#CapetownIsRacist

I indulged a guilty pleasure last night, by lazily hopping onto the twitter trend #CapeTownIsRacist. It was two guilty pleasures actually - one is talking about race, and the other is getting into an online barney. Doing either of these is almost always a waste of time, doing both together is a always certainly a painful waste of time.

I don't know how it started (I don't know how to go to the beginning of a twitter-trend, can someone young and hip tell me? #25yearsOLDnow). Times Live claims it was Lindiwe Suttle who tweeted "No matter how famous/rich you are, you're still a 2nd class citizen if you're Black in Cape Town. @helenzille when's the change you spoke about happening". Ms. Zille, of course, dismissed this as a baseless assertion, as did her subjects. Enough people tweeted #CapeTownIsRacist, though, to make it the number-one trending hash-tag yesterday - either denying or affirming, or being very conspicuously disinterested in the whole thing.

My plan for this post was to carry out a sort of proof-by-humiliation, where I enumerate the countless small indignities I have encountered in Cape Town. Things like the bill folder going to the white side of the table, or the security guard who follows you if you are brown and in a retail store, or the time I was told that I am not gay enough to be admitted into a gay bar in Greenpoint. I was even going to recount the time I was accused of stealing bubble gum! (truthfully though, this last incident happened in another city). This is not a great strategy though, I risk being labelled a #ProfessionalBlack by my #ProfessionallyRaceBlindLiberal compatriots.

And too much is required of me: Not only do I have to endure indignity, I also have to chew it up into b(wh)ite-sized pieces for you to understand. I understand it just fine.

I remembered a very painful email exchange with a (then) close friend who proudly identifies as an "old-school liberal". It was about his hilarious (to him, and his other friends) impression of the Cape-Coloured. They way it goes, is to say "jou ma se poes" in the most nasal white-boy-sounding-coloured accent you can muster. I spent many precious words and minutes trying to explain the role of his white privilege in this ugly caricature of a diverse group of people, trying to explain that the fact that he's one-eighth coloured does not exonerate him when he is so very apparently white, trying to explain that his view of coloured people was frighteningly narrow. He was proudly non-racist, of course, so you can imagine how long it took for the explanation to take.


But Explaining over, and over, and over is its own kind of torture.

I don't think the #CapeTownIsRacist tag will achieve much. You cannot say anything in 120 characters - you can only shout a little. Clearly, the intended audience of these shouts cannot, or will not hear. (Now trending: #CapeTownIsAwesome).  At least, though, those of us for whom #CapeTownIsRacist resonates with a dull pain we have yet to articulate will know that we are not each imagining things.

Birthday ramble

I am a quarter of a century old. Yesterday I pulled out a lone nose hair poking out my left nostril. My newest preoccupation is my 8-month belly - an inheritance from my otherwise skinny dad, and beer I suppose. His hair only started running away in his 50s - no silver yet.  My mom still has a full head of jet-black hair, dread-locked into a crown. They are both hypertensive, but neither diabetic. My grandma would take insulin shots. Actually, I am not sure that they don't dye their hair. They are sneaky. Both of them wear glasses, and my younger sister does as well now. She is 21.

Are my nipples lower? What is this fold of skin when I bend to the side in the shower? I run now; twice a week. 3 miles, 30 minutes. I tried to cut carbs out last week - had salad for supper two nights in a row. Life seems too short to eat salad. I will switch from beer and to that turpentine-vodka they serve at No Parking. Right now I am having rice and beans because that is what is in my fridge.

My little sister is graduating from UCT today. I am extremely proud of her. I stayed at her apartment when I visited home. Judging by the contents of her fridge, she is more of a grown up than I will be for a while. Fridges dont lie.  She is also my friend. (When did that happen I wonder? Who knows.)

I guess it being christmas and all, I should reflect or whatever. I don't want to too much, I don't want to jinx things. I am on a winning streak that began on 1 Jan 2007 a little after midnight, after some heavy drinking, when I told my friend Iain that I am gay. He listened and bought me lots of chicken. Real friends buy you chicken (or Tofu or whatever) and they listen. And they hang around. Friends have helped me to gain sanity and to grow.

