And now you know why it was time to file my quarterly Date Withholding
statement... Luckily, a fifth of tequila and an hour or two on the
phone with Adam and condolences from S helped me keep a happy face on
it all. My capacity for rejection may not (yet) be Jim's friend's (for
asking out his entire high school), but it's getting there.
And besides, the next day comes a missive from out of the blue. Three
Fridays ago, I sat in on Miss Kitty's KUCI show, Molotov Cocktail, and
here I have a winsome note in the ol in-box from B: 'My bags are
packed; when are you picking me up, [TRAVELMAN]?'. The very weekend I
already have the symphony scheduled for Thursday, an ethnic-exclusive
(largely) event for Friday, and an Indian picnic for Sunday, I get an
opening. Jes' peachy. Then J replies, too...
But first, conservation of luck dictates I'm going to get stood up
again. Thursday night, I fail to interest Clover's friend (also B) to
join me at the Symphony, but furthermore, Peyman stiffs me at the last
minute, claiming some silly multi-million-dollar grant proposal takes
priority over the 20-29-yo Classical Raves series. S immediately
declines, also begging off for work. Before trying to call J or B or
L, Jim Whitehead helpfully bobs his head and says, "I'm not doing
anything tonight; but do you think I'll have to put on some socks to
go to this?"
And off we went. Back the anti-mall, this time for the concert
reception. At the first concert, they were demonstrating mehndi,
Indian henna tattoos. The second, we had a national Yo-Yo champion
giving away Yo-Yos and teaching us tricks. This month, the hair salon
sponsored it, so we got to watch a makeover. Needless to say, there
was an overwhelmingly female turnout for the extremely technical
tutorial on 'protein separators' and other Star Trek technology...
The concert itself, with some crack 25-year old Israeli violinist was
probably better than either Jim or I have the taste to appreciate.
I'll just say that you get your money's worth from Shostakovich's
Concerto no. 5 -- no downsizable orchestras here! Afterwards, Jim and
I retired to the Irvine branch of McCormick & Schmick's, an upscale
seafood chain with a decidedly low-budget $2 gourmet late-night happy
hour menu. I used to live off of it in Pasadena, but I hadn't even
known one existed in Irvine. I'm glad to report their usual standards
on waitresses are being, ahem, upheld... J3 was committed to day two
of a new, stress-free life before she made it to our table. Has anyone
ever noticed that I radiate stress?
[4:19 AM. Time to evacuate Toi's. Tonight's fortune is: "You are a
deep thinker witha knack for problem solving." Hah!]
[5:23 AM On a rise overlooking a Pacific sunrise in Malibu -- a
spectacularly clear morning]
Especially when working at flirting. It's hard, stressful work,
goshdarnit. To put it in the politest terms possible, to downshift to
a merely socically tolerable level of geekiness. I was in the middle
of a fine rant that evening with J3 came by to check out our ticket
stubs, a friendly and talkative subject, if up somewhat past her
normal bedtime -- not a regular on the closing shift. Jim started
calculating my mean-time-to-pun, some obscure refernce I'd slip in
which caused her to exhale and suddenly click forward to the next step
of the script, killing the moment. For example, at one point a lemon
dropped on to the floor while clearing the table, and I complimented
her exquisite balance work in holding onto three plates while reaching
for it. She replied, "of course, what else can I do in this skirt?", I
flusteredly pointed out I was worried for the ceramics, not the
skirt-- involving a three step indirection from lemon to balance to
plate to breakage to material, which was enough to roll her eyes all
over again. But she was a great sport: she came back dejected from the
kitchen and swooped straight to her knees to apologize we weren't
getting our free dessert for our concert stubs because she forgot the
kitchen's last call. I, startled by the sight of our waitress' head at
table level, promptly fell under the floor laughing. So she comped me
a shot of Sauza Tres Generaciones tequila as a consolation prize. I'm
going to have to go back there soon, even if it's only for the Bayhawk
chocolate porter, and not J3...
