Last Day in Monaco: The Sun Emerges

We woke up this morning to sunny skies and warm temperatures. And so now I like Monte Carlo. It's a great city to be in, when the weather is beautiful. It figures it wouldn't clear up until our last day. But I'm grateful for it.

Mom wanted to get some pictures by the Palais,
so we took the #1 bus to Monaco-Ville. We strolled around the Jardin Exotique, taking in the splendid views of the principality, and admiring Prince Albert's cactus collection. Here's a pic of me on one of the landings.

We had lunch at the horribly (and ironically) named Express restaurant, on the rue Comte Felix Gastaldi. I highly recommend it -- they have great, unassuming Provencal-style meals for not-eye-popping prices, although the service is incredibly slow. Well, actually, meal service is slow all over this country. I've found that lunch and dinner can easily take up your entire day here in Monte Carlo. We entered "Express" at 1, and finally got out at 3. After all that food and walking for miles, we decided to call it a day.


We got off the bus early to walk along the seaside promenade that leads up to our hotel. I saw a truly ugly statue outside one of the city's many landmarks, and insisted my mom snap a photo of me next to it. It was really hard to refrain from trying to imitate the statue's expression.

There are plenty of family-oriented areas along the Plage du Larvotto, including an indoor carousel. I have no idea what this sign, posted outside the enclosure, was advertising, but it seemed like a fine last photo to take here, on my last day in Monaco. Humm!!


Now I've got to pack, and prepare to wake up at the crack of dawn to accompany Mom to the Nice airport. Bonsoir!

Day 7 in Monaco: the MAMAC

My original plan was to spend one day in Nice and one day in Aix-en-Provence, but I decided against Aix when I discovered it takes 3 hours to get there. It really didn't seem worth it, particularly considering how miserable the weather is. Today the rain came down particularly hard, so I figured it was a good day to visit museums and art galleries. Nice has a high concentration of them. We went to the Musee d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, which houses some excellent New Realism and Pop Art collections. There is an extensive array of works by Niki de Saint Phalle, who donated 63 paintings and sculptures and more than 120 silkscreen lithographs and engravings to the city of Nice in 2001.

Mom, true to form, kept complaining that she didn't understand any of the art. Here she is, looking flummoxed, next to a sculpture by Yves Klein.

There's also a great open-air market at the Place Garibaldi.
Most of the vendors sell fruit or seafood. I took a picture at one of the stalls. Sea urchins, anyone? Only 5 euros a kilo. Ick!

Day 6 in Monaco: Escaping to Nice

I've decided I do not like Monte Carlo.

Or, rather, I would like Monte Carlo, if I were a stinking rich person with fabulous European friends, traipsing around in the sunshine in a $2,000 bikini.

Instead, I'm a regular American on a budget, attempting to show my mother (who has never before been to Europe) a good time during the off season. The weather has been AWFUL...cold and rainy.

I must point out once more how expensive everything is here. And the Monagasques pretend they don't understand me whenever I try to do something bizarrely economical like ordering tap water instead of bottled water with a meal. The servers at this hotel think I'm an alien.

I've discovered, however, that I quite like Nice. Nice is a real city, with real people, just like New York or Paris, only smaller. Mom and I took the bus from the Place de Moulins. The trip takes about 35 minutes.

When we got off the bus, I heaved a sigh of relief, because it looked normal. Students, homeless people, and regular folks who looked like they were on their way to the post office or the library or the grocery store were all around. In Monte Carlo, everyone looks like they are on their way to the opera or the Casino or their private jet or helicopter.

By the time we got to Nice, we didn't have the energy to do much aside from have lunch, visit the tourist bureau, and shop a bit. I was walking by a second-hand store that had a lot of dusty used clocks in the window. They had a small jewelry section, with a small ring that caught my eye. It was sort of medieval looking, made of glass and silver. My mom insisted on buying it for me. Yay Mom!

Day 5 in Monaco: Mom Needs Fritos

I woke up at 6 this morning to the sound of my mom snoring. "Go back to sleep," I thought. It would be rude to wake her. I woke up again at 7, and at 8, and at 9, each time to her loud snoring. "OK, she needs the sleep," I thought. "We both need the sleep."

At 10:30, after one of her particularly loud, honking intakes of air, I got out of bed and violently parted the terrace curtains. Sunlight streamed into the room.