I am going to work tomorrow, in an organization that helps people all over the world to realize their human rights. Particularly, I'm working in the section that helps people who are gay or lesbian or transgendered.  People who may or may not be recognized as worthy of dignity by their own family members. Some who may not be deemed worthy of their own lives.

I have met some people, this year, who work "on the ground" in spaces like that. They do amazing things. Despite. Gay people always seem to do amazing things, Despite.

Anyways, I am excited to go to work tomorrow, and about the next quarter-century. Maybe over the next two months, I will do one thing that will make one person's life a little easier in a small way. Who knows? It is exciting.

Yours,
Tata Keletso

Things that I am thankful for

(in no particular order)

• living in a strange city with strange people
• no parking bar
• a scholarship
• ken "kennedy" nadolski's drunk voice message from last wednesday
• josephine karianjahi's jokes
• pedro "slut" carneiro's sassy sex column-like advice 
• daniel lyons's 'tude
• my family's ability to laugh at anything
• my research supervisor's openness
• facebook
• the ability to go to (almost) any country for $2.25
• the diaspora (you know who you are) for bringing home here
• people who hold the door open or say thanks when you do, help people with strollers, give up seats for elderly people, or in some other small way make this crazy city more livable for other people.
• the 24-hour $3.50 falafel guy on 168th and Fort Washington

Surprise Pap

I just had a consultation with a doctor.  I have had a few this year; I am almost used to the awkward silences and fluorescent lighting. Some involved nudity, one left me a bit angry and confused. Today's was awkward (but not silent) and definitely flourescently lit. As we all know from encounters in clothing shop fitting rooms, there can only be truth under flourescent lights.

The first thing I did when I arrived in my new doctor's office is to take a furtive picture of a book on his desk (the book shown above). It set the scene for our consultation (which, by the way, had nothing to do with the topic of the book... or so I thought when I made the appointment).

I don't want to go into details about our encounter (maybe I will later, when I have processed).  Right now, I just want to tell you that if you are a homo man you should probably get the HPV vaccine. What I will share about my consultation is this unexpected pamphlet I got at the end.

You Have Just Had an Anal Pap Smear 

Introduction - Over the last decade, medical providers have become more aware of the risk of infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV) in the anus. Doctors have long known how HPV affects the cervix in women and we now know that it can affect the anus in a very similar fashion.  The surface of the anus is made up of the same tissue as the cervix. When HPV infects a cell it can occasionally cause the cell to develop changes in its DNA called mutations. As more and more mutations occur there is a chance that a normal cell will become a cancer cell.  In the cervix we perform Pap smear to check for abnormal cells which can then be easily treated to prevent cancer. In fact, forty years of cervical Pap smears have reduced cervical cancer rates in this country [U.S.] by 500%. In recent years rates of anal cancer in gay and bisexual men have been rising dramatically.  In an effort to combat this problem we recommend the same kinds of preventative screening in the anus to prevent cancer as we do in the cervix.  And that is why you've just had an anal Pap smear.

Stephen E. Goldstone, M.D. 

Brazen and lewd as I am, I don't know whether I would have been able to talk about my last sex, bottoming and topping, condom use and sexual partners in the clinic if it all frightened or disgusted my doctor. I can only imagine how much more unpleasant a pap smear could have been. When I have energy, I will write about the time a doctor tried to ask me all of those things without making eye contact and without speaking in full sentences... Or the time a nurse asked me with deer-in-headlights-eyes if I was ok with her looking "down there". I would have been ok if I knew that she knew her way around "down there". Anger, confusion, flourescent lighting and awkwardness.

What I am thankful for, this thankstaking holiday, is medical providers that recognize my life as a gay boy, and are well prepared to take care of all of my health needs, not only the polite ones.

*Read this New York Times article about the neglect of LGBT health by the medical profession. The comments are especially entertaining (but in a distressing way).

speak now

"What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?"

Mansplanations

Mansplain. v. To explain in a patronizing manner, assuming total ignorance on the part of those listening. The mansplainer is often shocked and hurt when their mansplanation is not taken as absolute fact, criticized or even rejected altogether.

