* my apologies for my blatant misrepresentation of and insensitivy to those who are actually developmentally challenged. I would rather spend my time with them than with the people this post is about.
The other night I went to a bar. Somehow, every asshole male with an over-inflated sense of self -entitlement and was ALSO at the same bar that night. Somehow, they all wanted a piece. It was like a competition, a fashion show, and they all brought out their best self-entitled behavior to model for me!
LIKE I’D BE IMPRESSED.
Asshole #1! is a man I’ve been working with for eight months. Our staff room functions largely like a high school cafeteria, and there is always somebody sitting at the wrong table. With that in mind, I try to approach any situation with an aim to keep the drama, conflict, and outright hostility out of the way. So when #1! kissed me the first time, I assumed he was just being drunken and silly. I laughed it off. The second time, I firmly took a step backwards, but didn’t tell him off because a) drama! and b) he was to drunk to understand, and I didn’t have the patience to drag it out until he sobered up. The third time, I was starting to get pissed off. This is not a man who has feelings for me. He does not secretly wish to date me. I have not rejected dates or broken his heart. I am, however, ignored until he wants to be made out with (passive voice chosen intentionally) every few weeks. Fuck off, #1.
Ok, you’re saying. A few unwanted kisses. A little bit of unprofessional behaviour, some discomfort at work. Doesn’t really sound like there were any olympics going on, even if kiss 2 and 3 happened on the same night.
Asshole #2! is a man I also have to work with (I’d like to point out that the necessity to work with someone immediately increases the stakes when embarking on assholery). I met him just a few days before and I need to work with him in the cafeteria/staffroom for four more months. He’s also married, but left his wife in his home country for the year. I agreed to dance with him. I did not agree to be fondled, felt up, made out with. I did not agree to have his tongue in my mouth. And I did not agree to be made to feel uncomfortable when, instead of telling him to fuck off, I quietly refused to dance with him again. I’ve already been made to feel uncomfortable on the dance floor, I am in the awkward position of either being gossiped about or causing gossip to happen to someone who just arrived, and I really really don’t need to justify my refusal to dance. What the hell was I supposed to be – a sex toy until his wife showed up? You don’t develop feelings for someone that are worth breaking up a marriage for in 3 days, so…..THE HELL?
Perhaps I need to rethink the priority list – #1 – telling men who cross boundaries to fuck off. #2 – avoiding discomfort at work. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
Asshole #3! is a man I met at the bar. We danced, we kissed a little, and then we went our separate ways. It was fun, but we’re talking 15 minutes of fun here, not a relationship. A little perspective would be nice, here. He chased me out to ask for my number, and when he told the story later (to MY FRIENDS), he said that my demanding that he be polite to me and then kissing him and agreeing to give him my number was my ‘bitching him out and ruining his night’. He didn’t call me. I didn’t hunt him down. Clearly, neither of us were that interested. So when I showed up at the bar two weeks later, with my friends, and saw him with his friends, throwing myself at him wasn’t the first thing I thought of. He came to talk to me, and we made small talk (remember: we’ve never had a conversation!) and then he asked me if I remembered him.
“Yep!” I said.
“Well, why didn’t you come to talk to me?” he said.
“Well, you didn’t call me,” I shrugged.
“I guess you don’t want to hear my REASONS, huh?” he said.
“Uh, not particularly.” Could he not understand that I just didn’t care? He stormed away, stormed back again.
“We just kissed,” he lectured. “That doesn’t mean anything. What exactly do you want?” Uh, I want to be left alone by men who aren’t interested in me, who I am not interested in, and who somehow want me to still feed their ego by being all over them after they don’t call me. I don’t need to have my evening hijacked by some egotistical asshole who gives me lectures at the bar because he’s feeling neglected. What exactly did I owe him?
Asshole #4! is a man that I have spoken to for a collective 4 minutes over 6 months. The second 2 minutes occurred at this bar, where I reminded him of my name and where he had seen me before. Then we both turned away. I began talking to another man, he began talking to…someone. Next thing I knew, he had grabbed me and was dragging me away from my conversation.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he said. I guess he saw my face, because then he said, “What the fuck’s your problem?”
