Mood:
not sureTopic: Culture
Strike 1: ("Did someone poop in this ocean?"):
If you're anything like me, you get your history lessons from rap songs. But beware, the occasional historian/rapper will revise a history/culture to suit his/her syllabic needs. Take for instance, the chip-toothed rapper Fabolous (spelled as is). In a collaboration with Mary J. Blige, the queen of Hip Hop Soul, Fabolous recommends: "We can leave the club and hit the beach in Guyana, don't come back until our features is tanner." As far as I know, there are no beaches in Guyana. There is the Seawall (where my parents used to go on dates---awww!). It's a concrete half-wall that people walk on. That's it. No boogey-boarding on the Seawall. "We can leave the club and walk the Seawall in Guyana..." What, Fabolous--walking on concrete isn't sexy? Actually, I'd prefer it as such. Leave my parents' dates outside of the realm of the sexual. Anyway, the Seawall keeps the brown waters of the Atlantic Ocean from flooding the land. Brown waters--what you say!?!? I'm no geologist, but from what I understand, the Atlantic Ocean stirs up the sea floor in such a way that the water becomes brown as it meets the Guyanese coastline. And since we're a self-involved, racist Western culture, we want our water like we want our eyes--clear, blue, and Aryan. Hence, no tourism industry in Guyana as elsewhere in the Caribbean. Hence, rampant poverty. Hence, damn.
Perhaps, Fabolous was referencing the banks of one of the many rivers of Guyana (Did you know that Guyana means "Land of Many Waters" in some forgotten Amerindian dialect?) The Demerara River, perhaps? It's a possibility, but I doubt it. Again, dark waters (somewhere between brown and green). And also, squatters make their homes along the river banks for the abundance of fish. You wouldn't want an old, big-belly Guyanese fisherman flashing you a toothless grin as you frolic on the riverbank with the dime-piece you met last night at the club, would you? My guess is, Fabolous met some hot Guyanese chick the night before writing this rap. She exoticized herself to get seats for her and her friends at the bottle service table. And BAM--history revised!
Strike 2: (I wish the Kool-Aid pitcher mascot would get real angry for the misrepresentation, bust through the coffin, and choke Jim Jones' neckbone. ***NOTE---it was actually some other local brand of cavity-inducing "Aid," but I like the idea of the Kool-Aid guy choking the skeleton's neckbone too much to be accurate.***)
It's ALWAYS awkward when you tell someone that you're Guyanese for the first time. They look at you for a second too long, trying to determine, I guess, if you were old enough to have had anything to do with the whole Jonestown, cyanide-in-your-Kool-Aid thing. The other day at work though, I had a new experience: I wasn't face to face with the person when I divulged my cultural heritage, there was a cubicle wall between us. DA DA DUM! But I'd have to argue that the silence was more overwhelming than the blank stare to which I've grown so accustomed:
Me: "Yeah, I just got back from my Granny B's funeral in South America" (you say 'South America' sometimes to defer the awkwardness).
She: "Oh really? Where at in South America?"
Me: (Damn.) "Guyana."
---Please return for the conclusion after this 30-second silent intermission.---
She: "Your family didn't come down with Jim Jones, did they?"
Me: "What? No...my great-great grandparents were born in Guyana. Jonestown happened in '78. My parents had already immigrated to the States by then, actually."
She: "So they didn't go to Guyana for that then?"
Me: "Uhhh...nope."
She: "So they weren't involved at all?"
Me: "No. Different areas of the country."
Silence.
She: "So they weren't involved then (finally, with a relenting tone)."
You know, I'm thinking that after the second or third dismissal, I should have just gone for the goal and concoted some story about how my grandparents were the storeowners who sold 50 lbs. of grape Flavor Aid powder to some weird white guy and used the money to immigrate to the States the next day. But then they were stopped at customs because there was purple powder spilling out of Grampa's pockets. And the customs dogs licked it up and croaked (this was pre-cyanide, they croaked as a result of the artificial sweetners). My grandparents fled when they saw the guards looking vengeful. And they relocated to backwoods New Jersey where they watched the news of the Jonestown mass suicide on their new, American TVs in their new, American living room.
History revised, damn it! Centuries' long cultural tableau, spilled on by a Dixie Cup of purple.
