Ousia

Since two months ago when I chatted with a cleaning guy with a Dominican accent at O’hare and debated with myself whether to switch or not to switch to Spanish, I have been navigating and discovering my identities as I navigate and discover the contours and flavors of America. This reflection is the beginning of reflecting on this process.

Since so much baggage is attached to being from Gringolandia in Latin America, I sometimes try to hide. It doesn’t usually work. If it’s not my light eyes and skin that give me away, it’s a mis-conjugated verb or my accent or my gate. I’m never anonymous; I am always qualified.

On days when I’m not feeling prepared to, say, explain Guantanamo Bay and both Iraq wars to my International Law class because I’m the token Gringa, I yearn for the privilege of anonymity that being white and middle class in the States allows. On afternoons when I don’t feel like being invariably cat-called by the construction workers on the way to class or leered at by men of any stature or honked at by cars, or groped on the bus or on nights where I clutch vigilantly at my drink, I dream a metallic body suit that plates my curves in steel, eyes with lasers and poison spit. But only on those days.

(My hips are happier anyway accompanied by my boxer briefs, loose fitting jeans, carried by my mom’s big black boots).

I hear a lot of generalizations when people explain to me why they know I’m foreign, or why somehow my national or ethnic identity doesn’t make sense. My nose isn’t a gringo nose, it’s a french nose, they say. It doesn’t make sense that I have dark hair if I don’t have Latino heritage. I shouldn’t be able to speak Spanish if I’m a gringa. Sometimes they guess correctly where I’m from, for a similarly absurd list of reasons.

Differently placed, as I have chosen to be, I have access to a new view of me. I also realize that same me I speak of has changed as a result of her placement, an in some ways I am uncomfortable with. Since when do I sacrifice my balance on the bus instead of lifting my arm and showing off my flowing pit hair? Since when to I feel compelled to shower more than every other day for no good reason? Since when to I semi-consciously change the pronouns of exes mentioned in passing so as to not bring up questions of my sexuality? Grimace nervously or even smile sometimes at leering men instead of spit my poison in their eyes? Raise the pitch of my voice and soften my tone when speaking to men, or when speaking in Spanish?

Passing as more-or-less straight makes it easy to slip into hetero performance, but it’s not comfortable, and I feel like I’m committing a form of self-violence by doing it. (***Note to extended family that didn’t know I’m queer: consider this a coming-out).

I’ve been sneaky with myself, omitting truths about my identity that are harder to express here in Chile with people I do not know. No more! I have the opportunity to perform myself in every interaction and every setting I place and find myself in. Along with this fresh opportunity of being in the extranjero (similar to the word for the Strange), I have an obligation to perform myself truthfully, instead of assimilating or hiding. I must locate both the linguistic and emotional vocabulary to answer categorizations people make of me with my own.