Happy
V-Day II
Ok,
so it’s no longer V-day, but that’s only if you’re reading the title with a
singular meaning. The beauty of “V-day”
is that it’s open to multiple interpretations.
A friend of mine deciphered it as“Vampire Day,” “Vinho Day” and “Venom
Day.” Though her readings got a bit
dark, I really do enjoy the openness, the playful plurality of meanings.
Nevertheless, “Happy V-Day” (Part I), my
blogpost of last year on February 14th, was perhaps way too
open. It simply did not provide any
closure or conclusion. Really, I don’t
want to give this topic much import, much space and air to breathe. No one wants to kick a dead horse. Also, this is a different year. Even though everything is cyclical, year after
year, through the seasons, and the waxing and the waning of the moons, February
2013 and February 2014 are not identical.
There are so many other things to talk about, like life in Chimoio, our
Camp Ndzou adventure, the first week of school at UCM, and other miscellaneous
yet funny and fascinating events.
But for this post I just want to write
an ending to “Happy V-day (2013).” Now,
we all know that sequels suck. Blogs are
generally simple, light, and easy, so I hope no one has high expectations
here. What I want and what you, the reader,
want can be two very different things.
Desire is nothing, if not duplicitous.
A female PCV once complained to me that there are very few PCV guys in
the Central Region of Mozambique. Well,
I thought, how many guys do you want?!
Yet it’s not any easier to talk about
necessity, instead of want. If we’re
talking about need, then we, each one of us, really need just one. . . the
right one. The only one. How many of us have that?
It is a common complaint among PCVs,
though. The complaint is so ubiquitous, in
fact, that our packing list indicated a “Personal Intimate Massager” as a
“recommended” item to be brought to Mozambique.
I don’t know what that means for guys, but perhaps it should be listed
under “Necessary items.”
But I don’t want to talk about necessity
here, now. Last year I needed to write a
sort of fantasy story. Here, now, I
don’t need to write Part 2, but it is my desire to do so, mainly because Part 1
was such a cop out. It shies away from
an ending. So now I want to finish it,
to be done with it once and for all. Of
course desire for, let’s say, climax, for jouissance and that sweet dénouement-afterglow can be
boundless. I’m fairly low-maintenance,
but I don’t know about you, the reader. Então, let me just say, beware. Curb your expectations. Remember that most, if not all, sequels do
not live up to the sparkly flourish of their beginnings.
So. After such a fluff-filled
intro, how to conclude last year’s “Happy V-day” (Part 1) blogpost? What end shall befall our anonymous
protagonist, the budding botanist/wanna-be writer?
Hmmm.
. . . .
Margaret Atwood, one of my absolute
favorite authors, wrote a short, short story entitled “Happy Endings,” which
sketches five re-visions or “endings” of plotlines for a “John” and a “Mary.” Her meta-narrative of multiple endings, I
think, suits the quirky style of my “Happy V-Day” Part 1, though perhaps hers is
a bit too complex, and the voice too grave for the simple, light, and easy tone
of a blogpost. Atwood’s depicts a
darkness that doesn’t jive with “Happy V-day.”
You can check out her story online; again, it’s very short. But let me quote its ending, the real, final
ending, of “Happy Endings” here:
“You’ll
have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don’t be deluded by any other endings,
they’re all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive,
or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality.
“The
only authentic ending is the one provided here:
John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.
“So
much for endings. Beginnings are always
more fun. True connoisseurs, however,
are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do
anything with.
“That’s
about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after
another, a what and a what and a what.
“Now
try How and Why.”
Despite the strong, imperative voice, Atwood’s heavy
emphasis on death as an absolute ending seems gratuitous. Don’t get me wrong, I love this story and I
love Atwood’s work. But I also think
that she shifts into the shadows, into a sort of dark and tragic aura, which
artists are wont to do. The
meta-narrative perhaps lightens the story a bit, allowing readers to stand back
and see the construction of the story. But
I disagree with its definitive-one-and-only-death-ending. For me, even death, can be ambiguous.