"What time is it?" she whispered. I took a shower, dressed, and ceded the bathroom to her at 11:15.

At 1:30 I was pacing back and forth, starving, watching her apply the last vestiges of her mascara.

"Ma, are you ready? Can we go downstairs and get some lunch now?" She emerged from the bathroom. She looked me up and down, and frowned dramatically. "You're wearing THAT??"

And this pretty much set the tone for the entire afternoon.

Mom handed me a of bunch sightseeing descriptions of Monaco that a friend of hers had printed for her from the Internet, and instructed me to figure out where we were going. I had planned a day in Aix-en-Provence and another in Nice, but figured maybe I should let her determine the itinerary for today's in-town wanderings. My mother, however, does not like to make decisions -- she prefers to leave it to others to make them, and then criticize the outcomes.

The one very unfortunate thing I've learned about Monaco today is that, essentially, the entire country shuts down from November 15 until after Christmas. Museums close, stores are shuttered, restaurants have signs posted on them indicating a "seasonal holiday". Even Les Grands Appartements du Palais, the home of Monaco's royal family, is closed. I suppose Prince Albert is somewhere else, ostensibly where the weather is nicer. Actually, the weather here is not at all bad, but it's a bit chilly, and I neglected to bring the appropriate fall-weather apparel. I'm cold and a little resentful that the Principality is not cooperating with me. This is my mom's FIRST TIME in Europe, for chrissake. Don't they KNOW who she IS?

I decided we should head to the Musee de l'Oceanographie, because I love aquariums and because it is one of the only tourist sights that's open. It turned out to be a really great idea. I've been to many aquariums, but Monaco has the BEST I've ever seen, by FAR. There is also an oceanographic museum, and an exhibit of Princes Albert I's and II's expeditions to the Arctic. Apparently, Albert the First (1848-1922) was an avid explorer of our planet's polar regions, and his great grandson took an anniversary expedition in 2006 to study the effects of global warming.

The aquarium is fantastic, and my mom was LOVING it. She was like a little kid, pulling me from tank to tank, pointing out fish to me with smiling excitement. As much as my mother bugs me, I like nothing better than to make her happy. So I was positively beaming as I watched her bounce up and down, splay her hands across the glass, and coo happily at the variety of sea creatures. I couldn't help but feel a sense of accomplishment. "This was a good idea I had, eh?" I said, patting myself on the back. She agreed.

One could wander all day at the Musee, and we spent the entire afternoon there. We had a very expensive stop at the museum gift shop, where Mom spent a whopping 142 euros on t-shirts, keychains, coasters, candies, and assorted refrigerator magnets.

"Pace yourself, Mom," I pleaded. "We have plenty of time to shop in Nice and Aix."

But she was a woman on a mission to spend her money. We passed another hour in and out of goofy souvenir shops around the Palace plaza, before I decided it best to go to dinner and call it a day. We sat down in a greasy, smoky pizzeria near the Place d'Armes. I ordered a bottle of Beaujolais for us, and an artichoke pizza for me. She ordered spaghetti. When the waiter served up our orders, she said, "You got pizza? I didn't know you ordered pizza."

"Do you want some pizza?"

"No, I don't want pizza. I have spaghetti." She craned her neck and stared at my dish.

We started munching away. We talked about how much we enjoyed the aquarium.
"Remember when I said to you, 'This was a great idea I had, coming to the aquarium?'" Mom declared.

I blinked at her. "Um, that's what I said to you," I replied.

"NO!" she countered, "I had ALWAYS wanted to go to the aquarium!!"

Before I had suggested it, my mom had made no mention whatsoever of the aquarium. She didn't ask about, it wasn't in the printouts she gave me, nothing. When I did suggest we go there, she had been lukewarm, as if to say, "Ok, whatever". Now she was convinced it was her idea all along.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I cut another piece of my pizza, but couldn't eat it. I decided to put my fork down, and just quietly enjoy the remaining wine in my glass.

"Aren't you going to FINISH that??" she spat, pointing at the uneaten pie.

After paying the bill, we took a cab back to the hotel. It was kind of early, around 8, but it seemed like we were ready to turn in.

"We need more munchies," she determined.

"But we just ate," I protested.

