The time is afternoon and Joel sits in a restaurant with his dearly beloved, or whatever she has devolved into. She’s chewing on her chicken, he on different food. There’s more chomping than there is talking, more licking on chopsticks. There’s no talking at all but plenty of musing, you can tell. Plenty of troubling. As she picks up another morsel of dead chicken, still avoiding his eye and his conversation, he asks himself: Are we the dining dead?
Here are the thirteen signs (number completely impromptu) that we are, all of us, the Dining Dead. We are the victims of our flambé, we are to drown in our coffees, we are to boil in our soup, we are to pass on our yawns, we are to grow the color of our chairs, we are to douse our salads with the juices of our sameness, and we are to deserve it. I am a waitress, so I’ll go ahead and consider myself a pundit, describing a few things I notice at the café where I work with no small measure of regret.
1. We’ve reserved a table. Two of us arrive before the rest of the fun gang, and while we wait, we refuse to talk to each other. If more is merrier, is less a painful misery?
2. I know what I want. Every time. No, don’t give me the specials. I want what I got yesterday. One same old, please.
3. I was here yesterday.
4. I was here the day before.
5. My attire hollers: I have a fashion show to attend after this meal. Reality whispers: I’m going home and checking out my Facebook profile after this meal.
6. I bring Facebook with me! I’m caught in the world wide web, and it’s going to eat me like the atrophying housefly I am.
7. We’re a loving couple when we walk in, all a-giggle. By the time of the entrée, we are two people sitting next to each other, saying nothing. Pass the ketchup.
8. I find it more important to complain about the mint leaves in my Mojito—“they’re a little too squishy. You know what I mean? Sssquishy.”—than to do something about the social funeral that is my Saturday night.
9. I’m 16, mingling around twenty-year olds, fading into an eighty-year-old. I have a grandpa, and he’s probably sinking into his chair as we speak for the next two years, watching life go by. We're not very different in that respect, he and I, except that I'll have my salad without the pills.
10. I make a “thing” out of going to the restroom (it’s a three-person-minimum event). There’s nothing like urine to spice the night up.
11. I don’t know how to tell my parents I don’t want to be dining with them, so I just ask for more coffee, please.
12. Me and the fun gang have travelling plans. We’re going to go to another country and find cafes just like this one. And we’re going to do the same thing we're doing RIGHT NOW.
13. There are a million things I could be doing instead of sitting here for hours on end. But I choose this. Every single time.
I see a lot of things that I like though. I like people who come to read, ‘cause it’s a really pretty café, kind of shut off from the city and suitable for a good, relaxing read. I’ve never happened upon a client who was there alone, though I would like that. I like people who are genuinely happy to see their friends after a long time, and their reunion is a display, but only for themselves. I like people who come with messy hair, and people who are easily convinced to do shots with the waitress, just for laughs. I like couples who sit in a corner and hold each other for hours, as if there’s no-one else but them in a crowd of two hundred. I like people who start with a smile, whatever they’re starting. I like mothers who stroll close to the flowers so their babies can touch and smell. I like gangs that get louder with every round of beer. I yearn to see more of that; more of the Dining Alive N’ Kicking.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Cartoons
I thought I should share my current messenger screename, which says:
'You remember what used to matter? 7AM cartoon shows. Skirts that swirled nice when you spun.'
I miss that skirt. It had a wide waistband, a floral print and it flared just the right way when I pirouetted very quickly. I hated my mum when she threw it away.
On a different note, I feel dirty.
There's casual sex that truly arises out of nowhere, like a sudden flinch in your routine, and it tends to be great sex. Your body didn't expect it, your car and its yet unsteamed windows didn't expect it, and it's like a birthday gift for daily life. Happy Monday! Happy Wednesday! It's when, inspired, he says, 'Let's head to the beach.Tonight, after work.' Yes, more skin dipping--redundancy, begone.
Before you can think of reasons not to go, you find the little prodigy of spontaneity inside of you consenting gleefully. To the beach you head, for head and whatnot. It's the first time, and so you can still pretend that sex is not the cynosure...Sex is the 'Oh, look what happened' gasp of surprise, and the surprised gasps that follow closely. Before sex, you play make-believe that you're there for the 3AM waves (he likes how they arise frothily out of nowhere...kind of like proper casual sex), for the interminable sky and its glistening diamante children, for the mammoth of a joint he pulls out of his bag, like a magician of spontaneity ('Oh, look what happened!) and for sitting on the sand on a beach towel that barely bears room for two hips. In fact, half the joy is being unsure whether or not you're actually going to do It.
