Composed Elements

I’m talking about my new dentist. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like getting hit on by my dentist while I get my teeth cleaned.

It was a very uncomfortable hour and it felt like I was at a bar, forced to chit chat with somebody I didn’t want to talk to. The worst part was that I couldn’t even use the “Sorry, I need to go the restroom” excuse.

At first I thought, maybe he’s just really talkative. He asked me a bunch of questions about myself while he was working on my teeth, but of course, I could only respond in nods, shakes and gurgles. I learned from him that he liked my hair and he used to dye his hair every color of the rainbow, he liked learning different languages, how he felt about the media, what countries he’s traveled to and so on and so on.

Then things got more awkward as he leaned in to talk to me and put his arm around the top of the dentist chair…almost like his arm was around my shoulders. Slick move, Doctor.

He then touched a small chicken pox scar I have on my face. I don’t think anyone’s ever commented on it before because it’s so small, but after he touched it, he asked, “Oh, so where did you get this from?” I should have told him it was contagious.

While I was gurgling Listerine, he leaned to the side with his hand holding up his cheek and stared at me the whole time, asking me more about my age and my hobbies.

I ran out of there as soon as I could. As if visiting the dentist wasn’t already scary enough!

I haven’t had a chance to write about some fun bar stories in a while. These stories are from a couple of weeks ago. I was meaning to post this earlier, but dangit, work got in the way. Work, you sure know how to keep me too busy to write my blog!

Best overheard conversation
On Friday night, I went to this “burlesque night” at a club. The event flyer demanded people dress “sexy” and promised pole-dancing lessons as well as free hair and make-up stylists. When I got there, almost everyone was dressed in regular clubbing attire, except for a handful of girls that tried wearing feathers in their hair with flapper outfits (?) and some girls tried to pass off underwear and stockings as burlesque clothes. There were no hairstylists and make-up artists in sight. Although the DJ was really cool, I didn’t see how house music matched with a burlesque show. I guess they could dance really fast… The go-go dancers did dress in fun outfits and did their own pole dancing while having to shoo away the swarm of creepy guys trying to get in on the action.

My friend overheard a conversation a group of three guys were having near us. They were scheming on how to approach us.

GUY 1: OK, there are four of them and three of us. What are we going to do?
GUY 2: I got it. You guys each take one girl and I’ll take two.

I’m glad they didn’t want any of us to feel left out.

El Mariachi
My adventures continued on Saturday night. One of my friends saw this thing on MySpace called the Barmuda Triangle, where you hit three bars in Downtown LA, pick up a “passport” to stamp at each bar and get a free T-shirt at the end. Deep down, we knew the passport and T-shirt part was a joke, but we were still hopeful.

When we got to the bar, La Cita, my first thought was, wow, I don’t know of any other bars that have not one, but two Mexicans flags as part of their brightly lit signs. When we walked in, the room was extremely dark with a reddish hue. Mariachi music was blaring from the live band. The woman at the door asked if we were here for “the party” and of course we said yes. We were here to party. The walk down the corridor to get through the bar felt excrutiatingly long. Everyone stared at us. The place was packed with people from the age group of 30 to 45 with a good number of people wearing cowboy hats. Where was my cowboy hat?? I swear the music stopped like in the movies when the nerd walks into a house party and the record skips to a screeching halt. OK, it didn’t, but it felt like that. We tried to fit in and got on the crowded dance floor. Within minutes, the exciting music stopped and the band started playing a slow song. Our dancing went from jumping around to swaying in a circle. Awkward, but we were determined to enjoy ourselves. We left shortly after realizing we had crashed somebody’s actual birthday party. Ahh, so that’s what that woman meant by “are you here for the party?”

Good thing we found a taco stand next door and I ate there twice that night – once then and again after the Barmuda Triangle. Al pastor tacos, I love you so.

One of my friends is learning Spanish and is using it as much as she can whenever she talks to me. I took three years of Spanish in highschool, but as we all know, our education is what we make of it. Yeah…I can hardly say anything in Spanish.

Whenever someone talks about the language, a couple of images always pops into my head. One is of this ad that was plastered on all the buses in San Diego when I was living there. It said, “!Accidentes! 222-2222.” I giggle when I say it to myself – “ACCIDENTES???! Call dos dos dos dos dos…”

(ooh look, I found a picture)

The other image that pops in my has to do with a pregnancy test my friend saw in a 99 cent store. On the box, it said, “Instrucciones en espanish.”

Yesterday, as my friend and I were chatting online, I tried saying “I love you” in Spanish, which is “te quiero,” but instead I wrote, “te llama” and then I quickly changed it to “te llamo” (you know, to sound smarter). I realized a second later that that was totally wrong and asked her if I had just called her a llama (like the animal). She said, “No, you just said, ‘you are called.’”

When I went out with my girlfriends the same night, the Spanish was infectious. We were using all the Spanish we could think of. Combined, I think the four of us knew about four Spanish words and used them all incorrectly. My friend’s favorite sentence is “Yo soy abogado,” which translates to something like “I am lawyer.” She always means to say “aburrido,” which means “bored,” but always says lawyer in Spanish by accident. !Accidentes!

My other friend and I took joy in saying “lo siento” (I’m sorry) to each other a million times on the street. This Mexican man that was at the bus stop turned to look at us and then looked utterly confused. It might have been because we were two Asian girls yelling out “lo siento” or we just looked plain crazy. Since both of us suddenly felt incredibly awkward and stupid, we didn’t know how to act, so of course we said “lo siento!” to him. That’s a sure way to make things less awkward.