Echo

Pink Dresses, Inebriated Asians and the Middle-Aged Businessmen Who Love Them

Dear Diary,

My boss’s wedding was today and it was a Pink Wedding, so everyone had to wear some form of pink. I’d been putting off buying a dress for a while since I hate malls and I really don’t like the idea of me being in pink, so I’ve been avoiding it. Coming upon the 11th hour, I figured that the wedding was at 6pm, so I had plenty of hours to hit a mall and find something pink. I vowed to get up early enough to go to the gym and still hit the malls as soon as they opened. I got up at 10, went to the gym for 2 hours, then managed to make it to the mall…perfectly on schedule if the mall opened at 2pm. I describe the next 3 hours as pure pink hell, as I went into mall-lit after mall-scented store, my eyes zoning in on anything pink. I was like a shark. A big gay, Persian shark locked into anything hot pink, sequined and gaudy.

I went through every store at the mall and couldn’t find a pink dress that wasn’t extremely ruffled, fashion-senseless or a prom dress. Then again, I believe those first two traits are redundant. Finally, I settled for a pink top and white slacks. I was really hoping to find a dress since I prefer dresses when going to events and I wear pant suits to work a lot so showing up in a dress would really help my cause in negating the office teasing that I’m a lesbian.

Tonight, I realized why weddings and more blatantly, wedding receptions, are such strange but truth-revealing events. People show up to celebrate the beginning of a journey, the peak moment when two people are completely in love with each other and are so happy to be alive. In the face of this, I think the people who want to reach that place of optimism and happiness become aware of wanting it, while the people who have been disappointed by love or miss the excitement and optimism of new love wish to regain it. Thus, why people always flirt with each other and hook up with each other at weddings. These are some random things I observed or thought of tonight:

The wedding was a Jewish wedding. There was a pre-reception because these things start really late. I didn’t really know anyone and most of my coworkers hadn’t shown up yet, so I just stood at a table by myself and people watched. This rough-looking guy in his 40’s asked if he could share my table. He had an earring and cold, penetrating blue eyes, and looked like your average cocky white American middle-classed male who was divorced and bitter at his bitch ex-wife who had taken the kids and overall, fucked up his life.

I had him pegged for a car salesman.

He turned out to be a private investigator so my evaluation of him wasn’t too far off. He fished around into my life and I wouldn’t give him much. He mentioned that he had kids, was divorced, then ask me if I’d ever been married. I knew he was digging for my social status and PERD (Psychological/Emotional Relationship Damage, aka Baggage, aka Potential to Fuck Someone Due to Low Self Esteem) so, feeling a bit sadistic and knowing that I could run mental laps around this guy, I went into my spiel about how a marriage is basically a legal and religious convention, but if one were not religious, then basically a marriage is the forming of a corporation where resources are shared and a commitment is made to accept responsibility of taking care of each other’s livelihood. Because what is really so different between a long-term committed relationship and a marriage, if the emotional bond and responsibility towards one another’s emotional well-being are the same? It’s mostly about a commitment to resources and contributing to them and sharing them.

My coworker finally comes over and gets me out of the conversation by introducing me to the owners of our sister company in Dallas. I’m meeting them for the first time and I’m surprised because I’m always talking to one of the guys on the phone or over email, and I always envisioned the guy as older, probably really fat and bald or with light color/gray hair. Because he always sounded so Texas-jolly on the phone. But he was young with thick, dark brown hair and I just couldn’t get over how he didn’t look anything like I’d expected.

You know how sometimes you meet someone for the first time and there are just sparks? Not necessarily the romantic/sexual kind, like when you look at someone from across the room and you get butterflies in your stomach. It’s just an opening, where both of you are curious about the other person. I’ve found out that, as a Gemini, I will get really flirty when I’m intrigued by having a new person to explore, and will flirt to get them to open up so I can see inside of them. That attention and flirtation can turn on and off like a faucet, depending on how interesting the things that I find are. It’s not really conscious, but kind of built into my constant craving to get into people’s heads and understand where different people come from and how they experience life.

