It’s time to write about a recurring trauma in my life. (Heavy-hearted sigh) Another hair-do massacre has taken place. As I write, I am recovering from a heart-attack directly linked to the hair dressers. It’s still the first 24 hours, so I am in a fragile state. I’m hoping by tomorrow I’ll only have minor palpitations. From some luck of the draw, I have been cursed since birth with some kind of Hair-Do Curse.
But, before I tell you about today, let’s take a trip down Hair-Don’t Memory Lane. I’ll narrow it down to the Top 5. They are in chronological order. And this story is rather long so you might want to save these tales for a day when you have time to sit and read.
Hairtale 1 (Note: If you have The Curse, there are signs of it early in life.)
From birth to the age of about 12, this was my recurring hair-dresser routine: “How would you like your hair cut today?” the hair dresser asks.
“Well, I’m trying to grow it out. So, please just give it a trim,” I reply.
“Okay. No problem.” Then, scissor noises: hack hack hack. Twenty minutes later, hair-dryer noises. I glimpse in the mirror several times at the hair-ball manifesting before my eyes. I try not to watch as every curl is brushed out into a fluffy cotton-candy mass. Then there are hair-spray noises. The hair-dresser pats my afro while smiling. Then, she whirls my chair around so I am facing myself head-on in the mirror.
My mother stands behind me and asks, “Oh, don’t you just love it?”
How the hell can I say “no”? I can’t. I cannot say a word. I am concentrating too hard to keep back the tears and control my mouth which so badly wants to contort and quiver. I am ugly. I am so ugly. I hate how I look. “Get me out of here. Why did you do this to my hair? Would you want to look like this?” That’s what I want to say to the hair dresser, but I can’t because my mother just asked me to say how much I like it.
We cannot leave fast enough. My mother cannot unlock her car fast enough. I cannot hide in the back with my coat over my head fast enough. I cry the entire way home. Once we are home, my mother gets out her hair dryer and straightens my hair. She makes me feel normal again. She fixes the awful mess. This scene happens several times a year for years.
Hairtale 2 (Note: The Curse is most dangerous when in your own hands.)
At the age of about 13 years old, I decide my hair is now in my own hands, for better or for worse. It’s the 80’s and I feel very free. Girls are wearing their hair very short. Long bangs and short sides are in. There is room for mistakes (and I’ll need all the room I can get when cutting my own hair). Why not experiment? One day, I’m alone in my room listening to music and staring into my mirror. I love the scarf my new boyfriend gave me. It looks like a long dirty piece of gauze around my neck. I say to myself, “Time for a haircut.” I get the scissors. My hair is almost chin length when I straighten it with a hair dryer.
I will look good with short sides and long bangs. Snip, snip, snip. I glance in the mirror. Not bad. I think the sides could be a little shorter. Snip, snip, snip. I can see my scalp peaking beneath the short hairs on the side of my head. My heart starts racing. Do I want it this short? Yes! I look punk, it’s a new me. This is a perfect role for me. I pull my long bangs over my left eye and cut them into a point. Even better! That night at dinner, my parents take turns looking back and forth at each other.
“Did you have brain surgery, kid?” asks my father dryly. Clearly he does not like my new do.
My mother looks confused. “Did you mean to cut it that short?”
“Yes,” I say and sit-up straighter, “I like it this way.” I untie the grey rag I’m wearing and re-wrap it around my neck.
“You look like a Garbage-Patch Kid,” my sister says flatly while chewing her food.
No one seems to appreciate my new look. For weeks, I maintain this look. Time passes and we are now staying in a hotel in Denver, a Christmas vacation for the family. My sister and I have our own room. While my sister is sitting on the bed listening to Depeche Mode on her Walkman, I stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom, alone. The sides of my hair have grown-in quite a bit, time for a trim.
I get out my scissors and trim my sides dangerously close. The sides look like an uneven army buzz. There are too many holes. I need to smooth it all out. I dig through my make-up purse and find a disposable orange Bic razor. I carefully begin to shave the sides to get them nice and even.
I nick myself a little and a couple drops of blood rise to the surface of my scalp. I stand back and observe the art project in front of me. My head is shiny. I am not going for a shiny head look. I look like the freak from the Thompson Twins video. I begin to panic. I comb my bangs over the side of my head, like and old man trying to cover a bald spot. My bangs are too long. I neatly cut them to fit perfectly around my ear. It hides the baldness but looks like a wig. I try to stay calm but I can’t.
This is a disaster. My heart beats faster. “Diane!” I cry out for my sister. Maybe she can help me or at least comfort me. “Diane!”
She can’t hear me, she is singing with her music. Diane is in her own little world. I hurry out of the bathroom and walk up to her bed, “Diane!” I scream.
She flinches a little. She takes off her headset and looks at me.
“I totally fucked up my hair! I totally fucked it up!” I start crying.
“What did you do?” She stands up. I walk back to the bathroom and she follows me. We are both standing under the bright lights in our cramped hotel bathroom. I lift my make-shift hair flap and uncover the baldness.
“What the fuck, Sunny? Why did you do that?”
I stare at myself red-eyed and ugly in the mirror.
“Did you shave it with a Bic?”
“Yes”, I sob, “What am I going to do?”
“Dad is going to kill you, Sunny!” Diane was not offering any comfort whatsoever.
“No shit, Diane! Shut up! Help me, god!” I snap.
“What do you want me to do, Sunny? I can’t fix that shit. Cover it back up with your hair, they might not see it.”
I pat my hair flap back over the side and spray some Aqua Net to hold it in place. “Does it look normal?” I keep patting my hair down. “Does it look okay?”
She cocks her head. “I don’t know, Sunny. It’s pretty bad. Just don’t show them that side…”
Hairtale 3 (Note: Even family members who love you could have The Curse)
Around 18 years old, my mother decides my hair is too dark. I am no longer her golden-haired little girl. Why not add some highlights? My mother buys a DIY highlight kit at Target. It comes with a scary rubber white cap punctured with miniscule holes. She puts it on my head and pulls hairs through the tiny holes with a plastic hook. I look like a cancer victim suffering chemo. We wait for the bleach to do its magic. We take off the cap and rinse my hair. Yellow strings hang randomly around my head. My mother studies my hair, “I think we need to add more highlights around your face,” she says and smears a bunch of highly toxic white cream on my hair around my face, especially above my forehead.
Being the trusting soul I am, I busy myself with more important things like talking on the phone. After a while, my mother tells me to rinse my hair. I rinse it and look in the mirror. I have a thick white stripe down the top of my head.
“Oh, my god!” I scream, “Mom, I look like a fucking skunk! What did you do?”
My mother panics. This means she begins laughing, crying, and coughing at the same time. She can’t speak. She tries to cough up a few words, “Ohh.I’m.sorry. Maybe.it.will.look.better.when.we.dry.it.”
I am not convinced. We dry it. Do you think it looks better dry? My mother speeds back to the store and buys some brown hair dye. We dye my hair back. It is fine for several months, but then the brown begins to fade and the white stripe reappears. (At least it has considerably grown out and it looks kind of SJP Sex in the City-ish but this was pre-Sex in the City days.)
Hairtale 4 (Note: If you have The Curse, you can expect at least one standing-ovation performance.)
Fast-forward to myself at 30 years old. My husband and I are living in Brussels. My sister is about to get married. Two days before I am flying to Arizona, I decide to get caramel highlights like Jennifer Aniston. (And you all know the color I’m talking about.) Just down the street is a hair-salon. A petit pretentious male has me sit down in a sleek black swivel chair. He brings out a book with different highlight colors. “So, show me which color you like?” He opens the shiny book. There are strips of different colored hair with fancy names underneath.
“Oh, I like that one, Honey Caramel,” I point to the hair strip. It is a beautiful warm color. I imagine how great my hair will look in this golden shade.
“Perfect”, he says. He takes the book away and starts to prepare my selection in a black plastic bowl. Very hip music is playing in the salon. Very hip people work there. I am going to leave looking very hip. My hairdresser sets a little timer on the shelf behind me. I wait while the chemicals do their magic.
“Ding, ding, ding,” rings the timer. It’s time to rinse my hair. Oh, I’m so excited. He rinses and rinses and then he dries while I look in the mirror. Do you think my hair is Honey Caramel? I don’t think my hair is Honey Caramel. My hair is Burning Bush Red. He finishes drying my hair.
“All done,” he says and walks over to the cash register.
As I’m paying, something is just not right. Should I say something? I hesitate. I finish paying. And then I say it. “It looks red.”
“Red?” he shakes his head, “No, it’s copper.”
“It looks red,” I repeat. “This is not the color I chose.”
“Yes, you chose this color,” he says quite confidently.
I begin to boil inside. “No. I chose Honey Caramel. Show me the book. I’ll show you,” I say.
He looks very hesitant. “Look, Madame, this is the color you chose.”
The two of us are standing in front of the mirror looking at my hair. By now, the other hair-dressers stop what they are doing. Everyone is listening. Everyone is looking at me and my red hair. He goes over to the book shelf and brings the hair samples to me. He opens the book. It is not the same book he initially showed me.
“This isn’t the book I looked at. This book doesn’t have the color I chose.” Now I am livid and shaking. He is trying to deceive me. It is unbelievable.
He smiles wryly, “This is the only book we have,” he says while making eye contact with all the other hair dressers. This is his cue to them, “Go along with what I say.”
“No. No. There is a different book with Honey Caramel.” I shake my head. My voice is getting louder. I’m still standing in front of the mirror. Customers are looking at me. “This is red. My hair is red!” I scream.
“Madame. Please calm down. Your hair is not red,” he says, “It’s copper.”
This is when I lose it. I look at the customers. “Does this look like Honey Caramel to you?” I scream while pointing to my head. I make eye contact with each customer. They avert their glances. No one wants to acknowledge me.
“Madame. You are going to have to leave. You are making a scene.”
“This is not Honey Caramel!” I bellow, “You are lying! You’re lying! My hair is red!” I scream on the top of my lungs. My throat hurts. I am losing control. Mustering up the last of my energy I look at the customers again and say, “This man is a liar! He’s a liar! I wanted Honey Caramel hair and he made it red! Don’t come here!” I leave the salon shaking. My breath is irregular. I make it back home.
My husband doesn’t understand what is happening. I am trembling. I am pacing back in forth in our apartment. I am acting crazy. I explain to my best ability what happened at the salon. My husband is upset. He leaves our apartment in a hurry and goes to the salon. I continue pacing back and forth. My husband is back within minutes.
“I can’t get your money back, Sunny. The man refuses but if you go back, he will fix it. That’s the best I can do.”
“Go back? Go back?” I holler. “I made a fucking scene in there. I can’t ever go back there…EVER!”
“Well, I don’t know what else to do,” my husband says.
The next day, I go to a different salon. They make my color better. In fact, everyone at my sister’s wedding comments on how great my hair color was, some auburn shade that is impossible to recreate considering it was two different hair colors from two different salons. To this day, that is my worst case-scenario regarding my behavior. So, imagine the fear in my husband last night when I come home with Hair Catastrophe Number 5!
Hairtale 5 (Note: At some point, we the cursed need to accept our destiny.)
Let’s fast forward to the present. I am now a mother of two little girls. Three years ago, some woman hacked my hair into a mess of two layers, one very short, one very long. I never went to her again. I have been, ever since, re-growing my hair. Yesterday, it was pretty long and almost layer-free. I was feeling happy that my hair was finally long again. I have been going to the same hair salon for two years now without any drama.
Yesterday, my little girls wanted to get their hair cut. I needed a hair-cut too. We arrive at the salon and it is virtually empty, no waiting! The hair dressers know us very well. We know them. They know how picky I am. I never want a style, just a trim. I always leave with wet hair. I am the simplest of customers. What could go wrong? A thin young black man with a lisp and a lopsided afro is going to cut my hair. He has cut it before. But, I remind him again, “So, you know I am growing-out my hair, right?”
“Yes,” he mumbles and rolls his eyes, “Just a trim”, he adds, “You’ve told me before, if I cut one inch, it shrinks up 5 inches. I remember.”
Pleased with his response I smile and say, “Okay…”
And we are off. Snip-snip here and snip-snip there. I pay little attention. Soon he is done. “How does it feel?” he asks me.
I quickly run my fingers through my hair. Something is off. Towards my scalp it feels very thick but as I get closer to the ends, it feels dangerously thin, almost stringy. As my hair is wet and there is no way in hell I am going to let anyone dry my hair into a shameful cotton candy bliss, I pull my hair up with an elastic band and pay. We go home.
My girls are happy with their haircuts. I begin to dry mine. Something is not right. I dry it a little more. My hair is all different lengths but can be summed-up as follows: there is one short, dense and curly top layer and one long, thin and stringy bottom layer.
This can’t be! I look in the mirror. I apply some fancy hair products and try to even it out a little. The top layer shrinks and becomes very bulbous. The bottom layer hangs there like broken violin strings.
“I don’t like my hair cut.” I repeat this several times to my girls. My husband arrives late that evening. I look at him and say, “I think I got a super bad haircut.”
He slaps his thighs angrily, “Oh, God! Again? Why? Why do you get your hair cut? I don’t understand!”
“Never mind,” I say. He doesn’t get it. He thinks it’s my fault. I try and forget this massacre. Maybe in the morning it will be better. I get a great night’s sleep and when I wake-up, I go to the mirror. Strings of hair dangle in random places. A thick top layer has shrunk and formed a toupee on top of my head. I go downstairs. “Look!” I say with desperation. “Look at my fucking hair! What is this?”
My husband looks at my hair. He tugs at a few pieces. “Why is it all uneven like this? It’s all different lengths.”
“I know!” I scream. “I have to go back! I’m going to have to chop it all off! Why can’t I have long hair? Why? Is there a fucking law out there posted at every hair salon? Why is it so hard for people to just let me grow my hair long?”
“Sunny, you can't go back there acting like this. If you go, you have to be calm!” he says.
“I know! I’ll be calm!”
“It doesn’t look like it,” he says.
I hurry back upstairs after quickly swallowing a cup of coffee. I have no appetite to eat. I put my make-up on with a shaky hand. I try to breathe in and out slowly. I grab my coat and head back. “Stay calm. Stay calm” I say to myself all along the way. No scene today, that will get me nowhere.
I arrive at the hair salon. I spot the guy who cut my hair. I gesture for him to come over. I stay calm. “Hi,” I say smiling. I explain the dilemma. He leads me over to a chair. He stands behind me. He doesn’t see the problem. He doesn’t understand why I don’t like the “cottage cheese meets string cheese” look he gave me. He says he barely cut my hair. He smiles and condescendingly says I’m just not used to having my hair cut. He repeats this phrase several times. I have no response to his utterly dumb statement so I just stay quiet.
He gets his manager who knows me very well. The manager says he will cut my hair again. The other hairdresser stands alongside us. The manager wets my hair and combs through it. “You layered it too much,” he says to his colleague. “She likes a more natural look”, he adds. He begins to snip. “You want me to even this out, right?” he asks me.
“Yes, but I don’t want short hair. I have been growing it out for two years,” I say staying calm.
Ten more minutes of snipping. It’s getting short. “It’s short,” I say in a panic. He glances up at me but keeps cool. He has no choice. Obviously there has been too much damage. He finally finishes. “It’s much shorter than I wanted,” I say sadly combing my fingers through my very short locks.
“Yes, yes, I know” he agrees, “but this is the only way for your hair to recover.”
The young hair dresser comes over to me, “I’m sorry,” he looks me in the eyes. No one ever apologizes in France so this actually makes me feel better, it does. The manager tells me he is sorry. He gives me a coupon for a free haircut. Everyone says goodbye to me. I walk home thinking, “This is just my fate. I need to accept it. I shouldn’t feel so shocked.”
I walk inside our home. “So? Let’s see,” says my husband.
I walk into the room. He looks at me and smiles but says nothing. My daughters come and look. “What do you think?” I ask. My eldest gives me an apologetic smile. She thinks hard and says, “Now you have short hair like me.”
My little one says, “And like me!” My poor little girl has curly hair like me. Yesterday, I witnessed her going through the same agonizing afro-blow of shame. Unlike myself, when the hairdresser asked her if she liked her round hair-do, she replied, “I don’t like it!” She looked over at me sadly. I knew what she was feeling and it broke my heart. There she was, my little sweetie sitting so innocently with her light brown cotton candy head. “I don’t like it, Mommy”, she repeated trying not to cry.
I said the only soothing words one can say in her situation, “Do you want the lady to straighten it?” (I think my little one might also have The Curse.)
