the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
7.15.2008
Sanguine Sandwiches and Summer Doldroms.
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."
One of my most distinctive memories of going to the beach on the Jersey shore is floating in a giant black inner tube. I have never been a strong swimmer, so I always had to rely on a giant inflatable tube to keep me afloat. If I went far out enough, past the breakers, I could just ride easy, with my forehead, nose, shoulder, and upper arms -- everything above the tube -- getting sunburned while my submerged legs remained a pasty ocre hue.
I never particularly cared for going into the water. I couldn't swim, and as an abnormally large child at the time, I looked like a fat idiot floating around getting sunburnt and flailing my limbs while remaining stationary. Jellyfish and squid and fish and pinching crabs were also a constant worry, and even wisps of harmless seaweed would send me into a gasping panic. But I was young, and my family rarely went out on trips to the beach, so the time in between visits to the shore were long enough that I would forget how miserable I'd feel there.
One of the last times I went out in an inner tube was probably when I was 7 or 8 years old. I was very fat and wore an awful diagonally striped neon yellow-and-black swimsuit that had a gaudy bow on the side and a ruffly attached skirt. I trudged out through the unsympathetically cold waves, tube held up around my waist, fat dimpled elbows bent, legs shaking, the cheap polyurethane squeaking with each step. Looking out at the crashing waves, it seemed like everyone else my age (and older and younger, for that matter) was having a great time, laughing, screaming with joy, splashing, swimming. Everyone seemed to have a lithe, buoyant quality that allowed them to slip in and out of the water and through the waves unharmed, something that I just seemed to lack for some reason.
So into the water I went, with the tube pulling me and pushing me with the waves. I put on a brave smile for whoever happened to be watching me, and hopped over several waves, the black donut around my waist serving as some kind of ballerina tutu as I pirouetted in the water.
Then, a girl's voice:
"HERE COMES A BIG ONE!"
Other kids squealed with anticipation, but my stomach filled with dread. I looked up at the wave, and it was as though I was a rat cowering in fear, and the wave was a giant elephant reared up on its hind legs about to smash the daylights out of me. I wished desperately that I could run out of the ocean before the wave crashed, but I knew that running would drive me further in the path of foamy destruction and that the friction of my legs cutting through the water would only let me move in slow-motion.
I gripped the tube with one hand -- the other hand tightly pinching my nose shut -- closed my eyes tightly, tensed my body up, and let the wave crash onto me. I was suddenly in a suffocating wormhole, doing underwater sommersaults, with water trying to force its way up my nose, in my ears, into my eye sockets, down my throat, tearing at my bathing suit, pulling the tube underwater. The waves finally vomited me ashore, as though discarding something very undesirable, onto some sharp rocks and shell shards, with me on my hands and knees, sputtering and coughing, the salty water burning in my nose and throat, my fingers splayed out to hold me up. This was fun?
The years went by, and my confidence as a swimmer didn't increase over time as much as I instead decreased the frequency of trips to the beach. I ditched the tube long ago, but I never went out far enough so that my feet couldn't touch the bottom. It was a thought so ludicrous to me that it didn't even cross my mind as a possibility or an option that I could take.
During the last five days, I was down at a beach house and played it safe for the most part by swimming close to the shore. The water was pretty cold, and it sometimes felt like torture taking baby-steps into the freezing water, even though several people said, "If you just jump in, it's a lot easier." I didn't listen and prolonged my suffering by inching my way in. In the shallower waters, the rocks scraped my knees, and as usual I winced when seaweed felt like jellyfish legs wrapping around my legs. I never considered going out very far into the ocean.
At someone's gentle encouragement, I swam out way past the breakers, beyond where I could touch the sandy bottom under the sea, way out to the point that the waves were breaking again. I had never ventured out that far so I couldn't even tell you how far out it was. But it was certainly the farthest out I have ever gone. There was a sand bar out there that I could feel with the very tip of my toe -- a place to stand. And I was scared, and coming back to the shore, it felt like I was kicking an awful lot without seeing any progress really. I felt some panic grip me in the process, but eventually the ocean spit me out again all the same. And I wasn't so afraid after that.
After that, on the fifth day, my last day at the beach, I decided to swim out to where I couldn't feel the bottom again. For the most part of the first four days of my trip to the beach, I barely exerted myself. I spent a lot of time catching up on reading outdated magazines while reclining on the sand. My muscles didn't feel sore at all, because I was basically just doggypaddling in place, floating, looking around at everyone else jumping through waves having a great time, as I worried about whether my eyeliner was running.
