talking about hard times.

2011-04-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

from an essay i wrote in college:

My parents and I packed up the rental car and headed towards Seattle University. During the fourteen hour trip on I-5 from Sacramento to Seattle, I put in my favorite CD that summer: Rilo Kiley’s Take Offs and Landings. At the conclusion of the fourth song, “Picture of Success,” the lead singer, Jenny Lewis, sings the lyric: These are times that can’t be weathered and we have never been back there since then. As Jenny repeated the lyric like a mantra, my mom, sitting in the passenger seat, listened closely and looked at me.

“She’s talking about hard times,” she said.

2011-04-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

good enough.

so, yo. check it.

this dude is like twenty-four years old when he starts this blog. he doesn't even know, really, what a blog is. but it sounds like something to do, something manageable. his friend has one, and he likes hers, so he decides to start one, too. it's 2007, and he's two years out of college. his first entry (and quite possibly the entire thing) is inspired by a speech by this guy, victor villasenor, who talks about how writing is a sacred act. he believes it. in college, he majored in creative writing. he wrote a twelve page essay on the act of revision alone. he worked as a writing center consultant, and he really felt like he was good at his job. it was the first time he'd ever found something he actually believed he was good at.

he had these professors, see, and they were paid to tell him his writing wasn't total shit (even though it was). they were paid to tell him to keep writing. something would happen eventually, if he would just keep at it. that's where the blog came in. he started to write, even though he didn't think himself interesting, didn't think he had anything worth telling. he was just an introverted asian kid, an only child, who felt as though the world continually conspired against him. and who knows? maybe it did.

it earned him some recognition. a local girl read his blog, and she was hot, too. he'd gotten a fan even in idaho. some guy in new delhi followed it. it got him a job. friends and some family read his writing. he didn't know what to think of it. he didn't really think about it at all. sometimes, a friend would say, "please don't blog about this." another might say, "you're going to write about this, aren't you?" and sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. it was just what he wanted, though. he could write about what he wanted, when he wanted, and sure enough, somebody was gonna fucking read it.

he became more adventurous just for the sake of having something to write about. it challenged him, this blogging business, to get out there, seize the day and all that. because he was such a poor fiction writer, had such an unintelligible imagination, he had to go out there and get the material for himself. he didn't actually exist anymore. he was just a character in this long, rambling story that may or may not have a point, or even an ending. was the story poignant? did it have meaning?

at 24, when he started to blog, he said he was gonna be a doctor. then he decided he was just going to be a teacher, instead. when that didn't work out, he was gonna work for the state, or else go to grad school for writing or something. and for a split second, it was law school, and then he was gonna join the peace corps. he was gonna do all these things, but he never got around to doing any of them. because he didn't really want to do those things. he just wanted to write, and be appreciated for wanting to write. and while no one ever outright said he couldn't do this, he continued to believe it was impossible. as it turned out, all he wanted was to live in a world where he didn't have to feel inadequate, like he wasn't quite there yet. so he made up these fictions about his personal future plans, a sort of choose your own adventure book he never even bothered cracking open.

but it didn't matter anymore. in a little over four years, he'd started and ended multiple friendships, lived in three different cities, visited dozens others, quit a job, got a job, then quit a job again, gotten robbed and reimbursed, learned to love karaoke, shot handguns, proctored exams, saw a bear, climbed mt. si, gone to concerts, had wisdom teeth extracted, pissed in central park, told a go-go dancer he loved her, gotten better at speaking tagalog, eaten balut, gotten lost in osaka, recorded songs, read books, reconnected with old friends, put up christmas lights, learned how to be alone. it was a hell of a story. and it was good enough. he was good enough.

it's now been over four years since he started, and it's time to move onto something different. it's been a good run.

hard times are over, haven't you heard?

thanks for reading.

2011-03-28T20:32:00.001-07:00

just gotta let it all go.

i decided the night before that i was gonna drive to l.a. by myself and see the jezabels two nights in a row. my only l.a. friend was having a bachelorette party, so staying with her was out of the question. i booked a hostel. i'd stayed in one before, but it was in a private room. i remembered it being full of young international kids looking to party. just what i needed. and at twenty dollars a night, how could you argue with that? i bought the concert tickets, made the hostel reservations, and i was on my way. my dad was worried about the car breaking down. he offered to pay for a rental, but i said that was a stupid waste of money. so i drove the newer of the two cars my parents own, a honda crv.

my mom packed me two oranges, two bananas, two hard-boiled eggs, and a package of cookies. i filled up on gas - $30 something dollars for a little over half a tank - and i hit the road. why don't i do this more often? i've driven solo once from seattle to sac, and taken multiple solo drives from watsonville to sac, but that was about it. i had a car, but i didn't drive it. i had money, but i didn't spend it. i was raised to live carefully, to not make a lot of noise, to keep to myself, to avoid confrontation. no one ever told me to go big or go home. no one ever told me to go at it hard. this accounts for the lack of trips i've taken.

it was a beautiful day on i-5. splotches of clouds and green hills, shit looked like screensavers. i thought about stopping to take pictures, but then i thought, what for? can't i just have something for myself in my mind? pictures don't mean anything anymore. they're just a means of making your friends jealous on social networks. i didn't have tapes or cds, so i listened to the radio. i heard pink a lot, and bruno mars, and the far east movement. i sang out loud to "just the way you are." this is the kind of thing people without life plans did.

i got to my west hollywood hostel around 4 p.m. and checked in. this asian chick showed me my room, and my two roommates - two kids from florida on spring break - said wassup. they were job-hunting, looking to have a good time. i said we should get some beers later. they said, yeah cool. why the fuck didn't i do this in college? what the hell did i do on spring break but come home and watch tv? i'm making up for so much lost time, living life backwards. i drove out to silver lake and ate thai food: pad thai, a thai iced tea, and spring rolls.

waiting for the show, i sat in my car and played skee-ball on my iphone. i learned the trick was to roll as many balls as possible really quickly. after an hour or so of that, i stood in line in front of the satellite, where the jezabels would be playing. this woman asked me, what band are you here to see? the jezabels, i said. i told her i found their music because of a bmx video on youtube. and they were amazing enough for me to drive seven hours to see them. twice. she introduced me to the drummer, nick. we shook hands, and he said we should get a beer after the show. we didn't.

they were amazing.

i didn't bother sticking around for the two other bands because i didn't give enough of a shit about them. i got back to the hostel, and my florida roommates were about to smoke some dope. there was a girl with them, too. the girl looked worried, like i was gonna narc on them or something. don't worry, the boy told her, he's from sacramento. the four of us smoked dope outside, talked march madness, talked college, talked about places we've been, places we've seen. and then i said goodnight and never saw any of them ever again.

i picked up mary from l.a.x. we went to umami, amoeba, and hotel cafe, where the jezabels played again. i met mary's friend, heather, and then i met up with pete. the four of us drank and played shuffleboard. i hadn't seen pete in eight years. the last time i saw him was at a hella show, and i didn't want to talk to him. there was no reason not to talk to him. i just didn't. and then when i saw him this time, we just started talking like no time had passed. he went on tour with afi, and his dad has parkinson's. back in the day, he was my buddy, and i just let that shit fall apart. i don't know what's wrong with me, what's wrong with people. why we do these things to each other.

2011-03-18T23:58:00.000-07:00

drunk driving lessons.

jojo picked me up at century. byron didn't come along because he wasn't feeling good. jojo was disappointed about that. i thought he was gonna take me to a strip club, or else a shady massage place, but he wanted to get some food first. "what do you want?" he asked me. i said i didn't care. he said, "how about hooters?" i said that was ok. "junjun is going to meet us," he said. and as he drove past the cultural center, he started telling me about his passion: video games. "do you know what the best machine is for gaming?" of course i didn't. "alienware," he said. "after all these years, it's still number one."

at about 5'3" or 5'4" jojo is significantly shorter than i am, but it doesn't detract from his confidence at all. he's the son of a millionaire, after all, and he makes good money as an international pilot. somehow, we got onto the subject of facebook, particularly the social network. anything involving lots of money interests him greatly. i couldn't really follow his logic, but i listened anyway. "if i'm a hacker," he said, "why would i work for mark zuckerberg? i'm not gonna work for him. i'll make my own website and work for myself!" ok, jojo, ok.

he then jumped onto the subject of l.p.'s and cassettes. "your dad, he used to have all those beatles' records!" yeah, he did. "does he still have them?" no. i don't know what happened to them. "sayang (too bad)! were they the originals?" i think so. "those could be worth a lot of money. you know, those collectors buy everything on ebay. they spend so much money just for an old l.p.!" i told him i started listening to a lot of r&b and hip-hop, and that mash-ups and remixes were making a comeback. "i don't like remixes," he said. "it ruins the integrity of the original song."

we got to hooters and took a table outside. naturally, he flirted with the hostess, the waitress, pretty much every girl on staff. he wore a white polo, khaki shorts, a rolex, and he smoked his cigarette. we ordered buffalo wings with celery, nachos, and naturally, san mig lights. he said that i should eat american food, since i'd probably only been eating kare-kare, crispy pata, and seafood, which was true. so there it was, a friday night in manila, and i was drinking beers with my cousin, fourteen years my senior. from a distance, we could hear the screams for charice, glee's filipina star, who was performing at the mall of asia.

the more he drank, the more personal he got. he told me about how he'd spend summers in america, moving from one aunt's house to the next. the way he tells it, my aunts weren't very nice to him, and he didn't like being this vagabond kid with no real sense of place or belonging. why was he telling me this? maybe he thought i was feeling the same. it was, after all, my third straight winter in manila. what had i been doing? taking advantage of a deeply discounted vacation, or was there more to it than that? i let him talk. at some points he seemed so upset or saddened by his recollections that i thought he was about to cry. but then he'd move onto something else - like how our aunt darna owned a condo in manila, or how her son, ralph, fixed up vintage cars in l.a. he would tell me these things, and then he'd be perfectly content again.

eventually, junjun came around. he took a seat, finished our leftovers, smoked a few cigarettes. my two cousins spoke to each other in tagalog, and i half-listened, but their conversation moved too quickly, and they used too many words i couldn't understand. jojo would throw his head back and laugh, and then he would high-five junjun. i wanted to be a part of it. i wanted to live here, to have grown up here, to feel the way a white person must feel in america. i watched the fireworks, downed another beer, picked at the nachos. it was time to move on. the night was just getting started.

there was a club nearby, l.a.x., and i had been wanting to check it out. the line out the door was a young crowd, though, and junjun was wearing crocs. jojo walked straight up to the bouncer, and they had a little exchange. the kids in line were typical middle-class manila scenesters: girls with straightened brown hair and too much blush, boys with their button-downs and spiked hair. junjun made that face he makes whenever he's shocked by something. his eyes bug out, and he sucks in cheeks. "how am i supposed to get in wearing these?" he said, pointing at his crocs. i don't know, i said, and we both laughed.

jojo said we'd go to a bar in makati instead. we hopped into his jeep, and junjun followed us. jojo told me that he hoped manila wouldn't enforce penalties for d.u.i.'s because he usually has a couple after work on his way home. i wasn't surprised the police didn't enforce penalties for a d.u.i. if they weren't going to regulate speeding, seatbelts, or even occasionally blowing through red lights, what difference did it make if a driver was drunk?

at this bar in makati, we shot some pool, ordered more beers with sisig (pigs' ears). after dominating both me and junjun in several games, jojo gave me some tips on how to shoot. i went to the dingy bathroom to take a piss, and there were pictures of nude women all over the walls. i was glad i didn't have to take a shit because i was sure the facilities were manila standard: no toilet seats, no toilet paper, and i'd forgotten to pack my pockets with tissue. after a few more games, we were ready to call it a night. we said goodbye to junjun, and jojo drove me back to the hotel.

jojo was about six beers deep at that point, and he started teaching me how to drive stick. he stopped in the middle of the road. "this is first gear, see?" he stepped on the clutch and switched gears. behind us, a car flashed its lights and honked. "see, now we're going about 40, 50, that's third gear." i just kept nodding, and hoped he'd soon realize that giving me lessons on how to drive stick while drunk at 3 a.m. in manila probably wasn't the greatest idea. "it's just practice, like playing pool." he drove down makati avenue, where prostitutes were making their rounds. "hollywood boulevard," he said. i watched a big white guy walk down the street while carrying a filipina slung over his shoulder.

he dropped me off at the century hotel. "we'll have to do this again," he said. "just call me if you need anything." ok, i will.

2011-03-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

what are you gonna do now?

the call came at 7:30 in the morning, and i wasn't expecting it at all. yet, somehow, when it rang, i knew immediately what it was. i'd been waiting for this call for months, and it went nothing like i planned. the placement officer asked me some questions. he tried, as other interviewers had done, to dissuade me from the program. he said things like, "even though you've had experience with this kind of work, you're most likely going to be in a very isolated, rural area. are you okay with that?" not really, but i guess i don't have a choice, right? "you're going to face lots of emotional and psychological challenges, how do you deal with stress?" i ball it all up inside, and remember that nothing really matters because one day, i'm just going to be dead.

of course that's not what i told him. i told him the exact opposite of what i was really feeling. and that is that i don't want to be isolated, and i don't want to be emotionally and psychologically challenged in a foreign land. i just want a job that doesn't completely suck, party on the weekends, and be happy somewhere. it doesn't matter where. but i wasn't honest, and i didn't like being badgered at 7:30 in the goddamn morning. so i fed him bullshit. yeah, i'm ready for it. sign me up, buddy. how soon can i leave?

and then he said exactly what i didn't want to hear. africa. i told him no. i told him my family would freak. they were, after all, the ones who wouldn't stop linking me to the 20/20 segment about the girl who was murdered in benin, and articles about the boy who was shot in lesotho. what was i supposed to say to them? no, this won't happen to me. i won't get shot or stabbed because i'm...different? also, aids, genocide and lions. i can't unsee hotel rwanda. of course, these aren't good excuses to refuse a placement. these are reasons people sign up for the program to begin with.

he got aggressive, and i shut down. "is this really about your family, or is this about you?" i didn't know what to say. "do you seriously have to wait for your family's blessing before you can begin service?" umm, no, i guess not. "to me, it doesn't sound like you're even ready for an invitation. at this point, i'm going to need you to convince me that i should even give you an assignment." ok. "this is really disappointing. you've come so far in the process, and now you're telling me this. i'll give you a week to think about it." ok, bye.

i was infuriated. everyone else - my recruiter, the return volunteers i had spoken with - they were all so kind and supportive. and then i get this guy, and he's not even hearing me out. i look him up, and he did his two years in tonga. there are pictures of him sitting on the beach and eating ice cream. there's a girl in a lot of the pictures, too, and i assume he was there with his wife. t'was a legit vacation. and he berates me for refusing an assignment in rural africa. my stomach turns, and i'm fuming all day. do i really want to volunteer two years for an organization that makes me feel like this?

i go for a run. i talk to everyone i can about it. i don't want to live in a hut in the middle of god-knows-where futilely teaching english on a stipend to kids who will never use it. i might as well just move to folsom. do i even like being around kids anymore? why am i even in this line of social justice work? i thought i decided years ago that it was stupid, that non-profits are disorganized, and that they don't actually accomplish anything, ever. the placement officer just gave me a taste of what was to come: being treated like a dumb kid again for the next two years. all i'm asking for in this world is a little fucking respect, some common courtesy.

three days later, i officially withdraw my application. i don't have a backup plan. the placement officer calls again. "what are you gonna do now?" what the fuck do you care?

i book a month-long flight to madrid. because the story has to continue. something has to happen next.

2011-03-04T23:10:00.001-08:00

fall back in love eventually.

back in sacramento. it's different this time. i don't know what it is. most likely, it was that weekend in seattle, a long weekend with no plans. three whole days where i wouldn't talk to a single person. my coworkers must've wondered why i wouldn't ever shut up on a monday. but yeah, there it was, friday off, and surprise, surprise, it's fucking cloudy and dreary out. maybe the sun breaks through for ten, fifteen minutes, but it isn't enough. it isn't damn near enough at all. and i shoot out texts. what are you upto tonight? everyone is busy. so it's just me, and the tv tonight. and the next two nights. and guess what? i'm too cheap for cable.

come saturday afternoon in seattle, i have to get out. i can't just nap and read books and think about which direction my life is heading, even though the clear answer is nowhere. i have some money, so what the hell. go shopping. i take the bus, i take the light rail. i go to nordstrom rack, i go to nike, i go to j. crew. i hit up the mall in southcenter, banana republic, hell, i even go to zumiez. and that's when i know i've hit rock bottom. i'm 27 years old and i'm trying on clothes at zumiez. i've done something wrong. somewhere in my mid to late twenties, i've missed my stop.

i go back to my apartment, and there isn't sadness, or ennui, or frustration. there's just nothing. like being stoned and realizing half the movie is over. auto-pilot, checked out, going through the motions, etc. there are many ways of putting it. i call my mom, and i know she's going to say exactly what i want to hear. you can just quit. which means no more money, no more job, no more structure. everything i thought i needed to make me feel better about being alive. even though i already knew it wasn't the answer. a whole generation of us who've seen films like fight club and american beauty, got the message, but never lived it out.

back in sacramento where there's nothing to do, no jobs available, no cool lefty liberal kids to mirror and thus validate my apathetic political views. at least it's sunny here. and my cousin lives nearby, so i can watch her kids grow up. and i tell myself, enjoy waking up at noon - you won't always get to do this. no need to be so hard on myself this time around, we're in a recession, don't-cha-know? and anyway, that peace corps letter should be coming in the mail anyday now. and if that doesn't work out, well, somebody hired you and gave you a job that you could probably do for the rest of your life if you had no other goals or ambition. therefore, somebody is bound to give you another chance at some point, somewhere.

so i go for a run, discover a part of the neighborhood i haven't seen despite my years of being here. i'll take the light rail if i wanna. i'll go to my cousin's house and play modern warfare for hours on end. i hang out with joseph, who doesn't give a shit that he still lives with his parents and works as a custodian. at least he has kung-fu, billiards, and his swords and daggers collection. maybe it just has something to do with getting older and not really aging, but for the most part, the post-college pressure is gone, and the floundering in life isn't such a dramatic issue. it doesn't nearly weigh as heavily on me as it once did.

don't get me wrong, hard times are far from over. but there isn't the same sense of urgency anymore. it's all just kind of funny to me now.

2011-02-22T22:36:00.000-08:00

i'm so sorry this happened to you.

ok, so maybe it is a story worth telling.

but where should i start? how about back in my dante class. dante said the worst sinners of all were those who committed fraud. "why fraud?" someone asked. "even worse than rape and murder?" father rowan said yes, even worse than rape and murder. because in a fraudulent society, where the individual distrusts everyone, rape and murder wouldn't even be possible. everyone would just live extraordinarily isolated lives and have nothing to do with one another.

i didn't buy it at first. but now that i've been a victim of fraud, i agree. the guy who stole my entire savings account ($15,680) can go to the worst part of the inferno and stay there for all eternity.

you're probably wondering, how did a broke joker like me even save $15,680? it wasn't hard. it was just time consuming, and it took a lot of scrimping and saving, foregoing dinner some nights, not turning on the heat when it was cold. i had a $10 bus pass, i paid $615 in rent, i didn't have kids, i didn't date, i'd already paid off my student loans. what was i even saving for? i don't know, just to do it? i figured i'd need surgery for something at some point, and the anesthesia alone would be in the thousands. i figured i'd get married, and it'd be something for the honeymoon. maybe a down payment on a house. maybe i'd finally have a car in my name. maybe i'd go back to school, and then i'd have enough for a semester.

when i clearly saw none of that was gonna happen, i said fuck it. i'd spend the money on traveling. i'd quit my job, join the peace corps, and i'd have a good enough chunk of change to carry me through financial emergencies, small trips here and there. $15,000, $16,000, $17,000. how much was enough? how much did i need before i could quit my job and live out the last days of my youth? i'd been good for so long. it was time for a change. it was time to be reckless.

i quit my job. i threw a christmas party for my family. i went to manila. i went to bangkok. and then on february 1, i checked my chase online bank account. $0.00. zero. haha. you're fucking kidding me, right? the transaction was still pending. $15,680 going to somebody named william yong's bank of america bank account. surely my bank wouldn't be stupid enough to transfer my entire account, which i've had with them for ten years (back when they were washington mutual), to some fool named william yong. this is clearly a mistake, and they'll fix it immediately. right? right?

i flew back to manila, and i called chase immediately. "let me transfer you to our wire department," they said. "let me transfer you to our fraud department," they said. "let me put you on hold for just a minute," they said. clearly, nobody knew what the fuck was going on. their call centers are spread out all over the world, and at some point, i spoke with a representative working in manila. he could've been next door to me for all i knew. one rep said i'd need a notarized affidavit. another said a notary was unnecessary. one said i should close my account immediately. another said they'd just send me a new debit card. all the while, i'd get transferred from one department to the next, the next rep more clueless than the last. still, i put up with it. what choice did i have? this was all my money. everything. and i was in a foreign country burning international minutes, using a shoddy magic jack that cut out every now and then.

"you should fly back to the states," my aunt said. i didn't want to. i was supposed to stay in the philippines forever, marry a beautiful brown-skinned girl and have ten daughters. i was gonna live in a ramshackle house in the provinces, and i'd learn to love tabo-tabo.

but i didn't. i flew back. i learned that the hacker got into my gmail account, and set it up so that any emails including the word "chase" would go directly to my trash. he contacted at&t and had all my voicemails go to some number he set up, most likely a prepaid burner. at&t refused to release any of my information or records to chase without a subpoena. chase said they asked bank of america to return the money, but bank of america cited "insufficient funds," and the money couldn't be returned. chase said they needed a statement from at&t saying that my phone was set to call forwarding the day the transaction occurred. again, at&t said they needed that subpoena.

in other words, i have to prove i was robbed.

i filed a case at the sheriff's department. the officer more or less shrugged his shoulders, and said, "depending on our workload, we may get to it." it sounded like they weren't even going to investigate. the chase rep at my local branch said, "because it was a wire transfer, once it leaves chase, there's really nothing we can do at that point." the bank of america rep at my local branch said, "this might not even be his real name. we don't even have his account number." i emailed my boss. i called my lawyer friend. i posted the story on reddit.

all i can do now is try to convince myself it was just a number. a large number, yes, but still, just a number. and what was i going to do with it, anyway? buy an ipad? visit france? i'm probably better off without it. just another test of character, of my patience. an expensive lesson in how to (yet again) deal with grave disappointment.

2011-02-17T22:47:00.000-08:00

more intensity!

"my stupid maid forgot to pack my payong!" it was snowing in osaka, and big fat franco was searching for his umbrella. it turned out to be just buried deep in his suitcase. we trekked out into the snow, and i walked far ahead of my traveling buddies. "what are you, running a marathon?" he called out to me. i looked all around me, japan covered in snow, and i was able to lose myself in it. the snow melted into my onitsuka tigers, and my feet and hands were freezing. it was the first time kathy had ever seen snow. "how can you tell when you've gotten frostbite?" she asked. we hauled ass to the osaka castle, and we took pictures. big fat franco had his camera stick with him, so he could take plenty of self-portraits. kathy and i would just watch him and laugh.

we rode the bullet trains, tried to explain to cab drivers where we needed to go, shopped and ate. in five days, we covered kansai, osaka, kobe, kyoto, nara, tokyo, and mt. fuji. the train ride from tokyo to mt. fuji was one of the most beautiful rides i'll ever take in my life. i watched japanese cartoons and morning shows, and i had no idea what the hell was going on, but everything felt like you had to be on drugs to create such things. i couldn't understand pachinko or the buttons on the remote next to the toilet bowl. almost every seat was heated, and everything was more expensive than i could have imagined. still, i loved every second of it. i understood why so many non-japanese people were obsessed with the country.

in tokyo, i saw cosplay girls, a fully functioning tower records, tokyo tower, shibuya square, buildings with lights everywhere. it was surreal to be there, the place that had given me nintendo, sega, akira, paprika, lost in translation, the concept of tentacle-rape, the idea of schoolgirl panties being sold in vending machines, the lyric "goddamn you half-japanese girls," seizure-inducing cartoons, the atomic bomb, sushi, godzilla, the phrase "they're big in japan," sumos, ninjas, geishas, tokyo drift, seppuku, ponyo, mama-sans. how did one country pack so much craziness into its collective existence?

because it was a japanese holiday, our hotel in kyoto was $1,000 USD for the night. our lunch in kobe was $200. to karaoke for one person for two hours in tokyo with a bottle of sake, it cost $50. every meal, no matter how small, was at least $10. as soon as you step in a cab, it's already $10. thanks to franco's rich friend, we were v.i.p. at a club in roppongi hills, and it cost $25 just to sit there. the girls dyed their hair brown and everyone wore black. african guys handed out flyers in the streets, and they worked as bouncers at the bars and clubs.

by the final day, i had a cold and i was exhausted. i had to take the train back to osaka by myself, as my flight left early in the morning, and franco's and kathy's flight wasn't until evening. by the time i reached my hotel, it was 10 p.m., and i looked like death. i found a small restaurant near the hotel, where i ordered a yakisoba for one. i gobbled it down and made as much noise as i could in the process. franco told me that to make noise while eating was a way of showing the cook that you enjoyed the food. so i slurped that shit up noisily, and while i was sick, exhausted, cold, and alone on valentine's day, at least i wasn't hungry anymore.

one thing at a time, man. one thing at a time.

2011-02-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

if one day you just up and leave.

all my money is gone, but that story isn't even worth telling.

bangkok was just kind of eh. once you've seen one major asian city, you've seen them all. what's it like? a bunch of asians crowding together in markets. street vendors selling meat on sticks, fake purses, fake watches, fake t-shirts. i went on a tour by myself. it was good, to be alone again. can i do this? for two years? just be by myself and have no one to talk to? in the bus, the guides spoke thai and broken english, i heard indians, and i heard french. i listened to kanye west, and the song "runaway" made me very sad.

my cousin, her friend, and i went to patpong, the infamous red light district. it was homely looking girl after homely looking girl popping things out of their vaginas. one smoked a cigarette out of hers. another popped ballons by shooting darts out of her hoo-ha. yet another shot ping pong balls out of hers, and i returned the serve with a paddle. one tooted a horn. another blew out birthday candles. if there is a god, why does this kind of thing happen every night? we went to another place, and there was just straight up fucking. nothing left to the imagination. penetration right on the stage, and i thought i was gonna be sick. i just looked at the girl's face, that look of hopelessness, a look that said, hey, i'm being fucked in a chalee bar, and you foreigners paid $15 to watch me get fucked in this chalee bar, congratulations.

at least the food was delicious. on the last night, i treated my cousin and her friend to dinner, and it cost around $70. but it was worth every penny.

i've come to realize that i don't really like traveling. i kind of just want to be in one place until it gets old and then move on. but that's no way to live, right? that's just being a bum, or more specifically, a hobo.

but a few weeks ago, i was in a van, and we were coming back from a full day of swimming at calatagan. the street was dark, and the driver was really putting the pedal to the floor, despite the oncoming tricycles and motorists. it was dark, and other than the sound of the engine, it was quiet. i felt peace, at ease. i thought, i am going to remember this. it was a good memory, and it came to me when i truly believed there were no good memories left to make. that night gave me hope. but the combined speed and darkness also gave my mom a panic attack.

and then i was walking back to my niece's house in fairview. we had just spent the evening playing music in her friend's bar. we walked along a dirt road, and we were out in the countryside, so i could hear the crickets, see the full moon and stars directly above us. another good memory, i'll keep it.

i could picture myself back in california. i'm sitting on the sidewalk, and there's no one around. my parents are inside, they're watching tv. some kid will walk by, but he won't even look at me. i'm sitting there the whole day, just imagine it. the mailman delivers the mail, not even a hello. the whole fucking day will go by, no one will say a thing. not one word. no one will ask, why the hell are you just sitting on the sidewalk all day? no one will ask, what the hell's the matter with you? and that's not what i want. that's not it at all.

contrast it with this: i'm in fairview, my niece's house. her three friends come over. one of them, janine, is a very cute, dark-skinned girl with crooked teeth. she smiles all the time to show those crooked teeth. and they're taking hours just trying to figure out how to play some indian movie on a usb inserted into a portable laptop that's going into the hdtv. someone comes downstairs, and she's holding her baby. the friends coo over the baby. another friend stops by, and my cousin, espie, she invites everyone to sit down at the table to eat. a neighbor stops by, and she's adorable, too, this incredibly thin, shy girl who just wants some ice cream. she just gets the ice cream with her head bowed low, and she tries to slip away unnoticed. i want to grab her and tell her that life is too short to be shy, that she should spend her days making music, screaming her head off, demanding her fair share from this shit, lonely world. she should love and be loved, as we all should.

and that's what i want: community, family, a sense of belonging. not taking things too seriously. to show gratitude for the small bowl of ice cream that's already melted. this is all i've ever wanted.

i'm almost home.