A friend of mine fell victim to a hip-intellectual's mansplanation tonight. The scene of the crime - a house party in my favourite brownstone in gentrified Brooklyn. I had encountered the manalyst myself a few moments earlier - he seemed to enjoy saying obvious things using unnecessary words and hand-gestures - many of them. I had wanted to excuse myself for another drink, but my cup was full. Also, I had premium real estate right by the food table - it was too scrumptious. I resigned to a few minutes of his mansplaining the importance of clean drinking water while stuffing my mouth - making sure to always have just enough food in it to make it impossible to respond to anything.

I wasn't too bothered really; after all, a few moments earlier a well-intentioned lady had asked me which South African Tribal Languages I speak, and which Tribe I belong to. She asked me not really to know what languages (because that’s what I call them) I speak, she had already prepared to forget the answer. It was to confirm her knowledge of Tribal Africa. This kind of thing bothers me sometimes - on another day I might have said something snarky about her blouse or started a shouting match. But today I wasn’t moved. I was drinking something sweet and surprisingly potent out of a red plastic cup. Now, my friend was angry about her mansplaining situation - so three of us pulled off to the side to say to each other some very unkind things about the manalyst. (We rubbished everything from his poor posture to his occupation). It was therapeutic.

When I first arrived here in New York, and at my school, it took me a while to get used to how people speak sometimes. Self-assured, assertive, and confrontational on a really thin knowledge base about the topic at hand. I remember one conversation with a school mate in which he impressed upon me that The Economist is really not a good publication to read. It is so UK-centric. Unless I feel beholden to my former colonizer, I should really switch to the New York Times or something like that. I was not ready for that, I was floored.

I almost duelled with a lawyer the other day who proclaimed that he had never discovered culture as patriarchal as African culture. People know more about us than we know about each other, it seems. Africa has over 2000 languages and just over 50 countries. Who can talk about African culture? Certainly not me.

When I first arrived, conversation seemed at times like mental arm-wrestling - it was suddenly possible to win or lose them. I tend(ed) to lose them. Manalysts and their mansplanations really crept under my skin. They don't so much anymore. I don't know why. I think I have given up, or turned into one. Ok, I don't really think I have turned into one. I hope not. 

But if you think I have, feel free to pull two friends to the side and say unkind things about me to each other. 

Applications (again)

Its time to apply for things again. Of course, the plans I had made before are before-plans, and now I need to make now-plans.

I attended a career fair the other day. It was slightly depressing because nothing there grabbed me. There was only the possibility of good money or prestige and the safety of a resume that can be warped into the right lie for just about any of the employers there.

I almost applied to a consulting company. (I had already bled out a disingenuous letter of motivation). Their online app system kept on rejecting my transcript from UCT (the pdf file was probably too big or corrupt or something). So I just ditched the application because I probably didn't want it enough, and they would probably sniff that out down the line.

I should probably just keep on lurching from one interesting project to another until it all comes together.  On the upside, I (cross fingers) have my next interesting project at a really exciting agency which does really amazing work but they are not going to pay me.

But you can't eat passion - not forever anyways.

silence

I have tried a few times to write about my last love(r). I have not yet found a mouth with which to tell. Two years have not created enough distance, maybe years alone don't. 

I only have suspicions and impulses - they refuse to birth words, not yet anyways. I want to blame it on race or class or my strange passage through the Cape Colony, or the time I frightened him because I was too black and too fast and I tapped him on the shoulder from behind outside my residence in Mowbray.  And his habit of locking the car doors upon sight of those men who have been selling flowers and beaded things on the corner of Paradise and Edinburgh for as long as I have known the corner of Paradise and Edinburgh. (They were brown and therefore dangerous, those men).

I think we never learned to understand together that I am Black and he is White and we have histories we didn’t create and they are written all over our bodies and read out loud every time a waiter puts the bill folder on his side of the table.

instead, we layered silence upon silence upon silence. until we Exploded. 

