The Roommate
"How do you clean"
"I didn’t know you cleaned the bathroom."
"I make sure the counters are clean."
"Maybe next time you could scrub the showers cause there are black things."
"I don’t use the shower."
"You don’t use the shower."
"No. I use the bathtub."
"You don’t shower. Why?"
"Cause it leaves shampoo in my hair."
"Cause I want to make sure that you are doing something."
"I am."
"This week I will make sure to clean."
Posted by Maria Tatar “Cinderfellas: The Long-Lost Fairy Tales”
Book Bench
Loose leafs from the New Yorker Books Department.
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March 16, 2012
Cinderfellas: The Long-Lost Fairy Tales
Posted by Maria Tatar
Bavarian fairy tales going viral? Last week, the Guardian reported that five hundred unknown fairy tales, languishing for over a century in the municipal archive of Regensburg, Germany, have come to light. The news sent a flutter through the world of fairy-tale enthusiasts, their interest further piqued by the detail that the tales—which had been compiled in the mid-nineteenth century by an antiquarian named Franz Xaver von Schönwerth—had been kept under lock and key. How astonishing then to discover that many of those “five hundred new tales” are already in print and on the shelves at Widener Library at Harvard (where I teach literature, folklore and mythology) and at Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley.
Schönwerth—a man whom the Grimm brothers praised for his “fine ear” and accuracy as a collector—published three volumes of folk customs and legends in the mid-nineteenth century, but the books soon began gathering dust on library shelves. In 2010, over a hundred of the fairy tales culled from the archive were published by the Schönwerth champion Erika Eichenseer, under the title Prinz Rosszwifl. So the Guardian’s news wasn’t exactly new. To be sure, those tales have not yet been translated into English, and many stories remain in manuscript form. But there are enough of them available now to satisfy our curiosity: are they radically different from the fairy tales we know?
Schönwerth’s tales have a compositional fierceness and energy rarely seen in stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault, collectors who gave us relatively tame versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” and “Rapunzel.” Schönwerth gives us a harsher dose of reality than most collections. His Cinderella is a woodcutter’s daughter who uses golden slippers to recover her beloved from beyond the moon and the sun. His miller’s daughter wields an ax and uses it to disenchant a prince by chopping off the tail of a gigantic black cat. The stories remain untouched by literary sensibilities. No throat-clearing for Schönwerth, who begins in medias res, with “A princess was ill” or “A prince was lost in the woods,” rather than “Once upon a time…”
Though he was inspired by the Grimms, Schönwerth was even more interested than they were in documenting the oral traditions of Bavaria. He hoped to preserve remnants of a pagan past and to consolidate national identity by capturing in print rapidly fading cultural traditions, legends, and customs. This explains the rough-hewn quality of his tales. Oral narratives famously neglect psychology for plot, and these tales move with warp speed out of the castle and into the woods, generating multiple encounters with ogres, dragons, witches, and other villains, leaving almost no room for expressive asides or details explaining how or why things happen. The driving question is always “And then …?”
Our own culture, under the spell of Grimm and Perrault, has favored fairy tales starring girls rather than boys, princesses rather than princes. But Schönwerth’s stories show us that once upon a time, Cinderfellas evidently suffered right alongside Cinderellas, and handsome young men fell into slumbers nearly as deep as Briar Rose’s hundred-year nap. Just as girls became domestic drudges and suffered under the curse of evil mothers and stepmothers, boys, too, served out terms as gardeners and servants, sometimes banished into the woods by hostile fathers. Like Snow White, they had to plead with a hunter for their lives. And they are as good as they are beautiful—Schönwerth uses the German term “schön,” or beautiful, for both male and female protagonists.
Why did we lose all those male counterparts to Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and the girl who becomes the wife of the Frog King? Boy heroes clearly had a hard time surviving the nineteenth-century migration of fairy tales from the communal hearth into the nursery, when oral storytelling traditions, under the pressures of urbanization and industrialization, lost their cross-generational appeal. Once mothers, nannies, and domestics were in charge of telling stories at bedtime; it seems they favored tales with female heroines.