2011-01-24T06:12:00.000-08:00

just own the night.

"so, that's it, huh? you're quitting life," she said, "trading work for karaoke?"
"yeah," i said. "might as well."
"what are you gonna do when you get back?"
"i dunno," i said. "get a job at a supermarket or bookstore, if i'm lucky."
"nothing wrong with that," she said. "i was just talking about that today," she said, "how americans are so goddamn competitive."
"yeah," i said. "we're only fooling ourselves."

my aunt, she put out this full spread, crabs and coca-cola and squid and eggrolls, but none of us could eat a damn thing. it was for my dead grandparents and the other deceased. if there was an afterlife, i could picture my grandparents chilling on clouds, and laughing at us from above. jesus, they'd think, why didn't she spend that money on the living instead? i watched as she picked out hopia, chicharron, and other snacks from overcrowded tiny shops.

earlier this month, my cousins and i went to boracay for four days and three nights. every night, we drank san miguel light until our faces turned red and we no longer felt self-conscious about dancing to bad pop music. "firework," "the time (dirty bit)," "like a g6," "the club can't handle me," "i like the way you lie," "we r who we r," etc. we karaoked until our voices went out, and we swam in the ocean until our mouths filled with salt, and we tanned until our skin peeled. we drank shakes from jonah's and ate all the seafood we could handle. because that's how you fucking do boracay.

and then there are the go-go bars. miss universal, east asia, malizia-2, air force one, golden dove, club 9, so many go-go bars and nineteen year-old girls sitting in rooms that i don't know what to make of it. chloe, she sits on my lap and sings "a thousand miles." i know it, so i sing with her. i ask if she's in school. she says she dropped out. why, i ask. financial problems, she says. duh. why else would be she be here, sitting on your lap? i look to my left, and my buddy angelo is shirtless, smothering his chosen one.

sometimes, i stop. you have to stop sometimes. am i really doing this? did i really just drink every night this week and say what i said to that young girl? am i really dancing like a fool right now and finally, completely letting go? is there any love in this world, or is it all just lust and its consequences? maybe the purpose of life is to just take one amazingly long hot shower. what i wouldn't give for a hot shower right now.

but it's best to not overanalyze. don't think about things too much. just keep going at it hard, nonstop, 24/7, e'rry goddamn day until you die.

2011-01-07T21:20:00.000-08:00

i see you colourful.

there's a little girl who sits outside shoemart at harrison plaza, and she looks at me. she wants money, that much is clear. i don't know what her story is. maybe she sleeps on the street, maybe she has some family, and they don't care where she is or what she's doing. i know enough tagalog to ask, where is your mother? but i don't ask. her clothes and hair are dirty, and she dances in front of the store window. the security guards try to shoo her away, but eventually, they resign - it is what it is - and she gets to loiter all she wants.

my cousin, jojo, he tells me that he's sick of living in vietnam, and he won't return there. instead, he'll break his contract, pay the $2,000 fee, and try his luck flying planes for another airline, zest air. he says that his previous employer, cebu air, had horrible working conditions, and they weren't worth his time. a small child peeks into his tinted window, and jojo knocks once, a signal for the child to get lost. jojo just keeps going on and on about how saigon is no place to live. it's a place only for tourists.

jamie, she works in the ktv cellar bar at our hotel. she says she's 21, single, lives in quezon city. she said she used to model, but not anymore. i asked her why, but she didn't have an answer for me. she rides the jeepney to work, where she entertains guests like me from 5 p.m. - 1 a.m. when there are no guests like me available, she just sits there with the other girls, and they talk about things. i don't know what it is they talk about. she said she liked the rhianna song, "i like the way you lie," and that her dream was to go to boracay. together, we sang journey's "open arms," and her voice was better than mine.

there's a guy who works at the small gym in the hotel. he was here last year, and probably the year before that. he says, "hello, sir," and once, he asked me if i was on vacation. i think he wants someone to talk to english, but when i run, all i want to do is listen to music. he tilts the tv monitor so it faces his small table, and usually, he watches game shows. if he has to use the bathroom, he tells me he'll be right back. once, i forgot my water bottle, and he called my room to tell me that i'd forgotten it. when i picked it up, i tipped him 40 pesos, about a dollar.

another guy, he drives a tricycle. he's wearing a basketball jersey, faded shorts, and dusty sandals. he's got a bandaid on his cheek, and he asks me where we want to go. i tell him, pancake house. i hear him ask another tricyclist in tagalog where pancake house is, and that person gives him directions. he struggles with the pedaling. he is, after all, trying to transport two well-fed americans, a good 350 pounds combined. all around us, cars, jeepneys, and motorcycles are whizzing by, honking and blasting black smoke into the air. the heat is thick and sticks to your skin. you can smell the sewage, the food, the piss, the kalesas, yourself. when the ride is over, i ask him how much? he says ten pesos, i give him twenty.

i'm walking around, and it's just a normal day, nothing special about it. i think about the lyric from jonsi's "animal arithmetic": everyday, everywhere, people are so alive. it's not like that where i'm from. where i'm from, it's not like that at all.

2011-01-06T07:19:00.000-08:00

who was that girl?

a beautiful woman sat next to me on the plane from seattle to sacramento. she was a bit older, early thirties or so, and blonde. she flipped through the pages of a sacramento magazine. it was either talk to the beautiful blonde woman or listen to the jezabels on my iphone.

"is this your first time visiting sacramento?"
"no, i'm from there."

we had this in a common, a similar hometown. what did she do? she traveled around here and there. her husband was a helicopter pilot, and they were last stationed in louisiana, and before that, germany. she had a daughter, and the kid was with her dad in olympia. what did i do? i just quit my job, working in an office. i was waiting to hear from the peace corps, but i didn't know where i'd end up yet, or when i would be going. so until then, i was just going to go to sacramento and then to manila, and then who knows what?

she told me that taking the trains around in europe was easy. she said she'd never been to the philippines, but that she would like to visit it eventually. we never even introduced ourselves. we spent the whole flight talking, and i didn't get her name. there was no mention of facebook or email or anything like that because there wasn't a point to it. she was a married woman, and that was that. why bother? it was nice, though, the conversation. we just talked and talked and the flight didn't seem that long.

we got off the plane, and she said something about how she loved coming into sacramento's airport. i had nothing to say about that. i was too busy thinking about how my dad was gonna ask, who is that girl? and i'd have to explain that she was just someone i met on the plane, and she was married, so what did it matter? she said something else, and i was just like, uh huh. i was thinking about that moment when i'd see my parents, and i'd feel like a child again, like some dumb kid who didn't know anything, and that whole grown-up conversation i had just had with the blonde woman would have become nullified.

her father and what looked to be her brother met her first. her father hugged her and she laughed and looked so happy to see him. i hesitated for a second, but then i said, fuck it. why would i introduce myself to this married girl's family? i looked for my parents, ready to play the part of the child who failed at life, the one who couldn't make it in america on his own. my dad and i waited at the carousel, and we barely talked.

we were the last ones there, standing at the carousel. i was worried they'd lost my guitar, but later i discovered they already had it waiting for me in a small office. the blonde showed up. "it was nice talking to you," she said. she shook my hand. "have fun in the philippines!" and that was that. just one more person i talked to for a little while, and who i will probably never see again for the rest of my life.

why wasn't that my life yet? flying helicopters, being well-traveled, married to a gorgeous, intelligent woman? why was i the kid again who loved useless things like writing and playing the guitar? was i ever going to get to be an adult?

"who was that girl?"
i knew you were gonna ask that. i fucking knew it.

2011-01-04T06:20:00.000-08:00

at least he looks happy.

well, i'm about to turn 28, and i'm spending my third birthday in a row in manila. i haven't taken any pictures. i'd only be taking shots of things i've seen. but there i was, two, three months ago, walking to work on a cold morning, and i said to myself, i need a drastic change. i was ready for traveling and being on my own then. maybe it was a little bird who kept telling me, you've got nothing to lose! and she was right. what is there to lose? when you are single, and have no personal or financial obligations, why wouldn't you try to shake things up a little?

the cereal prawns were new. there was a new line of restaurants in makati, and i ate cereal prawns, and they were amazing. but to think of food now only disgusts me. when visiting manila, there are only two things i can feel: full and sick. i saw my pamangkins, and that was nice. they called me uncle and laughed because i still couldn't fluently speak tagalog. they said, do you have a girlfriend, and i said no, and they said, but you are dating, and i said no. and so they are trying to set me up with a girl named april. and they aren't the only matchmakers. my aunt said, how old will you be tomorrow? and i said, 28, and she said, it's time to get married.

and then we were at miss universe, a shady little spot only a few blocks from the hotel. there were girls there, and i was ready to pay for them, but i couldn't bring myself to do it. there was place after place of this, thousands of young women looking to get paid, and thousands of lonely men willing to pay any price just to feel something, some great release from the banality of shopping, of working, of paying taxes, of feeling anxious, of living. there are shots of coffins on the local news, some hit and run, some landslide, some massacre, some fools lighting off fireworks.

my uncle now lives in a different area, ever since he pissed off my aunt, his sister. they still don't talk. christmas came and went, they didn't say a word to one another. new years came and went, and still, nothing. he's 52, though years of drinking and smoking make him look much, much older, and he knocked up a 21 year old girl. my mom said to me, his place is sad, isn't it? i didn't answer her, but i didn't want to use his bathroom, either. there was a cockroach in it. my cousin looked at pictures of him and his girl, and he said to me, at least he looks happy.

i have friends back in the states, and they're mostly white. they are thinking about their careers and advanced degrees, and making a life and having a nice home. they are worried about finding jobs and holding onto love and pursuing their dreams. and here in manila, there are men who just sit on crates. they are dark skinned, and they wear dirty tanktops, and they've got a towel resting on one shoulder. i don't know what they are waiting for. i don't know if they just sit there and hold those towels all day long or what.

my mom still says, it didn't use to be like this. my cousin says, why is it so goddamn dirty everywhere? he also says, i'm sick of malls. my dad, he doesn't say anything. he just feels at home, and i can tell by the look on his face. we still talk about what needs to be done to make this city great, or at least livable. we still talk about the dangers of riding a cab, and watching out for pickpockets. we still eat more than we should, and swim, and shop, and live like kings.

but i'm still walking down that cobblestone path at seattle university, the one that runs down between lemieux library and bannan, and i'm still thinking to myself, i need a drastic change.

2010-12-21T20:24:00.000-08:00

the best christmas ever.

"did you facebook that girl yet?" uncle mike asked me.
"umm, no, not yet," i said. he sighed in disappointment. "i told her you would message her!"
"okay, okay," i said, "i will."
"what are you drinking?"
"white wine?"
"can i have some?"
"yeah," i said, "i'll get you a glass."

i told him that we should get some beer. he said that it's always cheapest at rite aid, $10.99 for a twelve pack of bottles. he said he would drive to pick up a case. i got in the van, the one my parents used to own, and i asked if he'd quit smoking. he said he had, but that he'll light up one or two if he's been drinking. i asked if he'd gotten a new car stereo, but he said no, he'd had this one for a while.

while he went to rite aid to pick up the heinekens, i went to save mart, as i needed some bleu cheese. i wore my dog hat and my slippers with socks and i didn't give a shit. bleu cheese was pricey, something like $5 or $6 for a small container. even the bags of candies i'd gotten for stockings were expensive, something like $5 a bag. things cost. a woman tried to cut in front of me, but she failed. "there's a line," i told her. she looked behind her and apologized. as i left the store, i thought about the look she gave me, and how quickly it changed. it went from how dare you to oh, i'm so sorry in a matter of seconds.

back in the van, i asked uncle mike about his retirement.

"it's pretty good," he said. "if i stayed another year, it would've been more."
"oh."
"yeah, it's okay."
"so, where's carmina going to school now?"
"a.r.c."
"where'd she go to high school?"
"encina."
"did she like it there?"
"yeah, she liked it. i didn't like it. there's too many blacks."

later in the night, byron's friends arrived. graham told us there would be a lunar eclipse, so we all went outside to look at it. rich and i smoked black & milds.

"didn't you say you read something about how these are really bad for you?"
"yeah," i said. "they're pretty cancerous."
we laughed at that.
"those were the days," i said. "we'd light one of these up, get some big gulps. a big old thing of wild cherry pepsi."
"and mags," he said.
"yeah, high society."
"everyday," he said.

the people who lived across the street from us were standing in front of their house, and they were all looking at the eclipse. the older kid came up to our group, and he was talking to my cousin.

"who lives here?" he asked.
"i do! i live here," i said. we shook hands for the first time, even though we'd lived across the street from each other for three decades.
"do you mind if we light off these fireworks?" he asked.
"no, go for it, man."

at midnight, he lit off the fireworks, these loud little sparks that shot off into the air. everyone clapped and i went back into the house.

"i finally met the dude who lives across the street," i said.
"what about that girl?" rich said.
"umm, no, not her."
"what girl?" may asked.
"there's a girl across the street. he's been looking out his window at her for like the last twenty years."
"umm, no, no," i said.

gina was crying. my mom was trying to sleep but we were all being too loud. leia was talking gibberish to bella. sam didn't mask his disappointment when he found the fantastic mr. fox in his stocking. claire and i impersonated pauly d's meltdown in the jersey shore. we played scattegories, singstar, and catchphrase. we ate pancit, potato salad, ham, walnut and pear salad, layered cake, and corn chowder. the stereo intermittently played sufjan stevens' and john fahey's christmas songs.

before my aunt left, she hugged me and said, "thanks for putting this together, the best christmas ever."
"no problem," i said.

2010-12-05T21:33:00.000-08:00

hand off the trigger, always.

my coworker took me to the gun range, this place called wade's, over in bellevue. he took with him his own .45, and his brother's 9 mm. i didn't know anything about guns, and the only time i had ever shot one was the time i fired a shotgun outdoors, probably a little over 17 years ago. it was a shotgun, and the recoil left my right shoulder hurting for days afterward. somehow, though, i hit the target, a little clay disc, and everyone called it "beginner's luck."

inside wade's, my coworker told me to pick out some targets. they had all kinds of different ones - ranging from simple silhouettes of a man to zombie osama bin laden. i really thought about the target i was going to choose. what if from far away, osama looked like just some random brown-skinned dude? i didn't want to shoot that. i thought about the silhouettes, and why were they only black and white? did it mean that people who fired guns wanted to kill either white people or black people? i couldn't have it on my conscience. of course, i didn't voice any of this out loud, as the slightest hint of my crazy over-analysis of everything probably would've gotten the both of us thrown out. he chose some simple circle targets, and i couldn't argue with those.

before we went into the firing range, we had to sign releases. there was that line about risk and possible death. i signed my life away. i asked my coworker, "are you going to tell me what to do?" he shook his head, no. "i'll tell you when we're inside." i didn't see how that was possible, though, since i could already hear the pop pop pop mayhem through the soundproof doors. whatever. i goggled and earplugged up, and followed him through the double doors.

he uncased his guns, and unlocked the wire that ran through the butt and chamber. he showed me how to load the cartridge, and i struggled with it. he showed me how to pop the cartridge into the butt and how to release the switch to make it ready to fire. while he loaded up some more cartridges, he told me how to get the feel of it. one of the workers showed me how to properly hold the gun, as i obviously wasn't doing it right. "hand off the trigger, always," he said.

finally, it was go time. the target was in place, and the gun was all set to blast. i realized then how nervous i actually was, and my hand was all sweaty. what if the sweat plus the recoil lead to me losing my grip on it, and it backfired, and i shot myself in the chest? oh well. only one way to find out. i squeezed the trigger, and the recoil wasn't as bad as i expected. i fired another. i finished a clip. "knock yourself out," my coworker said, and i loaded another clip.

a different employee came up to me after i finished the second clip. "can i give you some tips?" he asked. "of course," i said. he told me i was standing wrong, that i should stand with my feet spread apart. he told me my arms should be out more and curved, as my upper body was supposed to absorb most of the recoil. he told me that i was anticipating the shot too much, and that i needed to relax more when i squeezed the trigger, that the gun should do all the work, not me. they were good tips, and when my target came back, my coworker said, "that's quite impressive."

back in the car, we talked about women. he asked me why nothing ever happened between me and this other girl he knew i liked. i didn't have an answer for him. "sometimes," he said, "you've just gotta go in there and pull the trigger, see what happens. you don't want to be the guy ten years from now who thinks back to all the things he didn't do." i just nodded. "that's just a bit of fatherly advice i have for you," he said.

2010-12-01T22:12:00.001-08:00

do you know where you're going?

i've got two weeks left in seattle. it still really hasn't hit me, as i haven't really felt anything in a long time. i tried to think what i'd miss most about it. there was a picture of the seattle skyline on reddit the other day, and it looked amazing. rainier in the background, the space needle front and center, the sky looking ominous and beautiful as it usually is. but what am i actually going to miss about this place?

i'll miss running down rainier ave. and seward park. that was fun. there was that time i ran through the mount baker neighborhood, and i found some cool looking cafes and shops and a nice park. i vowed to go back there when i wasn't so sweaty, but i've never been back. i'll miss taking the light rail to the qfc and to downtown. i'll miss having such a cheap orca pass and taking the bus anywhere and whenever i want.

and the food, of course. ezell's, red mill, tutta bella, molly moon, genki, top pot, crab pot, po' dog, cupcake royale, port st. george, that dim sum place i can never remember the name of and countless other restaurants in the i.d., olympia, wing dome, ivar's, six arms, the mix (r.i.p.), tamarind tree, coastal kitchen, geraldine's, thai kitchen, jamjuree, le panier, honey hole, baguette box, cafe flora, the essential bakery, and a bunch of other places that i've never even been or heard about.

i'll miss the crazies. the ones who smell and ride the bus, the ones who walk around downtown and just shout for no reason, the ones who hold signs that quote whole paragraphs from the bible, and the transient goth skaters at westlake plaza, the ghettofieds in pioneer square, the capitol hill gays, the belltown yuppies, the central district crackheads, the west seattle and ballard milfs, the dirty girls everywhere in their north face attire, the hipster baristas, bartenders and waitresses, the dudes with beards and flannel shirts with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the sounders and mariners fans, the black kids who jaywalk, the white kids who philosophize, the asians who speak their native languages.

when people find out i'm leaving work and about my tentative plans, they usually congratulate me. the older ones, they usually also ask, how old are you again? and then i tell them 27, and they tell me i'm still young. they say if they were younger and didn't have kids or a mortgage, they'd probably do the same thing.

nobody really knows what they're doing, or where they're going. but what i've seen is that most people are usually afraid to try anything different.

2010-11-28T23:16:00.001-08:00

it's your turn.

there i was at mikuni's, this sushi place off hazel. i'd never been there before, but showed up because it was my cousin's 40th birthday party. 40. i mean, i always knew he was older than me, but for fuck's sake, 40. that's how old nate's character was when he died on six feet under. i remember hearing my aunt was turning 40 when i was a kid, and i just thought, holy shit that's old. it was so old they called it "over the hill." and my other cousin, she just turned 30. it feels like last week we were just playing lava steps at the rosemont house.

anyway, i was at this place mikuni's, and then our other cousin showed up. he had his kid with him, a girl, and she was only 7 months old or so. she was cute with dark eyes and dark curly hair. he had another kid from another woman, and that kid is like 9 or 10, but he never sees that kid. so two kids, one my cousin sees, the other he never sees. i guess that's what happens sometimes. anyway, that cousin, the one with the two kids, he says to me, "you're next." and i was like, "what are you talking about?" and he goes, "it's gonna be your turn to have kids."

i've been getting glimpses of what it's like to have kids. i took my cousin out for her 30th birthday, and her two year old just kept running around the old spaghetti factory. i'd pick her up, try to put her in the high chair, and she'd just cry and cry and throw a fit. and then my cousin told me how the little girl would wake up at 2 in the morning, and wouldn't go to sleep until about 6. and the father would just yell, "go to sleep! i've gotta be at work in two hours! go. to. sleep!" and all i could do was laugh at it, and think, jesus, how do people live like this?

after the old spaghetti factory, we went into a toy store, which was another bad idea. the older one, the 4 year-old, she didn't want to leave, even after half an hour. she just kept saying, "i want to buy something!" and i said to her, "well, what do you want?" at that point, i would've bought her anything just to get back in the car and have her stop whining. but she couldn't even answer me. she'd say, "i don't know! but i wanna buy something!" and the whole time i was thinking, for fuck's sake, just pick something out already!

i just don't get it. most parents seem to be like, yeah, yeah, i love my kids, whatever. but most of them don't even seem to have good relationships with their parents. most of them would be a lot better off financially without children. sometimes i wonder why my parents had me. they could've done a lot more things rather than overwork themselves for decades just to pay my tuition. the obvious answer answer is that it's love, duh. but really, is it love, or is it just some fool nudging them and saying, "hey, it's your turn?"

2010-11-26T23:30:00.000-08:00

be a leader.

i was at the monkey bar with two old classmates and my cousin. out of nowhere, this asian girl and this white girl start playing pool. the white girl says something about the singer on tv, and my cousin tells her it's a band called my chemical romance. i'm immediately attracted to the white girl because of her posture, her bangs, and the fact that she is shooting pool and not with a guy. i don't say anything, though. i'm just an animal, but actually worse, because i suppress any and all my desires.

i meet up with an old coworker. it must be obvious by now. nobody from my past messages me or texts and asks to get together. only certain kinds of people have to stoop to that level. anyway, we meet up. if i hadn't texted her, she probably never would've said anything, even though we'd been planning it all week. i texted: still going out tonight? she texted: we're already here. so, i drove to the old tavern, some bar i'd never been to, and she's surrounded by three guys, and she doesn't even recognize me.

i say her name aloud. it's a pretty name, bronwyn. she says my name, we hug. she's trashed. she introduces me to her boyfriend, her boyfriend's friend, some other guys i don't know or even really care to meet. she gets distracted by something, and i'm left talking with the boyfriend's brother. even though i don't mind it, the whole time, i'm thinking, this isn't what i signed up for. he's a 2l at berkeley law, and i congratulate him for being young, attractive, and for having a bright future ahead of him.

i'm in the car with my cousin, and he brings up my blog. i bring up the old letters i've written to classmates, and at this point, i'm not sure exactly why i've written them. i tell him what i've been thinking for a long time, how i think it's strange that we spent all that time together, and now i never hear anything from them. i bring up the lonely american, and how it states that "falling out of touch" with people has become the norm, and why is that so? and it's not just about old classmates, coworkers, exes, friends, dead grandparents, what-have-you. it's about life and having to accept that your time is limited, and all you can do is try to enjoy it before it's over.

so i throw the football around with my cousin. i put icing on a little girl's hello kitty birthday cake. i do what i can, and i try to convince myself that it's enough.

2010-11-24T20:24:00.001-08:00

two weeks notice.

the three women were talking about stuff. we were in room 435, the fishbowl it's called, and i was just sitting there, listening to all of it. none of it had anything to do with me. there was nothing for me to say, no reason for me to be there at all, as i never even took notes at these meetings. they talked about the upcoming pilf auction, supreme court judges, lawyer stuff. i excused myself to go to the bathroom, even though i didn't even have to go. sometimes, i'll do this on a long flight. i go into the bathroom, and i just make faces in the mirror. it reminds me of who i am, that i am just this terribly lonesome person who constantly has to find ways to entertain myself, reinvent myself, remember that i matter, even though i don't.

once the meeting ended, i chased down my boss. she held a box of office supplies, and we trekked across the gallery to the elevator. she asked if i needed to get into the office, and i told her no, that i had actually come down to see her. and then i told her that this was going to be my last semester at the law school. my voice faltered as i told her. i was scared, and i wasn't exactly sure why. maybe because my future plans still weren't official, maybe because i imagined another long stretch of unemployment and lack of health care, of feeling inadequate and doomed. but then i remembered the long meeting we had just gotten out of, and i felt good about my decision.

i thought of all the lovely young women at the law school who were working to get their careers started. i thought of my sad and empty apartment and the awful winter ahead. i thought about coach taylor always going for two, refusing to accept the tie. i thought about wanting to be well traveled and my parents getting older and how a year can go by just like that. i convinced myself that if i didn't do something, if i didn't take a risk, well, then i was just going to have another year or lifetime of looking at the computer and pretending to be interested in meetings and what was happening around me.

i'm going to miss them. mostly, i'll miss emily and how her hair color changes with the seasons. i'll miss the way she brings her face so close to the screen, like she wants to swim in her monitor. or how she keeps three pairs of shoes underneath her desk. how she wears a giant black hoodie and loves molly moon and genki sushi and can't kick a soccer ball very well. how i could quote movies, and she'd know exactly what i was talking about. i'll miss how she writes like a five year-old and slumps in her chair around 3 o'clock.

before my flight, i wondered about that moment in the airport. the one where i am coming down the escalator, and i see my parents in the waiting area. how many times have i seen this? how many flights have i taken from seattle to sacramento and back? why do i do this, keep wanting to be away? there's my mom asking me how the flight was, and there's my dad giving me an awkward one-armed hug. and then there's that moment where i step into our house, the one i grew up in, and i can smell it.

my aunt was trying to make plans to see the newest harry potter. there were a lot of phone calls, a lot of compromising. my cousin kept saying certain times and days wouldn't work for him. it took twenty minutes to half an hour to figure something out. i just sat there and watched them madly flop around. we went to the movie, and it was raining hard. seven of us were there, sitting in the dark, and i couldn't remember the last time i had been to a movie with all of these people.

so much time passes, and i don't know what to make of any of it.

2010-11-16T21:36:00.000-08:00

wolves out there.

the last time i saw her, i was in d.c. for the annual americorps conference. she picked me up, along with my then girlfriend and another volunteer, and we drove through the snow to a restaurant downtown. i don't remember much about it. her boyfriend had those big hoops in his ears. i don't know what they were called, but i didn't like them.

mostly, i remember talking about my roommate. i told everyone at the table how he blasted classical music and how his farts were like thunder. his hair would clog the shower drain, and he never flushed his piss. on a special occasion, he even left a huge shit for me. later, my girlfriend told me, "you shouldn't talk about other people like that. it's not very attractive."

the year before that, i made mix cds around christmas time for everyone on the americorps team. my girlfriend looked at the track list i made for naomi. "you've got a crush on her, don't you?" i denied it. "yeah, you do," she said.

to ward off boredom at the office, i used to make comic strips using microsoft paint. i didn't know what to call the comic, so she came up with a name. "kathleen's coffee," she said. and so it was.

after hurricane katrina, i was sitting in the red cross office, and i was in charge of checking people in. right in front of me, melissa told our supervisor that i didn't do something right. it wasn't even a big deal, but she made it out to be, and i felt bad about it. i told naomi what happened. she reassured me that melissa was always doing things like that.

the first time i got a sense of who she was, it was on the first day of americorps. the seven of us sat in the classroom, filled out paperwork. she read aloud all the ridiculous parts. i knew then that this girl was willing to point out the obvious. she called bullshit on the first day, and i had to respect that.

we hung out tonight. it was the first time i'd seen her in over three years. it's weird, how little people change when so much time has passed. it was like when i saw toby for the first time in five years, and it felt like we were picking up on a conversation we left two minutes ago, not five years ago.

what i've come to realize is that there really are very few people i can just feel comfortable around. there are very few people who don't put me on edge, or make me feel like every thing i say has to turn into some kind of argument. i've realized the ones who put me on edge, the ones who constantly feel the need to prove something, those people usually have low self-esteem, and i've since dropped them.

i guess that's what has changed about me in the last few years. i used to be idealistic and think i could get along with just about anybody. but now i know that there are wolves out there, and sometimes it's best to just stay away.