Tutu

"African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence."
--Wangari Maathai.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote this letter to the Constitutional Assembly in response to the National coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality's campaign to support the inclusion of sexual orientation in the Equality Clause in the Bill of Rights [in the South African Constitution of 1996].

Dear Members of the Constitutional Assembly

Re: The Retention of the Sexual Orientation Clause in the Bill of Rights

Within the Church of Christ, and indeed amongst adherents of other faiths, there is much debate and difference of opinion on the question of homosexuality. The theological and ethical issues are complex and far from resolved.  It is indisputable, however, that people's sexual nature is fundamental to their humanity.

The apartheid regime enacted laws upon the religious convictions of a minority of the country's population, laws which denied gay and lesbian people their basic human rights and reduced them to social outcastes and criminals in their land of birth. These laws are still on the Statute Books awaiting your decision whether or not to include gay and lesbian people in the "Rainbow People" of South Africa. It would be a sad day for South Africa if any individual or group of law-abiding citizens in South Africa were to find that the Final Constitution did not guarantee their fundamental human right to sexual life, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

I would strongly urge you to include the sexual orientation clause in the Final Constitution.

God Bless You

Yours sincerely

(signed) Desmond Tutu

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God - if there is this love among you, then we will know that you are my disciples."

*from Sex & Politics in South Africa edited by Hoad, N., Martin, K., Reid, G.

Maurice

I found E.M. Forster's Maurice in our garage when I was about 14. I don't remember how I came to read it before even noticing A Passage to India or A Room with a View. They were all in the same box that my uncle (who had been taking night classes in English) left at our house. It must have been during the hot, idle and depressive summer holidays after my first year of high school.

I was sure that I am gay, but knew that I would never tell anyone. We had read Othello that year and I cast myself as Iago - "look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under't". I hated myself, and knew I would one day find my thrills without ever telling anyone. I would live in the dark, and differently in the light. I was very dramatic (some things don’t change!).

Then I discovered this English novel completed in 1914 but published posthumously in the 1970s. The more I re-read it now (I do it at least once a year), the more absurd it seems. Anyways, at my first reading, I came across this passage. My fingers still know where it is in the musty book. Two friends find each other at college without ever having to speak out their affliction. They find a complicated and transient love.

Love was suddenly possible for me.

For a long while, this passage was all the hope I had.

 *****

Durham sat upon the floor beyond [Maurice's] reach. It was late afternoon… . Maurice stretched out a hand and felt the head nestle against it. He forgot what he was going to say. The sounds and scents whispered, 'You are we, we are youth.' Very gently he stroked the hair and ran his fingers down into it as if to caress the brain.

'I say, Durham, have you been all right?'

'Have you?'

'No.'

'You wrote you were.'

'I wasn't.'

The truth in his own voice made him tremble. 'A rotten vac and I never knew it,' and wondered how long he should know it. The mist would lower again, he felt sure, and with an unhappy sigh [Maurice] pulled Durham's head against his knee, as though it was a talisman for clear living. It lay there, and he had accomplished a new tenderness - stroked it steadily from temple to throat. Then, removing both hands, he dropped them on either side of him and sat sighing.

'Hall.'

Maurice looked.

'Is there some trouble?'

He caressed and again withdrew. It seemed as certain that he hadn't as that he had a friend.

'Anything to do with that girl?'

'No.'

'You wrote you liked her.'

'I didn't - don't.'

Deeper sighs broke from him. They rattled in his throat, turning to groans. His head fell back, and he forgot the pressure of Durham on his knee, forgot that Durham was watching his turbid agony.  He stared at the ceiling with wrinkled mouth and eye, understanding nothing except that man has been created to feel pain and loneliness without help from heaven.

Now Durham stretched up to him, stroked his hair. They clasped one another. They were lying breast against breast soon, head was on shoulder, but just as their cheeks met someone called 'Hall' from the court, and [Maurice] answered: he always had answered when people called. Both started violently, and Durham sprang to the mantelpiece where he leant his head on his arm. Absurd people came thundering up the stairs. They wanted tea. Maurice pointed to it, then was drawn into their conversation, and scarcely noticed his friend's departure.  It had been an ordinary talk, he told himself, but too sentimental, and he cultivated a breeziness at their next meeting.

