#and the other lady was indian and she was obviously uncomfortable with me and would call me she all the damn time

[triviareads]

i love your bridgerton takes and i’m curious - if you had a chance to rewrite s2 of bridgerton, what changes would you make?

ah thanks! you know, it's been two years and at this point I've kinda resigned myself to Shondaland's priorities (unnecessary drama, lady whistledown) and what they're disregarding (people of color, queer rep, the actual historical romance-ness of it all), but here's how I would rewrite Bridgerton season two:

Without explaining exactly what India's role in this post-but-not-really-post-racial world is, I'm uncomfortable with the colonial implications there as well as the fact that that they made the Sharmas from India, as opposed to the casting the exact same actors— Simone Ashley, Charithra Chandran, Shelley Conn— and having them be from Somerset. Hell, they could have kept some of the same customs like the Haldi and oiling hair, but made the Sharmas like allllll the other POCs in the ton; no one knows how they got there, but they're equal now so.... yay.

I also dislike how culturally confused the Sharmas were; they were using words from multiple Indian languages because the writers thought they'd do this weird pan-Indian culture for them. Pick a language, pick a region for them to be from, and stick to it

"Kathani" as a name should never have existed: here's all my research on why it's a name that means nothing, which is the antithesis of Indian culture, where name meanings matter. it's also insulting that her "actual" name was only used once; clearly the writers thought it was too ethnic to be used when she was introduced to us and other characters, but they wanted to pander to desi people so they included ONE Kathani in the end.

I want the Sharmas as a group to have WAY more screen time. I also think the family dynamic was royally mischaracterized. The writers were lazy and decided to make Kate's role in the family echo Anthony's which resulted in her basically.... taking over? And the results were disastrous even though she obviously meant well. A more feminist take, to me, would be this idea of all 3 Sharma ladies doing their part and pulling through together (well Mary and Kate a little more than Edwina) because there is no patriarch to provide for them, and that's something they could really have honed in on. So Kate and Mary would be making a lot of tough choices together, while Edwina is painfully cognizant that she's gonna be the one to marry up and provide for her family.

Because the Sharmas would be from Somerset, I think their backstory would be very similar to the book; dad is dead, they've scraped and saved up for one season, Kate is going to make a *sensible* match in the country (as opposed to having no marriage aspirations at all, which I found so weird considering she was 18ish when her dad died and COULD have married to save her family, regardless of her dowry or lackthereof she's a beautiful woman whose father clearly had some status as a royal secretary so that entire line of reasoning that she HELD OFF on marriage and decided to train Edwina to be the Ideal Debutante is bullshit on the writer's part to me) but Edwina is gonna be the shining star diamond who marries a rich enough dude to save all of them from destitution

Newton makes Anthony fall into the lake while he's still courting Edwina (similar to the scene's placement in the book)

And similar to the book I'd much rather Anthony take his courtship of Edwina only so far, like, honestly I'd be chill if he compromised Kate while still courting Edwina. I think it's unrealistic for Edwina to be entirely fine with this turn of events like she was in the books but the blowout would never have been necessary, and quite frankly, I think Edwina shrieked at Kate about the wrong things in the show. I'd personally be horrified my sister is conducting an affair with my suitor/fiancé and more importantly for Edwina, I think I'd want to know why, if my sister liked this guy, does she not think she's good enough for him and why does she keep throwing Edwina at him?

I'd do an extended study scene where not only do they talk about Edmund, but they also talk about Kate's dad who, when he died, left an even bigger gap in their family because like I said earlier, he was the male figure and it was SO Hard without a male in the family back then; The Bridgertons were actually lucky because Anthony was of age and was able to take over where it mattered most, with Violet's guidance. So that's what I'd want them to talk about and bond over.

I'd LOVE the book compromise moment; I think it's the most hysterical part of TVWLM and I'd want Portia Featherington to utter the immortal lines "Lud, girl, he had his mouth on your bubbies, and we all saw it." But then I think Kate should have refused to marry him because she she can't reconcile her dislike of him with her attraction buuuuuuuut then they have a blowout argument in the gazebo and then he eats her out and dickmatizes her into agreeing to marry him. They should have fucked a lot sooner than episode 7 because the chemistry was THERE and a compromise-turn-marriage plot like the book would allow for it. So less face-breathing, more fucking.

And that would lead to the wedding we all wanted to see except it's fraught with drama because a) the scandal and b) Kate still thinks she's Anthony's second choice

I'd loooooove a wedding night seduction scene

And then the issue becomes similar to the book's conflict at this point— Anthony still fears for his mortality, while Kate is falling for him but feels trapped in this marriage because she can't.... express those feelings because Anthony doesn't want love in their marriage

And then, fine, Kate has that riding accident except this time after she confesses her love and he freaks out and the accident is the nudge they need to make up and finally confess their love for each other

No Cousin Jack— that was such a bullshit plot because a) if he wasn't dicking down Portia while being engaged to her daughter what even was the point and b) he left in such a definitive way at the end of S2 so again, what was the point

We didn't need an episode devoted to the inner machinations of how Lady Whistledown works, nor did we need Marina implicitly endorsing polin which is so fucking disgusting considering Penelope literally shamed her into a botched abortion. I'd also like for Penelope to not microaggress Kate (calling a brown woman a "beast")

I think the Sheffield plot could have been reworked in some way; sure maybe Mary ran from her aristocratic family to marry a poor gentleman and they disowned her and now they're dangling an inheritance over their heads. I think it could have been more neatly done.

Colin's ponzi scheme crusher arc was unnecessary and dull

I liked where they took Benedict's arc actually; you really got the sense he wanted love but doesn't quite know what it is yet (his poem he gives to Anthony feels like he's worshipping a muse, not loving them for who they are), and he's in a shitty place by the end and doubting his abilities as an artist...... which would be a GREAT time for a love interest for him to come in

Eloise slumming it for a hot minute could have been done wayyyyy better starting with a hotter man, more chemistry, and more exploration

[toadcircus]

was talking 2 coworkers about past coworkers and there was a lady that was super lovely to me when i started and she made me feel so welcome and praised me so much and kept saying “its only his first day hes doing so well isnt he??” to customers and she was quite old (not as old as i thought she was though GKJDF) so she felt like a really sweet reassuring presence. turns out she was an absolute nightmare to literally everyone else and was incredibly rude to customers ALL the time. she left after my first week so i never got a chance to see that side of her but apparently shes lovely at first and then just starts treating u like shit lol so glad i didnt ever experience that. 

but there was another coworker that i worked with who’d be really off with me and really snappy when i got things wrong and would misgender me and everyone else said she was the loveliest woman ever and super sweet and nice. bizarre that i had such opposite experiences with these ladies?? 

[maq-moon]

My mental illness & fandom

So this is a long time coming from me. Almost a year, really. I want to be clear up front: this isn’t a call-out post. It’s me explaining my (and possibly others’) behavior. It’s partially an apology, too. I know tumblr is like... the worst place to talk about mental health, but this is where the people I care for-- the people to whom this applies-- will see it. I’m so nervous that I’m actually shaking, but I think it has to be said. I won’t feel right until I’ve explained. So, off we go!

I’m crazy. I use that word because I have to laugh about my mental health or I’ll cry about it. There’s a laundry list of diagnoses (when I see a new doctor I ask, “Would you like them alphabetically or the order in which they were diagnosed?”), but right now we’re going to focus on two. I have PTSD (no, I won’t say why) and BPD. BPD is currently being bastardized in the media. Crime shows love to have their perp or unsub suffering from undiagnosed or unmedicated borderline. I won’t rant about how the mentally ill are far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than to commit them.

The central thing with BPD is “black and white” or “all or nothing” thinking. Everything is one extreme or another; no middle ground exists. There are also attachment issues. We tend to get attached to people fast. Add the “all or nothing” to that. We could, hypothetically, meet a new person, have one or two good conversations, and think, “Wow, we’re great friends!” while the other person is thinking, “Meh, maybe I won’t answer their next text.” (This is where the media stereotype of stalkers/obsessed killers comes from).

I get this way. I’m very sociable and chatty and, if others are to be believed, downright charming *wink* I also attempt to cover my insecurities with humor. I’m incredibly insecure and want to avoid talking about a significant amount of my life, so I joke a lot. I’m generally positive with everyone I meet. Why shouldn’t this new person want to be my friend?

Because of me. Because of PTSD. As much as I get attached, as much as I want this new friend, I can’t trust them. As soon as a conversation turns serious, I get uncomfortable and push new people away. Sometimes friends will physically push the new people away for me if they see I’m in distress.

Which brings us to our title: fandom. Should be lots easier since it’s online, right? Nope! Have you ever heard of parasocial relationships? Most people haven’t. I learned about them when David Bowie died. A parasocial relationship is basically a one-sided relationship-- like why you’re sad when a celebrity dies. They didn’t know you, but you felt that you knew them in a way. That’s why the prefix is para. Here’s the connection. A person with borderline gets involved in fandom. Suddenly they’re surrounded by new people. Blogs, Twitter, the AO3 comment section, Discord servers-- they all serve as a way to interact with new people. And interaction means attachment.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have made actual friends in fandom. I go out of state a few times a year to visit someone from my Harry Potter roleplay days. I know it’s not impossible. But I don’t know when it’s a real relationship and when it’s parasocial.

You may be thinking that it’s like this for everyone. We’re all navigating the Internet and faceless kinda-friends. Well, yes. But I’m acutely aware of how having borderline makes me act and how it affects others. I don’t want to be that clingy weird lady. I don’t want to over-share and make people uncomfortable. So as soon as I feel a rapport building with someone online, I do what I do in real life: shut.it.down. I don’t ghost one person, I quit the Internet (all or nothing, remember?). I don’t want to give myself the opportunity to fuck up a friendship, so I stop myself from forming one. And I don’t think about how that affects the other person, because PTSD has me focused on my own well-being.

BPD and PTSD are one hell of a combo, right? Come closer, stay back! Ugh.

I asked my therapist once how to tell if the people online were my friends, if they liked me as much as I liked them. She said that a good indicator would be someone going out of their way to ask how you are or just saying “hi”. I realized my fandom friends weren’t my friends, and it was probably my fault. I quit the Internet for much of 2020 (when I wanted to come back, my computer broke. w e i r d). It’s hypocritical of me to make assumptions, though. After all, I don’t send random “hello how ya doin” messages. I keep quiet out of fear of my mental illness. I don’t know why others are quiet. I jump to the worst conclusion, though: none of them like me. And that’s me. That’s not a reflection of any community I’m in. All of my fandoms are full of lovely people. People I like, and who I wish I were brave enough to let like me.

I said way back in the first paragraph that this is a sort of apology. I’m not apologizing for having mental illnesses. Genetics and experiences did that and I stopped being ashamed a long time ago. I do want to apologize to a great group of people (while being vague enough that hopefully only they know who they are?).

Last year, I feel like I invited myself to your event. It was open, obviously, and I had a great vacation around it, but I still feel like I went somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. Zero blame on all of you; it was me assuming we were friends. The person I brought with me kept trying to get me to actively invite myself to things you were doing the next day. You weren’t talking to us, but she heard two of you discussing Indian food and kept pushing me to jump in; I’m not that rude. I talked to each of you for a few minutes, and then… Then I was afraid that the borderline would “kick in”. I was afraid that the only reason I had driven so far to meet you was because of borderline-induced parasocial relationships. A few weeks later, I did a fic swap but ignored everyone. I didn’t talk. I wrote, but I didn’t interact. I’m sorry for all of it. I won’t blame BPD; that’s a cop out (I have borderline, not “I’m borderline”). I was just very excited and very afraid and very insecure and even more very afraid.  

I’m used to not being liked. I’m what you would call “an odd duck” or “a special snowflake”. I’m weird, basically. But it’s one thing to be disliked for your weirdness and another to not know why you’re disliked, or even IF you’re disliked. That’s the beauty and the horror of the Internet, I guess. You can do you, but there are no boys asking you for tissues the day you’re wearing a Wonderbra. Er, an imperfect analogy. You don’t know what people really think! There’s no body language, no inflection. The only way I can think to tell if someone’s sort of my friend is if we’re mutuals. Some of my very favorite people aren’t, and I won’t pretend that doesn’t sting—but it’s me. It’s me and my idea of friendship, which is arbitrary and changeable, and it’s my brain playing tricks on me, and it’s me trying to outsmart a mental illness.

So… yeah. 1300 words on my brand of crazy. I hope maybe I cleared some things up (eleven months later). I guess if I had to tl;dr this thing, it would be that if I’m following you on a social media platform, if I go back-and-forth with you in comments, and so on, I probably want to be your friend and have been self-sabotaging. I’m not trying to put any onus on you. I’m just letting you know.

With love,

Mac        

[quantifiableme]

Who are you Texting?

Canon is being perfect, so Imma write some AU fics to get me through the week. 

Gendrya Modern!Au Whoop whoop!

“Do you think we should ask Gendry to invite his girlfriend?” asked Hot Pie as sorted through his extensive bad-movie collection. 

Arya felt her heart stop for a moment, but ignored it. “What are you talking about?” 

“That girl he’s always texting,” responded Hot Pie casually. Finally, he looked up and noticed his friend’s unreadable expression. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? The dude is addicted to his phone!”

“Gendry?” questioned Arya. Gendry wasn’t addicted to his phone. Arya spent months  trying to convince him to trade in his Nokia for a smartphone, and even then it was only after his new job required him to. She spent three hours last week teaching him how to download Snapchat before the guy completely gave up and nearly destroyed it. 

Hot Pie laughed. “Arry, you seriously haven’t noticed?”

“How do you know he’s texting a girl though?”

“He always gets smiley and shit, plus yesterday I asked him about it and his face got sooo red!” Hot Pie went back to shuffle through a few discs. “Do you think she could set me up with one of her friends when he finally introduces us?”

“Introduces who?” Gendry walked into his and Hot Pie’s shared apartment with an extra-large pizza in his arms. 

“Your girlf-” Arya kicked Hot Pie with the side of her foot to shut him up. She didn’t know why she did it, but part of her really didn’t want to know about Gendry’s new fling. 

It wasn't shocking- she had always known Gendry was attractive. He had no game whatsoever, but his awkward charm only seemed to make girls flaunt to him more, not that he ever really noticed. The past few bar trips the three friends made, Gendry was especially oblivious to a lot of very pretty girl’s more blatant attempts at flirting - one girl even going as far as to throwing her drink on his shirt for ignoring her. Luckily, Arya’s apartment was close by and he always had a stash of extra clothes there just in case. 

Gendry having what could be a more serious relationship in the works would explain his behavior, and admitting that made Arya feel very hollow. 

“So what are we watching?” Changing the topic, Arya plopped herself onto the couch and motioned for Gendry to give her a slice of pizza. 

***

The next few days, Arya tried to catalog when Gendry was on his phone, which wasn’t very often. Once, when he left to go to the bathroom during one of their Sunday coffee trips , she stole her friend’s phone. She picked it up, but when she had gotten to the lockscreen, she had hesitated - it wouldn’t be hard to guess the password (”BULL”), but she still her brain stopped her from opening the phone. 

If she opened it, she would be invading Gendry’s privacy. Which should have bothered her more, but honestly she was never one for “respecting boundaries” when it came to Gendry, nor was he one to ever be bothered by her nosey-personality. No, what stopped her was the same thing that stopped her the few days before when she kicked Hot Pie. If she opened it, and it were true, what then? 

She must have waited to long because before Arya realized it, Gendry was back  from the bathroom.

“What are you doing with my phone?” he asked her defensively, but still made no motion to take it from her. 

Snapping herself back to reality, Arya quickly recovered. “Why do you have the most generic fucking background?” Which was true- it seemed phone-addict Gendry had never figured out how to change the background.

His blush only proved her suspicions. “W-well, I, uh..Shutup!”

She only laughed and pulled him into the booth next to her- ignoring the lack of space between them. Opening the camera, she held the phone up to get both of them in the shot. 

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“Chaning your background, shh.” She stuck her tongue out and held up an easy peace sign.  Looking at the phone screen, Gendry only laughed at his friend and pulled her closer, his arm wrapping around her shoulders. 

After she showed him how to open his setting and change his background, his arm still loosely laying across her shoulder, Gendry took the phone and tossed it onto his bag that was still lounging in the booth across the table. 

“Now that that’s done, no more phone,” said Gendry as he looked down at his friend. “You were telling me about fencing practice?”

She smiled as she began retelling the story of how she played Joffery out flat in their practice, enjoying the moment and pushing the idea of girlfriends and texts far from her mind.

