My mom and I have been spending a little more quality time together lately, and it's really been great. She's a ridiculously charming and funny little person, with never an idle moment. She's always singing at the top of her lungs or power-jogging in place or doing a Judge Judy impression.
And whether it's through her job working at a hospital or from her interactions with her fellow Korean churchgoers, she also picks up a lot of sad stories...
- A co-worker's 37 year old son died in a motorcycle accident, just weeks after reuniting with his estranged mother and saying he'd like to go to church again.
- While putting up little Christmas ornaments, my mom told me that she bought a whole collection of them from a co-worker who had made them herself. She then told me that a few months after working together, she had to flee the state with her son because her husband had been molesting him.
- Today, while at my mom's church's Christmas concert, she pointed out a really adorable young boy with enormous glasses, braces, and an awkward, floppy bowl haircut, and said she thought he was incredibly adorable. He's 13 and was playing the cello, and smiled at his mom who was sitting in the front row watching. My mom pointed out his mother to me, right as the woman took off her glasses and looked like she was going to cry. I thought it was sweet that she was so moved by her son's performance, but then my mom whispered to me that she has a brain tumor and can no longer see or hear very well, and doesn't have much longer to live.
The mother and son had an unmistakable, striking resemblance, in their eyes, their mouths, the shape of their faces. He smiled a sad, broken smile from the stage, with the metal braces gleaming, when he saw his mother's face. The little quartet of pre-teens had just finished playing "Joy to the World," but I wondered how much joy could really be in their lives right now, knowing that any day could be the end.
I am absolutely at odds with pretty much everything in my life right now.
I love my parents but whenever I see them, I feel a nervous knot in my stomach caused by guilt, anxiety, and the desire to avoid any talk of LSATs and law school applications.
I'd like to have a better relationship with my brother but I'm too afraid of coming across as being insincere or awkward.
I don't know if I should apply to design school (photography, graphic design, or fashion design), or law school. Or grad school for psychology to become a therapist (I like helping people with problems).
I don't know what I should do with my personal life. I miss my friends. I miss learning new things.
I wish there was a time machine so I could wind back to the years when I was a 18 year old insecure, idiotic neurotic and start over, without wasting so much precious time I could have spent loving my family, getting to know what kind of person I truly am, and developing my skills. Instead, at that age, I was making eyes at minimum wagers working at Guitar Center, fighting with my parents, wasting time on the computer, and wishing I had a better life.
I've been really into mint these days, I've realized.
I use/consume/drink:
Miss Treated mint shampoo by Kiss My Face,
peppermint body wash by Nubian Natural,
tea tree oil, which smells really minty (combined with cocoa butter, it smells like mint chocolate chip ice cream, which is one of top 2 favorites!),
Gold Bond powder with menthol (not just for sweaty balls, people!),
peppermint tea,
minty lip balm.
Well anyway, the list goes on.
My heart especially belongs to Miss Peppermint Patty, who I actually featured in 2002 on my terrible old site:
I have so been there, Patty. I feel your pain. Your minty fresh pain... I'll never be as pretty as the red-haired girl, either. Let's set her on fire and put her on a rocket and shoot her into the sun!
This is the cutest cat video I've ever seen, and believe me, after a childhood full of "America's Funniest Home Videos," "America's Funniest Pets," "The Planet's Funniest Animals," and all those endlessly cutesy shows on Animal Planet, I've developed a discerning taste for a funny cat video:
How fucking hard is it to buy a package of coffee cups in New York City?
Almost impossible, apparently!
I had to come into work an hour and a half early this morning for a very important meeting. And by "for a very important meeting" I mean "to look presentable at my desk while my bosses have an important meeting with their overseas business partners and serve no actual useful purpose besides smiling at the wall."
As soon as I walked in, my bagged whole wheat croissant in hand, everything was already in full-on crisis mode. Two dollar bills were strewn across my desk, and a voice called out, "WE NEED MILK!"
I scurried downstairs with a mission, retrieved two small half-pint cartons of El Moo fat free milk ($1.50) from the snack stand downstairs and entered the kitchen, triumphant.
As I came into the kitchen, however, I noticed that a Very Important Overseas Business Partner (VIOBP) with whom we should be making a good impression (lest they fuck us in the ass business-wise), was poking around our cabinets. We were out of cups. As I said good morning, my eyes frantically jumped from place to place searching for a hidden cup somewhere, with no luck.
The VIOBP said, "No matter, I will just use one of these... cups... here," as he gestured to the motley assortment of broken mugs and stain-splattered tumblers sitting in our cabinets. He pushed a few aside and pulled out an orange mug with a broken-off handle, decorated with black paw prints and the words "GOOD GIRL" along the side. "I will use this one."
Feeling a very monumental twinge of embarrassment in my stomach, I said, "In the meantime, I will run and get some more cups."
Stop #1: Duane Reade. With my credit card in hand, I first ran 1 block south to Duane Reade. Taking the escalator down to the basement level, I calmed down, despite the image of the VIOBP looking into the mug and noticing that it was unwashed and stained. I cringed.
In the cup aisle, which took me considerable time to locate, I saw with great disdain that there were only Dixie cups, plastic cold cups, styrofoam hot cups (I cannot bring myself to buy styrofoam), and 9 oz. paper hot cups which are borderline-too-small for our automated coffee machine which pumps out just enough coffee where it would easily slosh out of a 9 oz. cup.
I grabbed the 9 oz. cups anyway, as well as a delightful box of Mint Medley tea as a reward to myself, and with a wave of triumph once again swelling inside my chestal section, I rode the escalator back up to the cash registers with one leg up on a higher step, in a Napoleon-esque stance.
As I happily chirped, "Good morning!" to the heavy-lidded and slack jawed cashier, I handed over my cups and tea and held out my credit card.
"Um, our, like, credit card machines are like, broken today. They're not working."
"What?"
"Well, we have an ATM back there..."
ATM fees notwithstanding, my credit card can't be used as an ATM card. So I left, head hanging low, and a tiny kernel of early-morning, I-shouldn't-even-be-up-right-now rage building inside.
Next stop: 1 more block south to CVS. The CVS "Greeter" was an old man whose skin looked like rotisserie chicken -- greasy, mottled brown, and shriveled. "HI GOOD MORNING HAVE A NICE DAY," he called after me, a little too loudly for me to appreciate it at such an early hour.
Dodging an apparently blind employee with a handtruck stacked haphazardly high with tubs of merchandise, I had high hopes for the pharmacy chain that was once my employer, years ago. Sadly, CVS was even worse than Duane Reade -- ONLY styrofoam cups or plastic cold cups. CVS, I spit in your face!
I marched out, nearly flicked off the greeter as he called out, "OK MAMI HAVE A NICE DAY... Chinita..."
Stop #3: Across the street to the Mega Staples.
I walked in through the sliding doors and was greeted by a young man in a red polo t-shirt with his hands clasped together with dumb glee and his eyebrows raised inquisitively.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY CUPS?" I asked, trying to smile through my teeth gritted with impatience.
"Cups?" he asked. Then, he paused for a good five seconds, pondering what the word "cups" could possibly mean. "What would you use these -cups-... for?"
I was going to strangle him. "COFFEE CUPS. LIKE TO PUT COFFEE IN."
"Oh okay," he said, as he slowly sauntered over to the girl at the cash register and said, "Yo, we got any coffee cups?"
"No."
I spinned around on my heel, 180 degrees, and left.
Next: Two blocks west to the Rite-Aid inside Grand Central.