Support lines are now open. Call us for more information on support groups in your area. You are not alone.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Drive-by Pedicure
This is a sad story. I don’t mean the year 2000 definition of “sad” like something you’d say to your friend who leaves his house wearing tube socks. “Oh, dude, that’s just sad.” I mean a truly sad story.
Most of you are already well-aware of the level of respect you can find in Marseille from my other tales or from your personal experience here. I have now experienced, on a scale of 1 – 10, Level Minus One (-1). Because the Marseille Respect Scale (MRS) does in fact reach into the negatives.
The other morning, I was walking in a neighborhood called Cours Julien. This area is as dirty as Rue des Héros, however, it is much bigger. It contains many little streets which serve as open sewage canals as well. They are semi-pedestrian zones, because the pedestrian concept is incomprehensible in Marseille. All pedestrian zones in Marseille accept several arbitrarily parked cars so that all pedestrians literally have to climb over them or scrape their bodies against a wall to get passed.
All semi-pedestrian zones also include scooters whizzing buy, loud motorcycles, dogs without leashes, a couple “gypsies” in long dirty skirts holding half-naked babies begging for money and unconscious people talking on their phones (but the latter is normal everywhere in 2012).
The only difference between Marseille and third world cities is the lack of goats and cows roaming around. But, maybe I’ll distribute a few and see how that works out.
Getting back to Cours Julien, it is also home to the homeless who sit in large groups drinking all day and peeing in the streets. It is home to loads of “Bio” (organic) restaurants, unique clothing boutiques, and used book stores. It has lots of cafés as well and draws crowds at all hours.
And just a side note, in Marseille most people who eat organic food are unemployed or actors and they in general smell and think capitalism needs to die. I know I’m generalizing and stepping over the line, but this is my time to express myself, so, too bad.
Getting back to my story, I had just finished teaching a yoga class and was feeling very calm and peaceful while walking down the semi-pedestrian street that had huge mounds of orange dog shit every couple of steps. But, I was fine with it. Acceptance is the key to life anyway, isn’t it?
I was crossing a tiny road and heard a scooter to my left. I turned my head to see how close it was, it was not very close. I had plenty of time to cross the path that was no more than three feet wide. I crossed it in less than one second and heard the scooter speeding up.
All of a sudden, he swerved to hit me and sped away. He ran over my toes. It didn’t hurt but my adrenaline was pumping and I kept my head down and kept walking, a natural instinct I have adopted here as people like to provoke each other. A woman on her cell phone who was a couple steps ahead of me turned around alarmed, “Did that scooter just hit you on purpose?” she asked.
I looked up at her and slowly answered, “Yeah. He did.” I don’t know why, but I felt like a total loser. I felt like someone who gets picked on in high school for no reason. I felt embarrassed someone had seen that happen to me.
She turned back around and cried into her phone “People here are sick! Some guy just ran over a woman on purpose!”
After she said those words, it dawned on me the cruelty and heartlessness of such an act. I suddenly filled with sadness. My toes hurt a little but I was too nervous to look down. What if they were broken or worse, not even there anymore? I slowly looked down. A thick black greasy line marked all my prettily painted red toes. I wasn’t bleeding. It didn’t hurt. I was okay. That dude was a fucking asshole. Why did he swerve to hit me like that? I wasn’t in his way. I didn’t understand. He just felt like being a dick. That made me sad. I silently made it to the metro and went home.
As I walked through my neighborhood almost back at our house, I tried to call my husband, but he didn’t answer his phone. As soon as I heard him on voice mail, I felt like crying. I started to leave my message, “Hi. It’s me. Something bad just happened to me. I’m okay. I’m fine. But, a motorcycle…ran…over…me (sob sob sob) and and I’m okay, but I’m just (sob sob sob) really sad (sob sob sob)…” And I hung up and tried to stop crying.
I don’t know if the crying was just energy being released after the motorcycle adrenaline rush. I was fine, why was I crying? I felt ridiculous. Was I wallowing in self-pity or was it all justified? Minutes later, I got home and Jeeves arrived to work on our translating project.
“Jeeves,” I said while preparing him one of my infamous Nespresso lattes with a little bit of cream and some whole milk. “I was kind of aggressed today.”
I told him my story and he replied, “You know, Sunny. When you go to the zoo, you walk by the cages and look at the animals…and you say, “Oh, look at the animals” You don’t try to understand the animals. You don’t try to change the animals. That is how I see Marseille. Why would you try and change the animals? You can’t. It’s just impossible. Don’t try to understand them. Because they are just animals.”
Jeeves was right and I was glad he said that to me. At least it made me feel better. Later that evening, I told my husband about my accident. “Was the guy trying to steal your purse?” he asked bewildered.
“No”, I replied.
“So, he just ran over you like that?”
“Yep,” I answered.
My husband shook his head. “I don’t understand people. He could’ve hurt you.”
“I know,” I said, “but he would not have cared. He tried to hit me and ran over my foot. Then he just kept on going. He’s just an angry person. It’s sad that our city is full of people like this. It’s hard knowing that we live in a city like this.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
“Look,” I proffered my lovely black marked toes.
He shook his head again while dragging his fingers across my foot. “Are they black because they’re bruised?”
“No, that’s from the tires.” I replied. And then I thought, “In another city, this would be an act of violence, some kind of aggression. In Marseille, it is nothing more than a drive-by pedicure…”
Most of you are already well-aware of the level of respect you can find in Marseille from my other tales or from your personal experience here. I have now experienced, on a scale of 1 – 10, Level Minus One (-1). Because the Marseille Respect Scale (MRS) does in fact reach into the negatives.
The other morning, I was walking in a neighborhood called Cours Julien. This area is as dirty as Rue des Héros, however, it is much bigger. It contains many little streets which serve as open sewage canals as well. They are semi-pedestrian zones, because the pedestrian concept is incomprehensible in Marseille. All pedestrian zones in Marseille accept several arbitrarily parked cars so that all pedestrians literally have to climb over them or scrape their bodies against a wall to get passed.
All semi-pedestrian zones also include scooters whizzing buy, loud motorcycles, dogs without leashes, a couple “gypsies” in long dirty skirts holding half-naked babies begging for money and unconscious people talking on their phones (but the latter is normal everywhere in 2012).
The only difference between Marseille and third world cities is the lack of goats and cows roaming around. But, maybe I’ll distribute a few and see how that works out.
Getting back to Cours Julien, it is also home to the homeless who sit in large groups drinking all day and peeing in the streets. It is home to loads of “Bio” (organic) restaurants, unique clothing boutiques, and used book stores. It has lots of cafés as well and draws crowds at all hours.
And just a side note, in Marseille most people who eat organic food are unemployed or actors and they in general smell and think capitalism needs to die. I know I’m generalizing and stepping over the line, but this is my time to express myself, so, too bad.
Getting back to my story, I had just finished teaching a yoga class and was feeling very calm and peaceful while walking down the semi-pedestrian street that had huge mounds of orange dog shit every couple of steps. But, I was fine with it. Acceptance is the key to life anyway, isn’t it?
I was crossing a tiny road and heard a scooter to my left. I turned my head to see how close it was, it was not very close. I had plenty of time to cross the path that was no more than three feet wide. I crossed it in less than one second and heard the scooter speeding up.
All of a sudden, he swerved to hit me and sped away. He ran over my toes. It didn’t hurt but my adrenaline was pumping and I kept my head down and kept walking, a natural instinct I have adopted here as people like to provoke each other. A woman on her cell phone who was a couple steps ahead of me turned around alarmed, “Did that scooter just hit you on purpose?” she asked.
I looked up at her and slowly answered, “Yeah. He did.” I don’t know why, but I felt like a total loser. I felt like someone who gets picked on in high school for no reason. I felt embarrassed someone had seen that happen to me.
She turned back around and cried into her phone “People here are sick! Some guy just ran over a woman on purpose!”
After she said those words, it dawned on me the cruelty and heartlessness of such an act. I suddenly filled with sadness. My toes hurt a little but I was too nervous to look down. What if they were broken or worse, not even there anymore? I slowly looked down. A thick black greasy line marked all my prettily painted red toes. I wasn’t bleeding. It didn’t hurt. I was okay. That dude was a fucking asshole. Why did he swerve to hit me like that? I wasn’t in his way. I didn’t understand. He just felt like being a dick. That made me sad. I silently made it to the metro and went home.
As I walked through my neighborhood almost back at our house, I tried to call my husband, but he didn’t answer his phone. As soon as I heard him on voice mail, I felt like crying. I started to leave my message, “Hi. It’s me. Something bad just happened to me. I’m okay. I’m fine. But, a motorcycle…ran…over…me (sob sob sob) and and I’m okay, but I’m just (sob sob sob) really sad (sob sob sob)…” And I hung up and tried to stop crying.
I don’t know if the crying was just energy being released after the motorcycle adrenaline rush. I was fine, why was I crying? I felt ridiculous. Was I wallowing in self-pity or was it all justified? Minutes later, I got home and Jeeves arrived to work on our translating project.
“Jeeves,” I said while preparing him one of my infamous Nespresso lattes with a little bit of cream and some whole milk. “I was kind of aggressed today.”
I told him my story and he replied, “You know, Sunny. When you go to the zoo, you walk by the cages and look at the animals…and you say, “Oh, look at the animals” You don’t try to understand the animals. You don’t try to change the animals. That is how I see Marseille. Why would you try and change the animals? You can’t. It’s just impossible. Don’t try to understand them. Because they are just animals.”
Jeeves was right and I was glad he said that to me. At least it made me feel better. Later that evening, I told my husband about my accident. “Was the guy trying to steal your purse?” he asked bewildered.
“No”, I replied.
“So, he just ran over you like that?”
“Yep,” I answered.
My husband shook his head. “I don’t understand people. He could’ve hurt you.”
“I know,” I said, “but he would not have cared. He tried to hit me and ran over my foot. Then he just kept on going. He’s just an angry person. It’s sad that our city is full of people like this. It’s hard knowing that we live in a city like this.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
“Look,” I proffered my lovely black marked toes.
He shook his head again while dragging his fingers across my foot. “Are they black because they’re bruised?”
“No, that’s from the tires.” I replied. And then I thought, “In another city, this would be an act of violence, some kind of aggression. In Marseille, it is nothing more than a drive-by pedicure…”
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Guess What I Saw
Guess what I saw?
I can barely contain my excitement.
Let’s start with Rue des Héros because I have several tales to share.
It’s best to start out with the dirtiest street I’ve yet to meet: rue des héros. Remember this one?
The other day as I walked uphill to the yoga room, ready to open it for
my morning class, I could see from afar two people seated on the stoop. I could tell they were not yoga students, but most likely some drunks which is common enough and a problem I’ve dealt with before.
“Oh, great” I muttered to myself, “I’m going to have to say something diplomatic and hope they’ll leave.” I continued my walk upwards while inhaling fresh and stale urine smells rising off the pavement. Shit from every species that exists was smeared on the streets and sidewalks. I made my daily eye contact with the older prostitute who is always waiting on the left wearing normal clothes, as normal as a secretary waiting for the first client to walk in the door.
Finally I made it up to the blue stoop. What did I see? Two seated women, one inserting a needle into her arm.
“Hello,” I said, “I’m going to open the room now…soooo” I let my words trail off hoping it was enough to convey some kind of message that meant it was time to leave.
“Okay, okay, no problem,” said the women who didn’t have the needle in her arm. The woman shooting up sat smiling and didn’t say a word. I opened the room and got things ready and then peaked out the window to see if the two women were still there. Yep, they were still there.
Some of my students started to arrive. One walked in clutching her heart, “Did you see those women out there?” she gasped.
“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to get them to leave.” I opened the door again. “Okay”, I said in a somewhat loud voice, “You have to leave now. I have students coming.”
One of the ladies rose and tried to make her friend get up. It didn’t look like her friend could stand so it took a little coercion and the two were soon on their way, arm-in-arm.
My colleague Angelo arrived and heard the other students up in arms about the scene they had just witnessed. So, I said to him “People were shooting up on the stoop…It was disturbing…”
Angelo shrugged his shoulders, “To each his own vice”, he looked unaffected. “It’s not my problem,” he added. “Why should I care what they do?”
“Nice,” I thought to myself even though in reality, it’s true, those people shooting up don’t concern us. Of course, I’d prefer if they did their “vices” elsewhere.
Several weeks later, I was once again walking uphill, stench of pee and poo, hooker to the left, two druggies on the stoop. “Oh, great!” I mumbled expecting a needle or a can of beer. But this time, two women were seated on either side of a little piece of paper filled with white powder.
“Bonjour,” I said to them.
Without a care in the world, one of the women continued her snorting. The other one looked up at me. “Hello” she answered.
“I’m opening the room. You’re gonna have to leave now.” I said a little less diplomatically than I have said in the past.
“Yes, yes, of course. We’re just finishing up,” she said as if I were in-line waiting for the loo. Once again, I prepared the yoga room and went back to see if my little coke-heads were still there. What do you think? Yeah. They were still there. I opened the door and stared at them. “Time to go. This is NOT okay. Time to go,” I said trying to wave them away like flies at a picnic.
“I know, I know…”said the more sober of the two. “I’m trying to get my friend to leave,” she turned to her friend and started pulling on her arm, “Let’s go!”
Her friend hunched over, smiled, but didn’t say a word. Finally she managed to get her friend up and the two weaved their way down the street.
Last but not least is what I saw on this infamous street just last week while with my friend Jeeves. As we walked down, to the left AND to the right, two men were peeing in unison.
“Look at that!” exclaimed Jeeves, “Not one man peeing, but two…and at the same time! Unbelievable! They might as well claim this street a public urinal, we’ll hang a sign! I can’t believe this street is called Rue des Héros. It should be called Piss Alley!”
“It’s beautiful, Jeeves! I love it! The irony is just excellent, excellent! The street has to be called Rue des Héros, it’s perfect!”
“This is no Street for Heroes”, said Jeeves, “this is a fucking urinal!”
“I know, isn’t it great? I love it! This street couldn’t get better and its name is very important, no need to change it at all!”
So, there you have my vignette of Rue des Héroes stories, but there’s more! Yes, there are other great neighborhoods. Take for example the area near La Conception, a hospital. We were all in the car, my husband and I in the front, our girls in the back. While we were stopped at a red light, I looked out the window. We were stopped just in front of the hospital. “What is this hospital known for?” I asked my husband who is in the medical industry.
“I think it’s a mental institute…” he said.
“Really?” I asked.
Just then, as if on cue, an older man in scrubs and white slippers slunk his way down the sidewalk. He was holding his ass, the seat of his pants was ripped open. We watched him in unison.
“Scary,” said my husband.
I burst out laughing. “Do you think he is coming or going?” I asked.
“I don’t want to know,” he said, “that’s just scary.”
Feeling excited, I replied, “I love it! Look at him! It’s perfect. He’s holding his ass and walking past the mental institute in slippers…”
Do I sound demented with all my disturbing excitement at these scenes? I figure, if you can’t appreciate this type of thing, you have no place in a big city, especially Marseille which is definitely the strangest place I’ve ever known.
How about a story linked to nature? A park, for example? Sure, coming right up. Marseille has a very nice park named Parc Borély. We love to take the girls there with their bikes. It’s safe: no cars, no dogs. However, there are tons of bikes even some funky ones made for 4 that remind me of the old buggies from a black and white movie. Often you see parents pedaling in the front, children in the back. These things are so heavy you often hear squeals coming from the parents, typically the mother, who loses control of the steering(women drivers!).
Well, we love to go there when it’s nice and sunny. They have a big pond with a café next to it. There is even a churros stand complete with little cups of Nutella for dipping. (Only in France!) Their cotton candy is bigger than two adult heads side-by-side. (Barbe à Papa which translates as “Daddy’s beard”) They also have nice open grassy areas for playing soccer or laying out a nice picnic. There is even a rose garden and a little corner with a small pond and a rock wall.
A couple Sundays ago, our girls were happily riding their bikes. A crowd had formed around the little pond so we all stopped to see what was happening. Some ducks? Some fish? We peered down into the still water. “Look,” pointed my husband. A small animal was treading back in forth. It was a rat!
My girls stared in fascination as did I. A little boy kept throwing bread but no fish or ducks dared to come in the vicinity. Soon, a tiny splash came from the rock wall. Another rat joined his playmate.
“Look, look!” pointed Claire.
“Oh, they’re so cute”, said Eva.
I watched them, their little legs paddling around, long pink tails trailing behind them. They’d dash back into the rocks only to peek out and jump back into the pond instants later. At one point there were at least four little rats swimming in the pond.
Claire leaned dangerously close over the rocks down below. “Claire!” my husband’s voice boomed. “Get her away from the water,” he said to me.
“Do they bite?” asked Eva.
