Breakable

I’m listening to Ingrid Michaelson’s Breakable and the words seem to make a disturbing sense:

Have you ever thought about what protects our hearts?

Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts

So it’s fairly simple to cut right through the mess

And to stop the muscle that makes us confess

I haven’t written a real post here in a while. Heck, I haven’t written a real anything in a while. There’s all this propaganda. How much truth is truth? It just seems so much easier to retreat into a journal than to bear all to a bunch of well-loved strangers.

I’ve just read 27th’s tribute to Bryan Bukenya, and the stabs of guilt are for every friend’s status update I rushed over when it said, “R.I.P Bryan Bukenya.” Every blog post I skipped over… because I did not want to share in a sadness that was not mine. I did not want to drop a clumsy, “I’m sorry,” when I could not picture the man, the friend they had loved and lost. His blog has made him real, and now at last the sadness is legit. God be with him, and his.

And we are so fragile

And our cracking bones make noise

And we are just breakable, breakable

Girls and Boys

There’s this boy. There’s always this boy. Common sense and logic forget to apply their brakes, and just like that, I am  hurtling full-speed towards a certain painful death.

And you fasten your seat-belt because it is the law

In your two-ton death-trap I finally saw

A piece of love in your face that bathed me in regret

Then you drove me to places I’ll never forget

4 a.m. on a Saturday morning is the perfect time to call my mother. It’s dark, you see, and even if she can hear the sadness [which I call tired-ness], she cannot see the tears that streak silently down my cheeks. I wanna come home for two weeks, for a day– I’ll take the crumbs off that treasure table!

And we are so fragile

And our cracking bones make noise

And we are just breakable, breakable

Girls and Boys

I’ve been lying to my folks for a while. “Yes, I’m happy. I’m awesome!” “School? Oh, school’s great!”

A month or so ago, I had my life all planned out. I was gonna be an actuary. I was gonna be filthy rich. I had a job, Yay! Then I got sick– it felt like freaking H1N1. I quit my job. I blew off an Advanced Calculus exam because I didn’t feel like studying for it. I got hired by the Writing Center. Yay white-collar job! And then I realised while I shivered and watched the wind chase the leaves across the great lawn two days ago, that Maths and Statistics is blah. Insurance? Meh. I’ve heard the question, “Why aren’t you an English major?” so many times, I could shoot myself. Yes, I wanna write for a living. But am I good enough to be able  to afford more than a broken-down apartment in the Bronx?

Money or happy-ness?

Life doesn’t make sense anymore.

Breakable, breakable

Breakable girls

Breakable, breakable

Breakable girls and boys

Hey, don’t tell my parents?

Maroon 5 & Jason Segel: WOOT!!!

I’ve never been to a real concert before. Those bright flashing disco lights, the screaming girls up front right next to the stage, the pulsing bodies pressed up against each other, the cell-phones raised like beacons, the powerful vocals drowned in insanely loud music– nope, none of it– not till tonight. Maroon 5 was playing at St. John’s just a few hours ago, and I was smack in the middle of all that excitement. Can I hear a: Woot! Woot! ?

My hands went up of their own accord. I was screaming so hard I damn near forgot myself– as did most of the people all around me. And that was before the show even began.

But when it did:

Adam Levine. One word: HOT!

Okay, maybe  more than one word. 13 energy-packed song performances: some lively, some with the tempo real slow, a little country to mix it up, a bit of Alicia Keys appreciation and all the while, Adam Levine’s amazing vocals, personality, and–let’s face it– just all out hotness, carrying the show. I’m sorry Mr. James Valentine and all the rest of Maroon 5, it was just really hard to see you with Adam’s awesomeness clouding up the stage.

But my personal highlight of the event/ weekend/year remains Jason Segel– How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshal, I Love You Man, Knocked Up

Crooning into the appreciative ears of our very Catholic audience:

Tell me would it be wrong for me to use my celebrity status to make love to a college girl tonight?

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Call me if you need me

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Only call me if you need me

…Don’t miss this one time offer

You get to sleep with Jason Segel freshman year

….So bring your friend to my swanky Manhattan hotel

Remember when I showed my penis in Forgetting Sarah Marshal

There were no special effects…No, No special effects…

So if you liked what you saw

Well, that’s exactly what I’m working with

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Only call me if you need me

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But only call me if you’re disease-free

Remember when I showed my penis in Forgetting Sarah Marshal

There were no special effects…No, No special effects…

So if you thought it was small, if you thought it was small

…well then your boyfriend is probably NOT white.

