Go Ahead, Jon Gosselin, Make My Day

Every morning I go to the same gas station on my way to work.

A few posts back, I found a dog there.

Today, I found a man there.

Well, okay, so I didn't really "find a man" there per se. In fact, we didn't even speak.

I pulled up and got out of my car to purchase my overpriced energy drink of the day. I turned my french rap down so that no one would notice how much of gangster I am. Walking up to the entrance, I tried clicking the door-lock button on my remote to no avail. Something about this particular gas station blocks the signal. Every single day I try to make the doors lock using my clicker and every single day they don't lock. Luckily, I never buy more than a single energy drink and I bring in my wallet, phone and keys, but it makes me uneasy to open the door to the Mapco and never hear the satisfying click of my car doors locking behind me.

On this particular day I was feeling pretty svelte and awesome looking. I was wearing a new blue and white ruffly shirt underneath my black suit jacket tucked into my black criss cross BCBG skirt. Which, by the way, is the only thing I own that could in any way be called designer. I bought it at TJ Maxx for 10 dollars on clearance. In any case, I was wearing an outfit that, in my opinion that morning, made me look both sexy and expensive. So when I opened the door to the Mapco, I noticed a few heads turn.

The usual couple of landscaping Latinos were getting coffee and conchas, those little shell shaped glazed donuts. I had been on a diet for almost three months, and had lost nearly 25 lbs. I reached for the sugar free red bull. Once stepping into line, I was distracted by a older gentleman, maybe in his late sixties, in front of me who seemed very chatty.

"Look at you all dressed up!" He stopped talking to the older lady in front of him and actually tipped his hat to me. "You look so sharp, I gotta let you go in front of me." And he stepped to the side.
"Aw, thanks." I smiled. I did only have that one drink. It wouldn't take but a second for me to pay.
"You must work in an office building. People who work in office buildings don't smile enough. You have a pretty smile."
"Thank you!" I said, and turned just in time to see the guy at the front of the line turn to leave.

I swear he looked just like a skinny, more attractive version of Jon Gosselin. Dark hair with a dark complexion, and deep set eyes. I noticed the eyes first because they slid sideways at me as he pushed open the door. He was dressed nicely enough. A button down shirt and some black pants. I didn't get a good read on the shoes, which always seem to be the most telling article that men wear, but that was all because he kept looking at me, burning a hole through the side of my face as I turned back to the older gentleman.

"Do you smile much at work? I bet you don't. I bet you only smile when the boss is smiling."
I put my drink up on the counter.
"I smile! My boss smiles a lot. Maybe that's why I smile so much."
He was pumping gas outside, I noted, looking through the window.
"People don't smile unless the boss is smiling. Why is that? I want all my employees to smile. All the time. Office people are never happy, are they."
I swiped my card. "Well, they treat me pretty well at my job. So maybe that's why everybody smiles." And the clerk handed me my receipt.
"Well then you've got a good job! Stick with it! But I don't have to tell you that, they'd keep you around just for decoration," the old man said. And he laughed a little too loudly.
"You have a nice day, sir!" I smiled back at him and pushed open the door, myself. I was thinking about what the old man said for a second about how office people never smile. I decided that he was probably a manager at some shop or store, and he was probably a darn good manager, too. I bet he wasn't rich, but he was good people. Like Flannery O'Conner thought was impossible.

The Jon Gosselin lookalike broke my concentration. He was still looking at me from the gas pump. Back and forth, here and there. It wasn't a creepy steady gaze or anything. Just an I'm-letting-you-know-I'm-looking kind of thing. He looked professional. He looked nice. And established. He looked down to shut his gas cap, and I smiled to myself, hopping into my unlocked car. I left the door open for a few seconds and made room in my cup holder for the very unhealthy Red Bull I was about to drink.
Glancing up at my rear view mirror, I saw the back end of his black Honda drive off.

Even though we never spoke, he had already made my day.

It was almost overkill when I passed his car heading toward the turn lane and caught him looking for me again. And the last time I saw him, he passed my car on his way around a corner. In my peripheral vision, he was STILL eyeing me.

Okay, so you might find that a bit creepy. But it made my day. Compliments and open gawkers? Bring it on. At this low weight, which I haven't been since a bit after college, I expect these things. And I revel in them.

Frankly, though, if Jon Gosselin had spoken to me, I would have spoken back. Still, if I'd found that it actually WAS the REAL Jon Gosselin, I might have run screaming in the other direction.

Carlos Baute is a Poetic Liar

Early last year I watched a lot of Spanish tv. Over a period of about two weeks I saw the same blond Venezuelan actor/musician on a total of 3 television shows. I saw him on a morning show being interviewed. I saw him on Sabado Gigante. I saw him on Belleza Latina. And by the second time I saw him, I was in love. He was so cute and skinny and bright and knowing-looking. He kinda looked like a sunshiney bad boy. He had this toothy grin that blinged with white sparkle and he was always laughing.
So after enjoying the song he played on each show, I downloaded his whole cd. It became a fixture in my car's 6 cd changer. He sits in position number four, and has for an entire year. Right behind my three french rap cds, and before my Aventura cd.

All of his songs are love songs. Melodic and acoustic splashed 90's pop rhythm, the hooks on the songs have an amazing build and are a perfect compliment to a sunny day with your windows rolled down. Unlike American love songs, though, they're not about dirty sexy love. They're incredibly romantic. They talk about marriage and kids and the kinds of things every girl secretly wants to hear. I could have eaten Carlos Baute with a spoon! The whole idea that a guy was out there thinking those things made me giddy. Especially if the guy thinking them was as attractive as Carlos Baute.

One day, though, Daniel Castillo rained on my parade.

I was driving him to a soccer game and singing along to a song that sounded like this:

"Me quiero casar contigo.
Quiero dormir contigo.
Quiero que lleves mi apellido
Nuestros hijos, tu sonrisa.
Te quieres casar conmigo.
Quieres vivir conmigo.
Quiero pasar el resto de
mis dias con tu compania."
Which, of course, means:

I want to marry you.
I want to sleep with you.
I want to give you my last name
and give our children your smile.
Do you want to marry me?
Do you want to live with me?
I want to spend the rest
of my days with you.

"You like that song?" Daniel asked.
"YES!"
He paused for a second, pulling up his knee socks before saying, "I think maybe Carlos Baute is a liar with poetry."
I laughed. "A liar with poetry? Why! The whole cd follows a pattern, Daniel. Early tracks are about him falling in love with someone who is is best friend, and then they have an anniversary song, and he wants to marry her, and the last song is about always remembering those early good times together!"

Daniel's eyes grew wide, and I knew he was about to give me some major scoop. He had looked the same way when he was telling me about how Cristiano Ronaldo and Paris Hilton had sex in the back of a limousine. And how the pop artist Belinda (see pic below) had taken a fancy sports car in exchange for her virginity. Because, clearly, Daniel had been there. I rolled my eyes and braced for it.
"No no no... Carlos Baute, I see him interviewed on Don Francisco Presenta. And you know what he say?"
"What did he say?" I was already slumping. "I know he's not married. So whoever he's talking about, they didn't actually get married, but I thought..."
"Don Francisco ask him a question, like he ask everybody this same question. He say what is your favorite thing to do? What is your favorite time? And you know what Carlos Baute say???"
"What did he say..." Darn it, Daniel, I thought, you're gonna ruin it for me."
He say he like to take some girl and go some place, like tropical paradise place, and make a big vacation."
"Well... that's not so bad."
"Yes! Yes it is bad!" Daniel was not smiling at me. "You know why? It's because Carlos Baute say his favorite thing to do is make a big vacation and all he wanna do the whole time is mucho sexo and mucho comer. All he wants to do is have lots of sex and eat lots of food."
I laughed a little bit. "Really?"
"Yes. I saw him say this."
"Well, what about getting married and giving the girl his name and all that?"
"Nada. He wants sex and food."
"Ugh! ...he probably didn't mean it that way. He probably only does that with one woman. Not some woman."
"No, he says different women. All this things in his songs are big, big lies with poetry. He says anything for the girl to give him sex." I turned into the YMCA parking lot. "I'm sorry, Barbie."

So, Daniel was convinced Carlos Baute was a man-slut. And I was convinced he was beautiful. It is true that I often give people more credit than they are due. When I thought about it, though, Carlos Baute was really just the cover of a romance novel in my head. The stories he told in his songs were sweet and made me happy, and as I parked my car near the soccer field filled with Guatemalans and rich white people about to get their butts kicked, I decided I didn't care who Carlos Baute was in real life. As far as I was concerned, all his songs were about me.

To this day, I will listen to him with my windows rolled down, and my sun roof cracked open so the air blows through. I sip artificially sweetened coffee on ice, and sing along even when the people next to me at the red light stare. Daniel Castillo has come and gone, and left his dents, but Carlos Baute still loves me.

So I don't care if he's a poetic liar. Or if he beds a thousand Belinda's every night. When I play the cd, he loves me. He is what I want him to be. And that's all that really matters.

En Cambio

Sadly, despite my system flush, and attempt to rid myself of unnecessary stressers, I have added stressers that have little to do with my social life.

A week and a half ago I decided to plan a trip to Aalborg, Denmark, through Germany, and finally to Paris, France where I would attend a french rap concert featuring La Fouine. La Fouine, as you may know, is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE french rap artist in the world.

