Tag: articles

mornings after you

I read this while standing on the R train to Queens. I was sandwiched between all these businessmen holding their leather laptop bags, weary on their way home. I finished reading the piece and looked up with a sudden agitated rush that made them turn towards me with questioning looks.

Aside from the specifics of coffee and cigarettes and bagels, I feel like this is the story of the trembling thoughts I’ve had every time I’ve gone home with someone. Every night I’ve fallen in lust, or love, or both, and then the mornings that I’ve woken up beside him.

I was still trembling a little inside as I got home and wrote my own version about the way I feel when I wake up next to you. Months later, and I still feel like this every evening you take me into your arms and ask me to stay the night. Months later, and I still feel like this every morning I turn over to breathe into the part of your sleeping body closest to me. There are one or two times (maybe more) that I may have covered my face to hide the accidental tears finding their way to the surface of my eyes.

You’ll ask me, and I promise I will continue to deny. You said that if I keep denying, you’ll eventually stop asking.

But my heart is content in the fact that you already know.

•••

(I’ve only copied it here because I’ve never been able to concentrate on Adult Mag’s font and layout)

Afterward, your legs are entwined with mine and for a moment everything’s suspended, as if in amber, as if for a private eternity. It’s quiet in the spaces between our bodies. The silence pools out from there and fills the rest of the bedroom, until I get up for a glass of water. Would you like one? “And coffee,” you add. I’m up anyway, so I put on a sweatshirt and leave you there to watch the sun rise. The window is open and there’s a chill because it’s morning and it’s still dark; there’s the twinned orange flash of the lighter and the cherry, the quiet pop of your inhale.

What’s between the last kiss and the door is a pile up of inexplicable reasons and impaired solutions. I want to understand it, I want to move beyond half-measures, I want to exhale. But that can’t be all at once, and I don’t think I can safely omit what happens before we curl around each other like quotation marks.

Here’s the minefield: Appear approachable, likeable, then approach and be liked. Figure out your wants, navigate hers. Don’t think too hard, don’t force anything——there’s money for drinks and how much I’ve drunk and maybe a cab fare I can’t really afford right now okay we’ll split it no it’s fine and jesus christ why do you have to live so far away from me? could this be something?——and do this before your lips touch. Fail here and you’re doomed. Don’t forget to breathe. Don’t forget this is about connection.

In the morning we’re freed from specifics. Roll over and they’re beside you, sleeping probably, not looking how you thought they’d look, not looking out of place at all, on these sheets, this close to you. Your room performs the most mundane magic in the world: When their eyes open and they croak at you——“Morning,” they’ll whisper——they’ll seem as though they belong, a little. Like your lamp. Or that succulent on your windowsill that you’ve forgotten to water for, what, three weeks now?

•••

You made me coffee the way I like it, strong and black, and we stood naked in your kitchen while the cats orbited our legs. We watched each other, watched each other watch. I think I said you were perfect. If I didn’t then, I breathed it into you later with my tongue and my hands.

And with you: We were friends then and still are. The timbre and architecture of us hasn’t changed. We snuggled that night and fucked when the sun came up. We exited into that cold morning with bagels on our minds.

I always went to your place, down by the subway, and I always woke up before you. Morning light from your window would play across your shoulder; after a kiss, I’d slip out for work.

The first time with you felt so right——because we’d waited for such a long time, sure, but mostly because I think we knew from the beginning how well our bodies would fit together. Afterward remains a warm blur: There was coffee, there was sex, but here my memory’s failing.

It was so cold in your room, there with you on your small bed with the black sheets. I was scared because you were a decade older. It helped, though, that we spent the rest of that day tangled together.

And you. We were in a house that wasn’t ours for the weekend. I remember sobbing after we slept together for the first time, because I was in love with someone else and I’d lost her irretrievably. We split our time between the big bedroom, the small bedroom, the Jacuzzi with the replica of Michelangelo’s David, and the cozy kitchen, foraging for drinks and for food and for each other.

One constant here is the trust I’ve placed in the sun, that I firmly believe it will rise and that it will set. Another is evolution’s essentialism; doing the thing we’re meant by nature to do. What I feel in the morning might be something else that doesn’t change, a star to navigate by: After I’ve remembered who I am, I look at you and I feel a rush, perhaps the barest outline of love.

•••

The years and the beds pile up inescapably; things mostly stay the same, though the bodies change. There will always be the moment when we’re speaking to each other and the words between us stop making sense——they don’t matter now, because we’ve both been drawing nearer this whole time, our bodies conversing. And the first touch: My hand on your waist, both of yours tracing my back after our mouths finally find each other. This rightness, this sweetness. We go down together with the ship, wrecked on a reef of blankets and pillows.