On that final day, I realized that if I never forced myself to go out where things were uncertain, to a place where I wasn't 100% safe and comfortable, that I would never realize how much I can actually do on my own. I would never build my muscles, I would never exert myself, that I would never feel the exhilaration of completing something just to know that I can do it.
The reason why I was miserable when I was little and had to use the tube was because I just didn't realize that I could go it alone, without the floatation device. Though it did keep me above the surface most of the time, it let me become lazy and I just didn't enjoy myself. And when a big wave came up, the tube actually weighed me down and dragged me under. I realize now that I need to set the tube aside, shed my fears, face the uncertainties, kick out beyond the breakers, and teach myself how to move, swim, live, and breathe all over again.
I understand how you feel, horrified gopher/beaver. I understand.
Living at home again after college is certainly an overwhelming experience. There is much more to adjust to than I thought.
The main point of conflict with which my parents and I have been struggling is the fact that I really don't have a focused, intense goal in life at the moment.
In high school and during my freshman year of college, I really, truly wanted to go into the field of psychology or maybe sociology. I took several courses in high school, including all of that honors and AP bullshit, and did well. I enjoyed it. And I wanted to help people as a counselor of some kind, a psychotherapist I guess.
But my parents immediately quashed the idea. My mom has been a nurse for over 15 years, I believe, and according to her vast experience in the psychological world, I would basically be a social worker (not to knock social workers at all) and would be making next to no money.
I struggled with this for a long time. I thought that I had found my one interest that would be lifelong, something that I wanted to turn into a career, and my parents stood heavily in the doorway of opportunity with giant red "STOP" signs. I found myself very confused -- was psychology really not a worthwhile occupation? Was I not qualified enough to be a successful psychologist/psychiatrist/psychotherapist (I hadn't even gotten to the point where I had researched the difference between those)? Would I truly be poor and overworked and miserable?
My interest in psychology grew dark, withered, and dropped away. My grades in my psych classes wavered, as I dismissed the courses I was in as just dead weight to my future. I lost my passion in it.
Instead, I took up journalism as my secondary major and my new main interest. I like writing, yes, and I like talking to people. Seemed like a good thing to go into, considering my interests. Yet, again, my parents just weren't happy with it. They asked me patronizingly if I would get a small column in a local newspaper, and if I really thought I would make enough money doing it to support myself. The problem was, I didn't have the confidence nor the experience to say "yes." At this point, I was wondering what the fuck I was going to do with my life. Psychology was out. Journalism was also being presented as a dead end.
My parents have pretty much been like those people who stand in airport runways with protective earmuffs with those orange lights. But instead of guiding airplanes into their respective terminals, they have constantly been shepherding me and to some extent my brother into being something like a doctor or a lawyer all our lives. Out of resentment or out of hope for something different, I decided that I wanted nothing to do with either of those. Or maybe the constant scolding really hit my confidence in general -- if I wasn't good enough to make it as a journalist or a psychotherapist, what makes me think that I'd be a good doctor or a lawyer?
I've been talking to them lately to try to get them to understand that constant negativity really just makes me want to do nothing but curl up into a ball and die. Either that, or sleep all day -- which is what I've pretty much been doing since I've come home. My hand has been slapped away from the cookie jar of things that I've actually wanted to pursue, and my nose has been pushed into a giant bowl of V8 -- nutritious and rewarding, yes, but something I just do. not. want.
I know that they ultimately have my best interests in mind. My mom constantly tells me that if I had started pre-med classes during my undergraduate education, I'd be well on my way to medical school right now. And if I had taken my LSATs early, I could be in law school right now.
This is all well and good, but if I don't have that itch inside that makes me WANT to be at those places, what would convince the admissions officers at competitive schools that they'd want to pick me over the thousands of people all over the country that are dying to get in? Why would they pick an apathetic, clearly parentally driven individual over those that truly have the desire to dedicate the rest of their lives to a specific career?
My mom says she's most afraid that I'll turn around and regret all the time that I have "wasted" until I finally decide that I want to become a doctor or a lawyer. What I think she fails to understand -- which frustrates me a whole lot -- is that if I do something passionately that I actually enjoy and love and want to do for 10 years, even if I do not make a ton of money, I would find that rewarding in itself. I would never regret years of dedicating my life to something that I truly want to do and love. If, at that point, I decide, "Fuck, I'd really like to be a lawyer/doctor/whatever," then I would put my whole heart into that.
