Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Less game than "Sophie's Choice"

(I will stop doing this, but: recommended soundtrack for this post, Alan Partridge-style:)




For those of you looking for information about Turkish burial customs, this is probably going to be one to skip.

So: those of you who know me well know that, in 2001, I was chosen by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as the World's Least Successful Heterosexual. (And, for those of you who point out that I've been making this same joke for a while, I say: it was quite an honor.) Anyway, although I generally try not to make this the exclusive topic of my conversation--anymore--I do occasionally so distinguish myself in such a way that I feel I should share it with a wider public.

The semi-screenplay version: the local hipermarket. Vegetable-weighing counter. An attractive young person says "Michael!" I look confused. "We met at the American embassy thing!"

Ah, yes--the embassy thing! I remember vaguely. But an attractive person is saying hello to me. So, naturally, my instincts run in two directions. Firstly direction: I say, pompously, "remind me again what department you work in?" Such a charming thing to say! Not at all like I was raised on a woman-less ice floe! Bear in mind that I have no idea what this person's name is, so I decide to relate things back to work, like the charmless drone that I am.

But! I get an answer! This conversation could continue!

Obviously--obviously, even--this cannot be allowed to happen. So, instinctively, through some long-dead lizard-brain instinct, I say "Well, nice to see you again!" as though she had just announced that, since she had stopped taking her pills, she could taste Jesus when she saw clouds. I shut things down like Seal Team 6. And then I wander the hell off, rudely--that Coca Cola Light isn't going to buy itself, apparently. I then spend the next few minutes sadly watching this person wander around the store, before she--to paraphrase my rnb doppleganger, Ne-Yo--faded into the background. There was no further meet-cute opportunity. I was left to my shame and sparkling water.

Anyway, another day in the life.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Some last days of disco

(Belated soundtrack for this post...)

So, this is actually some months ago, but nevertheless a little vignette of Turkish life.

My beneficent employer is built into the side of a hill. When I'm completely well and organized enough to be on time, this is great: I have a thirty-minute walk up a hill every morning, and a lovely view when I get there. Were you here to cup my vigorous thighs, you would be impressed.

Towards the end of last semester, however, I was shamefully running late to a class--we're talking a 1:20 departure for a 1:40 class, something not really ideal in the physical universe in which we live. The sad truth is, reader, that I had to use one of the ubiquitous university cabs to ferry me up the side of what I just actually wrote as "the side of the mountain." (It is not a mountain--it is a small hill. Nevertheless.)

Speaking of commanding heights, I've mentioned before the extent of my Turkish skills, which were actually quite a bit worse back then. To add to the fun, I instinctively seem to look foreign to most Turkish people. From my cabdriver, I heard what I also hear from, say, mall security guards, bus drivers, random people in the street, etc.: "Where are you from?" Which is a perfectly nice, welcoming sort of thing to say--I'm not complaining about that, or at least about the spirit behind it. I will say that after a few months, one does sort of begin to feel rather more exotic than one probably should feel, given (as I've mentioned before) how close one lives to a Dockers store.

Now, at this point, I didn't speak very much Turkish at all--I couldn't even properly say "Kanadalıyım," a very basic way of saying "I am Canadian." (I'll practice my Turkish, possibly making a grammatical error, and inform you that saying "Kanada'dan geliyorum" would also be acceptable--although that means "I am coming from Canada." Additional verb tenses as lessons permit.) So it took me a couple of tries even to establish that I was from Canada ("Canada. Canada! Canada?"), of which my driver approved. We were, even on our short trip, deep in smile-and-nod territory. But I was trying to be friendly, and he was trying to be friendly, and we were nearly 1/3 of the way up the hill. This could be a successful social outing!

This, unfortunately, is where my driver chose to give me his opinion of our students--specifically, our female students. "Sexy," he informed me. "Disco party." His facial expression indicated that he imagined I was a regular attendee at said parties, lithe nubiles draping my arms.

