“Four hours and then we back on bus,” Doran shouted in front of our 5th destination of the morning. He continued on with general guidelines, bathroom destinations, and falafel stand suggestions in his aggressive Hebrew drawl.  His bald head (where his perfected dreads used to be from a past life that I wished I was a part of) like a silicon boob pulsing in the afternoon sun. Like a modern day Moses, he had been schlepping our tour group, not to mention our allergies, phobias, and chemical dependences, throughout this land for the past week. From Adam and Eve, to the King of Masada, to the War of Independence, Doran covered it all. He paused occasionally to take a swig from his glass bottled Coke or sneak a drag off my cigarette. With his uniform of crocs, Panama hat, and a variety of neon Zionist T-shirts, I could’ve sworn he was born walking backwards with a bus microphone in one hand and a first aid kit in the other.

“So this market, it a very popular market in Tel Aviv…lots of things happen here, so remember if you hear something, anything ….just duck!” He continued laughing to a group of Americans who did not think this was so funny. After all my chachki shopping in the market, maybe I could use my newly acquired bargaining skills to purchase the whole gang a sense of humor.

Cut to the market as Danya and I walk hand in hand, each nursing our respective panic attacks. While Danya dug her claws into my sweaty palms she reached for the muscle relaxers she’d been using to self-medicate ever since she threw her back out while emotionally and physically supporting the weight of a fellow group member on a nature hike the previous afternoon. The only thing on the planet bigger than Danya’s boobs was her heart. Though the marvel of modern medication, it turns out, was no match for Carmel Market on a Thursday afternoon. Pop. Swig. Swallow. As her claws dug deeper and deeper, the rush of the market attacked Danya’s senses from every direction possible. While the sight of cow tongue and the smell of the man who sold it didn’t make me want to shout “Le Chaim!” from the rooftops, it wasn’t so much the senses overload that made my anxiety want to come out and play. My panic was linked to the emotion, the most powerful emotion which was the driving force throughout the land of milk and honey - Guilt. This panic/guilt combo that surfaces every time I’m far away from home and not completely relishing in every moment of my “experience.”  I was in the center of the market, in the middle of the world, inside the pinnacle of my existence, so why was I so miserable? The horrifying truth was at that moment I would have rather been making my way through the food court in the Beverly Center. At least there was air conditioning and Coffee Bean.

“You don’t want Falafel. This is junk food. You want real Israel food?” he asked as we aimlessly paced in front of the kosher Burger King.

I’ll eat twice-baked cockroaches if it’ll put me across the table from you for an hour.

“Yes! That sounds great, doesn’t that sound great, Danya?” I asked, as if she had a choice.

“Do they have a place to sit down?” Danya answered in between back spasms.

He nodded, “Of course.”

“Sounds delicious, let’s go.”

“Hi! Where are you guys going?” Robyn shouted from across the street. One of the forty faces from our diverse group and it didn’t take much to remember Robyn’s name. All I had to do was look at her golden chest where two identical red birds were permanently engraved. She was the sort of non-threatening Rocky Mountain pretty that kept on giving. Each time I looked at her face I discovered something new that I liked. Straight out of a burning man documentary, Robyn’s passion for life, and by life I mean belly dancing, was relentless. It was such a shame to me that most of her energy was spent talking about, recovering from, and drearily anticipating her gluten allergy.

“Uh food… not here,” I said, not skipping a beat.

“Great! This place is so stressing me out, can I come with?” I wonder sometimes what this world would be like if people waited to hear the answers to their own questions.

As our group steadily expanded, so did the obvious yet painful truth that we  would not be able to pull off looking like a bunch of typical Israelis grabbing a casual afternoon bite.

“This place, I’ve been to this place a while ago. It’s here, around here somewhere,” he said squinting in the middle of the street. As if seeing half the road would somehow make the path to the restaurant crystal clear.

“Are they going to have enough chairs for us? Outside. I want to sit outside. Do they have a bathroom?” Robyn asked anyone who would listen.

“Oh, do you have to use bathroom?” he sweetly asked.

“No, but I will, and when I do, I’ll need one”

“Are they going to bring water” they asked as we started shoving pieces of table together.

“We have to sit down first,” I mumbled to absolutely no one.

Musical chairs began as we unloaded our backpacks, water bottles, hats, and the rest of the evidence, which proved we had business in this gem of a neighborhood.

“Excuse me, does the hummus have gluuuuu-teeeen in it?” Robyn asked, fiddling through her laminated gluten allergy cards trying to find the Hebrew page. These cards which explained her genetically developed condition in every language imaginable. By now the tanned pierced, and utterly magnificent couple beside us was fully staring at our scene.  I grabbed the gluten flash cards from her grasp in an effort to remove myself from anything having to do with the here and now.

“Gluten, yes, tell her it’s like soy. And that if I eat it at all, I will die.” Robyn motioned to the perfectly groomed waitress who starred     blankly at our translator, as if her customer had just asked her to deep-fry Abraham Lincoln himself.

“Okay, so that’s four meats, three salads, two chicken hearts and one liver.” He announced to the group. “Jessie, this is okay?”

Distracted by how beautiful the words “ may cause abdominal bleeding” looked in Russian, I nodded. “Yeah, chicken heads, porcupine toes, I’ll eat whatever they serve,” I said. Trying to move it along.

As the meal progressed and the random chicken organs disappeared skewer by skewer, I looked across the table at Robyn blissfully devouring her bowl of cucumbers.

“Ah, this is so good guys! Delicious! Perfect!” she shrieked in between crunchy bites.

As I soaked up my plateful of hearts with hot pita, I thought about what it must feel like to take a walk in Robyn’s Birkenstocks. How I had, at one point or another, felt trapped inside my own body and how this sweet girl actually was.

More chow appeared as the table exchanged opinions about what was about to happen, critique what already did, and most of all the revelations, the holy, sporadic, natural religious revelations everybody and their mother seemed to be having. Except me. Truth be told, the only tears I cried in Israel were not from my deep connection with G-O-D but rather P-M-S.

“Oh shit! The bus is going to leave us!  Do they have togo boxes? But not Styrofoam…there’s this kind of box actually made out of corn, but it’s totally gluten free…”

Check please.

“This is something that is never ever funny. How can you laugh at this? How?!” Immediately I fight like hell to find something to take me out of this moment; the gaunt ceiling, the bunny-poop covered floors, the British flat mate in tighty whiteys, anything to keep me from looking into those endless blue eyes. Her anger filling up the inside of her eyes like captive ocean water.

“No, no, Maya, we’re not laughing at what happened, we’re laughing at the situation, this guy, this douche bag….the context…” Danya blurts out in between puffs of her Camel Wides. The heavy smoke pushes its way into the crowded room, finding its way inside her prizewinning cleavage.  My travel partner smuggled her favorite smokes to Israel inside the lining of her suitcase like Grade A heroin. Covered in star tattoos, piercings, and a Malibu tan, Danya’s sexuality and aggressivness flowed together like rain and no Israeli was immune to it. She had lived nine lives. I felt blessed she had found me in the middle of her tenth. My stomach nerves awoke to the present as I caught a glimpse of Danya’s dark gums.

Shit, shit Danya don’t smile, don’t you smile too….we’re assholes. This isn’t funny. The more awkward it gets the more utterly impossible it is not to smile. Shit.

Maya untangles herself from our web a limbs, which a few moments earlier was a series of fabulous chick flick moments. She hovered right above us – a million miles away.

“How can you laugh right now? I don’t understand.”

Maya’s question had been one I’d been asking myself since landing on this very holy, very epic, very very very funny land. I’d never met a group of people who were as prone or as insistent on laughter being a part of every conversation.

“Read the torah in Hebrew. Now that’s comedy.”
“Jesus was a lazy Jew.”
“What kind of stuff did you do in the Army…”
“…We killed Arab babies”

It wasn’t as simple as “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” but moreso, that you should do both and, when the situation calls for it, at the same time. Like most things in life, our tears should come from both ends. As an outsider it was sometimes hard to gauge where the line was and where my place was in crossing it.

“Can I make the Nazi joke?”
Should I? I’m the silly, smartass, “Jewish” girl back at home. Always the first one to crack a joke, especially at my own expense, but here I was beginning to feel a little behind.

And this is how it went w/ my Maya, the coolest gift Israel gave me and the funniest girl I’d ever met (at least when I could keep up with her). Like most people I fall love with, upon first impression she left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t as simple as too salty or too sweet but like some weird underground spice I’d never even heard of. In between her strict diet of Parliament Lights, Guinness beer, and french fries, Maya would feed me with stories of her life growing up on a Kibbutz, her time training Commanders in the IDF, and her current life where she was new to both Tel Aviv and law school.  Maya didn’t have dreams. She had plans and it was only a matter time….  The coolest thing about Maya was how serious, how insanely serious she was about being funny.

Suddenly, the Brit in his undies turned off the “Let’s Get It On” track he’d handpicked moments earlier as the soundtrack for our love fest. He was facing the doorway now, thinking of a way he could leave his own room.

“All right, then, tea anyone?” he was already halfway in the kitchen.

Still trying to avoid Maya’s Baby Blues, I reached for a bottle of generic lotion and eagerly applied it to my sun whipped skin. Since returning from the southern beaches of Eilat a few days earlier, I was existing on a steady cycle of Eat, Drink, Smoke, Moisturize, and repeat. Like everything else in Israel, nothing in moderation. Eat until hummus comes out of your eyeballs, smoke till you can’t talk, bake in the sun until way after you should and fall in love, hard and rough and over and over again. Was this what it was to be Israeli? Or was I just another silly American who masked cultural immersion in mindless consumption? Either way, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt more fulfilled.

As the lotion ran out of skin to soak, I took a deep breath and opened my big mouth:

“Uh Maya, I’m so sorry we- didn’t know, uh the things is a joke not the tractor terrorist, no that’s not a joke – but the guy, this guy who was going on about crocs, he’s using a terrorist act to market shoes, it’s so sick it’s funny, ya know?

“I’m so sorry Maya.” I said, as if I ate her last french fry, like it’s not something that you apologize for, it’s something you just don’t do in the first place.

“I’m just kidding, you freaks!” she said, giggling and falling all over us. We erupted into laughter not because it was funny but out of sheer relief that we didn’t piss off another Israeli - our host, our tour guide, our friend, our Maya (though she was kind of everyone’s Maya).

“You guys fall for it every time!” Victory on both sides and the tickle fest continued as the Brit brought in teatime.

Before even getting on the plane, I promised myself I wouldn’t go through this trip perpetuating the stereotype that young liberally educated American’s think America just sucks. That Americans are boring, stupid, and way too serious - the typical American Jew that moves to Israel because they just “can’t handle being American” anymore…but I couldn’t seem to shake this feeling that Israeli’s seem to be having much more fun than us. They talked more simply because they had much more to say. At twenty-four, their lives seemed to contain a lot more living than mine. Their connection to themselves, their land and especially each other was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Strangers became best friends on a bus ride from one side of town to the other. Best friends were like blood and to be a solider, of any kind, was as sacred as any religious act.  Sure, our generation “fucked Bush” together but we didn’t line up for buzz cuts. We lined up for Pinkberry.