The lesson there is that there's something essentially off-putting
about continuous intensity. (1) 97% of people don't like to think all
the time and (2) even of the 3%, 97% of them don't like it when you're
thinking all the time. It's too damn much work to keep up with me, I'm
told. I can certainly say it's not so easy on my end either, reaching
from stiff hair gel to protein separator to transporter beams to
Scotty impressions in a single bound... Total strangers who have been
exposed to as little as three hours of peripheral RoBits have been
conditioned to ask "Rohit won't be coming along [on our 'relaxing'
evening], right?"
Anyway, I gave Jim the keys, and staggered home. So much for getting
homework done on time this week. But it's for a good cause. I can't
imagine any particular assignment being genuinely time-critical enough
to put off a social event for. I place *that* high a priority on
making new friends or making FoRKpostable memories with old ones.
Adam, by contrast, is putting some silly security talk or other ahead
of coming down here to UCI for a Lisa Loeb/Sarah McLachlan concert
next Wednesday, which I already bought a pair of tickets for. (which
reminds me, doh!, I missed the student pre-sale for Ani DiFranco, July
3rd. Anyone? $26). Mockery being what it is, J wrote back -- so now
instead of 0 people to ask for my second ticket, I had to decide
between 2. In practice, it's not that hard. You have to ask one first
:-)
[RK: and one did: congrats to B! She has fine taste...]
And now, finally, we get to last night.
All I can say is, thank heavens I stopped to run home and grab my suit
jacket -- this banquet turned out to be some cross of Homecoming and
the Prom. And I refer to these teenage rites of passage precisely
because that's what I was looking at: 300-odd fully decked out 17-20
yo Indians. Quite a sight -- I've never been to an event like it. And
it certainly wasn't all paired up as dates -- I was right that it
wasn't that sort of high-pressure event. But, it was all broken out by
school cliques. And though there were 40 other (undergrads) from UCI
alone, I had table 5 all to myself, later joined by two guys from
Northridge and, AFAIK, the one other self-employed out-of-the-blue
attendee I saw, just one month younger than me.
So I guess that officially makes me the dirty old ma of the evening,
staring slackjawed at the sheer quantities of babeliness (and,
frankly, studliness) at the country club. There were precisely two
women who wore saris -- dramatically sexy ones at that -- but everyone
else was in state-of-the-art Western wear or over-the-top Indian,
midriff-baring fashion. The guys were all in their best casual suits,
straight outta Details. Charcoal and orange seemed a lot less
ridiculous once I got there.
Unfortunately, I'm too used to being a minority. My brain froze trying
to correlate all these Indian names. I just don't deal with that many
in real life! So there were only a very few lasting impressions. What
few unilateral introductions I could make kept triggering the
professional-acquaintance subroutine: where are you going to school,
what's your thing, did you grow up in SoCal? // I just moved back from
Boston, I'm working on the Web, and yeah, I've studied a bit of
<insert what other person is dedicating life to here>. One fifth-year
(ug) from UCLA just froze the moment in amber for me, though. Said she
was majoring in economics, so I retreated from the computer-geek route
and opened up the game-theory front. Attacked too far forward by
bringing up von Neumann and Morgenstern's _Theory of Games_, 1949; her
sophomore friend, still in braces, said all they'd done was boxes and
points. That managed to confuse the issue of whatever the hell it was
I said I did for a living, and I automatically replied "oh no, I've
always been doing both econ and CS classes, back to Caltech and
Harvard." "Oh, I see, you're some sort of Brain, huh?".
Ouch. Not just a brain, but an arrogant namedropper, too. (and she's
100% right!) Too bad all those pickup lines honed at IETFs for
recruting geeks go over so poorly on a dance floor.
Not that this was on the dancefloor. I'm just not a dancer -- it takes
serious bass and serious alcohol, as Jim can attest -- so all of a
sudden, memories of orbiting the 8th grade dance floor in a racetrack
came flooding back to me. Except the spectator sports were never this
boombastic. I mean, thug life rules this scene: all the best in
hip-hop, old-school, booty-shakin' moves, and MIL-SPEC security
frisking. Very twilight zone for a geek like me, much less a nice
Indian boy :-)
As much as I wanted what I saw on the floor: not just the luscious
young bodies, but also the uncomplicated happiness -- that's not what
I need and not how I'm going to get there from here. I'm OK with not
being stylish, attractive, or physically adept enough to attract
anyone without opening my mouth. And I can't expect the reverse. My
Economist-toting dream date is 97% likely not going to be at one of
these bunny hops, either. Sorry.
