glitters in the night

[intertribal]

I saw a fruit bat last night.  It was in the tree I was sitting under by the Yarra River.  Good-sized, one of those cute ones with the fox faces.  It was crawling amid the branches, looking for fruit, presumably, not minding the party boat-barges filled with teenagers that had just come back from a day at the races of the Melbourne Cup with their silly hats and puffy cocktail dresses.  The bat fit better with the slowly spinning ferris wheel behind it, an older and cheaper pleasure.  Supposedly Coney Island is going out of business and its rickety amusement park may have to close - too bad, in my opinion.

I also went into a casino for the first time in my life.  I only stayed ten minutes.  ID was not demanded from me - "not you, ma'am, you're okay" - and although at first I felt out of place, in jeans, it became apparent that all the rich socialites weren't actually gambling.  They went to private rooms and restaurants and chocolate stores.  The slot machines and card tables were populated with people from my socioeconomic class, or maybe even lower.  Unhappy, desperate people continuously pressing buttons to make little fruit shapes swirl on a screen.  It's like a nirvana of capitalism - monetary amounts are posted all over, 5 c, $30, and everything glows and blinks - cheap and superficial.  It's fascinating, probably because I'm so detached from it.  Even if I go to Vegas after graduation, I swear to God, I won't gamble.  I was born in the year of the Rabbit, after all, and Rabbits don't gamble.  Occasionally there's the sound of coins in a downpour as somebody wins something, but it's rare.  The house always wins.  The bouncers are black or Latin, the casino workers and waiters Asian.  Behind me was a man on a cellphone: "I'm somewhere in the casino, I don't know where I am." 

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Yeah, casinos are depressing.

Speaking of class, though, you know what's odd? Not only is masculinity associated with the working class, butch lesbians seem to mostly exist in the lower classes, and these are the same people I'm most attracted to. I can find other people, of both sexes, attractive, but get me around a girl like that and I swoon and flirt like none other. It's absurd. This is not just Josie, but like the clerk at Safeway and random people I see when shopping...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

That is odd, but I'm sure BS explanations can be made for it (well, maybe not all BS). Not that I have any.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

all i've got is the same thing that makes "feminine" speech and tastes, etc. more "proper" and upper class (no, seriously, that's the difference between men's and women's speech, on very generalized average), the same idea that the working class itself is more masculine, the upper classes effeminate. i don't really know what that means, but i know people who date in the reverse, find upper classes more attractive (usu. the women) and are from a lower class background. my background is kind of...rich working class, if that makes sense. lower class people who got money (through marriage or work) and produced me. i'm much more comfortable away from the upper classes, in general. which i don't think i knew so well until i came to Reed, with the exception of meeting Santiago's grandparents...

so there's a big mess there i don't know how to sort out, and don't really expect you to...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

ah, I think that makes sense - the feminine, fragile upper classes, too dainty to do work or get tan in the sun (an Asia thing).

I'm definitely more comfortable with people who are either lower middle class/working class, although I have a few wealthier friends - but they usually don't... I don't know, flaunt it or have no awareness that they have it. Then again, rich in Nebraska is so not as rich as rich in New York/Florida. I mean, I think I just have difficulty communicating with Floridians who grew up with housekeepers.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I still don't understand why I'm attracted to that sort of masculinity in women though. Not that they have to be working class, it's the masculine part that gets me. In a certain way--the confidence and charisma...even a swagger. I don't like bull-dykes, necessarily. More androgynous. But still masculine. Now I'm really rambling.

Yeah, rich in Nebraska isn't much. I could say a lot about who I was more comfortable with at the Book Co. and PSU, but it amounts, more or less, to the same thing. I think I'm even more comfortable around working class people than middle class...almost certainly.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Jason thinks I'm culturally lower class and economically not. That kinda fits...at least, all my parents' ways of thinking about money are very tied up in working class concerns/values/aesthetics...though they take no pride in it, so, very pretentious (that's more my dad than my mom, though). It has the bizarre result of me resenting upper class people more, I think, because I never wanted the money they had.

And yeah, there's a difference between people with money and upper class people, which is why i use the term at all...it's a way of being. Manners and things I don't understand.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

that's very true (that there's a distinction between people with money and upper class people). there's also people who are upper class who have no money - I guess there used to be more, especially in fiction (ha ha - House of Mirth, Grey Gardens) but I don't know, there's a couple people I know at Barnard who come from working/middle class but know how to fake coming from the upper class extremely well because they know all those ways of being.

sometimes I feel like I'm culturally of a higher class than I am economically because my parents (almost) both have PhDs - it's kinda different, but similar.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

yeah, Tara's the same way (her parents are both professors, but not so much money). it's like the inverse of me, haha. since neither of my parents finished college, which i become very conscious of around parents' weekend or if they're here helping me move stuff. i get really ashamed.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Bah, what's the use of shame. Kim's parents aren't exactly academic either... in fact, most of my friends' parents aren't (Yue's the exception).

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

er, that last isn't quite right...i mean i resent the upper class more than people like Jason, at least, who very much dislike their working class roots and all the racism and sexism and beaten down acceptance to their way of life that they associate with the working class, as opposed to upper class intellectualism.