"We need potato chips," she insisted. "And we need wine. We need...we need...potato chips, or...Fritos."

I stared at her. "Actually, mom, I'm going down to the bar. If you want a drink or something to eat, you are welcome to join me."

"No!" she barked. "I DON'T WANT TO GO DOWNSTAIRS! Now, call the maid or something, tell her to bring up POTATO CHIPS!"

"Bye, Mom. I'm going downstairs to write. Come down if you want something," I sighed, and walked out the door.

Monaco is glamorous, and I'm so very fantastic and glamorous in it, right?

Days 3 & 4 in Monaco: "Beef" de Resistance

Our final day of training ended with a team-building activity -- cooking a three-course meal, in groups of 4 or 5. A panel of judges consisting of the chef and sous-chef from Intempo (the hotel restaurant) and senior management from our Brussels office, would taste and decide which team would win the coveted first prize.

One team didn't have to cook -- they were simply equipped with a tableful of various spirits and mixers and a variety of tumblers and stemware, and directed to invent a cocktail. The rest of us leered at them in envy. We all had our own cooking stations, each with a main ingredient (in my case, a raw filet mignon), and a frying pan with jars of that lightable fluid they use for keeping banquet food warm.

In the center of the room was a table outfitted with a smorgasbord of ingredients -- various chopped vegetables and herbs, oils, vinegars, a few different kinds of stock, and some fruits. When Daniel, the sadistic bastard running this whole event, shouted, "Go!", we all had to attack the table and grab whatever ingredients we believed would turn our slab of beef or fish or crepe into the winning course. The rest of my team chose sensible ingredients -- onions, veal stock, cooking sherry, tomatoes, celery, herbs, garlic, etc. Inspired, I seized a bowl of figs. I waved them in front of the faces of my team. "Look here!" I piped enthusiastically. "Figs! A magical ingredient! We will WIN with these figs!"

Patrick, Karen, and Sabrina all looked at me quizzically, and then went to work chopping. The chef came over to help. I think he was concerned that we might subject a very prize piece of beef to unimaginable violations.

The chef pretty much did the cooking for us. Some of us chopped, or commandeered the spatula to flip the filet a couple of times, but we weren't truly cooking. I, true to form, barely came within sniffing distance of the cooking area. Instead, I felt I did a much better job of playing the roles of cheerleader and scribe. Each team needed one person to document the recipe used, as well as come up with names for both the team and their dish. Who better than I to accomplish said task? I certainly was not useful in the cooking area.

I looked at Karen (who is from Malta), Patrick (Dutch) and Sabrina (Sardinian), and christened us "3 Europeans and a Dorky American". Ick, what a stupid name.

I watched Chef labor over the sauce for our filet mignon, and came up with a name for our culinary masterpiece: "Le Boeuf de Resistance".

We won the competition. Our prize was a copy of the hotel CD of the hotel's signature music. Figs were nowhere in our recipe. My "magical" ingredient had somehow disappeared from our table and ended up being used at the crepe station.

The next morning included a presentation from the head of our Global Web Services division. He presented remotely, via a webcam on top of his PC in his office in White Plains, which is 3 doors down from mine. Part of the presentation was a live demonstration of Virtual Aloft -- the model property Starwood has built in Second Life. His avatar took us through a virtual tour of the model. The evening before, I constructed an avatar of my own, and dropped in during the presentation just as he was emerging from the virtual swimming pool. Chris had no idea who was controlling this invading avatar, nor did the audience in the conference room. I was snickering secretly in the back row, behind my laptop, thanking the hotel for wireless access. After some interesting back-and-forth in the virtual world and across the webcam and conference call, I revealed my identity. Laughter ensued.

At 1 pm I excused myself to go to my room and await my mother's arrival. I invited my mother, an extremely high-strung and judgemental individual, who has never been anywhere in the Eastern Hemisphere, on this trip, for 2 reasons:

1. She's been nagging me for years to take her to Europe, and always asks if she can join me on business trips; and
2. I didn't feel like traveling back to the US during the Thanksgiving weekend, because travel in the US at that time is always VERY messy.

Le Meridien was offering a very attractive $69/night employee rate (their normal rate is 400 Euros a night or more), so I figured it best to ride out the whole thing here, and return on Monday when it's all blown over. I've never been to the French Riviera, so what the hell? When my mom heard I was going to Monte Carlo, she got very excited. I checked out the available airfares, and they were super-cheap, so I invited her to fly over. I would have felt guilty (and perhaps a bit lonely) if I spent Thanksgiving on this side of the Atlantic without her.

