Category Archives: random love

random love

I love

Jealousymy bitches.
My right-hands.

ARGH.
I can’t fit it all in one post.
There’s too much- chats, saving my ass, working, sharing, bitching, whiskeying.
Too much fun, crying, laughter.
Too much love.

So.

It’s cold in February.
Tokyo’s chocolate heart explosions have come and gone (by the way the focus here is chocolate from the females on Valentine’s and the guys reciprocate on White Day, next month.  This country loves hetero-consumerism).
Which reminds me of my favorite V-Day tradition…

My bitches and I wear unglamorous but soft, flannel-y, fleece-y things and cheers to brown drinks on the rocks.
The oven is preheating and we do this:

Um…I’m in love with an alcoholic.
You used a condom right?
…
Did you use a condom?!

The one who can cook (motto: no babies, only beards) puts cookie dough on baking sheets as my young, pre-professional right-hand and I peruse the containers of magical toppings that will turn simple, golden sugar cookies into delightfully inappropriate treats to be shared with our work family in a number of hours.

We have red, pink, purple gel and cream icings.
Multi-colored sprinkles, red and pink glittery sugar dust.
Cookie dough goes in the oven.

I’m excited and feel the whiskey gently warming my cheeks…cozy times.

I blurt:
I think I’m pregnant.

These two are my damn truth serum, as my worry thought just spills out of me.

Really?
When are you supposed to bleed?
Not soon enough.  Fuck.
Plan B time.
Sigh.  I know.
Want me to go buy it for you now?
Damn they’re so sweet and waste no time taking care of fucking business.
Basically, they ROCK.
Nah…I’ll get it tonight and take it.

Ding!

As the cookies cool, we test out different icing tips and ready all the little containers.
And the fun begins.

V-A-G
CUNT- yes.
I think my penis looks weird.
I can’t fit the balls on this thing.
Uh…this tip is messed up.  I think I broke it.
It’s too big!
God, this gel icing is gross.  EW.
Chlamydia or gonorrhea?
You can fit that shit on there?
So…the nips are melding into each other.
Just sprinkle a shit-ton of glitter on it.
How do you spell—
Boobs.
Just boobs.

We turn into Valentine’s elves, gleefully creating dirty sweets that taste like total crap but will get eaten nonetheless because: the love, people.
Who doesn’t want to eat some sweet cunt on this lovers day?

More than a few 2.14s have passed since we’ve baked cookies and goofily giggled like pubescent tweens.

We’ve gone from living in the same house and/or across the street to different states and continents; we see each other a fuck of a lot less but they’re still my truth serum.

We witness big and little changes of the work, heartbreak, marriage, graduation variety.
We take pregnancy tests together, 7,000 miles apart.
We grow some and stay the same.
When I’m broken, they help.

And even though we 10,000 word-text each other and have marathon video chats, sometimes I just want a fucking whiskey with my bitches.
At a table.
In person.

Love y’all.

P.S. Also, shout out to my bitches in SF/Oakland, DC, Spain, Bahamas, Colorado, SoCal, Cambridge/NYC, Montreal, Memphis and Tokyo…thank you.

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about Japan, random love, relationshipping

It’s time

My eyeballs need cocaineto visit my grandparents’ grave.  I want to scrub-brush the tombstone, take some pretty flowers, burn some incense, put my hands together and pray.

Their grave is on a mountainside and the view is stunning; however, the sheer size of this cemetery is intimidating.  I’ll need a map and it’ll take me twenty times as long to find their grave as it will to sit, pray, think, love.

Some of my earliest memories are at my grandparents’ home in rural Japan.

A single-digit me hangs out in the piney front yard with huge moss-covered boulder-stones, awesome bonsai, random fruit trees, flowers sprouting jolts of color and a little stream running sweet, cold water.