This took place soon enough. With half a dozen others he was starting for the theatre after hall when Durham called him.

'I knew you read the Symposium in the vac,' he said in a low voice.

Maurice felt uneasy.

'Then you understand - without me saying more -'

'How do you mean?'

Durham could not wait. People were all around them, but with eyes that had gone intensely blue he whispered, 'I love you.'

Maurice was scandalized, horrified. He was shocked to the bottom of his suburban soul, and exclaimed, 'Oh, rot!'. The words, the manner, were out of him before he could recall them.

those three letters

Today someone told me that they're HIV positive.  We were talking about something else, about our Public Health interests. He mentioned that the region he is interested in working in would not admit him. (Like I would mention my ex-boyfriend to indicate my gayness without asking permission for it). I had a split-second of panic, but I think my face did not give me away. I hope it didn't.

I remembered a similar occasion a few months ago.  I was walking from a house party to a bar with some new friends and older friends. One of the new friends (I had just met him at his house party) noticed the shirt that I was wearing. My black Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) t-shirt with white "HIV Postive" emblazoned in huge block letters. I love that shirt, it reminds me of home, and it reminds me of the power of community organizing. I wear it often and deliberately. He noticed the shirt and I started talking a bit about TAC and how I came to work with its members.

He shared with me: "you know it took me a very long time before I could say those three letters to myself." At first I wasn't sure what he was saying. When I became sure, I froze. Again, the panic. What is the right thing to say back?

"It's Ok" ?

"Well done" ?

"I understand" ?

I don't think I understand, and I don't want to patronize. I am afraid, though, that my panic was read as something else - revulsion, judgement, pity. My new friend crossed the street and entered the bar - we didn't talk again that night, and it is unlikely that we will meet again. I wanted to apologize, or have a do-over, but what good would that have done then? I failed.

Maybe I have been on the other side.  Being in, and then out of the closet taught me to be vigilant, and to be quick. We have always had to be watchers. I remember mentioning my boyfriend to an ex-supervisor who considered himself my mentor. I didn't stop for feedback of course - I was not asking for permission. I did see the flash of panic in his eyes.  Our conversation struggled back on its feet clumsily, and limped on for a few more minutes before falling back to the ground. It was our last. I read his reaction as homophobia; clear and simple. I excised him from my life as I have excised others.

I wonder if it wasn't something else though. A brief failure - one worth forgiving. I wonder how many such failures I have failed to forgive.

Missed Connections

I just discovered the 'Missed Connections' section on craigslist.com. I find most of it romantic, some of it lonely, and some of it is unabashedly sexual. A friend and I had a conversation the other day about how we always seem to be creeping on people who don't creep back. We concluded that we must be common looking. "The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he makes so many of them."* We have strength in numbers.

Anyways, "Missed Connections" is the possibility that someone once saw me on the train and thought "I wan't a little sugar in my bowl / I want a little sweetness down in my soul"** (in reference, or course, to my own sugar). Not that I am trawling through the interwebs in hopes that I will bump into the guy I was drooling over in Gristedes (I am too much of a statistician). Not that I am lonely (I am too much of a loner). Just that it's good sometimes to hear someone say "Ausi, ako atamele hle"***.

Below is a mish-mash of some entries I found. (There are URLs to the individual entries scattered in there). I only added full-stops and one question mark.

****

I'm boyish for my age, had on a black t'shirt and helmet. You were big, shirtless, sweaty and handsome. You nodded and flashed an adorable smile. We exchanged glances several times while we were working out Sunday around noon. You were wearing a 'New York Boxing Club' tshirt, I was in a plain grey tshirt. aside from the occasional smoke, you are the most handsome man i've seen in ages.

A while back we were in the sauna together - with someone else - the extremely beautiful man eating a sandwich from elixr. all I wanted to do was check out your tight body but didn't want to stare. My mom always told me that was inconsiderate.

