THE ETERNAL MYSTERY OF U.S. HIGH SCHOOLS

At lunch today we were all discussing our memories of prom night. Some were dumped by their boyfriends, others (like me) had the guy they liked showing up with their ex girlfriend, and another had their graduation so long ago she had to waltz with her father as a tradition. When you work with someone from Argentina, Puerto Rico, Bulgaria and New York, recounting war stories from high school can get pretty interesting. As it happened my prom night memories were pretty similar to everyone else except of course for the New Yorker.

School here is so different from back home that is like a parallel universe I’ve never visited and not matter how many times it has been explained to me it remains confusing, scary and clouded in an almost science-fiction-like fog of mystery.

It has always baffled me how school works here. From electives classes and going to different schools for each phase (elementary, middle, high school), to the school districts things by neighborhoods and homecoming parties and prom queens and kings. Back at home you don’t get to elect your classes, even if math is not your strongest area, you still have to suffer through eleven miserable, terrifying, traumatic years of algebra, geometry, arithmetic and my nemesis… trigonometry. Fucking trig I still have nightmares about it. When I watched TV and teenagers said hi to each other tentatively in school saying “You are in my history class aren’t you?” I never understood what they meant. Back at home we got a classroom assigned with other 30 to 40 students, you get assigned a seat at which you are to remain for the rest of the year and teachers come to you. Back at home you have no choice but befriend your classmates, you spend five days a weeks, 6 to 7 hours a day in a classroom with them, breathing the same air, sharing the same torturous math teacher and forced to work in groups. You sit in the seat next to someone for 6 to 8 hours for five days weeks and you learn to like them whether you like it or not.

I was the new girl on my sophomore year in High School. Since wretched math was kicking my ass I had to change schools to one that allowed students to choose if they wanted to spend their last two years learning social or science studies. Since the left side of my brain is stunted and never developed I went with social and spent my last two years in heaven with classes like French, Latin, Sociology, Philosophy, Psychology, Art History, English, and the right side of my brain enjoyed the party while the left grew cobwebs.

Whenever I think of high school here I remember how easy it was for me to change school and make friends. I had a blast on my last two years in high school and I shiver to think how much harder it would’ve been here. I was the new girl in a graduating class that had been in the same school since elementary. I was the new girl among teenagers that had seen each other for eleven years, five days a week. They knew each other’s grandparents, cousins, they knew each other secrets and had memories dating back to the time when some were still sucking thumb. Here it would’ve been impossible for me to befriend them since I don’t make friends easily, but back at home was so easy because we were stuck with each other all day.

Here is so different! Prom is before you actually graduate and the parties are unsupervised and at hotel rooms… I can’t even wrap my mind around it. Our graduation party was the day we got our diplomas and we work our dresses and suits under our gowns, we partied with family members and friends until five in the morning at a rented hall, had dinner, a champagne toast (even though most student were under 18 and therefore not allowed by law to drink). We partied as if it was a wedding, with a DJ, a photographer, a band and flowers. The party was the last time I saw some of them and a big way to say goodbye with a bang. It would’ve felt sort of anticlimactic if I had to see them all the next Monday after such a celebration.

Here you dress up, rent a limo and go to a hotel room to have drunken sex with a boy who has no idea what he is doing. Even if things were done that way back home parents would’ve never allowed their kids to go to a hotel room after a party. Here let me pay for hotel room where some randy teenage boy is going to pop my little girl’s cherry. Riiiiight.

Doesn’t anybody notice how simply wrong that is? *She says failing at trying to sound non-judgmental* Don’t get me wrong there were plenty of people that were sexually active at my graduation, but that didn’t mean we were allowed to celebrate our high school graduation party at some random hotel room without adult supervision. Back at home even the most rebellious rebel wouldn’t have dared to smoke in school property. There, school grounds are almost holy grounds and you don’t fuck around with school ground, you don’t graffiti, have sex under bleachers, smoke, drink, and give birth in bathrooms.