“They could bite and they are very dirty animals so you could get a serious infection. Never try and touch a rat.” I said.
“Let’s go!” said my husband turning and ready to continue our stroll. Enough rat action for him.
“No!” they pleaded, “we want to see!”
“Let’s stay a little longer,” I told my husband.
The girls watched in awe. Some rats literally swam under the water for seconds at a time.
“Wow, they can hold their breath and swim super well. I totally understand why they like sewers. They are made for sewers!” I said.
My husband looked disgusted. We stood in silence watching. “Only in Marseille...” I said.
My husband laughed and shook is head.
“Only in Marseille do you come to a park to watch rats swim in a pond,” I added.
It was another great demented vision for me to savor. However, that night, little Claire had a nightmare. In the morning she said, ”Mommy, I had a bad dweem.”
“You had a bad dream?” I asked her. “What did you dream about?”
“I dweem that I fell in da watuh (water) and a wat (rat) bite my head!” she told me. (Poor Claire!!)
“Nice.” said my husband.
“Well, I guess we won’t have to worry about her getting too close to ponds and falling in.” I said.
And there you have it, folks: Druggies shooting up, coke heads snorting, men peeing in unison, a mental health patient holding his ass, and a band of rats swimming in a pond. This is what I saw.
I can barely contain my excitement.
Let’s start with Rue des Héros because I have several tales to share.
It’s best to start out with the dirtiest street I’ve yet to meet: rue des héros. Remember this one?
The other day as I walked uphill to the yoga room, ready to open it for
my morning class, I could see from afar two people seated on the stoop. I could tell they were not yoga students, but most likely some drunks which is common enough and a problem I’ve dealt with before.
“Oh, great” I muttered to myself, “I’m going to have to say something diplomatic and hope they’ll leave.” I continued my walk upwards while inhaling fresh and stale urine smells rising off the pavement. Shit from every species that exists was smeared on the streets and sidewalks. I made my daily eye contact with the older prostitute who is always waiting on the left wearing normal clothes, as normal as a secretary waiting for the first client to walk in the door.
Finally I made it up to the blue stoop. What did I see? Two seated women, one inserting a needle into her arm.
“Hello,” I said, “I’m going to open the room now…soooo” I let my words trail off hoping it was enough to convey some kind of message that meant it was time to leave.
“Okay, okay, no problem,” said the women who didn’t have the needle in her arm. The woman shooting up sat smiling and didn’t say a word. I opened the room and got things ready and then peaked out the window to see if the two women were still there. Yep, they were still there.
Some of my students started to arrive. One walked in clutching her heart, “Did you see those women out there?” she gasped.
“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to get them to leave.” I opened the door again. “Okay”, I said in a somewhat loud voice, “You have to leave now. I have students coming.”
One of the ladies rose and tried to make her friend get up. It didn’t look like her friend could stand so it took a little coercion and the two were soon on their way, arm-in-arm.
My colleague Angelo arrived and heard the other students up in arms about the scene they had just witnessed. So, I said to him “People were shooting up on the stoop…It was disturbing…”
Angelo shrugged his shoulders, “To each his own vice”, he looked unaffected. “It’s not my problem,” he added. “Why should I care what they do?”
“Nice,” I thought to myself even though in reality, it’s true, those people shooting up don’t concern us. Of course, I’d prefer if they did their “vices” elsewhere.
Several weeks later, I was once again walking uphill, stench of pee and poo, hooker to the left, two druggies on the stoop. “Oh, great!” I mumbled expecting a needle or a can of beer. But this time, two women were seated on either side of a little piece of paper filled with white powder.
“Bonjour,” I said to them.
Without a care in the world, one of the women continued her snorting. The other one looked up at me. “Hello” she answered.
“I’m opening the room. You’re gonna have to leave now.” I said a little less diplomatically than I have said in the past.
“Yes, yes, of course. We’re just finishing up,” she said as if I were in-line waiting for the loo. Once again, I prepared the yoga room and went back to see if my little coke-heads were still there. What do you think? Yeah. They were still there. I opened the door and stared at them. “Time to go. This is NOT okay. Time to go,” I said trying to wave them away like flies at a picnic.
“I know, I know…”said the more sober of the two. “I’m trying to get my friend to leave,” she turned to her friend and started pulling on her arm, “Let’s go!”
Her friend hunched over, smiled, but didn’t say a word. Finally she managed to get her friend up and the two weaved their way down the street.
Last but not least is what I saw on this infamous street just last week while with my friend Jeeves. As we walked down, to the left AND to the right, two men were peeing in unison.
“Look at that!” exclaimed Jeeves, “Not one man peeing, but two…and at the same time! Unbelievable! They might as well claim this street a public urinal, we’ll hang a sign! I can’t believe this street is called Rue des Héros. It should be called Piss Alley!”
“It’s beautiful, Jeeves! I love it! The irony is just excellent, excellent! The street has to be called Rue des Héros, it’s perfect!”
“This is no Street for Heroes”, said Jeeves, “this is a fucking urinal!”
“I know, isn’t it great? I love it! This street couldn’t get better and its name is very important, no need to change it at all!”
So, there you have my vignette of Rue des Héroes stories, but there’s more! Yes, there are other great neighborhoods. Take for example the area near La Conception, a hospital. We were all in the car, my husband and I in the front, our girls in the back. While we were stopped at a red light, I looked out the window. We were stopped just in front of the hospital. “What is this hospital known for?” I asked my husband who is in the medical industry.
“I think it’s a mental institute…” he said.
“Really?” I asked.
Just then, as if on cue, an older man in scrubs and white slippers slunk his way down the sidewalk. He was holding his ass, the seat of his pants was ripped open. We watched him in unison.
“Scary,” said my husband.
I burst out laughing. “Do you think he is coming or going?” I asked.
“I don’t want to know,” he said, “that’s just scary.”
Feeling excited, I replied, “I love it! Look at him! It’s perfect. He’s holding his ass and walking past the mental institute in slippers…”
Do I sound demented with all my disturbing excitement at these scenes? I figure, if you can’t appreciate this type of thing, you have no place in a big city, especially Marseille which is definitely the strangest place I’ve ever known.
How about a story linked to nature? A park, for example? Sure, coming right up. Marseille has a very nice park named Parc Borély. We love to take the girls there with their bikes. It’s safe: no cars, no dogs. However, there are tons of bikes even some funky ones made for 4 that remind me of the old buggies from a black and white movie. Often you see parents pedaling in the front, children in the back. These things are so heavy you often hear squeals coming from the parents, typically the mother, who loses control of the steering(women drivers!).
Well, we love to go there when it’s nice and sunny. They have a big pond with a café next to it. There is even a churros stand complete with little cups of Nutella for dipping. (Only in France!) Their cotton candy is bigger than two adult heads side-by-side. (Barbe à Papa which translates as “Daddy’s beard”) They also have nice open grassy areas for playing soccer or laying out a nice picnic. There is even a rose garden and a little corner with a small pond and a rock wall.
A couple Sundays ago, our girls were happily riding their bikes. A crowd had formed around the little pond so we all stopped to see what was happening. Some ducks? Some fish? We peered down into the still water. “Look,” pointed my husband. A small animal was treading back in forth. It was a rat!
My girls stared in fascination as did I. A little boy kept throwing bread but no fish or ducks dared to come in the vicinity. Soon, a tiny splash came from the rock wall. Another rat joined his playmate.
“Look, look!” pointed Claire.
“Oh, they’re so cute”, said Eva.
I watched them, their little legs paddling around, long pink tails trailing behind them. They’d dash back into the rocks only to peek out and jump back into the pond instants later. At one point there were at least four little rats swimming in the pond.
Claire leaned dangerously close over the rocks down below. “Claire!” my husband’s voice boomed. “Get her away from the water,” he said to me.
“Do they bite?” asked Eva.
“They could bite and they are very dirty animals so you could get a serious infection. Never try and touch a rat.” I said.
“Let’s go!” said my husband turning and ready to continue our stroll. Enough rat action for him.
“No!” they pleaded, “we want to see!”
“Let’s stay a little longer,” I told my husband.
The girls watched in awe. Some rats literally swam under the water for seconds at a time.
“Wow, they can hold their breath and swim super well. I totally understand why they like sewers. They are made for sewers!” I said.
My husband looked disgusted. We stood in silence watching. “Only in Marseille...” I said.
My husband laughed and shook is head.
“Only in Marseille do you come to a park to watch rats swim in a pond,” I added.
It was another great demented vision for me to savor. However, that night, little Claire had a nightmare. In the morning she said, ”Mommy, I had a bad dweem.”
“You had a bad dream?” I asked her. “What did you dream about?”
“I dweem that I fell in da watuh (water) and a wat (rat) bite my head!” she told me. (Poor Claire!!)
“Nice.” said my husband.
“Well, I guess we won’t have to worry about her getting too close to ponds and falling in.” I said.
And there you have it, folks: Druggies shooting up, coke heads snorting, men peeing in unison, a mental health patient holding his ass, and a band of rats swimming in a pond. This is what I saw.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut
The first time I visited The Evolution Center, I knew it was a little nutty. I met with the original owner who opened this yoga and tai chi studio in 1973. The place was worn down and the mats were made from dirty black foam. The owner asked me about myself and gave me the okay to start teaching at his place though he was handing the ropes over to Frieda, another teacher. She would be taking over the center so he could retire in the Alpes full-time.
The second time I went was for a teacher’s meeting. My friend Katrijn was going to start teaching there too. She was dressed nicely and looked clean and organized. It was our first interaction with the other teachers. We arrived and the old dirty black mats were on the floor with bolsters on top and a make-shift table in the middle. It was an attempt at “cozy” I imagine.
All the teachers sat barefoot on the bolsters. Since Katrijn and I were the newbies, we had to introduce ourselves but no one else told us who they were. One man with a big honker and a short silver beard tried to talk about India. He later introduced himself as Olivier.
Frieda cut him off. She was the woman in charge. Tall, big-boned and bug-eyed she spoke quickly. She made it clear she was running the show. Frieda began to talk about the process for signing up new students. She gestured to the wall behind her. There was a sort of exposed card catalog that would have made a librarian’s head spin. A metal rack held little cards in alphabetical order. The entire wall was filled. Each card belonged to a student. It was like the Dewey Decimal System and probably created in 1973 when the room opened.
“Now,” Frieda held up a card showing us as if we were children, “when a student comes to your class, you will need to get their card from the wall and stamp it. Then you will need to write their name on the attendance sheet. You need to make sure you fill out the attendance sheet every time you teach or we will have no way of knowing who came to your class.”
Frieda showed us the different cards and repeated the important stamping process at least three times as if this was one of the most important things ever. It sounded like it would take us longer to take attendance then to give a class.
A young pregnant woman who had wavy blonde hair explained how she wouldn’t be able to give massages much longer, she gestured to her stomach. Just then, the door opened and the third new teacher, who was very late, strutted into the room. She wore loose black jeans and a flannel shirt. She had shaggy hair. She climbed onto a pillow and sat with her legs apart. “Sorry I’m late” she smirked with a rough voice. She was sitting close to me. She had a faint blonde mustache and very thin lips.
Frieda stared and then said, “Why don’t you introduce yourself to us?”
“Okay,” she wore a sly grin, “I’m Rhianna and I’ll be teaching a style of gym and stretching that is a mix of yoga and Tai Chi. I created my own routine with traditional Western movements for people who find yoga scary or too hard.”
Frieda stared at her and then at the group. No one said a word. Rhianna’s appearance frightened me. I couldn’t imagine going to her for any class of any sort.
Frieda spoke about the cards and stamps again. She put down her pen and said “Okay, for those of you who want to stay and eat, the meeting is over.”
Each person ruffled in his or her bag and brought out little salads, cheeses, cakes and we passed out plates. Olivier began speaking about India again. “I go every year. It is such a magical place.” He said while scooping some kind of grains onto his plate.
A teacher in her late 40’s with curly reddish hair and huge glasses said, “I just did China and it was such a hard country to visit…the language, getting around, it really was difficult. I prefer India.”
“India is filled with so much culture and history,” he added.
I thought back to my trip in India with my husband. Images of open sewage, a woman lighting cow dung and then waving the vapors into her face, lepers, half-naked skinny children tugging at our clothes…but my favorite image of all is of me hanging out the side of a moving rickshaw and puking.
“Holy Shit,” my husband had commented at the time, “you looked like a fucking alien!” We had laughed but it wasn’t so funny when I puked another ten times, (though my stomach looked damn good for about 24 hours). I made a comment about my dislike for India. I don’t know why I said this in a room full of India lovers. Everyone stared at me.
Luckily, Katrijn piped up and said she had met her boyfriend in India and that is why she is now in Marseille. That was a good transition and Frieda then announced, “Baba Gunji is coming to Marseille. Are any of you going to go see him?”
“Oh, he’s amazing. I’ve heard him before,” said Olivier nibbling on his rice salad mixture.
“So have I! He is so real, no masks, he’s just himself and he makes you feel like you can be real too. He helps you get closer to yourself.” Frieda was always so intense.
“Yes. I don’t know how he does it. Just being in his presence makes you feel like it’s okay to be who you are,” continued Olivier.
“Exactly,” she picked at her bread and cheese, “he helps you accept yourself, know yourself better, get closer to yourself…” she said waving her bread in the air.
I listened to all this feeling like an outsider when Rita covered her mouth and said in my direction, “Get closer to yourself? I wanna get distance from myself. Heh heh heh.”
The voice of reason had spoken. I burst into laughter. She started laughing too, her eyes all squinty like someone who had just smoked a doobie. I liked her.
Two weeks later we had the Open House. Basically this was our biggest chance of the year to attract potential students. It was a sunny September morning. Frieda was going to make Chai that morning.
I say this because it had been decided that Chai would only be served in the morning, not in the afternoon. Also, the tea cup was to be filled to a certain level.
She was really into her Chai and had even printed it on the flyers as part of the Open House. She spoke about it during our meeting: The Chai in the morning, how she would offer Chai to people…in the morning. How people would come to our Open House, and if they came in the morning, they could have their cup of Chai.
Well, I arrived around 9:15am to help set-up the place. Random objects were on the shelves in the entry way, bathroom deodorizer spray, for example, which made no sense and was a total turn off. I mean, the first thing I think of when I see deodorizer spray is, "Cool, if I need to take a fucking shit, no one will know because I can spray this fantastic spray!"
Getting back to the Open House day, a massage therapist, Anne, was also helping set-up. She had short brown hair and was putting out flyers on the table in the entrance. The big yoga room had some tables and flyers too but was mainly empty so that we could give workshops.
“How can I help?” I asked looking around.
“You can help me hang these pictures,” Frieda wanted to hang pictures. I don’t know why it was a priority when so many other things needed to get done. She handed me three brand new canvases still in their plastic wrap.
“Okay, just tell me where.”
She came over and handed me a hammer and nails and then pointed to three spots on the wall that were way above my height. When she realized I couldn’t reach that high, she handed me the nails and I become her nail holder servant. It was a very inefficient way of using an extra set of hands. And then the two of us hung pictures.
“You’re hanging pictures…now?” asked Anne. We were expecting loads of people and it was just the three of us getting the place ready.
“Yes! Yes! Now!” she said as if this made perfect sense.
Soon a horrible burning smell began to enter the hallway. “Oh, no! Is that my Chai?” Frieda shrieked.
“I don’t know. It smells like incense,” I remarked.
Frieda fled to a little room in the back. “Oh, no! Oh, no! My Chai. It’s boiled over onto the wood floor.” She ran to get some towels. I followed and did the same. She started slopping up the mess that had boiled over from the electric kettle. “I forgot this kettle needs to be watched or this happens…” Then she disappeared before cleaning the floor properly to do something inefficient again. I took my time cleaning up the mess and wondered if I was on Chai duty or if she was coming back.
Soon Katrijn and a couple other teachers arrived. Katrijn took a look around and smiled at me. “So,” she asked me, “what are we supposed to do?”
I looked over at Frieda and then back to Katrijn, “Just do what she says.” I said somewhat under my breath. The two of us giggled.
Soon the door rang. It was our first potential student. A thirty-something woman, pale and chubby, stood in the doorway holding a plastic bag and her Open House flyer.
“Come in! Come in!” Frieda said over-enthusiastically with her bug eyes.
“Hello!” everyone chimed in.
“Hello,” she paused and looked at each one of us slowly. “I’m here for the Open House.”
Frieda made her way quickly over to our potential student. The woman held the flyer in her hand. Frieda towered over her, “Okay, which workshop interests you?” Together they studied the flyer in utter concentration.