Anyway, what the hell am I doing with
literary criticism, getting all philosophical and meta-physical. Sheesh. All I wanted to say was that, I’m borrowing
from Atwood’s “Happy Endings,” which is not to say that our narrative skills
are on par. Of course not. I write silly little blogs. She’s published a bounty of books, been
lionized in literary magazines, and won accolades up the wazoo. Sheesh. Anyway, I keep digressing, but here we
go. For a happy ending to my “Happy
V-day,” try X. If you want another
ending, try Y. But if you think this
post is already getting too long, then just stop reading now.
X.
Our main character-writer last year
was leaving her dorm room to join Sal, who had invited her to movie-nite
downstairs in the lounge with Sandra a dorm-mate and Jack, Sal's roommate. Our protagonist sensed, even before climbing down the
stairs, that Sal was interested in her.
She wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
It’s not every day that guys give her the time of day. But she did like that he wasn’t very
pushy. He seemed to understand her
reluctance. He seemed to understand
her.
For a young guy, actually, Sal does
appear present and mature. He was aware
that she wasn’t into him, that she basically ignored his rather longing
looks. He never ogled at her. No.
That’s embarrassing. He just
really liked her and it showed. He was aware
of and honest about his feelings, but he fully understood that she need not
share them. So he backed off. On the couch, as they watched the first
movie, Shakespeare in Love, he leaned
away from her, gave her space. His
mindful awareness isn’t based on some new age, hippy yoga meditation, though he
is of the millennial generation.
Like a proper collegiate, his presence of mind stems from sports, or, more
specifically, from basketball and rockclimbing.
Now, the goal driving him to graduate in three years with a psychology
major is both smart and doable. But he
is under a tight and rigorous academic schedule, so that his main outlets for
stress-relief needed to be activities that require little to no conscious
thought. Well, okay, so in rockclimbing
you need to be very conscious when you are belaying. No one wants a fallen climbing partner on
their record. But when he’s actually rockclimbing himself,
or bouldering, and playing basketball, he can just trust his feet and hands,
his whole body. He can be in the
zone.
So, in moments like these, in the late
afternoon, early evening, after classes and sports, he would feel his whole
body relax and the tension release. He’d
be inside his body and nothing else would matter. Not the formulas in his Stats course, nor the
abstractions in his Cognitive Psych class.
He wasn’t even really paying close
attention to the movie. He was enjoying
the movie, liking the British accent. I
mean, who doesn’t like British accents?
But he was equally enjoying the supple softness of the couch, the cool
comfort and soft dimness of the room. Life’s
palpability, its textures and colors seemed to weave themselves into his
senses. He was also aware, and liked
that he was aware, of the scent of the woman next to him. So he simply sat back. He didn’t need to push or struggle. Life is all.
Nothing else mattered.
He doesn’t exactly know why she
didn’t return any show of interest, but that’s perfectly fine. Her coldness towards him was refreshing, actually, because he would
rather have her be clear about her feelings than toy around with his. He’s met enough careless girls who merely
exercised their feminine prowess under the guise of “being nice.” This one, our main character-writer, seemed
serious, and he thinks she could be a terrific girlfriend. That is what, or who he is looking for. He’s never had a lasting relationship. He is only 18, after all. He knew, though unconsciously, that his
identity as a (straight) man entails being with a woman. Call it nature, evolution, socialization or
whatever. His manhood is inextricably
entwined with womanhood. It is an
interdependence, the depths of which he was lucky enough to understand without
much confusion from popular culture.
He’s never bought in to the idea of “metro-sexuality” or even
“asexuality.” These were all extraneous
stuff. To him, it’s just a fact of life
that he inherited a particular sexuality that is deeply connected to a woman’s femininity,
and that happiness or the fullness of life and living for him as a man actually
depends on sharing it with a woman.
“I thought this was supposed to be a
romantic comedy, but it wasn’t really funny,” Jack, blurted out
at the end of the movie. Their silence
seemed to signify that no one liked it.
“I liked that it’s not your typical
romantic comedy,” Sandra responded. She
wanted to explain to him the value of the film.
“It was funny to me, in its own
British way. What is a ‘typical romantic
comedy’ anyway?” asked Sal.