My poor cousin had to finish her high school years here and she was once almost took a mint from a guy who offered without knowing he was giving her Ecstasy. She saw people getting high in the bathrooms and I can’t even imagine getting away with smoking a cigarette at my old school, where the Spanish (from Spain) priests had eyes like a hawk and would know if someone skip school and called your parents if you talked back or misbehaved.

I love this country and I am happy to be here but I am also happy that I came here when I did, with two years of college under my belt and that I didn’t get electives that were going to keep me from meeting my friends, I am happy I didn’t have prom king or queens. I am glad I finished school back home where my graduation class was of two hundred people instead of getting lost in a sea of anonymity in a class of a thousand like my cousin and two of my friends.

I am forever grateful that I didn’t have to celebrate getting out of school by going to a hotel room to feel pressured into having sex with some pimply inexperienced boy with sweaty hands who didn’t know the clitoris from the anus. Amen.

FORGIVE & FORGET? OR OFF WITH THEIR HEADS?

So Tiger is spreading the love even though he has a wife of six years and two children. When a beautiful woman like Erin cannot keep her husband satisfied it makes one wonder. Who can? If success, fame, fortune, health and love cannot keep you happy then what can? Tiger is THE numero uno golf player in the world. He is at the height of his career, he has a beautiful family, he has everything anyone can ever want. Respect, success on his field, money, EVERYTHING. And apparently everything was simply not enough. Is it men as a gender who have an inability to stay faithful in spite of everything going well? Or is it more human nature?

What does it take to cheat? It is a disregard for that other person’s feelings? A need for instant gratification without regard of long term consequences? Is it carelessness? Is it loneliness? Horniness? Is it because that other person is offering something the person you chose to share your life with cannot give?
Or maybe is it because society places such a burden on marital rolls. Men are expected to be hunters, gatherers, providers, brave, romantic, strong yet sensitive like in the movies and women are supposed to be nurturers, sex kittens, cooks, mothers and everything in between. Who can fill such shoes? No one. We are all left dissatisfied because we have unrealistic expectations of the people we married and expect them to make us happy in each facet of our lives.

Although rationally I understand how difficult it is to remain faithful to someone until death, emotionally I don’t have any tolerance for the issue. I understand how hard it is to completely satisfy someone else, in and out of bed but how do people get past the sense of betrayal, the anger and the hurt? How do they move on? How do they open themselves again to the person who did the one thing they promise not to do in front of friends, family, the law and for those who believe in that, God?

In my family’s case forgiveness did absolutely nothing except for extend the humiliation and make more obvious the inability of my cheating father to commit to the woman he married and promised to love until death, the woman he chose as his mistress or the children he had with both. In which circumstance is forgiveness a good idea? I have been shown forgiveness when it comes to cheating is just a form of denial and silly hope that things will change.

In situations like these I wonder why would anyone marry? It’s such a risk, such a gamble, such an irrational promise of love, commitment, faithfulness and loyalty that we give too freely and without taking into consideration that there might come a time when we will be able to break it. Back at home almost all my friends had parents that were cheating on their spouses. Let me rephrase that most of my friends had cheating dads. Is it a Hispanic thing? Or are all men potential cheaters? Does it have to do with nationality, status? Or simply with having a dick?

Are women simply more discreet and conniving enough (don’t fight it you know we are) that we’ll cheat without getting caught? Or is it that we simply are brave enough to admit defeat and end a relationship before it gets to the point of cheating?. For men is it a case of wanting to have the cake and eat it too? (an expression that makes no sense to me because what else could you do with a cake if not eat it?) Or is it that their fear of confrontation (don’t bitch you guys know it’s true) keep them from facing the truth of their failing relationship and it’s simply easier to look at greener pastures without permanently leaving the farm?

We all dream (secretly or openly) about that breathtaking love that will last forever, epic and with a soundtrack, we all want to be Noah and Ally, or Lizzie and Mr. Darcy, Anne and Captain Wentworth, Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head…but how realistic is it to really be with someone for 50 years without forgiving some step outs?

Every time I see a couple that has been together for 20 to 50 years I always wonder which one has cheated, which one has forgiven. I haven’t decided yet if that makes me a cynic or a realist. I guess anyone can cheat and anyone can be cheated on. Maybe everlasting love isn’t about a perfect love but loving in spite of fucking cocktail waitress and spending too much time on the phone or leaving the toilet seat up.