Even more importantly, the Brothers Grimm, who were responsible for establishing the folklore canon we have today in Anglo-American cultures, may have been wary of telling stories of persecuted boys, having suffered much in their own early lives. It is no accident that we refer these days to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm almost as if they were a couple. The brothers lost their father at a young age and worked hard to educate themselves and to keep their fragile family intact. They studied law together and worked side by side for decades, taking notes, copying manuscripts, editing texts, and famously creating index card entries for their monumental dictionary of the German language. Is it any surprise that they might have found tales about quarreling brothers or male-sibling rivals less than congenial? Schönwerth’s collection reminds us that fathers are constantly sending no-account sons into the world to seek their fortune and that they are generally relieved to rid themselves of an extra mouth to feed. Brothers stand in a relationship of rivalry, fighting over farms or kingdoms and betraying each other in ways that hark back to the Biblical cruelties of Joseph’s brothers.
The briskness of Schönwerth’s style is clear in a tale like “King Goldenhair.” The adventures of the fair-haired prince bring together bits and pieces from “The Frog King,” “Snow White,” and “The Water of Life” to create kaleidoscopic wonders. The tale reminds us of the wizardry of the words in fairy tales, their worlds of shimmering beauty and enchanting whimsy. Who can avoid feeling the shock effects of beauty when Prince Goldenhair enters “a magical garden awash in sunlight, full of flowers and branches with gold and silver leaves and fruits made of precious stones”? Or when a dung beetle turns into a prince after a girl spares his life and invites “creatures small and large, anything on legs” to dance and leap at the wedding. Equally charming is the story about Jodl, a boy who overcomes his revulsion to a female frog and, after bathing her, joins her under the covers. In the morning, he awakens to find himself in a sunlit castle with a wondrously beautiful princess. Here at last is a transformation that promises real change in our understanding of fairy-tale magic, for suddenly we discover that the divide between passive princesses and dragon-slaying heroes may be little more than a figment of the Grimm imagination.
Sleeping Beauty print circa 1876, courtesy Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Keywords
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/03/long-lost-fairy-tales.html#ixzz1sXZABIlg
The Imagined Life of Ben Smith (Pipe Dream)
In order to keep their married life spicy, the wife decided to get some kinky, slutty lingerie from Victoria’s Secret, which sculpted her breasts into ice cream cones. That night, Ben Smith and the wife had normal sex. Luckily, he already had a vasectomy but they didn’t have to worry about any biscuit baking in the wife’s oven, threatening their assets. This summer, they decided to vacation in Hawaii. This was one of the curious customs of the white people. In this ritual, one went away from work for a couple of days of leisure and expected to return to their jobs in tact.
Taylor Swift’s lyrics give me chills
I was a scarlet letter.
You made a rebel out of a careless man’s careful daughter.
Pipe Dream: work was busy
Sometimes I find my dad to be suffocatin. He gets really worried whenever it rains. Maybe he thinks I am going to melt.
The story of Butterfly McQueen haunts me. Robert Townsend is so fucking talented. I hate him.
Today I relieved a childhood experience. I ate ramen. It was actually painfully and pleasantly spicy. It was so cool. But unlike childhood, the portion wasn’t as big.
Clovis almost ran into me. I love it when he think sevyerthing is someone else’s fault.
It’s not his fault for slacking off . He says "I was so busy helping Ben Smith. "
Usually, he gives me the utility bills by hand. Then, suddently he puts them in Greta’s office. When he aberrates, …
One day he wants utility bills to his desk. Then suddently he wants them in his mailbox.
What is up with this dude?
Clovis " Didi is the senior. "
Didi is one of the laziest and dumbest people in the fucking world but she doesn’t lack self esteem.
Everyone at this fucking company ises the title of "Senior" which means NOTHING.
Cold
Roommate had the door and window open again. I wonder if she is cold blooded. It was unusually cold. Did looked at my desk to see if she could blast her AM radio. Alas, I was there. The fridge is being defrosted. I hate the sond of leaky plumbing.
Pipe Dream: MF
Motherhood is the road to madness
She is the embodiment of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. On an L shaped couch. Amy was arranging her dolls. She ws plyaing with Annie. I wason my latop struggling to write. Them there was mom who was lying down. I had to remove my fucking binders whih annoyed me. I hate the proximity of people. I feel like I have no permanent place where I could just spread out my research materials and concentrate. I am always surrounded by noise and people. I am not anti social. I just a break from the ruckus. I long for walls. I long for a log cabin. I just want a moment of silence.
The mom screamed while drying the girls hairs. It was like a terrible violin string breaking. It clawed at my heart. It actually scratched through my heart.
I was feeling irritated. I didn’t understand why this evening brought this slum tenement arrangement. Usually they are in the living room. But here they were with me in the same room. Why?
