conversation

I'm not sure how horse meat comes up in the conversation, a surprise in the Swedish meatball of life.

"I don't think I could eat a horse," she tells me. "I mean they are such majestic animals and we have this connection with them. You can feel their intelligence when you ride them."

I don't have the heart to tell her that she has probably eaten horse meat on multiple occasions, after all the FDA approved the consumption of it in 2012 and since then it's shown up everywhere from Ikea to fast food restaurants. The dining hall is a bustle with people who could very possibly be eating horses, as we speak.

"Well, if we're going to talk about intelligence," I take a bite of my sushi. "Then, we shouldn't eat pigs because they are hella intelligent and more likely to have the cognitive capacity to self-actualize. They are able to open locks and save their kin in farms. Therefore, the decision to not eat horses is really just specisism."

She is eating the days mystery meat. Because this is Aramark and because Aramark is all about local and cheap, she is almost definitely eating horse meat. "Let's forget about intelligence, pigs are tasty."

"They're made of bacon," someone else, eating a stir fry, chimes in.

Mystery meat "So you would eat a dog?"

"No, because I've heard it's disgusting from everyone whose eaten it,"

"But you haven't tried it so why won't you eat it."

"Look, I'm not arguing that we should eat pigs or horses, I'm arguing that we should just have consistency."

Prosti-tuition

Thanks to the Internet, I now know exactly how to tell my mother that I’m a prostitute, after I make that eventual career choice, just like my middle school assumed I would.

I think it was a Thursday (because if any day of the week was a douche with a neck tattoo, raccoon eyes, and bad tan that day would be Thursday). Regardless, we walk into the cafeteria and on the stage is the large projection screen. The principal tells us we were going to have a special treat. This only means one thing—a movie.

Or, it could mean that the school has decided to bring in a bunch of former prostitutes to show us pictures of their venereal diseases like old people show off pictures of their grandchildren. They tell us, “you are not Pretty Woman. No handsome man is going to ride in on a white horse and save you.” Well clutch my pearls, I’ve always been more a Cadillac fan myself. They tell us that we shouldn’t be prostitutes because we will be abused and beaten. They tell us that being a prostitute robbed them of their self-confidence. Now, I don’t know about my peers, but thank god for that wonderful intervention. I was totes planning on becoming a prostitute boo.

Yet, this narrative is the dominant narrative in society. One that premises prostitutes as inherently powerless, who either need to be saved by some douche bag on a white horse or need to be liberated by the powers that be. When in actuality, this hardly accounts for the reality of what happens. For instance, the whole ohemgee diseases part of the narrative. Factually, this is just wrong. Yeah, some prostitutes do pick-up diseases, but the HIV infection rate for women who work as prostitutes is lower than for women who do not work as prostitutes. Former and current prostitutes have called the experience “empowering.” The violence that occurs is predominantly caused by the criminalization of prostitution, not by the profession itself.

            The conflict between these two narratives forms the nexus of one of the most contentious debates within feminism. The anti-prostitution feminist narrative is rooted in an understanding of prostitution as a coercive act that discriminates based on race and class. The economic exchange is seen as an abstraction of the woman into a product, a thing to be used. It’s interesting that the women in the red light district work behind glass that looks like store windows. On just a visual level, this seems to be turning the person into a product. The very existence of such a system is patriarchal and exploitive.

            The sex-positive side of feminism has a very different view of feminism. The sex-positive view of feminism comes as a direct response to what the movements originators felt was the patriarchal control of sex, through the promotion of sexual freedom. This view tends to hold that sex workers are in prostitution more often than not because they want to be. Thus, the act of being a prostitute is nothing more than an expression of their sexual freedom.

            Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that prostitution is a business. And like any business, these days, the average American prostitute looks very different from what we would expect. Thanks to the internet sex work is easier, safer, and more cost effective than ever. Websites like Backpage.com have hundreds of listings for when you’re lonely. One guide on how to get into the business advises, “you should take advantage of the many blacklists, whitelists, and background checks that are available.” It’s also a lucrative business. One San Francisco based sex-worker, Jolene Parton, reports making several hundred dollars an hour and works less than ten-hours a week, while staying squarely in the middle class.            

            Of course, it’s not all rainbows and puppies, before you all run off to become prostitutes, like I know you will. There’s the constant stigmatization of sex work in society. The demonization of the world’s oldest profession. There are lots of reasons to be a prostitute.  

