Jesus Speaks Spanish (and Drinks 3.2 Beer)

You might think I’m going to tell you some witty little travel story and maybe accompany it with some pictures of local Latinos at some colorful festival.

I’m not.

I haven’t really been anywhere. Not anywhere that people blog about and I certainly don’t have a world map with pins in it bragging about where I’ve been.

But if I did, this one would be me and the big guy…er…the big guy’s son, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

If you are conservative, religious, or easily offended, just stop reading.

So we all know Mormons are fucking CRAZY.

Smart, entrepreneurial, good architects, global, but…off the charts, certifiably nuts.

This will not be another, ‘holy crap, listen to THIS’ about the ridiculous shit Joe Smith made up, because that’s endless and has been done and besides, go watch Big Love.

It’s just a mere anecdote about SLC.

We went there—a bunch of us queers—for a gay wedding.

I know.

We frolicked, we danced, and we invaded conservative America. And it was all good.

But the last day we decided to go down to the square, where the temple is and check it out, tourist-style.

There are tons of chicks from all over the world. It’s like the only place in SLC where they let people of color.

The women also go on missions, just like the men, but they can get sent to Salt Lake City to be docents, or tour-guides or whatever. I mean, can you imagine being from like Australia or Brazil or something and being sent to Utah on your mission? Talk about sucking.

I’m undeniably gay and feeling uncomfortable although at least I’m blonde and look like a lot of their 17-year-old boys.

We go into this information center where we wait for the foreign girls to guide us to the Jesus statue—huge, and like he’s been carved out of a massive bar of dove soap. I learn then, that in Salt Lake City, Jesus speaks Spanish.

As for the beer thing? I mean, that’s just funny. I do, however, really intuitively feel that Jesus would be a light-beer kind of guy. Like...'hey JC, you need another brewsky?'. Yeah, that just fits. I dunno if he'd answer though. I don't speak Spanish.

A Teaching Hospital and a Dildo

I understand that doctors need to learn somewhere. I see the necessity for practice. After not having had health care for a bit, I learned closely how it is that they garner this experience and knowledge.

At the expense of poor, disempowered people.

I’m lucky enough that I didn’t learn this until later in life because I had health insurance. But I’m not even getting on my soapbox about healthcare. There’s plenty of blogs out there to read if you’re looking for that.

This is about a clueless lesbian, a swollen tonsil, and lube.

Elena and I sat in the waiting room for something like 4 hours. I couldn’t speak because my right tonsil was so full of crap and puss that it blocked my airway and I had to spit my own saliva into a handkerchief, as I was unable to swallow. HAWT. Really, really sexy. This was my first visit, of four, to the Emergency room.

To further illustrate the experience beyond the visual of my spit-cloth, there was a point when a woman came in, clutching her chest, and claiming that she was having a heart attack and it felt exactly like it did the LAST time she had a heart attack. They didn’t even check her freaking temperature man! They just made her sit in the waiting room! I can’t even make this stuff up. Someone pointed out to me that perhaps the staff knew her to be a common visitor and hypochondriac. I guess that’s possible, but still, I’m not going to get into the Peter crying wolf scenario. You can’t argue with me that there isn’t something about that that is seriously messed up even if she was exaggerating. I dare you.

While the light gradually shifted and I agonized (yes, I am choosing that verb—agonized—because I’m weak, impatient, and it freaking hurt), I saw several prisoners in orange jumpsuits with handcuffs on both arms and legs (anklecuffs?) and in fact, there is an entire wing dedicated to the treatment of prisoners. Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m a firm believer that everyone is entitled to health care (except maybe that snake Woody Allen…), and I don’t shock easily. I consider myself fairly ‘tough’ (as in exterior—NOT when it comes to boily-ass pustules kicking it in my neck), but I’m not going to feign pretenses here. I’m a white girl from the Midwest and I’d be a liar too if I didn’t say that it’s disconcerting to both not be able to swallow and have to wonder what the hell someone did to get double-cuffed.

