JamieSue

Kiss Da Girl

Previously, on As The Blog Turns, JamieSue ventured into the world of Real People at a Local Bar, was stalked by a bunny lover, and ultimately accepted a date with a hot hip hop guy who will heretofore be known as The Fonz.

Why The Fonz? Well, of course, because he was cool and everyone knew him. The bartenders knew him, the people lounging on the couch by the dancing knew him and shouted at us, people just coming in knew him, the bikers knew him, the old guys knew him, the black guys knew him, the white girls knew him, the Indian Bunny Guy did NOT know him. And, even more impressive, he seemed to know all of them too. He did back slaps and half arm hugs and he smiled huge and talked with them all and introduced me with his arm around my shoulder.  Clearly, The Fonz. And I gave him my cell number.

I met The Fonz in downtown Sarasota Saturday afternoon so he could give me a tour of his town and the beach. The tour involved walking, talking, and at some point hand holding. The Fonz was interesting. He was my about my age, from Tunisia originally but moved to the US when he was 21, spoke several languages, had been in the army and jumped with guns out of planes, and he was happy. So happy that people walking down the street around us smiled and nodded and The Fonz smiled and nodded back and if the people had a dog, The Fonz said “LookAtThatBoyWhatAGoodBoyThat’sMyBoyOhLookAtThatBoy” and then we stopped and talked to the people and The Fonz pulled out his cell phone and showed a picture of his dog (a tiny Zsa Zsa Gabor dog)  and then there were dog stories and the people told us their names and their lives and we were talking for ten minutes and everyone was smiling and everyone was happy and eventually we finally left those people and started walking…until we passed someone else with a dog and the event started over again. You get the idea. And several times while we were walking people came up to us on the street who knew The Fonz and there was talking and smiling, and The Fonz said to me many times, “I am a  happy guy. This is me. I am happy.” Or “Life could be worse. Life could be better, but life could be worse” or his personal motto, “It is what it is. It can’t be anything other than what it is. So it is.”

And Sarasota was beautiful. We saw sailboats and fishermen and people taking wedding photos and at one point we ran like kids along the bridge to follow three dolphins that kept breaking the waves, the sun glinting off their backs. Eventually, after an hour of walking we reached the beach with white sand and clear blue water and we sat and talked and walked by the waves and the sun made The Fonz’s tan glow, and his big brown eyes glimmer, and his perfect amazing smile glint, and when he took off his shirt his completely ripped stomach practically twinkled like hero in a Disney movie, and we were walking holding hands and the surf was crashing and we stopped and he turned toward me and leaned in and...

So here’s the thing. I like geeks. If you have ever dated me for any length of time, you are a geek. In fact, there is high likihood that you have surpassed geek and slid hopelessly into dork. I can’t explain it, really. Maybe it’s the glasses, or the humility, or the social awkwardness, or simply that I identify with them, but it’s true. Nothing gets me weak in the knees like a bad pun or a joke with an xkcd reference. Nothing makes my heart flutter more than accidently mismatched socks or a misaligned button-up shirt. And for true love, make him know a lot about something I don’t and make him willing to explain it for hours and draw diagrams on napkins. Or best of all, have a white board in his apartment, oh, Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream. Well, I’ve distracted myself, where was I…

So The Fonz, the hottest, great dancer, super happy, most popular, most well-built guy to ever even know my name was leaning in to kiss me, the recent dumpee, on the white sand beach with turquoise water and dolphins surfacing in the distance and I, well, I said, “Umm..  I’m not really feelin’ it.”  Yes. These were my precise words. And then, I began to back peddle rapidly and say what a great guy he was and how nice he was and how attractive and how and how but I just didn’t feel the same way. 

Now, a friend has pointed out that as a recent dumpee in strange town that I would be leaving in two days, why on earth wouldn’t I kiss the hot boy. I’m not against kissing on a beach. I’m not a prude. And I did like him. But, the honest answer was the one I gave. I just wasn’t feeling it, not even for the kiss. I’m not the girl who dates The Fonz. I’m not even the girl who dates Richie Cunningham. I date Wesley Crusher or Alex P. Keaton. Or, well, Giles. 

