A bouquet for you...
She picked flowers all the way home, offering them up, in spite of the fact that I was grumpy all morning (and later too). "Look, I always pick things that are pretty and smell nice for you." She's right, she does... Flowers are such a socially constructed requirement of any relationship, it seems phenomenal that they should also be a genuine gift... the one that I have always been searching for.
I don't mean to disparage, I am a fabulous gift-giver and a rotten gift-receiver, I always have expectations that are too high, hoping that a divining decipherer will pluck my deepest and most secret want from the air and serve it to me, with no ceremony... but I, inevitably failing to offer the right clues, render it all an excercise in futility.
I once received a wonderfully well-meaning cactus for a birthday present, wonderful and all wrong. I promptly killed it, accidentally, over-zealously watering it before a six week trip to Mexico and California... I meant to save it and cherish it, and be grateful for its novelty and spiny beauty, only to return and watch it crumble into dust in my hands. Life works that way, it seems.
But on the way home I recalled an amusing anectdote that I have long been meaning to manifest in written form, and then forgot... So here it is.
Back when I was a young girl (ahem...) living alone in the Megalopolis that is Mexico, DF. I lived in a very strange home, for a brief time. I had been living with my friend Tania quite some distance from the University that I was attending... It was a half-hour bus-ride (usually standing) to the metro Taxqueña, then a 15 minute, head-lulling rock to Chabacano, where the blue and brown lines intersect, a mad dash through the tumultuous multitudes, and with luck, a spot on the first sardine-packed, rush-hour cattle-car that pulled up, taking care to not be trampled, smushed or felt-up - all the way to the end of the line; and finally another half hour bus ride out of Tacubaya, up, up, up through the pestilent markets and human detritus, to where the other tenth live, gingerly stepping off in front of the massive IBM building, feeling guilty and apologetic, and finally arriving at school.
This, I had thought, couldn't go on forever, and although the commute was just long enough to read an entire play before class, I needed less strain, physical and emotional, so I chose to move (after weeks of fruitless searching for my _own_ place) in with her two un-bachelor (or post bachelor? divorcé) uncles. Alex and Tavo. What a bizarre tryptich we made, they being twice my age and then some, the brothers of my ex, and one of them, Alex, professing his deepest love for me, parading me (unknowingly) around as if I were the newest young thing on his arm, a live-in date, a mistress. I had the only bedroom for myself, and they camped out on the living room couch and floor. It was a fourth-story walk-up, on Patriotismo, with a direct view of the World Trade Center. There were no elevators, no phone, no intercom, no fridge and no water filter (evidenced by the living creatures, black and red swilries, that swam about in a glass of water if not covered by a cloth napkin upon aperture of the faucet). On a side note, that might explain my eternally awful intestinal illness; looking back it seems kind of silly that I wouldn't have demanded they help me carry bottled water up the four flights... but I didn't.
So Alex and Tavo, and other brothers of theirs were among a strangely emergent social group that I had the privilege to observe. They were culture leeches, always finding out what gallery was opening, an event for every evening, free drinks and gourmet food, rubbing elbows with the social elite. All of this, was of course, initially unbeknownst to me. At least for a while. I enjoyed having a free ride and tangential company while exploring some interesting, and other truly wretched, current work that was being produced in the city. I would arrive, perhaps nurse a glass of white wine - slowly, always too dry for my uninitiated palate. I was there to observe, to soak in the visual landscape, to relax after a long day, anything but supposing myself learned or knowledgeable on the themes presented. For me these moments were a temporary disconnect, allowing me to not think, to emote, and then shortly after seeing what was to be seen, I wanted to go home. Alas, there were always other plans and I tried to blend in, to dissappear as the waiters and bartenders, tactfully tried to avoid making eye-contact with my companions. All of this could be amusing, and it was, until the night that I was "invited" to a Cuevas exhibit.
"Get dressed up if you want to come out to a gallery tonight," says Alex. I don't own gala attire, but I am told that it is not _that_ formal, I foolishly capitulate and we arrive, only to discover, to my chagrin, that this is an invitation-only event, and not wanting to humiliate myself more, I allow myself to be slipped in the door. I immediately want to die when I am saluted by an ultra-rich, ultra-bitch classmate, "Ay que gusto verte!" as I want to slip inside myself, into the wallpaper, or dissipate into molecular form on the floor. My doubt about the degree of intended maliciousness of the comment allayed by my justification that it wouldn't be _that_ unreasonable for me to know someone (letting myself be tricked by the hidden race/class politics of the country) that would be there. All the while I am desperately trying to disassociate myself from the leech crowd, trying to focus on the paintings, which were the reason that I had come in the first place, trying to avoid the approach of other moochers in this crowd who had now seen me enough to feel that they too could engage me in discussion. I had finally escaped, up the stairs to the third floor, hiding by a fountain near the gallery offices, breathing, biding my time so that I could then casually stroll back out, taking a taxi back to my home that was not a home. And then, a hand on the back of my neck, unwelcome warm breath and a bouquet of flowers... "Where did these come from??" I asked, dreading the response. "I stole them from the center-piece on one of the tables, no one will miss them." Mortification, rage, rejection of said flowers, and a confused look from Alex -"I thought women loved receiving flowers..."-
Well we do, just not _that_ way...
That was the last time I went to a gallery with my roomates, and soon I was out of the house, living the high life, quite literally, after Alex exposed his love for me and promptly began chastising me, telling me that my choice of recreation was wrong, in spite of the fact that he was a (sometimes) functional alcoholic. Men... why do they always start fathering as soon as they think they have the upper hand?
