go back to canada

I'm at a point in my life now where I'm getting drunk and getting into arguments about immigration. I think if I were raised by less prudent parents I would be losing my shit and getting 40 days in a L.A. County jail for DUI, but as such my parents are loving and generous people and I am only feeling mildly ruined by my newly intemperate personality and accompanying willingness to tell closeted Republican Cubans that I'm planning to fuck them in the ass. I'm touchy and unforgiving - a long distance from the hippie boddhisattva that came out, hive-ridden and thinner, from my people of color meditation retreat two years ago where I learned to stop worrying and love my lot in life. The new me: black-suited Spiderman, just as ugly, just the same, except with a frond of emo hair and a new bad attitude.

Anyway, blah blah. What this means is that I got into an argument, four or five cups, not glasses, of wine into an 8-hour rooftop party, with a woman who works occasionally for a bakery at the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market. She was a Canadian student getting a Ph.D. at the New School. I said, "What do you think of Bread Alone?" She said, "They're great, but I don't know where the monks come from. [The monks who bake the bread alone.] I bet they're all illegals." Looks between two angry Asian girls were exchanged. "I mean, is there like some monk exception to the law?" Angry Asian girls arched eyebrows. One left. One stupidly stayed to duke it out with halfway chagrined Canadian, who sputtered through a bevy of excuses without ever apologizing. She said things like, "You know I'm illegal too because I'm not supposed to be working!" She said things like, "Your friend seemed really mad at me, but I just wanted you to know that I know what's up, I understand it! I totally understand all the arguments!" One should not talk about white privilege with Canadians when drunk, because one spews platitudes about whiteness. In fact, one should never talk about white privilege, because it all seems platitudinous to white people, it seems like just another case of someone playing a whole fucking deck of race cards, it seems like crying wolf, and they never, never, never understand it. It seems like crazy non-white people are jealous and saying mean things about people based on race, and it makes me seem like a crazy non-white person. And I have to say, "Wait, wait! You're not listening! You don't get it!" and then they respond, "No, I'm cool, I get it, I'm illegal too!" and then you wring your hands and think that you're being treated like the protagonist in Gaslight. No one believes you, everyone thinks you're crazy, Cassie, and then you drink more wine and throw up collard greens between your green shoes by the AC ducts on the backside of the roof.

Which is to say, go back to Canada, you maple-sucking monarchist. Arrrgghhhh!!