Girl Anachronicles

What a way to end the year! Just yesterday (day next-to-last of 2010) our roommate and closest living being (right along with Caprica and Gallifrey) was fired from her job. Some people might debate about whether it was deserved or not, and I think it’s a bit less debatable about whether due process was followed … the Devil is in the details. But to add insult to injury, I’ve known of at least one (maybe 2) persons who have outwardly and publicly rejoiced at her dismissal (who knew the Munchkins had moved from Oz to Earth and had become so daft all of a sudden? Oh, they already were daft… Turn to Wicked for answers).

Ding-dong the witch is dead! (besides, Elphaba was so much more!)

What’s interesting and different about this whole situation is that, although my initial reaction was the empathy rage that always fills me when I see an injustice or injury done to people I love, it eventually fizzed out. Of course it’s worrisome that our pockets will once more be a little bit tighter – what? You didn’t think we’d leave her out in the open, emotionally starved and alone. Why would we? We love having her around!

… and of course it’s infuriating that the people that planned this out to ensure my friend’s dismissal (all enveloped tightly in a hissy fit from the district manager) are the same group of people that swiftly turned my dream job into a living nightmare a year ago (all with the help of a broken leg at the wrong time, lousy managerial decisions, and eventually the demise of a friendship, going down in flames in front of clients and coworkers).

But somewhere, in the midst of all this unraveling of passions and emotions, a calm little center (who knows whence it came!) reminded me that: 1) this is not the end of all, 2) all things can be worked out, and 3) this is the perfect opportunity for my friend to finally break free from the chains of retail, and to start doing what she really wants to do.

Hell, she might have looked like she led a “pointless little life”, but those who say this know very little of the potential that simmers under the surface, sprouting wildly from canvas to canvas. I think it’s time to let that wild caged animal roam free. Her dismissal has offered the perfect opportunity for that.

So we must thank the idiots and fools who gloat and boast in their Facebook and Twitter accounts that they “have been finally ridden of the witch, ha-ha-ha!” Yeah. Her keepers. They’ve finally gone and set her free. Idiots and fools, they will never know the favor they did – if they knew, maybe their smug grins would melt off their faces. Let them live in oblivion.

Who needs to suffer fools anyway?

Cada vez se me hizo más difícil escribir – o expresar lo que sentía … hasta que al final no lo hice más. No por los medios usuales. Claro, hubo intentos de cuentas alternas, parajes secretos en el ciberespacio, recovecos que tampoco me sirvieron de alivio pero que no pienso borrar porque uno nunca sabe cuándo los vaya a necesitar de nuevo.

No sé qué me pasa (o qué me pasó; quisiera pensar que no se va a repetir)… Quisiera culpar a las hormonas, al calor / frío de verano / invierno (cosas imposibles en este punto kármico de la isla, en el mismo cruce del Ecuador y Greenwich) … quisiera culpar a los demás, pero está un poco difícil apuntar un dedo cuando los otros cuatro que completan la mano están apuntando a uno mismo. Al final lo que queda es la auto culpa. Y empezar a remediarlo.

Aún así, no puedo ignorar las señales que me envía mi cuerpo (las cosas no andan como habitualmente, es un poco preocupante y no puedo descifrar si la tensión es la causa o el resultado).

El año se termina y, lejos de estar haciendo resoluciones insulsas que se marcan con el sellito “12/31″, ya hace rato mi resolución fue … otra. Pero ¿quién soy yo para negarle la gracia al último día del calendario 2010? Si hago una restrospectiva, lo que veo es espantoso, y si miro al futuro lo que veo es espeluznante. Estoy rodeada de horrores, y de entre este jardín de lo macabro me toca crecer y continuar echando hojas, a ver si algún día mi sombra es suficiente para proteger a los que amo.

Mientras tanto, me toca resguardarme en el ajetreo de los estudios y el falso sentido de urgencia del trabajo; es como continuar laborando con pala y un cubito en el Titanic. En un rincón, ante mi atónita mirada (llena de envidia) veo la larga fila de motas negras y marrones, ojitos brillosos, narices al aire, bigotes eternos… todos ellos caminando por la soga hacia fuera de la nave, hacia … ¿el mar?

¡Quién fuera rata!

