quelquefois

If there’s anything I’ve learned in my time here, it’s to get everything down in writing. Whenever I retell the rather inane details of my day to a Chinese friend, followed with “So he promised he would…” The Chinese friend immediately fires back, “You got that down on paper, right?” Usually, I would respond with something about how I could trust the person, that their word is good enough, et cetera. And usually, it was true.

However, this last event has changed the way I look at promises made by Chinese people forever. While searching for a new apartment, I stumbled upon a little 50sqm gem right between 东四十条 Dongsishitiao and 东直门 Dongzhimen. I asked the agent whether there was a couch and other furniture included, and he replied, “Yes, of course.” The next day I went in to sign the contract, and asked the landlady when she could move a couch in.

She responded, aghast, “I never said there would be a couch!”
“But the agent told me that you would provide one? Where am I going to sit?”
The bickering continues for several minutes. To which the agent interjects and says, “I will buy you a couch, okay?”

My situation was complicated. I was originally leaving China, but received a job offer that would keep me here for a little longer. By the time I realised I should find a new place before I went home, the pressure was on to find a new place and move everything in in less than 72 hours (yes, it’s possible). Thus, I signed the contract, moved in, took his word, and left for two weeks—in theory giving the agent ample time to secure the right couch.

I return to China and call him after settling in. ”Oh, hi,“ he begins, “I will work on it, it’s been busy here, I’ll get back to you later this week.”
He did not.
I called him on Friday, and asked, “So…how’s the couch search coming along?” He said he needed some extra time. Fine.
No word from him all weekend. Then I call six times on Monday and he does not pick up. I call him ten times on Tuesday, then switch phones and call. He picks up immediately. I say, “Why are you ignoring my calls? Do you not have any respect?” To which he responds, “Hello? HELLO?! Hello?” And hangs up on me. I proceed to frantically call him back-to-back-to-back until he finally turns his phone off.

Consider this lesson learned.

Karma will get him back, and I may expedite that process through one or more of the following:

• Post his number on personal ads as a beautiful single Chinese woman wanting to marry a rich, white male;
• Advertise “special services” with his phone number;
• Make stickers advertising the purchasing of your unwanted pharmaceutical drugs and post them everywhere ;
• Or find out where he works and punch him in the face

Yes, I am working with limited resources here (his phone number, his name), but if the 人肉搜索 human flesh search engine has shown me anything, the power of Google can never be underestimated.

I really don’t know where some of my ideas come from. For example, in order to keep from growing a resistance to medicine’s effectiveness and subjecting my body to unnatural chemicals, I have adopted the take-if-you-really-need-it approach to medicine. It’s as if my taking a few days or weeks of medicine will change human DNA for generations to come. But seriously, it’s not a bad idea, right?

But recently, I have found that bad things (be it sickness, bruises, or men) don’t go away by themselves. I thought I could trust my body or time to heal blemishes and wounds, but I was wrong.

I. Sickness
Last winter in Harbin, I made my third trip to one hospital (fourth trip overall) after the doctor made me take a CAT scan and a breathing test. I was suffering from breathing problems. She told me that I needed to spend at least one week living in the hospital to get medicine administered via IV for my sickness. Excuse me, what? Are you just trying to milk me for my money? I refused to pay exuberant amounts of money for something that can be solved without needles.

Upon arriving in Beijing, I saw a special Ears, Nose, and Throat doctor at a private hospital. He reviewed the x-rays, CAT scans, and breathing tests from Harbin and said, simply, “You have bronchitis and sinusitis.” Was it really that easy? How come my disease was a complete mystery in Harbin? Then, upon taking three weeks of antibiotic prescriptions and starting antihistamines on a daily basis, I was almost back to normal.

II. Bruises
In November, I went snowboarding and, not realizing that snow in China (did I say snow? I meant ice) is nothing like the snow at Lake Tahoe, bruised my knees pretty badly. In fact, in retrospect I’m pretty sure that I had ruptured a blood vessel. I left it alone and hoped that, like all bruises, it would improve with time. However, last week, there had been no noticeable improvement in my legs. In fact, the bruise had spread to other parts of my leg.