Finally, this nurse realized I was struggling to breathe and she looked down my throat and all of a sudden, I was fast-tracked. I ended up on a cot in the hallway. Exactly like you see on E.R. (circa late 90s before it sucked itself stale) and again, I’m waiting. But this time I’m waiting on oxygen and morphine, so I must jump the story ahead because my memory blanks out and besides, I haven’t gotten to the dildo yet.

I end up in this TINY room with a med student who is super butchy and definitely a lesbian. She closes the door and even in my drugged up state, it doesn’t escape my notice that she, Elena, and my bulgy tonsil make an odd trio. It’s sort of uncomfortable. But so is like, life…so, when she tells me she’s not sure if I have an abscess and will need to do an ultrasound, I’m like, ‘ok’. Except really I couldn’t speak, so I think I just nodded. She pulls out this neck massagy DILDO (here it is!) thing and says she’s going to have to STICK THIS DOWN MY THROAT. Before she does so, however, it takes her like the gestation period of a fucking elephant to get the machine working. And then…”no, this ultrasound machine doesn’t work”…”I’ll be right back”…and “WHAT is wrong with this plug?”…Jesus Christ, just fix me already. So she finally gets this shit hooked up. I’m sweaty and this room is tiny and she takes out a CONDOM. She rolls it slowly over the dildo/ultrasound stick/neck massager just like the banana demonstration from health class and then squirts a ridiculous amount of KY JELLY LUBE onto it. She then proceeds to stick the entire apparatus down my throat. Don’t forget the first part of the paragraph. Still three lesbians in a coffee can.

Surprise! I had an abscess in my throat.

From there…I’ll spare you the details, but dildo-girl attempts to stick a needle into my tonsil and drain it while three other med students observe(one of whom dropped her heavy knee tapping thingy on me while peering in my throat) and this fat, bossy old nurse gives her instructions. She did this while leaning her pink, ugly, nurse-patterned butt on the counter. (Seriously, what is UP with that? Why do they make their clothing look like the wallpaper from a nursery?) Yes, the room was small, but she, the only experienced one in the room, decided to instruct from afar.

Good ol’ dildo girl removed only enough puss to have resided in the pimple of an eleven year-old, which is how I ended up back in the hospital two days later.

For those that like things wrapped up nicely, I’ve since had my tonsils removed, but I waited until I got health insurance again. I’ve been back on solid food for well over a month, which is about when I decided all of this, is in fact, hilarious.

Like a Woody Allen Movie

Does inactivy breed more inactivity? Because I am so damn lazy lately, it goes beyond embarrassment and resides, leisurely, in mere acceptance.
Ok, so for the past couple of months I’ve been shirking any responsibility for it because it was NOT my fault. My tonsils were sucking all of my energy and attention and probably every calorie too and so what could I do? I was sick. Tired. Too pooped, sad, and miserable to do anything but have Elena rub me and cook for me and feel bad for me.
Soooo…now my tonsils are removed and I’m healthy. I’ve actually talked about getting my thyroid tested. Because maybe that’s the culprit. Yeah, that’s probably it. I’m not lazy and I can’t fit in my clothes because my thyroid is slow. Piece of shit thyroid.
I haven’t had it tested, probably because I know that there is nothing physically wrong with me beyond atrophied muscles. Ever since I started this sitting job…this work of LETHARGY I have become attached to it, married to the feeling of a numb ass and bored brain. My friend is studying for the GREs and she keeps telling me how ennui is her new favorite word. She defines it as, ‘restless from being bored’. Wikipedia defined it as, “a word meaning general disinterest or boredom or depression”.
I like how they tack on depression at the end, implying that such boredom results in depression. This is my interpretation.
(As a side note, my favorite new word when I was studying for the GREs to apply to grad schools that I didn’t attend, was ‘assuage’ which means, ‘to lessen the intensity of’ and I still don’t really know how to properly pronounce it or work it into a sentence but these words make me feel particularly quirky, sad, and mundane, simultaneously like I’m a fucking Woody Allen movie).
I was sitting on the toilet earlier, both going to the bathroom and just hanging out for a change of scenery even after I was done (try sitting in a NEW room) and I was thinking…I’m gonna have to really work all day long if I quit this office gig. I mean, I’ve been crabbing constantly about how bored I am and how I can’t sit at this desk for another single second and then, while on the shitter, I got nostalgic. I felt a pang of sadness for my slackerdom. You know, like…who will check my ebay bids? And how will the gmail community continue without my everlasting presence? Utterly pathetic.

