You ooze sexual energy

Friday, February 11, 2011

9:07 a.m.

Happy anniversary

9:14 a.m.

:(

I look at my phone, boring holes through it hoping she can feel my rage. ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?! Not only was I pissed off this was the first text of my day, but because is she really telling me ‘happy anniversary’ when we aren’t even together anymore, like nothing was wrong? She and I celebrated our anniversary each month not because we thought that we didn’t think our relationship would last another month, but because we respected our love enough that another month together was important to the both of us. It was the celebration that we had spent another month of our lives together.

I had told her yesterday, more than once, I had an interview today. I did not have the time to be thinking about her, what her texts meant and be in my head obsessing over her. I needed to be focused, prepared and on point. I am stressed to the max right now. I am frantic looking for a job. I have money saved, but I am anxious to be doing something with my life rather than being my mom’s bitch all day running her errands. I do not have the time for her bullshit. She wanted me to move to Houston, find a job, start school and get a life and that is exactly what I have been so busy doing. She still believes my world revolves around her and that I would even remember today was another month’s anniversary. She thinks nothing has changed between us. She has our anniversary programmed into her phone and gets a reminder. I, thankfully, got a new phone and completely forgot to program it into mine. I won’t. I refuse. I don’t need a reminder every month of my failed relationship. It’s not to be acknowledged because we aren’t together. We didn’t spend another month of our lives together. She decided she didn’t want to spend any more months of her life with me (for now). Yet she sends me a text saying happy anniversary?! I’m starting to believe that she is the one who needs therapy, not me.

I mentally kick myself for answering her text at all, even if it was a simple sad face. How dare she begin my day like that, reminding me of our failed love and making me mad! I quickly stop my train of thought, remind myself no one can make me feel anger but myself, reposition my thinking and resolve that I would have a great day and interview. Fuck her.

I had told Monica yesterday that instead of her going to Titi Marta’s office again to switch cars so she could pick up her Valentine’s Day present at the mall, I would drive her anywhere she needed to go. Monica has two kids and they’re at difficult ages so if I am not doing anything or I can help, I try my best to do so. I quickly shower, get dressed and pick up Monica and her three-year-old son, Elijah.

Tanya calls me to give me the scoop on my interview with Children At Risk, telling me tips to really ace my interview and impress her boss, Bob.

I drop Monica and Elijah off at home and rush home to start getting ready for my interview. I hate being rushed to get ready so I took my time. I wanted to look perfect. I wanted to look like the job and look so together that I was offered the job as soon as I walked in the door. I knew that was next to impossible but I figured it was worth a shot and I got ready slowly. I quizzed myself methodically for the interview as I was getting dressed.

What were five adjectives that best described me?

Which of those five described me the most and best?

What was my management style?

Do I believe in working alone or as a team?

Am I a leader or a follower?

What were my weaknesses?

What were my strengths?

According to the psychologist Jung, am I a red, blue, yellow or green person?

What was the most challenging thing I have overcome in my life?

I leave my house at 2:30 p.m. even though my interview isn’t until 4 p.m. Traffic is horrendous in Houston. Everyone in Texas, even if they’ve never been to Houston, knows of the traffic congestion because you waste years of your life stuck on the highways in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I happily drive to my interview in my car. MY CAR. I love saying that. I zip down highways, weave in and out of traffic honking at slow drivers. I manage to arrive to the general area of where my interview is located with twenty-five minutes left. I’m a little nervous about being late because even at 3:30 p.m. I had been stuck in traffic and no one was moving. I take side streets and drive down San Felipe St. as quickly as I can without getting a ticket from the police for speeding. I head in the wrong direction for fifteen minutes before I realize my mistake. I make an illegal U-turn and speed off in the opposite direction. Dammit, I curse myself. She always used to say, what would you do without me? You couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag. She was right. Stop it! I scold myself. Stop thinking about her.

I arrive at the location of my interview with seven minutes to spare. I carefully dot a sheer layer of peach lipstick on in my rearview mirror. Breathe, I tell myself. I tousle my curls and make sure my hair isn’t flat, get out of my car and rearrange my clothing. I pull my collared shirt down, my pants up, cinch my suit jacket at the waist and tell myself the job is already mine. The interview was nothing more than a formality.

Bob seemed to be impressed by me. I had an internship with FOX 26, the network Children At Risk was having a golf tournament with next week. I had been a DJ at a local non-profit radio station, 90.1 KPFT, for a year while in college and Children At Risk had their own news segment every Monday. I have established contacts in the media as well as companies that I have built a rapport with and would be able to solicit donations from. It would be in their best interests to have me working for Children At Risk.

