Author: zk122596

My Song 2 3

Essay 3

Zhanna Kubankina

On B(.)(.)bs.

 

My breasts started growing when I was about twelve years old. The small lumps that appeared out of nowhere started to hurt. They were still small– other girls in my class were already wearing bras, while I have never tried one on. I thought there was something wrong with me until when I was a summer camp. All of a sudden, while all of us went swimming to the river, Svetkas boobs seemed to have diminished by two sizes. Later in the restroom I caught her putting cotton pads in her bra. She asked me not to tell anybody and promised to convince the most popular guy Alexey to date me. After this I started to avoid him even more, so that if I saw him approaching me, I would turn around and instead of taking a path would scratch my way through the dense forest. And once when we all got dressed up to go dancing and he came up to us with a cigarette in his mouth, I stumbled and fell from my 10-inch platform heels. At that moment I felt my face on fire, I have never felt more ashamed of myself. And he was cracking up and not even thinking of giving me a hand.

(.)(.)

My friend Masha started developing when she was nine, so by the age of thirteen her bra size was 32D. Her mother used to say that our bodies were forming faster than our brains. I guess she was right, because at the age of 18 Masha got pregnant. Before pregnancy her bra size was 34DD, and while being pregnant her boobs started growing even bigger, which already made her look like a cow. They were not popping out bringing curves to her shape anymore, but were resting on her enormous belly-watermelon.

(.)(.)

When I was fifteen I was always jealous of other girls already formed shapes. While they were wearing tight clothes and deep décolleté, I was hiding under long skirts and bulky shirts. Whenever they put heels on, they looked sexy; when if I did, I looked like a girl who sneaked them out of her mom’s closet.

To get ahead of nature, I started buying push-up bras. My boobs looked fantastic in those and I was happy until one day while making out with a much older guy I felt his hands wandering around my face, neck, shoulders and going lower towards my inch-and-a-half-newly-boosted pieces of treasure. When his hands reached this treasure, I stopped feeling them, and I bet he felt only polyurethane. That was the day I realized that sometimes you have to compromise between looks and tactile feelings, so if you are going out on a date with a guy who will only be allowed to look at you, it’s okay to wear a push-up bra, but if you really like the guy, you might go with something else. When I started buying push-up bras it became extremely hard to stop; since everyone around was used to my bigger boobs, I did not want to startle them by a sudden change.

(.)(.)

College showed me that the smaller the boobs are, the bitchier the girl is. I remember sitting in the library overhearing a conversation of a bunch of girls: “a boob should be a small size, so that a man’s hand could cup all of it.” When I saw Valeria for the first time, I thought that this girl does not need a bra at all, but she was still wearing one I guess just to create an essence of boobs. She was literally flat. I have never met anyone as flat as her in my life. I think if she played soccer for a shirtless team, one could be surprised that she was actually a girl and not a super skinny guy. “One day when she becomes a mother she will have some sort of boobs”- someone in class once said. I always felt that this was the biggest psychological complex of her life, which was and still is the main reason I never saw any guy around her.

(.) (.)

At the age of twenty I went to the USA for the first time in my life. I loved it, I was living together with seven other Russian girls in Fort Myers, Florida and we became local stars there. That summer I had been working in California Pizza Kitchen and all I ate was pizza. I have never eaten that much pizza before; I could eat the whole medium sized pizza at once. My girlfriends were working next to me in Cinnabon, Dunkin Donuts, Mc Donald’s, Taco Bell. We would have our breaks together and share all our junk food; we took this food home, we ate it everywhere. As a result, I gained 7 pounds, Marina and Dasha gained 14 and Ekaterina was the winner – she gained 33. “A hippopotamus is coming back to Russia”- she prepared her boyfriend over the phone. I’ve been always skinny, and those 7 pounds did only good to me and this was the only summer when I did not feel underweight, but normal and sexy. And my boobs grew much bigger too.

Later I met Diana. When we just got to New York City we wanted to party, but we knew no one. Somebody told us to go to meatpacking district. We heard the music and stopped by the closed doors of a nightclub. We did not know that in order to get into the club we had to be in someone’s party, or what a “promoter” meant. Our only ticket was Diana’s boobs, which worked perfectly fine. She says sometimes it is hard for her to live with boobs of this enormous size and she wants to go for a surgery one day.

(.) (.)

I met Maria at a bar. She is a 41-year-old with breast implants. She got them at the age of 27. She has waited for her boobs to grow, but the miracle did not happen, so she had to pay the doctor to perform the miracle. And he did a good job. They are just the right size, they look very natural, though don’t feel so when you touch them. On my question about a future motherhood, she said breastfeeding with implants is nothing extraordinary. The surgery made her feel more confident and she is happy she went for it.