In December, I went to a special doctor that deals with fracture wounds. They deemed nothing wrong with me, warned me to be more careful, and stuck a smelly herbal compound they created on my knee, told me to keep it on for five days, and that was that. The bruise faded, and the swelling subsided.

III. Men
Men (and women) also don’t go away without medicine. Sometimes that medicine is “ignore” or truth (e.g., “No, I do not want to be your girlfriend.”).

So, I have learned that medicine–be it a [smelly] homemade Chinese herbal remedy or a dose of truth–can do lengths, and there are certain circumstances when they are welcome saviors to dire situations.

I am notoriously bad at writing about events when they are relevant. But hey, at least it’s still April (barely). On April 1, I called my mom and told her that I was recently released from prison, and had to leave the country within 7 days. To say the least, she believed me and started to worry. Eventually, I said in a shaky voice, “可能是 (Perhaps it’s)。。。是因为 (it’s because)。。。APRIL FOOLS!”

She screamed at me, and later told me that her legs were shaking for me, because she knows that something like that could actually happen. Last year, I did something similar, when I told her that I joined the Army and would be deployed to Iraq after I graduate. I know, it’s cruel. I’ll think of something less nerve racking next year, even though she told me she wouldn’t fall for anything next year. We’ll see.

But my mom made a good point the following day: that things like this are possible. It was a stark reminder to indeed watch out for what I say and write.

Last Wednesday, a friend (named Jon) and I decided to take action against our aching backs and decided to get a massage. We had two choices: go to a hospital or to a massage parlour. One of our Chinese friends told us that there was only one masseuse at the hospital, so we opted for the parlour.

Once we entered the door we were a little sketched out. Men started trying to explain to us the different types of treatment. We finally decided on the 100 kuai (about $15 USD) 2-hour treatment. We went to our respective rooms to change.

The second I entered the ladies changing room, there was a half naked woman eating porridge and watching me. I have no idea why she was just sitting there half naked eating. Another lady asked if I wanted to shower before my massage. It seemed that if I chose to shower, I would have to do it while they watched me. I chose not to, and despite trying to find a corner to change, they watched me. Why? I have no clue.

I walked out and started to wait for Jon but the masseuses quickly rushed me into one of the massage rooms. There were about six beds separated by a half wall. In the room I was in, there were a few heavyset men smoking cigarettes and talking loudly. I was not very comfortable. The masseuse started to talk to me.

My masseuse asked me, “Are you Korean?”
“No, I am not.” I answered.
“Are you sure?”
“Look lady, I know what I am and I am not Korean.”
“Oh…well you look like a Korean. What are you then?”
“I’m American.”
“American? You don’t look American.”*

Once Jon came we started our massages. Highlights include her sticking her fingers into my ears, her putting her fingers close to my crotch, her climbing onto the massage table with me and massaging me wit her legs, her sitting on my ass and “massaging” my back (more like rocking back and forth on my ass), and ending with her lying on top of my back. I asked her if mostly men came in, and she replied, “Yes.” And as these incredibly unprofessional massaging techniques occurred, I realised that they were for the benefit of the male clients.

After the massage, I quickly changed back into my clothes. As I waited for Jon, I noticed that there was a board with 70 female masseuses’ head shots that men could choose from (there was only one male masseuse, and he only worked with feet). Jon later reported that the male changing room was more like a spa. There was a jacuzzi, Chinese chess, *two* floors, and many showers. My changing room was the size of a dorm room with a tiny shower.

Well, we learned our lesson. Our backs still ached, we were 100 kuai poorer, but we now know never to return to that place again.

*To the Chinese, being an American means you’re white, with deep-set eyes and a pointy nose.

I had been working on this entry for close to a year. Things just kept changing and other things kept coming up, but I feel like now is the right time to write about this.

