Crashing on Dee's Floor

I carried all Kerri's bags upstairs, so when we went to the tiny restaurant with people putting their shrimp shells in piles on the wooden tables, and everyone gawked at us, I thought I was convincing them white people sweat all the time. When you sneeze here, it means somebody is thinking about you.

Dee asked if it were true that all us foreigners smelled badly. I had not showered nor deodorized and just trudged luggage in the hot sun. “Sometimes,” I said.
She told a story about a local girl who came to the city, where a friend told her she could do hard labor in the factory and make little money, or service foreign men and make a lot. Her first customer was so hairy that she went crazy, and went home, where she only said “Hairs! hairs!” to everyone for months. I told her hairy people were the smartest.

(Dee's place)

Dee said Kerri taught her not just English but made her feel confident that life could “still be colorful” without children. There was no reason she coulnd't have one that I knew of, but I did notice the way Dee enjoyed Kerri's presence. Some people find her big personality a bit much, but she can be inspiring in the way she lives her life. They had a real friendship.
“Would you like a tissue?” Kerri said. “I have one.”
“That's a good idea,” I said. “You are wise to carry those around. I've never seen it until now.”
“I know. Here.”
“Used, please,” I said. “I prefer used.”
“Je voudrais acheter des fleurs pour ma copine,” Kerri said.
“You want to buy flowers for our friend?” I said.
“Doll,” she said, slapping my arm, but Dee didn’t let on if she’d heard.
I was just pleased I got what Kerri was saying, but I'd forgotten French was for speaking secretly.


It's true. I felt big and strong here, like a man. The women were small, and no men had visible attitude or soul. It seemed like people married young, then cheated. We hadn't met a faithful person yet, except maybe Dee’s classmate, Bomi. Bomi had worked in a factory, and met a husband; then the guy met a bargirl and former prostitute, said he'd “never met such a gentle woman,” and fell in love with her. As Dee told the story in English at the lunch table, Bomi, though she didn't speak, started to cry. Bomi had no skills besides cooking. Later, I asked her to teach me Chinese characters. I deluded myself into thinking it helped cheer her up.

I followed them around shopping. Each little shop had a sheet attached to the side, so that when you wanted to try anything on they could fold the sheet around you in a triangle, and create a tiny changing room.

A young woman in white working at the department store makeup counter had what I thought looked like melanoma on her hand. I couldn't think of the words to say she should go to the doctor--what right did I have, and what did I know. I agonized.




Bicyclists rode by with shirts wrapped around their head and dress shirts on backwards to cover their arms as they ride their Vespa-style things, wearing visors that looked like welders’ masks.

Around my hurting index finger, I wore the magnetic green bracelet Kerri had received as a gift from a Dominican friend at home. My uncle said magnets had healing properties, and he was the skeptical sort, so it could be true.
“You look like an Indian princess,” Kerri said. “I mean India dot, not India…” (she made her mouth O-shaped, patted it and skipped around.) “That was really offensive, wasn't it?”
“What, the ‘hey-ah, hey-ah’ and jumping around?” I said.
“Yeah, that.”
“I'm not here to correct you,” I said. “Lord knows that would take up too much time.”

My graffiti idea: on street signs that read “drive slowly”, deface them so they say “Save slowly”, to share my advice on holding on to your money, a trait I share with the Chinese, and not with my travel buddy.

“I know why my index finger's been hurting,” I said. “I thought it might be from the mousepad on the laptop, but no. It's from using chopsticks. I have to try a different finger.”
“Nice.”
“You like my sleuthing?”

The nerdiness and pants pulled up almost to the nipples makes me think how in our country we worship the least successful people—thugs. People without much education or job opportunity, but charismatic and tough. Here, drug dealers would be pariahs. In the US, they are lovable rogues, and if we don't emulate them, then we are silly and hung up, with our pants pulled up too high. How did this happen?

The nice dad at dinner said he had treated his daughter like an adult from a young age, and was sending her to NY. Then maybe Maine for school. They wanted to know if it would be safe.
“Black people?” Dee said.


“What is that for?” said Dee, pointing to the remote control for Kerri's laptop.
“To put the volume bigger,” Kerri said.
“What is happening to your English?” I said once again.

It's off-topic, but is everyone suicidal once in that 15-18 age range? I keep hearing about it, and I also keep finding out more female friends have endometriosis.