Frieda left for something else and the lady approached me in slow motion and spoke to me in a monotonous tone, “Can yoga hurt me? I have some problems…” She asked me lots of questions, the same question just worded differently each time. “Will yoga help me?” I tried to comfort her and told her soft yoga would probably be good for her. Nothing I said seemed to soothe her, she just stood there looking lost.
I went back to Chai duty and moved some random objects into the back. Each time a student would arrive, Frieda would monopolize the conversation and none of the other teachers would get in a word.
“I might as well leave,” mentioned Katrijn with wide eyes, “she isn’t letting us talk to anyone.”
As 10am approached, people started gathering around for a Soft Gym class that Rhianna was going to lead, however, she was nowhere to be seen. Frieda’s eyes starting shifting left and right. She kept looking at the round clock on the wall. At least 4 people were waiting for Rhianna. Frieda started thinking out loud. “Where is Rhianna? It’s 10 o’clock. These people want to try Soft Gym. We have to start. What should I do? It’s 10 o’clock…”
Katrijn offered her help, “I teach Soft Yoga so I could give the workshop if you want?”
“No! No! No!” Frieda started pacing the hallway. “I’ll do it. It can’t be just anything. It has to be something similar. I know what she does.” Katrijn looked shocked at her response.
Frieda brought the people into the big yoga room and Katrijn turned to me, “Wow! This woman is really awful. I’m trying to help and she acts like that? She really wants to do everything!”
Then we spied on Frieda who was leading a group in auto-massage. She briskly rubbed her arms up and down, then her legs. She encouraged the workshop students to do as she was doing. The others began to rub their arms too. Katrijn and I looked at each other and started laughing.
“What is she doing?” Katrijn asked me.
“I think it’s Do-In a type of auto-massage…” They were in fact doing something quite legitimate, but it looked ridiculous and Frieda teaching something that is supposed to relax people just made it even more absurd.
About ten minutes later, Rhianna entered. Her hair was matted on one side and sticking out on the other. She must have literally rolled out of bed and thrown on her jacket. Her eyes were tiny and sunken into her head. The sight of her made me start laughing. “Tired?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows at me, “Why? Do I like tired?”
“Yep.”
“Do I normally look energetic?”
“Nope,” I answered and we both laughed again.
“Frieda started teaching your class, did you want to do part of it now that you are here?” asked Katrijn.
“Nah, let her do it,” She chuckled.
Ten thirty was coming up. It would be time for my workshop, Dynamic Yoga with Suny. Yep they spelled my name wrong on over 15,000 flyers, I was disappointed with that. Frieda was to blame, but what are you going to say to that broad?
As Frieda and her students left the room, she said to the next group, “Now for Dynamic Yoga with Sunny.”
I scanned the crowd of about 8 people. The slow chubby lady was part of my group! She began asking me a bunch of questions again and I noticed a wart on her finger. Not just any wart, a mushy dangly one. Eww. I made a future mental note: Do not adjust her hands.
I entered the yoga room and began to set-up mats, people just kept on pouring in. A tall man in a bright blue construction suit, the kind you have to zip up, was one of my students. A red-eyed man who probably found our flyer in the dumpster he sleeps in was also part of my little posse. He had whiskey breath and was wearing black jeans and a black long sleeved shirt that reeked of nicotine. (Sound like a potential yoga student to you?) A couple women looked dressed for a marathon and a couple others looked like yogis who were just seeing if I was any good which made me nervous.
My class was full so I shut the door, ready to begin. Supposedly, Frieda panicked and repeatedly said in an ugly tone of voice, “What? She closed the door? This is an Open House... The doors stay open in an Open House.”
It was a hot day in Marseille. Our room had no fans and no open windows. I began the class and it heated up a little too quickly. I hadn’t anticipated any sweating during a 30-minute yoga workshop and thus I had put on make-up and worn a normal non-absorbent bra. But soon, sweat was running down my cleavage and my face was dripping. I had to sneak a couple peeks in the mirror to make sure I didn’t look like Alice Cooper with mascara melting down my face. I looked out at all the workshop participants, people whom I’d most likely never see again: slow wart lady, construction man, and drunken dude. One or two people’s yoga practice was almost too good. I felt like they must have been there specifically to investigate me on behalf of some undercover yoga teacher committee. Would I pass their test?
I watched the clock and timed the class perfectly. We were just coming out of our relaxation when Frieda burst open the door and banged on a bronze bowl repeatedly, “Time’s up!” she chimed like one of the evil step-sisters from Cinderella. Could she possibly be any more obnoxious? The truth is, she is an unaware obnoxious person so you kind of feel sorry for her. I do not think she knows she is so awful but…still…I kind of wanted to slap her.
As we exited, steam left our room and drifted into the hallway. The next big group filed into the room for the Tai Chi workshop. Katrijn was standing in the hallway. She told me she was leaving. For a while, I stood alone feeling invisible and uneasy. With the other workshops going on and Frieda talking to everyone, there was little for me to do. Luckily, I had to participate in another Open House on a different side of town. I glanced around the room one final time.
“I have to go,” I said to Frieda while opening the door.
“Oh…you’re leaving already?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said without any explanation, “Good bye,” I closed the door behind me and exited the building. I smiled as I felt the city air and sun on my face. I felt relieved. It was as if I’d managed to escape a different dimension. I was back in my world again. I was safe now. I exhaled a sigh of relief. And I happily walked down the street, leaving the nuts and the squirrels behind.
The second time I went was for a teacher’s meeting. My friend Katrijn was going to start teaching there too. She was dressed nicely and looked clean and organized. It was our first interaction with the other teachers. We arrived and the old dirty black mats were on the floor with bolsters on top and a make-shift table in the middle. It was an attempt at “cozy” I imagine.
All the teachers sat barefoot on the bolsters. Since Katrijn and I were the newbies, we had to introduce ourselves but no one else told us who they were. One man with a big honker and a short silver beard tried to talk about India. He later introduced himself as Olivier.
Frieda cut him off. She was the woman in charge. Tall, big-boned and bug-eyed she spoke quickly. She made it clear she was running the show. Frieda began to talk about the process for signing up new students. She gestured to the wall behind her. There was a sort of exposed card catalog that would have made a librarian’s head spin. A metal rack held little cards in alphabetical order. The entire wall was filled. Each card belonged to a student. It was like the Dewey Decimal System and probably created in 1973 when the room opened.
“Now,” Frieda held up a card showing us as if we were children, “when a student comes to your class, you will need to get their card from the wall and stamp it. Then you will need to write their name on the attendance sheet. You need to make sure you fill out the attendance sheet every time you teach or we will have no way of knowing who came to your class.”
Frieda showed us the different cards and repeated the important stamping process at least three times as if this was one of the most important things ever. It sounded like it would take us longer to take attendance then to give a class.
A young pregnant woman who had wavy blonde hair explained how she wouldn’t be able to give massages much longer, she gestured to her stomach. Just then, the door opened and the third new teacher, who was very late, strutted into the room. She wore loose black jeans and a flannel shirt. She had shaggy hair. She climbed onto a pillow and sat with her legs apart. “Sorry I’m late” she smirked with a rough voice. She was sitting close to me. She had a faint blonde mustache and very thin lips.
Frieda stared and then said, “Why don’t you introduce yourself to us?”
“Okay,” she wore a sly grin, “I’m Rhianna and I’ll be teaching a style of gym and stretching that is a mix of yoga and Tai Chi. I created my own routine with traditional Western movements for people who find yoga scary or too hard.”
Frieda stared at her and then at the group. No one said a word. Rhianna’s appearance frightened me. I couldn’t imagine going to her for any class of any sort.
Frieda spoke about the cards and stamps again. She put down her pen and said “Okay, for those of you who want to stay and eat, the meeting is over.”
Each person ruffled in his or her bag and brought out little salads, cheeses, cakes and we passed out plates. Olivier began speaking about India again. “I go every year. It is such a magical place.” He said while scooping some kind of grains onto his plate.
A teacher in her late 40’s with curly reddish hair and huge glasses said, “I just did China and it was such a hard country to visit…the language, getting around, it really was difficult. I prefer India.”
“India is filled with so much culture and history,” he added.
I thought back to my trip in India with my husband. Images of open sewage, a woman lighting cow dung and then waving the vapors into her face, lepers, half-naked skinny children tugging at our clothes…but my favorite image of all is of me hanging out the side of a moving rickshaw and puking.
“Holy Shit,” my husband had commented at the time, “you looked like a fucking alien!” We had laughed but it wasn’t so funny when I puked another ten times, (though my stomach looked damn good for about 24 hours). I made a comment about my dislike for India. I don’t know why I said this in a room full of India lovers. Everyone stared at me.
Luckily, Katrijn piped up and said she had met her boyfriend in India and that is why she is now in Marseille. That was a good transition and Frieda then announced, “Baba Gunji is coming to Marseille. Are any of you going to go see him?”
“Oh, he’s amazing. I’ve heard him before,” said Olivier nibbling on his rice salad mixture.
“So have I! He is so real, no masks, he’s just himself and he makes you feel like you can be real too. He helps you get closer to yourself.” Frieda was always so intense.
“Yes. I don’t know how he does it. Just being in his presence makes you feel like it’s okay to be who you are,” continued Olivier.
“Exactly,” she picked at her bread and cheese, “he helps you accept yourself, know yourself better, get closer to yourself…” she said waving her bread in the air.
I listened to all this feeling like an outsider when Rita covered her mouth and said in my direction, “Get closer to yourself? I wanna get distance from myself. Heh heh heh.”
The voice of reason had spoken. I burst into laughter. She started laughing too, her eyes all squinty like someone who had just smoked a doobie. I liked her.
Two weeks later we had the Open House. Basically this was our biggest chance of the year to attract potential students. It was a sunny September morning. Frieda was going to make Chai that morning.
I say this because it had been decided that Chai would only be served in the morning, not in the afternoon. Also, the tea cup was to be filled to a certain level.
She was really into her Chai and had even printed it on the flyers as part of the Open House. She spoke about it during our meeting: The Chai in the morning, how she would offer Chai to people…in the morning. How people would come to our Open House, and if they came in the morning, they could have their cup of Chai.
Well, I arrived around 9:15am to help set-up the place. Random objects were on the shelves in the entry way, bathroom deodorizer spray, for example, which made no sense and was a total turn off. I mean, the first thing I think of when I see deodorizer spray is, "Cool, if I need to take a fucking shit, no one will know because I can spray this fantastic spray!"
Getting back to the Open House day, a massage therapist, Anne, was also helping set-up. She had short brown hair and was putting out flyers on the table in the entrance. The big yoga room had some tables and flyers too but was mainly empty so that we could give workshops.
“How can I help?” I asked looking around.
“You can help me hang these pictures,” Frieda wanted to hang pictures. I don’t know why it was a priority when so many other things needed to get done. She handed me three brand new canvases still in their plastic wrap.
“Okay, just tell me where.”
She came over and handed me a hammer and nails and then pointed to three spots on the wall that were way above my height. When she realized I couldn’t reach that high, she handed me the nails and I become her nail holder servant. It was a very inefficient way of using an extra set of hands. And then the two of us hung pictures.
“You’re hanging pictures…now?” asked Anne. We were expecting loads of people and it was just the three of us getting the place ready.
“Yes! Yes! Now!” she said as if this made perfect sense.
Soon a horrible burning smell began to enter the hallway. “Oh, no! Is that my Chai?” Frieda shrieked.
“I don’t know. It smells like incense,” I remarked.
Frieda fled to a little room in the back. “Oh, no! Oh, no! My Chai. It’s boiled over onto the wood floor.” She ran to get some towels. I followed and did the same. She started slopping up the mess that had boiled over from the electric kettle. “I forgot this kettle needs to be watched or this happens…” Then she disappeared before cleaning the floor properly to do something inefficient again. I took my time cleaning up the mess and wondered if I was on Chai duty or if she was coming back.
Soon Katrijn and a couple other teachers arrived. Katrijn took a look around and smiled at me. “So,” she asked me, “what are we supposed to do?”
I looked over at Frieda and then back to Katrijn, “Just do what she says.” I said somewhat under my breath. The two of us giggled.
Soon the door rang. It was our first potential student. A thirty-something woman, pale and chubby, stood in the doorway holding a plastic bag and her Open House flyer.
“Come in! Come in!” Frieda said over-enthusiastically with her bug eyes.
“Hello!” everyone chimed in.
“Hello,” she paused and looked at each one of us slowly. “I’m here for the Open House.”
Frieda made her way quickly over to our potential student. The woman held the flyer in her hand. Frieda towered over her, “Okay, which workshop interests you?” Together they studied the flyer in utter concentration.
Frieda left for something else and the lady approached me in slow motion and spoke to me in a monotonous tone, “Can yoga hurt me? I have some problems…” She asked me lots of questions, the same question just worded differently each time. “Will yoga help me?” I tried to comfort her and told her soft yoga would probably be good for her. Nothing I said seemed to soothe her, she just stood there looking lost.
I went back to Chai duty and moved some random objects into the back. Each time a student would arrive, Frieda would monopolize the conversation and none of the other teachers would get in a word.
“I might as well leave,” mentioned Katrijn with wide eyes, “she isn’t letting us talk to anyone.”
As 10am approached, people started gathering around for a Soft Gym class that Rhianna was going to lead, however, she was nowhere to be seen. Frieda’s eyes starting shifting left and right. She kept looking at the round clock on the wall. At least 4 people were waiting for Rhianna. Frieda started thinking out loud. “Where is Rhianna? It’s 10 o’clock. These people want to try Soft Gym. We have to start. What should I do? It’s 10 o’clock…”
Katrijn offered her help, “I teach Soft Yoga so I could give the workshop if you want?”
“No! No! No!” Frieda started pacing the hallway. “I’ll do it. It can’t be just anything. It has to be something similar. I know what she does.” Katrijn looked shocked at her response.
Frieda brought the people into the big yoga room and Katrijn turned to me, “Wow! This woman is really awful. I’m trying to help and she acts like that? She really wants to do everything!”
Then we spied on Frieda who was leading a group in auto-massage. She briskly rubbed her arms up and down, then her legs. She encouraged the workshop students to do as she was doing. The others began to rub their arms too. Katrijn and I looked at each other and started laughing.
“What is she doing?” Katrijn asked me.
“I think it’s Do-In a type of auto-massage…” They were in fact doing something quite legitimate, but it looked ridiculous and Frieda teaching something that is supposed to relax people just made it even more absurd.
About ten minutes later, Rhianna entered. Her hair was matted on one side and sticking out on the other. She must have literally rolled out of bed and thrown on her jacket. Her eyes were tiny and sunken into her head. The sight of her made me start laughing. “Tired?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows at me, “Why? Do I like tired?”
“Yep.”
“Do I normally look energetic?”
“Nope,” I answered and we both laughed again.
“Frieda started teaching your class, did you want to do part of it now that you are here?” asked Katrijn.
“Nah, let her do it,” She chuckled.
Ten thirty was coming up. It would be time for my workshop, Dynamic Yoga with Suny. Yep they spelled my name wrong on over 15,000 flyers, I was disappointed with that. Frieda was to blame, but what are you going to say to that broad?
As Frieda and her students left the room, she said to the next group, “Now for Dynamic Yoga with Sunny.”
I scanned the crowd of about 8 people. The slow chubby lady was part of my group! She began asking me a bunch of questions again and I noticed a wart on her finger. Not just any wart, a mushy dangly one. Eww. I made a future mental note: Do not adjust her hands.
I entered the yoga room and began to set-up mats, people just kept on pouring in. A tall man in a bright blue construction suit, the kind you have to zip up, was one of my students. A red-eyed man who probably found our flyer in the dumpster he sleeps in was also part of my little posse. He had whiskey breath and was wearing black jeans and a black long sleeved shirt that reeked of nicotine. (Sound like a potential yoga student to you?) A couple women looked dressed for a marathon and a couple others looked like yogis who were just seeing if I was any good which made me nervous.
My class was full so I shut the door, ready to begin. Supposedly, Frieda panicked and repeatedly said in an ugly tone of voice, “What? She closed the door? This is an Open House... The doors stay open in an Open House.”
It was a hot day in Marseille. Our room had no fans and no open windows. I began the class and it heated up a little too quickly. I hadn’t anticipated any sweating during a 30-minute yoga workshop and thus I had put on make-up and worn a normal non-absorbent bra. But soon, sweat was running down my cleavage and my face was dripping. I had to sneak a couple peeks in the mirror to make sure I didn’t look like Alice Cooper with mascara melting down my face. I looked out at all the workshop participants, people whom I’d most likely never see again: slow wart lady, construction man, and drunken dude. One or two people’s yoga practice was almost too good. I felt like they must have been there specifically to investigate me on behalf of some undercover yoga teacher committee. Would I pass their test?
