November 17, 2004

Last night at WYSIWYG : For Love and Turkey
by Liza Sabater

If you ever see a show with the names of Nichelle of Nichelle's Newsletter, Amy Sallow of Puff Pastry, Matthew Kovach of 'Til The Cows Come Home, Alexis Tirado of Alexis' Blog, Chelsea Peretti, don't walk. Just goddamn go! Last night I had a blast at the WYSIWYG Talent Blog, more as an audience member than performer. It's not that I did not have fun reading my story, but it's been years since I last performed in anything and, quite frankly, all these people absolutely rocked.

I did manage to skeeve out Alizinha's friend, and I had quite a few audience members scold me for making them re-live their own versions of my story. Which makes me quite happy --it means my work was indeed done.

Make sure you only let the audience members imbibe --a couple of my performing cohorts were hitting the Southern Comfort too hard. GACK! I hadn't drank that stuff since high school. Damn! It's the fucking Manishewitz of catholic school alcoholics the world over.

Thanks to Andy and Chris for producing the show and asking Nichelle and I to curate the January edition. The topic will be "Please don't let me be misunderstood". If you have a funny story about cross-communication --linguistic, sexual or otherwise-- please drop me a note and show me the way to your blog.

Oh, and yeah, that's me. I hate seeing myself in pics --I think I don't photog well-- but at least I am not looking at the camera.

And now, without further ado,

For Love and Turkey:

Homelessness is a socioeconomic injustice. Homelessness is also a state of mind. I spent a lot of years trapped in the drama of emotional homelessness. When I left “home” to go to college in Puerto Rico, I had done so right after my parents had split and my mother had our home foreclosed by the bank. So when other students would go home for the holidays, I would have to call to find out what was our new address. With a family shattered by divorce and no architectural memories to go to, I decided to come to NYC, thinking “If I’m going to be “homeless”, it might as well be in the big city”.

This was back in the 80’s when this here theater was in the bad side of town, surrounded by crack and whore houses and with real homeless people as far as the eye could see. I decided to stay at the dorms --I thought, it’ll be safe like a home. Alas, NYU had not delivered on time their promise for on-campus housing; so I ended up with about 300 students in what had been until that summer a hotel used as a homeless shelter. From that hell we moved mid-semester to the unfinished dorm that is now Goddard Hall, with wires tripping fire alarms, paper thin walls and the noise, THE NOISE of every fucking parsley-cum-ganja transaction happening on Washington Square Park. In the two years I was a student at NYU, I ended up moving 8 times.

Last but not least, I was a foreigner in what was a foreign relations program (Latin American Studies). I cannot remember having one American friend, or for that matter, one American penis during those two years. Puerto Ricans of every color, Peruvian, Brazilian, Spaniards, German, French, Russian. So by the end of those two years, not only was I lonely and emotionally homeless but, once they were gone, horny as hell.

Let’s say that settling down was my number one priority and, at that point, that meant going back to Puerto Rico.

So when I met Mr. Man or my present worst-half, falling in love with him took me completely by surprise. Not only was I falling in love with a gringo, but I was faced with the possibility of never going back to live to the place I had called all my life home. So now, not only did I have to contend with feeling home “less”, but feeling like an orphan in the city. I wanted a home and a family and I wanted it bad.

When Mr. Gringo Man asked me to spend Thanksgiving with him and his family, I was overwhelmed in more ways that one. The obvious one was knowing that Turkey Day is a big thing in this country, being probably the only non-religious holiday that Americans can celebrate without conflict. So I thought, “WOW! Bringing me home for this occasion means I am the one”. Needless to say, that made me happy. But what really made me ecstatic was the opportunity of attending, for the first time, a real gringo Turkey Day Dinner. I was looking forward to the indigenous fowl with whatever was it that they called trimmings (for all I could care it was glitter and ornaments). I wanted to see those marshmallow thingies in what was meant to be not a dessert but a side dish. I wanted to see the bulbous rolls and the cream laced onions, the butter sloshed vegetables but most of all that oh so famous of American delicacies, that “gelee au cranberrie” that “shlurped” right out of the can.

It was going to be my ultimate National Geographic moment; a kind of revert exotica that only a non-United Statian can appreciate. Especially a Puerto Rican, who had grown up in a country notorious for taking every single culinary tradition of the United States and bastardizing it beyond recognition. Turkey? With adobo. Yams? With garlic and olive oil. Vegetables? What are those anyway? And most importantly, never stuffing; always arroz con gandules. I was ready to have my gringo Thanksgiving by any and all means necessary.

I bought a dress that would not scare the natives by blending in with their catholic school aesthetics. I spent time on grooming, making sure the hair was combed, the breath minty and the underwear clean. And most importantly, I spent time on my diction, making sure I pronounced everything as closely to a ‘native’ accent as possible I did not want them to be distracted from their normalcy with my still lingering Puerto Rican accent. These were my gringos in the mist and I was going to enjoy every single moment in their natural habitat.
Of course, I was not counting on the environmental attack I would receive by invading their lair.