2010-11-08T20:10:00.000-08:00

when you find out.

a little over a year ago, i received word that she'd met someone else. the only girl i'd ever loved, and the only one who ever loved me back, had moved on. it wasn't fair. i was devastated. i drunk-dialed her. it must have been three, four o'clock where she was.

hello?
did you sleep with a married guy?
what?
did you sleep with a married guy?
that's none of your business.

we exchanged a few more words, and then i hung up. i woke up the next morning, and something was off, but i couldn't immediately remember what it was. it was similar to those moments in college when my computer would break down, and i'd spend the entire night futilely trying to repair it myself. in the morning, i'd wake up and instinctively know there was something unpleasant i had to deal with.

even though technically we've been broken up for over three years, that night, the night i found out, solidified it. i wanted revenge. i thought of unspeakable things. how could she? after all i'd done for her. after five years together, i felt i deserved better than that. i spent the following weeks in a haze, hitting on random girls at bars to no avail. it was my turn, goddamnit. didn't these women know what i'd been through? didn't they know how creative, funny, and caring i was? what the hell was their problem, anyway?

i look back now on that particular time, and it amazes me that the word that comes to mind to describe how i really felt then is not shocked, disappointed, hurt, or heartbroken. sure, i felt all those things, but the one that really sticks out above all the rest is relief. it's amazing what one will put up with to keep the loneliness at bay. it's crazy now to think how badly i needed another person's acceptance, how important it was for me to feel needed.

and then there i was at a bar, asking a girl for her number. there i was at another bar, asking a girl if i could buy her a drink. there i was, writing heartfelt emails to girls i kind of knew. of course, these little exchanges never led to anything other than some humiliation on my part. but i did those things because i didn't want to be left behind. i didn't like waking up alone in the middle of the night and feeling anxious. i wanted to come home and tell someone about my boring day at work.

what i've learned in the last two years of living alone is this: my expectations for life have been ridiculous. just like how i thought high school was going to be zany and brightly colored as saved by the bell, i thought my mid-twenties was going to be like friends and how i met your mother - an active social life, a lot of dating, and maybe a couple of really great relationships. maybe it's that way for some people, but for most people, especially the ones i know, it's not even close.

being alone has its benefits, though. in the time that i've been alone, i've gone to new york. i've been to canada multiple times. i've gone hiking. i saw a bear in the wild. i've shaved my head. i've learned a bunch of songs on the guitar. i've gotten back into running, and i go to the gym regularly. i reach out to strangers, and i invite them out for drinks, for dinner, for karaoke. i buy clothes that i think will look good on me. i've saved money. i've caught up with old classmates and friends. i've said yes to girls who've invited me to coeur d'alene for a weekend. i've applied to the peace corps. i've unsuccessfully flirted. i'll pretty much go anywhere and do just about anything. i try to make the most out of each day.

because when you're on your own, you've gotta go at it hard. there's no other choice.

2010-11-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

less polluted air.

i thought she was talking to her sister downstairs. i waited as long as possible to come down, as i wanted them to have some time together. i picked up my phone, played all the words with friends games i had going. after that, there was nothing left to do with my phone. i went downstairs. there was a girl there, sitting at the table, and she had her back turned to me. she wore a red sweater and her sleeves covered her hands. we introduced ourselves, and i sat at the table.

i didn't know what to say. i picked up the sunday paper, pulled out the funnies. it was already snowing in garfield. the two girls talked about some people they knew, they were catching up on things. and then my friend told her i'd applied to the peace corps. she seemed to be interested in that, so i said my piece. the conversation then went back to her, and had she ever done any traveling?

yes, she had done some traveling. she was a geologist, and she traveled to some sites where her company had mines. i thought that was very fascinating, a girl geologist who worked on mine stuff. she told me about a particular time that she went down to bolivia, and she was involved in what she called an "express kidnapping." did i know what that was? no, i didn't. she explained: a taxi picked up her and a coworker, and the driver took her to a shady part of town, and then the doors flew open, and then she had a knife pointed at her, and the hoodlums demanded she hand over her debit card.

her spanish was good enough that she could explain she only had a credit card, and therefore they could not withdraw cash with the card she had. her coworker, however, who had his debit card with him was robbed of $1,500. what went through her head, i wondered. did you totally freak out? she didn't freak out. she was too shocked to really think anything. she did think she would be raped, and that her coworker would freak out, and it would all end in a bloodbath.

but back to you, she said. she apologized, but she wanted to know more about the peace corps, and why did i want to apply? i had some answers to that. it was all very nice. we were two adults sitting at a table in a beautiful home in northern idaho, and it was sunday morning in the pinnacle of fall, and i had just eaten a blueberry waffle. i answered as honestly as i could. she said that she would like to do the program, too, but that she wanted her boyfriend of five years to marry her already, so that they could volunteer together.

at some point, the two girls started talking about whether or not teach for america was a good program. one thought it was, the other didn't. i thought it was awkward when they would both talk at the same time, and i just had to listen to this stream of voices, criss-crossing each other. i had no opinion on it. all i knew was that i once had a tough teaching job, and i didn't want to see it through. that was just irresponsible on their part, she reassured me.

later, another friend showed up, and the four of us went for a walk. there was a bit of a break in the clouds, but for the most part, it rained. we walked in the rain, me and three girls. why was it that i always ended up hanging out with girls? i took pictures of an old barn, some horses, a hillside. i didn't really like walking in the rain. i just wanted to be in a warm bed, asleep. it was a bit of good, though, breathing in the air that wasn't as polluted as city air. it was good to be in the company of people i sort of knew.

we went back in the house, and while the other two girls loaded up the car, the two of us just sat there alone in the living room. for some reason, she had put on her red-framed glasses, and she pushed them up the middle with her index finger. she told me she had to go home and study for the g.r.e. she wanted to study international studies or something like that, and maybe get a job in the foreign services, maybe one day become a diplomat. i didn't know anything about it.

but i did enjoy just sitting there, listening to her talk, while the wood stove kept me warm.

2010-11-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

heart of an awl.

it was saturday night, and i was at this girl jessica's apartment, and she was dressed as a used car salesman: fake mustache, slicked-back hair and all. her friend, adam, wearing a sheep costume his mother made, smoked me out. to my left, princess leia, and to my right, a nurse with a dead baby hanging outside his front pocket. there was also another girl wearing something slutty, and she was running around looking for lipstick or something. per our request, jessica was singing a song of hers that may or may not have been called "bitterness," and we were just sitting there, watching her.

after she sang two songs, we were supposed to go to this halloween party at this girl corey's house. who was corey? i didn't know, but laura knew her, or else knew somebody who knew her. everybody in coeur d'alene seemed to know somebody who knew somebody else. see, there's this coffee shop called java right in coeur d'owntown, and all the cool kids in town drink there, work there, or have worked there at some point.

this girl emily currently works there, and the first thing she said to me was, "what the hell made you want to come to north idaho?" i said i had nothing better to do, and she said, "obviously!" she was a loud little one, and i thought she looked a lot like ellen page. i thought it would be a lame thing to bring up, as she probably got it a lot, but at some point, i got drunk enough to. "does anyone ever tell you that you look like ellen page?" "wait," she said, "yeah, isn't that the girl from juno?" "yeah," i said, "she was also in hard candy, and she was really creepy in that." "well, you know that i am creepy," she said.

the thing about emily was that she was a felon. as told by laura, emily was made an example of by george w. bush's felon crackdown. underage and driving drunk, she crashed her car and, in doing so, broke her friend's ankle. how that made her a felon, i wasn't sure, but she was one, and that was that. a few years after that, she fell out of her apartment window, and dropped sixteen feet to the pavement. "what the hell," i said to her, "you're like mid-twenties, and you've had every life experience already." "yeah," she said, "but i want the good life experiences."

the crazy stories didn't end there. at the party, i got talking to this other girl. she was saying stuff, and i was halfway listening, and then my ears perked up when she nonchalantly said that her parents were heroin addicts. "did you just say your parents were heroin addicts?" i asked. "yeah, they have been pretty much up until two years ago." this other guy, this older guy with a big belly, he just chimed right in. "i just got clean. have been for about five years now," he said. the girl got up, and she said, "i just need to give you a big hug right now." i watched them hug. were these people real, or was there something in that flask i sipped from that the what about bob? guy wearing an orange life-vest gave me?

this other girl, this hip-looking twenty-two year old dressed as a sexy geisha, she just pointed at me, and she said, "i took your order! raspberry italian soda!" and drunk as she was, she got that much right. she was amber, and i was raspberry italian soda. and because i'm curious about such things, because i've read that guys like me are supposed to just ask open-ended questions when approaching strange women out of our league, i asked what the hell she was doing in life. she sat sprawled out on the floor, and she told me her history.

she was orphaned, then adopted. the people who adopted her weren't very nice. her adoptive mother or father was abusive or something, but she wouldn't get into it. instead, she described it as, "fuck that." somehow, maybe or maybe not because of the abusive people who took her in, or maybe it was her stepmother (a mixture of beer and wine made it hard for me to follow the story), she inherited 40 acres of land. the land was used for timber, so she had $70,000. she needed to raise another $10,000 to buy a bigger piece of land in montana or oregon. "i'd really want it to be in oregon," she said. she said that she'd like to have a community, and anyone who wanted to help her garden could live there. i was one bottle of wine away from writing her a ten thousand dollar check and living in her future hippie garden utopia. a woman standing behind her, who may or may not have been amber's coworker, mocked her as she told me her vision.

it was halloween in coeur d'alene. the first and maybe the only time i'll ever see that place. the leaves were bursting with color: orange, yellow, green and fiery red everywhere, all over the streets, all over the hills, on the sidewalks, in the water. there were antique shops, thrift stores and bars like any other town. there was a skate plaza, a toy store called figpickels, a super one grocery store, a couple of zip's burgers, a veterinary office where laura's dad worked, and a breakfast place that served amazing duck sausage with orange liqueur.

i stayed at mariah's parents' house, which felt like a giant log cabin. her dad collected printing press stamps and marbles. her mom was really into politics. i thumbed through photo albums, trying to figure out who this family was, what they were about. they adopted a filipino boy who ended up having a mental disability, and now he lived in a group home. her older sister had gotten married, and now she had two kids. there was a wood stove and her mom made a blueberry pie. there were chickens in the yard and wild turkeys that would yelp yelp yelp in the morning. there used to be a barn but it didn't make it through last winter's snowstorm.

and then, after all that, it was time to go. we drove off in the sunlight, me falling asleep in the backseat against mariah's big bag of clothes.

2010-10-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

oh mylanta.

oh dear readers, let me tell you about my hellish ordeal in the last twenty-four hours. see, i take doxycycline for acne, and the directions explicitly say not to eat dairy products when popping the pill. but i had eggs with cheese and stale chips with salsa anyway. and the night before, nachos from el sombrero. big fucking mistake. an hour or so after popping the pill, i had the stomach ache of my life. i tried taking a nap, but couldn't get in a comfortable position. i was getting chills, feeling nauseous. i felt like i had swallowed a big ball of paperclips, or else a rock.

i started to think about tumors, flesh-eating bacteria, appendicitis, e. coli. was this it? was this how i was finally going to go? what a terrible thing, i'd be one of those statistics, found weeks later in my apartment, dead from eating some bad nachos. at around midnight, when things hadn't gotten any better, i called the group health nurse. she told me to get prune juice, maalox or mylanta, and docusate sodium. it was rainy out, and it was midnight. i didn't even have a single friend nearby whom i could call and pick things up for me. that's when i thought about the importance of living in an area where at least some family is nearby.

i took the bus to safeway. i didn't even bother getting out of my pajama pants. i bought maalox, prune juice and yogurt, and i felt like a 50 year old man. i didn't care. the pain was so great, i didn't give a shit who saw me. i waited for the bus heading back home. there wasn't one. i waited some more. there wasn't one. i took the prune juice out of the plastic bag and started drinking it straight from the bottle. and so there i was, on rainier ave. s. past midnight, drinking prune juice while wearing pajama pants.

i started to walk home. there were a bunch of leaves and branches on the sidewalk from the previous day's storm. it was a cold, lonely walk. this is what life's going to be, i told myself. just one long solitary walk down a dark street in the rain. life really was just suffering, until it was over. as soon as i got home, i downed some more prune juice with two teaspoons of maalox. i slept for a bit, but then three hours later, i was wide awake and hurting. there was no way i would ever get to sleep, and no way this stomach ache was going to go away on its own. i called an orange cab to take me to group health urgent care.

the driver asked how i was. i told him i'd been feeling shit all day. he said he was sorry to hear that. he had a bluetooth, and he talked to his wife in a language i didn't know. we stopped at an atm. i just wanted to die. i got sixty out, paid him twenty. he said that he hoped i felt better. i told him i did, too.

the nurse was this unfriendly dude. i figured i would be unfriendly, too, if i was working a shift at 4 a.m. the doctor came in, and he wasn't even wearing hospital clothes. just jeans and a baseball shirt. he was short and stocky, and he asked why i ate dairy products with the doxycycline. i told him i didn't know. because i was an idiot? i told him i was constipated, but he corrected me and said that i had bowel movements, so i wasn't constipated. i wanted to ask him what the hell this boulder in my stomach was then. he prescribed some pills, a lot of pills, and gave me instructions. he told me to never eat nachos ever again. for the rest of my life.

by the time i got home, it was well past 5 a.m., and people were already hanging out at starbucks. i went straight to bed and finally fell asleep. it was an incredible feeling, how such small pills could make a person feel normal again.

2010-10-18T21:05:00.001-07:00

the best wednesday ever.

wednesday last week was hella good. mostly, it was because those miners got rescued. how often do you see brown people headlining cnn news when drugs, guns, and earthquakes aren't involved? it was such a weird feeling, being on the bus after work, and thinking about how there was this positive energy. somewhere in the world, 33 miners were being rescued and being reunited with family. i thought this was weird because there's always so much bad and depressing news, and no one ever really stops to think about what this does to us. it's just fucking news, you know. you read/see/hear about a bunch of deaths, bombs, oil spills, home foreclosures, kidnappings, typhoons, warnings, rapes, really sick shit, and then you go on and finish your lunch. and then, for the first time, in what seemed like for-fucking-ever, there was a bit of good news. a brief reminder from the major news networks that the world is okay to live in sometimes.

the sun was out on wednesday. my gums were healing from the teeth extractions. i walked through the park to get teriyaki on broadway. i took my time eating it. i walked back through the park to work. i got the mail, and my new marmot precip jacket, which i had purchased on sale, had arrived! i tried on my jacket at my desk, and my coworkers thought it was funny. i thought about the adventures i was going to have in my new jacket.

after work, i went to the park by my apartment. no point in wasting perfectly good sunshine. i started shooting threes, and then this cambodian dude i had seen before invited me to play 21 with his gangster buddies. i didn't win, but i enjoyed the company. we played 2 on 2. i won. we played 3 on 3. i lost. when it was over, i slapped hands with them, and i said, "it was good seeing you again." this is what people did, these were the kinds of things they said. i might be a normal human being.

i showered, and i got ready for karaoke. i had initiated karaoke with two people i had met at a party, john and meera. they were a couple. i didn't mind being the third wheel, so long as i got to do karaoke. we went out for beer, and john bought me a chocolate stout. in return, i ordered a pitcher of manny's. he didn't want to sing. meera did, but she hesitated turning in her slip. i sang "screaming infidelities" and really butchered the loud part. it didn't matter. this was the best wednesday ever, didn't they know? a black man slapped my hand, as if to say, "good job." an attractive blond followed, sang madonna's "get into the groove." meera said they had to go, but that we should come back again sometime. i stayed a bit longer, finished my beer.

afterward, i stumbled two blocks back to my apartment. fuck yeah. the best wednesday ever.

2010-10-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

okaaaaaaaaay.

friday night, and it was hella cold out. fall done come quick, seemingly without warning. i had a ticket to a soldout wiz khalifa concert, and no one to go with. i could've scalped it for hella bills on c-list, but i really wanted to see the show. fuck it. i'll go it alone. i had diarrhea from the two soft tacos i had eaten earlier from el sombrero. not a good start to the night.

who the fuck was wiz khalifa? that's what y'all'd like to know. he's this twenty-two year old rapper from pittsburgh, and he's got cred from the teenyboppers to the indie nerds all the way up to the old o.g. fools. i don't know how much of that is exactly true, but from what i saw, that was about the looks of it.

how'd i stumble upon his shit? i remember it like it was yesterday. back from manila in january, i was mad depressed because my cousins didn't come along, and i didn't get a single titty in my face the whole three weeks i was there. no way i was gonna listen to that depressing indie rock shit anymore. i turned to bad rap. i loved the confidence, the ridiculous claims of wealth, weed and bitches. only problem was, most decent rappers (wale, cudi, curren$y) don't ever take it far enough. and when they do, it's but for a quick second. then they get back to having something real to say.

enter wiz.

the line for the show was as funny as some of his songs. as soon as i stepped in it, these two kids in front of me got busted by security. security, in the form of a big white dude with a black hoodie, pulled their mcdonald's cups. "is there alcohol in these?" the kids nodded. the security guard emptied the cups and tossed them into the bushes. he pulled them out of the line. "you guys can't go to the concert tonight, but i'm gonna give you a chance to get your money back." he told them they could sell their tickets, but there was no way they were gonna see wiz. it made me glad i wasn't underage anymore.

despite that, i still felt hella old. the line was like fucking wu-tang meets camp rock. this black dude behind me kept saying, "lot a niggaz tonight. lot a niggaz." and then there was this white girl who was on her cell phone. "can you get my water bottle? it's inside the trunk, and in my bob marley bag!" there was a douchebag with a white hoodie and sunglasses and he looked like zac efron. there were big ass black dudes eye-fucking the shit out of white girls with their tits popping out their tanktops. i didn't get these girls. it was fucking cold out. i got to thinking about teen girls cutting themselves and starving themselves, all to fit some make-believe mtv image.

and everyone was trying to get high. security yelled at the crowd, "y'all got weed? i know you do! if i catch you smoking it inside, i will take it from you, and i'll smoke it right in front of you!" every two minutes someone was talking about weed. it was, after all, the waken baken tour. kids kept talking to each other, being super paranoid. "they'll throw you out if you're underage and they smell beer on your breath!"

once inside, i got to the designated over 21 area, which was nearly empty, save that for a few asian dudes. felt like home. and damn, i needed a drink. i ordered a rum and coke, downed it, ordered another. switched to beer, and then i was buzzed enough to enjoy a rap concert surrounded by ghettofieds and jailbait. the second rapper, yellow wolf was hella whack. people, including myself, booed the shit out of him. he put his hand to his ear. "i need that shit!" he said. "they're booing him," this jailbait said to her friend. "it's because he's fucking awful!" i said. she laughed.

finally wiz got on, and it was sick. he did his donkey laugh multiple times, played songs i wanted to hear ("this kid frankie," "the thrill," "black and yellow," etc.), and i left feeling satisfied. and still kind of drunk. the way it should be at these sorts of things.

2010-10-12T20:28:00.001-07:00

the time to be smart is now.

my poor mother, how i scolded her.

her: don't go hiking anymore. it's dangerous.

me: don't tell me what to do.

her: you'll get attacked by a bear.

me: so what? if a bear attacks me, it attacks me. what am i gonna do about it?

her: don't talk like that.

me: why? i could die right now. i could have an aneurysm or a stroke right now.

her: don't say that.

me: we all die, mom. i am going to die. you are going to die. it's a part of life.

her: don't tell me that!

i asked her to make my favorite filipino dish, kare-kare. she went to order oxtail from bob's meats across the street. she was wearing her big blue jacket and jeans. i took pictures of her as she paid for the meat. she was so short, chin level with the metal counter. i thought of her as a bear buying food.

while i was at work, she only left the apartment to go to safeway, pcc, and mcphereson's market. her old classmate, too busy preparing for a trip to the philippines, cancelled plans with her. she had no other friends in seattle. we had that in common.

"it's lonely here," she'd say. i couldn't argue with that.

"come back to sacramento. i'll give you $100 a month," she said.

"you're bribing me to move back home?"

"and another thing," i said. "stop telling me my apartment is terrible. i'm sorry i'm not living the life you set out for me. i'm never going to make a lot of money, or go to law school or business school like you want me to. i don't want those things."

"your place isn't that bad," she said.

we ordered halo-halo from red ribbon in the southcenter mall. there was no place to sit, so we had to find some couches in the middle of the main walkway.

"people are going to complain," she said.

"why? it's a food court. all malls have food courts."

"yeah, but we're close to the stores. the white people are going to complain."

"so let them complain."

i hated the sense of inferiority that lingered in her voice. it was her decision to move to this country, her decision to stay even after she retired. why stay in a place where you feel you didn't belong?

"are you going to move back to the philippines?" i asked.

"no. that's not my home. my home is here."

"but you don't even like sacramento. why don't you just sell the house already?"

"now's not a good time to sell."

"it's never a good time to sell."

"if you move to the philippines," she said, "then pops and i probably would go, too."

"the filipina girl down the hall, she's dating a black guy?"

"yeah."

"that's sad."

"you're so racist."

"too bad she's not dating you instead."

"you should call selly's daughter. she lives in ballard."

"why? why would i want to do that?"

"i just hope you don't end up like uncle tim."

she showed me what to buy at seafood city in order to make filipino dishes. it was amazing the things she picked out. i looked at the bok choy, the eggplant, and i thought, never in a million years would i think to make a meal out of those things.

i went to church with her. we had to walk, and she was short of breath.

"you're out of shape," i said.

"i'm old!"

"still, you need to exercise more."

"i know. i know."

in the homily, the priest kept repeating, "my friends, the time to be smart is now." it became our inside joke for the week.

after church, we walked back in a downpour.

after cleaning my apartment, she said, "look! i can walk barefoot and my feet aren't as dirty."

i wanted her to be healthier, to have friends, to have money and be able to travel. i wanted her to not be so afraid of life, to take risks, and stop using old age as an excuse. i wanted her to stop worrying about me, to realize that she is no longer in control, that none of us are.

2010-10-05T20:25:00.001-07:00

feel some pressure.

mariah, the beautiful receptionist, greeted me. she knew my name without even looking at the computer. she smiled as she said my name, and she touched the back of her neck. i convinced myself that this was flirting, that she was flirting with me, and even if it wasn't true, it at least momentarily helped me forget about the awful ordeal i was about to undergo. i was finally going to get my wisdom teeth removed, and even though it was only the top two, which were already erupted, i was anxious as hell about it.

after a few minutes, she led me to one of the chairs. "do you have any questions?" she asked. yes, will you let me impregnate you at least twice? "no," i said. she told me there was a hook where i could hang my backpack. i put my belongings on the hook, and then i sat down. she handed me a consent form, one that said i ran the risk of infection, cardiac arrest, death. i signed it. minutes later, my dentist showed up. we shook hands, and he asked if i had questions. i said, no. "i'll just get you really numb," he said. we laughed at that. please don't kill me.

the injection wasn't bad at all. same as when i got my filling some months ago, i couldn't even feel the needle going in. it was only slightly sore as the needle came out. i could feel the novocaine on my lips and tongue, and within minutes, i was numb. he numbed both sides, a total of four shots. "you're going to feel a little bit of pressure," he said, and then he went to work. it's just a bit of pressure. you're going to be fine. don't panic, don't go into cardiac arrest. i could hear michael jackson's "man in the mirror" on the radio. fuck! is this is a sign? m.j. went into cardiac arrest, and then he died! "you're going to feel a lot of pressure now." his whole fist was in my mouth, and i noticed that he had kept his watch on.

good god, that's a lot of pressure. but don't worry, you're not feeling any pain. this is nothing. remember when she left you? that hurt. nothing will ever hurt you as much as that did. this ain't shit, baby. i tried to not think about what he was actually doing to me. i didn't want to look at his plastic guard, as i ran the risk of seeing the bloody carnage that was happening inside my mouth. i understood why some people wanted to be put under for a procedure like this. i anticipated a cracking sound. something was going to crack, and i didn't want to hear it. i paid attention to the radio. it was taylor swift's "love story." remember when you were in boracay and you asked that girl to dance to a remix of this song, and she said she didn't want to? god, you're a loser. you deserve this. you deserve to have all of your teeth extracted.

i exhaled deeply when the first one came out. the assistant asked, "are you okay?" "yeah," i said. he went to work on the next one. it came out easier than the first. i remember him making a circular motion with the forceps. before i knew it, i was done. all that anxiety and all those sleepless nights for nothing. the assistant packed my mouth with gauze, and my dentist said to just take it easy today, to get a lot of rest. i thanked him, and he thanked me. i was so happy to have finally found a good dentist. possibly the best dentist ever. i should write him a letter, and tell him that he's the best dentist i've ever had. and that the dentist i had as a kid scarred me for life, but now he is restoring my faith in dentistry. okay, maybe not that much. a simple thank you.

i went to pay the bill. i noticed mariah had some glitter on her face. she charged me $168. say something witty. be charming, even though you're bleeding. i didn't say anything. she told me to get plenty of rest. "and no heavy lifting!" she added. i smiled at her. love me. please. i got on my bike and rode home. i texted in sick to work. i put ice packs on my face and changed the gauze every ten minutes. i watched love, actually and ate ice cream. i bought soup from geraldine's for $8. i watched rushmore. i was glad it was over. something to do while i still had dental insurance.

a bit of pain to distract from the overall numbness.

2010-10-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

more sex in the future.

what's that? you give blood?

nah, had to get tested for the hiv.

uhh, ok. i mean, i guess everyone should, right?

haha, no, i'm kidding. i'm applying for --, and they asked me to get tested.

what? you're leaving, too?

well, i'm just applying. nothing's official yet.

yeah, you're out of here. you're outta here.

what did i say about eating in here?

you said we're not supposed to.

so put it away.

can i just eat it right now?

no. put the chips back in the box, and put it away.

just one chip?

no.

it's a pretty exciting time to be alive.

what do you mean?

just the technology that's available to us.

oh yeah, right.

i mean, i was in a mall in manila chatting with you on an iphone. instantaneously.

yeah, it's crazy. think about the jetsons. they probably didn't even have cordless phones.

have you been tested for hiv before?

no.

have you had more than one sexual partner in the past year?

no.

then you're probably at low risk.

yeah, i'm pretty sure i don't have it.

do you use condoms?

i've only had one sexual partner ever.

well, if you have more sex in the future, be sure to use condoms. and get tested.

okay.

would you like some water?

actually, could i have some tea?

sure.

and a mango smoothie.

yes.

this tea, i brought from home. we ran out of tea, so i had to bring it from home. is this okay?

yeah.