I watched the clock and timed the class perfectly. We were just coming out of our relaxation when Frieda burst open the door and banged on a bronze bowl repeatedly, “Time’s up!” she chimed like one of the evil step-sisters from Cinderella. Could she possibly be any more obnoxious? The truth is, she is an unaware obnoxious person so you kind of feel sorry for her. I do not think she knows she is so awful but…still…I kind of wanted to slap her.
As we exited, steam left our room and drifted into the hallway. The next big group filed into the room for the Tai Chi workshop. Katrijn was standing in the hallway. She told me she was leaving. For a while, I stood alone feeling invisible and uneasy. With the other workshops going on and Frieda talking to everyone, there was little for me to do. Luckily, I had to participate in another Open House on a different side of town. I glanced around the room one final time.
“I have to go,” I said to Frieda while opening the door.
“Oh…you’re leaving already?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said without any explanation, “Good bye,” I closed the door behind me and exited the building. I smiled as I felt the city air and sun on my face. I felt relieved. It was as if I’d managed to escape a different dimension. I was back in my world again. I was safe now. I exhaled a sigh of relief. And I happily walked down the street, leaving the nuts and the squirrels behind.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Give A Hoot. Don't Pollute!
Give a hoot. Don’t pollute!
Remember this message growing up? A long time ago, the US decided littering was bad so they came up with an anti-littering campaign. I don’t remember what it was like before this campaign. Was the US messy and dirty? This cartoon owl sitting on the branch was a part of my daily TV life, “Give a hoot. Don’t pollute.”
Do you think the US was like Marseille is today? Strewn about papers, broken glass, gum, lumps of foamy spit every two steps plus men washing their ass in public fountains? (Jeeves and his wife can confirm this latter appealing snippet)
And my sister Diane and I once saw a man drop his pants, spread his butt cheeks while standing upright and unload a splashing mess onto the sidewalks in Toulouse. We both thought he was going to whip out his penis. No, he had diarrhea and it was so shocking we ran as fast as we could to my apartment and when we felt safe, we stopped, doubled over laughing and Diane said, “Only with you, Sunny. Only with you!”
“Oh, my God. That was fucking disgusting” I said. My heart was racing.
“That was awesome! That was hilarious!” Diane had a high. She loved stuff like that.
Somehow I doubt the US was ever in bad shape like this even during the “Gangs of New York” days it still was probably better than Marseille. My mother grew up in NYC and claims to have seen a man crossing the street with nothing more than a newspaper tucked under his arm. He was just strolling along as if everything was perfectly normal, naked and a paper tucked under his arm. This is so mild in comparison, a nice summer breeze. Well, if we are going to go in this direction, crazy people we have seen in our lives, I’ll never get to my wonderful litter theme, so let me try and get back to that.
First, let’s revisit the American campaign. I imagine the reason why they used the word “pollute” is because nothing really rhymes that well with “litter” but we humans are not a bunch of cars sputtering exhaust, so why refer to us like that? Is it just because the person in charge of the project was uncreative or maybe lazy?
I can come up with something good. The Hoot campaign was an owl. Well, why not something like “Save us critters, don’t litter” and you could have a really cute animated hedgehog with bits of paper stuck in his quills? Wouldn’t that have been brilliant? I mean, that would have sent a nice message, much better than an owl sitting pretentiously on his branch preaching to the pulpit.
Even though I saw the owl every day, I think I littered as a child. In fact, I remember my turning point when I realized how awful littering was. I was with some friends, most likely Sydney and Kayla, and we were with a new guy named Mario. He had long black shiny hair and said he was Aztec. Yes, you heard me right, he was Aztec. Are you thinking, “There are no Aztecs, what the heck is she talking about.” But Mario referred to himself as Aztec. Clearly, he was embarrassed to say, “I’m Mexican”. It was much better to refer to himself as part of a people who no longer existed. Mario belonged to a people who built some pyramids and then disappeared inexplicably.
Getting back to my turning point from littering to cleaning up after myself, we had been sitting in some tall grass in a park smoking weed. We were dancing in the sunshine and eating chips and candy bars. We decided it was time to leave and so we all stood up and started to head out.
“Hey! You guys are gonna leave this garbage here?” cried out Mario in disbelief.
We looked down and saw our wrappers. It looked ugly and instantly I was filled with a consciousness whereas before I had been operating blindly without a clue. I felt guilty. I was going to leave that mess behind in the pretty prairie?
Quietly we all bent down and gathered our mess. Twenty years later, I still do not litter, it is one of the worst things I can think of doing…until recently.
Please, don’t judge me. I can explain. It’s awful I know but somehow these past days I’ve been littering. I feel a tremendous relief as if my non-littering was building up inside me for years and has finally been unleashed into a city that understands. Marseille, you understand me, don’t you?
Every time I teach yoga, I have to walk up the dirtiest street I have yet to find in my life. I don’t think Jeeves or I have managed to walk up or down it without some kind of comment every time:
“Christ, this is disgusting!” Jeeves says with enthusiasm every time.
“Oh, my god, I have to walk in the street, this sidewalk is impossible!” I say knowing damn well that attempting to walk on the sidewalk never pans out.
“That’s human shit. Oh, God! It stinks!”
“Hurry, walk faster, I can’t stand it here!”
“This is the worst street in Marseille.”
“It really is! This is the worst street in Marseille!”
It is not possible to keep our overwhelming thoughts to ourselves while walking on this street. I even take my girls to yoga on Wednesday morning and they say things like:
“Mommy, are you breathing yet?”
“No, I’m still holding my breath.”
“It smells really bad, Mommy!”
“I know, I know. Watch out! Take a big step, that’s pee from a man!”
“How do you know, Mommy? How do you know it’s from a man?”
“Because there’s a lot!”
“Girls, hurry, hurry, this is awful! Breathe out of your mouth.”
“I don’t know how. I still can smell it. Mommy, it’s really bad!”
We’ve been doing this walk almost daily for over a year now. But, it is just such an inspiring street and to top it off, listen to this, it is called Rue des Héros! Do you know what this means? You must have an inkling. It translates to Hero Street! Isn’t that exciting?
This street is home to the prostitutes, drunkards, homeless, and druggies. Sometimes I find needles on the yoga door stoop, empty beer bottles. I watch older and experienced prostitutes stand in the street and younger ones getting into cars with African men. There is a dumpster at the top of the street and at the bottom of the street. Behind the dumpsters serves as a public toilet plus all the trash that people throw alongside the dumpster instead of inside it.
The other night, I was eating a chocolate on my way down rue des héros (have you ever eaten a chocolate while breathing in shit and urine stench?). Feeling overwhelmed and rebellious, I looked left, I looked right and then I threw my wrapper under the dumpster so it could hang out with the other litter and I swear, I felt so fucking proud. It was my Baptism, my rite of passage into Marseillais-dom!
Later that evening over dinner, I told my husband and he was annoyed. “Why do you have to be such a rebel?” he asked.
I thought about his question. “Look, this city is so dirty. It felt good plus my wrapper just joined a pile of wrappers on the street anyway. I’m just adapting…” I explained.
“No,” he corrected me, “you are giving in because it is easier to litter.”
He did have a point, it was easier to litter. But, something about putting my wrapper in a dumpster seemed absurd. There are times when I feel like I’m just standing in a huge wasteland with reminisces of an ancient city, buried somewhere. So, I basically repeated what I had said, “It’s not that I’m rebelling or that it’s easier. But, no one else gives a shit and now I don’t give a shit either.”
“Exactly” he said smiling, “you’re giving in because it’s easier.”
“Whatever,” I said. I knew the truth. I was morphing into a true Marsaillaise.
A few days later, in my little neighborhood, one of my students brought me fresh apricots from her garden. After our yoga class, I walked happily down the street stepping over plastic bags, random shoes, cartons, while eating apricots with my friend Silver.
I held the pit in my hand hesitating whether or not to chuck it. “I know it’s awful, Silver, but hey, it’s Marseille so I’m going to litter like everyone else,” I said and carefully tossed my apricot pit alongside the street as if I were skipping stones on a lake. Then I ate two more apricots and did this two more times. She is from here but bitches constantly so I figured she would be proud of my littering though I don’t really know. Truthfully, I found my behavior a little over the top and uncalled for. I started feeling a little guilty. How far am I going to go with this?
Just yesterday, I started getting sick of my chewing gum. Chew, chew, chew. I reached the point when my gum became god damn annoying and I started thinking, “Why the hell is this gum in my mouth? I need to get rid of it!” So, I got rid of it, right on the side of the road. Of course I made sure to throw my gum close to the edge of a sidewalk where cars park, not smack in the middle of the sidewalk.
I haven’t reached complete and utter disrespect. I’m a respectful litteresse (I just created this personage) I never toss my trash directly in a walking path. (Though I just had an excellent day dream: I’m standing in the street with my garbage bin filled with papers and banana peels. I just stand there dumping it into the street in broad day light. That is what I’d really like to do while shouting, “What do you think of this? Is this how you like it? Want me to go back home and get another bin for ya? Is this how we do things here, huh? I’ll show you litter!”) And, I always make sure no one is behind me before chucking something haphazardly over my shoulder. On the contrary, I have dodged many lit flying cigarette butts.
Littering comes in degrees. I’m a mild litteresse, like someone who smokes a cigarette socially, I litter when I’m among my fellowmen. The worse the litter around me, the more I am inspired to join the party. And if someone just happens to walk in my gum, do you think I really care? No. Because that person could quite easily be the one who let his dog take a shit in front of our door the other day, right?
How did I reach this point of hootlessness? Maybe I’ll come around. Maybe it’s a rebellious phase all people go through at some point in Marseille. I don’t know. But for now, I don’t give a hoot, I pollute.
Remember this message growing up? A long time ago, the US decided littering was bad so they came up with an anti-littering campaign. I don’t remember what it was like before this campaign. Was the US messy and dirty? This cartoon owl sitting on the branch was a part of my daily TV life, “Give a hoot. Don’t pollute.”
Do you think the US was like Marseille is today? Strewn about papers, broken glass, gum, lumps of foamy spit every two steps plus men washing their ass in public fountains? (Jeeves and his wife can confirm this latter appealing snippet)
And my sister Diane and I once saw a man drop his pants, spread his butt cheeks while standing upright and unload a splashing mess onto the sidewalks in Toulouse. We both thought he was going to whip out his penis. No, he had diarrhea and it was so shocking we ran as fast as we could to my apartment and when we felt safe, we stopped, doubled over laughing and Diane said, “Only with you, Sunny. Only with you!”
“Oh, my God. That was fucking disgusting” I said. My heart was racing.
“That was awesome! That was hilarious!” Diane had a high. She loved stuff like that.
Somehow I doubt the US was ever in bad shape like this even during the “Gangs of New York” days it still was probably better than Marseille. My mother grew up in NYC and claims to have seen a man crossing the street with nothing more than a newspaper tucked under his arm. He was just strolling along as if everything was perfectly normal, naked and a paper tucked under his arm. This is so mild in comparison, a nice summer breeze. Well, if we are going to go in this direction, crazy people we have seen in our lives, I’ll never get to my wonderful litter theme, so let me try and get back to that.
First, let’s revisit the American campaign. I imagine the reason why they used the word “pollute” is because nothing really rhymes that well with “litter” but we humans are not a bunch of cars sputtering exhaust, so why refer to us like that? Is it just because the person in charge of the project was uncreative or maybe lazy?
I can come up with something good. The Hoot campaign was an owl. Well, why not something like “Save us critters, don’t litter” and you could have a really cute animated hedgehog with bits of paper stuck in his quills? Wouldn’t that have been brilliant? I mean, that would have sent a nice message, much better than an owl sitting pretentiously on his branch preaching to the pulpit.
Even though I saw the owl every day, I think I littered as a child. In fact, I remember my turning point when I realized how awful littering was. I was with some friends, most likely Sydney and Kayla, and we were with a new guy named Mario. He had long black shiny hair and said he was Aztec. Yes, you heard me right, he was Aztec. Are you thinking, “There are no Aztecs, what the heck is she talking about.” But Mario referred to himself as Aztec. Clearly, he was embarrassed to say, “I’m Mexican”. It was much better to refer to himself as part of a people who no longer existed. Mario belonged to a people who built some pyramids and then disappeared inexplicably.
Getting back to my turning point from littering to cleaning up after myself, we had been sitting in some tall grass in a park smoking weed. We were dancing in the sunshine and eating chips and candy bars. We decided it was time to leave and so we all stood up and started to head out.
“Hey! You guys are gonna leave this garbage here?” cried out Mario in disbelief.
We looked down and saw our wrappers. It looked ugly and instantly I was filled with a consciousness whereas before I had been operating blindly without a clue. I felt guilty. I was going to leave that mess behind in the pretty prairie?
Quietly we all bent down and gathered our mess. Twenty years later, I still do not litter, it is one of the worst things I can think of doing…until recently.
Please, don’t judge me. I can explain. It’s awful I know but somehow these past days I’ve been littering. I feel a tremendous relief as if my non-littering was building up inside me for years and has finally been unleashed into a city that understands. Marseille, you understand me, don’t you?
Every time I teach yoga, I have to walk up the dirtiest street I have yet to find in my life. I don’t think Jeeves or I have managed to walk up or down it without some kind of comment every time:
“Christ, this is disgusting!” Jeeves says with enthusiasm every time.
“Oh, my god, I have to walk in the street, this sidewalk is impossible!” I say knowing damn well that attempting to walk on the sidewalk never pans out.
“That’s human shit. Oh, God! It stinks!”
“Hurry, walk faster, I can’t stand it here!”
“This is the worst street in Marseille.”
“It really is! This is the worst street in Marseille!”
It is not possible to keep our overwhelming thoughts to ourselves while walking on this street. I even take my girls to yoga on Wednesday morning and they say things like:
“Mommy, are you breathing yet?”
“No, I’m still holding my breath.”
“It smells really bad, Mommy!”
“I know, I know. Watch out! Take a big step, that’s pee from a man!”
“How do you know, Mommy? How do you know it’s from a man?”
“Because there’s a lot!”
“Girls, hurry, hurry, this is awful! Breathe out of your mouth.”
“I don’t know how. I still can smell it. Mommy, it’s really bad!”
We’ve been doing this walk almost daily for over a year now. But, it is just such an inspiring street and to top it off, listen to this, it is called Rue des Héros! Do you know what this means? You must have an inkling. It translates to Hero Street! Isn’t that exciting?
This street is home to the prostitutes, drunkards, homeless, and druggies. Sometimes I find needles on the yoga door stoop, empty beer bottles. I watch older and experienced prostitutes stand in the street and younger ones getting into cars with African men. There is a dumpster at the top of the street and at the bottom of the street. Behind the dumpsters serves as a public toilet plus all the trash that people throw alongside the dumpster instead of inside it.
The other night, I was eating a chocolate on my way down rue des héros (have you ever eaten a chocolate while breathing in shit and urine stench?). Feeling overwhelmed and rebellious, I looked left, I looked right and then I threw my wrapper under the dumpster so it could hang out with the other litter and I swear, I felt so fucking proud. It was my Baptism, my rite of passage into Marseillais-dom!
Later that evening over dinner, I told my husband and he was annoyed. “Why do you have to be such a rebel?” he asked.
I thought about his question. “Look, this city is so dirty. It felt good plus my wrapper just joined a pile of wrappers on the street anyway. I’m just adapting…” I explained.
“No,” he corrected me, “you are giving in because it is easier to litter.”
He did have a point, it was easier to litter. But, something about putting my wrapper in a dumpster seemed absurd. There are times when I feel like I’m just standing in a huge wasteland with reminisces of an ancient city, buried somewhere. So, I basically repeated what I had said, “It’s not that I’m rebelling or that it’s easier. But, no one else gives a shit and now I don’t give a shit either.”
“Exactly” he said smiling, “you’re giving in because it’s easier.”
“Whatever,” I said. I knew the truth. I was morphing into a true Marsaillaise.
A few days later, in my little neighborhood, one of my students brought me fresh apricots from her garden. After our yoga class, I walked happily down the street stepping over plastic bags, random shoes, cartons, while eating apricots with my friend Silver.
I held the pit in my hand hesitating whether or not to chuck it. “I know it’s awful, Silver, but hey, it’s Marseille so I’m going to litter like everyone else,” I said and carefully tossed my apricot pit alongside the street as if I were skipping stones on a lake. Then I ate two more apricots and did this two more times. She is from here but bitches constantly so I figured she would be proud of my littering though I don’t really know. Truthfully, I found my behavior a little over the top and uncalled for. I started feeling a little guilty. How far am I going to go with this?