I came up to you and was interested in your gauges. You were Colombian and adorable but my friend was returning and I didn't get a chance to grab your number.  I believe we might have kissed but not entirely sure.

even though you are straight, I feel that its mutual. Am I wrong? I look at you, and I want to run my fingers through your hair, kiss your lips and let my tongue run across your teeth. I pray that we are never in the bathroom at the same time. I got it bad for you. it is going to be more difficult for me to hide how I feel about you.

Unfortunately I was too shy to say any of this to you, and am left with posting a 'missed connection'. 

I hope I see you on Tuesday.

I hope you see this.

***

*Abe Lincoln

**Nina Simone

***in Sesotho: "sister, why dont you get a little closer?"

Aunt Irene

Apparently hurricane Irene is visiting on Sunday. At first I didn't take it seriously - people are sometimes excitable here. The recent tremor for instance, had us all grabbing at our facebook-enabled phones in order to be in the first wave of "OMFGeee, did you feel the earthquake? My life flashed before of my eyes for all 3 seconds!" status updates. I just ignored Irene, safe in my "if its important, then someone important will email me" philosophy. The Fulbright has emailed me. My school has not yet, though.

The highway that runs on the west of Manhattan seems to be gridlocked up here in Washington Heights.  It's probably always gridlocked on a Friday afternoon, but today I squint down to see if the cars are full of children and pets and other things people take when they are running. I can't really tell.  I have just finished chatting to a friend who told me that they are saying that we may have power-cuts (horrible) and that these would entail internet-cuts (super horrible) for days.  Water may also be disrupted.

I have resolved to go hurricane-shopping with my bff Pedro. We are going to try and get tasteful flashlights, candles, canned food, water and duct tape for my windows at Target (I hope they still have stock!). After that I am going to see if any of the first-year boys who have moved in to my residence need extra reassurance in the form of caresses and hugs. In the words of Gaga, "love thy neighbour".

UPDATE: When I met up with Pedro to go Hurricane shopping, he said: "Hurricane?  I thought you said Heineken..." awkward.

The spoils of our hurricane conquest were toilet paper, water, and really tasty frozen french loaves which you pop into the oven for a few minutes for fresh boulangerie-like deliciousness and a crisp crust.

I will try again tomorrow.

LDR. You again?

I met a boy. Not on gaydar.co.za or at the gay bar (because you will never meet anyone nice at the gay bar - never ever).  We met through a common friend and discovered that we have a small common network. We had attended the same school - though we did not know each other then.

I crushed on him almost immediately.  He has all the qualities I am looking for in a man: slightly taller,  nice to look at, and not prima facie creepish. As we spent more time together, I discovered that we have a similar sense of humour and a sense of curiosity. Also, he dances like his hips were born in South Africa (which is notable because they were born in Michigan).

He would indeed fetch a high lobola (bride price): on top of the features I have already listed, he knows how to cook like a proper Italian, is well educated and has remarkable skin. If it were not for the fact that I am entertaining at parties, I know how to clean (in theory), and it seems like I will age well, this match would potentially be expensive for my kin. Overall though, I think that the lobola owing to his kin would be higher than that owing to mine, but not by a lot. By less than 6 cows (say). I digress.

Unfortunately, he was kind-of with another guy when we met so I was friendlined (v. past tense. to be dismissed romantically by being labelled 'just a friend'. e.g. Im'a friendline that boy coz I heard he's always scratching his between-the-legs). It turns out, though, that he had a crush on me too so about 7 weeks into my torment (and after it was over with the other guy) he asked to take a nap at my house, and I said yes. We took many naps, they were glorious. We became more intimate and open with each other than I have been with someone for a long time. A happy beginning.

We are both nomads, though, so shortly after our beginning we were (and are) on opposite sides of the Atlantic. And I am back here again - the LDR (long distance relationship). My LDR number 3, and his number 2. My sister asked me once, just after I had announced that number 2 was heading to Europe for 9 months: "why do the guys you date seem to leave the country a lot?" I don't know. When I told him about my current situation, one of my dear bff's offered: "If you are going to have a long-distance one or both of you must be really rich...". Another friend simply advised, "You're screwed."

