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Saturday, September 12th, 2009
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It is been raining cats and dogs all damn day. Almost on a biblical scale, but not quite.
What does this mean to most folks? Let's take our kids out to the toy store!
For some reason completely beyond me, we were busy as hell this morning, and it's raining so hard outside that you can't even see straight.
And then it happens - a guy slipped outside and hit his head, and red shirts are everywhere. One of my co-workers tells me, "Call an ambulance!" and I was like, piss. I call 911 on the phone, can't get an outside line, decide "Fuck it," and call on my cellphone in the middle of the floor. I'm at the return desk, trying to get through (whatever happened to "911, what's your emergency?" Know what I got? I had to be connected to like three goddamn people before I was able to get to what I needed), and people are still checking out, still having time to like, bitch at the cashier when this guy is laying in the middle of our foyer bleeding. The manager and another supervisor were with him, and you know what people were doing? Nearly stepping over this poor guy so they could fucking LEAVE. We had to have people near the entrance telling folks that they needed to go out that way because they don't have enough goddamn sense or consideration for their fellow man to even half-ass express concern for this guy.
Come to think about it, the only people I saw around him helping him was the store manager and the other supervisor. Between myself and yet another supervisor, we got paper towels, called the authorities, and got gloves, but seriously? This guy hit his head, and blood was coming from this cut like a faucet. I have seriously never seen that much blood in my life. It was enough to soak through two cloth diapers that we got for him - and he's laying there, and people are still just fucking WALKING PAST HIM. No one even offered to help us - they just stood there gawking and bitching about what a problem it was that they weren't getting the floor's full attention. I'm sorry, your little fucking mistake that should have been in a goddamn sock is less important to me than this man laying here bleeding while his wife is panicking and trying to console their kid. No I can't help you find this, I need to get gloves for the supervisor who's attempting to keep this man calm and put pressure on his wound.
At the time, I didn't have time to just freak out, but now that I'm off the clock and it's sunk in, I'm just like...Jesus. One of my kids ended up puking (poor guy - blood was too much for him) and another one was shaky as hell for the rest of her shift. Once we got the guy into the ambulance and taken care of, we all just sat in the back and looked at each other. What else could we really do? It was really hard to get back to business as usual after that. You went on this weird autopilot and through the motions, but nothing was all that sincere. You're just like, "Hell." When I finally went to lunch (no one that had witnessed the situation really had an appetite), I called my mom and talked to her about it. She said, "And imagine, your dad saw that every day." My dad was a paramedic. She told me a story - one night, he'd come home and there was blood all over his uniform. My mom freaked out; she wasn't sure if it was his or someone else's. He told her that he was too tired from work to bother changing (apparently he changed into a clean uniform before coming home, so who knows what the dirty ones really looked like), and that it was from someone who had a gunshot wound.
And the whole time, people were still "me me me mine mine mine". I don't know what the fuck is wrong with people, but it's seriously sickening. Just thinking about how people just gawked or didn't even think to ask for help makes me think - my dad was out there saving lives, how often did this happen to him? Did he ever get this disgusted? In that sense, I think my dad was a better person than me. He didn't stop helping people. I find myself asking what's the point? It's not that you help to seek praise; you help because goddamn it it's the right fucking thing to do. But I think you can still help people and resent the fuck out of them.
I just don't know what's wrong with people that when they see someone suffering, something inside of them snaps and they just get out of themselves to do something. It's not like I was expecting someone to be, "I'm a doctor, let me see this man!" No one offered a phone, support...I just...Fuck. How did we get this far? If this can be considered "far", after all.
-K!
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Friday, August 21st, 2009
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Wow.
There's nothing all too exciting to report, but today starts with cupcakes. I abhor chocolate (it's a fact!) and no one really makes the kind of cake that I want for my birthday, so I'm making my own. Except, you know, in cupcake form so it's easier to deliver. I love to bake, but I don't like doing it for myself, if that makes any sense. I bake to deliver/share. Even if I end up with stuff around the house, it just kind of sits there...
Anyway, I'm making green tea cupcakes and discovered the most awesome baking materials - silicone heart-shaped cupcake holders and Chris picked up a little baking tray that's shaped like dinosaurs. They also had butterfly and flower shaped ones, and I was like, wow, this so makes me want to bake more except I really don't like, have anyone to bake for. I'm bringing stuff by for the folks I work with, but I'm like, my boss can eat a dick, that goddamn enabler. And of course cupcakes for the comic book guys cause they're always awesome to us, but when I really think about it, I don't have that many people to go deliver to. I guess that's what happens when you move.
Jokingly yesterday, I told a coworker he wasn't invited to my birthday party, and then had to explain why I wasn't having a party. I don't like large/small gatherings of people all in one place. Since I can also count the number of actual friends I have on one hand, I don't want to spend the day surrounded by people who I don't really want to be around. Most birthdays I prefer to just be left alone and buy what I want to buy. I guess when I was younger I wanted the idea of being surrounded by people that cared and were happy to be there, but please. I'm not the type of person that has a lot of friends, or ever will. That's fine, too. The older I get, the more I realize how much I inherited from my father.
My mom's real big on going all out on birthdays, but to be honest, it's another day for me. I want to go swimming and have sushi, but seriously, I bought just about everything that I could "want" material-wise (because I can't buy a new job, unfortunately), so that's that on that end. The thing I think I'll miss the most is my dad calling me to just talk to me. It was like my birthday was the day that my folks set aside their shit to be honest with me for a little bit, and I'm going to miss that. I missed it bad last year.
My mom and I got into a fight not too long ago and haven't spoken since, and to be honest, I don't expect to hear from her or my grandparents. Secretly, I kind of hope that I don't. The fight my mother and I got into was so indicative of our relationship (oh so very tenuous in the best of times) that I just don't want to be reminded of it on the day of my birth. Yes, I'm terrified that my father isn't proud of me because I'm just fucking surviving instead of being honestly happy and feeling accomplished in my life, and that's something that I know he wanted for me. He didn't, and doesn't, want me to be miserable. I know he knew about just surviving; he also knew how terrible it was when you want to do so much more. I know, in a sense, that I'm in a downtime until it's time to go to the next phase, but I'm just scared that I'm letting him down. The aspiration to do something more, to be honest to god compelled to do something more, is something my mom just doesn't understand.
Rick said that I had to go into a "noble" profession because that's what my dad did. My dad was a paramedic - he was in the business of saving lives. One time he confessed to me that if he had had more support, he wanted to be a doctor. But it wasn't just that. He helped/coached kids at the YMCA. My dad was someone that did for other people, and he was also someone that got constantly fucked over because he was so kind at his heart. He was a good person, and the world does not like good people, but it cries and yowls and demands for good people to constantly save it without thanks. I saw my father grow bitter, but he never stopped what he was compelled to do, despite divorces, hardships, no relationships with his own parents. I find myself in the same situation, somewhat, but with more ice than he had. I don't let people get close. I push them away. I don't want to form tight bonds with a lot of people because I know how folks are, and I can't get angry at them or fault them for it. That's just how humans are. If my dad can deliver babies and stop you from dying and not get a word of thanks, what am I honestly expecting?
In this life, I find myself doing things because I'm compelled to, and as I get older, this gets clearer. I wanted to animate because I wanted to touch people emotionally. Now, finding myself unable to do just one thing, I want to do something that will make the world a better place, as hackneyed as that sounds. Yes, I want to teach, but I want to read, write, and research. There is something out there in this world that I can indeed do and fulfill, but my road isn't as easy as it is for some people. I can't do just one thing, and I won't be happy until I find out how to combine all of my interests in a way that grabs and promotes understanding.
Because I'm colder than my father, I don't know if I have a breaking point like he did. As much as I loathe surviving, I do it anyway because I have no other option. I can't stop. I don't know if something will ever be so big that it will just make me stop entirely. In the later years of my dad's life, everything got to him. I think nothing more hurt him than the constant removal of his children - my mom did it to him, my stepmother followed suit. I was lucky because I was old enough and had enough nasty in me to constantly fight with my mother about it and against it. It's probably why our relationship isn't so great now. Everyone knows I was closer to him. I can't imagine what it's like to be "betrayed" like that like he was, and I can understand what it did to him. I wonder if it'll do the same to me, because at my heart, in the pit of my soul, I feel like I'm a lot meaner than he was. I don't give people the chance.
Will this change in the new year of my birth? I doubt it. If I had honestly disliked this part of my personality, the part that makes me so aloof, so inaccessible, so cold, I would have changed it. But I embrace it, both quietly and outwardly. It is who I am. At best I hope to be charismatic in my solitude, and at heart, in that center, the issues I have my looks don't matter there. Why should it? It can come off as rejecting the world before it rejects me, or the truth: being focused on something more lasting and imperative than the now. I've always had this amazing inability to live in the present, to be happy now. At the smallest stretch of time, I think about tomorrow, at the longest, years from now. I didn't see myself with anyone who could love me, and yet here I am. So I might be wrong about a few things, but sometimes it's nice to be wrong.
-K!
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
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Well, not quite next week's episode, but soon enough.
After recovering (somewhat) from this past cold/sinus infection/whathaveyou, going back to work seems more like a nightmare than I remembered it. I don't really feel the angst of turning 24 coming up soon, really, because when I look back on it, I didn't really have any goals set for the year or by the year. When I was younger, I just wanted to work for Disney.
Now as I'm older (and growing more reclusive by the year), I realize, I like drawing, but I don't like drawing in that way. I have my own doubts about my talent, but...I guess, sitting around, really thinking about things, it all becomes clear. Don't get me wrong; I still would love to see my work animated, just not by me. I used to think I was "envious" or "jealous" of other artists that had "made" it before me, but "age" has kind of revealed to me what it was: respect.
It's really kind of sad that my self-esteem (oh, you black footed culprit!) clouded up what I thought of as competition and the like when it was really just respect. Like, take for instance "The Thing." I love the shit out of that movie. The makeup effects in are amazing. I sit and watch that movie and I'm just in awe of how awesome everything is in it. But I never once felt envious of the people working on the film, just this sort of, "Wow, I wish I could have that much fun with a team" (because this K! is at heart an extreme creature of eternal solitude). I suppose I got envious of other artists simply because I felt that they had succeeded in a path that I could not, but on the same hand, I didn't feel that way about academics that I looked up to. One has more fame and glory, and the other is condemned to a much smaller circle of people. I know that in walking the path of a brain I shut my accessibility off. In a sense, that's fine. I never thought of myself as all that accessible or approachable anyway. Not that I think academia has to be that way. It's just a matter of taking the time, closing my eyes, and tasting my path to show it to others.