Amendment to the child molester reference (Woody)

Two amendments actually.
1. I should have said that I hate Woody Allen and that stepdaughter thing is super creepy to me STILL and I don’t even think his movies are all that great. Yeah yeah, I know. I’m sure I’ll hear it, but seriously they are white whiny people loping around the east coast pondering their meager existences with little to no plot and nary a conclusion that merits that kind of self-indulgence.
(The irony doesn’t escape me as I write my dribble. I can hold up the mirror. But I still don’t get with kids. Like, any kids. Ever. And not one that I raised with my partner. Gross.)
2. My friend just informed me that, “frequently, assuage is used in relation to guilt. Like to assuage guilt”. Wow. I rest my case.

I miss Ghetto-Ass Oakland Sooo Bad

This I wrote Fall of 2007. (I guess I was going through a phase of not capitalizing. It's irritating now, but not enough for me to do anything about it. To set the scene, I had left the classroom after four years of teaching and I was waiting tables because I was going to be a famous writer or artist or dj or drummer. Please note: I don't play the drums and I'm currently employed in education.)

my night didn't start very well. i sliced my finger open at work which for most people is unfortunate and for me is a little more...cuz...i'm a wimp. a wimp without health insurance. not that i necessarily need stitches, but what if i DID? and there was a lot of blood and i got light-headed. but, i mean...my finger is fine.

that's not the point.

so then, i was taking off my stupid work stuff in the dingy-ass bathroom and i was also trying to text message at the same time because rachel thought we were seeing a movie tonight, which we're not...we're seeing it tomorrow night but i was trying to type type type...'hey sorry, i didn't stand you up' but all of a sudden like a bird taking flight or anything else that would unexpectedly leap out of your hands because you are clumsy, my phone jumped into the air. and it landed on that dingy-ass floor clankclumpclammer and all and it wasn't one anymore. no, it was two. two separate pieces. this would be unfortunate for most, but for me, a travesty. i live for that little black box that brings me the voices. sweet little lifeline.

but that's not the point either.

the point is after both of those two things, i drove home to find FOUR cop cars in front of my house. in oakland, i think FOUR cop cars is like, half the force so something was not right with my hood...or my house? i didn't know for sure so i rolled down my window and asked the kind sir who happened to be shining his bright light into MY backyard if everything was ok at my house. and he said they were there for the neighboring apartment complex. yeah, the one that overlooks my yard...and my room. so i'm glad my roommates are safe, but still a troubling discovery at 10:30 p.m. on a friday evening. so i look for somewhere to park, but there isn't anything that isn't nearly a mile away and something tells me walking after dark right now is out of the question (and that something is the aforementioned blockade of opd vehicles), so i block my neighbors driveway. they are a sweet nice family and their light is on, so i knock on the door and tell them the situation. they watch me walk home where i find...no one home. in a big drafty house that has been broken into in the past, i am alone. and there are cops crawling everywhere. and i don't have a working phone nor do we have a landline. so i pace and pace and cry a little and pace some more and turn on all the lights and maybe that is someone hiding behind those big drapes? ok, it isn't. it's just a draft or something, but then i look out the window and the cop is flashing a light into a paper bag on the street...WHAT IS HE LOOKING FOR? i yell into my head. i do not yell this into any phone because i do not have one and i do not yell this into the street because i think that would probably draw attention to the fact that i am alone in a big big house and i don't have a dog or a baseball bat. WHY don't i have a BASEBALL BAT? more importantly, why don't i have a cheapy phone to plug into the landline i pay for each month? it wouldn't even have to be a cordless. not even that.

but the point, really is that (i've said this before)...it's that i love the internet. i hate earthlink (you suck so much) but we just got our internet back so i logged on and i love gmail too and i love that rachel was online and i told her i thought i heard shots but maybe it was a car backfiring or fireworks or something though i don't know why on earth anyone would be doing fireworks because it's after 11 on a friday and it's kind of rainy and i am FREAKED out, but the internet saved me and so did rachel because she is going to come sleep over and that makes me feel a bit safer.

i think that paragraph was one sentence but i reserve the right to be WORDY but next time someone asks me if i could really deal with all that snow in minnesota i think i will say yes i can deal with all that snow and all that safety and i think i'd like a big dog.

and a plug-into-the-wall-phone. maybe cordless, but not necessarily.