I know I may be screwed... but it feels so freekin good.

Sick in bed

Nothing trips me up more than a day spent in bed with a cold.  I indulge generously in self-pity.  I immerse myself in it.  Usually, I have a stock of cheesy gay romantic comedies lined up for the day.  Boy meets boy (or boy meats boy) - boy likes boy - boys encounter obstacle - there is a montage with boys living separately and miserably - the obstacle is overcome - they kiss - I cry. Rinse, repeat. Alas, today I don’t have Netflix or Hulu so there are no gayromcoms for me.

Sometimes I daydream about all my loves.  The one who I still love, the one who broke my heart, the boy I texted a (unrequited) smiley  the other day, the straight crush who should really stop wearing impossibly tight pants if he wants to stop breaking gay hearts.... I imagine each of them cooking up a big pot of soup and rubbing Vicks Vaporub into my back and chest. Nothing says love  more than food and an unsexy back-rub in a darkened, snot-layered, hotbox of germs.

Then there is the sick-texting. I should really rip out my battery and bury it somewhere. Sick-texting is worse than drunk-texting.  It happens during the day, so you cant send the default "Jst saw the crzy txts I sent last nite. Soz. Wuz sooo drunk! Lolz, xx K". No.  How do you undo the "Hey, how you doing? Was just thinking about you!" sent to the guy who is going to read it as "Hey, even though I basically lost your number and have been real shady after our really awkward date a few months ago, I have just realized that I want you and I want to birth your progeny"?

Of course, I will sick-text the guy who didn't return my cute and suggestive smiley.  And he will say something sweet - maybe offer (but only in the hypothetical) to cook soup for me.  I will swoon.  Then I will take more drugs and sleep my sanity back.

Just like high-school .  Except, I never had access to good cold medication back then. It does get better. 

The invention of Heterosexuality

The most powerful paragraph I have read in a while:

The idea of heterosexuality as the master sex from which all others deviated was (like the idea of the master race) deeply authoritarian.  The doctors' normalization of a sex that was hetero proclaimed a new heterosexual separatism - an erotic apartheid that forcefully segregated the sex normals from the sex perverts. The new, strict boundaries made the emerging erotic world less polymorphous -- safer for sex normals.  However, the diea of such creatures as heterosexuals and homosexuals emerged from the narrow world of medicine to beconme a commonly accepted notion only in the early twentieth century. In 1901, in the comprehensive Oxford Dictionary, "heterosexual" and "homosexual" had not yet made it.

--From The invention of Heterosexuality. Jonathan Ned Katz. 1990. Socialist Review v.20, n.1

The article challenges the idea that the category of heterosexuality is natural and timeless.  It was invented at the same time as the category of homosexuality (in North America and Europe).

What Makes A Man

My mum and I we live alone 
A great apartment is our home 
In fairhome towers 
I have to keep me company 
Two cats, a dog, a parakeet 
Some plants and flowers 
I help my mother with the chores 
I wash, she dries, I do the floors 
We work together 
I shop and cook and sew a bit 
Though mum does too I must admit 
I do it better 
At night I work in a strange bar 
Impersonating every star 
I'm quite deceiving 
The customers come in with doubt 
And wonder what I'm all about 
But leave believing 
I do a very special show 
Where I am nude from head to toe 
After stripteasing 
Each night the men look so surprised 
I change my sex before their eyes 
Tell me if you can 
What makes a man a man 

Round 3 o'clock or so I meet 
With friends to have a bite to eat 
And conversation 
We talk and empty out our hearts 
On every subject from the arts 
To liberation 
We love to pull apart someone 
And spread some gossip just for fun 
Or start a rumour 
We let our hair down, so to speak 
And mock ourselves with tongue-in-cheek 
And inside humour 
So many times we have to pay 
For having fun and being gay 
It's not amusing 
There's always those who spoil our games 
By finding fault and calling names 
Always accusing 
They draw attention to themselves 
At the expense of someone else 
It's so confusing 
Yet they make fun of how I talk 
And imitate the way I walk 
Tell me if you can 
What makes a man a man 