Envy's also nice because it seems like the artists I was glowering over had it so much easier. They could just do what they wanted to do. There was no huge ethical debate over one thing or the other - I was constantly pulled between artist, writer, academic, model. I've nipped the last one off (semi-permanently, perhaps?), and realized that what motivates me (when I'm not rendered too apathetic from work or the people around me) is just the pursuit of knowledge, but we live in a world where someone who loves to learn is a freak. This, despite warm words from other people, is something I don't think a lot of people can really relate to. Even now, I think it's strange to look at what I write side by side with some of my modeling photos, and if it's as confusing to me, I can only imagine what an outsider perspective must look like. There's no geling of these two personas, but yet they're both me. I suppose as you get older, you either cultivate who you want to be or let everything go to seed.
Goddamn. What I want to do is going to be hard. Not that it hasn't been done before, but it was always the result of a team effort, rather than just one person. Here I am in Austin, wondering why the hell I moved here to work another dead end job with the worst customers I've ever encountered (Christ did I do this for a guy), and running myself ragged just trying to run away from what it was I needed to do and take responsibility for. Friday night, when it all broke down and I just cried in bed, the thing I had been trying to avoid and in a strange way ignored came out.
"I think a lot of this has to do with my father passing."
It's true, I've felt guilty because it feels like I don't dwell on it long enough. But my life is much emptier. Chris is a wonderful guy, but he's not enough. I miss my father so very very much and I miss his guidance. Truth be told, I'm sure if he was alive I wouldn't listen to him anymore than I did when he tried to reassure me, but he was one of the few people in my life that was just behind me indefinitely, and now in this time of such turmoil and upheaval and general malaise of life, I miss him. I want him to tell me it's going to be okay and that I will get out of this because I've come from much worse places and made it before, but now, god, now I'm not so sure anymore. The simpler I make my dreams, the harder they seem to be to achieve. I don't even want to be pretty anymore, I just want to make a difference. I'm learning the hard way that I can't change the world overnight but I want the chance to at least get the motion rolling again.
But, most of all, I want to hear him call me and say, "Happy Birthday, Kim, I love you, and you can do it."
What "it" is, I don't know, but I just wanted to hear it again from him, one more time. It's hard now, I know, and he used to say the only way you can go from down is up, but I seem to be so very far down and up seems so very far away, and I'm missing the little part of me that used to say, "Yeah, what of it?" and enabled me to keep going. Now I just am, just surviving, just waiting for something that I used to be able to go out there and get, or at least delude myself into thinking that I could.
Most of all for my 24th birthday, I just want to be happy.
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| Subject: | "NO." |
| Time: | 9:25 pm. |
| Mood: |  angry. | | Music: | "Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan!" - Sakura Gumi. |
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She's pissed at me. I can tell by the way she wrinkles her plain face behind her glasses.
"Sorry, ma'am, once you've used a coupon, you can't get it back."
So I bent the truth a little. I could have done an even exchange - but she also could have been pleasant to me. The fact that her stomach is this grotesque round ball under her shirt does not invoke my pity. Lady, there are millions of women out there whose sole talent in the world is to reproduce. You are not special in my eyes, and you are not entitled to special treatment.
My day starts, or is made up, pretty much of moments like these. Women who just think they are the greatest things in the world because they forgot the condom and decided an abortion would probably be more expensive than having little Johnny who is running around screaming and pinwheeling his arms and knocking things off the shelves. Things, by the way, that I have to pick up at the end of my shift.
It just ain't worth it.
I think the worst thing about where I work (which I can't actually mention or defame without the possibility of losing my job, believe it or not) is that for all of these miserable women, obnoxious kids, and husbands who are either not there or would be anywhere BUT where they are, is that I can imagine them having sex. I don't know why. It used to be that I would make up stories about particuararly bitchy guests, like, the blonde trophy wife who's pissed because Consuela got deported and that now SHE has to watch the kids and her husband is off in Miami on a beach and in a twenty year old. That kind of shit. Things that would make why people that were just unreasonably rude the laughing stock in the Maury of my imagination. But now, I just imagine them having sex. And the kicker is, it's never GOOD sex. It's like, bored, routine sex. Sometimes she fakes an orgasm just to get him off of her. He's thinking about the checkout lady at HEB, the type of guy that longs to write a "Missed Encounters" for Craigslist but doesn't have the balls cause he has kids and an evil wife and fuck everything happened so soon I didn't have a chance to enjoy anything.
Kids are a product of sperm and egg, this is true. Sometimes their joining is met with joy - but in the faces of the parents of where I work, I never see, "This was planned." Ever. I don't see enjoyment. What I do see is people either intrigued to my appearance (I have perfected the art of looking someone straight in the eye and not cracking a smile - sorry, I just don't get paid enough to fully humor your bullshit) and because I'm distinctively the only black person on payroll. Not calling the patrons racist (although I'm sure a few of them are in their own way, more like, "Oh, that brown person!"), but I get asked this question on average about once a week.
"Can I touch your hair?"
Sometimes they ask, sometimes their eyes ask. You just feel them staring at your head and just itching to touch something that's exotic and out of the norm. Sorry lady, I just watched you half-ass cover your crotch shit's mouth after he hacked up, I don't want swine flu in my hair.
After explaining our return policy (which is posted on a large blue board over my head) all day, the clocks hits quitting time and I'm out. This job is singlehandly destroying my work ethic, my desire to ever have children, and my tolerance of people. What disgusts me the most about where I work is just watching people act complete fools in front of their children, setting sterling examples that the true American way is to bitch until you get what you want, without showing any gratitude or any drive to actually obtain it. It's sad that I have to say that when a kid says, "Thank you, ma'am," it is literally the difference that makes a horrid day from being absolutely tragic.
My car's on its last leg, so no stops on the way home, and no A/C. When I get to our apartment, I have sweat all inbetween my tits, making the rose petal powder I put there to prevent heat rash into literal mud. I get out looking like some sort of colonialist nightmare and trudge up the steps. Yeah, it's hot, yeah, my day sort of sucked (like they usually do at work), but fuck it, I'm at home. Where's the alcohol?
Fuck. What in the hell is that on the back of the door?
It is a notice from the apartment to GTFO - a goddamn eviction notice saying that we hadn't paid our rent. Well that's just bullshit, because the checks cleared on the 7th and the 8th. I take a deep breath. There's got to be a mistake. How can they say we hadn't paid our rent when the checks just pissing cleared? I text Chris and asked if he actually did remember to drop off the rent checks. I love him to death but he has a lazy streak as wide as an elephant's ass. Things slip his mind. He texts back that he did. So I call them, and am doing my best not to yell. Just lose it, just keep calm -
"Ma'am, let me explain before you cut me off -"
"You posted an order on the inside of our apartment saying that we are going to be evicted. You'd better explain and quick, considering that you took our money."
We're under new management, by the way.
Apparently, only MY name is on any information (bullshit, if they had taken the time to look up the lease), because the "old management" screwed up. So if my name was the only one, why did they STILL cash Chris' check? I explain to them that two people indeed live here, and that they should have recieved the checks. The woman explains that she did indeed take his money, but since he didn't write the apartment number on the check, it just floated around. I can understand her actions if she had not cashed the check, but they DID. They took money that they didn't know belonged and just put it somewhere.
By this time, I am irate.
"You mean to tell me you cashed his check and it could have gone to someone else's rent? What time does the office close?"
"It closes at 7."
"I'll see you in a few."
As soon as Chris gets home, I explain to him the situation. The women (I was bounced around) that I talked to on the phone were eager to get rid of me, and assured me that everything was taken care of and to disreguard the notice. "Oh, you don't have to come in," she cooed. We head down there and I'm just pissed. They've dicked with my very hard earned money and threatened to kick us out of the apartment for late rent - by the way, do you think we recieved any notices in the mail or on our door? Nope - just automatic GTFO.
Chris is mad, oh, he's mad. This is the maddest I've seen him in a while. He stands beside me, arms crossed. I confront the woman that I spoke to on the phone and she refuses to make eye contact with me. I just stare at her, forcing her to look into my eyes. Since they've fucked up, I damn well expect them to look me in the eye and explain precisely what happened as to how we've ended up with a goddamn eviction notice on our door.
She chirps on, saying that they've corrected the issue, oh, the old management had a shitty way of keeping files (despite their ability to process our payment always on time and never having an issue like this arise) and that I was the only one who they had information for (if they had pulled up the lease - which I believe is their JOB- they would have noted two signatures), and that they had indeed tried to get in contact with us - despite not leaving any mail, any fliers, anything for us. Actually, I take that back. Chris got a phone call today at 4.
As she can probably sense that this is doing nothing but making us angrier, she calls in the other woman I spoke to on the phone. This gem, this wonderous woman, the first thing she has to offer to this conversation is,
"Oh my god, can I touch your hair?"
Are you fucking kidding me? You threaten to kick us out of our apartment, don't even offer to apologize or look into the issue, and you ask me if YOU CAN TOUCH MY FUCKING HAIR? When did I accquire a sign that says, "Petting Zoo"? There's curiosity and then there's just shit you need to be slapped for.
What follows next is what made me, Chris, and my mom (whom I related this tale to on the phone) laugh the hardest in retrospect.
I was literally two seconds away from punching this cunt in her throat. My voice cracked, and regained strenght.
"NO."
"Really? You won't let me?"
Because obviously she didn't hear me the first time.
"NO."
Taking that as a hint, she prattles on about how she also wants locks and doesn't think they'll look good on her. I am so tempted to just tell her how white people generally look like they have fucking mange when they have dreadlocks (because on them it's truly dreadful, derp!), but there's still the matter of our goddamn rent. We don't leave until they have his name down, our phone numbers, and email addresses. The woman again argues that it's the old management's fault, and that they're a much smaller company, see, and since they're smaller, obviously they can't be utter twats and incompetent at their jobs. She reiterates how small they are by mentioning that it's easy to get in contact with their Regional Manager. I look at Chris, and we leave.
Outside in the parking lot, hell breaks loose, straight from the gates of my mouth. "Who the fuck does she think she is? Do I look like a motherfucking petting zoo? I don't ask fucking white people to touch my hair, why the fuck do they think it's okay to just goddamn pet on me like I'm a fucking animal?!"
When I get angry, I have an affinity for the word "fuck."
