The Big Grid

by Caelyn Cobb

The Creator didn’t want to start her Instagram account at first. Her thought was: that’s so new money, honey. She was a freshman at the New School and she was going to be a poet, a fabulous one, the kind who went down in history. She had a typewriter and everything. But everyone told her she'd be a natural. And you know what? Of fucking course she was. Blonde and blue-eyed and in possession of a great rack. How could she not be?

Her first picture was a close-up of herself, blowing a kiss. Behind her was the sky, crisp, perfect blue, cloudless. On her shoulders, shrugged down just so to display her bare, unblemished flesh, was her Aunt Astrid’s mink coat. 100% real fur. Aunt Astrid left it to her in her will. She tipped her head back so at the center of the frame were just her lips, pursed, perfect, petal-pink. The likes came easy.

And that, friends, is where this fucking legend was born.

The biggest trick is to know your best filter. The Creator has a custom one, from her dear friend Rosie, who she met in a poetry workshop at Lang. It lightens and brightens the blue tones to set off her eyes. She’s  got unique eyes, everyone says. Turquoise, or maybe sapphire. Her precious stones. Make those pop, show a little skin, flick the hair over the shoulder—voila. You’ll get your trail of little hearts, too.

Rosie’s the one who showed the Creator how to do the big grid. The user logs on and they see nine photos right off the bat. That’s your first impression. You’ve got to coordinate. You’ve got to plan. They set up a few shoots to get things rolling. The Creator, at the farmer’s market, arms full of flowers. The Creator, looking back as she runs under the late-night city lights, grinning, lipstick dark as wine. The Creator, on the fire escape, in her great-great-grandma Mary’s pearls and a silky black robe. Grandma Mary wore them as a debutante in 1904, back when the family was still rich. Mary’s father was in the textile business—not that kind—imports. The Creator put the pearls between her teeth and pouted out over the city. 

I love your style, a girl from Omaha commented on that last one. The Creator likes to think Grandma Mary would be proud of her for being such an inspiration.

The Creator never imagined this whole thing would take off like it did. She and Rosie were just sharing her style. Having fun trying out new outfits and locations. They redecorated every corner of her off-campus apartment (thanks, Daddy!) to get different moods: romantic, chic, whimsical, girlboss. Some people might say it was a waste of time to wallpaper and paint and stock up on so much furniture when she’s just renting. The Creator says that it’s visionary. The Creator says that they’re all haters. She has a disco ball made of quartz hanging from the overhead light in the bathroom. It feels like she’s bathing in ayahuasca. 

The Creator got a lot of followers in that first year. A hundred thousand? Something like that. Honestly, she stopped keeping track. She just remembers that the number they used in her first major media coverage was a big one. And after that, the freebies started. Perfume. Lipstick, from those trendy French brands. Lingerie. Gift cards to boutique clothing chains in the hundreds of dollars. Teeth whiteners. Nail polish. Earrings. Bath oils. All she had to do was pose with the products for a picture and say how much she liked it. Piece of fucking cake.

Rosie and the Creator would have sleepovers to try out all the loot. They did their hair up and spritzed it with the free perfume. They hit the town in the trendy French lipstick, grinning bleach white. The Creator had to get the outfits in her size for the shoots, but she let Rosie borrow the earrings and her great-grandma Lois’s fox-fur stole. They took selfies in front of the big fountain in the park. 

I wish I had your life, the girl in Omaha wrote. The Creator could hear her sigh with envy from thousands of miles away.

Parties—lights all in red. Glasses of orange-pink aperol spritz in the summer sun. An ocean, cerulean blue. A white dress in front of a wall of ivy. The Creator met a boy at a poetry reading; she wasn’t reading, but he wasn’t either. She spent the night in his loft. They smoked angel dust on his roof and she wore only her mink coat and her gifted black lingerie. 

He started taking all her pictures after that. Rosie didn’t mind, the Creator said. Rosie had her own thing going on. Good for her. The Creator always knew she’d do great things.