And I do love french rap, probably too much. I love it even when its inappropriate, because I wouldn't know. I love the way it sounds, all tough and delicate at the same time. I love that it's cheesy and fun. Its sense of humor is always a bright spot to my day.

I had been enjoying my time back at the only Temp job for the company I love and would die to work for.
I had been enjoying English Outreach classes on Sundays, classes I volunteered to teach, but hadn't yet.
I was looking forward to my presentation at work.

Then things got hairy.
My friend in Aalborg informed me that he cannot travel outside of the Sweeden-Norway-Denmark region because he is living in Denmark on asylum and recieves assistance from the government. Upon hearing this news, I angrily calculated that I had already spent around 400 dollars in preparation for the trip and the concert.
"You can still come to Aalborg!" he said. "We'll do some fun stuff here in Denmark! It is beautiful. You're gonna love it!"
But I was mad. I was really, really mad. To be honest, here he was thinking the trip was about spending time with him, when it was really about spending time with EUROPE. I wanted the trip for ME, not for him. I wanted to be romanced by the location, not the person I was visiting. I never officially cried, but when I got into my car after reading his email, and La Fouine came on my cd player, I might have shed a single tear.

My trip to Europe was put on hold indefinitely. I was extremely disappoined in myself, in my Danish friend, and in my helplessness to travel alone. I just didn't think I could do it. It had crossed my mind to attend the concert alone, but I was terrified of being stoned by angry Frenchmen.

Two nervewracking events soon occurred in quick succession.
I taught the Advanced class at English Outreach.
I gave my presentation at work and shocked everybody with my old Forensic skills.

A couple days later I was approached about a position that might be opening up at a high end bank. I jumped on it, scored the interview, and three days later, during the interview, was offered a job. The thing is, I don't really want to leave my current position at all. But I need a career, not just a place holder, and I need medical insurance.

Sigh...
I haven't had a good nights sleep in almost a week. I continually grind my teeth and dream about strange things like driving in the dark without any headlights, which seems oddly symbolic.

Slowly, and with much chagrin, I spitefully told the Danish dumbo that I would NOT be coming to Aalborg to stay with someone who hadn't even figured out his own legal status. I called France Billet in Paris using the $6 credit on my prepaid phone account to stay on hold for over two minutes and beg the CSR to help me in English sil vout plait! Canceling the tickets and retreiving my 110 dollars was a weight off my shoulders.

Still crushing me, however, was the job decision.

As of about one hour ago, I have officially chosen the bank.

Still. I am sad. The whole situation is a catch 22 of sadness. Sad if you don't go, sad if you do.

CHANGE, my friends, is the word of the day.

I can still remember my first few days of fourth grade. I hated it. I had no friends. I cried upon asking someone where my classroom was. I had to ride the bus for the first time. It was awful.

I can remember waking up and putting on the kitty cat sweater with little red button eyes, and sitting down with a bowl of Captain Crunch in front of the living room tv. I dreaded the bus like nobody's business. I HATED it. But Sesame Street was on. I remembered Sesame Street from when I was in Kindergarten and first grade. In fourth grade, everything was harder.
A song came on the episode of Sesame Street, and I have never forgotten it.

"Things are always changing. So don't be sad and blue. Change can make you happy; it can bring you something new."

I never forgot that song, and I sang it as a mantra, along with a couple poems I had memorized, just to calm myself down sometimes on the bus.

Things ARE always changing. How right you are, Sesame Street. How right you are...

The Only Option: at 180 Beats Per Minute

According to my wrist watch heart rate monitor, my pulse was racing at 180 beats per minute. I had been dancing for around thirty minutes already, my shirt tied up into a knot right above my stomach. The ceiling fan was on high, the dog was under the covers in bed, and mentally, I was a million miles away.

I was kicking the living daylight out of someone. I was grinding my heels into their eye sockets. I was punching the air wildly, knuckles into jawbone. I was swinging out my hips, moving faster and faster away. But then back, and with a terrific smack, and the crunch of bone, the nose would break.

"How DARE you lie to me!" I was swearing. "How dare you pretend!"

It wasn't anyone in particular. But the past was swirling swirling swirling. And I thought of my exes, and my church, and my old, backstabbing, nay-saying friends and I pushed harder and harder.

"DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO I AM?"

Because, of course, they didn't. But did I, even? I pictured writing mean notes about infidelity to my former friend's husband. I imagined strategically ill-timed, revealing, embarassing posts on the public profiles of my exes. I imagined conveniently dropping full cups of hot coffee into their laps in passing. I imagined giving back the camera I'd recieved as a gift with a one finger salut as the only contained picture. I imagined sabotage, and the destruction of worlds.

"I'll show you! You just wait! I'll get you so good!" Punch, kick...

And then I thought about what the minister had said that past Sunday about a girl whose life changing, life determining experience had occurred in the 2nd grade, where her teacher had allowed all her classmates to write nasty things about her on the blackboard as punishment. And years later, after a failed marriage and lost jobs, her therapist had suggested that she revisit that day. Because Christ had been in the room, too. And after all the kids sat down, he had washed all the nasty words away. He had rewritten them. And hearing this, the girl was reborn. Even though she was 47 years old, and she was old and she was tired and bitter like soured rotten milk, she was reborn. She could let it all go, because he'd been there, and though she didn't know it, he'd never left.

My heartrate dropped to 156.
It just wouldn't be worth it. There are a thousand mean things I could put my effort into. And I'm conniving enough to carry out plenty of maliciously backhanded acts. In the seventh grade, I poured red food dye into Rebecca Blackwell's body lotion. Pointless, but amusing. These days I could probably get myself arrested without batting an eye. But where would I be then? It wouldn't make me any happier. My old speech coach used to say "Rise above, ladies. Rise above." Of course, there came a time years later, that I learned I had to "rise above" some of what even she said about me.

I pushed harder.

The only option, I thought, is to let it go. Its the only healthy option.
My heartrate was steady at 151, and I stared straight ahead, watching them all fade into the background, watching them slowly be erased, watching the pathway in front of me widen.

"Let me see the best version of myself."

And I kept on dancing.
And that was my Valentines Day.

Valentine's Day: Surprises and the Truth

I waited all day for the phone call from my mom that meant she had recieved the bouquet I'd ordered for her last month. When it came, I was informed that whatever company I had used shipped everything inside a big brown box and she had to assemble the arrangement herself. What a rip-off! I might as well have paid one of those immigrants hanging out at the Day Labor place to drag over a Kroger bouquet. Whatever. The box-o-flowers kinda softens the affect of flowers at work. Which, by the way, is the trump card of Valentine's Day.

Other than that mild disappointment, I am seriously beginning to sense a change in myself.

Yesterday I watched as this six foot tall blonde walked my pseudo-hipster Napoleon Dynamite crush down the center aisle at church before sitting together. They had to climb over people to sit side by side. I couldn't tell if she was chasing him, or if he was willing her to come along with him. Were they together? What was the deal? And I couldn't get it out of my mind. The whole church service I was checking to see if they were talking or exchanging looks. They weren't. And eventually, during a sermon about selfishness, of course, I managed to shake the obsession. Napoleon isn't even my usual type. He is 100 percent white American, and a little odd to boot. Why do I care what he does? If I fixate on him like this, its just going to make this whole experience about something that it has nothing to do with. Church is NOT a dating service.

"I kind of have international tendencies," I told Maryanne. We were at Panera Bread eating lunch after Sunday service. I had only met Maryanne a few times but we had already been to lunch in a group once before, so we got along okay.
"What do you mean tendencies?"
"I mean... I like foreign guys. I don't know why. I am just so much more attracted to them."
"Oooooh," Maryanne laughed. She had already finished her bagel. I was sitting there trying to eat the rest of my salad. "I'm weird like that too."
"Really?! With foreigners?"
"Oh-- no. I mean, I have a thing." Maryanne was twenty-six and pretty in a quiet way. She looked much older than she was, but had mannerisms and gestures that made her seem much younger than she was. She was sweet, and a little bit innocent.
"What's you're thing?"
"Well," Maryanne leaned in across the table, "I like black guys."
I almost spewed my soda.
"Well I do!" We both started laughing. "I mean, most of them are hot! So..."
Sometimes people surprise you. It's what makes life fun.

After church, I watched the blonde Amazon woman dart away from Napoleon, who is only a few inches taller than me, and I realized they were not together at all. They had been chatting casually and had ended up sitting next to each other. If either one of them wanted to continue talking, they would have stayed right where the were in the middle of the pew the minute the service closed. But amazon woman was out the door before I even had a chance to look for her. She didn't even say goodbye.

"I would have said goodbye." I mumbled to myself, on the way out to my car.

True. I could have said something to Napoleon as he waded his way out the door just like me. But he was already talking to someone else. Someone male, I noted. And I don't really know why I got on this thing where I notice him all the time. I don't even think I like him that much. Maybe its just somewhere to put my feelings. Maybe I park my feelings on Napoleon these days.

One thing I do know, though. I don't feel as much urgency in the dating department any more. I think maybe that's one thing I was doing wrong all this time. I felt this urgency. Like, He's right around the corner! I just need to meet him! So that literally every corner I turned I was looking for someone and calling fate on whoever I found. I don't know about that anymore. What I've figured out is this: You can't fit a square into a circle. No matter how close they are to perfect, you shouldn't settle.