After you’ve fucked someone for the first time you’ve got more information to go on. It’s like going from binary bit to quantum qubit: Where a bit has two states——do you want the lights on or off?——a qubit has more through superposition, its potential to be two states at once, to be of two minds about any one thing at any one time.

A friend recently told me her ritual the morning after she’d gone home with someone: Leave by 7 and find a diner to be alone in. She didn’t explain why, and so I took it on faith——we all cope with that crush of feeling differently. I picture her alone, sleep still in her eyes, a hazy halo of hair, sitting upright with a coffee and ignoring the light that gilds her. It is the most alone she’s ever felt, maybe, but she’s not lonely because she’s savoring the restoration of her personal space; she is a vibrating particle returning slowly to equilibrium.

Mine’s different. I always feel that I’m imposing, sullying someone’s space. I think it has something to do with revelation: I’ve just shared my essential self with you, and I can’t bear to see what your eyes won’t hide. So I say goodbye, hiding behind a remark that’s too glib on my way out the door, down the stairs, to the subway. It’s not relief I feel, not quite. Only that I’m armored, that I’m no longer so naked and flayed. People aren’t more tender the morning after, they’re just more vulnerable. It’s the same unguardedness you read in their faces when they’re coming; the same stuff that strangers on the subway feel rolling off of you in waves after a good tryst, the little things in the morning after the big things of night.

•••

If, in the morning, you turn over and happen to remember the luster of those eyes and how cutely those hands held a cigarette, you might feel a sudden headrush-y clarity. Of purpose, sure, but probably also of feeling. These aren’t at odds. What I mean to say is that you’ll know, in an instant, exactly what you want from whomever’s beside you. I’ve denied that knowledge before; it’s never worked for me.

I’m in alone in bed now, an explosion of books beside me. The window is open, there is the chilled breeze, and I am happy here; my lighter is just over there, resting on my pack. There’s a lucky inside. A cigarette I’m saving for your arrival, for your lips.

– Mornings After You, Bijan Stephen, via Adult Mag

attention without feeling is only a report

The absolute splendor of a completely empty schedule on a Sunday. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t wake up at 6am. I arose later than I have in months, looked lazily at the full sunlight and went about my entire day in almost complete silence. I cooked breakfast and went outside to elatedly watch ice melt into sidewalk rivers in front of my eyes, and felt giddy at the “45 degrees” staring at me from my weather report check. I felt the warmth of spring stubbornly insisting on its first appearance through the curtains of persisting wintry cold. I went and hid in a bookstore for a little while. With all of New York City at one’s disposal, sometimes the greatest luxury is just being by yourself.

Often when I do actually find myself having a quiet evening at home, I type in an artist’s name on Spotify (tonight, Sonny Rollins keeps me company) and then just work or allow myself to meander through reading books or blogs or articles.

At night just before bed, my memory wanes and occasionally in the mornings I’ll wake up to little notes I had emailed to myself. If you haven’t tried it, it’s actually pretty spectacular to read letters from yourself. I treat my entire blog as such.

Last night, I emailed myself my own blog entry from a while ago (aptly one that mentions Netflix, since I fell asleep watching an episode of Scandal). I found the quote at the end of my blog post referenced again here, where Brain Pickings explores the love between Mary Oliver and Molly Malone Cook. (I have always loved reading Mary Oliver- I liked that Brain Pickings referenced “her familiar touch of emboldening light” when speaking of the things she wrote in the wake of her lover’s the death). It’s exactly how I would describe her writing.

I was drawn to Mary Oliver’s thought that:

“Attention without feeling… is only a report.”

Later in the article:

But perhaps the greatest gift of [Mary and Molly’s] union was the way in which they shaped each other’s way of seeing and being with the world — the mutually ennobling dialogue between their two capacities for presence:

“It has frequently been remarked, about my own writings, that I emphasize the notion of attention. This began simply enough: to see that the way the flicker flies is greatly different from the way the swallow plays in the golden air of summer. It was my pleasure to notice such things, it was a good first step. But later, watching M. [Molly] when she was taking photographs, and watching her in the darkroom, and no less watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter. Such openness and empathy M. had in abundance, and gave away freely… I was in my late twenties and early thirties, and well filled with a sense of my own thoughts, my own presence. I was eager to address the world of words — to address the world with words. Then M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking and working, of seeing through the heavenly visibles to the heavenly invisibles. I think of this always when I look at her photographs, the images of vitality, hopefulness, endurance, kindness, vulnerability… We each had our separate natures; yet our ideas, our influences upon each other became a reach and abiding confluence.”

being a woman in tech

Speak up — but don’t talk too much. Light up the room — but don’t overshadow others. Be confident and critical — but not cocky or negative.