What qualities I have, can't be advertised. Call yourself an artist,
and you've labeled it: people might stick around to plumb your
presumably-crazed intellect to see if it's any fun. I haven't found
any ways of conveying the complicated character you see on FoRK in 30
seconds, though. Everything I can say leads to a tar pit: computer
geek, boring business type, snobbish globetrotter, arrogant academic,
and nothing that generally conveys the sense of art and uniqueness I
see in geeks.
And even then, I'd like to know what the secrets are for introducing
yourself to a group of women. Note group: they never leave the pack.
Men, you watch, you pick 'em off one by one. Life would be sooo much
easier if I were gay: I know how to pick up guys!
Eventually, the 3% of over 21s ended up at the club's bowling alley,
more specifically, the bar (& 97% of those guys -- all guys -- were
obnoxiously drunk). There, I ran into one of the guys from Ziba Music,
where I'd blown $75 on Indian dance music on Valentines' Day. The last
two hours were a lot more fun, but they were excellent dancers, and
there's only so much fun to be had spectating... Still, I'm hoping to
see one or two of them again, and we'll see what happens.
Bottom line: I still feel like an outsider, because sometimes it's
true. I really didn't know anybody there, and it turned out to be
fairly difficult to meaningfully meet people. But I've learned not to
let that preclude having a good time: I've passed that point where I
realize self-conciousness is a monster of ego: no one *cares* if
you're standing by the wall. At the same time, I still cling to my
outsider's crutch. I've frankly been pretty pompous about dismissing
the top octile of California's youth as beneath me: I suppose this
actually might be the real pool, and I'm just too stiff.
Enough analysis for today. Tomorrow's the UCI-CSULB Indian students'
picnic :-)
Onward through the Void,
Rohit Khare
6:19AM, Pacific Coast Highway, Five-Mile Canyon. [Time to go to
temple, fwiw]
[1] Adam and I have been writing all of our WWW7/XML papers at TOI in
Hollywood. We're sort of the geeky, 2:30 AM regulars. They're open til
4, so we do actually get work done their, while I admire the notably
Hollywood, exquisitely proportioned, coiffed, and pierced crowd for
both of us. Toi manager: "Duuude, what happened to the T-shirt,
shorts, and sandals?!" And yes, I am typing on a laptop at the Bar. I
just plugged it into the nearest strand of christmas tree lights.
You've really got to see this place... "rock'n'roll Thai food"
[2] "Hey, man, don't look at me. I don't volunteer information. You
never asked if I knew the Indian woman in our building..." Thanks, H.
Really :-)
=======================================
[A very special bonus round for the, few, the proud, the profoundly
bored, who read all the way to the numbing end:]
Now I know why this message was so long. I was driving along the
canyons, mainly Mulholland, in the early light this morming, and I
played A.R. Rahman's recording of an Indian patriotic anthem, Vande
Mataram, and the moral of this story occurred to me:
There's no escape from cool.
See, being part of a low-N misfit community made it easy to believe
that all Indian-Americans were more or less brains and worked in the
same, unusual, ways -- that my kind of nonconformity was really
conformity to the group ideal.
Wrong. There are nearly a billion Indians, and the same standards of
beauty, wealth, taste, and class apply as everywhere else. It's not
that I'm excluded as an uncool geek only among 'Americans' -- I'm a
geek among Indians, too.
(BTW, if apply the additional premise that I am firmly American,
culturally, what pops out is precisely that my idenity is primarily
bound as 'geek', secondarily ethnic. Can we have a new master race of
Dilberts, the Geek-Americans? (or have Dertouzous and Negroponte beat
us to it? :-))
=======================================