the universe is my bouncer

how to live off of erotic capital in the french rivera

the party girl’s guide to a good time

when i was younger, i felt i had no friends. a party girl by birthright, i lamented this fact to my mother who in response emphasized the importance of stepping out into the world without the psychological crutch of an encourage.

“you need to learn how to exist by yourself.” she advised me.

and it sounded silly and tone-deaf to my ears as i was really speaking to a growing loneliness, one that had plagued me for some time, than a burning desire to dance the night away; but as mothers often are, mine was correct.

i needed to learn how to exist by myself in the absence of friends. and so i begun to show up where i wanted to go, even without a group of girls by my side.

this is a practice i had started in college, and by the time i arrived in new york, i was a veteran solo rider that the addition of other people brought more friction than fun.

it’s not that i suddenly turned anti-social, but that all my solo jaunts into town had been marked by a key revelation: one has to hold the vibration, ideally by creating it.

to hold the vibration means to set the energetic intention for the night and not waver, regardless of what doesn’t happen or how shitty the dj is.

my intention was always simple: shake some ass and go home. my friends on the other hand always had such complicated intentions; notably of being chosen by promiscuous, if not devilishly handsome, trust fund boys and having random men they’d never see again buy them drinks. these intentions were seemingly banal on the surface—i mean, who doesn’t want a man in finance with a trust fund who’s six-five with blue-eyes?¹—but they reveal a deeper psychoanalytic itch:

the inability to enjoy the moment without external confirmation of a good time.

i was in it for the vibes, they were in it for the validation. and the more we went out, the more apparent that became.

while i was content, if not dead-set, on holding the vibration throughout the entire night, their mood would sour, thereby downgrading the frequency, if a man they spotted in the crowd didn’t pick them for a flirty line, a make-out session on the dance floor, or the prize of them all: the exchange of digits.

all this externally-facing energetic discharge violated a core principle of club dynamics i had learned, and mastered, as a veteran party girl²: the energetic tone one sets is what dictates what materializes around them, not the other way around.

in other words, hold the vibration. and never let the vibration hold you.

welcome to st. tropez

it’s hard work, this business of energetic maintenance. to be a minister of enjoyment means you operate off flows of spiritual attraction and see what unfolds.

the butterfly effect, it’s called. a seemingly small action has long-lasting, rippling consequences.

one such for me has been my recent sojourn in st. tropez. it all began on the 7th of june when i finally indulged into my olfactory desires and bought a victoria’s secret perfume that haunted me since i first spritzed it on when checking out my “i-got-into-graduate-school-let’s-reward-my-hard-work shopping bag at the counter.

part of their bombshell fine fragrance line, this scent was specially conjured for their “bombshell gateaway” seasonal collection, a bid to capture the magic of a european summer from coast to coast, and was aptly named “bombshell st. tropez.”

having never been to the french sea-side town myself, but knowing that’s where diouana had envisioned living out her fantasies, i purchased the perfume as a spiritual nod to my eternal muse.

and so when i was invited to accompany a friend to st. tropez, i thought to myself, “the universe always finds ways to flirt with me.”

i personify my universe because i believe we all have our own worlds. our own personal realities that reflect back to us our personalities, beliefs—limiting and otherwise—and potential. mine is a flirt and she teases until you pay maximum attention to her. she’s never cruel, just clear. and she’ll never leave you for dead unless she’s certain you’ll resurrect yourself. after all, it’s only in enduring absolute bullshit that you can gain an ounce of wisdom.

and although i had boarded my flight from jfk thinking st. tropez would be a week of rest and relaxation, by the end, it had become a rite. a ritual of primal womanhood and a crowning ceremony of what it means to live off of erotic capital—even with $17 dollars to your name.³

i’ll spare you the details, as it’s the silhouette, not the linearity, of events that matter.

wednesday into thursday, i received unpleasant news. news the universe keeps giving me. imagine sending countless letters to god, each discussing the same topic, for each correspondence to be mailed back to you with the stamp “return to sender” in blood-red ink.

heartbroken and mentally fraught, i knew i needed to cleanse the negativity from my aura. as with any ritual, i needed a summons. a portal to the next life. and there’s no better place, especially in the south of france, than une boîte de nuit.

it sounds silly, but when groups of people come together—in music, song, and dance—dionysus finds himself in the room. and if anyone is capable of making you forget all which ills you, it’s the god of fertility, festivity, and religious ecstasy himself.

although my modus operandi for a fun night out is to simply shake some ass and go home, that night, i needed something more that just a good time. i needed a conjuring and so with each dj set, i gave myself simple instructions: make love to the music.