In fact there is a guy at church who seems perfect. He did speech and debate, he goes to my church, he helps take care of his grandma, and works for himself! Well. What I really found out was that he was terrible at speech and debate, he only goes to church sometimes, he lives with his grandma, and he doesn't really work at all. He runs a website. Not a real job. And the living with grandma? Weird. He's 31 years old! Come on, now.

Anyway, I'm just not in a big hurry for someone to wow me with flowers and balloons. If the guy is wrong for you, all that cutesy stuff is just salt in the wound, right? All that's left is to figure out who's gonna be the wounded one.

I'll wait for it all now, okay?

I just hope I'm not too late.

Diamond Store Ninja Stars

If you dont live in Nashville, or if you do and are just completely unaware, LISTEN UP PEOPLE!

THERE'S A WAR GOING ON.

A jewelry war, to be exact.
Village Jewelers, Shane Company, and Genesis Diamonds are blowing up my car radio with sickeningly sweet commercials about true love, and crazy exotic accents promising uniquely international flavor at low, low diamond prices.

Seriously. What. The. Heck.
It is not HUMAN to sing along to a jewelry commercial. Two out of three regular radio listeners can probably recite for you the hours at your local Cool Springs Shane Company.

"Open Monday through Friday till 6. Saturday and Sunday till 5. Online... at ShaneCo dot com."

Oh yeah. It's gotten really bad. I even know the names of the owners at Village Jewelers and Genesis Diamonds. Owner Boaz Ramon, who reminds us that "his accent is always on value," competes regularly with Nyuma Shor of Village Jewelers, "official jeweler of the Tennessee Titans," who also has an alarmingly unique accent. The two of them are almost indistinguishable, though hilarious to immitate. The only odd ball is the nationally recognized voice of Tom Shane who should really invest in Brookstone and lend himself to Enviro-scapes because I immediately want to pass out upon hearing him speak.

What makes it worse, however, are the images they use to pull at your heart strings.

"He's charmed my mother, impressed my father..."

It's almost like they're waving phony, yet deliciously perfect relationships in your face.

"The next time I hold his hand, I want to be wearing a Tacori."

Which, by the way, is a very expensive designer engagement ring. ...Gold digger...

This stuff blares through my car stereo YEAR ROUND. Its Valentine's, true, but in the fall? Shane Company lets me know that more guys pop the question around Christmas than any other time! Its the summer? Bridal blitz! It DOES NOT end.

Thus, unfortunately, I am stuck here in my car year in, year out, glancing at my naked ring finger while I grumble about the sappy squooshy gooshy voice of the happy bride. OR, of course, the rolling R's of Boaz and Nyuma.

Speaking of whom, the plot thickens if you do a little research. The Charlotte (NC) Business Journal, dated April 30th, 2004 had the following to say about Mr. Ramon after his exit from the Charlotte diamond scene.

"No statement to the press was too outlandish and no competition-bashing advertisement was too bold for Boaz Ramon, the controversial former presient of Diamonds Direct USA Inc. The man who raised his diamond business from relative obscurity on Independence Boulevard to SouthPark -- the glittering heart of high-end retail in Charlotte -- won few friends along the way. But it wasn't just Ramon's aggressive business dealings that rankled the industry. The taunting calls he made to competitors when he took a customer away and the sef-congratulatory faxes he would send after winning a sale left many local jewelers angry and some feeling vulnerable. Many say they never knew what he would do next -- and that scared them. Ramon left management of the 6,000-square-foot SouthPark store and showroom on March 24 under circumstances that still aren't clear."

Love it! Taunting calls and self-congratulatory faxes? The man's a beast! His character gets more and more interesting the more you read. Apparently he's currently in the middle of a lawsuit.

"Cammeron's complaint detailed how he and Ramon signed a 13-month lease in June 2008 for a five-bedroom, 4,975-square-foot mansion on Taggart Avenue north of Cheekwood. Under the agreement, Ramon - who runs Genesis Diamonds in Green Hills - was to pay Cammeron $6,000 a month to live in the house built in 2007. In July of 2009, when he didn't notify Cammeron of his intent to leave after the 13 months, the lease was automatically renewed.
This past March, Cammeron says, Ramon moved out and has since not paid his rent. The builder also accuses Ramon of "causing substantial damages to the Property over and above normal wear and tear." He has asked for a trial to determine damages to the house, which until recently was being marketed for sale at $995,000."

Sucks for you, dude! I'll admit that an automatic lease renewal is a little sneaky. But the substantial damages to the house? Haha! At $6,000 a month, he's probably rolling in it from stealing would-be grooms' pocket change and having crazy parties or something. Personally, I enjoy the mental image.

So. Even though these commercials annoy the junk out of me, I can smile a little bit knowing that the sappy squooshy gooshy ads are, in reality, just backstabbing ninja stars being thrown by competitive jewelery store owners.

Its amusing, really, when you think about it.

Tabula Rasa

So I was thinking about it the other day and I think that no matter who you are... somebody probably assumes the worst about you. And its not because they think you're an idiot or because you stabbed them in the back at work.

In fact, I would say it's a Southern thing, but its not. Its a universal way that people identify each other. Its about culture and color and accents and comfort levels and how all of that dictates the way you think about everyone you meet in America.

First, History: The United States is possibly the only country that doesn't have its own cultural history beyond four or five generations. That means that the lines we draw between us and the groups that we form are quite different from those in other countries.

I postulate that part of the reason we are this way has to do with the fact that most of us came here under those exact circumstances. We "tired, poor, huddled masses" all shipped ourselves over and forced the only existing culture (native americans) into extinction. We formed huddled masses of our own. We segregated ourselves around what we knew. Pilgrims and Indians and Irish and German and Polish and Puerto Rican and Egyptian and Somalian and Kurdish. The passage of time allows for generational shifts and ethnic mixing, but we all have communities. Some communities are just older than others.

Personally, I've been noticing discrimination a lot more than I used to. Even my own discriminiations. Partially I think the reason I've never noticed it before has to do with the fact that I'm white. White Americans don't notice discrepancies in race relations as much as people from other backgrounds. Possibly, deep down, white people think they are SUPPOSED to be the majority because that's the way things have always been. And when a large group of "Other" comes in, they think somethings wrong. And things that are really more related to socioeconomics get labeled racial issues. Gangs, drugs, and public housing to name a few. These kinds of labels separate people. They form barriers that become sharpened and intensified by dialectical differences, differences of popular culture, and the perpetuation of unrealistic yet commonly accepted stereotypes.

"Recitatif" was Toni Morrison's only published short story, and it blew my mind in college.
The whole story is a series of five events in the lives of two women who are identified within the first paragraph as being of different races, black and white. The reader is the left, unbeknownst to him or her in most cases, to draw their own conclusions about who is black and who is white. While reading the story it is impossible not to picture the girls and intone your own opinion based on the events in the story.

Read it. It's amazing.
One student in my college class remarked that he thought one of the girls was black because the story mentioned that her hair smelled strange. Another remarked that it must have been a story about how a young black girl, obviously Roberta, they said, defied the odds and became wealthy and successful. Still another mentioned that Twyla must have been white because she couldn't remember what race a friend of theirs from school was. "White people don't notice people's color as much as black people," she had said.

Holy cow, Toni Morrison was a GENIUS for writing that story. The stereotypes in our heads were all going mad trying to tell us who was who and what was what, and none of it was even correct. She stripped right and wrong answers and let us see that the tools we use to identify people were often made of stereotypes.

People are a product of their experiences.

First generation Latin guys might call me a "bad girl" because they think white girls are "crazy." They see MTV, and they listen to pop music, and they see all the "freedom" and "equality" and they call us "bad" because we're just as capable of doing stereotypically male things as they are. And its all commonly accepted here. Sushiboy might have asked me for casual sex because I casually slid him my number underneath my plate at the sushi place while I was there with one of my guy friends. That guy in class might have said Roberta's hair meant she was black because one time he sat next to a fellow student on the bus who happened to be both black and overdoing it on the hair product.

Empiricism is the rule.

Its just not fair that we can't start with clean slates. Tabula rasa. I mean, I want to SO BADLY. And the older I get the more I realize that life is like a huge snowball of experiences. You keep going further and further down this big hill picking up all sorts of baggage and its like... Where does this end??? What's at the bottom of the hill? Why is it that when someone meets you they throw all their baggage on you and dress you up based on their experiences until you don't even look like yourself at all. You look like whatever they think you do.

Don't let your baggage determine who somebody else is. Everything you assume about anything and anyone is often a product of your mind alone. Though you may take credit for any truth you find, the link between your assumption and the truth is usually one big fat myth.

So anyway. What I'm trying to say is we should give each other more credit. Somebody I was talking to the other day said he travels to Latin America on a regular basis and he loves it there.
"It makes me feel like a Christian," he said. "And everything here is like... if you ask to stay with someone's family they're not sure. They're not hospitable. They get suspicious. And everything just..."
"--has to be a certain way," I finished.
"Yes!" he said.

Its true. Sure. People are the sum of their experiences. But don't let your experiences keep you from change. There is a big world out there. And you do NOT know everything.

