House rules, an ode to presumptuous white men:

I’ve worked a lot of service and entertainment jobs. For me, the most interesting similarity between the two is the insight into power relationships that they offer. With service encounters, the ways that social hierarchies influence people’s behavior can get pretty complicated in my experience. Within entertainment, particularly for a bar DJ, you get a pure, unadulterated visible privilege meter.

The bar being public space, the DJ serves as something of a gatekeeper, with no bureaucracy and nearly instant gratification. The way a person approaches and interacts with the DJ says a lot about their attitudes toward and relationship with public space. Hence: the most visibly privileged have the highest expectations of ownership. Though this doesn’t work as well with employees, it’s an almost perfect correlation for your average patron.

My observations of (and frustrations with) many white men under these conditions gave rise to the following list of rules of how not to behave like an overprivileged, presumptuous ass.

1. You do not speak for everyone, nor are you more important than they are. "Can you play anything but [insert genre/artist/song currently playing]?" is not a very helpful or constructive question. In all likelihood, the previous song was of a different genre/artist than the current song and most certainly not the SAME song. It’s probably safe to assume then that the next song, following this pattern, will differ from the current one in genre and/or artist as well. Since I, as a rule, do not repeat songs during any given night, the only logical conclusion I can draw from this request is that you would like me to stop playing this song immediately and/or refrain from playing any more songs of the same genre/artist.

Now, I know this may seem like a novel concept to you, but other people (and by other I mean not men, not white and/or not presumptuous people) generally just request what it is that THEY would like to hear. They may try to sway me by providing specific information (It’s my birthday) or insisting that everyone will love their song/artist/genre, but more often qualify their own desires as not superseding the desires of the group. Your request, on the other hand, either prioritizes your own desires as more important or takes them as representative of the whole. Incorrect on both counts, sorry and thanks for playing.

2. Racist observations do not further prove your importance or suitability as a representative of the group. They are annoying, offensive and irrelevant. When a white man asks me to play anything but Rap, for instance, he may be tempted to follow up this request with an observation of his surroundings. Now, the question alone is an exercise of privilege, but one I’m willing to work with and even indulge. Not because it’s okay, just because it’s my job. The followup observation is almost without question going to take me from cooperative to popping Excedrin for racial tension headaches.

It usually goes something like, “How many young black people do you see in this bar right now?” Meaning, what? That only black people listen to Black music? Wrong. The largest consumer group of Hip-Hop/Rap music for decades has been 16 to 25-year-old white males. Well, at least the way that the music industry is defining consumption and measuring demand.

Now, I know this fact may be troubling to you. You prefer to look back fondly on some forgotten time when popular music was altogether Whiter, right? Wrong again. The history of popular music in the US is full of black artists, white artists who appropriate Black music while neglecting to give credit to black artists and the artists who have been influenced by the aforementioned groups. Rock and Country owe their origins to young (and old) black people as much as Hip-Hop/Rap.

And you know what? I’m not even playing Rap. It’s called R&B, google it.

3. Despite what your over-inflated sense of self worth might be telling you, I do not require your approval. Though many patrons feel compelled to complement my work, thank me for playing their song or even tip me, you are the only one who lords your approval over my head. You insult my performance when I don’t do what you want, when you want. You insult other women as a means of complimenting me. I don’t have the vaguest notion of where you got the idea that flexing your power and authority as almighty white man would impress me, or that denigrating my fellow women would flatter me.

I watched you try to dance with every unattached woman on or near the dance floor, and one-by-one they laughed at your clumsy approach and drunken “moves” or got frustrated by your pushy tactics. You are a shining example of rape culture at work and when you admitted to telling another woman that she displeased you because she danced “like a typical white girl” in an attempt to -what, woo me?- all you did was announce, unmistakably clear: “I’m a misogynist and a racist. I believe that I have ownership over black and female bodies/identities. I appropriate an imagined parody of Blackness to bolster my masculinity and leverage it to judge your expression of femininity.”

Eww.

Ella quiere su rumba (¿Como?)

I’ve had high cholesterol for years. Just one of those things that I lost the genetic lottery on. I eat a high fiber, low fat, almost devoid of any type of cholesterol or trans fat whatsoever diet and at my latest check up I found out that my cholesterol has actually gone up slightly since the last time I had gotten it checked. So, I started doing some digging and found out that diet may not be as effective in controlling high cholesterol as exercise, particularly regular, medium to high-intensity cardiovascular exercise. That probably would have been a helpful tidbit for my doctor to have given me, but maybe they’re not up-to-date on all the latest research from 1998. That’s okay.

The point is that I’ve gotta start working out more. I hate running. I’m not really sure I want to shell out the cash for a gym membership just yet. Probably a good idea eventually. My immediate solution: Zumba. Everyone raves about it and at $10 a pop, not a bad option for a commitment-phobe in need of a quick cardio fix. From what little I knew about Zumba before showing up to my first class the other day, admittedly almost zilch, I was pretty excited. Dancing has always been a preferred activity of mine over anything that I would call exercising.

