Arab-American comment.

The other month I went to see at a local film center screenings of bits of 4 documentaries in progress, including one on the Arab-American experience after 9-11.

All the directors and some people associated with the films were there, including this one (mid-20s) (kind of cynical and know-it-all) (half-Arab) (half-Polish) (hipster-ish) guy who was in the Arab-American film...

“My mom may be Polish,” he was like, “But that doesn’t matter when my last name makes me get pulled over in airports.”

When pressed on some other issue, he also said that being Arab-American in the U.S. nowadays is like being on a sinking ship, and everyone decides to go beat up on one of the passengers instead of doing something about the sinking ship.

Pride Parade: Marching and More.

So, for the city’s Pride Parade, I took up the invitation of a radical socialist queer activist group that I’ve protested with a few times, and rounded up a friend from school and his boyfriend and marched.

Usually I dislike the unpragmaticness of radical socialists, but the leader of this group picks great targets, has effective messaging, and always gets great media coverage for protests (e.g. of the city’s gay-hating Roman Catholic cardinal, or an evangelical pastor who gave lectures in Uganda and helped whip up the homophobia that killed a major activist there and led to the introduction of a draconian anti-gay bill in that country’s parliament).

Like most radical socialist groups, the people who turned out were very motley, and many of them were linked to the city’s Occupy movement.

One guy I was talking to was this stringy-haired moustached tattoed-up (white) guy in his early 50s...  He was a roofer from an industrial part of a neighboring, very Republican state, and had met the leader of the queer group through contacts from Occupy.

As the guy told me his story, it came out that he wasn’t gay, but was married to a cool woman who put up with his bullshit, and was with him as he got off IV drugs.

“I’ve been sober for ten years,” he was like.

He also said that he was a white trash homophobe and racist, but contacts with different people through life experiences made him realize what an asshole he was and how much harm he had done, and so now he tries to make amends by going out of his way to march for and fight for different groups that he’d wronged.

“I’m for everyone,” he was like, “Except maybe white trash like I was.”

He also said that people where he lives don’t just have the same exposure to gay issues, and the other day a young (white) guy he roofs with started saying some bullshit about gay people, and so he told him that he was going to the Pride Parade, and invited him to come.

“He shut up real fast,” he was like, and then said that he was sorry that the guy didn’t come, it would have been a growth experience.

Overall, one of the 2 main causes the group was messaging in the march – they even made sure that the people w/the 2 groups of signs split up into a front contingent and a back contingent, to maximize issue visibility! – was “Free Bradley Manning,” since he’s a (gay) hero and fought for human rights by leaking info about U.S. military atrocities in Iraq, even though that’s not as topical as gay marriage, the other issue the group was pushing for in the march.

They even had these little bright pink Bradley Manning stickers made up, and as the (retired) (straight) (transvestite) (white) (male) public school teacher went around giving them to everyone, he slapped them on their chests, and then asked everyone to put one on their backs, too, for double visibility.

“There!”, he was like, slapping a sticker on my back.  “That’ll make a nice target.”

He was only half-kidding; a lot of the city’s Anonymous hacker collective chapter showed up in Guy Fawkes masks to march with us because of the renewed importance of defending a Wikileaker in light of the Ed Snowden debacle, and I kept wondering if the government was taking note of everyone who was there, because of that.

Isn’t that sick, to have to worry about your own government like that?

When our parade section finally mobilized to march – we were in the middle of the line-up, and had to wait around about 45 minutes after start-time – I made sure to grab one of the 2 Spanish-language protest signs, this bright pink one declaring –

!DERECHOS PARA TODOS!

- and I marched along the edge of the group, so that I could high-five the groups of Mexican lesbians among the front rows of spectators.

A Mexican (gay) couple also had me stop and pose with my sign for a picture – you know that shit is going on Facebook! – and like 2 other times some young drunk (Mexican) (gay) guy saw me and started screaming out, “!Para todos!, !para todos!”.

Oddly, there were a number of mutli-generational (Mexican) families there, and like 3 times I saw an old (Mexican) grandmother who was like 90 and wizened and about 4-feet high just light up in a smile when she saw me carrying a Spanish-language sign.

I always made sure to go out of my way to shake her hand or give her a high-five.

Solidarity!

Stories from a Black Bar: Storm, etc.

The other week I took a bikeride on a late weekday afternoon/early evening to go a few bars in a (poorer) (black) neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, before it got dark out and things got rough(er).

I popped into this one place and was chatting with a (black) (female) teacher who was sitting next to me – “Don’t even get me started talking about the mayor,” she was like, “He’s an asshole” – when a line of severe storms hit, and the sky got gray outside and heavy rain began, and then the rain even went horizontal when the high winds kicked in.

“Holy shit, look at that,” I told the teacher – I could see the windows over her shoulder – and then when we got up to go look, everyone else in the bar went to the windows too.

“I’m calling FEMA!”, one (black) guy shouted out.  “No way in hell I’m passing up that money!”.

Then, the (black) (female) bartender started being like, “Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming!”, laughing all the while, but also in a kind of half-serious way.

Then, she came out from behind the bar to look more, and her and the (black) (female) teacher started clapping their hands and dancing around in a circle and singing “God is trying to tell you something!” from (the musical version of?) “The Color Purple”.

Later, when the rain stopped – the line of storms was severe but very brief – the (black) (female) teacher went outside to take a picture of the temporary flooding on her iPhone – “Look at that!”, she was saying later, showing me pictures of these huge puddles that took up half the sidewalk – and the bartender began telling me to stop on through on Sunday for their White Party, which was also on behalf of a political candidate from the area.

“What are you saying?”, I deadpanned, and then when she looked confused, I was like, “What, do you want me to be the mascot or something?”, and then she just started laughing uproariously.