Bob asks me what is the most exciting thing I have ever done and I preface my story with telling him it might not seem like much to anyone else but it was, and still is, a big deal to me. I tell him of the story about this tree on a beach in Puerto Rico that had a trapeze at the top and how kids of all ages would climb the tree, swing on the trapeze and fall into the crystal blue water below. All my life I have always wanted to climb that tree and swing on the trapeze but being afraid of heights, I cowered at the thought and never tried. I hadn’t been to Puerto Rico since I was a young girl and when I returned two years ago for an aunt’s wedding, I was determined to conquer my fear. I climbed the tree terrified, certain I would snap the tree with my weight or that I would slip off the thin tree with my wet feet and plummet to my death. Step by step, I slowly climb the tree following the sound of Lito’s voice encouraging me to take just another step. I keep my eyes firmly focused on the rubber tree below my slippery feet, avoiding looking down and how high I had been climbing. I make it to the top and look at my expectant family cheering me on below. My mom, grandma, great-aunts Titi Isa, Titi Clara, Uncle Steven, Titi Sandy, Titi Cathy, great-uncle Tio Junior, cousins Gabby, Lito, second cousins Julia and Clara, Isha and Nick all scream my name, urging me to take another step and climb higher.

“Show Puerto Rico your boobs!” Titi Sandy screamed up at me.

I am definitely not showing Puerto Rico my boobs. I never show anyone my boobs. My boobs were for my significant other’s eyes only. I never understood why women so casually flashed strangers their boobs. Do you show them your vagina, too? Why is your vagina different but your boobs available for anyone’s peeking eyes? My bikini top is staying firmly in place, thank you.

Lito tells me to reach for the trapeze swing. There’s nothing to hold on to and I have at least another foot and a half before I can grab the swing. What is he, nuts? How in the world do I grab the trapeze, without falling, if there was nothing to hold on to? This was not only a trapeze act but a balancing on a wire act, as well. I was a one woman circus. Britney Spears didn’t have shit on me.

I lunge for the trapeze and grab it firmly in my hands. My second largest fear is the sensation of falling. I can’t stand rollercoasters for that reason. I hate when planes drop altitude quickly because of turbulence. My stomach drops and sometimes on those turbulent plane rides, I fear it will fall out of my feet. I hate being out of control and that is exactly what falling feels like to me. It is giving someone else the power, relinquishing control and trusting your faith that you will land safely. The only time I ever fell was for love and even that had been difficult.

I breathe, say a quick prayer and feel my feet leave the rubber tree before my mind had committed to the idea of swinging on a trapeze off a tree on a beach in Puerto Rico and plummeting into shallow aquamarine water. What the hell was I thinking, I thought as I felt myself flying. I screamed as my body sliced through the air. I swung once and fell into the clear water below. I had been holding the trapeze and been sailing through the air for seconds, but to me, I had been on the trapeze for days.

“And that, was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done,” I conclude.

Bob seems pleased with his interview, asks me if I have any questions and I fire a litany of inquiries at him before he ends the interview and walks me out.

Tanya calls me on my way home to tell me what he said and ask me about the interview. She tells me I got screwed over because someone else was supposed to have sit in on the interview, too, and that Bob was making the company sound better than it is. It doesn’t communicate with and advocate for the community like it says it does. In fact, it affects no real change and that’s why I’ll be leaving the company this year. I left politics for this, she tells me. I had thought I would be able to really change policy and laws by working for a non-profit company but in reality, its worse in the non-profit sector. Right, I tell her. Because now you can’t tell people what you’re thinking and there be no consequences. Now, you have to bend over and take people’s shit, smile while doing so and ask if there is anything else you could do for them. Exactly, she screamed.

“I’m only telling you this because you’re my girl but Bob came into talk about you and your interview. I still can’t believe he said this,” Tanya said.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Dawg, just know that Bob says a lot of inappropriate things. The other day Laura was talking about a book she’s reading called Choke and Bob was like, isn’t that about sexual asphyxiation? Even if it was, why would you say that? Why wouldn’t you say something like, isn’t that written by the author of Fight Club? Or just say, you don’t know or mention something else about the book?”

“Spit it out. What did he say?” I demand, my voice getting louder.

“He came into my office, said he liked you and then said, you ooze sexual energy,” Tanya said.

“WHAT?!” I screamed in my car.

“IIIIII know! I told you, he says off the wall shit like this all the time. It doesn’t make it right, but he’s the boss. Who is going to put him in his place?” she asks me.