But this constant attitude of "don't even think about starting a career in ____ because you won't make enough money/you won't be good enough/you can't do it/I don't want you to do it" makes me not want to do jack shit besides sit around and feel sorry for myself. It doesn't inspire me to try harder. It doesn't encourage me to be a doctor. It convinces me that I am an incapable fool. And if I spend decades, years, months, weeks, or even a day beliving that I am an idiot that can't make a living -- then THAT is what I would truly, truly regret and wish to take back.
I've spent the last 10 days or so cleaning out my horrendous mess of a room. It's not really a bedroom, come to think of it, as much as it's kind of an archive of my entire childhood. I have things that I've drawn/written/made when I was 7 years old. I have stuffed animals strewn about that I have not really given a shit about since I was 10 (okay, maybe actually 13). I have, as I have mentioned before, an archive of every single note I has ever been passed to me since I was in 4th grade, filed in chronological order. It must be some kind of sickness. Now that I think of it, my dad is almost the same way, except his habits include saving up thousands of newspaper clippings which are now yellowed and decaying, illegible.
Combine the fact that I am a huge packrat and am incapable of throwing things away with about 10 years of compulsive flea market and thrift store shopping. I have over 80 pairs of pants that I am looking at right now. I have a box of 23 pants that I am donating/giving away. Many of them I have worn no more than three times, some, I have not even worn at all. This is not to mention the horrible shirts and sweaters that I've also packed away, too -- the ones that didn't even fit me, the ones that I wanted to tailor to fit but never did, the ones that I brought home and wondered what exactly I was thinking in the first place. All of this had been growing and growing in my closets like some kind of terrible tumor -- it even spread from my closet to my mom's closet to my dad's closet to the two coat closets downstairs and into the garage. I have way, way, way too much shit. And I'm not proud of it.
Going through all of my shit, and picking out all of the things that I will never wear -- there is just so much, so many pairs of pants, so many ill-fitting tank tops, so much fucking shit that at first, it seemed like an awful waste. Sure, I paid no more than $1.00 a piece (my mom and I are seasoned pennypinchers and skilled hagglers), but it still felt like a big waste.
My dad is strictly anti-flea-market. He is of the opinion that I should only buy one very high quality item now and then, and not waste the time and the money spent on digging through tons of shit to find things that I may or may not even use or wear. When I was in the 7th grade, he absolutely forbade me to buy a certain kind of silly cheap perfume that I wanted (it smelled like cotton candy), because it was too cheap and tacky and said that he would buy me expensive perfume instead. Honestly, yes, it was an incredibly cheap and tacky thing to want, but for gods sake, I was like 12 or 13 years old and wanted a cheap spray that would make me smell like cotton candy. I didn't want Chanel No. 5. Plus, he didn't even fulfill his offer, so I bought it on my own anyway, but was so wracked with guilt and the fear of getting "caught" wearing it, that I never even used it anyway. If I hadn't been made to feel so terrible about having a silly fun thing, I could have used that for a few months, gotten sick of it on my own, and thrown it away after enjoying it temporarily.
So I think I have to tie this all together. I think if, in high school, I had taken my dad's advice and spent $100 on a pair of expensive designer jeans... Let's step back and consider the fashion trend of 4-5 years ago. I would be stuck with a $100 pair of shitty jeans with weird bleach washes on the ass and no back pockets, that I would totally be embarrassed to own, let alone wear out in public. Instead, I spent $10 on ten pairs of thrift store jeans -- sure, maybe two out of the ten, I never wore, and 6 others I wore only a few times, but the other two out of the ten, I wore every single day, loved, and wore to pieces.
I don't want to be stuck with a handful of expensive clothes that I would be sick of wearing after a while, but would feel obligated to, since I had spent so much money on them (and probably had no money left over to buy anything else). If I really wanted to smell like Chanel No. 5 since I was 13, and wear it for the rest of my life -- sure, it's possible that I could be happy like that, but I'd likely be boring as a turd drying on the sidewalk. If I want to smell like cheapass cotton candy, goddamn it, I will smell like it and I no longer want to be made to feel like some kind of cheap worthless bum for doing so.
