Have you ever heard the song "Short Dick Man" by 20 fingers, featuring Gillette?
Well I hadn't, until it came on on my way home on a crowded bus.
The lyrics go like this:
Don't want no short dick man (x4) What in the world is that fucking thing? Do you need some fucking tweezers to put that little thing away? That has got to be the smallest dick I have ever seen in my whole life Get the fuck outta here Eeny weeny teeny weeny shrivelled little short dick man (x2) Don’t want no short dick man (x8) Eeny weeny teeny weeny shrivelled little short dick man (x4) Isnt that cute, an extra belly button You need to put you pants back on honey Don’t want no short dick man Eeny weeny teeny weeny shrivelled little short dick man Do you need some fucking tweezers to put that little thing away? That has got to be the smallest dick I have ever seen in my whole life Get the fuck outta here Don't want no short dick man (x4) plus mocking laughter throughout
This is a cruel song. It doesn't necessarily bother me that it's vulgar and crude, but it does bother me that it is cruel.
But, there is also something of the hilarious about it. Especially at maximum volume, when you are on a bus crammed to overflowing with Mexicans, half of whom are teenaged schoolchildren and none of whom probably have any idea of what the words mean, including the slightly creepy driver who is singing along enthusiastically without really making any of the words.
I kept being overwhelmed by giggles and then trying to control myself, partly because I didn't want to be the mad laughing foreigner, and partly just in case anyone DID know what was so funny.
Isn't it odd, given the relative amounts of current and historical disapproval of the two acts, that bugger is considered so much less offensive a swear word than fuck?
I just realised that I don't think I have any health insurance right now, since my contract has technically finished. Which, you know, is probably fine. I'll just have to try very hard not to get airlifted from anywhere.
"I don't know who I'm going to play ping pong with when you go"
said my friend sadly yesterday lunchtime, while we were playing. It was a melancholy moment, but I was glad too to know in this oblique way that I will be missed. I'll miss it too. I've played with him for a few minutes, not every lunchtime, but most lunchtimes, for perhaps a year and a half, perhaps longer.
It's been rather pleasing to see myself getting better, making fast shots and difficult shots, making him work harder to beat me. It's been a pleasure, a few moments of pure enjoyment stolen from the day. And it's been one of those little rituals of shared time that cements a relationship, ensuring that we are friends rather than people who share the odd casual chat.
When you think about it, a daily game or two really is a luxury -I can't imagine ever being able to afford a house big enough for a table tennis table. In the public sphere, I associate table tennis with drafty youth clubs and the back of the school hall and the college basement, but I suppose one can play it in sports centers. Once a week maybe, if I'm lucky enough to find someone to play with. Sigh.
Yesterday we also played volleyball for the first time in months. At first, when it didn't look like anyone was going to show up, I was angrily disappointed and embarrassed by my overenthusiasm, conscious of all the people there watching the semi-final of the football tournament and in my absurd imagination thinking me ridiculous. But then we had three or four, enough to begin warming up, and before long we had trickled up to two full teams of six.
I really, really love volleyball. I'll get frustrated sometimes when people get overcompetitive and start stealing my balls, but mostly I love it. I'm not all that good but I've got better, and every time I make a decent shot I'm pleased with myself. I love the grace of it sometimes, and the energy, and the precision. I love being outside. I love playing as part of a team. I love playing with my colleagues and people I'm fond of. I love the friendliness of it, the way we yell at people passing by to come and join in. I love the supportiveness of it, the gracious Mexicans who've watched me grow and will say well done even if I stuff it up, or congratulate me if I make a point even if I'm on the opposite team. I love that the taunts are always good-natured and the way we all laugh when someone makes a terrible shot or makes themselves look daft - with them, not at them - and how we don't bother to count points except perhaps to bring the session to a close.
Volleyball makes me happy and I really want to play in the future. The thing is, that's not how volleyball works in the real world, outside of a campus like this. It's not the sort of sport people play casually after work, not in the UK anyway. You have to join a club, play on a team. Like I said, I'm not all that good and I'm far from athletic, but I suppose I could join at the beginner level.
The thing is, even then your supposed to aspire to 'proper' volleyball. Offensive and defensive play. Sets and spikes. Rules and points. Not being pleased when you just get it over the net and not cracking up when you do something stupid and not making faces at your friends on the other side of the net. It doesn't sound like very much fun at all. Perhaps it's stupid, but I hate all the tactical stuff. I suppose it's worth it to be able to play, if only I can not be too terrified to do such a thing as join a club, but my heart will be here, on uneven grass with the chalk lines washed away and a broken net.