2010-09-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

it's natural to be afraid.

i had to get some baby teeth pulled in the morning. my cousin rich slept over the night before. we were just joking around, and then all of a sudden, i got serious. i told him i was afraid of seeing the dentist. he told me i didn't have to worry, that pretty soon we'd be riding around like batman and robin, and my dad's ford ltd would be the batmobile. that got me laughing again. i forgot all about being afraid, and i slept soundly that night. my dad's ford ltd the batmobile, what a riot!

i remember my dad driving us to the airport in the summer of '91. we were going to the airport to fly to manila. i didn't like flying. once, i got so airsick i had to throw up in a bag. i thought about it and thought about it. it was illogical to be afraid, since i had made the trip twice before. but then i thought, that was when i was a kid. it was different now that i was a little older. i could feel things more. my feelings and emotions had so much more gravity. i sang the church hymnal in my head: be not afraid, i go before you always. i watched planes taking off and landing, and i played that hymnal in my head.

we got on the plane, and i immediately forced myself to sleep. i wanted to sleep through the whole thing, but especially the takeoff, sleep the fear away. minutes later, my dad shook me awake. he told me that he and my mom decided to change seats. i burst into tears, and i yelled at them for waking me up. i had the whole thing planned out! i was in control! in our new seats, i couldn't stop my legs from shaking. it was the most violent shaking i had ever seen, and i couldn't get it to stop. the stewardess gave me a blanket, and my dad scratched my head. i closed my eyes for takeoff. once we were airborne, i turned to my dad, and i had the biggest smile on my face. i said to him, that was it?

my aunt used to own some dogs, lhasa apsos. they started barking at me, and they jumped on my legs. there were probably four or five of them. i just stood there in the middle of the driveway, and i bawled my eyes out.

in the philippines, one of my relatives had half a coconut on the floor. they used it to clean the floor. i saw it, and i cried.

in the seventh grade, my classmate went up on stage to play the piano for the talent show. before he went on, i wished him good luck. he said i could be up there, too, playing guitar, but i wouldn't. because you're a pussy, he said.

my mom used to have prayer groups at our house once or twice a year. there was a big statue of the santa nino, christ child, that she would put on display behind our couch. the statue was like a four foot doll, and it had a porcelain face with long, curly hair. at night, i couldn't leave my bedroom to use the bathroom or get a drink of water. i didn't want to see it in the dark.

my mom also had smaller versions of the santo nino that she put in my bedroom, as well as her own. when i was old enough, i told her i didn't want it in my room anymore. she asked me why, and did it scare me? i told her it did. i once had a dream where our house was on fire, and in the driveway, there stood the santo nino.

i slept in my parents' bedroom on a foldout couch up until the seventh grade. the thought of being able to masturbate openly and at any hour of the night trumped any fears i had about sleeping in my own bedroom.

freshman year of college, i got really high and paranoid. i wanted to go back to my dorm room. i wanted to be a good kid. out on 12th avenue, i powerwalked back to bellarmine. my two buddies made fun of me for walking so fast. he thinks if he walks faster, he'll get more sleep! she called out in the dark.

it gives me the creeps to go inside the rosemont house by myself. my grandpa died there.

my girlfriend wanted to ride all the rides at disneyland. i had never ridden anything before. she kept pushing me and pushing me. frustrated, i called her a bitch. her eyes bulged, and then she went and rode california screamin' by herself. when she found me, i was crying on a park bench. i was twenty-one years old, still afraid of life.

after hurricane katrina, i didn't want to go to new orleans. i'd wake up in the middle of the night and picture myself alone on an airplane. i didn't want to be alone on an airplane. i wanted to just be in bed with my girlfriend.

the first time i got prostatitis, i thought it was all over. i was sitting on a bench in cal anderson park, waiting for my doctor's appointment. i sat there on the bench, and it was a sunny day. what if this is it, i thought. what if i am going to die? i thought about sean reid, a college classmate who died of cancer shortly before graduation. i thought about my instant messenger friend, gabby, who told me once that she couldn't believe one day we'd all be dead. and the saddest thing about death, she said, was that she wouldn't be able to look through her kitchen window ever again.

after i watched the exoricst, i couldn't sleep. i was eighteen then. after i watched the shining on the big screen, i couldn't sleep. i was twenty.

one easter, i watched a bible movie with my dad. i kept thinking about lazarus coming back from the dead, and i couldn't sleep.

last year, i asked this girl out for drinks. i couldn't even do it in person. i did it over instant message. my heart was racing as i typed it. we finally went out for drinks, and i didn't know what to say. i was twenty-six years old, and i hadn't ever really dated. she asked me what i had been up to lately, and i told her that i had been barbecuing with friends. was i really so boring? when i came back from the restroom, she casually slipped in an anecdote about some guy she was already seeing. i played it off like, oh, whatever, and then i insisted on paying for our beers.

you never made a move, my ex said. i had to make the first move, she said.

i asked my coworker if she had any manly-looking umbrellas behind her desk. as if there's anything remotely manly about you, she responded.

sometimes i wake up alone in my apartment, usually in the middle of the night, and i am terrified. and for no reason. no reason whatsoever.

2010-09-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

can you be perfect?

as i walked home from work today, a bunch of peewee football players were running up and down the hill. it made me glad that my elementary school never had any hills. i thought about how the coach would use anything to challenge us, physically exhaust us. and as a kid, i never saw the point. i looked at the faces of the peewee footballers, and they looked red, sweaty, miserable. i wonder if they thought what i thought when i played soccer and basketball and had to go to practice: what is the point?

i didn't see the point then. soccer practice was intense. mr. martin was our coach, and he was a big mexican man with a super mario mustache. he was large and had a big gut, wore glasses and a whistle around his neck. and he made us run laps like i've never run before in my life. there was one exercise in particular that all of us boys dreaded. we would all jog around the soccer field, and each time he blew the whistle, the boy at the front would have to sprint all the way around the field to catch up with the jogging group. and he wouldn't let us stop until each boy had gone around at least, if i remember correctly, twice. on one our two occasions, he was so pissed at us that we ended up doing it for the entire practice.

and then game day would be on saturday morning. i remember being so happy on the few mornings when it rained and the game would get called off. that meant i could just sleep in or maybe watch cartoons. but most of the time, it didn't rain, and my dad would drive us off to some random part of the city, and i would stand on a field in my jersey, cleats, and shin guards for two hours or so. playing a sport i didn't really care for with boys i didn't even really like. the experience didn't instill any sense of being on a team, or build leadership skills, or teach me that hard work paid off, practice makes perfect, and all that shit. all that i really learned from soccer was being disappointed when we lost, and not really feeling like i had contributed anything if we had won. i did, however, learn to hate the other team, to be disgusted with boys i didn't even know.

a few months ago, i got to talking with my parents, and i asked them why they enrolled me in soccer. "i thought you liked it," they said. i told them that i didn't. but i think that, on some level, i must have. i did like running (just not to the point of vomiting) and kicking a soccer ball and bouncing it off my knee. i liked getting new cleats from big 5 each year, and wearing shin guards made me feel like an indestructible robot. i liked getting orange slices and capri suns after a game, and seeing all the hot soccer moms and sisters of teammates. i liked it when it was all over, and coach would say he was proud of us, and you could tell by the look in his eyes that he really, really meant it, and then we'd get an ice cream party and trophies.

it wasn't until i saw friday night lights (both the movie and tv show) that i understood why we play sports, and why they matter. in the movie, coach is always talking about being perfect, and at the end of the movie, he explains that being perfect isn't necessarily about winning. but it's about doing all that you could have done. i think about that final scene a lot, the one that takes place in the locker room where he finally reveals this concept of being perfect. i think that it translates to so many other things in life.

there was this poem that my english professor shared with us once. it wasn't a very good poem, but it pretty much drove home the same point. in the poem, he kept repeating the line: "let it be enough." it was directed to all the perfectionist writing center consultants. the repeated line basically reminded us that there's only so much we can do. there shouldn't be any sense of failure or disappointment if you gave it all you've got.

2010-09-13T21:13:00.001-07:00

never eat dairy queen in life.

i said that i wanted to hike up granite mountain. gen was a hiker, so she said okay, let's do it. but that wasn't good enough for me. see, i've lived in this city long enough to know that if you don't actually name a date and time, it ain't gonna happen. like how i was supposed to go fishing with my other coworker over a year ago. gen suggested a sunday. i said that was fine. so, we had plans to hike up granite mountain, and that was that.

the day before the big hike, i ate horribly. i had a taco salad from a food court, and then an oreo/m&m blizzard from dairy queen for dessert. it wasn't my usual diet, but i was in the suburbs, and i thought, what the hell, when will i be in the suburbs again? afterward, i spent most of the night in the bathroom. i couldn't believe what i had done to myself before venturing on an eight mile roundtrip hike. when the alarm clock rang for 8 a.m. on sunday, i kicked myself for what i had gotten myself into. but i couldn't flake on her. she was all set to go! suck it up, i told myself. for once in your life, be a goddamn man.

gen drove us out there, and it was a bit cloudy. we talked about our families and podcasts and work. there were no awkward pauses or anything. we got along fine. we got to the trailhead, and started our sunday morning adventure. she kept a brisk pace, and i was having a hard time catching up. she didn't even sound like she was out of breath. gen just kept talking about work and other stuff, and i was trying for dear life to keep up with her. i thought about the oreo/m&m blizzard. i could see it in my mind. all those sugars and chemicals slowing me down, making me feel faint. i felt bad, but i had to speak up. i asked if we could stop for a bit.

she didn't seem the least bit annoyed. she just sat there while i unzipped my backpack and ate an orange. i thought of the scene in 28 days later when the two characters are heading up the stairs and the main guy can't keep up. he has to sit down and drink a pepsi. that was me. i was crashing. if zombies were after us, i'd be eaten alive. i confessed the shit food i ate the day before, and she laughed at me. she said i should never eat dairy queen in life. she said that sometimes you just need a partner to tell you to keep going. i thought then about how it would've been nice to have had an older sibling, someone like her, to tell me to suck it up every now and then.

once i had regained my senses and was good to go, she said that it might be best if i led the way. which i did, at a snail's pace. going up granite, i kept finding other reasons to stop. i wanted to look at the view, i lied. i wanted to take a picture. there was a pebble in my shoe and it was making the walk uncomfortable. at some point, she told me that maybe we would see a bear. i said that i would like to see a bear, but i wasn't sure why. i just wanted to see something, anything. there's so much i haven't seen in real life.

we got up to the clouds, and a huge meadow opened up. everything was red and green and fog. she pointed out blackberries, and told me that's what the bears eat. i wanted to ask if we could eat them, too, but i didn't want to sound too ignorant. she regained the lead, but i must have gotten my second wind from the orange because i was keeping up. the cool mist on me helped, too, and i knew that i could summit the mountain, no problem.

all of a sudden, she became quiet, and she stopped so suddenly in the middle of the trail that i almost bumped into her. i turned to my right, and about twenty or thirty yards away, there was a giant black bear looking right at us. the bear looked to her right, and there were two small cubs eating berries. the bear looked at us again, and this time, she got up on her hind legs. gen said that we should probably turn around. i did as i was told. i calmly turned, remembering that any sudden movements might freak the bear out. my natural instinct was to run away, run the fuck away, fast and far, but somehow i knew the bear would just leave us alone.

we walked far enough back down the trail, and we bumped into two young women. gen told them about the bear sighting, and they decided to turn around. gen reasoned that it would probably be okay, that they would most likely retreat at the sound of our voices, but the fact that the bear got on her hind legs really threw her off. the four of us agreed that it would probably be okay, so we continued up the trail. we saw the cubs again in the distance, and we decided that it would probably be a better idea to just turn around. this was their home, after all, and we were intruding.

on the hike back down the mountain, gen told me that i was pretty calm for what had just happened. i told her that i didn't have time to really process the encounter. but what i really thought was: if the bear killed us, then it killed us. what else could we have done?

2010-09-12T22:22:00.001-07:00

i can just feel it.

i couldn't sleep the night before my interview. it wasn't even that i was nervous about it. it was just something different. my life lately has been strict, mundane routine, so the slightest change upsets the system. i dreamed of some guy who was dead, and when they found him, he was in a relaxed and comfortable position in his desk chair, hands behind his head. i took it as a sign. that's gonna be you, keep going on the way you do, sitting at your desk, making money and turning stupid. i kept waking up through the night. time to get up yet? no, not yet. time to get up yet? almost.

finally i got up, showered, ate my oatmeal. why didn't i shit before i left? i had plenty of time to take a decent shit! now what if i have to go? nothing worse than being on the light rail or bus and having to go. only one time was it so bad that i actually had to get off at a different stop and scramble for a public bathroom. and luckily, at the time, i was only heading home, so no big problem. but it could come at any time! best not to think about it. i felt like a dope, dressed head to toe in j. crew with my new north face backpack. look at this nerdy yuppie, they'd say. he's certainly not fit for the program.

i got off the light rail at westlake center, used my handy dandy iphone to locate the office. i think i had been there before. same office as the oral surgeon i pussied out on going through with last year. i asked the front desk dude where the office was. "sixth floor," he said. i went up to the sixth floor, and the door was still locked. a small woman let me in. i apologized for being early. i heard you're not supposed to do that in interviews. i took a seat. soon, another woman came in and they hugged each other. "after you've been in the program," she said, "that's what happens! you start hugging everyone in this office!" i laughed. they were an odd bunch, but what the hell. i could use a hug.

the recruiter had a streak of purple in her hair. she told me i'd have to get fingerprinted. she told me she loved speaking with me on the phone, and she said i would be a perfect fit for the program, she could "feel" it. and then she fingerprinted me, but before she did so, she looked at me, and she told me she loved me. she was an old woman, old enough to be my grandma, and she was such a hippie that i almost felt compelled to tell her that i loved her, too. almost. she kept screwing up the fingerprints, and i liked to believe that it was so that she could keep holding onto my hands for as long as she could. that's probably not true. but then again, she told me she loved me within five minutes of meeting me.

she said that she was upset that she would not be the one interviewing me, but that i should feel completely comfortable in the interview. and then she disappeared, and i waited some more. i sat down next to a very pretty girl, who was probably right out of college, and i said, "hello." she said "hello" back, and i thought that this was a very good start to the program. i asked if she was interviewing, and she said yes. and then she asked me if i was interviewing, and i said yes. and then i got called in for my interview.

they asked me exactly twenty questions. why do i want to join? when have i been a leader? what challenges do i think i'll face? i faltered a bit in the beginning. and then somehow, i picked up the pace. something clicked in me, and that something said, dude, who gives a shit? i didn't practice for the interview at all. people told me beforehand that i should do a mock interview, or at least outline what i was going to say, but i said fuck it. i've had enough practice with interviews as it is. all in all, i think it went very well.

i left the building feeling confident. here i am, i thought. i may not matter all that much, but i'm gonna give it all i've got.

2010-09-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

they'll only miss you when you leave.

she said that when i go into my interview, don't make it sound like i am trying to escape something. well, that kind of stung because of course i am trying to escape something. let me tell you about the things i am trying to escape.

there's my couch. the stitching has come undone in several places. it seemed like a good enough couch even though i felt coerced into buying it. see, my friends, they said, well, you have an apartment now, dum-dum, why don't you furnish it? and on top of their lists was a couch. they said, if you get a couch, then you can have friends over! and then those friends moved away. and the only person who sits on the $380 couch that i purchased brand new, and which has more or less fallen apart in just a year and a half, is me.

there's my television. i wasted most of spring and part of summer watching a stupid television show called lost. the show was okay and it had its moments, but when the island moved, and then when there was time travel...well, i just don't know how some people can say that it's one of the best shows ever. that's just silly talk. and anyway, watching the show by myself just reminded me that i don't know what i'm doing on this earth, but it doesn't really matter that much because i'm just going to die. six feet under had the same effect, but it was a much better show.

there's my iphone. technically, i'm still under contract for a full year and four months. sometimes, i feel like i am just working to pay for rent, groceries, and my iphone bill. and when i think of things that way, i think that the system is very stupid. essentially, i am working to give my landlord, pcc groceries, and steve jobs my money. and as a reward, i can have a few beers here and there, watch a movie, buy something i don't have to make payments on, like a t-shirt or backpack. i don't even like talking on the phone. i don't know why i have one.

there's the internet. sure, the internet is great for blogging and looking at boobs. but i'm trying to escape it, too. social networking sites just remind me that my life is boring. why do i have 370 friends on facebook? i don't even know these people. but i still read their status updates - everyone from some random elementary school classmate to some chick i talked to once in manila - and i don't know why i read them. not since sixth grade history have i read so much about something i have so little interest in.

there's the solitude. a friend of my dad's who also lives in seattle told my dad that one needs an upbeat personality to make it in this city. let's face it. upbeat personality? just look at the title of my blog. but the dude is right. living alone anywhere can be depressing, but especially in seattle. add to the fact that it's actually a fifteen, twenty minute ride south of seattle, and it's even more isolated. in the last three days i haven't spoken to a single person.

there's the job. granted, i've hated every job i've ever had, and i've looked forward to every last day with the exception of the writing center. but here's where it gets tricky. the job i have now is certainly not the worst. i could take off a whole month if i wanted to, and i've done it. there's always food lying around at the office, and it's always mine for the taking. i have a retirement account, and the school just keeps throwing money in it every month for no reason! and even though i don't know how to talk to any of them, there are hot girls all over campus all the time. the people i work with don't annoy me, and they don't expect much from me, either. all in all, it is the least stressful thing i've ever done. i also have full health and dental coverage, and i'm confident that they would never lay me off. ever.

but still, there's the job. there's looking at the computer all day long, browsing the same boring sites. there's my job title, program assistant, that screams unskilled entry-level no chance for moving upward ever. there are long-winded meetings about mission statements and communications and strategic planning. there's answering emails and submitting reimbursement forms. there's sitting in an office chair all day long, wondering about ergonomics and heart disease. there's awkward monthly birthday parties and being reminded that i'm one of the few men on staff, one of the few asians. and always there's wondering, can't i do better than this? wasn't i destined for something greater than this?

and though it's scary, i can't tell you how satisfying it is to say, fuck it. even if things don't work out, if things somehow get worse than they already are, at the very least, you'll no longer be in a state of wondering.

2010-09-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

angel hair and baby's breath.

i went to the seattle art museum. the whole time i've lived here, i might've gone only about four or fives times. as a freshman at s.u., i once had to go for an art history class. i didn't get art history. who the hell cared about tribal clothing, goblets and paintings of fat and pasty white naked women? i had to write five to seven pages about some fucking tablet, and i didn't know what to say about it. i pulled something together, though, and it was good enough to get me a c or a b.

so yesterday i went, for the first time, by myself, as an adult. the other times i've gone it was because someone else wanted to go, and i had nothing better to do. i walked around, skipped all the african tribal stuff, and went straight for the special exhibitions, which focused on kurt cobain and andy warhol. i looked at a picture of kurt cobain, and i figured that music was about as close as i could ever get to appreciating or understanding art. there he was, in that iconic pose, lying down on a trashed drum set, and he was looking at the camera with a look that said, why the fuck am i still alive? i thought back to the times i played guitar with my cousin and all i wanted to do was smash the guitar, break it over my knee, and whirl it around over my head because i sucked, because the world didn't care about me, and because i would never be able to make real music. and i guess that this expression, this need to say something important without actually saying it, that was where art came from.

i didn't get warhol. the whole four prints thing sewn together and then all those black and white videos of just people's faces. i didn't get it at all. who the hell cared about cool white people who lived in new york a long time ago? all i could think of when i read about warhol's factory is the group of kids at every college who are all fucking each other and smoking cigarettes and listening to bands you've never heard of.

then i saw some photographs by amy blakemore, and i liked them. i think i just liked that she got an mfa in photography in the late eighties. that appealed to me for some reason, and i couldn't explain it. i saw this one photograph, and it was just a big open space and there was a woman pushing somebody in a wheelchair, and i thought that was great. then i read that amy had earned a travel grant from some school to go to europe to take more pictures in the early 90's, and i liked reading that. i can only imagine how happy she must have been then, to receive that grant to go do something she loved. and then there was a picture just titled "dad," and i read about how it was the last picture she took of her dad, him on his deathbed. it was real dark and all you could see were his hands, and there were these venetian blinds that looked like the ones in the bedroom i grew up in. i thought it was the saddest fucking picture i had ever seen.

i got out of there, and i received a text from an old friend. fuck off, was all it said.

2010-09-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

just like starting over.

dude showed up and slapped hands with me. if he thought it was strange at all that i had asked him and his girlfriend to have dinner with me, he didn't show it. he had on his bus driver uniform, and then we ordered some beers. we got to talking politics, since he's part of the international socialist organization or something. he asked if i was socialist. i probably am, but i told him i wasn't, and that i didn't really know anything about socialism. i once read that jesus was a socialist, and if that's true, then i probably understand socialism better than i think i do.

he asked me what my politics were, and i told him i didn't really keep up on them as much as i did in college. i just don't see the point anymore, but i didn't tell him that. i told him i voted for nader, and then he high-fived me because he did, too. i told him i did so because i couldn't get behind obama's perpetuating the war in afghanistan rhetoric, and i couldn't support any candidate who thought increasing troops in a country we know nothing about would ever be a good idea. he nodded, and then we drank our beer.

his girlfriend showed up, and she seemed kind of huffy. she poked fun at him for always wanting to go to bed early, and he didn't try to argue or anything. it felt like i was watching an old version of my previous relationship. it was a strange thing, to have been broken up, to see close friends break up, and then to see this current relationship: the strong, assertive woman and her passive, low-key boyfriend. we ordered our food. i got the dungeon burger, and vegetarians that they were, they ordered tofu burritos.

we got to talking about the past. i told them about americorps, about sacramento, and he talked about the suburb outside of cleveland, oberlin, working at ups. the girl's story was about the northeast, delaware to be exact, how she studied neuroscience but had no plans for graduate school. it was a real good thing, to have people to talk to. people who didn't have to put on a show or act sarcastically or pretend they were something more than they actually were. i thought back to my seattle works group, how they were all older, more professional, better able to act like they knew what they were doing in life. all i needed, i realized, was some people my age who were in the same boat, just trying to figure things out.

he asked me if i had roommates and i told him no, but that recently, i was wishing that i did. he said that he'd never done it, and that it would probably be awesome to live alone. i told him that it was at first, but now i was wishing i had roommates. he said that sometimes he wished that he and his girlfriend lived in a house with other people and she said that she sometimes wished that, too. i thought about the lonely american and the idea of cocooning. it's not good to cocoon when you're a couple. you need an active social life and friends of your own. i didn't know those things when i was 22. now i am alone.

toward the end of dinner, his brother showed up, and he was going on and on about some dojo he had visited. the brother said that he was going to drive up from olympia every week to go to the dojo, but his brother told him it was a stupid idea. he reasoned that it would be a lot of money wasted on gas, so the membership, which seemed like a deal, wouldn't even be worth it. the brother was really intense, and i felt like he was putting on a show, but maybe that was just how he was. there were awkward silences when the brother was there, and then once he broke it by making karate sound effects.

the girl said she had to go pee, so it was just us three boys. somehow, we were talking about the game, the pickup artist shit my friend from new york is into, and then the brother said that someone should write the end game, a guide to breaking up with someone smoothly. he then went into his divorce, and he played it off like it wasn't a big deal. he said it was the easiest thing ever. he said that his then wife sat him down and told him that it wasn't working anymore, and to that, he just said, okay. and then when she went off and had sex with a girl, he also just said, okay.

his brother said that he was lying, that he wasn't okay with the divorce. he said that he was pretty upset about it for a while. and then he turned to me and he told me that his brother was with this girl for ten years before they got divorced. i just said, oh. and then he said out loud, i don't even know what i'd do if she and i broke up (she was still in the bathroom at that point), i think that i would just give up. i wanted to tell him, yeah, i have given up. look at me, this is what it looks like. and then he said, there's just so much that goes into a relationship. i can't imagine starting over.

i can't imagine it, either.

2010-08-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

that's off.

at my boss' kid's first birthday party, i made a fool of myself right from the start by asking if her husband was home sick when he was standing ten feet away across the room. she looked at me like i was crazy, and then she told me that no, he just had a twenty-four hour bug. i smiled, and then i let the adults continue talking. i handed her my birthday present to her daughter, which was a set of three sailboats for the bathtub. i remembered liking toys in the bathtub when i was a kid, so that's why i bought it. when i bought the toy, i saw my barber, holly, and she said hello to me. i said hello back and told her that i was shopping for a birthday present. in the store, i also wanted to buy these cool-looking japanese dolls that were $16, but then i thought, what business does a grown man like myself have buying these japanese dolls?

i was out of place at the party, which was nothing unusual for me. it was a real grown up party, though, a bunch of couples with their infants, and why did i show up to this thing anyway? i made a plate of caesar salad with some quesadillas and i sat at the a small table, where i ate by myself. i walked around the playground a bit, and this south korean woman introduced herself to me. she was an elementary school teacher, and she was there with her husband, who worked security for boeing, and they had a tiny daughter who looked at me and smiled. the woman and i talked about teaching in korea and the richmond night market.

i went to the basketball court where this black kid was shooting hoops by himself. i asked if i could shoot with him, and he said sure. so, there we were, shooting hoops. i made some, bricked some, air-balled more than i would have liked. i worked up a sweat and asked the kid if he was in high school. he seemed flattered, and then he told me no, that he was just gonna be in eighth grade. i tried to make small talk, asked if his team was any good, where he planned on going to high school, etc. he answered questions, but didn't say much else. only other thing he said was, "that's off" before missing some shots.

afterward, i got some groceries. i went up the escalator to catch the light rail, and i thought that i might want to be a dad some day. but only because i like my cousin's kids, and my boss seems to be happier, and my other coworker looked like he was really having a ball pushing his daughter on the swing. actually, not just having a ball. it looked like that that was it. it looked like that was about as good as it got in this stupid crazy world. he was pushing his daughter on the swing and she was just really laughing it up, and his wife was just standing there, taking it all in. and i thought this over on the escalator ride up, and i thought about how i was gonna make dinner for one, and spend my saturday night watching a lot of television. my friend has told me, it won't always be like this, and i won't feel this way forever. but it's sure starting to feel like forever.

i'm going to have to change it up real quick.

2010-08-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

spend my whole life good will hunting.

there are so many horrible voices in the world. take this one time, for example. this old woman asked me what i studied in college. i told her creative writing. she scoffed. "haven't you ever heard of making a living?" she asked. and then there was this other time. this woman cheryl, who is my uncle's sister, asked me if i was still in school. i told her i had already graduated two years ago. she asked me what did i get my degree in. after i answered, she said, "you should've done medicine or engineering instead." and then just a few months ago, i told a good friend i planned on quitting my job to just travel. he said, "listen to yourself," and then convinced me it was a bad idea.

these people don't even know who i am, or what i'm about, yet they think they know what's best, what i should've done. can you imagine? i want to call them stupid, but i'm the stupid one for listening. surely, you've had people in your life discourage you from doing what you want. and you probably listened, too. because you want your life to make sense. you want what has been planned out for you, even though you know it's unsustainable and, in the long run, won't even make you happy. yet you do it because it's what's expected of you.

i'm ready to walk away from it. let me tell you how the trap is set, now that i've been in it for some time. when you're a grown up, or almost one like i am, you'll want your own place. because that's what grown ups do. roommates are for broke college busters and co-ops are for dirty delusional hippies. we live alone because it's more convenient, and if we're lucky, we can bring someone back to our sweet bachelor pad. but the truth is that it's hard to meet people. especially if you live in a city like seattle, and not even seattle, but the south part of seattle where people your age don't even seem to exist. so, instead of the nonstop parties you expected, instead of bringing back random floosies to your apartment, you're more likely to just feel alone. you'll be lucky if you can have a friend come over once a week to watch jersey shore.

once college ends, everyone is too busy for you. they pencil you in for coffee dates. and if you don't drink coffee, then expect to just sit at home and feel bad about yourself. there's also happy hour. you have to drink. during college, but especially after college, people don't know how to talk to one another if beers and sangria aren't involved. you can't talk about anything important, either. it's gotta be all lighthearted banter about getting laid or not getting laid and who is so-and-so and what is so-and-so doing these days and that's a nice looking jacket, where'd you get it?

and you blow money on these drinks, but it doesn't matter because you're finally working! you finally have money to spend on the one thing that's guaranteed to bring single adults together: alcohol. you'll blow money on other things, too: new shoes, clothes, gadgets, furniture to help your apartment (and thus your life) not look so painfully empty, high speed internet, cell phone bill (no one's calling your ass), groceries, movies, more happy hours. when you're alone and have nothing to do, you can always go out and shop some more!

the other day, while walking to my job, i took a physical assessment of how much i was worth. penguin polo, $30 (nordstrom rack); pants, $69 (j. crew); running shoes (nike), $99; duffel bag (onitsuka tiger), $45; iphone, $299; at&t 3g service plan ($80+ per month). how did i let things get so out of control? i couldn't even imagine what would've happened if i had actually made real money. i was walking around, $1,000 human being. and sure, a lot of people will say, big fucking deal, i've got the iphone 4, and my shoes cost more than your entire savings account. but how do these people live with themselves. how do i do it? honestly. my god.

i don't want to make a living anymore. i want to make a life.