Even if I have to bust my ass and make next to nothing in doing whatever it is I do in life, I think if I am not getting tons of negative energy from my parents that make me feel incapable and worthless, I will enjoy it regardless, and those experiences will shape whatever I pursue in the future. Did I have a shitload of clothes to give away after 10 years of hoarding them? Yes, I really, really did. Do I regret finding a bunch of clothes that were different and special to me, that I really loved? No. Come to think of it, the only instances that I can recall where I really hated shopping was when my overworked mom would take me to the mall (the bane of my existence) when I was a teenager, complain that she was really tired and for me to hurry up and just buy something, anything to justify the trip out... and I'd end up getting wheedled into buying something overpriced that I didn't really like, and feeling huge amounts of guilt for never wearing it afterwards. Do I regret spending hot summer weekends at flea markets with my mom, laughing and gossiping, and digging through piles of clothes? Not even for a second.
Does this make sense to anyone else out there? Am I really the crazy one? I just want to live a life where I have the opportunity to try new things, to figure out what I'd like to do on my own. My mom told me when I was small that the reason why she wanted our family to grow up in America is for opportunities and individuality which would not be available in Korea. So it's hard for me to stomach the idea that we're here in America, and tons of opportunities are just blasting by, and I'm left feeling like an inert turd, wasting my abilities because I'm getting bullied into being a doctor or a lawyer, the same goal that millions of other Koreans across the sea want for their own unhappy kids.
Sigh. If you can't tell, I'm a little frustrated over here... Can a nigga get a hug around here?
When I was a very young child, around 5 years old and in the first grade, my dad owned a small gift store in Newark, New Jersey. He sold things like plastic toy kitchen sets, incense that had names like "Sexual Chocolate," t-shirts with Simpsons characters on the front, gold teeth with money-sign cutouts, and slap bracelets. My brother and I took to carefully opening boxes of toys, playing with them halfheartedly, resealing the boxes, and placing them back on the shelf. We spent much of our time in the back room where there was a dirty bathroom where I once saw my dad crush a rat dead with a wadded up piece of newspaper, much like you would a cockroach or a spider. Whenever I recall that bizarre memory, my dad looks away with a sheepish look that comes with a deep pain beyond the point where grimacing would be appropriate -- and tells me not to bring things like that up. I don't remember whether or not my dad had a gun to protect himself and the store, but I do remember my parents talking about it.
We were often confined to this small room filled with dusty boxes, with a small card table in the middle and two rusty folding chairs for entire days during the summer -- we were not allowed to stay home by ourselves and we could not afford a babysitter.
I never took well to babysitters anyway. Well, we never had the typical teenage white babysitter who chewed gum and wore socks scrunched down and waited for the parents to leave so she could pig out and talk to her boyfriend on the phone. Usually, we got dropped off at a Korean lady's house, someone my parents knew from church, usually someone with kids around our age. I hated it. They were always fake-nice, speaking to me in a patronizing baby-voice when my parents were watching. Fake-nice was never a part of my family, so it was alien to me, unwelcome. I remember crying as my parents were leaving, following them to the door, with my red shoes clutched in my chubby hands in a dramatic display that I was going to put them on my feet and go with them, no matter where it was they were going in the first place. In my mind, I was grown-up enough to travel with them, or not grown-up enough to be left with a strange fake-nice Korean lady who made rice with hard, bitter, black beans -- a noxious combination not fit for human consumption in my opinion at the time.
When I was 5 and my brother was 8, we both were given tape recorders and several blank tapes. He got a Panasonic, I received a Sony. Mine had speakers on the back and had three equalizer settings on the front, but of course, I was still envious of the Panasonic if only for the fact that it wasn't mine. We have dozens of tapes that we recorded with these, including tapes of my mom snoring (she requested this to be taped as she didn't believe that she snored, since she couldn't hear herself snoring while she was asleep); my brother and me pretending to be on a radio show (my shyness prevented me from being more than a small presence) where I called myself "Harbee," a misheard pronunciation of "Harvey," the guy who announced the prizes on Nickelodeon's Double Dare and its successor, Super Sloppy Double Dare; my brother and me reading problems out loud from a TOEFL textbook that my mom played in the car to help her study for her English Language exam (which she failed at least one time before passing and becoming a nurse); and recordings of me, my brother, and my mom talking at night before going to sleep about anything and everything.
