I Said (Part 1 of a Series)

It’s a common Filipino belief that a pregnant woman can have a say in how her child will turn out as an adult simply by carefully selecting what she eats. For example, when a child is dark-skinned, people (especially old crones and barrio-living ones) immediately assume the mother loved to eat chocolate porridge, chocolate, or other dark-colored food during her pregnancy.

Her: Your little girl is so smart. What did you eat when you were expecting?

Me: Friend egg, corned beef, and penis.

Her: (incredulously] Really? Which animal’s penis?

Me: My husband’s.

Taut silence.

Me: (in an attempt to break the strained silence) I’ve also been told I’m such a chatterbox because when my mom was pregnant, not a week would go by when she doesn’t eat pig’s vagina.

Again, taut silence, and this time, even I had to admit the less words I say, the better.

The Universe Is Funny That Way.

He was not a very convincing teacher. He was fresh out of school and nervous as hell. The class could smell his fear but they chose not to be unkind. He was the first goodlooking male they had seen in years. What does it matter that he sometimes stammers, that his stare wavers, that he had this habit of nervously steepling his fingers together whenever he was asked a question he hesitates to answer? He was the only male teacher in that all-girls school who was not ugly, not married, and not nearing retirement age. They were willing to forgive him anything.

He was twenty. She was fourteen.

She liked him the first time she saw him. He was hooked the first time she opened her mouth. She tried very hard to catch his attention. He was always willing to give her attention. She baited and taunted. He was enthralled. She was not like any other fourteen-year-old he had come across. But that was the problem. She was fourteen. He was not like any man she had ever talked to. But he was not just any man; he was her English teacher.

They argued over Shakespeare. He idolizes him; she thinks he is boring. They talked of economics, space exploration, morality, the Victorian age, and sex. She liked being outspoken. He enjoyed being shocked.

The one time she missed class, he was worried. The next day, he went to their house and visited her in the hospital. She was taking care of her sick sister. She never saw him; he never told her.

He hated the way he felt about her. He became distant. She hated what she thought was absence of feeling on his part. She became insolent.

Then, one day, he told other teachers how he felt about her. They were aghast. He was their Golden Boy. They had great plans for him. They told him not to pay the student any attention. That girl has a long history of liking male teachers, they said. Do not pay any attention to that child. Do not take her seriously. You are just an infatuation to her.

He listened to them. He felt betrayed by what he heard. It hurt his pride, that he was being used by a child. And so one day, he simply stopped talking to her. He brushed her and her questions aside. He no longer wrote comments on her papers. He would not even answer the questions in her eyes. He became very critical of her work and frequently gave her a dressing down in front of her classmates.

She was baffled and hurt. She raged. She baited him even more in class. She wrote scathing essays. But he remained indifferent.

A year after, he got married. To a woman they both love. He asked her to his wedding. She showed up with the biggest smile in the world and a heavily banged up heart. She sat next to a teacher who gripped her hand. She was clenching and unclenching her fists; the teacher must have known how she felt as he walked down the aisle.

Ten years later, they meet again. Over Yahoo Messenger.

He was married. She was married.

“I’ve never been able to forget you.”

There was a lump in her throat as she answered, “My husband knows you, too.”

“We seem to be landmarks in each other’s lives.”

They laughed like old friends, close friends, scarred friends. She was 24. He was 31. For the first time in a long, long time, they could openly acknowledge what they were to each other, past and present. They talked about the things that transpired ten years back.

Sad and shaken at how much he could still move her, she tries her hand at humor. “The universe will always be funny that way. But I’m glad you are happy.”

“Yes, I am. But I will never stop wondering. What if?”

She smiled. He smiled. They let the question hang in the air. The universe is funny that way. Gravity brings even the lightest of leaves down to the ground. But it lets questions, achingly important questions, remain suspended in the air.
What if?

Kiss-off

I had a talk with the pseudo-lover. I say pseudo-lover because we have done practically everything except sleep together. We chat until the wee hours of dawn. He takes pictures of his privates. He performs before me, teasingly, shamelessly. He describes what he’d do to me and what he wants me to do to him.