“What the fuck?! That is rude and inappropriate. People say that all the time. My previous manager at CBS said the same thing about me and the office used to talk about me. I don’t understand it! I don’t think of myself as sexy nor would I ever try to be. That’s silly. I don’t even know how to be sexy. I would feel stupid trying. I had not an inch of skin showing from my collared shirt, to my buttoned vest, down to my enclosed feet in two-inch Easy Spirit heels. Easy Spirit is a brand for grandmothers and old women, Tanya!”

“Dawg, I know. I told him the same thing. I looked at him crazy and said, what? No, I don’t think so,” she tries to calm me.

“Seriously, though. People use the adjective, ‘sexy’ to describe me all the time. It’s annoying especially when it is not the time or place for it. It’s not just one person’s opinion so it has to be true. This is ridiculous. What is it? I think it’s my hair. I’m going to start straightening my hair every day,” I said.

“No, fool! Don’t straighten your hair. I don’t think it’s your hair. I think it’s your mouth,” she said.

“My mouth?! How could it be my mouth?”

“You do this thing with your mouth,” Tanya said.

“You mean, talk? Yes, that is what a mouth is used for. I’d talk out of my ear but I think I’d sound nasal.”

“I don’t know. You do this thing with your mouth,” she said again.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t do anything with my mouth except talk, eat, sneeze, cough and breathe.”

Tanya flirts with me, saying, damn Christina… can I hit it? She says it twice during our conversation on the phone while on my way home. She’s been flirting with me for years. I laugh it off, telling her to stop being silly. Tanya is a close friend of mine and that is a line I never cross. Friendship, casual sex and love generally don’t mix. Need proof? Look at my situation with her now.

Tanya is married to her high school sweetheart and had a two-year-old son. I knew her and her husband had a playful sexual lifestyle but that was nothing I wanted to get tangled in. Also, I tend to be extremely choosy about my sexual partners and almost prudish in my sexual encounters. I just don't like the idea of having sex with a stranger. It's not that I don't believe in no-strings-attached sex. It's simply that more often than not, one person catches feelings and the sexual tryst always ends in disaster.

During college, I began having sex with an acquaintance and when I realized he was a jerk, ended things entirely. We weren't exclusive. As the president of his fraternity, he had to keep up appearances and invite white girls from other sororities. After four months, I got fed up. There was not one ball he could invite me to? He didn't have to tell people I was his girlfriend or even his bed buddy. I would have settled for being his friend. We were both extremely involved in UH organizations. It would have been believable that we were just friends. At over 300 pounds, no one would ever believe Jeremy would be fucking me anyway.

I got tired of being his 4 a.m. booty call. I wasn't his dirty Latin slut that he could hide from the world. I was just as deserving to be on his arm as any other white sorority girl. Then came the straw that broke the camel's back. He had offended me saying that I fucked like a porn star. What the hell does that mean? I didn't watch porn. I would have no idea how to emulate how a porn star fucked. I was so involved with school, I was lucky enough to sleep, much less squint at my 12-inch computer screen watching while two strangers had sex. And which porn star was it that I fucked like, I screamed at him. I just meant that you were a good lay, he said. Relax.

That was the last time I saw Jeremy. I called him, told him I never wanted to see him again and didn't. I would avoid meetings with organizations we mutually attended and made sure to disappear from his life.

A week passed when I received a text one afternoon from Jeremy saying, why didn't you say hi to me? You walked right past me.

What the hell was he talking about, I had wondered. Jeremy was hard to miss. He couldn't hide his fat ass behind a shrub on campus. If he would have been anywhere in my vicinity, I would have seen him. What was he doing by the communication building anyway? He was a hotel and restaurant management major and the Hilton hotel at UH was on the other side of campus. I ignored his text.

Later during the following weeks, I would receive texts saying, I see you. I would look in every direction to no avail. He was invisible. He would text me when he left work every day at exactly 4:23 a.m. saying that even with the all the alarms and security measures at my apartment complex, he would find a way to make it upstairs to my apartment.

I had been scared for my life. Teetering precariously close to 400 pounds, I knew that Jeremy would easily overpower (my then) 140-pound body. Jeremy was extremely charming and personable, the qualities that had drawn me to him when we had randomly bumped into each other in Memphis, TN for a UH football game. If I were to make a complaint against him, who would the police believe? Jeremy, the big man on campus who knew everyone in Houston, or, little ole sexpot Latin me? They would probably think that I had deserved his treatment or worse, that I wanted it. What could the police do anyway? A restraining order is nothing but a piece of paper. It would do nothing in the sense of protecting my security and my life.

