Old Write Exercise: About Sefa

The first time I spoke to Sef, he said he was British but he didn’t have a British accent.  It was much like Abani’s British and something else.  Sef was from Ghana and he contacted me through a myspace search engine.  I’m still not sure why he began talking to me.  I don’t want to ask either.  My second reading week for London was slow so I called him and we spoke.  He was a third year business major at Nottingham and his parents paid for school so he didn’t work.  He was addicted to Chinese food.  His ex-girlfriend was Chinese.  Her name was Estella.  She left him for someone else.  The conversation revolved around her, even though he said he wanted to meet me.  I was bored.  I needed adventure, so I said yes.

I’m one of those people who needs busy work, because when I get bored I do stuff like what I’m about to tell you.  Anyway, we agreed to meet at Waterloo.  I had trouble spotting him, because I wasn’t too sure what he looked like.  We picked up our mobiles and I found him by the sound of his voice.  Still that same British-Ghanaian accent.  He was tall and slim, with skin the color of dark milk chocolate.  I was nervous, so I was glad that he did most of the talking.  He told me a bit about Ghana.  He was the youngest of three or four siblings.  His parents were wealthy.  Sef didn’t see an elephant, until he went to a zoo in Washington, and he hated telling people he was African because they assumed he ran with the elephants.  I never made the observation.  I tried to imagine myself on some exploration of eroticism with him.  I didn’t like him very much, but I figured it would make a great tale for Anita and Emma when they returned from Sicily.  But I didn’t tell him that.  I didn’t want to look like a slut or anything.  I touched his hand.  He winced.  I’d try again later.

London wasn’t his town he told me.  He didn’t spend much time there, but that was how he met his ex.  We were at Rendezvous in Leicester Square.  She passed him in the street.  They met again at Nottingham and flirted like butterflies around the idea of hooking up.  She was involved with someone else.  He stopped eating his Belgian waffle and almost said her name, which I found lovely and called her The Past.  The Past kept in contact with this guy while they were living together.  The Past had non sexual affairs in London hostels with him.  Sef checked her e-mail and called her parents to confirm his fears.  Then his cross-dressing became more frequent.  His favorite color was pink, and he hated admitting that.  He told me that over our phone conversation and I wore pink especially for him.  Anyway, he met a guy on myspace who was gay.  They met for drinks when The Past still endured her intimately wrong affair.  He slept with this guy, but it wasn’t an affair he said.  He wasn’t gay.  He didn’t come.  He wasn’t even a cross dresser.  He just liked dressing in girl’s clothes.  And he hated drag shows.  They were demeaning, but lesbians were great.  Such a typical male.  That’s what ended their relationship.  He assures me that The Past is missing out, even though she is back home in China.

We left Rendevous and I hoped we could leave The Past but she followed us everywhere.  A rose lady walked past us.  I got The Past a rose at this club, he said.  We sat on a bench and a placed my leg over his.  He pulled out a condom and sighed.  These things are like kryptonite, he said.  We watched a movie; I think it was Bullet Boy.  I slipped my arms over him.  He said I had soft skin.  The Past didn’t.  Sef took me to a Chinese restaurant where he ordered way too many courses.  He took my hand at the table.  I sighed.  I really like you, he said.  You’re like a sponge, so absorbent, he said.  He felt so comfortable with me.  While we were waiting on desert, he told me about his masturbation habits.  He’d wait for several days and do it five times.  It helped to release some pressure.  I tried one more time and caressed his arm.  I went to far listening to him to not do this.  He was upset with his roommate last summer and he jacked off on her favorite dress before she went back to France.  He felt a relief, after so many months of being without The Past.  He felt close to a woman for once, he said.

I looked down at my ice cream and sighed.  At least I got a free meal.   

                                                                                                                     

Free Write 15: Pain

I cut myself last night, messing around with a Y peeler, because I bought one, because I wanted to make roasted potatoes because I love potatoes but I hate peeling them, and I figured, a Y peeler is safe because I won’t have to worry about cutting myself, like I often did with a knife whenever I was cutting potatoes, or tomatoes, or butternut squash or sharing carrots.  Perhaps my knives have gotten dull but I’ve never cut myself once, ever and then while I was in the midst of listening to Keyshia Cole I put my thumb wide open.  Like, there is blood everywhere, my red potatoes died pink, pink smeared into the water.  I am so accident prone with things that are supposed to be safe for me, things that are good for me.  I fell down while running a few weeks ago, all in the middle of trying to focus, trying to breathe, trying to envision how great I’ll look when there’ll be a lot less of me, but no, I fall and luckily it’s so early in the morning that no one else sees me.  So now I have scars, sublte ones on my knees to match the scars I got while hiking in Utah, and I ate coming downhill, right next to the scar I received while rollerskating in grade school and I fell down and ate it too.  I have other scars on my knees from a shaving accident gone wrong; taking things out of the over and burning myself; times when I’ve scratched too much and there wasn’t enough cocoa butter or fading cream in the world to get rid of them, but they are still there.  I wish that I had used more free time doing other things, although no of these scars burned until I put peroxide on them.  Take a lesson from dad:  always use peroxide because it brought air to the cut, helped it heal faster.  I wish I had heeded this lesson long ago.  I keep doing the same things that I know could bring me pain but I am always surprised, always shocked but the gush that peroxide can bring.  But I need otherwise my scars won’t heal as quickly.  It needs to be handy in my life.