I never told my whole prom story (in blog form). I mentioned it in passing in one entry about three years ago, but I never went into detail about the whole tragedy of it. A few weeks ago we were talking about this among friends and I told them the whole story, and one of them – bless her soul! – said: “Everyone’s entitled to a prom night!”. Prom night was a myth I pursued after my own prom had passed. I insisted in participating in my brother’s and my sister’s proms, seeking to capture whatever I thought I had missed in my own. Some would call it pathetic, but I know I was desperate.

My brother’s prom came a few years after my own. I had already graduated from college and had one of those temporary office-clerk jobs after a disastrous stint at a computer systems corporation. I jumped at the opportunity of spending the night at my brother’s hotel room with my then-boyfriend, Oscar. It wasn’t half bad: we scrammed early off the dance floor and beelined to the hotel room, we ordered room service, we got drunk, we went to sleep, and I woke up a few hours later when my brother and his friends came in with a bottle of rum. I had my rum shot, and then it went up my nose. Epic. Hilarious. But not my prom.

My sister’s junior prom was epic too, for all the wrong reasons: I got a flat tire and I had to change it. Imagine that: a girl bedecked in a spectacular, long evening dress full of glitter and satin… changing her car’s tire with great effort, getting all sweaty and dirty (and bloody knuckles too). Yeah, some may see it as a sexy fetish. I won’t judge you, guys, but I beg to differ. Her senior prom was a disappointment too, although I did see one of my elementary school ex-classmates attending the same prom. Maybe this disorder isn’t so strange after all. The Prom Vampire Syndrome.

So what went so wrong that I had to go stealing my siblings’ prom? I’ll tell ya…

It all started on the planning phase, I suppose. Back in 1995, merengue was all the rage (I think it still sort-of is, you won’t find a party in Puerto Rico without its merengazo long set). The artists of the moment were Olga Tañón (complete with pre-op nose) and Tony Vega (where IS he now?), and the class president would simply NOT have prom night without ‘em. These merengue divas were fucking costly, so the budget had to give somewhere else. I’ll tell you where it got cuts: the yearbook (it never got printed. Instead, each of us got it in digital form in a CD-ROM… about 8 years later), and the location for the prom.

It’s important to think about the size of our graduating class: each grade was composed of 9 – 10 classrooms, each classroom had at least 20 students in it. Being conservative, the number would be 180… then take off about 10 (dropouts, people that chose not to go, etc) … 150 – 160? Okay, let’s go with the 150, it’s nice and round. Now add parents and prom date for each one of those students – let’s say, to compensate, that each student brought only one parent and one date – and you get the sheer number of 450 souls to attend the event.

Where was my prom being held?

Parque Julio Enrique Monagas: it was a fucking tiny room at the top of a fucking tiny mogote (flat-topped mountain). The place is perfect for a small wedding, a business meeting … something small.  My class prom was not small. I’ve seen hotel ballrooms filled to the brim for a prom of a graduating class of 60 students. My class was NOT small. But they HAD to have Olga Tañón and Tony Vega. I hate merengue, so you can guess where that left me and like-minded people: very, VERY upset and resentful. I wasn’t gonna enjoy Olga Tañón! I definitely wasn’t gonna enjoy Tony Vega!!! Why did I have to lay low and accept this decision? Well, maybe ‘cuz I was way stupid!

Now, on the personal front, you’d think I had more control of the variables. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted as a prom dress:

The original one was way cooler: it was a white underskirt with black overskirt. Very ska!

(Something like) this, of course, paired with my dearest Doc-Marten-style boots… And I also had a very precise picture (as in: “I had a magazine cutout”) of the makeup job I wanted… minimalist, sweet, just a bit of attention to the eyes, nothing fancy. I was never a huge fan of makeup.

The gown was the first let-down. Money was short, this much I knew, but I was never told. So, when the time came to choose a prom gown, I was painfully aware of the price tags over anything else. I didn’t dare to go over $100, and I ended up choosing an $80 dress in the kind of slinky fabric I hate (you know the one! sticking to all the wrong bulges and seams…) It didn’t even look like a prom dress: slinky black little number, long but only down to my ankles, with a double row of silver-colored buttons down the front, with a ruched section of fabric in the middle, criss-crossed with thin bands of the same fabric … sort of going for classic-greek, but not quite getting there…

Then my mother thought it wise to get me some control top pantyhose AND some control-top panties …

..now do NOT breathe!

oh, yes! The same! So you can guess how many muffin-tops I had … about a THOUSAND! And I couldn’t do anything about it because I only thought of trying the whole thing out the same fucking day of the prom! Stupid stupid me!