I know that having dreadlocks sets you up for a lot of shit. I knew that when I started wearing my hair natural. People have questions; I'm happy to answer them. But don't assume I want your hands all in my head of hair. I mean, how would you feel if strangers just put their hands all in your hair? The fact that my hair is different isn't a goddamn excuse, either. Seriously. It is really starting to get old. What really made this the coup de grace of the evening was that this woman just had the audacity to ask me for a fucking FAVOR after threatening to kick me and my boyfriend out of our apartment because someone was too fucking lazy to pull up the lease! And on top of that, they just TOOK his money without question.
Seriously.
I demanded ice cream, fries, and a hot bath, and got all three. Chris is out playing the Game with the boys, and I've had the apartment to myself pretty much all evening. My head is still aching from earlier, and I know my blood pressure jumped just a tad bit. Now it's too quiet, and I debated, "Do I want to write, or go to sleep?" I harassed myself to get up and jot this down, because let's face it, I'm not modeling anymore and I don't have any excuses for being lazy.
That's my day.
-K!
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I love how "erotic" usually means really awkward closeups of unattractive skinny women and their equally unattractive body parts.
Chris and I rented "Perfume" and "Eros" - the former of which was...interesting. In a really long and oft awkward way. I know I'm not in the slightest prudish (for reasons which don't need further explanation), but seeing sex acts on film just annoy me. They're never how the act usually is - I mean, sex can be love, but because love is involved doesn't omit the fact that you get pubes in your mouth and teeth, the sheets have a wet spot, and the air gets heavy with musk and spunk. I think scenes should just strive to capture this. I figure when you actually give a shit about someone, the wet spot ain't so bad.
"Eros" had two redeeming features in it. The first segment, directed and written by Wong Kar Wai had this desperate awkward (word of the day, it would seem) pathetic nature to it that I actually really liked. Chris was grossed out, but I'm like, good on you, Wong. Seriously. I hate trumped up sex scenes and let's face it, there are some people in the world who are sad and pathetic but it doesn't rule them out from having their own connections to humanity in their own way. The fact that he had the balls to show a very atypical relationship was awesome. Pathos is good, sometimes.
The second segment had Alan Arkin and Robert Downey Jr. in it. So enough said.
The third part was just awful. One of the actress' painfully fake tits held our attention more than the actual paper thin chain of events.
What just irked me about both movies is that "erotic" appears in both film descriptions (don't even get me started on the real fuckin' definition of "eros", for Christ's sake) and neither movie had any like...idea of what erotic was. It's like instead of showing some sort of actual interaction, it was just tits bonazna. *sigh*
And seriously, not even good tits.
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Summer is coming up. Bikinis and the last shoots I said I was going to do are also coming up.
Mornings with protein shakes, days on my feet dealing with screaming kids and parents, wondering if there is something more.
24th birthday is coming around.
My hair is 19-20 inches long now, but my hairdresser doubts if it would be safe to grow it out to my waist. Maybe after it's 2 feet long, I'll consider getting it cut.
My hairdresser picked me to be his feature model in an upcoming hair show, so that means six inch heels and alien hair, make up and dresses and all sorts of unexpected.
Living with Chris is quiet. I didn't think it was possible, but I enjoy it and him.
My grandma is up to her usual shenanigans. Joke's on her - I got a new phone, number, and address. But yet the letter full of insane guilt trips still found us, or more specifically, Chris. I suppose she figured out that I wasn't having any of it, and decided to get to me through him. I asked him why he even bothered bringing that evil into the house, but since it IS his letter, it's ultimately his call. I am getting tired of seeing it on our night table, though.
I'm going to try and start writing again, once the brace comes off my wrist and the clogs out of my brain. Griselda lives here, so I've been harassing her about what she's doing. She told me that she was getting a teaching's certification, which has encouraged me to look into it. Since grad school is still a few grand away, I figure I should start decorating my resume with the suitable trimmings. HR at Toys R Us isn't going to cut that, but you knew that already.
Austin is the kind of pretentious that makes my mouth taste weird. It just seems like a bunch of inflated egos without the talent to back it up. A town for young people, college kids. Like the real world comes and goes because it's scared to fully penetrate, so you're perpetually caught in the youthful stage where nothing really happens but you can dream big big big over beer bottles in smokey bars.
My dreaming is still tangled in the past with the desperate drive to push forward, but as couples do, caught up in the joy of day to day monotony. It's hard to see a future in a relationship without getting discouraged at the cut and dry nature of it. For these things to last, you have to get lost in the daily. I'm happy when he comes home, happy to sit on the couch watching bad anime, or even discussing a budget, what kind of washer and dryer we're eventually going to get, what needs to be cooked this week.
The only time I'm like surrounded by black people is when I go get my hair done. I went there yesterday to get more details about the hair show and dragged Chris with me. I figured it was his turn to be completely nervous and out of his element.
As we were merrily going nowhere, he said, "I got death glares from the guys in the room."
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Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
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" 'Men don't want to be running their fingers through a bunch of naps, trust me.'
Mama nodded. 'You and your sisters will be walking around here nappy-headed with rings through your noses and the next thing you know Brother Kambui will be marrying some blonde.'"
From "Coffee will Make you Black", by April Sinclair.
I've been reading this book (a little coming of age tale set in the late 60s), and so many parts of it have just made me laugh or grimace. The self-hatred we had as a people that is STILL so very prevalent today, the "Black is Beautiful" movement that was all hot air and no progress (because if it was, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't still have folks look at me cock-eyed for having natural hair), just....I don't know. It stirs up a lot of good things, makes me think, and makes me want to talk to my mom.
Not that I'm hating on interracial relationships, mind you. The part about being nappy headed and having a ring through your nose just made me laugh, because I can only imagine that's how I look to the older generation.
...Well, at least my grandma. My appearance drives her ape shit. Like, seriously. Back when I had an afro, she told me that colleges wouldn't accept me with hair like that, and she calls the tips of my hair "dyed orange."
Most other older folk, I've noticed, just write me off as being from the Islands or something. Funny, because I have nary an accent to be found (except for a country/ghetto drawl when I get going. Chris is fond of my saying "THAT AIN'T SHIT" when I get mad), but my mom's often accused of the same thing. We really should take a picture together so people can see the comparison. She has her hair natural, too, and dyes it this golden brown color. My hair's more red in pigment and has layers that have been sun-bleached.
Oh, black people. Whenever we fight to get ahead, it just seems like we hide behind the achievements of people in the past and then make fun of the ones trying to move ahead. For serious.
Talking in bed the other night, I told Chris why I didn't want to teach American history. For how wonderfully interesting it is, for such a young country, America has been brewed in hate from the get go. Yes, we are not the only country to have had slaves, but the affects of it on this country and the utter utter vileness of it still taints everything. Our racism here is such a unique brand because it continues to thrive on ignorance.
To quote Ann Coulter as she appeared on Boondocks (this was not the real Ann Coulter), "There's no money in trying to save the world." It's true. It's easier to turn a profit on keeping people ignorant, scared, and hateful.
I secretly (not so secretly) think that Christianity and the formation of this country has a lot to do with the hate we've been simmering in. As much as I am loathe to throw the baby out with the bath water, my biggest problem with monotheistic (not just Christianity) religions is that they are so isolationist and like, strive to prove that one culture is better than the other. Going back to our conversation last night, I was telling Chris that the appeal of Classics to me was because race itself wasn't an issue. In the Roman empire, you weren't black or white. You came from one part of the empire or the other - you either had money or you didn't. None of this "Well, you're black AND poor - sucks to be you!" Older religions were respected and absorbed. I research it because I want to know what happened and how we can get back to that point. We're stuck at the bottom of the circle, marinating in hate, piling pebbles upon pebbles of why I shouldn't like you or why I should live away from you, and I'm hoping we can at least get back to the point where skin color was at lease irrelevant.
Because let's face it, the world boils down to sex. At night, ALL cats are black.
....Double entendre meant.
I know it's human nature to separate like water and oil for the stupidest fucking reasons. Even this doesn't stop me from thinking, "Maybe one day, if I have a mixed race child, I won't have to worry about people saying he has good hair or he's hot because he's fair, but they'll look at him as another human being." I feel in my marrow that I won't live to see this - and what bothers me the most about feeling like that is that it stops me from even wanting to have a child, period. Something that is innately written into my genetic code!
The world's a funny place.
Love,
A nappy headed negress with a ring in her nose.
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I've recently been watching "Wolverine and the X-Men," and seriously, it caters to the whole 'Ro/Lo thing.
Well, in my crazy fangirl way it does. I think to most viewers it just shows them as good friends, which is also extremely acceptable in my view. I mean, they ARE friends.
Just people like silly ole me wishes that they were more....*sigh*.
Because, seriously, that Black Panther thing is bullshit and needs to be retconned. HARD.
-K!
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Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
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So -
Disney's newest feature film, "The Princess and The Frog", stars the "first" African-American female lead in a Disney movie. I say "First", because say what you want about Kida from "Atlantis," she's closer to black than anything else. And you know, the Muses from "Hercules," etc etc.
When Disney first announced the film (which is set in 1920s New Orleans, hurrah Jazz Age before the Great Depression!), the main character's name was "Maddy", short for "Madeline", and she was a chamber maid.
BET threw a hissy fit, because this is apparently racist. But showing booty buttcheek music videos that only promote one kind of beauty that isn't reflective of most black culture ad nauseaum isn't.
When I first heard that Disney cowed to a name change ("Tiana", which strikes me as more "ghetto" than "Maddy"), I'm not going to lie, I was pissed. The biggest problem with Americans and American history is that they only want to hear the good part of it, especially concerning African Americans. Slavery is given lipservice, people are told it's bad, and yet they think that African Americans are the only people in the world with a history of slavery. Refuse to believe that Africans themselves more or less started the slave trade. We as a people have this innate ability to see our history for what it really was. We don't understand the suffering and sacrifice or what it truly meant to be a slave or looked at like you weren't even human. (Funny, as I write this, I think of how blacks see myself and my white boyfriend, and it's like they don't even recognize us as human.) We weren't suddenly "Free" overnight, and it wasn't like it was Abraham Lincoln's REAL prerogative was to free the slaves in the FIRST DAMN PLACE.
I say all of that to say: How is being a chambermaid named Maddy racially offensive? That's what most people of color did back then. Segregation was still strong in the 20s, especially in the South. You COULD possibly get away with more, as it IS in New Orleans, but our future Disney Princess is much darker than a paper bag. Something in the back of my head tells me that I doubt Disney would get any flack if they had decided to make her considerably fair skinned.