“When are you guys going to learn? I’m never serious!”

Soon I thought to myself, my stomach nerves can’t handle much more of this. Pillowed inside Danya’s cleavage, I turned to give Maya a good old-fashioned American wedgie and suddenly Marvin Gaye made his second appearance of the evening.

“Yes, yes this has got to be it. My friend told me turn right at the tree,” he barked as we drove further inside the deep blackness of the night.

“Uh…or that way could be right, or that way,” I shot back, flinging my arms in every direction at the multitude of trees.

“There’s lots of trees dude. Lots places to turn right.” I said, a little louder. I was trying to sound pissed, like

I had been all week every time my personal Israeli tour guide got that look in his eye that look that every man in my life gets at one point or another that, if forced to have a verbal translation, would come out something like, “I don’t know where the fuck I’m going but I’m sure as shit never going to let you know that.”

“Ahh, ehh—no, do not worry Jess, I’ve got it.” I rolled my eyes into the deep black and dramatically sighed like my mother does every time we have to wait for a table at a restaurant.

I looked out my window into the endless night, trying to fight off my anxiety in silence.

He doesn’t know where the fuck he’s going because there’s nowhere to go. Where are the lights? The moon? Anything? We’re going to drive straight into the sea…what is, is that Jordon? So I’m going to die underwater and my corpse will be eaten by Jordanian Border dogs….is that another car? I knew those guards were following us!

I tried to think peace…I thought of Avram, the Ann Arbor dead-head turned Kabbalist whose art studio (not to mention immortal soul) was nestled deep inside the northern holy city of Tesfat. I thought of what he told me my first afternoon in Israel:
“A bad day in Israel is still a day in Israel.”
I smiled to myself as we turned right. Bring it on mother nature, bring it the fuck on.

“Ahh!! I’ve found it, Jessie!” He screamed from what seemed like light years away. I heard what I thought was the sound of fresh hot springs spilling magically into each other and then wandering drip by precious drip into the Dead Sea. Though in the complete blackness of night this could also very easily be bored terrorists cutting the bones out of lost American girls or wild mountian lions licking their lips after feasting on a three-course meal of baby toes. The sound of my over-sized Tevas hitting the loose rocks broke my morbid daydreams, but still, I was lost.

“I uh, okay…where are they, how are they?” I screamed.
“They’re amazing Jess, come on!”

I pressed the nine button on my cheap rental cell phone using the faint green light to uncover the endless pile of rocks before me. In the near distance I spotted a plastic bag filled with sand that bore a striking resemblance to a member of the KKK. I wonder how he could’ve afforded his plane ticket to the holy land, especially in this economy.

“I-dude, I’m lost! How do I get there?”
“You find the best way to get there, and then you go!”

Of course, leave it to me to come to the land of nice Jewish boys and find the one dick. It wasn’t until I’d be given the gift of time here, not until I’d shoved my way through the market to get the best apple, not until I’d danced in the streets with total strangers, not until I argued my way through Israeli politics with only a bottle of wine to guide me, not until all of these slivers of life did I realize that this one phrase, this one commandment, was in essence what it means to be Israeli.

The water smelled like sulfur….like the smell that floats into your car during a long road trip that makes you realize no human, not even your brother, can produce a fart quiet so disastrous.

“A geyser, like from volcanoes underground, that’s what heats the water,” he’d explained on the drive up or down or whatever way we took to reach now. I nodded intensely as he explained the Geyser, as he’d been explaining all week, from the Christian Arabs, to the economic stature of Hasidic Jews, to dating life in the IDF. He could have said Enron itself fueled those hot springs and I would have kept on nodding, jumping in with the occasional “Tell me more about that…” He was one person in my life that made me feel if I spaced out in the middle of one of his stories, in favor of gazing at the wild mustard flowers, even for a sentence, I would have truly missed something.

Now we were both shirtless and inside the pools of some kind of miracle. We both float to our own corners of the pool – the air so quiet and open there’s not even a pin to hear drop. Time to relax.

Oh my g-d it’s burning so bad, between the legs, on the neck, everywhere! Is this feeling normal? Of course not, this is the feeling of nature ripping my skin off my body or leaving me with scars, scars I can’t afford to have surgically altered. And my eyes! Oh my g-d did a drop just get in my eye? Then I’ll be blind, how am I going to ever work again, blind and skinless? Wait! What was that? I knew there were alligators in Israel!

“Hey, Yessi… if you just let your neck go back and let go..you float…float”
He teased while cracking open a beer. Rather than the graceful and free image I’d imagined, I looked down at myself to realize I was pretty much in stir-ups ready for my annual pap-smear, my neck was so tense it held my head completely above water, and my head resembled less of a smooth swan and more of a stale prune.

Just let go stupid! Just let the fuck go. The Dead Sea, blanket of stars, and the hot Israeli man…this is all real so shut-up lay down in the water and put the living back in your life.

“I don’t understand how people can have sex out here, like in nature in general.” I was perched on the side of the pool, dizzy from the heat and too much warm beer.

“I mean I just feel like someone, something would be watching,”
He nodded, half present. Unfortunately, missing some of my rhetoric didn’t carry quite as much weight.

“I need like life to be happening, a garbage truck, a school bus, a siren. Here… I dunno.  It just feels like there’s got to be something somewhere listening or waiting for something to distract it from the silence.”

“There is not anything here Jess…nothing here except maybe G-d”

“Exactly, why do you think he hasn’t come back yet…doesn’t want to miss a good show.”

“You know, if you really want to get an Oscar you need to make a Holocaust movie” I laughed so hard – a real laugh from the inside out. We could laugh at the word Holocaust, right? I mean it’s not like I was in Georgia or even L.A. I was in Israel, with an actual Israeli.

“I’m serious, I seen it all the time. You make this kind of movie and bam Oscar.”  He continued as we squatted, setting up the mobile coffee maker. I put my Camel Natural between his lips and he inhaled. If I was ever cool enough to be French, this is what it would feel like.

“And Jessie, I’ve been thinking about it and you- you just need to demand these jobs from people, demand that people have to work with you- that you are the only person who could direct their movie…you need to be more aggressive, you need to fight, you need to be more Israeli about it.”

For someone who was two and a half years my junior he sure had a lot of career advice to impart – this was a bit of a shock to me considering his work experience could be summed up in two locations: New England Summer camp for Jews and The West Bank.

I rattled off after my third cup of coffee “No, I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s hard. It’s beyond hard work and at times it can be thankless but I’m learning, learning so much about the process of making movies and as long as I’m learning, I mean I’ll pick the sunflower seeds out of a salad, I’ll get up at 4am, I’ll do it all and I’ll smile..at least on the outside.”

“It, it just seems like such…so many egos- these celebrities..awful,” he responded, picking the dead ants out of the sugar canister, though I had insisted their addition to the coffee would only provide natural vitamins. Who was I kidding? I was nature.

“Yeah, I mean there’s always going to be people like that but I’ve met some amazing people as well. It’s so intense you don’t understand,  it’s like, making a movie is like going into battle-“

Did you just really compare the dynamics of a movie set to engaging in Warfare? And to an IDF solider who just spent the past three years in the West Bank? Really Jessie, really….

“Uhh, I mean…sorry so uh like what do you want to do..I mean after Australia?”

After backpacking the planet after you find yourself, loose your mind and find yourself all over again.

“I don’t know, but I think about it and I think I want to study Disease’s so I can fix them..you know, cure people”

I listened over the sound of my own mouth chewing up the sugar cookies I’d refused moments earlier.

“I’m not like you Jess, not creative”

“Yes you are! I mean everyone’s creative, there’s an artist inside everyone” I tried to explain, feeling ashamed by my own disillusionment that the less money you make the more you love what you do.

“Besides, finding a disease and deciding how to treat it, what medicines to take, that’s very, uh, creative.”

“No , but I want to fix people the natural way, not with all the drugs and shit that your country uses…That is just bullshit.” I’d tried to convince him the Xanax popping tour group we met had met on last week wasn’t the best example of the power of Western healing.

“I agree, like hmm if someone is feeling sad or mad sometimes talking, talking about it can really help…” I muttered in between cookies.

I was, of course, referring to the running argument we’d been having all week about soldiers and PTSD. I could not stop arguing that therapy should be mandatory after serving in any kind of combat unit, though he assured me that after three years in the West Bank he was “fine, totally fine” and ready for Australia, ready for his life to begin and not to dwell on his past.

The Camels were gone, the coffee cold, and the feeling of my wet pants was overpowering the beauty of the springs. I waited for him to say it. I wasn’t the jappy American who needed a shower. I was chill, I was present, I was Sephardic.

“You ready, yessi?” Sweetest words I’d heard all night.

We threw our life back into the Mazda as he turned on The Beatles, who are as ubiquitous in Israel as they were in America in 1962. Our hands played together beside the gearshift as we turned past the now infamous right tree. As the road turned from mud to gravel and signs of civilization quickly appeared, I began to feel like I always do when seeing an Ingrid Bergman film, not exactly enjoyable but as the credits roll, as you drive away, you can actually feel it changing you.

We pulled up to the border check signaling our arrival into neutral territory. I’m still so high from the lowest point on earth. As the soldiers signaled for us to stop I got a little nervous, as we usually flew by with a simple nod.
He rolled down the window revealing their faces. Young. So young. Faces burnt from too many bored cigarettes.

“Hatzava lo nimshach lanetzach… ze yigamer bekarov. tihiye im rosh lema’ala,” he said underneath a heavy smile as he veered us back on to the road.

“Oh yeah guys, I’m just with this silly American girl. She’s easy and yeah hahaha insert funny jokes in Hebrew that are so witty they don’t even translate to English” Then the gestures back and fourth towards me accompanied by those looks we’d been getting all week when people realized I wasn’t Israeli.

Well yeah fine, if that’s how he wanted to play it, I’m using you, too. You’re my tour guide, my hot Israeli affair, the best anecdote at all the dinner parties that await me back in L.A. You’re just a story, a permanent memory.  Take that buddy.

I waited a good 14 seconds before I leaned in….
“So, uh what did you say to them…”
“I told them, don’t worry, the Army doesn’t last forever, it’ll all be over soon.”

I leaned forward looking into his face as he squinted hard trying to find the best way home. If I stared hard enough maybe I could stop time, stop this moment I knew was ending before me. Stop him from ever being just a memory.

Additional photography by Danya Micah

They’ve have just finished having some late night loving- it
was pretty hot despite the fact that she still has her orange
Syracuse sweatpants halfway on and he wears only his black socks and a thin layer of night sweat.
He lies on top of her- still inside. She pushes up his shoulders placing them face-to-face. His forehead radiates from the computer screen like lime green Jell-O.
This big forehead she pretends to hate. Another meaningless physical piece of this person. She mocks and mocks around the others.
Her thin ears, pudgy stomach, hairy lip, big nipples: HE never says a word. Does he see it? How does he not see it all?

She hates this part. Him still inside. Like cracking an egg and holding the shell in your hand for the rest of the day.

Jane: God the Paxil really suppressed my sex drive

This statement forces him to throw away the egg shell and get off her.

