA, as do most sex workers, but I won’t get into that here).
It never once occurred to me to not fuck for money: I love fucking, and I love money, what more could I ask for? Other forms of sex work available at the time, like camming, were actually less accessible for me because they required me to be in my house, where my dad was. Plus, this way, I got to experience all different types of men and study the different types of power they wielded—whether real or imagined. Through sex work, I received access like I never had before, and in a city like Los Angeles, that power seemed to be the silent thrum underscoring the land, like a beating heart underneath the pavement that only a select few can hear, let alone look upon. I felt as if I could place my hand on the scorching pavement of any LA boulevard and feel the haunted heartbeat of the city, like if Edgar Allen Poe had lived in Laurel Canyon.
Money and sex and drugs all go hand-in-hand in Los Angeles, and I was determined to have my hands full. I can see why Lana was moved to change her whole identity to reflect it. And I can see why it was so alluring to me, a decade ago.
Down on the west coast, I get this feeling like
It all could happen, that’s why I’m leaving
You for the momentWest Coast
Once I had figured out that it was possible to use my hotness to make money while simultaneously exploring my own sexual fantasies, running around the greater Los Angeles metro area in my Tacoma, I felt like maybe my life was actually beginning. The dopamine hit from the wads of cash in my hands was certainly enough to rope me in immediately, and cause me to consider dedicating my life to this “career” I had chosen.
I had this one client who always overpaid me (he was very wealthy and not from this country, and I think American cash bills confused him, which benefitted me) and he always made sure I had an orgasm (perhaps another side effect of being a non-American man), and in my mind, if I could rack up a handful of those types of clients, I would be a successful and desirable (and more importantly, free) woman. And nobody seemed to understand that better than Lana Del Rey. She gave me permission to fuck my way up to the top.
You talk lots about God
Freedom comes from the call
But that’s not what this bitch wants
Not what I want at allMoney Power Glory
Despite all of this newfound and intoxicating power, however, I was still deeply, consistently, overwhelmingly sad. This should not shock you. Luckily for me, however, Ultraviolence kicks off with an extremely cathartic breakup song. I do not remember exactly where I was when I first listened to this album or this song, but I do remember feeling chills cover my entire body as hot tears instantly began to flow down my cheeks.
Shared my body and my mind with you
That’s all over now
I did what I had to do
I found another anyhowCruel World
Unbeknownst to me, mere days after Ultraviolence dropped, I was going to be swept up in an entirely new love story with my very best friend at the time, when I offered to be his designated driver for his 21st birthday and he got drunk and kissed me at the end of the night. It sounds way more romantic than it was, I promise you. But the key piece of this was that I did accidentally find a new lover, which made it a lot easier to forget all about Q.
But you haven’t seen my man
You haven’t seen him
He’s got the fire, and he walks with it
He’s got the fire, and he talks with itSad Girl
I was vengeful, I was in love, and I was alive with the glory of getting paid for sex. This hot guy whom I’d assumed had placed me in the friend zone permanently was actually deeply in love with me. The façade of obligation between my father and I had melted away, so there was no more pressure to be home for dinner. I spent a lot of time driving around the greater Los Angeles area. I smoked weed and went to Rocky Horror every weekend and snorted cocaine with my friends and had sex with strangers and prowled the streets. I slept in my truck at the beach many nights. I felt unstoppable. I felt free.
Despite how fondly I’m recalling it, we don’t need to pretend that everything was fine with me in the summer of 2014. It clearly wasn’t. But what is summer for, if not to run around and fuck around and escape your problems as you chase that feeling of limitlessness? What is self-destruction if not a form of revenge against those who chose not to be careful with you, a twisted attempt to beat them to the chase?
When I looked back on my old Tumblr entries to write this piece, I was struck by how very angry I felt back then—which was warranted, of course, but my memory of this time doesn’t include the anger and vengefulness I obviously felt back then. I was doing a lot to suppress it, I think, because if I had allowed my anger to spill over onto my dad (the source of my rage), things could escalate in a truly dangerous way. By the end of the summer, he had graduated from selling drugs to selling drugs and guns out of our house. I knew this because he told me; at a certain point he didn’t even have the decency to feel ashamed of it or try to hide it from me anymore.
‘Cause I was filled with poison
But blessed with beauty and rageUltraviolence
Right before the 2014 new year, when I turned twenty, I vowed to myself that I would “try everything” that year, including (but not limited to) drugs, so I could set myself up with the proper self-knowledge around specific substances going into this new decade of my life. That was my genuine intent; there was no escapism involved in that resolution. But by July, it was a different story. I certainly had a lot to escape from, and with my new, self-appointed job as someone who fucks for money, I had a convenient influx of cash to keep myself consistently stocked up on my new favorite drug: freedom.
I bet you thought I was going to say cocaine, huh? Well, you’d be close, because cocaine was my new second-favorite drug, and I absolutely had the means to make sure I never ran out of that, either.
White lines, pretty daddy, going skiing
You snort it like a champ, like the winter we’re not inFlorida Kilos
When you’ve got a lot of feelings to escape from, paired with an influx of cash and all the time in the world to spend it, cocaine is your best friend. Or at least it was mine, for a few months. I’m not saying this in a bragging way; it simply was what it was. That’s what made “Florida Kilos” my first favorite song on Ultraviolence: it was more upbeat than the rest of the entire album, even though it comes in dead last on the track list, and it’s a blatant love letter to a man and the drugs Lana helps him cook (and snort), evoking the fantasy of a hot Miami romance. While Lana was willing to risk prison in the name of love, I was certainly willing to risk a lot of things in the name of getting that next hit of freedom.
