this is a yung ting saying NO to men and YES to political philosophy. i literally almost called up can who has been phoning me up and flirting with me AGAIN, to say that yes I would come and see him, but then I remembered how I spent all the weekends of first term going up to see my trashy ex simon, ie the 30 year old man who was using me for sex and had a completely idiotic politic and hadn’t had a job in seven years and thought that made him noble. its like j. cole says, ‘pussy is blinding’, or like enjorlas says - ‘marius, you’re no longer a child. I do not doubt you mean it well, but now there is a higher cause. who cares about your lonely soul, we strive towards a higher goal, our little lives don’t count at all.’ so i would just go up and see simon and have sex with him and not concentrate on my economics work, and that’s exactly what i was planning to do with this guy Can and now, like, no, because i very much want the higher things in life. and OK, sure, spending two days in brighton won’t ruin my revision schedule, but i like myself so much better as the girl who distrusts men and spends all her time in the library working and loves political philosophy and comparative government more than anything, than the girl i would be if i slept with him when i should be studying for my end of year exams. there is flirtation and then there is the higher ends in life, and now that i am capable of choosing the latter i most certainly will do so. to be honest, i do feel a connection with him, i always have, but if it’s meant to be then he will wait, and it will happen at some point down the years. i just, don’t want to be the girl who lets guys have sex with her anymore. i want to achieve everything i can, live for myself, and prove that working class eastern european immigrant women are more than we are cracked up to be. i gave him everything, and i gave simon everything, and now i won’t give any man anything. all that i have is my own.
TW: Sexual Assault I felt a sour taste in my throat, the one that immediately precedes my gag reflex, when I read the NY Times piece about an immigration official who forced a woman to perform oral sex on him in exchange for her green card.
After the 22-year-old Colombian woman, whose name has not been released, went in for an interview for her green card with immigration agent Isaac Baichu in December of 2007, she started receiving phone calls from Baichu demanding sex. When he called her to meet in a restaurant’s parking lot in Queens, she was prescient enough to stash her cell phone, which was recording their conversation, in her purse. Her cell phone captured Baichu asking for sex “one or two times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t have to see me anymore.” Later in the tape there’s a minute-long pause when, the reporter writes, the young woman “yielded to his demand out of fear that he would use his authority against her.” The Times posted an audio clip of the woman’s recording in the web edition of the article (yay, multimedia?).
The sexual exploitation of immigrant women is nothing new, but there’s a very specific pattern of abuse tied to this case. News of a Miami ICE agent who made a pit stop at his home so he could rape the Haitian woman he was responsible for transporting to detention and reports of sexual assault on a woman held at the Don T. Hutto Family Residential Facility, a de facto prison in Texas for families awaiting immigrations processing, come to mind. Similar scandals have been reported in Maryland (Deputy Lloyd W. Miner this year), California (Agent Eddie Miranda in 2007) and Georgia (Agent Kelvin R. Owens in 2005).
of things worth loving for their own sake…
this is me wondering if the economics exam is going to go well or not
1. There will be several days that you daydream about stepping in front of a city bus. Don’t. It will not be beautiful. It will not be brave. It will be selfish. It will be broken. Your mother will cry.
2. Don’t write for him. Write for you. Write for others like you. Write so the girl that thinks about stepping in front of public transportation doesn’t. Don’t be selfish.
3. When you will yourself to sleep and it doesn’t come- get up. It doesn’t matter that it’s 3 am. There will be other 3 am’s. Take a shower. Take two. Wash him out of your hair. Write a poem. Read the same book you’ve read 202 times again. The 203rd time might tell you something different. Don’t stay in bed- you will think about the bus again.
4. Don’t kiss him because he’s broken. Don’t kiss him because his laughter never reaches his eyes. Don’t try and fix him. Fix yourself first. Be selfish. He can’t save you.
5. Date yourself. Take yourself out to eat. Don’t share your popcorn at the movies with anyone. Stroll around an art museum alone. Fall in love with canvases. Fall in love with yourself.
