One Down

I've just completed my first big paper. Coming in at 26 pages (including title and reference pages), my examination of the 18th- and 19th-century reviews of the slave narratives is over. I will gladly return the books tomorrow and resume my analysis of whiteness. Fun stuff.

Also, I tripped through my preparation for a presentation I have to do Monday with Katharina on the essay "Black Bodies Swingin': Race, Gender and Jazz." Enough of school. That is not all I do here. The other night I went to a party at Cornelia's house in Brooklyn. She lives in what she calls a "collective."

It's a big space (for lack of a better term) with rooms and random hideaways and tall ceilings and visible pipes and insulation. I would totally live there. Anyway, the purpose of the gathering was Cornelia's roommate, Siena, had an art show. Her art was all over the walls and she sold some pieces. I met a bunch of people and came home with two numbers. Two men's numbers. One guy is named Michael. By the time I got around to him, I had had a few Vodka Cranberries. We got into this conversation about my white paper and what I want to do and this play I'm thinking of writing over the winter break. He proceeded to ask me what it was I was going to do with all of this stuff in my head. It was nice to hear that I seem to be on the right track thought-wise. Anyway, he told me that he was going to introduce me to a friend of his here in New York who is a filmmaker. And he also told me that he was going to put me in touch with a friend of his who lives in L.A. and is a writer for the show "Friends." Anything I can do to meet Jennifer Aniston. We'll see.

The other number I got was Frances's. He's nice. He's Siena's boyfriend for now. My friend and colleague (that sounds so pretentious) took a walk down to the East River. It was cold and there was snow all over the place and it was amazing. I never want to live in a place where it does not snow. Speaking of the snow, I took pictures.

I saw the movie Far From Heaven. It was a great look into issues of race and sexuality. That it's set in the late '50s gives audiences an interesting perspective. Especially since some of the homophobic and racist attitudes displayed throughout the film exist today. The only difference is, sometimes people hide it. And unfortunately, sometimes people don't. On another "society sucks sometimes" note, I watched ER tonight. I swear, I really do study. Maybe that's why I'm always up late.

Anyway, I watched ER. There was a story line this past week about a little girl who was born with a penis. She was born in the wrong body. Her parents broke up three years previous because they didn't agree on how to raise their kid. So the dad took her and allowed her to be the girl that she felt herself to be. It's nice to see a top-five drama on NBC handle this issue. It's usually dealt with in adults and it's easier for audiences to dismiss them as freaks. But when they see a 10-year-old depicted as transgendered, it's harder to ignore the fact that there is fluid sex and fluid gender. The producers, writers, directors did a good job in balancing opinions by including such comments by doctors as "I think they call them transsexuals or something" to the unlikely transformation of a doctor's tolerance to a point where he felt deeply for the girl and pained (although not as much as the girl) at the fact that her mother cut her hair off and put a "boy's" sweatshirt on her. Two weeks left in the semester.