The United Altered States of Maryam

#1: Don’t mind me, I’m Asian!

“I know! I should get naked!” announced L with all the enthusiasm of a cheerleader in a B-Grade horror movie spoof. You could almost see the lightbulb go ‘ping’ above her head or was it the spotlight of a stage at a strip club? I was working with L and another girl on a performance piece for our Creative Arts Foundation class. We were assigned to work with the theme of “Violation” and I couldn’t help but feel as if dear L was taking the theme too literally. Violation = Nudity, it all seems too obvious an allusion, too derivative to me. And if she was basing it upon the clichéd notion that nudity is art than, well, Paris Hilton’s porn flick would be the freaking Sistine Chapel wouldn’t it?

We ignored her comment for awhile, in search of more novel ideas, fresh methods in which to convey our message. But you would be surprised at how persistent aspiring nudists can be. My every other sentence was interrupted by a “So do I get naked or what? Lets practice it!” and my internal response to her each time was Girlie, I just met you, stop violating my sense of social conduct and propriety by insisting that you get naked at this very moment. Or perhaps, that was what she intended, that she was an artistic genius and already putting the theme of our piece to work before it’s even pieced together and staged. Excuse me while I smirk with cynicism.

L was, still is at this very moment, about a foot shorter than me (give and take some exaggeration) with boobs twice as big (no exaggeration) and light blonde hair that was probably, originally a mousy brown. Her hair was secured with a wide headband with multi-colored stars on it that somehow reminded me of a cartoon character that had been hit on the head with an anvil. She’s 17 years old and fresh out of high school so one can understand to a certain extent, her compulsion to take her clothes off. I left the Malaysian equivalent of high school around 4 years ago and I can clearly remember an urge to run around the streets clothed only by joy and celebration. Except I’m turning 21 this year and that urge has slowly transformed into pajama-wearing couch-hogging kind of sedateness.

“I really think I should get naked!” Why? “Because you know…violation and all,” she drawled, or twanged – I haven’t quite figured out yet if the Australian accent is a drawl or a twang or something else. The pajama-wearing couch-hogging sedated part of me gave in. The other girl did too. L squealed for joy but then, “Oooh, my boyfriend’s going to be sooo pissed,” she drawled or twanged or dranged or twaled. “But it’s not like there are any guys in our class,” she continued.

I pointed out to her that there are in fact, two male students in our tutorial, if it matters.

“Aww, yeah, but it doesn’t really count cause they’re Asian,” she said.

Now what the hell is that suppose to mean? That Asian males aren’t really male? Or that Asians are inanimate and therefore undressing before us would be similar to undressing in front of a table? Does she consider Asians to be furniture? Now I know up to 1967, Australia officially considered Aborigines as flora and fauna. But I didn’t realize that this disgusting notion extended to all people of non-Caucasian descent and that this notion still exists in present-day “multicultural” Oz.

“Like, I mean, they don’t even really understand English,” was L’s explanation.

Honey, I think it’s pretty safe to say that one doesn’t need to understand English to see nudity. But you can’t hold anything against the ignorant. They wouldn’t know you were.

#2: I don’t speak American

I tell them I’m from Malaysia. They tell me I have an American accent. They go, “But oh, you have an American accent! Did you go to American school?” and I say, “No, I just watch a lot of American television.”

They laugh.

I don’t think it’s funny.

It’s kind of sad, really.

#3: Go Home!

I’m walking to the bus stop with Z. We’re minding our own damn business. An Aboriginal guy drives past us in a car with his white friend in the passenger’s seat. He yells to us, “Go back to your country bitches!!! Or I’ll stick my dick up your ass!” An Aboriginal guy telling two Asian girls to go back to their country with his white friend sitting in his car. The hilarity and irony of it.

Mate, in this day and age, no one can lay claim to any country. Too late for that. It shouldn’t be the way, anyhow.

Now go stick your dick up your own ass. Try it, you might like it and kill yourself along the way.

#3a. Bo-ring

I just finished writing my assignment for my attractive lecturer’s class. He’s not going to be impressed. He can stuff it. I don’t need to be any smarter just cause he’s attractive.

#5 That’s Hot

The young attractive lecturer, I will call him Mr. B was talking about something I wasn’t paying attention to because he looked especially attractive at that moment. And then he says (to the class), “I wish we had more time to discuss this topic more penetratively.”

All of a sudden, someone turned off the air-conditioning in the lecture hall. Or it felt like it.

Note to self: Only take classes taught by ugly people from now on. You’ll learn better that way. And the air-conditioning stays on.

#6 Glam Boys

I need to say this: Jonathan Rhys Meyers is … goddamn! His performance as the social climbing, morally-ambiguous Chris Wilton in Woody Allen’s Match Point was absolutely brilliant that you really couldn’t hate him when….. (nevermind, I don’t want to spoil the ending for those that haven’t seen it. Well you should!) Come to think of it, so was Woody Allen’s performance, absolutely brilliant, in that he wasn’t performing but stuck to being behind the camera, writing and directing in a tautly, suspenseful Hitchcock-ian style. (If you’re thinking of picking on me for not being fond of Woody Allen as Woody Allen, go develop a neurosis instead.) And yes, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, goddamn, he’s beautiful. Except, is it odd that I fancy him more in Velvet Goldmine, dressed in tight purple leotards, sprinkled with glitter, draped in feather boas, looking like someone’s tackily fabulous aunt?