Dick: really?!
Jane: yeah ,why… what?
Dick: nothing
Jane: What?
Dick: No, nothing.
Jane: Stop, just tell me.
Dick: I dunno, I can just tell- I mean since we’ve been back together- since you’ve been on the Paxil – you never want to do it- you just seem a little…bored.
Jane: That’s not true!
Beat. A couple of beats pass.
Jane: If by bored you mean not wanting to suck your dick in the thirteen minutes in the morning I have to get from the bed to my office then yes babe you’re right- absolutely genius.
Dick: Here we go again…

She looks away from him- fuck him for expecting it.
This pill which has reduced her glass house in to crumbled Ceran wrap.

Dick: Baby c’mon…..what?
Jane: nothing, get off me

She moves back and forth using all her strength to move the lanky yet surprisingly strong frame above her.

Jane: just get off me, move!

She runs out the door into the black night. Tears chuck out of her cheeks hard and uneven. She feels for anything and everything- something to get her to the bathroom.

He has stopped coming after her.

Just as the snot begins to gather at the base of her nose, Jane finds herself on the beige carpet beside the snoring roommate -Nina Simone-ish record plays- cats fur everywhere- she wants to lay down in the middle of this warm room full of vintage day coats, hemp candles, and sober sleep.

She sits on the toilet trying to pee. Squeeze Squeeze but nothing
comes out just more tears. Tears. And a mixture of him inside her.

Silence takes her to her side of the bed.

Dick: Are you serious? Babe…
Jane: Just don’t- I can’t

Come here Will Smith- jump off the screen and save this bloodbath.

He reaches out to her- she almost falls off the bed trying to reach away.

Dick: So you’re mad at me for stating something that is technically a compliment because you’re going off the Paxil now.. Jesus, it’s like you are trying so hard to be mad at me. You’re being such a baby!

More tears -she’s wasted so many on him this past week- he gets the point- it’s not her fault. She wants to waste these empty tears on someone else- like a casting director.

Everything could be so right if they wanted it enough to get through the wrong.

Storyboard by : Brittany Synott Johnston

http://brittanysynottjohnston.com

The following is a series of monologues inspired by over thirty interviews conducted in fall 2007.

Nineteen-year-old female college student

Born in Asia and has been living in U.S.A for 4 years.

During my adolescent period I now am able to diagnose myself as having depression. Growing up in China I had what anyone would define as a happy normal childhood. Parents that took care of me, plenty to eat no visible problems. Once I hit middle school I started to get into a kinda slump that became a really huge slump. The slump that prevents you from being able to let anything have an effect on you, besides how shitty you feel. I know when you become a teenager your brain and your body starts to change, sometimes making you feel imbalanced but I know that it wasn’t just my body, it was the world I was living in. Growing up in China at the time that I did was just crazy. I went to an all girls catholic school where, for whatever superficial teenage reasons, I was always labeled the black sheep. I felt so limited in what I could do or even what I could think. Every aspect of my life was dictated by these sets of social rules. Stick to traditional culture, but embrace western consumerism. You’re are this age so you have to do this or want that, but never encouraged to feel anything. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was so confused because I love my country and culture so much but it is hard for me to embrace it as a whole because of this new capitalistic material side. I felt a huge gap between my peers and me because they all seemed to go along with new system with ease. They bought the clothes and talked on the phones and never questioned anything. All I had was questions, which made me feel so isolated from my culture, my people. Depressed? I never had a doctor tell me that’s what I had but I still have the breaks in the wall from where I banged my head up against it.

After a couple of months of feeling this awful I knew that I had to do something about it. It sounds kind of funny but getting depression actually motivated me to find a way to cure myself. I felt hopeless but I knew I wasn’t helpless, I knew the source of my misery: my country. From then on it was like my direct light at the end of the tunnel. A one-way plane ticket to my happiness: America. I know it sounds kind of funny because America is the birthplace of capitalism, materialism, greed, crime etc. but America had always meant something very different to me. It represented choice, freedom, and opportunity. Unlike China, people in the states are free to pursue their knowledge or even encouraged to question things. I knew that if I could just get to America I would be okay. I applied to so many schools and all my friends and family knew that I literally couldn’t wait to get out of there. My parent’s didn’t really know my entire situation, I mean with the depression and all. I always had a really good relationship with my parents and I didn’t want to spoil that. I had no need to rebel against them so I just kept quiet. Staying in my room all day like most urban chinse teenagers. They figured I was chatting on the phone or on my computer. When I got my acceptance letter for school in the states I was a little bit scared of leaving home but by that time I was so depressed I had no choice but to leave. My depression overrode all my emotions, including fear.

Although my life in the states is not perfect, I have never felt like I did during those teenage years. I’ve since labeled that time as me being depressed even if I fully didn’t admit it to myself at the time it was happening. I believe that everyone has some sort of depression at some point in their lives but not everyone expresses it. I think the problem with our society now is that we have removed ourselves too far from the physical ness of life; we are too much in our heads. Like how we abuse medication. Well, I guess a world that’s already unbalanced uses unbalanced means to balance ourselves. Meds can lead to a cure and I guess that’s a good thing but what’s a cure? A cure is socially based. I think the problem is that depression is such a personal issue and we made it too public, my experience wasn’t pleasant but it lead me to where I am today and it was something I needed to go through on my own. I would say what I had was mild depression. It wasn’t traumatizing.

Twenty-year-old female

I don’t believe in depression as a clinical diagnosis. How can someone else begin to categorize my feelings? People need to be told what’s wrong with them in order to feel like an insider in this society. I feel like a social fluke because I can feel comfortable in my depression or knowing that there is a part of my emotional brain that is not definable.

My mom said I was smiling as I came out of the womb, and even now I wake up most everyday feeling happy. Alone, between my warm bed sheets you couldn’t find a bigger optimist. It’s once I have to interact in this world I begin to feel isolated and what most people would label as depressed. My isolation is the most common reason for me to feel depressed. I am constantly listening and observing in this world. Being adopted, I’ve always felt like a bit of an outsider in my family, always kind of hanging back creating whole worlds inside my head. Growing up we moved a round a lot forcing me to constantly change and adapt to fit the in with the crowd I was with. I think this trait has carried in to my adulthood, as I am constantly aware of my surroundings, the people in those surroundings, and how all of this affects me. Feelings, that’s my problem. I feel things just too fucking much. My constant struggle seems to be deciding what’s worse: being the smiling idiot or the aware cynic, doing what’s right or what makes me happy.

I know I seem kind of harsh but I don’t see depression as something real. People talk about depression like it’s an illness, something you have to suffer through. Evenness in people, life, emotions, isn’t the reality. We are constantly moving-left right up down- how can we expect ourselves to always be happy? Emotions are too complex for that. Like asking me these stupid questions, trying to get me to define my emotional state on a nice white piece of paper, just not possible.

For me the best way to move through this life is to throw away the boxes. Fuck the labels-love, hate, boyfriend, best friend, very best friend, throw it all away. I used to spend so much time pretending to be these characters for other people and putting all this energy into acting a certain way when no one is really listening. We live by this code of conduct in terms of what our emotions are supposed to make us feel like. Happiness=good, sad=bad, it’s all so superficial. We’re not focusing on what’s really going on. Why we feel a certain way or how we came to feel it. We don’t give ourselves the time to recognize sadness so how could we truly know what it means to be happy? My depression and happiness stems from the same root. It’s all up to me to recognize how I feel. Everything’s a choice. It’s you’re choice to celebrate your life or your choice to hate it.

22 Year-old Male

I can physically feel it coming on. The tension in the shoulders that sends a message to my brain making me feel stressed, irritated, sad or…um… well what do you want me to say that I get depressed? I do not know what that means. But I do know that I’ve been in therapy since I can remember.

It all started when I was a little kid and like most of us, mom and dad sat me down one day to tell me our family was breaking up. The court assigned me to a therapist to “help me deal with it”. Unfortunately, the therapist was more interested in following the court-mandated rules for therapy than in really investing in my well being. Needless to say, my first encounter with therapy proved more traumatic than helpful and causing me have a terrible opinion of modern psychology to this day.

When I got to college I was no more lost, oblivious, and confused as the average freshman yet as the weeks went by I knew there was something terribly wrong going on inside me. I can’t really explain what it is was like to you but I knew that I had to do something or I was not going to make it. Although my therapy in the past had pretty much been a theatricol performance to show the court and my parents that I was alright, I didn’t know where else to really turn, so I found a psychologist in town who agreed to see me. The result is the freakishly, addictive yet well-adjusted man you see before you.

Like everything else in our culture, therapy has definitely become a fad. I knew this going in to it and refused to indulge in the fact that this sharply dressed woman who sat before me was instantly going to cure me. She was simply an objective person who allowed me to throw away my social censors and spill my guts to. So I talked. I talked and talked and talked until I didn’t have anything left to say. Once our conversation topics moved to the weather I began to get pissed. How was this in any way helping? Yet as our sessions passed I began to realize her purpose. She wasn’t a magic eight ball, slipping me deep and meaningful clues within the subtext of our conversations yet; she served as a mirror allowing me to reflect my own ideas, emotions, and issues, onto myself. She never gave me answers, only questions and as our work progressed I began to build on those questions with even bigger ones. The progress we’ve made cannot be condensed to this conversation but I let’s just say I remain a faithful costumer.

Twenty four-year old female nurse

I’m always the one that’s happy. My friends, family, co-workers all know me as the one that’s always smiling. When I’m not smiling people don’t ask what’s wrong with me, they worry about what’s wrong with them. My senior year of high school there was a brief period where I was a bit out of sync. I was going through lots of changes and just so anxious about my future. My friends weren’t meeting my expectations, which may be a result of the very high expectations I set for people. It always seems to get me into trouble. Anyway, all this anxiety was floating around inside my brain and needed to get out. It took the form of depression and I just couldn’t seem to stop crying.

My parents took me to see a psychologist who immediately diagnosed me with depression and suggested a mix of medication and therapy. Honestly I was so relieved when he told me I was depressed. It felt comforting to have this doctor in front of me to tell me what my disease was and show me the cure. Well I started taking the anit-depressants and within a day felt relief. I know it must have been mental, no pill could fix you that fast but I honestly don’t care, I felt better and that’s all that matters.

I think depression is like cancer, we don’t know what actually causes it but there are factors that can make certain people prone to it. At my job I basically have to see people at their worst. I am surrounded by people who are hurting and that can defiantly take it’s toll on you no matter how much you try to act professional. When people hear about what I do their immediate reactions are something like “Oh that’s so depressing!” I guess people just have a hard time understanding why I’ve chosen to do what I do. I’ve seen some pretty awful stuff but I’ve always seen some of the most incredible miracles in that hospital. How do I deal? I just try to be honest with myself. I cry when I’m sad, not in front of patients, but sometimes when I’m driving home I just start screaming and wailing out of control. You’ve got to let it out or you’ll just explode.

37 Year-old Male

I’ve dealt with Anxiety my whole life. For as long as I can remember I’ve been coping with this disorder or at least learning how to live with it. Little did I know anxiety almost always tends to bring with it its best friend: depression. For me the two go hand and hand. My anxiety makes me feel depressed and vice versa. How do I cope? It’s a combination of things but really what it all comes down to is being self-aware. Being aware of the things in my life that I have control over and more importantly the things I can’t do a damn thing about.