In retrospect, with a guy like him I should have been sure. He has Angelina Jolie eyes and a way of making you feel like he actually finds your jokes funny.
When I was younger, and found it important and secretly electrifying to talk with my girlfriends about the anticipated First Time--the authentic First Time. Of the Paleo-Virginus Age--I disagreed with how they envisioned it. They wanted hotel rooms, king size beds and accidental yet diligently positioned rose petals cast all over the bedspread.They wanted a date, like March 12th or heaven forbid, February 14th.And what I wanted was a build-up of lust, a furor of passion, ripped buttons and then the slow but worthwhile discovery of a new way to communicate with somebody. Unplanned, above all!
If you plan it, you kill the thrill. That's why there's casual sex and then there's the first time you go to his place because he called and asked you to. Aside from a wedding night and a drive to the brothel, I can hardly think of sex that's more deliberate than this. Deliberate and, this time, terrible.
It was a few things that did it. That popped the party one balloon at a time. First, it was getting to his place before he did, hence making me wait. There's nothing like waiting in the dark interior of a car to make you feel like you need somebody and they don't need you. Second, there was a look his roommate's friend gave me when we walked in the apartment. It was a raise of the eyebrows and a tight-lipped smile, both very brief and they very briefly told me that there would be no introductions--I was just the sex girl for the night. Then there was the pointless conversation before the foreplay. Something about weed, something else about Coelho. Topics everybody has brought up at some point or another, because they float and are always relevant, unimportant to the particular moment and the particular people.
Afterwards, there was his cheap, unadorned invitation to stay. It went like this:
Me: You killed me. I'm sleepy.
Him: So sleep.
Me: No, I should probably go.
Him: Ok.
By then it was daybreak, and he lounged on the bed with a joint in his mouth, and his legs apart. He was content, exhausted. While he tickled me with his foot and stared at me with his intense look that I know now is nothing more than hunger--hunger, the easiest, most unattractive human impulse--we talked about why it was so hard for me to finish. His tone, I assure you, sounded like he blamed me. Pop! That was the final balloon.
It's stuff like that that makes me not want to be naked in front of a guy, nor have his eyes on any part of my skin. Stuff that makes me feel that if I don't run as fast as possible, the walls of self-loathing will crumble upon me and the dust won't even touch him. Stuff that makes me put on my clothes and walk out, and instead of kiss him at the door, lightly touch his lips. I wasn't touching to take, but to give back. I arrived at my brother's place, and the sight of the velvet couch in the living room drew me like a magnet. I turned on the TV and the early morning cartoons were on! Happy creatures, clearly defined and contoured by black ink.
So I sat and watched.
'You remember what used to matter? 7AM cartoon shows. Skirts that swirled nice when you spun.'
I miss that skirt. It had a wide waistband, a floral print and it flared just the right way when I pirouetted very quickly. I hated my mum when she threw it away.
On a different note, I feel dirty.
There's casual sex that truly arises out of nowhere, like a sudden flinch in your routine, and it tends to be great sex. Your body didn't expect it, your car and its yet unsteamed windows didn't expect it, and it's like a birthday gift for daily life. Happy Monday! Happy Wednesday! It's when, inspired, he says, 'Let's head to the beach.Tonight, after work.' Yes, more skin dipping--redundancy, begone.
Before you can think of reasons not to go, you find the little prodigy of spontaneity inside of you consenting gleefully. To the beach you head, for head and whatnot. It's the first time, and so you can still pretend that sex is not the cynosure...Sex is the 'Oh, look what happened' gasp of surprise, and the surprised gasps that follow closely. Before sex, you play make-believe that you're there for the 3AM waves (he likes how they arise frothily out of nowhere...kind of like proper casual sex), for the interminable sky and its glistening diamante children, for the mammoth of a joint he pulls out of his bag, like a magician of spontaneity ('Oh, look what happened!) and for sitting on the sand on a beach towel that barely bears room for two hips. In fact, half the joy is being unsure whether or not you're actually going to do It.
In retrospect, with a guy like him I should have been sure. He has Angelina Jolie eyes and a way of making you feel like he actually finds your jokes funny.
When I was younger, and found it important and secretly electrifying to talk with my girlfriends about the anticipated First Time--the authentic First Time. Of the Paleo-Virginus Age--I disagreed with how they envisioned it. They wanted hotel rooms, king size beds and accidental yet diligently positioned rose petals cast all over the bedspread.They wanted a date, like March 12th or heaven forbid, February 14th.And what I wanted was a build-up of lust, a furor of passion, ripped buttons and then the slow but worthwhile discovery of a new way to communicate with somebody. Unplanned, above all!
