Friday, August 29, 2003
at 11:34 PMMy Mother Told Me Not To Look Into The Sun
One aspect of my life I find intriguing is that the few fellows who view me as attractive are black (for the record, I never feel comfortable using colour words, such as "black", "red", "white", "brown", or "yellow" to describe non-cartoon-animated people). A young man "Hey, sexy"-ed me as I passed by him en route to the stockroom at work a couple of days ago. Currently, a fellow who rides the bus home from school finds me an amusing enough character to talk to.
He complimented my eyes. Later today, on the other bus I ride, another black man (he was a little older, and probably not hitting on me) told me I had pretty eyes. Most people who comment on my eyes themselves have brown eyes, which they often feel antagonistic toward. Brown eyes have as much depth as lighter-coloured eyes, but one has to shove one's nose in the other person's face to view the colour variations. I suppose people in general are as lazy about appreciating beauty as they are about everything else.
We labeled the external female genitals in human sexuality class today. Our instructor used computer-generated slides; the highlight of the class came after she asked, "Why do you think the clitoris gets its own slide?" and a girl a few rows behind me blurted, "Because it's awesome!"
The low point of that class came a few minutes later, as the instructor discussed information from the book about the Sudanese practice of removing the entire clitoris, cutting out the labia minora, ripping away most of the labia majora, and then sewing the resulting mess shut. It takes the average penis about three months of ramming to open up a decent-sized hole for the purpose of intercourse. The skin usually rips and hemorrhages. It made me queasy, quite literally.
Kerry noted the people smoking on his campus; many a person finds smoking a habitual pasttime at my school, as well. In fact, I'll bet the ratio of kids at my school who smoke is higher than the ratio of smoking kids at the University of Texas, because my school isn't a real college. There are probably plenty of smart people, but most of them really don't care about their lives. They don't know what else to do with themselves, so they go to school (sometimes).
Anyhow, walking out of a building into a courtyard filled with Pig Pens (surrounded by smoke rather than dirt clouds), I stomp toward my next class or the bus thinking about my dead mother. Well, not so much the person of my dead mother, but simply THE GAPING HOLE and the mountains of complications her death left in my life, in my father's life, in my siblings' lives, et cetera. I am not preachy, nor am I confrontational, but if anyone asks me for a cigarette, I will make them sorry they lived long enough to breathe pure air for even a second.