(Here's Bomi again)


We got set to sleep on the floor at Dee's, as did her father in the living room, and in the next room was Dee’s classmate Bomi, who made the yummy crispy pork, and whom I'd been joking with Dee that I wanted to marry. She spoke no English, but her pork was excruciatingly good, and I was enjoying being old-fashionedly attracted to her cooking. I walked by her sleeping body and whispered to Dee, “I love her.”
Dee whispered, “I will tell her.”
“No!” I said. Then I told Kerri, “If I tap you, that means you go in there, and Dee's classmate comes in here.”
“No way," Kerri said. "The AC's in here. You can go in there.”
When Dee had left, Kerri said in the pitch black that she didn't know how long she would be able to make it on the hard floor. My bad back appreciated it, along with the three comforters under me.
“I'm going to brush,” I said.
“I'm going to let it go one night,” Kerri said, rather loudly. “It's not like me not to brush.”
“It is like you not to whisper,” I said.
“They can't hear,” she said.
“They can't sleep!”
“Good night,” she said.
“I'm brushing my teeth and then I'm going to sleep,” I said. “You're gonna have to talk to someone else.”
“I'm already asleep,” she said.
“Shh!” I said.
“I gotta sleep. I can't talk to you.”
“Don't,” I said. “I'm trying to brush my teeth.” I added in fake weeping, “I'm trying to be a man in this world, and I get no support from you at all!”
“I give you every support,” she said. “You're just happy cause your new girlfriend is in the other room. She's in there sweating and waiting for you."
My eyes were starting to adjust and I saw her arm on my side of the floor.
“Stop trying to cross the sacred line,” I said. “I see you.”
“What is wrong with you?” she said. “Your stupid ass expressions. Like I'm gonna molest you.”
“Sacred line,” I said.
“I'm just afraid of mice.”
“They bite!” I said.
“I'm proud of the fact we didn't eat much tonight,” she said.
“I ate a lot!”
“Well, we didn't intend to,” she said.
“You're proud of us that we planned on not eating a lot?” I was laughing.
“But Dee called people and got them out of bed to come eat with us,” Kerri said in her Irish whisper.
“Shhh!” I said.
“And they came,” she said, laughing also.
“You want to sleep, but you have to shut up to do so,” I said. “What a dilemma.” I was laughing more now, afraid I would wake the father. “A veritable Scylla and Charybdis.”
“A rock and a hard place,” she agreed. “I'm pressed up against the sacred line.” She exploded in laughter.
“Shut up!” I said.

I woke up on Dee’s floor in the morning, silently got my computer, and began writing.
Kerri groaned. I sat there not moving, hoping she'd go back to sleep.
“What's the matter?” she said.
I let out a tiny mumble, to discourage discussion. Finally, she began talking to me. “Go to sleep,” I said.
“I've been up for a while.”
Giving up on having quiet, I said, “You're so competitive, you can't stand to have me even wake up before you!”
“No, I had to rub my various aches and pains.”
“The reason I didn't answer you before is I woke up with a great song in my head,” I said. “A little melody. Do our laptops record?”
“I think so.”
“No disrespect,” I said, “but it looks like you're wearing a wig.
“Nice.”
“Just a little rat's nest this morning, that's all.”


“I don't care how my hair looks this morning,” she said. “I just woke up.”
“Ahah!” I said. “Your story doesn't match up. You said you got up a while ago.”
She hit me with a pillow and I swung back with mine.
“What are we, Laverne and Shirley?” I said.
“I think we are,” she said, taking a swipe at me with the burgundy pillow, and singing the show’s theme song: “We're gonna do it our way, yes our way.”
“Don't take the song out of my head!” I said.
Kerri was an acquired taste—she required attention, but was a lot of fun. Like my friend Jeff Liberty, she was both an inner-city wise-ass and a serious thinker, and having both sides in one friend was a treat.
I’d put my “Italia” World Cup football jersey on over the same shirt I'd worn, to hide the fact I was wearing the same shirt underneath.
“You wearing 2 shirts?” she said.
She had me there.


I was watching the Red Sox game online later, as a way to feel home. Ortiz at the plate with a chance to tie it in the 9th, and Dee called to say ShuShu was downstairs waiting for me in the car. I hated being dragged around but I appreciated it. It turned out we were going to the huge 'Coffee' place again, that horrible 'Western' restaurant with the inedible food and high prices. I'd picked up enough Chinese to understand ShuShu ask where the foreigner was, and they said "3rd floor." Kerri was up there with Dee and Bomi. She told me she'd gone to help talk Dee's patron Mr. Guh into hiring Bomi, since if Kerri were there, he couldn't avoid seeing them. Bomi had to agree to make $180 a month, after a training period making much less, live in a dormroom at the factory with 4 other people, 6 days a week, and agree to a 3-year commitment that she'd owe a lot of money if she broke. Not terrible, I thought, and not that different from the cruise ship contracts. Kerri added that she'd tried to talk Mr. Guh into giving his workers free lunch. He said he'd think about it. I toasted Bomi. I was happy for Bomi to get a job, and praised Kerri for vouching for her, and for saying Mr. Guh looked even younger than he had last week. It would be extra degrading for Bomi to have to work as a prostitute after losing her husband to one. The “powdered pork” on a waffle with whip cream and a cherry appeared on the table. I opted for fruit salad over the astronaut pork.

When we talked at home, Kerri thought it sounded like I thought I was better than Bomi because I thought my attentions would cheer her, and said it meant I didn't understand women. I fired back that it was all I could give to cheer Bomi up, and Kerri must think she was better than Bomi and Dee to believe that it was her own vouching and peptalk that had gotten Bomi the job. Her judgment pissed me off and I went to sulk in the hot living room. I didn't have a crush on Bomi. But I couldn't talk to Kerri about everything, and she was my only friend there.