Meow Meow earns her name in a quaint cottage we have rented for the weekend in Taupō. Taupō is known for a mythical chance of snowfall that rarely eventuates, and its lack of snowfall compounds into a lack of anything to do, until we have turned our wild holiday plans into an evening of putting stickers on random objects. At the time, Meow Meow is a red UWELL Caliburn KOKO, a sleek metallic square that almost redeems the aesthetic humiliation of being a vape, and comes with a chain I wear around my neck. When Jacob sticks the glittery ‘MEOW’ stickers on either side, one assumes it is because we are terribly bored and flat surfaces lend themselves naturally to sticker collages. But it is a naming ceremony all the same, and the decision to name brings with it a tacit acknowledgment: we name the things we think will last. A name implies a sort of permanence, answers the need to reference this thing as distinct from other things. And in that moment of being referenced, Meow Meow takes on a quality of aliveness.
Meow Meow hangs around my neck every day like a talisman. She had become as integral to the composition of my body as the hair on my knuckles, and would probably be traced in the chalk outline of my corpse. When all the disposable vapes have died out in the late hours of the night, Meow Meow offers solace in her rechargeable form, guiding crowds of the desperate and fiending to huddle around her altar for just one hit. Inanimate as she may be, her presence is as palpable as flesh and blood. She is like a friend, or at least a conduit to something like friendship.
I lose this first iteration of Meow Meow at a houseparty, and I catch my Uber home with a profound sense of what can only be described as amputation. I clutch at the absence around my neck as I would a phantom limb, and I feel curiously unassembled, strangely vulnerable. The next vape I buy, I call it Meow Meow in my head; whatever soul existed in her has reincarnated. I cannot think of it as a thing, but rather must animate it as my Thing, alive and possessing of an identity simply by virtue of my ownership.
The idea of an ‘object attachment’ as a type of intrinsic relationship first crops up in child psychology. It manifests in a favourite blanket or soft toy, items which often act as ‘transitional objects’—as the child transitions from dependence to independence, the object allows them some sense of stability. These objects become touchstones from which the child regulates their emotions, a predictable landmark against an unpredictable wilderness. And while the need for an external cue like this lessens as we mature, the fact remains that we all experience some level of object attachment across our lifespans. You have some sentimental item you keep with you from childhood, or even a watch you brought in recent years you cannot go without. As children, as adults, we fear the same things: impermanence. People come and go. An object cannot leave you, nor can it ever change. It is entirely possessed by you and laden with whatever emotions you assign it, the extremities of which could never provoke an object’ rejection.
We love objects when they become shorthand for ourselves. There’s that cool hat you always wear, it is synthesised into my mental image of you, it is such a ‘you’ hat—and if a hat being so ‘you’ means something, it follows that ‘you’ itself must mean something as well. There is an innate need to characterise the self as one would a video game avatar, to adorn oneself with ornaments and trinkets until your identity is stylised as something singular. And even if that need has become proliferated by the TikTok OOTD Dress As A Sim culture of today, it isn’t a particularly new invention; Jesus has His cross, the Pied Piper has his flute, James Bond has his ties. These objects come to stand in as symbols for the identities they represent, until the possessor is no longer necessary to communicate meaning. In imbuing meaning to the object, we are trying to make a monument of the self beyond the body, to exist as something that can be acknowledged and remembered even when we ourselves are not present.
The latest iteration of Meow Meow was a tacky, beautiful thing. A black metallic UWELL Sculptor engraved with a fleur-de-lis, boasting an aesthetic gravitas that was completely at odds with its actual purpose as a battery from which I inhaled minty watermelon flavour compounds. It came with a chain too, and could occasionally pass as a piece of jewellery if you caught it from a distance. It broke the ice with strangers who regarded it with equal parts confusion and fascination, and as these strangers became recurring figures, so too did the vape become a synecdoche for the entity of ‘Roro’. I could spiel about how the Sculptor was finally giving vapers a fighting chance at reaching the visual elegance of the cigarette, and how jewellery companies should invest in cornering the vape market, and most importantly, I could cement myself in the other’s imagination as a person who cared about these things. Whatever this vape represented, so did I.
