You should not be reading my blog today.
You should be reading up on what’s what with politics and get your voting ass moving. There are crazy things happening in our world that make me want to vomit, like this.
This country’s in dire need of change, but I’m still obsessed with whether if I will be inhaling smoke in a restaurant and/or bar. VIVA LA, BOSTON, ATLANTA, NYC.
NO ON 4. YES ON FIVE.
More to come later today.
After reading some updates on my cyber icon BFP, she raises this ultra-profound question, What Will Blogs Document?
Synonymous with my daily pondering of what my life will leave behind when I die, I wondered what my blog would document should I die tonight, tomorrow, in 10, 50, 70 years?
Did I document the most important events around the world? No.
Did I care about the wars, the diseases, the injustice? Yessss, so much. So very much.
I hope that what my blog documents, particularly, these early posts, is a struggling lover of the world finding her way through life. Despite all the horror, indifference, and hate, I hope and continue to hope that my small blogging world will document that there was at least one who did not believe the media, who didn’t buy the Bu(ll)sh(it) agenda, and simply wanted and found a place for herself.
So this year has been my “golden year.”
I turned 27 on the 27th of February, this constitutes my golden year.
I’m not clear, still, on what defines a “golden year.” But if golden means to try to find gold, meaning digging, with my bare bleeding hands, through the broken edifice of my beliefs, changing core values, and evolving self, then I am having a golden year. I catch occasional glimpses of the shiny stuff and I still have a little over 3 months to see what I can find.
Perhaps my 28th year of life will be about cashing my gold in.
Saturday Morning
Apartment
Adonis and I are getting ready to go for a morning walk. This means we’re pulling on hats and sneakers in our pajamas.
Adonis, “Yeah, I think so. Is that alright with you?”
Loud. It was really loud, our laughter.
knock knock knock
Adonis and I look at one another. His glance reads, “Who could that be?” My glance is, “There’s an offended and violent Jew outside and now we will be killed.”
Adonis slowly dips his eye into the peephole and opens the door. I hide behind him.
A white man, 33-ish, holding a small baby is standing at our door, “Uh, hi. Does anyone speak Spanish?”
Adonis looks at me. “No.”
Whitey, “Oh, okay…”
Maybe he needs a translater because a Spanish speaking driver has hit, blocked in, something to do with the cars in the parking lot.
My bravery mobilizes my tongue, “Well, I do, but I’m not…well, how proficient of a speaker do you need?”
Baby gurgles. Whitey shifts him on his left arm, “Oh, we need someone who knows…you know…can speak…really well…”
I look at Adonis. Is this an immigration issue? Bewildered. “Uh, that’s not me.”
Whitey, “So, you don’t know anyone that would? Speak Spanish?”
Adonis and I, brows furrowed, shake our heads slowly, “No…not anyone we can think of that’s available at this moment.”
Whitey, “So are there Mexicans here?” He glances at me.
Whitey turns to leave, baby attached.
I begin to pull Adonis away as if Whitey said he’d like to give us the plague.
I assume my Sacha Cohen, high pitch, screechy tone, “So he did not care about the Running of the Jews! HIGH FIVE!”
So this is Isa*.
She is the daughter of my cousin, Marilen.
Isa is a devil.
I am now ready for a child.
I want a devil.
Now.
*Photos taken, arranged, and created by Marilen Mabugat.
I’ll admit it. I’m an anti-smoking occasional smoker.
From my impudent college days, I put a puffer to my mouth and held the smoke in my cheeks, not inhaling, but so wanting to look cool. I’m orally fixated, my excuse excused me from the Surgeon General’s Warning, and upset! Then I actually started inhaling.
I can do whatever the hell I want. This, I recall, is MY BODY.
Ok, fast forward five years to a less impudent college administrator. I loathe smoking for all the same reasons I did in college. The difference is that I now have the gall to state that I am an uncool, non-caffeinated healthy, avocado eating, ‘Laura’s Lean Beef’ carnivorous advocate. I am. I also love the taste of a hefty cigar and a sip’o brandy.