I rather think Mr. Darcy loved Lizzie all the days of his life and never looked at another woman the way he looked at her. I rather think Dear Husband will do the same.

NOTHING FITS. PURSUE OF AMERICAN FITNESS.

My body aches, I have crammed this week two 40-minutres sessions of cardio on the treadmill, yoga, abs and arms workouts and even my lashes are weeping. People here are obsessed with fitness which is funny specially when one considers the fact that America is one of the heaviest (I don’t like the word fat) countries in the world. Like I have pointed out before this is a country of extremes where the morbidly obese and the scarily thin coexist in shaky harmony. Since I am neither skinny nor obese I find myself being in that unhappy middle where obese people hate you because you complain about your weight and you hate the skinny people because they complain about theirs. I gave the gym a shot last year. I went every day for six painful, miserable months and actually gained two fucking pounds.

I am now happily exercising at home with my yet-to-be-paid-for treadmill. I rather bust my ass at home in the privacy of my own four walls than do it in front of a bunch of strangers. Granted is not really easy to exercise around a hyperkinetic dog that licks, pushes, barks and shoves her snout on your crotch but I’ll take that over talking a stroll down to the bowels of Hell. Dante didn’t talk about it in his Comedy, but I am sure it was a mere oversight. What else can you call a place where they make you weigh yourself in front of your husband and make you take measurements of your body so you know IN NUMBERS that your ass is too big and your boobs too small? As if you weren’t well acquainted with that fact. What else can that place be, if not Hell? With all the mirrors and the unflattering harsh lights, the inane music that makes you feel trapped in an elevator while you endlessly loop on a treadmill. You add to that the people around you that are a walking promise of what you might become (Gym Barbie and Willie the whale are your choices) and that sounds to me like a cocktail for insanity.

I remember clearly a girl in particular from my six-month stint in hell (a la Persephone) she was a chubby girl who was trying so hard to lose weight, you could see it. She used to jog/crawl on the treadmill next to mine, sheer determination coming off of her like waves. I could feel her need to fit in a pair of single digits Jeans. So there she was, wheezing air in and out, everything jiggling while her face got purple with a mix of pain, heat and concentration. She would watch Dancing with the Stars on the TV in front of us, seeing the graceful dancers and the cute outfits as an incentive to lose some weight and the shimmery lights distracting her from the pain. Inevitably damnation came in the shape of an Applebee’s commercial, with their fake “healthy” food and their yummy, greasy goodness. You could see the bodiless hands dipping the boneless wing in the sauce, damn them! And the girl would stop jogging, she knew that I knew that she was going to go home and wolf down some wings and there’s no point for her to kick her ass any longer for the night. Right when she is fantasizing about the drippy wings up come from the stairs the trim gym goddesses, in matching Nike outfits and perfect hair. They don’t sweat, they glisten and they climb the stairs gracefully while they pat the nonexistent sweat with a hand towel.

One time tired of seeing her defeat I did the unthinkable and talked to her, I NEVER talk to strangers but her face was just so sad that I couldn’t help it so I look at her and I could hear her thoughts: “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!!!” and I didn’t judge her because they were my thoughts too. Granted I didn’t really hate the skinny bitches in matching outfits and washboard abs. I would totally push them out of the way if a bus was going to hit them. I would just push reaaaaal hard. So filled with pity for my kindred spirit I told her: “Whatever they have like no ass” and smiled at her. She looked at me and I guess she thought I wasn’t heavy enough to hate along with her because her withering stare still gives me the hibbie jibbies and she replied: “Yes, they have no ass, but I have TWO” and she spits that “TWO” at me like a dart.

Even after that I kept going to the gym. I became one of those people I “ugh” about. I never really belonged there, tough, but kept going anyway. Dear Husband loved the routine, the endorphins (an urban myth as far as I am concerned). He would be all peppy and smiley and my eyes were stinging from the sweat, I was blinded by the fog in my glasses, my muscles cramping all confused because they were never worked like that before and my lungs didn’t know quite what to do with the air.