This I wrote last summer, 2007:

I've heard that Honda civics are not hard to break into and seeing as how this has happened to me three times now, I'd have to say the rumor is true.

My stereo has been stolen three times. Each time, my cds were left untouched, no windows were broken, nor did they even cut the wires. The perpetrators are skilled and probably reselling my stereos at the Ashby flea market.

I'd have to say that each time it's happened I have not been thrilled, though the blow is lessening at this point.

A few weeks ago my roommate was robbed at gunpoint. My stereo was stolen. Perspective is key.

Yet, no pretenses, I did throw the shit in my hand forcefully into my backseat and yell, "F*** ME! F*** F*** F***!" loud enough that my neighbors probably heard.

I've been thinking, however….trying to find some peace with a lot of stuff in life, (as one does when unemployed) and I've found the emergence of silence to be timely.

I've had visitors in my home off and on (mostly on) for over a month. I've been wrapping up time spent surrounded by lively teenagers. I've been social! social! social!

I find that silence, in many interpretations of the word, is needed.

So the chick in the silver Honda? The one with the crack in the window? The one talking to herself and looking deep in thought?

That'd be me.

So, why the HELL do I miss Oakland so much? I'll tell you why--it's 20 degrees warmer over there. It's August and I wore a fucking wool hat the other day. Bogus.

Special Ed is Wack if you're Black

This was recently published in an awesome magazine called, 'eth6'. There, it was called, "Files before faces", which is a much more appropriate title. But this is my blog and this is my affectionate title. Check out eth6 at www.ethsix.com

“Disproportionate representation: the extent to which membership in a given ethnic group affects the probability of being placed in a specific special education disability category (e.g., students with mild mental retardation).” --Oswald et al., 1999

My classroom at Berkeley High School measures 15’ by 10’, which is smaller than my bedroom at home. Within that space there are five tables (each seating two students), one smaller desk, two whiteboards, fourteen somewhat organized textbooks, a couple of boxes of pencils, three reams of paper, eight posters, one bucket of markers, five calculators, and six rulers. There are twelve high school students. It is the sixth and last period of the day and eight of the twelve students have just sprinted from physical education. It is cramped, sweaty, and the room vibrates with the anticipation of the end of the day. Of my twelve students, ten of them are Black and eleven of them are boys.

The student population of Berkeley High School is robust at roughly 3700 students enrolled. According to the school website, this population is a diverse body with an ethnic breakdown of 36.7 percent White, 29.1 percent Black, 12.6 percent Latino, 12.5 percent Multi Ethnic, 7.9 percent Asian, 0.6 percent Filipino, 0.3 percent American Indian, and 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian/other. I teach special education math. After having finished our budget project and furiously studying real-world statistics and percentages, my students could tell you that our particular tiny classroom is 91 percent male and 83 percent Black. They could also tell you, without any calculations, that this does not reflect the overall make-up of the student body, though that’s probably not exactly how they’d word it.

So why are so many of the students in Special Education students of color? A study by Harvard University substantiates the contention that a disproportionately high number of students from diverse backgrounds are placed in special education: African American children are almost three times (2.88) as likely as white children to be identified as mentally retarded, 1.9 times as likely to be identified as emotionally disturbed, and nearly 1.3 times as likely to be identified as having a learning disability. Diane Colburn, the Special Education Administrator at Berkeley High School took some time to talk to me about this very issue and some of her own research on the topic. According to her, it’s ironic that the field of Special Education emerged to level the playing field and has now developed into a sorting mechanism, thereby reducing the quality of education to many students of color. Her paper on this topic is appropriately titled, “Another Kind of Segregation” Clearly, there is no debate within the field of education about whether or not this issue exists. The data makes it credible, but one must merely spend a few hours within a public school to see the reality.

