(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.
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.
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.
I'd like to take a moment, in our prayers, to acknowledge all of those poor Turks who, in the course of carrying out their day-to-day jobs, have to interact with me in Turkish. It is inconceivable they are paid enough.
Those of you know know me well will know that an opportunity to combine clothing, personal shame, and speaking Turkish badly approaches whatever intricately masochistic heaven I have picked out for myself. And, indeed, today I had a foretaste of that afterlife.
I'm not really a mall person. This may have been why, after staggering out of Carrefour (silicon madeline pans, bitches), I staggered into a store selling what looked like a rather smart blazer. Up close, the blazer was not actually all that smart; I knew this in a heartbeat. But the storeclerk instantly asked me what my size was. (Or, at least, I think she did. All communication on the other side in this discussion will be very approximate.) And I am a nice person, so I decided to, ahem, "practice my Turkish."
I fumbled around for a while, trying to remember my numbers, which vanish whenever I am required to talk to a human creature. (Silently alone here in a Starbucks, I can remember them perfectly--let's pretend that, anyway.) Finally, this poor creature decided to break the ice.
"Elli altı?" she asked, citing an immense size (European 56, approx. American 46) that only the morbidly, scooter-boundedly obese--at my height and state of muscular development--fit into.
I am, in fact, a 54. I tried to say as much. It sounded like this: "Elli...oh, shit, I'm terrible at Turkish...so sorry...so very sorry...um...Turkçe oğreniyorum*...elli...fuck..dört?" She beamed as though a squirrel had finished his times tables: I had said "fifty-four," with only the additional assistance of having someone just said "fifty" about three seconds before. The only snag: there were no 54s in the blazer that I (remember) didn't really want. But she want to the back, returning with a 56 and a 52. The former looked like a balloon even on me, presumably originally being designed as a parachute or Christmas-tree skirt. The latter fit like a condom.
And then, lo and behold, a 54 was found. By this point I had been reduced even further into gibbering; even my hand gestures were growing inarticulate. But, to move along this weeping tragedy of a clothes fitting, I tried it on.
The 54 was, shall we say, fitted. Were I the opposite gender, I suppose this opportunity to show my voluptuousness burping and buckling out of a blazer-tit would have been welcomed. As it is, I try not to wear anything that makes me look as though I am milked on a regular basis. "Italyan modo," or something similar, the clerk said. And she was right, as far as it goes: many menswear blogs do, in fact, recommend moob-spanning blazer fits. (And, yes, I read menswear blogs featuring fashionable people. I realize that this is like the Little Mermaid dreaming of legs, or Martha--from those children's books about hippos--wearing a tutu. Discrepancy noted.) Of course, all of those people are size 36s, so perhaps it makes more sense there. As it stood, my fit was not Italian: it was Tony Soprano in a leopard-print thong. Or, I suppose, we might say Italian-American, in the Pringle-thickened sense.
"Thank...teşekkurler...fuck...tamam," I said, and I think the shopclerk (who really deserves hazard pay, or such) got the message. I waddled out, cookie-pans (silicon!) in hand.
Next door was (and is, I would imagine, since this happened forty-five minutes ago) a bespoke tailoring shop. I assume I'll have more luck there--or, failing that, are there still companies that make sails?
Sahlep is a sweet, warm drink, which according to Wikipedia is served throughout the former Ottoman Empire. Its primary characteristic is being sold out when you want some, pretty much anywhere in Ankara. I have successfully obtained it once.
Oh, Wikipedia has interesting information about sahlep: it's made from an orchid root, for example. And the Romans thought it looked like male genitalia, a fact that is less remarkable the more you know about Roman culture. (The Romans thought about 60% of all objects in the physical world--and an estimated 35% of objects in Plato's world of forms--looked like dongs.) But its primary characteristic is being harder to obtain than most controlled substances--although, lord knows, with the amount of effort I've put into the search, I could probably have obtained heroin by now.