I hated that fucking place; even just remembering makes my blood boil. I still remember Dear Husband’s voice saying: “When you cheat while exercising you are only cheating yourself” every time I took a break. I love that man. God knows I do but when we were at the gym he would say stuff like “Don’t lock your knees” or “Give me two more”, “Love the burn, feel the burn” or my personal favorite “There is no can't here” and I swear I would feel this homicidal urge that only the fear of being someone’s bitch from 15 to 20 and that horrid orange jumpsuit, would stop me from going “Snapped” on his ass.

I tried. I really did. I would wake up tired and achy and not an ounce thinner and I would just say to myself “muscle is heavier than fat” and fool myself into going again. I would try to be all positive and shit and imagine myself jogging at the beach in my thong with nothing jiggling. I would repeat “The Secret” in my head over and over again “Don’t just wish to be happy, be happy, feel happy” Smug bastards.

The pain, I assured myself, was a gentle reminder of my efforts, I would someday, laugh at my pains, no! Someday I wouldn’t even remember what it was like! And I would be curling 35 pounds and I would run around naked in the beach, thong? Who needs a thong!? I would walk around the gym doing nothing, patting my forehead with a towel and being hated by all. Sigh. That’s when you know you are hot when petty women hate you on principle.

I am a stinking failure because no matter how obsessed this nation becomes with a 100 pound ideal of beauty I am never going to be it. I am Hispanic! My ass alone weighs close to 100 pounds. I cannot fight genetics. I am not meant to be thin and I am okay with it. I just wish every commercial, TV show, model; clothing store would stop ramming their ideals down my throat. Only in this country you go to a store where the size L is actually small enough to fit a 130 pound woman. Who do they think they are catering to? The average American woman is a size 10 to 14 but the stores carry jeans from 0 to an 8. Cero is not a size damn it! It’s a non-size! You have to actually go to that dark, musty area of the store where the “plus sizes”. Nobody wants to walk to that area of the store. That means the cute, tiny and acceptable jeans don’t fit your fat ass! Just walking in the periphery of the “plus” size is bad for your reputation, people look at you funny and you want to get violent... remind me, why do I like shopping again?

No matter. I will work out at home and be healthy and fit and God forbid curvy.
Fuck this country idea of beauty.

RACISM IN THE SOUTH? GET OUT OF HERE!

I was reading the news the other day and ran into the case of the Justice of Peace in Louisiana who resigned his post after refusing to marry an interracial couple. When Dear Husband told me about it he wasn’t really incensed but he was a little put out by it since we are an interracial couple ourselves and I just couldn’t muster enough caring to give a damn.

I will be honest and say that maybe since the issue hits so close to home I should be offended, annoyed, outraged, enraged and all those other superlatives, but in reality I am feeling somewhat indifferent about the issue. Not indifferent enough not to talk about it but indifferent enough that it didn’t ruin my day when I read about it and indifferent enough that I actually laughed when I read the article.

I was too busy reading it and trying to wrap my mind around the man’s logic to be able to get pissed off and weeks later I am still not angry at him. See the problem with this guy isn’t that he is racist; his problem isn’t that he is close minded, mean spirited or cruel. I don’t know the man, I don’t think any less or more of him because of his stand. I do not understand why he “worries about the children” of such unions and I truly don’t give a flying fuck. Why I do care about is the fact that he took it upon himself to decide not to marry this couple. The description of his job as a justice of peace isn’t to decide who marries whom; it doesn’t include deciding someone else’s future because of personal misgivings. As a government official he should do what the job requires regardless of how he feels about interracial marriage or the future of the possible offspring. When gay marriage happens all over the U.S. (Don’t bitch, is happening) Justice of Peace like him won’t get to decide to marry a gay couple or not. They shouldn’t be protected by their personal feelings, religious inclination or their inability to grasp why a man would want to marry another man. They should get the job they are being paid for done. They should perform the job and move on to the next couple who hopefully to them will be a man and a woman of the same color that will keep their need for uniformity satisfied.