***

Arya wanted her sister to feel good, but Arya did not understand why they were torturing her to do it. 

“Arya, sit up nicely,” scolded her mother as Arya slouched in the fancily uncomfortable chairs the up-scale dress shoppe had to offer. In celebration of Sansa’s graduation from Law school, Cat Stark offered to buy both her daughters new dresses to wear at the dinner party they were to have after the ceremony. At first it was sweet, but it had been three hours and Arya was ready to go. 

“How about this one?” asked Sansa as she came out in a light pink dress that fell just past her knees. She looked beautiful in it. Just like the other fifteen dresses the girl had tried on. 

“Oh Sans!” their mother cooed again. 

Arya watched as the two gossiped and obsessed over the dress, scrolling through her Instagram as she did. She snorted at a post that had scrolled through - someone Indian advertisement for Google - and sent it to Gendry. He responded with a “hahaha”, which made Arya roll her eyes at how mentally old her friend was sometimes. The she started wondering what he texted his girlfriend - Died he respond the same or did they have long deep conversations? 

“Who are you texting?” Her mother asked her as Sansa went back to change into the next dress. 

“Gendry,” Arya answered. Her mother made a face, hinting at something. Arya rolled her eyes. “Mom, we’re just friends!”

“I know, I know,” Cat calmed her daughter, obviously not believing her. “Hey, why don’t you invite him to Sansa’s graduation dinner?”

“Why?”

“Arya, he’s more than just your friend. Everyone adores him, and he should know that he is welcome to come!”

“If he comes, though, tell him to leave his phone at home!” yelled Sansa from behind the curtain separating her from the dressing room lobby. 

“What are you talking about?” Arya felt a similar sinking feeling in her chest.

“Him, Jon, and I went out the other night and he spent the whole time glued to his phone!” Sansa laughed as she came out in a navy blue dress that fit her figure very nicely. 

“Well the was rude of him,” Mrs. Stark spoke up.

“Oh no, Mother, it was actually very sweet,” Sansa gushed. “He would be in the middle of a sentence and would just stop to giggle at his phone!”

“Gendry doesn’t giggle,” said Arya. 

“Well the closest thing to what Gendry giggling would be,” countered Sansa. “Who is he texting?”

“How should I know?”

“I mean you are only his best friend.”

“Well I guess we’re not as close as you thought then.” Arya grumbled.

Sansa and her mother exchanged looks before turning back to the annoyed Arya.

“Nonetheless, Rickon misses the boy dearly,” said Mrs. Stark. “Please ask him to come.”

***

After Sansa finally agreed on a dress that “Felt like her”- whatever that meant - the three went to lunch at a pub nearby. Arya had been practically shaking with excitement at the idea that she would have a burger and fries in hand within the hour. Despite the fact Arya was twenty-two, Mrs Stark sent Arya to wash her hands before they ate.

“What, why doesn’t Sansa have to?”

“Because Sansa didn’t play with the stray cat outside,” her mother responded, unresolving. “Go wash your hands.”

Grumbling the entire way, Arya made her way to the bathroom. To get there, she had to pass the bar-area of the pub where a large party of people were congregated. Recognizing the grubby and darkened hands, as well as the uniform Stag logo across their mustard-colored shirts, Arya realized that they were all construction workers for Gendry’s father’s company. Which meant...

Eyeing the crowd, her eyes settled on him. Gendry had insisted his father let him work amongst the blue-colored gentlemen and ladies he had admired for so long before he inherited the entire business. And there he was, nestled around the large burly men and women, all laughing after a long-morning of hard work. His hair was damp from sweat, and he was drinking a beer he had probably been nursing longer than any of his coworkers. 

In the briefest of moments, one that only someone truly staring at him as Arya was would notice, Gendry subtly reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. His eyebrows knitted together as he sent it onto the table and continued listening to his friends, but with significantly less attention than he had before. 

Arya then pulled her phone and sent a quick text - a picture of the cat she had been playing with earlier. 

Instantly, Gendry’s phone screen light up and the man raced to grab it. Arya watched as her friend’s face softened and he chuckled to himself. He began to type a bit of text, and then Arya saw the “cute” of his response pop-up on her phone. 

The bearded ginger man next to Gendry looked at his phone and began poking his side with his elbow. A group of workers around them joined in at the chirping - saying things like “Who’s the lucky sucker, Gen?” “Hey Bossman, who’s got you smiling like that?” “Look at Cupid!”

Gendry eventually had to leave the crowd hassling him, but had been smiling as he did so. Arya followed him to the hallway leading to the bathroom, his eyes glued to his phone the entire time. 

“Gendry,” Area said to her friend’s back.

Jumping, Gendry turned around. “Jesus, Arry,” he grabbed at his chest. “What the fuck?”

“Who are you texting?” Arya wasted no time in asking, her entire self being coasting on adrenaline at this point. 

“Wha- no one!” Gendry’s breathing and deep-set blush gave him away, so Arya pushed farther.

“Hot Pie and Sansa have both told me that the past few weeks you’ve been addicted to your phone,” Arya explained. “They think you have some secret girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” Gendry, if possible, became even more red.

“I didn’t believe them at first, but you certainly very attached to your phone right now.” Arya stepped closer and took said phone out of Gendry’s limp hand. She looked at the picture the two had taken weeks ago. Studying it now, it was very apparent how comfortable Gendry looked- more comfortable than he did with any of the other girls he had talked to at the bar, and more like how he looked when he had received her texted earlier. “Is it me?”

Gendry stayed silent, eyes glued to the phone screen Arya had been studying. 

“Because I like you.” She said it casually, but her heart was racing faster than it ever had before. 

“You what?” Gendry looked dup to meet her eyes.

She only quirked her eyebrow as he studied her face. His eyes followed the movement, slowly circling her features until they landed on her lips.

“Arya-” he had said, breathlessly. 

The word was all the encouragement Arya needed. The love drenched in every syllable of her name was too much for her to handle. She surged up meet his mouth with hers and kissed him deeply. His hands cradled her back, immediately responding to her. 

The broke off as quickly as they had begun, both very aware that they were still in a very public area. 

“My mother wants you to come to Sansa’s graduation dinner,” she told him in between breaths. 

“Do you want me to come?” He asked sincerely, but part of him already knowing the answer. 

“Yes.”

“As your friend or...” His eyes looked hopefully as he asked it. Arya laughed at herself for ever thinking there was ever anyone else. This was Gendry, the boy that would listen to her rants for days on end, who would do anything for her. What other girl could compete? “Boyfriend.” She said, trying and failing to hold back a smile. 

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: Peter Pan

I think I should come out and say it: I’m not the biggest fan of classic Disney films. I mean, obviously I appreciate them for what they did for the company, I would never deny their artistic merit, and it’s not even that I think they’re bad per se, it’s just that I am most definitely a Renaissance man. The Disney Renaissance is what I grew up watching, and the decade before and the decades after it are where I find most of my favorite Disney films. All that being said, though, there were always a few exceptions: growing up I loved Pinocchio, I’ve always been very fond of Sleeping Beauty (I still call it one of my favorites), and then there was the subject of this review, Peter Pan.

Peter Pan is the sort of movie I have very mixed feelings on nowadays, as it has a lot of strong elements as well as some… unfortunately glaring weaknesses. Would I say it’s a bad movie? No, I don’t think this movie is, on the whole, bad, and I think it is rather fun and enjoyable for the most part… but it’s not a film I’d ever be able to say is one of my favorites ever again after having watched it as an adult. I think there is sort of an irony to that, all things considered.

Let’s look at what this film does right first. As is pretty typical of the Disney classics, the villain really steals the show here. Captain Hook is just an absolute delight, a true ham for the ages who manages to be gut-bustingly hilarious and truly threatening whenever the scene calls for it. What really helps is that Hook, despite his unsavory qualities, actually ends up being rather sympathetic due to his animosity towards Peter Pan being extremely warranted and his general ineffective qualities and the constant slapstick aimed at him. You almost want to give the poor guy a hug with all the crap he gets put through. To not much lesser extent there is his sycophantic sidekick Smee, an absolutely goofy delight of a man who slavishly helps his Captain and usually bumbles whilst doing it, leading to ever more hilarity. These two really make the film, and every scene with them is delightful.

Then of course there is the stunning, iconic little fairy that is Tinkerbell. While she would not get much expansion or development until decades later, Tinkerbell cemented herself as one of the faces of Disney with this film, where she plays a cranky, sassy, silent sidekick to Peter. While the audience doesn’t understand her, the animation does a good job at helping show what sort of emotions she’s feeling at any given time. The animation in general is fantastic in this film, but really that’s just par for the course for old school Disney animation. 

But, see, that’s about all the praise I can give to the characters in this film. The rest of the cast is rather bland, with Wendy and her brothers getting hit especially bad; not a one of them is interesting or memorable, which is a real shame especially in Wendy’s case, as since she has the same actress as Alice from Alice in Wonderland (Kathryn Beaumont) I’d expect a bit more personality from her performance. 

The Lost Boys too are a pretty shabby bunch; perhaps it’s just the fact I’m such a big fan of Hook and the colorful cast of Lost Boys there (particularly the inimitable Rufio), but these Lost Boys just don’t do much to stick out besides where different costumes. And while the eponymous character is memorable in his own right, he’s rather arrogant, childish, and rude… which is probably the point, considering he is an unaging magical child. I still find him rather unsympathetic and more than a bit unpleasant, but unlike the other characters there’s at least something of a reason to it. And to be perfectly frank, after reading about the tragedy that befell his voice actor Bobby Driscoll, I feel a lot more inclined to give the character a break.

And then we come to the elephant in the room, and no, I am certainly not giving these characters a break. The big, red, racist elephant… I am, of course, referring to the Indian tribe of Neverland. Frankly, these guys are the reason why I wanted to talk about this movie, because it gives me the opportunity to talk about some of the absurd racial caricatures of Disney’s early years.

Now, these caricatures rely mainly on stereotyping, and with stereotyping you’re obviously going to slap elements onto a given character so the audience “gets” what you’re going for. Si and Am from Lady and the Tramp, the crows from Dumbo, characters like that are all examples, as despite being animals they feature traits that heavily imply the races they are mimicking. And yes, it is easy to see them as racially insensitive… but it’s easy to defend them, too. For instance, there are plenty of black people who defend the crows in Dumbo, and plenty of Asians like Si and Am. Obviously no one can tell you what to get offended by, so if you find those characters insensitive, that’s totally fine, and it’s hard to say that they aren’t, but at the very least them being animals with stereotypes slapped on them are a bit easy to swallow, and I can s ee why people like them. Like yes, Si and Am are clearly aping those good ol’ “Yellow Peril” stereotypes, and sure, maybe those crows are a bit iffy, but it’s easier to enjoy the characters for what they are because the characters themselves are not really trying to make any sort of commentary on the race they’re representing stereotypes from. They’re just evoking it, however tastelessly. 

But the Neverland Indian tribe are humans, and that does kind of make things a bit more uncomfortable, as they are ostensibly supposed to be like you and I. But between their exaggerated skin color, voices, and overall aesthetic, it’s hard to take them seriously. Only Tiger Lily really escapes this, as she is about the only Indian treated with any sort of dignity. All this being said, however, I have something of an ironic fondness for these awful characters. For one, as terrible and insensitive as they are, they manage to clear the incredibly low bar of not being portrayed negatively; the tribe is portrayed as good people. And as mentioned before, they are so deeply caricatured with all the ridiculous stereotypes of the time that they are just impossible for me to take seriously; the characters manage to cross the line twice, turning their insensitive designs into a laugh riot of “what the hell were these animators thinking?”

So in the end, Peter Pan is a bit of a mixed bag, but it’s one I think skews closer to the good end of that than the bad one. Classical animation fans and Disney buffs will at least appreciate this movie, and I do think there is some value in watching it even now, though it’s probably best to have a talk with any youngsters about the insensitivity of the stereotypical Indian tribe. When the movie is good, it’s very good, and it has a lot of fun and creativity in it, and even if the title character is a bit of a brat, it’s hard not to like him a little, especially if you’ve read up on the tragic story of his voice actor. All in all, this is a decent film with some good qualities, though I don’t think it’s really one you need to trip over yourself to watch.

[bitchanarchy-blog]

Does Penis Size Truly Matter?

Personally, I do not understand why some women say that only a big penis can satisfy them. They either have large vaginas naturally or that have been stretched by having too many kids (because once a woman has a child, those muscles are never again the same).

I worked with a woman who admitted to me and a few of the other ladies, that she had worked as a call girl. She said that most of her fellow escorts hated getting a client (john) with a large penis because it made sex painful. Obviously, she was not built as large 'down there' as a lot of women, and in fact she had not yet had children (though by now she probably has).

I once dated a guy who had a large penis and sexual intercourse was no picnic. In fact, I avoided it as much as possible and I'm sure 'Garnet' wondered why. I liked kissing the guy, he was a really good kisser, but that other stuff...no. I simply could not stand having sex with him and it was a relief when the relationship finally ended. I went on to better things, even if they were mostly smaller.

How about the myth of the Big Black Dick? Is it honestly true? As a woman of color, I can assure you that it is sort of true, but also kind of not true. Of the 10 guys I have dated and slept with, 3 were African American and only one of them had a very large penis. I dated 2 Hispanics and they were both rather smaller than average, I would say. I think perhaps they had a lot of Amerindian blood and maybe that explains it.

Garnet had Indian blood - the Hindu type - and he was fairly large, the 2nd largest of the guys I have dated. Of the White guys (4), only one was pretty big. All of the guys with larger cocks were not fun in bed, because their size made intimacy more of a painful chore than an adventure in bed. The chart below is definitely not accurate in my opinion as it shows that Latinos have large penises when in fact, they do not. At least, not in my experience. I also know a few other women who have dated Hispanic men and they hold the same opinion.

To be brutally honest, I would say that more non-White men have larger cocks. I worked as a massage therapist once, and the lady with the spa had select clients whom she offered a little extra to, what is known in the sex trade as a 'happy ending'. It was not just a prostate massage but an actual handjob, but she also gave very special clients a blow, and if they offered more cash, actually had sex with them. There was a little Black guy she termed 'horse dick' because his penis was unusually large.

She did not enjoy sex with this guy, and he wanted it every time he came for a massage because he did not have a regular girlfriend (and who would want a man with a dick that damn big).

Now a very small penis is just not satisfying and I did date a man once whose penis was just so-so, but that might have been due to his age (he was more of a sugardaddy than a real boyfriend). I just do not like them too large, and I understand why the women I have known who worked as strippers or call girls confessed that large dicks made sex very uncomfortable. I think it's more the going power than the actual length, and the girth being thick doesn't hurt either. I'd much rather have wild, kinky sex with a man whose penis length is around seven inches, with a thick girth. Too small, and it slips out often during sex. Too large, and it won't even fit inside.

[mermaidsirennikita]

March 2018 Book Roundup

I read a lot of books this month!  And two of them were actually five star reads, which I would recommend for completely different reasons.  Read A Girl Like That by Tanaz Bhathena if you want to be completely devastated.  Read To Kill A Kingdom by Alexandra Christo if you want a fantastic fairy tale romp with a good bit of blood.  But like, read both?  There was also one pretty big disappointment (that was still by no means a failure, this book just got hyped to hell) and a book I actually hated.  So like, a mixed bag!

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton.  4/5.  In Orleans, beauty drives people--in part because they don’t naturally have it.  They’re born gray-skinned, red-eyed, and ugly; and this can only be changed with the help of a Belle, one of the lovely young women with the power to (temporarily) manipulate people’s physical appearances.  Camellia is making her Belle debut with her sisters--but only one can get the coveted spot of the queen’s favorite, working on the royal family.  Initially, Camellia is passed over; but when her winning sister mysteriously vacates the spot, she is thrust into the role of favorite and tasked with the seemingly impossible feat of healing the queen’s older daughter who’s been in a coma for years.  As it turns out, the fate of Orleans could very well hang in the balance.  On the surface, I thought that The Belles would be like a lot of those YA fantasy/dystopian books centered on looks that is basically a transparent riff on reality shows/21st century pop culture meets Harry Potter/The Hunger Games/What Have You.  In fact, the way the Belles work in their world is very much its own thing, and Clayton does a lovely job of weaving in these super sugary descriptions--obviously drawing from the French royal court of Marie Antoinette or Louis XIV--while never dropping this sense of mystery and dread.  Part of that mystery revolves around what the Belles really are, and to be honest I’m still not 100% sure about that--but this is the beginning of a series, and it’s incredibly intriguing.  Furthermore, the horror factor was much more present than I expected.  It’s a book that gets a lot out of the eeriness behind what people do for beauty--the only thing it needs to work on, for me, is fleshing out the characters a bit more.