 

On kyeyo, & other randomsies

Because three very awesome people asked how I was in the comments section on my last post, I have decided to crawl out of the wood works and scratch a little something onto the bark of my tree.

First a little background.

A couple of months or more ago, I got an email inviting me to an interview for a job on campus. I forsook my jeans, t-shirt and hoodie for tailored pants, a girl blouse and girl shoes. I tied my hair back all respectable, and I put on my happy face and when my would-be boss asked why I wanted the job, I answered, “Well, I do have the time on my schedule,” while the smarter suck-ups next to me went, “I love working with people,” and “I have had some experience in the field.” Impressive for a first-ever interview, no?

But let’s skip all the whatsits in-between. Three interviews later I had the job. The job description: setting up for events on campus, moving heavy tables and chairs. Warning: “unglamorous.” Pay: over the minimum wage. Hours: workable. Working attire: jeans. Me: sold!

Have I mentioned to you before how much I hate euphemisms? It’s shit, well call it shit, damn-it! “Unglamorous” and “set-up” translated into taking the trash out, cleaning bathrooms, and sweeping in between people’s feet in the school cafeteria.

3 days into the job and I discovered:

This is how they break your spirit. They keep your neck bent, your eyes locked on the ground and your hands inches deep in mouldy burgers and stinky pizzas, and dirty jobs they wouldn’t do themselves. When you lift the garbage bags and the coffee spills out of one of the ripped bags down your immaculate blue jeans while you stand in one of the hallways, you die a little. And when you look up from the mess and meet the concerned eyes of your professor over the garbage roll-away, well then you seal the embarrassment with a deep purple blush. You bump into your friends, of course, while riding the garbage truck from one end of the school to the other, and you hope that your grimace passes for an “I don’t care,” smile. You uncover the recycling myth that your school perpetrates and you consider writing a piece about it for the campus newspaper.

It is harder still when after you take the trash out, you must lug heavy metal furniture across ridiculously long distances and lay carpet tiles on the indoor basketball court floor for a volley ball game– all in the space of a few hours. You find that there is more pain in the humiliation, the monotony and the sheer lack of mental effort  than in your newly cramping back muscles and burning swollen feet.

Someone swings a door into your head while you are bent dutifully over a dust pan, and then you finally realise that the label blue-collar, silent and invisible is yours.

But then you discover also:

The wonderful world of work camaraderie, or is the right term shared misery? You curse actively round the table while you’re on a break and then you discover that you are enjoying yourself. It’s not so bad, after-all. These are real people. Behind the uniforms, brooms and faces you never see upturned, you find lively stories, enviable dreams, rock-solid personalities. These are people you can laugh with, cry with and share with. They are real, and they are here.

You change your tune from, “Fuck this job!” to “Fuck whoever has a problem with me working here!”

You spend your first pay-check on alcohol it is illegal for you to buy because you need it, and you consider yourself initiated into the real world. A big swallow of beer. Now it’s all better.

That’s where I’ve been– turning my hands calloused and learning to juggle manual labour, parties on the weekend, physical exhaustion and Advanced Calculus. I’ve been away– growing. A good thing, eh?

Oi! This Nanowrimo thing has caught me eye. If I am AWOL in November, you can totally blame it.

Baz, I suspect that you will appreciate Zombieland. Go see it.

Okay, peoples, I’m out.

Wait. Just one thing more: Feather, my insanely cool and super-talented sister was born today. Happy Birthday, love!

Laters!

On the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009

“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than two men holding hands?” ~Ernest Gaines

I am a Roman Catholic. I believe in God. I do not question His omnipotence or His omnipresence. But I do question some of the teachings of the Catholic Church– they are after-all a man’s interpretation of God’s word– and I am a man also.

I have highlighted here, three passages in the Catechism of the Catholic Church dealing with Homosexuality:

Article 2357 states, “Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Article 2358 continues,“The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”

And article 2359 concludes, “Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”

To put it succinctly, the Catholic Church teaches that persons who are sexually attracted to persons of the same sex have no ethical option except lifelong abstinence, even if “the number of men and women who experience these deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible” and “the psychological genesis of Homosexuality remains largely unexplained.” However, there are those Theologians and lay Catholics like myself, who argue that gay and lesbian people cannot be expected to go an entire lifetime without genital intimacy [necessary for the make-up of well-rounded adult humans], and so the Church’s guidance in this case is not valid because it is not realistic.