Right now I’m going through a pretty awful divorce. It’s my second marriage but the same type of woman. Angry, sad, abusive…. I guess I didn’t learn my lesson the first time. Like all of us, my wife had her fair of share of problems. The real problem, I later discovered, was my reaction to her problems. In an effort to save our relationship, I began to make them my problems. Trying to heal her made it easy to avoid my own wants and needs and eventually led to my downfall. The tension between us became too much and I decided to mention divorce one morning over breakfast. Instead of the lovely tear-filled reunion I was secretly hoping to scare out of her, I was met with a causal “Yes, that’s a good idea”. Just like that, our marriage was over. I felt like one big failure. How did this happen? How come I couldn’t make this work? Why? Why do I always get myself into these situations? For a guy who’s trying to take control over his own life, I felt like I was doing a pretty shitty job.

My newly discovered depression is one link on my road to recovery. Therapy, medication, my dogs, just surrounding myself with things that encourage me to recognize the truth within myself is how I’m trying to live. People are so embarrassed when it comes to mental illness, like it’s something that you can wish away. I feel sorry for those people, because they are the ones that don’t really know themselves. I know I’m going through a rough time with my divorce and all but my anxietydepression comes from a much deeper element that’s inside myself. It’s a part of me. This part of me is expressing itself more and more each day. My faith lies in my ability to be vulnerable for recovery.

56 year-old, Male

Depression? I think of it as a chronic state of hopelessness, a more long-term condition rather than just a mood. I was depressed most of my life, unfortunately I was too drunk to realize it.

My drinking really got out of control around my late 20’s. I got fired from this job that I really liked and I thought I was really good at. Everyone around me was so on track with their lives and careers, especially my wife. I felt like I had just been drifting since college, not really finding my place. I had really low self-esteem and had this internal turmoil building up inside of me. Although I knew alcohol was a depressant, it seemed to be the only thing that helped. I’ve always been an alcoholic, I was born with this disease, but losing that job made me feel really emasculated and eventually triggered my disease.

During those years my wife would nag at me to go talk to someone about my problems, like a therapist. The thought of exposing myself or making myself vulnerable to anyone made me cringe. I just wanted to crawl inside that bottle and shut off the world. Looking back at those years I think I was acting like a fucking baby. I was feeling so sorry for myself preventing me to face the reality of my life. The disease really feed on my hopeless state of mind.

After my wife started packing her suitcases for the 5^th time I realized I had to get help. Once I stopped drinking my depression almost immediately disappeared. Now, I get my fix from meetings, which I am just as addicted to as the bottle. I’m always going to be an alcoholic that doesn’t go away but luckily the depression has. Sometimes I get a little depressed when I think about how I can never have a drink again: some wine with my wife, champagne to celebrate etc. yeah, I guess that’s kinda depressing. But then I think about drinking again, ya know “just to take the edge off”….. now that’s terror.

Fourteen-year old Female

To me, depression is just a sadness that you can’t get rid of. A deeper feeling than sadness. I don’t think depression comes from inside you, I mean I don’t think it’s passed down into your genes or anything. People can control whether or not they’re depressed. If you can spot it before it happens so you won’t be so surprised, that would help you deal with it when it does happen. There are certain people that are more likely to get it. I think it all depends on what your life is. If you have more money, a good family you will have more confidence and it’s less likely you’ll get depressed.

A few years ago my friend was depressed. She didn’t tell me she was or anything but I just knew. Her dad moved away and she was so unhappy and couldn’t get excited about anything. I helped her by telling her the positive things that came out of her dad moving away. She started to feel better and now she feels good.

People need to find their own ways to be happy. Some people play sports some people take anti-depressants. It’s nobody’s business but that persons. As long as they’re making themselves happy.

We are in the midst of a huge rock concert, one that starts mid-afternoon and ends way past midnight. The sun shines behind the thin hazy fog. The crowd, dressed uniformly in too tight black pants, various colored suede blazers and skinny neck ties, sip from oversized plastic beer cups. They stiffly sway back and fourth to the faceless band on stage who is dressed to match their audience.

Jessie and Brittany, decked our in flowing skirts, paisley scarves, braids, shell shaped earrings, and flip-flops, stand out from the rest of the hipster audience. The only two obvious southern California girls, they push up against the lawn railing, the closest their tickets will physically let them be to the stage.

Jessie and Brittany share a cigarette, a Miller Highlife, and the same arm swaying dance move.

Jessie

(Screaming over the muffled Band)

Oh Shit! I looooove this song!

Brittany

Yeah

Jessie looks around for some acknowledgement from fellow concert viewers regarding the goodness of the song. Most people sit and try to avoid any eye contact with her by putting their heads in their laps or whispering something to their shaggy haired counterpart.

Jessie

Ah, this crowds so dead!

Brittany

Northern California Emo kids…having fun isn’t part of their style.

Jessie

Well they can suck my ass!

Both girls continue dancing, both pretending not to be totally self-conscious about being the only smiling faces.

A couple walks in front of them arm and arm. Middle-aged but still cool enough to be at the same concert as kids who could easily be their children. The woman whispers something to her man as they both giggle simultaneously, the funniest inside joke in the world. Brittany and Jessie separately stare at the couple.

Brittany

Seriously, after being together for so long, what could she be saying that’s so fucking funny?

Jessie

Ha, I dunno. Maybe they’re realizing how old they actually are.

Brittany

No Jess I mean really, it’s like they’re putting on a show for everyone else. She’s all “Oh, hunny this beer is goooooood!” and he’s all like “Yeah, good enough to get me laid tonight!”-Humor for bored married people. They’ve had that same conversation hundreds of times…

Jessie

Is that what you and Alex do?

Brittany

Yeah right, with all the shit we give each other, there’s never any lack of material.

Jessie

Do you miss him?

Brittany

Ah…I’m just so used to it by now.

Jessie

I don’t how you guys do it. I just couldn’t even imagine. I mean I don’t have to. I’ve done it, the whole long distance thing, and for me it’s just always ended in blood or tears. Usually both. It’s incredible how much you—

Brittany

(Interrupts)

…More beer?

She hands Jessie the cup

Jessie

Thanks, I mean really though, two people torn apart by so much distance. That’s got to create a mental space too. And all you have between you is that fucking phone. Oh my g-d! I tried having phone sex once, all I got was a soar neck and a really embarrassing lecture from my mom about how to let the rest of the house k

now when you’re going to be using the phone. But really the physical deprivation must be—

Brittany

(Interrupts)

Ok Jess. Look around…. Concert, dancing, fun. Did we drive all night and sleep in the dirt to stand around and debate the uselessness of phone sex?

Jessie

Sorry, you’re right.

Brittany

I know I am. C’mon finish that shit

Jessie Chugs the rest of the beer and lets out a huge burp. The girls next to them pause from taking pictures of the band for a moment and glare at the girls in disgust.

Brittany

You’re so pretty!

Jessie

I’ve learned from the best. Now if I could just get my farts to smell like rancid milk, we’d be about even!

Brittany pats Jessie on the shoulder. It’s more of a direct hit than a pat.

Brittany

Oh my sweet best friend. Remind me again why I ever leave you?

Jessie

Momentary lapse of craziness.

Brittany

(Mild sarcasm)

Speaking of, how you feeling?

Jessie

Nice, transition Britt! Ah. Yeah I’m feeling good. Sad, happy, mad, terrified, it’s all kind of happening at once. But I’m trying to allow it to happen. All of it.

Brittany

That’s great Jess.

Jessie

You’re such a bitch!

Brittany

What, I’m serious.

Jessie

Oh sorry, sometimes it’s hard to tell with people like us…I dunno. I really miss him though Britt.

Brittany

Well yeah, that’s totally normal. You just said goodbye to someone you love. It’s not all gonna be empowered woman escaping needy guy. You’re a person; you’re going to feel sad.

Jessie

I know, it’s just. Ah, I’m so confused. I feel relieved and happy to have done it not to mention really fucking strong but at the end of the day I’m lying in bed, alone.

Brittany

I know, but after everything’s been done, do you feel like you took care of yourself?

Jessie

Yeah, I mean my piece of mind; my soul and all that shit but I’m a girl and sometimes it’s nice to be told you know (voice gets lower like she’s telling a deep dark secret) that you’re like sexy and stuff.

Brittany

Jess, you can eat a whole t-bone in one sitting, if that’s not sexy I don’t know what is.

The band casually announces this will be their last song and some of the zombies in the audience stand up. A group of Red Bull fueled pre-teens pushes through Brittany and Jessie screaming “Ahhh! Yeah! Ah Yeah we love you!” at the band. All their hair has some form of pink in it and they all sport sweatshirts displaying the name of the band on stage.

Brittany

Perfect.

Jessie

Oh they’re so young. It seems like yesterday we were running around with our braces, soberly screaming for joy—

Brittany

I may have been thirteen but I was never the little shit that wore the bands sweatshirt to see them play; I beat up kids like that.

Jessie

Please, your right hook’s weaker than my grandma’s.

Brittany

You wore the bands’ sweatshirt to the shows, didn’t you?

Jessie 

No!

Brittany

Jessie…

Jessie

Just when I went to go see Blink-182! But I’m from Georgia,

that’s how the cool kids rocked it.

Brittany

Uh huh.

Jessie

Sorry Britt, not all of us came straight out of the womb wearing all black and smoking a cigarette.

Brittany

Okay can we take a time out to discuss how starving I am. All we’ve had today is rice cakes and cheep beer. That’s just not doing it for me.

Jessie

I know, I know but I refuse to pay $8.95 for some nasty nachos. I could use some nosh though.

Brittany

I could use a turkey.

Jessie

Yeah…that sounds good.

Brittany

No seriously, I could like eat a whole one by myself.

Jessie

Can I at least get a leg or something?

Brittany

It’s negotiable

Jessie reaches in her purse for a water bottle filled with dark red wine. She hands it to Brittany

Jessie

Here, we’ll just get drunk and forget we’re hungry.

The two girls take turns chugging the wine as the band announces they’re going to play one more song. The zombies rejoice.

Brittany

I thought they promised that was going to be the last song.

Jessie

Did you take a Ritalin today?

Brittany

No but I fucking should’ve. Tricking my body into thinking it’s full, thanks for the drugs Dr. Goldman!

Jessie

Yeah, that shit’s scary. Do you, I mean, do always—

Brittany

–No Jessie I don’t take it everyday and yes I always eat when I take it. If I didn’t maybe I could fit into my tight jeans and join in with the rest of the Emo freaks here.

Jessie

Britt…

Brittany

I’m kidding, Jesus!

Jessie

You’re perfect.

Brittany

What?

The bands final song fades out.

Jessie

(Louder)

Your body is beautiful. You’re perfect.

Everyone around pretends not to hear the comment Jessie just made.

Brittany

Thanks Jess, louder I don’t think the band could quiet hear you.

Jessie

Sorry…

Brittany

Well if everyone didn’t already think we were a bunch of drunk lesbians they do now.

Jessie

I’m sorry, I’m just trying to be open and honest with you…oh my g-d, are we dating?.