Issues 4 and 5 are on the
Besides the proverbial “my contacts dry out and my eyes sting, smelly hair and pillow (the latter is optional if you don’t shower before bed), my clothes need to be dry-cleaned” argument, the only resounding point I come up with is: I WANT CLEAN AIR. I am the kind of person that convinced my Philip Morris employed brother to quit the empire and to come cheer on the good side of humanity. I am the kind of person that, yes, under inebriation, steals a rare puff from my best smoking friend because I engage in occassional bad behavior. Bad behavior? Check. Actively killing myself and my lungs? No.
This is my message to smokers: you can be the lung destroyers of the world – because it is your right to do whatever you want to your insides, just like my college experience attested. But, this November 7th, I refuse to be taken down with you. I refuse to walk into any given restaurant and have no choice but to simply sit in a cloud of smoke, to be inconvenienced to find of a non-smoking establishment (when you’re thisclosetokentucky, it’s difficult), inhale toxins, and shorten my life. Hey! When I want to kill my lungs, I’ll do it on my own time and smoke outside so no one else is affected by my bad behavior.
We drink alcohol. It’s apparently within our right to poison our livers and destroy brain cells. There’s no law that says you can’t get drunk (outside the 21y/o thing), but you can’t get drunk and then recklessly put others at harm. Hence, there are laws regulating what we do afterward. We are not allowed to operate vehicles or other large mass machinery out of concern for everyone’s safety and well-being. Right? We have rights, but there’s laws created to prevent us from potentially hurting another human being.
Is smoking really that different?
Follow me.
There are a lot of smokers, but that shit you blow out is inhaled by me, dining and welcoming service employees- who are mostly women- children, and other passer-byers. That smoke floats over the ineffective barricade and adheres to my nostrils, my lungs. My rage raises as you flick your butt outside car windows, into lawns, and start fires in college residence halls. But that’s going beyond Issues 4 and 5.
For Ohioans, Issue 4 is a well known to be backed by Tobacco companies. Issue 5 is backed by the American Cancer Society. For f*ck’s sake, you figure it out.
This, I recall, is MY BODY.
VOTE YES ON 5. NO ON 4.
You know what completely inspires me?
I love when people can succintly say what their passion, job, and reason for living is all one breath. Like: “HI. I”m a black activist and use my photography to explore sexual and queer politics.”
OK.
Now me.
“HI. I’m a multicultured person and use my heroinandspeed-like thoughts to conquer the world and simultaneously try to make it better, one blog at a time.”
No.
Mhm.
“Hello there. I’m a Spanish Filipina devoted to any sort of expression that enables me to feel a part of the world, connected to beauty and intimacy, and love to use my brain for complicated thoughts.”
Dunno.
“Hola! I’m a person who changes with each morning, but am committed to exploring love, art, writing, and spiritual fulfillment through everything deemed ordinary.”
Too…something…
F*ckit.
“Hey, I wish I could tell you all that I am, but can only promise I am much more and better than you can even or ever imagine. I am that rare.”
There it is….
[I’m on the phone.]
So, is meeting on the first of November good for you?
Yes, Lisa, that’ll work. Here in Rexler Hall?
Mhm. Yes, that’s fine.
I’m sorry I haven’t received your messages, I don’t know how that happened.
Oh, not a problem. Probably got buried someone in your inbox.
Maybe, but I’ve tried to keep up with email, that’s been the one thing I’ve been good about since I’ve been gone.
Oh?
Well, I just had a baby in May.
Cong-
But then this summer, I was diagnosed with cancer.
Long breath in.
Yes, I know. I’ve been busy. But, this meeting sounds great and I look forward to it.
Yes, so do I. Thank you.
So, this woman, who had a child and was diagnosed with cancer had the most pleasant voice and cheerful disposition. My navel-gazing resumed. I’m pissed because I can’t run well when it’s cold out. My moods are swinging like pendulums on crack and the world is a cruel, narrow, and racist place.
But I’m healthy. My lungs breathe on their own, my mind is alert and sharp, and my muscles are long, uninterrupted, and strong. I’m happy. Adonis wrote me an emotional poem that raced to both the beating physical and proverbial heart. My family, as fucking crazy as it is, is alive, argumentative, and passionately devoted to one another.
I am alive, with no threat of tomorrow or violence. The logs in my fireplace neatly burn and my kitchen cutting board is made of solid wood. The pesto sauce I made last night was perfect with the tortellini. Messages on voice-&e-mail, albeit windy, chide me to return love, return to loved ones and be received and known.
