a few streams of consciousness of my more cleaned stand-up pieces. meet me in a breakout room to watch live 😘
I.
I have two dogs-- one's a shih tzu (lil shit for short), and one's this Havanese, and every morning after my run I take them for a walk around the block, and every day, without fail, they do what dogs do and sniff and pee their way through the neighbors' front lawns. Like every single house. Dude, if you're going to mark all of this as your territory, I should at least be getting the property tax.
Galileo, the piece of shit (sorry, piece of shih tzu), gets this little look on his face too. He'll do this really obnoxiously loud snort as he's sniffing, turn around, face me, and then maintain eye contact with me as he lifts his back leg and pees. I could just see that he's thinking, "yeah, this one is mine-- I OWN this place bitches hehehe"
And I was like oh my gosh, my dog is a colonizer.
I mean, think about it, this little white animal, who clearly doesn't know the first thing about being in a new place, is on a tight leash by a much more hegemonic power (that's me, you peasants), decides he can just waltz in after sniffing something for literally two seconds and say that he owns something. Galileo, that wasn't even yours to begin with!
Can you imagine what it must have been like to be the first colonizers in a foreign country. They pull up to shore, tail wagging, nose to the ground, looking for gold or whatever (at least, that must be what my dogs are looking for if they keep sniffing so hard), then out of nowhere stick their dick out and say, "I will call this place my own! This place is now mine!" "But sir, there are people here--" "This place I will call my own!" "I think there might be others--" "I peed on it first, therefore it is mine" "Actually I'm pretty sure someone else--" "My pee, my rules"
Never mind the hundreds of years of civilization, the advanced craftsmanship, the technical mechanical ingenuity, the complex political forms. Who needs that when you have a colonialist regime?
The grass is always yellower on the pissier side, I guess.
See I can just look at my dog and be like, you know that doesn't count, right. It's not actually yours. That much is obvious.
It makes me wonder what would have happened if I just put a leash on those white, scurvy-ridden men, and just been like, "no, bad dog" and spritz them with water and yank them away from that nice family's lawn. I mean it works for my pets.
II.
I never really understood white culture. To be honest, I didn’t even know it was a thing until college. In college, one of the first questions people without fail always ask is, “Where are you from?”
I’m from this place of flavored food where no one ever gets a sun burn, hun.
Like for reals, you all colonized the fuckin globe, and you couldn’t find one spice you liked? When my brother came back after visiting Oxford, he couldn’t shut up about two things: one-- the fantastic education, bla bla bla, intellectual vitality shit you hear from your typical high school valedictorian; and two-- how the only seasoning was salt, pepper, and fat. Honey, hate to break it to you, but salt isn't a seasoning. It's a rock. It’s no wonder people were itching to leave! Damn, if that’s all I ever flavored my food with, I’d be high tailing it out of there too.
Except, well, I would have to give my parents a full 40 page dissertation and a thirty minute powerpoint carefully detailing where I would be going, with whom, and a minute-by-minute itinerary before I left the house, but--
I remember growing up, my parents never really grounded me, but I think there was a base level of understanding that my brothers and I were just always grounded. No parties, not friends over, and “why would you go out? Didn’t I drive you somewhere yesterday?” Like no, mother, that was the library.
Come to think of it, maybe they have a point with this whole “reverse racism” thing. No no, hear me out here. We POCs, we really got it made: I’ve never gotten a sun burn, I never have to buy tupperware bc my parents will reuse the same restaurant to-go container for fifty years, I have a never ending supply of plastic bags, and everywhere I go I get to meet a new auntie or uncle I didn’t know even existed three minutes ago!
And what do white people have? A better chance at getting an interview? Higher wages? Beauty standards that actually reflect what they look like? Representation? Lower incarceration rates? The benefit of the doubt? History books written in your perspective? Privilege??
Please. You would trade that all in a heart beat for some of my aunt’s guinataang. Mmm! That woman would have a heart attack if I ever didn’t have food in my plate, goodness gracious. “It looks like you lost weight! Here, have some more!” Or more iconically, “you’re so pretty-- when will you have a boyfriend?”
