And the World Changed (49 page)

[What Leila really thought but would never say in front of the biker boys of this world is this: “I just broke a bloody nail and feel I cracked a couple of vertebrae as well! Time for tranquilizers and a back brace. Can I have this fool put away for reckless endangerment?!”]

WO/MAN BLUES

My brother came by today to tell me his woman's left him. Again. It's the third time in as many months. Get a clue. He says he's not ready to let her go. I'm a little tired of providing tissues, tea, and sympathy. Last time he took to the bottle and ended up with liver damage. This time he's busted his kneecap. The correlation is dubious; unless self-loathing resides in the patella.

In my mind love is the talent of acceptance. When someone's annoying idiosyncrasies either suddenly or slowly turn endearing, then you arrive at a place that is bound to teach you a few unpleasant lessons in self-preservation.

Not that she's a slow learner, not that she lacks common sense or initiative, simply a sense of survival. That has to be it. The reason for this strange flippancy, her heart-on-sleeve behavior.

This is how she pictures it; a man, a woman, an undisclosed location, no sense of time or space to fill in the gaps, nothing but two people who say only this to each other.

       
Man: you know who I am?

       
Woman: the reason I am.

       
(But this is how it is)

He calls her his sister and his heart in one breath.

She wonders what it means, now that he's squeezed her heart dry.

(Just because it's unrequited, doesn't make it any easier to get over.)

       
Truth is

       
Overrated

       
Not sugar-coated

       
Inappropriate

       
Flippant

       
Transient

       
Matter-of-fact,

       
Takes a minute to swallow

       
And a lifetime to digest.

VOICE II: SIMPLE

DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY

Sara calls me late one evening as I plod through an unending pile of grading exams. I haven't heard from her in a few weeks and I presume it is because she's still trying to break up with Sameer, her boyfriend of three years.

“Next time around, I want to be able to say no without feeling guilty,” Sara sounds weary, frustrated, in need of reinforcement. “To draw boundaries between his demands and my needs without feeling like I'm a bad person for having needs in the first place. It makes me a bad person, doesn't it?”

“No Sara, it just makes you real,” I try not to sound as irritated as I feel—this is going to be a long phone call and I'm already behind schedule on marking. I figure it's best to let her vent and keep my advice to a minimum, since she never listens to it anyway.

In a nutshell, the reason for Sara's current melancholy is this: After having worked three weekends back to back, the girl finally managed to schedule a Sunday afternoon of serious pampering. A ninety-minute deep tissue massage with Rainbow
Light, the miracle masseur at Sara's health club, who appears once a week to tend to massage therapy addicts like my dear friend.

On her way home from this feast of lavender oil and the expert touch of Ms. Light, Sara got a call from Sameer asking her to drop by his place with much-needed nourishment. (Did I forget to mention that the boyfriend in question is also the laziest man on earth?)

You would think Sara's reply to this request would be, “I'm on the other side of town, Sameer. Why don't you order takeout or go to the deli around the corner? I've just had a long massage and want to go home and take a nap.” Instead Sara finds herself taking a fifty minute detour to Drummond Street where she buys enough
biryani
to feed a
baraat
(“because he loves Indian food”) and finally trudges to Sameer's apartment who receives this culinary gift without so much as a proper “thank you” (a grunt is meant to suffice) before getting down to the business of filling his belly.

I listen to Sara's narrative and roll my eyes at least half a dozen times during the span of this story. She'll never learn, he'll never know, and I'll remain stuck in the middle of this shit.

“But where are you from
originally
, mate?” Simon asks the minicab driver in a curious display of friendliness, and accompanies the question with a hearty laugh meant to suggest camaraderie. I cringe visibly at the remark but hold my tongue. Simon is a well-traveled Englishman, genuinely interested in “other” cultures (perhaps that's why he's dating me), but after a few pints on a Friday night his politics become skewed, his tone can be patronizing. If Simon were simple I'd let it go, brush it off, move on to the next remark, but somehow his inability to sense the cab driver's hesitation, his disregard for the man's indignation, make me feel like I've failed to sensitize Simon to anything other than his own pallor. I catch the cabby's expression in the rearview mirror and quickly look out of the window to avoid his
gaze. I can hear him thinking, “Who are you to ask me where I'm from,
mate
? Acton, Lewisham, Brixton, High Barnet . . . but you want to hear that tone which creeps into my voice when I say the word Morocco, right?”

There are three kinds of migrants. The apparently assimilated who secretly yearn for lost home/s, the truly assimilated who deny their cultural origin to some extent, and, finally, the unassimilated migrants who recreate the most consumer friendly aspect of their estranged culture and market it as fried food or ethnic clothes on the local high street.

For now I dwell only upon the in-between subject. The assimilated migrant, also known as the bounty bar—brown on the outside, white on the inside—the man who looks like he should understand me but in effect has no clue about my position because his cultural values are entirely alien to mine. A particularly dangerous kind of man because he's unaware of his dual appeal; white girls go his way to score a piece of exotica, and brown girls make the effort because they think they're getting lucky with one of
their kind
. It's all very complicated, and you should ask me because I have fallen for many bounty bars in my time, only to see these relationships turn into a sticky mess in my hands.