To make sahlep, put up a large, friendly sign that says "SAHLEP," and then tell the foreigners who come in that it is sold out. You do not need to mention that it was always sold out; that you never had any intention of selling it; that maybe you made, oh, three cups' worth, but they sold out in 1993 and you swore your children on the souls of their mother to never make any more. Why not just have some tea? We probably have tea.
Some sahlep vocabulary: Sahlep bitti: The sahlep is sold out. Sahlep yok: There is not any sahlep. Çay ister misiniz?: Would you like some tea?
A great, great class today. Only my inner cynic (quiet, you) notes that part of its greatness came from having the students talk about something totally unrelated to the class materials. We're reading the Republic--aren't you envious?--and to open as wide a space as possible for Socrates, Our Contemporary, I asked the kidler to each talk about thing that they'd like to improve about contemporary society. (I also think I opened a space for Socrates, Athenian Dickhead, who is my favorite Socrates. But anyway.)
I take very seriously the idea (pace an ascending percentage of my high school, college, and graduate school instructors) that I do not teach primarily for my own benefit. I get paid, after all, like a grown-ass adult, in order to teach others. But I have to admit that today's class was fascinating. Guess what? My Turkish students are concerned, in their heathen alien Middle East Muslim heathen heathen way, with:
The proximity of the media to government
The depiction of women by and in the media
Unemployment
Education
and so on forward.
One of my students even pointed out something that I had noticed, but not been able to articulate, that seemed subtly different about Turkish media: what I think of as the notional ideal subject (NIS, if you're nasty) of advertising.
Now, like me, you probably assumed Turkish advertising looked something like this:
Amazingly, and in many senses depressingly, it doesn't. In Ankara as in Topeka, the blandest, middle-income-wealthy-ist, frankly whitest people are used to sell products. Only here, the bland twentysomethings all tend to be married--so you get the couple (let's call them Mete and Merve) that you might in a North American ad (Joshua and Madison.) But where Joshua and Madison would have a zany cast of twenty-something friends to carouse with while living (one presumes) in sin in a Brooklyn loft, Mete and Merve come furnished with offspring, an attractively-styled home, and a father-in-law with a mustache. (This latter point seems to be mandated by law.) For example, here's Coca Cola's ongoing "let's depress Turkish Marxists by emphasizing the utter Turkishness of our product" campaign:
See? Singletons with children, rather than with dumb little hats suggesting work in graphic design. The marital teleology of the NIS is moved along a few years here, I think, but the result is pretty much the same: Mete and Merve are living only a couple of rungs up on the exact same ladder where Josh and Madison will be in a few years. The only solution, of course, is global homosexual Marxist revolution.
In the mean time, the Republic leaves me wondering: what do I want for my students? I worry sometimes that I'm a pretty conservative person in this sense: I want them to have good jobs, and pleasant apartments, and as much contentment as is reasonable--as I want for everyone. There are days when I think that Dave Thomas, Founder of Wendy's, has done more for human happiness than, say, Louis Althusser, postructuralist Marxist. I don't want the Great Books to leave them stranded in some sort of Socrates-reeking fug, unable to find employment out of concern for not finding the Platonic form of what they want. (I'm more Aristotelian--or, to be least pretentious, more Canadian--than that.) I'd rather they be Mete and Merve at the table above than not, I suppose--or Merve and Merve, if they wish.
Take my wife, please.
But I also want them to know why they want these things. And to know that these aren't the only things they can want. Hell, I don't want to be at that fucking table, chugging figurative Coke and making smalltalk to my figurative father-in-law-with-a-moustache, all of the time. This can all get a little bit grandiose. But I want them, I suppose, to be able to make small adjustments in the fabric of things as they are, rather than overturning everything as this year's local variant of the philosopher king. Today, I was very pleased with what my students wanted; for the sake of all sorts of people, including Merve and Merve, I hope they get it.
Let me break down precisely what this means. A moment ago, I found myself using my "Muppet"-branded plastic oven mitts as castanets, clicking along to a gentleman named Calvin Harris. (He did that Rhianna song--love? Hopeless place?)
