27 diciembre 2008

obligatory heyworth bar blog

[i originally started writing this as the power went out in heytown on dec. 27. sorry for the delay but amaren is really to blame]

it seems that every time i'm home i find myself at one (or more) of the three local establishments dedicated to alcohol consumption. and usually, something significant happens, about which I want to report. Things like crying over CT. sophomore homecoming dates becoming plumbers. jody singing while doing a shot. spartacus. my girlfriend from nap town. getting invited to house parties by 9th graders. the list goes on.....

but three things of significance happened last night at C2. first, i saw the necessary. it was not the first time i'd seen him at the circle. in fact, the very first time i went there on a thursday night with the butter cow crew he was there. the night it all began...but last night, the conversation was a bit more intense. he was one of the first people i saw after walking in with lou and mamaH. he said not much is new, except... & held up his left hand to display a wedding band. and then he very directly looked at my left hand. it was strange. i know plenty of married or engaged people. i know r___ & r____'s elaborate code system for communicating the presence or absence of a ring. but i've never felt so scoped out before. not to say that his scoping was due to romantic interest, but i guess i've never felt subject to such curiosity, presumably because i've always felt so far from the marriage stage. so i lifted my empty hand and said "nope" to which he responded with a slicing off the head motion, and said "don't do it." maybe i'm making too much of this, and by no means do i think this really means he is unhappy, but its very strange to be told by the man you went on your very first date ever with that marriage is a bad idea.

now, however much i'm blowing necessary's comments out of proportion, this is the type of thing i expect to happen when i make my rounds at the heyworth bars. i have bizarre conversations about children, marriage, jobs, school, and mostly the past with people i marginally knew in high school. but the second noteworthy event was entirely unexpected. i was standing by the flocked christmas tree with mamaH, and lou had gone to the bathroom (in which, taped to the mirror, is an utterly ignored sign that says "no smoking comrade" just below a newspaper article explaining the unconstitutionality of the illinois smoking ban). mid-conversation, i felt a swift and strong slap to the ass. i expected lou to be returning from the bathroom. but i looked around and she wasn't there. i searched behind me for b.s. or some other character i've known for 20 years that might feel such entitlement, but mostly just saw a bunch of kids about 6 years younger than me playing pool.

Then I saw markH. I didn’t know him well. His sister was on my high school basketball team. I believe we went to the same church as children. I once bought a pair of jeans were likely his from his family’s garage sale. But I wouldn’t say any of these connections might give one reason for thinking they have any business slapping my ass. Well, upon realizing through his drunkenness what he had just done, his face turned a bright rosy shade. He apologized. And I, being in a jovial mood didn’t yell, but laughed and eventually excused him. This of course, was the wrong move. I’m not sure any logic was functioning in his brain at the time, so perhaps my excusing was unrelated, but at this point, he started putting his hand on my waist and asking my age. When he discovered I was a mere 5 years younger than him (as opposed to one of his former girlfriends, who was 8 years younger), he pressed on. He paused to say “that’s kind of young” at which point I thought to myself- Oh, honey, if only you knew…but I kept quiet. The conversation finally ended with him attempting to get me to kiss him with the convincing line “come on, why not?” He walked away and rejoined his friends.

Later, Dana, who I had seen earlier with the elder Fox at H3, came over to say hello. We had lovely conversations about her sisters’ children, connie, and the Arkansas connection. The conversation was nothing extraordinary. But an hour after leaving the bar, I got a text from BS saying he ran into Dana at a gas station and she told him I was in town. The night before, I ran into little Mr. Burns at the AL and he texted his sister to tell her I was around. Last summer, BS’s brother saw me at the GLT summer concert and without my knowledge BS was informed. It sort of feels like being stalked. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me, and in a way its comforting, but you just can’t go anywhere in this town and get away with it. Word travels fast. My face is too familiar. This is not the place to hide out if I ever need to be anonymous. But on the other hand, it sort of feels like walking into the Cheers bar.

08 diciembre 2008

el fin

there's something about finals that heightens the senses.

maybe its that there is a sense of time that Fabian never accounted for. that sense that everything is about to end. The world, at least in its current state, will cease to exist after the next week. the clock is ticking and the sand is running out. nothing matters beyond next thursday. everything is urgent.