“There’s usually a happy ending, the
male and female-lead characters come together in the end,” explained our main
character. . .
I should really come up with a name
for this protagonist. I suppose there’s
no reason to keep this Botany major anonymous.
Let’s call her. . . Luce. Short
for Lucinda.
Sal suggested ordering pizza, but Jack
said he’s too hungry to wait. He’s got a
couple of microwavable pizzas in his mini-fridge, so he ran upstairs to get
them. Sal was struck by his eagerness to
share. Probably he wanted to impress
Sandra. Though he does seem always
hungry. Sandra and Luce went to the bathroom, and Sal made more popcorn.
“Do you think Sal likes you?” Sandra
asked.
“I don’t know,” Luce lied.
“You know we were about to start
watching when he said we should wait and get you first. He seemed to know you’d be in your room.”
“Maybe he’s a stalker.”
“Oh c’mon.”
“What?
You don’t think a guy would ever want to stalk me?”
“Luce, you can be so crazy sometimes,
you know that?”
Back at the lounge-kitchen, Jack was
waiting for Sal to finish using the microwave.
He also brought down a bottle of Frank’s hot sauce, and a Nalgene bottle
full of Jim Beam. The girls returned and
queued the next movie from the flashdrive.
The flat-screen in the lounge wasn’t new but hardly anyone used
it. Most watched movies on their own
computers, in their own rooms. They all
agreed that they ought to have more get-togethers like this, maybe make movie-nite a regular thing. Their Resident
Assistant or RA (a third-year student receiving free housing for
monitoring and providing resources to the new first years) isn’t the most
helpful, nor the most reliable. But they
don’t really need his help, and all the residents seem to like his laxity. They could have a party right now, and the RA
would never know as he’s not even there most nights. Jack wished then that Sandra was a little
wilder. He hoped the whiskey will
help.
The next movie they saw, Happy Accidents, combines sci-fi with
romantic comedy. It’s a low-budget film
set in New York, so the sci-fi aspect of it doesn’t really stand out, but it
does blend elements of the fantastic, which Luce sees as essential to any
story. Life, everyday life, can be so
mundane that stories offer the strange to jar readers into re-seeing the
everyday as new. She wondered what
extraordinary event she could include in her story. She still has the weekend to think about it
and come up with something.
At one point in the movie, towards the
end, the mother of the main character says that maintaining a relationship is a
constant battle. It’s a striking
metaphor which tells Luce she’s on the right track with her own story, as she
left her characters in the middle of an argument. The Nalgene bottle was being passed around,
and, as she took a sip of whiskey, she realized that her protagonist, or
protagonists (because the girl and the boy in her story, really, are
equals—they’re having an argument, but neither one of them is an antagonist out
to beat the other) will have to do something drastic. Someone has to be brave, to take some major
action, and bring the story to a boil.
Lest I spoil the ending of “Happy
Accidents,” we can fast-forward and say that after the movie, Sandra said she
was tired and ready to go to sleep. Jack
offered to walk her up. She laughed and
said it’s only one flight of stairs, but okay.
Sal and Luce were left to tidy up.
They’ve only had maybe a couple of shots between them, so they weren’t
drunk enough to just dump the bowl of popcorn in the sink. Besides, Sal hates seeing ants in the
kitchen. Luce said she could stay and
help, though he said it would only take a minute to wash a single bowl.
Then there was silence. He felt a little tired and so he assumed she
was, too. But the bit of whiskey lit her
up, and she hadn’t done anything very physical all day. She was still savoring the heat from the
whiskey when they left the lounge.
She lived on the second floor, and he
on the third. Her room was the first to
the left of the stairwell, so he said good night and was about to head up to
his floor, when she said:
“Sal, do you want to come to my room?”
He stopped and looked at her. It was as if the words were still floating in
the air, wispy and diaphanous. He wasn't entirely certain she said them at all.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
In her room, she thought about how
she’s not really sure what she’s doing.