Bygone Badass Broads by Mackenzi Lee.  3/5.  Lee expands on her popular Twitter series, telling the stories of women who have been scrubbed from history because they’re not white enough, not straight enough, not cis enough, or otherwise too transgressive in some other ways.  Basically, this is one of those books that lists dozens of rebellious or unusual women, and I tend to love that.  I wouldn’t say that this book is bad, but it also doesn’t rank super high in the subgenre.  Yes, Lee does a great job of digging up women that even I hadn’t heard of (and I say “even” because again, I read a lot of books like this) but the write-ups are so short (about three-ish pages on Nook each) that I didn’t get a lot out of them.  Which of course allows Lee to include more women, but I would have rather seen more about each woman and less women in general, especially as some were honestly--less impressive than others.  As important as lady publishers are, I feel like there’s less intrigue and yeah, importance overall to their stories compared to those about women like the Maribel sisters.  There were a couple of women included who were borderline legends as well, and I don’t know...  Maybe cut them in favor of the women who definitely did something?  Furthermore, there’s a huge imbalance in time periods, or at least it felt that way--I mean, it seemed like most of the ladies were from the nineteenth century and onward.  And that’s just a matter of personal taste--I’m more interested in history from ancient times to the eighteenth century.  Nineteenth century is where my interest begins to wane a bit!  But with that being said, it’s not a bad book and definitely a nice, quick read when you want to discover some interesting women written about in a chatty tone.

A Girl Like That by Tanaz Bhathena.  5/5.  For most of her life, Zarin--an Indian immigrant to Saudi Arabia--has been viewed as a bad girl.  She’s seen that way by the mentally ill aunt who raised her, subjected to abuse in part simply because she’s a “bastard orphan”.  Her uncle sympathizes but won’t actually help.  The girls at school and their mothers see her as a flirt and a bad influence.  The only person who seems to give Zarin a chance is Porus, the boy who worships the ground she walks on, no matter how careless she is about his feelings.  Now Porus and Zarin are dead in a car accident, and few know what actually lead up to it; in bits and pieces, from multiple perspectives, we learn the reality of Zarin’s life, and why she was far more than “a girl like that”.  First off, this book is absolutely heartbreaking.  Though you know from page one that Zarin and Porus are dead, you still fall in love with them and there’s this sense of dread throughout as you get closer and closer to their deaths.  Zarin is one of the best YA protagonists I’ve read about in a while--flawed but incredibly human, easy to relate to, and terribly wounded in a way that isn’t over the top.  And Porus isn’t a knight in shining armor, he’s a romantic boy in love with a girl who may or may not want him back, and the book doesn’t hesitate to call him out for his white knight-ing while not abandoning his inherent goodness (which is implied to be present because he had the influence of a good father, whereas the other, less good boys in the book are following the examples of shitty fathers).  It was great to read a YA contemporary novel that was set somewhere other than America, or even Europe.  The author has a background similar to Zarin’s, so she’s not talking out of her ass here.  And there’s a deep sympathy for almost every character in the book--even when they’re horrible, they aren’t mindless villains.  There are cultural and religious elements at play, and none of them are good or bad without cause.  As a warning, rape and abuse (sexual and otherwise) are themes throughout the book, as is depression, suicidal ideation, and more.  It’s not an easy read.  But it should absolutely be read.

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.  4/5.  Anna is an agoraphobe and classic cinema fan, spending her days talking to fellow agoraphobes on a message board and her nights watching movies--and spying on her neighbors.  She hasn’t left her home in ten months, doesn’t live with her husband and daughter anymore, and seems beyond hope when her new neighbor Jane visits and breathes new life into her boring routine.  No sooner has Anna made a friend, however, than she sees something horrible happen in Jane’s home.  The issue?  Everyone--including the police--say that it didn’t happen.  This book is a clear Rear Window tribute, and acknowledges as much--in fact, Anna’s obsession with classic thrillers, along with her alcoholism and psych meds, probably contribute to her status as an unreliable narrator.  And I love an unreliable narrator.  Anna is flawed without losing my sympathy (another favorite character type) and while I can’t say that this is the most original thriller I’ve read, it’s entertaining and well-done and even a bit emotional.  Definitely satisfying.

Rosemarked by Livia Blackburne.  2/5.  Zivah is a healer, struck down by the same plague she’s been treating people for--the rose plague.  It will shorten her life but kill her slowly, isolating her in a little cottage (think shades of leprosy, but not as gross, of course). Dineas has survived the same plague, leaving him immune, and has escaped the Amparans who tortured him to the point of breaking.  His desire to liberate his people brings him to Zivah, who wants to make the remainder of her life mean something--and together the two unite on a mission to steal from the capital.  I think.  Honestly, this book was so boring that I wasn’t really absorbing much of the plot.  In theory, it’s such a cool idea: a slow-burn romance between a warrior and a dying healer that has them acting as spies.  But it’s told in alternating perspectives, and Dineas and Zivah are both so bland that I couldn’t really tell the difference between the two of them. There was a lot of summary without much urgency.  Also: the romance is clearly meant to be a big part of the story.  However, Dineas and Zivah lack chemistry, and this issue is only exacerbated by the fact that... for reasons... which I didn’t totally get... Dineas keeps having his memory taken away?  Willingly?  “For the mission”.  So Zivah is supposedly falling in love with amnesiac Dineas, who isn’t even really Dineas completely--or is he???  God, it made no sense.

Awayland by Ramona Ausubel.  3/5.  A collection of short stories capturing the feelings of dreaminess and wanderlust, often with a dose of magical realism.  This book is very difficult for me to describe, in part because it’s just kind of weird?  Definitely well-written if you like pretty, sometimes purple prose.  There were a few stories I really liked, some that simply baffled me, and in general I loved the sense of the different lands the author described.  However, one story made me particularly uncomfortable in the almost fetishistic way that it described Africa, and I can’t help but feel how... deliberately vague... it seems to be.  And I’m not sure what to think about that.

To Kill A Kingdom by Alexandra Christo.  5/5.  Princess Lira has seventeen hearts in her bedroom.  The daughter of the siren Sea Queen, Lira waits for the day that she takes her mother’s throne, building a fearsome reputation by taking the still-beating hearts of princes.  Prince Elian isn’t so dissimilar--however, he sails the seas killing sirens, and his reputation has made him a prize for the sirens.  After killing one of her mother’s subjects, Lira is punished with a human form.  The only way she can return to her true body--and remain her mother’s heir--is to get Elian’s heart--without any of her powers.  This Little Mermaid retelling is dark--focusing a good bit on the effects of abusive parenting--and bloody, starring a monster princess and a prince who isn’t so nice either.  Yes, it’s a story of two people who are mortal enemies hating each other until they maybe don’t so much.  Yes, it’s full of the various lands Elias and Lira visit and all of their royal families.  Yes, it was one of the most fun and engaging books I’ve read in a long time, and certainly one of the best fairy tale retellings I’ve read.  READ IT.

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough.  3/5.  A verse-driven retelling of Artemisia Gentileschi’s rape and its aftermath, interspersed with stories of the women who would inspire some of her most famous works.  Let me tell you this upfront: I feel that other people would enjoy this book much more than I did.  It’s written in a lovely way--the stories of Judith and Susanna are told by Artemisia’s mother, almost as bedtime stories, which is... a bit weird, but cool--and it is an incredibly important, if brutal, story.  It’s also, at face value, pretty accurate: Artemisia was the daughter of a mediocre painter who she learned from and surpassed; she was raped by Agostino Tassi after an initial romance; she was tortured in court to prove that she wasn’t lying about her rape.  The story does skirt over the fact that Artemisia wanted to marry her rapist, and his refusal to marry her drove her to seek justice--not the rape on its own.  And that bothered me, the lack of real confrontation of that fact.  Because it renders Artemisia an “imperfect victim”, and few rape survivors ARE perfect victims.  Certainly, few in the seventeenth century fit a twenty-first century idea of what rape survivors are like.  And that was a huge issue with the book in general.  Artemisia--and her mother, to an extent--thought and sounded like twenty-first century women.  Artemisia approached painting like a twenty-first century artist.  As someone who has studied Italian painting of this era, and how Italian women painters were treated and acted, it just... didn’t sit well for me.  Sure, the whole book was stylized, but you can have a stylized story without losing authenticity.  Again, this will probably be a fantastic book for people who don’t share my background with the story.  But it didn’t work for me.

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw.  1/5.  Two centuries ago, the people of Sparrow drowned the three Swan sisters, all accused witches.  Ever since then, the sisters have returned every summer, possessing innocent girls until the solstice to seduce and drown boys.  Penny Talbot is familiar with the legend, and therefore hasn’t let herself get attached to the local boys.  Bo isn’t local--but he does have a connection to the sisters.  As they zero in on a boy she’s growing increasingly concerned for, Penny hunts for an answer to what the sisters really want and how she can stop them.  This was so bad.  So bad.  Bad because the idea was really cool--ghost witch sisters, possession, seduction, drowning--and there were some really interesting descriptions.  Basically, some of the bits that were just about the Swan sisters’ past were cool.  Some of them.  Until the end.  The rest was basically a hodge-podge of incredibly predictable “twists”, chemistry-less instalove, and a total inability to write people as people.  They made ridiculously stupid choices, experienced inexplicable emotional reactions, and in general just felt fake.  This should have been SO cool.  But it just made me want to write the opposite thing in order to prove a point.  (Also: it is set in OREGON.  Near Portland.  In our time, or at least a time where stereos are a thing.  I know that shady shit can happen anywhere and especially in small towns, but fuck.  Around 3 or more young boys from this town drown EVERY SUMMER, and not only is the town able to sustain itself but the FBI hasn’t gotten involved?  These all seem to be young white boys, in Oregon, just drowning.  Literally if this had been set in a made-up town in a made-up time, this would have been much more believable.)

The Merry Spinster by Mallory Ortzberg.  3/5.  A collection of short, spooky retellings of not only fairy tales, but classic children’s stories like “The Velveteen Rabbit”.  Overall, I’d recommend this book if you’re in the mood for something lyrical yet genuinely grim--but be warned, it can be a bit self-important sometimes.  A few of the creepier bits felt almost too self-aware; like, “this is scary because these are children’s characters acting really weird, oooh”.  Some of the stories I could have done without.  Standouts include “The Daughter Cells” (The Little Mermaid), “The Six Boy-Coffins” (The Six Swans, also the best story in the collection), “The Rabbit” (The Velveteen Rabbit) , and “Cast Your Bread Upon The Water” (Johnny Croy and His Mermaid Bride).  

The Radical Element ed. Jessica Spotswood.  2/5.  An anthology of short stories about young women who are “radical” in some what, from the nineteenth to twentieth century. Because really, for a historical fiction anthology, this is pretty limited in time periods and locations--it’s nineteenth and twentieth century America, barely stretching a century. Which is something I found irritating about the last anthology edited by Spotswood that I read (A Tyranny of Petticoats) but I liked that more because there were more stories for me to connect with.  Honestly, many of these read very young to me, so regardless of the writing quality I didn’t like most of them.  The only one that really stood out to me was Anna-Marie McLemore’s “Glamour”.  But this isn’t a bad anthology, in my opinion--I just think I’ve outgrown much of these stories.  

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney.  2/5.  Amber is in a coma.  She can sense everything around her, hear everything people say, but can’t move her body, even to open her eyes.  She remembers nothing--only that her husband doesn’t love her anymore, and she believes that he had something to do with the “accident” that people refer to.  Alternating between Amber’s present in the coma, the days leading up to the accident, and a series of diary entries, the truth slowly unravels--or maybe.  Because sometimes Amber lies.  Basically, this had all of the plot elements it needed to have... But it moved at what felt like a glacial pace, and I couldn’t get into anything because the voices were dull.  Also: Amber has no control over her bodily functions while in a coma, and is sure to remind us of this every possible moment.  Furthermore, there is such a thing as too many twists, and to a degree, this book went there.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.  3/5.  The land of Orisha was once full of magic--and Zelie’s mother was one of those who had it.  Until, that is, magic disappeared.  King Saran conducted a raid that killed all--or supposedly all--magic users, including Zelie’s mother.  Years later, Zelie and her brother Tzain embark on a quest to restore magic, aided by the runaway Princess Amari, and pursued by Amari’s brother Inan, who is determined to inherit his father’s ruthless legacy.  So...  This book.  I wanted so badly for it to be at least a four star read for me.  It’s been intensely hyped up, with the movie rights being sold ages ago.  Is it worth the hype?  For me, obviously not.  The hype oversold it.  Because Children of Blood and Bone is an enjoyable read with a ton of potential--but it’s also one of those books that was so clearly written by a debut author.  And I hate to say that, because I want to be a debut author someday; but there is a standard we need to hold ourselves and others to, and to me, this book needed some editing.  It was very overlong, with some parts dragging because I wanted to get back to the action.  The character beats sometimes felt rushed, comparatively--especially when it came to, you guessed it, the two central romances.  One of them was MADE FOR ME, but though I liked the pairing I wished that there had been more a realistic buildup.  The interesting thing about Children of Blood and Bone is that Adeyemi--who as I understand it is Nigerian-American, raised in America--based it off of West African culture.  As a white American, I obviously cannot speak to the authenticity of the usage of Yoruba, but I have seen a couple of Nigerian reviewers claim some issue with it, and that does make me wonder.  I do know that Adeyemi used, again, Yoruba in her book as well as several real place names.  This bugged me a bit.  Orisha is a fictional world--why refer to real African cities and a real language?  Obviously, most of the dialogue is in English, but Adeyemi could have referred to an imagined language as many fantasy novelists do.  To me, this all felt like... I don’t know, Jon Snow saying that he’d learned French from a tutor, or Gandalf saying that he was from Belfast.  It was a worldbuilding issue that knocked me out of the story.  For that matter, the fact that the catlike animals were referred to as “leonaires” (leopards), and so on... it seemed kind of weak.  There were a ton of very usual beats here--rebellious princess, young characters doomed from the first page, evil king who is evil because he is evil and had a dead love that is the sort of root of all of his problems...  It seems like I’m critiquing the fuck out of this book, but it had such a great idea and was so set up to be great that I don’t know.  I’m just disappointed, and it all could have been much better because the bones were there.  All that said, I’m probably going to read the second book because I was invested in the characters and do want to see what happens next.  But if the next book isn’t better, I probably won’t read beyond that.

In Search of Us by Ava Dellaira.  3/5.  Angie has never known her father; the biracial child of a white mother, she has never known the black side of her family, as her father apparently died before she was born along with his brother.  After discovering that her uncle is actually alive, Angie embarks on a trip to LA with her ex-boyfriend to seek the truth about her father.  In a parallel story, we see the journey of her mother, Marilyn, as a teenager being pushed by her mother to support them through a modeling career she doesn’t want.  After meeting James, Marilyn sees the opportunity for a new life--the question is how she’ll come to be the single mother of a daughter she keeps secrets from.  This book is really lovely and sweet in a lot of ways--the writing is quite pretty.  Marilyn’s story is, to be honest, much more compelling than Angie’s simply because she has a more dramatic arc.  Angie is essentially on a trip to uncover something you can probably guess fairly early on, and though her struggles are totally understandable, it is kind of difficult to watch her treat her very sweet ex like shit and kind of take advantage of his feelings.  Marilyn has this struggle of attempting to escape her mother’s impossible dreams, while engaging in genuinely sweet and sad romance.  The issue for me was that nobody quite as accessible as Marilyn, and while I appreciated the message the book was sending, it seemed a bit heavy-handed and abrupt towards the end.  Tacked on for points, to be frank.  Also, there was one sex scene that seemed... while not physically impossible, very unlikely.  But overall, if you want to read something sort of gentle and sad with good romance AND mother-daughter elements, I’d recommend it.

The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian.  3/5.  Flight attendant Cassie is something of a train wreck, using her career to facilitate a habit of heavy partying and one night stands.  In Dubai, she has a one-nighter with a man named Alex, only to wake up to find him brutally murdered in the bed they shared.  Unable to remember the entirety of the previous night’s events and terrified of what will happen to her, Cassie sneaks out of the hotel room and finds herself embroiled in an international scandal.  The book follows not only Cassie’s perspective, but that of the mysterious Elena, who seems to be keeping tabs on Cassie.  This is definitely a gripping book, and I sped through it.  Honestly, much of the interest had to do with just how odd and intriguing a flight attendant’s life can be, and it was certainly a great profession for the main character of a thriller--Cassie was constantly jet-setting.  The issue was that she was also a total idiot, to the point that sometimes her stupidity felt less like a character trait and more like a plot device.  But I could have gotten over that.  What bumped this down from a 4 to a 3-star rating was the ending--the big twist wasn’t something I called, but it also wasn’t very thrilling.  You pretty much knew what was going on before the end.  And of course, everything was tied up in a very... borderline sexist way?  But it’s not the worst thriller I’ve read; I mean, it wasn’t even the worst one I read this month.