Dodging the sluggish tourists slogging through and the harried businesspeople sprinting across the station with briefcases in hand, I finally made it across Grand Central station to the tiny, poorly lit Rite-Aid. Already, a line eight-deep had formed at the register, where the dull-eyed cashier girls were very slowly and mechanically ringing up items.
I raced to the back where a row of paper plates and napkins were illuminated by flickering fluorescent lights. Plastic cups, more dreaded styrofoam cups, tiny paper cups, and, finally, decently sized hot cups. Even though they were packaged with plastic lids that we'd never use, and they were twice as expensive for half the quantity, I grabbed them, and waited half an eternity in line behind a fat lady in heels who was clutching at a large stack of toilet paper on display to keep her balance.
At this point, my brain was so burnt-out from my morning's seemingly easy yet incredibly frustrating task of finding a package of fucking cups, that each little plushy squeak of the plastic packaging on the toilet paper was like a lightning bolt hitting my brain, every time the lady gave the rolls a squeeze to keep herself from swaying. I wished fervently that the woman's heels would break off of her shoes and that the whole Scott Tissue display would topple over, burying her beneath the rolls, just so that she would stop that horrible plasticy-puff-puff noise as her meat-hook hammy hands gave them a squeeze.
But no such luck.
I finally got back to the office, the rage slowly cooling, and I consoled myself with the idea that I'd just gotten some exercise and fresh (midtown traffic) air.
I plopped the cups down on the table in the kitchen, shuffled over to my desk, sat down to my now cold coffee and my whole wheat croissant, wondering how it was possible that it took me almost an hour to buy a dozen cups in Manhattan.
Soon the buttery layers of whole wheat lulled me away into a carb coma, and I put my head down at my desk, little crumbs clinging to my mouth, as one of the VIOBPs came out of the conference room, looked at me, shook his head gently, and tried to avoid staring.
So last week, in the bathroom stall of the office where I work, I was humming a little Neil Young under my breath ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart," for those who may be curious) and reached for the toilet paper.
There was an overhang of 1.5 sheets, as per usual, that I pulled on. As I gave it a little tug, a giant flurry of black wings emerged from underneath the flap of T.P. and scared the absolute piss out of me (or would have, if, well, you know --). A gargantuan black moth the size of the palm of my hand was beating its wings furiously and flew around wildly around my face.
Not one to really scream when scared, I instead opened my mouth in a comical giant O and gasped sharply as my wad of T.P. fell to the floor. I feel like I'd almost inhaled sharply enough to actually draw in the giant moth with the force of a black hole straight into my fucking mouth, where it would have no doubt crawled up into my brain and laid hundreds of thousands of moth eggs.
This morning, I was humming a little Pixies under my breath ("Wave of Mutilation," if you must know), and same deal, reached for a little flap of toilet paper, and the SAME FUCKING MOTH flew into my face!
There's a giant window that is wide open at all times -- I would've thought it had flown out in terror (I guess I had falsely assumed that it was "as scared as I was" the last time), but no, it was the same fucking giant mutant moth that was nesting inside the little flap of toilet paper in the bathroom, terrorizing me in my waking existence and in my nightmares!
Only after this happened the second time, today, did I start thinking... This moth is obviously one calculating, sinister little creature with only treacherous thoughts on its mind. What was it doing under there not once, but twice (and most likely thrice)? That little enclave under the roll of toilet paper was obviously some kind of nesting ground for the little bastard, and besides the downy softness of it, what could it be doing there?
The only conclusion I came to was to obviously plot my downfall. I have reason to believe this moth was laying hundreds of thousands of invisible microscopic eggs on the hidden underside of the T.P., waiting for me to swipe with the hundreds-of-thousands-of-microscpic-eggs-laden tissue, impregnating me with hundreds of thousands of giant mutant moth men (and moth ladies?) that will swarm the Earth with their giant black wings and their giant moth boobs (hey, they have to inherit SOMETHING from me, right?) and take over mankind as we know it.
Next time, I guess I'll just have to squish it.
9/15/08 Edit: It could've been my imagination, but I'm 98.21% sure I saw the fluttering of gigantic black wings INSIDE OF MY OFFICE this morning. No doubt checking on the progress of incubation. Holy fucking shit!
I came across this little gem on my computer today and thought I'd share it with you all. This is what my mom gave to me on my 23rd birthday in January:
A newspaper clipping of a Coach bag advertisement, with the words "Do U Want a this bag ?" written on it.
The grammar and spelling are a little iffy, and I really hate Coach bags, but the heart is definitely there. Thanks, Mom.
I realized a few months ago that I hadn't read a "real" book (e.g. not a girly magazine, not a self-help "How to Beat Shyness!" book, not a cookbook) in probably several years. I somehow managed to scrape by the required reading for classes in college by skimming through, reading the description on the back cover, or desperately printing out Googled summaries while choking back tears an hour before a final exam.
So I decided to spring into action, because there's no way my brain has been getting adequate exercise at my glorified desk slave job. I subscribed to the New Yorker (though I skip a lot of articles to get to the interesting medical articles, fiction, and, of course, the cartoons -- I'll admit it), ordered the recent David Sedaris book "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" and Augusten Burrough's "Running With Scissors," the latter of which I've been meaning to read probably for a few years. (Both are great, by the way.)
After I finished reading those and proudly posted them on my GoodReads.com profile (add me!), I moved on to Carson McCullers' "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter". And holy fucking Jesus, I could not put that book down! Not only did it completely consume me like a hungry orca on a baby seal, but it is most definitely the saddest book I've read so far -- it's about different characters in a working-class town during the 1930s, all of whom have their individual demons that haunt them each day of their mundane, shitty lives. There's something about a sad book or depressing movie or a particularly poignant episode of Wonder Years or Adventures of Pete and Pete that moves me. Hell, even the Joe Cocker theme song from the Wonder Years sometimes puts a sad twinkle in my eye. And there's something about being moved, whether to tears or to a stomachache through which I derive a certain masochistic pleasure.
If you haven't read the book but are now considering it, don't read the rest of this post (e.g. "SPOILER!"), but there was one part that truly called out to me, loud and clear -- A young girl (12 or 13 years old?), Mick Kelly, who has a crippling love of music and hears symphonies playing in her head all day long, gets a job at a department store. She tells herself and her family that it's only for the summer, but they all (including herself) know that once she takes the job, her family will become dependent on the income, she won't go back to school, and she'll be working for the rest of her life.
Mick takes the job anyway, and at soon enough, she finds time only to eat, sleep, work, and feels tired every day. She no longer hears the beautiful music in her head. It comes and goes -- and when it comes, she can't remember long enough to write down the tune. She finds that she's angry all the time, but not at anyone in particular, and vaguely feels like it's an anger directed towards her shitty job. Despite being a headstrong, loudmouth, street urchin-type up until that point, she lets her dream of being a musician slip away little by little, as her menial duties take over and clouds what she really wants to do.
It's not that I feel like I have a lifelong passion for music, or anything in particular that I can put my finger on at the moment, but this part of the book was shocking to me because for months now, I've been feeling cranky as shit, and have felt like my job drains me, not only of my physical energy, but of the time I could use to figure out what I want to do with my life, and the time I could spend to actualize it.
It's easy to kind of just go with the flow of daily office/paperwork tasks, surfing the internet during downtime to read about celebrity retards, but I feel like at 23 years old, I should be kicking some fucking ass instead of sitting on my steadily growing ass that's parked in my ergonomic desk chair. I just don't know what ass I should be kicking, or where to start. Sometimes I mentally visualize myself popping on a bad-ass biker mustache, tearing off my shirt, and stalking around in tight pants, busting out into Queen's "I Want To Break Free," in all of my Freddie Mecury-like glory (then segueing right into "Don't Stop Me Now," straightaway, of course). So someone please tell me -- where do I start? How do I figure out what I want to do?