On Obama

People are always surprised to find out that I abhor Barack Obama. I think it's my skin color. They assume that all of us brown people stick together. Or maybe the fact that I'm from Hawaii. Since all of the Hawaiians stick together too, bunch of savages, with their tribe mindset. The only logical answer to this conundrum is that I must be a Republican. They make the accusation, as if I came in riding a white horse, wearing a robe, and carrying Anne Coulter's How to Talk to a Liberal (if you must). I respond to them politely lips closed, "I am not a republican." This scandalizes them, as if by not being a Republican I am suddenly obligated to vote for Obama or the progressive police will come over and revoke my open mindedness card.

I have nothing against Obama the human. He seems like a chill dude. I think that if we had a beer together it would be fun. I imagine us talking about hip-hop and literature. Flitting back and forth between subjects, like a pair of butterflies. Then we'd hug and tell each other how much we valued each other as human beings.  We might even cry a little, as progressives are wont to do, with our secret desire to promote the gay agenda. That being said, I really hate the guy as a politician.

There seems to be this weird double reality between what Obama says and what Obama does. For instance, I've always thought that the Nobel Peace Prize had something to do with peace. So I guess, that drone striking the shit out of innocent people is somehow peaceful. We call the missiles used by drones Hellfire missiles, but I always thought the whole peace and Hellfire mercy mine God and sinner reconciled, was a christmas carol/Christian thing and from what I've heard Obama used to be a pot smoking hippy. I don't think he was very good at that though.

Just imagine, the current president sitting in a circle with other flower children talking about peace. The talking stick comes to Barack and he says, "gee guys you know what I think is peaceful? Killing terrorizers." The horrified circle of hippys drop the bong and it shatters on the floor. Moonbeam cries a tear, as she realizes that there is no hope in the world. They put on suits and go to law school.

And I think that Barack (can I call you that bro?) is a testament to the benefits of law school. In 2010, America had a landmark year of finally exceeding human rights requirements under international law, or, basically, not being really shitty to people that aren't white and live somewhere far away. The reason? Our ground troops had implemented standards for monitoring each other and ensuring compliance. Rather than continue this Barack O. B. decided to start drone striking the people.

The international community was horrified. They thought that turning murder into a video game was awful. The Obama administration assured them that they mos defs weren't killing any innocent civilians. And after a few months of data, everyone shrugged their shoulders and assumed that he was obviously right. What really happened, was the Obama administration decided to re-define "enemy combatant" as any person of combat age within a strike zone. Or as I like to say everyone in the Middle East.

Yet, nobody has talked about this. Nor the fact that while Obama has called for transparency, he has enforced the Espionage Act more than any other president, which is framed in a way to punish whistleblowers. As a nation, we still love Obama and praise him for his progressive politics and forward thinking vision. We ignore the drone strikes and the political opportunism and the exploitation of the Gay community. We ignore the fact that yuppy white guilt is probably clouding our collective vision. We don't want to be the one to say, "holy motherfucker this dude is really not doing what he's saying."

At the same time, republican shaming is such a big deal amongst the youth. It is associated with bigotry, stupidity, and being uneducated. We talk so much about republican rage, but what about liberals? The recent racially based attacks on Mitch McConnel's wife led by liberal commentators reeks of the exact thing they are supposedly rallying against. We cannot critique ourselves to the point where we truly understand our own bias and as a result we prop up Obama and celebrate him violence, war crimes, and all.

The Obama love will end when America finally asks itself: what do we stand for? What did we vote for? Why don't the two mesh? And maybe, just maybe, we'll start asking the hard questions like how big is his penis.

On Porn

The first time, I saw porn. I was really freaked out by it. Of course, it was anime porn and I hadn’t intended on watching it. I was just talking to this girl I liked and she sent me this internet game and I played it and I finished it. And then, bang, animated tits and cocks are all over each other like football players in a locker room or wrestlers or syrup on pancakes. I immediately closed the window.

I do not know how to bring this up, so I stare at my keyboard, until I see the perfect thing to say, “ummmmmmmmmmm.”

My computer emits an irritating mechanical beep, “Yes?” she replies.

“Did you just see that?” I ask. I do not know what is going on.

Ping. “You mean the hentai?” she asks.