“You,” I said. “You are my problem.”
“Why the fuck am I your problem?” he yelled.
“Because you’re grabbing me,” I said, pulling my arm away. Up his hands went in the air, defensively.
“SORRY!” he said. Like maybe I’d done something wrong in asking him not to touch me. Like maybe I’d requested something completely unreasonable by wanting to decide which part of the bar I was in by myself. If he was my boyfriend, I’d have broken up with him on the spot, but he didn’t even have that excuse for stopping a conversation with another man. I don’t know this man. We are not friends. We’ve never had a relationship.
By the end of the night, battered and exhausted, I went home and called my mother, who told me that ‘girls who drink are unattractive’ and that I ‘must be driving all the good men away’.
ouch.
The blatant rudeness of my students will never cease to amaze me.
Let me start by saying that they’ve cut off water to my entire city. My apartment, this morning, had no hot water so my shower was sketchy at best and I’m not as clean as I’d like to be. To compensate, I’m wearing a dress. I like to look good when I feel like crap.
The dress I’m wearing has small sleeves. I didn’t really think about it, because I rarely have occasion to raise my arms in class. But today my arms did go up. NEWSFLASH: the pits don’t get shaved every day. On a day with no hot water, they are NOT A PRIORITY. Well, when my arm went up, my sleeve slipped. A little hair was showing for people who were looking for it.
AND MY STUDENTS SURE WERE. They spent the next ten minutes trying to get my arm up again, by tricking me, yanking on my arm, pulling at my sleeve……WHAT THE HELL?
THEY’RE FRIGGEN 12.
Hey, remember that kid who carried homophobia across the Pacific Ocean and straight into my classroom?
Remember how I patiently explained allll about homophobia, and rationally and politely asked him to refrain from that kind of behaviour in my classroom? How I respectfully asked his opinion before handing down the decree? How I made him understand why it was bad instead of simply banning it?
He was recently moved up a level, into a different teacher’s class. The teacher came to me one days and said, “Hey, you know what Jack’s taken to calling me?”
“What?” I said. “Bad teacher? Fat? Let me guess. He think you’re pregnant too!”
“No,” he said. “He’s been calling me ‘Homo’.”
So, instead of making a kid understand something, I just annoyed the kid to the point where the fun in making fun of gays didn’t outweigh the tedium of listening to me talk about gays.
WIN.
I came home tonight to make dinner, only to find that I actually have no food in my house. I was going to make salad, but the lettuce was bad. I forgot I finished the spinach, I’m out of spaghetti, I forgot to thaw meat, the leftovers are mouldy, as is the cheese (which I will probably eat anyway), I’m out of bread and I don’t have snack food.
‘Aha!’ I thought, reaching into the very back of the fridge, past the half-jars of jam and the gigantor tub of sour cream. ‘Eggs! I’ll scramble them up and throw them in with a bowl of rice! I rock.’
So I boiled the water. I got the rice in. I stirred. I heated up a pan, put oil in it. I cracked the first egg. I cracked the second egg. The second egg was the approximate colour of a yellow hi-liter. ‘Hmmmm,’ I thought. Curious, I grabbed the third and last egg. I cracked it. I jumped back, ejaculated some strange sound, dropped the shells into the pan.
The yolk was dark green.
And of course, cooking, because I still had the pan on. So now my apartment smells like fried rotten egg and I have a nasty pan to wash and some nasty compost to take out.
What have we learned from all of this? Well, I’m a university graduate living successfully in a foreign country, and I haven’t quite managed to figure out how to keep a fridge stocked with edible food.
Win!
Today was Teacher’s Day in Korea. Happy day, teachers!