Many students on my caseload illustrate this conundrum. “Janine”, an African-American female in her junior year, had a file the size of Rhode Island. I attempted to sort through it, but more telling than the documents in her cumulative file, were the emails I began to receive from her teachers beginning the first week of school: “Janine is consistently tardy, argumentative, and disruptive…” or “Given chance after chance, Janine will come through at the very last second, barely skimming by, only to blow it again and again by accusing me of being biased or shouting loudly across the room” or simply, “I don’t know what to do about Janine…..” and worst of all, “I can’t teach or reach any other students with Janine in my classroom”. As her case manager, general education teachers reach out to me to give them ideas or assistance. Students in special education are entitled by law to be in the least restrictive environment and to have access to the general curriculum. It was unclear why Janine had been referred in the first place, though she had qualified due to an unspecified learning disability and had remained in special education, with minimal support, mostly due to her truancy and behavior. The amount of class she missed made it impossible for her to keep up with curriculum, and the way she behaved made it nearly impossible for teachers to teach. They consistently wanted her out of their room and she consistently used her powers of persuasion and keen verbalization skills to talk her way into staying…and skating by…barely.

One on one, she’s likable and hilarious. She converses with adults easily though her frustration and anger keep her from effectively using this skill to her advantage. She had learned, through years of being in the system how to get by. After four years of teaching and some of my own experiences in high school, I still had NO idea what her disability may be, but I knew she needed to learn strategies to succeed and her special education status hindered her from moving forward or gaining independent motivation. Janine herself told me many times that she was frustrated by the special education label, because, ‘she wasn’t dumb’ and ‘didn’t know why she had to have a case manager’, yet because she IS smart, she was also aware that her behavior and inconsistency affected her academic success.

California rates among the lowest of the states in public education (47^th in private research results from 2006/2007) yet last year Newsweek ranked Berkeley High School 297^th in public education. Berkeley High initiated desegregation independently in 1968 and was the first high school in the United States to have an African-American studies department. That said, the statistics from my own classroom in 2006/2007 highlight quite prophetically the existence of disproportionate representation of students of color in special education, even at a renowned public institution. At the high school level, my caseload of students hovers around twenty students. Most of my students qualify for special education because they’ve been identified as having a ‘specific learning disability’. Ironically, determining what that specific learning disability is can be tricky. By the time students reach high school, most have been in special education for several years, and it can take a lot of investigation to find the original reason a student was referred.

Janine is a great writer. Whether or not she initially should have been placed in special education is undetermined but somehow—early on—a limp had been detected (maybe just because of her behavior) and now she’d been leaning on a crutch for so long that it would be unjust to grab it from under her. At this point in the game if I were to exit her from special education, she would most likely fail.

Not surprisingly, these statistics and stories like Janine’s affect our society and the ability of students to succeed in the world beyond high school. Inappropriate placement in special education limits the success of children from diverse cultures after graduation. Among secondary aged youth with disabilities, about 75 percent of African American students, as compared to 47 percent of white students, are not employed two years out of school. Slightly more than half (52 percent) of African Americans, as compared to 29 percent of white young adults, are still not employed three to five years after school, according to 1994 data.

Teachers struggle with the difficulty in constructing instructional programs that address students’ unique learning strengths and needs. A student like Janine would have been referred in the mid-90s by school psychologists that learned their craft in the 1970s. She would have been identified before the Harvard study in 2001. As Colburn told me, “things aren’t really going to change until teachers and school psychologist, from the very earliest point—even in preschool—do more than understand these statistics, they actively employ strategies that avoid putting kids in special education that don’t need to be there.” Her research supports this statement, as she found that despite an increase in civil rights protections and educational services over the past 25 years, school districts nationwide continue to improperly and disproportionately place minority students in special education classes. My colleague and current vice-principal at Excel High School in west Oakland (with an overwhelmingly African-American population) says, “I believe one of the underlying causes of misidentification of students of color at early age is because of behavior challenges that teachers don't know how to best handle. It's easier to track a student into special education as opposed to admitting that the child presents a behavior challenge that a teacher doesn't have a solution to.” Janine, exasperated and kicked out of another class, rolls her eyes and tells me, ‘When I’m not there, my teachers are on me about that, but soon as I show up, they kick me out!”