Challenge yourself. Let go of your baggage and allow people to prove themselves beyond their own. Suspend your disbelief. Believe in something. Believe in the goodness of people and treat them well.

It will make you feel better.

The End for Sushiboy

"So you don't have a boyfriend? At all?" Sushiboy's voice sounded much more confident through the phone than I remembered it. I remembered the shy kid who couldn't have been more than 5'3," and who kept looking at the ground.
"No," I said, rolling onto my back in the bed. "I don't have a boyfriend at all." I kept the phone close to my ear and wondered if anyone could hear me down the hall.
"Why not? Its not because they don't want, you know."
I laughed. "I know that. They want. Of course, they always want. But I don't want."
"That's good for you?"
"Yeah. Its good for me." I paused, playing with the fringe on a throw pillow near my head. "I'm sick of hearing about how people don't trust me. Just because I'm American doesn't mean I'm bad."
"But I trust you."
"No," I said. "You don't. Its the same like I told you before. You don't even know who I am. You don't trust me and you never will. And you know why? Because I won't let you. I don't want a boyfriend. And I especially don't want one who doesn't speak English."
He chuckled. "But I'm speaking English now."
"Yes, you are. How is that, exactly? Becuase I still don't believe you are who you say you are."
"I ordered a cd for you."
I sighed in frustration. "You shouldn't have done that."
"It's Carlos Baute. Something new for you. I know you like Carlos Baute."
"Yeah... I do." I considered that. A boy who prepared sushi for a living, said he trusted me, and who special ordered me Latin Pop cd's from Spain. He was unique enough.
"We shoud see each other again, so I can give you the cd."
"Well..." But I knew where it would lead. I would just lead him on and I would have to break it down to him again about how I was in a different place in my life than him and how it was hard to communicate and blah blah blah the usual blah. One thing ALWAYS leads to another and that's where I would be. I knew it like I knew the sun would rise.
"I just can't, okay. I can't. I don't want a boyfriend."
For a few seconds I could hear what sounded like a tv in the background on the line. It was blaring some Spanish announcer. It sounded like an infomercial.
"I don't have to be your boyfriend."
I considered this. "But you don't want to be my friend. So... surely you're not..."
"--Why you so mean?" he asked.
"I'm not mean. I'm being smart. I know what I want now."
"Okay," he said. "Then let me ask you one question."
"...All right."
"--No, never mind."
"What is it?"
He sighed. "Never mind. Forget it."
"Just tell me!"
"I just want to know something," he said.
"Which is?" I stared at my ceiling, waiting.
"If you have no boyfriend, what do you do for sex?"
"Excuse me?!"
He was laughing. "See... never mind."
"For sex?" We were treading dangerous waters here. "I don't need that. Do you? Obviously we are very different." Still staring at the ceiling, something occurred to me. "Is that what you really want from me? I mean, just be honest. Is that what this is about?"
"...yeah."
I dropped my gaze. "Oh..."
And then I started to feel angry.
"If you just want some American girl to have sex with go to a bar, go to a club, go... any of those places and take your pick. But I'm not like that. Don't you know that? Don't you know ANYTHING?"
"I just thought--"
"You thought wrong. I have standards. You understand? I have higher standards. Do you understand standards?"
"...No. Not really."
"Ugh. Okay. I don't have sex with people because of God. I don't have sex because I go to church. I don't have sex because one day I want to get married and I don't want to have to explain to my husband how I had sex with some random idiot like YOU."
And I hung up.

I didn't really know why I was crying all of a sudden. Sushiboy was just one of any number of douchebags in the world who all want the same thing. But I think it was one of those first times when I started to doubt the good in people. For whatever weird reason I have always believed in the good in people, and yet this was one of the first times when I had hung back just long enough (five months!) to hear the truth of things. Sushiboy didn't care whether I was his novia or not. He just wanted to cop a feel. I had really believed that with all his shyness, he was better than that. I didn't want to date him, so it's not that I was sad about that. It just shocked me to believe one thing and then find out that the exact opposite was true.

Maybe Latinos have it right. Maybe Trust is a total crock.

Of course, I was also a little wounded by the fact that he thought I would be okay with it all. Why would he think that? Is it because I'm a white girl?

I quickly logged into my phone account and blocked his cell phone number. Thank God I'm done with all this dating crap, I thought to myself. I don't have to listen to that shizz or wonder about intentions for at least another 4 months.

My "reset" is obviously still in progress..........

The Corporate Weird

What IS the corporate world? Why is it so weird? Why are some people just born to be here? Is corporate the "popular kids" of high school? Is it some elite club where entry is only gained by sucking up to current members and having lots of moneyed things in common to talk about?

It seems like I can't say a word to anybody here without feeling like a complete hillbilly fool.

"Stop texting," I say to Mazatlan as I walk out of the caf.
"Why you say stop if I'm texting to you!?" He laughs.
"You're not texting me."
"Yes I yam!"
"Oh, well, I don't get any," I say. "Maybe its becuase I blocked your number! Hah!"

Talking to Mazatlan is like slipping into my old self. I fit like a glove into that side of myself, and its fun. Edgy. Cozy, even. But I get into the elevator and step back into the Corporate Weird. I guess if I had to choose a me, I'd choose the one on the elevator. She's more grounded. More likely to own a house some day. And have a husband. And two kids. And a dog.

"Do you have any weekend plans?"
"How are you today?"
"It's really cold, today, huh?!"

Its all relative, though. And the Corporate Weird is not the only thing that makes me a different person these days. I guess I've grown up a bit. I must say, I do appreciate the boring things in life a lot more than I used to.

Press the Reset Button

Through straight up diet and exercise I have now officially lost 10 lbs.
I go to church 3 times a week.
I write to you about random things during down time at work.
I drink two liters of water every day.
I weigh myself every morning.
I chart my weight on my calendar, and on a BMI + Weight Chart on my phone.
I teach ESL classes to Spanish speaking adults on Sunday afternoons.
I am starting an initiative to, on rainy days, give umbrellas to people on the streets who don't have them.
I spend forty to sixty minutes every night, without fail, dancing to Bachata music in my bedroom.
I have sworn off dating for a period of 6 months. As for this never-ending quest, I may resume in June 2011.


When I was in high school and my early days at Lavery I was dating Russ Walker. I can remember wishing I could hurry up and be old enough so that Russ and I could get married and he could be my engineer husband and we could just be so cute and happy together. My mother had only been 21 when she married my father. I remember wishing I could get married before that. And when my mother said we should wait longer, I remember thinking in the back of my mind that I knew it was a stupid idea, too. It wouldn't make me happy to get married knowing that everyone thought I was doing the wrong thing. I needed my mother's approval at the least. Looking back, 21 is a stupid age to get married. In the four years since then, I feel like I've climbed some mountain of adulthood or something. I have reached the peak where I can see out in front of me and know where to go on my way down. People who get married at 21 are only climbing up together, having no idea what is on the other side. And you never DO really know what's in store for you in life, but you should probably know a bit more about where you're trying to go and how you want to get there before you do something as permanent as marriage.

That's why I'm pressing the reset button. My weight has expanded slowly over the past four years. So now at 10lbs down and 20 to go for my dream weight, I'm working on it. I'm focusing on what's best for me and the people I care about.

Yesterday I stopped at Kroger and bought twenty five dollars worth of products to use in the shower. Body scrub that smells like "tahitian velvet," shaving gel that smells like kiwis, fancy hair conditioner with tea tree extracts and mint, and a razor that has three blades and is a beautiful shade of lime green. It was fun. I had a blast smelling things and googling them on my phone trying to find the best product for the price. But it was nice to splurge on something that is just for me and has nothing to do with snagging guys.

I'm trying to make better choices here, people. Don't knock the technique. Turning your attention to the important things in life, while re-evaluating what you want out of it all is a really important step in growth. I've spent a lot of my time saying I'll change this and I'll change that, but never setting aside the TIME to do it. So. Here I am. I've got time.


Russ Walker IS married now. To some girl I don't know in Washington, D.C. They met a couple years after he moved up there. I helped him move. We loaded up his tiny blue Saturn and drove the whole way, weighed down, almost scraping the pavement when we pulled out of the driveway. I stayed two nights in D.C. and flew back, crying my eyes out like the world was ending. And in a way it was. A chapter of my life had ended. But I don't miss it.

Russ really did become an engineer. A top secret one. He works for the government. And I sorta did become a writer like I said I would. I'm writing to you, aren't I? But I don't think Russ and I would have worked out in the long run. People change a lot between 20 and 25. The heartbreak, the disillusionment, the pain, the nature of life, all start to become apparent. And in the back of my mind at 19, the whole time my mother would say "Wait," I thought to myself that 26 was a good age to get married. At 26, no one accuses you of being too young. At 26 you are fully yourself.

And I think I am. Or in six months, once this reset is complete, I will be.

JLE: Dog Rescuer!

I rescued a dog today!
Not like adoption, like a rescue!

She was limping around the Mapco parking lot with a big gash in her back right leg. She looked pittiful, with this sad pleading look and a low, steady wag of her tail. I petted her when I came out, thinking she belonged to somebody. But no one said anything, and people kept coming in and out like normal. I looked around, and then back at the dog, who was looking at me.