[lodelss]

Osama Shehzad | Longreads | August 2020 | 3,543 words (14 minutes)

“Passport please,” asks the security officer, an Indian-British woman, at London’s Heathrow airport.

I hand her my green Pakistani passport, and she thumbs through it to get to the page with my visa. I am travelling to America where I’ve lived since 2009 on either student or work visas.

As she examines my passport, she frowns and then lifts her head to look at me.

“Osama?”

I reply with a nod and a small wry smile, as I always do when people ask to confirm my name.

She leans over and asks in a hushed voice, “Do you get shit for your name in America?”

*

I was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, where Osama was — and still remains — a popular name.

My grandfather, a poet, named me Osama because he wanted a name without a harsh stop at its end, a name that would flow smoothly off the tongue to my last name, Shehzad.

*

My elementary school Koran teacher, Qari Sahab, tells me Osama is an ancient Arabic name that translates to “lion.” It is popular throughout the Muslim world because Prophet Muhammad chose that name for his adopted grandson.

*

“What is your name beta?” asks the uncle, an old friend of my father who is over at our place with his wife for tea. The uncle emigrated to the U.S. in the ‘80s and has rarely visited Karachi since. This is my first time meeting him.

“Osama,” I reply.

“Oye, you are hiding here in Karachi and Bush is looking for you everywhere,” replies the uncle and everyone in the drawing room gives out a courteous chuckle for his attempt to lighten the mood.

“Good luck getting a visa to America,” his wife adds.

“You should change your name,” the uncle instructs me.

“Chai piyo aur niklo,” I feel like telling him, but instead reply with a polite “Okay.”

*

“Be prepared,” warns Mrs. Isani when I tell her that I have decided to attend college in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mrs. Isani is my high school counselor. She is, I guesstimate, around 85 if not older. She is a soft-spoken but straight-to-the-point Parsi lady.

“The American South is a racist place,” she tells me. “I am afraid you will be bullied because of your name.”

*

“You are applying for an American visa?” people in my high school mockingly remark when I tell them about my college aspirations.

“I thought you were planning on going to Georgia, the country in Eastern Europe,” comments one friend. I wonder if he is showing off his knowledge of world geography or highlighting his apparent lack thereof.

“You will never get a visa to America.”

*

It’s 2008 and America has just elected a new president with a name only one letter different from mine. Obama dares everyone to hope. I hope that Americans don’t judge people by their names.

*

My parents tell me that I shouldn’t feel ashamed if I want to go by another name when I’m in America.

I can tell they feel responsible for giving me a once-beautiful, now-wretched name.

They even make suggestions: maybe a condensed Sam? Or a Western-sounding Sammy? Or Two-Two, a pet name they reveal they had used for a few days in the hospital — the room in which I was born was numbered 22 — before my ultimate name was assigned to me.

*

I try to put myself in the shoes of an American college student and contemplate which name can be more easily made fun of: Osama or Two-Two?

*

“You should just go by Shehzad in America,” suggests a high school friend. “I’ve heard people in the West just go by their last names.”

“Mister Shehzad,” I say out loud to him. “It does have a nice ring to it.”

“Sounds like Mister Bond.”

“Maybe I should go by Double-O Seven?”

“Or better, you should come up with your own number. How about Zero Zero Nine Two?”

“Zero Zero Nine Two…” I repeat to check how it sounds.

“Don’t do it. They’ll think you’re a telephone from Karachi.”

*

“Visa milgaya apko?” asks the airline employee with a tinge of sarcasm as I check in to my flight at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport.

There are no direct flights from Pakistan to America. I fly from Karachi to Dubai to London to Chicago. Phupho and Phupha, my aunt and uncle who live in Indianapolis, will pick me up from O’Hare and then drive me to my college in Atlanta.

As I wait at Heathrow to board my final flight, I practice introducing myself to others. I try to imagine every possible reaction from them — and what an appropriate polite response to it might be.

If someone were to start laughing and ask, “Are you serious?” I would pretend to laugh too and say, “Obviously not, I’m Sam.”

If they called me a terrorist or tried to punch me, I would run away. Where? I am not sure. Maybe back to my dorm?

If they walked away because they didn’t want to talk to anyone who had a name like mine, I would just put my head down in shame.

I wonder if I need to say sorry for going by my own name.

On the flight from London to Chicago, a white American woman is sitting next to me.

I am worried: will she ask what my name is? I debate if I should tell her my name is Osama. Maybe I shouldn’t because we are on a plane.

We talk briefly but she never asks.

*

There is always a pause after I tell people my name in college. I see a split-second hesitation in their eyes. I feel embarrassed for putting them in this situation. I don’t know what to do. I end up smiling a lot.

“Osama?” People repeat my name, sometimes a few times, to confirm they heard it correctly.

“Yes, Osama,” I say.

“Obama?” Some people ask me.

“No,” I correct them. “Osama.”

“Ajay?”

“Bro, how the fuck did you hear me say Ajay?” I want to ask this weirdo.

Instead I politely correct him. “No, Osama.”

*

I watch Office Space for the first time with people in my freshman dorm. They claim to have seen it multiple times.

“Michael…” a woman reads out a man’s name in one scene, before pausing with astonished eyes, “Bolton?”

“That’s me,” says Bolton, who we can tell has been in this situation too many times before.

“Wow,” exclaims the woman. “Is that your real name?”

Everyone around me laughs. I am tense. I wonder how Bolton will respond to this. I also wonder if anyone is looking at me, trying to see how I react to this scene. So I keep my eyes glued to the screen and smile.

“Yeah,” says Bolton curtly as he clears his throat.

“So are you related to that singer guy?”

“No,” clarifies Bolton, who’s trying to end the conversation. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“Oh,” says the woman, seemingly disappointed, as she walks away.

When Bolton’s cubicle mate, Samir, complains that no one in America can say his last name correctly, Bolton says, “well at least your name isn’t Michael Bolton.”

“You know there is nothing wrong with that name,” Samir tells him.

“There was nothing wrong with that name,” corrects Bolton. “Until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.”

“Well why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?” suggests Samir.

“No way, why should I change? He is the one who sucks.”

*

On Facebook I notice that some other Osamas — whom I knew from Pakistan and who had also come to America — have now tweaked their names. They go by Sam or Mo or Sammy. No one goes by Two-Two or Zero Zero Nine Two.

I wonder if their experience as an Osama in America is different from mine. It probably is, I tell myself.

Sometimes I wonder what other Osamas in the world, not just in America, are experiencing.

*

“Wait, wait,” says a guy at a frat party. He is trying to hush the three other people whom I have also just met for the first time, and who are standing in a circle with us.

“I have to ask you a question, Osama,” he says.

The way he emphasizes my name. I know where this is going.

“Are you related to…” He pauses for dramatic effect and then adds, “Osama bin Laden?”

He delivers his punchline and looks around the circle as he laughs. The two guys, both wearing identical Braves hats, smile.

The one other person in the circle, a girl who I think is in the same CS1371 section as me, squirms with an uncomfortable expression on her face.

“This is awkward as fuck,” I can hear her thinking in her head.

*

I contemplate changing the spelling of my name: Usama Ousama Oouussaammahh Okssamta (the k and the t would be silent)

*

I read somewhere that self-deprecating humor makes you appear more relatable and therefore more attractive.

*

A Starbucks opens in the library. It is quickly the most popular spot on campus. Lines are always long and sometimes extend out of the building during finals week.

Even though the baristas ask for my name every time and spell it correctly on the cup when they write it down, I notice that they never say it out loud.

I feel bad for putting the barista in a position where they are afraid to offend someone by calling them an Osama.

I tell this story to all my college friends. I end it with the punchline, “So I guess everyone has name troubles at Starbucks.”

People laugh in acknowledgement; even though their name is Gracie, Chris, or Zach and mine is Osama, we share the same inconveniences at Starbucks.

“See, we have so much in common,” they say.

*

It’s 2010 and a Pakistani man tries to blow up Times Square.

His last name is Shahzad.

My last name is Shehzad.

I tell myself that at least the spellings are not the same.

*

“Do you always tell people that your name is Osama,” friends ask me.

“Yes,” I usually reply with a nod. “Except when I am on a plane,” I add after a slight pause for dramatic effect.

“If I asked the guy sitting next to me on the plane what his name was and he replied ‘Osama,’” I say with a laugh, “I would freak out too.”

This is a joke I often crack about my own name. It always gets laughs.

*

“Yo, check out the time,” my friend tells me.

I check my phone. It is 9:11pm. I look back at him.

He has a proud smirk on his face.

*

My friends and I are watching Russell Peters’ stand-up show on YouTube.

“What’s your name?” Peters asks someone in the crowd.

“Anthony,” the guy replies.

“What’s your Asian name?” asks Russell back.

The person is reluctant to share his name at first but does so after Peters insists. Peters then goes on to make fun of his name and his ethnicity.

I shudder when I try to imagine what Russell Peters, or any comedian, would do with my name.

*

“Kahan say arahay hain?” asks the immigration officer in Karachi as I hand him my Pakistani passport.

“America,” I reply.

As he stamps the green pages of my green passport, he asks, “Wahan loog mazak to nahi uratay apka?”

Do you get shit for your name over there?

*

I am watching Jon Stewart clips on YouTube when I stumble across his interview with Bassem Youssef in Egypt.

Stewart narrates his encounter with an “incredibly hospitable” refugee in Jordan.

Towards the end of a heartwarming interaction, a deeply moved Stewart asks the refugee for his name. The refugee replies, “Osama.”

Stewart pauses on that punchline.

And then in Stewart-like broken sentences, collecting his thoughts on stereotypes and ignorance in general, he says, “So that was a… it was difficult… it’s a kind of thing that you need to open up your heart to.”

I wonder if it is this difficult for everyone in America when I tell them that my name is Osama.

*

I start a summer internship at a technology company in Atlanta.

A few days into the internship, Jie, an intern who is an international student from China, tells me that he will now go by the name Humphrey.

I ask him why he decided to go by a different name than Jie.

He says his manager, who is also Asian, advised him to pick an American name to go by in the office.

“It is better for my professional career,” he tells me.

*

I change my Facebook display picture to my college graduation photo. In the photo I have a mortarboard on my head, a degree in my hand, and a big smile on my face.

A friend comments on it with a pun.

Awesome-A

I smile when I read it. I never realized that Osama could sound like Awesome.

*

“I’m authentic, real name, no gimmicks”

— Drake

*

I move to New York City for my first job out of school. On my first day, a coworker asks me if I have seen Office Space.

“Yeah bro,” I tell him. “Such a classic”.

“You know the character Michael Bolton from Office Space?”

I see where he is going with this.

“Why should I change my name?” He says.

“He is the one who sucks,” I complete the sentence.

He nods at me with a big satisfied smile on his face and extends his fist.

I fist-bump him.

I feel as if I just passed Steve’s Assimilation Test.

*

“Do you get extra shit at the airport when you enter America?” A coworker asks as he pumps the dispenser to top off a half-sipped coffee mug . “Like, do they strip search you and shit?”

*

Browsing the shelves of McNally Jackson in Soho, I come across a short story collection by an author named Osama Alomar. He is a Syrian immigrant now living in Chicago.

I buy the book, The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories, and read it in one sitting in Washington Square Park. His stories are very short, some only a few sentences long.

One of them is called “The Name.”

*

I download a dating app and set up a profile.

“Will our first date be a blast?” A brunette in the West Village messages me.

I unmatch her.

I match with a Muslim grad student at Columbia. The first message she sends me: “Please be honest, do people give you shit for your name?”

I unmatch her too.

A hot blonde in Williamsburg messages me. “Come bomb my pussy.”

I wonder if this is an invitation to sext. Maybe? But probably not. I unmatch her too.

*

I am browsing books at WORD in Greenpoint when I overhear a comedy show taking place in the building’s basement.

I stand near the entrance, trying to listen without paying for a ticket.

A stand-up comedian finishes her set and the next one introduces himself.

I hear his name: Osama. (I later learn that he spells it Usama.)

He makes fun of his own name. He cracks some jokes that are very similar to mine. He tells a story of how he freaked out when his friend shouted his name at the airport. I have a similar story that I tell to make people laugh.

I wonder if all of us Osamas (and Usamas) make the same jokes about our name.

*

Often, once I get to know someone and we are a little more comfortable around each other, they tell me, “I am sure you get this a lot, but sorry, I’ve always wanted to ask you something.”

In the middle of the first heartfelt conversation with a new friend, he will invariably say, “Bro, can I ask you something that might be a bit personal?”

Sometimes during an intimate moment, a girlfriend will say, “Can I ask you something that might be a little weird?”

I know what question they are going to ask next. But I still cross my fingers and close my eyes in anticipation of being asked something truly weird.

Despite it being different people, different moods, and different amounts of clothing we are wearing, it is always the same question.

It is the question that I knew they were going to ask.

*

I show up 20 minutes late to a comedy show in Brooklyn.

It is a packed small venue, and the only open seat is in the very front row. I am reluctant to take that seat but the usher tells me that I am blocking everyone’s view. I have to walk across the stage to take that seat.

The comedian raises her hands in faux-annoyance as I walk in front of her, “Alright dude, what is this?”

The crowd laughs.

I mouth a “sorry!” to her and shrug my shoulders.

After a few minutes of jokes, she introduces her last bit, “You guys have been great. Now for my final joke, I will ask you your name, and make fun of it.”

Fuck.

I know she will pick me. I try to look at the row behind me in an effort to nudge her to pick someone else.

She is looking directly at me. I don’t look at her to avoid eye contact.

“You, who walked in late,” she points at me and walks over. “What’s your name?”

She holds the mic in front of me.

I can feel the eyes of the crowd glaring at me in anticipation, waiting for me to say my name.

I don’t want to tell her that my name is Osama. Maybe I should tell her my name is Sam, or Sammy, or even Two-Two.

I wonder if my friends, who are sitting a row behind me, are cringing as they see this happen.

“Osama,” I reply into the mic.

There is a pause.

I look at the stand-up comedian who is still holding the mic in front of me. She is staring at me, unsure what to say.

“Okay,” she says as she moves away from me.

The crowd remains silent.

I have a wry smile on my face. I feel embarrassed for putting her in this situation. I feel embarrassed for making my friends sitting behind me witness this awkward scene.

“And what’s your name?” she asks a guy sitting a few spots from me.

“Ben,” he replies.

“Where did you get that sweater from,” she asks him, before adding with an emphasis, “BEN?”

The crowd laughs.

I am relieved that it is over. I feel like everyone in the audience is still looking at me.

*

Despite his best efforts, the Author’s name began to slide down off the top of the book’s cover where it had been printed. The Author’s self-confidence had died long ago, but his name was determined to hang on to the spot where it belonged with all its might.

(“The Name,” by Osama Alomar, from The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories)

*

I get a notification from Facebook.

A friend has re-shared his status from May 2011, with me tagged in it, as a memory.

Why would you re-share something so fucking old, I think to myself as I open my Facebook app, dreading to see what I was tagged in seven years ago.

“A good day for all the Osamas in the world except one” — Osama

I remember cracking this joke.

So many people asked me how I felt about the news that day that I remember feeling like I needed to draft and issue an official statement.

This is the joke that I remember telling the most often. There were probably a few others that I don’t remember anymore.

I didn’t anticipate anyone putting up what I said as their Facebook status. I think to myself now that my friend must have found what I said incredibly insightful.

*

I am tired. I have been working late at our office in Chelsea. I contemplate whether to take the L train back to Brooklyn or take an Uber. Fuck it, I’ll Uber.

My Uber driver, Ali, is four minutes away.

I wonder if I can expense this Uber ride because I was working late.

When I enter the car, I tell the driver, “Osama,” to confirm I am getting in the right Uber.

“Yes, salaam brother,” replies Ali.

“Salaam,” I reply curtly. Ali seems like an Uber driver who likes to talk. I am in zero mood for a conversation after a long day at work.

“Going to Brooklyn?” he asks.

“Ya.”

“You have a beautiful name, friend,” Ali comments. “Where are you from?”

Fuck. This is the last conversation I want to have right now.

“Pakistan,” I say.

“Can I ask you a question Osama?” Asks Ali.