“Why would God create approximately ten percent of humans with a sexual orientation that must be suppressed and frustrated anyway?” The search to understand what truly human conduct consists of for gays has not yet been completed, and the discovery of what God intends for gays and lesbians remains inadequately understood [Eileen Flynn, Foundations of Catholic Theology].

David Bahati’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 includes a provision for the death penalty for gay men and women in Uganda. According to the Bill, an individual caught having ‘gay sex’ with a disabled person or anyone under 18, would be subject to an HIV-test, and if found positive would be liable to face the death sentence. The “promotion of homosexuality” which means the “production, trafficking, and procuring, marketing, broadcasting, disseminating, and publishing of homosexual materials” would also be criminal under this law.

“A person who keeps a house, or a place of any kind for purposes of homosexuality commits an offense and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for seven years,” the bill states.

Failure to report a violation [by friends and family of gay and lesbian persons] would constitute a criminal offence.

I will not even attempt to get into a discussion of Bahati’s preamble to the actual law; it is so obviously a reflection of his own personal feeling rather than an attempt to present objectively the facts on homosexuality available to him through research that it does not warrant more than my glancing attention. But I will address what the passing of this Bill will mean for Ugandans–gay and non-gay.

You will agree that in pre-dominantly Christian/ religious Uganda, homophobia stems from the belief that the behavior of gay persons is “unnatural” and “immoral.” You will agree also that the tenets of Christian teaching: compassion, respect, sensitivity, putting yourself in another’s position, extend to all human beings, in spite of their sexual orientation [Refer back to article 2358]. But when we encounter the suggestion of this Bill in the press, we find that our religious leaders are noticeably silent on the issue of the death penalty for gay persons as they are in situations where gay persons are forced to undergo “correctional” rape. We find that the majority of the Christians who experience a knee-jerk reaction when they hear of the death sentence are silent when it is applied to gay persons. Why?

Does the definition of “immoral” blur between heterosexuals and homosexuals? Must we apply a different understanding to each? If Bahati is as concerned with “protecting the health of Ugandan citizens from the negative effects of immoral behavior,” as he makes out, why has he not extended the law to prostitutes, to rapists, to adulterers, to liars, to cheats? The reports of sexual molestation in Uganda are attributed more to heterosexual criminals after-all, and liars and cheats do harm our health when they scam us of our life savings.

Homosexuality is not a disease. You do not ‘catch’ it by associating with gay people. Gays do not “recruit straights.” We seem to forget conveniently that sex for the most part is consensual, and when it isn’t, victims do not hold out for repeat performances of those terrible episodes of their lives. There is no underlying conspiracy by gay people to take over the world as Nsaba Buturo insists, there is no need to be urgently afraid of the extinction of the human race because gays cannot reproduce. What is there to fear then from our gay brothers and sisters?

The power to effect change is in the hands of the people, we who vote and decide what happens to us in our country. Too many times we sigh and cry, “It’s the government’s fault. Blame Museveni.” But really you should blame yourself if you twiddle your thumbs and do nothing about everything you find fault with. The question here is not whether you believe homosexuality to be a disease or not, but rather: are you willing to allow the government to sentence our brothers and sisters to death on the basis of a biased definition of “immorality”?

Protest the Bill.

The Fat Cat, Smalls NYC

Saturday, September 26: After a five-hour stint at work

We rode the subway for over an hour and when we finally rose up out of the underground, we were met by the unfamiliar sights and sounds of West Village. These were the darker alleyways of NYC, with the streets squashed together as though by an impatient hand. The incessant rain made the night murky and the puddles that we couldn’t see splashed black mud on the ends of our light blue jeans. Hoodies gave us anonymity– which allowed us to blend in with the crowd which patronised the tattoo parlours, The Pink Pussy Cat [in bright pink neon lights] and a store called Birthday Suit. These were the kinds of streets that made you clutch your wallet and phone tight and huddle closer to your group of friends. Our plan was to find the Fat Cat, a jazz club we had googled and decided to go to on a whim.

