It’s sort of like consulting…

I just finished writing this story for my fiction class, and somehow it had all these sex scenes in it. Or at least, foreplay scenes. And here is what I have learned: Writing sex scenes is hard. Difficult things include:

1) Getting them workshopped. This was especially hard in my current fiction class, because you are not allowed to speak while the class discusses your story. So if someone had said, “Mae seems like a pervert,” I would have just had to sit there like a mute while everyone shook their heads sadly. Not that that happened. On the other hand, no one was like, “Mae really doesn’t seem like a pervert.”

2)  Actually writing them. There are a lot of words I want to exist that just aren’t in the English language. For example, if you want to talk about a penis, “penis” is pretty clinical; “dick” is pretty British street urchin-y, and also the name of my childhood piano teacher; “wang” just makes you sound like a wang (the boomerang of penis vocabulary!)… etc. I went with dick but didn’t feel great about it.

3) Related to (2), but there are also a bunch of words you can’t use because of romance novels, like “ravish” and “throbbing” and “member” (ughhhhh it makes me never want to join a club again… because then I will be a member! Badum chhhhh) and “yearn.” No one should yearn for a ravishing member to throb over to their house. You know? But then it’s like Fabio stole half your vocabulary. (In India, one of the beach shacks had a lot of romance novels, and I read one called The Billionaire’s Step-Daughter’s Love Child’s Lover. Or something. That is why I know about this. Also, I read Twilight, although that was more a “liquid eyes”/”bronze hair”/”no sex” situation.)

4) My parents are really supportive about how I like to write, so they asked to see my story. And I was like, “Well… no” and they were like, “Why? It’s okay if it’s bad… we’ve read a lot of other bad stuff you’ve written.” (Which they really have.)

So then I had to be like, “You know how all my friends got consulting jobs? Well, I’m sort of like them. Except instead of doing consulting for money, I write porn. For free.”

Keychains

So here is something fun to write about.  Keychains in India!  They are crazy!  I don’t think I have ever laughed harder than when I went keychain shopping (which was basically every day, although not entirely by choice.  Stores just weren’t as specialized there – a lot of them sold Pretty Much All Stuff.  Key chains, being stuff, were pervasive).

The best key chains I saw were in Agra, around the Taj.  (I’m on first name terms with the Taj Mahal… and how many buildings do you know, betch?)  They were these little flat pieces of wood, and they had English “sentences” or “phrases” painted on them, such as:

Love is the Dream of Life

Friend Like You (my personal favorite… the more you think about it, the vaguer it gets)

Nice to have a helpfull

I always with you

I had a lot of fun looking through these key chains, and ended up giving them as gifts to some people.  (Just in case you are reading this, friend who got the “Friend Like You” keychain – I gave it to you because having a friend like you is GOOD.  Not just because you are a friend like yourself.)

Another excellent keychain I found in India was too weird to buy as a gift, so I got it for myself, which constantly embarrasses me now because it is large and strange and so whenever I lose my keys I have to be like, “Hey, has anyone seen a keychain with a teddy bear attached to it?”  And then everyone looks at me like “My god, you are so freaking twee!”

Which is not true, because my key chain is much more than a teddy bear.  It is a teddy bear… wearing a skirt… and then attached to the skirt… in the crotch area… THERE IS A CLOCK.

It’s so absurd it almost makes sense again.  Like, what if you’re a little bear, and you’re looking at your groin, and you want to know what time it is, and you don’t have a watch and you don’t want to stop looking at your groin because WHAT SORT OF BEAR WOULD WANT SOMETHING LIKE THAT so you just, you know, attach a clock to your bear-skirt and then the problem is solved.

See?  It’s so logical.  That’s actually why I bought it – because I love cold, hard logical reasoning.

The Situation

So I’m back in real school, where there is work and I have to scrounge up food and do my own dishes (rather than lounging in India, attending serve-yourself buffets that are still inexplicably staffed by six or seven waiters), and I have less time to write this.  It is a fact.  So.  I will post less.  And you will read less.  If you can even read.  (JUST KIDDING I’m sure you read great!)

BUT I want you to know that I am writing something long that will probably drop (ahhaahha wow I am really laughing at my own word choice… Chicago winter, what are you doing to me?) in about a month (??).  It’s for a nonfiction class, and it’s going to probably be more sad and creepy than usual, but if I don’t disastrously mess it up it should be interesting. It’s about MURDER so… basically, I’m hella hard.

But not so hard that I committed the murder.

But still hard.  Very, very hard.

Oh my god, who I am kidding.  I am listening to Justin Bieber as we speak.  It’s pretty ironic that I have listened to “One Time” like, a thousand times.  Even the song itself is telling me that I have taken things too far.