The people who watch porn are never the people that look like they watch porn. Every month, over thirteen million American Women and basically every American man watches porn. In terms of search volume (the number of times a term is Googled), porn is searched 21.3333 times for everyone search for “Obama” the president of the fucking United States. It doesn’t take a math major to understand that porn has a statistically significant viewership in America. Yet, we don’t discuss it like we discuss other statistically significant programming like The Oscars or Girls or Blues Clues. This is a discussion that we need to have.

The first time, I watch porn. It’s out of an academic curiosity fostered by McSweeney’s recent column “Conflicted Existence of a Female Porn Writer” by Lynsey G. It is during my early experiments with feminism, which entered my life shortly after I gave the finger to Jesus. These events comingled to form a hella judgmental attitude towards porn: it was exploitive and subjugating and immoral. (Yeah, it was a very second wave view of feminism, in retrospect, but everyone’s got to start somewhere).

In the first column, Lynsey writes, “Women in porn were making a shrewd decision about their options in life—which were limited for many of them—and often they were getting rich and famous. What kind of judgmental princess was I to think they weren’t feminists in their own right?” 

There are many benefits to watching porn. A recent study found that the amount of porn men watch is positively correlated towards attitudes regarding gay marriage. The researchers think that this occurs for one of two reasons: first, porn makes people more excepting of alternative sexual experiences or second, they just aren’t as freaked out by other penises.

Porn was also vital in the development of the home video player. The movie industry hated the concept of videos, as they felt like this would cut into their in theater revenue. On the other hand, the porn industry had nothing to lose in the theater business, so they invested in the home video player. So all those childhood memories of Bambi’s mom and Hercules? Thank porn for them.

That night, I sit at my computer. I try to remember the names of the websites my friends mention jokingly. The splash page immediately assaults me with a plethora of appendages and positions I’ve only ever read about in Stephen Elliot novels or short stories from McSweeney’s. I click on the one that looks simplest. It’s called “Jewel Masturbation.” The video begins and she is sitting on a couch. The cameraman talks to her they make small talk about her “life.” Then dirty, sexy, things start happening.

I think she is the most beautiful girl in the world. I start Googling her. According to her website she is an “all American girl going to college.” According to her Twitter she is from Canada. She has never been older than 19. It’s as if for those lucky people they are never allowed to age.

Aging is a major problem for female porn stars. Joanna Angel, a porn star, said in an interview, “men can keep doing this forever, but women can’t. I want to get into directing.” Porn films made by women for women are becoming increasingly prominent. Last year, Mexico had the first by women for women porn festival. This shift has had a very real impact on the industry. According to Oprah last year one in three online porn viewers were women.

The thing is, porn is far more instrumental than we give it credit for. It’s not just something that people jack off to. It’s an industry that helps move American culture forward and redefine the dominant paradigm.

Dead End.

I stand outside of the door inventorying the details, the chipping edges, the long strip of unveneered bark exposed by time, the hole my brother left with a pick axe. Nothing has changed in the time since I left, except for the tiny latch that keeps the double doors closed, there is no sign that any time has passed. I open the door. The house is cleaner than it has ever been in the years we lived with my grandparents. The couches, which were always more accustomed to things sitting on them instead of people, are clear and welcoming. The floor is clear. Everything organized onto shelves. In the middle of the living room sits a folding table and chair. And my grandmother. I sit down in front of her. She does not look at me.

“He’s really gone, Matthew,” she said. Her eyes clear and uncluttered by tears.

“I heard,” I said.

“He was so proud of you,” she said, gesturing at the trophies from debate victories stacked on the shelf.

“I know,” I said.

“I wish he could have seen your graduation,” she said.

“I know tutu, I know.”

My grandmother sits across from me at a cheap plastic table and explains to me the way my mother called the ambulance and tried to force air into my grandfathers broken lungs. How she tried to squeeze more life from him. The paramedics tore open the double doors to fit the stretcher into their home. The floor was cluttered then and they pushed everything off to the sides, parting the red sea of our lives. Then they carried him up to the ambulance. It was too late they said.

My grandmother and I sat at that folding table for maybe twenty minutes. Neither one of us cried.

            “It’s funny,” she said, looking at the silent television. “Yesterday, he was sitting right there watching Nascar.”

            “Yeah,” I nod my head in agreement.

            “I think he knew his time was coming without knowing, you know,” she was still watching the black screen, as if it were a crystal ball. “Last week, he made up with his brother and they settled his mother’s estate.”