“Oh shit,” she was like, “I didn’t get you at first!”.

Then, she leaned in and was like, “For you, it’s a ‘come-as-you-are’ party,” and then she threw her head back and began to laugh uproariously some more.

A bit after that, I met the (black) (female) political candidate who was there, and she told me that it was a shame that I hadn’t stopped by earlier, since she had bought chicken wings for everyone in the bar.

When I told her that I also couldn’t go to her White Party because I was marching in the city’s Pride Parade with this radical socialist queer activist group, she told me about when she worked in the city’s water reclamation district and was on their drainage tunnel float for Pride and this very drunk (gay) man came up to her on the float and pulled her sleeve and was like – and here she put on a little breathy, slightly camp-ish, very put-on voice - “Commissioner, commissioner, *I* have a big tunnel too.”

“And you know what I told him?”, she was like, “I said” – and here she also put on a little breathy, slightly camp-ish, very put-on voice – “‘Yes, but does it fill up with water like mine?’”.

Later, the cook was in, and someone said they weren’t going to order chicken wings since they had just had some.

“Which store?”, someone asked, and the (black) guy said the name of some store, and the person replied, “Why the hell would you go to that store and pay an Arab, when you can buy them from blackfolk?”.

“Hey hey hey,” this (black) (male) ex-football player who was sitting next to me called out, “That’s enough of that, you got a point, but that’s a little too much.”

“No, really,” the person was like, “Why would you go buy them from an Arab?  They’re just going to put that money into weapons of mass destruction.”

“Shee-it,” the (black) (male) ex-football player was like, breaking into dialect to get real and settle things down a bit, “That guy don’t know how to make no weapons of mass destruction, he just cook chicken wings.”

When I did eventually leave – the teacher bought me another beer, and I had a burger and fries too, though most everyone else was having chicken wings or fried catfish – I went around the bar to say bye to everyone I had met.

When I said bye to the bartender – she had just gotten off shift, and was down at the end of the bar drinking with friends – she was like, “Are you sure you don’t want to come to that White Party?  You already got your costume on!”, and she laughed uproariously, and told me to seriously, stop by again.

The teacher said that too, and she said she was usually there on Thursdays during the summer.

The Poles came through!

I found out the other week that I won a partial tuition scholarship from a foundation that gives money to Polish-Americans...  I had applied back in January, and had even had to assemble a family tree of my Polish side tracing all known ancestors back to Poland, and supply a letter of attestation from a well-known member of my community vouching for the truthfulness of my family tree.

I called my parents right away, and my (Polish-American) mom answered.

“The Poles came through!”, I was like, and I told her all about the scholarship.

“And you know what?”, I was like, “Not only did the Hungarians not give me shit, but they don’t even have a foundation.”

Then, I asked where my (Hungarian-American) father was.

Right away, my mom told me he was busy and was like, “Don’t even say that, he’s in a bad mood today.”

My Treat: Better than I thought.

So I went to a specialty CD shop in the city that sells dance music, and the clerk pointed out that to buy CDs of Madonna's first 2 albums would cost around $25, whereas I could get a special UK boxset that has remastered tracks, all the standard bonus material, and her first 11 studio albums (not including the recent MDNA or movie soundtracks) for $49.95, tax not included.

So, I bought the CD boxset.





"Way to upsell me!", I was like.

"No," the clerk was like, "It just makes sense."

What a nice person: Hot dog vendor.

Walking to school across the park from the subway the other day, there was this hotdog stand set up in a lovely shaded area on the edge of the park with an older (black) woman staffing it, and 2 teenage (black) girls as well.

Since it was just before lunch, I stopped and got a hotdog to eat, and the teenage girl had a hard time finding change for my 20 (it was unfortunate, I didn't have anything less to pay for my $2.50 hotdog with!).

Meanwhile, I was talking with the older (black) woman running the stand, and when I asked her if she was [name of the woman] in the business title ("[woman's name]'s Hotdogs"), she was like, "No, that's my grandmaw, I'm a grandmaw's girl."

She then introduced herself (either "Lakweeta" or "Takweeta", I forget), and was telling me that this was their 2nd summer and they had opened last Monday, and that during the winter she worked in the special Christmas restaurant of a downtown department store.

"That's some good money," she was like.

Finally, when the girl came up to her to ask if she had change for a 20, she was like, "No I don't, Ray didn't come yet," and after calling out to the other girl and asking her to call Ray, she turned to me and was like, "Can you just pay next time you come by?", and I promised to pay her the following Tuesday, since I'd walk by there before lunch when they'd be open already.

After I finished my hotdog at a table they had set up near the stand, one of the younger (black) girls came up and asked me if everything was okay, and I introduced myself before I left.

One of the 2 said that the owner was her aunt, not her mom, but I'm still not sure the relation of the other girl.

Also, there were some older (black) men in dress shirts and porkpie hats getting out of a nearby car to go to a park building right before I left, and the older (black) woman called out to them, "Hey fellows, any of you got change for a twenty?", though none did.

Stretched Thin.

I am stretched thin this summer:

- summer classical music festival.

- bars!.

- the beach.

- finishing up my dissertation chapter.

- trying to turn a chapter that won’t appear in my dissertation into 2 articles.

- mental health first aid training (12 hours over 2 days).

- 40 hours of unpaid job training to teach in the college’s writing program next year.

- tutoring my 2 remaining language students (at least 1 session for 1 student a week).

I really can’t afford to go back home to visit my parents until mid-August, when things start to die down (unpaid job training is over, the 2 articles will hopefully be done by then too).

I really do have a lower quality of life than other grad students with spousal income, who can afford to take time off more often.