(Props to Mona of kirida.com for reminding me of how much I love Queen. Her site is so goddamn funny that I'll probably lose all of my readers to her. You'll thank me, though.)
So, this afternoon, my boss came by my desk en route to a meeting in one of the cubicle/offices about 10 feet away from where I sit. He produced a white medium-sized paper bag, pulled out a foil-wrapped sandwich, and put it on my desk.
He slowly put his fingers inside the folds of the foil, partially opened it up, revealing a delicious whole wheat ciabatta filled with buffalo mozzarella, olive tapenade, basil, and tomato. Then, looking up at me, he smiled, blink/winked then walked over to the meeting, not to emerge for a significant amount of time.
This sandwich striptease, finished off with a knowing glance and a smile (he may as well have given me the double-guns salute while making the "chik!-chik! noise) before heading off to the war zone seemed, to me, to be an indicator that this sandwich was mine -- a reward for my hard work at the office and helping him get his shit together.
Halfheartedly (I wasn't particularly hungry) but gratefully, over the next 35 minutes, I slowly packed every inch of that sandwich away in my gaping maw, my glazed-over eyes staring into my computer screen at nothing in particular, my fingers blindly tapping away at my keyboard in a guise of having something to do.
Ah, feeding time. Another lunch hour at my desk.
At the halfway mark, I was stuffed, but the sandwich was so attractive (Are those sunflower seeds on the ciabatta? How lovely!) that I just barely pushed the last of it down my throat and felt a mild sense of celebration. After all, I was quite the fatty in my childhood, driven to obesity mainly by parental guilt trips -- Hell was described to me by my mom as a place where your mouth is the size of the eye of a needle, through which you have to push in every last grain of rice you left clinging to the side of your rice bowl.
Feeling the warm buzz of accomplishment, I sat at my desk beaming quite retardedly at my computer screen, my hands clasped in front of the keyboard, and my cheeks rosy. I heard a door open and my boss emerge from the meeting and come up to my desk.
"Umm, anything left of that ... sandwich?"
The sandwich was not for my own consumption, but for his. I'd eaten my boss's sandwich.
I felt so stupid.
At that moment, my friend J., who had temped for a day at the office a few weeks earlier texted me, asking me to bring his check down. It was a nice opportunity for me to quickly catch up with J. and buy a replacement sandwich, but not before each having a shot of Jack at the depressing bar next door to the OTB hovel.
And that is the height of excitement at the office these days. Missing sandwiches, distended stomachs, stray shots of Jack in the middle of the day, and utter boredom. It really feels like a constant, never-ending cycle of Work-Eat-Sleep-Work-Eat-Sleep-Work-Eat-Sleep...
Meanwhile I'm trying to figure out what I "want to do" with my life. Go back to school? Stay away from school? Become closer to my family? Reconnect with friends? Make new friends?
August is almost here, and I can't help but get that antsy elementary-school-days feeling of summer. Not the one of ecstatic June after "graduation," or early June when you're tan as Pocahontas from riding bikes and catching frogs all day. But that moment when you suddenly notice that August is almost here, and the realization hits you in the gut that you haven't really done all that much this summer besides eat too many ice cream cones and watch so much TV it gives you a headache just thinking about all the golf that's on on Sundays. And all too soon comes September, and school, and shyness, and wondering if you even remember how to write in cursive anymore, or if your hand is too atrophied from disuse to even write your name in decent handwriting anymore. And how the fuck do you figure out the area of a triangle again?
I'm feeling that anxiety lately. I wish I knew if I'll be good enough for what lies ahead, whatever that may be.
Sometimes I want to run away to Alaska, stay there so long that I don't remember who or what it is that I miss, stay there so long I don't even remember what it feels like to be lonely, and have no more regrets.
I'm usually pretty gung-ho with doing everything myself on this site (hence the slightly askew banner image, several broken image links in older posts, as well as a few unresolved comments issues), but when I think about RSS feeds and XML I get kind of lost.
A few people have suggested that I start an RSS/XML/Atom feed for this site, so that can quickly tell when I've updated, rather than clicking here every time. Can anyone give me a hand?
I can easily admit that I am not an extremely attractive person. My proportions seem way off to me, my hair for some reason has reverted back to its Bad Hair Days of 1994, and I've packed on what often feels like a padded, foam fat suit over the years.
However, I am a woman in New York City with no visible mutations or deformities. My hair is dark and long, my waist is luckily smaller than my hips and my bust. So with these very basic factors of being female, along with my deliberate Shy-No-More! personality (wherein I try to be friendly and talkative, unlike my painfully shy and evasive days where I would have killed to hide behind my mother's legs and peek out occasionally in terror... at like age 18), I somehow attract the attention of some very strange, desperate characters in search of female companionship.
I was at B.'s house on Saturday, helping him to prepare for the delivery of a baby grand piano. The movers arrived -- the ringleader being a very heavy, red-headed Italian with a broom-like mustache and a heavy Staten Island accent, and his laborers a team of Hispanic young men who all looked very nervous and fidgety, with eyes that didn't quite come up high enough to match your gaze. Later, we'd learn the probable cause of their sheepishness was that they'd forgotten the fucking piano bench and had left it behind.
Anyway, as B. took off for the bank to pay these guys, the red-headed Italian "mover" (quotes added because he didn't lift a single thing, and only ordered around/criticized the other guys), George, didn't even wait until B. was off the driveway before he closed in. "So your husband is from Staten Island, too, huh?" he said.
"Husband??" I thought. Okay, well, I guess I could go with that.
"Yes, I guess he is!" I replied, cheerfully, glad to avoid an awkward silence while B. was away for several minutes. I would honestly rather talk about something gross like gastric colitis or something ridiculous that I don't know/care about, like, say, "American Idol," than stand around with an awkward silence heavily upon me. That's when my cheek gets a little nervous twitch when I smile and I start sweating on my upper lip -- my patented SweatStache that I so love to write about. I also may or may not twiddle my fingers around as though I'm knitting an invisible afghan throw (or are those crocheted?) and start asking random people if they want something to drink.
After some small talk about George the Mover's daughters, he got a look on his face that I knew too well. The "Trying to be smooth even though I'm a middle aged obese man with a rash on my face that may be psoriasis"-Look. All of us ladies can feel this coming on from a mile away.
"Hey, do you gots a twin sistuh?" he said, screwing up his eyes to get a better look and pushed his wraparound sunglasses to rest on top of his wispy-haired head. His eyes were shockingly clear blue, and were opened so wide that they looked like they were about to pop out of his skull. "Blink-blink," went his eyes, as though he had just emerged from a cave after blindly wandering through the dark for several days, his hands groping about for an exit... groping...
"No. Why, do I look like someone you know?" I said, still happy to be having a conversation rather than pestering the very sweaty movers if they want a plastic tumbler of iced tea (which I would find myself doing just moments later anyway).
"Nah, I was just hopin', 'cause YOU'RE already taken!" he said, giving me a fixed, plastic smile, his gritted teeth pressed together into a neat grid.
"OH! HAHA ha HA!" I laughed. I noticed a small crumb in his mustache. I felt a little strange in my stomach and wondered when B. would return. I looked around for a tissue and started dusting a book on the coffee table.
Next, he did something that I truly detest. "You a Korean?"
"Yeah, are you?" I replied, immediately irritated, trying not to sound too snappy. Behind us, three Hispanic men were struggling to put the piano up on only two legs, as one tried to shove the third leg in place.
