Thoughts on Some Crazy Cats

As the stories emerge in this 6 month stint, it is only fitting that characters do as well. I do best surrounding myself with people who are caricatures, over the top versions of themselves that make life hilarious and allow all experiences to be richer based on each individuals awkward/weird/dorky contribution to life. My life is full of caricature friends back home, and no one could ever take their place; similarly here, each person is so crazy individual that when I leave I will lament the loss of each true and wonderful gem that I will never meet again. 

The Hippie Scientist is one such friend whose keen personality I need to soak up as much as possible while we are still only living one floor away from one another, as is her roommate, my pal, whose name I haven't come up with yet. A true cross section of nature and nurture, Hippie Scientist is by nature wired for science, detail, facts, particulars, reason and no nonsense. Raised in Berkeley, she was nurtured to connect to her environment and universe, to think globally and act locally, to appreciate love in all forms and human bodies in their most natural state. In practice these dichotomies equal sheer brilliance. While at first glance she may come off to some as slightly studious and hinting toward know-it-all status, a second look reveals a true fascination with nature, particularly the ocean, and a sharp and fast mind that holds such a vast body of knowledge that the know-it-all label can be applied for its sheer truth and not for pretentious fluff. 

"Look at this shirt," she said to me last night, pointing at her own Tower-Hangout-Attire. She was wasted, as was I, and while our conversation at the moment probably had no ties to science, this was the kick she latched onto after 2 grown up lemonades, Kaisa-sized vodka sprites, somec*, and beer pong. "It has all the phylum of animals on it. Look at the mammals...there are only four," she put four deliberate fingers to her chest, where all the phylum were listed on her dorky shirt.  "Four. That is pretty insignificant. Makes you think, doesn't it. " She shot me a triumphant look that seemed to say, in its inebriated body language, "I know, right?", which is what any of my Seattle friends would have ended that point with, and then she headed back to the beer pong table. I laughed, because it was clear that she had thought of this before, this imbalance of taxonomy and the hierarchy of species, probably while stoned. The way feminism is my drunken soap box, the animal kingdom is hers- her politics is that of nature. I don't know shit about animals except for what you have to know about primates for anthropology, so I can only smile and acknowledge how profound her little statement was, with little to no understanding of the greater implications of there only being four phylum mammals on this planet.

The Hippie Scientist is one of the leading characters in this weird act, this "Real World Guam" experience, and there are many others, some whose names are yet-to-be-determined. A couple of others to chew on for now are "Lisa," named for his similarity to the Lesbian Man on the L Word, Captain Planet, who was incidentally not named for any Green Planet promoting, and Princess, who was fittingly named for acting like a Princess. All the time. It may not be of pressing importance for me to make a character summary for each individual here, because I hope I follow through with writing enough for them to reveal themselves, so for now, the Hippie Scientist is as much detail as I can muster. 

Besides, the Gold Mine is The Stoic Korean. I promise.

Forgetting How To Read...An Old Blog I Didn't Post Because I Was Probably Drunk and Fell Asleep

Its a pretty stellar thing to live in a place where a plethora of languages are spoken around you and where your job requires so much guest interaction that you are forced to learn those languages. The list of Korean words floating around in my brain is growing by the day, and while I haven't set my sights on Japanese yet, I can most certainly pick it out when I hear it and respond with the appropriate hello or goodbye. Learning to communicate without a common language is also a crazy-satisfying endeavor, because you realize, after struggling through instructions to people who speak one of three different languages that aren't English, and wrestling through a nighttime conversation with your roommate about where furniture in the room should go, that communication is bigger than a common language. Hurray.

The flip side to all that learning is a loss of the eloquence of your native language, and an overall simplifying of communication on the whole. I already find it appropriate to make whole sentences out of two words, "No more," "everytime" "ok," "Off today?" etc. A complex sentence sounds something like "You going dinner?" "Where are you from?" and "No fighting/running/diving," which is then followed by a very obvious no-n0 hand motion. I think a lot of us have a secret fear of degrading our English to a point of permanence. This carries over into reading, because I am finding my attention span is waning when I sit in front of my computer to catch up on the world. It may not just be the language issue though, but the constant kind of stimulus that this job requires is making it hard to engage in any other kind of continuous down time besides sleeping and drinking. Regardless I am suddenly an impatient child with ADD, and it is a miracle that I can even write this blog and an even bigger one if I bother to post it.

