9.28.2005
When Miss Daisey Drives her own
If I had to describe Sue Ann in lament terms, she’s the Midwestern catholic mother of eight preadolescent children who she home schools and feeds, lives on a 20 acre farm, fixes the plumbing, milks the cows, feeds the horses, looks after the chickens, and make sure all 6 dogs stay within property line at all times, all while keeping a smile on her face that makes you feel life is nothing but a playground.
But that’s only what she would be has she been a farmer’s wife.
Sue Ann is the executive assistant to the American headquarters of a large German company who I am the receptionist to, and my boss, every time I make her laugh she puts her hand on my shoulder and say “you’re great” – she asks our sales reps what they think of my fabulous voice over the phone and comes to me with literature to read and a cup of coffee every day – all while overlooking her duties as the CEO and CFO’s assistant, making sure the biggest intracompany construction work is going smoothly and hazard free, driving her daughters to see colleges around the state while trying to car shop because her good ol ford expedition is dying.
Oh, and taking over my position for an hour twice a week so I can take my lunch break.
I love my new boss.
9:34 PM
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9.22.2005
Go Boys
Viva La Reforme!
I recalled what at the time seemed to me as nothing more than a group of uprooted Saudis hanging loose. The more I remembered about the experience, the more I grasped how naïve I was at the time.
One thing you should know about the Saudis and their culture is that they do not take religion or family values to as an extreme degree of seriousness as they do to sustaining a virtuous reputation and keeping the family name, not the family, wholesome. It is – by far– the only virtue that gets passed from Saudi generation to generation seamlessly. Pride in social status is embedded so far deep in the psyche of the people, it would take nothing less than a Napoleon style colonization to reduce its significance.
But how? And why this place?
To describe it loosely, the space was transformed into a Saudi style royal tent with intricately embroidered fabric sealing, huge Persian carpets and circles of cushions and arm rests guaranteed to hold your drug hazed and inebriated frame contently. The drums and the Oud sang loud and clear; the Indian incense combined with the aroma of fragrant tobacco flowing from the numberless hookahs fogged up the air with the subtle smell of every Wahabbi sin imaginable. A marriage of seductive darkness and mingling that seem to have lit an internal match brighter than the red Christmas lights hanging about with dreadful irony. Being in there was the closest I have ever gotten to being in an Ottoman opium den.
And now I sit here and look back as the memories I evoke are increasingly curious.
As unruly as they were, they seemed to have upheld one thing, or did they? And that is the complete and utter exclusion of feminine energy, in America, giving the place a true Saudi face. And now I sit here and look back as the memories I evoke make me rephrase . . . there were no women.
Amongst the dancing silhouettes, one group of three handsome young men had taken upon themselves the act of compensation, they wrapped their shimaghs (headscarf) very tightly around their wastes as they danced,…
A n d d i d t h e y e v e r d a n c e .
They waved their shoulders and swayed their midriffs like bathing mermaids; their feet went around with steps evocative of youthful stallions doing their flirtatious dace. They had grace and femininity that would rival the best belly dancers in Egypt. And they were dancing peacefully, leaning back and forth absolutely uncondemned by everyone in the room. As I sat and watched them in awe with the urge of getting up and joining on their celebration of Arab drag queen-ism, I remembered my uncle and suppressed the urge. But I began to recall the stories I read in my father’s secret “adult” library. Stories of the Dancing Kocek, a common object of masculine affections in the Ottoman Empire among other men. How at one point in time, in the Arab world, loving a man was just as tolerable and agreeable as loving a woman. And how Wahabiasm destroyed all of that.
It made me gain a distinct sense of hope in learning that not only social pride is rooted in the Arab culture, but many other less obvious values, including our history of being the love-all-that-is-beautiful party people. One day, the west is going to open its eyes to what is floating just beneath the surface of the protests of the arab islamic populas: a crowd full of gay belly dancing stallions.
8:09 PM
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