So I asked the clerk at the gas station if he knew whose dog it was. He said he didn't but he wished he did. It had been sitting in front of the double entrance doors and somebody had hit it real hard with the door by accident making it scream. The clerk said it had been there since 5:30 that morning. So I went back out and met the dog who seemed to be waiting for me, and when I opened my car door to get out my phone the little dog jumped right in my floor board!

"Well, okay," I said. The dog stared up at me like, "I'm sorry to be so pushy, but I need some help."

It was a really nice dog. It looked so sad. So I sat down in my car with the dog, and tried to call the Animal Hospital next door to the Mapco. Coincidence? I think not. But they still wouldn't take her. They said I'd have to pay for her to get treated. I explained the situation, but they didn't care. They told me to taker her to the shelter on Harding.

The shelter is a nice way of saying THE POUND. I've been there only a few times and every time I go I can't help but cry because the poor things look so pitiful. They get euthanized if they stay there too long. Still, it was 7:30, I was supposed to be at work, and I had no other place to drop off a dog without taking him to my house and possibly infecting my own dog with who-knows-what.

We drove to the pound. I called my boss. The whole way there, the dog lay curled up on my backseat. She had jumped back there while I was talking to the lady at the animal hospital. She looked up at me with such sad eyes.

"You're having a rough time, huh?" She blinked. "You'll be all right soon. I'm gonna take you somewhere you'll have a place to sleep and someone will fix your leg back there. You'll be just fine." The dog put her head down and breathed out.

I can't imagine what it would be like to ride up to some unfamiliar place, be let out, and then watch the car that got you there drive away into the distance. Did they even say goodbye? Were there kids somewhere missing their little black and brown dog? It looked like she'd been well cared for. She was a little bit chunky. She wasn't afraid of people. She had jumped straight into my car. That made me think she'd been in somebody's car plenty of times.

When we pulled up at the pound, I turned around in my seat. She was still laying down, but her eyes and ears were alert. She knew we had reached our destination.
"Well. Somebody will adopt you. You'll get a new Mommy. One that's nice, like me. Somebody will definitely want you. You're so cute and little. And you're so good with people. You're a little lovebug. Like Boo. You even look a little like Boo."

Boo was my mom's dog. He could pull the same innocent expressions that this little dog was pulling then. The only difference was that Boo was really a hyperactive monster-dog with extremely bad breath.

"Okay, now. I'm gonna go inside and see if I can find somebody to help us, okay? I'll be right back."

I got out of the car, reassuring the little dog that I'd be right back. I do that same thing when I leave my dog alone in my room at home to go to the bathroom, or when I leave on my way to work.

And that was pretty much it. A big guy wearing a police uniform with an Animal Control patches came out to get the dog out of my back seat. She cried a little bit when he picked her up, but it was because of her back leg. The guy took my name, phone number, and address. I told him where I found the dog, and he put her into a big kennel cage. I waved to the dog shaped shadow inside on my way out the door.

.................
Now I can't stop thinking about the dog. She'll be up for adoption come Saturday. That'll be four days from when she was brought to the shelter. They'll test her temperment, and she'll be all set for viewing on Saturday from 10 to 4pm.

I'm going to see her. I want to make sure they're treating her leg. You know, because... she was so sweet. I don't want anything bad to happen to her. If she gets close to euthanasia I'll just have to find a real rescue group that can place her out, or adopt her myself. We could foster her until someone adopted her, most definitely. Right? I mean... I'm not crazy for thinking about her this much, am I?

Do YOU need a dog? If so, her ad is already up on the Animal Control Shelter's website. Below is her link.

http://www.petharbor.com/pet.asp?uaid=NASH.A077399

To India and Back Again

I am officially a grump.

I got transfered to Corporate Escalations through Virgin Mobile Customer Care today. They cannot provide me with proof of my phone insurance, and are being about as helpful as a peg leg at the running of the bulls.

Still, I refuse to ditch them and go with a different company. My bill is EXTREMELY low and for the amount of data I use, switching carriers to a company that makes me PAY for data would not be in my best interest.

Therefore, I forgive you, Virgin Mobile.
I forgive you for taking away my phone insurance when I had clearly paid my bill. I forgive you for telling me you could not help me because I was inelligible for insurance afterwards. I forgive you for filling out the Technical Support ticket incorrectly. I forgive you for having to fill it out again at my request. I forgive you for never notifying me that the ticket was resolved, and I forgive you for never being able to prove to me in writing my phone insurance had been reinstated. I forgive you for NOT SPEAKING ENGLISH because your call center is located in INDIA. And finally, I forgive you for trying to bribe me with 50 minutes of bonus airtime when I called to complain.

I do hope you, in turn, forgive me for calling your Corporate Headquarters in Warren, New Jersey.

Despite the fact that my phone service costs less than a water and sewage bill, I can see where you have cut corners in order to provide the lowest rates possible.

But I swear, if I have any more problems with you, the first thing I will say when you can't understand me (ME! Who LOVES foreigners) is "Transfer me to escalations immediately, or I will hang up and call Corporate in New Jersey." Fortunately the only people who handle escalations are in the US of A. I appreciate that. It is unfortunate, however, that I have to approach insult of your Indian CSRs before I get rerouted back to my own country.

Ah, well.

3 Bachata Videos for You!

Since I have been talking about Bachata music so much, I thought I would expose you to it.

1) "Mi Corazoncito" by Aventura. This was the first Bachata song I ever fell in love with. I learned all the words and could sing it. I still can. It helped that I was student teaching at a school that was an ESL hub for South Nashville at the time. To this day I think about poor Guadalupe Cardozo, a trouble making boy with a father and brother still in Cuba, who happened to have a girl's name. Also, the 5 MILLION hits that this video has, is not indicative of the success of this song. It is INCREDIBLY popular, and to this day (the song is 5-ish years old) you will still hear it played at Latin dance clubs, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpfshN1wJKU

2) "Tu y Yo" by Prince Royce. My first Bachata love is of course Aventura, Kings of Bachata, but Royce has this song with elements of electronica. And I am a SUCKER for that stuff. Did I mention MGMT is now a fixture in my car's CD changer? K, well, this song is my current fav along with the below.

UPDATE 2/1/11: Previously I had posted a Toby Love video and picture. Come to find out, Toby Love sings an AWFUL and in no way comparable Bachata song also titled "Tu y Yo." I hadn't even checked to see if the video was the song I wanted, but was like, 'video oficial? Tu y Yo? OKAY!' Thus my error. Apparently, there are no videos or even sreaming versions of Prince Royce's "Tu y Yo" with electronica. All the versions I find are acoustic, or sans electonica. Thus I actually have no video for you on this one. SAD! IF YOU KNOW OF A VIDEO OR STREAMING LINK for Prince Royce's "Tu y Yo," electronica included, then post it. And I will mail you ten dollars. :)

UPDATE 2/7/11: Congratulations to ME for finding the correct link to a youtube video playing Royce's electronica version of "Tu y Yo." Click and Listen!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=823N33W5OGs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

3) "No Es Una Novella" by Monchy y Alexandra. I wait for this song during my workout to Pandora radio, and can identify it by the first second of the song. By the way, if you're wondering what it looks like to dance bachata, there is some low-key bachata dancing in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN1lwFrDiBE

At the Airport with Karl Rove

I hadn't been going to church that consistently in a very long time. I was going three times a week, class and services included. Between losing weight and going to church, I had less time to think about boys and make myself crazy trying to snag them.

"Yes, uh, prayer requests for me and Christina. We're getting married on Friday, so..."

Then again, church wasn't always the best place if you were trying to avoid feeling single. In any case, my schedule was generally full, and that was the goal, so whatever.

I still struggled with the Lavery stigma. Every now and then I'd hear something that either offended me or made me feel so "different" that I had to stop and remember that people are just people, and the stereotypes are all in my mind.

"You will NOT believe who I saw at the airport the other day."
My Wednesday class in particular seemed to make me feel awkward.
The classroom was fairly large with three sections of seats, but on Wednesdays only about three rows of the middle section were taken up. The teacher was an engineer by day and very likeable. He was charismatic and didn't seem jaded. So I forgave him quickly of the story he told next.

"I was standing in the line for security. You know, where you have to take off your shoes and pull out your laptop and stuff like that. It was a long line and I'd been standing in it for a while, and then this guy starts walking ahead of everybody on the other side of the rope. And at first I'm like 'Who does this guy think he is? He can't just skip line like that.' And then I start looking at him, and he looks kinda familiar, and the security guards are looking at him, and they start smiling to eachother like they recognize him too. And you know who it was???"
He was really excited now.
"Karl Rove!"
The class was silent.
"You know, Karl Rove! You Fox News enthusiats should know who that is."
They seriously didn't know who Karl Rove was.
"Well maybe I'll have to go downstairs and tell that to the older classes to get a better reaction."
That wasn't the reason he wasn't getting much out of me. I made a face and held it, knowing that if I said anything I could probably kiss my hopes of ever having church friends goodbye.
"Hey, you can't wash your hands now," said a guy I recognized on the front row.
"I'm sorry?" The instructor asked.
"You can't wash your hands now. Because you touched him."
I crossed and uncrossed my legs before muttering under my breath.
"...I'd be taking a shower."
Nobody heard me, of course.