But it became clear to her that forgetting about her ex can best be
achieved by re-directing one’s thoughts (i.e. writing a different story—i.e.
different from her past experience, the story that was playing in her head),
or, as is the case now, focusing one’s attention on someone else. Even if Sal doesn’t open up the universe of
experiences for her, even if he’s just her “rebound guy,” that’s okay. It was V-day, after all. Why struggle and be alone when one doesn’t
have to?
She turned her bedside lamp on and put
a patterned piece of cloth (we’d call it a piece of capulana or a lenço here
in Mozambique) over it to soften the light.
Then she turned off the ceiling light and asked him:
“Do you have a condom?”
A pause. Again, even though he wasn’t inebriated,
everything seemed slow and dreamy.
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
A slight look of confusion. She had assumed all guys kept one in their
wallets and were always ready on the go.
“I don’t think I want to have
sex. I mean I do, but not tonight. Call me old-fashioned, but we’ve never really
talked or hung out even. We don’t really
know each other.”
She smiled. He won’t be her “rebound guy” after all.
Now, do we still need to divulge what
they ended up doing that night? Can’t we
just end it there, with the vision of her smiling at him and him with a tender
look on his face? I feel like I’m
getting into fofoca (gossip) here,
but I also don’t want to cop out this time.
So, let’s see. She said:
“Well, it’s too late to be getting to
know each other. Do what you want, I’m going to bed.”
She started to take her clothes
off. He watched her slowly undress. She watched him watching her undress. She kept her underwear on and slipped into
bed, under the covers. It was a cold
February night.
He wondered if she thought he was a
prude. He liked her and cared what she
thought of him, but he wasn’t about to have sex with a girl who could possibly
be intoxicated. She appeared sober, and
he was turned on by her. But what he
really wanted to do was to just stay with her, to simply or literally just
sleep with her. So he took his shirt
off, but kept his pants on, and slipped into bed as well. They held each other for a long time until it
got too warm, and then they started turning over and on their sides away from
each other. It was a small bed, and it
became clear they weren’t sleeping any time soon. When they came together again, she started to
touch his shoulders, caress his chest.
He took her hands and nuzzled against her neck, taking her all in, breathing her all in. He let go of her hands and
held her face. He was kissing her when
she took her bra off. He raised himself
up a little and looked at her and touched and felt the shapeliness of her body. He kissed her again and again and again
again. He kissed her deep, deep
down, tasting the core of her femininity. There was nothing else. They held each other once more and were
finally able to sleep.
Y.
Well, okay. Never written anything like that before.
Maybe being a PCV for over two years has made me a bit of a perv.
Oh, well. X isn’t really the most realistic ending, anyway. I mean, not if we put in the nitty-gritty
details. . .
It seems clear, in retrospect, that Sal and his beloved would
never come together. If you read last
year’s “Happy V-day” part 1, you can see that she’s still very much hung-up on
her ex-boyfriend. She's also not daring enough. She'd much rather reflect and write about her experience, than take a chance to experience something different. And he was too young
and inexperienced to see that she was preoccupied by someone else. He was interested in her, but she wasn’t in
him. It was a simple as that. There’s no use analyzing the sources of their
preoccupations, but since we’re trying to build a story, a “How” and a “Why,”
as Atwood suggests, then let’s add some key information.
Maybe it was precisely because she was preoccupied with her ex
that he became attracted to her. Her
silence gave her the aura of mystery, and unlike most excited college girls, she
appeared pensive and exotic. Probably
she knew he was attracted to her, but deliberately blocked or resisted the
attraction because her ex was white. She
remembered her brother telling her this racial joke, which repulsed her: “Hey, what do you call a white guy with an
Asian fetish?” What? “A Caucasian.
Get it? A Cock-asian. Hahahahaha!” Her brother can be such an asshole sometimes. She thought he was teasing her about her
boyfriend. He kept a database of racially charged jokes, but this one became a nasty incantation for her. Now, whenever a white
guy shows her any attention, she’s more than a little revolted. . .