But, I’m proud of myself because I didn’t just kiss him and run or come up with a story about my recent heartbreak or a boyfriend that didn’t exist. I just said the truth. I’m just not really feeling it. I was not a pansy. And it all turned out okay, though there is one important lesson I learned that day, a truth like “I’m not really feelin’ it” should be said, oh, a few steps from the car, not a walk of an hour and a half.

Hot grandma, bikers, and a bunny lover

 I’ve been cheating. When I travel and I want to meet people, I go out swing dancing. Then, others (non-swing dancers) say, “You mean you just showed up at a dance by yourself? Where you didn’t know anyone?  Wow. And then you made friends? Double Wow.”  Okay, maybe they don’t actually say Double Wow, but you get the point. But really, this swing dancing socializing thing, it’s cheating. It’s my home town. Even when I don’t know these particular swing dancers, I know the dance, I know the stereo(geek)typical swing dancer. It’s a (geek) event at which I am very comfortable.  It’s not traveling. It’s cheating.  

 Sarasota, Florida, on a Friday night, I went to a local bar called The Gator Club that was playing rockabilly and hip hop. The crowd was a real mix – young frat boys and frat girls, two biker guys with leather, long hair, and bandanas on their heads, a woman who was pale and thin with a scarf on her bald head and was surrounded by three other women trying to look like everything was normal, a very short wrinkly man in a brown three piece suit and hat, a woman with giant blonde hair who wore spike heeled boots, fishnet stockings, and shorty shorts –and she was in her late fifties. So, yes, the crowd was eclectic.  It was about 10pm and the band was just coming and on and there was nowhere left to sit, so I got a drink and then stood (cowered) near the wall by the dance floor trying (desperately) to look as though I was with the crowd of women around the scarf headed woman.  The band started to play.

Let me take a moment to explain why swing dancing by myself is not terrifying.  At a swing dance, there is likely to be one, maybe two, Creepy Guys who are clearly just there to hold on to girls. They are entirely shunned by all the swing dancers. Many girls just say “no thank you” when they ask them to dance. These Creepy Guys are obvious. When they ask me to dance, I dance once, and then I say “No thank you.”  Everyone else at the dance, the boys, the girls, the old guys, the hot guys, they will dance with you, smile, and walk away. Maybe if you had a really great dance you will dance a few more times that night and exchange email addresses. There is no hidden meaning in a dance. Dancing with a boy does not mean “Yes, I’d like to come home with you,” or “Yes, I think you’re attractive,” or even “Yes, I’d like to know your name.”   Swing dancing is 100% no pressure. 

So, there I was, at The Gator drinking my drink, making eye contact with no one, and cowering along the wall. The band was on a second song when the FishNet Granny got onto the dance floor alone and started wiggling. 40 seconds later, there were ten more people out there with her. Give it up for Granny. Some people were dancing alone but there were a few couples out there too. And oh did I want to dance, but there was no chance of me unfreezing myself from the wall. After a few more songs, the strange little man in the three piece suit (of course) asked me to dance.  And, honestly, it wasn’t that bad. We danced one song and I rushed back over to my spot on the wall as though it might not stand without me there. I had a few more dances with non-descript people, all of which I ran away from as soon as the dance was over, and then one of the biker guys asked me to dance and he talked through the dance, so I couldn’t just run away.  I had promised myself that for this non-cheating experiment that I was not going to lie. Okay, that I was going to try not to lie. Well, not to lie much.  For example, it was okay to hide the fact that I was a girl staying alone at a nearby campsite, so instead I said I was visiting my Aunt.  But, it was not okay to say that I had a boyfriend.   I was going to deal with people. Real people. Like I wasn’t a pansy. With the biker guy, it turned out to be easy because his line was “So, how many boyfriends do you have in South Carolina.”  And my response was, “Enough.”  Okay, not exactly direct, but it was my first go at it.  

And then, I made a brilliant discovery, the perfect line, so perfect that it has been immortalized in song, and even a song I particularly like. “I’m just here to dance.”  That is what I said and it was the perfect response for nearly any question. Do you want a drink? I’m just here to dance. Do you want to go outside and talk? I’m just here to dance.  Do you want to have dinner while you’re here? I’m just here to dance. What’s your phone number? I’m just here to dance.  Literally, it worked for everything and repeated enough times and the guy seems to actually believe it. It’s brilliant. You can use it if you like (for a small surcharge of five cents per usage). 