And then there it was– under the sign that declared its name. The stairs were steep, descending into a cramped space, and even if I hoped very hard that they wouldn’t, the men at the bottom of the stairs still stamped the Under 21 red stop sign on my right arm.

It was packed down there, people stood pressed back to back, clinking glasses and bottles of beer and talking loudly all at once. The chatter rose and became a constant buzzing that you could choose to ignore, or you could press your hands to your head and go mad. It smelled like white people in a too small place, like sweat and tobacco and cheap perfume and it was impossible to move without bumping into a half-dressed girl or a half-drunk boy. But the Fat Cat boasts of billiard tables, pool tables, chess and checkers games, Foosball, backgammon, ping pong and– this last amused me– scrabble. So yes, it did have its saving graces. And over it all, like a loud, insistent radio, the live band worked what I suppose they would call their magic.

I’ll admit that the way they handled their instruments was impressive: the man on the sax had a pair of lungs on him, the dudes strumming the guitar and the bass coaxed impossible tunes from them and the guy on the piano– he could do extraordinary things with his fingers. But the music was soporific, several times I had to shake myself awake. The lasting impression they made on me was that if they would play for me while I lay in my bed, maybe I’d finally chase big bad insomnia away. I was glad to stumble out of there.

We hit up Smalls next. It’s another jazz club right around the corner from the Fat Cat. The music was uppity and classy–  it lifted the spirits, instead of deflating them like a pin to a balloon. The crowd was slightly older too. I was barely awake when we first got in, but when I found that my head was bobbing on its own and my shoulders kept slowly swaying, I woke to a song that seemed to lift the very weariness from my bones. This was good music, music to make you remember what it is to truly enjoy sounds beautiful without the encumbrance of words, music to teach your soul “how to strut.”

Smalls is the kind of place to take your significant other to and sit back with a nice cool glass of alcohol that you can savour while you listen. I’d have settled for just the alcohol.

But still, I found it again, that beautiful peace. As we walked out, I dropped back my hood and lifted my face to the rain. The air was cleaner, I could breathe deep. Even the irreverent, speedy yellow cabs caught under the street-lights seemed to shine a little brighter. My feet found no puddles. I smiled and I hummed catchy jazz tunes. I say, if music be the food of the soul, play on! Play on, my brother! Art is that which even the man with the work-roughened, calloused hands can appreciate.

Grrrrrr!

I’ve never been this tired before in my life, or if I have, I have forgotten it long ago. I feel like a man stretched on a rack– with commitments and internship applications and essays and school and work pulling at both ends– I’m just about ready to snap right down the middle. I decided to have a bit of a touristy weekend: Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Central Park, to toast my last two days of freedom, and I wanted to post about it, of course. But, wouldn’t you know, I am needed elsewhere in the next half-hour…

Toodles, people! I’ll see you whenever!

Kampala Riots

I’m the kind of person who would say worrying is for losers. What will happen, will happen. There’s no use worrying about it in the interim! But I have been guilty over the last two days of a nagging, all-consuming worry. I cannot hear those gunshots in the dark, feel the merciless kibokos or imagine walking through town with my arms stretched upward in surrender. I cannot fully grasp the idea of being stopped in traffic and questioned about my clan or my totem because I pretended for a scared second to be a Muganda. The idea of being beaten up in Nateete for wearing jeans– a non-Kiganda culture– is beyond me! But dear God, I am afraid. So deathly afraid of an empty, burning Kampala.

What I see in my head is a darkness punctuated by loud shouts and mad chants, careless bullets finding unwitting targets, and the blood seeping from fallen victims. And all for what? Bruised egos?!

My sister is usually the very epitome of calm. She’s the one who taught me to laugh when I’d really rather cry. So when I called her up an hour ago and the first thing I heard was a nervous laugh when she recognised my voice, it hit me rather hard that all of this ruckus, all of this chaos IS for real.

“Teti, shit be’s tight.”

They’ve turned the electricity off in Seeta. The road into town has been cordoned off by a burning fireman’s truck. My sister who says she has been hearing gunshots all day is cowering in a corner with her baby and my cousin. The askaris advised that they lock up and bar the doors before it was even dark.

Why?

How is it that we are dissolving into tribal conflicts in 2009, while crying out to the world that we are more than our spears, loin cloth and grass-thatched huts?