Just yesterday, I started getting sick of my chewing gum. Chew, chew, chew. I reached the point when my gum became god damn annoying and I started thinking, “Why the hell is this gum in my mouth? I need to get rid of it!” So, I got rid of it, right on the side of the road. Of course I made sure to throw my gum close to the edge of a sidewalk where cars park, not smack in the middle of the sidewalk.
I haven’t reached complete and utter disrespect. I’m a respectful litteresse (I just created this personage) I never toss my trash directly in a walking path. (Though I just had an excellent day dream: I’m standing in the street with my garbage bin filled with papers and banana peels. I just stand there dumping it into the street in broad day light. That is what I’d really like to do while shouting, “What do you think of this? Is this how you like it? Want me to go back home and get another bin for ya? Is this how we do things here, huh? I’ll show you litter!”) And, I always make sure no one is behind me before chucking something haphazardly over my shoulder. On the contrary, I have dodged many lit flying cigarette butts.
Littering comes in degrees. I’m a mild litteresse, like someone who smokes a cigarette socially, I litter when I’m among my fellowmen. The worse the litter around me, the more I am inspired to join the party. And if someone just happens to walk in my gum, do you think I really care? No. Because that person could quite easily be the one who let his dog take a shit in front of our door the other day, right?
How did I reach this point of hootlessness? Maybe I’ll come around. Maybe it’s a rebellious phase all people go through at some point in Marseille. I don’t know. But for now, I don’t give a hoot, I pollute.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Dude Looks Like A Lady
Twelve year-old Maxim entered the living room wearing a long blue wig, lip gloss, black pantyhose, black knee-high boots and, the killer, a stuffed bra under his dress.
“Wow!” laughed my husband not sure what kind of comment was appropriate.
Eva was bedazzled and stared with a big grin on her face. Claire pulled on his sleeve “Hi! Hi!”
“Mommy, why is he wearing that?” Eva pointed to his long blue locks.
“Oh, just for fun,” I tried to explain, “do you like his wig?”
Eva nodded yes. Long hair is one of her preoccupations.
Maxim stood in the entrance. He held his head back exposing his neck. Then he doused it with woman’s perfume. “Voilà,” he breathed. The final touch. He was now ready. He went around the room with pursed lips, kissing the cheeks of all the dinner guests with his shiny peach lip gloss.
It wasn’t the first time he had captured the crowd’s attention. Several months earlier, he had shown up to our house in a white Mozart shirt, ruffles down the chest and long swooping sleeves. This seemed more like a fashion statement and I actually liked it. I had no doubt he was homosexual and his mother being somewhat macho and provocative seemed like a perfect mother for a homosexual child to have. She would be open-minded, tolerant, and let her son express himself to the max. Wouldn’t she?
Trying to break the ice a little, I turned to her after Maxim left the room and with the intentions to proffer a compliment, I said jokingly, “Maxim is lucky to have a cool mom like you.”
Her eyes widened and she stepped in a little closer to me. Her gray spiky hair just inches away from my face. “What do you mean?” she was waiting for a special response, one that I wasn’t tough enough to give.
“Well, not many mothers would be okay letting their son dress like that,” I instantly regretted having opened my mouth at all.
“It’s totally normal for children to dress up,” big brown eyes bore into me. “It’s okay for girls to dress like boys. My daughter used to wear suits and ties and no one thought there was anything wrong with that. But when a boy dresses like a girl, it’s not okay?”
I held her stare. She wasn’t going to intimidate me. However, I dared not say what I was thinking:
“Your son is wearing a bra stuffed with tissues under his dress. Did your daughter stuff her fucking pants with a sock to look like a man with a dick and balls? Did she draw a mustache on her face and wear men’s cologne? Because that my dear is fucking weird. And I highly doubt your daughter looked like a man. Your son is not just wearing a dress or just a wig, he is in drag. How many teenage boys willingly and solo, dress up like women at parties? Zero boys, that’s how many because it is NOT normal. And I don’t care what your son wears, but if you think it’s normal, you are fucking blind.”
That’s what I wanted to say. But, I couldn’t say that so I said, “Yeah. I suppose you’re right…” and hoped it was enough to remove whatever pole I had accidentally rammed into her ass.
As more guests arrived to the dinner party, I watched people’s expression as Maxim sashayed into the room, shriveled sausages dangling from a fork in a dangerous way as he asked who wanted one. (His father put him in charge of the BBQ. “I don’t care if you look like a woman, you are my son and males are always in charge of the BBQ whether they wear dresses are not,” could have been one of his reasons.)
“Are we going to find melted blue hairs in our food?” Joked my husband as Maxim flung a sausage onto Claire’s plate. I laughed. No one else did.
People wore plastered smiles. I observed each person as they said hello to Maxim. Some said, “Bonsoir, Mademoiselle,” in a light-hearted way. But I have telepathy and I could hear their thoughts, “Holy shit! Smile. Look normal. God damn! I’m glad my kid doesn’t dress like that! What the fuck? Smile, pretend it’s totally normal!”
“Where did you get those stockings?” asked my husband. Maxim obviously could not have borrowed them from his sisters or mother considering he was much taller and, shall we say, a “plus size.”
“Did you buy those for him?” my husband asked Maxim’s father. My husband was treading in dangerous waters. I wanted him to shut up. Maxim’s father chuckled, but did not share. I laughed nervously. A vision of Maxim swaying down the pantyhose aisle in a luxurious department store flashed in my mind. Did his mother take him? Did he go alone? What about his enormous boots? Did he buy those too in the women’s department or does he actually, miraculously wear the same size as his scary mom?
More families arrived with more children. Some other boys around the same age as Maxim entered the house. They were the same age, but they were from different planets. They had messy hair that was slightly dirty, boys who liked being boys. No interest whatsoever in how they looked or what they wore. No identity crises going on in that corner. They saw Maxim and laughed. Boy, that Maxim! He sure was funny. They were too young to realize Maxim was most likely having gender issues and probably wanted to be a girl.
Later in the evening, all the children were upstairs. I went up to see how things were going. All the children, ages 3-12, were spread out on the floor playing games, smiling, innocent wide eyes, and crumby faces. Who do you think sat by himself at a console in front of a mirror? You guessed it. Enraptured with his own image, Maxim sat with his long blue wig and a curling iron in front of a well-lit mirror as if he worked at Burlesque and was preparing for his next act. The scene was mind-blowing. One could say, “Oh, he was just having fun.” Yep. He sure knows how to get into a role.
After the party, back at our home I lie in bed watching my husband hang up his clothes. “It’s more than just being gay,” I said to him. “I’ve had gay friends and they were happy to be men. They had no desire to be women at all except on special occasions when everyone dressed up together.”
My husband listened to me. “Well, we don’t know what his parents think or if they have tried to talk with him. It is very delicate and I’m sure they are not going to talk to their friends about this. But, what is sad is no matter what, Maxim is going to deal with gay crime at school and in life. It’s a fact.”
I thought about this. This made me sad. “You know, it’s more than just being gay,” I said again.
“What really freaked me out, Sunny, is not the dress or the wig, it’s the fake boobs,” said my husband.
“I know. I wonder if deep down Maxim feels like he should have been born a girl, you know?”
“Well, I don’t want to think about it.”
We were both silent for a while. An image of Maxim’s mother sitting on her couch alone watching a transsexual on TV popped into my head. A woman with manly hands is being interviewed. “I always knew I was supposed to be a girl”, she says in a husky voice, “It wasn’t a choice really. I had to have the operation. I have always been a woman inside and now I am finally one on the outside.”
You hear a bell toll once. The camera pans in on Maxim’s mother. We see her eyes widen as the camera goes in closer and closer. Her hands begin to shake. Quickly she covers her mouth. She shakes her head in denial, disbelief. And. Cut.
Or maybe I’m just being dramatic. Maybe Maxim is normal, just checking things out. There is always the possibility he’s doing it to avenge his parents. Let’s assume his parents act cool when guests are around but when they are alone, they rip into him. “Do you realize how embarrassing you are? Christ!” they scream. “Cut this faggy shit out! Can’t you just be a plain old regular teen?”
“Fuck you,” he mutters to himself as he marches up to his room and hatches a plan. The next morning before he leaves for school, he swipes 50 bucks out of his mother’s purse. Instead of going to school, he hops on the bus to Les Galleries Lafayette. He heads straight to the hosiery section and chooses a nice pair of black tights in XL. Then, he tries on numerous pairs of boots in the Women’s shoe department. He hides his loot under his bed and waits for D-Day. Saturday evening finally arrives. His parents are busy setting out bottles of liquor and wine, paper napkins and bowls of chips. Maxim finds his sister’s wig and curling iron, puts on his outfit and waits until he hears the voices of guests.
“Show time,” he says into the mirror with a smirk. He comes down the stairs and sways into the room flinging his long blue tresses over his shoulder. “Good evening, everyone,” he says as he rearranges his bra a little. He catches his mother’s eye. Her stare burns a hole through his heart. He winks at her enjoying every moment. It’s as if someone is spoon-feeding him chocolate mousse.
Or, there’s always the simple explanation that he’s just a drama queen and loves the attention. If it is just a taste for the thespian life, then next time we see him he could be dressed like the Hobbit or even Yoda, right? And years from now, just after he takes a bow from a stunning performance and the curtain goes down, his parents who are sitting in the audience will turn to their friends and say, “You know, for a moment there, we all thought our Maxim wanted to be a girl.” And his parents and their friends will all chuckle heartily and yuk it up. “Yeah, that sure was a scary time…ha ha ha!”
And is it true that girls dress-up like boys? Besides wearing a suit and a tie, maybe some masculine looking shoes and a short haircut, I’ve never seen a woman dress like a man to the same extreme as a man dresses up like a woman. Have any of you out there seen a transvestite woman? I mean the whole thing: flatten her breasts down to nothing with some kind of tunic, stuff the crotch of her pants, fake five o’clock shadow? Yes, women may dress in men clothing, but it is more of a fashion statement or even a feminist statement, like “Hey, I don’t need to show my tits and ass to be a woman.” It’s not intentionally done to make people think they are men.
And now, I must sidetrack because this gets really interesting! I have a Tantric explanation to this whole gender issue. Science has shown that all embryos are first female and then some become male after certain hormonal and developmental phases take place. In fact, if you cut an embryo bunny’s gonads, the embryo will automatically revert to a female which proves all life is female in the beginning; the male species develops from an original female state. Therefore, (this is the Tantric part), men often feel this desire to go back to their feminine side and this is why sometimes you see men dressing as women and these men can be heterosexual. On the contrary, it’s rare that a man finds his wife secretly trying on boxer shorts and shaving her face or that she has a special suitcase filled with men shirts and pants that she wears when he is out of the house. Isn’t this fascinating?
Well, to come back full circle, back to the humor in it all, I don’t think any of it is good or bad, right or wrong, it just is. Maxim made a big impression on me. He obviously got me thinking. Maybe his identity and gender issues will work themselves out in time. But today, dude looks like a lady.
“Wow!” laughed my husband not sure what kind of comment was appropriate.
Eva was bedazzled and stared with a big grin on her face. Claire pulled on his sleeve “Hi! Hi!”
“Mommy, why is he wearing that?” Eva pointed to his long blue locks.
“Oh, just for fun,” I tried to explain, “do you like his wig?”
Eva nodded yes. Long hair is one of her preoccupations.
Maxim stood in the entrance. He held his head back exposing his neck. Then he doused it with woman’s perfume. “Voilà,” he breathed. The final touch. He was now ready. He went around the room with pursed lips, kissing the cheeks of all the dinner guests with his shiny peach lip gloss.
It wasn’t the first time he had captured the crowd’s attention. Several months earlier, he had shown up to our house in a white Mozart shirt, ruffles down the chest and long swooping sleeves. This seemed more like a fashion statement and I actually liked it. I had no doubt he was homosexual and his mother being somewhat macho and provocative seemed like a perfect mother for a homosexual child to have. She would be open-minded, tolerant, and let her son express himself to the max. Wouldn’t she?
Trying to break the ice a little, I turned to her after Maxim left the room and with the intentions to proffer a compliment, I said jokingly, “Maxim is lucky to have a cool mom like you.”
Her eyes widened and she stepped in a little closer to me. Her gray spiky hair just inches away from my face. “What do you mean?” she was waiting for a special response, one that I wasn’t tough enough to give.
“Well, not many mothers would be okay letting their son dress like that,” I instantly regretted having opened my mouth at all.
“It’s totally normal for children to dress up,” big brown eyes bore into me. “It’s okay for girls to dress like boys. My daughter used to wear suits and ties and no one thought there was anything wrong with that. But when a boy dresses like a girl, it’s not okay?”
I held her stare. She wasn’t going to intimidate me. However, I dared not say what I was thinking:
“Your son is wearing a bra stuffed with tissues under his dress. Did your daughter stuff her fucking pants with a sock to look like a man with a dick and balls? Did she draw a mustache on her face and wear men’s cologne? Because that my dear is fucking weird. And I highly doubt your daughter looked like a man. Your son is not just wearing a dress or just a wig, he is in drag. How many teenage boys willingly and solo, dress up like women at parties? Zero boys, that’s how many because it is NOT normal. And I don’t care what your son wears, but if you think it’s normal, you are fucking blind.”
That’s what I wanted to say. But, I couldn’t say that so I said, “Yeah. I suppose you’re right…” and hoped it was enough to remove whatever pole I had accidentally rammed into her ass.
As more guests arrived to the dinner party, I watched people’s expression as Maxim sashayed into the room, shriveled sausages dangling from a fork in a dangerous way as he asked who wanted one. (His father put him in charge of the BBQ. “I don’t care if you look like a woman, you are my son and males are always in charge of the BBQ whether they wear dresses are not,” could have been one of his reasons.)
“Are we going to find melted blue hairs in our food?” Joked my husband as Maxim flung a sausage onto Claire’s plate. I laughed. No one else did.
People wore plastered smiles. I observed each person as they said hello to Maxim. Some said, “Bonsoir, Mademoiselle,” in a light-hearted way. But I have telepathy and I could hear their thoughts, “Holy shit! Smile. Look normal. God damn! I’m glad my kid doesn’t dress like that! What the fuck? Smile, pretend it’s totally normal!”
“Where did you get those stockings?” asked my husband. Maxim obviously could not have borrowed them from his sisters or mother considering he was much taller and, shall we say, a “plus size.”
“Did you buy those for him?” my husband asked Maxim’s father. My husband was treading in dangerous waters. I wanted him to shut up. Maxim’s father chuckled, but did not share. I laughed nervously. A vision of Maxim swaying down the pantyhose aisle in a luxurious department store flashed in my mind. Did his mother take him? Did he go alone? What about his enormous boots? Did he buy those too in the women’s department or does he actually, miraculously wear the same size as his scary mom?
More families arrived with more children. Some other boys around the same age as Maxim entered the house. They were the same age, but they were from different planets. They had messy hair that was slightly dirty, boys who liked being boys. No interest whatsoever in how they looked or what they wore. No identity crises going on in that corner. They saw Maxim and laughed. Boy, that Maxim! He sure was funny. They were too young to realize Maxim was most likely having gender issues and probably wanted to be a girl.
Later in the evening, all the children were upstairs. I went up to see how things were going. All the children, ages 3-12, were spread out on the floor playing games, smiling, innocent wide eyes, and crumby faces. Who do you think sat by himself at a console in front of a mirror? You guessed it. Enraptured with his own image, Maxim sat with his long blue wig and a curling iron in front of a well-lit mirror as if he worked at Burlesque and was preparing for his next act. The scene was mind-blowing. One could say, “Oh, he was just having fun.” Yep. He sure knows how to get into a role.
After the party, back at our home I lie in bed watching my husband hang up his clothes. “It’s more than just being gay,” I said to him. “I’ve had gay friends and they were happy to be men. They had no desire to be women at all except on special occasions when everyone dressed up together.”
My husband listened to me. “Well, we don’t know what his parents think or if they have tried to talk with him. It is very delicate and I’m sure they are not going to talk to their friends about this. But, what is sad is no matter what, Maxim is going to deal with gay crime at school and in life. It’s a fact.”
I thought about this. This made me sad. “You know, it’s more than just being gay,” I said again.
“What really freaked me out, Sunny, is not the dress or the wig, it’s the fake boobs,” said my husband.
“I know. I wonder if deep down Maxim feels like he should have been born a girl, you know?”
“Well, I don’t want to think about it.”
We were both silent for a while. An image of Maxim’s mother sitting on her couch alone watching a transsexual on TV popped into my head. A woman with manly hands is being interviewed. “I always knew I was supposed to be a girl”, she says in a husky voice, “It wasn’t a choice really. I had to have the operation. I have always been a woman inside and now I am finally one on the outside.”