What I hadn’t really counted on was the uncomfortability level. It slowly became apparent: three young, suburban, white (read: anglo) women teaching a room full of mostly middle-aged; black, brown and other white women bachata, hip-hop and other latino/afro-american (in the continent sense of the term) inspired moves. I can’t say that I definitively walked away with a sense of how I felt about it. On the one hand, anything that promotes non-white and/or non-US artists, potentially increasing their exposure and albums sales is great. This room full of women leading healthier lives, also great. What I’m assuming are primarily white women profiting off of the art and culture of non-white artists, eh, less than great.

And the ultimate truth that remained obfuscated by the racial, ethnic and national heterogeneity of my particular location-- and again, I’m assuming here-- that these classes are primarily being taught TO white women, white women who are imagining some exotic latin lover type, Henry Churches with a rose in his mouth. That one just about made me shiver out of distaste. I always hate when people see Cris that way. When they assume he’s romantic, passionate or a good dancer because of where he’s from rather than who he is. I suppose that there are a million stereotypes of Latino men that people don’t readily apply to him because of his association to me, or at least not out loud anyway. I think I’ll keep going to Zumba class. I’ll just have a lot to think about while I shimmy my LDLs off.

Love in the Time of Skype

Perhaps it has something to do with the frequently near freezing temperatures outside, or more likely the newfound flexibility in both of our schedules, but in recent months Cris and I have been spending an almost unjustifiable amount of time chatting via Skype. With the exception of the four months I spent in Cuba and completely unable to connect to Skype, it’s played a fairly central role in our relationship throughout. When we first met, my camera died in an accidental drowning, so the first pic I took of him was a Skype screen shot.

While the long distance relationships of yesteryear, or maybe a little bit longer ago than that, relied primarily upon long letters with even longer arrival times or low quality phone calls; LDRs now seem like the hottest new trend, at least if my immediate social circle is to be taken as somewhat representative. From unlimited sexting plans to Skype dates on free wifi connections, not only has communication gotten faster, it’s also a lot cheaper to keep in touch long distance these days. That’s not to say that there aren’t still some major hurdles for international romances- the higher cost of international calls and texting, quality and price of internet access outside of the first world, and then there are all of those international travel problems, but that’s another story for another day.

In spite of the difficulties we’ve faced, the long distance nature of our relationship has also been beneficial in a number of ways. I think that it has taught us both to listen better and be more patient with one another. Generally, in relationships, I feel that I take my partner’s presence for granted as time goes on, and that the same physical presence of them fills far more space of the relationship than meaningful conversation. With Cris, because we’ve spent so much time apart, we’ve had to invent ways of being present in one another’s lives. Rather than just doing the things that occupy our day to day lives, and doing them together as many couples would, each mundane task becomes an opportunity to communicate and share our lives. Tonight, for example, Cris called me up on his way to the store to ask me what I thought he should make for dinner. Somehow, I felt closer to him then than all the times we’ve made dinner together.

I knew I was in love when...

I had a dream last night. Really, a nightmare. For some reason unknown to my waking self I was in a situation where I had to marry someone not my husband-to-be. I chose a good friend of mine, someone for whom I've felt romantic feelings in the past, though not in a long time, and tried to make the best of it. The dream, in short, was a sequence in which, one by one, all of the things that I have planned and imagined for my future are taken from me while I attempt to remain strong and optimistic, keeping everything from falling apart. The real turning point of the dream happened when my dream spouse cut their lip, and something about their face in that moment brought me back to images of my former life, the life that I should have had. All at once, I was filled completely with a deep, aching desire for that life, and the knowledge that I could never have it made me wish for death. A bit dramatic, I admit, but that's dream logic, and it was the most profoundly upsetting dream I’ve ever had. When I woke up the first thing I did was call my fiancé and cry; I haven’t been able to shake the feeling of it all day.

My fiancé and I have been doing the long distance thing pretty much since the beginning, spending four months apart and one to three months together. It hasn’t been easy, but for the most part we’ve made it work. We’ve found some pretty creative solutions to the problems created by the distance, and at times even used it to our advantage. But we’ve never gone this long without seeing one another in person. Four months, it seems is really our limit and right now we're going on six.

I’ve never been the type to believe in soul mates or fairy tale relationships. I find that type of mentality to be a recipe for disappointment. It’s easy to set unrealistic expectations at the beginning of a relationship, but difficult to live up to them over the long run. Stable, healthy, fulfilling relationships are built on a base of compatibility for sure, but require honest communication and a willingness to love, accept and support one another. The soon-to-be Mr. Naranja and I certainly have all of those ingredients mixed up in our little love stew (otherwise I don’t think either of us would be ready to commit our lives to each other). However, I am willing to admit that I may have underestimated the element of magic in a relationship, because we also have something deeper. Something that doesn’t require any conscious effort or decision.

I’m sure there are those out there who could explain this phenomenon by following the oxytocin and vasopressin through some circuitous tour of my brain, but all I know is that my partner and I understand each other without words. We complement one another in a way that gives meaning to the phrase “too good to be true.” It’s a little creepy and a lot sappy, but I feel like we were made for each other. When I asked him to marry me I never expected that I'd every be any more certain of my decision, and yet, sometimes it feels like every day I wake up exponentially more resolute and assured.