The way he emphasizes my name, I know where this is going. I already know what the question will be.

I let out a sigh as I settle back into my seat and tell myself that I should have just taken the L.

I reply with a brief mmhmm.

“Do you want to listen to Drake or Atif Aslam?” asks Ali.

* * *

Editor’s note: Instead of a story fee, Longreads is making a donation to the South Asian American Digital Archive, per the author’s request.

Osama Shehzad is a writer from Karachi living in New York City.

* * *

Editor: Ben Huberman

[idontknowwhysblog]

CHAPTER #1

Dream a little dream of me

The vision this time was clear. Like the last few times. What was needed the last few times was some research, a visit to a library perhaps and a long journey to reach the place. With the advent of technology and transportation means this wasn't necessary anymore. Just a quick Google Search and Nick knew where he was headed this time. It was really funny because the first time he had the vision he was too lost in his own sorrow to make much of it. He didn't realize that he was supposed to act on it. But now he was a pro. Centuries of playing the same game had made him a master of the game. The first vision had been of the snow clad Alps where he had spent the torturous era of two World wars; waiting for her. Then he found her in the deserts of Afghanistan and now as he slept he dreamt of the tropics again. He saw a crowd rushing to catch a train, countless unknown faces and then he saw her. She looked very different from the last few times. What remained same were the dark eyes which were a passage to her soul. The eyes never changed. He saw her with her face covered in a scarf that was tied all around her face with only her eyes open and he recognized her. Like he had recognised her the numerous previous times. She was his Abigail. She was the reason he was alive. This time she was in India and he had no trouble guessing it. He had been there couple of times over the past many years. The next thing Nick did was dye his blonde hair a darker shade and buy the darkest black contacts and a ticket to India. He had to fit in. Somehow this twisted action made sense to him.

He would find her. He always did.

Ruhi was at the most happening discotheque of the city and she was bored. It had been the idea of her closest friends to sneak out and visit the epitome of night life in the city to bring in her 16th birthday. The LED lights of the most happening disco in city flashed in blood red at the top most floor of the skyscraper.

“The age limit is 18 and above.” Neha had remarked a night before.

“We look eighteen and above.” Anushka had replied without much thought. The three of them were in the ladies room of the mall, shopping for Ruhi's birthday dress a day before. Anushka reapplied her neon pink lipstick, smacked her lips and brushed her hair for the umpteenth time, her eyes never leaving her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t even look at Neha as she took a dig at their mutual friend and Neha's boyfriend next. “I just hope your boyfriend’s patchy moustache doesn’t give us away.Both chose to ignore.

Next night, they successfully entered the disco without any questions asked. Minutes after entering the discotheque, her best friend Anushka had found a guy and was busy flirting with him. Her other two friends were a couple and were busy dancing. She didn't want to be the third wheel. She took a deep breath and the only thing she could inhale was cigarettes. So she decided to go in the attached balcony overlooking the city at 12th floor of the building.

It was close to midnight and suddenly the DJ decided to go slow. He put on a melodious track of bygone era and Ruhi imagined her friends getting cozy inside. She threw a quick glance at Neha and Rohit and indeed they were lost in their own world. She walked out, there were just two couples in the balcony and a single guy smoking in a corner.

She couldn't resist singing alongside the melody and was at the Hmmm…hmmm... part of the song, totally lost into it when she was interrupted.

“You have a very nice voice.” A heavily accented voice said.

She was sure that she was not that loud and was just humming to herself. She was even sure that she had scanned all the people on the balcony and the stranger was not one of them. The door to the balcony was still closed and she was seated very close to it, so he could not have entered without her noticing. She just smiled back consciously.

“You mind if I join you?” he asked next. A direct No sounded rude in her head. A yes was not safe, not because he was a stranger but because he was a stranger, she could get attracted to, she took advantage of the light, rather the lack of it and studied him for a while. He didn't seem Indian although he had black hair and eyes. He was really tall and was dressed in a pair of casual jeans and a white linen shirt. He seemed older.

She nodded and he sat beside her. Damn the risk she thought ," my friends have conveniently forgotten that it is my birthday so I deserve this escapade."

She was anyways sure that he would get tired and go away, that was one aspect of her personality that she was sure of. She never had many things to say. People usually got tired of her silence and moved ahead, even he would.

“So happy birthday!” he exclaimed as he sat beside her

“How did you know?” she was surprised.

He shrugged.

She insisted on a reply though.

“I am a friend of your friend Rohit.” He said. That explained it. She never knew his other guy friends. They were just classmates since nursery. All four of them, Anushka, Ruhi , Rohit and Neha. Over a period of time Neha and Rohit had become a couple and that left a very shy Ruhi and an over the top Anushka in the group. But they still did hang out together. Rohit did have other guy friends whom he introduced time and again and some of them did become a part of the group when Anushka decided to date them for the time but were soon forgotten.

“So Ruhi, right?” he asked her. They were now seated facing each other completely on the bench in the balcony. She was sitting with her legs crossed and he sat on a bench near her with a leg on each side of the bench. However his upper body was tilted towards her as he talked.

“It’s obvious, Ruhi if someone is tilted towards you while talking he is interested, if not, just drop the conversation and leave.” Anushka’s voice echoed in her mind.

He sure was interested.

She nodded.

“What does it mean?” he asked next.

“Soul.”

He laughed at that.

“What is your name?” she asked a bit offended by his laughter.

“Nick.” He managed to murmur as if he was ashamed of his name, as if he was saying it for the first time and was not comfortable with it. The way someone named funny would say his name. His name was not funny, the way he said it, he made it sound like an insult he was inflicting on himself. She continued looking at him as if he had not spoken at all.

“Nicholas Corduroy.” This time he sounded confident.

“Nice to meet you Nicholas.” Ruhi smiled. She had never acted this frank, and kept wondering if Anushka’s company was getting to her, not that she was complaining. She was smitten and right now could have exchanged souls with Anushka, if that would make her seem interesting to him. Ruhi always felt that she was too dull. She didn't know how to hold a conversation. She had never learnt how to small talk and was pretty sure she bored whoever was in her company.

The song changed with the DJ announcing the next track with verve.

“Tourist?” she asked next only because his stare made her uncomfortable. His coal black eyes pierced directly into her as if they were looking for some answer. He was caught off guard by her question, which was simple so she repeated.

“Yes… No…” he faltered.

She waited.

“I am sorry… what did you ask?” he asked again.

By that time she was sure he was drunk or just not interested in holding a conversation, but he was still facing her and looking at her with those deep eyes. But then she decided to give him the benefit of doubt, as the next track chosen by the DJ was real loud.

“I asked if you are a tourist.” she enunciated every word.

“No. I work here.” He replied never taking his eyes off her. He replied with the same enunciated words, speaking above the music, his one hand pressing his ear closer to the door.

“Your hair is still so dark and long.” He exclaimed and she flushed red but caught herself soon enough.

“That’s because I turned sixteen today, not sixty.” she tried to joke but he did not get it. He obviously was good looking but seemed slow. She was contemplating making a move and introducing him to Anushka instead, they would click. But then she remembered Anushka had already found someone.

“Sixteen…huh?” he asked

“Don’t shout it out, for tonight I am eighteen.” she whispered.

The discotheque had strict rules about underage entries.

“I get that, would have helped me if you were indeed eighteen.” he laughed.

She smiled uncomfortably again. She had no experience of flirting even when she had witnessed Anushka do it a number of times. She had no answer and he was still looking.

She got up to leave murmuring some excuse.

“Be here for a while, I have no company.” he said.

“My friends must be looking for me” she lied.

“No, they are not.” He replied and patted the place where she was seated a minute before, signaling her to sit down.

“Are you bored?” he asked.

“A bit.” she could not lie.

“You don’t like it here?”

“This is my first time, I thought I would like it, but it sucks.” she replied and he acted shocked.

“What?” she asked.

He was giving her the shocked look as if he was offended by something she said. It took him a long time to clear his expressions but not without a shake of his head.

He was really confusing her but she was transfixed.

“Nothing” he said and laughed again.

"What is it with this person?" Ruhi thought. He laughed at all inappropriate moments.

“No, seriously why were you upset?” she asked

“You always amaze me.” He replied and smiled again.

“Always?” she was more confused than ever.

That question went unanswered as Neha came out searching for her.

“This is my friend, Neha.” she introduced her to her new stranger-friend.

Neha gave him a shy smile and informed Ruhi that she was leaving. She wished her again with a peck on the cheek. Ruhi was supposed to wait till Rohit dropped Neha home and returned as Anushka wanted to stay. With no other option left, Ruhi stayed.

“So you want to do something else which you might be interested in?” Nicolas asked her.

“Like what?”

“Like getting out of this place?”

“I cant, my friend is in here.”

“We will come back, c’mon. I will show you the game room.”

She was confused. The invitation was very tempting but she could not go without informing anyone so she refused.

Initially.

“Too bad, I had a little something in my mind.”

Her curiosity got the better of her and with a quick touch to the pepper spray in her purse she walked through the interlinked door to the game room with him. She had never acted this irrational and impulsive. But there was something hypnotic about him that made her throw all caution to the wind. It was quieter there, so quiet that she could hear her breath and his as he walked behind her. She finally sat down on the recliner there and looked around. Again just a couple in the room and they were busy fighting each other in a video game. He kept standing beside her and looking at her strangely and she did not have it in her to ask him to stop instead she tried distracting him.

“So what do you do?” she asked him.

“Work.” Monosyllabic again.

“Oh… is that how you know Rohit?” she had to keep up the conversation.

He just shrugged. Now she was out of things to say to him. She rattled her brains with all possible things she could say but came out with a blank. So she walked away from him and strolled on, looking at all the different consoles and games in the room.

“You have no friends in there?” she asked him next.

“No.” he replied.

“It’s quiet in here. Feels good.” she knew she was just blabbering. She was not a great conversationalist. It seemed nor was he.

“I am glad you like it.” he said.

They went silent for a while and she was humming the song she heard earlier. Somehow the silence was not uncomfortable anymore.

“Sing it loud.” Nicolas said

“No, I am a terrible singer.” she complained but he kept on insisting.

“You cannot be a terrible singer.” He said with an affirmation even she lacked in herself.

“How can you be so sure?” she questioned. Anything to not sing.

“I heard you down there.”

“You understand the language?”

“No, but I understand the emotion and I like to believe I have a musical ear.” He smiled.

He was standing in the dark and she could just see his eyes sparkling and it started to feel weird. She suddenly realized that they both were alone there so she suggested going down again.

“Stay.”

Just that one word.

And she stayed.

She didn’t know what she was doing or why, but it felt comfortable to be in the company of a stranger than her friends down, as if she had known him longer than she actually knew them.

“So where are you from?” she asked the obvious question.

He did not reply. Either he was deaf or just not paying attention. It was disturbing.

“Hello? She called in again and walked towards him. He was leaning against the wall and looking at her strangely.

“Is something wrong?” she ventured again.

“No, Why?”

“Don’t be offended, but you are weird.”

“Mussouri” He said and smiled.

“And how do you know Rohit?” she asked again.

“Mutual friends.”

“And why are you not down there with them?”

“Your friend stole him away, so I chose to steal you.” He smiled referring to Anushka flirting with the guy she met earlier.

“I did not know that I and my friends were causing trouble.” she said. She was a bit flustered; she had expected a different answer. He laughed again.

“You amuse me.”

“I did not intend to.” she retorted and turned away from him.

“Did I offend you?” he asked and turned again to look at her. He looked worried.

“No, I just don’t know what I am doing here.” she said the truth at last. She had been pulled towards him although they seemed to have nothing in common.

They did not speak for many seconds, she was looking at the different games figuring out what she wanted to try and Nick…Well he was looking at her.

“Stop.” she finally snapped.

He was taken aback. “Sorry?”

“Why you keep looking at me like that?” she finally managed to say.

“Like what?”

She didn’t know how to phrase it. He looked at her like she was a long lost love, trying to search some source of recognition in her eyes. She did not know what to say so she let it pass.

“I should be going.” she said instead but he stopped her again.

“I am sorry for acting weird, just don’t leave yet.” He shook his head, as if trying to get rid of a memory.

He finally looked away and sighed.

“So you are in school?” He asked.

She nodded.

“You like it here?” he asked next.

She assumed he meant the disc, but she had already mentioned that she did not, so then she guessed he meant the game room so she nodded again. Now that he as finally opening up she had turned monosyllabic.

“It’s quieter than down there.” she said to make up for her lack of words and he laughed again.

“I meant the city.” He said.

“Yes, I do.” She was born and raised there and never been any place else so she had nothing to compare it against.

”you don’t?” she asked.

He just shrugged.

“That is not a definite answer.”

“It is different, but I am not complaining.”

“How long you been here?” she asked.

He looked at her for emphasis as if he wanted to convey something more than what he said eventually.

“I keep coming and going back since last sixteen years.” He said at last.

She was out of things to say again and tired too, so she just slid down and sat on the floor, resting her back against the wall. He kept standing.

“Sixteen years is long.” she said at last as she replayed the last words he said in her head.

“Trust me, it is.” he laughed again.

Finally he sat down beside her and that was a bit comforting because he standing over her was intimidating. By that time, she was really enjoying herself. He did not fill in all silences with chatter so it suited her well, she spoke when she wanted to and he continued sitting by her side when she did not speak.

“What do plan to do tomorrow?” he asked her. It was a Sunday.

“I usually am at home on Sundays, What about you?”

“I was wondering if you want to go out.” He asked.

Really? She thought" why would someone mature, good-looking and one who had all the options open ask me out?"

“I am not very sure.” she replied.

“I bore you.” He stated and looked away. Thinking of it, they had not had a very interesting conversation but she definitely felt a strange pull.

“That’s not it…,”she faltered. He did not press it further.

“I have a lot of homework to do.”

“I can help you with that.”

She could not think of any other reason so she just said that I would think about it.

“What homework?” he asked.

“I have to write an essay on the Victorian era.”

He laughed aloud at that.

“What is funny?”

he didn't reply.

“Is it difficult?” he asked her instead. She did not know what he was referring to. “The essay.” He added noticing her confusion.

“Not really. But I cannot visualize it.”

He smiled yet again. She was not minding his smiles much now.

“I will help you, if you are meeting me tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a fair deal.” she replied. The point was she sucked at writing long meaningless essays. She never understood how studying the history could be of any particular use to anyone.

“So what exactly, you want me to write on?”

“We are supposed to research the culture, the people of that age from the internet and come up with a 1000 words essay.”

“Consider it done, you will have it tomorrow.”

“Well… thanks.” she murmured.

“1000 words, Huh?” He asked for confirmation and she nodded.

“500 would do, I can work up the rest.”

“I was in fact wondering how I would restrict myself to 1000.” He winked at her.

“You seem pretty confident.”

“I can visualize pretty much.” He nodded. “I can go on and on.”

“Really, tell me something then.”

“Like what?”

“Anything, Educate me…” It was her turn to wink.

He did not say anything.

“You did not read any classics?” he asked

“I suck at it.” she replied and he looked upset again. “Seriously, I tried reading the Austen classics and I go to sleep within two pages, the language is too high brow for me.”

He laughed again.

“What did you attempt?”

“Agnes Gray” she lied. The truth was she never had read any classics, never opened a book. Her mother was an English graduate and she had seen this particular book on her shelf.

“That’s Bronte not Austen” he informed her and she was red with embarrassment.

“Now you know how bad I am.” she looked down.

“So tell me the story.” she said next to come out a bit interested and a tad intelligent. She had accused him of being slow; she was coming out as being ignorant.

“Of Agnes gray?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Well I read it ages ago, don’t think I can do justice.”

She was disappointed and relieved.

“I can tell you another Victorian story though, maybe that would help you visualize the age.” “Go on…” she encouraged.

“Oh wait… is it a love story?” she had to ask.

“You can call it that.”

“Brilliant… I love love stories, go on…”

He turned towards her and she had her chin on her knees as she lost herself in the picture he created so expertly.

“It’s a story of a high class girl, the daughter of a reputed lawyer.”

“What was her name?” she asked.

“Abigail Clarke.”

“And what’s the hero’s name?”

“We will come to that.”

[ecoorganic]

“Do You Get Shit for Your Name?”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Osama Shehzad | Longreads | August 2020 | 3,543 words (14 minutes)

“Passport please,” asks the security officer, an Indian-British woman, at London’s Heathrow airport.

I hand her my green Pakistani passport, and she thumbs through it to get to the page with my visa. I am travelling to America where I’ve lived since 2009 on either student or work visas.

As she examines my passport, she frowns and then lifts her head to look at me.