 

It doesn't end here. Not only are my English skills possibly sliding away, so are my skills at reading people, that, or my entire cultural competency meter is getting shaky. Specifically, while in Seattle I know how to not get hit on by guys, and they also have the sensitivity in Seattle to pick up the gay vibe and generally not hit on me. Mutual happiness. In Guam, where all the ladies harbor a slightly harder, get-shit-done look and attitude, the dyke/femme binary has to be thrown out the window. Pair that with the over friendliness and slight feminization of the men in Chammorro culture, and every interaction is one big grey area where you can't rate the amount of sexual interest existing in a conversation to save your life. 

Until they call you- at 3 in the morning. 

I was so full of codene for my hacking night coughs that I didn't even understand the noise blaring from the phone until the 3rd ring, and I was even more confused when I answered and a male non-korean voice asked for ME, using the correct pronunciation of my name. 

"Who is this?"

The unknown on the other line told me his name and it meant zero to me, and it continued to mean zero for all the times that he repeated it until at last he gave up and said, "Ah you don't remember me...from the surf party. I told you I would take you surfing. I don't usually call people at 3 am, I just wanted to make sure you didn't fake number me. Have a good night. I will call you tomorrow." 

The end.

What the fuck? It was brought to my attention by my friends after that party that maybe when I said I met someone that would take me surfing I had the wrong idea. Damn, I guess I did. Why didn't I fake number that guy? Because I really believed we were going surfing, I was at a god damned surf party, everyone there was in this surf club and that is the reason I went in the first place. Out here you can't just find a beach and surf on it if you are white, you have to be invited along with a local or just wait until you vacation in Hawaii- these beaches do not belong to us. The only way in is to know somebody, and holy hell that was what I was looking for. So i read it wrong, just like when I read my contract wrong and missed the part that said I had a drug test. When I met this guy he reminded me of someone that I work with out here, and was just totally friendly and chill  about taking some rando clubmates to good surf. Give him my number? SURE! And the poor fucker thought I was fake numbering him because I gave him an extension at a damn hotel. No no guys, really, I live in the hotel.

Anyway, I solved the guy mis-read by just never calling him back, and the only other awkward time that I had to talk to him was accidently answering the phone thinking it was a friend of my roommate, The Stoic Korean. He asked about dinner and I pussyfooted around the truth that I didn't want dinner, just surfing, and then "accidently" threw his number in the trash. As for my slowing demolishing reading and speaking skills, I probably can't just ignore those like I ignored the guy. I have to motivate back to writing and reading and editing and critical thinking, and I need to do it quick, or else learn another universal language fast to aid in my communication. 

Maybe I'll learn the language of dance.  (If Erika and Kate don't read this that reference is pointless)

Marking Our New Territory With Drunken Stumbles

Let me cut to the chase now: I got wasted as fuck last night and it was soooo good.

 Fittingly, last night marked the end of my training and the eve of the true start of me as a worker bee at this establishment. Not only was I about to enter the ranks of routine, but we, "The Fab Four" were disbanding, and after yesterday we were no longer required to be up each others asses everyday as the FNGs (Fucking New Guys. Yea, they really say that here.). We were warned that our first steps alone in this world without each others hand to hold was going to be like that first day of junior high in that episode of Boy Meets World where Cory and Shawn don't realize until school begins to take place at an alarming rate around them that they no longer have every class together. It was said that we would scramble to find each other as we lost our footing, thinking we couldn't handle life without our fellow new hire buddies to surround us, but that eventually life would pick up and maybe we wouldn't even miss each other.

Bah. We had an easy way to deal with all that. At the end of our training the 4 of us just went out to this big surf party on top of a club and got so stinkin' shitty drunk, in that bonding-buddy-forever kind of way, and constructed enough moments of hilarity we were nearly required to find each other for recall the next morning. Despite the fact that we were no longer in each others spaces, we had a blast last night that forced us to seek each other out, laugh and retell our stories to the point of avoiding having to miss each other at all. And let me just say that getting me to remember all of last nights events was a group effort that took all day. 

Its silly to talk about the possibility of missing your friends when you all live on the same 2 floors of a hotel, but it is absolutely the reality that if you don't find reasons to see each other you may go days before re-running into your favorite clubmate/mates, unless you attach to each other at the hip bf style. Which is sort of what we do. Now. 

Day one on our own and we are already up each others asses again, spreading gossip, talking shit, laughing our heads off about the nights events and just overall loving life. The "Fab Four" (our boss came up with it not us) has been here for two weeks now and something is starting to click, we are getting enveloped into the pace of life at this place and to the pace of each other. I've gone out drinking a few times since I have been here, but last night was by far the first time that felt familiar, like I knew the pathway home, or at the very least, the path to the nearest Fujiichiban at 2 am. What makes home? Knowing where the drunk-folk food is at? Maybe. I mean, this is only temporary home, I still have home in the Northwest waiting for me, which is home in the bigger scheme.