Brittany

Ha, I know right. C’mon we can finally sit down.

The girls walk over to their blanket placed on the lawn holding their purses, shoes, and an empty bag of rice cakes. All the zombies return to their respective blankets and break out food, drinks, and meaningless conversation. The couple to the right of the girls’ blanket is in mid conversation as they sit down.

Guy

–If she was trying to be post-modern than yes. But you can’t use rogue for th

e back lighting and call it classical.

Girl

Than what was the Chrtiav movement? Who was Erberger? How can you challenge that brilliance?

Guy

How can you toss those names around like volleyball. Context Claire, you have to put things within a framework of situational context.

The girls lay on their blanket silently giggling.

Jessie

What context isn’t situational?

Brittany

Words Jessie. The more words they use in a sentence, the more meaning it has.

Jessie

Dammit! I keep forgetting that rule.

Brittany

Try listening in class, that’s the kind of shit they’re teaching us.

Brittany takes a big gulp of wine. Jessie fumbles through the empty bag of rice cakes.

Jessie

Hmmm….rice cake crumbs! It’s like Christmas!

Brittany

You’re right, I am too drunk to remember how starving I am.

Jessie

Shut-up you’re reminding me! I’m so glad we got away this weekend Brit, we really needed this.

Brittany

I know I know. But the intellectuals-we can’t escape them They’re taking over!

Jessie

I know it’s like college conditioned me to pretend I like Descartes and deny that I love Seinfeld.

Brittany

(sarcastic)

Who’s Descartes?

Both girls laugh as muffled noise begins to come from the stage. It’s party time.

Jessie

You ready for another round champ?

Brittany

Been ready all my life.

The girls make their way to the front of the lawn. Sneaking between, around, and through the zombies. They ignore their resentful stares. The girls get right to the front.

Jessie

They’re just jealous that we have the balls to get up here.

Brittany

Or they’re pissed because our fat assess knocked them over. I think I killed one of the 42-pound blonde girls back there.

Jessie

Brittany…

Brittany

Jesus! So I’m not allowed to use humor if it is in any way insulting my body?

Jessie

Exactly

Brittany

You’re such a dork

Jessie

Who happens to be your best friend! So what does

that make you missy?

Brittany

Retarded

Jessie

You said it.

The band enters the stage and asks ‘”Are you ready to rock motherfuckers!” The crowd, for the first time all day, actually goes wild. Jessie leans in to Brittany’s ear.

Jessie

You are perfect you bitch.

Brittany

Shut up.

Brittany grabs Jessie’s hand and the two look at each other for a moment. The band starts up as the lights flare up over the crowd.

Fade Out

Painting: “Secrets” by Chelsea Leoba Dixon   http://chelsealeoba.com/

“Is he Italian or not? Simple, simple question girl!” Salvatore’s dad yells. He’s practically making out with my forehead he’s standing so close to me. He’s not even my boss but for some reason this man treats his son’s restaurant as his make believe castle where he’s king.

“Yes, I, um I think so. Well he looks…yes, yea he’s Italian,” I mutter as I look over at my first customer of the day. He sits alone in the corner side walk table. He smokes a cigarillo and takes off his slick black glasses to reveal the smallest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. There are molecules out there bigger than this man’s eyes. He holds up the latest copy of the “Oligi” and the mystery’s solved. Only a true Italian would read the newspaper which gives daily updates on the sacred homeland.

“Well then you have to redo this,” he shoves my newly made espresso in my hand spilling it all over my fingers. “Italians know the difference between instant espressos. Go, go next door and make fresh! Now!” His voice rising with each word. Someone needs to let this man know that feudalism is long gone. I walk away before he can finish the sentence

I can’t get mad yet, It’s too early. Just breathe and make more coffee. You’re alive, you’re healthy. Don’t freak out, he’s not worth it, none of them are worth it.

I rush next door to the attached restaurant owned by Salvatore’s cousinbrotherfriendI can’t keep track anymore. It’s a bit more upscale than Salvatore’s place, white table cloths instead of our classic plastic checkerboard table covers, but for some reason we’re always busier and sometimes use the sidewalk tables next door when we have an overflow of customers. We don’t try to pretend to be something we’re not. We are exactly what the people picture. We are the tiny pizza joint in Little Italy with the huge personality.

I remake the espresso in an instant with ease, and silently bless that summer spent as a barista with the drunken Scottish chef. I bring my caffeinated masterpiece over to Mr. Real Italian with his sugar, spoon, and napkin. Everything’s perfect. He smiles approvingly. Suddenly, a ping of joy comes over me and I feel proud to make this Italian immigrant with the tiny eyes happy. Salvatore’s dad mumbles something and walks down the street; finally I can breathe. I make my way toward the pizza oven and try to wipe some of the sweat beads off my forehead. It can’t be noon yet, but already the summer heat wave sets in and I look out at the sidewalk; it’s boiling. I rush over to the inside bar, my personal dugout, where I keep all my amenities to make life in the war zone tolerable. I’ve got my diet coke, cigarettes, cell phone, and my daily reminder that I’m actually living in NYC for the summer; the New York Post. It’s almost always opened to page six where I can get lost in the ridiculous tales of the city from the night before. I feel like Cinderella gazing through the pictures of the gaudy and fabulous galas where the gaudy and fabulous people congregate, but Cinderella never got this much attention, at least not until she had a makeover or even a shower.

I pick up the diet coke and rub the slushy can over my forehead. Sweat, water, dirt, it’s all over my face now, it’s all the same. Just as I’m reading about the huge cat fight that broke out between the two cokehead socialites at Bungalow 8 last night I feel a hand and then a whole arm wrap around my waste squeezing my hips. I don’t even have to turn around to see it’s him, I can smell him, smell his presence hovered over my body.

“Morning little girl…” he whispers pushing his tongue inside my ear.

“Get the fuck off me Luigie!” I scream. I can see Mr. Real Italian out of the corner of my eye take one last sip of his espresso and leave. I use the bar for support trying to push him off but his scrawny arms hug tighter and I’m trapped. He smells like raunchiness.

I try another approach. I relax and let him win. He loosens his grip.

“I’m a little girl? You’re the one that’s like fifteen Luigie!” I try to touch his face.

“Oh still trying to grow that beard…you’re so cute!” I laugh, he lets go. He’s pissed or trying really hard to be.

He mumbles something in Italian. He is the single reason I see Italian as a dirty, dirty language.

“What’s that Luigie?! You’re going to have to speak up. Remember you’re in A-M-E-R-I-C-A now!” I laugh, it feels good to be mean and I know exactly where it really hurts.

He looks down and walks away towards the kitchen. I’ve hit a soft spot and I feel bad. I follow him into the kitchen. I hate to admit how much I like him. How much potential he has to be liked.

“What’d you do last night?” I pry, trying to change the subject .

He approaches me quickly, practically lunging at me, and grabs my shoulders looking deep into my eyes. It’s scary to look this close into someone’s eyes but Luigie seems so comfortable. He’s the kind of attractive you can’t really figure out. The kind of attractive not on the billboard but on the real high-end runway shows. Take him out of his uniform of white cotton and pizza grease and he could turn some heads. Then his lack of English wouldn’t be a disability but a sexy mystery. He opens his mouth.

“I fucked you in your sleep, you don’t remember?”

How do these kind of men have mothers?

I knee him in the balls as hard as I can. So much for trying to see him as an ally in this place. He’s exactly like the rest of them.

He bends over grabbing his stomach and cursing to himself in Italian. I make my way back to the bar.

“Lesbian,” he mumbles. I pretend not hear.

I browse through page six and am about to find the horoscopes section when I hear Luigie from the oven belting out that cliché Italian song used in all of the Prego commercials. This act can only mean one thing: tourists approaching. I look down at the sidewalk tables to see an older couple gazing romantically at our cute little restaurant with the cute Italian pizza boy. They’re in.

“How are we doing today?” I belt approaching the tables, menus in hand.

“We can sit..?”

“Anywhere!” I sweetly interrupt. The couple picks the middle table with the shaky leg. They take off their cameras and put their khaki hats and water bottles on the table. Arizona? No, they’re mid-westerners for sure.

“Can I get ya’ll something to drink?” The ya’ll usually gives away that I’m not authentically Italian but it’s endearing just the same.

“I’ll have a lime Pellegrino.” The woman points to the menu like she never knew this kind of water existed.

“Oh, I’m so sorry we just ran out of that. But we have a wide selection…”

“Yes! Lime Pellegrino. Right away!” Salvatore suddenly appears behind me. He grabs my writing pad and pen and bumps right in front of me. The boss is here.

“We have a special today just for you, two pizzas and a glass of wine…” his voice fades into the background as I quickly run back into the kitchen. I hate being snubbed and I’m certainly not going to wait around the table to watch him snub me more.

I stand by the pizza oven fighting for fan space with Luigie. The sticky air mixes with the brick oven pizza fumes and I have to hold on to the counter to keep from self-combusting. After a few minutes with the mid-westerners, Salvatore races into the kitchen. Short, stocky, sleazy: he’s everything an overbearing Italian boss should be.

He throws the order at me shouting, really shouting, “How many times I tell you, we ALWAYS have everything! We don’t have? We run to store, we get! Mamma Mia! Stupid girl!”

“I know but…sorry” is all I can muster.

He puts his arm around my shoulder in the older brother after-school-special type of way.

“It’s fine. You know how to do…you are the best girl!” the lion has a heart, or at least pulse. He gives me the mid-westerners order and points to the kitchen. I run.

The kitchen smells worse than the sewers outside. Meat, hot meat, sits everywhere. I look at the order written in Salvatore’s chicken scratch:

TWO HOUSE SALAD -1 NO Tom.

I grab one of the Mexican cooks and point to the order. He shakes his head.

“Two salads, NOOOO tomatoes on one,” I say loudly and repeat a couple times. Hand motions, body language—I try everything to get him to understand. He’s still lost. I roll my eyes at him even though it’s not his fault.

“Luigie!” I call from the kitchen “How do you say NO TOMATOES in Spanish?”

Luigie storms in the kitchen and hands me a basket of bread “You take this to the customers!” He grabs the salad order out of my hand and starts yelling at the Mexican cook. I feel bad for the Mexican cooks. They do the most work and get the least. Hidden in the back like slaves. I feel bad. But in this place it’s everyman for himself, and I’ve got to feel bad for myself more.

I bring the bread to the two mid-westerners and try my best to manage a smile.

“So it’s just you and all these guys?” the man asks.

“Yea, but don’t worry I can handle them,” I say. Everyday a customer asks me this question and every day I give the same answer.

I can hear my phone ringing from the back and run into the bar to see that it’s of course my mother calling. I breathe and answer, I can’t press ignore on her for the 2^nd day in a row.

“Honey! Hi! How are you? Haven’t talked to you in a while? How are things? Are you working?” Welcome to the realm of a million questions.

“Hey mamma,” I half whisper, “Yea I’m at work. What’s up?”

“Oh sorry babe, just checking in. How’s everything going? How’s the weather? It’s hotter than hell in Atlanta.”

“Yea, its fucking miserable here too. I feel like the sidewalks are about to catch fire.” I bend down behind the bar so Salvatore can’t see me chatting.