       
How It Is

       
Once the discrepancies slap you in the face

       
there isn't much left to do but walk on by,

       
to the next potential stimuli.

When Sam eventually got dumped he watched TV for thirty-two consecutive hours, drank too much beer, didn't shower all weekend, and lay on the couch like a beached whale. When Sara arrived at the brink of distraction, she did four loads of laundry back to back and scrubbed the bathroom until she could see her sobbing reflection in the floor tiles.

So many plans and change of plans; yes I will, no I won't, maybe I should . . . like a guinea pig stuck in a weird science of my invention, waiting for something big to happen.

I am alone because I fucked up. I am alone because I am too scared to change the pattern. I am alone because I don't know how to let go of imagined ideals.

I can convince myself of anything. Even things like I never really loved you. And here I am, without you; alive, around, dazed.

VOICE III: SASSY

BACKGROUND GOSSIP

More than I can handle at present. Maybe you'll call me bitter but the abominable colleague has just returned from his honeymoon, and despite having shut my office door I can hear him whistling through the wall. It would all be hunky-dory if he wasn't my least favorite human being; short-tempered, hormonally unbalanced, no sense of humor, balding to boot, so don't ask me how he has managed to bag this sweet, intelligent woman as a wife.

Maybe he's great in bed. Maybe deep deep down, he's an angel. Maybe the world makes no sense. See, I know I'm sounding jealous and I'm not. Not of him or her, or even the situation. I don't want marriage per se, but I want to walk into my office with a smile on my lips and a whistle in my throat, and I want it to be because I've found the closest thing to perfection in the opposite sex.

Instead, him and all the other egotistical-for-no-apparent-reason sort of men seem to get good women and I'm now left with the option of hooking up with the married ones, running after the gay ones, or building a meaningful relationship with my vibrator.

Don't do that eye-rolling thing please, because I can see
you—” such a drama queen, no wonder she can't get a man . . . poor thing.”

Anyway, for what it's worth, I'll tell you my side and I'll tell you nicely so you understand.

On my last birthday I found out that the man I had wholly and solely given my heart to (when he obviously couldn't give a hoot), had decided to marry his ex-girlfriend. Call me crazy but I think I deserved a phone call. A little hint maybe, that he was planning on doing the wedding march with someone else while I fantasized about nuptials and puppies and beach resort vacations featuring him. But no. I had to hear the news from my best friend's man who heard it from his uncle who assured his nephew that this was “already old news, kid.”

After having spent the past couple of months getting lots of good advice from my friends (who are either married or in “happy” relationships) on how to forget this piece of excrement and move on to better, brighter things, I'm thinking the whole concept is overrated. One only has to look at the current divorce rate to gauge just how successful this “until death do us part” thing really is.

Then there are couples who wisely stay away from the legalities but still end up operating as one entity. “We wish you . . . we are hoping . . . we are planning”—Jesus, I don't care about “we,” I don't even really know your partner, I asked YOU because you are the one I've had the pleasure of knowing since WE were six. And when these two-in-one ladies start spewing advice my way about how I should “cherish my freedom,” wait for something perfect to materialize instead of “settling for someone who doesn't appreciate you,” it makes me want to scream!

{Aside}

#1

“God bless you please (Ms.) Robinson,” can you cut the shit and quit looking at those twenty-year-old chicks with perky tits and a wide-eyed wonder that will be erased soon enough, that
will compel them to compare their fading glow to other, fresher blossoms while you snigger from the sidelines.

#2

Maybe men become attractive only when they're unavailable and safely out of reach. . . .

Meanwhile Leila's temptress-like aspirations continue to fall short of the forbidden fruit because of poor stamina and mad expectations.

       
Doing Your Head In

       
remains unaware of the consequences of his un-thought-out

       
actions,

       
my increasingly schoolgirl reactions

       
bound to be a drag in the end (like all good things are),

       
bound to make me roll my eyes and kick myself in the shins . . .

       
one woman's truth is another man's

       
funky kinda freaky shit
        
(“what the hell are you talking about?”)

       
that your mama warned you about
      
(“where's this coming from?”)

       
but you were too busy
         
(don't lose your balance in a blink, girl!)

       
chasing the slightest, silliest,
         
(don't ask me what she sees in him!)

       
bound to make you fall flat
         
(cloud in the sky).

       
on your face

       
She needs to be more matter-of-fact about this:

       
The unfolding of non sequiturs.

       
Matter-of-fact:

       
She's more confused than ever.

       
Matter:

       
Flesh is not the best measure of love.

       
Fact:

       
None of it means much beyond a moon or two.

He's a star in the making all right. Getting ready to break unsuspecting hearts with a casual glance, that crazy smile before walking home, the long way round to “the real thing.”

       
Wide-eyed