The Adventures of Julie

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Today I will be Hermione from England. Now all I need is Harry Potter's invisibility cloak...

Traveling as a solo white female is a cultural experience in itself. You are sought after, nearly worshipped for your white skin - there are many days when you feel like a superstar - families want pictures with you; babies are thrust into your arms; school children flock around you wanting to touch you; you sit down for a moment and 20 people are crowding around you.

The flip side is the men. Your white skin besides being infinitely fascinating also labels you a westerner and thus a whore. They have seen all the American movies and looked at all the magazines, and thus all Western women are cheap sluts desperate for sex and willing to give it up to any man who comes near them.

In sexually repressed India, the men usually leave you alone, you are merely subjected to what Jen and I dubbed the "mind fuck or MF" where in one stare they pretty much fuck you with their mind. It is very creepy and disconcerting. Our solution - use humor. "Hey Jen, nasty looking bald guy scratching his crotch doing a MF on you behind the blue sign."

In Sri Lanka the men have all read the same page from the poorly written grammerically incorrect handbook on H"ow to pick up Western Women". It goes like this:

Helllloooo hellloooo (repeatedly and loudly and more annoyingly if you try to ignore them, but because obviously the only reason you are not responding to their studly good looks and manliness is that you didn't hear them) hellllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooo
Where you from?
What your name?
Sri Lanka like?
How long you stay?
You have boyfriend? No? Really?
Why you single?
You want (fill in the blank) tuk tuk, boat, me, surf lessons, etc ...

Repeat conversation about 40 times a day. Out of sheer boredom and a twisted sense of humor I've started creating alternate personalities and stories for my life. I've been Hermione, Ivanika, Roger, Mary Poppins, from England, Estonia, Never Never Land. My boyfiend is at home drunk, meeting me soon, dead, ran off with another man, I've been an actress (and my friend my agent), a comedian, a fairy, a dog walker and so it goes.

My next step is to get a tee shirt that answers all these questions and says GET LOST at then bottom. I was going to have it say Fuck Off, but it was pointed out that that might be taken as an invitation. Really what I need is to borrow Harry's invisibility cloak for a few days.

by jewel30 at 8:08 PM |