#7 The Morning After

She woke up around midday and attempted to head straight to the kitchen, only the living room sofa ran into her and she fell into its soft, cushy lap and stayed there for a very long time, still in last night’s clothes. I asked her how she was and in a barely audible tone, she mumbled, “I hate the smell of dude on me in the morning.”

Not that she wouldn’t do it again or go further the next time with perhaps, a different guy. Not that she regretted the night before. It was fun. “Just the morning after.” Because she couldn’t remember what he looked like. And yet she knew she smelled of him. And not at all like herself. Of course, it’s nothing that a good shower can’t cure. If she could only get herself off the couch……….

#8 Lust in Sheep’s Clothing

Now, believe me or not those of you who have a tendency to misplace your pity, I’m not being bitter-single when I say this but I’m convinced that romance is the most potentially harmful of all false notions and that romance is lust in sheep’s clothing, except the sheep is the threat here. For so long, lust was constructed to be the evil sibling of romance when in fact, it is the most virtuously honest one of the family. I know people who have devoted their lives, or plan to devote their lives to the pursuit of romance in hopes of finding fulfillment and yet, once they have achieved their socially-constructed, culturally-indoctrinated idea of romance, they find themselves, ultimately unfulfilled. Knowing this, still, they remain devoted to the ideology, like Katie Holmes to Tom Cruise and Scientology. I don’t get it (devotion to romance, but also scientology). Romance is a false notion but lust, is among the most basic of all human instincts, the foundation of the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs , for without it humankind would not survive and grow to 6.5 billion. Also one would think then, that lust coupled with tax benefits is a good enough reason to commit wouldn’t it? And also, you know those movies or how some people say that women throw themselves into their work because they are “romantically-deprived”? Well has it ever occurred to these people that maybe, just maybe some people envelop themselves with “romance” to make up for their sucky careers? It’s a thought but go ahead, prove me wrong…

#9 Green Tea-Fuelled Purpose

Lipton’s Green Tea’s tagline goes, “Now that’s refreshing!” So refreshing apparently, that I turned into Pat Morita’s character in Karate Kid, scaled up the top of a treacherous mountain and started telling the world that I could see but couldn’t see me:

“It would seem at times, as if everything in the world has been reduced to the he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not-petal-picking-game. But I suppose, it is the simplest, easiest way to measure one’s life by. That and the amount of money one has. It doesn’t make living life easier per se, just easier to measure, compare and contrast with that of others. It is a method. And judging by those two methods, I fail.”

At that moment a little bird, with snow on the tip of its beak came by and said, “i guess people think that someone wanting you enough to be with you constantly makes you more... of a person? more acceptable? something, i don't know. i think it's naff, i admire people who can go through life not being dependent on someone else for happiness.”

And I responded:

“I admire people who are happy through a way they choose to be, regardless of the method. If being desired by another makes one happy, all is well. The problem arises when one knows that being desired by another won’t bring fulfillment to oneself but one is in the dark of what will. Not knowing what makes one happy is far more shameful than knowing that one is dependent on another for happiness.”

And then I said:

“I think, no, I feel that purpose should not be something one works on but something one feels, at the very core of one’s being. Achievement requires time but purpose is present from the very start of the conception of one’s being.”

The bird then said, “i know what i want to do with my life, but is it my purpose?

To which I pondered, and replied:

“I feel that purpose extends to more than just ambition. It’s also a sense of … belonging. I feel, that purpose is more than just what one does, be it want to or meant to but it is what one is. It is as much a state of being as it is an action-plan.”

And then I went on about something else, vaguely related but not quite:

“There’s no sense of coherence to the way I live or choose or want to live my life. It doesn’t make sense to me especially when I think of the inspired. Some people don’t do anything in action but possess an uncanny aura of inspiration nonetheless. They are innately inspired to know themselves. And it is beautiful. And it is fabulous! And even if they do not know themselves, they know how to strike a convincing pose. They know exactly the pose they want to strike, they know exactly the image of themselves they desire to offer the world, and they strike it, and they project it. And who are we, unsteady, unsure, fickle fools to think less of them??”

And then I said to the little bird

"Perhaps, I do not want to be an intellectual that theorises about things. Perhaps, I want to be that thing that intellectuals theorise about. Those who don't do, those who don't be, theorise. And right now, I'm theorising."

And then I saw a thousand books from my past throw itself into the fiery chasm of err…. fiery things. And a hundred unfinished academic theses go up in smoke. And I stood up on my one bad knee, on top of this mountain, and proclaimed with all my might:

I DON’T WANT TO BE AN ACADEMIC! I WANT TO BE A PANDEMIC!!!!!!!!!

And the bird said, “Awesome, let’s put that on a t-shirt!”

#10 Night Night

It’s 5 am in the morning now and I need to go to sleep. For every hour that I delay sleep to blog gibberish, a centipede grows another pair of legs. No more mutant millipedes. Night night.

Posted by Maryam on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at 4:59 AM | Permalink