People like to ask her, where do you get the money to afford this? Parties, outfits, flowers, jewelry, booze, drugs. Plus rent in that part of Manhattan. Listen. It might not seem like it, but she’s a hustler. Contrary to what you might believe, the Creator doesn’t put absolutely everything she does on the big grid. She works. She does partnerships with companies. She gets paid to come to parties and opening nights at restaurants. If you see her out having a good time, she’s probably actually working. It’s called having a brand. You’re not supposed to know the difference.

Let’s be candid. Followers like when the Creator gets real. Sometimes she does go overboard. Sometimes she puts down her credit card at the bar and forgets to close the tab. Sometimes she goes a little nuts at Sephora because she can’t make up her mind. Shit happens when you’re living your best life. And you know what? She hustles hard and she pays that shit off. Her dad offered to help her out, but she didn’t need his money. She never has. She’s self-made.

It’s hard for the Creator to talk about her dad. When he went into the hospital for his cancer is when she really got into the sponcon, to help out. She had to. He was the one who gave her Aunt Astrid’s fur coat. He paid for the Creator to go to college and didn’t even bat an eye when she dropped out to focus on her dreams. He always had her back.

That was the era of the hauls. She did so fucking many. She’d partner with a brand and get to make up a season’s worth of dream outfits. She did a little video runway show for each brand. Look at this haul! she’d say, spinning around. She  put in so much effort for them. They loved her, but to be honest, they paid shit. She did five or six hauls a month on top of everything else. Still, she kept her integrity, which was fucking hard. She could have sold out. Instead she only picked out clothes that she really believed in. Unique stuff. Trendy stuff. The real money is from affiliate links, getting her followers to buy the clothes because she looks so damn great in them. And that, friends, she does.

Some of this stuff is from TJ Maxx, someone had the nerve to complain. The Creator did that on purpose, dumbass. Haven't you heard of normcore? 

The Creator knew that if she had more followers, she’d make more. So she expanded the brand. She went on podcasts. She went on YouTube shows. She guest-posted on blogs. People ate what she was serving up with a spoon. She told them about her exploits. About the intrepid social life that was in her blood, all the way back to Grandma Mary. She became an icon. It was all for her dad. To give back to him what he gave to her.

So glad to see our project is such a success, Rosie wrote on one of her posts. Our project? She hadn’t been on the scene for over a year. The Creator was doing all this herself. And Rosie had never once reached out to her when she was being vulnerable and sharing about her struggle with her dad’s diagnosis.

You never gave me back grandma Lois’s fox-fur stole, the Creator replied.

Eyeroll emoji. That thing is def polyester, Rosie said. That ungrateful, lying bitch.

So the Creator blocked her. Then she unblocked her and blocked her again. It was really hard for her to do. The Creator always had so much love for Rosie. But she had to protect her mental health.

The Creator couldn’t bring herself to visit her dad during the end. Tumors ate him alive, curdled his insides until he was throwing up blood. She didn’t need that image of him in her head.

The Creator will be the first to admit it: when he died, she went a little off the rails. She came home from the funeral and went straight from the airport to the bar in her black dress. In her selfies from that night, you can see the mascara streaks on her face from crying all the way home.

There were a lot of late nights. The Creator met a boy who always had good cocaine. She stopped talking to the poet; such a killjoy. She fell going down the stairs and also going up the stairs. She photographed her black-and-blue leg above her psychedelic, glinting tub. 

LOL, the girl from Omaha said. 

The Creator’s mom called her a lot. The Creator sent her to voicemail. The Creator deleted the voicemails without listening. Her mother did the same to her when she went away to Andover. How does it fucking feel, the Creator wanted to shout. Sometimes the Creator did shout it. 

Her dad didn’t leave her much inheritance. Some more fur coats, antique guns, a reverse-mortgaged house, a portrait of Aunt Astrid in her mink coat. The Creator hung it above her bed. Hashtag twinning. 

Her mom said the lawyers would take care of selling the house for her. There wouldn’t be any profits anyway. The Creator did so many hauls that her bedroom was full of clothes: piled on the floor, hanging from cheap clothing racks wedged into the corners, spilling out of the closet. She filled the room with jewel-toned silks and soft velvet and identical dresses in every color of the rainbow. They’re staples; you can’t have too many. Plus, her ass looked amazing in that style. Why wouldn’t she want to wear it as much as possible?