"I had a Korean coin once," he said, unfazed. "I asked this pretty Korean girl once how much it was worth. Ten cents! I woulda asked her out on a date but she was already taken, too. Huh."
"Well, how about that," I said.
"And to top it all off, I stupidly GAVE her the coin, so now I don't even have it as a conversation startuh!"
"Well, at least you can tell that story now," I replied.
"You don't have any Korean coins you could give me, do you?" he said.
"No."
Luckily, B. came back at that point. We then noticed that they'd forgotten the piano bench in New Jersey, but B. had already given me the wad of cash to give them, including the tip, so when they asked for the balance, I just handed over the whole wad from out of my pocket, without trying to negotiate the price of their negligence. I'm so weak sometimes.
Then, as each of the five Hispanic men took turns making lengthy trips to the bathroom, as the rest of them had the iced tea I brought out, George the Mover and I found ourselves in another conversation once again. B. was puttering around with his elderly neighbor showing her the new piano. "Oh!" she exclaimed. I couldn't make out the rest of what she said to him, but it was in that same frail, high-pitched tone.
"You cook, too???" George bellowed. I looked down, and on the kitchen table was "The Wicca Cookbook," which was not mine. "You really ARE da perfect woman!"
I tried desperately to make eye contact with B. who was in the next room, but he was now too busy showing off the framed artwork in the dining room to his neighbor. "Oh!" she exclaimed again.
He then examined the shelves stacked high with about 50 boxes of tea. "White tea is supposed to be really good for you," he said. "You drink this stuff?"
"Yeah, it's pretty good."
"I was watching Oprah -- no, I mean, the View -- and some guy was on there saying how white tea is all you should drink. And that coffee is the worst thing you could put in your body," he said.
We both looked over at the French press I'd filled with coffee.
"Well, it's decaf."
"White tea is da best..." he went on. "So good for you..."
Finally, I grabbed the box and gave him a few tea bags. "Why don't you take some with you?"
"WOW!" he exclaimed to one of the movers who had just come out of the bathrooms without washing his hands. "Patty is just the sweetest, isn't she? Just the sweetest woman. And so beautiful, too, isn't she? That Patty."
The man turned red and walked away.
Next, George the Mover spotted a newspaper clipping on the fridge -- a photo of a ballet dancer from the NY Times that B. thought was "the most graceful thing he'd ever seen."
"You like ballet? You know, I used ta take ballet lessons! Was the only guy in my class, but I remember all of my positions!"
And with that, this 250+ pound man, wearing sweat-shorts, puffy sneakers, and a grayed gym shirt (yellowed in the armpits, I noticed), thrust his hairy, Popeye-like arms over his head, pointed his toes outwards, and did a few quick, strange, squatting motions.
And as I watched in horror, he rose slowly up on his tippy-toes, and delicately padded around in a circle in the middle of the kitchen, pirouetting slowly, like something out of the Nutcracker. The tea bags in his pocket flapped against his thigh. And as his routine continued, this strange exotic mating dance ritual, and as the positions became more and more obscenely ridiculous, as he huffed and puffed -- the whole time, his bright blue eyes were locked with mine, unblinking, boring into my skull intensely enough to cut diamonds in my brain, daring me to look away.
Sitting near cute guy but Strike 1: Answers phone with "Salud." 2: But isn't European. 3: Says Mapquest is better than Google maps. 4: Ends call with "Anon."
To: Me From: Yas
I just got irrationally angry that he thinks mapquest is better than google maps.
Like I said, don't expect anything mind-blowing on there. It's more like my own internal monologue, really. I don't know why anyone would really want to read it, but there it is.
UNFINISHED BLOG POSTS FROM THE PAST PART 1: APRIL 18, 2006
I was just flipping through some old posts I made and came across a bunch of stuff that I started writing, never finished, and never published online. I guess since I rarely seem to be motivated to write about stuff that is going on lately, I might as well finish up what I started. Here's something from TWO YEARS AGO(!).
It's kind of appropriate, I think, since it shows how long I've been desperately searching for an apartment in New York to escape having to go home to New Jersey, and my epic failures in attempting to do so.
Here we go:
Apartment Searches, Past and Present.
(Last saved on 4.18.2006)
My apartment search this year was much more fruitful than the last, thank god.
Last year, all I did was troll Craigslist for a few days before giving up and returning to New Jersey to pass the summer months living at home with my parents.
One of the Craigslists ads I responded to last year looked so promising -- $700 a month for a place right on Union Square seemed absolutely perfect for me; I had two part-time jobs in Manhattan lined up and could probably pay the rent myself while still saving a bit of money in the bank.
So I ended up talking on the phone with this guy named David, who immediately annoyed me by doing something I absolutely hate -- He talked while playing the guitar, barely paying attention to our conversation, while giggling with one of his friends.
"Will you teach me how to play the guitar if you move in?" he asked me. "Uh, yeah, sure," I said. "Can we talk about the rent now?"
I didn't want to be dragged through the bullshit chitchat, so I met with him to look at the apartment. He was this tall, skinny, Jamaican guy who thought he was just the absolute shit. The cat's meow AND the bee's knees.
"I think my style is kind of like The Matrix," he said to me five minutes after we said hello. "I'm cool like Neo." He was wearing what appeared to be a shitty women's navy blue pea coat and dirty black loafers. "Right," I said, smiling uncomfortably. "Just like Neo."
"By the way, I'M GAY," he said, without me asking about or mentioning anything of the sort. "I'm GAY, so don't worry about anything, okay? I'm GAY."
We walked to the apartment and he opened the door to an enormous space sectioned off into five little living areas. It was nice, except there were three scrawny white kids living there -- none of them could have been more than 14-16 years old. I immediately thought, "Oh my god, the dude is running a child sex ring in here!"
Whether that was true or not, I still don't know. In fact, I don't want to know. But once we got to his place, David immediately sat at a computer desk, put on a headset, and started loudly playing Counterstrike instead of showing me the place. I stood a few feet away from him by the doorway, unsure of what to do for about 15 minutes, until I finally interrupted his rapid typing and loud cursing into the microphone. "Um, are you going to show me the place? And... who are these kids?"
David said they were pre-college kids living there temporarily to take some summer classes, which struck me as being really odd. Who would send their teenage kids to the home of some random 29-year-old Jamaican guy who sits around playing computer games all day? Plus, the ad I'd responded to said the people I'd be sharing the place with were a 19 year old girl and two guys, 21 and 24. "Oh, Amanda's coming home from work any minute now," he said, referring to the 19 year old girl.
We were there for over an hour, and no Amanda.
There was a large lofted area over the kitchen, with like a 4.5 foot clearance.
"This is where you'd be staying," said David, as we climbed up the ladder to take a look. We both had to crouch like hunchbacks so that our heads didn't hit the ceiling above us.
The place was filthy. The entire floor was covered with two thin blankets, side-by-side. There were stacks of books and VHS tapes taking up the rest of the place.
David stretched out on one of the blankets and patted the spot next to him. "This is where I sleep," he said. "You'd be sleeping right next to me."
My eyes bugged out a little then, I think. He saw I was freaked and immediately reminded me, putting his hands out, welcomingly, "But I'm GAY, remember? I'm GAY. Don't worry! I'm GAY. Really -- I'm GAY!"
So despite the less than ideal conditions, in my feeble mind I felt like this would be better than commuting into New York from home in New Jersey. We sat up there in the loft for a little while longer, discussing the rent. I called my parents up to tell them that I was staying in NY and that I'd found a place, and they flipped out.
