Woman on the subway platform.

The other night I dashed up the stairs to get to the subway platform as a train was arriving only to have it be “Out of Service” and pass by, and since the platform monitor was broken, I had no idea when the next train was due.

After a minute, a(n early 30s) (black) woman in a black leather jacket and pierced-through-the-center space below her lip walked up, so I asked her if she had seen when the next train was coming, and after that we started talking about public transportation and how the platform can be empty late at night, how some cars can be empty or have sketchy people in them so you have to look for a fuller call w/normal people, etc., and then she started talking about how she got on this one car the other week and there was a homeless guy in the middle of the car.

“He stunk so bad,” she was like, “It filled the car.”

She then said she had had a Subway sandwich with her and she was going to have half then on the subway car and half later at work on break like she sometimes does, only she couldn’t even start the 1^st half on the way there, her appetite was so gone.

3 reactions to the State-of-the-Union.

1) My one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend's (half Sudanese) (half British) sister, who is also my friend, was the only friend who came out to the student bar to watch Obama's State-of-the-Union w/me.

After the speech and before the GOP response, she was like, "I never expected to identify so much with someone in power before."

"Really?", I was like.  "How?".

"Oh, you know," she was like, "Mixed race, African dad, all that...  It wasn't until he became big during the 1st campaign that I had that feeling, and I realized that everyone all along must have these feelings all the time with people in power."

Then, she added, "I had a Kenyan law professor, and that made the classroom wonderful for me. And to think that other people have these connections all the time!".

 I followed up more, and she said that she identifies w/Michelle Obama as a woman, but otherwise not so much, and that even though her dad was from Sudan and grew up there, there's something about "being from Africa" that creates a connection w/people from other countries on that continent.

2) My dad thought that the GOP respondent was nuts, and a very odd choice, since no-one had ever heard of her.

"I was getting tired and wasn't paying attention," he was like, "But don't give me that 'I worked at a McDonald's in high school and look at where I am now' bullshit.  Hell, in high school I worked at a Pepe's - that was a place before McDonald's got big - and it'd be like me now saying, 'Look at me, I'm a master teacher.'  What the fuck is that?  I *hope* someone moves on to better jobs from working at a McDonald's in high school!"

He also liked my line about the GOP comparing the poor to an unmotivated retarded child so much that he told my mom about it later (she wasn't home when I initially called my parents).

3) My mom thought the GOP woman was fake and odd-acting.

I then told her that she was also appalling, since she was whoring out her Downs Syndrome baby for billionaires.

"You're right," she was like.

(My mom's always disliked politicians' kids in politics, esp. when people attack someone's kids, but also when someone uses their own kids.)

I then told her that I bet a lot of GOP women punch themselves in the belly to have a disabled baby so they can have a political career.

"It's a gift from G-d," I was like.

"Ok, time to hang up!", my mom was like.

More from that same night.

That same night, I was telling my one Asian-Canadian friend that I was very turned off by the Mexican prison nun Mother Antonia’s accent, and from old clips of her on YouTube, I couldn’t help perceive her but as an older boozy Beverly Hills housewife.

“I know you read bios to get closer to people,” he was like, “But you have to remember that that isn’t necessarily a substitute for experience, and if you were with her and actually experienced her, it might have all made sense, in person,” which totally challenged me, but I found true somehow, and beautiful.

Also that same night, I got re-acquainted with the one Swiss grad student who I had met at a similar event like a month earlier and who had been surprised by my knowledge of Switzerland.

He vaguely remembered meeting me, and then when I started relating my Switzerland factoids that I had shared with him, he got surprised all over again, and was like, “How do you know so much about Switzerland?”.

He then said that the previous month he had actually ended up vomiting outside on the street after the bar closed, the people in Romance Languages had done so many shots together.

Twin Peaks memories.

The other week I was drinking w/my one Asian-Canadian friend and we ran into some Romance Languages Dept. grad students who were out drinking beer on the dept. tab, and somehow me and him and one of them began talking about Twin Peaks, and I mentioned that that was out when I was in 5^th grade, and though “Who killed Laura Palmer?” was everywhere, no-one my age knew what that was about, except one kid in my class whose parents let him watch it, oddly enough.

Since that guy is still my friend, I texted him if he remembered that, and the next day he replied –

For years I tried talking like the backward talking/walking midget.

- which I found surprising, so I texted him back if he was serious, and he replied –

Yes.  I thought it was neat.  Most kids didn’t know what I was talking about (or my impression was really awful).

. . .

Woman in a Cafeteria, with Baby.

The other week I was in a cafeteria catching up w/a friend when this (bigger) (late 30s) (black) woman walked past the table with this cute little kid who looked 2 or 3 tucked up in her left arm, and when he looked at me, I smiled, and the woman noticed, and was like, “You like my load, hunh?”.

And then when me and my friend began to talk, she didn’t even wait for us to speak, but was like, “He’s a breastfed baby, that’s why he’s hanging on my boob.”

And she did this all while walking past, never even really stopping to talk and breaking her stride.

Bar-hopping: Bittersweet music, odd bonding.

The other week I was barhopping in a yuppie/hipster area of town, and was prepared for a very dry night, since those areas tend to be devoid of fulfilling personal interactions.

Like 6 bars in, though, I was at this one new yuppie gastropub that was sunk down from street level, with lots of exposed woodwork and barrels and racks of wine bottles, and was eating this awful overpriced hors d’oeuvres that sounded good in theory (tater tots with chicken and some kind of sauce), when I noticed that the music system was playing New Wave music, in particular Blondie’s “Atomic”, and I suddenly got very wistful, knowing that if I had been alive when it was 1^st out that I would have been very affected very late at night when out clubbing and that came on.

(I still feel lucky to have been alive when MGMT’s “Kids” came out, and to have known it for months and months before it crept into the mainstream; it was just happy and euphoric with that infectious electronic hook, and people couldn’t get enough of it.)

At the last bar of the night, I somehow started talking to 2 taller thinnish (white) hipster guys, and got in a very intense conversation with the one about how he’s plagued by awful dreams, though beyond his dying in most of them, I don’t remember details, though he had this off-kilter look in his eyes and he kept looking at me very intensely w/o breaking eye contact while describing the most horrible things, over and over and over.

Later, the 2 of them did cocaine off the back of their hands near the wall opposite the bar, and later than that, one of them started confessing to me that he was just out of a relationship and the biggest problem with his ex-girlfriend was her shallow vagina.