2010-08-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

yeah, a 'rir bit ronery.

i'm an only child, so growing up, i had things my way all the time. i had my room just the way i wanted it. all my books and toys were organized. whenever my cousin rich bitch came over, he would make a mess of things, and once, i even called him out on it. i told him, "every time you come over, my room gets messy!" he didn't have anything to say about that. i think he just visited less after that.

i didn't have a roommate until college. i was going to be roommates with some random dude, but the thought of that freaked me out, so i requested to be roommates with someone i went to elementary and high school with, tony meatballs. i didn't talk to tony meatballs in high school at all, but it didn't matter. he was a familiar face, and i just knew that he'd be a better roommate than some random ass dude.

tony meatballs would sometimes get drunk and come home in the middle of the night puking. i didn't mind that. i found it funny because i wasn't the one puking. he'd procrastinate a lot, too, so sometimes he'd be up until 4 in the morning typing a stupid paper. that was something i wouldn't stand for. i told him that if he was gonna pull that shit, he should go down to the basement and type his papers. he did as i asked, but that didn't stop him from waking my ass up at 5 a.m. to ask me how to print.

it was fun having a roommate. he'd tell me all about his girl troubles, and he'd look out for me. see, our neighbor, geoff, would make a lot of asian jokes, and they didn't really bother me because i knew geoff was a good guy. but tony meatballs took me aside one day, and he asked me if geoff's jokes bothered me at all. it meant a lot to me that he asked that.

toward the end of sophomore year, i was kind of over having a roommate. i was a real dick about it. i had a girlfriend, and i didn't really care about anything else. see, tony meatballs was a soccer player, and he had his dirty laundry scattered all over the floor. once, he did laundry and he didn't even bother putting his clothes away. being a passive-aggressive weirdo, i actually folded his clothes and put them away for him. he walked in on me doing this, and he said, "what are you doing?" i glared at him, and i said, "putting away your clothes." he left the room after that.

we didn't talk for a few weeks, and i decided i wanted my own place. i didn't tell him what my living plans were for junior year. i entered the school lottery to get a studio in the murphy apartments, and i remember waiting in line in campion ballroom to hear my name called. i remember tony was sitting down with his soccer buddies, and he just looked at me. it was an expressionless look, but it made my heart sink, like i had let him down in some way. i barely saw him on campus those next two years.

after college, i moved in with my girlfriend, and that was pretty much a disaster.

during my second year of americorps, i got another roommate, glenn. glenn was a tall blonde kid with a cleft lip. he listened to classical music and jim o'rourke and nina nastasia, had leftist politics, played the trombone, smoked a lot of dope, and knew how to fix cars. i was hardly ever home, since i worked at starbucks and slept at my girlfriend's place, so i was never much of a roommate to him. the house was always cold, and our fridge was always empty, so there was never much of a reason to stick around. we ate a lot of gardenburgers and stir-fry potato/onion/cheese concoctions. when we didn't have to be roommates anymore, i was pretty happy about that.

after americorps, i lived at home, did nothing, and i felt like the world had left me behind.

when i moved back to seattle, i got my own place. i didn't bother getting a couch or anything for the first six months. i didn't see the point. my new apartment was just a shelter, not a home. i still see it that way. still, it was pretty sick having my own place, at least for a little while. i could shit with the door open, nap whenever i wanted, listen to music and watch porn at any hour, play my guitar and sing songs and not annoy anybody and not have anybody annoy me. i could fart like a champ, walk around naked, talk to myself and say funny things out loud to entertain myself. it was fun. for a while.

it gets scary, though, this business of living alone. there are moments, sometimes when i wake up from a nap, and i am very aware of my body, very aware that one day, i am going to die. it's very easy to go a full weekend without talking to anybody. i think about how my parents are aging, how they won't be around forever, and why the hell am i living so far away from them? i talk to my mom on the phone, and she can annoy me, and sometimes, i'll be really abrupt with her. i tell my cousin that sometimes i feel like i'm in the movie moon, or else living in the hatch in lost. i'm an introvert, probably have social anxiety disorder, am not good at making friends, lack confidence, don't know what to do with my life. now is not the fucking time to be living alone.

i thought that there was something wrong with me, but there isn't. there are now more people in america living alone than ever before. i checked out this book from the library, the lonely american: drifting apart in the 21st century, and it's the most important book i've read in a long time. it talks about how the concept of loneliness is stigmatized in our society, and how just admitting you're lonely is a faux pas. more people are more comfortable admitting they're depressed than admitting they're lonely.

i think about what this all means. how, rather than trying to get along with my roommates, i just walked away from all of it. i got my own apartment because it was more convenient. when my girlfriend and i moved in together, and it didn't work, i easily gave up on us. i thought: well, there goes any chance of us ever getting married. the bottom line is, it's easier to be alone than to have to work on relationships. cutting people out is pretty standard, and more and more, it's becoming the norm for people to just admit, "well, we've lost touch. that's just a part of getting older."

the book also says that men who live alone tend to be lonelier than women. people who live alone are less likely to socialize, less likely to ever have roommates again. the book pretty much called me out on my shit. so now i'm rsvping to every facebook event i get invited to, calling/texting/emailing people more and, if i can help it, i'm never going to live on my own again.

similar to working in an office, human beings just weren't meant for this shit.

2010-08-16T20:50:00.001-07:00

good for ten years!

i'm sure i've told you about the doctor i had as a kid, dr. dentinger. he was an old man, 6'6" and had to have been well over 250 lbs. a giant of a football player of a monster. he talked in his big, booming voice ("how's my old buddy, james?") and he scared the crap out of me. he'd jam the tuberculosis test into my forearm, ram instruments into my ear, press his dead cold hands deep into my abdomen. my mom wondered why i cried each time she told me it was time to see the doctor.

i've had other doctors since dr. dentinger, but none i really liked until i recently met dr. kawamoto. i went in today for a physical and because i was concerned about depression and anxiety attacks. i told her it ran in the family. she said she'd give me a brief screening from the a.m.a., and she read off questions like, "how often do you feel bad about yourself?" and "have you ever tried to hurt yourself or commit suicide?" i answered as honestly as i could, but i also thought the screening was a little ridiculous because, at the same time, even though i didn't know her well, i wanted her to think highly of me. there was also the fear that one wrong answer could lead to a lifetime of stray jackets and a daily dose of prozac. at the end of it, she declared me depression-less, and free from anxiety attacks, but she still gave me a mental health referral, in case i just wanted someone to talk to.

toward the end of the physical, she asked me the question i had been waiting to hear: "are you sexually active?" i told her the truth, and she made it seem like it was okay that i wasn't. because in reality, it probably is. she told me that if i do become sexually active in the future, i should use condoms and birth control. i just smiled. she then asked me if i had any questions about sex, and if i had a sense of humor i would've said, "yes, how do i get it?" but instead, i just told her no. finally, she started to say something along the lines of, have i given any thought to getting married? but she didn't finish her sentence. she trailed off, and it was like something my boss had done to me before. i didn't get it. older women's fascination with me getting married, but being too embarrassed to ask.

i had to get blood work done and then a tetanus booster shot. the girl who gave me the booster shot was pretty hot, and her name was katie. she stuck the needle in my right arm, and i remembered zack from saved by the bell getting a shot from the hot nurse. the whole thing took less than twenty seconds, and when she finished, she said, "okay, that's good for ten years!" i easily did the math. i wouldn't have to get another one of these until i'm thirty-seven years old.

i went to work, and it was pointless.

after work, i went to the library because i was amazed it was open. they usually close when it's too hot outside, and this afternoon was about 88. in the nonfiction section, i found this book, the lonely american, and here's a sample passage:

so josh came to therapy sessions and regularly complained that he had had a disconnected, lonely weekend in which he slept too much, watched too much tv, and ended up disgusted with himself. what emerged in therapy was that josh's life was so empty because he didn't want anyone to know that he had so little to do. he avoided social situations because he did not want anyone to ask him what he was doing. the reason: he had a nine-to-five job that did not interest him. the kind of crowd he was afraid to face were friends and relatives who were passionate about what they did, who boasted about their sixty-hour workweeks, who were busy all the time. josh had made his life emptier because it was not busy enough to feel like a high-status life. when relatives and friends who hadn't given up on him pressed him about why he hadn't shown up to a particular social event, his usual excuse was that he was just too busy.

i lay in columbia park a short while after reading this. in the distance, some band was practicing "when the saints go marching in." cars with their headlights on whizzed down rainier ave. i could see television sets in windows. i thought about myself in public, always with my headphones on, always tweeting or chatting, never available for anyone immediately around me. i thought about how i invited my neighbors out for drinks one time, and then when no one else ever planned anything, i got frustrated and gave up on ever trying to hang out with them again. i thought about how i have a very small group of friends that i see on weekends if i'm lucky and all the people i've just completely shut out of my life for one reason or another. i thought about how, over the past two years, i've completely disconnected myself from people, only left to wonder why i am so alone.

and then i tried to just not think at all. to get the voice inside my head to just shut up, if only for a minute. it was a challenge.

2010-08-15T22:09:00.001-07:00

humans weren't meant to.

see, i was just visiting family, and my cousin, he kept on being like, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do? fool just couldn't shut up. he couldn't help himself, you know. and i remember that, i remember those days, even from just a few years ago. it'd be one of those days where there just wasn't a goddamn thing to do, and it was maddening. it was like, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do? and so this is what we did: we went to the mall, we went out for ice cream, and then we went home. and that seemed like enough for my cousin who has two kids, and my other cousin who is just in high school. but it wasn't enough for me. it just wasn't. so i left.

and then there i was on this rooftop with a couple of friends, and more friends of friends. there were beers going around, and there were white people everywhere. and i should just get over the race issue already, right? if it's such a big deal, why don't i just go out there and make some asian friends, right? well, i don't know how to do that, so i just drank and kept quiet. and i've seen pictures of my cousin's facebook, and i see his red drunken face surrounded by mostly white people, and i've thought to myself: cousin, what the hell are we doing in this strange, strange place?

it didn't matter much because my legs had felt heavy, and i just wanted to go to sleep anyway. earlier in the day, i had hiked eight miles roundtrip up and down mt. si with a friend. i was all ready to go up the mountain with just a water bottle, but the jew told me to get some trail mix and a power bar or something. he said spending five hours in the heat with just a water bottle, well, that was just stupid. and he was right. it was a hell of a hike and a damn good thing i didn't do it alone.

that's what i've been wanting lately. remember office space? of course you do. well, the line that sticks out the most is where peter says something like humans weren't meant to sit in cubicles all day. and he's damn right about that. when i went up mt. si, i felt more alive than i've felt in years. because that's what we're supposed to do. we're supposed to move around and push limits, physically exhaust ourselves. we're not supposed to just sit around and ask, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?

today, i didn't do anything. i woke up late, ate, did the dishes, did laundry, called my mom, watched friday night lights the tv show, played guitar, chatted online. it wasn't much, but it beat doing something just for the sake of doing something. and that's what it felt like at home. going to the mall or out for ice cream just because we couldn't bear the thought of just sitting around looking at one another, or going out on a saturday night with the hope of having a good time. call me crazy, call me ignorant, but it just reflects poorly on us. it says something about how we don't know how to be with one another unless we're consuming, drinking, gossiping. it says that we don't think much of ourselves. the way most of us live is downright appalling when you really think about what we're doing.

hiking up mt. si made me realize how out of touch with nature, reality, humanity i am. why didn't my parents ever take me on a hike? why is it that, at twenty-seven years old, i've only seen beautiful scenery from inside a car? we'd go up to some of the most beautiful spots like lake tahoe, donner pass, marin headlands, and what would we do? parents to the casino, me to the arcade, all of us to the all-you-can-eat buffet. why didn't we ever set up a tent, and why didn't i get to play flashlight tag and go exploring the woods with my cousins? why was my only summer camp experience a week-long basketball scrimmage?

it's starting to catch up with me now, how much i missed out on. and now i'm doing everything i can to make up for lost time.

2010-08-13T23:24:00.000-07:00

dear alicia.

dear alicia,

my stupid cousin used to make me listen to new kids on the block with her. she'd put on one of their ballads on my aunt's stereo, and we'd sit against the speakers and listen. this would usually happen late at night, and when i think back on it, i don't necessarily cringe or anything. i just continue to think about the absurdity of life. anyway, whether it was nkotb, atlantic starr, hi-five or whatever ballad was hot on ksfm 102.5, you were the person i thought about while listening.

i still remember your birthday: january 24, 1983. i thought it was cool that we had birthdays in the same month, even if we weren't the same sign. later, when i watched the o.c. and seth cohen admitted he knew summer's birthday, i didn't feel like such a freak anymore.

ms. crawley paired us together on the last day of class, and i thought that it meant something. there are few things i remember from kindergarten. one of them was doing good deeds to get feathers to be indians on thanksgiving. another was when i threw dirt at some girls and got in trouble. and then there was the time i told ms. crawley i could count by fives to a hundred, but i messed up. i didn't see you much, since you were in the morning class and i was in the afternoon one. but i do remember that last day. i remember thinking: i'm going to marry this girl.

but of course it didn't happen that way. after college, your dad died and you married this other guy i didn't even know. at that point, anyway, i had assumed i was going to marry someone else, so what did it matter? i didn't marry that girl, either.

i watched this video recently called how to be alone. you can find it on youtube. the girl in the video makes being alone look easy. you had three sisters, so i wonder if you ever knew what it was to be alone. one of your sisters even went to college with us.

that was another thing. of all the colleges in this country, we ended up going to the same one in a totally different state. i thought that, too, meant something.

in the second grade, i did my best to make you laugh. i fell out of my chair, dropped pencils, cracked jokes. one day after class, you told me that it was the happiest day of your life, and i believed you. because it was mine, too.

i was really down one night in bellarmine hall. school was overwhelming, i was homesick and still a virgin. you just looked at me and gave me a hug.

whether you know it or not, you got me through elementary school. it was just a big joke, putting on the stupid white and navy uniform, sitting still all day, dealing with a bunch of kids i didn't even like. but then there you were, and i'd get to hear your high-pitched voice, see the way you threw your head back when you laughed. how you would lean in and poke your head out when you got excited or surprised by something. was your hair going to be down and curly today, or up in a bun?

in the sixth grade, a group of us boys wanted to impress you, so we took turns stepping inside the girls' bathroom just for your amusement. me, i went all the way in. back in those days, i swore i would've gotten expelled for you.

this one time i tried to give you a bag of bouncy balls that i couldn't sell. you must have been having a bad day because you just said no and looked at me like i was the stupidest person in the world.

i'm doing it all wrong, aren't i? my timing is off. it's just important these days for me to tell everyone everything.

2010-08-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

pornography, pt. 2.

back in the america online days, this is how it would work: you would go into a private chatroom, something called avis, and there would be a server there. let's say sickboy77 was the server. you would type: sickboy77/send list or something like that, and then you would get the list of titles in your email. you would scroll down, choose the files you wanted, and then you would type, sickboy77/send 24, 34-57, 68, 89. and then you'd get emails with attachments accordingly. you would download each file separately, and there were programs that could connect the files.

when the internet got faster, and america online was no longer the only option, it was all about passwords. the best way to do it was to google the @ symbol with the website name. for example, if you googled: @milfhunter.com back in the day, you would get all kinds of random sites that had lists of usernames and passwords. while not all of them worked, most did, and it was a satisfying thing. essentially, it was hacking, and it was just about as illegal as you could get. i got into many websites for free, and when i showed my cousin how to do it, he told me, "not a lot of people know how to do that."

i had downloaded so many files that it filled up my hard drive. i started to buy blank cds to burn the data onto them. soon, i had whole cd spindles, and it was getting out of control. i bought an external hard drive that i soon filled up, too. a classmate came into my dorm room once, and looked at what i had. he laughed at the absurdity of it. "why do you need that much?" he said. i didn't have an answer for him. our r.a., rebekah, once saw me hand off a spindle to another guy who wanted to copy some files. "is that porn?" she asked. jason laughed, told her no, it was to install a video game.

soon, my cousin told me about torrenting, and that brought downloading to a whole new level. basically, you install a program like utorrent or azureus, and then you go to a torrent site like puretna.com or thepiratebay.com, and you have at it. sometimes, people will post a megapack, which can be as much as a couple hundred gigs. my other cousin told me that you could stream files from your xbox to your tv. he's usually good with technical stuff and computers, but when he tried to set it up, he couldn't figure it out. i had it figured out in minutes. when porn is involved, i am continually surprised by what i can accomplish. i could probably cure cancer if the reward was right.

i read this short story in an issue of adbusters once, and it's stuck with me ever since. this young man wrote that he had watched porn all his life, and even though he had a beautiful girlfriend he loved very much, she still wasn't enough.

my friend in college told me she caught her boyfriend by looking at his online history. she vented to me: "what?" she said, "am i fucking not enough?" she asked me if i would stop looking at porn once i got a girlfriend. i told her that i probably would.

my mom went to go see this movie called little children, and she told me about one of the characters in the film, about how he's obsessed with pornography. she said that he was so obsessed that it was almost funny. i laughed uncomfortably.

i've read articles from former porn stars, anti-porn crusaders. they talk about how, like it or not, it's still a form of misogyny. most girls who end up doing movies have been beaten, raped, molested, sexually assaulted. sometimes they end up doing things in films that they did not sign up to do. in post-production, editors cut away scenes involving blood, puke, or shit - anything that might break the fantasy.

my girlfriend wanted to show me her new blog that she had started. she started to type in the url for blogger, but once she had typed in "b," "l," "o," blacksonblondes.com showed up because of the auto-fill feature. she hit the "g" before she noticed, and it disappeared. i hated myself then for being so weak. why couldn't i stop?

i remember this episode of sex & the city, when a guy miranda is dating has to turn on porn every time they get it on. when she finally confronts him about it, he tells her that they have just been dating for a few weeks. but he's been watching porn his whole life.

the episode of freaks & geeks where bill, neil, and sam watch porn in the garage for the first time is the most accurate portrayal of that experience i've ever seen.

my college roommate is the only guy i know who has admitted that he doesn't watch porn.

i've read an article about how it messes with your mental well being. something about how your concept of risk and reward is screwed with, something about how your body doesn't create as much dopamine as it should. it actually takes a physical toll.

i heard my mom once state the obvious. "america is oversexed," she said.

it's all related. that guess jeans peachee folder my cousin once had, those pictures of cindy crawford and paula abdul in my disney adventures magazine, every girl i've ever had a crush on, every girl i've wanted to fuck, that civilization is founded on the repression of instincts, american pie, britney spears and jeans that have juicy on the back, school girl outfits and the fires of hell, "birthday sex," "i touch myself," madonna's cone bra, lady gaga's machine gun bra, pretty much every r&b song on the radio from 1991-1996, sharon stone in basic instinct, victoria's secret, etc.

i think that pornography is best summed up in fight club, after the protagonist beats angel face to a bloody pulp. when asked why he did it, why he took it that far, he responds: "i felt like destroying something beautiful."

2010-08-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

pornography, pt. 1.

the first time i saw porn, i was eleven years old, and i was at a classmate's birthday party. his brother had a whole closet full of xxx vhs tapes stacked in rows in his closet. he put one on for a group of us boys, a movie called general hospital, where a bunch of busty blonde girls fucked their patients. i tried to watch it, but i couldn't actually watch it. i was feeling confused. i was getting aroused, but i was surrounded by a bunch of boys, and i knew if i got an erection in front of them, well, that would be the end of me. i remember feeling clammy and my face burned, and i felt sick and excited. i can't remember how the other kids reacted, but i knew it was their first time seeing something so hardcore before, too. the tone switched a lot that night. at one point everyone was laughing, the next all you could hear were the grunts and moans coming from the television set.

i knew that what we were doing was wrong. we were watching something we weren't supposed to see for at least, legally speaking, another seven years. but there was also something very liberating about it. it was more than just a dirty movie. it was a glimpse into the future, a gateway to hell. it was so far removed from the routine of home, school, church, home. it was an act of defiance to my dad who warned me not to watch channel 44 when he got us a blackbox for cable. an act of defiance to my mom who made me feel shame and guilt when she caught me red-handed with the macy's swimsuit catalog. but it was also my first taste of misogyny, of watching a woman get fucked, utterly degraded, treated like nothing more than a stupid whore.

i remember going downstairs after viewing the porn, and mike r. was just sitting on the couch by himself. he had walked out of the room after a few minutes, he just couldn't take it. he was holding a pillow to his chest, and he looked absolutely traumatized. eventually, i got him talking, and we ended up watching some of the lawnmower man on cable. it was a strange moment we shared on the couch, both coming to the realization that our youth, in some small way, had ended the moment noel's older brother pressed play.

the following week at school, nobody talked about what happened. nobody bragged about it, nobody said a word. i couldn't look at girls the same way. it was like i knew their fates, knew all our fates. at some point, we were all going to have to do that, and it was going to be either really awesome or really terrible. a few more weeks passed, and we had to go to confession. i knew that i had committed a sin, and i was really afraid i would go to hell if i didn't say something. i told the priest, father angelo, that i had watched a "bad movie," but i didn't go into any great detail. he told me to say some our fathers and hail marys, and i felt a little bit better about it. noel asked all us boys if we had said anything. all of us said we hadn't.

in junior high, i watched the playboy channel and the spice channel almost nightly. my friends always wanted to spend the night at my house because they knew my parents had a blackbox. while the porn on those channels was often hardcore, it was censored, so you could never see penetration or cum. it didn't matter, though. porn was porn, and we watched the shit out of it. i had seen enough of it that it had become normalized. i no longer felt guilt or shame, just a general need to see more. when the internet became available, i downloaded jenna jameson videos from chatrooms. i visited purextc.com everyday in high school, as soon as i got home.

i gave my older cousin money to buy me porn tapes from liquor stores. i'd fast-forward through the chubby girls, the way too skinny girls, the girls with flat faces. i needed the perfect girl to do her twenty minute thing on a four hour cassette tape. when i turned 18, i rented my own porn, and i dubbed my favorite scenes. i started to memorize the names of my favorite stars: melody love, bridgette kerkove, madelyn knight, lexus locklear. all my friends and my cousin knew about it, but they all just thought it was funny. nobody ever mentioned anything about addiction, about it being a problem.

when i went to porn shops, sometimes with my cousin, i'd look at the other people in the store. they were usually older white men, and they kept quiet while browsing the aisles. i kept quiet, too, turning over those large vhs boxes or dvds with their plastic coverings. on the cover of each box, there was always a naked young woman trying her hardest to look either really stupid or really young, usually both. you know the look: wide eyed, twirling her hair around her finger, mouth wide open, dark eye shadow, bright lipstick, and with her shirt pulled up, exposing her nipples. i'd pick out one or two titles, whatever looked the most promising.

sometimes, my friends would pick out really bizarre shit and take it to a whole other level. for instance, there's this creepy old man named max hardcore with a series of films, and he does some of the worst shit imaginable. regrettably, the scene i remember most involved some orthodontic tools, a mug full of cold milk, and an extra long straw. i have seen some awful shit in my life, but i really wish i could take that one back. there were also gagging videos, where the girls cry and or/puke, gangbangs, blacks on blondes, milfs, teens, bukkake, pissing videos, etc. sometimes, i just wish i could be absolved of all of it.

my parents didn't ever talk to me about sex. teachers did, but they merely described the mechanics of it, how blood flows to the penis to create an erection, how the sperm fertilizes the egg. there was never any mention of intimacy or awkwardness or how sex changes everything. there was no talk about things you shouldn't do, how to behave, or how it feels for the other person. i didn't know a damn thing. everything i learned about sex came from poorly produced, unrealistic films.

at twenty, i somehow miraculously managed to get a girlfriend. my mom asked me if we were having sex, and i told her the truth. we weren't. my girlfriend and i talked about it. she straight up asked me once if i had seen porn, and when i told her i had, she acted really surprised. later, she asked me if i had seen anything really gross or violent. it was at that point i started to lie. she kept coming at me with more questions, and each time she brought it up, i'd get frustrated, lie some more, and then shut down. all that shame and guilt and thoughts of going to hell resurged. at one point, she told me to look her in the eye and swear to her that i didn't still watch porn.

i looked her right in the eye, and i fucking lied.

2010-08-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

this here, this is it.

been jogging and walking home recently. you know, been reading all these articles telling me how bad it is to be sitting all day long. brings on heart disease and cancers and all that. sitting all day, it's no good. and then i come home and watch a lot of tv. so you know, thought it would be good to start running home. running is what i call it, when i've got my shorts and t-shirt on, and my coworkers ask me what i'm about to do, but really, it's just jogging enough to get my heart rate up, my head and arms a little sweaty, and then when i don't think i can handle it no more, i slow down to a walk.

anyway, i was walking down martin luther king, jr. and of course, it got me thinking about poverty and social justice and all that again. let me back up. see, earlier in the day, on the internet i saw this picture of a little girl from afghanistan who patched up potholes in roads, and she depended on tips from travelers and soldiers to survive. so then i was walking down mlk jr. and i got to thinking about what we're all trying to do. are we trying to get people off the streets and into low-income housing? if a family lives in a crappy apartment off mlk jr., are we trying to raise their standard of living? how nice does one's digs have to be before we can settle on a definition of social justice, of having it made? if that little girl from afghanistan gets a low-income house on mlk jr., have we arrived?

this little boy on mlk jr., he was just sitting on his porch with what looked like his sister, and they were just chilling there. they might've been having a snack or something, i didn't get that good a look. anyway, this boy just waves at me. i wave back at him. see, the thing is i've been watching friday night lights and now i think that there are all these poor kids who don't have a real father figure, and how i probably should go back to teaching because i think i might be able to be a father figure, or some type of leader or something. i think that i have it in me, that i have what it takes. and so everyday i spend at my desk doing nothing, i'm just not using what i've been given, and it's not a good thing at all and it's probably killing me. literally. heart disease, remember?

on the phone with this nun once, she told me that we are all capable of so much more than we think. and i've been doubting myself for too long, listening to people who think they know what's best for me. of all the things i hear, i hear two contradictory things loud and clear: think about your future and i want you to be happy. they think they know what's best for me, so i've shut them all out. i just didn't want to hear it anymore, you know? also, these last two years are just a test. i've spent the last two years in seattle learning how to be alone. and now i know, it's not so bad. i have my good days and bad days just like anyone else, but at least now i know that i'm capable of so much more than i think.

and my cousin, he was right. he said that trying to get into another relationship was just like buying a new hdtv or getting an iphone. it wasn't going to solve anything. likewise, going back to school, joining the peace corps, going abroad to teach esl, getting an mba or law degree, that's not going to solve anything. it's just like that episode of the wire when cutty gets his job mowing lawns, and he gets that big speech from his boss who tells him something along of the lines of, "there ain't no big reward. this here, this is it." so i guess that's all i'm trying to say, that whether i knew it before or not, it's all i've been doing spending all this time by myself. learning how to be in the present, learning that this here, this is it.

2010-08-01T23:28:00.001-07:00

get too comfortable.

she always warned me about getting "too comfortable," and i didn't know what the hell she was going on about. and then she went away, got an advanced degree, got a job somewhere, and that was that. some warning.

i know what it means to be comfortable, though. being comfortable means having a big bed that i get to sleep in, a big tv to watch downloaded pirated shows. it means showing up late to work and leaving early, playing on the computer all day, getting paid a decent wage and having no actual responsibility. tomorrow will be much of the same. spoiled is what i am.

i watched chris of the silversun pickups thrash his head around while the big screen behind him absorbed all the different colors projected by the lights above. i watched him, and i thought of the video game rock band. i thought about how his was just a job like any other, playing the same songs every night, touring city after city, but not really getting a feel for what it's like to actually be somewhere. just hitting those drums and giving the people what they want. yeah, being a rock star, it's probably not all that different from having a desk job.

i told this girl liz what i did, best i could. she said what everyone says, "oh, that's cool," and nodded, even though she didn't really understand my response. hell, how could she? even i don't know what i do. i'm comfortable, remember? she was shorter than i was, big glasses, blonde hair, the strap of her messenger bag going right down her middle, accentuating her bust line. she told me she hadn't been to europe, and we had something in common. i told her about the philippines, restaurants, and cheap massages. she repeated massages and made air quotes when she did, and that made me like her.

in the eighth grade, i sprinted better than anybody else on the b team. i wore all black to practice, and i remember some of my teammates saying, "he's gonna beat cavner!" and they were referring to this a.d.d. kid matt, who was the skinniest, fastest guy on the team. i remember doing those sprints, and even though my sides ached, my legs were ready to give out, and i could barely breathe, i remember what it was to push through all that because it was self-hatred that kept me going.

i crossed the parking lot to get to southcenter mall on a saturday afternoon, and it was the new religion. i passed champs, pacsun, zumiez by myself, knowing that i was looking to buy something, anything, in order to fill the spiritual (or whatever) void. i don't even remember when i stopped praying. there wasn't an actual moment or anything, never a conscious decision made. it was just like forgetting to water a plant. and then i walked past a church, some place on my street, and there were all these ethiopians (maybe) all dressed in white, clapping and singing one of the most beautiful songs i've ever heard. if a cult or religion wanted to recruit me, now would be the time to do it. i don't think i've ever been more vulnerable.

i wish i was driving right now, some part of the south where i could see old barns and long stretches of dead grass. it shouldn't have taken me twenty-six years on earth before i saw fireflies. that's just unacceptable. there's a whole world out there, pulsating, sweating, bleeding and screaming, and i can't even bring myself to leave the apartment some days. there's never ever going to be an electronic sign again that reads: jul 28 2010 5:26 p.m.

people are always going on and on about something, and they never give me a chance to talk. all i can ever say is, "uh huh," "yeah," and "really?"

i've always been asked about and/or criticized for being so quiet. how else am i supposed to be? my whole life, i've barely been able to get a word in edgewise.