 

But what about those other scars, that other pain?  The pshyical pain used to not bother me:  just the evidence, but now the emotional pain bugs me even more.  Those are scars that don’t heal and there’s no peroxide to the heart that I can take.  I don’t know how to let those scars heal, let that pain heal because when it raises to the top it hurts and when I bury it, it hurts and the only way to really let it go to have some distance, from space, and even in that space I have to be conscious to not let ot go and raise to the top where it wants to.  Sometimes I just want someone to cook for, talk to, someone who will hold me…and just I feel ashamed for having such trite desires that no one will seem to fulfill.  There’s also pain in wondering if I will ever be happy being with someone and if I can only be happy alone, can I be okay with it?  Can I laugh just as I did when I fell while running or hiking or rollerblading?  Why can’t I find the beauty of the pink, the emotional pain or rejected love just as I can when my blood gets on potatoes, perhaps because I can wash it, I have a solution so I know that pain is temporary and it’ll only leave a scar that I can later on show to friends and family and laugh about this one time when I blah blah blah, and how I got through it because I know what I was doing.  I know who I am in those moments.

Thoughts of the day: Kindness

I’ve been talking a lot about kindness lately.  Like love, it still remains elusive to me and it feels weird to say all that because I am a very kind and caring person.  But what is its value to others?  I once read about the orphanages in East Europe where people fed babies but didn’t hold them.  Those babies died.  I’m currently fostering kittens who needed surgery when they went into my care.  But after spending six weeks with me, they are fat, happy, healthy kitties who no longer need to go under the knife.  What was the difference?  My guess is that kindness is something everything needs in order to survive.  It helps you see that you are part of  a unit, that someone wants to bond with you, that it matters whether or not a baby or a kitten will evolve to spend more days on this Earth.  

If popularity was based on kindness then I would be so popular! People would love me so much, but that doesn’t happen.  I find that people often try to take advantage of it, whether it be in me or in others.  Or that it’s not fun and exciting and therefore not interesting.  I met a woman recently who complained to me and another friend about a woman who saved her life — literally.  And now she’s tried to befriend this woman, whom, even though she’s “caring” isn’t “fun” and therefore she doesn’t want to be around her. I almost said that woman should’ve left the one complaining for dead if that’s all that matters.  

Kindness and caring is something that everyone needs, and because it’s a constant need, whereas excitement and fun can be fleeting preferences it’s often undervalued.  I couldn’t understand why, but I think I figured it out while talking to the lady who disliked the woman who saved her life.  I think there’s a profound difference between someone who likes receiving acts of kindness and someone who appreciates and values them.  Everyone I’ve met is in the former camp but I’ve met relatively few in the latter.  Acts of kindness come in many forms.  Whether it be in attention, love, material goods, food, company, care taking, compliments or sex.  There are forms of benevolence who doesn’t relish someone giving greatness?  The major difference is that liking an act of kindness just has to do with the person receiving them, thinking it is all about them and focusing on the act itself, rather than considering all that goes into the act for the person giving them.  Appreciating an act of kindness placing value on the act, considering it important because someone took the time out for the person receiving it.  And for that reason, it becomes important and they are thankful.

Here’s an example:  I was chatting to someone who asked me to do their hair.  Considering our history, I couldn’t do it.  He always struck me as someone who basks in attention from others, loves when someone does things for him, but it mainly matters that he’s getting his needs met, and less about the person who’s doing it.  So the people are interchangable in his life as long as he meets his needs.  It wouldn’t matter if I do it– it matters that he fulfills that desire.  It seems very self centered and I don’t want to take part in that.  It almost seems like it was the same for that woman who complained about the woman who nursed her to health.  And if someone is only concerned about their needs and not about mine, that’s someone I’m better off not doing anything specifically kind for.

I still hold open doors and carry people’s luggage when they’re struggling to get on the BART.  There’s a part of me that’ll always be that way. I find that it helps to connect with others authentically when I stay true to that core part of myself.  But perhaps I am becoming more targeted in whom I go out of my way for, exhibiting a behavior that does imply caring (like cooking for someone).  I’m fortunate to have friends whom feel that same way now.  I went to a vegan bake sale with Victor and Miranda and their friends and I was so relieved that there was no popularity contest.  It just mattered that we were all kind and respectful of one another and we all worked to create harmony within the group.

What about y’all, dear readers of this blog (if I have any)?  How do you feel about kindness?

Subtitles

I like to watch movies with subtitles.  This probably came about since I love foreign films, but I put the subtitle option on even when I’m watching films in English. Especially if they’re in English.  I find that having white or yellow letters at the bottom of the screen help me better concentrate on the movie and what is being said when I can read it at the same time.  Sometimes I wish I had this option in real life. Sometimes I wish I had subtitles for when I’m speaking to people.