I spend all day in climate controlled environments, florescent lighting, the hum of the heater, the clicking of the keyboard. The copy machine blinds me. It is dark when I arrive and dark when I leave. The only light I see is the brief walk outside to the library.My bed is just a pitstop. I shed clothing leave it on the floor and find something new in the morning, just to repeat the cycle, leaving a mounting pile of discarded apparel next to the bed. My life is in disarray.

i carry books home just to set them down, pick them up 7 hours later and carry them back here. For all intents and purposes I live at this desk.

My sustenance comes from the convenient store downstairs, the free bread from some random event nearby, oatmeal that’s been sitting on the shelf for over a year and tea that we bought last spring for a department event. I have not eaten a meal at home in a week. Cookies, canned soup, an occasional bag of jellie beans.

Its as if everything is about to end. And suddenly everything must be solved now. This paper, which should be the pinnacle of my academic career thus far must be concluded. Anything I am passionate about cannot wait. I cannot be patient, I cannot take a deep breath and think about it. i cannot breathe except to write more. the feeling of time constraint makes it feel like something has to be secured before it all ends. it makes temptation scandal and excitement explosive.

But even in acknowledging it, I cannot fix it. I cannot slow it down. I cannot stop the keyboard clicking in my head, that blurs into the ticking of the clock and the heater’s rhythmic buzz, and the flipping pages, and beating hearts and churning stomachs and blowing wind, and my cell phone alarm buzzing and the coffee maker percolating and scanner screeching and I just can’t wait for it all to stop.

But when it does, as always, it will be a little too quiet. A little too lonely.

06 diciembre 2008

genero de nuevo

yes, once again, i have a comment about that whole gender debate i can't get over.

but i was reading david harvey's The Body as an Accumulation Strategy (1998 Environment and Planning 16:401-421), which I fall more in love with every time I read, and came across a sentence I thought appropriate.

But first, to contextualize: Basically Harvey is saying that the body is not "finished" but is malleable in certain ways, both by external and internal forces. Following from this, the body has a dialectical relationship with the processes that "produce, sustain, bound, and ultimately dissolve it" (402). Basically, similar to the way Butler conceives of the body (as not existing outside of discourse) Harvey is saying the body is very connected to the socio-political formations in which it is embedded.

And then the kicker

"And the representational practices that operate in society likewise shape the body, making any challenge to dominant systems of representation, as, for example, by feminists and queer theorists in recent years, a direct challenge to bodily practices" (403).

ok, back to writing. just can't get enough of the cholas...

05 diciembre 2008

prop 8

its late, i'm tired and stressed, and i have a full week of nonstop work ahead of me.

but this is just too good not to share.

01 diciembre 2008

dia de SIDA

today is world AIDs day.

and i have a number of disjointed thoughts on the matter.

1. i have never been tested for HIV. i always think i should do this. my excuse is that everytime i go for a checkup, most of the other tests are free. things like chlamydia, herpes, syphilis, etc? all covered. hiv, not so much. this just seems ridiculous now that i think about it. not ridiculous enough to be an appropriate excuse, i admit, but still. bizarre and counter-intuitive.

2. facebook tells me i should buy a cup of starbucks coffee today and they will donate a portion of profits to the global fund. and as lovely as this might seem, i have a real problem with the notion that the way to fix the world is to buy more. perhaps that $2 spent on overpriced coffee (even if it is free trade) should be directly donated to the global fund. its all so very sickeningly neoliberal. why is the technical solution to the problem always consumerism? why isn't the emphasis on education? or volunteering? because that would cause rethinking of cliches, and that's risking too much (to paraphrase tom robbins). instead we'd rather go about our daily lives changing very little, merely giving the appearance of caring through our commodified lifestyles. we've now fetishized caring about the world. i'm certainly guilty of it too, but i'm trying to be more conscious of it.

3. sure, i think world AIDs day is a great idea, but what about local AIDs day? I live in a city where 5% of residents are thought to have HIV. Not that we should not be concerned about "Africa" (as long as we can do it in a way that doesn't reek of paternalism), but maybe at some point we need to focus closer to home. Start questioning the ways in which HIV is closely connected to systemic inequalities here in our own neighborhoods. Start looking at the ways we reproduce the conditions that foster such high rates of HIV daily. Once we get that figured out, then its time to move on to the rest of the world.

So, in essence, my feelings on world AIDs day are crazy-isolationist, anti-capitalist, and hypocritical. what's new?