In 2006, I gave all of my tampons and pads away to girlfriends. I didn’t need them. It certainly wasn’t menopause, and pregnancy was out of the question. I had hyperprolactinemia. In English, that means I have high prolactin levels in my blood. Prolactin is a hormone produced in the pituitary gland and is primarily responsible for milk production during lactation. 

Milk production during lactation? What the fuck does that mean? Was I lactating (the answer has consistently been: no)?  I spoke to doctor after doctor, from family practitioners to endocrinologists, to no avail. There have been endless MRIs, blood tests, acupuncture sessions, and explanations, over and over again. And, here’s the catch: of all the blood tests that I have done in the past two years, my prolactin levels are in normal range. 

I think know the root cause, but I do not know how to cure it. Junior year of high school, I swayed under the pressure of my then boyfriend who told me that I should just get on birth control so he didn’t have to slip on a condom every time we did it. My horny ex-boyfriend couldn’t cope any longer with the fact that he had to actually obtain condoms before he sticks it in.

My naïveté drove me to make an appointment with my doctor. I told her I wanted birth control for its beneficial side effects on skin. She prescribed Ortho Tri-cyclen Lo, which resulted in a month long period disaster. Ironic that the opposite effect happened, and I did not end up having sex once that month. Nevertheless, months went by, and everything was fine. (On a side note: if the quality of sex could have been a determinant of whether or not you’d get pregnant (with good meaning preggers, and bad meaning infertile), I would have been calling up adoption agencies and ask for every unadopted child available. It was the worst sex EVER.) Well…that commentary was not needed.

Even though I broke up with him by the end of my freshman year in college, I continued to take birth control pills for the convenience of predictable and lighter periods. By the middle of my sophomore year at Brown in 2005, the periods continued to get lighter, and I decided to give up the pills in hopes that things would go back to normal.

It didn’t.

In 2008, I still face the consequences of actions I made in 2003. Every time I came home from college or abroad I would be bombarded with blood tests, MRI scans, acupuncture, therapy, and consulting sessions with doctors. After three lousy years of that, I became dependent on 2.5 mg of bromocriptine every night. Did I mention that if I missed one dose by a few hours, I’m doomed to have a week-long period?

I took hormone pills, worried about how I’d never be able to bear children, and just generally felt like a menopausal woman. What was weird was that it would make brief re-appearances whenever I hooked up with someone. Soon, after my affairs ended, my period also disappeared. At least I knew then that I wasn’t completely broken.

A few months ago, I was still taking hormones. Now I have my period every other week. You heard right. EVERY. OTHER. WEEK. As if my uterus was trying to make up for lost time. And lord is it letting me know. I’m even considering going back ON the pill just to regulate this shit.

Fortunately, this summer I saw a wonderful doctor who helped me figure out what was going on. Yes, I did more lab tests and even got an ultrasound, but he deemed me perfectly healthy. Seeing no use for it, he told me to stop taking the hormone. I’ve been feeling more optimistic, even though my body is still figuring out that a period once every 28 days is fine. I still worry about the long term (i.e., children?), but I can’t dwell on that now. I have too much going for me.

I hope that I can be hormonally normal again soon. I’ve learned never to fuck around with nature using artificial hormones. And I suggest you think twice before listening to what those bitches say about “Yaz” on TV and getting only .560283 periods a year. 

How do I even begin to detail the last week of my life? I met a crazy but compassionate super gay rock star on the bus to D.C. While in D.C., I caught up with my dearest friends and had a wonderful time, despite the 106 degree heat and losing my phone. I came back from D.C. and started work. I bought Raid Ant & Cockroach killer and had a ball spraying my entire apartment and killing the small creepy crawlers on sight.

Some point during the week, I realised that I was also getting bumps on my body. I, being the psychosomatic nutcase that I am, self-diagnosed myself as having bedbugs. Once I did so, I started itching all over and noticing more red bumps show up. If that wasn’t enough, late Thursday evening, an American cockroach (you know, the huge, 2-inch long ones with wings, the one that can run up to 3.3 mph) crawled, ran, and flapped its horrible, horrible wings in my apartment and proceeded to give me a panic/anxiety attack. We probably made eye-to-antennae contact a few times when I shouted in dread whenever it moved.