I notice this often in English language films where the subtitle doesn’t quite match up to what the character said.  It’s just a word or two, and it still contains the same idea. Real life is like this often because I experience a disconnect between what is said, and what I hear.  Am I hearing what they are saying? Am they saying what I’m hearing or will my own interpretation come back to haunt me?

Early in the movie Annie Hall, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton passionately converse about art and the beach, but the subtitles below show their thoughts are centered around sex.  He wants to sleep with her and he’s trying to devise the most witty, stimulating comments to give her the impression he’s one worth sleeping with.  Conversations take place like these every day.

Or maybe I’ll give a more current example.  Let’s say, me, goes to an event (like a party, an art murmur, a museum, etc) and I meet someone I like.  I tell person I like that I’d like to get together some time, and they say sure!  But of course this doesn’t happen.  Whenever I’ve said, “Can I see you again?”  there’s usually some child like voice on the inside saying, “I like you. Do you like me?  Am I worth some of your time?” And maybe person I like may think, “She seems desperate” or “I have enough friends” or “She seems cool and I’d like to spend time with her too.”  I say this because this response is standard in the Bay Area.  I meet people I like all the time but I can never tell if they like me too, or if they like me in the moment.  

Here’s where a subtitle option would be useful.  It’s not the same as reading someone’s mind (I don’t even like being in my head sometimes.  I don’t want to be in anyone else’s) but it would help to see if the person is being sincere. Or better yet, am I being sincere in what I’m saying.  I try to make my words match up with my intentions, but sometimes it doesn’t happen.  Okay, it rarely doesn’t happen.

The easiest way to become my friend or to get me to do something nice for you is to just tell me you like me.  I’ve given up on hearing someone say they love me for the moment.  A few years ago I met a nice older man at a dinner party who stopped me mid-sentence to tell me he liked me.  And I felt relieved.  That older man became my therapist when I was in school, and I’m sure it’s all because he told me he liked me that it allowed me to listen to him.  

Even now, though, I still stumble with saying I like someone, even if it’s true.  Mainly because it requires some sort of vulnerability and from my experience, it makes people nervous.  I told a guy I liked him one at a party and that started some weird discussion on how I was trying to push my expectations and decisions onto him and I wasn’t being fair.  That ended me liking him.  And the conversation.  But if I had the chance to read a subtitle where he might’ve said, “Don’t say you like me” I might not have said it.  And who knows, maybe we would’ve been friends, who don’t like each other.  

I bring this up because I could’ve used a subtitles option a few weeks ago.  At the Art Murmur I ran into this guy Evan who helped me with the purchase of my bike (finding an adult bike if you’re under 5′3″ is a challenge) and he made me laugh while he adjusted my seat. Miranda swore up and down that we were flirting, although I justified it in saying he was trying to make a sale. 

“But he was acting like that long after you wrote the check,” she said.

Good point.  Anyway, he was friendly, and I wanted to get to know him.  So when I saw him at the art murmur I found the perfect question for him — which was, which gears do I need to be in while going uphill.  He ended up coming back to my place for a glass of water and to see the fosters along with his best friend, and right before he left, he said he had fun with me. I did too.  I asked him if he’d like to hang out again, and right before we exchanged numbers he got all nervous.  Said he only calls 5 or 6 people on a regular basis.  I asked him why couldn’t be a part of this group for a week, just to see how things turn out, then he stumbled he couldn’t do it, he didn’t know if he was going to call me, and yammer yammer yawed, and I’m wondering, why the hell did this get so complicated.  All I wanted to do was hang out and have fun, and now, now we’re reduced to this:  sweaty palms and fumbling with cell phone and blushes on both sides.  Not the good kind either.

If there was a subtitle, in my mind, it would’ve read, “I’m not sure if I like you enough to spend two hours with you,” on his end.  Or perhaps, “You get the wrong idea and I don’t like you at all.  I was just showing good salesmanship.”  Whatever the case, I refused to hug him when he left.  Perhaps my subtitles was reading, “You don’t deserve it and you hurt my feelings. Kind of.”

Then again, it might have said more than that.

The Update of I’s

It’s been too long since I’ve updated this thing. Here are a few thoughts

 

1. I need to write as much as a run.
2. I like everything about my life right now, except my job.  I need a new one.
3. I’m glad I’m throwing potlucks
4. I went to the art murmur with my lovely vegan neighbor Miranda a few weeks ago, where she said she loved me.  She’s said it before, but this is the first time I believed her!  This is also the first time in five years I’ve had a positive exchange involving the words I love you.
5. I love kitten fostering.  Who wouldn’t love to have cute furry animals in their home only to return them when they start getting irritating?
6. I’m happy I have my bike.
7. I actually went vegan.
8. I am feeling a bit old now that 25 will be here in two short months and I’m having a quarter life crisis entitled, what am I doing with my life?
9. I miss being in a relationship. I don’t miss him.  But I would like to be with someone else in that way.
10. I am scared of the things that go on in my head.