I Ask One Thing Only

They creep up on me these memories, such that one minute I am curled up with a book and the next, I am sitting up and holding my stomach in, as if that will stay the sudden desperate need to have Annet hand me the plate of matooke she has just sliced (with that purple plastic plate burned around the edges), and lifted steaming from the banana leaves. She is standing on the verandah of the half-finished house which serves as our kitchen “out back” and behind her, the smoke rises from the sigiri and the soot it spits paints a smudgy masterpiece on the brick walls. She looks tired, but the grin she shoots at me as she holds the plate out has enough energy to make the most sad-faced bitter old man smile back.

“Annet, that is too much food,” I laugh.

“Even if. You will still eat,” is her smart response as she jumps up the steps to the kitchen inside to pile my plate with rice, sikumawiki and hot, chewy beef stew.

It’s been a long day at wherever and so I am happy to kick off my shoes and sit outside to eat with Annet. She tells me about her day, I tell her about mine. We speak a hopeless cross between English and Luganda, and punctuate our conversation with teasing smiles and harmless jibes.

Dear God. What I wouldn’t give to be stumbling down that dirt road in the evening, rounding the bend to our house and calling out, “Annet? Annet! What’s for supper?”

Oh. To have the feel of hot smooth matooke gliding down my throat!

Bugger these burgers!

Labor Day Weekend

Location: Amherst, MA

Book on the nightstand: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Mood: A little thoughtful

There are many things on my mind right now: death, pregnancy, drunken nights and terrible choices, idyllic hot summer afternoons outside Antonio’s pizza shop in Amherst town with a slice of buffalo chicken pizza and the laughter of friends I haven’t seen in a year wrapping around me in a cocoon of warmth, swelling and lifting like an incredible cloud of joy. I am thinking of the eight straight shots of rum, vodka and tequila I tossed back on Friday night in the space of eight minutes. I am remembering with a smile the fact that even if my mind said to my legs half an hour later that they could walk in a straight line, they wouldn’t or rather couldn’t. Swaying, staggering, and almost kissing the ground; my friend trying to force water down my throat, and me asking only for alcohol, more alcohol. It’s a great feeling, being wasted. Nothing at all seems to matter, it’s all light and happy and oh, I do so love the world. Even if you wake up the next morning and find your fingers threading through the hairs on a strange boy’s naked chest. Maybe that’s not so bad either. Sunday night with a bottle of cheap whisky that burned all the way down and had an abominable aftertaste. Pre-gamers and parties that didn’t quite happen, white music that forced your legs to stand still rather than move to the beat. Bullshit card games, pleasant tasting beer. A trip to the mall, a missed bus, a quick run into Inglorious Basterds at the cinema, and a reluctant approval of its blood and gore sadistic humour. I’m thinking of juicy bits of gossip straight from Uganda too, courtesy of my friend who got back from her summer vacation a couple of days ago. Damn! There’s that blasted homework to do.

I ran away from NY for the weekend. Tomorrow, I will have to face myself, school and my absurd problems again.

P.S. Do y’all believe everything you read?

Good Times

I wore these terribly long denim skirts in school, mostly because they were much easier to imagine into trousers, when I was bouncing around in baggy t-shirts and pretending to be a boy. It was school policy too, but that’s a minor point. I mention these skirts only because this random image of me looking down at my toes peeping out from under one of those voluminous skirts just popped into my head. I am standing at the front of the classroom at the time, clutching a few books in my hands, so I suppose it is prep time and I am in S.2 again.

Eish. I remember this particular prep. I switched seats with my neighbor that night, for some obscure reason, so I was in the aisle rather than the window seat at the back of the classroom. There was an HSC supervisor at the teacher’s desk watching the class like a hawk and it couldn’t have been more than half an hour since the final bell for prep had rung to shut us up. I was very studious, of course, scribbling a ridiculous story about a boy with blue hair into one of my old notebooks, when I felt something fall on my neck and slither down my back. I jumped about discreetly so as not to draw attention to myself and shook the back of my shirt. When whatever it was fell to the floor, I made to glance at it, all casual-like. It was a gecko’s tail, still twitching. Fuck.

I looked up at the ceiling, instinctively. Just in time for the two remaining geckos to sky-dive onto my upturned face.

Good times.

G.N.L. Zamba’s Kikankane on replay