The house is very crowded.
I am still adjusting to the roommate. She is very tyrnnical.
"You can clean it for the next weekend."
I am guesing she kicked out mom and the twins from the living room.
Mom is never going to get her GED. She has too many mom duties. She has no free time for herself.
Easter
The people in yjos pcmtry practice a truly odd ritual known as an Easter egg hunt. The boiled egg is prized. Many eggs are boiled. These eggs are then deocrated. They are then hidden in a lawn. The objective is for kids to look and "hunt" for these eggs.
First of all, the why the fuck would anyone decorate boiled eggs? It’s not even tht yummy.
Second of all, why the fuck would anyone hide them in the grass?
Work
I emailed Ben Smith. I still could not walk up to his office and say my request. I am so immature. We are introverts, meaning we’d rather gouge out our eyes with the staplers on our desks. I emailed him to sign it. No response. I made sure to hide in MF’s office.
"I want to talk," I said.
I was buying time.
MF looked up from his computer.
"How’d you spend your Easter? I went to a concert. It was acoustic guitar. High energy. "
"I don’t celebrate Easter." I said.
"Is your family Catholic."
"yeah," he nodded.
"Ethnicity?"
"Mexican."
"Whiochj state?"
"Actually, my dad is from here. He’s fourth generation Californian. My mom’s MExican. "
"Did your dad push you into engineering. How’d you get into the oil industry?"
"My sisters are all self employed. My dad has his own business. He had a business selling linoleum. "
"Do you have family?"
"Yes,"
"DId any jounrliats contact you to interview about fracking?"
"Yeah, but I don’t talk to them."
"I know SR declined an interview with KCET."
"You do?"
"Yup."
"I’m not surprised. You know how they twist your words. You know?"
"I don’t believe the hype." he said.
"So why did the fracking go wrong in Dimock?"
"Where’s that?"
"Pennsylvania."
"Oh. Don’t know."
"I mean, things can go wrong. Like the BP oil spill, It should’t have happened."
I nodded.
I looked at his shelves.
"What’s that?" poionting at the plastic bvottles. One held yellowish sand. One held gray sand. One held coal black sand.
They were in front of books on machinery and engineering.
I looked at the whiteboard with well na,mes.
he showed me a relic of a part.
"We weren’t supposed to do that."
Accidentally, the operation ended up breaking up a machine part.
There were four chairs in his office.
I noticed a mint container with the logo of a vendor. On one corner were scrolls of maps. These were maps of drilling wells.
His window faced the driveway and looked out to the apartment and solar wells.
His department was in charge of cementing and well completion.
I couldn’t help but notice a red p[lastic Halliuburton mug. Halliburton was the notorious company of Dick Cheney and the cpompany that was in charge of the cementing for the BP oil offshore drilling.
Overall, it was a pristine office.
"you got familty here?"
I nodded.
"You got family anywhere else?"
"I have cousins in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s the most beautiful place I Have ever seen. If you have kids,. that’s the place where you should raise them."
He laughed.
Suddenly, his long time contractor entered. It was BD. BD has gray hair and mischievous blue eyes. He looks old but his attitude is still that of a preteen boy. Hios hair is cut short. Because his work is in the field, he was wearing T shirt and jeans. There were flushes on his cheeks. His eyebrows looked like clouds. BD would give me rides. Sometimes, he would even watch for me. One time, he made a U turn just to get my attention.
By then, I felt ythat the convesation was enough. I had hidden out of Ben Smith’s view sufficiently. And Ifelt it was safe to return to my office without running into Ben Smith.
I still needed my fucking timesheet signed. Fucking Ben Smith still hadn’t responded.
So I printed out a hard copy and I gave it to Didi. She was our envoy. I sent her to walk over to Ben Smith to ask him to sign.
She then relayed a message from Ben Smith, "Have the other branch HR manager sign it. "
Pipe Dream
Ch. 3 College
I remember when I went to college. This is a warning to all Korean dads who put tight leashes on their daughters.
I wanted to find out what the fuck I was missing out on.
There was plenty of dirty dancing. SO what?
I went to an east coast college. I decided to put the farthest college. I decided I had to be in couple time zones away from dad. I wanted to be free. I longed for liberty. I was even interested and enthralled at the idea of snow. It looked like a Christmas postcard. It looked as serene as powdered sugar.
I decided to go. It was time to leave. AT the last minute, I got chicken.
