Despertar

i am incredibly hot

Gotcha! I bet you thought I was going to write about how sexy I am today, but, of course, I will not. Even though I am. I probably look better than anyone ever has, at any time, today. It's effortless, for me. I almost can't help it.

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It's cold as balls here. Seriously. Before I flew out here, I was really excited about the prospect of sundresses, and now it turns out I have to wear a parka to work, which blows my mind, it being June. It's because of the currents, how they roll off the bay, which is only about a block away in several directions. It makes for a pretty view from the upstairs windows, but it's a huge deterrent against wearing skirts to work.

Emeryville, where the apartment is, is on the other side of the bay and is about twenty degrees warmer. Which is significant, because the air conditioning unit is broken.

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They don't care what I wear or what time I come into the office. I feel almost out of place among all these laidback West-Coast attitudes. I was trained to call my superiors by their surnames, to reserve jeans for casual Fridays and to put in as much face-time as humanly possible, for reference purposes. I think I come across as a shit-eater.

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The people on the subway are kind of douchey. Visually, I mean, because they don't really interact with me or with each other; they sit on the (cloth!) seats and read their pamphlets, their Onions, their self-important education reform hardbacks. They don't smile or offer to help an obviously struggling girl heft her suitcase onto the seat, and they are very reluctant to answer questions about the order of stations between Macarthur and Embarcadero.

Today, though, I made eye contact with a homely save-the-whales chick wearing red Chucks and a giant backpack. I really don't like that type, because of how condescending and judgmental they are, and I instanty disliked her, because of how condescending and judgmental I am. I tried to convey, through my gaze, that she should maybe consider losing twenty pounds and the fingerless skull gloves, wash the yellow dye out of her hair so that people on the streets would respond more positively to her donation pitches.

She scowled at me, probably disgusted by my shaven legs, my floofy skirt and heels, the ambergris in my perfume. We both got off at Embarcadero and she stepped on my (open-toed) shoe on our way up the escalator.

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On the plus side, my office has free food, lots of it, most notably, tea, Luna bars and Oreos. I get to eat all day, which becomes important when you consider the five-mile round-trip walk to and from the train stations.

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Plus, yesterday I met some of the kids from the site at Lynn, Massachusetts, a really adorable bunch of forty-two graduating eighth-graders who were really excited to tour the Cal campus. It's incredible: the kids I worked with last summer were incredibly privileged by comparison, but also incredibly obnoxious and bratty; crippled, no doubt, by their huge entitlement complex. The kids from Lynn (I've never been there, but Justin has, and he describes it as a "hellhole") have rough family situations and have been challenged in ways their more advantaged counterparts never have, but you only have to give them directions once, and you never have to raise your voice.

We went to the top of the historic bell tower at the center of the campus, so the kids could see the bell carillon and the yellow Berkeley hills. They were chatty as hell all the way up there, but once we got to the top, where it's chilly and pretty and you can see all the stucco rooftops, they all got totally silent, spread out to all different corners of the tower and stared with their mouths open.

When we went back down to the ground, we conducted a survey of who thought they might like to go to Cal someday. At least thirty-five of them raised their hands.