 

My aunt always says, “Why do women care about how they look when naked in front of men? Why are we never happy with ourselves? Why figuring out what will they think about our bellies too big or breasts so imperfect? Let them sweat over their own shapes! And worry about themselves being too fat or too old.” My aunt is 51 and she has a husband and a lover. So whenever my uncle is being an asshole to her, her lover is always there. And he asked her to divorce my uncle and marry him. She has always been satisfied with the way she was, so even if there is anything imperfect, nobody notices that. Is not it better and healthier than surgery?

 

 

Will you marry me for several thousand dollars?

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
(Proverb)

“No, God, no! Why??” I opened my eyes and saw a silhouette of Anna on the floor in the middle of my room. I jumped off the bed, went on my knees, stretched my hands towards her, afraid to touch her. “What happened?” I could hear my heart beat now. “Aaa hen djin geen” Anna’s red eyes were full of tears, her face was all wet and her mouth was stretched in a grim of sorrow. “What is going on?” Rape? Robbery? Violence?- flashed in my head. “He did it again! We just had sex in the car on the parking lot, and then told me he has a new girlfriend who lives with him and sleeps in our bed!” I went to the kitchen to get some Valerian root pills. I gave her three.
Anna came to the US from Russia 6 years ago for the summer to work as a nanny. She realized that she wants to stay in this country and the easiest way for her was to get married. “By the time you find a real husband, you may turn forty and I want my green card now”, she told me, that’s why she went for a “paper marriage” and her husband charged her 20 k, frequent sex and took her heart as an add-on. In order for the officer to believe them, they had to live together, which made them both happy for about a year, when after, as it always happens, their happiness was shattered by an everyday life. He started staying at work a little longer, she forgot when was the last time they went out together. Anna became paranoid: looking through their mutual bank account to see what he was doing, where he was spending time, read his e-mails and texts. Eventually she got her green card and soon is getting her passport. But was it worth it?

“What do you mean, he died?” screamed Svetlana in her phone. “-When did he die? Why nobody told me? What am I gonna do now?” She did not even ask why or how he died, she knew it was an overdose or death in prison- people of this kind do not have much of a choice, they all end up the same way.
Lack of work and her sick mother made her leave Russia and search for any job, so Svetlana became a go-go dancer in New York City. She was dreaming about a green card now, life in Russia did not seem to be a future for her, so she started looking for a husband. She realized soon that not only good husbands, but husbands in general are hard to find, and in her situation she was ready to marry whoever, even a bad guy, even to pay him to do that, and that was exactly what happened.
Igor was introduced to her by a mutual friend. She bought his black suit and a nice car. Later she bought their marriage. They started living together. A flow of shady people went through her apartment. Skinny, poorly dressed “friends” sneaked into his room and left with their eyes wild. “I dont know what drugs he was doing, but he was bad” she told me. “He was very aggressive, did not want to speak, did not show up on the interview for their green card and was stealing money from me. And then my hubby died.” She said she only got her papers because the officer saw everything she went through in her eyes and felt bad for her.

“What? You dont have a passport?” Victorias eyes rounded as red spots came out all over her face and neck. She felt like he was ruining her future she has been building all these years. “You went for a marriage to make me an American citizen and you have no passport?”
” I dont have money to get it, I dont work, you know.”
Victoria was so tired of working in restaurants that one day after she saved the required sum she married a guy she barely knew anything about. She saw him once before, he looked OK to her. Later she found out he never worked, does not have money to pay the rent, lives with his parents and multiple sisters, never got any degree, and those several thousand dollars she paid him was the biggest amount he ever had. And only for a couple of days.
“I hope he does not withdraw all the money from our mutual account” she told me once. “Ha ha ha, thats so fucking hilarious!” Tyrone was snorting and squealing on a couch with a huge pack of Cheetos and bright red Kool aid while watching Harlem Shake videos. “Does this kid even know what a bank account is?” went in my head.
This couple has not had their interview yet, but Victoria is doing everything possible for her dream to come true while Tyrone is playing video games and probably does not even remember her last name.
We always think its always better somewhere else, not where you are now. We think life is easier in a different country, but most of the times we are mistaken. The failure does not live in a particular country, it lives in you and it will follow you anywhere you run from it. Some choose to do anything to stay in America, obeying all religious and moral canons. And what are we left with? A green card and a future or a lie and a solitude? Is it better to marry a real man and start a family or a country where no one needs you? Its up to you.