It was exciting, this flirt dance. I felt guilty and exhilarated at the same time.

At some point, we decided we were ready to be physically intimate.

No, we never did end up in bed together. He wasn’t too bright, see. And as the days wore on, it became painfully clear to me that if all I’d get out of him is sex, I might as well have sex with myself.

I told him: I get laid every night, dude. Sometimes, I get laid three times a day. Sleeping with you would only be one in a series of tumbles. You can’t blame me for looking for something more. No, I am not looking for a relationship. I’d love it, even, if you did not know my name. But I am looking for a little something, a kinship of minds, perhaps, or a shared love of something intangible. That, we do not have.

He acted like a jerk while I made my speech. He kept asking for a goodbye fuck.

Some form of IQ test should be given to potential lovers.

Of Ghosts and Writers

I love conspiracy theories and a new one has just caught my attention.

Perhaps, Kaavya Viswanathan was not to blame for plagiarizing Megan McCafferty's work?

The International Herald Tribune writes that both Viswanathan's and McCafferty's books were edited by the same person.  

"…Claudia Gabel, is thanked on the acknowledgements pages of both McCafferty's books and Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." Gabel had been an editorial assistant at Crown, then moved to Alloy, where she helped develop the idea for Viswanathan's book."

Here's my How Opal Mehta Is a Deeper Mess Than We Could Have Imagined theory:

Viswanathan did not heavily borrow from McCafferty. It was Gabel, who edited Viswanathan's work, who did. But Gabel also edited McCafferty's work, so perhaps she wasn't plagiarizing at all. Perhaps, she was simply appropriating lines that she had written for an earlier work.

This explains why McCafferty is, curiously, not very indigant about the plagiarism. C'mon, if it were your work being plagiarized, wouldn't you be spewing fire and venom? A writer looks at an article the same way a mother looks at her baby. After all, both writing and childbearing involve the painful process of birting. But McCafferty seems curiously detached.

Now, you might ask, why doesn't Viswanathan save herself by pointing the finger at Gabel?

Because she couldn't. If she blames Gabel, she would end up destroying herself. What would the accusation say about her? That she did not write the book herself? That she wrote Opal Mehta but that a substantial part of it was eaten up by the backspace / delete button?

So, her hands are tied. She takes the blame for the plagiarism. But semantically, she really isn't taking the blame. She's making her photographic memory take the blame. It's her memory that's convoluting her ideas; her memory that made her appropriate lines from another person's book; her memory that pushed her to replace Psychology class with Human Evolution class. And yes, it was also her memory that convinced her to use 170 shops later.

In the meantime, the ghostwriter gets off scot-free. After all, the cover says she didn't write the book.

And Viswanathan? It's possible that her one good deed of the month is making a significant contribution to the English language. She just might succeed in making people accept "internalize" as a synonym to "steal."

Opal Recalled

It's often said that no publicity is bad publicity. Notoriety attracts attention and attention, whether positive or negative, sells books. But in Viswanathan's case, some mistakes just can't be publicized away.

Harvard Crimson reports that the publisher of "Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" are now asking stores to return all unsold versions of the book.

I think they are doing the right thing. Opal Mehta is no Da Vinci code. Da Vinci's author was said to have stolen the "architecture" of his book from Holy Blood, Holy Grail. A judge later on tossed this allegation out of the window. The judge ruled that Dan Brown did not use "all the same historical conjectures" espoused in Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

This is precisely why I'm saying there's no parallel between Opal Mehta and Da Vinci. The plagiarism involved in Opal Mehta was not abstract. It involved more than a very close thematic similarity. Opal Mehta liberally borrowed phrases, sentences, and paragraphs from two books by Megan McCafferty.  Worse, these phrases, sentences, and paragraphs were changed craftily to make them less google-able.