I knew that if I had told my family, my brothers and cousins would have built a fort with their bodies around me. They would have gone to jail or lost their limbs or lives protecting me. If I had told my mom, she would have demanded I move home. If I had told my dad, he would have hired a bodyguard packing heat. I had told her, as she was my best friend at that time, about Jeremy stalking me.

She later told me she hadn't believed me. She had thought I was lying, blowing things out of proportion, being dramatic and wanting attention. Why the hell would I lie about something like this? I have nothing better to do with my life but fabricate stories about others?

I had no one to depend on but myself. I would spend as much time as I could on campus, working on homework in a private room at the UH library or working out at the rec center, until I had no choice but to go home. Once home, I would eat and pee in inky black, all consuming darkness. Since you could see into my apartment from the highway, I couldn't risk even the light from my TV being on and alerting him of my presence. A few months passed without hearing from him and I began to feel safe again.

"You'll never believe who sent me a message on Facebook," she tells me.

"Who?" I ask clueless.

"Jeremy."

"What?! What did he say?" I ask.

"You blocked him on Facebook, you changed your name and your phone number. He

was asking for your new name, phone number and Social Security number. I told him no," she says. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you. I just thought you were being dramatic, as usual."

Now that we aren’t together, I am seeing more and more of her that I didn’t like. Dramatic as usual?

Jeremy was my lesson in no-strings-attached sex because as it usually ends up, someone always catches feelings. Jeremy treated me terribly. He would yell cursing at me, put me down and call me a stupid bitch. Still, he caught feelings for me or he just possibly liked that I “fucked like a porn star.” There's always the most inconspicuous, undetected but incredibly strong string that becomes attached by at least one partner in the casual sex no-strings-attached relationship. Someone always gets sprung.

If I turned Tanya out, I could not and would not deal with the repercussions. I cherished our friendship so much and I knew if anything happened between us even once; it would turn into something that we would keep up over the years of our friendship. I had met her husband before I met Tanya, by coincidence, in another sociology course. I respected Jose. Even if he was okay with me being Tanya's side piece, I had learned my lesson the hard way. Nothing would ever happen with Tanya.

We change the subject when Tanya asks if I’ve spoken to her. I tell Tanya how she texted me ‘happy anniversary’ earlier that day and she tells me that as my friend, she would really like to tell her how inconsiderate she was being of my feelings and how badly she was treating me. I ask her, would you? Because I feel like no one is standing up for me and telling her off. She says I would but I don’t want to cross any lines. I honestly don’t know how she feels about me and how it would come off me telling her that she is an asshole for doing this to you. She is so quiet, Tanya says. I tell her that that is what everyone says, that she barely talks to her own best friend and that she rarely speaks of her feelings, even to me, which is why I had been so blindsided when she had told me that I needed to move out.

I arrive home, end my conversation with Tanya and call my friend in DFW, Aubrey. Aubrey is someone who I met last June and had an instant connection with. We look at life in the same way, abhor liars and see things as black and white. We just clicked. I loved her direct, no nonsense way of talking to people. Aubrey was a part of a group of friends we had made in DFW. She and I met them all when we went to her high school basketball team player, Yvette's, birthday. We had been a really great group of friends with each friend’s personality adding to the group and every member being an unique individual. As with Aubrey, I felt completely comfortable around these friends. I never felt I had to impress them, be someone I'm not or pretend I like something that I don't. I don't do that anyway but they never pressured me to conform to the idea of someone I'm not. They loved me as I am. They loved Christina. Best of all, they not only made me laugh so hard I cried, I felt so loved and special when I was with them. I felt like I was a part of something great because they were so great.

I talk to Aubrey on the phone for an hour and a half. I needed to hear her voice.

"I thought you had called me to tell me you were coming to visit us already," she says.

I missed her. I missed all of my friends. That was so sweet and sad at the same time, I thought.

"But March 30th ..." she trails off.

"IIII know!" I say excitedly.

"And actually, we'll be celebrating the weekend before so we'll see each other even sooner!"

"YAAAY!" I yell.

For her girlfriend's, another friend in our group, Erika, birthday we will be meeting in Austin to celebrate. As I've never been to Austin before or partied on their infamous Sixth St., I cannot be more excited to be bar-hopping on Sixth St. with my friends I wouldn't have seen in two months.

Lately, it's been the only positive, definite thing I can see in my future. I CAN’T WAIT!