"What? You crazy? It waste of money. You coming home." --click--
"I think the rent is kind of high for me," I said to David. He was reading Sin City and was falling asleep. "Well, how about this. If you wear a maid outfit and clean up the apartment and cook for us, maybe I could cut the rent for you..." The maid outfit was a bit much for me, but if it meant saving some money... "How much?" "I'll take off... $20 bucks a month." "Forget it!"
I got up to leave, climbed down the ladder very slowly (I am afraid of heights), and told him I'd call him tomorrow. I wanted the place, but only if he cut the rent down to $600. He threatened to show the place to "hundreds of other people interested in renting the place." I said "fine" and left.
About half an hour after I'd returned to my dorm, my cell phone rang. It was David.
"I want you to move in. You've got the place." "Are you serious??" The thought of not having to live in New Jersey filled me with relief. "Yeah. Now come back and give me the first and last month's rent... $1200 cash." "What???"
I ended up talking David down to just one month's rent. We met up again -- by this time it was around 1 in the morning -- and went to the closest bank nearby so I could withdraw the cash from the ATM, withdrawl fees be damned! Once we stepped into the bank, it was as though we stepped into some bizarre alternate universe -- immediately, we were hit with the unmistakable smell of shit.
Something had obviously gone very, very wrong in this bank. There was a big upturned carton of salad that looked like it had exploded all over the floor, and a huge mess of newspapers covering an enormous pile of shit that was so big, only a human could have pinched it out.
"I don't even want to KNOW what happened in here," said David, as he quickly left to wait outside.
So there I was, in a shit-filled ATM area, withdrawing a huge chunk of my life savings to give to this "gay" maid-outfit-fetish freak. I could only take out $200 -- I'd forgotten there was a withdrawl limit on my debit card. In a way, I was relieved. I carefully stepped over the pile of salad and shit, exited the bank, and handed over the cash in an envelope.
When I explained about the limit, David surprised me by exclaiming, "What! GOD! You are just like my ex-girlfriend!!!"
Wait.
Ex-girlfriend?
"Aren't you GAY?" I asked, getting mad. "Yes! I AM GAY!! I AM. I am gay! What, you don't think I'm GAY?" he said, quite visibly flustered.
I looked at him silently.
"Okay fine, I'm bi then. Okay?"
I swallowed down the terrible feeling that was welling up in my stomach, and silently convinced myself that since I'd be working those two jobs every weekday, I wouldn't have to actually deal with David and his ragtag team of teenage slaves so much. Plus, I said to myself, it would still be better than living in New Jersey.
So while walking home, I called up my ex and told him what had happened.
"What?!?!" he screamed into the phone. "GO THERE AND GET YOUR FUCKING MONEY BACK! Are you retarded??"
It hit me right then what a horrible idea it would be to live with this crazy guy and his minions. Visions of maid outfits and Counterstrike sessions filled my head. I frantically called David and told him that we had to talk -- I wouldn't be taking the place.
He insisted on me coming to his place to talk instead of meeting me somewhere in between, as I was "fucking him over." I wanted my envelope of cash back, so I reluctantly agreed.
Once I arrived, he started wailing about how that coming Sunday was going to be Mother's Day, and how since both of his parents were dead, he was now an "orphan." And how DARE I do this to an "orphan"!
It was difficult for me to have much sympathy, as I have never heard of a 29-year-old man referring to himself as an "orphan." Honestly.
I coolly stood my ground and said since he had "hundreds" of people wanting the apartment, it would be easy for him to find someone to take my spot. Unwilling to be caught in a lie, he said "Yeah, I guess, but I want YOU to live here!"
When I again asked him for my money back, he slowly ascended the ladder up to the loft, and I heard the sssssslkk! ssssslk! sssslk! sound of a stack of money being counted. I assumed it was my stack of $20 bills that I'd given him. He didn't come down, but instead dropped an envelope down to me, and it fluttered down towards the floor. I caught it, snatching it out of the air.
I opened the envelope and counted the money. It was, unsurprisingly, $80 short.
"Dude, this is only $120. Where is the other $80?" I said. "I... um, I used it already." "You used $80 in the half hour that went by from the time I gave you the money to right now???" I said. "Yeah." "That's fucking bullshit, give me the rest."
He came down and eyed me.
"How about you give me the $80 for all the trouble you put me through?" he said. "After all, I'm an orphan." "How about no?" I replied.
At this, he let out a huge melodramatic sigh that was big enough to potentially cause a windstorm in his shitty apartment. He pulled out a wadded up bunch of cash from his pocket and shoved it into my hand.
"Now, don't think that you can come back here and be my friend or anything, okay?" he said. "I don't think we can be friends after this." I was absolutely dumbfounded by this. Friends? "Are you fucking serious? You must be seriously fucking insane."
With that, I made my grand exit: My fingers, numbed by my adrenaline rush (my body's survival instinct kept asking me if I was going to have to engage in fisticuffs with this ruffian) fumbled with the lock, but I managed to let myself out, closed the door firmly (I'm not much of a door-slammer) and walked out, feeling as though I had just barely avoided letting my naiveté fuck me over by some Counterstrike playing, Matrix-loving, faux-gay, Neo-wannabe. I considered myself very lucky, indeed.
(Note: Okay, back to 2008 now. Just wanted to mention that after all this fuss, I did in fact go back home in New Jersey that summer of 2006. And I hate to say it, but looking back now, two years later, despite the stubbornness and resentment I felt at the time... I think it was a very, very, very good thing.)
I've been plagued recently by some really bizarre, vivid dreams. Anyone want to take a stab at "what it means"?
Last night, I had this awful nightmare that my dad and I were in my mom's SUV. He was driving me to someplace I can't recall, through some sort of summer camp. It was at this weird beach-like colony where young white people were running around on the sand in colorful swimsuits. I've seen this weird setting before in my dreams, many times. There's always a lot of dirty seaweed strewn about, the sky is a dead green, the sand gritty. The water is mucky, and a bubbly film floats on top of the crashing waves.
There was a small, black, petroleum-y lake under a hill. I, for some reason, asked my dad to drive closer and closer along the lip of this lake. I'm not sure why. It wasn't to show off to anyone (no one stood out to me in the crowds as anyone I knew), maybe it was just to see how far I could push him. Without putting up a fight (which is not like his character), he acquiesced and drove closer and closer to this black, disgusting, swampy lake.
The inevitable happened, and we got stuck. I hopped out and tried to push the car out of the black muck, but the car was stuck, and started sinking quickly. I yelled for help and screamed at my dad to get out of the car, but it was sinking too quickly, and no one came to help us. I ran to see if I could get someone, anyone, to save my dad, who was trapped, submerged under the thick, black mud.
I ran and came across some friends of mine. I'm not sure who they were, but I think we all went out somewhere, talking, catching up, laughing. I wondered to myself when I would have to break the news to my family that my father had succumbed to the dark mysterious mud, and that my strange request to drive the car close to this black lake had rendered my mother husbandless, and my brother and I fatherless.
I'm not sure how much time went by, but at some point the laughter became sincere and carefree, until a jarring sudden moment when I remembered with urgency that my dad was trapped inside of a car, at the bottom of a black lake. I chanced upon some kind of towing garage, where I summoned the help of a white man with a sunburned red face, a beer gut and a crew cut, to tear ass in his tow truck to this lake to save my father.