She arrived 2 hours later than I was expecting. The airline had lost her luggage. I was a bit thankful for that, because I was worried about her struggling with heavy bags. This way, the airline was obligated to deliver it directly to her hotel room. I was thrilled when she finally arrived at about 4pm (and her bag a couple of hours after). We were both starving, so we headed out shortly thereafter, to one of the only restaurants in town that is open before 7:30pm, the Cafe de Paris. This reknowned brasserie is situated in the same plaza as the Casino and Hotel de Paris.

I ordered the rabbit. My mom made a face, and, citing her undying love for my sister's childhood pet bunny, Muffin, ordered the chicken. When our meal arrived, I began eating with relish. She watched me disapprovingly.

"I would NEVER eat THAT," she sneered.

We finished our entrees, and she decided to get profiteroles for dessert. By this time, I was starting to get tired, and perhaps it showed as I watched her slurp up the melting vestiges of her ice-cream-filled dish.

"Diane, WHY are you SLOUCHING??" she complained, hunching her shoulders in an attempt to imitate me. "You're a BALLET DANCER, for CRYING out LOUD!"

I put my chin on my hand, and sighed. I didn't have the energy to argue with her, so I tried my best to sit up straight. I also didn't have the heart to tell her I haven't had the time to go to ballet class since the summer.

I don't think this weekend will be very restful, except perhaps for the portion during which I am fast asleep.

Day 2 in Monaco: I'm in the Casino, Bleeding (Real Blood, Not Money)

My colleagues and I ran a very successful training this morning and afternoon, and once we were done, at around 8, we headed straight for the Pacific. The Pacific is a ridiculously overpriced restaurant in an already-ridiculously-overpriced town. We ordered sushi appetizers all around, lavish entrees, desserts and digestifs, and headed to the Casino.

I write, "the Casino", because, when you are in Monte Carlo, there is only one casino. It's The Casino. It's not like being in Vegas or Atlantic City or any other gambling mecca you can imagine. The Casino is located in a Versailles-like building. You have to pay ten Euros to get in. You cannot wear jeans.

Don't even call it a casino: it's a classic games-of-chance desination.

I was so tired and unenthusiastic, that I tripped and fell on the way there from Pacific. My knee bled. I was really pissed, not because of the considerable injuries I sustained to my knees, ankle, and arm, but because the fall caused a rip in my favorite pair of pants.

But one must hold one's head high when one walks into The Casino.

Feh, whatever...me and my female colleagues abandoned the men at the craps tables and mulled marketing concepts over preciously-priced glasses of Champagne.

You know, I like the people I work with, but I'm really looking forward to the time, a few days from now, when I'm on vacation, and I can just relax and spend time exploring and writing, and getting out of here. I will do all the classic Monte Carlo tourist destinations, but I will also head out of town to see what is there, beyond. Someone outside of town must make a good soup or grilled something or fried chicken. Someone somewhere.

It's a beautiful place, really, if you can get beyond some stuff.

J'arrive: Day 1 in Monaco

I just checked into Le Meridien Beach Plaza here in Monte Carlo, and my room is fantastic. My terrace, where I will eat breakfast daily, overlooks the beach. It's a little too cold to go in the water now (about 65 F), but it's still really nice to hear and smell the ocean. Tres therapeutique.

Monaco is ridiculously expensive. I was warned, but am now experiencing it firsthand. I immediately ordered a room-service meal when I walked in the door (the meals on the AA and BA flights here, even in business class, were TOTALLY INEDIBLE), and am now throwing down a 25-euro plate of spaghetti. And I had to run to the gift shop to buy an adapter, which I forgot to pack. That set me back 15 euros. Incredible. Well, I say "me", but it's my company's money, not mine. I do feel a personal responsibility to at least feel offended by the ripoff pricing here as I sign the bills.

Within 10 minutes of arriving in my room, hotel employees knocked on my door no less than four times. The first time, to deliver a letter from the GM thanking our group (the one I'm making a presentation for); the second time, to deliver slippers and a robe; the third time, to deliver some Evian and these little Turkish-delight thingees on a fancy plate from the GM again; the fourth time, my spaghetti. It's like Grand Central Station in here.