At Lavery, the 2004 elections were brutal. Not for most people there, but for me. I wrote a sociology report about it months later implying that the Lavery kids would not have been that brutal on me if they hadn't been experiencing group mentality. Because they were surrounded by each other's similarly accepted ideas, they saw my opposition as being even more wrong than they would have otherwise. Would they have peeled bumper stickers off of someone's car at Kroger? Would they have paint penned their next door neighbor's windows? Would they have called a complete and total stranger a baby-killer? Highly unlikely. But they did those things to me in the school parking lot, the dorm, and at the school cafeteria. And all because I went to Lavery and happened to be liberal. Discouragement from this type of behavior was negligible. Even the head resident wanted to know which girl had the John Kerry sign in her window.

Anyway, I shrugged it off at class that night. Most of the kids didn't even know who Karl Rove was. And if they did, they didn't really revel in the fact that one among them had seen him at an airport. It didn't matter. So I wondered to myself, is it possible for me to get with one of these guys from church someday and NOT have a problem with our clashing political beliefs?

A friend of mine got married a couple years ago to a guy who told me that when I voted for John Kerry I was letting the terrorists win. There was a Ronald Reagan sheetcake at their wedding. Chocolate filled. I won't even make a joke about that one. But his wife, my friend, had always been my liberal ally at Lavery. We went to a Michael Moore rally together! I'm sorry, but I will not allow any fiance of mine to put Ronald Reagan's face on a cake at my wedding. Even if its the funniest joke in the world.

Still, getting back to Karl Rove, it amused me that one of the champions of Homeland Security would not have to wait through a line exercising its express purpose.

"Argue": It's A Cultural Thing

"Argue."
"Argue," everyone repeated.
"Argue," Ms. Jane said again.

They had led us down the hall and told us to start class in one of the sixth grade Bible study classrooms. It was cooler in there, Mr. Byrne had said. Secretly I knew it wasn't too hot in the other room like Mr. Byrne had said it was. Stuffy, sure. But hot was not a good word for it. Hot was like Mexico City, and Hermosillo, and Lima, and Toluca. Those were the cities represented by the four students in the room.

There was Jose, with his neck and wrist tattoos that sported his name, Sanchez, with a flouish on the Z. There was Marta, who looked like skin and bones and red lipstick. There was Raul, with his wide grin and large, weathered hands. And then Roberto, from Peru, who was the pastor over the Spanish language services. He remembered me from when I came with Daneil Castillo.

"I remember you," he had said across the table, though nobody else knew why he was pointing it out. Raul had even laughed like something funny had been said, mostly because he didn't understand what was going on. Roberto tapped his forehead and then pointed at me, unsmiling. I chuckled and told him I remembered him too. How could I have forgotten the man who sent letters to my apartment, handwritten in Spanish, assuming I was Daniel's wife. He probably thought we had separated, which was quite different from breaking up, and in Latin culture, as I recalled, was somewhat unforgiveable. I would have bet money that he blamed me for that. After all, I was American. All I did was rape and pillage other peoples' cultures and probably behave like some junky on Maury Povich.

"American girls like to use us Latin boys," Daniel had told me one time. "Because we're hard workers, American girls will sit on their hands and sleep and watch tv and eat out all the time, using our money. Sometimes they are lazy and don't get jobs, or they don't get good enough jobs."
I had resented that. I was busting my butt trying to do better for myself. I had finished high school and finished college and obtained teaching certification, and just because I wanted to change my career path and make myself happier Daniel was questioning my work ethic.
Never mind the many Latin boys that couldn't read, couldn't write, couldn't get jobs because they were illegal, and who sponged off of American girls and the American economy as a whole. Nevermind that, of course.

"Argue," everyone said, Jose a halfbeat behind the others. He was tapping his foot on the floor and wrapping and unwrapping his long brown fingers around the sharp tipped pencil he'd brought. The Adult Literacy books in front of everyone had different things scrawled in them. Sometimes Spanish words and sometimes English.
"Arguing is... when two people don't agree. They argue. They... get angry. They..."
"Like a fight?" Marta asked. She had recently been moved up from the Beginners class.
"Yes. Like a fight with words." Ms. Jane perked up and nodded. She was an accountant in her sixties and was actually very pretty. Her smile was very glowing, and when she smiled at Marta it was almost like she was patting her on the back. It was amazing how comforting she could be just by looking at you.
"Que?" Jose poked Marta.
"Discusion," she said in Spanish, and Jose scribbled the translated word onto his word list.
"Do you ever have arguments?" Ms. Jane was opening up the floor for discussion. Jose kept staring at his book, and Roberto, the pastor, looked blankly at the page in front of him. I wondered just how much he understood. It was ironic that he would be using the same English Outreach program that his church had created for the community.
"Raul, do you have arguments at work? Anybody ever tell you they think the electric should be wired a different way than you think? Do you ever disagree?"
Raul smiled his wide smile and folded his hands in front of him. "No... No."
"Jose, do you argue about anything?"
Jose flushed. I could see it from the side of his face as he looked at Ms. Jane and then down again. "Me, no..."
Ms. Jane looked at me, like what a help they are. I let out a little amused breath and Ms. Jane continued.
"So... in your culture, it seems to me, people don't argue very much. Is that right?"
Raul shrugged slowly and smiled, considering it.
"Sometimes..." Marta said.
"But you're pretty laid back in general?" Ms. Jane pressed. "Your culture is slow to anger, it seems. You tend to go with the flow. Less argumentative than Americans, huh?" And she laughed like it was so funny.
Everyone else laughed, too. Roberto said nothing. And I thought about Daniel Castillo.

I argued with Daniel Castillo way more than I cared to remember. I argued about why I was a good person. I argued about why I should live in my own apartment. I argued about the definition of independent and I argued about its importance. I argued about why wanting to lose weight didn't mean I was trying to look good for other people. I argued about how quick comments to a cashier didn't count as flirting. I argued that Daniel shouldn't leave me because he worried he was too ugly or too illegal. I argued via text message. I argued on the phone. I argued in my apartment and broke a glass frame containing a prom picture of my high school sweetheart and I. Daniel had argued that if I still had our prom picture lying around, it meant I was still in love with him. I argued that prom was ten years ago, and that my high school sweetheart lived across the country and was married to someone else. I argued about the broken glass when it shattered against the corner of the table. Daniel argued that I was out of control. And I probably was.

I couldn't make him understand. He argued with me about things that never should have been questioned. And maybe its the fact that in my culture trust is implied until proven true, not doubted until proven false, but I am sick and tired of having to prove myself to people beyond the limits of reason based solely upon the fact that I'm American. They'll deny that as the cause, but when it comes down to it people from other cultures don't trust me because I'm American. They don't trust me because women are independent here, and strong. And it takes a lot of arguing, a lot of tears, and a lot of backbreaking work just to show them who you really are. So laid back and agreeable? Those were not synonyms for Daniel Castillo.

"Argue is not a good word for today, is it?" Ms. Jane looked back down at her book. "You guys really don't do that very much. I guess it's a cultural thing."

Pictures from Lavery

If you cannot read the text bubbles, click on these pictures to make them larger.

Dear Eric Alvarez of WZTV

Dear Eric Alvarez,

We have never met, but I've watched you since you did the news for Solo Nashville, local spanish syndicate. You brought me pressing details about the growing Latin community that I am a part of, apparently, based not on my nationality, but my location.

Now you're on WZTV Fox 17. And I see you pretty much every night. If it isn't a package you shot earlier, its some live story or on-location shot. Being a former collegiate and now wanna-be news person myself, I am extremely impressed by your dedication to this city and to your career. During the snow and ice storm last month, you ran a total of three stories in a single nightly broadcast. I know because I, like most other sane people, was at home on my couch bored out of my mind. Yet you were running around getting scoops and leads and reactions shots and videos of kids sliding down hills on trashcan lids. Twitter says you often eat in the newsroom and I wonder about this.

For whom did you come back to this city? Why are you here if you had a great run at KNBC in Los Angeles? Could it be that like me, you remember that this city is in the mid to early stages of multicultural explosion? That there is something special here that, on certain levels, not even LA can compete with? Or perhaps it's a girl. That's my suspicion. There is NO reason why someone as perfectly adorable as you would move back from LA to Nashville without having a reason like loyalty or love.

Speaking of which, I think we would have a lot in common. It is unfortunate that your life is eaten by your job. Were I to see you out somewhere, even at a gas station or a deli, I would probably find some quirky, meaningless remark to say, solidifying my overture that we continue talking. That you take my number. That we have coffee. That we watch a terrible movie. That I make fun of your non-regional diction. That you forget I don't have a masters in Journalism. That I forget you work for a conservative news source. That you read this post. That...
Well. You get the point.

So anyway. In the meantime, thanks for making my night. You're pretty cool. And I'm glad you graduated from Solo Nashville. I can understand significantly more than 40% of what you say now.

That Time I Met Enrique Iglesias

So I was dancing to this awesome song, and the music was up SO LOUD and the only thing that kind of ruined it a little bit was the fact that some weird guy in the background kept making funny yodeling sounds, but whatever, I was there to dance. I had gotten all cute, too. My black heels made my usually short legs appear long and lean and the fact that I had been practicing dancing to Bachata at home meant that I knew exactly what I looked like. All smooth curves and fluid hips.