How could I ever imagine sleeping with that (and potentially thousands more lurking in the building) crawling all over the place? I was going to make a run for it. The insect took a temporary leave behind some boxes on the far wall of the kitchen. I bolted into the bedroom to gather my essentials when it zooms back into my room. I am cornered into the bathroom.

Cue war cry and hysterical spraying of Raid Ant and Cockroach spray.

I was immobilized for forty or so minutes in the bathroom. Scared that any moment, it would pop up right by my toes. I finally convinced myself to grab everything, not look back, and get out.

And so began my three days as a homeless person.

It was about 2:30, 3 a.m. in the morning. I call 311, NYC’s local assistance line.
Me: Do you have any numbers of places I can stay tonight?
311 Operator: What? You mean like a homeless shelter?
Me: I’m not homeless….I meant a hotel.

I stayed at three different places on three different nights. First, I intruded on a friend of a friend’s apartment. I was relieved to know that I did not have bedbugs. This, unfortunately, did not solve the cockroach problem. The following day I didn’t go near my apartment. I booked lunches, dinners, apartment viewings, and arranged to sleep at another friend’s place.

Unfortunately again, I barely slept last night because one of her roommates found bed bugs. This time it was legit. Shit, I thought, where am I going to go at 4 a.m. in the morning? There was no way I was going to lie down on the couch in the common room. I tried calling hostels; I tried walking back and forth for as long as I could to pass the time; I contemplated sleeping at a 24-hour Starbucks or a train station; I also thought I could ride the subway back and forth until morning. Around 5:30 a.m., I passed out for twenty to thirty minutes on the kitchen table, where flies from the neighboring trash pile landed on my body.

I caved. I laid down for a few minutes, but then the flies started to land on my body again. It was about 6:30 a.m. I got up. Soon after, I noticed two white/reddish welts on my body. The fucking bedbugs! I left the apartment immediately.

It was a long, long, looonnng morning and afternoon. I could be standing and I’d start nodding off. But, wait, it ends well: I found a wonderful place in Astoria, Queens that I can immediately move into.

It was hard to stay positive throughout this entire process. Many times I broke down and cried, wishing that I could be home or with a friend. I was grateful for the emotional support I received from friends, but it was hard to fight this battle physically alone. I’m trying to put it all behind me, but there won’t be a moment in these coming weeks when I don’t mistake a black dot on the ground or a piece of dark lint on my shirt for a cockroach.

I was having a dream about cupcakes. Boxes of cupcakes with buttercream frosting smeared heavily on each sugared cupcake floated amongst the crowd. My friends and I were watching some mediocre performance put on by a school. I got my fingers around the sugary jewel and was just about to bite into it when, all of a sudden, loud bursts of a man and woman yelling pierce into my dream.

That’s because some Cantonese family is fighting outside my window and has been yelling for the past twenty minutes at each other. Many times in those past twenty minutes I wanted to shout what little Cantonese I knew at them and end it with a, “Shut up!”

It’s times like this I wish I had inquired about the “culture” of this area, as well as: a) physical dimensions of the apartment, b) the condition of the A/C unit, c) the presence of insects, and d) whether or not pigeons were breeding and nursing their young outside my window, before I decided to move in to this apartment. I guess this is a lesson for next time!

“I dropped my card in the irretrievable depths of the metal grates by the CIT” got me a brand new, shiny Brown ID card for free.

5th anniversary of Iraq invasion.

Even as a remote ordinary citizen far from the grueling reality of war and endless fear, I could easily be brought to tears/anger by the words and images from documentaries, news, speeches, books, this Iraq war timeline. And what I see is not even the half of it. Not even close.

When I can, I will do what I can to help. And I hope the rest of my generation does, too.

I hate it when I lose my ID card.