I think I need to blow off my colleagues tonight. They are going to dinner, probably in Italy. That sounds far, but it's not. Monaco is flanked by France and Italy. Italy is closer to where I am right now on Ave Princesse Grace than Brooklyn is to my Manhattan apartment on 57th Street. I want to go to Italy to eat tonight, but I have a much stronger urge to sleep.

Whoever is the Light-skinned Black Actress du Jour

I first started noticing it when I was 15, then it kept coming at me over and over when I was 16, with such a nagging frequency that I was forced to ponder what the hell was happening.

People kept calling me "Denise."

Actually, up until then, I had gotten used to being called "Denise", because that's my older sister's name. All my life, as a child, I had lived in my big sister's shadow. Denise was the MOST FABULOUS teenager EVER -- beautiful, popular, smart, outgoing, stylish....EVERYONE loved her. I, however, was this shy, geeky, frizzy-haired mouse who trailed five years behind her, basking in her ever-brilliant glow. "You're DENISE DEWINDT'S sister?" my grade-school teachers and assorted Denise-DeWindt fans would exclaim, upon meeting me for the first time, their eyes widening with admiration. "That's WONDERFUL!"

Um, OK, great.

I mean, I, like everyone else, it seemed, on the planet, absolutely worshipped my older sister. She was the ULTIMATE ideal of everything anyone should ever be. I wanted to be just like her. But, by the time I arrived at high school as a freshman, I was sufficiently self-aware to understand that superstar-Denise-level teenage popularity was not in the cards for me. I was columns editor on my high-school paper, I worked on the lighting and sound-production crews for drama-club productions, and I scurried to the Princeton Record Exchange at every opportunity to pick up the latest Nick Cave import. On vinyl, by the way. I liked very few people, and very few people liked me.

But then, gradually, during the mid-eighties, I noticed people calling/referring to me as "Denise" with increasing frequency. I became really flummoxed when I realized that most of these clueless people, some of them my age or younger, were just these random idiots who had no idea who I was. They didn't know I had a sister at all. They were newcomers to East Windsor, or too young to have experienced life in any grade that was infatuated with my famous big sister.

"What the hell?", I wondered. I was really worried.

I think part of it was a confusion afflicting all people regarding the typical American female "D" names: Diane, Debbie, Donna, Denise, etc. They all sound kind of the same -- it's easy to mix them up. But that's more a late-teenage-early-twentysomething faux pas, typically committed by drunken frat boys.

This phenomenon was pervasive. Insidious. There was something else going on, and I remained clueless, until one day, Mr. Lawrence enlightened me.

Mike Lawrence was an obviously-gay teacher of AP English in my high school. I wasn't in any of his classes, but he had cast me in a one-act play he was producing at our local theater, "Interview", by David Mamet. We were sitting in the cafeteria, chatting, when I brought up my dilemma.

"People keep calling me 'Denise', Mr. Lawrence. People that have never met my sister. I'm very perplexed."

And, without skipping a beat, he peered at me, smiled, and piped, "Oh, yes! You are like that girl on the 'Cosby Show'! Yes! You even DRESS like her! That MUST be it!"

He grinned, very pleased with himself. He was justified in being pleased with himself, because he was right.

People were calling me "Denise" because they were associating my look with that of Lisa Bonet.

Now, understand that, at that time and in the following years, Ms. Bonet was the "it" girl. She had her show. She was on the cover of "Interview". She had a baby. It was Lenny Kravitz's baby. She was IT.

So I took the Lisa-Bonet comparisons, which became CONSTANT, as a compliment. But, as time wore on, it became less of a compliment, and more of a label.

It made me feel a bit sick to my stomach because, over time, the comparisons creeped to a widening list of women. People told me I looked like Lisa, but, just as often, they would also tell me I reminded them of....

• Janet Jackson
• Jennifer Beals
• Rae Dawn Chong
• Lisa Lisa
• [insert name of any random light-skinned black and/or Hispanic actress or singer here]

and so on and so on.

These are all very attractive people. However, I look nothing like any of them. But I happen to be a "light-skinned black woman". And we all look alike, right? Well, yeah, it seems so, from all the comments and weird shit I get from people.

