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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Every Good Demon Does Fine
Part I: Hemingway always said to put in the weather. It�s snowing today. Yesterday I wore a sweater over a tiny little shirt and thought about, but rejected, sandals and today it�s snowing and I�m wearing a big coat and my boots and carrying an umbrella and I drove to school it was so ugly and all because it�s snowing these big beautiful sticky wet flakes of snow. Part II: Do a good deed everyday. 1. Write a letter of recommendation so that the divinely sexy Russian calculus TA can win a teaching award and then take you out for a drink. 2. Meet The Demon Who Always Does The Right Thing and talk about her application essay for graduate school. (Let her return the good deed: See below.) 3. Return Mayflower�s call even though she�s in crisis and will only try to make you agree that her craziness should be bottled and labeled �Reasonable.� 4. Return x�s call even though he ditched you for sushi and coffee last night. Part III: Count your blessings: The sushi account becomes the sushi recount. There was sushi last night. I took Max in, and told Max to sit while I went to the bathroom. Later Max told me that Aisho�s first question was, �Is Sublingua here with you?� We waited for The Boy. The Aisho-san chided me for not having been very friendly last time I was in. I teased him back about not wanting to climb over the bevy of blondes that he had had seated in his station that night. (Later, I told him that it was just jealousy talking. I didn�t watch for his response, but he did laugh, so I added, �I can�t even get cute blonde women like that!�) I told Max about coming in and the Aisho-san�s having a line-up of blondes in front of him. The Aisho-san blushed. �How many women do you need lined up in front of you, Aisho-san?� I asked. He teased back about whether or not my story was going to change over the course of the evening. I asked him about the man I had been sitting next to at the sushi bar (the night I went in alone). He claimed not to remember. �The one dressed like a Japanese Johnny Cash,� I said. Aisho-san told me, �Oh, that guy? He�s a sushi chef at another restaurant. He�s not even Japanese.� I said, �He�s Korean, isn�t he?� Aisho-san said, �Yeah. But he speaks pretty good Japanese. He mixes in some Korean and English though.� He and The Boy chattered away happily about martial arts. (�Excellent!� The Boy fairly yelled when the Aisho-san told him that he had a fourth-degree black belt. �Fucking excellent!� The Boy yelled when the Aisho-san told him that he became certified to teach three years ago.) �You didn�t tell me he knew martial arts!� Aisho-san said to me. I replied, �Look! I brought someone in for you to talk to.� He tsk�d and said that he always talks to me. We joked and prodded at each other. He revealed that he has two dogs, beagles, named Chloe and Peanut. He told us about his brother (with the same name as one of the Beatles) who is in his mid-20�s but who recently married a woman in her late 40�s and how his �old-school Japanese� mother was pretty peeved about that. He told us about getting in fights in Japan with GI�s and about breaking his finger when he caught it on some guy�s sleeve. We also talked a bit in a vulgar fashion about sex, my asking him at one point if his fingers smelled fishy. �No, they don�t,� he said, holding them out, �They smell like ginger.� (He had just placed a big handful of gari, pickled ginger, on my plate.) I asked, �Ginger? Who is Ginger? Was she nice?� He laughed and blushed. �You�re blushing, Aisho!� I said loudly, which made him blush even more. Later, The Boy was joking about how he got maced about eight times for every girl that agreed to go out with him. �You get maced eight times for every time you get laid?� I asked. �Pretty much,� The Boy answered. I said, �Aisho�s got that down to six.� He leaned back against the counter and laughed, holding his hand over his mouth. (A very Japanese move, I thought.) He made some comment about developing relationships over months and years. �I haven�t got that kind of time,� I said, my mouth full of some kind of maki sushi that The Boy had foolishly ordered. We talked about my leaving. �Are you coming back?� Aisho-san asked. �I don�t know,� I said. �Probably not.� He asked when and were I�d go. I told him, adding that I have never lived anywhere else. �That�s sad,� Aisho-san said. I mistook his meaning, thinking that he meant it sad that I hadn�t ever lived anywhere else. �No,� he said, �I meant it�s sad that you�re leaving.� Then he said to The Boy, �See how she is?� The Boy said, as though speaking of a hopeless case, �I know.