My mother also thought it would be a great idea to have our personal stylist (of that time, she’s long gone, thankfully! Dreadful woman!) do my makeup for me that day. To be honest,  I thought it would be a great idea too – I’m less Michaelangelo and more Pollock with my makeup brushes. The woman arrives and I show her the magazine cutout I had saved for months (!!!), told her “I want something like this!” … and to this day, I remember her words “¡Ay, no! ¡Esos ojos de vaca cagona!” (translate for yourself, if you don’t speak Spanish, but … yes, something to the effect of a cow shitting … enjoy!) Then, she proceeded to do whatever the hell she wanted to my face.

And I swear, to this day, that the woman did what no other living creature has dared: she made it look like I was wearing another woman’s face as a translucent mask.

THIS woman's face. Desiree Lowry: beauty pageant queen extraordinaire. COMPLETELY different face! C'mon!

Nothing has ever been more unbecoming ever again.

(and let’s not even talk about The Hair, although, to be fair, I only acquired peace with my own hair within the last few years)

So, feeling completely unlike myself and very self-conscious about my general appearance, we set out to the prom. The first warning flag of All The Things That Would Go Wrong was the line for the elevator: long, serpentine… The ballroom was on top of the mountain, and the only way to get there was a single elevator. Now, why it was taking so long would be a surprise. We were first supposed to walk in one by one as a few words on each student would be read over the mic. I don’t know how in the world they were keeping the order straight: 150 students arriving randomly at any given moment would not make it easy. However, for me, this would be a highlight – or so I thought.

The wait was long and tortuous. My feet were killing me: no boots for me, my mother wouldn’t have it! So instead, I was wearing shiny black high heels. I have flat feet, so you can imagine. I never wear heels.

After more than an hour’s wait, we were finally at the top, albeit still at the end of a long line that ran from the ballroom all the way across a hallway that led to the elevator door. Then I saw it happen: the diva Olga Tañón whooshing past us in a fucking hurry. And then the line started to move.

As I pranced into the ballroom, I realized they had completely skipped the idea of reading anything other than the students’ names as they walked in, so it was “Diana Campo”, quick picture with my father, and that was that! Later on, I learned that Ms. Tañón was in such a hurry that she gave the ultimatum that she either started within 30 minutes, or she was gone (with full pay, of course!). So, any glory that dissenting students would have at least walking into the room was foregone in favor of this fucking bitch.

Way to go! You can stick that manicured thumb up your flaccid twat, you miserable whore!

Moments later my father pulled me apart and told me my mother was feeling sick, so we had to go. I don’t blame her: the ballroom was small, its ceiling was quite low, and by 15 minutes in, I was feeling like fried fish under the spotlights. It wasn’t a nice place to be. I bid my adieus and went home for the night.

So, does everyone deserve a prom night? Maybe.

I was thinking about this today and I realized that maybe I should have taken better control of the variables I could control: the attire, the makeup, the hair. I didn’t have to accept what was being handed to me right off the bat.I could have gotten creative, like sewing the dress or look for bits and pieces off older garments from home or the Salvation Army. I could have practiced the hair and the makeup at home, maybe raid mom’s makeup box. I could have taken the whole thing into my hands and run with it. It was my prom, after all. If it were today, that’s what I’d do.

But then I remembered what was really going through our minds back then: mom was surviving cancer. Plain and simple. There was no time nor energy for anything other than that. My involvement in school issues was limited, competing with my other escape (boyfriend, sex…). The whole teenage-side of my life, I think, was sort of a cardboard facade waiting to peel off at any moment. It was gone long before my senior year, but I kept up with the motions of being a graduating brat. My heart wasn’t into it, though. Had I really been into it like a normal teenager, I would have gotten a $200 dress like my step-sister’s (2 years down the road):

..not so great for leaping and prancing...

… oh, wait, I did wear that one … to fuck some other boy in his car… jeez, I’m such a smutty fucker. Nah, I don’t deserve a prom.

... nope, no bananas here either...