A diver in scuba gear dove into the muck with a hook, and emerged, announcing that he had successfully rigged the hook to the back of the car. I tried in vain to calculate how much time had gone by, and how much oxygen there was in the car for my dad to possibly survive on. It seemed like a lost cause. I wondered to myself if my dad had struggled, trying to open the door or crack a window to free himself, which probably would have only allowed the mud to enter the car, fill his nose, mouth, ears, and muffled his shouts and paralyzed his flailing limbs. It was not an image I enjoyed. Despite my dad's usual hardness, his cheapness, his usually ill-tempered mood, I considered him to be a good man, and I loved him. A crank started turning, a rope attached to the hook tightened, and the back of the car in which my dad was prisoner became visible.
That's when I woke up.
* * * * *
My personal thoughts on this dream is that it is no coincidence that last night, before I had this dream, my father and I finally had an uncomfortable discussion about me moving out, as my mother played "passive referee" (playing sudoku next to me as she occasionally shouted criticisms at both of us without looking up from her book). For the last two years in which I've tried unsuccessfully to move out on my own, my dad has gone into hysterics every time I brought up the topic. He wails, saying that he is going to faint, and how could I be such a horrible daughter with skewed thinking to even consider moving out. He still thinks I should live at home until I am married to a Korean man, an idea which admittedly shocks and horrifies me. Therefore, my dad has understandably been pretty much left in the dark of my moving plans in the past few months. My mom usually chimes in, too, saying that everyone in New York is a drug addict and an alcoholic, and dirty, which is not very helpful to my cause -- but lately, as the more progressive parent, she begrudgingly agreed to me in secret that it seems like it's time that I move out.
After first attempting to use threats, anger, and frustration with little success, my dad moved onto the most powerful strategy a charmingly petite and typically angry Asian parent can ever summon: guilt.
"But... I like it when you are here at home."
This was either a rare glimpse at my dad's soft side, or a crafty, desperate, last-resort attempt to appeal to my "good daughter" side. But I put my foot down. The conversation ended awkwardly, like a joke that trails off without a punchline, and I went up to my room. There, I received a call on my cell phone from my dad, who was downstairs in the living room, where I imagine he was shaken and recovering from the ordeal.
"Yaejina, even if it costs more money, I think you should find a place that you like," he said to me in Korean, his voice uncharacteristically gentle and giving.
My stomach ached with a feeling I can only describe as tender guilt. I can count the instances that my typically cheap-ass dad suggested using MORE money rather than less on one hand. Make that half a hand. Some kind of a mutilated hand that is mostly stump, and three little stalky growths popping out from a single knuckle. I said "okay" softly and hung up as the stomachache grew.
I don't want to feel like I'm abandoning my dad like a "bad daughter." I also don't think that leaving home at age 23, when I am gainfully employed, should count as "abandonment" -- though I can plainly see that my dad considers my moving out as such. I guess that the distance that has slowly grown between us over the past decade and a half could feel like an abandonment, with both of us being left feeling like the abandoner as well as the abandonee. But I want him to know that I would never leave him at the bottom of a black hole, alone, so that I could yukk it up with some friends -- despite my inexplicable actions in this weird dream I had last night -- and that I would dive straight into the murky black quicksand myself, tear the door off with my bare hands to free him, take his hand, and search for the surface with him again, without ever looking back.
I've been wondering why my legs are so sore lately... I just realized today that it's probably because from Monday through Wednesday, I was mostly bed-ridden in the hospital, and Wednesday through Sunday, I've been pretty much on self-prescribed house arrest (not so much out of fear but out of laziness and comfort I guess). After so much disuse, I think my muscles atrophied a little, and I'm not used to so much movement! ("So much movement" = "walking from the kitchen to the can.")
My ass injury surprisingly still doesn't really hurt so much, except when I'm sitting in one position for an extended period of time, or if I'm getting up out of a chair. Getting out of chairs really is a killer. I feel something in my coccyx (hehe, coccyx) pop, then I feel the laceration pop open, and then for the next 20 minutes I get to enjoy the soothing feeling of fluids leaking out of the puncture wound in my ass, slicking up my butt crack and soaking a nice crusty line all up in my undies... cool. If you were eating as you read that last sentence -- you're welcome.
I've come up with a few creative ways to get out of chairs besides the typical "normal" way to do it, which is to plan your feet on the ground and hoist your body up with your legs, optionally using your arms to push up. The leg plant/hoist is really what makes it feel like Wolverine is about to slash his way out of my ass crack, so it's upper body all the way...
1. Slowly cross one leg over the other, and start spinning 180 degrees, and plant my face into the back of the chair, holding my body up with my arms. Bite my lip to make the pulsating pain less distracting. Plant feet on ground, push my body up with my arms, remove face from back of chair.
2. Slowly slouch lower and lower in my seat. Once the small of my back is reaching the end of the seat, bend my knees as much possible, and gradually sink to my knees, with my arms holding me up. Gradually crawl to the nearest bed or soft spot on the floor. Take a nap.
1. Get a job at a small law firm or similar place of employment likely to have decorative coffee tables.
2. Engage in conversation with boss in his office while perching self on edge of low glass coffee table. Make this a habit.
3. Build up false sense of security while doing so.
4. On the day you'd like to Bust Your Ass (TM), wear some kind of long flowy dress that is likely to catch debris in its folds. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! Men, make do with loose linen pants.
5. During a lull in the conversation with boss while perched on edge of low glass coffee table, relax and lean back, making sure to place all of your body weight onto your ass.
6. When the glass shatters and your ass crashes through, act surprised: wide eyes, O-shaped mouth, hands flapping like doves.
7. This will make your boss leap up and go into Former Boy Scout Mode (TM) that he has not employed in 40 years. He will pull you out of the rubble by the elbows.
8. Upon setting back on your feet, take note of your surroundings. Your ass has crashed through a glass coffee table, at work, causing a bit of a ruckus. When co-workers start lumbering over, act calm despite your utter embarrassment.
9. Notice the drops of blood on the floor. Shit, is that YOUR blood? And why does it feel like you have a killer wedgie from outer space? Damn!
10. Upon reaching back to pick the Wedgie From Outer Space (TM) (R), notice that it is not your underwear (luckily, you somehow had the foresight to wear red underwear on this bloody day) that is caught up in between your butt cheeks, but rather, it's a 6 INCH SHARD OF GLASS THAT HAS BURIED ITSELF INTO YOUR FLESH.
11. Stay calm.
12. Just kidding, FREAK THE FUCK OUT (on the inside)!
13. Pull it out gently. Notice how it feels like you're slicing into a Christmas Ham -- funny, there's no pain!
14. Cram paper towels into your ass to ebb the sudden gushes of warm blood, and wait for the ambulance to come. Wonder if your paramedic ex-boyfriend will come. Feel very conflicted about it and enjoy the momentarily distracting thought.
15. Twenty minutes later, wonder where the paramedics are, and why your legs are trembling, and if you'll cry. You won't. Okay, a little, but your co-workers will politely look away.
16. When the medics come, realize with dread that you MAY have to leave your office building on a chest-high stretcher, on your stomach, with your Ass In the Air, like Forrest Gump.
17. When the paramedics ask you, "How bad is the pain on a scale of 0-10," feel happy that you can answer, "Guys, I've had worse after Mexican food. 2." Feel pleased with self -- no, really, go on! It's okay.
18. In the emergency room, be prepared to have several doctors form a semi-circle around your bed and ask you while barely stifling their laughter (which is inevitable with any kind of Traumatic Ass Injury), "What happened?" Tell them the ridiculous story and share a few laughs.
19. As more doctors come in behind your curtain, welcome them to "The Butt Party." One of them may "raise the roof" while saying, "HAYYY."
