Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak. says Rosalind in a moment of love’s despair in Shakespeare’s As you like it, disguised as a man.
And even though so much time has passed since the Bard wrote that, it is still true. Anywhere I am today, despite how I dislike being stereotyped as the has too many shoes and takes a long time in the bathroom type, I can’t help but say what I think. Even when it’s irrelevant.
A tend and befriend response.
What do you really need to survive a single day? If you were to move to a new place, what are your basic necessities?
The few things I need: a pillow, my laptop, and a wireless internet connection.
Hope is like wearing clothes. Despair is like realizing that you left your jacket at home and you can’t get it before you will freeze for three hours outside. You think of several hundred ways to get that jacket, but you’re unwillling to sacrifice your own pickiness to wear someone else’s and would rather suffer the cold than wearing a stranger’s jacket.
“I could put all my books here!” my new roommate exclaimed as we were standing in the extra room in our new apartment.
I paused for a moment and said with a glazed look in my eyes, “I have always wanted a pillow room.”
Only because I saw it once on MTV on Cribs.
When is it the right time to move out? When do parents expect their kids to move out?
In the last 6 years, I lived away from home. For school. In and out of apartments. Cheap places. Living the college life. I started my first real job a few months ago and I finally found a place in San Francisco. I had been looking to move out ever since I got back.
Here’s my chance right? But when is it right to stay and when is it right to go? It’s not that my parents need my help. They were the ideal immigrants–saved enough money to buy a house in an affluent suburb, send their kids to a good school and college, and live minimally at least to a certain extent…to at least enjoy life.
And so I am about to sign a lease tomorrow. I want to be able to be close to work, walk outside and be right there at a cafe. Be in the city. I can’t do that while I am out here stuck in the suburbs. But right now I am getting the “when I was your age” speech.
So I would really like to think that unlike most people my age, my spending habits are good. So there’s the eating out on weekends. But I save a lot on other things. Never carry a balance on my credit cards. No loans. I will splurge every once awhile on my favorite electronic gadget or concert, but it’s all with due diligence. So I will survive the upcoming year living on my own. Because I have. Somewhat before.
Are our lives fulll of rounded rectangles? My computer desk has rounded rectangles, but my other desk only has rounded rectangles from wear and tear. My comb has rounded corners. So do my speakers, my powerbook and my monitors. My trash can. My mattress and pillows. And so does this plastic package for dark chocolate covered espresso beans from trader joe’s that have been infiltrating my diet the last 2 weeks. Not my wooden bed frame nor my bookshelf. My mirror and my door do not.
But the steps outside my room do.
After we had hit up a dive bar in the Mission, someone suggested we head to Crow Bar all the way on the other side of the city. As we drove there, we realized it was…truly fleet week. Before this, I had seen the blue angels crossed paths in the sky. But as we drove down Broadway, men in uniform. Sailors, marines, etc. were wandering the street. Their bushy-eyed tailed look in their eyes. I had never been in the city when they were here. All I could recall was the SATC episode where Carrie asked how often a “big love” happens to a sailor and where Charlotte decided to be a new brazen, risk-taking Charlotte.
At the bar, a girl walked a few feet from her table. Slowly and unsurely. Her friends–all female–urged her to go on. She walked a few steps, but stopped and turned back. She talked with her friends for a few minutes and in a moment of bravery, she walked away again toward the sailors. She did this a couple of times, each time pulling her skirt up revealing her…”pleasantly plump” legs. Eventually, the entire group got up as if to leave. As they walked by the sailors, the girl slapped a sailor from the behind. My table collapsed in laughter.
In the sun, the day is clouded. I am sitting in traffic in San Francisco downtown, mentally pushing the light to change green. But I only move 10 feet when it does before I realize I shouldn’t block the intersection. Parking is 25 cents for every 90 seconds at the meter. I don’t have enough quarters. I make circles around the same block over and over again to find parking. Calls aren’t returned and I am lost in my own frustration. The weather is cold during the day, chilling for the wrong choice in clothing for the fall turning winter days. It sprinkles outside and my hair sticks to my face. My forehead smarts from the scratch I gave myself yesterday. I want sleep, but now is not the time. I feel messy and incomplete.
But the moonlight arrives. What I thought was going to be darkness only lit by my highlights doesn’t need that light at all. As I drive down my street which unnaturally doesn’t have streetlights, I can see my street lit up by the bright full moon. It’s mid-autumn and the moon has successfully fought the darkness.
Today, I saw the most feminine bathroom and kitchen. Adorned with pink.
Things learned:
On Sunday, my dad learned from a lawyer that there are 7 ways to answer a question:
1. No.
2. Yes.
3. I don’t remember.
4. I don’t know.
5. I don’t understand the question.
6. I can’t answer the question (5th amendment)
7. Green.
Green as in don’t elaborate more than you have to. If asked what color your car is, don’t say it was yellow before until you painted it green this summer. Simplicity and the way to manipulate the system.
In other news, my new potential roommate just finished up at Harvard Law and fits my requirements perfectly. I could be living with a lawyer in a month!