You hear a bell toll once. The camera pans in on Maxim’s mother. We see her eyes widen as the camera goes in closer and closer. Her hands begin to shake. Quickly she covers her mouth. She shakes her head in denial, disbelief. And. Cut.
Or maybe I’m just being dramatic. Maybe Maxim is normal, just checking things out. There is always the possibility he’s doing it to avenge his parents. Let’s assume his parents act cool when guests are around but when they are alone, they rip into him. “Do you realize how embarrassing you are? Christ!” they scream. “Cut this faggy shit out! Can’t you just be a plain old regular teen?”
“Fuck you,” he mutters to himself as he marches up to his room and hatches a plan. The next morning before he leaves for school, he swipes 50 bucks out of his mother’s purse. Instead of going to school, he hops on the bus to Les Galleries Lafayette. He heads straight to the hosiery section and chooses a nice pair of black tights in XL. Then, he tries on numerous pairs of boots in the Women’s shoe department. He hides his loot under his bed and waits for D-Day. Saturday evening finally arrives. His parents are busy setting out bottles of liquor and wine, paper napkins and bowls of chips. Maxim finds his sister’s wig and curling iron, puts on his outfit and waits until he hears the voices of guests.
“Show time,” he says into the mirror with a smirk. He comes down the stairs and sways into the room flinging his long blue tresses over his shoulder. “Good evening, everyone,” he says as he rearranges his bra a little. He catches his mother’s eye. Her stare burns a hole through his heart. He winks at her enjoying every moment. It’s as if someone is spoon-feeding him chocolate mousse.
Or, there’s always the simple explanation that he’s just a drama queen and loves the attention. If it is just a taste for the thespian life, then next time we see him he could be dressed like the Hobbit or even Yoda, right? And years from now, just after he takes a bow from a stunning performance and the curtain goes down, his parents who are sitting in the audience will turn to their friends and say, “You know, for a moment there, we all thought our Maxim wanted to be a girl.” And his parents and their friends will all chuckle heartily and yuk it up. “Yeah, that sure was a scary time…ha ha ha!”
And is it true that girls dress-up like boys? Besides wearing a suit and a tie, maybe some masculine looking shoes and a short haircut, I’ve never seen a woman dress like a man to the same extreme as a man dresses up like a woman. Have any of you out there seen a transvestite woman? I mean the whole thing: flatten her breasts down to nothing with some kind of tunic, stuff the crotch of her pants, fake five o’clock shadow? Yes, women may dress in men clothing, but it is more of a fashion statement or even a feminist statement, like “Hey, I don’t need to show my tits and ass to be a woman.” It’s not intentionally done to make people think they are men.
And now, I must sidetrack because this gets really interesting! I have a Tantric explanation to this whole gender issue. Science has shown that all embryos are first female and then some become male after certain hormonal and developmental phases take place. In fact, if you cut an embryo bunny’s gonads, the embryo will automatically revert to a female which proves all life is female in the beginning; the male species develops from an original female state. Therefore, (this is the Tantric part), men often feel this desire to go back to their feminine side and this is why sometimes you see men dressing as women and these men can be heterosexual. On the contrary, it’s rare that a man finds his wife secretly trying on boxer shorts and shaving her face or that she has a special suitcase filled with men shirts and pants that she wears when he is out of the house. Isn’t this fascinating?
Well, to come back full circle, back to the humor in it all, I don’t think any of it is good or bad, right or wrong, it just is. Maxim made a big impression on me. He obviously got me thinking. Maybe his identity and gender issues will work themselves out in time. But today, dude looks like a lady.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Sunny & Sydney
During my teen years, I pushed my limits north, south, east and west, towards the heavens and towards hell. Only a handful of people were willing to go there with me. At this critical developmental phase of my life, one person with whom I felt an enormous sense of freedom, albeit at times fearless and invincible, was my friend Sydney.
I met Sydney in junior high school during English class. He had a distinct walk as if striding on his tip-toes. Sydney and I got along wonderfully. All of my creative ideas jived with his and we laughed incessantly. Sydney had large flat lips my sister once referred to as “mashed potato lips” and Bart Simpson green eyes. Sydney dared to speak what others kept to themselves.
At home in the evening I would think about how much I liked him in an almost desperate way. Any time we had a class together, we would get thrown out for disrupting the class. If you weren’t laughing with him, you could be sure he was laughing at you.
We would tease the “uncool” kids and then laugh like two monkeys. Some people started hating us. I even got a taste of my own medicine when I came to school in shiny new silver ballerina shoes.
“Hey, Dorothy! Hey, look! It’s Dorothy,” someone hollered down the hall. “Hey! Where’s Toto?” This went on for weeks.
“Dorothy had ruby shoes, dumb shit!” I replied every time. And Sydney would show his support with high pitched hoarse laughter.
One day, I got a phone call after school. “Hey, Sunny. I’m on my way to pick you up,” said Sydney. Ten minutes later, a big blue van pulled up in front of my house. As we were only 14 years old, no driving license or experience, my heart began to race. I fled from the house and climbed into the van.
“Sydney! Oh, my god!”
He chuckled, a menthol cigarette dangling from his fingers.
“You stole your mom’s van?” I was in disbelief.
“Yeah”, he began to drive out of my neighborhood. “My parents are gone this week.”
“You know how to drive?” I couldn’t imagine driving, especially a huge van.
“Yeah, it’s easy,” he glanced into the rear view mirror as if he had been driving his entire life.
I lit a cigarette and tried to relax but it was so far from anything I had ever done before. With the radio turned up, we drove down the streets, windows down and our hair blowing wildly. We came to an intersection and as we pulled up to a red light, Sydney started to light a new cigarette. Then, he rear-ended the car in front of us.
“Oh, shit!” He froze in his seat unable to react.
“Sydney! What the hell?”
A large woman got out of her car, walked around the back of her car and observed her bumper. She came up to Sydney's window. He sat petrified, his cigarette burning in his hand.
“You’re lucky there’s no damage, young man,” she glared at Sydney.
“Oh, my god! I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” His cheeks had patchy red marks.
“You should probably get back home and tell your parents,” she shook her head and got back into her car.
I looked at Sydney. As soon as the light turned green, he brought me back home. Our ride was silent. When we got to my house, he got out to check the damage. “Oh, shit,” he put his head in his hands. “Oh, no!” He stood there staring at a small dent in the front bumper.
“What are you going to tell your parents?” I gasped.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I better go home. Oh, shit.” He got into the van and drove off.
I was terrified and didn’t say a word to my parents that evening.
We finished junior high and started high school, the place where I reached my height of metamorphism. Sydney followed me all along the way ratting his hair up as high as possible. My curly hair was dyed eggplant purple. The cowboys called us “Chicken Heads” as we walked down the halls together.
On the weekends, we began to perfect an act at liquor stores. It was during a time when neither one of us could be seen without a long-sleeved shirt tied around our waist. It was an essential fashion accessory. It was known as our “dick thing.”
I wore bright red lipstick and thick black coal under my eyes. No one could miss our duo walking into a store nor think us innocent but we were too naïve to know this at the time. Thus, we would pretend we were brother and sister and ask for help from the sales person at the liquor store.
“Hi. Yes. We were wondering if you could help us.” I’d say. “It’s our parents’ anniversary soon and we wanted to know what your best Champagne is so we could buy it for them.” As I talked to the shop keeper, Sydney would peruse around and slip bottles into his baggy pants.
I’d note down the best Champagne and smile. We’d say thank you and steal away into the night with our Root-beer Schnapps or whatever we’d manage to steal. The two of us would find a dark alley and drink the entire bottle. Then we’d emerge stumbling and laughing and louder than ever. We’d find our way into a teen club and dance all night. Sydney had a fabulous way of prancing around the dance floor and smoked in an effeminate fashion.
One evening, we chose a very small liquor store. As we entered, I noticed high mirrors on all the walls. They had hidden cameras. I tried to tell Sydney not to take anything but he shoved a huge bottle of vodka into his pants in an alarmingly conspicuous way. As we headed towards the exit, a short sales clerk with a mustache grabbed Sydney’s arm.
“What’s this?” he said tugging on the shirt sleeve tied around Sydney’s waist.
“Oh, that’s just my “dick thing,” he said yanking on his loose shirt sleeve, though the sales clerk had no idea what a “dick thing” was.
“And, what’s this?” he said pulling out the huge bottle from Sydney’s pants.
“Oh, um…”
“I’m going to call the police,” the man began to make his way over to the phone behind the cash register.
“Please don’t,” pleaded Sydney. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Please,” I said trying to sound pitiful. “We’re sorry. We’ll never do it again.”
“My dad’s a doctor. It will ruin his reputation if we get caught,” said Sydney.
The man looked at me. Then he looked at Sydney. He hung up the phone. He grabbed both of us by the backs of our shirts. He dragged us to the door like two naughty kittens and then launched us into the cold winter night. “Get the hell out of here!” he screamed.
Frightened, we ran as fast as we could. Suddenly, I hit a patch of ice and slipped on the street. I flew forward scraping my hands and knees on the pavement. My black tights ripped around the knees.
Sydney bent over to help me up, “Here,” he grabbed my hand while laughing hysterically.
“Damn it!” I said embarrassed from falling and still high on our adrenaline rush. “Let’s get out of here!”
We continued running until we made it to a nearby teen club. I pulled out a tiny bottle of Kahlua I had miraculously managed to steal. I downed it in one gulp.
Soon we moved onto weed. We smoked it in the video game arcades of a big teen club, in my car, in the back of the school; anywhere that was slightly sheltered. We’d spend hours taking apart the lyrics of songs.
“Oh, my god! This song is about a transvestite!” Sydney once gasped as we listened to The Kinks’ “Lola” in my car.
“Huh?”
“Listen! Listen!” Sydney said rewinding the tape and replaying the lyrics a tad louder.
“Oh, my god! You’re right!”
An innocent song, after a good analysis, was never the same again. We had endless theories and solved lots of problems. We ate lots of Ranch flavored Doritos and Sydney had a thing for Butter Finger candy bars.
Getting stoned became part of our daily routine like brushing your teeth in the morning. It became a fundamental part of who we were. Sydney would take the longest hit imaginable and then holding his breath he’d eek, “Come here.” We’d place our lips together and he’d exhale the glorious smoke while I inhaled it all in. Smoking pot habitually also meant that we frequented kids who lived on their own or who were completely neglected by their folks. We’d get stoned with them and then wish we weren’t at their abandoned homes.
“Life is a living hell,” began one girl with whom we shared a bong while we sat on a dirty futon couch in a tiny apartment.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she flipped her long feathered hair and turned up her stereo that was playing a Heavy Metal song. “We are already in hell because the only way out of this world is up…”
I tried to understand what she was talking about. “But, Earth is in space…we can go up or down or side to side.”
“No,” she disagreed, “you can only go up. There is no down. This is down. Therefore, we are in hell.”
“Totally,” agreed another chic with shaggy hair and a torn black t-shirt. These chicks were buzz killers.
Sydney gave me a sideways glance. With deception on his face he mouthed, “This is awful.”
I nodded in agreement but we had no excuse to free us from the chains of these Head Banger losers. We felt as if we were being punished. That was the downfall of being a desperate pot-smoker; you smoked with anyone who had it.
One weekend Sydney’s parents were out of town. He invited me over. We sat in his kitchen and he pulled out two minuscule red paper squares.
“You got acid?” I asked wide-eyed.
He laughed. “Here, take it.”
I stared at the palm of his hand holding the little squares.
“Take it. Come on! I planned the entire night for us.”
That sounded promising so we both put the papers onto our tongue and sat quietly waiting for it to work its magic.
We went down to Sidney’s bedroom. His bed was made. Everything was in its right place. His room had blue carpet. Little boats covered the walls. Marine décor? This sailor wallpaper could not have been his choice. We might as well have been sitting in some stranger’s room. Surely his mother had picked it out thinking he was a traditional little boy or maybe trying to convince herself of this. Or worse, he had picked it out as some cover-up of his true colors.
His famous vacuum was parked in the corner. The first time I saw it, I asked, “Why is the vacuum in here?”
“Because I need it in here,” he responded.
“Why? Do you vacuum every day or something?”
“Yes,” he replied is if this was a totally normal thing for a teen to do.
We sat on some pillows in Sydney’s closet. He had created a lounge area amongst his wardrobe. Sydney lit a long black stick of incense. It smelled sweet and musky. We watched the smoke whirl its way up into the air and mingle with his hanging clothes. We lit up cigarettes and inhaled pensively. Twenty minutes later, Sydney looked at me, his pupils as big as saucers. He stood up and took a drag off his cigarette with large sweeping gestures and laughed.
After some free flowing movements, he came over to me and cupped my chin in his hand. “When I look into your eyes, darling”, he paused and waved his arm around like a magician. I waited for him to say something like “You are beautiful,” but he said, “I see… myself…and I look marvelous, darling, simply marvelous.” Hoarse laughter erupted from him and then he sat down and quietly puffed away.
“Should we go out?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ll meet you in your car. Give me a minute.” While he began airing out his room and disposing the cigarette butts, I went out to my car. My acid trip seemed in control for the time being. I sat behind the wheel in the darkness. I opened my moon roof, put on some music and stared at the stars. They were swaying to the music for me. I don’t know how long I remained like that but at one point I realized Sydney was still inside. I got out of the car and walked into his house. He sat on the couch staring at the TV which was turned off.
“Sydney? What are you doing?”
He turned to me. His lips looked bigger and flatter than usual. A look of fear washed across his face. “My father,” he said into space, “I was having a conversation with him.”
“What? What did he say?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you,” he shook his head, “it was really awful though.”
“Well, let’s go.”
He followed me silently to my car.
“Look, the stars are dancing,” I showed him the sky as we sat in my car.
We lit up some cigarettes and reclined our seats and watched the stars that were pastel shades of pink, yellow, and blue.
“I’ve gotta get home. It’s getting late.” I said. “Come back with me.”
“Okay. But, what will we tell your mom if she finds me?”
“Um. We’ll tell her your parents are away and you didn’t want to stay home alone because the Skinheads have been threatening you again.”
I gave myself a brief pep talk before driving us back to my house. "Okay, you can do this. You can do this." And we were off on our way. Everything was going just fine until we stopped at a red light.
"Oh my god!" Sydney started pointing at the car next to us, "That lady! Look at that lady!"
I glanced over. A woman was seated soberly behind her wheel. Her dress was caught in the car door and she did not know. When the light turned green, we both drove at the same speed. Her dress was flapping in the breeze.
I doubled over laughing. I could barely breathe. "Oh, my god! Look at her. She is so serious. But, her dress...her dress is caught in the door. She has no idea. How can she remain so serious?"
Sydney and I could not contain ourselves. We shook so hard our stomachs hurt. We tried to communicate with each other through our laughter but only gasps came out. This woman and her dress happily tailing alongside the door was the funniest thing we had ever seen. What a mad scene, the two of us bent over in laughter in my car. Though I doubt anyone perceived us driving in the night like that.
Soon we were back at my house. It must have been around midnight and we were in full trip mode. We quietly walked into my house and went straight to my bedroom. I pulled out a stack of white paper. “Let’s do some algebra!” I proposed. Feeling like a challenge, I created an algebraic equation that needed to be calculated to the 35th power.
We must have gone through 20 sheets of paper each. We worked up a hunger so we sneaked into my kitchen. We left with Frito Lays corn chips, a bottle of ketchup and some paper plates. We went back to work in my bedroom with paper plates and ketchup spread out among our math pages.
My walls were covered with posters of Rock bands, faces that had become very familiar to me. Sydney stared up at them for a long time. “Don’t you think it’s weird how we hang photos of people we don’t know on our walls?”
I thought about this for a second.
“I mean, you don’t know these people at all. Why are they on your wall? Wouldn’t it make more sense to hang posters of all of your friends on the wall instead?”
“Yes. You’re right. It is weird that we do this. Humans hang famous people on their walls. I mean, these rock stars, they don’t know us. They don’t know we even exist.”
“I think I’m going to have my friends’ pictures blown up into poster size and put them up in my room. Wouldn’t that be cool?” Sydney asked.
“I guess,” I responded though the idea of my friends’ faces big and shiny hanging on my walls sounded scary.
“Hey, wanna paint?” I asked. I set-up everything and we began painting. Soon afterward, my door burst open and my mother came in.
“What the hell is going on?” she wore her little black night gown, her hair tangled. “It’s 3 in the morning!”
“Umm, we’re just doing some math,” I said pragmatically.
“Sunny, I need to talk to you. Now!” said my mother and left the room in a huff.