moving one’s body rhythmically, aka shaking some ass, and making love to the music sound about the same to a novice, but a blind woman could show you the difference.

when you make love to the music, you let the beat possess you. depending on the tempo, the beat could find itself in your chest, your shoulders, your legs, your hips, your arms, or even your back.

people often dance behind the beat; when you make love to the music, you ride on top of the beat. it’s sonic sex. and as the music loosens, usually with a bass drop or a very, very tight transition, you release everything you have in a spiritual orgasm.

and it’s through the repetition of this, that one opens a portal to the next life. dionysus moves through you until you’ve sweated away every ache that was gnawing at your psyche.

and it was in this moment between orgasm and birth—the final acceptance of a desired path not meant to be my own—that i felt eyes on me. and before i could blink, he stood in front of me.

in catching our breathes, i began to understand why the universe kept returning my letters to god: i spoke to him of my baby, diouana womanomics, and he told me “it has legs.” anyone else, this line would be a throwaway; an easy man’s attempt at flirting. but in his mouth, it was recognition.

i often find that god speaks to me through people. that, and dreams. and in sending a harvard business school alum whose decades-long career had been spent advising chief executives on how to scale, and sell, their technology companies, i finally heard god’s answer to my letters: if you keep going, you’ll go further than you could even imagine.

it’s absurd to have a business strategy session at 2a in a cave club in st. tropez, but how often does one come across a seasoned startup advisor on the dance floor? how often is their expertise in your exact vertical? and how often does their silhouette allude to ghosts of the past?

regardless of the absurdity, i take my serendipity where i can find it.

it’s been a constant battle for me, determining if the slow death of corporate or the slow burn of diouana womanomics is the path forward for me, and in so many precise ways, my universe keeps affirming the latter and never the former—to the dismay of my bank account.

but when you’re a woman with undeniable erotic capital, you could be broke on paper but a spiritual trillionaire. and that is what my universe used st. tropez to show me:

in the ego-death of rejections from professionally-validating careers, the spiritual honesty of asking for help, and the confidence that clarity surrounding desires bring, will you manifest the people, places, and things you need to pass through the portal of your next life.

so, although this past week spent within the côte d’azur was less rest and more rite, i emerged a new woman. one harmonized with my true path.

the path of the freedom-seeking, glamour-loving, intellectual sensual woman who is harvard-bred by birthright, a founder-scholar of erotic capital economics by destiny, and a tropézienne by conquest is not a conventional path; and that is precisely the point.

luxury bohemia has always been my disposition, despite a lack of generational, or personal, wealth.

coming from anyone else, this is pure delusion. but in my mouth, it’s a prophecy.

when i met him the next day at casa amor, he introduced me to a man who promised to introduce me to a woman who runs a magazine both you and i read. this is in response to my being introduced by him as “an entrepreneur with an interesting idea.” and in our people watching, he pointed out the private security of those who descended to st. tropez not by uber, but by yacht, and said to me, “one day, those men will be protecting you.”

and in being recognized for your inevitability, by someone with a track record of making exceptional bets, one realizes that financial capital pales in comparison to wealth of the soul, magnetism of the mind, and the carefree audacity of leveraging one’s erotic capital to claim one’s stake in this world.

this is the result of what i call primal womanhood: the state of conquest. where we allow the fires of life to burn us until the lessons have been inscribed into our bones. and then use these lessons as the cheat code for the next iteration where a new trial by fire awaits us.

like an ouroubous, each new version of ourselves is closer to who we’re truly meant to be in this life. until we one day wake up to realize we’ve become the kinds of people that leave naō by midnight, not arrive at midnight. that we enter and leave the city through boat, not car. and that st. tropez becomes part of a larger constellation of sea-and-country side places we live and work, and are not forced to confine to a week-long escape.

the high priestess of the french rivera

usurpingly, my favorite moment occurred in that same cave club but on a different night.

dancing at their own table, i spotted an 80s-something-year old couple, with the husband noticeably older than the wife. the woman wore a gorgeous kaftan and the husband was dressed in a relaxed but tailored linen set.

the husband had earplugs in as the music was impossibly loud, and i found him to be fully lucid of everything around him.

his entourage at the table gave him a cigarette, which he smoked in rhythm with the music. from time to time, he’d sit down to repose himself, only rising in the seconds before the beat was set to drop so he could ride the wave down.

him and his wife moved in unison and i fell in love with the sight of them.

we’re told that our 20s, or however long we look like we’re in our 20s, are the best years of our lives. entire anthems have been written about the mantra of only living once, so enjoying our fleeting youth before the moment passes. we are socialized to believe that it is only the young who have fun, glamour, and sex appeal.

