Virtual Gypsyz

October 29, 1998
Today I went to the Florence Crittenton School for teen moms. Usually I know what to expect when someone gives me a brief description of some place, but for some reason, I wasn’t prepared emotionally for what I would see. I experienced three separate emotions:

1. An underlying connection with many of the girls because
a. Yo soy Latina, como muchas de las muchachas;
b. I look young, and I could blend in easily
c. I could have easily been there because of my rocky 13, 14, 15 year old stages

2. Alienated, which is the opposite of the above feeling. I could see the elevator eyes on me, the curious stares, trying to figure out whether I was one of then, or one of those dirty middle class Latinas. Even though I was dressed nicely, as a Latina usually dresses, I still wasn’t dressed or made up the way they were. Would they want to talk to me? Or is my accent too annoyingly anglo? I told one girl, to try to connect with her (desperately), “I like your shoes. I have almost the same ones, but with butterflies on the heels.” She nodded smugly…huge chip on her shoulder.

I wanted to ask some of the girls if their boyfriends were still around, when they ad their babies and how they dealt with pregnancy, birth and now motherhood. Would it be possible to revisit this site and develop some sort of trust?

There was one girl who looked all of 14 or 15, and she spooked me because she looked just like me. She played listlessly with her one-month-old looking daughter. I wondered if she was bored. I wondered what she looked like while she conceived this child. Did she enjoy the sex? Was it her first time? How did he court her?

3. Embarrassment. My co-worker embarrassed me. It was like she was trying to stand out as the all mighty philanthropist looking down upon the peon needy groundlings. She is so unnatural, she makes dorky comments and she dresses so that her clothes speak for her economic status. Fuck her little dress code. I say dress according to what the people are wearing. Now more than ever I want to show my color and be proud of it. Fuck her business casual jackets. She hasn’t a clue of what she’s doing. What are her motives for being involved in this type of work? My co-VISTA says it’s about low self-esteem. She knows she’s above all the people she works with and so she pulls power trips and talks down to them to show her superiority. She knows she wouldn’t ever cut it in a corporate setting. She’d be eaten alive.

Afterwards, we went to a day care center on the Auraria campus. Fewer emotions, but interesting all the same when compared to the first day care/school. The facilities were much nicer and roomier. The classrooms actually had nice Macs. The kids were really diverse and were mostly three and four years old. The rooms were decorated for Halloween, and you could see how money can change the whole child development process.

Later in the day, I went with my co-VISTAs to a seniors Halloween party at the Volunteers of America Sunset Towers. I thought it would be boring, but I was wrong. We met a woman named Martha who went on and on about her sons and travels, but she was really funny. Then Eddie Herrera sexually harrassed me when he got up in my face and kissed me on my forehead. It’s weird. Why did I feel ashamed? I started to think about that possibility of dirty old men and the way I dressed. This job is so complicated in regards to dress. I guess regardless of what I wear, I am young and invariably a dirty old man target.

Then Bhong spotted me and I went to her table to meet her friends Mary, Margaret and Gloria. The first two were both current Foster Grandparents who work in a hospital with newborns and premies. They love their jobs. Mary is Latina and has 10 kids and 65 grandchildren. Sounds like my grandmother. Margaret was a white woman, and I guess I was exhibiting preferential treatment toward Mary, so I don’t know Margaret’s story.

I danced with Bhong, who is so cute. She says, “I love you” all the time. She moved here from Korea 13 years ago. I guess making $800/month is a better life for her. Amazing.

October 30, 1998
Today I decided to tap into the Latino community. I want to give a presentation in Spanish. I need to prepare it and work on my grammar. It’s going to be a challenge, but isn’t that what I’m here for? I’m the only person of color here, and it’s my responsibility to reach out to other people of color, given the fact that they make up 30 percent of Denver’s population. First, I’m going to translate the literature into Spanish. I should bring my Spanish grammar book and dictionary to work on Monday. And at night I’m going to the Floricanto Literary Festival featuring the Poet Laureate of Aslan!