And it actually made for a pretty fun night. I danced with a lot of people. I didn’t have to use the “I have a boyfriend” lie.  Then, half way through the night a tiny Indian guy, well dressed and actually pretty attractive, nudged his way over to where I was standing and started up a conversation. He asked about my boyfriend. I used the line on him. He went on and on about how girls like me deprived nice boys like him of girlfriends.  For a long time. He kept talking and talking. And then, he told me, “I like you because you look like a bunny.” What? A …bunny? The first time that the “I’m just here to dance” line just didn’t work for a response.  Ironically enough, the small strange guy in the three piece suit came over and asked me if I wanted to dance, and I went off with him and he said to me “You looked like you needed to be rescued.”  So, the small strange three piece suit guy who I would have clearly guessed was the Creepy Guy in the room rescued me from the upscale somewhat attractive totally Not Creepy Seeming guy in the room.  But suit guy was dead on. The Indian guy followed me around for the rest of the night. I didn’t talk to him any more and I didn’t feel threatened (I probably out weighed him by 50 pounds for pete’s sake) but it was disturbing. The whole night. I came out of the bathroom and there was the Indian guy waiting by the door. I went to the bar, Indian guy followed. Indian guy didn’t actually dance, so he just stood on the edge of the dance floor and stared.

So, the night goes on and around 11pm a guy started dancing near my treasured wall spot. He was dancing ….hip hop? I don’t know. I don’t actually know hip hop, at all, but I start mimicking him and we started dancing together….for the next two hours. 

And while we’re dancing he’s chatting me up and I’m using my “I’m just here to dance” line, but the truth of it is: He is a fantastic dancer. I am having a fantastic time. He is totally hot and I have just recently been dumped. So, at the end of the night, when he asks for my phone number, I give it to him and when he texts and calls and calls and texts, I agree to see him the next day. But this blog entry is already ridiculously long (is anyone even still reading), so I’ll leave that for another day. Besides, all this writing crap, I’m just here to dance…and to look like a bunny, apparently.

(photos are old dance photos to break up the text. from top to bottom: by Keith Marszalek in Louisana, by Will Luong in NYC, by unknown in St. Louis, by unknown in NYC at the dance protest, by George Gabor in SC)

Awkward in any language

I stop in Fitz Roy because I think it is close to the petrified forest and might have information. Fitz Roy is a town along the paved highway, though it has no pavement of its own. It does have  one gas station, a few business oriented buildings, and tiny houses with gravel yards. I go to the nice looking log office of Tourism for information. It’s 1 pm and the sign says Open Until 2pm. But, the office is closed. I walk to a dumpy  trailer also marked office of Tourism. Closed. I go to the gas station to buy a sandwich. Closed. It’s not even siesta time. I see a small concrete building with a sign in the window that says Restaurante so, half heartedly, I go there. The door actually opens and as I walk through it metal chimes ring from over the door and a mechanical stuffed parrot wolf whistles at me.

The room is dim. There is a counter and a register for selling snacks, an upright refrigerator, seven plastic tables and chairs, and a TV dubiously suspended from a wall in the corner. There are two men at one table. They stop talking and watch me.  I walk over to the table furthest away from them and sit down under the television. I wait. Eventually, a woman emerges from a doorway in one corner of the room. She is a short, blocky, older woman with her hair in a handkerchief and she walks slowly toward my table. She is wearing night slippers and she doesn’t pick up her feet so they make a slip slip slip slip noise all the way to me. I say hello and ask for a menu. She just stares at me and rattles off some very fast Spanish from which I am able to extract the words “salad” and “milenesa.”  There are other options but I don’t understand any of them, so I ask for the milenesa and salad. Still, the men are not talking.  The woman returns through the doorway that has three signs over it, all of which say “No Entrance”. Strategically placed around the corner there are many mirrors all perfectly angled so that, I assume, she can see into the dining area while she cooks.  The men have finally started talking very quietly and I get up to go to the bathroom.

The bathroom smells. The door does not close. There is no toilet paper. There is no way to flush the commode – believe me, I am now adept at finding the way to flush foreign commodes – the button on the top of the tank, the button on the wall, the peddle on the floor, the regular handle on the side, the string hanging from the tank suspended on the wall, the button on the tank suspended on the wall, and once – the bucket of water sitting next to the commode with a dipper in it which I could use to get water and put it into the commode. I know all the places to look. There is no way to flush this commode. 
I return to my table, sit down, and being reading my book. The woman returns and literally drops the bowl of salad on my table. It makes a loud clang and the men at the other table look over.  Surprisingly, the salad is very good. Just lettuce and tomatoes but it is all very very fresh.