I was really happy to finally meet him and I gushed that he was supposed to call me whenever he made it out so we could shoot baskets (I’d never mentioned any such thing). We chatted about life in Texas versus California. His business partner was really serious, an intriguing nut to crack. Every time I asked about cities in Texas, he would describe their topography.

The wedding was beautiful. I cried because I cry at weddings. But the feeling is strange. On the one hand, I’m so happy for the people getting married because I can feel how happy they are. But then there really is a sadness that tinges it, almost a feeling of me missing something that I lost a long time ago as a child. I couldn’t figure this feeling out.

I think that when you really believe in someone so much, when you really believe in a partnership that feels safe, your whole world suddenly has incredible meaning, if only just to stay alive long enough to experience another day with this person. I was watching the wedding and feeling so happy for my boss and his new wife, and I realized just how much I love people. How much it means to me when people are happy and comfortable and feel safe and loved. How I worry about being socially appropriate because I want everyone to feel connected to this world and safe so much, that I wish that giving them unconditional love and positive regard and by sending in good energy will make a difference. But then sometimes people respond with this unhealthy clingy neediness, the death grasp of a drowning person taking his rescuer down to share a watery grave. The more you give, the more these type of people demand you to heal their wounds rather than using the strength gained from being supported and believed in to find that place where they can attain contentment. Maybe one day I’ll find a place that will make me happy and feel safe myself, where I’ll feel that I can give and not feel like the people who try to get close to me are people who will inadvertently drown me.

I was supposed to be at a table where I didn’t know anyone but I switched over to the table with all of my coworkers. My aunt and uncle where there. I felt bad because I had debated for weeks whether I should invite Reggie to the wedding but the biggest issue was that my aunt and uncle would be there and they would treat my being there with a black man as a huge scandal and family disgrace. I figured that if I ever told my family anything, I would want my mom to hear it from me first and judge this on its own merits, rather than to find out about it through the grapevine where all information is twisted by judgmental minds into an insult to the family name. So I went solo and during the whole ceremony, I really wished he were there, but then afterwards, I was glad that he wasn’t because I did a lot of people-watching and got really introverted thinking about my life, who I am, and what are the things I want.

I think the place where I put the things that I love is the place where no one
would ever know about them. I keep them a secret. I tend to be secretive about my relationships and even my friendships. Not just the details of them, but even in terms of who these people are. The more I care about someone, the more likely I keep things hidden, almost because I’m so afraid that when something I care about is held up in the light of day, it’ll turn out to be all smoke and mirrors, and then I’ll have to deal with the disappointment and disillusionment. Or that other people will disparage what I believe in or try to destroy it. The beauty of what goes on privately between two people is magical…like the things people experience alone in the woods in the dead of the night. And when the sun comes up, things are different. The magic is gone and it leaves you wondering if it was ever there in the first place. I don’t think it matters whether or not it even existed or if it doesn’t hold up in the light of day. If it means something to me, I want to keep it protected, safe in a place deep inside me where no one even knows there’s something valuable to destroy.

My aunt said to me, you need to settle down by the time you’re 29. I rolled my eyes and she said, no seriously. I have a friend who’s 34 and the only types of guys she can get are divorced or widowed men, and then it’s a family disgrace. She made it sound like these men were the ass bottom of the barrel. I told her that statistically, second marriages tend to be the strongest and also, sometimes people need life experience to grow and fulfill their potential as human beings, so having gone through a marriage and learned from it makes them better partners. She looked at me and just repeated, trust me, get married by 29 because otherwise, when you’re left with used people, you lose face.