Gender and Generalized Apathy

i remember when i was 20 or 21 and the entire concept of identity constructs and identity politics blowing my mind, as did the shock of the extinction of 80 gazillion passenger pigeons (ok, an exaggeration but seriously...like a shitload of pigeons were killed in absolutely no time) as well as that little thing called the WTO. i am not alone in this awakening of a liberal arts college education and frankly watching others spout their newly acquired knowledge straight from the mouths of their P.hd T.A's who are probably younger than me, makes me want to hurl on their faces and hope that some of the nast lands in their blabbing mouths.
which i know is sorta gross and extreme. but still.
because at some point all that passion and all that energy and all that marching wore me out. the emergence of all of this new knowledge quickly became overwhelming as the frenzy to have an impact quickly resembled a patchwork gardener contest. that, coupled with my swift introduction into the ills of urban public education turned my idealism sour.
i mean, for the most part.
i'm not totally willing to allow myself to become that jaded cynic. nobody likes that kid. i still, in my heart fully believe that change is possible, that hard work pays off, and that pursuing these things is absolutely crucial. yet, i grew up catholic in the midwest and i don't know if i can ever change this ethic or rooted values. as much as both of those facts can sometimes be disdainful in another story context, in this fashion, i am grateful .
but this isn't about my insight into the systemic ills of academia, or lack thereof. oh, no...find me on a friday happy hour for that one and i will persistently insist that we not talk about school. then i'll give a speech about it after my second beer.
this is about how lately, i am rethinking gender in a big way.
and not meaning to.
i want it to go away actually.
because it makes me get into my head and start thinking about constructs and all that stuff that is just soooo women's studies and i'm over it.
except maybe i'm not?
i don't feel like a girl. that is how it started. i started thinking...this little voice in my head...while i was doing mundane shit...it started saying that to me. and i told it to shut-up. because it was being stupid. i like my body. i like all of its parts. i don't want to change it. i know who i am attracted to and i don't want to change that either. so what did this little voice know? um, nothing. i'm not trans. in some ways, i can relate, but i'm not. i just know that. and i know i don't feel like a boy and don't want to be one. i'm not even super butchy. i don't get mistaken for a man or boy...or at least very rarely and then it's usually someone thinking i'm a gay 16-yr-old, which i find kind of flattering, but it's not because i want to be one. i just think they have better fashion than lesbians.
and then i realized that it's just that i don't feel like a girl or woman that is defined by society. and then i was annoyed because i realized that's totally identity politics and i was not in college anymore so i was over that, right?
except maybe i'm not?
i'm envious of straight people that really fit those stereotypical male/female roles. but it doesn't end there. i'm also envious of people that are gay in a stereotypical way.
and i used to think my evident lesbian tendencies from an early age made me fit some stereotype, but i think the reality is that a tiny minority fits any of those media stereotypes.
most of us, are sorta muddled.
or at least i know i am. a muddled mutt. definitely. i started to want to feel more comfortable with the wardrobe choices i made and the way i felt best presenting myself. which i often found at odds with being a high school teacher. while i feel there is more fluidity with such things in the bay area, i also feel that my formative years made me fear any sign of difference.
i started thinking about my name and how i don't and have never really identified with being 'michelle'. i've always preferred mich or miche ('meesh') and it's not about male/female identity stuff. it's just about what feels like ME.
which really, with all the identity rhetoric aside, is what this all comes down to. i want to feel like me. which means a lot things. it means i might get tipsy and spout some stuff about special education laws. or i might make you listen to the top three reasons why some musical artist is the next big thing. or it might mean i only want to shop at boys gap. or i might walk around all day in a bikini. but i want to feel safe exploring that. i always equated 'genderqueer' with one step away from transitioning, but as much as i resist this adventure into rethinking identity, i'm beginning to rethink that concept altogether.