January 26, 1999
I’m already bored with AmeriCorps, Volunteers of America and the Foster Grandparent Program. I look at the people I work with, and I wonder how they get up every morning knowing they will be working the same old job today, tomorrow, 10 years from now. I’m already looking toward October wishing it would race toward me so I can move on. I feel like I don’t want to work anymore. My father just retired, so maybe I’m displacing his newfound freedom inot my own psyche. I feel unenthusiastic about even going to swimming or Carlos’s latest opportunity to schmooze with the big B-O-Yz in NY. His career is taking off while mine stagnates. The momentum I once had, especially right after I graduated, has somehow disappeared. I’m so bored. My mom says that people who get bored are stupid. What is she really saying? Busy people are smart? Or everything you do is what you make it? I’m sure it’s the latter. Because it’s not that I’m not busy. Surely I have enough CRAP to do until the end of my service. It’s the monotony of it all. It’s the apathy. It’s all the hard work that goes to waste. There’s only so much you can do until you’re blue and fed up. It’s time to focus on something different. I’m tired of recruitment. I’m tired of PR. There’s only so much I can do before I’m running out of ideas, feeling tired all the time and dreading coming to work everyday. I’m gettin burnt out on making copies of shitty-ass flyers and posting them all over the world so everyone can ignore them.

What can I do that’s different? We have all these presentations and trainings coming up so I am extremely limited on creativity. I want to do site visits. I want to observe more closely how our Foster Grandparents work with school-aged children.

I feel like asking to leave early everyday. I’m tired of making $300 every two weeks. I know I work with people who live on less, but my youth and health require me to live on more. I can’t afford to buy a car, my insurance is sky-rocket high; it’s useless to even think that I can try to buy one. I feel like going unconscious for a few months.

February 18, 1999

My friend Catherine from Michigan wrote me an interesting email today…it’s weird how I connected to her. We met at the Ann Arbor Master’s Swim team, but then it turned out I had met her brother at Princeton a few years before when I was visiting my friend Erik from high school…

“I am reading this really interesting book which you should check out. It is called “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsh. You may have heard of it. There is this part which they discuss how we have our child rearing all wrong. We should have our children in our 20s and 30s as we do, but that the elders (grandparents or close friends in the community) should take a large part in raising the children. Our mistake is that we have children and then try and raise them when we are not done being parented ourselves. The idea that we are supposed to be an adult that has it all together, at age 21 is totally stupid. We are still merely children at this point. True wisdom comes with age, and those 50+ are the ones that can teach children much better than we, in our 20s-40s, who are struggling to find ourselves, can do. Not to say that we should ditch our own kids, but maybe we should pay more attention to that phrase, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ It also talks about how in ancient societies, they were more matriarchal and when they turned  patriarchal is when the world turned to shit! (just kidding) but really, it is the male-run society that teaches us not to be compassionate, loving and to surpress all our emotions because they are ‘weak.’ And thus…we have American Society!!! So you’re saying, what’s my point? My point is that you are 23 and you are still a baby!

I am still learning too, but between now and when you turn my age, or especially 30 years old, you are going to grow leaps and bounds! You are going to shape your ideas and figure out who you are. College only does this a little bit, but your 20s are HUGE for doing that. Lots of other people I know have told me this. I have learned so much in the past five years that I could never have learned from school. I think it is great that you want to go home, because you will learn about yourself through watching your parents. You will see what they have made you into, and what parts you don’t like and what parts you do. You will view them fro a whole different perspective now that you have been away. Learning about yourself is a real eye opener. It gives you perspective and perception like you didn’t have before. I know you are a spiritual person, but I also know you are still formulating your ideas about God and what all that stuff means to you (NOT what you were taught it means) which is why I recommend that book as a starting point. I am starting to believe that there really are no mistakes, as a perfectionist this is so hard to accept, but just because it does not all look perfect, doesn’t mean it’s not part of a perfect plan.

OK, have I been totally babbling or what? I am just totally excited about the Peace Corps and everything so I’m in the mood to babble, I guess. I don’t mean to be too preachy, but I know how stubborn you can be. You think you have to have all the answers right now, and have too much pride to admit that you don’t, and maybe ask for help or advice. Sometimes I think you think you are a 70-year-old lady trapped in the body of a 23-year-old.

Write when you get a chance.”