But this for-now set up is gaining all the familiarity and warmth of a place that I want to be, and it probably isn't because of a late night noodle place or free drinks at the bar. I think it is because of a dose of karma that I am receiving on credit that led me to this fabulous set of ladies that make up some kind of cracked-out-coconut-style Sex and the City....Although, with the statuses between the  4 of us equaling zero sex for various reasons of perpetual singleness or the practice of that gross word "monogamy," a better suited title for the story of the 4 of us might be "Masturbation and Micronesia." 

I'll let you know when we buy the rights.

A little angst

Some days I don't miss it, I could be so busy that my body doesn't have the energy to yearn for that particular sweet pleasure. I am also doing an ok job of training myself to not think about first thing every morning, to wish for it before bed in all its hedonistic delight, and to forget about the sneaky excitement when it is done in the afternoon. Uhhhhh- right, not thinking about it. But sometimes, or maybe more honestly, often times, the power of desire is all consuming and my faculties are overwhelmed with a vicious need to get stoned. 

Substitute fucked for stoned and I feel pretty much the same way, but as of yet, I am not totally there with blogging about what I miss about sex. In reality I could write twice as much about that, but for now on that subject, I am leaving my intense sexual angst to swirl around on the inside, left to manifest in the few precious little moments that are handed down by god when my roommate stays at her boyfriends house, or when i am off for the afternoon and she is nowhere to be found....I will side track to say that the free nature of clubmates moving from room to room with doors typically remaining unlocked leaves for a slightly stressful session of angst relieving, and that- no no, I was talking about pot, not this.....

As far as my friend Marijuana goes, the yearning is not of the addicted smoker kind, because I was one of those in high school and the kind of addiction that comes from smoking cigarettes is a beast of its own. I read in some Legalize Marijuana literature that pot is about as addictive as caffeine, and my biased opinion is to agree. The careful balance of necessity and delight that exists with my morning cups of coffee is on par with how I feel about an evening bowl: they may not be basic essentials, but life is only better and more relaxing upon their inclusion. Not only to I love pot, but I work a job that nearly requires a weed unwind after a shift, and live on an island in an atmosphere that supports imbibing of the Bob Marley persuasion. The big drawback is the drug testing and the still mysteriously unmentioned results of mine. The consensus is that they are going to stay mum about the results of my test until I pull something that requires some extra ammo for them to get rid of me; basically, if they keep liking me I'm in the clear, but what that probably means is that I should stay damn careful about smoking for the duration of my contract.

So I'm fucked, and not in the good way. I mean sure, I could use break from pot, my intake during my first post college year probably accounted for more smoke in my lungs than all of college put together, but it also accounted for the biggest mellowing out my intense personality has ever made it through. Thank you ganj', and now it is gone. I recognize that there are bigger problems in the world than whether this girl gets to get high at any old time of the day, but it points to something more significant that I had a feeling would happen after being here for a little bit, and that is missing home. I miss Seattle already. I miss an evening with my friends, I miss sitting on a couch and lighting up a bowl and then getting lost in wherever your mind goes in that stoned little space you created until the night is over. Ah man, I miss everything smelling and sounding and tasting so good, and o fuck FEELING so good. Touch IS the best one, and right it is still good without M.J., but o shit isn't it rad with it? Ok, maybe I'm rambling a little here, and maybe I am crossing my physical pleasures a bit too much for the time, but man o man. 

Learning experience. Learning experience. Learning experience.

Dressing Like A Lady, and Everything Else That I Suck At

In situations that you partake in "for the experience" (and good lord am I tired of that phrase) the selfish westerner often reflects on the breadth of experiences around them in terms of what they learned about themselves. That, for better or worse is true of the experience that I am having right now, and the positive or negative nature of that self reflection vacillates everyday. The other night, for example, I was singing my own praises after cracking up a group of 4 on the 2nd floor for hours talking about my childhood as a Catholic, coming out to my family and reenacting the particularly heinous nuances of other clubmates and so forth. On the next day I felt worthless and stupid realizing that I don't know how to dress myself- like, at all, and suddenly the 9th cloud that I was floating on the night before was deflated and uninteresting. 

Admitting that I have zero body of knowledge when it comes to dressing like a girl has little to do with being gay, and more, I think, to do with pure laziness and a lack of visual creativity. I am also from Seattle, where the name of fashion is function, and it is appropriate to spend all night in a bar still wearing your cycling shoes. I have never been particularly over-the-top feminine, petite, cute, soft, or whatever other adjectives you might apply to dressy-tanks and short-shorts wearing girls, which I have been able to shrug off previously; and the type of self-learning that I expected to do here was not of this nature. But that is the learning part I suppose: expect the unexpected and laugh at yourself with your big revelation is just that you are a sucky dresser. 