tom ford called this the cult of youth.

but for those of us whose supposed youth has to be spent building the foundation of our lives—again, no generational wealth—this cult of youth is triggering for it asserts that by the time we “arrive”, our moment will have passed.

american society valorizes young people who make it “big” within the 20s. there’s nothing more attractive to the american press than a 22 year old, ivy league drop out whose company’s unicorn status crowns them among the league of "young billionaires.”

but this capitalist fever dream has the downward pressure of making all of us believe there’s no time. capitalism’s greatest foe is not socialism, it’s hope.

when we have hope that our lives will not end the moment we turn 25 or that our beauty will not fade with the passage of time, capitalism cannot twist us into becoming luxury consumerist workaholics.

there is no “baby botox” when your anti-aging regime is sunscreen and incandescent sessions of love-making. there is no “hustle culture”, “trad-wife-ism” or “sprinkle sprinkle” when your path is chosen for spiritual eroticism and not the quickest path to financial stability.

when we have hope, we can endure the years it takes to become ourselves. there is no exit strategy through a “strategic” marriage to “an older man” as a way out of doing the real work of confronting ourselves and our shadow.

we simply meet ourselves on the dance floor and let dionysus take it away.

when we reject the cult of youth, we embrace life. and when we embrace life, we can withstand life’s trials and thunderstorms with a grace not common in people our age.

and in doing so, we develop a work ethic that becomes our sex appeal.

an undeniability of our inevitability.

and before we know it, we’re in our 80s dancing the night away with our husband.

i went to her, and told her that i want to be her when i grow up. that i found such inspiration in her and her husband. their ease, their aliveness, and their audacity to be in the club at 80-something-years old.⁴

she told me, “you have so much to look forward to.”

and my heart filled with such hope even as my eyes began to water. me, who has been working very, very hard for a long, long time. me, whose default stage is exhaustion as the result of being undercapitalized with dreams that dreams that demand payment in sweat equity and cash infusions. me, who has wanted to accomplish everything all at once just so i could enjoy my “youth” having already “arrived.”

but she showed me there’s no need for that.

i have so much to look forward to.

and when i arrive, it’ll be on my own timeline, at my own pace, and having done something no one else could have even thought to do.

after all, how many erotic capital economist do you know? there’s just me.

and this moment reminded me of another woman who never let age rob her of anything: tina turner.

she said once, “my legacy is that i stayed on the course… from the beginning to the end, because i believed in something inside of me.”

i feel similarly; and you should too.

there’s something in us that we must honor. from start to finish, we must never give up on ourselves. nor should we allow any perception of a disadvantage stop us from becoming all that we can be: not lack of beauty or money or class or institutional access.

few survive the middle as it’s the most messy. the beginning and end are sexy, the possibility and completion of the thing. but the middle holds you at knifepoint and any sudden movements, you’re likely to draw blood. but that’s alright. there’s not a single thing worth having that won’t demand you stand up for yourself. and what’s more is that you have to show the universe you won’t be held hostage by your circumstances. you must demonstrate your spiritual will to continue.

at least, that’s how my universe works. she pokes and probes and flirts you and teases, but it’s always to ensure i’m calibrated for the next level.

i used to think about things so linearly. one achievement after the next. but now, i desire to live in a multiple realities—if i don’t already.

this is the result of arriving at the point of womanhood where there is no right or wrong, just understanding and consent. in this arena, it’s not the best woman who wins but the one who can sustain multiple contradictory beliefs and actions at the same time because that’s what the situation calls for.

if the reward is to be a textured life, one shouldn’t imagine the path there will be straight and simple.

the messiness brings character.

i spent all my money in st. tropez, but even bankrupt, i emerged a more spiritually enriched woman. one who knows she has so much to look forward to, and from where i’m standing, it looks like jet-setting all throughout the côte d’azur.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: if you haven’t already, create your diouana womanomics account. by tracking your beauty expenses through the platform, you’re contributing to the world’s first dataset on erotic capital. this means we’ll finally have the hard data to answer questions such as, “what is the psychological, financial, and social return of skincare products for black women in their 20s?” and “which archetype of women are most likely to actually receive money and other tangible assets because of their beauty expenses?” these are important, mission-critical questions babes. create an account and contribute to the mission.

dare: bartering with the universe.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

1. everyone on my internet has been ragging against celine song’s film, the materialists; but the reactions to this refrain proves the spiritual core of song’s film correct: we are all materialists.

2. readers should note that the author has never been to ibiza, so is being fictitious at best by referring to herself as a “veteran party girl”.

3. true story.

4. i didn’t say the last part (“…audacity to be in the club at 80-something-years old”), obviously.