I wasn't surprised when this guy started toward me from across the room. He'd been eyeing me for a while. He was wearing a black leather jacket with a white shirt underneath. I thought it was odd because I was getting so hot suddenly.
He started dancing with me, and I smirked at him innocently enough. We moved in unison for a few bars before he leaned into my ear.
"I know you want me," he half whispered. He looked a bit dazed, but actually pretty sexy.
"Excuse me?" I said. "Perdon?"
"I've made it obvious that I want you too."
I focused at a certain spot on the floor, still dancing, and wondered what the hell he was talking about.
"So put it on me," he said. "Lets remove the space between me and you." And he took his hand around my back and leaned in with his hips so that we were scissor-legged.
"Whatever, dude." I looked around a little bit to see if anyone was watching us. They weren't. But it seemed like everybody else was getting closer together too, not just me and this dude.
"Hey what's your name anyway?"
He didn't answer, but shook his hair out of his eyes and made a face. What a poser!
"Now rock your body," he whispered, and I started laughing.
"Who are you, Justin Timberlake?"
"Damn, girl, I like the way that you move."
Rolling my eyes, but still dancing, I chose to ignore him. "Shut up and dance with me, bro."
It was almost like he was totally ignoring me. I cocked an eyebrow and looked around.
"So give it to me. I already know what you wanna do."
Sighing heavily, I stopped dancing and stepped back from his scissor-legs. "Alright weirdo, TU NO HABLES INGLES??? You're weirding me out. So I'm about done here." And I turned and started walking toward the side of the dance floor.
Just as I got to the edge, he grabbed my arm and I turned around cringing.
"Look, here's the situation." He said. "I've been to every nation. And no one's ever made me feel the way that you do."
"Oh, really." I jerked away, but he had a firm grip.
"You know my motivation given my reputation. And... I don't mean to be rude, but tonight I'm loving you."
Suddenly I realized who I'd been dancing with. It was Enrique Iglesias. What the hell? His eyes were all warm and brown, but they were hollow looking in the flashing red lights with the suddenly very loud techno music pulsing all around us. The yodeling guy was still singing away somewhere, and everybody dancing seemed to be gyrating wildly. Where was I????
"Tonight you're LOVING me? What the heck are you talking about? You're dancing with me, okay? That's all. And who are you to be LOVING anyone for only one night anyway. Thats not quite my definition of LOVE."
Suddenly the music stopped and everybody froze, even me.
"--okay I really mean that Tonight I'm f***ing you. But I seriously don't mean to be rude. Plus, the censors will get all over me so I'm gonna keep saying that I'm LOVING you as opposed to F***ING you."
The music started again and everyone kept dancing, and my jaw dropped.
"You nasty man-whore bastard!"
I jerked away successfully this time. Oh yes! I knew about Enrique Iglesias' repuation. Practically having sex with Anna Kournikova in his videos, sweating profusely, getting moles removed, never actually being ANYONE's hero, and causing more pain than he could ever kiss away, he was a regular Cassanova.
"You're so damn pretty." He was chasing me, now, and no one seemed to notice. "If I had a type then, baby, it'd be you."
"Stop. Calling me "baby" and making lame sexual innuendos. Its not getting you anywhere."
"I know you're ready." He said. "If I never lied then, baby, you'd be the truth."
I stopped and turned. "What the hell is that supposed to mean anyway, Enrique? Are you drunk? Seriously, I'm not lying you need to get your filthy hands off me."

And he did. Because that's when he repeated himself for like the thirtieth time and tried to explain to me that he'd been just about everywhere and that I was special but at the same time he was a player and blah blah blah tonight he was LOVING me even though he really meant that he was F***ING me and only this one time.
Just after he repeated himself, five half-dressed girls came out of nowhere and started groping him and taking off his shirt.
"Security?!" I pointed, and looked around for the undercover guys I'd seen in the past, but couldn't spot anyone.
That's when the crowd on the dance floor opened up and parted for this black guy I recognized from the movie Crash. I liked him in that movie. What was he doing here with Enrique Iglesias? He started rapping, and all the people were dancing, and the girls were stripping Enrique pretty quickly, and I turned away because I didn't want to see anymore.

And when I opened my eyes all I could hear was that weird yodeling guy, and everybody was gone.

It was the weirdest night at the club EVER.

Things Can Get Pretty Crazy at church school

He had been looking at me from a row over and back all two weeks we had been in Bible class. That was six classes, two Mondays two Wednesdays two Fridays, of intense stares penetrating my left shoulder.
His name was Ty Anders, and he was a baseball player at Lavery.

As an extremely conservative religious University, Lavery did not have enough money to invest in an extensive atheltics department. There was no football team. There was baseball, softball, soccer, and the basketball team, which was the major source of any "students of color" Lavery happened to acquire. Rumor had it that the students were recruited without ever being told about Lavery's religious affiliation, or that every student was required to go to Chapel and University Bible Monday through Friday, as well as take an additional Bible class of their choice every semester. It was intense religion.

Ty Anders had obviously been aware of Lavery's extreme reputation. I had spotted his seat in University Bible at the arena and had watched as he sang every song, flipped to every scripture, and praised his little heart out with hands uplifted. I thought it was odd, actually. He had a definite smack of POPULAR kid, of EXPERIENCED kid, with his New Balances, his shag hair cut, and the harem of blonde hotties that always loitered in close vicinity to the baseball team as a whole.

He wore a black North Face jacket and ripped jeans. I wore an imitation fleece and clearance shoes. I had only just discovered the wonders of straightening irons. I'd had no idea how the blonde hotties got their shine, but now that'd I'd been living around them for months, I was picking up a few cues. I couldn't tell if this newfound awareness guys had for me had to do with my picked-up tips, or whether I'd always been attractive and had fallen into a new group of people who HADN'T known me since I picked my nose in Elementary school.
The older I get the more I realize it was the latter.

"Hey, I'm Ty."
I had dropped a book on the floor called Marriage and the Christian Home. I hated that book, but my mother had spent twenty-five dollars buying it at the campus bookstore, so I picked it up. Upon standing, I realized that the baseball player was right in my face.
"Oh-- hi." The last of the other students were starting to file out, and Baseball-Ty and I were about to be alone in the classroom with the Bible instructor.
"Do you have class right away, or can you walk with me to the student center for some coffee."
Geez, cutting to the chase all ready, I thought.
"I can go. I don't have class right now."

I was starting to get used to male attention. In high school, the only shocking male attention I'd had to thwart was from the Asian foreign exchange student who watched me reach over the side of my desk to pick up my pencil in math class before informing me that there was "a whole other world" down my shirt. That hadn't been the most pleasant of experiences. At Lavery, though, jocks and preppy kids resembling the popular elite at my high school seemed to come out of the woodwork to suavely profess their interest in me. I still didn't see it coming very often, but it didn't surprise me as much. Then again, they weren't usually commenting about the other world inside my shirt either.

"So I have to ask you, now that I'm talking to you outside of class," Ty said. He turned around and walked backward for a few steps, looking me in the eye as he bobbed along next to me down the brick walk. "What are you writing in that notebook? Donovan doesn't give that much to write notes about, and the study guide he gave us should be enough for the test on Friday. What is so interesting that you hardly look up during class."
I flushed a little bit. "Oh, my notebook. I've just always had one. Its like... what I do until I sort out a story or something."
"I KNEW it wasn't class related." He was suddenly more animated than I had ever seen him. Especially considering how I'd watched him sleep through an entire class in the previous week, and I told him so.
"Oh that!" He laughed before opening the door for me as we stepped inside the student center. "That was because of my initiation."
"Initiation? The social clubs haven't even started rush yet." I was suddenly aware of everyone else looking at us on our way in. If only for a second, I wondered if I looked like one of the blonde, hottie, hangers on.
"Not a social club. For baseball. I'm on the team."
"I know that. What kind of initiation are we talking here?"
"Well." He looked around, and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were a pale blue color. "Its kind of more like hazing. See, I don't know how you're gonna take this and all," he chuckled, "but the baseball team initiates new players by getting high-- you know, smoking pot-- and then watching the movie Requiem for a Dream." He said it like he was a real rebel, a real bad boy, like it was something so awful and hilarious at the same time.
"Wow. Thats pretty intense I bet. I've seen that movie, and I would not want to watch it under the influence."
A smile broke across his face. "I KNOW right!??" I had passed the test.

We drank frozen lattes and traded numbers, mine, at that point, was my dorm room number. I didn't yet have a cell phone. And he didn't laugh at me for it. Instead, he invited me to study with him for the test later that week.
***

"Where are you going?" My roommate Alana was getting dressed at the same time as me. It was seven thirty at night, and she usually put on her raccoon eyes and powder pink lip gloss while I was making raviolli or watching reruns of A Different World on Nickelodeon, but tonight I was debating between the red shirt with the cute collar or the white shirt that showed cleavage.
"I'm going with some guy from my Bible class to study for the test tomorrow."
"Ooooh, study date, huh." She quirked an eyebrow at me while powdering her nose in the mirror, then turned around. "In that case... white shirt. You gotta add at least a little spice to your Bible study."
Alana was one of the blonde hotties I was getting tips from. Though she didn't usually offer them up like she was tonight.
College is funny because its the first time in your life where the pot gets stirred and all the carefully constructed social layers get warped and mixed up. Nobody knows each other, and sometimes people like me ended up rooming with formerly popular girls like Alana. Somehow everyone always seemed to be able to still know who was who. So Alana never asked me to go out with her. Instead, I just used her stuff that was lying around when she left, or in the morning when she slept late. I still hadn't bought my own straightening iron. For all I knew they could cost a hundred dollars like the Birkenstocks she wore. They had little ridges in them for your toes and they felt really good. I had almost gotten busted when I'd worn them to church on a rainy Sunday.
"Thanks, Alana. You going out tonight?"
"Yeah." She picked up her purse and took one last glance in the mirror. "See ya!"

