state of the lab rat. 1st quarter 07
Shit's gone crazy for the 07. I left for Egypt in mid-December with Sarah, and nothing's been the same since. Egypt was an interesting place. You might go to Europe or Mexico or some place and see signs in English and think the whole world is like that. I always figured that I could go anywhere, at least any big city and get by alright with my native tongue but it wasn't like that in Cairo. For a country that makes most of its money from tourism, Egypt could give two shits whether you or not you get Arabic.
Sarah had a few things going against her. She was lily white, wearing a septum ring, and had long (gorgeous) hair. There's a weird thing about women's hair in Egypt. Sarah dresses pretty modestly, especially as a visitor in a sexually reressive Moslem country, but on the street men looked at her like a whore. Sometimes the men stared so hard at her that I could feel it. Sometimes it wasn't staring but lewd (-seeming) comments, catcalls, and kissy noises, and when left unchecked in a crowded enough area that they could get away with it, they'd get grabby. A group of boys stacked in threes ride up on a moped yelling at us. I tell Sarah she should flash some leg or some cleavage and see if she can give one of them the most awkward erection of his life, but we never really stirred the pot. The thing is, a lot of local girls dress like sluts. They may not be showing a lot of skin, but there'll be these curvy jawdropper women thundering down the street in skintight clothes, and no one would bat an eye because their head is covered with a hijjab. It's a clunky analogy but it's kinda like a stripper wearing a crucifix. The hijjab has become such a symbol of piety that there's no reason to look beyond it. That's actually a way shitty analogy, and maybe it's more akin to a single girl wearing a wedding ring when she doesn't want to get picked up. It cuts through whatever might be construed as a mixed message. It says, in no uncertain terms, back the fuck off.
Exchange rates worked to our advantage, but there was a complex series of prices for anything that wasn't written down. For example, cab rides. Say you're staying at a hostel on Talaat Harb (in the neighborhood of the same name) and you want to go to the American University Dorms in Zemelek (where Sarah's sister lives). If you're a tourist and you don't know what's up, you're paying 30 pounds (6 bucks) and thinking it's a steal. If you're an outsider who speaks Arabic, however, you're begrudgingly paying 8 pounds ($1.50, give or take). The driver's holding a grudge because he only picked your white ass up for the fat tourist cash. You're holding a grudge because you know the locals are getting in cheaper. Then there's the Arab price. I pulled this off once or twice when I didn't have Sarah around to blow my cover. If we kept things businesslike with no small talk or bullshittery, I knew wnough Arabic to get around. They could tell I wasn't local with my long hair and mutton chops but figured I was still friendly, maybe I was from Jordan or Morocco, maybe I was an Arab from Spain (I got that a lot for some reason) and I paid three pounds (75 cents). I was surprised at how nitpicky we got over sums of money that meant nothing back home.
There's a lot more to the trip. Eating pigeon. Fighting with Sarah. Christmas in the Libyan desert. Kosheri and mystery meat from street carts. Going inside the great pyramid and marveling at the sphinx's butt (it has a tail!). People who live on highway medians. Hand crank tricycles and cemetary flea markets. Dealing with myself when I have no reason to continue being me as I know myself. Hopefully I'll write about it someday but this isn't how, and when isn't now.
I came back with next to no money, happy to find a few checks waiting for me. New Years wasn't great, but wasn't terrible. I had one trip ahead of me and I'd be moving out soon after. The house on Homer reeked of the ammonia scent of cat piss. I was at Red Lobster with Autumn when Tania called. Our negotiations with the landlord had broken down. We pulled a cut and run and a few days later I was at utumn's, exhausted and leaving for Israel.
I left with Rachel and Kyle on a trip with fortysome other local Jews our age. It was like propaganda summercamp. We climbed mountains, rode buses, mangled prayers and ate shawerma and hommos. At night we drank and relished in sexual tension. Rachel and I suffered the conflicting pressures of staying true to our girlfriends back home, and that tendency that people have to fall for someone or grasp at someone when they're sequestered in a group away from home. We passed the time by trading sexual war stories and objectifying every woman that happened to cross our path. Dudes too, but less so.
It was weird to be back in the Middle East, in an area that was sometimes so lush and so metropolitan, and to be there with Jews, who wouldn't ask us to stop and explain ourselves when we made a reference to Hebrew School, and wouldn't ask us to stop and explain ourselves wgen we made a reference to something specific to the Windy City. Even if a lot of our comrades were Northshore transplants whose frame of reference wouldn't include much of ny Chicago, whether it be WZRD, Chic a Go-Go, or the Rat Patrol. At least I didn't have to explain my exlanations when something like that came up.