By the time I was thirty, I was so tired of the endless comparisons and people insisting that I look like this or that celebrity, that I cut off all my hair. I was convinced it was my freakishly curly hair, which, at the time, I had grown to mid-back length, that was driving people to strange, annoying conclusions. So I chopped it all off.

Nope, that didn't work. Another James Bond movie came out, and people looked at me in wonder, and whispered, "Halle Berry". Because she was sporting that cool short cut at the time.

Um, thanks.

I guess it's comforting, when one is a female obsessed with one's looks, to get the seemingly-positive "you-look-so-fantastic,-just-like-Halle-Berry" reaction. But, when you have the issues I have, it's a very mixed feeling.

Just like me. I'm very mixed. I wish it were easier.

Well, what is easy is describing what I look like to people who have never met me. They sometimes ask, "What celebrity do you resemble?" And I say, "Whoever is the light-skinned black actress du jour."

"Sexy" Ambiguity: Day Zero in Mexico City

I’ve been in Mexico City for less than 24 hours, and I’m about to go to sleep so I can wake up in time for my airport transfer at 7am. I haven’t seen the city at all – I got off the plane and arrived at this hotel at about 1 this morning. I’ve been in meetings all day, and then found out that dinner was to be in the hotel restaurant. Ugh. I can’t wait to get out of here.

But I cannot sleep, so I turn on the TV. Some channel that always has those “top 100 this” and “top 100 that” programming, I think maybe it was E!, was counting down the world’s sexiest supermodels. What fun! With each entrant into the Pantheon of Those Who Are Most Beautiful For Now, there was some commentary by a fashion designer or journalist or another model explaining exactly what makes this particular model so desirable and worthy of a place on the list. They annointed Adriana Lima, the pouty Brazilian most famous for her Victoria’s Secret work, with the #3 spot. And then this annoying blonde woman with leathery skin and mean eyes chirped, “What makes Adriana so beautiful is her ethnic ambiguity! Is she Native American? Is she white? Is she black? Is she Hispanic? You cannot tell! That’s why her look is so appealing!” This woman seemed fascinated by the quandary. It made me want to spit.

I’m not sure I understand her point. I thought Ms. Lima’s appeal was related to the same things that make most lingerie models appealing: great body, great skin, bedroom eyes, big full mouth. I highly doubt people are purchasing underwear and bustiers because they took one look at her and thought, “I can’t tell WHAT that girl is! I MUST buy a garter belt!”

If ethnic ambiguity were truly the hallmark of beauty in the world of fashion, I quite think we’d be seeing something different on catwalks and magazine covers. There is nothing ambiguous about what’s there now, except for perhaps the occasional nod to androgyny.

Nigger's Out

[Note: I wrote this entry 3 days ago, but am just getting around to posting it now. I know in my last post, I set up the expectation that I'd be writing about "vantages", but that will have to wait until I'm in the mood to tell those stories.]

I’m in Figs bar at LaGuardia airport, waiting for my flight to Mexico City, which is delayed by the rain. I’m tired and pissed off at myself. I must present to a group of Starwood’s Latin American regional marketing directors tomorrow morning, but my presentation remains largely unfinished. I am the most unprofessional, unprepared presenter I know. Whatever Powerpoint slides I do manage to put together before speaking are uninteresting and tedious, and I always just end up ignoring them and winging it. I know this isn’t the way I should approach speaking engagements, but that’s the way I always end up doing it. Strangely, plenty of people at all the companies I’ve worked at go out of their way to congratulate me with a hearty “Great job!” after each one. It makes me wonder what would happen if I actually followed protocol.

I was too busy this week and last to work on the slides, but I figured that was OK, I could just write the whole thing the night before my flight. So last night, I placed a plate of reheated scallion dumplings and a glass of Pinot Noir on my coffee table, plopped on the couch, opened my laptop, and fired up my VPN.

Whenever I sit down to do work, I always have this moment of reluctance, during which a little elf makes herself comfortable on my right shoulder and chides me for attempting to pretend I’m a productive individual. “Why bother analyzing those marketing results, and plotting them on pretty graphs? Nobody cares and none of this is really important. Call one of your friends instead,” she suggests.

Who am I to ignore my elf? I only have to spend two days with the marketing directors. The elf is with me all the time. So the only logical thing to do is whatever she says.