And you want to trade that for, what, not being exoticized for the color of your skin? For a verbal “I love you” instead of “have you eaten?” Being “on time?”
What does “on time” even mean to white people? For as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve been running on “Filipino time” or “Hawai’ian time” or “Mexican time” (I’ve really just learned that it’s non-white time). Like, no, of course you don’t come to a party at the time you were told. I mean, you could, but you’d probably end up sweeping the living room or helping prep the food; and then you have to leave a three hour buffer period at the end of that party to make sure you say goodbye to your aunt, your uncle, your 76 cousins, so that by the time you finally reach the door, your grandma will come over and say, “Jusko-- you’re still here? Have some more food!” “No, Mamang, it’s okay, we really have to leave now” “Just take some to go then!” *exasperated noises*
In quarantine, I’ve learned this neat little trick: if my family is going anywhere, I tell them to load up in the car half an hour before I’m ready. That gives enough time for my dad to go bathroom three times, my mom to wonder whether or not she should bring a sweater, give the dogs a bath, graduate from college.
But the thing is, they found me out! Now when I tell them to load up, that’s when they start asking the question of where we’re headed. “Where do you want to go?” “Oh anywhere is fine”
I swear-- we don’t even leave the house sometimes. I’m just like, should I give you a two week notice? Do I blindfold you and shove you in the backseat of the van? I mean, I have options.
III.
There was a therapist I used to see-- Sheila. She was great, paid to hear me talk about myself, extra points for somehow dragging the dark depths of my soul from the crevices of my debased mind. (I kid, I kid, that would require trusting someone, and boy, these walls are higher than the institutionalized boys' club at universities, or the glass ceiling for women engineers (and let me tell you, that ceiling isn't very high).)
But Sheila dropped this fun little tidbit I didn't know before: when you have a psychological illness, your brain's capacity is like 30% reduced.
So she was telling me-- a 20 year old at the most elite, selective university in the world, enrolled in max units, an active triathlete and marathoner, bible study leader, Model UN member, vocal director, RA, field researcher, dance team vice president (sorry, I forgot where I was going with this. Y'all have no choice but to sit there and listen to me brag about myself- that's the real joke); she was telling me that I was only at 70% my capacity?
*mind blowing sound effects*
Could you think of the things I could do with that extra 30%?
Like, actually do well in my classes? Or like, I don't know, not angst around? Or breathe? I heard that that's actually fun.
Well, a long and convoluted recovery story later, I'm doing a lot better now; there are ups and downs, but hey, we live, we learn, we grow. As I started to get better, it was like this giant cotton ball was lifted from my brain, like I was coming up from underwater and could breathe and see clearly in a way that I had forgotten was most people's reality. It was like my mind was getting that 30% back, and honestly it was the best feeling ever, those months where I felt like I was living in my body again and not outside of it.
My brain was on this epic roadtrip, and do you know the first place it decided to take a pitstop?
Boys.
Freaking boys.
And what I really don't understand about them is that no matter how much I complain about how stupid or dense or just incredibly ridiculous they are, they always agree with me! I would scream "boys are turds!!" at one of my guy friends, and they would just sit there and take it and say "yeah, we suck." No defense; no "not all" shit. But just a, "yeah well you're not wrong there"
I appreciate all of y'all's solidarity against half the human race. It's really encouraging for all posterity. (And ladies, we actually have the power to end all of posterity. We could just make a cumulative decision to say right now "nope, sorry, this uterus is closed, occupation zero".)
But sometimes I think things like this to myself, and like I know my mind is a labyrinth, and as I'm thinking I feel the *whistle* spiral down. When I think, I walk, and there would be points when I would just stop and go "wait, am I overthinking this?" And as soon as that thought comes through, another one would follow: "there are other ways I could think?" It's just like-- did I miss the zoom meeting? Did I miss it when I was at the grocery store? Honey amazon prime that shit to me.