My morning routine: cut through the superskinny passageway connecting our house to my grandmother’s sister’s home and walk around the foresty hill behind the house.  I collect various beetles as I get mercilessly bitten by mosquitoes but no matter because I’m off and running to the local candy shop and grocery where the shopkeepers think me a lovable but strange novelty, being reared in the States.  I say neighborhood hellos and discover chocolate-covered strawberry bon-bons(!!!) from a vending machine next to the neighborhood shrine; cicadas rhythmically scream-buzz in the humid afternoons, rows and rows of them encircle the tall shrine tree trunks.  Finding those bon-bons was a fucking awesome day.

My aunt wakes around noon and I watch her hour-long makeup routine in awe; her lipstick palette alone fascinates me for many minutes.  She was a model in Tokyo when she was young; many decades later, she’s no doubt the hippest woman in this quiet town.  She loves to tango and has many male admirers; my uncle’s joy over this is easily measured in the cans of beer that stack up, the brick thrown in her face was a little more direct.  Sometimes it takes her too many hours to finish her makeup so an impatient me plays in a field, looks for four-leaf clovers and makes necklaces out of weedy flowers.  Sometimes I ride the bus to explore neighboring towns but mostly I walk around, suck nectar from honeysuckles, balance on raised concrete borders of rice paddies and stare at tadpoles and frogs.

As the sky starts to turn pink-orange, I buy beer and cigarettes from adjacent vending machines for my uncle and cousin, respectively.  They drink and smoke while I light fireworks at night, sometimes with my next-door second cousins, sometimes not.

The family was tight.

So tight that when my older cousin gets too involved with the Yakuza, he lives with us in the states until- years later- he can resume life in Japan.

So tight that when his younger brother gets into rougher and rougher shenanigans at school, it’s his turn to live with us.

So fucking tight that this cousin uses an eight-year-old me for firsthand sex ed.

He doesn’t have to ask me to keep our secret.

I look up to him; I block it out of my mind.
It didn’t happen.

Nothing.

Happened.

As long as he lives with us, I don’t say anything.

Even when he ‘asks’ me to watch porn with him.
And taunts me (some days I’m really dumb and not cute, other days I’m a brilliant beauty; this confuses me).
And breaks my collarbone.

I don’t hate him.
I don’t know that I will ever hate him.

Even as he continues to mess with a ten, eleven, twelve-year-old me.
Even after a fifteen-year-old me feels immense relief that he has a girlfriend.
Only to find a box of Polaroids that he’s taken of me while I was asleep.

At seventeen I can’t deny what happened anymore; memory flashes disrupt my suburban teenage-hood.
At nineteen I tell my parents.

I still don’t hate him.
Even after my dad confronts him and he calls me a crazy bitch.
And a liar.

My grandparents are dead; it’s no longer their home.
And I’m no longer welcome there.

The greatest irony?
As I’m on this island, many years later and planning to visit my grandparents grave, I miss that family.
I didn’t quite realize the ultimatum: saving myself means goodbye to them forever.

Usually thinking about them doesn’t bum me out but apparently on a night like this, as I reflect, it makes me tremendously sad.

We don’t get many givens in this life.
Family is one of them.

Sometimes.

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random love, the sex

Let’s talk about sex

InpatientBut where to start?

How about one of my firsts.
I was 19 years old.

Me: Wait, what’s his name?
BFF: ***.  He’s really cool and he wants to meet you since he’s ***’s (her boyfriend’s) best friend and you’re my best friend and you happen to be in New York.
Me: Sure, why not.  I’ll see when I’m off this week.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

I know this guy likes to party, way more and harder than I do so my judgy mind expects a strung-out skeletal raver-kid who could be beautiful or with fucked up speedy teeth and bad skin who can’t stop scratching himself.

He’s actually much more wholesome-looking than I expect and quite polite but that could just be an effect of his charming English accent.  The strangest thing is how safe I feel around him and maybe it’s nothing more than my internal radar believing that if I don’t acquiesce, he won’t sex.  Either way, I trust him enough to easily “sure,” when he asks if I want to party.