I thought there were four tests a guy had to pass before you knew he was a keeper. The first one being “ooh, he’s cute”, followed by “he’s so funny” and the ever popular “ooh, baby, harder harder don’t stop”. But the fourth one was the most important, and Mr. Man had passed it with flying colors : the “freezer test”. You know what I’m talking about, the one in which, once you’ve examined his dwelling, you’ve danced to the absence of zip locked and deep frozen human remains. So I was obviously too blinded by good looks, lame puns and cunning lingus to pause and think, “Is this relationship hypoallergenic?”

In Puerto Rico or “The isle of a thousand hurricanes”, unless you have a big ass hacienda kind of place, wood is not considered status worthy when building a house. So, I lived in concrete houses until then and never had to contend with the petrie dishes people call home in this country. Mr. Man’s family abode became a wild jungle of mites, molds, dander that were all out to kill me on that fateful Thanksgiving Day.

I do not remember all the details of that day, actually. I was too busy battling the stages of my slow and painful asphyxia by asthma. Asthma can be triggered by many things or even nothing at all. In my case, allergens are the culprits --when my body is under attack by aspirin, mites, molds, cats my body devolves into a chain of reactions that go from scratching and coughing and could end with asphyxia and death. This kind of reaction is called anaphylaxis and the more you cheat it, the worse it gets the next time around. That’s why it’s considered the most dangerous of allergic reactions.

Now, at the time, I had no idea what was anaphylaxis was. I’d had scares triggered by aspirin and dust, but it was never explained to me how one allergen could be associated with others or how you could become allergic to something all of a sudden. I mean, I had at one point 3 cats living with me in Puerto Rico. Well, living with is too complimentary a term. We had 3 cats who would come in and out of the house. They rarely stayed indoors and, being Puerto Rico, even if they had been indoors, with a concrete house and windows opened everywhere, their catness had not a chance to be encrusted in any indoor surface nook or cranny.

So Mr. Man’s family home was a whole new indoor ecology for me. I thought, okay, wood, maybe molds and mites. Easy as cake : If I started sneezing and coughing, it could be taken care of by a bit of Benadryl here and a little Robitussin there. But hat’s not what happened. Ben and Rob just delayed the inevitable

The ‘episode’ started like any normal allergic reaction, but faster than I thought. No sooner I had walked through the door and before we had said our hellos that my eyes started to water. The in-laws must have thought, “she’s emotional, she’s crying”, when in truth their cat encrusted, dusty and moldy as a library house was just an allergenic menace.

There I am, with my matronly dress, smooth hair and clean underwear when my “allergy” sense starts tingling in my eyes. If you have allergies, you know what I am talking about : The tingling sensation that happens when you start to react to the microscopic shit that’s gonna kill you. And that house is out to kill me because almost nothing is moved once it’s put down in that house. A book? Oh it’s been there for ten years. A rug? “Oh, about 25”. A lamp? “About 15”. What I thought was the virtue of constancy and stability in that family proved to be treacherous and down rigt nasty. Every object, every surface, every nook and cranny was covered in the fiendish, highly allergenic essence of the 1015 generations of cats that have roamed in that house for 40 years. 40 years in a cape-cod style house with low ceilings and tiny windows destined to be forever shut to either keep in (during the winter) or keep out (during the summer) the hot air that incubated the allergenic fauna (dust mites) and flora (molds) in this storied petrie dish of a house.

My in-laws must have thought I was overcome with joy what with the teary eyes. No sooner they had served me some festive wine and the pleasantries of cheese and crackers that stage 2 of my allergic reaction kicked in : I started to itch like hell. It was as if an army of invisible pointy legs had landed on my body and attacked it through each pore, especially on my neck and face. So I run to the bathroom to splash some water and run outside to see if the fresh and cold air helped. It did, but it was there where I found one of the culprits of my plight : One of the 5 cats living in the house. I, trying my pathological best to be polite, wanted to show my hosts how much I liked the little furry killing machines, so I proceed to pet the beast. Stage 3, sneezing, kicks in.

I started to sneeze uncontrollably. The itching and tears returned. We’ve gone from the nibbling of curded cow products into full fledge tour of garden duty, but I could hardly talk. It was decided I’d get some antihistamines and shortly, my condition was improved. Too bad I had drank all that wine. Now, not only was I sneezing and tearing, but I was drunk. Double whammy with the Ben because antihistamines dehydrate me, make me incoherent and sleepy. So now I’m drinking gallons of water, and snapping out of my stupor with each peeing scare. In in the peeing plenitude of stages 4 and 5 --dehydration and erratic behaviour.
So it is decided that I go into a room to rest. Mr. Man’s former room. The room he had not inhabited for about 5 years. The room that had become the allergenic beasts’ playground. That room. So in my stupor I am instructed to lie down. Within minutes I wake up covered in cat hair and gasping for air; feeling that I’m breathing through a straw --clogged by a watermelon.

