Preston Chaunsumlit
“Anxiety, as we know, is always connected with a loss — with a two-sided relation on the point of fading away to be superseded by something else, something which the patient cannot face without vertigo.”
— Jacques Lacan
I left New York about 2.5 years ago with the excuse to free myself from my routine and the pains of living there. Truth is I was a bit confused and lost about where I wanted to be, professionally, personally, creatively. I had hit a wall, hard. And as a half-assed form of therapy, I decided to write a new web-series, and much like my last failed attempt at Internet fame, it was going to be somewhat autobiographical. In researching for this project, I realised that I was no stranger to failure. Maybe I failed at doing New York, at my career, as an Internet persona, and now in LA, I found myself as a failing, out of work actor that never had a role that wasn’t named Preston — a character who is a walking fail. Even a Hollywood porn company offered me a role as Preston; the role was nonsexual. Essentially, I was failing at portraying a failed fictitious version of myself. I felt fragmented, infinitely divided but multiplied, and the only string keeping it together was failure: as anyone on the Internet could see, it was a motivation that opened up new opportunities, and to be quite frank, was always a matter of survival. A study of my failure was the direction I wanted to pursue. I also had no Tinder matches and hadn’t gotten laid in years.
To fully jump into the more embarrassing parts of my narcissism, I asked close friends and acquaintances, as well as some of my online fans and trolls (i.e. Everyone), what they would like to see in a web-series. Comedy, of course. Sexuality that wasn’t pornographic, but with hot people. Politically correct, ya know. Oh, and relatable ‘Schadenfreude’ that wasn’t too violent. These things read as a retrospective of how I ever got anything done in my life. It was the failure in these experiences that made them endearing. However, I began to realise failure is never alone. Failure is inevitably accompanied by pain.
You know who else fails? Everyone. Romance had an uncanny resemblance to the disconnect I was feeling within myself. Romance is an expectation — the more unrealistic the expectation, the more romantic. Consequently, a masochist’s guarantee of immeasurable failure. There is no such hope that can protect us from this. Ouch. Failure being that constant string again. Looks like this web-series is going to be a lovestory, a cringeworthy, painful one.
An obvious example of my days of conflicting narcissism and attempts of reconciling Preston is the dating app profile. It became what I thought was a project on my own terms. It would be my escape. Fun, harmless, self curating, attention baiting. Instead, I was forced to confront this failure thing. If anything kills one’s ego, it is the dating app. Ironically, it is all selfie. My selfies got a few of my dating app profiles deleted, due to reports of catfishing as Preston, cyberbullying, etc. Normal stuff. I still wonder if the multiple fake profiles of Preston’s got all the right swipes I never received. If so, it was consoling to know there were others swimming in my failure. As my online persona was rapidly disintegrating, my personal life became a bit of a fiction. Failing there too.
“Hey Preston, I am not sure if this is your number but I just found out that I’ve had syphilis so you probably should get yourself checked out.”
— an anonymous SMS message from a troll, 2013
The only way an appointment at the free clinic can possibly be fun is if it is meta or an extreme degree of self denial. Everyone in the waiting room is a bit of a failure or feels inconvenienced by it. The comforting attitudes of the nurses just comes off as judgemental. Yeah, you recognise someone, or you will. You have also been recognised. Failure doesn’t invite the good kind of camaraderie. The waiting room and the examination was, I’ll admit, completely meta. I hadn’t been sexually active in years but the troll’s SMS, inspired me to get checked out, to be socially responsible and to really feel like I have failed, or maybe take responsibility of some other fail that I wasn’t so sure of. The nurse was suspicious by my behavior and deduced I had been a victim of sexual assault. She did not believe me when I told her she was mistaken. I didn’t feel like being probed and gagged by an extra long cotton swab. I gagged. She threw her medical tools down. We argued, the way New Yorkers do. She left and slammed the door behind her. The visit to the free clinic wasn’t a complete wasted fail. Left there on the examination table naked and alone, it was the perfect moment to take sexy medical seflies.
I soon lost that phone. It shattered while attempting a dance move on a table that is best described as a cross between “Coyote Ugly” and “Zoolander”. Maybe those selfies will end up somewhere on the Internet, and I can add that to my oeuvre of failure. I didn’t bother getting a new phone so fast. I was gifted by Samsung a camera with a sim-card slot. They sure thought I was the influencer. They were wrong. I kept my phone number and maintained some of my online persona there. The camera didn’t have a selfie camera or the processing speed to handle dating apps or watch a web-series. My contract from my previous series wasn’t ending for almost another year. Whenever I was needed, I came up with an elaborate lie that I was working on gallery projects in far off places like Oporto or Tokyo, or was in an obscure beach in Southeast Asia. The lies became a reality when I decided to illegally AirBNB my apartment. I finally welcomed this dissipation of Preston by letting him in and go. I met up with a few of my stalkers, my biggest fans, and left them disappointed. I did not live up to the failed persona they romanticised in all the wrong ways. It was time to go. Failure was inspiring me to leave and asking me to confront it. And accept it, because there was more to come.
Preston Chaunsumlit was a former noted Internet personality. He is currently based in Lisbon, writing his next web-series, “Groundbreaking”, a romantic comedy. He only uses dating apps as research and is still waiting for matches. He will not appear in the pornographic role offered to him due to scheduling conflicts.
Words Preston Chaunsumlit
Photography Daniel Nunes