You should watch the video for “One Time” at least once, though, if only to enjoy the intro scene where Mr. Bieber answers his phone and says:

“Yo, Usher!  I’m just playing video games with Ryan.”

Now that – THAT is hard.  JB, you ball outrageous.

(Point being: I’m going to be posting more like weekly now, with a really long one coming soon.  Try not to fall into a pit of despair without, you know, constant Ramayana analysis.  Or whatever I write.  I know it’s tough.  Wow, I really do not even know what I DO up in here.)

It’s The Claw

There is this sign that my friend Janet saw this one time and NEVER FORGOT and STILL TALKS ABOUT ALL THE TIME (and sometimes I WISH SHE WOULD STOP BECAUSE IT’S SERIOUSLY BEEN YEARS so that’s why I’m shouting).  It had a little picture of a stick-dude pedestrian, and it said, “Stop for me, it’s the law.”  But someone had defaced it so that stick-pedestrian had a claw-hand, and it said, “Stop for me, it’s the claw.”  Janet still thinks it’s hilarious but in my humble opinion, after year two of reminiscing it starts to lose its charm.

However, I thought of this sign one weekend in India very… much.  We were staying in this very strange hotel in Hospet, a place I would recommend you never go unless you are studying Vijayanagra, which we were and which sounds like vagina a LOT.  The weirdness of the hotel is best summed up by two facts.

FACT 1: The fish were packed into the fish tank like bricks are packed into a… wall…

FACT 2:  When we were eating dinner in the hotel restaurant, my friend said, “Huh. I kind of feel like we’re in a death trap,” and then everyone nodded soberly and contemplated their impending demise.  It had no windows and practically no lights.  I don’t think it had a name but if it did, the name would be The Food Cave.  Or maybe Goodbye, Sweet World: The Restaurant.

Anyway so we were in this hotel, and it was weird, and the poor fish were stacked on top of each other like Lincoln Logs (better simile!  I’m growing up!), and then someone on the program got attacked in the stairwell.

Wilson, a guy on our program, was walking down the stairs, and a hotel employee was walking up them.  So Wilson moved to the side, to let the employee by, but the employee moved to the side, too.  And then he reached out and grabbed Wilson’s arm with his hand, except it wasn’t a hand it was a CLAW.  So Wilson strategically ran away and escaped the claw.

I asked him to describe the hand.  ”What do you mean it was a claw?”

“It was a claw.”

“Like, a metal claw?”

“A CLAW IT WAS A CLAW.”

I think Wilson had a touch of PTSD.

Other people encountered the Claw Man later, though – he followed one girl to her room and told her she was beautiful, which is always nice to hear but gotta say, some times are much nicer than others – and apparently he had a hand deformity.  Which is fine, and I don’t want to rag on deformed people because all zero of my deformed friends are really nice, but I do want to rag on people who grab other people  and terrify them.  They suck.

Keeping it Real

I read an interview with Taylor Swift in InStyle recently, and she had this quote about why she had redecorated her apartment that was like (I’m paraphrasing), “My life is so real.  And when your life is as real as my life is, it’s nice to come home and have your walls be painted a fun color.  Like purple!”

This was funny because a) just… wow and b) it reminded me of how in India (oh dang policemen could PATROL on this segue) some of us, such as me, got kind of obsessed with Seeing The Real India.  I didn’t want to see some sanitized, tourist-friendly version of the country – I wanted to see the PAIN and the SUFFERING.  In hindsight this is actually kind of weird, like I went in thinking India must be depressing, and then when it was a mixed bag (instead of an undiluted bag of suck) I was like, “Duh.  The thing I imagined is reality, not the thing I am seeing with my eyes.”

But, weird or not, that’s how I was thinking for a while.  This was most obvious when we volunteered at a girl’s orphanage near where we were staying.  It was a lot of fun – the girls were really cute and smart.  (They were also obsessed with asking us our names – I think because “What’s your name?” was the English thing they were most comfortable saying – so every time we arrived or left, thousands/maybe not but A LOT of girls in super duper brightly colored clothes would come up to us, ask us our names, tell us their names, and leave, only to be immediately replaced by another girl in different colored clothes who would do the same thing.)  (All the moving colors and shouting and repetition could make you feel kind of high sometimes.)

We’d been volunteering at the orphanage for a few weeks when we found out that some of that these girls weren’t necessarily Real Orphans.  Apparently, any girl could live at the orphanage as long as she didn’t have a dad.  This was weirdly scandalous to some people (me).  I wasn’t like, asking the orphans if I could SPEAK TO THEIR SUPERVISOR  PLEASE THANK YOU, but it didn’t seem as Real.