His friends live in a way too fucking cool for school apartment in a doorman building and they’re already SMAAaa-shed.  Actually, considering that they haven’t left their place for almost three days, they are in that dreamy-haze state that saw wasted over 36 hours ago.  We’re just in time for nitrous rounds!  But I stick to my familiar weed and alcohol as he snorts, smokes and rapid-inhales a motley assortment until he’s blue in the face.  He stays blue-violet long enough that not only am I worried (of course I’m worried) but his friend who showed up god-knows-when is worried, until said friend takes a hit of something and disappears into his own high world.

Time suddenly morph-warp speeds as happens when drugs happen and as we’re sitting in a diner eating many plates of pierogies, I need to decide if I want to have sex with him because his friend is asking him if he needs a place to crash.  He still feels safe to me and as tends to happen when shared experiences take place, I feel close to him.  So why not?  Yeah, come back to my crappy dorm room.

He uses a condom.
I intake sharply as he decidedly fucks me.
He cums.
All in all, he’s pretty sweet and gentle.
I reach for a cigarette and quickly become lost in thought as I inhale delicious nicotine.
He joins me for a smoke- “Oh, right!”- because that’s what you do after a fuck?
He crashes, thank god.
I go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror.

So that was that.

He didn’t say degrading things that make me feel inadequate and dirty.
I didn’t fix my eyes on a single, burning bulb, willing it to render me blind to erase what was happening.
I had no problem looking at him the next day, directly in the eyes to say, “I’ve got to go to work so you’ve got to go.”

It was devoid of any meaning.
That it was a meaningless act made it absolutely meaningful; a first of many in the realm of sex.

My first one-night stand was the first time I had sex.

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random love, relationshipping

Let’s jump ponds

Sex changesIt’s time for an adventure.

But why does anyone do an international move?
To find themselves
or to run away.

Before I started dating S, I knew I’d move from the American South but that was to be a decidedly domestic decision between my beloved NYC and possibly Philadelphia.

Then when S and I got serious, so did the international-ness of next destination- Spain or Japan.

Why Japan?

I used to give what I thought was a well thought-out answer:
I wanted to get in touch with my cultural roots.
I wanted to be in a big city again.
I wanted to be in a more creative city.

As the move-out date approaches after S comes out as trans, I begin to doubt.
I ask S on occasion, “We’re not pulling a geographic with this move, are we?”

She’s not.
She’s fulfilling her original goal of living abroad.
She’s had enough of America and her mostly very conservative and narrow-minded hometown.

But me?

I think if I name the thing I don’t want to be guilty of, it will keep it at bay. Except every time I want reassurance that I’m not running away, something in my gut sends an, uh-oh alert to my brain. As in, I’m definitely running away. Because these days more than simply wanting an adventure, I want to be in a new place. I want to consider my transsexual relationship away from the trappings of a small and (too) familiar town where everyone who finds out about S’s transsexuality has a pointed opinion they are not shy about sharing; usually it’s ultimately supportive (after many questions) but sometimes it’s downright mean.

A year and some months pass and I think about living in Japan.
I haven’t run away yet as I haven’t escaped the confrontations that come with a rigorous raking over of me and S’s future.
Case in point: we are no longer coupled and despite moments of wanting to jet on the immediate, I stay put. I work out the highs and lows of living in a far-off unfamiliar that still doesn’t feel like home. I’m also at peace knowing that I may not ever feel completely at home here; Tokyo was never intended as a final destination.

As for finding myself, that’s certainly happened and continues to, thank goodness. This life is an often funny and delightful little mindfuck in that just when I’ve figured something out, made the hard choice and breathed a sigh of, “Okay…that bit is finished,” I am shocked at what comes next.

So the next side of my never-ending relationship Rubik’s cube?
I’m just beginning to unpuzzle this one but it revolves around a specific notion of control as a new adventure begins…

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random love

THAT word

THAT word

elicits some strong reactions.

Yup, I’m talking cunt.
And moist.
Ha.

I think those might be the two most hated words in the English language.  It seems that moist nauseates people and cunt offends the fuck out of many folks.

So of course my juvenile mind thinks, what if we committed to using those words in conjunction?  I mean, a moist cunt isn’t nauseating nor offensive unless one has issues of a different sort altogether.

