I spent a lot of time walking around the grocery store this afternoon. I ended up walking out with a lemon parfait and a Diet Pepsi after almost 45 minutes of trying to decide what I would actually *eat.* That’s what happens when you’re on Adderrall and you go to a grocery store. You intend to buy groceries, and nothing looks good. Plus, I was absolutely lost in thought. I couldn’t have shopped at gunpoint because I was so knocked for a loop emotionally. The reason I walked out with so little is that the longer I spent lost in thought, the more demand avoidant I got. It happens to me frequently, a sign of the neurodivergent brain. If I can’t think about anything else, I can’t do anything else. That’s because autism is famous for monotropic thought processes.
I could not pick out food I would like to eat in the future when my appetite is so suppressed that I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate. This is also because I get demand avoidance around cooking, because I don’t like going downstairs. One of my roommates and I are tight. One of my roommates and I are now in a war because she expects me to clean up after her in the bathroom, to the point where she won’t even change the toilet roll.
I can’t remember the date, but the time I got together with Zac before Burns Nicht, I was at his house for two nights. Since I knew I was going to be gone, I didn’t change it just to see if she would.
She didn’t.
We have cameras in all the public areas, so people would notice if this was happening in the kitchen (it does). I have been her maid for nine years, except for the day the maid comes. It won’t take three hours before there’s hair all over the vanity because she has washed her hair in the sink.
The shower is a mess of her hair, because I don’t shower that often in the winter. It’s too big a swing in terms of sensory environment and if I was going somewhere, of course I’d pull out all the stops. Mostly, I just want to avoid cleaning up after someone else.
She will not talk to me about this issue at all, because she thinks I’m unclean (she’s a Trumper, a Modi fan, and has so far made me aware of all the cultural stigmas that come with being queer in India. It has never happened to me before. One of my previous housemates was a Nigerian. No issue whatsoever, and their taboos are probably worse than India.
Said Nigerian was a doctor who went to medical school in Crimea, so he’s the only black person I know who is also fluent in Russian. Oh, and Arabic because he worked in Saudi for years. I don’t remember whether he was a GP for the populace or whether he was working in a palace taking care of the royals.
My hatred of the Saudi monarchy knows no bounds, but I am not insulting the people of Saudi Arabia. The people have nothing to do with how they’re governed. What I know for sure (because my landlady is Lebanese) is that families in the Middle East are all about hospitality and being welcoming. For instance, if I could get into Iran, there are a lot of people who’d want to welcome me because they have no beef with the American government. A minority would be trying to peg me as intelligence, shouting “death to America. Death to CIA.”
Actually, I can’t remember if they said that last part in “Parts Unknown” or whether I’m mixing up the Iran episode and the first few minutes of “Argo.”
Incidentally, there is an “Argo” quote for every occasion… but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be when Jack and Tony go to present their idea for the film crew. Right before Jack opens the door to what is presumably a 7th floor kind of office, he says, “careful. It’s like talking to those two old fucks from The Muppets.”
Iran’s continuing ire at us is a real thing if they’re still protesting us exfiltrating the Shah. He lived out his days in Great Falls, VA, working for us (presumably) because one of the reasons we exfiltrated him was that he had cancer that he knew would kill him with the medical treatment in Iran. So, we got him to the US and that was the end of that.
I understand that the Iranis have the right to hate our guts for it, too. I don’t have to have a dog in this fight, because it’s been going on since I was two. No one, especially me, is going to figure it out. The best outcome would be coming to an agreement at least good enough to reopen the embassy. But that’s a pipe dream, like asking Israel to stop bombing the hell out of Jerusalem, because Netanyahu doesn’t seem to care who dies. If he has to kill his own people to make the Palestinians pay, he doesn’t lose sleep over it.
They came to a sort-of deal in the 70s, in which the Palestinians were given land. Good to go. But then Israelis were encouraged to move into those neighborhoods so that they could push the Palestinians out.
“You can’t do that. We live here.”
“Do you have a flag?”
-Eddie Izzard
We could solve a lot of this by cooking together, as Anthony Bourdain showed us for many years. We are more alike than we are different. Even the Israelis and Palestinians have learned this. There are many, many integrated neighborhoods where Israelis and Palestinians live side by side and never spout that Zionist shit, because they live in the real world… the one where Muslims lives are not worth less to Jews because they know them… not like the Israeli government.
Israel is a recognized state. Palestine isn’t. Therefore, Israel has all the military power they could ever want. Both Palestinians and the Israelis who support them are the Resistence. Zionism has been used to great effect, both in Israel and in the United States, to not only try and push out the Palestinians, but have the world’s full support to do it.
In America, this leads to Evangelical Christian money being pumped into Israel because they think that since Christianity came from Judaism, that means we are like, the same.
I don’t have time for that bullshit. This is not our fight, and we are clearly picking sides. There has to be a reason, I’ll tell you that. I just don’t know what it is. Because that’s what generally happens to me. I criticize based on what’s public, and find out later what really happened, through either the news or an op being declassified so you can look it up online.
So, maybe I’m telling you all the wrong things because there’s more to the chessboard than I can see at present. But this is what I think based on what I know *right now.*
And as I’ve said before, I dive up and down in my writing because I’m using a technique that Louis L’Amour taught me. He said to just start writing and let the faucet drip. Say whatever comes to your mind, because eventually you’ll hit on something worth exploring. For me, that shows itself in having random connections with stories in my brain, and some of them are not pleasant.
Therefore, I start feeling anxious about what I’m writing, and I come back up. Then, as I’m sitting with my negative feelings enough to breathe, I can dive back down again.
Because if I take the blog prompt from this morning literally, my favorite foods to cook are the ones I learned from Dana. She was my first chef, and I wouldn’t know anything about cooking on a professional level without her. So, I take time with breakfast.
My housemates called me “Pancake Girl” for a year.
Stories That Are All True 