� I�m so in crush with the Aisho. He shook The Boy�s hand as we left. (The Boy, who I think is also in crush with the Aisho-san after last night, invited him out for coffee and dessert, which the Aisho-san declined, saying that he had to go home and feed his dogs.) I joked that I felt it a personal triumph for him to shake hands with a friend of mine. That made him shake hands with Max, making a �Max, Max. Max, Max� introduction joke, as they are both named Max. Then he shook my hand. He has warm, broad hands and a firm handshake, which I commented on. �I hate wimpy handshakes,� he said. So today I at coffee with The Demon Who Always Does The Right Thing, we talked about the Aisho-san and my reluctance to face him down solo. It�s true, I�m afraid to do this. Why? I�m pretty friendly. I�m outgoing. I�ve antagonized him as much as I do my friends and he�s bounced back from it so I know he can take me full-strength. (Although last night he made some comments that made me realize that he�s probably holding back and we did the whole, �I haven�t insulted you, have I?� exchange, feeling each other out to make sure that things were still okay.) So, yeah. I know that the Aisho-san likes me. But I want him to like me. (And I guess I�m a little gun shy after Red�s �I like you and I don�t want to ruin this,� talk�after which it turns out that he didn�t like me the way I thought he did, and that he didn�t mind ruining things after all.) I want for things to go well with the Aisho-san. I want for them to go well and smoothly. And if I don�t feel that they will, I want to just walk away and never think of it again. In fact, I got home last night and had one of those �God�s No Friends Rule� moments and wrote on my shower curtain with my handy sharpie marker, �3/1�I won�t go back.� I meant that I won�t go back to the restaurant to see him because it�s just hopeless. And I�m done with feeling as though my relationships with others are hopeless. So I just won�t have relationships with others, right? And I should become more adept at reading signs perhaps. But then, how would I interpret this: We went for coffee, The Boy, Max and I, and ran into Ama, The Ex-Grrlfriend of The Demon Who Always Does The Right Thing. She is normally a very angry person, very withdrawn and closed off. And I say this loving her. I say this as her friend who loves her very much. She often intimidates people with more sense and thinner skin than I have. And so we ran into her last night at the coffee shop. And she and I talked about the Aisho-san and about how it was hard for me to catch a man. She--a lesbian, obviously�disagreed. �No,� she said, �Men are easy. It�s women that are hard.� I disagreed. �Women are easy!� I said. We talked. And then she told me that her new goal was to get to know as many people as possible. And this was like a bolt of lightning from her, the woman who relied on The Demon so often to make social situations smooth. Ama told me about hanging out and talking to people she�d�ve never thought to do this with in the past. �Some of them are really cool!� she said, amazed perhaps that all those others that God put here on earth are really pretty decent and worth knowing. I know I should try. I don�t want to get hurt. I know I have to keep my heart open. I know I should try despite the fact that it may not work out, that I might get hurt. I know I have to keep my heart open. I know I have to try. Updated to add: So I had that letter for my Russian calculus TA, right? Right. He needed it today, so he emailed me to ask to meet me on campus. I can just drop it off, I replied. I can meet you at 12:30 or 1:00, he emailed back. I couldn't meet him at these times, told him that I'd just drop it off in his mailbox. I sent my phone number along (249-66XX--why don't you ever call?), and my alternate email, casually writing that he should call if he'd like to do lunch. I went to drop off the letter at 2:45 or so. He had waited for me. We chatted, he touching me about half a dozen times or more in the space of about twenty-five minutes. I sniffled--it was spitting a mix of snow and rain outside, I was bundled up against it, and coming into the warm building made my nose run--and he said, "Do you have cold?" I answered that it was probably allergies or the rain or something. He said, with a very straight face, "You are allergic to rain?" We stood in the hall and talked and talked and talked. He stood so close that I could feel his breath on my face. He touched my arm, my hand, over and over. I almost expected him to reach out and touch my face. (What an interesting caress that would have been. What would I have done? Probably responded in kind and then I would have been on the floor with him.) I smiled and smiled and joked. And he did too, but he did not make a date. I told him to call me when he found out about the award, and if he won, I'd take him out to celebrate, but if he lost, I'd take him out to commiserate. So, yeah, that's the sexy Russian calculus TA. Can I have him and the Aisho-san?
More lies:
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