It is a curious thing to form an object attachment to a source of addiction. As my reliance on the object grows, so too does my reliance on its purpose. When I interrogate my relationship with nicotine, what I find is that, beyond just a physical relaxation, the real balm it provides is as a caulk to dress over the gaps of my own awkwardness. It is like the beer you nurse at a houseparty; while tranquil drunkenness is the destination, the journey of sips puts your nerves at ease. There is an almost Freudian fixation in doing something with your hands and mouth to fill an awkward silence. A vape, more freely accessible, more appropriate to indulge in, pads out each social faux pas in the cushioning of intentional action. That joke didn’t land at all, you think. Let me take five minutes to swap out this juice and try not to kill myself.
In Andy Warhol’s 1967 silent film Henry Geldzahler, the titular character smokes a cigar and becomes increasingly uncomfortable over a runtime of 97 minutes. That crucial moment, the second between your humiliation at having nothing to say and the smoking of a cigar to save face; this is the crossroads in which much of Warhol’s art takes place. Warhol was fascinated by conversation, though he hated to participate in it. He kept a tape recorder everywhere he went, and what he seemed most intent on capturing was this disconnection we reflexively fear, the spaces in conversation and the moments in which language fails. Where we avoid the margins of social failure, Warhol liked instead to poke at the wound. In the film, Geldzahler’s cigar is as much a character as he is, the entity into which he focuses his discomfort at being observed. A cigar distracts him from the intensity of the moment, and pathetically tries to conceal him from true vulnerability.
Geldzahler was a close friend of Warhol’s, and he seemed to understand the latter’s idiosyncrasies better than most. As the cigar was to Geldzahler, so were technological devices to Warhol. Geldzahler once said of Warhol: ‘What became obvious [...] was the distancing quality of technology for him. It was always keeping people at a slight remove. What he wanted was to make sure that they could never see him too clearly.’ When I read this passage in Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City, I was struck by an uncomfortable moment of self-awareness. Was my vape like Warhol’s Polaroid or Geldzahler’s cigar? Was it less that I loved to smoke, and more that I loved to hide? It is humiliating to admit your desire for company, not so humiliating to focus your connection on the passing of a vape, and it is easier to have everybody think of you as a fun human steam engine than a desperately awkward conversationalist. The constant stimulus of impulsive gratification numbs the fear of being truly seen. We want our things to speak for us and tell people who we are, but we also want them to act as buffers, safeguarding us from the burning gaze of our witnesses.
But walls are not impenetrable, and a buffer is only a conduit to the soul in the hands of the right witness. Just as Warhol’s attempts at distraction only revealed his true loneliness to the people who knew him, the things that protect us can say a lot about what exactly they are protecting.
Meow Meow was by my side for two years, rarely ever misplaced and basically a venue-wide Missing Persons poster whenever she was. As bizarre as it might be to admit, I had developed a real fondness for her and came to think of her almost as a pet. Whenever the coil burnt and she began to hiss and spit, I found I was coaxing her as you would a startled horse. I suppose what was really happening was a transference; in the memories I had shared with Meow Meow, I was imparting upon her the memories of the people I love. The care I gave to her was an extension of the care I wished to give my friends. When I wore it around my neck to let my loved ones imbibe it so intimately, I felt something almost maternal in that act of nourishment. Meow Meow actively conducted the spirit of compassion. Her form facilitated affection as well as it could distance, but it all relied upon my choice, how I decided to utilise her.
And increasingly, towards the end of her life, I find I make the right choice again and again.
It’s December. I’m in a smoking section and everybody is out of cigarettes and some random chick is suckling my vape for sustenance because it’s late and we’re tired but we’re having too much fun to leave. We’re talking about Lena Dunham and passing Meow Meow back and forth like a chalice, because what is a vape if not a holy communion to all the people you share it with? It will be two months before the stores run out of refillable Sculptor pods and Meow Meow has to retire. But I hold tight to this memory, because it is a vignette of how Meow Meow should always be remembered. This was her dutiful service: a token of companionship between friends and strangers alike, worn-down metal a testament to all the hands she had passed through. (And, of course, lucky to bear my excellent flavour selection.)
Icon of Auckland, resting in heaven now ❤️
rip meow meow