So Disney changed her name. Smooth sailing until now.
The production art for Prince Naveen shows him to be either extremely fair skinned (which is a stretch - his voice actor is Brazilian; he's the guy that played Dr. Costa on "Nip/Tuck.") or just flat out white, and this is causing MORE friction. People are accusing Disney of being racist because the prince isn't black, which tells people that black men are unable to be princes.
Seriously? Really?
Didn't Marvel just throw you naysayers a bone with that whole Storm marries the Black Panther (who just so happens to also be a black prince!) foolishness that was penned by Eric Jerome Dickey (who happens to write black on black on black romance novels, HORAY)? Isn't there a LONG history of black characters being with each other for the sole fact that they're black and therefore MUST be together?
Are we REALLY going through this?
Personally, I think Disney's got the right ticket on this. First off: New Orleans. My family hails from Louisiana, and we're a mix of fair to dark to in between. The real name of the game for the French then was if it was attractive and had a warm hole, that was the way to go. New Orleans was unique then (and often considered the red headed step child of America) because of its somewhat lax views of race-mingling. It happened. It was documented. If not, please explain to me how the terms "Quadroon," and "Octoroon" got into the English language.
Second of all: Disney makes a point of her being an AMERICAN princess. What is America? In theory, it's supposed to be a melting pot. There's not a single person that walks this soil that isn't some kind of a mutt. Yours truly is one of them: technically by "make up", I'm French, Native American, and African. All of this ancestry, whether by rape, love, or luck, has boiled down to produce me. To say that races shouldn't mingle or people should do this or that is a form of self-hatred, and I deal with enough of that about my body to really spend time hating the fact that I've got either a French rapist/whore blood. In the long run it doesn't matter.
America is build on multi-racial relationships, sexual or not. My boyfriend is white, and even though we're in one of the more progressive cities in the south, the people who give us the most nasty or unbelieving looks are usually black, like I'm some sort of race traitor. I think that's asinine, considering that black culture does so adore the fair-skinned big assed caricature that I recall was considered anthropology a century or a few ago. But this is getting into why minorities seem to have an issue with finding me attractive that's another essay all together.
People, look. There is a REASON why more blacks aren't featured in films like this, and we're seeing why. We throw hissy fits over the smallest and oft most accurate things and consider it racist. On the same hand, we're ignorant enough to see a movie like "Troy" and not even bother to think, "Where are the Ethiopians that the Greeks were so fond of?", or see movies like "The Mummy" and don't even BOTHER asking, "Where are the Nubians? Why are the Egyptians this fair before Alexander's conquest?" We don't ask the questions that we need to ask because we don't know, and we're OKAY with not knowing. But something that's presented to us in a frank fashion, something that actually ATTEMPTS to celebrate and teach about our deep history, we hiss and scream at.
This is why black people can't have nice things.
-K!
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Two more shoots that I know of for the year (so far).
I still need to go through the work I shot with Akin. He actually took a chance on me and used a make up artist and the whole nine. I'm really, really, really impressed with what I've gotten back. Of course I'm going all neurotic over the images (before photoshopping; the joke of the shoot was, "Yeah, you can photoshop my fat out," after a comment made earlier in the shoot. No, he wasn't saying I was fat, but he was asking me to stand a different way to de-emphasize the mess that is my sway back). As a bonus, the make up artist (Dee) and I became friends, so yay, learning how to actually apply the makeup that's been collecting dust since like, forever.
Those are not my real eyelashes, by the way. Dee put on some massive fake ones. I couldn't tell if my eyes were all the way open most of the time.
Work's work.
My main reason for taking the time off from shooting is that I want to refocus on writing and illustrating this year. I still have a comic thing to produce, as well as some other projects I'd like to get underway.
-K!
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Monday, February 16th, 2009
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| Subject: | Where. |
| Time: | 10:48 am. |
| Mood: |  awake. | | Music: | "Minoi Minoi" - Pacific Soul. |
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I'm at Toys R Us now, working as a HR Department Supervisor.
The downfall to this is that for 5 days out of the week, I am surrounded by adorable as fuck baby products. There's something about them that just makes you want to have a kid to dress it up in little cute duckie onesies.
I'm definitely becoming more reclusive as I get older. It feels like a priority shift, but not. Maybe I'm gathering strength, maybe I'm waiting for something, perhaps I'm biding my time as always, waiting for this job to take hold, money to settle out and down, and then bam, back to basics.
Got a shoot on saturday. I've managed to get some of my definition back in about a week's time and dropped a size. I'd gone up to a 7 (as opposed to the 5), so that tones down the neurotic side of my brain for a bit. I did have a nice reality check about the state of things while I was shopping for khakis for work, though -
As I'm inspecting the rows (I'd tried on 5s and they were too tight - and unflatteringly so), I hear this tween voice whine, "They never have my size, GAWD! They NEVER HAVE ZEROS!"
I turn around and look at this child - who can't be older than 15. No tits, no ass, and about as big as my wrist. I was like...wow. It's a good thing I can't get into 0s anymore.
Cause, seriously, wow, yuck.
When I went back to return a pair (cause, yeah, needed to put some money back on the credit card, yo), I tried on a 5, and they fit, but I deemed them a little too tight to be work appropriate. Mind you, I just work around kids and stuff, but, yeah. I kind of favor loose clothing as opposed to my second skin off the clock wear.
I don't expect to have the body of a 23 year old at 33, but I don't want to get fat, either. I want to just stay...proportionate and healthy.
And to keep my Chun-Li thighs.
Chris took me to the Orchid Society show this past sunday (pictures to follow soon, hopefully), and I bought 3 new plants - "Sea Jewel", "Baby", and "Hadouken." The latter are seedlings, which is exciting for me, considering that I've never raised anything from a little cutting. Even though it is extremely old people of me to do, I plan on joining the society once I get a few more paychecks under my belt. I've got an old woman hobby - what can I say?
Graduate school now seems more of a possibility now, although I wonder about my ability to become a professor. Classics would be a completely different animal from teaching Religion Studies, and as for the latter, I'm not really sure if I'm prepared to deal with blind-faith based stupidity for a paycheck.
-K!
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Monday, January 26th, 2009
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Saturday, January 17th, 2009
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| Subject: | And now what. |
| Time: | 12:10 pm. |
| Mood: | awake. | | Music: | "Tainai Tokei Toshi Oruroi" - Revolutionary Girl Utena. |
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Leviathan has an issue with going straight down in the bowl.
Among the sundappled blue marbles, he's picking, looking for some flakes that he may have missed the first go-round.
Leviathan is my goldfish. Well, I suppose, technically, mine and Chris'.
Sometimes I feel peaceful when looking at him, considering that Chris has taken the time and effort to give him a voice and a personality. He follows you and begs for food if you get too close to the top of the tank. Most of the time it's me and him at the apartment all day. I scour the internet for jobs and moderately housekeep, he looks for loose food in the marbles or stares at me with his inexplicable goldfish eyes.
But generally, I worry. Worry about not being able to find a job. Worry about the forebearances I've had to get on my student loans because I have no job and my savings are basically depleted. Worry that I tax Chris too much with being at the apartment. Worry about yet another round of interviews that probably won't lead anywhere. Worry about getting out. Worry if I can actually get into grad school and if it's really the right choice. Worry if I gain weight. Worry if my ass is expanding. Worry that I'm not as pretty as I used to be.
I decided that this year I would severely cut down on the modeling, because here it is x years after the fact and I don't feel anymore attractive. I generally feel worse about myself and that I am continually fighting upstream for something that just isn't worth it. I can work my fingers to the bone, but since I missed out on the booty butt cheeks culture, I'm not going to get anywhere. The work I've done is gallery quality, but my photographers either don't seem to think so or think I'm worth the effort. I thought, well, if I can't do magazines, I'd like to do galleries, thinking in the small corner of my grey matter that modeling still counts as a little slice of art when I know really that it's not enough for me. Things were so much easier when I was just an ignored academic, but suddenly I got into college and I thought people found me attractive and now I'm still trying to pick up the pieces or figure out just what the hell went wrong in my brain that send me spiraling down this path into a whole lot of what the fuck.
There's only so much that you can do nude, anyway. But I'm tired of bickering over my pubic hair, over if I'd do erotic or not, what I would do with my hair. I'm waiting for my pubes to grow back from a recent body painting shoot and again there arises this issue of who the hell is this in front of the mirror and when will she start looking like something that makes sense and when will my body finally settle into the next stage.
It annoys the shit out of me to have so many issues over something that is essentially so fucking banal and stupid and shallow it makes me cringe to harp on it. But everyone wants validation and since I'm not in school or doing anything creative, my body's the next viable option. I'm going to shoot with the people whom I spoke with last year because I am a woman of my word and felt excitement or thought, why not, but seriously, this has got to stop or at least transform into a dozen articles on what it means to be black and noticeably ethnically black and where you go from there, but everyone already knows that with the dreadlocks, nose ring, feminist leanings and some sort of mystical facial features I'm well on my way to being some black author like Alice Walker or Toni Morrison, but that's not really the case, either, maybe I'll turn out to be like Tracy Chapman writing songs about looking out the window, but god knows I'm not going to be in Playboy anytime soon, I pick at the old racial wounds that keep people from masturbating happily.
I've had a cold/allergies for the past two months, it would seem.
I miss my dad at unexpected intervals. The first year after he passed I knew when I was going to have "bad spells." Now they come out of nowhere and floor me for a little bit. On the way back from Houston, Chris and I were talking about past relationships and how we saw ourselves. I told him about my dad and his Hollywood standard of beauty that somehow affected me too. It was strange to have him say I was pretty and nothing was wrong with me when his type was so typically mainstream that it hurt. I don't really wonder how my mom views me - she thinks of me as a mini her with the personality flaw of being so much like my father and looking so much like her. Chris says I'm a good mix of the two - I personally don't like looking in the mirror for images of my parents.
When I grow up, I'd like to give something back to society. The knowledge that we can be better. That we can be happier with ourselves, that no one suffers entirely alone, that I wish I could draw everyone in and just tell them, things will be all right. I don't know what's the best way to achieve this. Maybe being a professor is best for me. It's nicer to be lost in the stream of time until nothing is new and people cease to surprise you because what he did was like that Greek before Alexander did and before him or across the world something that some Native American did and it's all very old and stupid, running in this circle that we think we're carving anew or blazing some new trail or shining so brightly when the light from other places are already dead by the time they get to us, spinning in this quiet dance.