Sex work is inherently dangerous. In-person sex work is doubly so. In-person sex work through an unregulated platform with zero vetting strategies for potential clients while driving my own personal vehicle to outcalls was incredibly dangerous. One of the hallmarks of addiction (to anything) is risk-taking behaviors in pursuit of one’s substance of choice. My substance of choice was freedom, and I was doing a lot of very risky things to feel that particular high.
People never die in Miami
That’s what they all say
You believe me, don’t you baby?Florida Kilos
The wrench in my big plan to become a hugely successful slut that summer was the fact that I was in love. This will not be the last time this happens to me. I was in love with my best friend and he was in love with me and we were having the time of our lives spending my slut money through the summer. Looking back, he definitely was not prepared to be the boyfriend of a prostitute and was likely just enjoying the fruits of my labor (literally). I think I sensed this, intuitively, because I spent a lot of my summer hiding the majority of my sex work escapades from him. He would know when I was going on a sugar date, because those usually didn’t involve sex (not on the first date, anyway), but he definitely didn’t know about everything else I was doing. I knew even then that it wasn’t smart to let a boyfriend get in the way of me getting my bag, but still, I was genuinely and deeply in love, and this ate away at me. It’s very confusing for the body to go from making love in the morning with someone you’re balls-deep in New Relationship Energy with, to fucking some stranger in his Malibu apartment that night.
You’re falling hard, I push away, I’m feeling hot to the touch
You say you miss me and I wanna say I miss you so much
But something keeps me really quiet, I’m alive, I’m a lushWest Coast
The separation between my two lives, and the way I got to dance between them on a daily basis, honestly delighted me. On one hand, I had my ‘real’ life, where I had friends and a boyfriend who were doing a great job keeping me distracted from my insane dad back at home; and on the other hand, I had a wholly other life in sex work where I could distract myself from everything and everyone (both hands held an assortment of drugs at all times).
Being a bad bitch on the side
Might not appeal to fools like youSad Girl
I loved sex work because I got to be someone else, anyone else. Being anyone other than me was so preferred to the realities of my life, and I was also keenly aware of the temporality of the whole thing: I won’t be this young and fuckable forever. My body won’t bounce back from substance abuse so easily one day. Might as well make the most of it. Lana was writing songs that spoke to my most tangled internal narratives and running a comb through them, making them achingly clear and concise—and beautiful. Thus, this new album grew increasingly more important to me as the hottest months of the year beat on. It started to feel like some sort of narration or commentary on the events of my life as they continued to unfold.
The power of youth is on my mind
Sunsets, small town, I’m out of timeOld Money
There’s no real resolution for the events of 2014. I am still living out some of the consequences of that time. If you’re looking for happy endings, I can at least tell you that my dad is sober now and has been for several years. But things did continue to get worse for me throughout the rest of 2014, and into 2015, until I moved out of California with that same boyfriend who kissed me on his 21st birthday. He ended up being nothing special, either, but he was definitely an important part of that time in my life and I probably wouldn’t have left Los Angeles if I hadn’t been in love with him. Sometimes I wonder if he came into my life just for that reason: to save me from the underbelly of the life I thought I wanted.
Once I relocated to Portland and eventually broke up with him, I went right back into sugaring and other forms of sex work (including OnlyFans) for a few more years before officially retiring from it in 2020. Outside of the rabid vastness of Los Angeles, with her dark corners and abundance of millionaires, being a whore certainly does not hold the some enticing allure, but it did result in more meaningful and long-term connections with a handful of clients I had over the years.
A theme throughout Lana Del Rey’s entire discography (and the experiences of numerous sex workers) is the conflict between money and love. Whether real or imagined, this dichotomy comes up time and time again, and the mythology says: you can be a well-paid whore, or you can be loved, but you cannot have both simultaneously. My friend Alice wrote this incredible piece about Lana and sex work that mentions a more recent song, titled “A&W,” which details the inner mental landscape of someone who’s been selling sex for a long while, perhaps:
It’s not about having someone to love me anymore
This is the experience of being an American whore
Despite how much I felt like Ultraviolence was my own personal soundtrack for many years, I can see my own growth now in the fact that I am the type of person who chooses love. When true love appeared to me again, I did not make the mistake of thinking it was getting in the way of the life I wanted. The choices that followed me choosing love have resulted in the life I actually wanted. I no longer seek to destroy myself before others can get the chance; I no longer want to live separate lives in an attempt to avoid myself.
The sun also rises on those who fail the call
My life, it comprises of losses and wins and fails and fallsMoney Power Glory
I thought sex work was my ticket to a life of my own design, but the fundamental relationship I had with it in California was one of escapism and separation from the self. The abusive relationships I had back in 2014, with my father and drugs and money and the city of Los Angeles, felt so achingly beautiful at the time, even when I was mired in the sadness of it all, because I had a place to go, a way to retreat into the music.
Nostalgia gives us an opportunity to plunge the depths of the past with a certain amount of emotional padding—the rose-tinted lenses associated with nostalgia may actually be a protective balm when doing the “4th house work” of peering into your own personal history. I had to be reminded of all the anger and inner turmoil I was experiencing a decade ago; in my mind, I only recall it as a beautiful, albeit tumultuous time.
What Lana Del Rey did for my 20-year-old self with Ultraviolence was give her permission to interact with her shadow, the parts that craved all of this darkness and dissonance and chaos. Ultraviolence terraformed my internal narratives and gave them a backdrop, a way to conceptualize everything outside of my control as a great drama playing out on a stage of my own creation. In a way, its darkness held space for my own, so I could survive a very, very strange time in my life.
this is a fkn masterpiece. it’s incredible to hear more of your story and like i love the way you structured it and your prose is RICH. so so luscious to read
This is an absolutely stunning piece: well written, formatted perfectly with the placement of lyrics just so, and for my visual thinking brain- a true feast.