I call David. I've only known David for a short period of time, but we have long, involved conversations and yell at each other as if we’ve known one another since birth. David is a consultant and videographer who lives in Elizabeth, NJ. David’s parents are both American – his father is black, and his mother is white. He grew up in New York City.

David was talking about his videographical assignment in Connecticut that day. He was tired and aggravated by the day’s commute, and made several grammatical errors as he was recounting his trip. In my previous life in which I had a meaningful job, I was a journalist and editor, and any abuse of the English language, however slight or unintended, is like nails scraping across a chalkboard to me.

I then unwittingly committed a grave mistake. If I could take it back, I would. But now it is too late.

I asked David, “Have you read Eats, Shoots and Leaves?”

Without skipping a beat, David declared, “I HATE that book. Do you have it? Open it and turn to page 51.”

"Um, now?"

"YES. Right now."

This was a reaction I totally was not anticipating. I scrambled to my bookshelf, located the volume, and opened it to said page.

On it, the author, Lynne Truss, was giving examples of improper use of the possessive (or lack thereof) that she’s seen in books or on public signage. Categorized under "Dangling expectations caused by incorrect pluralisation:" she cites:

• "Pansy's ready (is she?)
• Cyclist's only (his only what?)
• Please replace the trolley's (replace the trolley's what?)

"and, best of all:

• Nigger's out (a sign seen in New York, under which was written, wickedly: 'But he'll be back shortly')"
  

You could almost hear David seething. “So, WHAT do you think about THAT?”

“Um, not much at all. It’s just a list of grammatical errors she’s seen.” Actually, I was trying to avoid admitting I couldn't understand what was the grammatical error she was pointing out. There's no dangling expectation there -- "Nigger's out" translates to "Nigger-is-out [of the store or other establishment]", right? That makes sense, doesn't it?

“She shouldn’t use the word ‘nigger’,” David insisted.

“Well, she’s not. She’s quoting someone else who was using it, and was doing so not because they were using that word, but because they were making a mistake in use of the possessive.”

“I can’t believe this doesn’t upset you!”

It didn’t. And this incited David to launch into a whole diatribe about how wrong that word is, and then suggest, in an extremely presumptuous and righteous manner, that I didn’t understand his point of view because I had been shielded from racism when I was growing up.

Um, hold on there, asshole. WHAT??

After some very heated back-and-forth during which I established he had no fucking clue what he was talking about, we agreed, although both of us come from racially mixed, middle class backgrounds, that I, a Hispanic/Black/White female of Caribbean parents who grew up in the suburbs, have a different perspective than he, a Black/White male of American parents who grew up in the city.

And I also must point out that, despite the fact that these issues are about race, I think the single most influential factor in the divide in our experience (meaning, this particular one between David and me -- I'm not making a sweeping generalization here) was gender. Men and women experience race differently.

But someone walking by the two of us might guess we think alike, because we look, "ethnically", alike.

Nope.

I also made a valiant attempt to take up David's argument. It was obvious he felt very strongly about Ms. Truss's use of the quote, and it had to do with the context of its usage and David's own experience with abusive language and abusive people. After hinting at some of the events I've experienced (which will all be recounted here), and therefore defending myself against his "you-haven't-suffered" onslaught, we discussed the general usage of the term "nigger", and how it can make one feel when one has been called a nigger, by someone other than a black person (usage of the term "nigger" amongst black people is another subject area entirely -- I will not get into that here, and maybe I never will).

We came to a truce of sorts, centered around the following idea: it really doesn't matter how innocuous an author's usage or quoting of the term "nigger" may be -- the word is LOADED and should be used sparingly, and NEVER in the breezy way Ms. Truss does. She has PLENTY of examples, I'm sure, of Dangling Expectations Caused by Incorrect Pluralisation. The "nigger" example was not necessary to illustrate her point, and therefore, would have been better left omitted. Certainly, it should not have been highlighted with the finale-like phrase, "and best of all".

My apologies, Ms. Truss, I know you are just trying to make a point about bad grammar. But you exercised poor judgement in doing so.

That Harold Ford Commercial

Writing about race and race relations in America is a tricky, tricky, tricky thing. There are so many ways in which I could fuck up writing about it, and, even if I do manage to write something that’s spot on, there are even more ways in which readers will misinterpret it.