A bouquet for me, or a flower, or a gem, to pluck and roll over in my hands, a good laugh now. And once more I ask myself- how do I get myself into the situations that I do? I think that I am somehow drawn to danger and the perverse, a curioius cat, craning my neck... Oh well, that is that.
I don't mean to disparage, I am a fabulous gift-giver and a rotten gift-receiver, I always have expectations that are too high, hoping that a divining decipherer will pluck my deepest and most secret want from the air and serve it to me, with no ceremony... but I, inevitably failing to offer the right clues, render it all an excercise in futility.
I once received a wonderfully well-meaning cactus for a birthday present, wonderful and all wrong. I promptly killed it, accidentally, over-zealously watering it before a six week trip to Mexico and California... I meant to save it and cherish it, and be grateful for its novelty and spiny beauty, only to return and watch it crumble into dust in my hands. Life works that way, it seems.
But on the way home I recalled an amusing anectdote that I have long been meaning to manifest in written form, and then forgot... So here it is.
Back when I was a young girl (ahem...) living alone in the Megalopolis that is Mexico, DF. I lived in a very strange home, for a brief time. I had been living with my friend Tania quite some distance from the University that I was attending... It was a half-hour bus-ride (usually standing) to the metro Taxqueña, then a 15 minute, head-lulling rock to Chabacano, where the blue and brown lines intersect, a mad dash through the tumultuous multitudes, and with luck, a spot on the first sardine-packed, rush-hour cattle-car that pulled up, taking care to not be trampled, smushed or felt-up - all the way to the end of the line; and finally another half hour bus ride out of Tacubaya, up, up, up through the pestilent markets and human detritus, to where the other tenth live, gingerly stepping off in front of the massive IBM building, feeling guilty and apologetic, and finally arriving at school.
This, I had thought, couldn't go on forever, and although the commute was just long enough to read an entire play before class, I needed less strain, physical and emotional, so I chose to move (after weeks of fruitless searching for my _own_ place) in with her two un-bachelor (or post bachelor? divorcé) uncles. Alex and Tavo. What a bizarre tryptich we made, they being twice my age and then some, the brothers of my ex, and one of them, Alex, professing his deepest love for me, parading me (unknowingly) around as if I were the newest young thing on his arm, a live-in date, a mistress. I had the only bedroom for myself, and they camped out on the living room couch and floor. It was a fourth-story walk-up, on Patriotismo, with a direct view of the World Trade Center. There were no elevators, no phone, no intercom, no fridge and no water filter (evidenced by the living creatures, black and red swilries, that swam about in a glass of water if not covered by a cloth napkin upon aperture of the faucet). On a side note, that might explain my eternally awful intestinal illness; looking back it seems kind of silly that I wouldn't have demanded they help me carry bottled water up the four flights... but I didn't.
So Alex and Tavo, and other brothers of theirs were among a strangely emergent social group that I had the privilege to observe. They were culture leeches, always finding out what gallery was opening, an event for every evening, free drinks and gourmet food, rubbing elbows with the social elite. All of this, was of course, initially unbeknownst to me. At least for a while. I enjoyed having a free ride and tangential company while exploring some interesting, and other truly wretched, current work that was being produced in the city. I would arrive, perhaps nurse a glass of white wine - slowly, always too dry for my uninitiated palate. I was there to observe, to soak in the visual landscape, to relax after a long day, anything but supposing myself learned or knowledgeable on the themes presented. For me these moments were a temporary disconnect, allowing me to not think, to emote, and then shortly after seeing what was to be seen, I wanted to go home. Alas, there were always other plans and I tried to blend in, to dissappear as the waiters and bartenders, tactfully tried to avoid making eye-contact with my companions. All of this could be amusing, and it was, until the night that I was "invited" to a Cuevas exhibit.
"Get dressed up if you want to come out to a gallery tonight," says Alex. I don't own gala attire, but I am told that it is not _that_ formal, I foolishly capitulate and we arrive, only to discover, to my chagrin, that this is an invitation-only event, and not wanting to humiliate myself more, I allow myself to be slipped in the door. I immediately want to die when I am saluted by an ultra-rich, ultra-bitch classmate, "Ay que gusto verte!" as I want to slip inside myself, into the wallpaper, or dissipate into molecular form on the floor. My doubt about the degree of intended maliciousness of the comment allayed by my justification that it wouldn't be _that_ unreasonable for me to know someone (letting myself be tricked by the hidden race/class politics of the country) that would be there. All the while I am desperately trying to disassociate myself from the leech crowd, trying to focus on the paintings, which were the reason that I had come in the first place, trying to avoid the approach of other moochers in this crowd who had now seen me enough to feel that they too could engage me in discussion. I had finally escaped, up the stairs to the third floor, hiding by a fountain near the gallery offices, breathing, biding my time so that I could then casually stroll back out, taking a taxi back to my home that was not a home. And then, a hand on the back of my neck, unwelcome warm breath and a bouquet of flowers... "Where did these come from??" I asked, dreading the response. "I stole them from the center-piece on one of the tables, no one will miss them." Mortification, rage, rejection of said flowers, and a confused look from Alex -"I thought women loved receiving flowers..."-
Well we do, just not _that_ way...
That was the last time I went to a gallery with my roomates, and soon I was out of the house, living the high life, quite literally, after Alex exposed his love for me and promptly began chastising me, telling me that my choice of recreation was wrong, in spite of the fact that he was a (sometimes) functional alcoholic. Men... why do they always start fathering as soon as they think they have the upper hand?
A bouquet for me, or a flower, or a gem, to pluck and roll over in my hands, a good laugh now. And once more I ask myself- how do I get myself into the situations that I do? I think that I am somehow drawn to danger and the perverse, a curioius cat, craning my neck... Oh well, that is that.
posted by ilana at 5:52 p.m.
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