I do not have cancer. I am not on an operating table. I do not see spiders in my home. I’m in therapy, but not recovery. There is no power over me except the O*e I worship in my soul. My water is silver clear and my pillow shares two heads, dreaming differently but sharing one vision.
I am alive.
My father is a psychiatrist, so you can understand when I say that I have grown up with mental health. Terms like schizoid, pathology, and etiology are as common to me as flour, water, earth.
Still, the stigma and sting of therapy is no stranger. I’ve been in therapy for more years, off and on, than I can count. And today, Merce posed an unaswerable question about family, so poignant and sensitive, that I was wordless. I said nothing because that’s what truth does. It stares you down until you have nothing to say.
The anger, the passion, the sadness, the inevitable disappointments left ungrieved
are
all
l i n k e d .
Sometimes, for as much as I know the process is worth it, I wish it didn’t hurt so much.
The last wedding I attended was one of the fanciest ones I’ve ever seen. Every man had either a dark suit or a tux on, every woman was wearing a black dress. This ostentatious parade could have easily been turned to a celebrity funeral.
I could not believe how many variations of a black dress there were: strapless, spaghetti, off the shoulder short, off the shoulder long, one sleeve sling, deep V front, deep V back, backless, sashes, bows, ripples, wraps with varying pleats and side hip gathers for every kind of material possible, sheer, satin, taffeta, silk, stretchy, translucent. There were different layers and swaying hemlines at the floor, ankle, calf, knee and thigh. And there were stiff hems inching upward, curving the buttuck region. The strapless women tugged at the top of their breasts all night [super attractive, don’t think anyone’s watching?] and the loose straps were yanked impatiently all night as they fell off a dipping left shoulder blade.
Another detail I noticed about weddings and fancy places in general is women’s footwear. Part of the revolution, I hope, is the ability to claim comfort for our feet. Apparently, these guests didn’t want that part of freedom’s walk, or at least, they will step gingerly on freedom’s walk in tight shoes. Being the flat footed, no arched, excessively pronated person I am, I have a hard time reconciling stilettos and high heels that yell CONQUER from across the room. I sport them once in a great while. But then these women try and do limbo in them. [brows furrow]
And then there’s the dancing…
Ok, this is going to sound extremely racist, but what IS it with white people and music? For the most part, white folks CANNOT dance for shit. Are they impervious to bass and percussion? Do they not hear the natural beat and instruction of the rhythm? And WHAT IS UP WITH THE INEVITABLE DANCE CIRCLE? That thing where everyone tries to be inclusive and in this effort ends up with offbeat clapping and hooting and hollering? Why running in place? The numb looking feet shifting from left to right intrigue me. Adonis insists this is cross cultural and says that even Filipinos do the dance circle thing. Yes, but we, for the most part, can dance, I counter.
And why, why, why is it considered appropriate to do bad lip-syncing to your dance partner one millimeter from their face before they both collapse into fits of high pitched squeals and laugh like they’re on ecstasy? Of course, there is the token flower girl doing round-offs and twirls by herself and the one [really] drunk, hapless guy trying to grind with the bride.
Wedding receptions at the Hilton are weird.
There were almost as many photographers, all women, as there are bridesmaids, reminding me of a feminist paparazi. The acoustics were terrible in this temple of a ballroom; the dance floor was the size of my apartment.
The filet mignon and bearnaise sauce was brilliant. From my assigned table on the balcony, I watched the crowd below while my table guestimated the cost of the wedding. Adonis, as usual, was way off in his underestimation and I made a mental note to argue with him about that later.
I counted four or five dozen white roses on one centerpiece alone, amid several circular tables. Some of the centerpieces were as tall as me. I eagerly flagged one women of color in the room. She wore red, instead of black, and I realized, was busy taking care of Table 28.
While our unfortunate server was suffering (and therefore we were suffering) of intense body odor, I counted the guests to keep my mind occupied. He was like a walking sour stick of old balsamic vinaigrette.
All my life, I’ve naturalized the fact that I am often the Other in any given room. I’ve also naturalized the fact that no one gives a damn about that and no one cares to find out if I give a damn either. Well, I do.