I love the feeling of winning a game, but I don't really get the kind of excessive competitiveness that drives the fun out of things. So many people get bizarre competitive attitudes on them about all kinds of things - sports obviously, but also things like dancing, or gardening. Pchah. When I think about it I actually find the Olympics pretty distressing (and not just because of how much they cost). So much effort, so much hope, and for so many it's all just broken dreams. Still, I read an interview with British gymnast Beth Tweddle where she said that the uneven bars felt like flying. Maybe that makes it worth it?
It is called where in the name of sweet baby Moses on stilts did I put my external hard drive when I went away, and why isn't it in any of the hiding places it ought to be in? Sometimes I wish I could get things done at times that were not 3am, or that I didn't have to get up in the mornings. Or that I didn't need 8 hours sleep. Whatever.
My neighbour's son has a new(ish) schnauzer puppy. Both son and pup are visiting at the moment, hence I met it today for the first time, and oh my gosh it is one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Friendly, full of beans, soft-coated and eminently pettable. Once again, my wish to have a dog is awakened.
See, I'm beginning to suspect that this hoary old divide between cat people and dog people is really just a load of cobblers. I like cats - we had a cat when I was a child - and I've always thought of myself as a cat person: fiercely independent - the cat who walks by herself - choosy with my affections, never fawning, a creature of integrity. But the thing is one's own personal characteristics aren't necessarily what one would want in a pet. I, for example, would make a terrible pet. And it is also true that as I get older I increasingly value "dog" characteristics, and, I think, grow into those aspects of myself - loyalty, warmth, demonstrativeness, friendliness, generosity of spirit.
In short, I got it into my head a few weeks ago that I want a long-haired chihuahua. Everyone thinks chihuahuas are silly, but they have a long history stretching back many centuries to prehispanic Mexico, which is pretty cool. And I like small dogs. They are cute, pick-up-and-cuddleable. They are practical - I like the idea of being able to take my pet with me places, and unless you have a lot of space or a lot of time to dedicate to long walks I think it's pretty unkind to keep a big dog. And almost most of all, small dogs don't know they are small: they are fearless and bold, little warriors with hearts just as big as any. I like that.
I dismissed the idea pretty quickly. I do not have the kind of lifestyle that would be fair on a dog. In the immediate future I envisage the kind of employment where I have to be out at work all day. Furthermore, I am a person of irregular, some might say chaotic, habits and irregular hours. I like being able to stay out all evening and not get back until late. When I am settled in the UK again, I hope I'll be going to lots of classes and things, or at least some, which will mean being busy and time not spent at home.
Something that worries me more is that perhaps I am not the sort of person who should have a pet at all. I like the idea of pets - companionship, affection, general adorableness - but the reality is I don't really want to put any effort into them. I resent the responsibility of them. I resent their dumbness - their comfort is hollow. Whatever people say, pets don't really understand you, don't really love you.
Worse, I worry that I might feel that way about people: maybe I like the idea of human companionship in theory but actually I'm too selfish, too turned in upon myself to actually care about or for other people in a real way. Certainly I am afraid that I will have children because it seems like a good idea - I like and one day want children, I feel like I would love them - but actually in reality resent and hate being so tied down, and all the endless effort you have to put into them, which they can never - and nor should they have to - repay. After a few minutes with a pre-speech child, amusing them with the same game over and over again - lifting them up in the air, pretending you can't see them, making silly noises - my smile is fixed, my cooing doesn't falter, but I feel like I'm losing my mind and I just want to get rid of said child. The thought of doing it day in, day out makes me feel ill. And playing is supposed to be the fun part...
Awesome, I am a sociopath! Maybe I worry too much, but they seem like doubts too big to dismiss and blithely take on either a puppy or a child anyway.
Back to cats and dogs... obviously gender stereotypes are not cool however you slice 'em, but why is it that men are seen as doglike/dogs are seen as masculine, and women are seen as catlike/cats are seen as feminine? I mean I get it (dogs = big and dumb and noble, cats = pretty and capricious) but actually most of the most self-contained, self-controlled, emotionally unavailable (i.e. arguably catlike) people I have known have been men, whereas if dogs are needy, emotionally transparent, demonstrative and helplessly hungry for affection, well, that sounds more like a female stereotype than a male one.
I feel like a mixture of both (of course, for who amongst us in his own mind is reducible?) but perhaps more of the latter and less of the former than I think. The boy is most definitely a cat - for though he is generous, a good friend, fun to be with, he is also self-contained, undemonstrative, inscrutible, neither needing nor wishing to be needed. In fact, henceforth I think I shall refer to him as el gato (the cat) - it's silly to call him a boy anyway, since he is several years older than me, wreathed about with the mystery of adulthood. He is not my boy, or even the boy - there are lots of boys in this world after all - but he is my friend. My cat friend. And it sort of sounds like a cool gangster name, no?, so I don't suppose he'd mind.