I nervously glanced at Sydney and then at my bedroom. The floor was covered in pages of impossibly long math equations, paper plates of ketchup and chips, strange paintings. I looked at Sydney who sat uncomfortably on the floor chewing his thumbnail.
My mother stood in the kitchen waiting for me.
“What is it?” I asked innocently.
“Are you two on something?” she looked very upset. My mother's face kept morphing into a witch. She kept staring at me. I couldn’t look at her. I felt like crying. Did I know this person? Was she actually my mother? Act normal! Act normal! You can pull it off!
“What’s going on?” she scowled, her eyes cringed at the brow.
“Nothing, why? Sydney was scared to stay at his house alone since the Skinheads said they were going to get him. His parents are out of town and I told him he could stay with us and we aren’t tired so…”
“Look at me!” she grabbed my face and held it under the light. “Look at me!” She stared into my eyes. “Don’t tell me you aren’t on something.”
“Mom, I’m fine. I promise we’re not on anything.”
“Then what is that mess in your room? Don’t tell me you aren’t doing drugs! What is it? Pot?”
“I promise. We’re just hanging out.”
“That’s enough already! It’s 3am! Get to bed. Tell Sydney he can sleep in the guest room.”
I walked out of the kitchen and back to my room.
“Your mother is super scary. She turned into a witch. I have to go home. I can’t stay here,” Sydney was trying to clean up our papers.
“Don’t be silly! Sydney, everything is fine. You can sleep in the guest room.”
“Your mom looked like a witch, Sunny. She’s evil. Your mom is super evil.”
“I know. She looked really scary but we’re just fucked up so don’t worry. Everything will be fine in the morning. Just be sure you tell her you came here because of the Skinheads, okay?”
Sydney silently walked into the guest room. The wallpaper was salmon colored with huge white sea shells. In the morning, Sydney said he heard sounds of the sea calling him the entire night and couldn’t stop staring at the walls. I don’t think he slept. And I don’t think he laughed too much either.
I met Sydney in junior high school during English class. He had a distinct walk as if striding on his tip-toes. Sydney and I got along wonderfully. All of my creative ideas jived with his and we laughed incessantly. Sydney had large flat lips my sister once referred to as “mashed potato lips” and Bart Simpson green eyes. Sydney dared to speak what others kept to themselves.
At home in the evening I would think about how much I liked him in an almost desperate way. Any time we had a class together, we would get thrown out for disrupting the class. If you weren’t laughing with him, you could be sure he was laughing at you.
We would tease the “uncool” kids and then laugh like two monkeys. Some people started hating us. I even got a taste of my own medicine when I came to school in shiny new silver ballerina shoes.
“Hey, Dorothy! Hey, look! It’s Dorothy,” someone hollered down the hall. “Hey! Where’s Toto?” This went on for weeks.
“Dorothy had ruby shoes, dumb shit!” I replied every time. And Sydney would show his support with high pitched hoarse laughter.
One day, I got a phone call after school. “Hey, Sunny. I’m on my way to pick you up,” said Sydney. Ten minutes later, a big blue van pulled up in front of my house. As we were only 14 years old, no driving license or experience, my heart began to race. I fled from the house and climbed into the van.
“Sydney! Oh, my god!”
He chuckled, a menthol cigarette dangling from his fingers.
“You stole your mom’s van?” I was in disbelief.
“Yeah”, he began to drive out of my neighborhood. “My parents are gone this week.”
“You know how to drive?” I couldn’t imagine driving, especially a huge van.
“Yeah, it’s easy,” he glanced into the rear view mirror as if he had been driving his entire life.
I lit a cigarette and tried to relax but it was so far from anything I had ever done before. With the radio turned up, we drove down the streets, windows down and our hair blowing wildly. We came to an intersection and as we pulled up to a red light, Sydney started to light a new cigarette. Then, he rear-ended the car in front of us.
“Oh, shit!” He froze in his seat unable to react.
“Sydney! What the hell?”
A large woman got out of her car, walked around the back of her car and observed her bumper. She came up to Sydney's window. He sat petrified, his cigarette burning in his hand.
“You’re lucky there’s no damage, young man,” she glared at Sydney.
“Oh, my god! I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” His cheeks had patchy red marks.
“You should probably get back home and tell your parents,” she shook her head and got back into her car.
I looked at Sydney. As soon as the light turned green, he brought me back home. Our ride was silent. When we got to my house, he got out to check the damage. “Oh, shit,” he put his head in his hands. “Oh, no!” He stood there staring at a small dent in the front bumper.
“What are you going to tell your parents?” I gasped.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I better go home. Oh, shit.” He got into the van and drove off.
I was terrified and didn’t say a word to my parents that evening.
We finished junior high and started high school, the place where I reached my height of metamorphism. Sydney followed me all along the way ratting his hair up as high as possible. My curly hair was dyed eggplant purple. The cowboys called us “Chicken Heads” as we walked down the halls together.
On the weekends, we began to perfect an act at liquor stores. It was during a time when neither one of us could be seen without a long-sleeved shirt tied around our waist. It was an essential fashion accessory. It was known as our “dick thing.”
I wore bright red lipstick and thick black coal under my eyes. No one could miss our duo walking into a store nor think us innocent but we were too naïve to know this at the time. Thus, we would pretend we were brother and sister and ask for help from the sales person at the liquor store.
“Hi. Yes. We were wondering if you could help us.” I’d say. “It’s our parents’ anniversary soon and we wanted to know what your best Champagne is so we could buy it for them.” As I talked to the shop keeper, Sydney would peruse around and slip bottles into his baggy pants.
I’d note down the best Champagne and smile. We’d say thank you and steal away into the night with our Root-beer Schnapps or whatever we’d manage to steal. The two of us would find a dark alley and drink the entire bottle. Then we’d emerge stumbling and laughing and louder than ever. We’d find our way into a teen club and dance all night. Sydney had a fabulous way of prancing around the dance floor and smoked in an effeminate fashion.
One evening, we chose a very small liquor store. As we entered, I noticed high mirrors on all the walls. They had hidden cameras. I tried to tell Sydney not to take anything but he shoved a huge bottle of vodka into his pants in an alarmingly conspicuous way. As we headed towards the exit, a short sales clerk with a mustache grabbed Sydney’s arm.
“What’s this?” he said tugging on the shirt sleeve tied around Sydney’s waist.
“Oh, that’s just my “dick thing,” he said yanking on his loose shirt sleeve, though the sales clerk had no idea what a “dick thing” was.
“And, what’s this?” he said pulling out the huge bottle from Sydney’s pants.
“Oh, um…”
“I’m going to call the police,” the man began to make his way over to the phone behind the cash register.
“Please don’t,” pleaded Sydney. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Please,” I said trying to sound pitiful. “We’re sorry. We’ll never do it again.”
“My dad’s a doctor. It will ruin his reputation if we get caught,” said Sydney.
The man looked at me. Then he looked at Sydney. He hung up the phone. He grabbed both of us by the backs of our shirts. He dragged us to the door like two naughty kittens and then launched us into the cold winter night. “Get the hell out of here!” he screamed.
Frightened, we ran as fast as we could. Suddenly, I hit a patch of ice and slipped on the street. I flew forward scraping my hands and knees on the pavement. My black tights ripped around the knees.
Sydney bent over to help me up, “Here,” he grabbed my hand while laughing hysterically.
“Damn it!” I said embarrassed from falling and still high on our adrenaline rush. “Let’s get out of here!”
We continued running until we made it to a nearby teen club. I pulled out a tiny bottle of Kahlua I had miraculously managed to steal. I downed it in one gulp.
Soon we moved onto weed. We smoked it in the video game arcades of a big teen club, in my car, in the back of the school; anywhere that was slightly sheltered. We’d spend hours taking apart the lyrics of songs.
“Oh, my god! This song is about a transvestite!” Sydney once gasped as we listened to The Kinks’ “Lola” in my car.
“Huh?”
“Listen! Listen!” Sydney said rewinding the tape and replaying the lyrics a tad louder.
“Oh, my god! You’re right!”
An innocent song, after a good analysis, was never the same again. We had endless theories and solved lots of problems. We ate lots of Ranch flavored Doritos and Sydney had a thing for Butter Finger candy bars.
Getting stoned became part of our daily routine like brushing your teeth in the morning. It became a fundamental part of who we were. Sydney would take the longest hit imaginable and then holding his breath he’d eek, “Come here.” We’d place our lips together and he’d exhale the glorious smoke while I inhaled it all in. Smoking pot habitually also meant that we frequented kids who lived on their own or who were completely neglected by their folks. We’d get stoned with them and then wish we weren’t at their abandoned homes.
“Life is a living hell,” began one girl with whom we shared a bong while we sat on a dirty futon couch in a tiny apartment.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she flipped her long feathered hair and turned up her stereo that was playing a Heavy Metal song. “We are already in hell because the only way out of this world is up…”
I tried to understand what she was talking about. “But, Earth is in space…we can go up or down or side to side.”
“No,” she disagreed, “you can only go up. There is no down. This is down. Therefore, we are in hell.”
“Totally,” agreed another chic with shaggy hair and a torn black t-shirt. These chicks were buzz killers.
Sydney gave me a sideways glance. With deception on his face he mouthed, “This is awful.”
I nodded in agreement but we had no excuse to free us from the chains of these Head Banger losers. We felt as if we were being punished. That was the downfall of being a desperate pot-smoker; you smoked with anyone who had it.
One weekend Sydney’s parents were out of town. He invited me over. We sat in his kitchen and he pulled out two minuscule red paper squares.
“You got acid?” I asked wide-eyed.
He laughed. “Here, take it.”
I stared at the palm of his hand holding the little squares.
“Take it. Come on! I planned the entire night for us.”
That sounded promising so we both put the papers onto our tongue and sat quietly waiting for it to work its magic.
We went down to Sidney’s bedroom. His bed was made. Everything was in its right place. His room had blue carpet. Little boats covered the walls. Marine décor? This sailor wallpaper could not have been his choice. We might as well have been sitting in some stranger’s room. Surely his mother had picked it out thinking he was a traditional little boy or maybe trying to convince herself of this. Or worse, he had picked it out as some cover-up of his true colors.
His famous vacuum was parked in the corner. The first time I saw it, I asked, “Why is the vacuum in here?”
“Because I need it in here,” he responded.
“Why? Do you vacuum every day or something?”
“Yes,” he replied is if this was a totally normal thing for a teen to do.
We sat on some pillows in Sydney’s closet. He had created a lounge area amongst his wardrobe. Sydney lit a long black stick of incense. It smelled sweet and musky. We watched the smoke whirl its way up into the air and mingle with his hanging clothes. We lit up cigarettes and inhaled pensively. Twenty minutes later, Sydney looked at me, his pupils as big as saucers. He stood up and took a drag off his cigarette with large sweeping gestures and laughed.
After some free flowing movements, he came over to me and cupped my chin in his hand. “When I look into your eyes, darling”, he paused and waved his arm around like a magician. I waited for him to say something like “You are beautiful,” but he said, “I see… myself…and I look marvelous, darling, simply marvelous.” Hoarse laughter erupted from him and then he sat down and quietly puffed away.
“Should we go out?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ll meet you in your car. Give me a minute.” While he began airing out his room and disposing the cigarette butts, I went out to my car. My acid trip seemed in control for the time being. I sat behind the wheel in the darkness. I opened my moon roof, put on some music and stared at the stars. They were swaying to the music for me. I don’t know how long I remained like that but at one point I realized Sydney was still inside. I got out of the car and walked into his house. He sat on the couch staring at the TV which was turned off.
“Sydney? What are you doing?”
He turned to me. His lips looked bigger and flatter than usual. A look of fear washed across his face. “My father,” he said into space, “I was having a conversation with him.”
“What? What did he say?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you,” he shook his head, “it was really awful though.”
“Well, let’s go.”
He followed me silently to my car.
“Look, the stars are dancing,” I showed him the sky as we sat in my car.
We lit up some cigarettes and reclined our seats and watched the stars that were pastel shades of pink, yellow, and blue.
“I’ve gotta get home. It’s getting late.” I said. “Come back with me.”
“Okay. But, what will we tell your mom if she finds me?”
“Um. We’ll tell her your parents are away and you didn’t want to stay home alone because the Skinheads have been threatening you again.”
I gave myself a brief pep talk before driving us back to my house. "Okay, you can do this. You can do this." And we were off on our way. Everything was going just fine until we stopped at a red light.
"Oh my god!" Sydney started pointing at the car next to us, "That lady! Look at that lady!"
I glanced over. A woman was seated soberly behind her wheel. Her dress was caught in the car door and she did not know. When the light turned green, we both drove at the same speed. Her dress was flapping in the breeze.
I doubled over laughing. I could barely breathe. "Oh, my god! Look at her. She is so serious. But, her dress...her dress is caught in the door. She has no idea. How can she remain so serious?"
Sydney and I could not contain ourselves. We shook so hard our stomachs hurt. We tried to communicate with each other through our laughter but only gasps came out. This woman and her dress happily tailing alongside the door was the funniest thing we had ever seen. What a mad scene, the two of us bent over in laughter in my car. Though I doubt anyone perceived us driving in the night like that.
Soon we were back at my house. It must have been around midnight and we were in full trip mode. We quietly walked into my house and went straight to my bedroom. I pulled out a stack of white paper. “Let’s do some algebra!” I proposed. Feeling like a challenge, I created an algebraic equation that needed to be calculated to the 35th power.
We must have gone through 20 sheets of paper each. We worked up a hunger so we sneaked into my kitchen. We left with Frito Lays corn chips, a bottle of ketchup and some paper plates. We went back to work in my bedroom with paper plates and ketchup spread out among our math pages.
My walls were covered with posters of Rock bands, faces that had become very familiar to me. Sydney stared up at them for a long time. “Don’t you think it’s weird how we hang photos of people we don’t know on our walls?”
I thought about this for a second.
“I mean, you don’t know these people at all. Why are they on your wall? Wouldn’t it make more sense to hang posters of all of your friends on the wall instead?”
“Yes. You’re right. It is weird that we do this. Humans hang famous people on their walls. I mean, these rock stars, they don’t know us. They don’t know we even exist.”
“I think I’m going to have my friends’ pictures blown up into poster size and put them up in my room. Wouldn’t that be cool?” Sydney asked.
“I guess,” I responded though the idea of my friends’ faces big and shiny hanging on my walls sounded scary.
“Hey, wanna paint?” I asked. I set-up everything and we began painting. Soon afterward, my door burst open and my mother came in.
“What the hell is going on?” she wore her little black night gown, her hair tangled. “It’s 3 in the morning!”
“Umm, we’re just doing some math,” I said pragmatically.
“Sunny, I need to talk to you. Now!” said my mother and left the room in a huff.
I nervously glanced at Sydney and then at my bedroom. The floor was covered in pages of impossibly long math equations, paper plates of ketchup and chips, strange paintings. I looked at Sydney who sat uncomfortably on the floor chewing his thumbnail.
My mother stood in the kitchen waiting for me.
“What is it?” I asked innocently.
“Are you two on something?” she looked very upset. My mother's face kept morphing into a witch. She kept staring at me. I couldn’t look at her. I felt like crying. Did I know this person? Was she actually my mother? Act normal! Act normal! You can pull it off!
“What’s going on?” she scowled, her eyes cringed at the brow.
“Nothing, why? Sydney was scared to stay at his house alone since the Skinheads said they were going to get him. His parents are out of town and I told him he could stay with us and we aren’t tired so…”
“Look at me!” she grabbed my face and held it under the light. “Look at me!” She stared into my eyes. “Don’t tell me you aren’t on something.”
“Mom, I’m fine. I promise we’re not on anything.”
“Then what is that mess in your room? Don’t tell me you aren’t doing drugs! What is it? Pot?”
“I promise. We’re just hanging out.”
“That’s enough already! It’s 3am! Get to bed. Tell Sydney he can sleep in the guest room.”
I walked out of the kitchen and back to my room.
“Your mother is super scary. She turned into a witch. I have to go home. I can’t stay here,” Sydney was trying to clean up our papers.
“Don’t be silly! Sydney, everything is fine. You can sleep in the guest room.”
“Your mom looked like a witch, Sunny. She’s evil. Your mom is super evil.”
“I know. She looked really scary but we’re just fucked up so don’t worry. Everything will be fine in the morning. Just be sure you tell her you came here because of the Skinheads, okay?”
Sydney silently walked into the guest room. The wallpaper was salmon colored with huge white sea shells. In the morning, Sydney said he heard sounds of the sea calling him the entire night and couldn’t stop staring at the walls. I don’t think he slept. And I don’t think he laughed too much either.
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