I hate that my jeans don't fit anymore even though I weigh the same and I still wear the same size in tops and I'm on the verge of losing my Chun-Li wanna be thighs.
I drink more.
I got drunk for New Year's and the new year came anyway like another day. I wanted to say I was disappointed. My dad's birthday came and went this year marked only by another interview and the current of misery that flows through me most days quiet as an underground river, I want to grow up to be a good person like he was.
A one year anniversary is coming up and I don't know how I feel about it. It feels like we've been together for most of our lives (not in a magical way, but an amazing ability to live with each other kind of way) so there's nothing to really celebrate. It will and will continue to be despite the day or the marching of 365 days in a mindless hum.
I like his eyes more than anything else.
There are lyrics to this song from Utena that I love for some reason:
An image of Death rocks my mind
I pull the cord; toll the bells
The cock beats its wings; when the window opens
The twelve disciples are mere dolls
Unblinking, a grand parade
The old orrery (clock of astronomy)
An automatic mechanism
The twelve constellations of the ecliptic me:
The zodiac
I,
The zodiac
Within my body, from olden times,
One hundred towers rise above
A visceral landscape; Utopia
In the cemetary, a church, a cloister
Eye of Earth; motive specimen
Intellectual organ of stone; the sign of Motive Power
Unfinished embryo; the secrets of Death
The theater, the hospital, the historical museum
Artificial flesh; grotta; Labyrinth; illusionary construction; marble
Artificial clock; weight; spring; spinning and turning; individual time
From the ancient city to me,
It ends with that day, quotidian clock
The sun in daytime; the moon at night
The natural clock of a day
Bong bong, ding dong ding,
Bong bong, ding dong ding.
The corporeal city and the Mystery of the clock
Geometric law, puritanical construction
Monotony; eternity
The present; perpetuity
All Creation is reality
Monotonous
Infinitely changing
I will take the form of a corporeal city
I shall take the form of a suspended clock
Municipal clock, a discovery
Municipal clock, an understanding
Municipal clock...
I don't know what else to say. No matter how I feel, time moves on. Sometimes that in and out of itself is comforting. Knowing that my problems are so small and so large on such a grand stage, unfurling unto infinity, is this the human state, being all too aware and knowing yet you are very little, very nothing, it is some sort of strange comforting.
-K!
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Friday, December 26th, 2008
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Basically all of last week when I was in Austin, I was severely depressed, since the first Christmas after my dad passing was so close to his death it hadn't registered. This year I really just broke down and spent a few days straight just in bed crying. I didn't really want to come back here (I never do : /), but I had called my mom to talk to her about how I was feeling. She basically blew me off because she was at her friend's college graduation, although she had enough time to tell me kids I'd grown up with were married and had jobs or whatever. So now that I really feel even more like shit, I get off the phone with her. A future photographer of mine in Austin, Rick, invited me and Chris out to dinner at his place because I'd been talking to him about how I felt about my dad's passing and he's really been the only one I could talk to about it.
So that night was great, and then I was like, fuck, I still have to go back to Houston. Since my car is a little under the weather, I decide that instead of going straight to my grandparents' house, I would stay with my friend Stephany because I haven't seen her in years and she's down the street from my apartment. I get in that night and I can't sleep. I didn't end up going to bed until like, 5 or so in the morning. The next day, Wednesday, I was going to go shopping with my mom since she had the day off. I called her at about 11 to let her know I was getting up and going to head on my way once I got Stephany with me and so I could use one of her parents' cars because I didn't want to drive mine all over town.
So we get up and are on the way to go get my mom and I text her to let her know we're on the way. She calls me and she's like, It's too late to go where I needed to go. I told her I called one of the places and that they were open until 7, but she wasn't having any of that and basically hung up on me like she did that morning when I called her. So again, I start crying because I'm stressed and upset and generally not having a good time. I go back to Stephany's place, get my stuff and go to my grandparents. My grandparents acted like they didn't care to see me pull up. My grandma barely spoke to me. So I get in bed, curl up, and start crying again.
I get my stuff ready to leave, but my grandma's like, you need to stay. Christmas morning wasn't any better. I couldn't really sleep the night before and I spent most of the day again, crying. Just upset. I haven't been eating (I've been averaging a meal a day if I force myself) and from the constant crying I've had this massive headache since before I left Austin. My grandma sees me crying, assumes it's because of my mom's bullshit, and starts bitching at me to suck it up and have a good time. It doesn't even occur to her that I might be really upset because my dad is no longer there.
I know/knew my mom' full of shit and acts like a child. This is nothing new. She was going to pay my last month's rent at the apartment, but since she's mad at me, she didn't call me on Christmas.
Not a single word from her.
She's called me twice today, but I'm not dealing with it or her. So, anyway, my grandma comes to me later Christmas night to "talk" to me about what's going on, which basically consists of "I told you so, your mom hates you, you're fucking up, I'm not going to help you with anything, this is why what you're doing is stupid", and so on and so forth, and then I was like, I dont have to take this. I'm going home - ie, to my apartment. I get up, get to my car, and my grandma's like, "Why are you running away," and then proceeds to STAND BEHIND MY FUCKING CAR SO I CAN'T LEAVE.
I called Chris and Stephany to let them know what was going on - in case they needed to come get me. I turn the car off (while I was on the phone she was banging on my window and shit), go inside, get my stuff and put it in the trunk. My grandma, in the meantime, has gotten my bag with my wallet out of the car and won't give it back to me until I listen to what she has to say - which is basically, "I'm not letting you leave without money," and I was like, if you were that worried about my finacial situation, you would have offered to help a month ago, but you don't care.
She goes back into the house with my bag, but at this point I'm like, fuck this and fuck you, and back out of the driveway since she's no longer behind my car. I think I shocked her to the point that she just gave me my bag and said this was a "one time offer" for help, and I was like, to hell with this, and drove off and spent the night by myself at my place.
Stephany was worried about me so she insisted that I come stay with her tonight since she didn't want me to be by myself. So here I am. Still with a massive headache
I'm as well as I could be. I have to be pragmatic about the situation. And I also need to cut them loose. I'm tired of living my life feeling like I'm a worthless failure because of them. I can't even see a worthwhile person in the mirror because of them and I can't live the rest of my life like that. It's affected all of my relationships and it needs to stop. I have given them no goddamn reason for them to treat me like this. I'm going back to my grandparents tomorrow because I don't want to leave on a foul note, but that's just because of how I am.It's the right thing to do. If they want to act crazy, I can go back to my apartment.
So that was more or less my Christmas.
I need to start eating more. 3 meals in 3 days, not so much.
-K!
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Sunday, December 21st, 2008
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I don't feel like the gods have abandoned me as so much as they're watching me trying to pull myself up.
The first year, I was still numb. Now I know for sure that daddy's not going to be here for Christmas this year.
They really have no point anymore.
Just because you don't talk about it doesn't mean you forget. You go on autopilot. But nothing really means anything anymore.
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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
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President Obama.
I'm not going to lie - even up until the 11th hour, I wasn't sure what America was going to do. I attempted to be apathetic. I admitted to my lack of faith in my generation - after all, the last time this country said "Change" and meant it, it was the 60's, and every day I see things that people fought for, believed with every fiber of their beings slowly crumble because we were under the assumption that everything was won.
It wasn't, not for a long shot.
I spent the better part of last night crying. For my father, who wasn't alive to see this. For my mom, who had a cross burned in her yard for being in the wrong neighborhood. For my grandparents. For my race as a whole - from what we have come, from what we have done, to what we can STILL do.
The thing of it is, and the best thing of it is, is that everyone around me last night was happy, each for our own reasons. Yes, it would be nice to say that race isn't an issue, but you know, it is. America, and for that matter, a lot of the world hasn't, and seems to have the inability to get over the fact that some of us are genetically made to handle more amount of sun than others. If me and my lily white boyfriend have a baby, it will be a human baby, not a fish, not a mutant, not some aberration of God. For christ's sake, we're still living in a world where skin color can still determine how ATTRACTIVE you're perceived - where skin bleaching creams are still on the market and eye-widening surgeries are vogue. And people think that the world isn't ruled by race or color? HA!
Now, if we can only get crackin' on those religious nuts, we'd be good to go. I wish I could pull every ounce of my Religious Studies knowhow and say, "This is NOT what Jesus meant." It wasn't. What happened to those parts of the Bible that say take care of the children and the poor? That a camel can go through the eye of a needle than a rich man into heaven? (Albeit the last quote has probably more to do historically with the gates of a city, but bear with me. If those nuts can pull and poke and prod to their own liking, so can I!) What happened to caring about the rest of the world and all of those in it?
I wish you could just say the name of the Pope backwards and vanish them to the 5th dimension or something. But you know, now it feels like instead of just feeling hopeless and helpless, we can actually do something. Something was sparked last night and that's something that just goes without words. My faith in what we can do has...well, been revived. I can honestly feel like I can help people, our situation, for the better. It's not all going to be done in 4 years - I know that. But it's a start, and that's more than what I can say about everything else lately.
-K!
P.S. Now is the dawning of my discontented Feminist!
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Saturday, August 9th, 2008
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Midsummer's day, I realized, "Wow. Why was I doing this?"
And more importantly, "Why did it take me so long to figure out what was happening?"
Finally, I managed to cut the Gordian knot of my past infatuations, driving with the windows down and blaring The Police all the way to my grandparents house. I had come to the conclusion that over the years, the imagination and spirit I had poured into modeling this infatuation could have easily reproduced best selling novels at this point. Why it was so important for me to continue to cling on (imagine, my feeling bad about our using each other - at least I was honest) the idea that I could have been attractive to boys when the only thing on my mind was to, well, be an animator for Disney?
Folks without anything to lose or without a rock don't really understand the sweetness that is an obsession. That's what this guy was - an infatuation, which is a minor sort of obsession; the kind that we deal with because we think it's a "phase", without really understanding that we, or I, in this case, had to continually put thought into why I thought I was drawn to this guy to keep the flames from dying completely out.
Hair struggling to blow in the late afternoon car-whipped breezes, I realized he had used me for sex, and all these years, I had used him as a doppleganger of someone who I thought I'd known. I don't know if working for Abercrombie (which has stirred up the muddied waters of my mind) did it or what, but one day at work, hiding in the back office, I thought, "Forget it." I was scared to tell this "friend", former fuck associate (because we weren't ever even friends) that I started dating someone for fear that he would stop talking to me, then it occurred to me that that was stupid in and out of itself. Encouraged by the sales kids at Baybrook (who were awesome), I put a graceful end to it and deleted his number.