Today, my kids:
- Asked for pizza
- Asked me if I was pregnant
- Told me I was fat
- Told me that their last teacher got them pizza
- Looked at me like sad cows when I asked them a question
- Called me ‘bad teacher’
- Threw bits of eraser around the room
- Spit on my floor and called it a ’skill’
- Stole my bugles (slash dinner for those of us who are nutrionally inclined)
- Didn’t bring their books to class
I sang ‘Happy Teacher’s Day’ to myself.
Filed under: idiocy (my own)
I have indulged myself a little tonight. I am a little more intoxicated than I should be, on a work night.
That being said, I think I love the BFF.
To put this into perspective, this is not the first time this has happened with a friend with a girlfriend. I do tend to form very close friendships with members of the opposite sex who are….safe. Unavailable, for whatever reason.
There are some new teachers at our school. New teachers who start talking about how great the BFF is. “You have no idea sister!” I want to shout. “Listen, boy,” I want to snark, “You’ve not seen ANYTHING”
These new teachers have done nothing wrong. They are looking for friendship, safety, knowledge. The same things I have been looking for, working for, for eight months. The same things I have been incredibly lucky to find in the BFF.
This weekend, I waited, as always, to find out if the BFF was making plans to visit the long distance Girlfriend. When he wasn’t, I made plans with him. Only to have them thwarted when the Girlfriend called. When he left. When he ditched our plans without a backward glance. And I thought hard: was I hurt that he liked the girlfriend more than me? Was I simply disappointed at the prospect of a lonely Sunday afternoon? Did I just wish, selfishly, that someone thought me as important as the BFF thinks his girlfriend: he is willing to drop everything for her. And while I am willing, for a friend, to be the thing that is dropped, I think I am also wishing for someone who will drop things for me.
Today he came back, and we had a few meals together. I got an apology for the missed roof picnic, a sheepish lunch invitation, and dinner. I even got a bar trip, some secret sharing, and some candid sex talk. What more could I want from a BFF on a Tuesday night? Nothing. I want for nothing, from him.
But then we danced. He chose the song. A slow song. And he pulled me close, as always, wrapped his arms around me, as always, held my hand and sang into my ear.
Like I said – I want for nothing.
And instead of thinking about how lucky I am to get him for 10 months, instead of fully enjoying the 2 months I have left……I am misplacing my general loneliness onto a very specific, very inappropriate, man, who has blessed me with his friendship.
What is wrong with me?!
We unbuckled before the plane hit the ground. By the time it finished taxiing, we had all our stuff on our laps and were nervously tapping our feet.
“Ok, as soon as it stops, get up and run. Seriously. Be pushing old ladies out of the way…..”
“….I really want to be the first ones through immigration…..”
“….Really, I mean it….book it…”
“…Do you think immigration will take very long?…”
“..Good thing we didn’t check any baggage!…”
“….How wide do you think the hallways are, could we pass people easily, do you think?”
We were very, very excited, talking over each other and probably being a little louder than was necessary. We were about to spend our long weekend in motherfucking China, and we only had three days. We did not want to waste any time in the airport. We were ready to go.
“Oh man guys, you better be very fa- “
“Excuse me, girls,” said the woman sitting in front of us, one of the only foreigners on the plane. She was leaning over her seat, smirking just a tiny bit. “We’re not in Beijing.”
“…Pardon?”
“We’re not in Beijing. We’re in a different city. You can put your bags down.”
“She’s lying,” whispered the girl on my left side.
“Are you joking?” asked the girl on my right side. “You’re joking.”
“Nope. There’s a storm in Beijing. We’ll be a few hours.” She settled back down, said something to her boyfriend, laughed.
We looked at each other. “Naaaaahhhh,” we said. “No way we missed the announcement. No way ALL THREE of us missed that announcement. We’re definitely in Beijing. She’s fucking with us.”
We sat, tapping our feet, checking and re-checking our passports, for a few more minutes.
“Uh guys,” said the girl on my left. “Why isn’t anyone getting up?”
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman in front of us. “Did they make the announcement in English?”
“Sure did,” she smiled.
“Ah.” I sat heavily back down. “They made the announcement in English.” I said.