The problem isn’t that Keith Barthwell refused to marry this couple. The problem is that the Parrish that hired him allowed this to happen before, since by his own words he has refused to marry interracial couples before and referred them to someone else. The problem is that the Parrish that hired him didn’t do a good job at doing check on the man and weren’t aware or didn’t care about his prejudice. He isn’t require to think, feel, ANYTHING he should be blind to anything else but the law who states "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

See that is a thing that happens here in the U.S. that doesn’t happen back home. Back home when a black man marries a white woman or vice versa there is not going to be a Justice of Peace who gives enough of a damn to “take a stand” and not marry them because of their skin color. First people wouldn’t give a damn and second if they did they still wouldn’t care enough not to do it. Indifference works wonders in such cases. Back at home people do not think their inclinations, preferences, racist bias etc, should be respected enough to do something like that. We do not think that because this is what we feel, because this is what our conscience tells us, then the state, the country need to respect it. Citizens in this country feel the country needs to respect whatever brain fart comes out of their mouth which works in some cases and in others simply doesn’t.

I harbor no resentment toward Mr. Barthwell, first because he is an old, set on his way bigot who is not going to change his mind so why bother getting pissed off, and second because the poor man is obviously slow since he doesn’t even recognize his actions and words as racist when he says: “I'm not a racist," "I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house” Well bless his generous heart for being so open minded as to allow the darkies in his living room.

The man is a closed minded fool to be pitied and ignored. Instead he is being sued by a couple who saw an opportunity to make some money out of the situation. If they were truly interested in justice they would sue the Parrish for hiring a racist and allowing him to refuse to marry interracial couples. Instead they are seeking unspecified damages claiming “emotional distress as a result of the incident”.

Give me a fucking break. I don’t think is right that this couple had to be reminded of the narrow mindedness of people the day of their wedding when it should’ve been a happy day for all involved but if all it takes is that to cause emotional distress then I wonder if this emotionally fragile couple should marry at all instead of being institutionalized until they are balanced.

This man was given free reign by the Parrish to decide on his own accord based on his personal beliefs who to marry and who not marry. The Parrish should be the one held responsible for not monitoring this man who abused his power and got away with turning interracial couples away for two and half years. The thing is he is right. He has the right to choose what to believe in. It stinks that what he believes in is stupid, backwards and ignorant, but he is entitled to those beliefs. I don’t like them but since he isn’t riding in the night (as far as I know) in a white hood burning trees and stoning people then I say he is a pretty harmless old bigot like there are all over the world. What he did was wrong disgusting, but he righted that wrong by removing himself from the position that gave him the opportunity to excert his bigotry on other people. I do not believe his stupidity and ignorance means he has to pay the rejected couple any money.

This couple have the opportunity to open the eyes of many in that Parrish of Louisiana, they have the opportunity to bring light to a problem that we all want to believe is gone, but is in reality alive and well all over the country, and instead of choosing to turn this opportunity into something good, they are victimizing themselves and looking for monetary compensation for something that was wrong, annoying, insulting, hurtful but hardly traumatizing. They should, as someone who has been touched by this issue, make sure that the Parrish does a better job at hiring unbiased individuals that won’t put their personal beliefs before the job. Instead they choose to go after a guy who is no longer working as a Justice of Peace in the Parrish and therefore holds no power to repeat his abuse in the future. The Parrish however, holds the power to choose to hire as many bigots as they please. This couple seem to be aware of the fact that is easier to get money from a civil suit to an individual than to sue the government. If justice is what they were after instead of money, they would make the Parrish and the whole freaking State of Louisiana pay for their negligence and indifference. Instead they rather make a few bucks of the dumbass who already quit.

I have nothing else to say on the issue aside from: Mr. Barthwell you needn’t worry about any of the mixed children I may or may not have with my blue-eyed, lily white husband. I assure you any children I have with him will be incredibly smart, bilingual, culturally rich and hot as hell.

To the couple who is suing Mr. Barthwell instead of the Parrish: Shame on you for ignoring justice for the sake of some cash.

For the article please follow the link:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/03/louisiana.interracial.marriage/index.html