To the reader:
I decided to place my cover letter here because I wanted you to read my essay first, without analyzing it, just to read it and feel if it flows.
I wanted to experiment a lot with dialogues (as we went over in class). In other classes I dont really use dialogues for my essays, so this was a good opportunity.
I also thought that comprising the big story out of three small extracts of the girls lives would be fun.
I used big spaces in between each and every story which made it easier to read.
All the stories are real, I just changed the names of people. To write this story I took interviews.I interviewed people to write on something else, but ended up writing this essay. I also used my own experience when describing some situations and some people as close to the original as I could.
I loved that I came up with such an interesting structure for my essay. Probably “Chimera” brought me here (since it consists of two different parts). I think it is always important to think about your reader first and not to get him bored.
What I did not like about my writing was the fact that writing itself takes me forever, I caught myself sitting down and staring on the wall for God knows how long in order just to plan my next move or go on writing. Also sometimes I had to translate sentences that I felt sounded good in Russian into English, which made it sound artificial.
I wanted to combine my journalistic skills with the writing skills given in this class, I hope this hybrid came out well. I realize that I am very creative and I love coming up with different topics. I also think my writing is interesting, well at least I hope it is. I started thinking more about all the advises given in class and from the book, many of them work fine for me, it just takes awhile to adjust them to my writing, but I love that my writing is being improved.
P.S. The grass is definitely always greener.

zhanna kubankina 1 essay

To the Reader:

It was hard to write this essay, and it was even harder to revise it.

I spiced it up with more descriptive details, added some metaphor at the end and got rid of some “cluttered” sentences and unnecessary repetition. In general I asked myself about the purpose of my writing, which, believe it or not, startled me for a while. That is a good question.  I never thought about why I want to write about this very week of my life. Probably, to make people aware of the fact that this can happen to anyone, make them precise what they have, or make them happy by realizing that they are surrounded by a family. I just wanted to share my horrible experience, because I dont think everyone went through stuff like this and it might be interesting to read.

Life Collapse followed by a successful revival.

This is a little story of my big struggle. My life can be divided in two parts: Russia and the USA, or, being more precise, cloudless and worriless existence back home and challenging survival in the alien country. I say “survival” because of many well-known things common to every immigrant, starting with difficulties finding a (decent) job and ending with psychological disorders that can happen to an individual who have been experiencing cultural shock and alienation. We all guess about the difficulties we may face abroad, but some of us dont know to what extend we will be exposed to them.

I love the USA, its friendly people, wide range of opportunities, finally, Black Friday sales, and I also faced one more side of the country that I did not think about: healthcare. And in general it turned out to work much better than the one in Russia.

 

That evening I felt pain in my chest and a shortness of breath. I decided to sit down and relax, but it did not get any better, so I was taken to a hospital and diagnosed with a spontaneous pneumothorax (lung collapse). When I asked the hospital staff what it means, they hurried to explain it to me, and one of them even printed out a Wikipedia entry on that diagnosis. No one from the people surrounding me knew about this diagnosis, which is very weird (and this rare thing had to happen to me). I went through two surgeries. The doctor said later if I waited for twenty more minutes before going to the ER, I could have died.

I remember squeezing my moms golden chain with a cross in my sweaty hands (they asked me to take it of my neck), how hard it was for me to breathe, how somebody told me to look away, how one of ER doctors was trying to insert the tube by poking me in between my ribs for about fifteen times, how he would go in between my bones with his finger to make some space prior to stabbing me with the tube, I remember hearing my own groans, and it felt like they belonged to someone else. I was only given morphine (a drug almost identical to heroine), which just made me high and did not knock me down. All these doctors manipulations made the cut rip even more, and I felt cold blood running down my torso. After the doctor succeeded in pushing the tube through (which felt like a knife inside of me), his assistant said: “congratulations, your first surgery went well.” Noticing my face full of surprise, the other one hurryingly added: “ah…well… as of today.” I was shocked to realize that I was their ginny pig.

Then the second surgery followed which was more complex and took about three hours. The recovery took much longer, I felt like I was struggling to survive, I had a hard time walking, breathing and even sneezing.

Being here by myself (having no family whatsoever), I went through a hard time, but I am glad I received a lot of support from my friends and I feel blessed to have some of them ready to come and be with me all night long, no matter what.

That happened on February, 2011, when the protests in Egypt got more intense and led to Parliamentary re-elections. In 2011 it is claimed that Osama Bin Laden was killed. Radko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general responsible for killing 8000 Muslims was found and arrested (though he could hardly walk- thats how old he was). Terrorist attack in Norway happened in the same year: 68 people killed by a gunman. Russia: the parliamentary elections are found to be fraudulent; hundreds and hundreds of people protest near Kremlin. New York: same sex marriage act is signed, Occupy Wall Street protests start.

It is really hard for me to associate this moment of my life with any events that happened in the States or in the world. When I was in the hospital, I could care less about what was going on outside my window, most of the time I was unconscious. Still, I think I can draw parallels with only one event, Bin Ladens death. He had been searched for such a long time, but eventually was found and shot, though he tried to hide so hard. The same scenario was with me: sooner or later the collapse should have happened, simply because my lungs are my Achilles heel. It is good that I went through a surgery now, because the older you get, the more complications a surgery can bring; same with Bin Laden: he could have killed more people, but he was caught before he caused any more harm. Osama Bin Laden was the reason the World Trade Center collapsed, triggering peoples doubt in their future, same with my health: pneumothorax was the reason my lung collapsed and it was fixed by a doctor inasmuch as Bin Laden was “fixed” or eliminated by U.S. soldiers.

zhanna kubankina 1 essay

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