Okay, so by details, I guess I meant ethnic differences. I mean, they have to be different, don’t
they? They’re already of the same
generation, the same age, grew up in the same state, pretty much had similar,
suburban childhoods. We can say that they're both from middle class families. They both have cars, for example. Old, used-cars, yes, but they're both mobile within and without the city. They didn't need to call their parents for rides back home, or to pander to friends for rides to parties. See, if we’re just going
to assume that they’re both white (as X seems to do) then we’ve fallen into
some ethno-centric whitehole where white is normal and the standard against
which beauty, ethics and aesthetics are evaluated. But what is “normal?” Perhaps we can say something is
“natural.” And what can be more natural
than (ethnic) differences, especially if our story is set in the United States
of America? We're not in
Atwood’s Canada, for Christ’s sake.
So the two of them watched the two films that night, and even
though they sat together in that comfy couch, even though they enjoyed the
films together, the two of them were just not on the same wavelength. The stars above them did not line up. While her broken heart was on the mend, his
was just about to break, and he wasn’t even aware of it at the time. After movie nite, she never asked him to come
to her room, and he slept soundly in his own bed.
The tragic irony was that she entered his dreams, penetrated his
psyche. Like an angelic-incubus, she came to him as a vision
in his blue-curtained bedroom, but it was her voice calling out his name that
saturated him with pure sunlight the next morning.
Of course it wasn’t really or literally her that visited him in his
dreams that night and several other nights thereafter. His vision wasn’t Luce, but his own image of
her. A mirage from deep within, conjured
up by his unconscious. But though she was an illusion, the feeling she evoked was irrevocable.
Had he been less sensitive, less intuitive, he could’ve ignored it all,
even forgotten that he dreamt of her in the first place. But his dreams of her did not dissipate into
nothingness that semester. And so he
suffered when he saw her go out with other guys. Normally, he would just move on, focus on
other girls who actually showed him some interest. But because they lived in the same building,
he wasn’t able to shake her off his mind as easily as he wanted to. He would wonder why she never gave her a
chance. And when fofoca about her becoming a slut began to blossom, he couldn’t help
but think how he wasn’t good enough for her.
Just one chance, he thought. Just give him one chance. Even
if he were to be her “rebound dick,” he would have gladly offered himself
up. Though he was already possessed by her,
or by his thoughts of her, he wanted so much to hold her, and for her to hold
him. He wanted mutual possession, and he
thought that if only given a chance, he could change her heart.
But it wasn’t just her heart that he would’ve needed to
change. Not only was she dead-set on
evading white guys, she also thought that she didn’t need any guy at all to be
happy. She’s in university to learn
about the world, about the world of plants, to be more specific. She would have fun once in a while, but she
was determined in her pursuit of a university degree, which would be a major
leap towards a lucrative career in pharmaceutical research or environmental
protection. She was studying in the hard
sciences to learn some hard skills.
Happiness depended on the security of this future, on her independence,
both financially and emotionally. Nothing
else really mattered. At least, not at
the time.
Eventually, though, after they all moved out of the dorms, Sal did
forget her. Or only had a vague
recollection of her. He would remember
her name, but not her particular features.
She had black hair, of course he remembered that, but almost all Asians
have black hair. Once in a while he
would think of her, of how deep a mark she left on him, despite the fact that
nothing ever happened between them. But
then he would remind himself that she most certainly did not think of him at
all. That there had never been and never
will be any reciprocity between them. Once he remembers the futility of her
memory, then he could move on again. He
would distrust women more, but he would keep on seeking a broad range of
experiences, an expansion of the self, in books and travels, drugs and dancing,
love and sex. But perhaps the lesson he
learned, the moral of his story, if you still need or want or believe in lessons and
morals in endings of stories, is that the greater the differences between
people (in culture and class, age and ethnicity, gender and sexuality), the
more terrible the risks. Though perhaps
greater is the self’s expansion. At the
end of the day, however, none of these differences matter. Not in the darkness. Not in death.
Lest I be accused of plagiarizing Atwood’s ending, let me use one of my
favorite lines from Spanish fairy tales:
“Colorin, colorado, este cuento ya está acabado.” [Colorin, colorado,
this story is now finished or finito.]”
The line seems to me both non-sensical and explicit in its
conclusion. But I’ll end by adding my
revision of the line: “Colorin, colorado, otra historia siempre está arrancando.” Another story is always
beginning.
