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

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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?

Len, The X-Files, and My Doppelganger

"Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you. I saw this girl on TV that looks just like you."
My brother was sitting in his usual spot in front of my 32" television which had finally made its way out of my bedroom and into the living room, uniting us all. Len had moved his x-box out of his own room and hooked it up. My TV was both larger than his and HD capable, though Len scolded me that 720p did not compare to 1080p when you dealt with video games. I didn't care. I was just glad he was sitting with everybody and being less of a hermit.

Things were improving at 3501 West Houser Road lately. Since I'd scraped the bottom of the barrel and changed my lifestyle a bit, staying at home every night of the week including weekends, I spent a lot more time on the couch with Len watching Netflix oldies like The X-Files. Oh David Duchovny...

"Are you telling me you saw my doppelganger? I hope she was pretty and not ugly and fat."
"Oh, no, she's all right. She just looks a lot like you in the face. Like from the nose up. Hang on and I can find it." He clicked through page after page of Netflix shows.

Len had recently scored a paid internship with none other than the nations' second most-watched wrestling federation. After finishing his first day, he had already sorted and read some fan mail from some of the bizarro viewers.

I was really proud of him. I was actually a bit jealous. But it made me happy to think that things would be okay with Len. I had rolled my eyes about him for probably all 22 years of his existence. But this was cool. I had gone around to half my co-workers at the office just to break the news that my brother would be working for a company that made money off of cage fights, ladder matches, and too much spray-tan.

"Okay, I found it. Here it is."
He pressed play as the camera was zooming in on an old British guy surrounded by an audience. I recognized the show as an auto program from the UK about restoration. The old guy and his buddies were hilarious. I'd seen an episode where they drove across four US states in cars that they bought for only a thousand dollars a piece, only to come back and close their show saying that the number one thing they'd learned in America was NOT to go to America.
"Look, see that girl behind the dude? She looks just like you, doesn't she?"
I sat up in my seat on the couch.
"Hey! She does look like me!"
"Seriously, doesn't she? Like, hold up she's about to smile."
A few seconds later, sure enough, the girl smiled.
"See, check out her cheeks and the way her eyes look when she smiles. She looks JUST LIKE you."
"Oh. Yeah, she does." I was kind of taken aback. Len was really excited about this.
"I was just watching the show and I was like, dude. Is that my sister? Is my sister in the UK right now?" Len laughed and then slowed down the video. "See, check it. She just did something. Wait, let me roll it back."
Len rolled the video frame by frame over the girl in the background as she smiled a tight-lipped smile and quirked and then dropped an eyebrow.
"That is JUST LIKE you!"
"Yeah. I guess it is."

Then Len went back to late night TV and I sat there on the couch wondering about how he saw me. I thought it was funny that he had even noticed someone in the background of a television show who looked like me. And I thought it was even funnier that he had taken the time to show me, and roll frame by frame over the facial expressions that made this would-be doppelganger look the most like me.

I thought of the other times in our lives when Len and I had been kind-of friends. We both liked funny youtube videos. We had hooked up the netbook to the TV so we could watch on a bigger screen. We had gone to eat by ourselves a couple of times. Really, though, Len had gotten on my nerves a lot.
He lives a lifestyle that was totally and completely opposite to mine. In college I had pretty much gone wild, while Len had come home like clockwork every weekend, saved his money, bought only video games and food, and didn't ever actually buy a car until he was a Senior. Yes, in college. I had a cell phone and a car by the time I was 19 and I used them to create my own idiotic independence. I was young, pretty, and boy-crazy. Len was conservative, quiet, and practically a eunuch.
We were opposites and we looked down our noses at one another.

Lately, though, it was almost like we were meeting in the middle. Len had gotten a sweet job, and I wasn't boy-crazy any more, or going out on retarded pseudo-dates. We sat around together and watched weird X-Files episodes about inbred freaks, alien abductions, and genetic mutants.
It made me think about when Len and I were younger. And I mean a lot younger. When Len was still little and I was his big sister walking him home from kindergarten. I had an excuse in the third grade that I could leave early and walk home with Len out of his kindergarten class. I can still remember the day when Mrs. Ault stopped me on my way out the door.

"Don't you think your brother can make it on his own today?"

I felt like she was butting in on my relationship with him. I liked being protector, leader, BIG sister. To this day, I'd call myself a nurturer. And maybe that's what some of those pseudo dates were about. What all the Catching in the Rye was about. That I am straight up, 100%, a nurturer. But what if, all this time, I was the one who needed to be nurtured the most? What happens when you realize that the one you've been trying to Catch is yourself?

Len laughed at something on TV. I was glad he hadn't lost me over the years. That he could still pick my face out of a crowd in the background of some random British TV show. It made me smile.