(no subject)
You know that you're in trouble when you start to feel low class at Dunkin' Donuts.
Thursday, after being awake for 31 hours straight (I've gone longer, but when you're writing about 18th century nonsense, you enter a far different measure of time), I stumbled in to my local purveyor of all things kreme, which happens to be connected to the ramshackle train station I commute to every day. This is the same train station which boasts passengers who refer to me as "Hot Mami" from time to time, where police crime scene tape litters the tracks and unwashed, pregnant 7 year olds hang out having biting fights on the platform.
So naturally, this train station would have a Dunkin Donuts attached to it. Dunkin Donuts, the place where I routinely buy 24 oz coffees (also called the Urine Test Special) and eat triple glazed confections alongside people whose work attire dictates that their names must be written on their shirts.
But something different was going on, during that particular Thursday. The resentful indian girls were still working there and there were still no less than 50 kinds of donuts on display. But there was also Vivaldi playing, Splenda available at the counter, and right before my eyes, some businessman in a cashmere overcoat was buying a soy latte.
Something wasn't right.
The ghetto girls with the big hoop earrings and screaming kids were gone, and in their place were the Philosophy assholes from my 20th Century fiction class. The girl I refer to as "Immanuel Cunt" was chatting away about the merits of Dali (the Dean Koontz of the art world) to an eternally bored looking midget in a bowler hat. Businessmen talked loudly in to their cell phones and hyperactive women in fur coats thumbed through the latest Town and Country.
Just when did Dunkin Donuts turn in to this? It was uncomfortable in the way that being around so many other white people can be sometimes. It's in those situations that I'm the person they feel better when compared to.
I know this because the only other place where I'm around so many white people, is in my literature classes. There's so much politically correct backpedaling that you'd think they'd just stop assigning The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass just so they wouldn't have to deal with the liberal guilt hanging over the discussion of slavery. I know that they consider me a "minority" because they always look in my direction when we discuss the imagery of hispanic ladies in literature.
You wear an Adidas track suit with missy elliot-designed adidas sneakers, and all of a sudden people think you are a minority.
There's so much elitism going on in these classes that I am just about ready to stop showing up to class. In that very 18th century class I stayed up all night writing a paper for, a girl told me that my presence made her feel better about her performance in that classes. It was a pretty backwards compliment, but I suppose people would assume you're dumb if your paper on an 18th Century text included references to Van Halen and Sex and the City. And if you came to class routinely armed with both Vogue and Glamour.
So maybe it is my fault if my snooty classmates think I'm brain damaged, and it is my fault that I have a problem with the snootification of Dunkin Donuts. I walk in to a place like that and see these people as the jerks who outpriced the New York City Metropolitan Area for us normal folk (a 200 square foot apartment, no bathrooms, but a kitchen, just went for almost $300,000 last week. I know it's a crazy market, but $300,000 is too much to pay for a place where you have to poop in a sink), the idiots who work seven unpaid internships and wonder why starting salaries for liberal arts majors are so low, and the people who willingly hire those individuals. They unfortunately remind me of the workforce I'll be entering in, which is not something I want to think of before my 24 oz coffee.
Thursday, after being awake for 31 hours straight (I've gone longer, but when you're writing about 18th century nonsense, you enter a far different measure of time), I stumbled in to my local purveyor of all things kreme, which happens to be connected to the ramshackle train station I commute to every day. This is the same train station which boasts passengers who refer to me as "Hot Mami" from time to time, where police crime scene tape litters the tracks and unwashed, pregnant 7 year olds hang out having biting fights on the platform.
So naturally, this train station would have a Dunkin Donuts attached to it. Dunkin Donuts, the place where I routinely buy 24 oz coffees (also called the Urine Test Special) and eat triple glazed confections alongside people whose work attire dictates that their names must be written on their shirts.
But something different was going on, during that particular Thursday. The resentful indian girls were still working there and there were still no less than 50 kinds of donuts on display. But there was also Vivaldi playing, Splenda available at the counter, and right before my eyes, some businessman in a cashmere overcoat was buying a soy latte.
Something wasn't right.
The ghetto girls with the big hoop earrings and screaming kids were gone, and in their place were the Philosophy assholes from my 20th Century fiction class. The girl I refer to as "Immanuel Cunt" was chatting away about the merits of Dali (the Dean Koontz of the art world) to an eternally bored looking midget in a bowler hat. Businessmen talked loudly in to their cell phones and hyperactive women in fur coats thumbed through the latest Town and Country.
Just when did Dunkin Donuts turn in to this? It was uncomfortable in the way that being around so many other white people can be sometimes. It's in those situations that I'm the person they feel better when compared to.
I know this because the only other place where I'm around so many white people, is in my literature classes. There's so much politically correct backpedaling that you'd think they'd just stop assigning The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass just so they wouldn't have to deal with the liberal guilt hanging over the discussion of slavery. I know that they consider me a "minority" because they always look in my direction when we discuss the imagery of hispanic ladies in literature.
You wear an Adidas track suit with missy elliot-designed adidas sneakers, and all of a sudden people think you are a minority.
There's so much elitism going on in these classes that I am just about ready to stop showing up to class. In that very 18th century class I stayed up all night writing a paper for, a girl told me that my presence made her feel better about her performance in that classes. It was a pretty backwards compliment, but I suppose people would assume you're dumb if your paper on an 18th Century text included references to Van Halen and Sex and the City. And if you came to class routinely armed with both Vogue and Glamour.
So maybe it is my fault if my snooty classmates think I'm brain damaged, and it is my fault that I have a problem with the snootification of Dunkin Donuts. I walk in to a place like that and see these people as the jerks who outpriced the New York City Metropolitan Area for us normal folk (a 200 square foot apartment, no bathrooms, but a kitchen, just went for almost $300,000 last week. I know it's a crazy market, but $300,000 is too much to pay for a place where you have to poop in a sink), the idiots who work seven unpaid internships and wonder why starting salaries for liberal arts majors are so low, and the people who willingly hire those individuals. They unfortunately remind me of the workforce I'll be entering in, which is not something I want to think of before my 24 oz coffee.