I’m not an authority on race relations, and know way too little about history and sociology to make any attempts to offer theories or explanations for why things are the way they are. I’m just going to stick to writing down my experiences and observations, from the perspective of someone who’s the ethnic equivalent of a pizza with everything. Hopefully my readers will find this stuff helpful, or enlightening, or, at least, entertaining.

How do I navigate this minefield? I’ve written a few pages of notes for myself, listing dozens of incidents and situations I’d like to recount and comment on, and I’ve organized them into broad topics. Which topic should I delve into first? I should probably start with one of the simpler ones, so I can ease myself into the more controversial topics later.

So…let’s begin with…interracial dating! That’s plenty simple and uncontroversial. I’m off to a great start.

Obviously, I’m just kidding. The real reason I’m going to begin with one of many missives I’ll post on The Topic of Interracial Dating is because I like to pepper my blog musings with references to current events. I read the New York Times and the New Yorker religiously, and find myself wanting to comment on what I see there. And there is a veritable plethora of material right now in the coverage of 2006 campaigning. I’m really enjoying the neverending articles about this season’s mudslinging. I’ve been meaning to write George Allen a letter to personally thank him for his Macaca comment – that whole incident, and the ensuing firestorm, were really priceless. The world’s greatest comic minds couldn’t write something that funny.

But back to The Topic. I’m watching, with great interest, the Tennessee campaign of Harold Ford, Jr. for the Senate seat. Republican strategists have handed him some incredibly valuable publicity (though he probably didn’t need it to win) in broadcasting an incredibly disastrous commercial that was intended to discredit his integrity and general fitness as a candidate. Instead, it only succeeded in broadcasting how clueless Republicans are when it comes to understanding the perspective of the American public.

You’ve undoubtedly heard about this commercial, so I’m not going to recount the whole thing, but basically it’s a series of fake interviews with everyday people on the street, making comments about Mr. Ford. One of the “interviews” is with an attractive blonde woman who says she met Mr. Ford at a Playboy party. After her come several other people, and then the commercial ends with this bitch winking into the camera, inviting Mr. Ford to give her a call sometime.

Now, the reason this is an interesting episode for me to write about is not because it’s an easy target for criticism of racist Republicans. It’s because, when I read about it, I had a completely different take on what kind of reaction the commercial would elicit. Every article I read talked about how the commercial was playing to white people’s fears about interracial dating. But my reaction was, “They must be trying to turn black women against him.”

Huh?

You heard me.

This may sound bizarre, but I think an extremely effective way to elicit a visceral negative reaction from American black women against a black male candidate would be to suggest that he is cavorting with white women, ditzy blonde partygoers in particular. I don’t have any statistics to back up this statement, but I think that the ratio of people vehemently opposed to interracial dating is higher amongst American black women than it is amongst any segment of the American white population, save perhaps those who crawl around with white hoods over their heads or swastikas carved into the backs of their necks. I don’t share this same bias against interracial dating (since pretty much any date I go on qualifies as being interracial, just by virtue of my own ethnic make up), but it is my understanding, from what I’ve seen and heard, that a black man dating a white woman is a high crime, if you are looking at the couple through the eyes of an American black female. If this viewpoint is completely new to you, put "Jungle Fever" and "Waiting to Exhale" on your Netflix list.

Even if I completely understood why they feel this way, it would be impossible for me to share that viewpoint, since different people slap different labels on me depending, amongst other things, whom I am with. Sometimes I am the White Girl that the Black Guy is dating, sometimes I am the Black Girl that the White Guy is dating, sometimes I’m the Spic that the Black Guy is Dating, sometimes I am the Gringa that the Latin Guy is Dating, sometimes I’m the Spic that the White Guy is dating, sometimes I’m the Mixed Girl that the Mixed Guy is dating…it’s all relative.

I’ve had the chance to experience the racial subtexts from three different vantages: a) me observing how other people are viewing/treating me when I’m with a guy; b) me observing my own thoughts and feelings when the Black Guy I Am With declares his appreciation for blonde beauty; and c) me observing black women (and Latinas, as well) observing other black-man-white-woman couples. I’ll give an example of each in my next post. I’ve written enough for the moment in my first foray into this topic.

Wow. This is more fun than….than a bikini wax.