The trip was one-sided. We were secular Jews, mostly, and we experienced Jewish Israel and secular Israel. Christian Israel rarely came up and neither did Palestinean Israel, or Palestinean Palestine, depending on how you look at it.
We rode camels, one of which bit Rachel, and had a dance party in a kibbutz bomb shelter, which I feel is a uniquely Israeli experience. Fog machine smoke wafted in like gas from a Birkenau shower, I was morbid enough to mention. We told bad jokes. The Aristocrats. Jesus fucking the camel when his Mom walks in. That one that ends "Fuck you clown!" We watched the Bears win in a Danish Hotel off the Dead Sea after hiking Masada and salting our wounds, and we went home.
For me it was a home I'd yet to sleep in; I'm not sure I'd broken in my new room yet but it would come soon enough. By the time I got there, all but one of the kittens have been given away, and Bela soon after.
I secured a job for the next month, and watched the Bears lose the Superbowl. It was my second Superbowl where the women outnumbered the men, and it was slightly less engaging than the Super Mario 3 tournament that ensued after. My Dad was there, but still recovering from a reaction to the medicine he took for the aftermath of a surgery he endured for an injury he sustained playing and coaching the Strom team in the Turkey Bowl, which has been going on since he was a teenager. It was his first real injury in nearly forty years of the game. He had a penicillin drip in his arm and some blood dripping from his dick and needless to say he was in good spirits but not much of a party mood. The snow came and I tried to write about it, and as it melted it became instantly apparent just how shoddy our apartment really is. Autumn told our landlord that a sixth of her bedroom was a sheet of melted snow, frozen over, and he told her to fuck off. We're suing him through the tenants rights association and soon enough Autumn and I'll be living in my eighth apartment in six years.
I've got a cavity in my mouth and a rash on my leg. I bought some new shirts and a hoodie. My job ends next week and I'm underemployed again. I got depressed but I predicted it before hand and took measures against it so I wasn't able to wallow in it.
All in all, i'm looking forward.
[currently listening to Hold Your Colour" by Pendulum]
I always thought I had a tough constitution from living in cities my whole life but the pollution really got to me. The whole trip we were taking taxis. They were these old Japanese Daimatsu-brand cars that looked like they were held together with rubber bands and twine, but they were dirt cheap (our most expensive ride, from one city to another, cost about ten dollars American) and were easier than public transportation, which was confusing and full of dudes had no reservations about trying to get a finger up Sarah's ass through her jeans.
Sarah had a few things going against her. She was lily white, wearing a septum ring, and had long (gorgeous) hair. There's a weird thing about women's hair in Egypt. Sarah dresses pretty modestly, especially as a visitor in a sexually reressive Moslem country, but on the street men looked at her like a whore. Sometimes the men stared so hard at her that I could feel it. Sometimes it wasn't staring but lewd (-seeming) comments, catcalls, and kissy noises, and when left unchecked in a crowded enough area that they could get away with it, they'd get grabby. A group of boys stacked in threes ride up on a moped yelling at us. I tell Sarah she should flash some leg or some cleavage and see if she can give one of them the most awkward erection of his life, but we never really stirred the pot. The thing is, a lot of local girls dress like sluts. They may not be showing a lot of skin, but there'll be these curvy jawdropper women thundering down the street in skintight clothes, and no one would bat an eye because their head is covered with a hijjab. It's a clunky analogy but it's kinda like a stripper wearing a crucifix. The hijjab has become such a symbol of piety that there's no reason to look beyond it. That's actually a way shitty analogy, and maybe it's more akin to a single girl wearing a wedding ring when she doesn't want to get picked up. It cuts through whatever might be construed as a mixed message. It says, in no uncertain terms, back the fuck off.