If the publishers allow Opal Mehta to continue making the rounds in thousands of bookstores worldwide, they would only make itself vulnerable to lawsuits and snubs. They may not have written the book themselves but they did distribute it.

In some people's eyes, that makes them equally culpable.

Many people believe that Kaavya Viswanathan's writing career is officially over. I don't. It's possible that all the attention has done what her book hasn't – cemented her spot in the literary world. After all, people are going to be following what she does during and after this controvery. Would she write that second book or would she give up writing altogether? Perhaps, she would simply write about her ordeal. If Stephen Glass' story made it to the big screen, why shouldn't hers? After all, no material is ever too sacred or dirty for moviemakers to touch. In the grand scheme of moviemaking morals, a teenager plagiarizing isn't as big a deal as a serial killer chainsawing his way through a town.

How Kaavya Got Published, Got Famous, and Got Caught

I was absent-mindedly clicking my way through the afternoon when I came across a video that made me sit up.

Katie Couric interviews a Harvard sophomore who denies she intentionally plagiarized another author's work. Katie asks piercing questions and 19-year-old Kaavya Viswanathan looks like she's a stiletto away from tears. I feel sorry for her but I'm also not buying her excuse.

I cringe, though, at the thought of how uncomfortable, humiliating, and painful it must be to sit through that interview. Specific points of similarities were cited by the Harvard Crimson and these similarities became the the stones that are being hurled upon Viswanathan's head.  

Nice Girls Don’t

He wakes me with a kiss. Happy anniversary, he whispers. I grab his balls. You can't get away that easily, I said with a smile. Come here and give me the anniversary I want.

We make love. I am so wet his penis keeps slipping away whenever he pulls out. As always, I finish myself off because he could never bear to be rough with me.

Minutes later, we lie together without speaking. We talk as we stare at the ceiling. I feel myself soaking up the sheets. I'm still drenched, I tell him. And I still feel horny.

We both look at his deflated member. Can you resuscitate it? I asked. I took it in my mouth. It leaped back to life. I let go so I could straddle him. I sigh when I could not feel his hardness beneath me.

Sorry, he said sheepishly. It's too soon and I'm too tired. You fu**ed my brains out.

I flip to my side so he won't see my disappointment.

You're always horny and aggressive lately, he marvels. It's like you're another person entirely. You're not acting like yourself.

Inwardly, I cringe. Not myself? This is myself.

But, I understand what he means. He likes me better when I exude ice from every pore. He likes me better when I pretend disinterest. This must be why he grabs me whenever I'm on my way to the office. He knows I hate taking my clothes off especially when I just put them on. So, whenever I angrily refuse his advances, he gets so aroused that one time, he even came in his jeans while we talked near the doorway.

He's weird, that way. He can only get it up for encores when he thinks I don't want a tumble. A passive response excites him. Passion turns him off.

After all, I'm his wife and wives are nice girls. They don't writhe in longing; they don't beg; they don't tell you to hurt them. They're not as wanton as the girl now lying beside him.

Almost, But Not Quite

I like it rough, I told him.

How rough?

Sweaty, no-holds-barred rough.

You sure? he said as he nibbled on the straps of my nightgown. We might wake the baby up.

It's pitch-black. She won't see a thing even if we wake her up.

He starts kissing, kneading, exhaling. I feel goosebumps form everywhere. He starts cupping my breasts. I strain against the sheer material of the nightgown. I want to tear it off. Leave it on, he said. I like doing you with that material bunched around your waist.

Pervert, I panted. I arch my back as he buried his face in my breasts. Skip the foreplay, I breathed. But he wouldn't listen. He sucked, he licked, he touched. I start combusting. As if he could feel the heat oozing from my pores, he blew butterfly kisses on the mound that he had selfishly ravaged only seconds ago. I quiver like a rope stretched too tautly.

Oh my god. Oh my God. Oh my god.

Stop calling me god, he said insolently. His tongue continues the onslaught. The sheet underneath me is now soaked through.

I want you to bite me, I quavered. He bites. I scream. Quick as lightning, he shushes the sleeping child beside us back to sleep.

