by Iryna Somkina
“No more rock 'n' roll,” my friend said, leaning against the railing.
“We always say that,” I replied.
We were eighteen, squeezed onto a tiny balcony that couldn't fit more than two people, entirely surrounded by empty bottles. Inside was an apartment— a gift from a girl's parents, a place of sheer envy. Almost downtown, perfect layout, niche cosmetics scattered around a bathtub that had never been scrubbed, and a smoke-filled kitchen with a sticky table and expensive coffee.
The place was such a mess that when one of our friends needed to throw up, he figured it didn't matter where, so he puked right into the kitchen sink. Others followed suit. The next morning, it took several brave souls to dismantle and clean the plumbing because a simple plunge wouldn't cut it. The important thing was, we all made the mess, but we all cleaned it up.
I hadn't thought about that clogged sink in years, until I saw a character do the exact same thing in a new movie called Chongqing Pink. Only this guy in the movie didn’t clean up. That single, unwashed vomit shattered a fragile social contract— one of solidarity, established by the film's main characters Z.H and Z.J.
Chongqing Pink throws you right into a familiar visual chaos. The disjointed geometry of the market, the crumbling awnings, the underpasses— many scenes look exactly like the bustling bazaars back home in Kyiv. It’s a universal aesthetic of street-level survival. You transition from that buzzing, relatable disarray to the unnerving emptiness of a McDonald’s, sitting in the quiet panic of not knowing who to score from anymore.
And the crazy part is, Hollywood is literally just down the road. It’s right there. But Chongqing Pink isn’t interested in treating Hollywood as an ideal or as some absolute evil. Through its deliberate color grading, the film strips the glamour away, leaving you with the realization that Hollywood is just another place where you can feel profoundly alone, even in what is supposedly the most beautiful place in the world.
The pacing of this life is best captured in the film's karaoke scene, a micro-experience of every chaotic night out. You ride the rhythmic, masking energy of Take Me Out, slide into the reckless abandon of Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?, and inevitably, unavoidably, crash into the melancholy of Creep. And after the melancholy? The inevitable brawl.
You hang out with strangers— a guy twenty years older, a girl who might be fresh out of juvie or a group home, kids who might have an STI, sketchy couriers, whoever happens to be around. If you’re lucky, some friends will be there too. You do ungodly amounts of whatever you bought from god-knows-who, wasting away hours in a park. You don't get robbed. The worst thing that happens is a puked-in sink at a friend's apartment.
Survivorship bias.
You survive the night, you wake up, you do it again.
Survivorship bias.
I call it life.
The obsession with “contribution” that Chongqing Pink discusses makes sense when you realize it’s not just about getting high. The ability to contribute feels like a twisted ticket to full membership in society. But genuine belonging is about something else entirely. Friends aren't there to erase your sadness and turn it into a blank page. They are just there, sitting with you through the worst of it. Beyond the grime, the bad decisions, and the unwashed vomit, Chongqing Pink reads perfectly as a story about belonging. Because in the end, what could possibly be better than hitting rock bottom, stealing the last of the stash to numb yourself, and still being pulled in for a hug?
****
Iryna Somkina is a Kyiv-based writer. She is Best Small Fiction nominee; her works explore ambivalence of intimacy in gritty reality.