“Osama?”

I reply with a nod and a small wry smile, as I always do when people ask to confirm my name.

She leans over and asks in a hushed voice, “Do you get shit for your name in America?”

*

I was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, where Osama was — and still remains — a popular name.

My grandfather, a poet, named me Osama because he wanted a name without a harsh stop at its end, a name that would flow smoothly off the tongue to my last name, Shehzad.

*

My elementary school Koran teacher, Qari Sahab, tells me Osama is an ancient Arabic name that translates to “lion.” It is popular throughout the Muslim world because Prophet Muhammad chose that name for his adopted grandson.

*

“What is your name beta?” asks the uncle, an old friend of my father who is over at our place with his wife for tea. The uncle emigrated to the U.S. in the ‘80s and has rarely visited Karachi since. This is my first time meeting him.

“Osama,” I reply.

“Oye, you are hiding here in Karachi and Bush is looking for you everywhere,” replies the uncle and everyone in the drawing room gives out a courteous chuckle for his attempt to lighten the mood.

“Good luck getting a visa to America,” his wife adds.

“You should change your name,” the uncle instructs me.

“Chai piyo aur niklo,” I feel like telling him, but instead reply with a polite “Okay.”

*

“Be prepared,” warns Mrs. Isani when I tell her that I have decided to attend college in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mrs. Isani is my high school counselor. She is, I guesstimate, around 85 if not older. She is a soft-spoken but straight-to-the-point Parsi lady.

“The American South is a racist place,” she tells me. “I am afraid you will be bullied because of your name.”

*

“You are applying for an American visa?” people in my high school mockingly remark when I tell them about my college aspirations.

“I thought you were planning on going to Georgia, the country in Eastern Europe,” comments one friend. I wonder if he is showing off his knowledge of world geography or highlighting his apparent lack thereof.

“You will never get a visa to America.”

*

It’s 2008 and America has just elected a new president with a name only one letter different from mine. Obama dares everyone to hope. I hope that Americans don’t judge people by their names.

*

My parents tell me that I shouldn’t feel ashamed if I want to go by another name when I’m in America.

I can tell they feel responsible for giving me a once-beautiful, now-wretched name.

They even make suggestions: maybe a condensed Sam? Or a Western-sounding Sammy? Or Two-Two, a pet name they reveal they had used for a few days in the hospital — the room in which I was born was numbered 22 — before my ultimate name was assigned to me.

*

I try to put myself in the shoes of an American college student and contemplate which name can be more easily made fun of: Osama or Two-Two?

*

“You should just go by Shehzad in America,” suggests a high school friend. “I’ve heard people in the West just go by their last names.”

“Mister Shehzad,” I say out loud to him. “It does have a nice ring to it.”

“Sounds like Mister Bond.”

“Maybe I should go by Double-O Seven?”

“Or better, you should come up with your own number. How about Zero Zero Nine Two?”

“Zero Zero Nine Two…” I repeat to check how it sounds.

“Don’t do it. They’ll think you’re a telephone from Karachi.”

*

“Visa milgaya apko?” asks the airline employee with a tinge of sarcasm as I check in to my flight at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport.

There are no direct flights from Pakistan to America. I fly from Karachi to Dubai to London to Chicago. Phupho and Phupha, my aunt and uncle who live in Indianapolis, will pick me up from O’Hare and then drive me to my college in Atlanta.

As I wait at Heathrow to board my final flight, I practice introducing myself to others. I try to imagine every possible reaction from them — and what an appropriate polite response to it might be.

If someone were to start laughing and ask, “Are you serious?” I would pretend to laugh too and say, “Obviously not, I’m Sam.”

If they called me a terrorist or tried to punch me, I would run away. Where? I am not sure. Maybe back to my dorm?

If they walked away because they didn’t want to talk to anyone who had a name like mine, I would just put my head down in shame.

I wonder if I need to say sorry for going by my own name.

On the flight from London to Chicago, a white American woman is sitting next to me.

I am worried: will she ask what my name is? I debate if I should tell her my name is Osama. Maybe I shouldn’t because we are on a plane.

We talk briefly but she never asks.

*

There is always a pause after I tell people my name in college. I see a split-second hesitation in their eyes. I feel embarrassed for putting them in this situation. I don’t know what to do. I end up smiling a lot.

“Osama?” People repeat my name, sometimes a few times, to confirm they heard it correctly.

“Yes, Osama,” I say.

“Obama?” Some people ask me.

“No,” I correct them. “Osama.”

“Ajay?”

“Bro, how the fuck did you hear me say Ajay?” I want to ask this weirdo.

Instead I politely correct him. “No, Osama.”

*

I watch Office Space for the first time with people in my freshman dorm. They claim to have seen it multiple times.

“Michael…” a woman reads out a man’s name in one scene, before pausing with astonished eyes, “Bolton?”

“That’s me,” says Bolton, who we can tell has been in this situation too many times before.

“Wow,” exclaims the woman. “Is that your real name?”

Everyone around me laughs. I am tense. I wonder how Bolton will respond to this. I also wonder if anyone is looking at me, trying to see how I react to this scene. So I keep my eyes glued to the screen and smile.

“Yeah,” says Bolton curtly as he clears his throat.

“So are you related to that singer guy?”

“No,” clarifies Bolton, who’s trying to end the conversation. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“Oh,” says the woman, seemingly disappointed, as she walks away.

When Bolton’s cubicle mate, Samir, complains that no one in America can say his last name correctly, Bolton says, “well at least your name isn’t Michael Bolton.”

“You know there is nothing wrong with that name,” Samir tells him.

“There was nothing wrong with that name,” corrects Bolton. “Until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.”

“Well why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?” suggests Samir.

“No way, why should I change? He is the one who sucks.”

*

On Facebook I notice that some other Osamas — whom I knew from Pakistan and who had also come to America — have now tweaked their names. They go by Sam or Mo or Sammy. No one goes by Two-Two or Zero Zero Nine Two.

I wonder if their experience as an Osama in America is different from mine. It probably is, I tell myself.

Sometimes I wonder what other Osamas in the world, not just in America, are experiencing.

*

“Wait, wait,” says a guy at a frat party. He is trying to hush the three other people whom I have also just met for the first time, and who are standing in a circle with us.

“I have to ask you a question, Osama,” he says.

The way he emphasizes my name. I know where this is going.

“Are you related to…” He pauses for dramatic effect and then adds, “Osama bin Laden?”

He delivers his punchline and looks around the circle as he laughs. The two guys, both wearing identical Braves hats, smile.

The one other person in the circle, a girl who I think is in the same CS1371 section as me, squirms with an uncomfortable expression on her face.

“This is awkward as fuck,” I can hear her thinking in her head.

*

I contemplate changing the spelling of my name: Usama Ousama Oouussaammahh Okssamta (the k and the t would be silent)

*

I read somewhere that self-deprecating humor makes you appear more relatable and therefore more attractive.

*

A Starbucks opens in the library. It is quickly the most popular spot on campus. Lines are always long and sometimes extend out of the building during finals week.

Even though the baristas ask for my name every time and spell it correctly on the cup when they write it down, I notice that they never say it out loud.

I feel bad for putting the barista in a position where they are afraid to offend someone by calling them an Osama.

I tell this story to all my college friends. I end it with the punchline, “So I guess everyone has name troubles at Starbucks.”

People laugh in acknowledgement; even though their name is Gracie, Chris, or Zach and mine is Osama, we share the same inconveniences at Starbucks.

“See, we have so much in common,” they say.

*

It’s 2010 and a Pakistani man tries to blow up Times Square.

His last name is Shahzad.

My last name is Shehzad.

I tell myself that at least the spellings are not the same.

*

“Do you always tell people that your name is Osama,” friends ask me.

“Yes,” I usually reply with a nod. “Except when I am on a plane,” I add after a slight pause for dramatic effect.

“If I asked the guy sitting next to me on the plane what his name was and he replied ‘Osama,’” I say with a laugh, “I would freak out too.”

This is a joke I often crack about my own name. It always gets laughs.

*

“Yo, check out the time,” my friend tells me.

I check my phone. It is 9:11pm. I look back at him.

He has a proud smirk on his face.

*

My friends and I are watching Russell Peters’ stand-up show on YouTube.

“What’s your name?” Peters asks someone in the crowd.

“Anthony,” the guy replies.

“What’s your Asian name?” asks Russell back.

The person is reluctant to share his name at first but does so after Peters insists. Peters then goes on to make fun of his name and his ethnicity.

I shudder when I try to imagine what Russell Peters, or any comedian, would do with my name.

*

“Kahan say arahay hain?” asks the immigration officer in Karachi as I hand him my Pakistani passport.

“America,” I reply.

As he stamps the green pages of my green passport, he asks, “Wahan loog mazak to nahi uratay apka?”

Do you get shit for your name over there?

*

I am watching Jon Stewart clips on YouTube when I stumble across his interview with Bassem Youssef in Egypt.

Stewart narrates his encounter with an “incredibly hospitable” refugee in Jordan.

Towards the end of a heartwarming interaction, a deeply moved Stewart asks the refugee for his name. The refugee replies, “Osama.”

Stewart pauses on that punchline.

And then in Stewart-like broken sentences, collecting his thoughts on stereotypes and ignorance in general, he says, “So that was a… it was difficult… it’s a kind of thing that you need to open up your heart to.”

I wonder if it is this difficult for everyone in America when I tell them that my name is Osama.

*

I start a summer internship at a technology company in Atlanta.

A few days into the internship, Jie, an intern who is an international student from China, tells me that he will now go by the name Humphrey.

I ask him why he decided to go by a different name than Jie.

He says his manager, who is also Asian, advised him to pick an American name to go by in the office.

“It is better for my professional career,” he tells me.

*

I change my Facebook display picture to my college graduation photo. In the photo I have a mortarboard on my head, a degree in my hand, and a big smile on my face.

A friend comments on it with a pun.

Awesome-A

I smile when I read it. I never realized that Osama could sound like Awesome.

*

“I’m authentic, real name, no gimmicks”

— Drake

*

I move to New York City for my first job out of school. On my first day, a coworker asks me if I have seen Office Space.

“Yeah bro,” I tell him. “Such a classic”.

“You know the character Michael Bolton from Office Space?”

I see where he is going with this.

“Why should I change my name?” He says.

“He is the one who sucks,” I complete the sentence.

He nods at me with a big satisfied smile on his face and extends his fist.

I fist-bump him.

I feel as if I just passed Steve’s Assimilation Test.

*

“Do you get extra shit at the airport when you enter America?” A coworker asks as he pumps the dispenser to top off a half-sipped coffee mug . “Like, do they strip search you and shit?”

*

Browsing the shelves of McNally Jackson in Soho, I come across a short story collection by an author named Osama Alomar. He is a Syrian immigrant now living in Chicago.

I buy the book, The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories, and read it in one sitting in Washington Square Park. His stories are very short, some only a few sentences long.

One of them is called “The Name.”

*

I download a dating app and set up a profile.

“Will our first date be a blast?” A brunette in the West Village messages me.

I unmatch her.

I match with a Muslim grad student at Columbia. The first message she sends me: “Please be honest, do people give you shit for your name?”

I unmatch her too.

A hot blonde in Williamsburg messages me. “Come bomb my pussy.”

I wonder if this is an invitation to sext. Maybe? But probably not. I unmatch her too.

*

I am browsing books at WORD in Greenpoint when I overhear a comedy show taking place in the building’s basement.

I stand near the entrance, trying to listen without paying for a ticket.

A stand-up comedian finishes her set and the next one introduces himself.

I hear his name: Osama. (I later learn that he spells it Usama.)

He makes fun of his own name. He cracks some jokes that are very similar to mine. He tells a story of how he freaked out when his friend shouted his name at the airport. I have a similar story that I tell to make people laugh.

I wonder if all of us Osamas (and Usamas) make the same jokes about our name.

*

Often, once I get to know someone and we are a little more comfortable around each other, they tell me, “I am sure you get this a lot, but sorry, I’ve always wanted to ask you something.”

In the middle of the first heartfelt conversation with a new friend, he will invariably say, “Bro, can I ask you something that might be a bit personal?”

Sometimes during an intimate moment, a girlfriend will say, “Can I ask you something that might be a little weird?”

I know what question they are going to ask next. But I still cross my fingers and close my eyes in anticipation of being asked something truly weird.

Despite it being different people, different moods, and different amounts of clothing we are wearing, it is always the same question.

It is the question that I knew they were going to ask.

*

I show up 20 minutes late to a comedy show in Brooklyn.

It is a packed small venue, and the only open seat is in the very front row. I am reluctant to take that seat but the usher tells me that I am blocking everyone’s view. I have to walk across the stage to take that seat.

The comedian raises her hands in faux-annoyance as I walk in front of her, “Alright dude, what is this?”

The crowd laughs.

I mouth a “sorry!” to her and shrug my shoulders.

After a few minutes of jokes, she introduces her last bit, “You guys have been great. Now for my final joke, I will ask you your name, and make fun of it.”

Fuck.

I know she will pick me. I try to look at the row behind me in an effort to nudge her to pick someone else.

She is looking directly at me. I don’t look at her to avoid eye contact.

“You, who walked in late,” she points at me and walks over. “What’s your name?”

She holds the mic in front of me.

I can feel the eyes of the crowd glaring at me in anticipation, waiting for me to say my name.

I don’t want to tell her that my name is Osama. Maybe I should tell her my name is Sam, or Sammy, or even Two-Two.

I wonder if my friends, who are sitting a row behind me, are cringing as they see this happen.

“Osama,” I reply into the mic.

There is a pause.

I look at the stand-up comedian who is still holding the mic in front of me. She is staring at me, unsure what to say.

“Okay,” she says as she moves away from me.

The crowd remains silent.

I have a wry smile on my face. I feel embarrassed for putting her in this situation. I feel embarrassed for making my friends sitting behind me witness this awkward scene.

“And what’s your name?” she asks a guy sitting a few spots from me.

“Ben,” he replies.

“Where did you get that sweater from,” she asks him, before adding with an emphasis, “BEN?”

The crowd laughs.

I am relieved that it is over. I feel like everyone in the audience is still looking at me.

*

Despite his best efforts, the Author’s name began to slide down off the top of the book’s cover where it had been printed. The Author’s self-confidence had died long ago, but his name was determined to hang on to the spot where it belonged with all its might.

(“The Name,” by Osama Alomar, from The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories)

*

I get a notification from Facebook.

A friend has re-shared his status from May 2011, with me tagged in it, as a memory.

Why would you re-share something so fucking old, I think to myself as I open my Facebook app, dreading to see what I was tagged in seven years ago.

“A good day for all the Osamas in the world except one” — Osama

I remember cracking this joke.

So many people asked me how I felt about the news that day that I remember feeling like I needed to draft and issue an official statement.

This is the joke that I remember telling the most often. There were probably a few others that I don’t remember anymore.

I didn’t anticipate anyone putting up what I said as their Facebook status. I think to myself now that my friend must have found what I said incredibly insightful.

*

I am tired. I have been working late at our office in Chelsea. I contemplate whether to take the L train back to Brooklyn or take an Uber. Fuck it, I’ll Uber.

My Uber driver, Ali, is four minutes away.

I wonder if I can expense this Uber ride because I was working late.

When I enter the car, I tell the driver, “Osama,” to confirm I am getting in the right Uber.

“Yes, salaam brother,” replies Ali.

“Salaam,” I reply curtly. Ali seems like an Uber driver who likes to talk. I am in zero mood for a conversation after a long day at work.

“Going to Brooklyn?” he asks.

“Ya.”

“You have a beautiful name, friend,” Ali comments. “Where are you from?”

Fuck. This is the last conversation I want to have right now.

“Pakistan,” I say.

“Can I ask you a question Osama?” Asks Ali.

The way he emphasizes my name, I know where this is going. I already know what the question will be.

I let out a sigh as I settle back into my seat and tell myself that I should have just taken the L.

I reply with a brief mmhmm.

“Do you want to listen to Drake or Atif Aslam?” asks Ali.

* * *

Editor’s note: Instead of a story fee, Longreads is making a donation to the South Asian American Digital Archive, per the author’s request.

Osama Shehzad is a writer from Karachi living in New York City.

* * *

Editor: Ben Huberman

https://ift.tt/30ShoNR from Blogger https://ift.tt/3fVXg1D

[lodelss]

“Do You Get Shit for Your Name?”

Osama Shehzad | Longreads | August 2020 | 3,543 words (14 minutes)

“Passport please,” asks the security officer, an Indian-British woman, at London’s Heathrow airport.