In the meantime, I started to scrape together what it was that I had wanted to say to him. I wanted to apologize for building up this grand imagination, figmentation of him, to say that I had treated him badly for raking the claws of infatuation across him, for never getting to know who HE was and just liking the imagery. Then I realized that it wouldn't make a difference. I knew that I was using him all the same (lofty ideals or no), and he was using me on a superficial level - who doesn't want to fuck their high school crush? Even then, it was more about the ideal of conquesting the untakeable that made the sex even stand out to me, because god knows it was nothing to write home about. I've been around the block to know good sex from bad from just straight out doing it for lack of anything else to do.
So ended this obsession the same way it started - through the brute strength of my mind.
I'm working 50 hours a week (of my own accord - get that cash!). I'm checking out books from the library, and have re-kindled my love of just reading. I've finished 3 books in 2 weeks. I come home, there's no tv, there's no internet; just my lamp, incense, and a paperback waiting for me.
Tangled in blue comforter, listening to the goldfish Behemoth and Leviathan (the former is especially retarded for a goldfish) suck at the blue marbles in the tank for food, I wondered why I allowed the past to dominate me to the point where I was having trouble moving forward. The death of a family member is enough to stagnate any sort of movement, true, but the issue was deeper than that, too. It didn't, and doesn't make sense. Of all of the good friends I've made, I met them in college, with the exception of one or two people I went to high school with. Of all the guys that mustered the balls to talk to me or find me attractive or confess later that they didn't know how to approach me otherwise they would have asked me out, this happened in college and the years after. So why does such a miserable time in my life have so much pull?
When I look back at it, no one really knew me, because they didn't know themselves. That, and I was always looking to something else - the future. How funny it is that I spent so much time looking forward only to waste so much time looking back, questioningly, looking for something that I may have missed the first go-round. Guys didn't pay attention to me, but I didn't start craving that attention until I took my focus off of what I wanted. Then it became this pulsing wound. I think I put way more emphasis on it than needed. Now that I've come to terms with the grand thought of "To Hell With This," my life's become a lot easier.
I don't really complain about getting male attention too much nowadays. I know guys don't approach me (regardless of my being in a relationship or not); they approach the girls I work with, which makes me think I wasn't really missing out on too much when I was in high school, and that my focus was right where it needed to be - to the future.
-K!
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
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| Subject: | Holy shit. |
| Time: | 3:33 pm. |
| Mood: |  shocked. | | Music: | "Cammy Stage" - Street Fighter II soundtrack. |
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So -
A while back, for shits and giggles, I entered in a modeling contest for Shirley of Hollywood's model search. I pretty much forgot all about it until I checked my junk e-mail.
I've got to send in more photos for "www.thebachelorguy.com" for judging. I'm like...wow, so does this mean that not a lot of people have entered, I've made it past some sort of opening round, or do they need more black chicks?
Either way, I'll soon be on www.thebachelorguy.com.
I'll keep you guys posted. I think the voting starts in October. The more I find out, the more I'll let y'all know, but hopefully you guys will vote for me. I'm starting to think that even if I lose, I'd hope it'd be by a small margin, ha ha.
But seriously, I want to be excited, but I really don't know what to expect. Other than just..."Holy shit - this might go somewhere."
-K!
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Kang Sung Hoon’s “Precious Memories” is in my ears, the White Russian is sweet on my tongue, the gnats circle the glass square of the lantern, and the wind ripples the surface of the water.
It’s been a difficult few weeks. I’m not sure if I’m quite out of the woods yet, or if I’m going to turn another bend only to have more obstacles in my way.
To recap –
I was laid off April 25th, and spent the subsequent time following trying to find another job. With the security of a steady paycheck and visits to the doctor suddenly yanked from under me, I would wake up in the morning and find myself with little to no motivation to do anything. After all, what would be the point? No schedule, no need to be anywhere at a particular time – just sit around the house, attempt to unpack more, go through things, watch the hours go, sleep a little, eat a little, read sometimes, then the innate fear of attempting art or authorship of anything would creep closer, edging its teeth, chuckling.
I can’t really explain the desolation very well.
I know that’s a cop out of immense proportions, but it’s difficult to express depression because it occurs in different forms to different people, the same as grief, the same as anger. It would mutate from my hopelessness from losing my job to the nasty words of my grandma when I told her, “I told you so – you won’t be able to find another job,” to the ever hungry monster of my low-self esteem wondering if, knowing always, if a relationship at this point was even good for me.
Goddamn you, grandma.
Whenever I think back on one of the sole points of reassurance I had, my dad, I realized I couldn’t pick up the phone and call him anymore. Towards the end of his life, I think we both knew that he couldn’t sweep in and do the “dad” thing that all little girls are used to, but I wish I knew then what I knew now – even if he couldn’t make things magically better, at least he was there to listen and to attempt to console me in the way that only someone so close to you in personality could do. When I would stop, manage to climb out of everything else for a few moments, I realized I missed my dad. I wanted to talk to him. And now I have no way of doing that anymore. I was ashamed, felt pathetic to realize that a lot of things kept swimming back, pointing back to that one fact – the one person that would try to make it all better simply wasn’t here anymore, and it wasn’t the same as being in a different state. I mean really and truly gone, in a place where I was deserted and lonely enough to admit.
My grandmother only mentions my dad’s passing when she wants someone to feel sorry for her. It is the most that she could have ever asked for in her arts of manipulation. In the depths of what I feel, what I don’t feel, and what I should be feeling, I feel as if I should nurse a blinding hatred for her, for this, the breaking of the last straw, for stealing my own goddamn grief from me. I have to reserve my tears and my sorrow and my hurt for the privacy in the navy blue womb of my shower curtain, for to cry anywhere else for it, for him, would simply mean that I’m doing it because I want someone to feel sorry for me. There’s nothing that I can say, no further that I can reach down and pull out from the bottom of my stomach how I feel to someone who has not lost a parent, because it just doesn’t go away. It gets easier sometimes, but it’s never really gone. It’s not a sense of abandonment – I don’t feel like my daddy has deserted me, I don’t feel like he left me impromptu, and I guess in some sense I should be lucky for that much. My dad prepared me for his death almost constantly in recent memory. If he knew something that I didn’t, he took it with him to the grave.
I thought I would be okay, though, I really did, simply because I was used to his not being physically there all the time – but we spoke on the phone several times a week. Sometimes I find myself forgetting what he sounded like or really raking the corners of my mind for the sound of his laugh. It pains me that I can remember how a certain voice actor sounds and I have trouble remembering how my own daddy sounded. It wasn’t until the other day when birthdays were mentioned that I remembered that this year I wouldn’t be getting a call from my dad. Although I loved when my friends call, my favorite birthday calls were from my parents. My dad would always tell me about the strange things I did as a child – crawling on three legs, drooling all over him, refusing to let him leave the house without me, and then, sometimes, moreso now, I can see myself, our bond, through his eyes and it becomes all the more precious, and I feel the loss that just won’t go away. It is consuming, this loss, it won’t go away, it won’t really be sated, and it complicates all, for everything else that I have to cry about, real or imagined, the realest thing I have has been stolen by a manipulative old hag drowning in her own guilt and her own foolish choices.
I don’t envy her, and on good days I would like to hate her. But most days I just feel done with her.
A friend of mine said it while I was thinking it and too scared to admit it. I’m lonely. I have been for a long time. It’s not just the fact that when you graduate, your friends, your foster family is whirled to all four corners of the wind, it’s also that the things I had previously taken comfort in – writing, drawing – were, and still are, spaces, eons, apart from me and where I wanted to be with it. When you spend so many years of your life doing one thing that you feel a passion for, when it’s suddenly gone, when you don’t know what else to do, it is like the world just falls away, stripping it to nothing but the daily grind. The future’s just a word, it doesn’t mean anything. There’s just the daily push and the tinge of envy at people so… “focused”, so untroubled by anything that remotely resembles “reality,” and it’s like, are you angry at them for having what you want, or angry because they can only think on one gear when you’ve always thought on three? When I literally had nothing else, I could always write or draw for a little while and feel somewhat sustained, not like I was floating without a purpose anymore. Somewhere along the way, I got so scared of my own lack of talent and abilities that I ceased to be. I couldn’t find myself in anything I did, and anything I attempted to do seemed like a mere hiccup of what I was once capable of. I know that if you don’t do something with regularity, you don’t get better. I’m not going to get a nice body if I don’t exercise on a daily basis – imagine what happens when even that last bastion of self-identity is gone, fading, because you apparently have too much sex and that makes your hips spread –
Maybe I focused more on the superficial because I felt like I couldn’t have what was real, the real sorrow, the real hurt, because it would be just manipulative like my grandma, but maybe these stupid little things were real to me, too – it feels like on a good day all I have is the semblance of a decent body, not a body that I hate, not one that I loathe, one that I wish was capable of more that would only happen through the sculpting of a life lived in the wilderness, the ephemeral nature of being attractive (oh yes, it’s still there!), the wonderings of past sex partners, “Why did I do that,” what was I trying to gain, what did I see in him, why is it when I really need someone no one is there, how long am I supposed to be strong alone, and then the bitter bitter realization that the characters you nursed and raised from your own psychosis have left you, you call blindly in the depths of your mind for them, standing on the front porch, calling them in for dinner, calling them away from the dark, and realizing they’re laughing in the bushes, hiding from you, feeding off of things too dark and ugly for you to face even on a good day, and they’ve grown without you, so much so that you flounder for pen and paper to write, to try and catch a moment –
But what’s the point when there are bills to pay that won’t be paid, when you’re scared you’re going to lose your apartment, and then what? Certainly not back to grandparents, whatever it took for that not to happen, the consistent nagging and tongue wagging of those trying to console by insisting, “You have so much going for you, why are you so down on yourself” and you just want to tell them to shut the hell up, or even do them a service better – rip open the empty space behind your forehead and let them wander around until they’ve had enough and know not to question, for them to drink so deeply of what it is that makes you tick that they’re glutted on your own sorrow and know now not to say anything all, because there’s nothing that can be said –
Nothing will get better unless I work at it. But now I’m scared to draw. I sat and mulled over writing this for days, scared that whatever I spat out on the computer would be complete and utter crap or not do justice to what it was that I had to say, scared to end up crying again and god forbid someone would be watching, scared to recount things that I knew so well – so well, in fact, what was the need to even write them down? It’s funny though, in my experience the more you reach out to people the more they recoil from you. When I asked for a crit of what I was working on, I got a lot of lipservice and nothing along the lines of what I asked for, which was simply, “Could you, would you, read this?” It in turns makes me bitter, but it tickles and taps and scratches at the indignant core of my being that simply, even through this depression, does nothing more than let me sleep. It won’t let me end things. It won’t let me stop from looking for jobs or doing something or walking or thinking about what it was that I wanted to be so desperately and now I don’t know what that is anymore. I realize I was reluctant to write because I’m not sure if I’ve done a good job of articulating how I’ve felt, I don’t want clichés, but I want it as I experienced it, a veritable blank space where nothing good and nothing bad and nothing extraordinary happens, or happened –
Or so I thought.