My grandmother used to have an odd sense of humor. “Yes, we have no bananas,” is a sentence she used to repeat in context of derision towards third-world countries. In retrospect, this could have been odd to see, since – as I learned later on in my life – my grandmother was born in Cuba and was raised there for at least the first 3 or 4 years of her life. She faintly, yet fondly, remembered the hacienda she lived in and the servants that used to work for them. My grandmother, it seems, was on the right side of the Habana Hotel. Yet, if you ever mentioned Cuba to her, just like it would happen to almost any conservative Puerto Rican in the heyday, all that would spout from her mouth would be clichés about bananas and dictators.

Living it up at the Hotel Calif-... no, wait...

Later on, through observation and interaction with Cuban families, I realized they are like a race in a permanent state of flight: a flight from their island, from their situation, from themselves. The ones I’ve met have been the kind of people to keep their nationality on the down-low, their exile has erased all identifying traits from their skin and tongue. Cuba is an ideal relegated to porcelain decorative plates and the occasional tiny tattered flag swaying in the wind.

… and I’ve realized that the constant throughout these refugees, the ones that claim to be from Habana and nowhere else, the “cubanos gusanos” (like my father-in-law has been herad to say), is that they hate themselves as a nation. They hate what they’ve come to belong to, so they decide to belong to it no more.

… and I’ve realized that this is exactly what’s happening in this island as well. We’re in decay: last few decades have seen to that. But the downward spiral flow has accelerated in these last few years, few months … and suddenly, all I see in my timelines and friend-feeds, all I hear from my loved ones is that we’d all prefer this island to blow to pieces. We’ve lost optimistic hope. Suddenly, I’ve even read people saying that we, as a people, deserve the brutal injustice to which we’ve been submitted… and I can’t help but understand, because there’s a side of me that thinks so too.

Every time I read a friend or family member justify the police’s violent response to pacific protests and what is mainly citizens claiming for their given rights, I cringe, and I tend to agree that this island needs some bloodshed, some fire and brimstone, some death.

We’re going down the same way as Cuba, or maybe not. I think the political details are completely out of my scope. But the self-hatred I see in Puerto Ricans today seems to be the seed of the dull resentment and silent rage the Cubans have come to live with for decades.

Yeah, we’re all out of bananas … but we sure have the fascist government that goes with the Banana Republic combo!

Thanks (?), grandma, for the lesson... I guess..

PD: My apologies to all Cubans and those of Cuban descent. My intention is not to offend nor judge in any way. These observations are purely personal, and more of a comparative relflection on what’s happening in PR during these days.

Backstreet Boys liked the back ways, eh!!! ;-D Saucy wenches!

… and I was like :-S “wait, whaaaaaat?”. Boy bands. They were one of the things most hated by me when they suddenly exploded in a flurry of tribal tattoos and hair-gel in the mid-90s. (That only serves to highlight the age difference between Vero and I). I brushed by The New Kids on the Block, but only while their new-ness lasted. As soon as the New Kids were more like Old News, I kissed them “Bye bye bye”…

Did you see what I did there? No? That's 'cuz you're STUPID, Jordan!

Not much time passed before I started squealing about other dudes… the bad-ass dudes:

Not much better for the show, though

…   I don’t know if deep down my lust after ”rough”-looking guys was just my way of rebelling (yeah, as rough as you can get while dressing up in pleather and satin shirts), but I honestly liked the music *sigh*… and I honestly developed huge crushes on these guys. 

I got SO pissed when the buys from school pointed out Tom Keifer looked like Ednita Nazario ... mostly because they were right!

 It was all very honest… and a little bit too obsessive. I papered my walls from bottom to ceiling with posters of Slaughter, Cinderella, Motley Crue, Poison, Nelson Nelson, etc etc etc. All long-haired dudes, all over my walls.

I guess my mother felt like parents from the 60′s felt when their girls went apeshit over  The Beatles, with the difference that the objects of my affection were not all that wholesome-looking and had a reputation of being “the spawns of the devil” (a myth my mother bought into all too easily). I only did what any self-respecting teen would: I moved onto darker, uglier shit:

He's so dreamy!

I eventually stopped developing crushes on strangers based only on their photographs and finished products of corporate  music. My fangirl days were over … until I saw this dude:

..oooh, that sunken chest! ...

… and then I became so dangerously close to being a paedophile that I just simply not talk about my crushes anymore. End of story.