I hand her my green Pakistani passport, and she thumbs through it to get to the page with my visa. I am travelling to America where I’ve lived since 2009 on either student or work visas.

As she examines my passport, she frowns and then lifts her head to look at me.

“Osama?”

I reply with a nod and a small wry smile, as I always do when people ask to confirm my name.

She leans over and asks in a hushed voice, “Do you get shit for your name in America?”

*

I was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, where Osama was — and still remains — a popular name.

My grandfather, a poet, named me Osama because he wanted a name without a harsh stop at its end, a name that would flow smoothly off the tongue to my last name, Shehzad.

*

My elementary school Koran teacher, Qari Sahab, tells me Osama is an ancient Arabic name that translates to “lion.” It is popular throughout the Muslim world because Prophet Muhammad chose that name for his adopted grandson.

*

“What is your name beta?” asks the uncle, an old friend of my father who is over at our place with his wife for tea. The uncle emigrated to the U.S. in the ‘80s and has rarely visited Karachi since. This is my first time meeting him.

“Osama,” I reply.

“Oye, you are hiding here in Karachi and Bush is looking for you everywhere,” replies the uncle and everyone in the drawing room gives out a courteous chuckle for his attempt to lighten the mood.

“Good luck getting a visa to America,” his wife adds.

“You should change your name,” the uncle instructs me.

“Chai piyo aur niklo,” I feel like telling him, but instead reply with a polite “Okay.”

*

“Be prepared,” warns Mrs. Isani when I tell her that I have decided to attend college in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mrs. Isani is my high school counselor. She is, I guesstimate, around 85 if not older. She is a soft-spoken but straight-to-the-point Parsi lady.

“The American South is a racist place,” she tells me. “I am afraid you will be bullied because of your name.”

*

“You are applying for an American visa?” people in my high school mockingly remark when I tell them about my college aspirations.

“I thought you were planning on going to Georgia, the country in Eastern Europe,” comments one friend. I wonder if he is showing off his knowledge of world geography or highlighting his apparent lack thereof.

“You will never get a visa to America.”

*

It’s 2008 and America has just elected a new president with a name only one letter different from mine. Obama dares everyone to hope. I hope that Americans don’t judge people by their names.

*

My parents tell me that I shouldn’t feel ashamed if I want to go by another name when I’m in America.

I can tell they feel responsible for giving me a once-beautiful, now-wretched name.

They even make suggestions: maybe a condensed Sam? Or a Western-sounding Sammy? Or Two-Two, a pet name they reveal they had used for a few days in the hospital — the room in which I was born was numbered 22 — before my ultimate name was assigned to me.

*

I try to put myself in the shoes of an American college student and contemplate which name can be more easily made fun of: Osama or Two-Two?

*

“You should just go by Shehzad in America,” suggests a high school friend. “I’ve heard people in the West just go by their last names.”

“Mister Shehzad,” I say out loud to him. “It does have a nice ring to it.”

“Sounds like Mister Bond.”

“Maybe I should go by Double-O Seven?”

“Or better, you should come up with your own number. How about Zero Zero Nine Two?”

“Zero Zero Nine Two…” I repeat to check how it sounds.

“Don’t do it. They’ll think you’re a telephone from Karachi.”

*

“Visa milgaya apko?” asks the airline employee with a tinge of sarcasm as I check in to my flight at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport.

There are no direct flights from Pakistan to America. I fly from Karachi to Dubai to London to Chicago. Phupho and Phupha, my aunt and uncle who live in Indianapolis, will pick me up from O’Hare and then drive me to my college in Atlanta.

As I wait at Heathrow to board my final flight, I practice introducing myself to others. I try to imagine every possible reaction from them — and what an appropriate polite response to it might be.

If someone were to start laughing and ask, “Are you serious?” I would pretend to laugh too and say, “Obviously not, I’m Sam.”

If they called me a terrorist or tried to punch me, I would run away. Where? I am not sure. Maybe back to my dorm?

If they walked away because they didn’t want to talk to anyone who had a name like mine, I would just put my head down in shame.

I wonder if I need to say sorry for going by my own name.

On the flight from London to Chicago, a white American woman is sitting next to me.

I am worried: will she ask what my name is? I debate if I should tell her my name is Osama. Maybe I shouldn’t because we are on a plane.

We talk briefly but she never asks.

*

There is always a pause after I tell people my name in college. I see a split-second hesitation in their eyes. I feel embarrassed for putting them in this situation. I don’t know what to do. I end up smiling a lot.

“Osama?” People repeat my name, sometimes a few times, to confirm they heard it correctly.

“Yes, Osama,” I say.

“Obama?” Some people ask me.

“No,” I correct them. “Osama.”

“Ajay?”

“Bro, how the fuck did you hear me say Ajay?” I want to ask this weirdo.

Instead I politely correct him. “No, Osama.”

*

I watch Office Space for the first time with people in my freshman dorm. They claim to have seen it multiple times.

“Michael…” a woman reads out a man’s name in one scene, before pausing with astonished eyes, “Bolton?”

“That’s me,” says Bolton, who we can tell has been in this situation too many times before.

“Wow,” exclaims the woman. “Is that your real name?”

Everyone around me laughs. I am tense. I wonder how Bolton will respond to this. I also wonder if anyone is looking at me, trying to see how I react to this scene. So I keep my eyes glued to the screen and smile.

“Yeah,” says Bolton curtly as he clears his throat.

“So are you related to that singer guy?”

“No,” clarifies Bolton, who’s trying to end the conversation. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“Oh,” says the woman, seemingly disappointed, as she walks away.

When Bolton’s cubicle mate, Samir, complains that no one in America can say his last name correctly, Bolton says, “well at least your name isn’t Michael Bolton.”

“You know there is nothing wrong with that name,” Samir tells him.

“There was nothing wrong with that name,” corrects Bolton. “Until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.”

“Well why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?” suggests Samir.

“No way, why should I change? He is the one who sucks.”

*

On Facebook I notice that some other Osamas — whom I knew from Pakistan and who had also come to America — have now tweaked their names. They go by Sam or Mo or Sammy. No one goes by Two-Two or Zero Zero Nine Two.

I wonder if their experience as an Osama in America is different from mine. It probably is, I tell myself.

Sometimes I wonder what other Osamas in the world, not just in America, are experiencing.

*

“Wait, wait,” says a guy at a frat party. He is trying to hush the three other people whom I have also just met for the first time, and who are standing in a circle with us.

“I have to ask you a question, Osama,” he says.

The way he emphasizes my name. I know where this is going.

“Are you related to…” He pauses for dramatic effect and then adds, “Osama bin Laden?”

He delivers his punchline and looks around the circle as he laughs. The two guys, both wearing identical Braves hats, smile.

The one other person in the circle, a girl who I think is in the same CS1371 section as me, squirms with an uncomfortable expression on her face.

“This is awkward as fuck,” I can hear her thinking in her head.

*

I contemplate changing the spelling of my name: Usama Ousama Oouussaammahh Okssamta (the k and the t would be silent)

*

I read somewhere that self-deprecating humor makes you appear more relatable and therefore more attractive.

*

A Starbucks opens in the library. It is quickly the most popular spot on campus. Lines are always long and sometimes extend out of the building during finals week.

Even though the baristas ask for my name every time and spell it correctly on the cup when they write it down, I notice that they never say it out loud.

I feel bad for putting the barista in a position where they are afraid to offend someone by calling them an Osama.

I tell this story to all my college friends. I end it with the punchline, “So I guess everyone has name troubles at Starbucks.”

People laugh in acknowledgement; even though their name is Gracie, Chris, or Zach and mine is Osama, we share the same inconveniences at Starbucks.

“See, we have so much in common,” they say.

*

It’s 2010 and a Pakistani man tries to blow up Times Square.

His last name is Shahzad.

My last name is Shehzad.

I tell myself that at least the spellings are not the same.

*

“Do you always tell people that your name is Osama,” friends ask me.

“Yes,” I usually reply with a nod. “Except when I am on a plane,” I add after a slight pause for dramatic effect.

“If I asked the guy sitting next to me on the plane what his name was and he replied ‘Osama,’” I say with a laugh, “I would freak out too.”

This is a joke I often crack about my own name. It always gets laughs.

*

“Yo, check out the time,” my friend tells me.

I check my phone. It is 9:11pm. I look back at him.

He has a proud smirk on his face.

*

My friends and I are watching Russell Peters’ stand-up show on YouTube.

“What’s your name?” Peters asks someone in the crowd.

“Anthony,” the guy replies.

“What’s your Asian name?” asks Russell back.

The person is reluctant to share his name at first but does so after Peters insists. Peters then goes on to make fun of his name and his ethnicity.

I shudder when I try to imagine what Russell Peters, or any comedian, would do with my name.

*

“Kahan say arahay hain?” asks the immigration officer in Karachi as I hand him my Pakistani passport.

“America,” I reply.

As he stamps the green pages of my green passport, he asks, “Wahan loog mazak to nahi uratay apka?”

Do you get shit for your name over there?

*

I am watching Jon Stewart clips on YouTube when I stumble across his interview with Bassem Youssef in Egypt.

Stewart narrates his encounter with an “incredibly hospitable” refugee in Jordan.

Towards the end of a heartwarming interaction, a deeply moved Stewart asks the refugee for his name. The refugee replies, “Osama.”

Stewart pauses on that punchline.

And then in Stewart-like broken sentences, collecting his thoughts on stereotypes and ignorance in general, he says, “So that was a… it was difficult… it’s a kind of thing that you need to open up your heart to.”

I wonder if it is this difficult for everyone in America when I tell them that my name is Osama.

*

I start a summer internship at a technology company in Atlanta.

A few days into the internship, Jie, an intern who is an international student from China, tells me that he will now go by the name Humphrey.

I ask him why he decided to go by a different name than Jie.

He says his manager, who is also Asian, advised him to pick an American name to go by in the office.

“It is better for my professional career,” he tells me.

*

I change my Facebook display picture to my college graduation photo. In the photo I have a mortarboard on my head, a degree in my hand, and a big smile on my face.

A friend comments on it with a pun.

Awesome-A

I smile when I read it. I never realized that Osama could sound like Awesome.

*

“I’m authentic, real name, no gimmicks”

— Drake

*

I move to New York City for my first job out of school. On my first day, a coworker asks me if I have seen Office Space.

“Yeah bro,” I tell him. “Such a classic”.

“You know the character Michael Bolton from Office Space?”

I see where he is going with this.

“Why should I change my name?” He says.

“He is the one who sucks,” I complete the sentence.

He nods at me with a big satisfied smile on his face and extends his fist.

I fist-bump him.

I feel as if I just passed Steve’s Assimilation Test.

*

“Do you get extra shit at the airport when you enter America?” A coworker asks as he pumps the dispenser to top off a half-sipped coffee mug . “Like, do they strip search you and shit?”

*

Browsing the shelves of McNally Jackson in Soho, I come across a short story collection by an author named Osama Alomar. He is a Syrian immigrant now living in Chicago.

I buy the book, The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories, and read it in one sitting in Washington Square Park. His stories are very short, some only a few sentences long.

One of them is called “The Name.”

*

I download a dating app and set up a profile.

“Will our first date be a blast?” A brunette in the West Village messages me.

I unmatch her.

I match with a Muslim grad student at Columbia. The first message she sends me: “Please be honest, do people give you shit for your name?”

I unmatch her too.

A hot blonde in Williamsburg messages me. “Come bomb my pussy.”

I wonder if this is an invitation to sext. Maybe? But probably not. I unmatch her too.

*

I am browsing books at WORD in Greenpoint when I overhear a comedy show taking place in the building’s basement.

I stand near the entrance, trying to listen without paying for a ticket.

A stand-up comedian finishes her set and the next one introduces himself.

I hear his name: Osama. (I later learn that he spells it Usama.)

He makes fun of his own name. He cracks some jokes that are very similar to mine. He tells a story of how he freaked out when his friend shouted his name at the airport. I have a similar story that I tell to make people laugh.

I wonder if all of us Osamas (and Usamas) make the same jokes about our name.

*

Often, once I get to know someone and we are a little more comfortable around each other, they tell me, “I am sure you get this a lot, but sorry, I’ve always wanted to ask you something.”

In the middle of the first heartfelt conversation with a new friend, he will invariably say, “Bro, can I ask you something that might be a bit personal?”

Sometimes during an intimate moment, a girlfriend will say, “Can I ask you something that might be a little weird?”

I know what question they are going to ask next. But I still cross my fingers and close my eyes in anticipation of being asked something truly weird.

Despite it being different people, different moods, and different amounts of clothing we are wearing, it is always the same question.

It is the question that I knew they were going to ask.

*

I show up 20 minutes late to a comedy show in Brooklyn.

It is a packed small venue, and the only open seat is in the very front row. I am reluctant to take that seat but the usher tells me that I am blocking everyone’s view. I have to walk across the stage to take that seat.

The comedian raises her hands in faux-annoyance as I walk in front of her, “Alright dude, what is this?”

The crowd laughs.

I mouth a “sorry!” to her and shrug my shoulders.

After a few minutes of jokes, she introduces her last bit, “You guys have been great. Now for my final joke, I will ask you your name, and make fun of it.”

Fuck.

I know she will pick me. I try to look at the row behind me in an effort to nudge her to pick someone else.

She is looking directly at me. I don’t look at her to avoid eye contact.

“You, who walked in late,” she points at me and walks over. “What’s your name?”

She holds the mic in front of me.

I can feel the eyes of the crowd glaring at me in anticipation, waiting for me to say my name.

I don’t want to tell her that my name is Osama. Maybe I should tell her my name is Sam, or Sammy, or even Two-Two.

I wonder if my friends, who are sitting a row behind me, are cringing as they see this happen.

“Osama,” I reply into the mic.

There is a pause.

I look at the stand-up comedian who is still holding the mic in front of me. She is staring at me, unsure what to say.

“Okay,” she says as she moves away from me.

The crowd remains silent.

I have a wry smile on my face. I feel embarrassed for putting her in this situation. I feel embarrassed for making my friends sitting behind me witness this awkward scene.

“And what’s your name?” she asks a guy sitting a few spots from me.

“Ben,” he replies.

“Where did you get that sweater from,” she asks him, before adding with an emphasis, “BEN?”

The crowd laughs.

I am relieved that it is over. I feel like everyone in the audience is still looking at me.

*

Despite his best efforts, the Author’s name began to slide down off the top of the book’s cover where it had been printed. The Author’s self-confidence had died long ago, but his name was determined to hang on to the spot where it belonged with all its might.

(“The Name,” by Osama Alomar, from The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories)

*

I get a notification from Facebook.

A friend has re-shared his status from May 2011, with me tagged in it, as a memory.

Why would you re-share something so fucking old, I think to myself as I open my Facebook app, dreading to see what I was tagged in seven years ago.

“A good day for all the Osamas in the world except one” — Osama

I remember cracking this joke.

So many people asked me how I felt about the news that day that I remember feeling like I needed to draft and issue an official statement.

This is the joke that I remember telling the most often. There were probably a few others that I don’t remember anymore.

I didn’t anticipate anyone putting up what I said as their Facebook status. I think to myself now that my friend must have found what I said incredibly insightful.

*

I am tired. I have been working late at our office in Chelsea. I contemplate whether to take the L train back to Brooklyn or take an Uber. Fuck it, I’ll Uber.

My Uber driver, Ali, is four minutes away.

I wonder if I can expense this Uber ride because I was working late.

When I enter the car, I tell the driver, “Osama,” to confirm I am getting in the right Uber.

“Yes, salaam brother,” replies Ali.

“Salaam,” I reply curtly. Ali seems like an Uber driver who likes to talk. I am in zero mood for a conversation after a long day at work.

“Going to Brooklyn?” he asks.

“Ya.”

“You have a beautiful name, friend,” Ali comments. “Where are you from?”

Fuck. This is the last conversation I want to have right now.

“Pakistan,” I say.

“Can I ask you a question Osama?” Asks Ali.

The way he emphasizes my name, I know where this is going. I already know what the question will be.

I let out a sigh as I settle back into my seat and tell myself that I should have just taken the L.

I reply with a brief mmhmm.

“Do you want to listen to Drake or Atif Aslam?” asks Ali.

* * *

Editor’s note: Instead of a story fee, Longreads is making a donation to the South Asian American Digital Archive, per the author’s request.

Osama Shehzad is a writer from Karachi living in New York City.

* * *

Editor: Ben Huberman

from Blogger https://ift.tt/3kG4lqH via IFTTT

[ecoorganic]

“Do You Get Shit for Your Name?”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Osama Shehzad | Longreads | August 2020 | 3,543 words (14 minutes)

“Passport please,” asks the security officer, an Indian-British woman, at London’s Heathrow airport.