The ice in my drink has melted. I wonder what the neighbors think of me, sitting out here on my perpetual quest for something, drinking, crying, snotty nosed because I needed to rake things up and out instead of settling under them.
The last few days have been surreal at best.
On another one of my infinite interviews, I was actually hired at a place. Customer service, supposedly, but after that first day, I knew nothing other than I had a job. Thinking that it was the best thing to do, I had attempted to break up with Chris simply because right now I’m not a good person for myself – how could I be a good person for anyone else? In the back of my head echoed the sour taste of the failure of Kyle and his borderline resentment at my insecurity. Unlike Kyle, though, Chris had been, and is, nothing but good to me. For once, I could admit that this break up would not be because of a subconscious need not to be with the wrong person, but because he deserved better than what I had to offer. There was the small issue of my not feeling like I was attractive to him, but even that small hiccup on my part, my meager attempt to share the blame in this parting was…just hollow. Well, not hollow – very legitimate in my case, but it did nothing to overshadow or hide that I was just not good for him. Months, maybe even weeks beforehand I would have never admitted that, but since, and previously before I was laid off, I started growing in my strange way – leaps and bounds of understanding that I had had lessons in previously, but never fully learned. I knew I dated losers. I knew that the NSA sexual relationships never worked for me. I knew I wasted so much time and energy screaming rabidly, frothy at the opposite sex, “So look at me!” that it was embarrassing to look back on. The only consolation I took out of these was that, “Better at 22 than at 42,” simply because if it was a lesson learned firmly now, it wouldn’t bear repeating in the future. When I donned a bikini one day, I suddenly realized – I didn’t care anymore. I used to be livid if I didn’t get male attention in scanty clothing. Then I just stopped. It wasn’t like a sudden bolt out of the blue, nor was it a gradual process. In fact, it was so sudden, so quiet, so destined to move on cat feet that I didn’t realize it until I went home and wondered why I felt so…still.
Back to the customer service.
I show up for the second day of the orientation and am repeatedly told that I can make 1000 a week if I work hard. Work hard at doing what was the real question, though – the very real question that wasn’t being answered. Then out came the vacuum cleaners.
Yes, the vacuum cleaners.
Our “customer service” entailed learning how to break these glittering steel hulks down, putting them back together, putting them in the box, and showing a customer how to use this nearly $2600 piece of crap. I was incredulous. In the back of my head beeped a little signal telling me to cut my losses and go home, but for christ’s sake it was a job, and after how many interviews? Maybe my luck was turning around – after all, I can only live on the severance pay for so long, and it wouldn’t be until July that unemployment would kick in. A job was a job at this point. Pay a few bills, keep looking for something better, but know that I wasn’t going to lose my place anytime soon.
The next day I came in with a list of questions for the new trainer, namely, “What is it exactly that we’re going to be doing?”
He gave me this look that automatically set him on my shit list. “What do you mean you don’t know,” he nearly spat at me. “Where were you the last two days? Too busy listening to your headphones?” I looked at him, and I can’t begin to recall what my expression must have looked like. It was one of those few times where I’m honestly so taken by surprise that I can’t bother to mask my disgust. My Plastic Fantastic smile must have vanished in milliseconds.
“No,” I recall saying after taking a breath, “It’s just that he never really SPECIFICALLY said what we were going to be doing or what the job entailed other than demos.” I remembered the glitter of carnelian around my wrist. I’d worn it that day solely for asking questions. Maybe it’s silly to believe in the power of stones to grant you certain abilities, but my carnelian has untied many a tongue and my quartz has seen through a lot of bullshit. Although a flare of self-doubt started, I shut it down quickly. In my absent minded chats with the other people I was going to be training with, they also expressed being unsure of what they were going to do. One poor lady had been told that it was a 8-5 job, and she was making the drive from Spring all the way out here in Katy.
So I wasn’t quite alone.
Again the flash and the glitter of how much money that we would be making. Bonuses. Incentives.
No mention whatsoever of being left in a house with an old Nigerian lady who only knew two phrases in English and one of the most ill behaved children on the face of the planet. He only had one volume – shout.
Nothing was sitting right. Conflicting times and dates as to when we’d show up and start work, what was to be done, how long we’d be working (which apparently now seems to be from 11-10:30 or later at night), nothing. The next day, I show up in newly purchased Express professional clothing (after spending the night before lamenting the state of my ass and how my breasts seemed to have joined the revolt against XS clothing labels), ready to do the best that I can in selling one of these goddamn machines, egged on in the back of my head by words from Paris (why I still fucking listen to him is a mystery for the ages), and from the Ghost of Christmas Past, encouraging me to at least learn something from the experience instead of loathe it.
We drive 30-40 minutes past Katy. I know now that we were in Missouri City, but at the time, I was completely and utterly lost. It wasn’t until later, explained by my sage like cab driver (whom I will get to later) that Missouri City is a hell of a lot bigger than I initially thought.
After we got to a pretty nice, i.e., rich, part of town, I was unceremoniously dumped outside of the black van, bottle of water, phone, and binder firmly in hand. Well I’ll be dammned – I was sent off without so much as a trainer to make sure that I didn’t fuck up. “Go up and down the street and try to get an appointment. I’ll call you when we set one up for you.”
So there I was, under the Texas noonday sun, in full professional attire, and told that I was going to go door to door to pitch these goddamn vacuum cleaners. When I finally got home, I called Chris and told him that the next time I whined that nothing interesting ever happened to me that he was to slap me and remind me of this day. Trying to hide my disgust and attempting the best to make Paris proud in my mind (I will have to scrape him out of my grey matter if it kills me), I went from door to door gamely, ignoring the huge sweat circles developing under my armpits on this goddamn nearly $40 shirt (yes Express is expensive, but it’s worth it), and swearing until my mind ran as blue as the sky overhead. By the time that I would get the occasional face to the door, I would be so out of swears that there would be nothing left on my face but the emptiest of smiles and the desperate attempt to make my heavy ponytail sway soothingly back and forth like the hand on a metronome.
In my door to door adventures, not once was I sworn at, not once did I have a door slammed in my face. I got very polite “No thank yous”, and ambushed by the sweetest of dogs – my favorite of the day, a four month old yellow lab puppy that shed long yellow hairs on my black pants and licked everywhere he could reach, tail wagging so hard that his whole butt shook. I thought to myself, “I should call this shit off and just hang out with this guy and his dogs,” but that’s kind of skeezy. When I finally finished, or thought I had finished a block, I sat down under the shade of a tree and cried a little. I felt stupid for doing it, but sometimes you just get so frustrated that it’s okay. Actually, I don’t know why I’m making excuses for myself now on the paper. I know that these tears had nothing to do with the aforementioned depression, but were borne out of pure frustration, anger, and just irritation. I had been basically lied to for the past three days, and then was called crazy or stupid for asking logical questions such as, “Do we have direct deposit,” “What’s the ratio of making appointments – ie, how many doors will be slammed in my face?” I was told I had a negative attitude, and I thought that I did. It wasn’t until I was alone and thought to myself, “How was any of that goddamn negative?” The company boasts that it’s never laid anyone off in 94 years. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t FIRE anyone in the mean time. And guess what – no unemployment, either. Sounded like a bum rap to me.
I called my mom and started to form a plan of escape. Anyone that knows me knows that it takes a lot for me to sweat (and sweat a lot – it’s weird, but true – I very rarely sweat. Go fig), and even more for me to feel faint under the sun. Although I had continually taken pulls of water from my bottle, it wasn’t enough, not for someone who wasn’t particularly in the habit of wandering around in the hot ass Texas sun in the middle of the goddamn day. Shit, at that time of day, I was usually at home, sleeping. Unfortunately, my beat up “medical bag” with my wallet and all of that good stuff was in the van, which was I don’t know where. Fretting over this unfortunate piece, I didn’t have to wait too much longer before the team leader called me, letting me know that he had made an appointment for me. “Well,” I thought to myself, “Even though this job sucks dead donkey dick the least I can do is attempt to sell one of these machines before I leave,” so, there, I attempted positivity.
Didn’t say that I won at it, though.
I was dropped off at a house full of people. A mom, a dad, a grandma, a daughter, a noisy ass brat kid, an older son. As I started the presentation, it was pretty clear to me that only the daughter was paying attention, so I began to drop the business attitude and just talk to her – about my wanting to go back to grad school, about life, about college. She’d bounced around a few places, never too far from home, and was trying to finish her BA, so I spoke to her candidly about life after graduation – it generally sucks. College doesn’t prepare you for the real world, and you have to know that even with a degree, you have to start at the bottom. People make it sound like once you have that piece of paper, it’s a golden ticket into whatever career you want. That’s bullocks. For the first couple of months all it is is a piece of paper. People try to be optimistic, or maybe they just don’t know any better, but leaving college is like leaving a part of your, no, not a part, but your entire purpose in life behind. You have to start over. In retrospect, it’s like anything else, but the way folks talk about it, they make it sound like it’s a transition. It’s not. It’s a whole new start with new worries, even more if you move out and live on your own, like I’ve opted to do. I don’t regret moving out at all (in fact, I would go so far as to say it was utterly necessary for my sanity), but I do get angry thinking about how unprepared I was, how unhappy I’ve been, how unhappy my friends have been and I’m too far away to hug them until the breath leaves their bodies and I mold their bodies into mine and my body into theirs, because you don’t need words, you need someone who gets it, and I’m pissed that we all have to suffer more or less alone, locked in our own solitudes.
I then apologized for sounding like a downer and commenced to bullshit about that goddamn vacuum. Seriously, people will spend money on anything if they have enough of it. I wonder what the compulsion is.