My baby sister got her A-level results today: straight As. I am so proud of her.
She always thinks she's the less-smart one, and that my parents aren't proud of her. She is less intellectually aggressive than my brother and I, and more of a balanced person, so it might seem this way. But not only is my sister lovely, brave, kind-hearted, caring, funny and beautiful (she thinks I have rosy spectacles, but I don't - she's not perfect, she's just pretty damn awesome), she is also proper intelligent and today I hope she's proved that to herself beyond doubt. And she works damn hard: she has a reading problem that's only been identified in the last year or so, so it takes her longer to do the same work. And she's done all this whilst actually having friends and a social life. In short, ROCK ON LITTLE SISTER!
Because it's basically all about me, I have been thinking about youthful brilliance, specifically mine. I wouldn't go through it all again, not for worlds - the intense stress of endless exams upon which your future hangs - but I do miss being sure of my own exceptionalness. I wish I knew what best to do to make use of my mind - it's a pretty good one, or it used to be - to use it well, and to be happy.
My sister's going to university to study psychology. I'm sort of jealous - it's something I half wish I'd done - and all of that glorious, privileged, terrible, shining time ahead of her to explore who she is and learn abstruse things and make friends to last her through the darkest days of her life and be ridiculous in her youthful excesses and be unreserved and be wonderful, before she has to start worrying about jobs and what the hell she's doing with her life and - God preserve us! - the fact that she hasn't got a pension. I'll be cheering her on, all the way.
I've had a hell of a couple of weeks. I do plan to write it all down, if only as a kind of exorcism, but for now some thoughts about today, which has been a rum old mix...
Lunch was farewell pizza from my English students. I took on the class - mostly middle-aged female secretaries whose names I still haven't quite got straightened out, because I was too shy to ask - because there was no-one else to do it, and it's taken much, much more time and effort than its two lunchtime hours a week. They gave me a card and a gift and I felt like even more of a fraud than usual, partly because I haven't really left work yet but largely because I never had any idea what I was doing.
I've never really managed proper teacherly assertiveness and today I was reluctant even to ask them to speak in English. If I'm honest I secretly like to have the chance to show that I can speak Spanish too. It's interesting though that the ones who I think of as quiet and timid and less able than the rest aren't necessarily the same at all in their own language.
After that it was an over-expensive taxi to one of the universities on the other side of town where my one non-work friend is a student. He had asked me to come and speak to his English class; apparently they always want guest native speakers. I didn't really want to - the idea of being up in front of 30 or so people gave me the horrors - but I couldn't say no. He'd stressed that I had to be on time, and all the way there I was balancing the passing minutes against the passing landmarks. In the end it would have been fine, only the campus is huge and I went the wrong way.
A fraught phone call - although my almost-inaudible speaker makes most calls pretty fraught - and we establish that I am lost. Out of a chained-up gate in a chainlink fence. In through a high-tech turnstile that seems in a weird no-man's land, but hurrah the building I'm looking for is in sight. My friend isn't. Another phone call and he arrives out of breath - he's been looking for me by the main entrance. I'm red-faced and flustered - maybe only 10 or 15 minutes late, but hardly the best beginning. The classroom door eases open upon a terrifying circle of attentive students. The teacher commands my attention: we're introduced in low voices, and she explains that, since I said I would be late (I didn't exactly, but still) there's been a slight change of plan - they're having some kind of information session now but it will be done soon.
It takes a little while for me to calm down and process my surroundings. A boy student is wearing a kind of folding sandwich-board display, mostly of condoms, in shiny packets in a multitude of colours and designs. A girl student is gesticulating with a realistically-moulded pink plastic dildo, which I extrapolate that she has just been putting a condom on; now she's demonstrating a female condom.
"How do you say that in English?" whispers my friend. I am nonplussed, wondering which of many thats he might be referring to.
A poster is pinned to the whiteboard, with a slogan along the lines of "don't be a dick, use a condom" - more literally, and more amusingly "don't be a penis".
I listen to them explaining the different methods of birth control, matter-of-factly but with humour and I have nothing but admiration for them. What they are doing is incredibly valuable and important, and I think it takes guts and strength of character. But, I am struggling not to giggle. Not so much at the subject matter but at the bizarreness of it all. Sometimes my life seems possessed of perfect comedy, and now is one of those times.