Eventually, though, I realized that these orphans were real, in that they had been sent to live at an orphanage (and in that they were not CGI).  And maybe they weren’t Real, in the way that my totally imaginary Real India was, but neither was anything, really, except an armless, mute, gay orphan (the most disenfranchised orphan ever!).  Or a corpse.

AND FUN FACT: On one of our bus rides, I saw a parade of people walking along next to our bus, carrying an unconscious man on a flower-covered stretcher and singing.

I turned to my friend, who was sitting next to me, and said, “Dude!  Check out that nap!”

My friend looked out the window and said, “Mae, that is definitely a funeral.”

So I actually did see a corpse.   And boy, was it ever Real!

Boring AND thrilling!

I have really boring dreams.  It’s just who I am.  I rarely remember my dreams, and when I do, they’re like, “I counted my fingers and there were five!” (made up) or “I walked down the stairs in my dorm and then, when I got to the bottom, I woke up!” (not made up).  If I were to follow my dreams, I would end up in Boring, Oregon (an actual place!).

But in India, I had my first boring dream that was ALSO THRILLING.  It sounds impossible but that’s why I am here: to educate you.  So:

I DREAMED

That I dreamed I cut my fingernails, but then I woke up and I actually didn’t.

THEN I WOKE UP AND

I actually had cut my fingernails.

I have never before had a dream that made me simultaneously think “WOAH NELLY!  Am I in the Matrix?  Is reality a social construct?  OH MY GOD I need some sort of snack” and “This is so effing boring.  Fingernails.  I am dreaming about my own fingernails.”

It was groundbreaking.

Blah blah blah and my flippy floppies

One of the best days I had in India was the day we took boat rides.  There were some other good things about the day – for example, violent monkeys tried to steal our stuff and poop on our heads, but we escaped! Yeah! Look who’s pooping now, bitches!- but the boat rides were the best part.

The boats were like big baskets – they were made of some kind of woven plant – but they were also watertight.  I don’t know how this worked.  (I think it probably worked because plants are secretly amazing.  I saw some scaffolding in India that was made entirely of what looked like grass.  Grass!)   They were each driven by an Indian dude with a paddle, which contributed significantly to the day being awesome because it kept us from drowning ourselves.  Also, my boat’s particular dude was HEE LARIOUS.

He started being awesome right after we all got in the boat, because he pushed it a little into the lake and said, “Bye!”  We sat there staring at him stupidly for a bit, while our boat floated away from the dock, and then he said, “Haha!  Don’t worry!  This is funny boat!”  And then he pulled us back to the dock with his paddle and got in, thank god.

Our conversation for the rest of the trip was basically him scaring us – “Watch out for snakes!”  “Watch out for alligators!”  “Watch out for falling boulders!”  “Oh no!  The boat is sinking!” – and then, instead of saying “Just kidding!”, he would say, “Haha!  Funny boat!”

Although after he said “Oh no!  The boat is sinking!” he actually said, “Haha!  This boat is not the Titanic boat!”  And THEN he said, “This boat is funny boat!”  (Subtle but important difference.)

Gotta say: there is nothing better than not getting pooped on and then taking a leisurely ride in a funny boat.  Especially when someone brings along their iPhone, because then you can ride in a boat AND listen to “Country Grammar”!  (Wow, I just Googled “Country Grammar,” because it is break and I have a lot of time on my hands, and it turns out it’s not actually called that.  It’s called “Country Grammar (Hot Shit).”  Nice!)

SNake PArk

The best place I went in India – beside Udaipur; everyone should go to Udaipur! – was the Snake Park.  It was pretty far from where we were staying, almost an hour’s rickshaw ride away, but it was so worth it.  If the Snake Park was in another dimension the commute would be worth it.   If the Snake Park was underwater, the scuba-commute would be worth it.  I am so serious right now.  The Snake Park was fantastic.

The Snake Park was so much more than a Snake Park.  It was also a zoo.  It had fat tigers, fat leopards, and a sloth-bear.  Well, one sign by the cage said “sloth-bear.”  The other sign just said “bear.”  Whatever.  Identity is fluid.  Be who you are, sloth/regular bear!!  It also had some jungle gyms, some peacocks, some eagles (I KNOW), and, out the front, the world’s saddest ride. 

The world’s saddest ride was like a merry-go-round, but with little cars around the perimeter, and instead of being mechanized it was hand-cranked.  Actually, there wasn’t even a crank.  Instead there was just a guy, who obviously had a mustache because how can a guy get any play without one?, pushing the thing around.  Dude looked PISSED.  Even dude’s MUSTACHE looked pissed.

 Upping the level of legitimacy, there was a kid on the ride, but just one.  And instead of shrieking happily or smiling or being sentient, the kid was sleeping.  And drooling.  Visibly.