My masquerade comes to an end 
And I go home to bed again 
Alone and friendless 
I close my eyes and think of him 
And fantasize what might have been 
My dreams are endless 
We love each other but it seems 
The love lives only in my dreams 
It's so one-sided 
But in this life I must confess 
The search for love and happiness 
Is unrequited 
I ask myself what have I got 
And what I am and what I'm not 
What am I giving 
The answers come from those who make 
The rules that some of us must break 
Just to keep living 
I know my life is not a crime 
I'm just a victim of my time 
I stand defenceless 
Nobody has the right to be 
The judge of what is right for me 
Tell me if you can 
What makes a man a man...

First three days in Nairobi

I don’t have internet at home. Its like death.  The two highlights of my day are getting to work because I get to check my email and getting off work because I get to check facebook at the café around the corner from where I live.  My employer has blocked facebook from her internets.  It makes me so sad and desperate, I find myself checking the incesssant facebook email-updates that I had filtered to trash in my gmail account a long time ago. I check them for any sign of life - any sign that the faceworld misses me as much as I miss it.  Alas, it seems that facelife goes on without me.

At least I have a full-length mirror.  This is a luxury I have gone without for the last 10 months.  I had forgotten how much fun it is to dress up and dance with beyonce in the mirror. In my CT apartment I had the heels, wig, mirror and youtube.  In NYC I had the heels (had to ditch my wig), the youtube but no mirror. Now I have no heels, no wig, no youtube but I have the mirror.  I think I am fine with just the mirror though.

I live slap-bang in the middle of expat city.  There are all kinds of expats here, you can see them in the morning with their laptop-'concealing' laptop backpacks.  I am one of them.  I am sitting in a café just around the corner from where I live - amidst all kinds of suites, probably from the embassies around here... or the NGO industry.

I can only remember one time I felt so foreign - that was in Argentina a few years ago.  I know less Swahili than Spanish… and as my Washington Heights Neighbours would attest, I don’t know a lot of Spanish at all. I know "Jambo!" (hello!) and I try to use it often. Also, I try and say "Asante Sana" (Thank you very much) whenever possible. I have yet to use "Karibu" (you are welcome) and "Sawa" .  I can tell that somehow my own language and Swahili are related, but that doesn’t really help me understand things that people say.  I have been told that my name sounds like Kisii which is a language from somewhere in the west of Kenya.

I have been trying to watch Kenyan TV.  I don’t understand a lot of it. There is an advert for something called "Maasai Service". It features a tall beautiful-looking Maasai man draped in a pink cloth standing on one leg with a staff in his right hand and a small radio held to his ear in his left hand. There is singing in the background. What does it mean? I don’t know. But I think I like it. I also watched an episode of "Spider" last night - it is a Nollywood soapie. There is nothing more fun than a Nollywood soapie.

I had been depressed the other day because I thought that Kenyan eggs (to be clear, eggs from Kenyan chickens) and Kenyan bread taste really weird and un-nice. My first meal in this land was an egg sandwich I made from supplies bought at a convenience shop around the corner.  I went to a real supermarket today, and bought fresh stuff.  It turns out the eggs were actually just going bad (one was green when I cracked it yesterday) and the bread was low quality.  I made myself some toast using better bread today and I was very happy with it.  I am gong to have an egg sandwich tomorrow morning with the eggs I bought at the Uchumi supermarket - I expect that I will be pleased with the whole thing. I also got some Koo baked beans, and Nederberg Lyric (my summer white wine).  These are two things that made life livable while I was in Cape Town.  I am so excited, I think I will wait for a special occasion.  I forgot to get Tusker - Baada ya Kazi. I have always wanted to taste this beer  - all the cool Kenyan kids at UCT seemed to have a Tukser T-shirt (do they hand it out with SA study permits? I don’t know).

Today when I asked my boss and my boss's boss whether its ok to drink tap water, they laughed then they said no - I should boil it.  I felt ashamed to admit that I had had two whole glasses yesterday and they were delicious. Im still ok though, and I have drugs at the ready.