In a panic, I run to the bathroom and try to wash off any catness attached to my skin. I pop more Bens and drink even more water thinking, well, it has oxygen. I sneak out again to the cold were the breathing wasn’t as belabored and try to calm myself down. By then, dinner is being served but stage 6 kicks in : The wheezing, coughing and hacking of my lungs. Not a good sign. So the Tussin is passed. Now I’m really doing the hard drugs; which, of course, kills my appetite. But hey! I was at the dinner table, of my Mr. Man’s parents, with his siblings and spawns, the slaughtered beast and variegated culinary accouterments that came in browns, oranges, whites and grayish greens and the ultimate, the coagulated crimson of the shlurpily cylindrical “gelee au cranberry”. I was happy, right where I wanted to be, in the middle of my ultimate National Gringographic special; and I was not going to miss it one bit.

I should have known better than to eat. You see, the main allergen in cats is the albumin in their saliva and, by extension, cat hair and dander. Albumin is a protein that is also found in meat, wheat, fowl, eggs, sesame seeds. So anything from the marshmallows in the yams, the egg in the stuffing, the milk in the creamed onions to the wheat and sesame seeds in the buns could have re-triggered my reaction and make it come back with a vengeance with stage 7, the swelling.

I was antihistamined enough for the swelling to happen slowly. It started as a burning sensation that started around coffee and pie. I had had this happen to me before with aspirin and I knew I was in trouble. But by then, I thought it was safe to call it quits, so in a mini-reverse Exorcist moment I told Mr. Man, “get me out”. So another eternity is lost to the packing of leftovers and the pleasantries of good-byes and thank yous. But the burning is subsiding and during the kissing of good-byes, I feel my lips are swollen.

We get into the car and drive away. There was that pregnant pause when something is awfully wrong and it was. I was trying to figure out how much in trouble I was. When I could not speak easily, due to the slowly swelling up and closing of my larynx, I knew then what I needed to say.

“Take me to the hospital”.

“Wha?”

“I’m having an asthma attack”

“Wha?”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Wha?”

“I’m going to die.”

And with those fateful words my already pigmentation challenged boyfriend turned ghostly white and starts driving back to his ‘rents home.

Now I’m gasping “No you moron, hospital.” He panicked so badly he could not remember how to get there. So he decides to get someone to come with us. Great. He brings his sister in law and in she comes, into the ultra small chick magnet of a car that was his 2 passenger seater Honda CRX. Now am not only in the middle of allergy episode, but am also performing a circus car trick.

We get to the hospital and I can hardly walk. In classic hospital fashion, they give me --now ashen faced and blue lipped- a mountain of papers to fill out. I reckoned my sister-in-law was a health benefits administrator ---good one Mr. Man--- and so all I remember is walking through the emergency room door and saying something like “Allergy. Asthma. Can’t breathe”. And then everything became a blur.

I saw white coats and faces

I saw tubes and needles with

Little bottles and vials of somethings

I saw masks and tanks and thermometers and pressure pumps,

I saw big lamps

and little pen lights

and I heard a voice ask me “how many fingers am I holding up”,

and my thinking, is this for real? a pop quiz?

And in the madness, I remember seeing Mr. Man’s distraught face and his putting my hands in his and after that I do not remember much at all. I don’t remember when I was discharged or when I got into the car, or even when we walked into our apartment building.

But I remember taking a deep breath once we arrived to the apartment we shared, the living space that had been our love playground until that night, and I remember the relief --I’m home.

And the sudden realization --I am HOME.

I had finally found my way home.

Posted by Liza Sabater in Blogeratti, Blogs, Events, Life, New York City, Story
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (3) | Technorati Cosmos

Trackbacks

Trackback for this post:
http://www.culturekitchen.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/2592

The following blogs make reference to this post :

» Drunkest WYSIWYG Ever! from WYSIWYG Talent Blog
As Andy's brief rundown mentions, last night was a particularly boozy WYSIWYG (not surprising, considering the subject matter was focused on families and family gatherings - I know I certainly need liberal dosages of liquid courage when dealing with my... [More...]

Found inNovember 18, 2004 01:18 AM

» Anaphylaxis of the Heart from lies.com
From Liza Sabater, whom I just now discovered via her enviable googlerank for the phrase "george bush sally hemmings," an uplifting story that will resonate with anyone who's ever been to the emergency room with an allergy-constricted airway: For lo... [More...]

Found inNovember 18, 2004 12:05 PM

» Drunkest WYSIWYG Ever! from WYSIWYG Talent Blog
As Andy's brief rundown mentions, last night was a particularly boozy WYSIWYG (not surprising, considering the subject matter was focused on families and family gatherings - I know I certainly need liberal dosages of liquid courage when dealing with my... [More...]

Found inNovember 19, 2004 04:50 PM

Say it loud, say it proud!