You know, now and then I forget how glad I am to have grown up in immigrant culture (given, second gen on my part) and in a city of immigrants.

I’m reminded of this at this moment in the way I’m often reminded: I just got out of a cab, post-cocktails with Cheryl downtown (and earnestly, craving a few more, being in something of a lushtastic mood, and right now trying to figure if I should walk myself over to the Copper Gate or not for some Jesus-sighting-Aquavit). I swear to gawd, I can easily say that 90% or more of the most productive, useful and insightful conversations I’ve had about this nation I inhabit have not only been with immigrants, but with immigrants driving a cab. Really, even if you’re not a regular cab-taker, I’d say that for $10 or so, it’s a sort of therapy — though possibly EST therapy if you read as too American — that’s more than worthwhile, particularly if you don’t get exposed to immigrant perspectives every day or didn’t grow up around them.

I had a moment tonight, too, in the midst of an immediately quick and bustling conversation with my African cab driver, of wondering why it is that I always seem to get the talkative cabbies, and why I pretty much need to say all of nothing to get an energetic conversation started. This particular driver, pretty much at the mere instant I was having that moment, made some comment about how amazing he thought my smile was. Aw, shucks, for sure — it’s one of my favorite compliments, and something people do tend to remark on often, likely because we big-lipped, big-toothed women do tend to have smiles that take up the whole of our faces — but that likely does have plenty to do with it. Someone smiles warmly at you from the get-go, you’re going to get gabbing.

Bar or no bar. Hmm.

* * *
Mr. Price and I went to a Halloween party Saturday night festooned as boy scouts. Given, he looked far more authentic than I having been a boy scout in earnest — and I merely a jealous girl scout — and in hardcore earnest, well through his senior year of high school. But I had a mighty hard time chilling out at the party, even given that any costume that allows me to wear sneakers and cargos is about the most relaxing thing a girl could ask for.

As Mark was far too inclined to share with anyone even remotely within earshot on Saturday, that boy scout uniform drives me freaking insane. I had ripped the buttons off the top of the one I wound up wearing when Mark wore it for me on my last birthday. That kind of insane. Mark has a couple of photos of Chicago he took around 1986, in a trip from Cincy to Chicago his troupe took, and there are photos taken a mere block away from my high school (They were at the Sears Tower and then in Greek Town). The sadness that came over me in knowing that I hadn’t managed to be glancing out the window during class when a troupe full of boy scouts from Ohio passed by, all ooh-the-big-big-city lights a’dazzle in their eyes, was unbearable. Had I noticed this at the age of 16, sitting in my barely-formed classroom with a bunch of other queer art geeks, I absolutely would have rushed everyone to the window to point the scouts out and yell “Hey! Lunch!” I’ve had a weakness for corruptible boys since about the age of 13, and it’s never worn off, even given that the age of said boys has advanced with my own.

Once, likely with the intent to seduce, Mark came out of his office wearing his scout shirt and sash. Alas, he also came out totally pantsless. This, in my occasionally very demented brain, registered a zero on the libido scale because he looked like a scout someone else had clearly gotten to already.

Yeah, I’ve got it bad. But it sure was fun to get home, and boy of boy, did our couch look bizarre the next morning.

* * *

Still on the fence about the bar. Ah, those big life decisions.

I spent basically all weekend doing nothing but very hardcore cleaning, including steaming the stupid carpets (our rental has wall-to-wall carpet in three rooms, which offends my personal aesthetics more than I can say), and doing some things to better insulate the house so that I don’t have the heart attack I did last year with the heating bill. I just finally got a basic abortion walk-through posted at Scarleteen today, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and which we really needed. I suppose I figured that I’ve had so much invective in my mailbox over the last week or two that I may as well put abortion on the front page, since I was taking crap already anyway. Over the next week, on top of editing the monumental-and-still-growing photo backlog, I’m hoping to get one new article up a day or so, from a whole slew of pieces that have been about 3/4’s finished for some time. I’m earnestly trying to be sure I cover any bases in terms of stuff I’ve been meaning to do that are the kind of thing I’ll take shit for (always from adults, mind: go figure that the pieces that seem to freak adults out the most are usually the ones the teenagers are the most thankful for), because it really is easier to bear during times when I already wake up every day to a pile of steaming e-poop.

Yeah, I’m thinking I’m go for that walk to the bar.

filed under Heather Corinna | Mr. Price | apropos of nothing
posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 7:17 pm

follow responses to this entry through the rss 2.0 feed
you can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.