I know he doesn’t mean to, but Ale can make me feel like such an asshole sometimes. Maybe it’s the insane cultural differences, but there are times when talking to him makes me feel like I don’t deserve to consider myself Marxist. Or “human being” for that matter.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that I have maids. Well, not me - my family does. I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my lifetime and he never batted so much as an eyelash when I told him about those. But when I mentioned that we have maids in the house, he was so shocked that had to interrupt our conversation to tell his parents about it.
“So what do you do at home if you don’t do any chores?” he asked me.
“Ummm…I work. I go online. I play guitar,” I mumbled.
I know that in Europe and the rest of the Western world, nobody has maids in their house unless they’re really really rich. Over here, it’s normal for most middle class families have at least one maid in the household. Still, I never realized how much I have in common with a spoiled brat until he started explaining to me how weird it would be for him to have someone clean up his room, cook his meals, and do the household chores for him.
Ate Diding and Ale
What made it worse for me was when he kept asking me all these questions about the helpers who live in our house two days ago. Stuff like how old they are, if they have any kids. All I could answer was an, “Umm…I never really got around to asking them.”
“So you don’t talk to them? Even if you live in the same house?”
“Not really. I like to keep to myself. Besides, just because you live with someone doesn’t mean you have to talk to that person.”
“Honey, I know that, but I don’t know…if we had maids in our house I’d probably talk to them a lot.”
Yeah, that made me feel like a class A asshole all right.
The funny part is that I can’t justify why I need any maids around because I’m the type of person who can live with clothes all over my bed and survive on canned food and restaurant leftovers. Okay, maybe it’s nice to have someone make your meals for you when you’re a real dunce in the kitchen (or when you’re just plain too lazy to ever get around to learning how to cook). But…is it really that hard for us to do our own cleaning and cooking? I know that people here need jobs and stuff, but a job where you have to do stuff people can very well do on their own is starting to sound more and more wrong to me. Also, I’m having so much difficulty trying to find a reason why I find it so hard to strike up a normal conversation with our maids. I’m chalking it up to the fact that I’m not really a sociable person unless the mood strikes me, but I’m afraid that the real reason for this might be that I still cling to a few more classist attitudes than I thought.
I <3 a man who can cook.
Because I can’t tell a frying pan from a wok.
Right now Ale is making dinner for us downstairs (spaghetti ala-something something), where “us” is my parents, my sister, and the maids. When we were talking about cooking dinner last night, he asked me if the maids could join us at the dinner table. I couldn’t have been more shocked. My family and the maids, all eating at one table. How totally awkward and inappropriate is that? But worse than the awkwardness was this tidal wave of shame that hit me the moment I thought that.
So I guess if I were him I would totally dump me right now, but mebbe he’s waiting til he gets back to Italy to do that. :\ And I really don’t have much of an appetite right now but it’d be a shame to let that food go to waste. Dinner tiem.
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