Mood:
don't askTopic: Early school life/sex
Background: Many of you may not know that I went to a northern New Jersey Catholic school for the first half...HALF, I say, of my educational career. St. Joseph the Carpenter in Roselle, NJ. From pre-k to 5th grade, I wore a blue, gray and yellow intensely plaid 1) pleated jumper with baby blue blouse underneath or 2) (and this commonly happens after "the pubity"--as we say in New Jersey--strikes), plaid skirt with the adjustable-length-depending-on-sluttiness inseam (you've seen them in rock n' roll, hip hop, and porn videos...and Mexican soap operas) worn with baby blue blouse and misshapen heather gray vest to cover up the oompa-loompas (Catholics, always denying their titties). Little "Sonia Ann" wore all this, seriously. As did her classmates, some of whom included future altar boys, guidos, strippers, Nino Browns, church ladies, club kids, etc. Imagine. A northern New Jersey classroom. It's a jungle in there.
Foreground: So today, I had one of those out-of-body experiences where I was confronted by another self of mine, one from a bygone era. I had a flashback. It wasn't a dream-like, dramatic, active replay where something happens. It was a photograph. A cheesy school photograph from the 80s. The ones with the digitally-rendered, ominous pink and blue lightsabers in the background. What DO those represent? "Sonia Nelson, age 8, has conquered the dangerous Phonics frontier and is now in second grade!" But the specific photograph I envisioned, a little too clearly (in a post-sex haze, okay, I said it! No censorship here!), was that of a nun...an old nun...an old nun who looked like ET! Sister Patricia of the Alter-Galaxy, or something like that (okay, I forgot her name, but I know that she was pious).
On shaky ground?: To be true to the reader, I have to say that I have never actually seen the ET movie. How Un-American, I know. Report me. But still, ET's visage is forever burned onto the inside of my dome-piece like a frat brand on a fat man's arm. Bulbous head, mince meat-looking gray wrinkles, eyes like blue shark-infested waters. Yet still, somehow...nice. And cute. And sweet. And angelic. And sexy...oh, HELL NAW. How do things like this happen? The mental image montages of our minds going horribly wrong? How does a 3 second spot cause us to question our sanity, morality, faith, ethics...basically everything that differentiates us from our buttholes. I want explanations (or therapy) damn it!
Topic: Co-workers
My co-worker is a french fry. The naughty, skinny kind with just a little bit of potato flesh and a whole lot of deep-fried surface area.
I only know of him what he divulges on a twice-weekly basis. Years of adventures in the American Southwest (with reddish skins to prove it), falling out in the bulletproof vestibule of his apartment building in Little India, Chicago to avoid drive-bys, acid-induced joyrides during his twenties (or thirties, or forties, or yesterday?) He drops by the cubicle commune that is Proofreading to talk to his old buddy, never really to me. But I noticed yesterday that I've grown quite fond of the distraction. I understate: I need it. Like how you suddenly NEED McDonald's french fries at 1am. Like if you don't have them, your stomach will rip itself free--leaving behind slippery pink danglies--to run through the nearest drive-thru without your ass...or your mouth. What would Pimply Dennis, the sixteen year old fry guy, say into his Bobby Brown headset if my raw and juicy stomach cruised up to the second window rolling on 20s? I digress. So I'm reading dry toast legal documents last night, craving the french fry that is He. He stops by for a brief chat--though I think of it more as stand-up comedy--and I applaud. "Yay!!! You're here. We've been waiting for you to come tell us stories. STORY TIME, STORY TIME--yay!" (You know I gotta keep it kindergarten up in here).
He's here! He's here! I interrupt this blog with a message from our sponsor:
Right now he's quoting from his leisure reading: "'The retarded aren't afraid to be themselves.'" He's reciting it in a sing-songsy voice. And now: "Look! Pictures of my doggie. I cleaned my house for the pictures. It's been elevated to the status of a crack house." And then: "Remember that charity CD back in the day called Band-Aid?!?! Of all things!!! I'm going to make a 'Heal the World' album and call it 'Iodine'. It's a charity that feeds me and only me!" Hoarse laughter. Who knew deep-fried sides could be so humanistic?
"Well, I better get back to work," says the golden french fry to the proofreaders 45 minutes later. Me personally--my Catholicism is my cellulite. I've experienced too much pleasure and I must repent for each fat s(h)tick--that'll mean proofing twenty pages an hour instead of ten...and twelve Hail Marys. Too much golden goodness in these gray legal walls.
Okay, I don't know what the point of this was. You'd have to hear the comedy for yourself. Would it be wrong if I brought a tape recorder in and recorded him without his knowing? Do french fries have rights? Attorney-Fry privilege?
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