Being single and female presents its plethora of problems.
Add "Asian" to the mix and it's like a whole nother universe.
Like if anyone seemingly flirts with me [a rare occurrence, thankfully], I immediately imagine their rooms: a tiny closet-like space filled with anime posters, Asian language books, pictures of ex-girlfriends [all Asian], and a corner devoted to video games. If social escape from said person seems difficult, I usually just try to open my mouth and curse like a sailor in an attempt to dispel any conceptions of the socially docile, obedient, Asian woman who also happens to be a total freak in bed.
I'm not sure if it works, but I've been completely creeped out enough to run the usual checks before entertaining even friendships. Paranoid? Probably. But I like to think I'm more interesting than my ethnicity.
Oddly enough, though, I fully endorsed fetishization yesterday. I even took pictures. In a bathroom.
Okay, it didn't involve anything racy [at least in the normal sense of that term]. Just that it was my first time using the NYC Velo bathroom [despite my love for iced coffee, my propensity to hang out endlessly at NYC Velo, and the fact that iced coffee also has me running to the bathroom every other hour]. And when you find yourself in a "unisex" bathroom/shrine to all things bike, with a wrench for the cold water knob on the sink, well, the camera is bound to come out.
Not to mention that entering NYC Velo's bathroom is like peeking into the Devil's handbook. If putting a ring on [or having a ring put on by] a cyclist is your thing, that is. The walls are plastered with posters of Tour and Giro winners, and where you might expect soft-core porn or Maxim covers, are pictures of Merckx, Lance, and Cipollini.
Which might make you question if putting a ring on the object of your affection [at least in NY state] is actually possible. But blatant homosexual crushes aside, it's also a glimpse into a world that has little room for other loves. And while that kind of obsession can too easily spill over into creepy-ville, I hypocritically felt right at home.
Declaring my approval as I exited the bathroom, I wondered what I would put up on my own bathroom walls. I couldn't think of anything [mostly due to a sheer lack of posters] but late last night after arriving back to my own apartment in Boston, I found it. A picture tweeted by Competitive Cyclist, it's something worth sticking up on a bathroom wall, in front of my desk, or even by my bed. And though still unable to do a wheelie [much less a wheelie off the ground on some bling tdf bike in front of the L'Arc du Triomphe after becoming the first Japanese cyclist to finish a post-war Tour], I'd rock that kit on a 'drome.
I'd even let him put a ring on it.