I never knew what to say on those tapes. We always used the Panasonic recorder because I never initiated with my Sony. I used mine to make mixtapes, though my musical knowledge was so limited due to my Korean family having little grasp on popular music, that my first mixtape was of television theme songs like "Full House," "Family Matters," "Growing Pains," "Saved by the Bell," and "Perfect Strangers" (my favorite out of all of the theme songs). I remember crying and being locked in the closet in the dark as "punishment" for not participating in radio shows to the capacity my brother, a natural showman, expected me to. I always said very banal things -- uncertain observations, mostly, like "Dad gave our cat away to someone, I'm sad, I think" or "today it was cold."
On the tape that we recorded the night before we left at 5am for a flight to Korea (which would be my first time seeing any of our extended family, as I was born in America -- Jersey City, in fact), I was still shy and unable to say anything too interesting.
"I'm Harbee," I said. "I'm a five-year-old guy."
My ignorance of the masculine gender-connotation of "guy" notwithstanding, I went on tentatively about how we were going to see our relative in Korea. My contact with my extended family (my dad has five sisters and one brother, my mom has two sisters and one brother, and at that point there were three surviving grandparents) were through awkward long-distance phone calls we made only on holidays, several times a year. We had to shout so they could hear. My weak grasp of the Korean language, which barely made an improvement even after 3-4 years of Korean Saturday school, became non-existent due to my nervousness when the beige, plastic phone receiver made its rounds to me. It became so bad during my teenage years that I would pretend to be in the bathroom for about an hour to avoid speaking to them. It was always the same questions and statements -- What grade are you in? What school do you go to? I trust you will do well in school and make your parents happy.
A distant, faceless voice speaking to me in a language I couldn't relate to expressing general good wishes was not a good way for me to establish a bond with my family that lives across the sea. I felt nothing for any of them, really. I felt no connection with them.
"Neh," was always my weak affirmative answer, one of the only safe Korean responses I knew. My palms were always sweaty and my nervous, horrifically grinning parents would stare at me expectantly, huddled around me with their ears bent in to hear what was being said. "What grade am I in?" I would hiss at them each time. "How do I say 'seventh grade' in Korean?" I'd ask, desperate.
Besides these terrifying phone calls, I had had no contact with anyone, and at age 5, I was going to meet them. It was absolutely terrifying.
On one of the first nights in Korea, we stayed at my grandmother's home. I remember my mom was sitting indian-style and had me in her lap, and she was talking to her mother in a strange voice, one that was overly happy or eager or cheerful, strained, telling her about all of the "great accomplishments" that I'd made in kindergarten or whatever grade I was in. I didn't like it. It was uncomfortable. My mom then picked me up, and to my absolute horror, tried to pass me over to my grandmother as though I was a Christmas ham on a platter being passed around the dinnertable, and this woman, whose flesh and blood was approximately 25% of my being, was an absolute stranger to me. I bucked, kicking and screaming and crying, nails scratching, to cling onto my mom's white neck. They laughed, but uneasily. I didn't like being on display. I was never a ham and didn't know how to be.
That night, I slept on a bed next to my mother, I think. Or actually, I think I was alone in a separate room, maybe it was my mom's sister's room once, and the pillow was a cylindrical woven thing made of straw, and my neck hurt. The air was dry. And I had a nightmare.
In this nightmare, my mom and I were in some kind of wagon, being pulled by a horse. It was like a wagon in the Old West, maybe, but it was filled with people with dirty faces, like Holocaust victims being shipped off to somewhere terrible. We were going to be slaves, or were going to be killed. And in my nightmare, my mom looked at me tearfully, and asked me in Korean, "Nehga uhnjeh nuhrul ddoh ubbuh jool-soo essulka?" or, "When will I ever be able to carry you my back again?"
Putting my arms around her neck and slowly rocking me back and forth while softly saying a rhyme was something my mom would do only when I was deeply upset about something, and it would always put me to sleep. I used to have a temper that would make my face feel red hot, and my legs would shake, and my voice would crack when I'd try to speak. Something about the idea that someday, my mom would not be able to give me a piggyback ride, rang through my subconscious dream state like an ear-shattering alarm and broke into my conscious state. There was some understanding in this nightmare that I was going to be separated from my mother once we got off this wagon, and I would see her only when I was too grown for her to carry me on her back and rock me to sleep. I woke up crying, a desperate emptiness in my heart, a pain of a black hole tearing through my chest, so pressurized that it was turning things inside-out. My mom came in and slept next to me, snoring. I laid awake for a little while before falling asleep with the heavy presence of her arm under my neck and tears moist on my face and on the straw cylindrical thing that was my pillow.