Here’s my rationale:
If you’re a straight man, lesbian or bi there is no problem with a moist cunt.
If you’re a gay man and that combination is very ew gross, maybe it’ll lead to thoughts of other, much more scrumptious sex?
And after reading through the very violent insta-response moist produces, vag imagery might not be the worst thing.

Personally, moist doesn’t bother me and cunt has been one of my longstanding favorites.
Moist cunt?
That’s good fun.

Perhaps my side project of the week is what set off this train of thought.
I leave you beautiful people with that imagery below as I ponder what word does drive me nuts in a rotten way…

cunt fuji

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random love

Perfect attendance

My eyeballs need cocainewas never my thing.

***

Except once.
Once in my life I didn’t miss a class the whole semester.

Goddammit, no Cont Art/Theory/Crit for me. Again.
I have yet to have a schedule that will allow my learning about Now Art so I take High Modern instead, which cuts off exactly when I get highly interested- 1968.
My sculpture advisor has such a constant hard-on for the macho gay artists of this period that I wonder if I’m going to witness the same reel of aggressive, testosterone-driven Rauschenberg, Johns, Pollock images and bios referenced in sculpture class.

Turns out, no.
The professor is a junkie for contemporary art, a beyond serious museum nerd and reputed to be a hard-as-nails, total bitch.
In other words, I will probably have a crush on her in a matter of days.
I smile.

This woman lives for modern art and I love her for it. She’s pretty ruthless if you don’t give two shits about investigating the why behind the art(ists) in their historical and contemporary context but the class cares. And though she’ll cut down lofty musings not grounded in earnest investigation of the topic at hand during class, she’s a really generous professor. For instance, her attendance policy: 100% attendance=final exam opt-out. Hell. Yes.

End-of-semester usually entails many hours of underslept hell on earth so eliminating one more exam/project sounds awesome. Except I like this class; I look forward to it and perfect attendance turns out to be a pretty painless endeavor.
This is unusual because I always skip a class or two. Sometime it’s because I can’t be in two places at once but often, I enjoy taking a personal day; I’ve done this since I was in my single digits.

***

So I’m memory tripping to a perfect attendance moment because of my recent FAILed attempt to post daily for the month of December. Pre-scheduled posts much? Right…I haven’t mastered that one yet. *sigh*

Still, let’s see what happens the rest of the month…although I guess it’s silly to daily post challenge during maximum holiday cheer month.
But I’m in Japan where people work on 12.25; there are no holidays in December*, which is extremely weird.
So of course I’m taking a personal day…it’s fucking Christmas for chrissakes.

*I lied; the Emperor’s birthday is December 23rd=holiday

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random love

A share

…because some poems strike like that.

“After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.”

— Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be. (via awelltraveledwoman)

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random love

5 things

My eyeballs need cocaine

I must have on a deserted island?

I’m working a damn long day; I will have had a three-hour break in a 36-hour workday, which makes me think survival mode.

I’ve never answered this question, actually.
And even though it’s a total hypothetical, I feel this pressure like oh shit, these are the ONLY 5 things I will be allowed when I get stranded on a desert island.

So what do I need?

1) the fattest plain notebook ever and a megabox of pens (0.5mm)
2) resistant-to-the-elements sleeping bag
3) the toughest, most comfortable, weather-proof shoes on creation
4) potatoes (starchy comfort food plus it’s easy to root, yes?)
5) glasses of the severely corrective lenses variety (oh, can that be a flame source?)

This is the most practical list I can come up with.

I thought about adding love, in any form, even as an unforgettable memory because I do need that in my life regardless of the where.  But if a memory- a feeling, a series of instant recall, flashback experiences- will suffice, then maybe it has already carved a permanent  sanctuary in my brain-heart and I don’t need it on a list?

I won’t forget but sometimes a fade happens…evidence of time and distance working their (un)fortunate magic.

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random love

Let’s fast!

She expected me to leaveUm no.
Was my first response.
Actually I think it was my first 38 responses.