My dad and I both feared the cold. He made sure to get me jackets stuffed with duck fur. It would make me look like a snowman all puffed up but hell I would be warm. immobile, but warm.
At first, I started to miss the little things. I asked Dad to send me some ramen. I even craved from Choco pie.
Dad immediately shipped a month’s worth of ramen via UPS overnight.
He also sent envelopes of cash.
He sent letters which I did not read.
I then realized that I had the freedom to go outside. But I was in the fucking suburbs, the boonies. There was nowhere to go. I had come from LA and I moved to the fucking boonies.
I didn’t have a car.
There was only ONE Starbucks and it closed at 8. On Sundays, it closed at 7.
I was used to the 24-7 restaurants. Hell, there were TWO Korean restaurants in walking distance of where I lived that served sul lung tang and Korean food 24 hours a day. It never closed. It was uncalled for for any business that served food to close any minute earlier than 11pm.
I missed El Pollo Loco.
I missed carne asada tacos.
I missed bacon wrapped hot dogs.
I missed the familiar sights of Latinos and the sounds. I longed for that annoying ranchero music.
I missed home.
I missed the thrill of putting siracha and hoisin sauce into my pho noodle soup.
I longed for the food. I tried the Mexican restaurant. It wasn’t the same.
First I thought this was normal.
I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to leave home so bad and now I was homesick. I didn’t get it.
I had a harder time adjusting.
I had to figure out a study routine. There was some difficulty in assigning a place where I could study.
There were so many fucking distractions. So many fliers. Damn. I felt like Little Riding Hood and I was trying to get to a journey but damn it so many people were fucking interrupting me. There were petitions to sign and clubs to sjoin and scholarships to apply for and homework to do. FUck Fuck Fuc k.
I fought with my roommate. It was not pretty.
I gor my own room. But still I struggled. I couldn’t study. ALl I wanted to do was to sleep.
I will be honest with you.
The all you can eat dining hall really took me over. I kept hoarding food. I kept eating and eating and I couldn’t control it.
I felt so many factors were setting me back against accomplishing my academic goals such as the endless food.
I was a recovering anorexic and bulimic and suddentluy the substance that I had abused was right in my face and in large unlimited portions. I ate and I ate. I then saved the food.
At first, food was not a problem. But I knew it would snowball. It became difficult for me to time my meals at certain times of the day/. Dinner would end at a certain hour and I had to hustle or else I would go hungry through the night. That was hard. I was used to an open fridge and a kitchen that I had access to.
What was the Bible verse? Better to eat a bread in peace than a afeats in a home of strife?
For others, meals were time of socialization.
For me, it was a competitive sport. It was fucking serious. It was an objective to stiuff myself , to make sure thta I would never go hungry ever again.
It was in college when I first tried smoked salmon. I didn’t like the taste. It was way too fishy and slimy. But it looked so pretty and pink. It was arranged on a platter with bagels, clouds of cream cheese, wiffs of red onions, sliced tomatoes, and capers. Like the piggy that I was, I spooned the salmon like ut was my last meal. I bit into my bagel sandwich. Vross. I coldn’t believe the fishiness of the taste.
But the meal was special. It was for Parents Weekend.
I was then reminded of the famous Leo Tolstoy quotye. All happy famiies….
Ofcourse, my dad wasn’t there. He was in Cali and this was the east coast. I am sure he would have come if I had asked. But I didn’t wnaty him there. Since I was little, school and family were separate. They could never combine. Different rules ruled in both, rules that were extremelty contradictory.
I am sorry to say taht I was ashamed of dad and where I came from. Dad was a person who worked in the swapmeets. I knew that these parents, these white people, wearing theior crisp Sunday best didn’t even know what swapmeets were. All my life, I did my best to fit in and appear like these people. But inward, I knew I was not like them.
I couldn’t help but marvel at the sight. Happy daughters eating and conversing in English with an older man (dad) and an older woman (mom). Some even had siblings.
White Ameircan media cherish the ritual of eating otgether, another foreign ritual. Dad and I hardly ate together. There was room on the table for ONE person at a time. It was such a cluttered kitchen.
On the floor were jars. White Amerifcans would normally put cans and jars into cabinets. Not Dad. He put them on display on the floor. Cannec mackerel? Got it. Ity’s right on the floor. Orange marmalade? In stock. It’s right on the floor. Coca Cola? The 12-can box is right on the floor. There was a tower of Korean ramen.
We were so ghetto. We would wash and save styrpofoam and takeout containers. Those were our china.