I hand her my green Pakistani passport, and she thumbs through it to get to the page with my visa. I am travelling to America where I’ve lived since 2009 on either student or work visas.

As she examines my passport, she frowns and then lifts her head to look at me.

“Osama?”

I reply with a nod and a small wry smile, as I always do when people ask to confirm my name.

She leans over and asks in a hushed voice, “Do you get shit for your name in America?”

*

I was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, where Osama was — and still remains — a popular name.

My grandfather, a poet, named me Osama because he wanted a name without a harsh stop at its end, a name that would flow smoothly off the tongue to my last name, Shehzad.

*

My elementary school Koran teacher, Qari Sahab, tells me Osama is an ancient Arabic name that translates to “lion.” It is popular throughout the Muslim world because Prophet Muhammad chose that name for his adopted grandson.

*

“What is your name beta?” asks the uncle, an old friend of my father who is over at our place with his wife for tea. The uncle emigrated to the U.S. in the ‘80s and has rarely visited Karachi since. This is my first time meeting him.

“Osama,” I reply.

“Oye, you are hiding here in Karachi and Bush is looking for you everywhere,” replies the uncle and everyone in the drawing room gives out a courteous chuckle for his attempt to lighten the mood.

“Good luck getting a visa to America,” his wife adds.

“You should change your name,” the uncle instructs me.

“Chai piyo aur niklo,” I feel like telling him, but instead reply with a polite “Okay.”

*

“Be prepared,” warns Mrs. Isani when I tell her that I have decided to attend college in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mrs. Isani is my high school counselor. She is, I guesstimate, around 85 if not older. She is a soft-spoken but straight-to-the-point Parsi lady.

“The American South is a racist place,” she tells me. “I am afraid you will be bullied because of your name.”

*

“You are applying for an American visa?” people in my high school mockingly remark when I tell them about my college aspirations.

“I thought you were planning on going to Georgia, the country in Eastern Europe,” comments one friend. I wonder if he is showing off his knowledge of world geography or highlighting his apparent lack thereof.

“You will never get a visa to America.”

*

It’s 2008 and America has just elected a new president with a name only one letter different from mine. Obama dares everyone to hope. I hope that Americans don’t judge people by their names.

*

My parents tell me that I shouldn’t feel ashamed if I want to go by another name when I’m in America.

I can tell they feel responsible for giving me a once-beautiful, now-wretched name.

They even make suggestions: maybe a condensed Sam? Or a Western-sounding Sammy? Or Two-Two, a pet name they reveal they had used for a few days in the hospital — the room in which I was born was numbered 22 — before my ultimate name was assigned to me.

*

I try to put myself in the shoes of an American college student and contemplate which name can be more easily made fun of: Osama or Two-Two?

*

“You should just go by Shehzad in America,” suggests a high school friend. “I’ve heard people in the West just go by their last names.”

“Mister Shehzad,” I say out loud to him. “It does have a nice ring to it.”

“Sounds like Mister Bond.”

“Maybe I should go by Double-O Seven?”

“Or better, you should come up with your own number. How about Zero Zero Nine Two?”

“Zero Zero Nine Two…” I repeat to check how it sounds.

“Don’t do it. They’ll think you’re a telephone from Karachi.”

*

“Visa milgaya apko?” asks the airline employee with a tinge of sarcasm as I check in to my flight at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport.

There are no direct flights from Pakistan to America. I fly from Karachi to Dubai to London to Chicago. Phupho and Phupha, my aunt and uncle who live in Indianapolis, will pick me up from O’Hare and then drive me to my college in Atlanta.

As I wait at Heathrow to board my final flight, I practice introducing myself to others. I try to imagine every possible reaction from them — and what an appropriate polite response to it might be.

If someone were to start laughing and ask, “Are you serious?” I would pretend to laugh too and say, “Obviously not, I’m Sam.”

If they called me a terrorist or tried to punch me, I would run away. Where? I am not sure. Maybe back to my dorm?

If they walked away because they didn’t want to talk to anyone who had a name like mine, I would just put my head down in shame.

I wonder if I need to say sorry for going by my own name.

On the flight from London to Chicago, a white American woman is sitting next to me.

I am worried: will she ask what my name is? I debate if I should tell her my name is Osama. Maybe I shouldn’t because we are on a plane.

We talk briefly but she never asks.

*

There is always a pause after I tell people my name in college. I see a split-second hesitation in their eyes. I feel embarrassed for putting them in this situation. I don’t know what to do. I end up smiling a lot.

“Osama?” People repeat my name, sometimes a few times, to confirm they heard it correctly.

“Yes, Osama,” I say.

“Obama?” Some people ask me.

“No,” I correct them. “Osama.”

“Ajay?”

“Bro, how the fuck did you hear me say Ajay?” I want to ask this weirdo.

Instead I politely correct him. “No, Osama.”

*

I watch Office Space for the first time with people in my freshman dorm. They claim to have seen it multiple times.

“Michael…” a woman reads out a man’s name in one scene, before pausing with astonished eyes, “Bolton?”

“That’s me,” says Bolton, who we can tell has been in this situation too many times before.

“Wow,” exclaims the woman. “Is that your real name?”

Everyone around me laughs. I am tense. I wonder how Bolton will respond to this. I also wonder if anyone is looking at me, trying to see how I react to this scene. So I keep my eyes glued to the screen and smile.

“Yeah,” says Bolton curtly as he clears his throat.

“So are you related to that singer guy?”

“No,” clarifies Bolton, who’s trying to end the conversation. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“Oh,” says the woman, seemingly disappointed, as she walks away.

When Bolton’s cubicle mate, Samir, complains that no one in America can say his last name correctly, Bolton says, “well at least your name isn’t Michael Bolton.”

“You know there is nothing wrong with that name,” Samir tells him.

“There was nothing wrong with that name,” corrects Bolton. “Until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.”

“Well why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?” suggests Samir.

“No way, why should I change? He is the one who sucks.”

*

On Facebook I notice that some other Osamas — whom I knew from Pakistan and who had also come to America — have now tweaked their names. They go by Sam or Mo or Sammy. No one goes by Two-Two or Zero Zero Nine Two.

I wonder if their experience as an Osama in America is different from mine. It probably is, I tell myself.

Sometimes I wonder what other Osamas in the world, not just in America, are experiencing.

*

“Wait, wait,” says a guy at a frat party. He is trying to hush the three other people whom I have also just met for the first time, and who are standing in a circle with us.

“I have to ask you a question, Osama,” he says.

The way he emphasizes my name. I know where this is going.

“Are you related to…” He pauses for dramatic effect and then adds, “Osama bin Laden?”

He delivers his punchline and looks around the circle as he laughs. The two guys, both wearing identical Braves hats, smile.

The one other person in the circle, a girl who I think is in the same CS1371 section as me, squirms with an uncomfortable expression on her face.

“This is awkward as fuck,” I can hear her thinking in her head.

*

I contemplate changing the spelling of my name: Usama Ousama Oouussaammahh Okssamta (the k and the t would be silent)

*

I read somewhere that self-deprecating humor makes you appear more relatable and therefore more attractive.

*

A Starbucks opens in the library. It is quickly the most popular spot on campus. Lines are always long and sometimes extend out of the building during finals week.

Even though the baristas ask for my name every time and spell it correctly on the cup when they write it down, I notice that they never say it out loud.

I feel bad for putting the barista in a position where they are afraid to offend someone by calling them an Osama.

I tell this story to all my college friends. I end it with the punchline, “So I guess everyone has name troubles at Starbucks.”

People laugh in acknowledgement; even though their name is Gracie, Chris, or Zach and mine is Osama, we share the same inconveniences at Starbucks.

“See, we have so much in common,” they say.

*

It’s 2010 and a Pakistani man tries to blow up Times Square.

His last name is Shahzad.

My last name is Shehzad.

I tell myself that at least the spellings are not the same.

*

“Do you always tell people that your name is Osama,” friends ask me.

“Yes,” I usually reply with a nod. “Except when I am on a plane,” I add after a slight pause for dramatic effect.

“If I asked the guy sitting next to me on the plane what his name was and he replied ‘Osama,’” I say with a laugh, “I would freak out too.”

This is a joke I often crack about my own name. It always gets laughs.

*

“Yo, check out the time,” my friend tells me.

I check my phone. It is 9:11pm. I look back at him.

He has a proud smirk on his face.

*

My friends and I are watching Russell Peters’ stand-up show on YouTube.

“What’s your name?” Peters asks someone in the crowd.

“Anthony,” the guy replies.

“What’s your Asian name?” asks Russell back.

The person is reluctant to share his name at first but does so after Peters insists. Peters then goes on to make fun of his name and his ethnicity.

I shudder when I try to imagine what Russell Peters, or any comedian, would do with my name.

*

“Kahan say arahay hain?” asks the immigration officer in Karachi as I hand him my Pakistani passport.

“America,” I reply.

As he stamps the green pages of my green passport, he asks, “Wahan loog mazak to nahi uratay apka?”

Do you get shit for your name over there?

*

I am watching Jon Stewart clips on YouTube when I stumble across his interview with Bassem Youssef in Egypt.

Stewart narrates his encounter with an “incredibly hospitable” refugee in Jordan.

Towards the end of a heartwarming interaction, a deeply moved Stewart asks the refugee for his name. The refugee replies, “Osama.”

Stewart pauses on that punchline.

And then in Stewart-like broken sentences, collecting his thoughts on stereotypes and ignorance in general, he says, “So that was a… it was difficult… it’s a kind of thing that you need to open up your heart to.”

I wonder if it is this difficult for everyone in America when I tell them that my name is Osama.

*

I start a summer internship at a technology company in Atlanta.

A few days into the internship, Jie, an intern who is an international student from China, tells me that he will now go by the name Humphrey.

I ask him why he decided to go by a different name than Jie.

He says his manager, who is also Asian, advised him to pick an American name to go by in the office.

“It is better for my professional career,” he tells me.

*

I change my Facebook display picture to my college graduation photo. In the photo I have a mortarboard on my head, a degree in my hand, and a big smile on my face.

A friend comments on it with a pun.

Awesome-A

I smile when I read it. I never realized that Osama could sound like Awesome.

*

“I’m authentic, real name, no gimmicks”

— Drake

*

I move to New York City for my first job out of school. On my first day, a coworker asks me if I have seen Office Space.

“Yeah bro,” I tell him. “Such a classic”.

“You know the character Michael Bolton from Office Space?”

I see where he is going with this.

“Why should I change my name?” He says.

“He is the one who sucks,” I complete the sentence.

He nods at me with a big satisfied smile on his face and extends his fist.

I fist-bump him.

I feel as if I just passed Steve’s Assimilation Test.

*

“Do you get extra shit at the airport when you enter America?” A coworker asks as he pumps the dispenser to top off a half-sipped coffee mug . “Like, do they strip search you and shit?”

*

Browsing the shelves of McNally Jackson in Soho, I come across a short story collection by an author named Osama Alomar. He is a Syrian immigrant now living in Chicago.

I buy the book, The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories, and read it in one sitting in Washington Square Park. His stories are very short, some only a few sentences long.

One of them is called “The Name.”

*

I download a dating app and set up a profile.

“Will our first date be a blast?” A brunette in the West Village messages me.

I unmatch her.

I match with a Muslim grad student at Columbia. The first message she sends me: “Please be honest, do people give you shit for your name?”

I unmatch her too.

A hot blonde in Williamsburg messages me. “Come bomb my pussy.”

I wonder if this is an invitation to sext. Maybe? But probably not. I unmatch her too.

*

I am browsing books at WORD in Greenpoint when I overhear a comedy show taking place in the building’s basement.

I stand near the entrance, trying to listen without paying for a ticket.

A stand-up comedian finishes her set and the next one introduces himself.

I hear his name: Osama. (I later learn that he spells it Usama.)

He makes fun of his own name. He cracks some jokes that are very similar to mine. He tells a story of how he freaked out when his friend shouted his name at the airport. I have a similar story that I tell to make people laugh.

I wonder if all of us Osamas (and Usamas) make the same jokes about our name.

*

Often, once I get to know someone and we are a little more comfortable around each other, they tell me, “I am sure you get this a lot, but sorry, I’ve always wanted to ask you something.”

In the middle of the first heartfelt conversation with a new friend, he will invariably say, “Bro, can I ask you something that might be a bit personal?”

Sometimes during an intimate moment, a girlfriend will say, “Can I ask you something that might be a little weird?”

I know what question they are going to ask next. But I still cross my fingers and close my eyes in anticipation of being asked something truly weird.

Despite it being different people, different moods, and different amounts of clothing we are wearing, it is always the same question.

It is the question that I knew they were going to ask.

*

I show up 20 minutes late to a comedy show in Brooklyn.

It is a packed small venue, and the only open seat is in the very front row. I am reluctant to take that seat but the usher tells me that I am blocking everyone’s view. I have to walk across the stage to take that seat.

The comedian raises her hands in faux-annoyance as I walk in front of her, “Alright dude, what is this?”

The crowd laughs.

I mouth a “sorry!” to her and shrug my shoulders.

After a few minutes of jokes, she introduces her last bit, “You guys have been great. Now for my final joke, I will ask you your name, and make fun of it.”

Fuck.

I know she will pick me. I try to look at the row behind me in an effort to nudge her to pick someone else.

She is looking directly at me. I don’t look at her to avoid eye contact.

“You, who walked in late,” she points at me and walks over. “What’s your name?”

She holds the mic in front of me.

I can feel the eyes of the crowd glaring at me in anticipation, waiting for me to say my name.

I don’t want to tell her that my name is Osama. Maybe I should tell her my name is Sam, or Sammy, or even Two-Two.

I wonder if my friends, who are sitting a row behind me, are cringing as they see this happen.

“Osama,” I reply into the mic.

There is a pause.

I look at the stand-up comedian who is still holding the mic in front of me. She is staring at me, unsure what to say.

“Okay,” she says as she moves away from me.

The crowd remains silent.

I have a wry smile on my face. I feel embarrassed for putting her in this situation. I feel embarrassed for making my friends sitting behind me witness this awkward scene.

“And what’s your name?” she asks a guy sitting a few spots from me.

“Ben,” he replies.

“Where did you get that sweater from,” she asks him, before adding with an emphasis, “BEN?”

The crowd laughs.

I am relieved that it is over. I feel like everyone in the audience is still looking at me.

*

Despite his best efforts, the Author’s name began to slide down off the top of the book’s cover where it had been printed. The Author’s self-confidence had died long ago, but his name was determined to hang on to the spot where it belonged with all its might.

(“The Name,” by Osama Alomar, from The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories)

*

I get a notification from Facebook.

A friend has re-shared his status from May 2011, with me tagged in it, as a memory.

Why would you re-share something so fucking old, I think to myself as I open my Facebook app, dreading to see what I was tagged in seven years ago.

“A good day for all the Osamas in the world except one” — Osama

I remember cracking this joke.

So many people asked me how I felt about the news that day that I remember feeling like I needed to draft and issue an official statement.

This is the joke that I remember telling the most often. There were probably a few others that I don’t remember anymore.

I didn’t anticipate anyone putting up what I said as their Facebook status. I think to myself now that my friend must have found what I said incredibly insightful.

*

I am tired. I have been working late at our office in Chelsea. I contemplate whether to take the L train back to Brooklyn or take an Uber. Fuck it, I’ll Uber.

My Uber driver, Ali, is four minutes away.

I wonder if I can expense this Uber ride because I was working late.

When I enter the car, I tell the driver, “Osama,” to confirm I am getting in the right Uber.

“Yes, salaam brother,” replies Ali.

“Salaam,” I reply curtly. Ali seems like an Uber driver who likes to talk. I am in zero mood for a conversation after a long day at work.

“Going to Brooklyn?” he asks.

“Ya.”

“You have a beautiful name, friend,” Ali comments. “Where are you from?”

Fuck. This is the last conversation I want to have right now.

“Pakistan,” I say.

“Can I ask you a question Osama?” Asks Ali.

The way he emphasizes my name, I know where this is going. I already know what the question will be.

I let out a sigh as I settle back into my seat and tell myself that I should have just taken the L.

I reply with a brief mmhmm.

“Do you want to listen to Drake or Atif Aslam?” asks Ali.

* * *

Editor’s note: Instead of a story fee, Longreads is making a donation to the South Asian American Digital Archive, per the author’s request.

Osama Shehzad is a writer from Karachi living in New York City.

* * *

Editor: Ben Huberman

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