The Perversion of Public Transportation

For such an over-sexed culture the idea of public affection is taboo unless you're out of the country. We invite love in but refuse to put up with the necessary act of love when it doesn't involve us... given that you're not a voyeur. I distinctly remember talking on the phone with a friend 2 years ago explaining that when in a relationship I like to show off my affection; I felt 'entitled' to spread my love around.  Since then, my views have changed. The fact of the matter is onlookers will find more delight in a couple laughing honestly together than one sucking face. No one wants to see your love... they just want you to get away. It's an uncomfortable party that we've been invited to without the option to decline. Unfortunately, it seems that public affection most often takes place within a closed area such as the subway, a.k.a the 'T". The T has become this common ground for lovers and quite frankly, I'm a little distraught.

Her newly forming dreadlocks spilled over her shoulder and I could see wisps of hair near her ear that hadn't yet clung to the lump on her head. Her innocent pearly face was shadowed by the bag of clothes hiding her shape. Maybe it's because I thought she was a lesbian but I wasn't expecting the kiss to come from a petite sized male with feminine lips and a bold black fedora. I averted my eyes and sympathized with the woman across from me, obviously struck with embarrassment. He kissed her hard, not passionately, like someone who had just learnt the art and wasn't familiar with anything besides the suction cup effect. They were one of those couples that you'd be jealous of because it was inevitable they'd end up married except you're too turned off by the repeated offenses to your eyes to consider their transcendental love. And yet, you can't pull your eyes away or else you risk the question of how did these two end up together to be left unanswered. However, as disconcerting as it is to be in the imprisonment of the T while a couple strains to conceal their libido, I find little comparison to the audible moans and groans of an oblivious couple. 

There's an unspoken assumption in the female community that when participating in sexual activities one should retire to the boy's room as to not disrupt the prude order existing within female dormitories. While most women consider it inappropriate to kiss someone in a room with others nearby, men simply sexile their roommate with no sympathy. After a night of partying I curled up in my bed unable to go to sleep. It so happens that our walls are quite thin, not to mention the pipe that runs through the three adjacent dorms, impeccable at carrying sound. Before long I began to hear the soft grunts and pleading words of a stranger nearby. I heard it all like a whisper in my ear and while amazed at the audacity of this girl, I was more alarmed by the clarity at which I could hear her voice. Twenty minutes later she was finished... needless to say, this was not my pick of a bedtime story. 

While I'm not the perfect poster child for refined behavior I know how to not grab my boyfriend's crotch in public and can keep quiet when need be. Is it really too much to ask for an undisturbed subway ride and a good nights sleep!?! In the next week I'll turn a blind eye to such vulgar displays of love given that St. Valentine is coming this weekend. But bear in mind, if anyone else decides to come... keep it to yourself.

New Year, New Life

I've spent the first semester of my freshman year of college puking, reading about a dangerous love triangle, nearly getting involved in my own dangerous love triangle, not sleeping in my own bed, sulking about my lack of grammar skills, cutting fake paper snowflakes, eating 800 calorie stir fry from the surprisingly decent cafeteria, avoiding workout routines despite the newly built fitness and recreation center near to my dorm, loving, loathing, studying in the Harry Potteresque Boston library, meeting new people, seeing snow fall, freezing due to my lack of inappropriate winter attire, becoming addicted to Qdoba, learning more about myself, talking at 4 in the morning, dressing up as a hot-tranny mess, dressing up as a georgia peach, dressing up as a slutty Hermione Granger, suffering from motion sickness on the subway, forming my gay posse, drinking cheap wine, dancing in a bar with no one around, writing a ransom note, suppressing anxiety about the future, eating goldfish and peanut M&Ms, and not writing. 

Building this new life from scratch has helped me see that being uncomfortable with someone shows just as much about ourselves as when we are completely at ease with our company. I've rarely had to be surrounded by people I hardly know and to be forced into the situation where I choose my friends, I choose how much I want to spill about myself, I choose, to some extent, how I am to be perceived. But learning how to be comfortable in my own skin has led me to question who's skin am I really living in?  I come from a world of 5 star hotels, drunken escapades in Europe, $400 Hermes scarfs, bitch fights, witty and politically incorrect banter, and a Mercedes Benz. But in Boston, I hold back this part of myself to share a dorm with two girls, eat cafeteria food, hide any hint of a fashionable wardrobe with a patchy black ankle length L.L. Bean coat, and I absolutely love it... well, the coat is debatable. So, who is who? Is the person I'm showing these people who I really am or am I obligated to share more of my past. Do our pasts really make us who we are today or do they warn us who not to become?

The thing about home is the past shows up in the present no matter how many new memories you've made. There is this unrelenting stigma attached to every move I make and I'm desperately afraid that some of the mistakes/judgments/decisions from my past will reveal themselves to my life in Boston. Not simply in the sense of monetary earnings (or that of my parents'), but how I've conducted myself in the past four years; who I've hurt, who I wished I could..., how I've handled situations in general. 

The strong cultural difference between Charlotte and Boston is one that I'm reluctant to address. I put myself out on the line even when I simply try to mention it to the boyfriend in Boston. One of the most respected traits I can find in someone is an ability to withhold judgments. Unfortunately, this is a rare quality in the human race and I'm at a risk to alter how everyone sees me in the North if I expose the more outward qualities of my disposition. The girl that Boston knows me as is to a certain extent exactly who I am or ,moreover, who I come off as. But the way in which I think of myself is lacking when I'm in Boston. I'm tougher and more sarcastic than I claim to be and I'm hoping this is less of a dumbing down of my personality than it is just waiting for some sign of comfortability to seep through. I feel as though I haven't completely broken through to my full character in Boston and while my personality at home seems to be how I measure how I'm supposed to act, it is also heavily influenced by the people who surround me; the same people who are not around me when I'm at school. 

Who we become results from balancing our pasts with the present and finding the core elements in ourselves that only we know. Our guilty consciouses, our inner most thoughts, our underlying desires tell us how we have been molded and how we will mature. That's not to say that dressing up as a slutty Hermione Granger and eating disgustingly good burritos means I'm going to become a fat prostitute but maybe it does mean that I admire a commanding female character and a healthy appetite. I have holes that have yet to be filled but for now I can definitively say I am happy with the choices I've made in Boston and the life I've just begun to live.