Seems kind of small-minded, doesn’t it? When, just because someone is “used” and has been through a marriage that didn’t work out, that you should be ashamed of dating them. Thank you for letting me know. For future reference and for the sake of my face, please fax me a list of all the types of people I should avoid or else suffer the loss of face. I’m assuming the list includes: Divorcees, Otherwise Previously Married, Non-college grad, non-steady income, Black, Mexican, Vietnamese, non-age appropriate, comes from a low-income background, has working class family, is of the same sex, is not a filial lump of homo-ethnic being that can be manipulated in the name of tradition.

I would also like to point out that my aunt is really gossipy and makes judgments about what’s right and not right as far as what other people will think. It seems like she’s just really insecure about what other people think of her. I was listening to her speak to someone and realized her English wasn’t very good, even though she’s been in the US about as long as my mom who’s good enough to give speeches. I thought maybe she wasn’t intelligent enough to fully grasp English, or more likely, that she had an aversion to picking up the language, wanting to cling to all that embodies being Chinese, including not becoming too Americanized. But I can tell that when she converses with people in English, she’s uncomfortable because it’s easy to hold this elitist position in her own head, but once she’s in a position where her subpar speaking abilities can be revealed, she feels insecure.

I think putting insecure people in positions of power is a dangerous thing to do. Insecure people tend to have control issues, which means their mistaken ideas can influence groups into embracing a nonsensical status quo.

There was a fat guy at the next table who kept slipping glances at my chest.

There was an old guy with a camera who kept flirting with Eddie’s girlfriend, who looks like a model. He kept coming over to talk to her like he was approaching a celebrity seated at a restaurant.

My boss’s little girl cried. He sat down with me at one point and mentioned that she was having a hard time. I told him it was because he’s a great dad. She’s felt so safe and happy with him, that she’s afraid that that goodness will go away when things change, so he has to just make her feel safe and over time, she’ll feel better. But to be honest, things will change because he’s going to have to give some of himself to his wife and his daughter is going to have to share him. The little girl just got too much of a good thing–getting her dad all to herself for a while and now she’s going to lose some of it, even though it doesn’t knock her down from being #1 in his life. It’s a tough situation, really, and it made me a little bit sad, because the girl was sad and my boss was sad.

I saw my boss get some dessert and automatically bring it to his wife. It made me smile inside because he’s such a thoughtful guy (like a sweet little boy), and he’s so in love with her. I want someone who feels that way about me.

I realized one of my coworker is in love with another one but he doesn’t know it. He can’t classify the feeling but I know what he sees–the electricity between them. They argue like cats in an alley, complete with hissing and claws and even as a bystander, I can tell how potent that mix can be. Read…great sex. He wants her and he wants her bad. She drives him crazy and it’s stirring him up. So I told him…I know your secret. You should just go for it. He first said he doesn’t date people from work, then said they’d have to lock up the office because they’d always be at it. He tried to give me excuses but I just kept saying, you know you want to. Later, I noticed him leading her out and her being flirty irritated but she was going along with him. He looked back, saw me looking, and winked. They were gone for a while and I asked her where they went when she came back. She rolled her eyes and mumbled something about, “Oh…far away…pshhht. ” Then she added, “He took me around and around, looking for fruit or something.” Fruit. Uh huh. Now, keep in mind she’s also Israeli and doesn’t speak great English. But even in broken English, it sounded like bullshit to me.