The chimes ring again and the stuffed parrot wolf whistles as six more men come pouring through the door. They are all wearing hardhats. They are all midthirties. They are all very loud. They are laughing and shouting at each other. They see the two other men at the table and shout hello to them. They come in and slap them on the back. Rest their hands on their shoulders. It seems like the men are pouring in through the door for days. Like they will never be done coming in. But finally they are. The door swings shut and it is at that precise moment that they see me. Suddenly all of that loudness and commotion is silent. They are all looking at me. I am looking at my open book. I am not reading my book but I am intently looking at it.  The men shuffle toward the large table in the center of the room and they sit down. It is like I am a librarian. They are utterly silent. They take off their hats. They sit. They stare. After a few moments, they are all talking with muted voices. Soft words. Small snickering.

The angry cook returns to the dining area and greets the men warmly. Clearly they are regulars. She repeats the menu and this time I catch all of it – my other options were chicken soup and steak. One of the men orders the soup and when it arrives it is a yellow broth with a giant full chicken breast in the center of the bowl. The bowl of soup is not brought out by the angry cook woman. It is brought out by a young man, maybe 20 or maybe 25. It’s hard to tell because it’s obvious that he has some kind of mental handicap – perhaps a little down’s syndrome. It’s also obvious that he knows the men. When he comes out they’re all joking with him, grabbing his elbow, grinning, and, though I can’t understand them, they are talking in those voices that are softer than men use with other men. They’re picking on him, but they’re being kind. The young man brings their bread to them and he goes around the table pulling on their ears as he hands them a pieces of bread. He rounds my side of their big group and he notices me.

I don’t know why, but it is always me. In New York City if there was a homeless guy, or a crazy guy, or just somebody who had some kind of clear mental handicap, they always approached me. Often, it was an unpleasant situation involving them screaming something unintelligible at me. Once, I was reading a Susan Serandon book on the subway at rushhour and a guy just started SCREAMING “Susan Serandon …jesus christ…susan Serandon..that mother fuc…communist” and I won’t carry on after that. He screamed at me from across the subway for several minutes and the got off at the next stop. After that, the guy sitting next to me turned and said, “You know, I took care of Susan Serandon while she was dying.”   I wondered if the whole world was going nuts.  But, they’re not always that unpleasant.  Once, again during rush hour, a youngish man with an obvious mental problem said to me very loudly, “Wooooowww… you are the most booot-iful woman in the whole world.”  I was extremely embarrassed but I said thank you and he said, “you are more booot-tiful than Miss. America.” To which I said just smiled at him. We were both standing (it was rush hour after all) and holding on to the bar above and he just stared at me, from RIGHT next to me. Extremely uncomfortable.  So, I reached into my bag and pulled out a book and pretended to read, while holding on to the bar above and being jostled by all the other people standing around me. He continued to stare. I pretended to read while he stared at me for two more stops and then the woman sitting down in front of me said, “Would you like to sit, I’m getting off at the next stop anyway.” I said, “Yes. Thanks” as it got me just a little further from the guy staring at me. And she smirked and said, “It’s not often that I get to give up my seat to someone more beautiful than Ms. America.”  These situations are always awkward…and that’s when I actually speak the language.

The young man holding the bread bowl stops handing out the bread. In fact, he is still holding one piece of bread in mid air and he is just staring at me. The men notice this and one of them says something to him quietly in Spanish. I didn’t understand the words the man said, but I can recognize a verbal “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” when I hear one no matter what the language is.

The angry woman appears again and says something to the young man. One of the worker men says something to the young man and uses the word “novia” or girlfriend. All the men laugh quietly. He disappears into the kitchen. The angry woman drops my plate on my table. The milinesa (we’d call it chicken fried steak in the country. It’s a piece of steak that has been battered and fried in sandwich form) and I begin eating as quickly as I possibly can while staring down at my open book. It feels like the entire restaurant is full of men and me. Of course, I made the initial mistake of sitting under the television. I can feel all the men staring at me and when I look up from my book, they all look at the television. I look at my book, they look at me. I look at them, they look at the television. The synchronicity of them adverting their eyes all at the same second is funny and I almost get the giggles. 