The Creator kept her parties to the living room in that era. They were intimate salons, like the Algonquin round table, but with charcuterie and rosé, on custom-made floor cushions. Everyone wanted an invite. She got written up in all the local gossip columns. Like an acid trip in Anthropologie that you can’t wait to be over, one of them wrote. You’re welcome.

The Creator knows how to show people a good time, even when things are hard. It’s her superpower.

The Creator taped hauls among piles of clothes. She filmed them high on cocaine at four am, with a group of people the boy with the good coke knew, all of them watching and taking photos. 

I can’t understand a word you’re saying, the girl from Omaha wrote. Can you adjust the sound maybe? ROFL. Girl. Enjoy the performance. It’s art. 

The Creator arranged thirty-two trendy lipsticks all on her vanity. One of every color. Six identical bottles of hyaluronic acid retinol pearl-compound moisturizer. It’s all an investment, she told her followers. Consider investing. 

She tried to sell some of the clothes from her hauls, so she could go inside her fucking bedroom again, but as soon as someone bought something, she felt a sharp pang of loss and to wear it out for one last hurrah. Angel dust in Aunt Astrid’s mink coat. Coke in grandma Mary’s pearls. All the classics. When she sent things to buyers a few weeks late, she reminded them that all the stains and tears and wrinkles were just part of the deal. You’re buying history. You’re buying a piece of a social scene legend.

Let’s get brunch sometime, Rosie texted her. My treat. The Creator didn’t answer because she was passed out in the living room on a pile of jeans in different washes. LMAO. She should have blocked Rosie’s phone number like she did her Instagram handle. When the Creator’s mom called, she didn’t answer her either, because she didn’t feel like it, and also because she needed some proper rest in bed after sleeping in the living room. It’s called self-care. The Creator thought about blocking her mom’s number along with Rosie’s, but she just couldn’t give either of them that energy. 

The Creator was sick of all the negative comments, so she told her followers that she was swearing off booze. She took videos of herself hydrating and going to yoga. She cleared a spot on the floor and took a selfie with a vase of fresh flowers. Only hashtag clean living from now on.

Forgot to move the plate of coke, someone commented. 

(Oops.) (Never say she doesn't make great content.)

This is getting bleak, the girl from Omaha said. I miss the old era when we hung out with Rosie.

The neighbors here love the Creator. Ha! Just fucking with you. They complain about her constantly. That girl in 2F is always clogging the mailroom with all her packages. That girl in 2F plays the same song over and over until three in the morning. That girl in 2F has the most godawful incense smell wafting down the hallway. One lady called the landlord on her because the Creator couldn’t get her door open–a haul was in the way– and she ended up falling flat on her back in the hallway and flinging all the boxes in her hand right into the neighbor’s face. The Creator just lay there laughing.How could she not? That was hilarious. Anyway this bitch called the landlord on her instead of helping her stand up and collect the packages she dropped. That’s New Fucking York for you. 

Once, the landlord wanted to come inside. The Creator talked to him with the door cracked and the chain dangling. The place was still a total mess from her last party, three weeks ago, and besides, she has rights. Of course he wanted to talk about the rent. Like she hadn’t just fucking paid. She pays him all the time.

 I can take you to court if you or your parents don’t send me a check, he said. First of all, it’s just one parent. How insensitive. Second: this asshole. Just because she’s  a young girl doesn’t mean her parents pay for everything. How many times does she have to say it?

Whatever, the Creator thought. He doesn’t scare me. She’s good for the money, she told him. I’m a legend. I’m an artist. Just follow me and you’ll see. I’m fucking somebody.

Caelyn Cobb (she/her) is a writer and university press editor living in Queens, NY. Her work has appeared in Longleaf Review, Passages North, HAD, and elsewhere, and her short story collection Saturn Return is forthcoming with Whiskey Tit Books in 2025. You can read more at www.caelyncobb.com.