– New York Times on Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins

I am proud to be in tech. I was a middle-schooler that would run home to get on the computer and frequently stayed up until 5 a.m. studying website source files. For fun. On dial-up connections! Yet, because of others’ expectations and perceptions, I wouldn’t have imagined that I would have gone to business school and developed a tech-focused background.

I remember being one of two women in my programming classes, and being regarded with surprise (almost shock) when I calmly stated my major in university. “Shouldn’t you be in social work? or communications?” their looks seemed to say. I remember being flatly told by one of my best friends that I would most certainly “fail” in the business world. He stated that I am too shy, too amiable, and not enough of a “type A personality.” Men still “apologize” to me if they think a meeting will be “too geeky/nerdy,” as if I won’t belong, or as if I couldn’t possibly take interest in the things that they do.

I remember receiving “developmental feedback” during my performance reviews – and no matter how outgoing or assertive I had tried to be throughout that quarter, they would tell me I would have to “take more initiative” – this was, of course, only because of perception. As a 5’0″ Asian woman, I had to work three times as hard to garner respect from middle-aged white males. “Why do you always dress in slacks? You should wear pencil skirts, you’d be so much hotter.” Really? My goal in the office should be to serve your hungry lust?

In my first three months I had dozens of meetings with tech executives, entrepreneurs and investors, and the only women I met were scheduling the meetings and bringing drinks to the boardrooms. I started asking myself what year it was in Silicon Valley for women. Had we reached the point where we could wear pantsuits and play golf, or was it still the Mad Men era?

The women who quit tech aren’t fragile. I think they’re fed up. Why would a woman want to work for Uber, whose chief executive told GQ he calls his company “Boob-er” because his wealth makes him attractive to women?

Who would want to work for Snapchat, whose CEO, five years ago in college, sent emails to his fraternity brothers characterizing female students as “bitches” and “frigid” and “sororisluts”? Why would a woman want to attend industry conferences that feature presenters miming masturbation from the stage, or presenting apps that help users “stare at tits”?

– Why women are leaving tech by Sue Gardner

I work at a tech accelerator now – in arguably one of the most progressive cities – and unfortunately I still receive gender-based comments that should infuriate me. The saddest part of this is that I don’t even notice anymore. It has so firmly become part of the fabric of my career that I just don’t even bother- because if I did let it get to me, I’d have left a long time ago.

But I think part of the reason we’re stuck here is that we’re understanding the problem incorrectly. When I hear people talk about it, they use words like “encourage,” “support” and “nurture.” We advise companies to do a better job of “looking after” or “caring about” their women employees. We categorize the problem as though it were an issue of corporate social responsibility and as if we really believed women aren’t good enough and need coddling or remedial help.

That doesn’t fit my experience. The women I know in tech are tough, resilient and skilled. They have to be, to have pushed through the barriers to get to where they are. Like Charlotte Whitton said, back when she was mayor of Ottawa in the middle of the last century:

“Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.” (And then she added: “Luckily that’s not hard.”)

I’ve learned that I just need to take a deep breath and tough it out. I crack jokes with the execs. I make them laugh. I’m not afraid to cuss. I’m not afraid to walk into a room with my eyes shooting daggers and letting them know that I mean business. I don’t mind speaking loudly to be heard and arguing my point while using better vocabulary. The intimidated middle-schooler inside of me feels a little triumphant when they say, “I can’t imagine that you would call yourself a shy person.”

As a courteous person by training, I still happily offer to get the coffee and schedule meetings- but I’m leading those meetings.

To this day, I still remember what I responded to my friend’s comment that I’d fail in business. I quietly argued that i think in this world, it’s not necessarily all about having a homogenous workforce of “dominating drivers” – diversity of thought and personalities within organizations is what matters.

We still have work to do.

Studies show that when women speak up in negotiations or other meetings, they are often penalized for doing so. And should women get ahead by aping the air of overconfidence and bravado that characterizes the Valley’s most cringe-inducing men?

“I think that in 2015 we can give women better advice than ‘Behave more like men,’ ” said Cate Huston, a software engineer who has worked at Google and IBM.

Instead, Mr. Wadhwa’s response to women who questioned his ideas often reinforced their belief that men don’t like it when women speak up.

“I think there’s value in men talking about this — I absolutely do,” said Melinda Byerley, a marketing consultant who has worked at several tech firms. “But if you’re telling us to be tough, to lean in, to speak up — we’re going to do that.”

– New York Times on Vivek Wadhwa’s tone

Added: “Coding like a Girl
(this was originally given as a talk at AlterConf in Oakland. this talk only addresses gender diversity and was given in the context of other talks addressing racism, disability, classism, and many other topics.)”