“What about the sidewalks? What fire?” she anxiously replies. Too anxious to handle hyperboles right now.

I look up to see Mauricio standing on the other side of the bar. Holding his hand up mimicking me on my cell phone. He doesn’t speak a word of English but that doesn’t stop him from making fun of me whenever he gets the chance.

I punch him in the arm, lightly. He’s wearing an Italian soccer jersey and his hair hangs down below his ears. It seems he took my advice from the day before when I pointed to his hair gel and screamed “No!”

“Sorry mamma, customers are waiting I gotta go, call-you-tomorrow-love you miss you-love you soooo much! BYE!”

I’ll call her back on my way home from work so that I don’t have to walk home alone.

I offer Mauricio some of my diet coke and he makes a disgusted look on his face and pats his belly, his skinny belly, which doesn’t need anything diet. He grabs for my cell phone and I fight him for it. Just as I’m about to let him win I hear Salvatore whine from the kitchen, “Hello! Hello! Where are you girl!?”

I look out at the sidewalk tables and see mid-size family with matching American flag t-shirts standing in front of the restaurant contemplating their move. I race out to them menu’s in hand.

“Hey guys! Please take a look at our menu! We’ve got a couple lunch specials.” I practically throw the menus in their hands. They look over the selection smile, returning the menus and slowly make their way to the next sidewalk restaurant.

Salvatore runs up behind me. Here it comes.

“Why?! Why they not eating here?! What do you say to them?!”

“Nothing Salvatore! I showed them the menus and they didn’t want to eat here!”

He rolls his eyes shouting louder, “Mamma Mia!”

I snap. “What the fuck Salvatore I can’t force people to eat here!” I’m screaming now. I swear he’s about to throw a punch when the cops pull up on their motorcycles. Here we go, time to wine and dine the pigs. Salvatore leaves me to greet the same four NYC police officers who dine with us more frequently than I can remember. Everything is made for them, nothing is ever charged. I never thought my life would involve such movie-worthy moments.

The cops sit at the bar and Salvatore sits with them. Beer, Pellegrino, I pour them everything and try to ignore their stares. Salvatore whispers something to the black one and then looks over at me like he’s about to take a bite out of my neck.

“Jesssssssssssie!” It’s Luigie.

I run over to the pizza oven, half relieved to get away from the scene. He hands me the restaurant phone. “I don’t know. I can’t know what they say. You talk.”

I grab the phone. “Hello? Number 28 Restaurant and Bar how may I help you?”

“Hi, yes I’m calling from Bellevue Electric. We have a problem with the bill from last month it seems-” The phone is muffled and I can barley hear the voice over the laughs of Salvatore and his guests.

“I’m sorry, can you hold on?” This is not a part of my job description. I walk over to Salvatore and try to hand him the phone.

“What?” He can be so mean.

“It’s bill people. I don’t know. You talk to them”

“No, you say I’m not here. I call later”

I roll my eyes and take a message. Poor electric company. They’ll never see that money.

Mauricio’s sitting at the corner table rolling silverware. I walk over and sit beside him helping him fold the napkins just right. He lights a cigarette and we share it as we roll. It feels good for once to not speak.

Three boys approach us. They look like they’re from Switzerland or Germany or anywhere else but here.

“May we sit outside?” one of them kindly asks.

“Of course,” I smile. My customers remind me that there are kind rational people in this world who don’t spend their whole lives yelling.

I place menus in front of them.

“Three beers,” the really blonde one says.

“Okay, we have…” I say trying to list all of our beers.

“We don’t care miss, just whatever three beers you have,” the medium blonde one says, laughing.

“Okay, you boys really know what you want from life, huh?” I sweetly say. We all giggle.

“Any food for you boys?”

“Yes, what is the difference between black olives and green olives?”

“Um, well not much but in my humble opinion black olives go much better with pizza.” They take my suggestion and order a large pizza with black olives. I walk back to the oven and Luigie, who’s been staring at me with the three boys.

“Here you go!” I try to fight his resentment with happiness.

“Slut,” he mutters as he grabs the pizza order.

Salvatore’s on the sidewalk bear hugging his cop’s goodbye. As soon as the cops speed away he runs back to the kitchen talking softly on his cell phone. I walk back to Mauricio and split another cigarette. Moments later two hip Indian looking girls arrive at the left corner table and sit, cigarettes in hand. They look ready for a drink. Salvatore appears from the kitchen open arms greeting the two beauties. He holds one closer to him and kisses her gently on the neck. It’s true what they say about Italian men. It’s all true. He motions for me. I’m there.

“What do you babies want? Anything you want” He can be nice when he wants to be.

“I’ll have the chardonnay,” girl number one says.

“I’ll have the pinot…how are you doing today sweetie?” girl number two asks me sincerely.

“Oh I’m good, tired. I’ve been…” I’m interrupted once again.

“What? What is this? Drinks, orders, you go!” Salvatore shouts.

I run back to the kitchen and open the fridge to get the huge jug of Carlo Rossi we keep in the back. We use it for every single $9 glass of wine we sell. I hate being so deceitful but no one has caught on yet.

I bring the girls their wine and Salvatore grabs my arm. I freeze.

“Where’s my glass?” he says and gives me a fake puppy dog face that’s truly nauseating.

“I wouldn’t give you water if you were dying of thirst,” I shout as I take back my arm.

The girls break into laughter and follow it up with a couple ‘oh she got you!’s.

He smiles and grabs my face.

“Look at this face. Do you see the way she talks to me?” He motions to his two girlfriends. “She’s the best, this one!”

Luigie calls for me and I run back into the kitchen. He’s rolling dough and motions to the ringing phone. I pick up.

“Hello! Number 28…can I help you?”

“What? Hello?” The line is so muffled. She continues, confused, “Who the hell is this? Where’s Salvatore?”

“Oh, yes hold on one sec. Who’s calling please?”

“His wife!” My stomach drops as I realize the voice on the other end is the most unfortunate wife in the world.

I glance over at Salvatore working the girls.

“Um yes, so sorry he’s not here. Can I take a message?”

Click. She’s gone.

I hang up the phone and look over at the boys. Shit! I forgot their beers. I rush to the bar and try to work the keg, which is always tapped. All I get is foam.

“Salvatore! Luigie! Mauricio!” I scream, but no one wants to hear me. I work the keg as best I can and bring out three glasses of foam to the boys. Maybe they won’t notice.

They laugh when I put the drinks in front of them.

“Sorry,” I say. Salvatore rushes behind me.

“New beers right away boys…sorry she a little stupid.” He grabs the glasses and rushes inside. I follow him to the bar.

“Why? Why you do this?” he says.

“I tried calling you but you wouldn’t answer. I don’t know how to change the keg.” I don’t know why I even bother trying to defend myself.

He changes the keg and walks back to his girlfriends.

“Order up girl!” Luigie shouts from the kitchen. I grab the large pizza and bring it out to the boys.

“Um, I think these are green olives,” the really blonde guy says as I’m about to walk away.

“Oh shit. Sorry He must’ve…”

“What’s wrong here?” Salvatore’s back and he’s pissed.

“Luigie put green olives instead of black.”

“You told him green?”

“No. I wrote black but I think he misread…”

“You tell him! You have to tell him! You know this is so….Mamma Mia! Not hard girl, this is not hard! Why you always make hard?” He’s really screaming now and all the sidewalk traffic stops and stares.

“I just…” I try to speak.

“No! You go, I’ll do. You can’t do anything!” He turns towards the boys. “Sorry. Free pizza for you.” He grabs the pizza and storms back to the kitchen.

I rush back inside. Everything’s getting blurry. I can’t run to the bathroom fast enough. I see Mauricio from the corner of my eye. I think he tries to stop me but I can’t even look at him.

The tears fall out like faucet water the second I close the door to the unisex bathroom. It’s so small and I’m forced to look at myself in the mirror. Look at myself balling and wailing out of control. I rush water over myself and try to stop crying and start breathing. I pat my face off with a paper towel, blow my nose as hard as I can, and take a deep breath. It’s time to get ready for the night shift.

The bus hits what feels like an iceberg and I’m knocked out of my deep slumber. I pry my eyes open only to realize that I’m face down in a boy’s crotch, Dominick’s crotch, and his new navy shorts are covered with my glorious morning breath spit up. I try to wipe it off before he can notice but I’m way too late he’s already seen the damage.

“Jesus, your like a baby! You’ll be buying me new shorts Jess”

“I’m sorry I was tired and your crotch is just so…” I’m too tired to think of a witty ending to the sentence so I just close my eyes and put my head on his shoulder. But his shoulder is not nearly as comfortable as his crotch.

“Your shoulder’s so boney Dom!” I say in a whiney accent, loud enough for the rest of the bus to hear. But he isn’t listening. He’s already un-paused his Ipod and one of Springsteen’s cheesiest songs blasts from his headphones. He’s off in his own little world leaving me to fend for myself on this never-ending bus ride.

We sit in the very back, our seats a bit higher than everyone else’s, which makes it easy to scope out the rest of the group and I’m able to pick my nose without anyone besides Dominick seeing. Let’s see; you’ve got the three dumb as dirt Australian guys (that’s just a given-in any kind of tour situation you can bet on three dumb as dirt Australian guys), the ridiculously attractive guy with his mediocre-looking-but-probably-has-a-wonderful-personality girlfriend, the ridiculously hot girl with her mediocre-looking-but-probably-has-a-wonderful-personality boyfriend, and the British looking mother and daughter who took this trip to really bond with each other (but both secretly wish they’d made this trip with their lovers that they haven’t found yet). These people fascinate me, and I want to know why. Why did they come to Vietnam? What were they hoping to find? How does their Vietnam compare to mine? And why the hell are they spending 16 hours on a sorry excuse for a bus and 300,000 Dong to go look at some land that was the demilitarized zone during America’s ruthless attack on Vietnam?

“I’m going to kill Brian!” I shout to Dom. I don’t care if he can’t hear sometimes it feels good just to shout.

He puts Springsteen on pause “Would you expect anything less? He sticks us on this tour and we cover the DMZ and some old war tunnels while he gets to sit at the bar for 14 hours”.

“Uh, I’m like looking forward to writing my professor evaluation, I’m gonna rip him a new asshole!” I’m really screaming at this point and look down to see the entire bus, tour guide included, starring blankly at me. At least I get a laugh from one of the dumb Australians. I lay back on Dominick’s shoulder and I don’t care how boney it is because I can’t face this crowd anymore.

“Please bring your camera’s!” The tour guide says over the muffled microphone. I’ve fallen asleep yet again and the I feel like last thing in the world I can do right now is get up.

“Get up girl…. it’s DMZ time!” Dominick says like a game show host announcing the latest microwave up for grabs. I look out the window at the main attraction of the day. There she is. Gloomy, dank, and cold. Exactly the way she’s supposed to be.

We file slowly off the bus as our tour guide gathers everyone around the enormous Ho Chi Minh cutout. “Welcome everyone to the demilitarized zone!” Camera’s – video and digital – and clip clip, flash flash, everyone takes there turn posing with Uncle Ho. I make my way towards the river. I need air, lots of air.

