Doja Cat DGAF If You Read This *

( * OR AT LEAST, THAT'S WHAT SHE WANTS YOU TO THINK)

- EJ DICKSON

I AM SITTING WITH Doja Cat in an Airbnb in Universal City, California, listening to a punk cover of “I Saw Her Standing There” and polishing off the toothsome lobster-caviar rolls she made. She’s talking about an ex-boyfriend and puffing on her omnipresent highlighter-colored tobacco vape (“I don’t crave many things other than this stupid thing. That’s pretty much it. Chocolate, sex, and vape”). All of a sudden, after about an hour of chatting about her last album and past relationships, she looks down at her Minnie Mouseencased iPhone and excuses herself to go to the bathroom.

For a few minutes, I’m standing in the kitchen, scribbling notes, cleaning up lobster meat, and trying to figure out the automatic trash can, when she comes back and calls out, “My throat and nose are really fucked up.” Her managers (she has four, two of whom have been hanging out in another room on the premises) scurry into the kitchen as if summoned by conch shell.

“Is everything OK?” I ask.

“Yeah, everything’s great,” she says. “I appreciate it. Really, I do.” And she disappears.