My dad told me a few years ago that he was sent off to some kind of boarding school when he was very young. I imagine he was probably 10 years old, maybe younger, and he said he wasn't able to see his parents for long stretches of time. And that on certain nights, when the moon was just coming out, when it was just becoming dusk, he would feel a loneliness, a kind of cry inside, a longing for his parents. I was really struck by this when he told me about it. My dad and I rarely talk about these things.
When I was in high school or maybe during my first two years of college, my mom's mother passed away, and then shortly after, my dad's mother passed away. My dad's father is the only surviving grandparent, 80-something years old, gaunt and proud. Both my mother and father took separate trips to Korea to see their parents on their deathbeds, only to have them die right before they arrived on Korean ground. Both of them missed their chance to see them and say goodbye, to pay their respects. There are photographs of my dad and his many siblings and his father on a mountain in Korea where they all have a hand pressed against a giant mound of dirt covered in a tarp. I guess this was some kind of burial shroud. I think my dad's family owns the mountain, and that is where our ancestors are all buried, together. There was no headstone as far as I could see, just a hill of dirt about 7 feet tall, maybe, and a dozen Korean people whose faces I couldn't recognize with one hand each pressed upon it. My grandmother was inside or under this mound with a tarp covering it, and soon, the hill would wear down, erode to become flat.
My mother, upon seeing this photo of the mound of dirt when my dad returned, told me in private, "You know, I heard that your dad's father was on that mountain next to the burial, and he looked around and said, 'I'm actually not sure if this is the right mountain.'" We both found this absurdly funny, and though perhaps tasteless, we laughed until we were out of breath and my stomach and face began hurting. But this photo had captured my dad with red eyes, face swollen, wearing a black shortsleeved polo t-shirt, hair carefully parted to the side. He was crying. And it made me so uncomfortable to see it that laughing was a relief, was a distraction from the sadness.
By the time I was grade-school aged, I joined my brother at a private Catholic school, where I wore a gray plaid jumper with a white blouse underneath, blue kneesocks and shiny black patent leather shoes that smelled terrible. I had deemed myself too fat to wear shorts in gym class, so during the hot summer months, I was the fattest, tallest, and sweatiest red-faced girl in the class. My legs were always boiling, and I imagined steam coming off of them when I changed back into my jumper. I remember graduating from the first grade and saying out loud, "That went by so fast!" and embracing the summer months that were to come.
During the summers, our school put on a county carnival. It was huge -- with a ferris wheel, that arctic ride that always seems to be blasting rap music (there is one at Coney Island, I've noticed), rides upon rides upon rides. And parents of students were required to either work the stands of the carnival or pay a hefty fee to be exempt -- the school ran an annual scam as far as I was concerned, with parents working all night, every night for at least a week or two -- basically for free. One year, my parents worked shucking clams. My brother and I ate our fill -- 5 clams to a plate, with a segment of lemon and a splash of Tabasco sauce. I ate so much that by the end of that summer, on my fourth clam, I was sick behind a tent. Since my parents had to work and I had no one to take me home, the puke had to be rubbed out with wet towels, and I had to display my shameful stained shirt. I think I hid somewhere the rest of the night, trying hard to stop crying, watching the lights of the rides blink and flash and whirl. I wanted to go home.
Some nights my brother and I did stay home. I had no choice, I had come down with the chicken pox, and my brother was forced to stay home to watch me. It was even worse than being at the carnival all night. We weren't used to being left alone until very late at night (which when you are very young, is about 9 or 10 at night, I suppose). My parents were unable to use a phone because of being forced to work so much, and my brother and I became very frightened. The possibility that something had happened and they were never coming back was a fear that felt like a knife stabbing me again and again. My brother, the brave one, tried to distract me by playing games with me. "Bubblegum, bubblegum, in-a-dish. How-many-pieces do-you-wish?" was a good one. We then tried playing 7-Up, but since we were the only two playing, it was maddeningly easily to figure out who had pushed the other's thumb down, even with our eyes closed. We decided to carefully go downstairs, ring our downstairs neighbor's apartment door, and ask if they would let us in. No one answered. We ran across to our neighbor's house and knocked as loudly as possible and called to him. Nothing. We ran back, holding hands tightly, in the dead of night, with bugs chirping deafeningly in our ears, and we went back home to the empty apartment. Soon after, we heard the lock rustle, and they were home, weary, apologetic, saddened by seeing our swollen faces and our pajamas with tear-soaked necklines.