So this is it? This is where the battles began. At this very spot people all different people where mutilated without justice. There was no protection, and morality was long gone. Kill. Kill. Thirty years, just thirty years ago. You could kill or been killed and that’s that. This can’t be real…I can’t think like this.

“Alright everyone! Let us return to the bus! Lots more to see today!” the tour guide shouts. I take a deep breath and say my farewell to the river. I snap some pictures. Not because I want to, but because I feel like I should. Disposable, they’re so disposable anyway.

“Do you want to split half a Dramamine?” I ask Dom as the bus zooms down the newly renovated Ho Chi Minh Trail.

“I’m good. And didn’t you just take one an hour ago? Please, I don’t have the energy for you to go all Valley of the Dolls on me” he says.

“Shut-up! You know how car sick I get!” I take another half a pill. The road seems to be getting bumpier and my usual breakfast bowl of Pho isn’t sitting right.

“Cammmmm-unnnn, Rat Vuuc Dat Gappp,” Sue’s a seat in front of me and as usual she is taking every opportunity to practice her Vietnamese as loudly as possible. I squeeze Dominick’s shoulder. I can’t take this right now. Not today. He lifts his eyebrows and points to his blasting IPod, which serves as Dominick’s instant escape from, well, just about everything. I reach down into my bag to grab my Ipod that’s been dead for about a week. I press all the buttons and pray for a miracle.

“Sin choaaa!!!!” she’s really at it now. If I threw her out the window could I claim temporary insanity to the courts? I put on my headphones. Maybe if I wish hard enough a song will start playing.

“I hope everyone is very hungry! We will be having authentic Vietnamese food so bring your empty bellies!” The tour guide spits over the microphone. The bus stretches to a halt in front of a small restaurant/grocery store which, like most Vietnamese eateries, favors an open-air storefront instead of a door. The shopkeeper’s play cards and smoke cigarettes as they sip their coffee. They spot us entering and immediately get up – like they’ve been expecting us. They wipe off the tables and bring out the larger plastic chairs to accommodate our big fat western asses. The group spreads throughout the tables. The dumb Aussies sit with the gorgeous girl and her good-personality boyfriend and the mother/daughter duo sit with the tour guide. Dominique and I choose the front table halfway outside so that I can smoke. He hates when I smoke, but he’ll hate me more if I don’t get my lunchtime cigarette.

“Can I sit here?!” Sue asks, though I don’t know why she even bothers to ask as she’s already seated by the time she asks the question.

She takes off her khaki Panama hat and removes her camera case, passport holder, Vitamin pack, and mini-first aid kit from around her neck and places everything on the table. She’s thought of everything; I can’t even remember to bring my lighter.

“Chi Oi!” She shouts to the waitress.

She leans in, “I’ve got to get a menu… I’m just starving!”

I try to be accepting of Sue mostly because I know she means well, and at the very least will provide Dominick with some great material for tonight. She knows her stuff and I need a break from Dominick’s bitching. Time to get positive! It’s Sue time! One question, all I need is one question, to set her off for the rest of the meal.

“ Sue, when was the DMZ constructed?”

The waitress approaches looking blankly at us. She’s not going to pretend like she cares or that she likes her job. Suddenly I’m transported into a deli in NYC, dealing with one of those no-nonsense tough-as-nail’s city waitresses, and I’m grateful (so grateful) that this woman’s not pretending. Sue gets some Pho and Dominick orders every deep fried dish on the menu. My post-Dramamine haze has left me spacey and nauseous and I can’t bring myself to eat anything knowing that I’ll have to get right back on that bus.

“Tra?” I mutter in my weak Vietnamese accent. Surely she’ll recognize my attempt to say tea.

She stares at me. Clueless.

“Lipton?” I give up. She nods and moves to the next table.

“Well, originally the Vietnamese government created the DMZ in an effort to block the French.” Sue’s ready. The next twenty minutes will be hers.

“I hope you’ve all eaten well. It will be another couple of hours until we reach the tunnels,” the tour guide states as we pull back onto the dirt road. He’s a stocky fellow with a sweet face that makes you want to trust him no matter what. The perfect tour guide. Dumb Aussie #2 raises his ridiculously toned and muscular arm. This should be good.

“So what actually ended the American war?” Semi-good question and I’m realizing how snobby I’ve become. It’s pretty disgusting.

“Well the real end of the war was due to anti-war movements in America. The youth especially were so strongly against the war that they pressured the American government to pull out of Vietnam”

Dominick leans and whispers “Oh yea, because you’re parents dropped acid, got naked, shouted “Revolution!” and the war ended.” I halfway smile and roll my eyes, which remain fixed on the outside scenery. Like always, Dominick is being way too cynical, and like always, his cynicism is rooted in truth. I take the other half of the Dramamine tablet and stretch my way back into Dominick’s lap. It’s safe and warm and I’m not leaving no matter how much he complains. He wraps his arms around my lower back and moments later I hear the remixed version of “American Pie” by Madonna blasting from his headphones. The remix is so dreadful I’m almost offended. I’m about to start yelling at him for exposing his tacky musical taste to the rest of the bus but I’m too sleepy to bother.

“Come on Jessie! Get up!” Dominick shouts standing above me. He’s poking me in the hips, as I lay sprawled out in the back row of bus seats. He’s the biggest pebble in my shoe.

“Shut up!” I scream back like a Diva that’s on her way downhill. Thankfully Dominick’s used to ignoring my behavior the first ten minutes after I’m awakened.

“ Don’t you want to go sit in an underground tunnel for an hour and listen to how we drove thousands of innocent Vietnamese people to spend years of there lives in barren darkness and silence?” His sarcasm doesn’t even surprise me anymore.

Yeah, actually I really do.

“Shit! I’m so claustrophobic I don’t know if I can handle this,” I moan as we make our way off the bus in search of the rest of the group. We follow the only thing that slightly resembles a path down to where the tunnels should be. The afternoon rain begins, soft as always at first. I hold out my hands to feel the water on my arms as we continue on the dirt path. We have stopped running when the rain comes. I have stopped caring about getting wet.

The entrance to the tunnel is unmarked but we can hear the delicate voice of our tour guide coming from somewhere inside. A narrow hole covered beneath grass and mud opens into an endless sea of darkness. It’s not real. This belongs in the movies.

“Here we go!” I try to push Dominick in front of me. The tunnel’s dark and I’m way too much of a scaredy cat to go in first. We step into the pitch black hole and I grab the back of Dominick’s arm.

“I can’t see a fucking thing!” he whispers. I nod taking baby steps behind him, steps into darkness.

“Just follow the guides voice,” I say as we move down the path, which seems to be going uphill.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me!” Dominick says as he pulls his arm out from the desperate grasp of my left hand and runs his hands along the walls to find balance for the uphill stretch. It’s every man for himself.

The path begins to level and we see a small light coming from the side left wall up ahead. We pick up speed approaching the light only to find what appears to be two mannequin like figures of a mother and daughter face down on top of a stone slab. A sign bellow them reads BED.

We keep walking faster.

“Creepy” is all I can think of the scene.

“…Vinh Moc village. Over 300 families lived here during the American War” we hear our tour guides voice getting louder and louder. We turn a corner to find the entire group hunched around another manger type creation this one is labeled TOILET.

“Where have you guys been?!” Sue shouts like a high school gym teacher who is trying to enforce the ridiculous importance of running the mile. “Be careful.” She holds up her cell phone, which she’s converted into a flashlight, “The path is really dark!”

We emerge from the tunnel in what feels like hours later. The warm sunlight feels good. It feels beyond good. It feels like freedom. The tour guide leads us back to the bus “What were the exact dates these villagers lived in the tunnel?” Hottie with the good-personality girlfriend asks.

“They hid from April 66-67, during Rolling Thunder I, and then went back down 68-73 for rolling thunder II….during Mr. McNamara’s plan.” I feel a pang in my stomach and am instantly nauseous again. The group walks back to the bus in an almost single file line in silence. We are speechless and freaked out. Officially freaked out by this day.

I’m the last one to get on the bus and as I move back to my usual seat I see that Dominick is already there sprawled out along the entire back row. He looks so comfortable, I figure I should give his lap a rest. I gaze around looking for an open seat like the most unpopular 5^th grader on the school bus. I spot the only seat left at the front of the bus right next to our tour guide. He looks up at me standing awkwardly in front of the open seat.

“Please, please sit” he says with sincerity as he moves closer to the window to give me more room.

The bus takes off, rolling jerkily out of the dirt parking lot and causing me to trip and fall into the seat. Our eyes meet and we both unleash our smiles; big and relaxed. His smile, uninhibited and kind, shows off his yellow crooked teeth. What a great smile. The bus gets back on the highway; it’s been a long day and everyone’s ready to sleep. It’s time to make a decision. Do I want to be the quiet girl who rests peacefully for the ride home or do I start unloading the questions on him? These endless questions I don’t even know how to ask. Either way I’ll be happy, either way I’ll loose something. I close my eyes only to realize how sick of sleeping I am.

“So how long have you been giving these tours?” It’s time to start chatting.

“About two years, I really wanted to be a teacher, but this pays more.” We’ve got a talker, a definite talker.

“So where are you from?”

“Quang Trang. Not far at all from here.” He keeps going. “My whole family is from this area. Lots of families are moving to bigger cities lately but this is a good area. Nice and quiet.” His English is proper yet relaxed. I wish I spoke English as well as him.

“My father, well he was placed in the army. The Southern Army. And he fought in much of the central countryside. Lots of the land was destroyed but everything is growing again. It is all returning….after it all ended he came right back here. He likes it best here. So do I.”

“So he fought around here. In this area?”

“Yes. Yes, right around here”

What! You’re father was forced to kill on the same land that you are now a tour guide for. What is this place? How does this happen? Don’t you see how fucked up this all is?

“Oh yes, it is very beautiful. Very green, ” is all I can say. I’ve got to keep this guy talking.

“Yes, I want to have my family here but first I need a wife”

“Ah…how old are you?”

“29 – getting too old but I want a wife. I need one”

“Well I’m sure she’s out there for you. There are so many beautiful women here, they’re all so beautiful. When I got off the plane in Saigon the first time I was blown away”

“Yes but you see I do not want a city girl. I want a good girl. A girl who doesn’t drink or smoke or disobey. A virginal girl”

Good luck buddy

“Oh, yes I see. Are women very different in the country?” I ask.

“The women, yes. The women here work very hard. They clean and cook and the men come home from drinking all day and beat them,” he says with a smirk.

Why are you smiling? Is it a joke? Am I supposed to be in on it? You? You don’t want that. No not you Mr. nice tour guide. Not you. Do you?

“Oh time for announcements,” he says, “Excuse me.” He scoots beside me and stands in the front of the bus turning on the microphone.

I open my bag and pop another Dramamine. I’m feeling sick again.