I learned this due to the evening dress code here, that basically allows guys to dress more casually than women, and I had a mini freak out thinking that I wouldn't be allowed to dress as as casually as the boys. An emergency KMart trip, a borrowed strapless bra, and some overall female backstage support helped me get through my first couple of uncomfortable dress up nights here, but I have been living in a constant state of fear that I will run out of anything acceptable to wear. It is already getting better as I watch all the local lesbians stake claim over their long shorts, their pressed collared shirts, and their stud diamond earrings. Granted, locals hires walk around here with more ownership and leeway than off island hires, but if these ladies can rock the boy dress code, than I think that I can too. I'm loosening up a little and realizing I don't have to look uber femme to look presentably for dinner. 

But more learning comes in here, because as it turns out, even as far as presentable dyke attire goes I'm still pretty out in left field. Everything that I own contains a layer of permanent sweat, rain and grime from Seattle living, and all of the nice clothes I could have afforded this summer were washed down by $5 pints of beer, which left me a little too hippy for some of my acceptable nicer shirts. I wear the same two pairs of shorts from Target nearly every day, and my favorite t shirts number in the count-on-one-hand category. Like I said, it isn't about being gay, its about being a bad dresser, which is why I freaked and bought some lady clothes, because I don't have any of my usual community here to say yay or nay to boy-cut dress shirts and belts that go with large pairs of plaid pants. 

So I suck. Ok. Maybe I will learn and I wont suck when I come back, but that's probably a stretch, and I'm ok with it. I am figuring out though, the truth in things that I didn't believe in before: that there are occasions which rightfully call for a presentable appearance, that jewelry is not always superfluous and wasteful spending (although beer might be), that shoes do make an outfit, and that blow dryers are necessary, even in Micronesia.

 I'm working a job where I get to be a kid all day but I'm still learning to tweak all these little things to make me more adult, or at least cleaned up enough to look like one. 

O yea, other things I suck at....Or do too much

1. Talking shit. I can't stop. New places, new gossip, new conflicts- it is never ending. 

2. Eating. My relationship to my hips is always going to be a struggle.

3. Calling/Writing people back. Some of this isn't my fault, I really don't have time to do anything.

4. Reading the fine print (see last entry). 

5. Going to bed early.

6. Taking the time to write things down. There is just so much, and so little time.

7. Saving money. I left broke, and I will return broke. 

Stoner Tales

Even though I left Seattle on Tuesday afternoon and it is now Thursday evening, I haven't even been in Guam for 24 hours. I am damn exhausted....So much learning and listening today, including the hard reality that in Guam the guy Clubmates always lose weight and the girls gain it--well there goes my plan of losing 9 mo. of beer weight with 6 mo. of island living. Although, based on an unofficial pact, I have to stick to my commitment to lose the half rack hanging out on my hips like an unwanted crying child. I shall prevail.

We drove out (new clubmates and our assigned training leader) in the back of a PIC owned Toyota Tacoma (and yes I mean in the back, this isn't Washington) to Gun Beach to watch the sunset. I will spare this blog the boring details of beautiful soft sand and a slowly fading sun, because yea yea, that is the same anywhere. But I will say that I enjoyed it as much as possible and kicked myself for not bringing my camera, since my stay in Guam is contingent on my passing a drug test, and in this test a positive answer is not a good one. 

O yea, that's right, I took a piss test this morning, less than 48 hours after getting stoned with my regular party of imbibers after drinking away my last night in town. Surprise? Nope, it was in my contract, I just can't read anything longer than a page apparently. I am having a hard time deciding if they are actually going to fire me- one guy fromm Saipan was given a retest, and I keep hearing mixed reviews on how hard line the drug policy is. I'm thinking, it really comes down to whether they like you and how much they need you. Unfortunately for me, September is the slowest month of the year, so I might be quite disposable. 

I can't even guess what is about to happen. Of course, I drank enough water to piss h2o and rehydrate Mars to support the point of supporting life again, but does that really dilute the TCH that is SEETHING through my body? hmmm. Well, I'm either going to remember this as my first-night-freak out, or I'll be looking for a new job, bumming a couch with my brother's friends, and returning in a month or so. Right now I don't care which, because at this point I have no more control of the outcome, I'm just rolling with the punches. I'm learning that I come out alright if I take that course of action.