He admonishes me, You can't scream or you'll wake her. Your brother, too.

I nod, too dazed to speak. He thrusts his penis at my face. It feels hot, thick, and furious. I take him into my mouth. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. My mouth starts to ache. He slaps my hand on his balls. I massage his semen sac. His penis undulates to the rhythm of my mouth.

Then, mid-thrust, I stop him. No more, I tell him. My mouth hurts.

Without another word, he grabs my right leg and thrusts. The world swirls as he starts thrusting.

Deeper, faster, harder. I could feel his kisses spitting fire.

Rougher, please, I beg him. Rougher.

His thrusts become punishing, merciless.

I ooze with lascivious fluids until inside, I become so wet I could no longer feel him slipping in and out, as intensely as before. Squeeze my buttocks, I rasped. I can't feel you. Grab the cheeks and stretch so I can feel you.

He does what I ask him. His eyes glaze. He barrels into me so hard that I feel torn between pleasure and pain.

Don't turn away, he commands. Look at me. I like looking at your face. I want to take pictures of your face, like that.

He starts touching me as he hammers away. Would my finger fit with me still inside?

There's only one way to find out.

Oh god. Oh god. Yank on my hair. Make me open up wider. Rougher, please. Rougher.

But he never goes rougher. Somehow, the longer we make love, the gentler he becomes. His touch loses its urgency, as do his thrusts.

I love you, he whispers. I'm afraid I'll break you.

I won't break, I whisper back. Just ride me roughly. Hurt me a little, please.

His face starts contorting as if he were in pain. He grunts loudly and then collapses.

I feel cheated. I was almost there. Frustration rams into me like a searing pain. While he tries to catch his breath, I lie face-down to finish the job.

Was it good? he rasps a few seconds later.

Yes, I lie. It was good. It's always good.

Sexist?

I came across an interesting post from Temperamental Artist. She presented a list that is supposed to gauge how sexist her reading has been. The list piqued my interest so I'm making my own, too.

Just present in bold font the books you've read; italicize the ones you've been meaning to read, and underline those you've never even heard of.

Allcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Atwood, Margaret–Cat's Eye
Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Chopin, Kate–The Awakening
Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, Geroge–Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
Gordimer, Nadine–July's People
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, Bell–Bone Black
Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing
L'Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller's Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
O'Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister's Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
Rocha, Sharon–For Laci
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You're Wearing That?
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife's Tale
Urquhart, Jane–Away
Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer's Beginnings
Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One's Own

I wish I could present more texts in bold print. But I don't think the fact I couldn't means I'm sexist. It could simply mean my literary horizon is in dire need of expansion. After all, I have never heard of a lot of books and authors in the list.

Made for Walking

What is it with men?

My husband likes ogling bad girls. You know the type; black-clad females who sport rainbowesque hair, multiple piercings, and tattoos. I don't mind him doing that. I like ogling girls, too.

But when I mentioned getting a tattoo, he vehemently vetoed the idea. "It makes you look dirty and cheap," he pronounced.

Then, last week, I got hooker boots. I call them hooker boots because they're footwear worn by showgirls on television. They're black as sin and sexy as hell. They're two inches short of reaching the kneecaps. But, they make the eyes want to stray higher. The boots were freaking expensive. They came at half the price of a brand new 21-inch television. I don't mind the price so much since the boots seduced me the moment I laid eyes on them.

What I do mind, however, is not being able to wear them. The husband thinks that I'm inviting trouble simply by putting the boots on. "They make you look slutty," he said. "They make your skirt look even skimpier."

If the goal were to appear respectable, then the skirt should have been the one replaced. But no. He wanted the boots off. So, I went to work with a skimpy skirt on, and a more sedate pair of high heels.

Then, a while ago, he sent me a kinky text message, asking me to wear the boots later. Only the boots. Nothing else.

Men!

I have half a mind to fling Jessica Simpson's song (originally Nancy Sinatra's) at him: These boots were made for walking and that's just what they'll do. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.