If you plan it, you kill the thrill. That's why there's casual sex and then there's the first time you go to his place because he called and asked you to. Aside from a wedding night and a drive to the brothel, I can hardly think of sex that's more deliberate than this. Deliberate and, this time, terrible.
It was a few things that did it. That popped the party one balloon at a time. First, it was getting to his place before he did, hence making me wait. There's nothing like waiting in the dark interior of a car to make you feel like you need somebody and they don't need you. Second, there was a look his roommate's friend gave me when we walked in the apartment. It was a raise of the eyebrows and a tight-lipped smile, both very brief and they very briefly told me that there would be no introductions--I was just the sex girl for the night. Then there was the pointless conversation before the foreplay. Something about weed, something else about Coelho. Topics everybody has brought up at some point or another, because they float and are always relevant, unimportant to the particular moment and the particular people.
Afterwards, there was his cheap, unadorned invitation to stay. It went like this:
Me: You killed me. I'm sleepy.
Him: So sleep.
Me: No, I should probably go.
Him: Ok.
By then it was daybreak, and he lounged on the bed with a joint in his mouth, and his legs apart. He was content, exhausted. While he tickled me with his foot and stared at me with his intense look that I know now is nothing more than hunger--hunger, the easiest, most unattractive human impulse--we talked about why it was so hard for me to finish. His tone, I assure you, sounded like he blamed me. Pop! That was the final balloon.
It's stuff like that that makes me not want to be naked in front of a guy, nor have his eyes on any part of my skin. Stuff that makes me feel that if I don't run as fast as possible, the walls of self-loathing will crumble upon me and the dust won't even touch him. Stuff that makes me put on my clothes and walk out, and instead of kiss him at the door, lightly touch his lips. I wasn't touching to take, but to give back. I arrived at my brother's place, and the sight of the velvet couch in the living room drew me like a magnet. I turned on the TV and the early morning cartoons were on! Happy creatures, clearly defined and contoured by black ink.
So I sat and watched.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Skin Dipping
Bowdlerize = to edit or modify parts of a text that are considered indelicate and offensive
Last night we went skinny dipping. The decision came out of the blue (no pun, no pun) over Japanese food that was cooked in front of us. Or was it in the car, before the food and during the hunger? Either way. We went skinny dipping. It's funny that it's called that and not 'skin dipping' since 'skinny' has a meaning all of its own. 'Skinny dipping' conjures up images of a bunch of starved models running on the sand, barefoot, while they pretend they don't see the paparazzi. They run to the water with the humblest of splashes, because they're about 300 pounds all put together (there's seven of them). They giggle, tiny boobies perking up and down, they throw water on each other and spread their arms but they're nowhere as free as I was last night.
So we got to the beach at midnight. Talking went on but I was mostly preoccupied with how to make this as least an uncomfortable experience for me as possible. How to find the darkest, darkest patch of sand that the lamp posts didn't touch. How to arrange my body into immaculacy. How to hug my knees without getting folds of flab on my tummy. The little worries. Because he'd never seen me naked. He's touched me between the legs but had never seen me naked.
I wouldn't mind it if he did, overall, except for my breasts. They're hateful little things, tiny bumps really, with tiny cherries of brown nipple skin perched on top; dirty things. They look like they were too lazy to fully form. I'd promised skinny dipping, or skin dipping, but was too shy to stand in front of him in just my skin, my sand-dotted skin. He can see my butt, he can see my thighs, he can see my calves, my knees, my back, my belly, but I hate the idea of him examining--when he looks, he examines--my breasts.
The night before I'd gone skin dipping with other people, friends, not lovers, and when we stripped I kept my arms crossed in front of my chest, like I was cradling it. I walked around like that, protecting the shyest part of my body with a mother's love and a foe's abhorring. My body delved in the water and the black sea wrapped around it like a cloak, like a guard. Nobody could see much, and I felt free, and it was all okay.
But the water wasn't black yesterday. Some lights still brightened the beach far away, and there was also one stark source of light standing on the water, something like a lighthouse. It didn't let the sea grow black, so I was guardless.
So I went in with my underwear.
This post has got me thinking so I'm getting up and walking to the bathroom. I lift my shirt and I stare, I examine.