A year or two later, my dad was transferred to making french fries (he had to wear a paper hat, which he was embarrassed about), and my mom scooped Italian Ices. She told my friends that if they brought their own cups, she would give them free scoops, since the remaining number of cups were how they calculated how much Ices had been sold. I liked the combination of chocolate and blue. My parents joked that they had been transferred since we had eaten too many free clams. Eventually, my brother and I transferred to the local public school, where the work was much easier and uniforms and parental carnival labor were no longer required. My mom would still take us in the summer, though. By this time, I was in the third grade or so, and I remember struggling tooth and nail to let my parents allow me to go off with my friends to go on rides. One night, I think I had gotten into a big argument and I was really upset. It was maybe the last year we were able to go to the carnival before we were moving to a different town, maybe even the last night of the fair. We still had a fistful of tickets left for rides. The place was closing down, but the swings were still open.
I felt embarrassed, ashamed even, of going on the swings. I was too old, I thought, to go on a ride where I'd have to sit in a red plastic chair with a bar that would come down over my lap, and I'd be whirled around in a circle. My brother and my mom were too big to go on, but I squeezed my overweight ass into the thick plastic seat and pulled the bar down. It was night. It was dark. There were a few little kids around me, and I felt huge compared to them, like a monstrously big baby. I would not have fun, I decided. I was going to be as serious as possible to show everyone that I was too mature to be having a good time on the swings.
I was 8 or 9, and I was flying through the air. My hair was flying back, my feet felt funny when I extended my knees straight out in front of me, and my cheeks felt uncontrollably tight -- I was grinning. Not the horrific grin that my parents would make at me when we spoke to our relatives in Korea, not that horrific expectant grin. It was a smile that I couldn't hold in, even though I was trying so hard to make sure everyone knew that I was too grown-up to smile on the swings. I couldn't control my happiness at being flung through the air, around and around in a circle, going everywhere but nowhere at once, holding on so tight to the chains that later I'd find indentations in my palms and fingers. My eyes were tearing with happiness. I was so happy. I could see my mom smiling up at me from down below, where the metal gate was that kept observers out. My brother looked bored and passive and grown up, like I had tried to look, but had failed. Everything was a blur, going around and around, except when I saw my mom and my brother, they were clearly in sight, almost going by in slow motion. I tried to wave, but my hands were too afraid to let go, so I just opened my fingers out in a fan and shook them back and forth, my palm still pressed hard against the chain. I was afraid, but so happy, and I didn't know why.
Now (oh yes, you bet I am going to try to parallel this with stuff going on now, you better fucking believe it), with my college graduation just a week away, I feel this similar feeling. I also feel it when I wake up sometimes and the sky is gray and cold and quiet. I remembered the swings and the carnival and the tape recorder and the trip to Korea somewhat recently, and I felt this strange feeling in my stomach, that there was something about these memories that elicited something in my brain, and that I should write about it and not stop until I was done. I feel like these past decades of my life were like being pressed into that red plastic seat with only inertia, gravity, and maybe some luck and that little metal bar in my lap holding me in, as I was propelled into space at a blinding speed. I didn't know where I was going, but I wanted to put on my serious face while doing it, but still managed to find joy here and there. The ride up until now has been dizzying, yes, terrifying, yes, but every once in a while, I can look down at the ground, and see my family waiting for me patiently, watching me enjoy myself, letting me feel the exhilaration of flying. But I remember feeling comforted and even fascinated looking down and seeing my own two feet, feeling my own two sets of toes curled tightly in my shoes like a pair of foot-fists, knowing that I'd soon get off the ride and be able to stand and walk and run and jump on those feet on my own -- and I felt like I could do anything, just about anything I wanted to do once I got out of that swing and got my feet back on the ground.
I don't know what to tell you guys... I guess I've been kinda wiped out lately. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about -- I have 5 notebooks full of stuff that I've written each and every day.
I love telling you people out there about myself, though, so how about this: Leave a comment here asking me a question, and I'll write about it.
[Peek-a-Foo]