She turns and looks down giving the curb a polite smile. It’s the signal. Time to get a move on. I swing my left leg around straddling the bike seat and scoop my hands underneath the seat to get a grip—a nice solid grip—before takeoff. I’m ready. So ready to fly through the streets on her cream colored ’97 Honda powered magic carpet. I wait. She lets out a cackle, a painful piercing cackle. I’m too tired to guess what she’s laughing at but I’m positive it has something to do with me. Something to do with something I’ve done completely wrong. “What?” I say. Snappy. Critical. Mean. Although it’s only six in the morning, I’m awake. I have every right to take this tone. The cackle fades and she points. “Your legs Jessie!” I roll my eyes and give the standard smile, which sweetly begs, “Forgive me and my foreign ways,” a smile I’ve perfected since my arrival in Vietnam. I hop off the motorbike and Nhu scoots forward on the narrow leather seat. I park my butt towards the back. Hands under the seat. Left leg crossed over right leg. No no. Right leg over left. Right foot on top of left foot, left foot touching the exhaust pipe, but not too much pressure or you’ll break it, but you’ve got to support your body weight. I shift my foot, desperately trying to find minimum comfort as the boiling exhaust pipe burns my left ankle. “Shit.” I whisper. Deep breathe. She nods approvingly at my newfound sidesaddle position. Proper, just like her.

“Have you met his parents yet?!” I shout in Nhu’s ear as we make our way around the first of the many large roundabouts in Saigon, effortlessly zipping passed the bicycles. I’ve only been staying with Nhu for a week but already I’m beginning to recognize the route to school. “His” of course referring to her boyfriend. Steve McQueen in her love-crazed heart, yet in reality he bears a striking resemblance to Steve Erkil.

“What?” she screams through the polka-dot bandanna she ties around her face whenever she’s in direct contact with the harsh Saigon sunshine and the thick smog. I’d politely refused her extra bandanna that morning. The smog’s a bitch but I need a good suntan. I try again, louder.

“Have you met his parents yet?!” It’s beyond silly to try and converse right now. Our voices can’t compete with the streets of Saigon at 7 am. No one else talks on their motorbikes. To them the morning ride is a time for preparation, contemplation for the long day ahead. Still, I keep talking in an effort to forget how tired I really am.

We cross over the bridge which separates Nhu’s neighborhood, Tam Biet district, from the hustle and bustle of the infamous district one( the one and only district most foreigners ever see when visiting Vietnam) As we speed over the bridge the now familiar smell of the sewage from the canal below seeps into my skin. I look at the same women I’ve seen each morning who sells books along the bridge- the women who live in this smell. I put my head down, my forehead barley touches the back of Nhu’s shoulder.

“Oh, you still tired Jessie?” she shouts and smiles at the same time.

“I just need some coffee and I’ll be great!” I say shouting back. I feel like a wimp but I’m not used to getting up this early and I don’t think it’s something my body is qualified to ever getting used to.

We approach a huge intersection just as the light turns yellow. Nhu slows down immediately, I wonder why she doesn’t try to speed through the yellow only to realize that the yellow light has already turned red. Unlike the US, the stoplights in Saigon leave little room for the stragglers to whiz through on the lasts moments of the yellow. Suddenly we are engulfed in a sea of motorbikes. Wheels, fumes, limbs, on either side of me. My claustrophobia has no option at this point but to simply disappear.

Finally, at least, she can hear my question.

“No, no, we do not do that here until you are ready to be very serious about each other.” Our driving neighbors all turn to stare. Their minds race. What is she doing here? Why are they talking? What are they saying? Why? On my right a fellow side saddler sits in her khaki jumper, arms around her husband’s waist, baby inside her belly. The definition of femininity, inches away. I nod looking down at my legs. Shit. I forgot to shave again. Green light and the race continue. Our neighbors speed ahead of us forgetting about the strange white girl the second they lose sight of me.

“No, no time for coffee!” Nhu shouts as we pull into the school parking lot. She must surely be crazy. “But Nhu, no you don’t understand. I can’t function without my coffee, I can’t breathe, I can’t…”

“It is 7:15 now. We are already late, Jessie…You promised you would come to my class….”

I roll m y eyes and open my mouth pretending to yawn. It turns into a real yawn, a big one, and I stretch up my arms over my head so I can really enjoy it.

“Jesssssssie!”

At this moment my mother suddenly pops into mind as does her latest e-mail: take advantage of every opportunity, take in everything…. Be the sponge!

I want to blow up the sponge. I want nothing to do with my mother or her e-mails. I want a bed—my bed. I want to sleep forever, or as long as I can, and take in nothing and never smile again unless I truly mean it. I breathe.

“Fine, fine, coffee later, but you’re buying!”

She giggles and punches me in the arm in an effort to show affection. But she’s got a pretty mean punch and I have to rub my shoulder and hold in the pain and let out only laughter. I punch her back as hard as I can and now we are really laughing. I realize that we are re-enacting an episode of Seinfeld and that Nhu doesn’t know the amazing-ness that is Seinfeld and that she is funnier and more charming than she’ll ever know. I hope Steve Erkel knows. I hope he knows to tell her how wonderful she is.

White stairs. Fifteen flights at least. I’m out of breath by the third flight but we laugh making the climb more funny than miserable. Sweat discovers my armpits first, then my forehead, and lower back and by the time we reach classroom 403B I am a sweat-ball. The classroom is straight out of The Cat from Hue. Long wooden desks, creaky fan, and open shutters, which let in just enough sun to make you feel like it’s all really just a dream. A few dozen Vietnamese girls fill the desks. I look up at thirty pairs of dark, tight blue jeans, thirty pastel t-shirts with pictures of Mickey Mouse and Barbie, sixty dark brown eyes stop in mid-chatter. Stop and stare right at me. Nhu taps my elbow. The signal. Ready to move. We make our way towards the back where the cool kids are supposed to sit. Head down as I quickly pass the teacher. She speaks English slowly and steadily into a cordless microphone. My favorite green skirt still damp and sticky from last night’s rain, drags beneath my flip-flops as I approach the back table. The chatter becomes a roar now. This is not what they expected. I am not like the girls they’ve been seeing in the fashion magazines and on MTV. I am the biggest dork in the world.

English, slow and steady. Puritans. Elvis. She asks me to explain everything. I try not to act annoyed, but kind of am. What makes me the expert on all this pop-culture American bullshit? Isn’t this the stuff I’m trying to get away from? Isn’t that the reason for me studying abroad in Vietnam of all places? Where’s the rice fields and the dirt roads? Where’s my cross-cultural experience? Yet, I’ve never been the expert or the one who knew all the answers so I share all my knowledge with the class on the puritans and all my opinions on Mr. George W. Bush and the state of our country. I feel kinda smart and kinda guilty. Nhu and I pass notes all the while to kill time with her pink pen on her pink paper:

KOREAN CLASS TONIGHT. YOU TAKE BUS?

I’VE GOT A MEETING. LET’S MEET AT 9 AT SCHOOL?

She nods. She knows what meetings I’ve got on Wednesday nights but still makes me remind her each week. What other games does she play? The teacher pulls down the map. American geography. That’s my cue. I poke Nhu, cupping my hand like I’m drinking something and point to the door. I walk out of the room as quickly as I can, keeping my head down until I reach the open hallway. The sun is really at it now. I turn toward the stairs. Tiny footsteps behind me and a gentle tap on my shoulder. It’s one of Nhu’s chatty classmates. She steps back as I turn around, like she’s surprised I noticed her. What now. C’mon… I’m sloppy, messy, dirty? What? Bring it on.

“You…you bohemian, right?”

I smile so big I start laughing.

“Exactly”

The day is not so long, really. Hours break down to minutes, which give way to seconds until it’s five o’clock and I’m free. I rush to the front entrance knowing that it’s only 5:02 and she’ll be late like always. Still I rush pretending like I have somewhere to be to see someone who’s been waiting just for me. I stand near the curb on the right side but the curb is really low making me feel like I’m standing on the main street. Cars and trucks honk at me as they pass. Don’t worry you won’t hit me. I need this time in between the constant transactions of the day. Time for my stomach to drop, time to think about him. What exactly did I say? What did we look like together? When’s the next time I’ll see him? What exactly does he look like? When?

“Hey Girrrrrrrrl”

My ride. My girl. Her pinstriped pants hang below her heels as her feet touch the ground to find balance on her bike. Polo cap and a ponytail, her daytime career woman make-up already removed. She’s a working girl with gin and tonics on her mind. I wipe the remains of the afternoon rainstorm from the back of her bike and hop on.

“What the hell?” She turns back laughing. I look down at my sidesaddle position.

“Oh.” I join in on her laughter and step off the bike. I’m with Minh; it’s time to relax. I rearrange my legs, straddling the bike, and hold my green paisley skirt down with my hands. We join the main flow of traffic. Saigon is dark and my naked legs mean nothing to the night commuters. The light turns red as we stop beside a taxi van full of tourists. Eyes. Pairs of blue all stare at me. Green light and we leave the taxi in the dust. I am the coolest person in the world.

“How was school?”

“How was work?”

Questions mean nothing when you already know the answer.

“Heart of Darkness?”

I nod, but she isn’t looking.

On weekends it’s the place to be, but this Tuesday night reveals the true emptiness and sadness of The Heart of Darkness Bar and Lounge. It’s lonely and bored and sick of all the regulars. We strut past the front couches where the backpackers always sit. There’ll all the same. They’ve extended their stays in Vietnam only to sit in the bar all afternoon. I smile at no one in particular and pop my hips back and forth. I can feel them staring. We still got it. We’ve perfected it. We need them to look, stare, and wonder who we are. We need them to want us and we need to act like we don’t know they’re alive.

We pick our usual table in the back room. Two gin and tonics in front of us without even asking. I can’t decide if that’s the coolest or saddest thing. I light a cigarette, not because I need one but because it’s part of the act. Minh munches on the stale popcorn and bops her head up and down to the latest track from 1994. What next? I can’t drink fast enough.

“Dare I ask?” I mumble.

“He didn’t pick up. He must be out in the middle of nowhere again.”

Smile.

“What? He’s only got a year left and then he’s done with the Navy for life”

Nod.

“I’m gonna send him a card for his birthday”

Smile.

“Did I show the latest pic he sent me?”

Smile.

“Shut-up! I’m 23 remember? Five years is nothing once you’re in your twenties.”

Sometimes I just like to listen to her speak. Her English is perfect and the way she pronounces words is beautiful and different each time. It’s like opening a present whenever she says my name. Five different tones spread between two syllables.

Two more drinks. Stronger.

She pulls out the pic. Blonde. Pale. Half-smile. British. Way too British. I tell her about how my parents met. A true crowd-pleaser. She laughs so hard she bangs the back of her head against the giant dragon wall hanging.

Two more.

8:52

“Shit!”

I take one last drag of my cigarette. Goodbye sweet release, I’ll see you again this time tomorrow.

We hop on the bike. We’re really racing now as I open my eyes as wide as they’ll go. Instant sobriety. I’m in control. Only five minutes late.

She’s waiting, sitting on her bike, playing with her cell phone.

“Hey sorry. So sorry we’re late!”

She nods trying not to look pissed.

Minh and Nhu give each other a polite nod.

“Call me tomorrow girrrrl” She’s gone.

“How was class?”

I over eagerly ask as I climb atop the bike. Butt towards the back. Hands under the seat. Left leg over right leg. No no. Right leg over left. Right foot on top of left foot, left foot touching the exhaust pipe, but not too much pressure or you’ll break it, but you’ve got to support your body weight. I hate sidesaddle.