I considered looking through her shoes again, but stopped when she busted back in the room five minutes later.
"Dang it." She was mumbling to herself. "Forgot my birth control. Not like I need it or anything. But still."
I watched her leave after putting the tic-tac looking thing in her mouth.
Alana was on birth control?
My roommate had had sex?
***

"I really thought you were going to be like some up-tight cutesy girl, you know. But you're really cool."
Ty and I were in the student center again, this time with our Marriage books and our Bibles between us. I still had a multicolored copy of the Teen Study Bible that my mom had given me for Christmas when I was fifteen years old. Ty's Bible was brown leather and had big margins and gold leaf trim. I noticed that he had parts of it highlighted as we flipped the pages.
"Where are you from?" I asked. We had already filled out most of the study guide.
"Atlanta. I went to private school down there. Where are you from?"
"Here."
"Cool. You must like country music."
"No, actually. I think it lowers IQ scores."
He laughed. "Me too! Do you like Christian music?"
"Not really. My church sings old-people hymns. We're not really jiving with Michael W. Smith or anything."
"Some of it's really good, you know." He shut his Bible and leaned back with a smirk on his face. "You don't seem like most of the other people here."
"I'm not, really." I laughed, and checked my cleavage before I looked up at him. "I'm... from a very different school than this. My high school had more minorities than white kids. It was a public school."
"Woah. Were there like gangs and stuff?" I would have been offended, but he was smiling. So I smiled back.
"Yeah. Minority gangs, too. Brown Pride. KPG. The whole she-bang. But they weren't really scary or anything. They were just first and second generation immigrants caught in the gap. And its actually really weird for me, now, being here. Because I feel kind of caught in the gap myself."
"What do you mean?"
It was late, and the sanitation crew was cleaning the place up. The florescent lights glowed bright against the black night outside the windows. It was deserted, and the food stands were closed. Lavery is the only university I can think of that closes their student food options after standard business hours. If you weren't eating in the caf between 5 and 7pm, you had to go off campus. And even then you had to be back before 10 to avoid curfew rules.
"I feel caught in the gap because this place is so... Christian. And private. I mean, I feel like I can smell money radiating off of half these kids. And I'm not saying I'm poor or anything, but its just funny to be around so many people who are used to all of this. I'm not used to this. I'm not used to talking about God at school and praying before class starts and going to church every single day."
"You're not a Christian?"
"No. I've just grown up differently-- where there was a time and place for everything, and my personal beliefs were private. I could share them with people if I wanted, but its not like we all believed the same things. I feel like here we're all expected to be the same. And I'm not the same. I'm different."
Ty sighed, and smiled a little.
"You're something else." He stuck the study guide into his Bible and sat back again, looking at me. "I bet you do feel different. But different is good. I mean, I like different. I like you. And I know what you mean. Sometimes it feels like people are really closed minded and stuff. But God wants us to challenge what we believe in, because he knows we'll come back to him. I mean, I don't know why you came here, but I bet God led you here somehow. You're supposed to be here. Like fate."
I opened my mouth to retort, and one of the cleaning people turned on a vacuum cleaner. I jumped at the sound.
Ty pointed and laughed at me a little before leaning in over the table.
"You wanna get out of here?" he asked. I did.
"We could make flash cards somewhere else! I brought stuff to make them!" I held up some notecards.
"Or we could do something different." He half yelled over the sound of the vacuum. He smiled slyly with one side of his mouth.

Ty was a nice guy. I had thought he was going to be shallow and rich and jock and all of the things I hated about popular kids. But he was kind. He opened doors for me and pulled out chairs. He gave money to homeless people and was really polite. Chill. His eyes weren't wild and jaded looking like I thought of the "popular" kids I had known before. He didn't look like he had any secrets I wasn't allowed to share. He just looked like a kid who had grown up a little more sheltered than me who had rebelled until he'd reconciled the differences between his life and other peoples'. Tha'ts what I remember most about him now. He smiled at me in this very kind way, and I felt like I was okay. He didn't smell a rat in my existence at Lavery.

We ended up at a Praise and Worship devotional event at a nearby church. The thing had already started. It was now 10pm and I was a little skeptical about any church even that would last that late, but Ty insisted that it was kind of like a concert.

"A concert?" I took off my seatbelt, still in the car. We'd had to look for a parking space and ended up on the side of the street. "I thought Church of Christ kids didn't do concerts. I mean, music in the church and all, you know?"
Ty looked over at me with a smirk. "Okay. There's a lot you don't know apparently. Let's just say not all CoC churches believe the same things."
"You mean you have a piano or something at your church in Atlanta?"
"No." We stuffed our hands in our coat pockets and started walking along the wet pavement. "That's worship service though, on Sunday. For devotionals and stuff like that outside the service, we sometimes have drums and a praise team and an acoustic guitar and all sorts of stuff."
He was looking at me to gauge my reaction. I maintained a straight face.
"So they're going to have drums and stuff in here?"
He smiled. "Yeah."

We entered through the side of the building and ended up right at the front of the room next to the pulpit. I could hear the music before we even opened the outside door. It was a song I'd learned since I was at Lavery. They sang it at the required University Bible in the arena sometimes. I liked the song, actually. But it sounded funny now with music. It sounded like a real song and not just a church song.
Ty took off his baseball hat and tucked it in his back pocket. I followed him to the door that would open up in front of the pulpit. There was a tiny window and I could see blue light coming from the auditorium through the glass over Ty's shoulder. He was taller than me, and I suddenly felt small and strange and a little bit scared with all the loud singing and loud music and holy glory praise hallelujahs.
"Hey. You ready for this?" Ty looked back at me, and I nodded. He grabbed my hand. "Okay then. Come on."
He opened the door and the music seemed even louder. It wasn't as scary as I had thought it was, but I could tell the minute he pulled me in that there was hardly anywhere to sit. I let him guide me down the side of the room, and took in the faces of all these people I'd seen around campus. The blue light was coming from spotlights above the pulpit, on which three girls and two guys were standing. The girls were singing and one guy was playing what looked like bongo drums while the other played an acoustic guitar. Everyone else was singing, too, and swaying, and several people were kneeling on the floor. I didn't know why I felt so weird.
Ty finally led us to a pew toward the back of the auditorium. There weren't as many people sitting around us there, and he let go of my hand as he sat down. He leaned in to my ear as I continued to look around.
"Not what you expected?" He was grinning.
"Its just... I've never been to one of these before."
I sang a couple of songs and watched the rest of the group praisy praise praise and worshipy worship worship and I just felt so weird. Like I was at what my mom would call a "holy roller" church. I tried to rationalize to myself that I shouldn't feel weird and that I should embrace this stuff. When a new song started, and the girl introducing it was reduced to tears when describing how beautifully God had made us, Ty leaned over again, still grinning.
"Things can get pretty crazy during this one."
"What do you mean?" I shot back.
"Just wait."
He was right. The song was long and repetitive and people were throwing their hands in the air and crying and kneeling and hugging one another and all sorts of stuff I'd never seen first hand. I was shocked for a few seconds and then didn't know what to do with it. It felt alien to me because I'd never known to be religious that way. I'd never known that. All I'd ever known was Overbrook High and its four required translations for printed take-home permission slips. There were lots of religions at Overbrook. And being there bathed in the blue light on a church pew next to a kid who had told me three days earlier that he'd recently gotten high while watching Requiem for a Dream was tripping me out.
He leaned into my ear again.
"You want to leave?"
I stared at the torn place on his jeans. "Do you?"
"Its a little loud, isn't it."
I smiled and leaned closer. "Its worse than the vacuum cleaner."

I never started dating Ty. I don't remember why. He always smiled and talked to me when I saw him in class and he waved when I saw him around campus. I might have been dating someone else, I don't remember. But I somtimes wonder whatever happened to him. He was really nice to me, even when Lavery seemed like a religious jungle.

My roommate Alana graduated with a premed degree, but ended up as a nurse. She got pregnant and her plans for full blown medical school had to change. Ironically she had the baby with some guy I knew from Overbrook. He was younger than us and incredibly immature. But he was always popular, which I find funny now, because thats how I thought of Alana, too.

I don't know if Ty was right about God and fate bringing me to Lavery. They "suspended me immediately" less than a year after my study date with Ty Anders. But I never felt like I belonged there. And it took me years and years and many mistakes to let that whole experience go. It sat on me like a dead weight that I couldn't shake. I let it define me.

And if Ty was right, and God brought me to that, then it sure was one twisted game of getting me to where I am today.

But I'm here, aren't I?