February 25, 1999
I think I woke up this morning. I’m not entirely Melanie today. As the NPR morning news blasted into my ear like an unwelcomed rooster, I lay lifeless in my bed, wondering why my breaths were only half as deep, why my blood is only half as thick, why the sheets were only half undone. I am a partial writer, a fraction of a drama queen, an iota of a Puerto Rican, a smidgen of a Christian, a slice of a swimmer. I am a smorgasbord of bits that don’t make up a whole.

Picturing Carlos standing behind a podium, talking into an echoing microphone, sweating into his t-shirt and vest with 1,000 brown eyes penetrating him makes me feel whole. I can feel his nervousness, excitement, adrenaline rushing through my own veins and then all of a sudden, 2,500 miles doesn’t seem all that far. I am eating pizza. I am watching everyone on the street. Breathing in the cold NY air and riding the subways.

February 26, 1999
I am totally freaking out. My body is falling apart. My mind has become one-tracked but the love train isn’t due back until Sunday. Instead of passing the time with work and other people’s company, all I want to do is sit at home and wait for him. Dependence is such a crippling feeling. Without him I am nothing. Maybe that’s not healthy, but what can I do to change? My dad is just like this when my mom is out of town. He is nonfunctional without her. Like father, like daughter. I need to spread out my eggs more evenly.

June 14, 1999
Keeping myself occupied since I moved to Denver hasn’t been all that challenging. I have so many more friends than I thought. Saturday night I went out drinking with VISTA Molly, her roommate Candice, their friend Mika from Denmark and VISTA Dan.

We all met up at Governor’s Park where Manny and Michelle were supposed to meet me but they never did. But we had fun regardless. Governor’s Park wasn’t very happening so we shifted over to Park Tavern, Molly’s neighborhood bar where “everybody knows her name.” I was the new girl in town who everyone wanted to meet. I’m such a Leo sometimes, it’s sick.

The attention gave me a high better than the beer. Bull ring nose boy wanted to meet me but must’ve had his balls pierced too because he had his friend Andrea be the middle “man.” On his behalf, she chatted me up, which made me feel like SHE was hitting on me.

I was awful. I didn’t mention a boyfriend. She found out through Candice, thank God. Andrea was a babe, and in my drunken state, I was actually kicking around her offer to go back to her place. I’m awful, I know it. But when I went to the restroom and sat on the toilet (my hands, actually), all I could think about was the boyfriend and that I wish he he was still here with me and WE were together in Denver instead of just me by myself.

That moment of sobriety finally kicked me to my senses and I was able to summon up the energy to thwart off Andrea and nose bull ring boy away from me.

Saturday was fun, but it left me with a small hangover and not much desire to go biking in Boulder today. But I had made the plans, so I needed to go and I’m so glad I did.

It was such a fun new experience to go mountain biking. Justin from swimming was my tour guide for the day. He helped me pick out a helmet and a bike light at the store and then we went up to a trail that was supposed to be novice, but it wasn’t for my weak ass. Riding those steep rocky hills tore up my legs and often I felt like puking or fainting so I had to stop a lot. It was really hard, but great exercise. The view at the top was so worth it: Boulder Canyon. And the ride down was even more of a reward. It was like skiing because you’re going so fast downhill and there are lots of rocks and moguls. I wasn’t scared because I was wearing my new helmet that I bought on clearance for $20! I’m glad I didn’t fall. That would’ve sucked. (that sounded like so 8th grade. Dur).

After mountain biking, we checked out a reservoir which was breathtaking and then Justin dropped me off at Robert’s. We went to the Golden Lotus for dinner with Curt and Jeremy and of course it was quite entertaining with those two involved. Robert showed me his college photo albums which included lots of photos of my lover. It made me miss him and being in Boulder made me feel nostalgic.

Tonight when we talked, he expressed his insecurities about me “having all this fun.” He’s afraid I’ll forget about him and prefer this lifestyle over ours together. I reassured him that it was OK for him to feel like that. God knows how often I’ve felt that way myself. He said he was jealous about my outing with Justin and it was killing him that he felt that way. He knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but it made him feel inadequate in outdoor-sy kind of stuff. I told him this made me realize how much I didn’t enjoy his mere company as much as I should have because I was always so concerned with WHAT we were doing. Now I realize that you have friends to enjoy things with you that your lover doesn’t necessarily love. So simple. But today I really understand it because I experienced it.———>>>>>>>>>>