20. Be prepared to have several doctors look for internal bleeding by sticking their finger up your ass. Three times. Then enjoy the feeling of having a Q-tip stuck all the way into your wound, to see how far it goes. TWO INCHES! Note that the bloody Q-tip will be left on a plastic chair near your bedside for the rest of your stay in the ER. It's like a little friend -- talk to it if you'd like.
21. When they do find blood in your rectum, bite down on that leather strap and get ready for a load of fun! And by "Load of Fun (TM)" I mean getting a 6 inch metal tube shoved up your ass while you struggle to find your "Special Happy Place." They will also use a small rubber pump to blast air into your ass. Try not to fart in the doctor's face -- they are trying to help you (and amuse themselves slightly).
22. When they roll over a giant IV bag full of clear fluid, note that this is not for intravenous administration. This is to spray up your ass. The nurse will pump this into your ass and you have to tell her when it feels like you're going to spew shitty water all over. Then you'll have to get up and spray shitty water out of your ass in the shared public restroom. At this point, you should wonder if you should be writing this for your internet audience -- Answer: Yes, you should.
23. Entertain your lovely visitors -- they care about you! Show them your ass, if you'd like. They don't mind.
24. CAT scan time! Wheeeeee!
25. CAT scan result: "You have a lot of air in your pelvis." Translation: "You have a wicked case of the farts." Blush.
26. Stay calm while the trauma surgery doctor comes over and explains that they're going to sedate you in order to stick a camera up your ass. "No biggie," you might think. But then the whammy -- the doc will say, "If we find a hole in your rectum, we're going to have to knock you out completely and operate. We might do this through your butthole, but if we have to go through your abdomen, you'll need a... you know, one of those..." (He'll motion to the side of his stomach now) "Colostomy bags?" you'll say. "Yes. For 2-3 months."
27. Try not to freak out at the idea of having a bag attached to the outside of your body, into which you'll have to poo. Take a deep breath and return to your "Special Happy Place" in your mind.
28. "Okay, cool man," you'll say. "Let's do it."
29. Upon receiving sedation, as you're fading in and out of consciousness, spurt out the last words: "God, you doctors here are all so YOUNG and HOT!" Ignore the doctor that says, "Quick -- put her under!"
30. Despite the anesthesiologist claiming that you won't feel or remember anything, you may remember the odd feeling of huge instruments going into your ass. Smile.
31. Wake up to someone shaking your shoulder. "We didn't find anything, you did great," translates to "YEAH! NO SHITTING INTO A BAG!"
32. Silently cry tears of joy in the recovery room. Call everyone you know and shout, "I DON'T HAVE TO SHIT INTO A BAG," and quickly hang up. It's best to leave them guessing.
33. Get wheeled up to your hospital room, where you'll have to stay for another two days. Two relaxing days of watching Law & Order and the Tyra Banks show all damn day.
34. Oh yeah, and you can only eat/drink clear liquids. This means for the next 48 hours or so, you can only eat Jell-O and chicken broth. Try not to seem too excited at the idea of losing a few pounds.
35. Wait and see if you get sick -- if you get a fever and start barfing, it means that you're Really Fucked Now. This would mean that the hole in your rectum is leaking poo into your body, which will form little pockets of rotting poo that will travel around your body. Hope that it doesn't happen. Watch another episode of Matlock.
Blah, blah, blah, okay okay, I'm getting lost on a tangent as usual, and my fucking ass is freaking killing me, so I'll end my How To Bust Your Ass tutorial here for now. I consider myself incredibly lucky that: (1) my boss pulled me out of the glass shards, because otherwise, if I'd struggled, that piece of glass would have gone right through my body and probably would have killed me, (2) everyone at the hospital was incredible, (3) I, for some reason, have people that care about me, and (4) I do not have rotting pockets of poo floating around my body, plotting my demise.
Anyway, if there's anything that you can take away from the stupid nonsense that I write, it's please, guys, never, ever sit on glass tables. No, really, that's it. It's easy, right? Just don't do it. I know all the cool kids are doing it these days, but don't. Unless you want to end up shitting out of a hole in the small of your back.
(Heh heh!)
So I'm at home looking for donut cushions for my ass on eBay now, and preparing to be the "butt" of a few jokes... so fire away.
I finally grew a pair, bit the bullet, and started looking for apartments in earnest.
So far, well, things are not going entirely well. The unsurprising problem seems to be that there are a lot of sketchy, awful characters on Craigslist.
"What? Crazy people on Craigslist? What are you on, woman?" you might ask, shaking your head in disbelief, thumb and forefinger massaging your eyeballs to relieve the tension headache I've just given you. But yes. It is true.
Seriously, everytime I've looked for a place to live through Craigslist, I've ended up meeting up with crooks, (male) drama queens, and people trying to induct women into doing amateur porn. Luckily, this round hasn't produced anyone too offensive -- just incredibly annoying.
Case in point: Donald.
Donald was one of the people whose apartments I was supposed to check out today. When I called the number in the ad and he answered, I immediately got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. If I were a guy, I'm sure my nuts would have drawn up into my lower abdomen with anxiety. Donald immediately sounded older (like a crotchety old man, really, but with a Latino sass about him), and had this thick accent with a raspy voice. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, and trying not to be rude and asking directly how old he was, I asked, “What do you and your roommate do?”
Then, as they say, the shit hit the fan.
He was like, “Oh, I can tell you’re a girl in your early 20s, axin’ people what they doo. You can’t go ‘round axin’ people what they doo just like that. You gotta come to my apartment, I gotta see what kind of person you are, then you axe me your questions.” I laughed it off, thinking he was just being some eccentric old kook.
Later on, I was talking to a co-worker about how I felt uncomfortable checking this place out. He suggested that I cancelled, so I called Donald back. I stumbled over my words a little, and I could tell he knew that I was bullshitting when I said that I wouldn’t be able to come, and could we schedule for later in the week? It was just as well, though, since I have no intention of going at all. He said, “Sure, that’s fine. So where you livin’ now?” And I automatically responded, “New Jersey.”
“Oh, okay. Where do you work?”
“Uh… 44th Street.”
“And what avenue?”
“Um, I don’t think I should tell you.”
“And why the hell not?”
This was irritating, so I said, “What? You won’t even tell me what you and your roommate do, and you expect me to tell you where I work?”
This set him off again, and he went off with, “You think I’m givin’ my apartment to any old person off the street? I gotta know what kind of person you are before I make a decision. Maybe you’ve seen my listing online before – that’s because I’m careful with who I want to give the room to, okay? Maybe once you come see the apartment, you come in, meet me, you meet my roomma—I show you a picture of my roommate—, you see my antiques, then you think to yourself, ‘Wow, okay, this is an okay guy, I could definitely live here.’ Now, where do you work?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to tell you.”
“Oh, I see, this is one big game to you, isn’t it? What, you need a little spanking, then? Why you people always want to be playin’ your games?”
I just sat there with the phone in my hand and my mouth open in shock -- not necessarily because of what he said really, but that yet again, another Craigslist-induced conversation inevitably turned to "spanking" (and you old-school readers will know what I am talking about... I am too embarassed to link to it) -- and he went on and on, describing how he cleaned up the area “all by myself in 1983 – before you were around” (how did he know that, I wondered), and how nobody had shot him in the face yet -- “and thank God for that” – then inexplicably said, “But time heals all wounds, you know?
“I would be willing to give you my room,” he concluded with grandeur, pretty much out of nowhere.
“Sorry, I don’t think so,” I said, wearied by the utter hopelessness of the conversation.