            “Wow,” I do not know what to do in this situation. I think all of this is a coincidence. It means nothing. But my grandmother has cleaned up the entire house for this moment. She keeps on cleaning.

            “And he never gets travel insurance, but he was supposed to go to Vegas today and this time he got travel insurance, Matthew he had to know,” she looks directly at me, as she says this.

            “Of course, it’s funny, how we can know these things,” I say. It’s all funny—if you laugh long enough. Forget the punch line. Forget the joke. Forget the timing. Just keep laughing until you cry. That is the moment it is funniest, when it hurts to laugh more. 

We do not cry at the card table. Instead, my grandma smiles, as she spots a large mottled moth in the corner of the room. “Look Matthew,” she said, pointing it out. “It’s grandpa, watching over us.” Both of my grandparents believed that moths were the souls of the dead reincarnate. After, my grandpa’s mother died, there was a large moth waiting for us in the living room and he had said, “look it’s great-grandma.” I’ve always thought it was a Japanese cultural belief, as one of my mother’s boyfriends, Mr. Okamoto, also pointed out a moth after his grandpa died. But the Internet reveals that it is a cross-cultural belief that transcends any single culture just like dragons and everything in ancient aliens. A mass delusion does not a truth make.

The Matthew Who Stole Christmas

Who liked whom, was such an important facet of fifth grade. In fact, it might be the most defining characteristic of fifth grade, as I don’t recall learning anything other than the process of it all. The way we sat at lunch, huddled in groups, whispering, “who do you like?” whining, “please, come on, tell me. Please.” We sat on the steps of the play structure, trying to pry the hair color, height, class room number, grade. We bartered with the only thing we had worth trading, offering a, “come on, I’ll tell you who I like.” Hoping they would agree and then we would all know. Kendra liked Matthew F. and Matt L. liked Kaitlyn (who I know through the magic of Facebook, actually went to prom together). I liked many girls throughout fifth grade: Sabina, Haley, Leilah, Marissa. 

It is Monday and we all file into class dragging our feet, shoulders heavy from the burden of the weekend. The door opens and in the corner of the room, a regular Christmas miracle, completely adorned in baubles and lights, gleaming with the one magical thing fifth graders can cling to: a Christmas tree.

Matthew F. turns to me and whispers, “so what are you going to get Kasey for Christmas?”

“I dunno,” I reply, furiously drawing swords all over my notebook.

Matthew F. points across the room, “Kendra’s her best friend.”

I focus on finishing up a katana, “really?”

“Yeah,” he stares at Kendra, separated by a sea of desks. 

That day at lunch, I went up to Kendra, “hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she replied, moving the cafeteria food on her plate around in circles, avoiding eating the slope they feed us.

“So you and Kasey are friends?”

“Yup,” she opens her chocolate milk, while I eat the bread, the only edible thing on my plate.

“Do you know what she wants for Christmas?” I ask.

Kendra immediately puts her milk down. “Do you like her?”

I pause, look her in the eyes, “no.”

She takes a long slip of chocolate milk, as if she were shooting whiskey to steel her nerves, “Who do you like then?”

I stare at her milk carton, “I don’t like anyone.”

She places her elbow on the table and rests her chin on it, as if jacking The Thinkers’ swag, “I think you like Kasey.”

I lean across the table and hiss, “No, I don’t”

“Yes, you do,” she interjects.

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Fine. I like her.”

“I knew it.”

“Do you know what she wants for Christmas?”

“I dunno. I can ask her,” she sips her milk slowly.

“Okie dokie,” I reply.

A few days later, Kendra came up to me after class and told me that Kasey wanted a laptop for Christmas. What kid didn’t want a laptop? The nineties were part of our lives and technology was growing more and more common. We played with laptops in computer class. We knew the magical practicality of portability and we all wanted it. We wanted to stuff those devices into our bags and bring them with us. Now, at home in a closet gathering dust, buried beneath an empty fish tank, old silver ware, and a box of 45s was my mother’s old laptop from college. She didn’t use it. Nobody did. It was a relic of a time long past.

“Kasey,” I said, one day after recess, I had been planning this moment for awhile, which in fifth grade is five days, I wore a polo shirt, instead of my normal Yu-Gi-Oh threads.

“Yup,” she had the cutest gap between her teeth.

“You wanted a laptop for Christmas?” I stayed cool.

“Yeah,” her bangs were cut straight across, and she was super cute, and Asian. (I had a thing for Asians in fifth grade.)