We saved plastic bags from the grocery stores. We had colleted so much that a huge barrack had developed form underneath.
We also savedketcup and salt packets and soy saue packets that the takeout restaurants would put in our food packages.
We saved disposable chopsti ks and plastic forks.
We saved napkins.
I wanted to go home. I thought about the story of Dorothy,. I just neede dto get some red shoes and click them together and say, "There’s no plae like home."
I sighed, There was no place quite like LA.
But I had four years of college to shove up my ass. Would I make it?
I managed to find a piece of home among he Chicana club.
They were form LA.
We drank. We met boys.
Then I met Slauson.
I was so ripe for romance. Like a Julio Cortazar story, I was so engrossed in the fiction that I was determined to make it true.
Even MM had gone there.
Slauson fit that arhctype of Red Upshaw.
I was so determined to cleave onto the little bits of home. Slauson was a piece of home beause he represneted the urban life. My interactions with him reminded me of the romances…from books and movies on AMC.
I was hungry for home and I longed to get my fix. I was addicted. I wanted more. More and more bits of home to revibve me. I became a monster.
I was unhappy.
Then Slayuson and I engaged in that tug of war over sex. I wante dmonogamyu. He wanted no commitment, just wanted to use me like a disposable conmdom or even a ziplock bag.
I thought I could change him. I read enough romance novels abnout how that one beautiful, smart protagonist was able to convert that bad boy into a nice, monogamist. That was the dream.
I am sure he thought he could convince me to see things his way.
Eventually, it was the end.
HE moved on to other women. I was aghast. He seemed like the greatesyt passion of my life. I felt like I failed.
I looked at myself. What the fuck was wrong with me? Was I not pretty enough? Was I not smart enough?
I was the one who helpe dhim with his math homework. I was the more erudite of the two. Even he knew that.
OPkay. May be he was prettier. He did have longer eyelashes that curled so lovely. He had this marigold brown skin that had tinges of grapefruit pink. He had these eyes that could sink you in. He had a lovely deep voice. His embrace was… warm. His touch was … charmismatic.
He was unlike any creature I had seen in LA.
So anyways, I saw him one night. He knew he was sleeping over. Not in my bed, though.
He had a rich sxual history.
I felt angry. I wanted to be as promiscuous as he was. If only I was a guy, then I could totally best him at him sleazy promiscuity. Girls can do anything boys can, just better.
It was unfair. I was modicum of discernment that he lacked. I had to accept that I wans;t him. I was not sleazy. I was not Slauson. I was me.
But the sting hurt. My self esteem took a dive.
I was determined to get it back.
First, I Indulged in vanity.
I went to partiesd. The number of boys on my back reiterated that I was just as attractive as Slauson. There were plenty of fish in the sea.
But my mind returned to Slayuson.
It was a wound that I suffered.
I was sad all the time.
I coldn’t concentrate. I longed for home. My spirit felt weak.
I was in a differnet state so I had no meds.
It flt like a melancholia was taking over me.
I went to the doctor. He was pretty pissed.
"Everything’s normal", he said.
I was bodily healthy. Damn it. I was a waste of his time.
I experimented iwth various solutions. Firts, I used food. Then I used parties. Then I used alcohol.
One night, I had enough alcohol. I ended up in the clinic.
Eventually, a counselor ercommended that I should take a leave.
I wanted to go home. Even though I had risked my life and my future, I was goinghome. I had burned my bridges at college.
I packed. I put everything in boxes. I had exactly 48 hours to vacate. Shit. I had so much shit.
My friend LC had alreayd withdrawn. She was from YTeas. And she also confessed that she was goin home. Another colleague who I went to orientation with had suffered from bulimina and she also withdrew. My God. IT was a horrible attrition.
LC was working in the Arts Library. It was where I went for my theater books like Dream on aMoneky Mountain and Fulan. It had plush royal purple carpet.
LC was a Mexican American. She was short and slightly chubby. She had striaght black hair. She had pale skin. There were hints of the Chicano accent which brought me home, and I thionk that;s whty I really liked her.
I faced the truth.
The dorm had housekeepers who were like mothers. They were friendly and really engaged with us. I loved them.
I was going home.
I arrived to LAX. I didn’t tell my dad.
The east had been so cold.
But I saw the familiar palm trees, the green chandlier wreaths all the way to the sky, swaying to the gentle breeze and the sun.
The air.
I smiled. My heart felt lightened. I was home.