It came off eventually. The underwear, I mean. There was no stopping it once we started kissing and touching, and once he clenched my breasts and scooped them against each other, in his passion. It didn't feel ridiculous like it should have, he with his giant's palms, me with my smurfette breasts. Something about the kissing and how it made my chest muscle constrict, something about the cool gray water filling every gap between us and around us, touching us where we didn't have enough fingers and lips to touch each other, made regular thoughts vaporize and spiral away and away. Thoughts about tummy flab, and unsatisfying breasts, and beach people watching us--there were late-night beachers everywhere!--these were suddenly the only dirty thoughts! And the thoughts that remained, those were the clean ones...The pure, good, healthy ones:
Such as the stirring thought that his member felt a lot bigger than I remembered. It had a lovely curvature.
Such as the surprising thought that I liked the hard tips of my breast caressing his wide chest.
Such as the compulsive thought that I wanted to drink every single drop of salty water from his shoulders.
Such were the clean thoughts while we skin dipped. There I was, not only naked in front of him but also against him. Not simply comfortable, but also right where I belong, in his bearish, wet hug. There in the hug, naked or not, I feel free, and it is all okay.
To be dirty is to be free. That's the point of this blog.
Last night we went skinny dipping. The decision came out of the blue (no pun, no pun) over Japanese food that was cooked in front of us. Or was it in the car, before the food and during the hunger? Either way. We went skinny dipping. It's funny that it's called that and not 'skin dipping' since 'skinny' has a meaning all of its own. 'Skinny dipping' conjures up images of a bunch of starved models running on the sand, barefoot, while they pretend they don't see the paparazzi. They run to the water with the humblest of splashes, because they're about 300 pounds all put together (there's seven of them). They giggle, tiny boobies perking up and down, they throw water on each other and spread their arms but they're nowhere as free as I was last night.
So we got to the beach at midnight. Talking went on but I was mostly preoccupied with how to make this as least an uncomfortable experience for me as possible. How to find the darkest, darkest patch of sand that the lamp posts didn't touch. How to arrange my body into immaculacy. How to hug my knees without getting folds of flab on my tummy. The little worries. Because he'd never seen me naked. He's touched me between the legs but had never seen me naked.
I wouldn't mind it if he did, overall, except for my breasts. They're hateful little things, tiny bumps really, with tiny cherries of brown nipple skin perched on top; dirty things. They look like they were too lazy to fully form. I'd promised skinny dipping, or skin dipping, but was too shy to stand in front of him in just my skin, my sand-dotted skin. He can see my butt, he can see my thighs, he can see my calves, my knees, my back, my belly, but I hate the idea of him examining--when he looks, he examines--my breasts.
The night before I'd gone skin dipping with other people, friends, not lovers, and when we stripped I kept my arms crossed in front of my chest, like I was cradling it. I walked around like that, protecting the shyest part of my body with a mother's love and a foe's abhorring. My body delved in the water and the black sea wrapped around it like a cloak, like a guard. Nobody could see much, and I felt free, and it was all okay.
But the water wasn't black yesterday. Some lights still brightened the beach far away, and there was also one stark source of light standing on the water, something like a lighthouse. It didn't let the sea grow black, so I was guardless.
So I went in with my underwear.
This post has got me thinking so I'm getting up and walking to the bathroom. I lift my shirt and I stare, I examine.
It came off eventually. The underwear, I mean. There was no stopping it once we started kissing and touching, and once he clenched my breasts and scooped them against each other, in his passion. It didn't feel ridiculous like it should have, he with his giant's palms, me with my smurfette breasts. Something about the kissing and how it made my chest muscle constrict, something about the cool gray water filling every gap between us and around us, touching us where we didn't have enough fingers and lips to touch each other, made regular thoughts vaporize and spiral away and away. Thoughts about tummy flab, and unsatisfying breasts, and beach people watching us--there were late-night beachers everywhere!--these were suddenly the only dirty thoughts! And the thoughts that remained, those were the clean ones...The pure, good, healthy ones:
Such as the stirring thought that his member felt a lot bigger than I remembered. It had a lovely curvature.
Such as the surprising thought that I liked the hard tips of my breast caressing his wide chest.
Such as the compulsive thought that I wanted to drink every single drop of salty water from his shoulders.
Such were the clean thoughts while we skin dipped. There I was, not only naked in front of him but also against him. Not simply comfortable, but also right where I belong, in his bearish, wet hug. There in the hug, naked or not, I feel free, and it is all okay.
To be dirty is to be free. That's the point of this blog.
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