“There’s this laptop lying around in a closet and nobody uses it, so I wanted to give it to you,” I said, looking at the look, then glancing back at her tiny smile.

“Really?” She jumped up, smile broadening.

“Yup.”

She looked down at the ground, smile quickly fading, “My mom probably won’t want me to take it.”

“She wouldn’t have to know,” I advised Kasey.

“Yeah,” she brightened. “I guess I could just use it in the closet.”

Of course, just because it wasn’t being used, didn’t mean my mother would part with it. It just meant she wouldn’t notice. I immediately began planning the who, what, where, when, why, and how. I knew that my mother left for work early and my grandmother and I would be the only ones at home. This meant that I just had to wait until; my mother went to work to start my plan. The second issue was a logistical one. Back then, laptops were gigantic, this meant I could not fit the computer and it’s case into my normal backpack. However, the rolley bag that was uber cool in second grade was far larger and had the added benefit of keeping my load light.

On the last day of class, I rolled my back right up to Kasey, who was surrounded by her friends. I unzipped it, and yanked the heavy fabric wrapped device from the bag.

“For you madame, merry Christmas,” I said, with a bow, arm extended out like some Lifetime movie butler.

Her friends giggled.

“Thank you,” she said. Then, a Christmas miracle happened, she hugged me. Her warm soft arms squeezed me and I could smell her strawberry hair. She was soft and warm.

Her friends guffawed.

“What’s going on over here,” Mrs. Chang our fifth grade teacher asked, as she winked at me.

“Nothing,” I exclaimed quickly.

“Okay,” she said, and walked away. I had pulled off the perfect crime.

When I got home that afternoon, my grandmother was waiting for me. “Matthew,” she said. “There’s a message for you from one of your friend’s moms something about a laptop.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll listen to it.” I ran to the phone and immediately unplugged it, under the pretext of messages. I waited then plugged it back in, jolting it back to life, without any of the messages on its system.

I waited by the phone. And every time it rang, I hung that motherfucker up.

Of course, I forgot that the house had four different phones and my vigilant offensive only covered one handset. Kasey’s mom eventually got through and my grandmother gave her our address and she drove up to drop the computer off. My mother thanked her, as she drove off, “no problem,” Kasey’s mom said. “I knew exactly what it was when I saw the case. She really wanted one.”

The first question my mother asked me was, “do you like her?”

Then, “why did you do it?”

I looked my mother in the face and said, “mother, Haley and I needed to finish up a project and Haley wasn’t doing work in class, so I lent it to her so she could do her fair share. Then, she must have given it to Kasey.”

“I thought you said you guys finished your project last week,” my mother asked.

“No, mother, I finished my work,” I said. I thought about the brilliance of my plan and the single flaw. I forgot to tell Kasey to bring a big bag. But even then, if only her mother hadn’t told my mother, I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those meddling adults.

My First Extemp Tournament

Extemporaneous speaking, more commonly referred to as extemp, is not the type of thing that gets people bloods boiling. Yet, it has always been the love of my life. I was in ninth grade when I found it.

“Matthew,” Mrs. Fujimoto, the head librarian said, as I sat at her desk. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

She led me to the computer lab area of the library and there was a rotund gentleman, who introduced himself as, Mr. Alisna.

“Matthew likes to read,” she told him.

“You read a lot huh?” Alisna said, eyes fixed on my enormous knapsack.

“Yup,” I said, jumping up with excitement.

“Do you like to read the news?” His eyes were wider now and he was grinning.

“I do,” I had never thought that anyone would want me to read newspapers for fun.

“You can do extemp,” he declared, and I thought I won a prize.

Of course, extemp isn’t really the coolest and/or sexiest thing. Even in the world of high school forensics (the really pretentious name for speech and debate as a competitive activity) extemp is not considered cool. Oh wait, forensics is not really considered cool either, which basically means that I was doing the uncool thing amongst the uncool kids, it’s kind of like being Ann Coulter, only without the blatant hatred of humanity.

Extemp has a bad reputation largely because of the events perceived elitism. At the beginning of each round, competitors pull three questions about current affairs out of an envelope. Then, they pick one and have thirty minutes to prepare a seven-minute speech that must be delivered from memory, with source citations.