"Okay, I’m out!” he said, and I'm pretty certain we hung up in unison, with equal aplomb.
head hurt today. me feel like me am dying. brain no work right now. me feel sick.
me know me no write no more. (me think last sentence fun to say.) me sorry. me graduate from school, move home to parents. kill me spirit. me love them and bro but need move out. me need shitty apartment in city for live. me no happy. me sad. me no can write since last spring because me so sad. me sad sack of beans.
me miss friends. me miss freedom. me miss me life.
me no have car at home. me have to ride bus to port authority to work in morning everyday. me have to get picked up from bus at night. me feel bad for bro who pick up me dopey ass at all hours of night.
me drink too much last night. me fall down a lot and break bottle by accident. then me got the farts. big ones. me feel sick today. sick in stomach, brain, and insides. me fall down stairs today. me feel silly. me no like drink so much no more. me move on to hard drugs instead (me kidding! me just kidding.).
me work like crazy now. me like job. but me miss creative job. me making the chedda but miss fun writing job. me feel like failure sometimes. me want to be happy.
It's been a while. I'm here. I'd like to tell you some things.
My mother is 54 years old and every night, she slips on her white imitation Crocs and pressed white slacks to go work the night shift in the ventilator unit of a hospital -- she's been working there for about 12 years now, I think. That's where patients (typically nursing home residents clinging to the fringes of death) stay for extended periods of time hooked up to a breathing machine, which provides air through a hole pierced through their necks.
The vast majority of the patients, from what I understand, are elderly and about to die, or are of varying ages but have suffered some kind of injury or disorder that has caused them to lose the ability to breathe on their own. There is little to no chance of these patients ever regaining their old life back, from what I've heard -- only a few of them recover from injury and can breathe and live on their own again. For the most part, between the steady blip-blip-blips of the monitoring devices, a plunger in a plastic vessel pumps air in and out of these bodies, these pods, to get the oxygen going, to keep the blood pumping, to keep them alive until the inevitable.
I never really thought of how morbid this environment is, and how depressing it must be to be surrounded daily by DEATH!DEATH!DEATH! until just recently. My mom never really told me stories about her experiences at work until the past few years, usually on our weekend drives up to CostCo to buy super-sized food items in bulk, wheeling around a gigantic cart through what is essentially a refrigerated warehouse/nuclear bunker.
I'll usually gently doze off in the passenger seat early on a Saturday morning as she dives into a story, her eyes ablaze, her hands waving wildly, her teeth bared. Unlike me -- who starts a story off on a bumpy road, getting caught up in explaining unnecessary details, veering off on tangents, and then hastily swerves back to the main point (identical to my dad's driving habits, incidentally) -- my mother is an expert story teller with an extensive array of gestures, sound effects, and facial expressions.
Her latest story was of saving an elderly woman from suffocating on a giant, gleaming, pit of dried mucus (which she described to me in grotesque intimate detail) stuck in her breathing tube. Despite confounding factors such as the fact that the last shift had misplaced the equipment my mom needed to help her (they left it on the back of her wheelchair), the clamp she finally found was the wrong size (too small), and that the nurse's aide was so groggy from being jarred from her nap that she tore the phone cord out of the wall while trying to call for assistance (and instead of running to the next unit for help, came to my mom almost in tears to tell her that the phone wasn't working), she was able to pull her from the grip of death.
"When somebody dying from suffocate, their face very much scary," she said, her steely eyes looking off at the road, her small hammy hands clenching the wheel. She then suddenly twisted her face up to demonstrate, her eyes rolling back into her head, her tongue diagonally protruding from her grimacing mouth, her nose crunched up. "Face turn gray, so scary," she continued in a hushed voice.
I don't know how she does it, really -- when I think about how I'd like to dedicate my life, working through the night with a ragtag gang of apparently incompetent, obese and hirsuite co-workers, struggling to keep alive a dozen nearly dead bodies does not rank high up on my list.
The last thing I want to do with my life is to spend most of my time struggling to keep a dying thing alive.
And yet, here I am.
Last Friday, I took a flight to Florida, and on the descent right before landing, my left ear went deaf, my head felt like it was going to explode from the pressure, and a piercing pain refused to stop stabbing me behind the eyes and nose. I cried all the way to the hotel, despite the pleas for me to stop or they were going to have to drive to the emergency room. And right as I curled up in bed in hopes that the pain could be slept off, my nose began to start pumping out blood, thick and red, and did not stop for two hours.
Up until last night, whenever I brushed my teeth and swished water in my mouth and gargled, a ribbon of fresh red blood would come out with the toothpaste foam. It wasn't from inside of my mouth, it was coming from somewhere in my head. It happened for a week, and as of this morning, it stopped, and there was no more blood. Until that happened, I wondered if the blood meant that something inside of me was torn and healing, or if some part of me inside of me had died.
I'm still not sure.
My mom is right, the look of death from suffocation is a scary one. I guess I haven't seen a person die from it, but I've seen plenty of other things come and go, shrivel up and die, and it is true, it does indeed have a gray and horrific face...
* * * * *
I guess since you and I have agreed to not speak to each other "for a while," we probably won't speak to each other on Christmas. So I figure it'd be okay to tell you about one of the things I got for you, since it just seems so fucking perfect now, given the circumstances...
It's certainly not a big present, but I got a glass teapot and a special kind of tea that I had never seen before. It's pretty much a bud-shaped bunch of tea leaves, sewn together that, when you put it in hot water, blossoms into a flower.
I guess one of the things I'm hoping for us to get out of all of this is sort of similar, in a way -- maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but try to bear with me... I feel like we were kind of like a beautiful flower that was plucked and eventually dried out and died, but, with some time and care, we'll be rejoined later on, stitched together piece by piece, and we'll spring back to life and bloom again. We'll be different then from our original form, yes, but I think it might still be beautiful, somehow.
Hi. You're funny, you know that? I asked you to please not cut my hair too short, to make the ends blunt and thick, and only a few layers.
Instead, you've given me some kind of flat, thin, very sad Asian mullet. Business in the front, party in the back. But not any kind of party I'd like to be invited to. An awkward party. I imagine that at this awkward party, there would be a group of fat people playing naked Twister in someone's smelly basement, and suddenly, a poo magically appears on one of the red dots on the Twister mat. A very quiet, unassuming poo. Then everyone silently de-contorts their limbs, steps away, scratching their heads, and mumbles unclear excuses to leave like, "I forgot, I just remembered I was going to get a haircut today..."
That brings me back to my original topic. This terrible haircut you gave me. Why? I pointed out a few photographs in the outdated and greasy Vogue issue you had on the table. Maybe you thought that by me pointing at the photographs and asking you to give me that hairstyle, I actually meant, "Hey, can you make me look nothing at all like the women in these photos? Oh, how about a mullet? Now that would be delightful! Perhaps you can fashion me a fancy merkin from the hair sweepings on the floor, using my tears as glue. How splendid."
Not that I cried. I wouldn't give you that satisfaction. The last time I cried after a haircut, I was... Well, fine, I was 20 years old. I was weaker then.
I also don't know why you assumed that I can't understand Korean -- either that, or you think I'm deaf or retarded. You asked me in Korean if I'd like my ends to be straight or flipped a little, and when I responded with a thoughtful, "Umm," you asked me the same question in Korean again, except more loudly and much more slowly, using very intricate hand motions.
Perhaps you can make those hand motions into a career, as a professional shadow puppeteer, a sign language-er, or as a manual fluffer (though I hear fluffers are a myth, sorry). But please, do not pick up a pair of scissors around me, ever again, please. I mean, "prease."
[Peek-a-Foo]
