funny story

Parkway Pick-up by Malia Griggs

Walking home along the parkway, a young man with dreads called out to me.

Guy: “Excuse me! You remind me of someone beautiful! Can I tell you who?" Me: "Who?" Guy: "You.” Me: “Oh, God.” Guy: “And can I tell you that you look amazing in that dress?” Me: “Thank you.” Guy: “No, thank YOU for putting it on. What’s your name?” Me: “Malia.” Guy: “Can I tell you, that reminds of a movie character named Mulan?” Me: “In that, they both start with ’m’ and have an ‘a’ in them?” Guy: “Where are you from?” Me: “South Carolina.” Guy: “And, but, what are you?” Me: “Chinese and Japanese.” Guy: “What! Do you speak the languages?” Me: “Nope.” Guy: “I can say 'konichiwa.’ And in Chinese, I can say 'chicken and broccoli.’ [says it] You know, I love Japanese culture. Know what I love most? Japanese cars. [hokey accent] Hooonda! Mit. Su. BISHI! TOYOTA!” Me: “Uh, are you following me home?” Guy: “No, we’re walking the same way!” [switches walking from my left side to my right side, closer to traffic] Me: “Why did you just do that?” Guy: “Because I believe in chivalry.” Me: “What’s chivalrous about that?” Guy: “No, no, CHIVALRY.” Me: “Chivalrous and chivalry are the same thing.” Guy: “I believe a woman should always be protected from the outside.” Me: “What makes that the outside? Aren’t we already outside?” Guy: “You know, I’ve never thought about it.” Me: “Well, I’m about to go inside. My apartment.”

by Malia Griggs

I recently returned from a 10-day trip to Turkey, where my best friend from college, Tas, lives and works. Before I left, my New York friends teased me by saying that I’d have “plenty to blog about” because of all the Turkish men I’d meet. To which I dryly responded that there was no way I’d be hooking up with some undeodorized European who may be chockful of STDs. 

Because the thing about Turkish men is that they are aggressive. Not ALL of them, of course, but (as is the case with men everywhere) the ones you wish would talk to you never do, and the ones who you least want to spend seven minutes in heaven with are attracted to you like mosquitoes to fruit-scented lotion.

I traveled with Tas, who is Indian, and our friend Monica, a natural blonde, and our ambiguous ethnic identities made for massive male curiosity. Everywhere we went, men on the street pestered us with pick-up lines and kissing noises. I didn’t learn Turkish for “hello,” but I did learn how to say “I’m Indian” and “I’m American” because of all the times Tas had to say these phrases to persistent guys. As a means of a conversation starter, men tried to speak to me in Korean and asked me if I was from China, from Japan, from Uzbekistan. (I told them Kenya.) One man approached me to say, “You are photo?” while waving a camera phone in my face, to which I replied, “No. I am not.”

This got old fast. Tas, the Turkish pro, was quick to flick off the most annoying pursuers, so I learned response tactics from her. On the last night of our trip, when a car stuffed with men making hissing noises followed us down the street, I whipped around, made an obscene crotch-grabbing gesture, screamed “EH! F*CK YOUR MOTHER!” in my best “Cake Boss” accent and flashed them the face of a Japanese dragon monster.

There were some creative stabs at flirting, though, that should be rewarded. A sampling:

1. My friends and I were referred to as “Charlie’s Angels” in the market, which, if you think about the fact there there is an Asian angel and a blonde angel, is two-thirds accurate.

2. Monica tripped on a curb, and a shopkeeper speedily called, “Don’t break your leg – break my heart!”

3. We went to the spice bazaar, which was just rows and rows of men trying to sell you stuff by shouting out “all the single ladies!”, “you give me pleasure in my eyes!” and “hey, fat one!” But one honest guy said, “Please, come to my shop! We have everything inside!…except customers.” He muttered that last part, so we almost stopped out of pity. Pretty effective.

Sadly, none of these attempts were clever enough to woo me into any Turkish beds (or onto any Turkish rugs). I would’ve sooner gone home with a doner kebab.

But there was one man who might have changed my mind. Here’s a fun fact: getting your hair blown out in Istanbul costs $2. Screw you, DreamDry, Drybar, Blow, and all other $40 blow-out businesses – in Turkey, hot, bearded men blow you for a price that’s cheaper than a single subway ride. It’s criminal. We went three times during our trip, and I developed a crush on Kaan, the auburn-bearded, hipster gent who dried my do. One visit, I was wearing a halter jumpsuit, and the halter became untied. Kaan handed me the loose string. Our eyes met in the salon mirror, and our fingers almost touched. It was super romantic, as all eye contact is for me (when it’s not making my stomach turn).

Did I act on this romance? Have you met me? Oh, you haven’t? Well, I don’t act on romance unless sandwiches are involved. But Kaan will live on in my memory, as will the feeling of his fingers running through my follicles. He probably doesn’t remember me at all. I have less hair than a baby feather.

Oh, Kaan. Oh, Turkey. I weep for all our possible futures.