I was standing by that owner of our sister company and we were all talking to some of my coworkers, and then he kept bumping me playfully. I asked him why he wasn’t dancing. He said he was but felt awkward out there. I asked him why Serious Guy didn’t dance. Serious Guy said he didn’t, not because he couldn’t but because he didn’t. Not-Serious-Guy asked me to dance and I said no. He said I looked really nice and he wanted to dance. I was tempted by the idea that this guy was a major business associate and I’m sure that with my willingness and a little encouragement, things could turn out scandalous tonight, but I try to live responsibly, even as delicious as the idea of scandal is. So he asked me again to dance and I told him that Serious Guy had to dance too. We we dragged him onto the floor. We danced for a bit and at the end of the song, I said I had to get some water, got distracted, then wandered off. I saw them later as they were leaving. I know it was kind of shitty of me to leave them on the dance floor like that but I wasn’t going to tempt that devil on my shoulder that wants to flirt irresponsibly and create situations that are messy. I have a good feeling that if I weren’t so staunchly disciplined about repressing things and could travel around the country and be in environments where no one knew who I was and there was no emotional accountability, I would be uncontainable. I would be having a lot of sex. I would have at some point been best friends or worst enemies with everyone for short bursts of time. I’m so intrigued by exploring people and the things behind closed doors that they don’t share with the rest of the world in broad daylight. Their secrets. It’s such an obsession for me that without boundaries, I would go wherever those feelings and impulses went, as far as they went, just to squelch that craving for different experiences. Intimacy junkie. I’m a pure intimacy junkie. But I shun emotional responsibility.

I went to take one of those Listerine Stri
ps but pulled out my Chloraseptic Strips for sore throats by accident. They come in the same packaging except the latter is orange. I never noticed what the physical effects are, but it numbs your tongue and throat, like a mild analgesic. It’s kind of freaky if you think too much about it.

I was watching people at the wedding, talking and dancing, and I just feel like such an outsider. Sometimes I feel really socially awkward and like I’m not experiencing life like other people, that I wasn’t born right. That I’m not as integrated into this plane as other people, like everyone is asleep but I’m not fully, so that rather than dreaming the same beautiful and complicated and tragic landscapes along with people, I can see people as they dream, and are aware that what they’re doing is dreaming and I don’t get to see what they’re seeing. And I’m left out of this romantic experience of just being human and sharing the same visions of life.

To be honest, I left the wedding overwhelmed by my loneliness. Sometimes I see too much, get too deep into people and I wish there were someone I could talk to about how to handle all the impressions I get, the images and the feelings. Sometimes I wish the night lasted forever and we could all lay down our costumes and masks and the roles we play, and just be ourselves under the cover of night. Sometimes I think playing a human being is a hard job because you can’t just exist, unencumbered by contrivance. Every situation demands a different set of social protocol. No one gets to behave “as is” in the light of day. We lose the fluidity and truthfulness of just being.

I called Reggie and tried to explain why I was sad. I could tell he had no idea what I was talking about. And that made me even more sad. So I told him I was feeling down and didn’t feel like hanging out. I just wanted some time alone to think about life and who I am and what I want.

Why does there exist within me, a cold, logical robot as well as an amorphous emotional being? Why is it so hard to be a human being? When I went in to have Lasik on my eyes, there were complications so it took a long time. They had put anesthetic drops on my eyes, but after everything was said and done, they reapplied the anesthetic on my left eye and operated, then FORGOT to reapply it on my right and operated. I felt the laser slice into me and it was like a slow paper cut on my eyeball, but I didn’t say anything because you’re not supposed to move. It only last a few minutes, but they basically operated on my eye without anesthesia. Sometimes I feel like that’s my experience of life. I don’t go through it numb enough. There’s too much awareness, of things I don’t even need to be aware of. All that’s inevitable…everything gained will eventually be lost. All that we have is borrowed and never owned. Our lifetime is a loan, blessed upon us to gain experience. The people in our lives, our youth, our beauty, our wealth, we give it all up someday, and death is the great equalizer when it’s time to give up our borrowed time and human identities. And there’s such an urgency to be real and for us to understand the very power we have when we are all connected and real, but we’re standing on a stage so it’s hard not to fall into acting within this play that has yet to conclude. Everything is ephemeral and things have to always be in motion but on the outside, there’s one connecting line that runs through every single person and being in existence, and we just get so caught up that we forget that there’s a bigger story beyond pages measured out by single human lifetimes. But to survive in a world built by humans, which plane do we choose to live in?