Pretentious, Self-Righteous Essays

Growing up in a multicultural society such as that in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, and then going to the University of Toronto to study Math, I was never really made to feel like a minority.  It wasn’t until I started working full-time in an office that I did.  I still remember the event that did it.  It was a birthday party – one of my associates had invited me to a birthday party.  The party was to begin at a bar where the attendees were to get wasted before going to a club later on in the evening.  I showed up alone.  I didn’t know anyone besides the co-worker that invited me.  I began to introduce myself to the other guests.  At that point in time, I hadn’t yet quite put my finger on what about each person it exactly was that I disliked, but I was certain that I wasn’t enjoying anyone’s company.  It wasn’t until the following exchange that I figured it out:

Guest: “Does it feel strange being the only guest who isn’t white?”

I looked at the group and I realized that I was the only person who wasn’t white.  I not only failed to notice, but failed to be bothered … up until that point.

Guest: “You know, I have a cousin who lives in a small town near England who has never seen a black person in real life before.  Can you imagine?”

Me: “You know, I have a cousin in the Philippines who lives in a small town far from the main cities who has never seen anyone besides Filipinos. ”

She looked at me and smiled pleasantly, so as to agree that our cousins truly were unfortunate.  It saddened me to see that the message I was trying to send had just gone over her head.  At the time, I was disappointed, but whenever I retell this story, I laugh.  I laugh so hard … until I cry.

It’s hard to know where exactly to draw lines when it comes to accepting compliments.  Admittedly, many of them are well-intentioned, are clearly conveyed as such, and so are also very welcome and happily received.  Some are blatantly obvious sexual advances and deserve dire repercussions but will only get silence as a response (because there’s no reasoning with an idiot).  Some are vacuous words mindlessly (and meaninglessly) uttered with the utmost indifference.  Others are tools for manipulation, offered up optimistically with hopes of succeeding in a calculated exchange that will be to the benefit of the complimenter (and to the expense of the complimentee).  Others yet are flirtatious devices unwittingly (*cough* pathetically) designed to boost the complimenter’s self-confidence, and have the unfortunate and tragic side-effect of being misleading and therefore of also potentially causing heartbreak.  Finally, there are even others that seem like the first case, but are actually one of the others.

If it isn’t the first case, then I don’t want it.

Some things are better left unsaid.  Sure.  But are they better left lingering in our minds?  So maybe it is the case that we shouldn’t tell everyone everything about our relationships with them that ails us, then whom do we tell?  Besides those paid to provide ‘professional help’, I don’t think there exists anyone with whom it would be universally “okay” to share.  I feel guilt sharing with even my closest friends.  It’ll always feel partly like gossip, which makes me uncomfortable because of what that would say about me.  I feel this way even if it is true that these secrets need only be kept from certain people and not all people, and even when I know it is my closest friends in whom I can confide.  The problem is that I have this curious feeling that regardless of who it is in whom I confide, I am doing an injustice to the subject of the discussion.

But my heart weighs heavily.  I can’t lie anymore.  Sure, I was always honest with myself in my blogs and private journals, but it isn’t the same as sharing.  It’s having a conversation with myself.  It makes me increasingly concerned about my sanity.  I can’t bear the burdens alone.  Lines were blurred a year ago.  It’s time I clarify things.

My father liked to tell riddles.  There was one that I remember him telling me and my sister when we were about 5 and 7 years old, respectively.  I wasn’t really paying attention, but my sister was.  He looked her right in the eye, and said, “If you are an eye-tee, you are e.”  At least, that’s what it sounded like he was saying.  My sister kept trying to figure out what “eye-tee” and “e” referred to.  He was really only spelling out the word ‘furniture’, which I could pick up because I wasn’t looking at him directly and watching any of the funny faces he was making.

Context is interesting in that way.  I’m hoping that life’s other riddles similarly become clearer when I avert my eyes and stop trying.

Ebert and all critics want to focus on the line “I want to talk about how bad you make this room look.” But I’m not a film critic, and I’m stuck to “Funny how falling feels like flying for a little while.”

It is funny.  I laugh until I cry.