The very first question I ever answered was: will there ever be peace in the Middle East? I was given more than the normal 30 minutes, in fact, Mr. Alisna told me I could have an entire night. I immediately started researching looking into what prevented peace and why there was no peace and what could be done for peace. I was going to give the best extemp speech ever. The next day, I came in ready.

I don’t remember what I said. All I remember is what followed.

“What is the first rule of extemp?” Mr. Alisna asked me.

“Answer the question?” I asked.

“Yesssssss,” his voice rose cartoonishly through the elongated strand of Ss. “Did you answer it?”

“I think so,” I responded, as I was fairly confident I had answered the question.

“Well you didn’t. Also, you need to slow down you talk too quickly. I can barely understand you. This also makes you trip on your words. You stumble and garble and you had about 75 vocal pauses. Did you even work on this speech? If you have that much time, I expect you to give a good speech. Would you say that was a good speech?” He tapped his fingers on the test.

I stared at the floor, thinking back on the speech, what went wrong? “I’ll try harder.”

Mr. Alisna glowered at me, “I don’t want to see trying Matthew, I want to see results.”

I could feel that familiar tightness in my eyes, “Sorry.”

He sighed, and shot me a withering expression, “Don’t apologize, just do it.”

It was here that I think I started to cry. Or at least, that’s how Gabe Alisna tells the story. He also claims that whenever I got frustrated I would put my hands on my hips and elbows thrusting backwards like a pair of wings and shut my eyes. I’m not sure

“Ready for another question?” he asked.

A few weeks later, it was time for my first tournament. I had been working on extemp everyday after school and I was ready to kick everyone’s ass. Of course, it was a novice tournament meaning that everyone had no experience in the events they were doing. My mother dropped me off at the school at six AM, and I eagerly ran up to the team room to pick out a tie. The one I chose was red and black with diagonal stripes. Mr. Alisna insisted on tying it for me.

After, I was suited up. I had to carry the extemp boxes to the bus. Because of the nature of the event, back in those days, extemp required four large Rubbermaid Tubs full of newspaper articles, printed off online news sources and filed alphabetically by country or topic area. I had four of these. At the time, I weighed about 70 pounds. Each box had about 30ish pounds of paper inside. I struggled under the weight of the tubs as I galumphed it to the bus, struggling down the uneven concrete path, weaving to and fro. My arms shook, as my twig like arms tried to embrace the lumbering beast of plastic and paper.

We arrived at Saint Andrews Priory at 8 am, and after warm-ups, such as “I am a mother pheasant plucker, I pluck mother pheasants I am the most pleasant mother pheasent plucker to have ever plucked mother pheasants.” It was time. I walked into the prep room, set-up my boxes. Pulled out the yellow legal pad I’d grown accustomed to. I was sixth speaker, in the first round, which meant more time to read current events. I pulled a copy of US News and World Report, I had brought along just in case. The question I pulled after, fifty minutes of waiting, was something about China. Easy.

I whipped through files, pulled out articles, wrote down quotations, outlined. Scratched out things that didn’t work and put together facts in a way that allowed me to answer the question. I stood up after 20 minutes and stood in a corner and talked to the wall running through my points and sources. Suddenly, I heard the prep room proctor, “Speaker six please head to your round.”

On my way to the classroom, I ran through my speech in my head. It was going to be fine. I opened the door stepped inside. Walked to the center looked at the judges and began to speak.

“I had a nightmare the other night and there were monsters everywhere closing in, in the grocery store, and everyone of the monsters was made in China,” then, I dived straight into my content. I said the question verbatim, gave my answer, took two steps to the left to indicate I was transitioning to my first point. Then, two to the right to indicate I was moving to my second; two more to the right for my third, before walking back to the middle for my conclusion. It was so exciting, sharing all of this information with them. I carefully watched the time signals from the timekeeper and before long my time was up, and my speech was finished.

Speech and debate uses a ranking system, in each room, there are six competitors and the judges rank the competitors first to sixth with no ties. Every round is a fight for a one. At the novice tournament, the judges give the ballots directly after the round is finished. The five other competitors and I sat there waiting nervously after my speech, as we waited for the judges to finish writing. It wasn’t long before they started to hand out ballots. The first one hit my desk and I got the one. Then the other ballot came another one. There were two more rounds that day, four more judges, and though I didn’t know it yet, I would pick-up four more ones. I wouldn’t have cared.

I clutched those sheets of paper in my hand and skipped back to the tables where my team sat. I couldn’t wait to show Mr. Alisna.