“Naaaahhhhh” 10 minutes passed. 20. Half an hour. “Guess we’re really not in Beijing” said the girl on my right. “When’s dinner?”
From Students:
“Ouch!.. Teacher, do I say ‘drat’ or ’shit’?”
“Clooney – what is it you are pretending to throw at me?”
“Ddong”
“Teacher! You are single, so every night, you watch 19 TV, yes?”
On the Great Wall of China:
“Hey, remember that time I couldn’t walk because I had too much sex? This is going to be way worse.”
At the bar:
“We’re not in Russia…..we’re in CHINA”
Over lunch:
“I have no problem with crotch hair. Sometimes you just have a little *cough cough* because there’s a hair at the back of your throat, but no big deal.”
“Oh yeah? Sometime I have a little *cough cough* because there’s a penis at the back of my throat*
Filed under: touristing
I went to China for the weekend. That’s how I’ll be starting all my stories for the next…month, or so. Hope it doesn’t get old!
While I was there, I:
- got up at 5 once, 8 once, and 5:30 twice. I have an ordinary wake-up time of noon.
- sat on an airplane on a runway in some random Chinese city for 8 hours.
- got lost in random tiny little alleys in the dark
- took a taxi ride of death on the beijing freeway!
- went to the wrong hostel
- wandered around Tian’anmen Square
- was disappointed by Tian’anmen Square
- didn’t see Chairman Mao’s mummified corpse
- wandered around the Forbidden City with six million other people
- went to Jonghan Garden on a whim (“see that temple? let’s go THERE!”)
- had a costume party in a temple at the top of a mountain in Jonghan Garden
- took pictures of travel buddies peeing in a public toilet with squat pots, but no stalls
- ate Peking Duck (IN PEKING)
- had to buy a new battery for my camera (more money than all three nights at the hostel)
- found the BC Canada Olympic Pavilion – it opened on the day that we left. (bastards!)
- took a bicycle rickshaw through some Hutongs
- had a heated argument with the driver of the bicycle rickshaw
- went to Pearl Market
- had a heated argument with almost everyone at Pearl Market
- ate ice cream at the Temple of Heaven
- ate pineapple on a stick upon leaving the Temple of Heaven
- took our first nice (not death-defying) cab ride to the hostel
- met Swedish Raoul
- went to an Acrobat show
- went to the meat market
- considered eating scorpions, centipeds, snakes, and starfish
- walked away with four meat popsicles (bargaining FAIL)
- ate what was called dog meat, but what I suspect was actually chicken
- got sketchy, wonderful full body massage
- went to the Great Motherfucking Wall of China (which was the hardest physical thing I have EVER done)
- didn’t throw up after climbing the Great Motherfucking Wall of China
- fell asleep on a random guy’s shoulder after climbing the Great Motherfucking Wall of China
- met random travellers to get drunk with
- got mobbed, when in a great bloody group of white people, by street vendors
- learned how to write Mandarin
- were fought over by bar owners
- smoked a hookah and tried not to get herpes
- watched a pole dancer (so. hot.)
- played ‘cowboys, bears, and indians’ on the street outside the bar
- demonstrated how to use a squat pot on the dance floor
- contracted a foreign mouth disease
- slept for three hours but made the plane anyway
- went straight to work from the airport
AND ALL THAT IN ONLY THREE DAYS
details to follow….
Filed under: idiocy (my own)
It’s been a while.
Tonight, I went out for a drink. A drink. And when I said, at the bar after dinner, that I was going to jet, the BFF shook my hand, held on to it. “Want a drink?” he said.
So now it’s 2:30, and I have a day off tomorrow that I don’t want to waste. I have to pack to go to China (holy shit, I’m going to China). I have to get up to go to the pool and go back to bed. I have a steak night (which may have been compromised, it turns out, if I had an affinity for strap-ons) planned, and I’d like to catch up on two weeks of blogging. Which means: commenting on posts everyone stopped reading days ago. Which means: eight posts in one day, all posted 20 minutes apart. Which means: possibly fucking with the dates to fool people.
but probably not.