Exchange rates worked to our advantage, but there was a complex series of prices for anything that wasn't written down. For example, cab rides. Say you're staying at a hostel on Talaat Harb (in the neighborhood of the same name) and you want to go to the American University Dorms in Zemelek (where Sarah's sister lives). If you're a tourist and you don't know what's up, you're paying 30 pounds (6 bucks) and thinking it's a steal. If you're an outsider who speaks Arabic, however, you're begrudgingly paying 8 pounds ($1.50, give or take). The driver's holding a grudge because he only picked your white ass up for the fat tourist cash. You're holding a grudge because you know the locals are getting in cheaper. Then there's the Arab price. I pulled this off once or twice when I didn't have Sarah around to blow my cover. If we kept things businesslike with no small talk or bullshittery, I knew wnough Arabic to get around. They could tell I wasn't local with my long hair and mutton chops but figured I was still friendly, maybe I was from Jordan or Morocco, maybe I was an Arab from Spain (I got that a lot for some reason) and I paid three pounds (75 cents). I was surprised at how nitpicky we got over sums of money that meant nothing back home.
There's a lot more to the trip. Eating pigeon. Fighting with Sarah. Christmas in the Libyan desert. Kosheri and mystery meat from street carts. Going inside the great pyramid and marveling at the sphinx's butt (it has a tail!). People who live on highway medians. Hand crank tricycles and cemetary flea markets. Dealing with myself when I have no reason to continue being me as I know myself. Hopefully I'll write about it someday but this isn't how, and when isn't now.
I came back with next to no money, happy to find a few checks waiting for me. New Years wasn't great, but wasn't terrible. I had one trip ahead of me and I'd be moving out soon after. The house on Homer reeked of the ammonia scent of cat piss. I was at Red Lobster with Autumn when Tania called. Our negotiations with the landlord had broken down. We pulled a cut and run and a few days later I was at utumn's, exhausted and leaving for Israel.
I left with Rachel and Kyle on a trip with fortysome other local Jews our age. It was like propaganda summercamp. We climbed mountains, rode buses, mangled prayers and ate shawerma and hommos. At night we drank and relished in sexual tension. Rachel and I suffered the conflicting pressures of staying true to our girlfriends back home, and that tendency that people have to fall for someone or grasp at someone when they're sequestered in a group away from home. We passed the time by trading sexual war stories and objectifying every woman that happened to cross our path. Dudes too, but less so.
It was weird to be back in the Middle East, in an area that was sometimes so lush and so metropolitan, and to be there with Jews, who wouldn't ask us to stop and explain ourselves when we made a reference to Hebrew School, and wouldn't ask us to stop and explain ourselves wgen we made a reference to something specific to the Windy City. Even if a lot of our comrades were Northshore transplants whose frame of reference wouldn't include much of ny Chicago, whether it be WZRD, Chic a Go-Go, or the Rat Patrol. At least I didn't have to explain my exlanations when something like that came up.
The trip was one-sided. We were secular Jews, mostly, and we experienced Jewish Israel and secular Israel. Christian Israel rarely came up and neither did Palestinean Israel, or Palestinean Palestine, depending on how you look at it.
We rode camels, one of which bit Rachel, and had a dance party in a kibbutz bomb shelter, which I feel is a uniquely Israeli experience. Fog machine smoke wafted in like gas from a Birkenau shower, I was morbid enough to mention. We told bad jokes. The Aristocrats. Jesus fucking the camel when his Mom walks in. That one that ends "Fuck you clown!" We watched the Bears win in a Danish Hotel off the Dead Sea after hiking Masada and salting our wounds, and we went home.
For me it was a home I'd yet to sleep in; I'm not sure I'd broken in my new room yet but it would come soon enough. By the time I got there, all but one of the kittens have been given away, and Bela soon after.
I secured a job for the next month, and watched the Bears lose the Superbowl. It was my second Superbowl where the women outnumbered the men, and it was slightly less engaging than the Super Mario 3 tournament that ensued after. My Dad was there, but still recovering from a reaction to the medicine he took for the aftermath of a surgery he endured for an injury he sustained playing and coaching the Strom team in the Turkey Bowl, which has been going on since he was a teenager. It was his first real injury in nearly forty years of the game. He had a penicillin drip in his arm and some blood dripping from his dick and needless to say he was in good spirits but not much of a party mood. The snow came and I tried to write about it, and as it melted it became instantly apparent just how shoddy our apartment really is. Autumn told our landlord that a sixth of her bedroom was a sheet of melted snow, frozen over, and he told her to fuck off. We're suing him through the tenants rights association and soon enough Autumn and I'll be living in my eighth apartment in six years.
I've got a cavity in my mouth and a rash on my leg. I bought some new shirts and a hoodie. My job ends next week and I'm underemployed again. I got depressed but I predicted it before hand and took measures against it so I wasn't able to wallow in it.
All in all, i'm looking forward.
[currently listening to Hold Your Colour" by Pendulum]
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