The son reappears several times with the men’s food. I am half way through my sandwich when he approaches my table. He stands two feet away. He watches me eat. He doesn’t even have an excuse. He doesn’t have anything to say or to put on my table. He just stands there and watches me eat.  I nearly swallow the rest of my sandwich whole. I ask for the check. He brings it - $20 pesos. I give him $22. In Buenos Aires, 10% is standard but in these smaller towns I get the impression that people don’t usually tip. The young man is confused and calls for the woman. She comes out, looks at the check, looks at the money, takes the $20 and gives him the $2.  She says real loudly to him, “This is for you.”  One of the men says, “Ahhhh…something something something your girlfriend.” And he makes the international thumb rubbing forefinger sign for money. The young man gazes at me with awe and wonder and I practically run out of the restaurant. Literally, I bump into two empty tables in my frantic desire to escape. The restaurant is silent. I open the door. The chimes ring. The stuffed bird wolf whistles. I close the door behind me and hear the entire restaurant of men break into raucous Spanish, laughter, and noise.  I flee Fitz Roy so quickly it doesn’t even occur to me to take a picture of anything.

Second date with the doorman

I had another date with my doorman. No, it wasn’t really a date. Seriously. I put forth all possible anti-date non-lingual multi-cultural signs: I wore my hair in a sloppy ponytail. I skipped the perfume. I even considered skipping the deodorant but I thought that might just be cruel. I wore my fat jeans – the ones that smell kind of funny now and have more holes than trend dictates. I wore granny panties – not that he would get that far, but maybe they would help me send anti-date signals.

We ate at McDonald’s and saw a movie. I know it sounds like a date, but really it wasn’t. He had an extra peso out to pay for the bus and I nodded to my own peso and put it in first. My hands were shoved so far into my pants pockets that I’m pretty certain I stretched them out and every time I sat next to him, I crossed my legs in the opposite direction. There were still a few moments that puzzled me cultural-date-barrier-wise, like when he took my arm to steady me as the bus was still moving, or put his hand on my shoulder to steer me away from a man pushing a cart into my path, or (the most confusing) when I said something un-intentionally funny in Spanish and he gave me a half hug.  These were the cues that kept my body language in the cold-bitch mode.

We talked in Spanish the entire time because he speaks almost no English. I humored him with my inability to say sneeze (estornudo) in Spanish despite the fact that my allergies are making me estornudo constantly. He humored me by telling me about his older son who is only after women and has now failed two years of school – it wasn’t the story that humored me but the kind of ‘what are you going to do’ expression he told it with. I taught him some English words for all the new Spanish words he taught me and we walked along Florida street while we waited for the movie.

The movie tickets cost 7 pesos (or about $2.50 US) and I did let him buy them but then I bought the McDonald’s.   He had picked the movie and I had just shrugged. I didn’t care. The theater was interesting – giant and antique with a stone floor, and wooden doors with trimming on the bathroom stalls – it was clearly built before plastic was everywhere.  In the theater, we were two of four people though there were at least 80 seats that I could see…plus a balcony above. There were no previews for other movies or advertisements, just lights on, and then the start of the movie. That alone caused it to feel like an entirely different country.  When the movie started, it was in French….with Spanish subtitles and he looked over at me with utter embarrassment and started spewing Spanish apologies I didn’t understand. I lied and I said I understood French and he relaxed.  Actually, the movie was really good for me. I’ve been despairing about my lack of Spanish language but I was really surprised how much of it I understood reading in subtitles without being able to cheat and listen to the English. I understood all of the plot but only ¼ of the jokes, but it was still reassuring.  Now, if I could only get that much out of hearing Spanish spoken.

After the movie, my doorman and I parted ways, but not before he gave me a big hug and said “mi amiga?” and then he said in rough English “my friend? Si?”  “Si,”  I said, leaving my hands out of my pockets for the first time in hours. So dating my doorman wasn’t a complete disaster, though to be honest, I’m not keen on having even a friend see me come and go every single day. I’ll be glad when I move and I can keep my groceries out of my daily conversation and can leave my apartment without feeling forced into small talk. If my new building has doormen, I guess I’ll get less practice at Spanish and more practice at my Buenos Aires cold-bitch mode. Si.