2010-07-20T23:25:00.000-07:00

4hdc827.

it's summertime, and it's hot. earlier in the day, it was 102, but it has cooled down significantly. they are lost. he took the right exit, but he must've took a wrong turn somewhere. he hits one speed bump after another, and they might as well be bodies underneath him. it's so dark out, and he has to turn down his high beams because the other drivers are all annoyed. finally, he gives up, and he starts heading for home. he rests his head against his fist, arm propped up against the windowsill. she puts her hand on his thigh. "what's wrong?" she says. "nothing." "you can tell me," she says. he begins to cry. "i just wanted to make things perfect for you."

it's new years day, and the car is parked outside the window of cafe septieme. they are drinking hot cocoas with mini marshmallows. he drowns the marshmallows with his small spoon, and she watches him. he gulps the warm drink, and then he smiles. "this is the best hot chocolate i've ever had," he says. she blinks. "i'm glad," she says. back in the car she goes, brrr, and then she crosses her arms, rubs them up and down. he cranks the heat, and presses play on the cd player. diana krall's christmas songs. "there's still a little bit of christmas left," he says. when they get to the apartment, he rolls up a snowball and launches it at her. her mouth drops open, as if to say, did you really just do that? but by then, he's already rolling up another. she takes cover behind the car, stockpiling her own ammo.

he puts the pedal to the floor. he's going 80, pushing 90. "stop it!" she screams. "slow down!" but he won't. this is what his mother used to do to him, and it taught him a lesson. the lesson was, don't piss off the driver because the driver is the one in control. but he wasn't in control. he would rather die than not live in harmony with her. each fight seemed to escalate, and they had reached a point where there was no going back. he swerved in and out of lanes. what if a cop car had tried to pull him over? would he give up, or would he just keep going? she is crying and she is scared. he is doing this to her because he hates himself. why are you even with me? don't you see how goddamn fucking crazy i am?

"oh god," he says. she is doing something naughty, the sexiest thing she has ever done, and it pleases him because he believes that he is the only one she will ever do this for. she unbuttons her blouse, and he reaches over, cups her boob. her body has gotten stiff and cold from the air conditioning. "are you sure no one can see us?" she asks. "yes," he says, "i'm sure." but he isn't really checking. he'll say anything to keep feeling like the luckiest guy in the whole world. he checks his speedometer, and he's going 80, much faster than he had previously thought. he eases up on the gas, but it doesn't matter. nothing does. he's invincible, king of the road. king of all roads.

they've finished with dinner, thai food, and his stomach is killing him. too many spices and he feels like he's gonna die. he nearly runs a red light, and she finds it kind of funny. it is funny when he thinks about it later, but at the time, all he wants to do is find a bathroom. he pulls up to the parking garage, unbuckles his belt, puts the car in park, removes the keys, opens the door, jumps out, slams it shut. he doesn't look back. he's left her in the passenger seat, and he knows she will catch up with him later. he does what his body tells him to. he leaves her behind.

he drives slowly in the rain. she slips her hand into his. she rests her head on his shoulder, and she smells like the perfume her grandmother bought her as a present. when she leans away, looks out the window, he reaches over and puts his hand on the back of her neck, warm and delicate. he puts his hand under her chin and he squeezes her cheeks. she hates that, and she tell him so, but he keeps doing it. he is thinking, can't you put up with something so small that i love so much? but he doesn't say it. he never says it.

after a long break, they take a long drive. they stop at random small towns along the coast, and each time, she double checks the street signs to make sure they won't get ticketed, or worse, towed. they were almost towed once. she ran toward the car, already attached to the tow truck, and she begged the driver to stop, to please stop. she waved her arms frantically in the air, and she pleaded with him, and the man listened. she saved the day. she was a woman of action. she wasn't a fatalist, all doom and gloom, the way he was.

the civic witnessed the tender moments, but also all the screaming, slammed doors and cursing. it played them music. it died on them. it made running errands a little more convenient. and now, it serves no purpose. it just sits there in a stuffy garage, thinking about what it all means.

2010-07-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

harder and harder each day.

my poor dad, all he wanted to do was go to sleep. but i wouldn't let him. he already had his eyes closed, his head on the pillow, but of course, i wouldn't let him. "dad," i said, "what happened when you first had a panic attack?" he sat upright on the bed. he told me he was driving on the freeway, and all of a sudden, he looked up at one of the exit signs, and it was all blurry. so blurry he couldn't read it. his palms were sweaty, and he was shaking all over. "why?" he asked. "did you have one?" i said i wasn't sure. he paused for a second. and then he said, "did it feel like you were going to die?" and then i told him yes.

go back a few hours into the evening. i'm at the imax with my friend, and we're sitting in the middle of the theater. it's a sold-out screening of inception, opening night, and all of a sudden, the crowds start pouring in. i think about this irrational fear my ex-girlfriend once had, when the fire alarm went off during x-men 2. she had read some story about japanese people dying in a fire in a movie theater, and she was afraid it was going to happen to us. i get claustrophobic. my heart doesn't seem to be pumping normally. there's a skip, a dull ache, and on top of that, my palms are sweaty. my palms are almost always sweaty, but that still doesn't help matters.

i tell myself to breathe. it's this trick i have. i breathe in all the good air and i breath out all the negativity my body is capable of holding. i think about being a dad someday, and my child is standing in front of me at the checkout line in the grocery store. i don't know why this image is there, but it is, and i grasp onto it to help me get through whatever it is i'm going through. at some point during the movie, when the characters are in a dream within a dream within a dream or whatever, i start to think about the time i broke out in hives and my parents drove me to med clinic in the early morning. i think about the time i sat in the park before i went to the doctor because blood came out where blood should not have come out. i am still afraid of letting go, even though i'm already holding onto nothing.

we get back to the car, and there's a parking ticket on the windshield. it was my fault, since i parked the car without her, but before i can even admit to my mistake, she asks, "do you mind covering it?" and for some reason, this annoys me. every little thing about every friend i have begins to annoy me. it's a text message about secrets i've revealed, it's a podcast about immigration, it's a married man, it's a subtle put-down over gchat, it's the way you fucking talk, it's the way you keep letting me down, it's the way you're just like me.

that night, i told my friend i had the same feeling i had about four years ago, when i was watching the devil wears prada. i knew something was wrong, and i couldn't pay attention to the movie. and sure enough, when we got back to the car, the side of my civic was completely destroyed, hit by a stupid speeding orange cab driver. the damage itself didn't quite bother me. what bothered me more was knowing that something was wrong, that i could literally feel something wrong. i blamed sondra perl's book felt sense for giving this strange phenomenon an actual vocabulary. i don't want to have that. it fucking scares me. i just want to be beautiful and oblivious.

inception. my dad putting the idea of a panic attack in my head. my mom putting in the fear of everything in my head. "you were even afraid of frogs!" she said. i told her, what more could one expect? i grew up in the suburbs, in a terribly sterile house where we killed ants and spiders with raid. we never went camping, and the only animals i saw were on cable. i was the definition of sheltered, and the world looked like a scary ass place.

i was walking along rainier ave. in the sunshine, and i heard it loud and clear: "you'll do anything to avoid conflict, won't you?"

2010-07-15T22:57:00.000-07:00

help yourself.

there's this woman at work named rebecca. she's in her late thirties, early forties, and she's stressed out all the time. i thought she was mean at first. she'd sigh a lot and shake her head, and i could tell that my ignorance about events protocol annoyed her to no end. i didn't know how to fill out online forms or what kind of food we should order. eventually, she figured out i wasn't going to make any real decisions, so she'd just go ahead and place food orders for me. i liked that.

she's into theater, does plays. she invited all staff to one of her plays once, but i didn't go. i think i had a legitimate excuse, some event our department was putting on that night. i don't know if anyone went. she seems like she's big into drama, though, i can tell. i know this because she sometimes uses big words and antiquated phrases when she writes emails. like once, instead of saying, what do you want, she used some old school phrase that i hadn't even heard before. i can't even remember it now, but at the time, i had to look it up, and sure enough, it meant what do you want?

she's been divorced. i know this because i saw her walking down my street once. she had just gone to see up at the columbia city cinema, and there was a white man carrying a white boy with him, but then there was also a black girl, and the black girl looked more like her. she introduced me briefly, and i put two and two together. i might not be able to fill out online forms correctly, but i know when there's a little more to a family's story. she seemed kind of happy to see me that day. it was during the big seattle heat wave, and she smiled at me.

she keeps all these signs at her desk that i sometimes need when our department is hosting an event. i always knock on her door, and she automatically knows why i'm there. i'm not there to chitchat or ask a favor. i just need a sign. i ask for a sign, and she always says, "help yourself." i grab the sign and easel, and i try not to hit the lights above her, which i've done several times in the past. i say thanks, and then she thanks me. i don't know why she thanks me. all i'm ever doing is taking her signs.

this one time, though, i grabbed a sign, and she dropped some real personal stuff on me. i don't remember exactly what it was about, but probably it was something about how her mother-in-law or somebody was driving her mad. she was particularly exasperated that day, and i couldn't help but wonder why she was telling me this. after all, there were other people in her office that she talked to all the time. she went into the family drama a little bit, and i tried to act sympathetic, but i couldn't get over the fact that she wasn't just saying, "help yourself" and "thanks." that day, she reached out to me, and i couldn't understand why.

she is super skinny with shoulder-length curly blonde hair. she hardly ever smiles. she wears dark cardigans over light shirts, rolls up her sleeves. she's got gold-framed spectacles over eyes that look like they've seen their fair share of trouble and sadness in the world. she wears long skirts and boots. i don't know why i should pay attention to her appearance. she's always dressing like a character in a play.

i don't know why she's on my mind tonight. she apologized earlier today for dropping the ball on a food order for our department's event. that led to me popping six bags of popcorn, and then pushing a cart full of juices and snacks across e. columbia street. i told rebecca it wasn't a problem because really, it wasn't. as usual, i had nothing better to do.

2010-07-14T14:05:00.001-07:00

dudes are a dime a dozen.

i don't know what she's doing. she told me once that she just wishes she had people who cared about her. now if i was a girl or sentimental or something, i would've said i cared about her. the thing is, i do care about her, but i'm a dude, and dudes don't say that kind of shit. that was like the time this other girl who was a friend told me her grandmother died, so me and this other girl that was also a friend both came over to her dorm room. she was crying her eyes out like i had never seen her cry before, and i was ready to come in, but she just let the girl in, and she shut the door in my face. she told me later it was because i was a dude. the funny thing is, she's not even friends anymore with that girl she let in.

i don't know why girls keep befriending me. maybe it's because i'm effeminate or something. i'm kind of lanky, speak softly, and i don't pose a threat. i am not dangerous. i still sometimes listen to wussy music. i read. i am supposedly a nice guy. it's a sucky thing, though, attracting the straight hags. because when a grandma dies, when it's bathroom time, when another girl is readily available, i move down in rank. the rule it seems, at least for them, is always hoes before bros. let's face it, if you're a girl, you're probably not inviting your straight male friend on vacation with you to another country.

and one would think having all these girl-friends (who are not actually "girlfriends") would lead to introductions to other available straight women, hookups, dates, sexting, etc. not so. for some reason, they always talk about setting me up, but it never actually happens. because a straight male friend to a girl is just like another pair of so-so shoes. she's never gonna wear them. and logically, she should donate them to the local goodwill, but there's a chance that some other younger, more attractive girl will snatch them up, wear them around town. and when that happens, the girl who got rid of her perfectly good shoes will think she has made a big mistake.

maybe most of my friends are girls because i got dude overloaded in high school. i went to an all boys' school, so it was dudes a dozen, day after day. we saw each other in the morning. we ate lunch together. sometimes, we hung out after school. and dudes were disgusting. in every class, there was always a fart. i mean, like a real fart. not just someone putting palms to his face and blowing air out his mouth, but the real deal. blowing air out of his ass. and everyone thought it was the funniest thing like it was the first time they'd heard a fart. me, i just thought it was disgusting. like, who farts in public like that? we live in a society, didn't they know? there are rules and customs, and we must follow them. but no, they just wanted to be animals.

i thought things would change in college. and they did, but not by much. dudes continued to annoy me. but this time, they farted out their mouths, acting like grownups when they clearly weren't. they wore ties with armbands and dark-rimmed glasses and tried to look like indie rock stars when they obviously weren't. they slept with girls way out of their league, and i bitterly resented them for it. they just wanted to smoke pot and drink all the time, and they talked about nietzsche like he was a buddy of theirs.

there was a time when i did actually have some serious male bonding. sophomore year, i bought an xbox, and three other dudes and i would play conflict: desert storm while listening to sigur ros. i enjoyed those nights immensely because everyone took it seriously. we were all 19, 20 years old, and we were real into this one video game, and we all could agree that () was the only thing we should listen to while playing it. it was the closest we were ever going to get to the real thing, our fictional band of brothers moments. we'd call for help when a man went down, and we'd throw smoke screens to distract tanks while another soldier would go plant the c4.

those dudes and i drifted apart, and we didn't bother keeping tabs on each other. because, who the hell keeps track of dude friends? it's always the weirdest thing asking a dude for his number. because that's like hella gay. whenever i see a potential dude friend, there are limits. you have to play it cool and overemphasize your heterosexuality. this can be done by checking out every girl in sight, talking about sports, spitting, talking about strip clubs and drinking a lot of beer. and when the encounter is through, you can't just say, hey, that was a great time, let me get your number and we'll do it again. nah. it's more like, aight, peace. see you around. or not.

maybe it isn't even a gender thing. maybe i'm just a misanthrope and girls happen to annoy me less. for one, they are typically more responsible. you don't normally hear about a thirty-five year old woman living with her parents and smoking dope while watching icarly in the basement all day. for the most part, it seems like they know what it takes to survive. this held true when i worked as a tutor at a high school. most of the girls did their work and behaved well. and the ones who didn't? well, they were going to be the meanest and baddest bitches around.

maybe i'm friends with women because i feel guilty. in general, they make less money, they have crazy stalkers, they sometimes get assaulted, they have to worry about being alone at night, they get cramps and bleed, they have to buy all kinds of crappy products just to look acceptable in society, and some of them, they actually have to push another human being out of them. that just sounds awful. my mom told me about childbirth once. she said it was like going through a dark tunnel that never seemed to end, and she was screaming at the top of her lungs, but she couldn't hear a sound. come on, mom. really, was it worth it?

it should be noted that jesus hung out with whores. remember the night before he was about to die, and all his boys just fell asleep on him? and when his ass got crucified, guess who was still around when it was all dark and rainy and shit? two women.

2010-07-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

american squalor.

harvey pekar died today. i first found out about him by watching the movie american splendor during my senior year of college. after seeing that movie, my cousin gave me an american splendor anthology as a graduation present. i read it cover to cover, even the parts where the print got really tiny because there were so many damn words in the little box. i couldn't believe what i was reading. it was exactly what i needed. sometimes a strip would just be about a trip he took to the airport on a cold morning, or else it was him helping his daughter, danielle, find her glasses. i read a comment on an online article today that said something like, he made the ordinary extraordinary.

lisa has been coming into our office space recently to do math problems. she continues to make me feel bad for not wanting to take the gmat. i don't understand where she gets this sense of superiority, like she knows what's best for me. girl just turned 25 and is still working on her bachelor's. not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just, don't be giving me life lessons, you know? but then again, i am two years older than she is, and we have the same job, same pay, so i guess i lose the battle.

joseph rang me up because he and his family were in town for a wedding. he said, come meet us at the tamarind tree. i had never been, and i figured they were gonna pay, so i went. there was no more room at the table, so joseph and i got our own table. i took a long time looking through the menu, and he already knew what he wanted. it's what i always get, he said. vermicelli noodles and deep fried pork rolls or something. i settled on noodles and meatballs. we reminisced some more, and it made me sad. because he works at sam's club, and i work for a university, and we don't really have friends, and we obviously have nothing more than memories of grade school. still, it was good to see him.

i walked down to dearborn and rainier ave. s. to catch the 9. i thought maybe i'd walk all the way home, but then i checked my phone and saw that the 9 would be coming in four minutes. i figured i'd wait it out. i watched a guy walking up and down rainier with a cardboard sign. some people rolled down their windows and handed him money. somebody handed him an orange. something about that moment caused my throat to swell. i remembered what it was like to be like that, to want to just give, even if it was just a stupid orange. and on his part, to be grateful for something like an orange.

i fell asleep on the couch, woke up in the dark. my first thought was, what the hell, i want to do peace corps? i'm afraid of just waking up alone in my apartment, how am i gonna survive two years alone in a foreign country? i don't know why panic is my first instinct. i turned on the light, and i felt better about it. i felt sick. probably because i haven't exercised in two or three weeks, and i've been eating a lot of ice cream again. i read a little bit of up in the air. i did the dishes and made a salad for tomorrow's lunch. i thought about how i needed to write about my ordinary day where nothing really happened because harvey pekar was dead.

2010-07-12T10:03:00.001-07:00

2 a.m. summer night.

fools from high school wanted to go hang out somewhere, so i asked my cousin where i should meet up with them. he said to go to hoppy brewing. i went there, and it was like almost 9, and they were already closing up shop. i was like, jesus, 9 o'clock and you guys are closing already? but that's how things were in the sacto. jason said we should go to hooters instead, so i said ok. i wanted some wings, beer, and boobs. so we went to hooters, but they were closed, too.

jason and joseph shook hands, and it was weird. they hadn't seen each other in years, and i think we were all thinking how weird it was. like, why did we even bother getting together again? what was the point? we were supposed to just walk away and never see each other again, weren't we? that's how things are supposed to work. we confirmed that hooters on zinfandel was closed, so we had to find another place to go. i yelped it on my phone. there was a billiards place in rancho, and joseph was like, oh yeah, billiards, hell yeah.

so, there i was on a sunday night in rancho at some billiards place i had never been to. it was a real sausage-fest in there, and i didn't expect any different. we played pool, and i was actually good. i told them it was beginner's luck - it always was - and my secret was just to hit the balls as hard as i could and just pray they went where i wanted them to go. we racked them up and jason and i drank beers. joseph said he didn't drink anymore, and we respected that decision. it seemed that our timing was always off. in high school, i never wanted to drink. now, i do.

we talked about jason's job - he records hip-hop artists and teaches audio recording. we talked about other fools we used to know. we said hella and for real and damn a lot. we talked the way we did in high school. i wondered why i couldn't just be satisfied doing this in high school - hanging out with some dudes, shooting pool, drinking beer, and talking nonsense. i couldn't be satisfied then because it wasn't enough for me. i always believed i was too good, too smart and special or whatever, for that kind of loser dilly-dallying.

when we finished pool, we drove around looking for a 24 hour diner. all the places we knew had closed down long ago. we finally found a denny's on howe. we went inside and there were only three other people in the restaurant. the waitress was old and worn and looked like she had seen her fair share of troubles in the world. we ordered food and reminisced a bit more, three asian men who still felt like boys at a denny's in sacramento. joseph asked about jason's girlfriend. he asked if he planned on marrying her. jason said yeah, probably, when the job is a bit more stable.

after we said goodbye, i drove off into the night, and thought about how i would make these summer night drives after working at tower. the streets would be empty, the air cool, and everything closed. that, i think, is the best way of remembering that place.

2010-07-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

i'm really going off, fireworks.

i waited for tiff in front of the showbox. i took a picture of the marquee, and i tweeted it. i couldn't believe i was back here. why the hell was i back here? sometimes, i float around this city, and i think, there must be a reason i came back here. if there really is fate or destiny or something, then what the hell was the purpose? for a while now, i've been waiting for something good. like, even if i'm at the corner of 4th and pine, and i see hayden panettiere's boob fall out, i could be like, oh, so there was a reason for me to come back to seattle, after all! for this one glorious moment! but who knows? most likely, there will be no heroes celebrity nudity for me.

so i saw this band called carissa's wierd. they hadn't played a show since 2003 or some shit, and this was their big one and only reunion show. i had a few beers and it was an alright time. afterward, misch bought me a polish sausage, and i ran into some old classmates from college. we didn't really talk about anything. after a few minutes, they left, and i felt like that was how it always was. other people always have somewhere more important they need to be. no one can just stand there and shoot the shit anymore. it gets too awkward or socially unacceptable or something. but me, i could stand there all fucking day.

i peed a lot that night. there was a dude in the bathroom, and he looked at the sink that was all scratched up and shit and he was like, i don't even wanna know what happened there! and then there was this girl who graduated a year before me, and i had never even seen her before in my life. we talked about something or other, but she grabbed my attention when she said she was unemployed. what i should've said was, would you like to help me sell all of my stuff tomorrow, and then we'll use the money to go volunteer at the american samoa islands through world teach? she wasn't even that cute, but it didn't matter. the next person who tells me to go somewhere with him or her for a short while or for good, and i'm gone. it'll make up for the time i didn't run away from home when i was fourteen, and i should have.

there are so many regrets that i have already. even just today, for example. nice weather and all that shit, but did i even bother going outside? nah. all i could think to do was leave the house to spend money. i wanted to go to guitar center to buy a new guitar. i wanted to go to target to buy a playstation 3. i thought about going to american apparel to get some baseball shirts. my only excuses for leaving the house are to acquire money and to spend money. it's no way to live.

i've already said this, and i'm sick of saying it already, but i need to man up already and make some real decisions.

2010-07-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

see you in another life, brother.

megan found me on facebook, said we should meet up. i hadn't seen her since 2002, 2003. i said sure, i'm not doing anything, why not? she said in her message that she had gotten divorced, had back surgery a few months back, and that she was now collecting disability, all the while trying her best to raise three boys. jesus. i said that i'd text her when i was in town, and that we'd go out for a drink or something. you know, something two people do when they haven't seen each other in nearly a decade.

i told another old friend, joseph, that i'd be in town, and i said i'd text him, too. he and megan didn't know each other at all. i told my cousin about this odd little reunion, and he agreed that yes, it would in fact be a strange encounter. i made plans with everyone to meet at the monkey bar, the bar that used to be the convenience store my dad once co-owned, and i told them to be there at 9 p.m. megan was already waiting there, and my cousin showed up with his new girlfriend. all the proper introductions were made, and then we sat at a table on the patio. cool summer nights, always good for some patio sitting.

to drown out the awkwardness of my facebook rendezvous, i knocked back a couple of beers, and at my cousin's suggestion, also had a mind-eraser. by then, joseph had shown up. he was wearing a large orange shirt with an eagle on it, and a baltimore orioles cap. i asked if he was an orioles fan. "no," he told me, "i just like birds." he then added, "i've also got a blue jays hat." he had asked about my ex-girlfriend, and megan moved in closer, saying that she wanted to hear all about it, too. why everyone was so interested in my lack of a love life, i wasn't sure. i told them it was over and done, and what else was there to say?

joseph told me that he was "cool" with kathleen now. that he stopped being a hater. back in the day, we always joked around about how great it would be to destroy our whole school and crush all our enemies. "can you imagine if columbine happened before that?" he said, "we'd be in hella trouble!" we laughed about our miserable upbringing, and how we believed that everyone was against us. "i've stopped being a hater," he said. "me too," i said, "what was with all that animosity?" "i don't know," he said, "do you know?" i said i didn't, but that it was just all in our heads. i offered to buy him a beer, but he refused, saying that he had quit drinking a few months ago.

joseph, megan, and i reminisced about other things. that's what happens when you haven't seen people in nearly a decade, and you're at an empty bar in a city where the only things to do are to go to in-and-out burgers, leatherby's, the galleria, the arden fair mall, the country club plaza, and dimple records. joseph told me that he just hangs out with his cousins now. megan said that she spends all her time with her kids. i would've felt bad about it, were it not for the fact that i don't have many friends, either. because that's what happens when you get old, see?

this random life. it just throws us all together, and waits to see what happens, doesn't it?

2010-07-01T22:47:00.001-07:00

i don't blame you.

i must've been a pain to be around, you can admit it. me with my stack of adbusters magazines. me with my netflix queue full of anti-corporate, anti-war documentaries. me with my borrowed naomi klein book that i never even cracked. my musty, worn-out clothes from the thrift store, my eagerness to return things to target, my animal rights' rants, my uninformed self-righteous talk. how did you ever put up with it? i'm so sorry for the trouble it has caused you. but oh, only if you could see me now. my biggest dilemma now is trying to find a really nice white hoodie so that i can look like i belong in a kid cudi video.

there was a moment i was walking down broadway in new york, and i felt it again. that strange, rare feeling that i was free. i've felt it a few times in my life now. once, after the weezer concert in san francisco, while walking back to the parking lot by myself. i was sunburnt to a crisp, and i had my oversized mxpx sweatshirt, my sunglasses, and i bet i looked like a mess, but i didn't care. i was free. the other was that ferry ride i've mentioned plenty of times. and then there, the most recent, in new york. i don't know how to describe it. it's just this realization that i really could do anything. i don't know how to put it any other way than that.

i've got this problem, see? this whole thing about how we've grown up with these concepts of sarcasm, self-parody, irony, etc. we are the scary movie 4 generation. most of the time, i don't know if i'm doing something because i really want to do it, or just because i've seen someone else do it, and i want to know what that's about. how do i explain it. there's a scene in greenberg where the girl is talking about how she and her friend went home with some guys and took off their shirts and let the guys videotape them, and she couldn't tell if she was doing it for her own sake, or for the sake of trying to be like everyone else.

that's what you wanted. you wanted nice dinners with friends where appetizers and wine glasses would be present. you wanted road trips and small vacations here and there. you wanted romance and to go out dancing. you wanted compliments from other pretty girls, and "where did you get that dress?" and expensive shoes. you wanted a man who could understand all of this, and give it to you. you wanted to be taken care of and defended, and who could blame you? i don't blame you. in the end, it didn't work because, just like me, you had all the world in the love to give, but you refused to accept any for yourself.

my grandma on her hospital bed, what was she thinking about? did she think about the mess she left behind? people who have children, do they realize that yes, there's love they put into the world, but there's also a mess that they leave behind? there is no way around it. in her last breaths, did she think about her grandchild, the one in montana, who hasn't spoken to any family members in years and is doing god-knows-what? is she watching over her son and daughter now, the ones who live in the same city but who no longer speak to one another?

as for me, well, i don't really know about nothin', nothin'.

2010-06-30T12:27:00.001-07:00

mangoes and fish for breakfast.

on monday, i gave my gmat book to lisa because i decided recently i have no business applying to business school. i told her i had no use for it, and since i knew she was planning on taking the gmat, i gave it to her. i sat on the couch in front of her desk, and i waited for the i.t. guy to come set up the conference phone. "what did you major in again?" she asked. "english," i said. "so, what are you gonna do?" she asked, condescendingly, "work for atji?" right then, i wished really bad things would happen to her.

the i.t. guy came and set up the phone. when he realized i would be the only one in the room, he got all pissed off. "you could've just made this conference call from your desk," he spat. "oh," i said, "i didn't know. don't i need this machine?" "no," he said, "it's just a phone." i set up the call in a huff, and then i went back to my desk to let my frustration with everyone subside. who were these people that expected me to know that i could make calls from my desk, that i should major in business because that will just miraculously solve all my problems?

i haven't done any real work in a long time. instead, i spend all my days at the office thinking about how i'm going to escape this dreadfully quiet place. i can't seem to focus on any one thing, though. one day i want to be teaching english in budapest, the next i want to be a bum at home just watching on demand with my parents. i'm supposed to be keeping track of our office's budget, contacting legal services organizations, updating our website, and jump-starting our department's blog, but i just can't bring myself to do any of it. i'd rather keep telling everyone that our days are numbered, and that in the grand scheme of things, none of this really matters.

i really like this kanye west lyric: i'm ahead of my time, sometimes years out, so the powers that be won't let me get my ideas out/and that make me want to get my advance out, and move to oklahoma and just live at my aunt's house.

today, i pictured myself living with my uncle in manila. it'd be hot as hell. i would stay in one of his four unoccupied guest rooms with no air-conditioning, and i would wake up at the crack of dawn because it'd be so miserably hot. i'd go downstairs, and his helper would have some mangoes, rice and fish ready for breakfast. after breakfast, i'd look at the clock, and it would be only 8:30. i'd work on a story until my uncle would wake up and drive me to the mall, where we'd walk around and not be able to afford anything. but hey, at least there would be air-conditioning.

sooner or later, though, they'd get suspicious. "so...are you gonna get a job?" and then everything would be ruined.

today, i found some big pieces of paper under my desk, so i started a game of pictionary with my coworkers. i drew an eye and a pea pod, and gen guessed i was going for "ipod." emily drew a robot. gen drew a piano and then a canyon, and i guessed "grand canyon." then i drew an oil rig that looked like a volcano and a glass on its side with little drops of water coming out of it. gen guessed "oil spill," and she was right.