What to do? The Turkish for "Well, actually, I don't really objectify my female students, it's sort of unprofessional, ha ha, we're all friends here, though, and incidentally here's a copy of some early Kristeva I think you'll really find enlightening although maybe you should also have a look at Lacan first" was years away--still is, of course. And I didn't have the forethought for "Evet, erkekler çok sexy!," which is some approximation of "yes, very sexy men!" And I had that smile-and-nod inertia going. Weren't we all friends? Sexy disco party friends?

Reader, I smiled and nodded, waited for the remaining ten seconds, paid, and exited the cab--feeling, might I say, that I had let multiple parties (as it were) down. I worry that I had just confirmed a general feeling that our female students were open for all manner of leering sexual adventure, and worse that our faculty were somehow along for the ride. I worry that, given the choice between being pleasant and spineless and severe and vertebral, I had gone for the jellyfish option. But I'm still adrift as to what I could have done. Somewhere on earth there is someone who would be able to communicate, nonverbally, that they disapproved of what had been said, and that the driver could do better than referring to our female students as easy. (Could that person please write to me, c/o this blog?)

Of course, this could also have happened anywhere--I have had far, far more insane conversations with Chicago cab drivers, all of which also started pleasantly. You all know, yes, the feeling of the agreeable cab ride that suddenly veers into insane-opinion territory? Compared to the man in Toronto who talked about taking mushrooms and coming face-to-face with Jesus, my disco gentleman was quite mild, and trying to be friendly. But I'm an employee here, and it's my job to represent our students as best I can. This was pretty much a total failure, in that regard.

I did arrive to class on time, at least, if pantingly. "My driver seems to think that you like disco parties" I told my students, who seemed to find this amusing. I left out what else he thought of them--and, of course, my shame. That goes on the blog.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Bloggus interruptus

Two months. This usually, um, doesn't happen to me...

I don't really have any good excuse for not speaking to you, notional second-person pronoun addressee of this blog, more frequently. When we last talked, we were in the springtimes of our youth; now we are brittle with eld.

Or, at least, I am. I'm sicker'n'a southern stereotype involving an elderly dog. I spent a delightful weekend dehydrated and somewhat delirious; high points included shaking so hard with cold that I could get out of bed to put on an nth layer of socks. On Monday, the sad-eyed Turkish physician told me that I had a severe throat infection, but that this would be entirely cleared up by Thursday, allowing me to teach.

I'll let you, second-person addressee, in on a little secret: I like teaching, and--because of that, and because it is my job to do so--I hate canceling classes. I once taught in Chicago with about a million-degree fever, and I like to think my students barely noticed, outside of the occasional moment when I would run out into the hallway and have a coughing fit suggesting I was birthing a goat orally. I would then return demurely inside to lecture on Greek lyric. (I'm sure that there is a Greek account of language  originating in a man orally birthing a goat out of his mouth--don't ask how it got there in the first place--so no doubt I was adding ever-more value to my students' educations, even if what they probably remember is a living corpse telling them incorrect things about ephebes.)

But the living corpse was not trotted out for the students this week. I don't actually have a voice at the moment, and my throat--although better--is still sort of a river of pain. It is Thursday, and the illness still has the run of the temple (e.g. ruined, clammy, possibly used for "ritual activities") that is my body. If I put my head basically on top of my new humidifier, I will cease coughing. If I decide that I don't want to perch directly in front of the spume hose--for so I have named it--I resume with the oral goat-birth. It is a living.

(This humidifier, too, is a Thing. Although all of the interior materials show happy babies gurgling appreciatively, the thing itself has what look like underlights--those things you put on your 'roided-up Civic in 4 Fast 6 Furious--and suggests that it might be able to support Lazer 'Floyd. Updates to follow.)

I am anguished--this is not too strong a word--that I have had to cancel this many classes, as well as a screening of Macbeth. But I have received many lovely messages from my students--no, that is not cynicism--so I suspect we'll all live without the megawatt illumination that is my teaching.

Anyway, regular blogging to resume--maybe tomorrow? I have many things to talk about: Marxist bombings, Ottoman soap operas (read: filmed catfights), and cab drivers subtly implying that my students are whores. But, before that, I am to the spume hose.