They round up by giving out condoms and talking about them again; I am distracted by the teacher murmering in my ear. When I look back they are pulling a condom off the dildo in a kind of tug-of-war: it is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g. I am not sure if this is a deliberate humourous demonstration of how not to do it, or an accidental one.
I talk about myself ad lib for a couple of minutes but can't think what to say and sound like an idiot. Then they get to ask me questions - and the teacher's marking them all for "participation". They're things like what I do in my spare time, what I think about Mexico, the differences between Mexico and the UK and so on. I wonder if this has any educational benefit. I'm hardly at my most eloquent, fumbling for answers, and my audience seems a bit glazed-over - I'm not sure if they're not really following or just find the whole exercise terribly dull, though they're sweet enough. Two questions have me blushing and not knowing what to say: what do I think about my friend, and do I have a boyfriend. I'm sure this gives the wrong impression.
In my office, preparing to take some shots, I read a bit online about how to take good portraits. I realise how I could have been taking some much better pictures and the irritation with myself sticks in me almost like anxiety, although I know I should simply learn it and get better.
At the end of the afternoon I brave a group of visiting American students in order to snare two or three to interview. In the bearpit of announcements made over the gathering of papers someone mentions that they want a volleyball, and I offer mine. We'll meet by the net. When the interviews are done I skip out of the office with joyful heart, even though I ought to stay and do more work. By a miracle, it isn't raining this afternoon, the sky is blue, the sun is shining and I am going to play volleyball for the first time in ages.
No-one is there. It transpires that the boys have gone to play basketball, and the girls have gone to Zumba in the gym. I really need to learn that other people are not like me, and do not see saying they'll do something as a binding promise. I know that I set myself up for disappointment.
But I hate these fucking students. And their cheerful vapid confidence. And their stupid accents.
I take a picture of long-dead wings on the path, looking as if their body has just gone somehow:
On the plus side, no volleyball did mean that I had time to go and get my hair cut. Suddenly it had turned itself into hateful rats tails and I couldn't stand it any more. I sat and waited and read about Mexican politics and economics in the 70s and 80s. I tried to make cause and effect add up in my head, but I wonder how much logic there is to history, and what are the real causes of how things turn out and what is just happenstance. It's frustrating not to be able to pin it down.
My hairdresser was Julieta, but I felt like it ought to be Violeta because she had purple bits in her hair (and blonde bits too). Unlike the previous one I had she didn't feel slightly creepy and inappropriate, like she was chatting me up, and neither did she blowdry my hair to make me look like a refugee from the 90s in the mould of early Scully, which was good. On the other hand she used a squirty bottle rather than washing it, so I was ashamed whenever she touched my unwashed locks, i.e. all the time. She did decide to give me my first and quite possibly last ever zigzag parting and put wax in it, which is the last thing it needs, but she got the length right, which is the important thing. I was thinking how flattering the lighting was, and how canny it is of salons to have such lighting, but then I realised I looked nice because I didn't have my glasses on and was thus a smooth blur.
When I stepped outside it was the kind of sunset to blast away discontent. A sky like this and I can't help but be lifted.
When I get home I go straight up to the roof and the sky is watercolour blue over the rooftops and the lights on the distant hills are like stars. I don't think I've mentioned the roof but it is like a secret because no-one else seems to go up there, and it is wonderful.
As I'm turning to go, I notice that one of the volcanoes, my familiar faraway volcanoes - Popo or Izta, Popo I think - is standing out deep blue and snowcapped and perfectly clear.
In the evening I get distracted from what I told myself I'd do by youtube videos from the US TV program "So You Think You Can Dance". I am cross with myself, but it does make me think about how much I really love good dance. There are lots of things that I could never really list as my interests, even though I enjoy them - films for example, or theatre. But in the future I want to make efforts to go and see dance.
I am also pleased that I seem to be able to discriminate, and when the dancing's not so hot I don't enjoy it as much, even though I can appreciate bits of great choreography.
The clip that got me hooked was this, Mark and Chelsie's hip hop routine:
It's here with better sound quality, though with the intro clip and judging bits from the TV show. I also really like their contemporary routine. I love Mark's outlandish clownishness - like an intelligent, French, mime-artist sort of clown but with huge physical energy, and strangely reminiscent of my friend Nathan's crazy dancefloor antics - and Chelsie is tremendously lovable and they both seem to embody a character when they dance.
My other favourite couple is Katee and Joshua, also both very likable, especially their hip hop and samba routines. And this from Jamie and Rayven is hugely endearing, her chutzpah and the way she couldn't suppress her big ballerina smile.
Of course I'd kill to have a quarter of any of their dancing abilities (or gorgeousness), but all the same I am inspired to dance around my house like a daft thing.