My parents come from a country that exports millions of women to become domestic workers across the seas and professionals leave for better opportunity. The Philippines has both a brain and care drain and it lives on the precipice of economically imploding. I ruminate this as I unblinkingly stare at the white rose petals scattering around the skyscraper cake. Who am I to dine in velvet and toast a couple I’ve never met and then politely ask for another linen napkin? Whose pink lips are these, with lavender lidded eyes and bronze rouge? Lancome, with its caucasian consultants, told me to use this combo. Why do I listen?
Bracing myself against the balcony, the powerful rum surges to my brain. My ability to metabolize alcohol is horrendously slow and am quickly drunk. I absent-mindedly text my sister on my cell phone while I eavesdrop on a women talking to my husband. She’s telling Adonis how she doubts her white male son will get into Harvard because of the non-white women, women in general, minorities, and “the internationals” that have to be admitted first. Right.
To my left, a woman is thanking two gushing admirers of her necklace, made, of course, by her very own sister. She has another shipment coming in soon, do you want her information? Oh, yes.
And a cool eye drops down my outfit, I sense. I look away from her, losing my confidence, losing my self. This foreign world with made-up faces and privileged parties deemed normative quiets me. I look for the black woman. I don’t know why. I hastily scan the crowd and drink in her busy-ness, her round brown eyes and young skin. I want to talk to her, but she’s clearing away the burned-out votive candles while the DJ skips around as Cotton Eyed Joe wails from the speakers.
I look down at my placecard. Well, at least they got the hyphenation right. But I can do without the M-R-S stuff. ‘Lisa’ is just fine.
As I become fixated on the bare and gyrating backs of dancers and the male clusters of sipping drunks, I tune out the part-time shimmying, part-time kissy facing couple next to me. Suddenly, the bride appears. She looks like a beautiful white lacy mermaid and Jarod’s the handsome merman with a boasting, muscled chest. I appreciated those muscles in the brief, fierce hug we shared.
Adonis’ aunt is there; a kind woman who loves me with a lot of energy. She pulls up a chair and I breathe. An unrecognizable man interrupts and sits in front of her and misdirects her attention. This man has her now. My time is over. His eyes shift to me momentarily before he indulges her with updates. I am ignored.
Okay.
I try to catch Adonis’ eye, signaling my white flag, but he’s occupied with his uncle.
A bathroom break is needed.
Grabbing my red wrap, I make my way to the bathroom. The Palm Court is a golden haven for expensive dates and wealthy business folks who need a steak in their bellies before bed. I keep my eyes downward and notice, for the 1000th time, the perpetual catch-22 I exist in: I fear being seen, I fear being invisible.
There are mirrors everywhere and out of my peripheral vision, can scope out my hurried walk, sidestepping slow walkers and loud talkers. The mirrors soar to the top of the ornate ceiling, giving the illusion of even more space in this fairytale room. Everything, all of this, is an illusion.
My feet dangle from the handicapped toilet seat and I have trouble getting back down the throne. Not built for me, I guess. Keeping my eyes downward, I nearly run back to the wedding, feeling irrationally uncomfortable.
Adonis is smiling at my return and asks me to dance. I accept. His frame blocks my vision to see over his shoulder, so I sneak a peak around his elbow and watch us in a mirror that stands next to a framed picture of Jacqui Kennedy Onasis. I observe, “I’m the shortest person over ten years old in this room. And I’m wearing heels.”
“No,” Adonis disagrees, drawing out the long ooooooo, “there’s a woman behind you, dancing with a guy in a yellow tie. I think she’s shorter.”
I barely listened to his reply, I already felt like anyone in this room could step on me from the top of my head if they really wanted to. My eyes drew upward and thought of Paris Hilton’s inheritance.
“Are you alright? You look really emotional,” Adonis cares openly.
I give a no-teeth smile and kissed him before I buried my head in his chest and fought a rising sadness.
45 minutes later we head home. Trying to warm my sore cold toes in the flannel red bedsheets, I asked Adonis with my back to him, “Do you ever wish you’d have married someone normal?“
“No. Never. I wanted you. Someone extraordinary.”
A silence that drifted five minutes passed.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he softly implored, trying, though he didn’t entirely understand.
A pregnant silence.
“You can’t make it better,” I finally reminded him and myself.
Our eyes met in the dark room once more before they closed and the complex sadness finally quieted, too.