The mother remarked to me earlier in the day that she thought that because of my hair, I must get accused of being from the Islands on a regular basis. I told her she was right – I’ve had some people even tell me that I looked Brazilian. The fact that I’m a home grown American nigger and somewhat attractive must be too much for folks to handle. Half-way through the presentation, the English speaking members of the family leave. Fuck. I can give the presentation to grandma, but she’s like dosing off and mumbles to me on occasion like she’s pissed, but it’s not like I haven’t been around hateful old women before, and at least this time I couldn’t understand what she was saying. While I was vacuuming the floor, singing to myself ( I have this odd compulsion of singing while I do housework; it’s very odd), I thought to myself, I’m literally in the house with other “Black” people, and I feel no sort of kinship with them whatsoever. It made me think about the times my dad threatened to take a vacation to Africa and bring me with him so I could learn my roots. Well, daddy, I was staring my roots right in the face and she just looked back at me with as baleful an eye as any other stranger. So much for racial solidarity. Maybe she knew in her African mystic way that I fucked white boys. Who knows.
After I’m finished vacuuming and shampooing the carpet, laboring over putting everything back in the box and cleaning everything, I call my team leader to tell him I’m done. “Did you make a sale?”
“No; I’m in the house with the grandma who doesn’t really speak English and the grandchild,” who now is shouting in the background that I have to spend the night and that he is going to call me “Kimmy” for the rest of the time that I’m there. I despise being called “Kimmy.” It’s true I’ve had my run of retarded “Kim” based nicknames, but for some reason calling me Kimmy makes me see red and drums up this innate compulsion to destroy and smash. I know I’m setting myself up to be called “Kimmy” by writing this, but I also add this – call me that, and I will, and this is not an idle threat, punch you somewhere as hard as I can.
“Oh yeah? Well, just hang out there for a while. I’m at a house.”
“For a while” ended up being 3 ½ to 4 hours. I eventually just ended up babysitting. And this child, this loathsome hellspawn whose only volume was “Shout,” had endless demands. He wasn’t a well mannered child, or even cute – two things that might have endeared him to me instead of humoring the thought of holding him over the stairwell by his shorts or just shoving him down them. “Get me cereal, make me tea, watch a movie,” never even so much as a please. And everything, I can’t stress enough, was shouted like I was outside and down the street from him instead of a foot away. Trying to figure out a way to get him to shut the hell up (at this point, the grandma had vanished, leaving me with this noisome bunch of sperm that should have ended up in a tissue), I suggested he play video games and I’d watch. The years of being a half-assed sister at best paid off, so I ended up watching him play video games while I made the occasional phone call, still plotting my escape from this job that was continually getting all the worst and surreal by the hour.
One thing of note as this creature played his video games – the grandma came out from nowhere, and sat down on the couch, watching him beat up on Link as Kirby. And then she proceeded to make a perfect imitation of the noise Kirby makes as he flies. Talk about surreal – in-between her half-sung, half-mumbled words in whatever language, she would punctuate something with that Kirby noise. There was something just so…off about that that I had to trust the pain in my head to make sure that I was real, that all of this was happening.
My team leader finally knocks on the door, I’m a step away from being catatonic from being constantly shouted at by that Satan in the guise of a child. I don’t say a single word to him as he drags the machinery back out to the car, except, “I need to get my bag and my Tupperware out of the cooler.” In one of our earlier phone exchanges, I told him I was going to catch a cab back to HQ to my car. No I didn’t want to think about the job, I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to work for me. One of the trainers called me as well, the same one that bitched at me for not knowing that I was going to be a door to door vacuum cleaner sales woman, and I told him the same thing, “This isn’t for me, thanks for the opportunity, and good luck.” The team leader looks at me like I’m insane. I guess all of the swears that I wanted to say but was too hot and tired to muster up reflected in my eyes and his grin faltered. He dropped me off at the outside of the complex, the hot ghetto mess that was in the car looking at me and laughing at me for passing up this great opportunity.
I try three different cab companies before I can get one in the area. As I’m trying to explain my location to the woman on the other line, I realize I have no earthly idea where I am. No clue of a zipcode. Just street names. I don’t even know what part of Houston – other than 30-40 minutes away from Barker Cypress, which is about 30 minutes from where I live. Great, we’re talking maybe an hour in a cab. I figured it’d be 60 bucks or so, 50 by the grace of God. Someone was listening, because after a while (and thank you, Cab lady), we managed to piece together where I was, and how to get me back. I sat down on the sidewalk and watched the progress of a doodle bug among black ants in the grass.
When the cab arrives, it’s a big van. From the voice on the phone, I thought the driver would have been Middle Eastern, but apparently that Saturday was my day for magical negros from Africa. I say this in jest, since my dreadlocks mark me as a fledgling magical negro, which I will get into later. The cab driver doesn’t look directly at me, doesn’t really even glance at me through the rear view mirror. But I start talking to him all the same, of my vexation from that job, from what I needed to do, why I was suckered into this, which bore a striking resemblance to an entanglement I got myself into earlier, with the creepy trainer that got my number from my resume and continued to call me after I made it clear I wasn’t going to go door to door selling cable.
“Because you got desperate,” he said very matter of factly. “You’re single, right? Not married, no kids, no one depending on you. You put yourself under so much pressure for no reason. Relax. Look carefully. Something will come to you.” He paused for a moment. “You don’t have many friends, right?”
I admitted that I didn’t. Shit, not in Houston, anyway. Folks are married, close to married, or so relaxed in their own lives that the gulfs that existed in high school turned into canyons. I used to be on the outside looking in, now I’m on the outside walking away. Complacency scares me almost as much as failure. Who am I kidding – they’re one in the same to me.
“Networking is how you help each other out. My wife joined a staffing agency, they were a big help.” He gave me the name of the agency, and I thanked him for it, feeling like I had just discovered something that I already knew. If I had had the means to tip the man, I would have. He didn’t have to say anything to me, but he did. Little things like that…I dunno, make me feel a little better. Remind me why I still hope so much for change among humans, despite evidence towards the contrary.
He waited until I got into my car, and waited until I made a phone call to my mom telling her I’d gotten to my car before he left. For a moment, I was reminded of my dad – I mean, maybe he was waiting for my credit card to clear, but it felt like he was waiting until I was secure in where I was going before he left. As I drove home, my mind was still somewhat of a blank, overwhelmed by everything that had happened and the sage like wisdom (others would say “common sense”) of the cab driver, and that it was so nice of him to even bother to listen to me and to respond.
I think I showered for an hour, though, just standing, just waiting for the dirt to melt off. Sleep was tangled in my hair and incense. I remember calling Joy to let her know that the lead I had was completely bust and that she shouldn’t rely on the place like I had.
I guess it came back to me, because a few days later she called to let me know that Abercrombie and Fitch were desperately looking for Managers in Training – and all you needed was a degree. I figured why not, and that I would apply Monday, since it was already late when I spoke to her. I went in Monday to fill out the application, only to be interviewed on the spot by the DM, and feeling like a fool in my beat up Spider Man underoos shirt, unkempt hair, and jeans a few sizes too big for me, held up only by the belt pulled tight around my hips. Apparently the only issue was that of my nose ring – one easily resolved by my retainer.
So, after thinking with confidence, “I’m going to get this job,” I went home and applied to more places online, as my daily habit. I thought I was done with the vacuum cleaner job.
Apparently I was wrong (I’m sure you saw that coming).
Bright and early Tuesday morning, my phone rings. I have a hard time finding it for a while because I slept with my hair down, which has formed this almost living breathing thick rope like mass around my face and arms.
“Hello?” I have a surprisingly clear voice in the morning, if I don’t recognize the number.
“Yeah, Kim, this is H., from the Vacuum Cleaner place. I thought you were going to come in yesterday, cause you’re missing a piece from your machine.”
You’ve got to be shitting me. I sit up in bed and shake my hair from my face.
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah, the whole shampoo head is missing, and your machine was dirty as hell.”
I’m so pissed that my thoughts jumble together like spiderweb and I have a difficult time to think articulately.
“Well, if you’re implying that I have it, I don’t. I loaded everything back in the box and double checked items,” because I was hell bent on putting shit up like I had been shown, I don’t know why.
“I’m not saying that,” which was funny, because the way he said it didn’t even sound like he believed that he wasn’t accusing me of taking the damn thing, “But did you leave it at the house or something?”
“I’m pretty positive that I didn’t, but if you say it’s not there, then I would check the house.”
He hung up before I could say anything more. For a moment, I was panicked, thinking that I had left something back at the house, then I calmed myself. When we were given the machines to do our demos with, we weren’t assigned any particular one. No serial numbers, no charts – just a random machine from the back of the truck, out of eight. So the one I showed could have easily have been used by someone else and then put back, and so on and so forth. After another call to my mom, we came to the conclusion that it was just petty harassment, and that there was nothing that they could really pin on me because of it. Fine, whatever by me, but what a shit way to start the morning. And better yet – I went out on Saturday. Why would they wait until Tuesday to let me know about this? It said bullshit all over.
I rolled over and went back to sleep.
That night, at like 1 something in the morning, I get a call. I don’t answer, because no one I know calls me that late unless they’re drunk, which is a rare occurrence nowadays. Whoever it was left a message. Turns out it was one of the guys I’d met at the Vacuum Cleaner Hell place, asking me to help him with his rent, since he had asked his grandma and uncle and they couldn’t lend him any money. Like an idiot I had offered to help him, assumably with the money I would make. But no job, no extra money. I told him that I had my own rent to worry about and that it was really his problem, not mine. I suggested that he ask one of the trainers that he’d gotten so buddy buddy with to lend him the money. Apparently this came as a bright light to him, and he thanked me before hanging up. Hence my fledgling magical negro qualities. I can’t solve my own problems but I can solve those of random white people. Go fig.
Eight pages later, my drink’s almost gone, my skin is sticky, and the pool is quiet again. I received a call this afternoon while I was waiting for my naan dough to rise. I got the job at Abercrombie. Working in jeans and tshirts and tanks and flipflops again, this time with the possibility of going overseas in a while. Money will be coming back to me, easing that one problem, and I wonder if anything else will ease up. Despite my initial (and somewhat lingering) apprehensions about the whole relationship thing, we seem to be doing okay. There’s been a lot of shit for us not even being together for half a year (if I remember correctly, it’ll be three months this month), so I’m wondering if this is just growing pains, or the bliss of ignorance that are the first three months of any relationship, or if the core of myself, the independent, the loner, will still pulse and beat out an invisible path that I instinctively follow. Who knows.
Still got a ways to go, it’d seem.
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lanerd's journal
drained.
nostalgic.
okay.
accomplished.