My Sexual Miseducation by Malia Griggs

My parents are liberal in most respects, but we never really had the “sex talk.” Sure, I saw “Kinsey” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” in theaters with them. But instead of sitting me down and dishing the deets, they gave me a large picture book from the 1970s which was supposed to explain the facts of life in a fun, non-threatening way.

The book was a cartoon of a family with one child and a “mommy and daddy” who “love each other very much.” Like any 1970s family, they wore bell bottoms, and the son looked like the kid from “The Shining.” Mommy and Daddy were drawn doing regular family activities — playing with their child in the park, getting ice cream, and because they were so in love, taking their clothes off, embracing naked and boning each other. As it was the ’70s, Daddy had a fro, and Mommy had a fro, too, of sorts. The comic made sex seem easy-peasy and always missionary. It only referred to sex as “making love,” and little cartoon hearts exploded around Mommy and Daddy’s converging forms. All of this intense naked hugging led to scientific drawings of a cute, ambitious sperm hopping into an egg, and voila, a baby! The drawings drove home the idea that sex is a natural, normal part of familial life but left out all of the other junk – virginity loss, how to put on a condom, STD paranoia, whip cream usage, how to get someone you want to have sex with to have sex with you, “50 Shades of Grey,” etc. etc.

Since my sexual education derived mostly from this children’s picture book and from the state of South Carolina, there were some gaping holes in what I knew about the birds and the bees. I had to learn the hard way, pun intended. Here are four sexual slip-ups I recall from childhood:

1. The summer before third grade, I went to Jewish Community Center musical theater camp. I’m not Jewish, but my parents briefly considered converting. We went to synagogue, to a stranger’s bat mitzvah, bought a menorah and almost burned down the house making latkes. This is all irrelevant. At camp, I befriended a girl named Mikayla. We were inseparable until we got into an argument over who could sing “Bye Bye Birdie” better. Mikayla was more advanced than me. She floated the idea of French kissing my way, which I interpreted as a sweeter, more meaningful version of regular kissing. One afternoon, I found my dad in his bedroom. I perched next to him on my parents’ bed.

“Daddy,” I said. “Would you French kiss me?”

My father’s eyes widened. “What did you say?” then “Do you know what that is?”

He gently explained the term, and I started crying out of embarrassment.

2. In sixth grade, my English class memorized stems, which are different parts of words and their meanings (“inter” means “between,” “intra” means “within,” “exo” means “outer,” etc.). We graded tests by trading papers with our peers. Once, I switched with Aaron, the class clown who I secretly had a crush on. Our teacher went through the test’s answers, and when she hit “hexa,” which means “six,” Aaron yelled out, “Ms. Wallace! Ms. Wallace! Malia wrote ‘SEX’!” I snatched my test back, certain he was just being a little douche rocket. But, no. I’d clearly written “sex” instead of “six.” Where was my mind? At that point, I thought sex was something you only did to fog up windows, a la “Titanic.”

3. In seventh grade, I went to a pep rally. You know – cheerleaders chanting, everyone screaming their middle-school brains out for a bunch of munchkins in football uniforms. In the midst of the ruckus, I turned to a friend and jokingly shouted, “Man, I’m gonna need VIAGRA!” She looked at me and said, “Did you mean Advil??” to which I said, “Aren’t they the same thing?”

4. And now we arrive at the crown jewel of my sex blunders. In my eighth grade English class, we began reading a “Sherlock Holmes” book out loud. At some point, Sherlock makes a remark, to which Watson (the narrator) responds, “My dear Holmes!” But in the text, the sentence reads:

“My dear Holmes!” I ejaculated.

Upon hearing this word, all the boys in my class snorted, and the girls smirked. My teacher told us to settle down, but she was smiling, and I thought everyone was amused at how random the word “ejaculated” was. Because wasn’t “ejaculated” just a much longer, ridiculously antiquated way of saying “said”? Oh, those Brits! Always one to seize the moment, I turned to my classmates and said loudly, “Yeah – like I’m going to go home and ejaculate tonight.”

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the class erupted (poor word choice). The boys were hysterical. My teacher gave up quieting them and said, “Well, it just got X-rated in here.” I was mystified and getting that French-kiss-failure feeling in my stomach again. My friend, Stu, paused laughing to say:

“Malia, don’t you know what that means?”

Another boy pulled out a dictionary (yes, a real dictionary, because no one had smart phones yet, or Snapchat for that matter, because if we’d had Snapchat in my middle school years, it’s far more likely I would’ve understood the concept of ejaculation, but I digress), opened it to “ejaculate,” and shoved it my way.

I think you know the definition.

“Oh my God,” I shrieked, covering my face. After class, as I walked down the halls, I could hear my classmates whispering at their lockers as I passed. My friend’s mother picked us up from the car line, and as soon as we got in the van, my friend said, “Mom, GUESS what Malia said in class.” (I don’t remember how she described my slip-up to her conservative Southern mother, but they both laughed, so that’s good?)

The story faded eventually, but every once in a while, it cropped up in someone’s memory. “Dude, remember the time Malia didn’t know about ‘ejaculating’?” Hardy har har. Story’s yours now, world.