Him: No one NEEDS to eat as much as they do.
Me: Nodding. I get that. But fries(!!!). Oh god, do I love a fried starch.
Him: You’ll get so much energy…you’ll feel great!
Me: I think I should watch you, get inspired, then try it out.
Him: You say you like to try new things…

I don’t know how it came to be that I agreed to fast.
Honestly, I think I was bored and that’s often dangerous.
I mean, it could cause a person to not eat for 11 days.

A few hours into Fast Day One…
Me: Oh my god, what are we going to do after we smoke weed?
Him: Uh, Rumi, we don’t smoke while we fast.
Me: WHAT?!
Him: Have you not been listening? It’s not just food; we’re getting pure.

What the shitty shit have I just agreed to?
I don’t meditate.
I’m not seeking mental clarity or an epiphany.
But at this point it seems like a good challenge. And it’s true that I’ve been feeling pretty lethargic and kinda gross in general so…yeah, let’s fast.

I’d never fasted before so I decide to maintain it until I can’t or don’t want to anymore, whichever comes first.

The first few days I think about how to handle hunger, hang out with friends at bars and restaurants, what if food smells gross me out, or I feel weak, would I be angry for being hungry, etc. I filter quite a few what if’s and feel excited about the new challenge and before I know it, I’m 2.5 days into the fast.

My body temperature fluctuates. A lot. I feel an intense heat radiate from within a few times a day. I’m a bit shaky for no more than 30 minutes every evening, between 21-23:30, towards the end of my work shift. I nap almost everyday; he tells me it’s a good way to conserve energy and let my body have extra rest.

The sight and smell of food don’t gross me out. Everything smells and looks fucking fabulous BUT I don’t want to eat except for a 15-minute window towards the end of my work-night. My sober self goes out to a drunken, hungover brunch and I’m severely tempted by fatty-fat dripping burgers and endless mimosas. But temptation isn’t indulged and she moves right along.

Life slows down, slows way down.
I calm down, my thought process is much more deliberate. Little things fall by the wayside; actually, they don’t even blip on my radar. I contemplate many things but it’s not necessarily deep thoughts, just thoughts.
Maybe I’m physically incapable of rapid-fire thoughts or knee-jerk emotional responses.
Maybe I’m gaining…clarity?

It was a peaceful, interesting and unexpectedly fulfilling 11 days.
Fast Day 12 doesn’t happen because I simply don’t want to fast anymore.
I want consumable energy.
I make a veggie soup and it is delicious.

Oh, and that first hit of pot, post-fast?
I-n-c-r-e-d-iiiiiiiiiii-b-l-e.
Pura Vida.

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random love

Inpatient

Inpatientwas a blur and a huge cliché but with one unforgettable connection.

I don’t know how I got to thinking about this woman today.
But here we are…

Even the most severely medicated patient feels her cold wall of silence, one that staunchly taunts the staff: just try to get me to give anything up. Because no.
And fuck you.

But I meet her gaze one day and it hits me- she is trying so hard to keep it together, which makes me instantly care about her. She’s not okay but she is fighting so hard to convince herself otherwise. Call it survivor’s instinct but we identify something in each other, which leads to our first conversation on some bench-table thing outside. It feels so nice, being outside; the natural light a warm and welcome relief from many a fluorescent bulb.

She is tough.
And not just because she’s a damn tough gang member who has been living The Bluest Eye. But because she is committed to dealing with her demons, regardless of how she is perceived by her biological family (completely untrustworthy), her gang family (traitor), the father of her child (unworthy). Her life doesn’t allow for a mental health check-out without some severe consequences. So she has to make this count.

As she tells me her story, my heart sheds shocked tears.
She was Pecola.

Later that night, as I sit in my room and process, reprocess what she shared, I cry for her. Hard.

Two days later, when someone open-shuts the door to her group therapy session I happen to catch a quick earful. I hear her crying for herself. I think it’s the first time she has let herself cry in a long time. Possibly ever.

It was both of our first times in this kind of place.
I never did go back.
I never saw her again but to this day, ten years later, my heart crosses its fingers for her.

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