The main attraction of the Snake Park, though, was not the angry mustachioed pushing man, or the sleeping drool child, or even the eagles (but eagles are cool!).  It was the snakes.  Man, there were a lot of them.  They were definitely the Snake Park’s specialty.  That is probably why it decided to call itself the Snake Park.  There were snakes in terrariums, and there were also outdoor snakes, in pits.  So like terrariums, but bigger, and with no lid.  This wasn’t a problem because snakes don’t do a lot of flying, but it actually was a problem because I am the kind of person who likes to catastrophize about unprecedented vertical jumps.  (Wow – that is such a complete yet concise description of me.  I should pay myself for my services!)  So yeah.  I was a little scared.  But the snakes were AWESOME.  There were also water-snakes in an outdoor terrarium, with their own pond and logs!  And there were cobras as thick as my arms (which are thick. DON’T MAKE ME TAKE OUT THE GUNS).

And on our way home, our rickshaw driver pretended to explode.  It just doesn’t get much better than that.  Unless you have one of those Brookstone massage chairs (AT THE SNAKE PARK).  Those are freaking sweet.

Whips

My high school friends – Hepzibah and two previously umentioned ones, Rachel and Sarah – went to India the year after we graduated and lived there for a while, working at an orphanage and sending me hilarious e-mails.  One of my favorite e-mails I ever received was from Rachel, right after she got to India.  It said, basically, “People keep trying to sell me whips.  Why do they think I want whips?  That are seven feet long?  Do I look like that kind of girl?  The kind of girl who wants to do kinky things to people seven feet away from her?”

It was great.  (It was especially great because the next year, when she was in college, she one day walked into her dorm room and discovered a whip she had never seen before leaning against her wall.  BECAUSE IT WAS HER DESTINY.)

So I went to India thinking that people would also try to sell me whips.  Which didn’t happen.  (I apparently do not look like that kind of girl.)  Whips were, however, still a presence, because of the Whip Guys.  (Not to be confused with the Blanket Guys.)  The Whip Guys would wander the streets, carrying seven-foot-long whips that looked like they were made out of live snakes, and periodically whipping themselves.  Then, after they whipped themselves, they would ask for money.

I wouldn’t give them money – I very rarely pay to see people whip themselves (unless it’s a holiday) – but apparently, this was a bad call.  I heard later – although I can’t confirm; I’ve spent some sad, unsuccessful time on Wikipedia researching this phenomenon – that these dudes are eunuchs, and have huge religious significance.  If you don’t give them money, it makes you cursed to five years of celibacy.  So that… is hopefully not true.

Maybe this is all a misunderstanding and it curses THEM to five years of celibacy, which doesn’t even matter because being a eunuch curses you to forever of celibacy.  As they always says, “Severed junk, severed sex life.”

(They actually don’t say that that often.  Oops!  Lie.)

Going To School

Sometimes, I worried that I wasn’t fully experiencing India, because I would sometimes do my readings for class instead of wandering around Snake Parks (more on that later – the Snake Park was great.  I will never stop awkwardly capitalizing it, either.  I might even start capitalizing it more.  The SNake PArk!  The SNAke PARk!  Wow I’m like five.)

But ultimately, it was really hard not to experience India.  For example, I saw a lot of things just walking down the street to school that I would not normally see, such as:

1)  People randomly welding stuff by the side of the road.  Maybe in a shop, or maybe in an alleyway.  You’d see a cascade of sparks coming out of a doorway and you’d be like, “Yep.  That is open-air welding.”  No one was ever wearing goggles or anything, either.  Including me.  It’s character building to go into every day wondering if your face will burn off or if you will keep it.

2) The enormous white dog.  It was fatter than… anything!  (Man, I wanted that to be funny and it just didn’t happen.  Maybe… it was fatter than your mom!  ALRIGHT!!!  BROTASTIC!!!)  We were constantly wondering if the dog was pregnant.  Finally, our Hindi teacher asked one of the guys who was always lounging around next to the dog (which was always lying in the same place – it was too fat to stand up) and the guy said no, it was just really fat.  But then he brought out a pregnant cat, which was also around, just to make sure our teacher still believed it was possible for things to be pregnant.

3) The TRAFFIC.  I’ve talked about it before, but I continued to have a hard time navigating it.  It never got better.  Once, when I was trying to cross the street, both of my shoes fell off.  I don’t even want to talk about it anymore.

4) I would also sometimes see whips, but I think I’ve got a whole post on that so I’m just going to leave you in suspense.   Do I mean cars?  Do I mean whips?  Or do I mean seven-foot-long whips that might be made out of living snakes?  We’ll just have to see.