2010-06-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

hear me now.

let's just pretend i have something worth saying, and you're reading because you're genuinely interested. you're not just reading because there's nothing good to watch on sunday night. you're not just reading because you can't, for the life of you, get into that f. scott fitzgerald novel you borrowed from the library, and you've already read the latest people and new yorker magazine cover to cover. you're reading because you've come across a stranger's blog, and you are interested in what i have to say, even though i have nothing interesting worth saying.

you've followed me from americorps to unemployment to a boring desk job. you've read every single word i've published, and you're not sure why. maybe you kind of know who i am. i'm a friend of a friend, maybe someone you've met once. you feel like if you keep reading, there might be an end, an answer, some closure. you read, and you never comment because really, what else is there to add? how does one comment on nothingness? maybe you read because you identify with something i've said. maybe you believe we are on the same team.

it's strange, though, isn't it? there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of other blogs out there. yet at this moment in time, you've chosen to read this. it's similar to the time you had the big realization, isn't it? that maybe there isn't structure or fate or destiny or whatever, that things are just random. you just happened to find this page, and now you're reading. and true, there were times when i had something to say, some important message, or some story worth telling, and you read that, too. but most of the time, like this time, there's nothing. you're just looking at words and processing them for the sake of dong it.

i've kept at it. for over three years now. i've written as abundantly and personally as i could manage. and what will become of it? because i haven't capitalized letters, or bothered polishing and revising entries, because i've just written aimlessly and with no purpose at all, most likely nothing will come of this blog. i don't know who these real writers are, the ones who get their stories published in magazines and books, the ones with writing samples that get them into prestigious writing programs, the ones who can pepper their stories with words like effervescent and adjudicate.

but still, you read. and i like to believe it's because you think the story will go somewhere, will have a decent ending. i started this blog in february 2007 after seeing victor villasenor speak to a full auditorium at watsonville high school. he talked about how writing was a sacred act, and i believed him. at the time, while working with foul-mouthed teenagers, i found that there were very few sacred acts i could engage in. so, i started blogging. and part of it does still feel sacred. when i was a kid, i prayed to god every night before i went to bed, but i've since stopped. i haven't prayed in a long time because i don't know if anyone is actually listening. but here, at least when i began writing, i could at least count on a handful of people listening.

the truth is, i don't know what i'm trying to accomplish here. i really got into this blog when i was unemployed because it was something to do. i wanted to feel like the world hadn't forgotten about me, and i wanted to prove to my friends and family that i was still trying, that i still had hope and believed in myself. but after a while, i just couldn't stop. and maybe it was a good thing, too, the way it made me go out and seek adventure just for the sake of having something worth writing about. but lately, i've been feeling like i want to have an adventure just for the sake of having one.

maybe when i'm finished, i'll take up praying again.

2010-06-23T11:26:00.001-07:00

matching columbia windbreakers.

let's fast forward to the part where you're no longer cynical, no longer anxious and uncertain of the future. that part where you're calm like you used to be, when you were a kid. in fact, let's fast forward to the part where you already have a kid, and her name is madeline, named after your favorite book as a child, and she's with you at the check-out line at safeway, and she's spinning circles, while holding onto the ends of her frilly dress. she stops when she notices the candy. she looks at the candy, and then looks up at you, and you know what she's thinking because it was the same thought you had twenty years ago. she is too afraid to ask because you've warned her again and again about how bad sugar is for her teeth, for her insides. but it's sunny outside, and you know it will make her happy, so you oblige.

let's back up a little bit, but not too far back, just to the point when madeline is still young enough for a stroller. and you're walking down 6th avenue with wifey, and you're wearing matching light green columbia windbreakers. it's spring time, cool enough for a windbreaker, but not warm enough to be without it. a group of teen girls sneer at you, the couple with the matching windbreakers and their baby, and you remember what it was like to be them: cynical, judgmental, unloved. you never saw yourself wearing that matching columbia windbreaker with wifey, now did you? you used to be so sarcastic and against such things. but look at you now. arms locked in with wifey's, and you're pushing a stroller. you are in love with life once again.

you no longer mind watching time pass you by because you have someone else who is watching it pass with you. you watch the hairs turn grey on wifey's head, and madeline gets bigger and bigger. it's june and then it's december. you get a dog, and madeline jumps on his back. the leaves turn green and then brown, and then they're no longer there at all. you go to your job and put up with it, the routine and long hours and little pay because for once, finally, there are people to come home to. before, you had nothing to come home to, except for the television and an empty refrigerator. that's the good part, when you walk through the door, it's pouring rain out, and wifey is leaning against the kitchen doorway, her arms folded and a smirk on her face because she knows how ridiculous this is, how lucky you both are.

on friday night, you pay the babysitter - her name is jenna - and what do you know, you don't even want to sleep with her. she has a round face and a small bob, and wears layers of bright clothing to mask the vague shape of her body. you are not interested in the slightest because what you have now, all of this, it's just too good to mess up. you were alone for so long and expected nothing from this life, and when it finally gave everything to you, made good on its promise of health and balance to you long ago, something finally clicked. you forgot all about the uncertainty, and somehow, miraculously, you were able to just appreciate what you had been given.

and there you are in your white polo, playing tennis with the missus. your game is off because you're sluggish from the morning's ecstatic lovemaking. she bats a ball over to you, and it's more like a game of ping pong. you laugh about it, tell her she looks great in her vest and visor. later during that same day, you argue about a higher-than-usual cell phone bill, but it's no sweat. money is tight and will always be an issue, but it's just that: an issue. the more trying part comes later, when you are afraid of losing it, all of it, and you imagine yourself back where you were, in your late twenties, coming home to an empty apartment, an empty refrigerator. you try to block out the images of court, of you in a suit, having to use words like "custody," "settlement," and "divorce."

but it won't come to that. i'm telling you now, it won't. trust me.

2010-06-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

princess is in another castle!

so, i saw toy story 3 recently, and it got me thinking about this article i read a while ago about how play is important to a child's development and well-being. i don't remember what the article said exactly, only that it went on to argue that a lot of crazies who went out guns-a-blazin' and committed all sorts of other horrible acts - well, they didn't get much play time growing up. how the author of that article knew about this lack of play time, i'm not sure. maybe they read about it in the crazies' journals, suicide notes or manifestos or whatever.

i got some decent play time in as a kid, so maybe that's why i'm not completely off-the-chain nuts. sure, i'm nuts, but then again, if you're reading this, you're probably old enough, and that means you've come across people who are nuts nuts. there was a time, though, when i had to use my imagination to entertain myself. even if it was just jumping on stepping stones and pretending that lava was beneath me, or jumping from the fireplace to the couch to save the princess, a part of my brain was actually working.

as a five-year old, i was always interested in saving the princess. i remember my childhood friend, rohdel, would come by, and i'd make him slay dragons with me and battle evil knights. all rohdel ever wanted to do, though, was play nintendo. that's why he came over. i remember him getting tired of my elaborate stories, and how we were going to strategize our next attack against the fire-breathing beast. he sighed. "can't we just play duck hunt?" i told him one more dragon to kill, and then we could do what he wanted. but when his family finally got a nintendo system of their own, i never saw him again.

at school, i looked forward to recess, where almost all the boys would start up a game of cops and robbers. i found it interesting that the rich white kids almost always wanted to be the robbers. naturally, i played a cop. we'd run around the school, hiding behind bathroom doors, popping caps in one another. it was all so real. if someone's thumb went down and they made the "boom!" sound, usually accompanied with a burst of saliva, i would grab my chest, fall to the floor in a dramatic fashion, and play dead. i could be making this up, but i think at one point, we even had fake e.m.t.'s reviving the wounded. there was hardly ever an argument about who shot whom first. if you got got, you knew it, and you dropped to the floor because you respected the game too much not to.

guns and violence were popular, but i was never much of a g.i. joe fan. a bunch of dudes going off to war, killing some guy named cobra or something - well, that just didn't appeal to me. i wasn't much interested in transformers or voltron, either. you're a car, now you're a robot. big whoop. no, like most boys my age, i was a ninja turtle kid. because there was some kind of magic to it. there was imagination. someone had to think of green ooze turning turtles into ass-kicking ninjas. you couldn't come up with a crazier, more awesome story than that. not in the eighties, anyway.

i had a massive collection of ninja turtles. i had april o'neil and casey, all the villains, foot soldiers galore, even shredder and his giant dome. i made them fight to the death. sometimes i'd even break them in half, snap their heads off, cut them with a knife, burn them with a lighter - it was a scene. my younger cousin would watch me, as i would engage those taiwanese pieces of plastic in the bloodiest of battles. even though there wasn't much of a story line, there was thinking involved. there was suspense and action, theater and dramatics.

i read michael chabon's fatherhood for amateurs recently, and he talks about how imaginative playtime is going away at an alarming rate. all of these crazy computerized animations, elaborate lego monuments, and intense video gaming is killing the imagination of youth. there's nothing left to think about. there's only assembly required and achievements to unlock. i've seen my cousin's impressive display of legos, and i'm pretty sure he never actually plays with them. they are, after all, $80 - $150 puzzles that break easily. and for some reason, this really bothers me. instead, he spends most of the time on the computer, clicking a mouse, shooting things down.

unfortunately, there wasn't a big moment when i realized i was too old for toys and games. most of my ninja turtles went to my younger cousin, but who knows what happened to my glo-worm, my etch-a-sketch, my magic eight ball? why did we stop playing cops and robbers at school, stop inventing our own games, and start playing video games and sports that didn't require any thought or imagination? when did we allow goals and productivity to trump creativity and real play?

and more importantly, what happens when younger generations forget that there's still magic and mystery in this world, still dragons to slay and princesses to save?

2010-06-20T00:08:00.001-07:00

why the sour face?

today is father's day, and i didn't get my dad anything. i didn't even send him a card. i bought him an iphone for christmas because he saved my life during that atv incident in boracay, but he still doesn't know how to use it. i tried to show him how to use it when i visited in april. i showed him all the cool things he can do, like tag songs with the shazam app, or google search by voice, or find a nearby sushi place on yelp, or locate his old house in san francicso using google maps. but it all seemed to go over his head.

each time i try to show him how to do something technologically related, it's always the same scenario. first, even if there's nothing to read, he'll put on his glasses. he'll put his glasses on and then he'll bring his chin in toward his chest and look over the top of his glasses. i'll start to show him something, maybe it's how to navigate folders in his email, or how to upload pictures from his camera, or how to download music. he'll look at everything closely, and then he'll stop me and say, "slow down. you're going too fast!" and so i repeat steps. by the end of it, i tell him to show me what i've just shown him to make sure he's understood it.

after years of doing this, i've pretty much given up hope on trying to teach him anything and everything technologically related. i figure that if he really wants to do something, he'll figure it out. for example, he knows perfectly well how to look up "the house of the rising sun" performance on youtube. he knows how to play a dvd because he really loves watching his elvis movies. and he loves the beatles and supremes so much that it was actually he who first showed me how to properly place the needle on a moving record.

but besides that, my dad hasn't really taught me anything. he tried to show me how to ride a bike at 13, and it was a complete disaster. when i was younger, he tried to teach me to swim multiple times, but i still don't know how to swim. when i got my license, he showed me how to change a flat, but we only did it once, so i'm pretty sure i'll be calling triple a the next time i get a flat. i only remember ever playing catch with my older cousin. my dad took me fishing once at a dirty lake past ione. i didn't catch a single fish that day, but i did see a lot of tires and other debris in the water.

when i was in cub scouts, he glued little bb gun pellets to the top of my soapbox race car. he told me that the car needed weight, since it would be going downhill in the race. i'd never made a wooden car before, so i trusted him. my car couldn't even finish the race, and all the boys laughed at me. being so young, i don't even remember what really happened. all i remember is seeing my car stopping way before the finish line, and i wondered why it kept stopping. the scout master even made it race two, three more times just to make sure it wasn't the track's fault. it wasn't. it was my dad's.

i kept it all in until we got to the car. as soon as i got in the front seat, i started bawling. my dad tried to reassure me. "it's just a race," he said, trying to comfort me. between sobs, i managed to say that i never wanted to go back there. i didn't want to be in cub scouts anymore. i can't imagine now all the similar heartaches i put him through. sometimes, after getting in a fight with one of my cousins at my grandma's house, i'd call my dad to come pick me up. i'd manage to keep it all in until we'd reach the driveway. that's when i'd start to frown and tear up. "why the sour face?" he'd always say. and i'd never be able to speak. i'd just shake my head. i was born on a wednesday, didn't he know?

that's not to say my dad hasn't looked out for me. when coach ownbey didn't play me in a basketball game, my dad called him up and chewed him out, and i started the next game. when some older kid grabbed me by the shirt, my dad got up in his face. when the comic book store guy overpriced me on a bunch of comic books, my dad was there to make sure i got every dime back. he showed up to every single soccer and basketball game i ever played. he gave me a car when i turned sixteen. he bought me a guitar and paid for lessons. he bought me everything i've ever asked for. he always made sure i didn't ever stay up too late or sleep in. he told me to get an education because that's something no one can ever take away from me.

we hardly ever talk on the phone because it's always so awkward, and we have nothing to say to each other. we've never really had a heart-to-heart, but then again, how many men ever do with their fathers? after saving me from the atv accident last december, i'll always remember that moment afterward, though. we had just made it up the mountain, and we were sitting togeher on a bamboo platform up in the trees. the natives had created a makeshift zoo or bird sanctuary, and grace and nikki were still a few levels up, taking pictures of each other. we both realized then that something miraculous had transpired - after all, i could've been badly injured or worse. we recognized that there was some kind of animal instinct within my dad that had allowed him to crash into me, and keep my vehicle stationary. he only asked if i was okay, but i could tell he wasn't just asking about what had happened that afternoon.

later, i asked him how he knew to do that. how did he know that hitting my vehicle from behind wouldn't have made me spiral out of control even more? he told me he didn't know. he told me he just got lucky. and that pretty much sums up my dad. my dad who often can't get an electronic hotel key card to work. my dad who watches wowowee, reads nonfiction books, and eats tuna sandwiches and vienna sausages for breakfast every morning. my dad who married a woman who made double, even triple his income over the years.

he didn't know. he just got lucky. maybe it's life's way of repaying him for the awful thing he had to endure before i was born. when his cousin, his best friend in the whole world, died in a car accident. my dad has had panic attacks ever since then. he takes xanax before flights, sometimes pulls over on road trips for no reason, and sometimes he'll just zone out at the dinner table. my mom will say, "hey!" and then he'll snap out of it. "where did you go?" she'll ask him. but he'll just smile and nod. a lot of people think he's simple. mostly because he barely knows how to work the tv remote control, but also because his english isn't that good, he keeps to himself, and he never made it past the tenth grade. but my mom, who knows him better than i do, better than anyone does, always warns me not to underestimate him. "you think he's simple," she says, "but he isn't."

one day, i hope, he's going to tell me that story about his cousin, about what really happened. one day, he's going to tell me what he's been keeping to himself all these years.

2010-06-16T23:27:00.001-07:00

no you're not!

the only thing that made me feel okay about quitting my last job was my boss' words to me: life is too short to not being doing what you want. and he had a point. i didn't want to try and force kids to learn english because i knew what it felt like when someone tried to force me to learn pre-calculus - a subject i had very little to no interest in. and even though english and pre-calculus can benefit all of us in the long run, i just had a real problem with being an authoritative figure. so i quit. and then i made myself pay for it. i still have dreams where i'm at the school, but each time, the gig isn't as bad as i had imagined.

what was it then? what is it that makes me want to give up on everything i do, everyone i know? there's this part in jhumpa lahiri's namesake where the father takes a job in another city, so he has to be away from his wife for long periods of time. when he finally dies, the wife realizes that he took the job and went away so that she could learn how to live on her own. similar to that, i guess i do what i do because i want to prepare myself for life's disappointments. like, if i just get really disappointed now, and feel like a failure now, i won't have to deal with it later. it's like a preemptive strike against a mid-life crisis. but that's no way to live your life.

they announced at work today that my department and i would be moving down to the clinic's old space. i guess that's what triggered it. the only thing i have to look forward to at work is my officemates, the people i bullshit with and complain to. after a long lonely weekend, i actually look forward to monday morning when i can tell emily and gen what i did, that they finally opened the hatch in lost, or that i ate some really amazing dim sum. i can quote boogie nights and talk about lady gaga all i want, and they just smile and attempt to humor me. and now work is taking that away from me, forcing me to work with new people, older people, and god knows what we'll have to talk about. oprah magazine and crocheting, i guess.

i'm using it as an excuse to get away. i can't look at the buildings of the university anymore. i can't take another month of rain. i can't just go to work everyday, do nothing, and then come home and take three hour naps. my boss once said that seattle is just a place where people come to go to school, and then when school is over, they go away. either that, or they end up getting some corporate job. and sure, it's gonna be the same wherever i end up. i'll have to start over, look for work, try to create something that resembles a social life, find an apartment, pay bills, get groceries, try not to feel anxious and overwhelmed.

what i worried about most when i was unemployed was that i was missing out on something. that old lie that your twenties are supposed to be some awesome nonstop party where everyone goes out drinking and having loose morals every night. and maybe it's supposed to be, but i got a glimpse of that kind of life in new york, and yeah, it was fun for a week, but after that, it's just kind of sad. and i saw myself for what i was. there was this moment where i was at some bar, and i went to the bathroom to get away from it all. i went back out and started dancing and singing along to "whatever you like." i'd never felt more disingenuous in my entire life.

but that's the thing. i saw this postsecret once that read, "i don't want to be holden caulfield anymore." i don't know how to stop having this internal monologue with myself. i don't know how to make it go away. i'm like the old biblical dude, the prodigal son, who lost his way. why else are there numerous entries in this blog about strippers, awful things i've said and thought, stupid things i've done. this isn't me. i need to figure out how to stop living just to have something to write about. i need to stop worrying about retirement and saving money because i'm afraid of uncertainty. i need to stop being so hard on myself, stop talking about hard times in general. sometimes you just need to learn to walk away and be grateful for what you've got.

sixty more entries to reach the 1,000th post, and then i retire the blog.

2010-06-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

tacos, tacos, tacos...burritos?

let me start by saying i don't write about food. i don't know why people write about food. writing about food is like writing about music. what's the point? everyone is gonna experience it differently, so you might as well just keep your comments to yourself. i'm sure there are some people who write about food well, like ruth reichl and the eat, pray, love lady (that's about food, right?), but for the most part, the average joe blow like myself can't tell much of a difference between a zagat-rated risotto and a microwaveable burrito from 7-11.

that brings me to my point, which is that i'm going to now write about burritos. it all started with taco bell's burrito supreme. i first had a taste of that glorious thing when i was probably four or five years old. my mom or dad must've brought it back from taco bell one day, and i ate that shit up like it was the greatest thing i had ever tasted. and in four years of existence, after eating gerber's mashed up peas, carrots and applesauce for years, it probably was the greatest thing i had ever tasted. i soon discovered the mild and hot sauce packets, and how you could make your burrito soggy and spicy if you wished. wash that shit down with an ice cold pepsi, and i was in heaven. after getting over a bad case of the stomach flu in second grade, i wanted one real bad, but was afraid i was just going to throw it up. when i didn't throw it up, i knew that the burrito was special.

there were other places where i got burritos, i'm sure, but none of them really stuck out in my mind as much as the burrito supreme did. it wasn't until i tried the burrito ultimo from baja fresh that i had first discovered a true contender. there was something terrific about it. it had a toasted tortilla and a special sauce that burst with flavor. green and red peppers, onions, rice, sour cream, and cheese. absolutely delicious. i got upset whenever i took a friend there, and he or she said baja was gross. i'd reprimand them, set them straight. "that's because you didn't order the burrito ultimo!" and then i'd feel as though it was i who had failed. i forgot to warn them that the burrito ultimo (and maybe the nachos) was the only thing on the menu worth ordering.

i took my buddies chris and jeff there once because they'd never been to baja fresh. it felt like my whole life i had to tell people about other stuff (i.e. bands and movies) like the burrito ultimo, but that's a different story. jeff didn't take my advice. i think he ordered a baja burrito, a real shit sandwich, and we laughed at him for being so stupid. chris, on the other hand, was rewarded for listening. his face lit up. halfway through his burrito, he said, "this is so good. i want to stick my cock in this." see? if you're gonna write about food, you need to come up with shit like that.

sidenote: sometimes the burrito ultimo is hit or miss. like yesterday, i got one from fucking bellevue. tortilla wasn't toasted, and i swear there wasn't a single goddamn pepper in it. it was mostly rice with a little bit of sour cream on the bottom. catastrophe. to guarantee goodness, you must order from the baja fresh on howe about arden. even the jamba juice there gets it right every time. they're doing something right in that area. and they've got leatherby's. something right indeed. but you know who doesn't have it right? chipotle. and world wraps. jesus, don't get me started on world wraps.

gotta give my dad props for discovering this little place called gordito burrito, off the highway 50/howe avenue exit. my dad came home one day, and i expected him to bring home his usual shit: korean barbecue, hawaiian barbecue, kfc, noodles and fried rice, etc. all the stuff he brought home was good, but when he laid down those boxes of gordito burritos, he took it to a whole new level. first of all, the burritos were fucking massive. they were like warm infants, small baby jesuses, ready to die for our salivating sins. he always ordered extra guacamole and salsa, and man, oh man, it was a feast.

i went through a real seven-layer phase in high school, too. the burrito supreme was on its way out, especially after everyone i knew kept telling me that taco bell used the shittiest meat. so shitty it wasn't even meat. grade z meat or something like that. so, i thought i'd be "healthier" and try out the seven-layer. less meat, more "vegetables," so it must be good for me, right? i ate seven-layers like a champ. for lunch, for dinner, sometimes twice a day. and always with pepsi or sierra mist. sounds awful when i think about it now, but back then, i didn't know no better. i learned about god and long division, but nutrition never even entered the discussion.

jimboy's and betos can also get honorable mentions. and there's this place by my apartment in columbia city that's okay. nothing worth getting excited about, though.

when i got to seattle, i tried taco del mar. the super veggie burrito is what they called it. when i order, this is how the conversation goes:

me: one super veggie burrito on tortilla please.

her: what kind of beans?

me: black beans.

her: cheese, lettuce, tomato?

me: yes.

her: hot, medium, or mild sauce?

me: medium.

her: for here or to go?

me: to go.

her: anything else?

me: no.

and so i go, hoping to find the world's next top burrito.

2010-06-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

can i use your phone?

the sun was partially breaking through the clouds, making its way past the blinds and onto the right side of my body. the dog lay lazily in the center of the room. on the coffee table, a bag of tortilla chips and homemade guacamole. the two roommates were screaming, slapping each other high-fives. the girls were on their laptops, occasionally looking up to see what all the fuss was about. on the other side of the country, the celtics were up by ten, up by six, and then up by seven.

there was some talk about the food. adam called aaron cheap, and aaron disagreed. who were these people? how the hell did i end up here? should i be at home, instead, watching the same televised sporting event with my retired parents? sure, i liked these people enough. i envisioned one of them, maybe even myself, getting up and screaming, "i fucking hate all of you!" and then storming off. where did this thought come from? i didn't hate them. and nobody in the group seemed to feel that way, either. but it was there. it was possible.

earlier that day, i was at the park eating tacos with my friend. this black kid came up to us, asked to borrow one of our phones. my friend was skeptical, asked what he needed it for, but i just handed mine over. this kid could've run away with it. if that happened, depending on my mood, i would've chased after him, or i would've just kept on eating my taco. that's how much i don't know myself. how will i react in any given situation? i won't know until it happens. he was a nice enough kid. he said he was gonna move to georgia because his dad is in the military.

as the story goes, corey got really drunk, and aaron tried to make a move on her. he hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, and he wasn't even drunk. the guy has a thing for her, it's obvious. he doesn't seem to know what to say, though. do you know how sometimes you hear a perfect song, read a perfect story, and it's as though those words have already existed? as though that song or story was always in the universe, and it was just a matter of time before somebody put them to paper and made it popular? well, this guy is like the opposite of that perfect song or story. he has a bunch of lines nobody wants to hear, superfluous comments that go nowhere, mean nothing.

the two girls talked of uncertainty, which was fine because they had graduated high school in 2004, and they were in their early twenties. they talked of moving beds, humidity in the south, storage units, living in fresno, going to graduate school at cal, studying birds, buying a home. all the while i sat in the backseat, keeping quiet, playing with my sunglasses, wondering if i was going to end up like the orange man at car dealerships, the one who just blows around in the wind.

i think i'm outgrowing it, this phase of uncertainty. but maybe it's just the weather, the time of day, something i ate three hours ago. tomorrow never knows, it could be back and stronger than ever. and that's why i'm so afraid of living.

2010-06-08T15:30:00.001-07:00

you's a hoe.

i didn't ever tell you about this girl, moriah, did i? well, i probably did, but who gives a shit? i'm always repeating stuff on this blog. sue me. moriah was this blonde girl who went to center high, and she took me on my first trip to the dreaded friend zone. we met at tower records. i was eighteen, and lamenting over the fact that i worked at a record store and still couldn't get laid. to my credit, staff was a real sausage-fest then, and i had just emerged from jesuit high school as a bitter individual who had just lost all faith in humanity.

needless to say, i was pretty happy when moriah showed up to work that first day. she smelled nice and had a vacant stare. she was pale, but not sickly-looking. she had green eyes (i think), wore lip gloss, eye shadow, and painted her nails either red or pink. a real girly girl. we talked about the interview process, the one where the general manager asked us to name all four beatles. she said she couldn't do it - she could only name paul and george - but she got the job all the same. she couldn't remember john fucking lennon's name. i was utterly entranced by her.

she kept talking to me, and i couldn't understand it. in those days, i was used to being ignored and downright ridiculed. so, why all of a sudden was this attractive girl who went to a ghetto high school talking to me about music and movies? we even had inside jokes. an example: back then, ludacris' song "you's a hoe" was a hit. she was talking to me on instant messenger and accidentally typed, "you's a shoe." it was a running gag for a long time.

one day, the store got free passes to jay and silent bob strike back. the screening was on a wednesday during the day, though, so passes were useless to most of the staff with the exception of moriah and me. i asked her if she wanted to go. she said, sure. i asked if she had seen any of kevin smith's other movies, and she told me that she hadn't. i told her that i had all of his movies on dvd and that she could borrow them if she wanted. somehow, she ended up inviting herself over to my house to watch mallrats instead.

she drove all the way from antelope or wherever the hell she lived to my parents' house in rosemont. for those of you unfamiliar with sacramento, that's like a forty minute drive. talk about leading a guy on! on the way over, she phoned me because she got lost. i gave her some bad directions, and she got even more lost. i was bad at giving directions because no one ever came to my house. finally, she arrived, and she was pissy. "you told me to turn left at mayhew!" i apologized, and then i turned on the movie. "what?" she said, "a movie with no popcorn?" jesus. i felt like i had invited peppermint patty to my house.

she asked to see my room, and i felt awkward about it. was this finally it? were we gonna do it? my mom was asleep in her bedroom, and i felt weird about bringing a girl to my room, even though i was already eighteen years old. what a noob, right? my room then was a total pervert's paradise. the walls were covered with britney spears posters and other scantily clad young women. i had shelves of cds and dvds, a blue trunk full of pornography. we watched some tv, and she told me i had a cool room. i asked her what was so cool about it. she said that i had obviously spent a lot of time there, and wanted it to look a certain way. at some point, my mom checked in on us, and i introduced moriah to my mom. my mom smiled and closed the door behind her.

you know how the rest of the night went because by now, you know my life. nothing happened.

a few days later, we went to go see jay and silent bob strike back with our free passes. she told me she would just meet me at the arden fair mall. i waited there, still not believing that this was happening. a girl was meeting me at the movies. a girl. me. movies. it didn't add up. she showed up, and she looked more amazing than ever. she was like one of those girls who was supposed to show up with her little female entourage, all the little bitches who envied and admired her all at once. she wasn't supposed to show up alone looking that good to meet schlubby me.

we made other plans. she drove me to her house for some reason, and i met her dad. the bathroom was a mess, and i didn't know pretty girls had disgusting bathrooms. i didn't get her family situation. she had an adopted asian brother or something, and an absent (or dead) drug addict of a mother she refused to talk about. i sat in her room, and i flipped through her old yearbooks. i was trying to figure out who this girl was, why she was spending her time with me, and where all of this was going.

that summer, we watched the fireworks atop the arden fair mall parking lot. i put on the jimmy eat world song, "just watch the fireworks." we got ice cream from leatherby's. she sang along to a song called "mt. moriah" that i had never heard of. we non-double-dated with our friends alejandro and chrissy, respectively. we got drinks from jamba juice. i played jimmy eat world's "sunday," and she asked me if i put that song on because it was sunday. i told her i did. i got jealous when i saw her talking to other guys at the store. even if we were just going to be friends, she helped me regain some faith in humanity.

summer was coming to an end, and i was all set to head up north for college, while she was gonna stay behind at american river community college. one of the last times we hung out, we decided to go to the california state fair together. i played one of the carnival games and won her a prize. she got on some ride that was just like a super fast car or something. we walked around to see the different exhibits, all the dirty pigs and smelly horses and giant squash. at the end of the night, we got our picture taken together at the kcra news exhibit, and just before the flash, i thought about kissing her. i didn't.

a year had passed. one lonely night in college, i instant messaged her and asked why nothing ever happened between us. she called me a downer, said i wasn't her type. she even called me "round." not square. round. as in, fat. i realized then that she hung out with me that summer probably because no one else could stand her.

and just like that, i could feel my faith slipping away once again.