6. Dress up and wear red lipstick and get drunk with your friends. They’re the ones that will pick you up. Don’t kiss him. Or him. Don’t fall asleep on strange couches with strange boys. When his hand slides up your dress walk away. Hit him. Don’t kiss him. He can’t save you.
7. Get another tattoo. Get five more. Get another hole in your ear. Don’t listen to your dad. You will still be able to get a job. Did you really want to be employed by someone like your father? Haven’t you had enough of judgmental old white men anyway? Get fuck you tattooed in tiny letters on your hip.
8. When you feel the yearning for a new city- start over. Take 200 bucks and a three suitcases. Work anywhere that will have you. Meet strange people and forget your name. Call yourself Ruby. No one will know the difference. Remember to call your mother. Don’t be selfish. Come home when you find yourself in the strangers and the small one bedroom apartment.
9. Don’t whisper evil things into your own ear. Other people are going to shout them at you. Be your own hero. Keep a sword on your key ring.
10. Don’t step in front of a city bus. It will not be beautiful. Live. Stay up all night with a boy that promises you everything and means it. Live. See shitty local bands with a friend. Wear a different band’s t-shirt. No one will care. Live. Have a baby girl with tiny fingers and tiny toes someday. Pour love into her until it’s overflowing. Live. Wake up. Staying in bed all day is not poetic.
Live. Live.
Live.
Do you hear that? It’s me. It’s your life. Wake up.
have read 470 pages of hal varian’s intermediate microeconomics in two days and keep thinking i see indifference curves everywhere
what I ended up getting was as usual not what I wanted, but instead this book and an even more entrenched cynicism about romantic love. cos, i remember how much fun we used to have together and the things he said to me, and regret, sometimes, how i didn’t let him have what he wanted: no strings attached. i got other things instead, though. this amazing book. hours spent in the library listening to this and reading isaiah berlin while it rains outside, feeling the greatest happiness i have ever felt. writing essays that express my ideas. all this richness. being co chair of the student union’s women’s campaign, organising things with a lovely group of people. a job in bangladesh in the summer. a brain which won’t stop ticking away and thinking about things and constructing ideas, not any more. a lot of friends in college who aren’t judgemental and selfish like he is. volunteering in an advice centre for asylum seekers with amazing people, actually making a difference at last. plans. a moral identity and a background justification for my actions, higher pleasure, a sense of dignity. all these things which i’ve written essays about this year, all these things which i’ve started to feel this year. i feel different now, i think as i go the short walk from my room to the library. about him, about everything.
maybe I should fight harder for you
but I said I’d let you go when you wanted me to
so, so slow
can you feel me letting go?
I, I know that we turn away
when the cracks begin to show
and now we’re sleeping with the television and all the lights on,
one of us is leaving soon but we’re both already gone.
stuck at the lost and found,
we watch things disappear…
looking for the missing piece, but it was never here.
ever hour I find a way, a way
to convince myself to stay
back and forth, I can’t juggle
lying here,
need to stand up and struggle.
but life gets stranger than fiction each year, and crueler, and funnier
and you have me caught between fire and air
unable to breathe or burn.
I became aware of the world’s tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but the shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed upon us and unappreciated.
enduring love, pt. 2
he plays music down the phone to me, and i hold the it close, letting the music drift out from between my fingers, close to my heart. i want to see you. you need someone who appreciates you. i hear his voice, how it’s changed, how his words have changed… remember his eyes, his skin, hear the desire in his words. now, there are things i would choose over anything else, above him: knowledge, passion, dignity. but a love that strong permanently changes you, moulds you around it. when it is gone, the shapes it carved in your skin remain, and the space it left yearns, sometimes, for what it once held. i think of his passion and intelligence and strength, remember the awe in his eyes as he looked at me, the song he wrote for me one day. come and see me before you leave. i can’t, of course… i can’t risk for a single moment being distracted from studying. but i remember the phone calls down the years, how the attachment grew stronger with time, and wonder if there are some things that are just meant to be. i dream about him that night, daydream the next day, tell myself off for being weak.