2010-06-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

hollywood kind of way.

my coworker is getting married next month. her fiance is an engineer for microsoft. he gets high tech gadgets and takes them apart. his job has taken him to places in europe and asia. they lived together for a year in japan. that's how come she knows all about weird japanese subcultures like lolitas. she's planning for the wedding, and it's gonna be a small affair in the small town where she grew up, some place called cle elum or something like that. somewhere in middle or eastern washington that out-of-towners like myself know nothing about. what business would i have knowing about a place like cle elum?

from the way she describes it, there's gonna be a bunch of plastic chairs and tables. she's been trying to find a vendor that'll give her a reasonable price, and this time of year, and with the date so close, it's not the easiest thing to do. a few weeks back, she went to portland with some girlfriends to get herself a wedding dress. she said the invitations haven't even gone out yet. maybe they have by now, but the last time she told me, they hadn't gone out yet. her fiance also bought a house in the central district, so they're gonna have to spend the summer fixing that up.

i asked her how they met because i'm curious about things like that. she said she was on a boat on lake union, her brother's boat to be exact, and there was a problem with the boat, like it got stuck or something, and then her fiance showed up and helped them. she said that it took them meeting a few times after that incident out on lake union before he finally asked her out. i said that was a real hollywood kind of way of meeting the person you were gonna marry, and she agreed.

a friend of mine from college is engaged, too. i told her she should register at crate and barrel. i don't know what it is about crate and barrel. the first time i walked in that store, though, i said to myself, so this is marriage. it's all expensive furniture and things i would never be able to afford on my own. so it's been a running gag with me. i pass by a crate and barrel with a friend, and i tell him or her i'm gonna register there one day. and they always say, why? and i say, just look at the place. doesn't that look like married life? and usually they don't get it, and i don't bother explaining it. anyway, my friend from college isn't gonna register at crate and barrel. she isn't gonna register at all. she thinks it's tacky.

it's funny. when i was a kid, i thought all little girls always dreamed about their wedding day. maybe some did, but that just goes to show how little i know about women. i thought they had everything planned out, from the dress they were gonna wear, to the venue, to what color ink on the invitations. now that i know engaged and even married women, it doesn't seem like they're fulfilling any sort of dream at all. it looks like a lot of stress and a lot of work.

as a bachelor, i took a three hour nap after work today. i can do that because there's no one around to tell me that i'm sleeping too much.

2010-06-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

make it right!

my uncle used to take me to candlestick park to see giants games when i was a kid. i didn't know shit about baseball, and i didn't care to learn, either. i just wanted the giants to win, but i didn't care one way or another. i just wanted them to win so that my cousins and my uncle would be in a good mood afterward. they rarely won, though. in fact, i don't think i had been to a single giants game at candlestick park when they had actually won. still, i'd bring my glove, and hope to catch a foul ball. i'd cheer when will clark was up at bat. i'd eat nachos and drink coke.

my friend got mariners tickets through work, so we went to safeco field yesterday. mostly, i was just glad to be outdoors while the sun was out. at the entrance to our section, 141, an old man held up a sign that read something like: as courtesy to the audience, please wait until this player finishes at bat. i wondered if holding that sign was the man's only job, or if he did it part-time, and what he might need the extra money for if the latter was the case. we got to our seats in the second inning.

at one point in the game, the angels' pitcher dropped the ball, but the ref called it out. there was a guy in our section that completely lost it. he screamed, "he dropped the ball! make it right!" he was a middle-aged white man, and his face was completely red. it wasn't the first time i had seen something like this happen at a major sporting event. it happens all the time. who are these people, though? they look so frustrated and angry when they're screaming their tomato heads off, and to what end? as if a referee is really going to change his mind over some lunatic screaming in the stands?

maybe it went like this: he was born, and he had a few childhood friends, but they didn't stick with him to adulthood. when he was seven, his bike was stolen, and his dad told him life wasn't fair. it seemed to be his motto whenever things didn't work out for him, and each time his dad said it, he could only think, if life isn't fair, and you knew that, then why the hell did you have a kid? out of pure dumb luck, he had a high school sweetheart, but it didn't take. they split up the summer before college. in college, he did a lot of drugs, but managed to keep it under control enough to get decent grades as a history major. then, he realized he wasn't gonna do shit with a degree in history, so he got a job as a delivery driver for ups. he met his wife through work. he had kids of his own, even though he knew life wasn't fair. he took the whole family to a ballgame on a saturday afternoon, where he screamed his head off at the ref, much to the embarrassment of his subservient wife and absent-minded child.

do you know how good it feels to let people down? i bet you don't. you don't know the thrill of being with a social group - i'm talking a real friendly bunch, and they're at some bar, and they're having a great time, really drinking it up, laughing, smiling, a real party, a real hoe-down. i'll bet you don't know what it's like to not be able to turn it off, to push aside the thought that this is stupid, that this is a waste of time. that this is completely unacceptable and irrelevant. you don't know the thrill of it, of walking away when things are just getting good, and there's no reason behind your selfish action. no reason whatsoever.

you do it because you're bored, and you've done this. everything's tired, and you just want to be left alone.

2010-06-03T09:31:00.001-07:00

put stuff inside you.

freshman year of college, there was this girl, jen, who lived next door to us. she was a nursing student, and a part-time waitress at hooters. i have to admit, it was pretty awesome. it was as though hollywood didn't completely lie to me, and that hot, fake american pie girls really did exist in dormitories. she'd hang out in our dorm room sometimes because she got along well with my roommate. my roommate was always bringing in the cooze, and i didn't get it. just because he was an athlete or something, big fucking deal.

jen found out i liked the gilmore girls, so on thursday nights, she'd come over, and we'd watch it. this one time, i hadn't taken out the trash in a while, and she sat right next to the trashcan while watching the show. "this trashcan smells like sperm!" she said. after the third or fourth time she announced it, i went off and emptied the trash. for weeks after that, she told my roommate that he needed to stop jerking off into the trash.

i think she wanted us to hang out in her room sometimes - it was only fair - so she bought an xbox and invited me and my roommate over to play. we played halo, and she commented on how i looked so serious when i played. she called it my game face. while we were playing, she told us not to turn around, so naturally, i turned around. she was changing her bra and shirt, getting ready for work. i caught a glimpse of her back, artificially tanned and perfectly fit. so, this was what a shirtless hooters girl looked like from the back.

come spring time, she went on and on about how she wasn't getting what she needed, sexually speaking. she lamented over being placed on what she called "the virgin floor," bellarmine six. i was sitting at the computer one day, and in front of my roommate, she asked if i would have sex with her. being a slightly overweight asian nerd, i knew she was just trying to humiliate me, so i had to come up with something clever and not-too-nerdy to say. i declined her offer, but followed with, "i'll put stuff inside you if i want." she laughed oddly. i couldn't tell if she found it funny or offensive.

eventually, she started seeing this soccer player who lived next door to us. i was surprised to find that, despite him being a self-proclaimed ladies man (he did have a lot of stories to tell and a new girl in his room just about every week to confirm them), he was also a virgin. after some convincing, they did the deed, and she was very disappointed. apparently, he couldn't last very long, and she'd tell me and my roommate all about it, all the while looking very frustrated and upset.

they were together for a little while, and then they weren't. i guess that's just how these things go.

2010-06-01T23:08:00.001-07:00

this story isn't appropriate for children.

i got lit and i watched the simpsons. i knew i was there when i couldn't stop laughing at this particular scene in the ralph loves lisa episode. lisa asks chief wiggum how he got krusty the klown tickets, and chief wiggum tells her that he caught krusty at a porno theater. when he finishes, lisa tells him, "that story isn't appropriate for children," and i was tearing up. like, why was chief wiggum telling a second grader that he was in a porno theater? goddamn, that was some funny shit. i went back to re-watch the scene, but then i found another scene that i didn't even remember watching. that's when i knew i was gone.

then i started thinking about lost, which is funny because i've only seen the first two episodes. i know nothing about lost, but then i started thinking about what i think the show might be about, and that freaked me out. like what if death isn't the end of us? what if there are all these alternate universes and we're in hell, or we end up in hell and we don't even know it? what if there's reincarnation and parallel dimensions and times and places that are crazy and more horrible than we could ever imagine?

why do i do it? i don't like losing control. but everything becomes so much funnier. like my friend was just playing a video game, and i knew we came from apes, but could you imagine an ape playing a video game? it would just look downright ridiculous. but it's perfectly normal for a human being to hold a remote control and pretend he is in control of another human being who is running around and throwing grenades at enemy soldiers. that's about when i thought all other species have it right. they just eat, screw, and try not to die.

my friend brought up full metal jacket, and that was a real buzzkill. i was only five or six years old when i saw a clip from that movie, and it haunted me for the rest of my life. it was the scene during basic training, when one of the soldiers completely loses it, and he shoots his drill sargeant before he shoots himself in the head. i was like five or six years old, and i was at a hotel with my parents. my dad was watching it, and i convinced him to let me watch some of it, too. i told him i could handle it. and then that soldier put the rifle in his mouth and all his blood and brains splattered against the bathroom tiles, and all i could think was, holy shit.

i couldn't imagine being in war. i watched the video game, and i failed to understand why people did it. why people went off (or ordered others off) to a foreign land and risked their lives for god, country, democracy, peace, stability, money, whatever it is. you run around and there's a chance an i.e.d. could just blow you to bits, or else a sniper could just burst your watermelon head. my friend said his cousin came back from two tours in iraq, one tour in afghanistan. he asked his cousin if he'd seen the hurt locker. his cousin said, "dude. no."

do you get it, though? like, this is it. right now i'm thinking i want to be wide awake and clear headed when it all goes down.

2010-05-29T21:49:00.000-07:00

this is happening.

she said she had to go get her master's degree in anthropology from some school on the east coast. which one? i don't know, columbia or cornell, some fancy pants place where old money talks with a stuffy accent. and what did that mean for them, exactly? well, let's not kid ourselves. there were only so many ways of putting it, of beating around the bush so to speak, and she had put up with him for so long that she felt she was entitled to an honest answer.

"i'm going to new york," she said. "it's over."

just like that. he didn't even put up a fight, didn't even say a word. he just smoked himself stupid and continued watching entourage. by then, they were both so unhappy, that she could've said just about anything, and he wouldn't have even flinched. i'm pregnant. i have cancer. dinner's ready. your mother's dead. did you get the mail? she needed a change, and he saw it coming. a serious relationship in his twenties, did he expect any different?

"aren't you going to say anything?" she asked. he hadn't said a word all night.

"what's there to say?"

"i don't know. that you're happy for me?"

"i'm happy for you."

he turned to face the wall, and he took more of the comforter with him. she sighed, and he could hear her as she put her hands to her forehead, something she did to express her frustration, which lately seemed to always be directed toward him. she got up to get a glass of water. he listened to her cold feet clap against the kitchen tiles. the sound of the refrigerator opening, closing, water pouring into a glass. then, slow gulps. he peeked over his shoulder to see if she was watching him. she wasn't.

the next morning, he went to work. he didn't say anything to anyone, at least for the first ten minutes. he checked his voicemail, his email, and then he got up to take a piss. the bathroom was empty, and he liked that. it made him feel like a rich person who had his own private bathroom at work. he could choose whichever urinal or stall he wanted. and then he could just stand there and look at himself in the mirror for as long as he wanted. he made some faces in the mirror, made his eyes real big, opened his mouth real wide, arched his eyebrows as high as he could. it was just something he did to help keep things in perspective.

"are you feeling alright?" his coworker asked him.

"yeah, i'm fine," he said.

"you just seem a little out of sorts today. i mean, more than usual. haha."

"yeah, well. kate's going to new york."

"oh. sorry."

he knew better than to bring up personal shit at the office. how unprofessional. and he wasn't even a big shot yet, so his petty little personal life didn't even matter. he couldn't wait to be his own boss, to wear a suit and tie. he'd go out to lunch with the other high power execs on the company's dime, and he'd raise his scotch. "my wife is leaving me," he'd say. and he'd say it with pride. because when you have power, status, and money, you'll most certainly find another. when you're a nobody bitch assistant, airing your little sob story and not being able to pull your shit together could just lead you back to your mother's guest room.

he stayed late at work that day. there was no reason to go home. all that would be there would be kate, some packed suitcases, and leftover meatloaf. all of his coworkers had gone home, and he went to watch the celtics/magic game in the lounge. he unbuttoned his shirt and stretched out across the sofa. there was a little black pillow he could rest his head on, and he tried not to think about how many asses and heads had touched the thing over the years.

his phone vibrated. a text from kate: where r u?

he didn't answer. instead, he finished the game. after that, he went out and got his favorite sandwich - a ham and gruyere baguette - from a nearby cafe. he took the bus into midtown and blew some money on a bunch of shirts. when the total came, $317.42, he knew he'd overspent, but he convinced himself that he deserved it. what else could he do alone? he thought about seeing a movie, but decided against it. there was nothing left to do but go home.

"i see you did a little shopping," kate said.

"yeah. a little."

"how much is a little?"

"$300 a little."

"jesus," she said.

he knew what he was doing. he was trying to guilt her into staying. he was trying to show her that he couldn't be trusted by himself. he was going to overspend and fall apart. if he knew where to buy hard drugs, he'd probably get into that as well.

"what are you trying to prove?" she asked.

"prove? what are you talking about?"

"it's not often you come home late with a bunch of new t-shirts."

"just felt like it. is that okay with you?"

she rolled her eyes and went into the other room. he lit another joint, and then he turned on the t.v. twenty minutes later, she came back into the room. her eyes were all puffy and red.

"can't you at least pretend you're a little sad that this is happening?"

by then, he was pretty lit, and her voice seemed like a far away echo. he thought for a long time about what he was going to say. she just stood there, looking more angry and confused by the second. his thoughts were coming to him very slowly, and he was afraid that no matter what he said, it was going to be the wrong thing. he didn't want to upset her because then she'd yell, and it would bring up all sorts of bad memories of growing up. all that he wanted was for her to sit there on his lap, and for things to be like the way they were when they had first started seeing each other.

he looked at her, and he tried his best to cry. he tried to think of all the saddest things he'd ever been through to help force the tears out, but for the life of him, he couldn't. he felt nothing. nothing at all.

2010-05-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

we're all illegal.

so, this school i work for, you know, the one that talks about social justice and equality all the time, has decided not to award a $40,000 fellowship to a female graduate, even though a whole committee nominated her and thought she was the best. from what i've figured out, the school has decided to not give her the fellowship because of her questionable citizenship status. apparently, the school says, sure, you can come to our school and pay us $30,000 in tuition every year for three years, and you can get a piece of paper with our logo on it when you finish, but no, you aren't good enough to be awarded a fellowship that might actually help you start your legal career.

the school is looking out for itself. it's just business. because my god, what might happen if this story broke while she was working at that law firm out there in moses lake? the headline would say: law school awards fellowship to undocumented graduate! and the whole city would be in an uproar. indignant folk would be all like, that fellowship could've gone to an american! no, no, the school couldn't have that. they'll support a professor whose offer to become dean at another school is rescinded based on sexual orientation, but come on, this is an immigration issue! one step at a time. don't blow your social justice load too quickly now, ya hear?

and even though the firm knows about her status, has outright stated that she is completely eligible to work for them, administration is still blocking the offer. and of course it's all hush-hush. can you just imagine if it got out?

2010-05-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

the serenity of a vineyard.

what a morbid little shit you were. you held the knife to your chest, and you thought about how easy it would be. only five years old and you put the big butcher knife right in front of your chest when no one else was looking. grandma caught you once. maybe you wanted to get caught. you were such a little drama queen, it's a marvel you never tried out for plays. grandma caught you, and she said, "don't do that! the devil could push your hand." you believed in the devil then. the devil, and ghosts and witchery. a little red and black man with yellow eyes, horns, and a long pointy tail would suddenly appear and bring that knife through you, empty your life all over the kitchen floor.

why did you do that? i don't think you were trying to be funny, or make a big production out of it. no, you were probably just seeing how easy life was. it was like your old nintendo. you could just press the power button, and it would be finished. but something made you want to keep playing. all the little pleasures in life, wasn't it? maybe it was hearing paperboy's "ditty" on the radio, or else full afternoons of eating pik-nik while watching tom and jerry. there was something weird about all of it, though, and i have to give you credit for knowing where the power switch was so early on.

and then there was that flight to los angeles you took when you were seventeen. it was a stormy day in april, and california was having the storm of its life. that plane shook and rattled, dropped and swayed for the short, forty-five minute flight, but you thought that was it. you thought you were dead. the attendants couldn't even get up to serve peanuts. that was always a bad sign. you made a deal with god then, you remember? you told god, if you get me out of this one, i'll be a better person. i'll stop being so negative, and i'll help people and be good and love, and dear god, just don't let me die. not tonight. not somewhere over fucking bakersfield. you made it, and then you didn't hold up your end of the deal.

what were you afraid of then? clinging to the isolated life you led, holed up in your room night after night re-watching jenna jameson videos? maybe it was the promise of another power-sized mango-a-go-go with a free vitamin c boost, or getting to sit through a really good movie - one that made you think - at the century theaters. there were all sorts of things you wanted to do. you were only seventeen then. you had to make it through that night. otherwise, all the old filipinos would just shake their heads and say, "bata pa, bata pa." translation: he was just a child. he was just a child.

you are growing too old for this kind of talk, this brand of negativity. you're older now. and even though you're not necessarily wiser, it's time to let go of some things. what if it is that easy? you know enough now that there is no devil, at least not one that's going to push your hand and make you do something you regret. worse yet, there's no more grandma. no one left to warn you about your own imagination.

2010-05-26T11:46:00.001-07:00

i'm a hugger.

the bowl was whack. it was supposed to be banging, but it was whack. we took a cab there, spent $25 to have the dude drop us off at a nearby park. we had to piss. "there's people here," i said. "so?" i had a whole pitcher of sangria and two margaritas welling up inside my bladder, so i had to unload. like a dog, i went on a tree trunk for a good minute and a half. "hurry up!" he said. "i'm trying," i said. i couldn't stop peeing. it was the pee of my life, brought tears to my eyes.

"let's pop in here," he said. "this place has to go cups." i had to get more cash out of the atm. by then, i'd already racked up nearly $30 in non-chase atm fees. i took out $40, knowing i'd blow it on drinks or something else. there was always something to blow money on. he handed me a to go cup. "let's bounce," he said. "dude," i said, "we're drinking fucking beer on the street. what the fuck is this?" "i know," he said, "isn't it fucking awesome?"

we got to the bowl, and there was a line outside the place. "let's kill this first," he said. "we've got styrofoam cups," i said. "i could just be drinking a pepsi." "nah," he said, "they know what's up." we stood in front of some building with graffiti all over it, and we finished our beers. "i hope this shit isn't whack," he said. "if it's whack, we'll just go somewhere else." "no doubt."

we went in, and there was a decent crowd, but not big enough for him. "this shit is dead," he said. "it's fine," i said. we met up with some girls he knew, marisa and michelena. marisa hugged him, and then there was a moment where we couldn't decide whether to hug or handshake. she put her arms around me. "i'm a hugger," she said. michelena and i shook hands.

we got some more beers, and i texted back and forth with another dude who was supposed to meet up with us there. in the meantime, i talked with michelena. she was this small blonde thing, cute enough, and she said she had just gotten laid off from her job in social media marketing or public relations or some other such thing i wasn't familiar with. my friend and i had our meeting on the mound. "what are my chances here?" i asked. "not good," he said, "she's only into d.j.'s."

the other dude met up with us. "this place is dead," he told him. "we're gonna bounce." by then we were all pretty wasted, and we had no idea where to go. i had to be at the airport by 7 a.m., so i wanted to go home. i suggested secrets, the shady queens strip joint. they immediately were into it. "alright," i said, "but we're in and out. none of this getting to know them shit like you pulled last time." "yeah yeah," he said.

when it was all over, it was six a.m. and it was cold. i had makeup smeared all over the front of my shirt, and the ground was still spinning. i had a seven hour flight ahead of me. "that was a great night," the dude said to me. "but it was random."

2010-05-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

the blue skirt or the blue skirt?

i told him i wanted to take the l train to bedford because i'd heard it in a song. most of my sightseeing had to do with indie rock lyrics, i.e. stranded on bleecker and broadway, looking for something to do; i'm the luckiest guy on the lower east side; etc. he said, sure, we could take the l train to bedford. when we got to the subway station, he told me to note who was going where. all the little hipster bitches with their big sunglasses were going to brooklyn, and all the suits and fashionable women were going to eighth avenue. funny, i said.

we stepped off the train, and he told me to prepare to feel very uncool. i always feel uncool, i said. this will be nothing new. we got off the train, and we started walking. we stopped at a bar. me and rocky used to come here all the time, he said. let's go in. we went up to the roof, and got some coronas. it was only 3 p.m., and we were gonna wet our whistles (his phrase, not mine) early. all the tables were taken, so we found a little bench to sit on while we drank our beers.

this dude with a beard and red blotchy skin dropped his cigarette next to me. careful there, ed told him. i'm fucked up, the dude said. no kidding, ed said. the dude said, slide over. and then he said to me, take a look around, which one do you want? i'm gonna be your wing man, he said, and then he slapped me on the back. what's your story, the dude said. i'm visiting from seattle, i told him. nah nah, he said, that won't work. you work for a software company, and you're looking to bring your developers to the east coast. right? so what's the name of your company? i don't know, i said. i'm not drunk enough to have a good story yet. your story is fine, he reassured me.

we finished our beers, and the drunk dude disappeared. we decided to walk further down bedford avenue, stopping every now and then to get more drinks. we drank pabst blue ribbon with orange juice, and he called it a brunch monkey. we kept walking, and then we were in hasidic jewish territory. for many blocks, there were men in suits with yamikas and curls, and pretty jewish women with dark shiny hair and argyle sweaters and they were pushing strollers. there were little jews everywhere playing in the streets. it felt like a whole different time period and country. a group of small girls looked up at me, and i thought of francie nolan.

a few more blocks, and we'll be in bed-stuy do-or-die, he said. it's where biggie grew up. sure enough, we kept walking and there were no more jews, but instead, big black dudes with baggy clothes. there's a good wings place right here, he said. he ordered some wings, and we sat on a stoop and went to town on those wings. i dumped packets of hot sauce on mine. a combination of the heat, being drunk, sitting on a cool brooklyn stoop and thinking about how this was the setting for my favorite novel of all time made it the best meal ever.

we ran into his ex-girlfriend on the street, and she invited us up to her apartment. we drank wine on jenny's roof, and she looked at my buddy like he still meant a lot to her. i remember that look. it's been a while since i've seen it, but still, i remember that look.

2010-05-24T16:21:00.001-07:00

it's a code orange.

the poor bastard was working late into the night. midnight had come and gone, and he was still going at it, pulling in his 40k a year to be an assistant editor. i don't know how he did it. "how do you do it?" i asked. "i don't know," he said, "i just do it. but i work hard, and then i play hard." he took me to a big window in his office, and said that across the way, those were nyu dorms. "sometimes, we see girls changing, or people straight up fucking," he said. he told me about their code system, how a code green meant a girl in a towel, code orange was nudity, and code red was fucking. he told me how he'd sometimes just stand there and watch a little coed lotion herself up. "you'd be surprised how long they lotion themselves," he said.

i drank a vitamin c from the fridge - all their drinks were free - and i checked my phone and the internet. all the while he sat at his desk, and stormed around the office saying things like, "fuck" and "shit" and "this is fucking bullshit." i didn't know any of the editing jargon he complained about, so i just assumed something was amiss. "ten more minutes," he'd say. "ten more minutes, and we'll be out of here." "no worries," i said.

the night didn't start until about 2 a.m. we walked through washington square park because i wanted to see where they filmed that brutal skateboard scene in kids. we ended up at le souk, some bar/club where his friend was spinning. he introduced me to some girls, said i was a friend from high school, said i was from out of town. i think the girls were marisa and mikelena, and the former was kind of seeing the d.j. they danced and drank and i just drank. "come on," he said to me, "it's a dance party."

there was a black guy there, and he said that he wanted to kick the black guy's ass. "are you down to get in a fight tonight?" he asked me. he told me about how he and the d.j. were gonna fuck up this black guy. "what for?" i asked. "he's an asshole," he said. sure enough, the black guy was annoying, and he said annoying things. i don't remember exactly what he said, but i do remember him kicking my foot at one point. i just moved my foot. "if somebody punks you like that, you give them the finger," he said. "you tell them to fuck off," he said. "yeah, okay," i said.

let me back up. back at the office, my friend was telling me about neil strauss' the game. it's essentially a story or rulebook about how to pick up women. according to my friend, it's helped him sleep with sixteen women so far. he asked me what my number was. i told him the magic number, and he was just like, jesus. and then he told me that i need to read the book. on the train, he showed me how it works. there was a cute, busty girl on the train, and she was with her friend. he offered her his seat, and followed it up by saying, he offered not because he was a nice guy, but just because he didn't want to hear their asinine conversation. a neg is what the book calls it. the girl actually laughed, and they got to talking.

he was proud of that whole exchange, and he wouldn't stop talking about it. i thought maybe he was manically depressed. he already had himself a cute little hipster girlfriend who lived in brooklyn, so i didn't know what he was trying to accomplish. "the game isn't just about picking up girls," he said, "it's about being your best self." he kept insisting i read it, so i told him i'd read it, but in reality, i never had any intention of doing so.

i knew there was a real problem when i had to duck into a mall on the upper west side to take a piss. he really didn't want to go to the mall. i told him it was just to piss. he argued that it didn't feel right, that everything in new york was unique, and that a big mall had no business being there. i told him again, i just needed to pee. "okay," he said, "but let's be quick about this." after we left the mall, he was in a sour mood, until he started explaining the plot of cloverfield to me. he brightened up real quick after that.

i woke up around 3 a.m. that night. he came in and said, "that girl was whack! i gave her a hundred dollars!" "what'd she do?" i said, half-asleep. "she let me suck on her tits," he said. he turned on an episode of the simpsons. i remember laughing at the first few lines, and then i was out. completely knocked the fuck out.

2010-05-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

his first time visiting.

a few months ago, i messaged a classmate from high school. "are you still living in new york?" "yeah," he said. i told him i wanted to come visit. "you totally should," he said. i needed a week off from work. i had to get away from the boredom, the constant feeling that i wasn't contributing anything to society, to the world. a few nights before i left, i woke up half-panicked. this has happened before. it's that moment that sometimes happens when i think, i am alone, and i am going to leave behind my bed, my apartment, and i will be traveling by myself. and then i actually do it, and it's not a big deal at all.

i told the cabbie 49th and queens blvd. i called up ed, and he met me on the corner. he said he was doing laundry, and did i want to put my stuff away? i said it could wait. he smoked a cigarette, a stoag is what he called it, while we waited for his laundry. it was a warm and sunny day in the city. we talked about some fools we haven't seen or heard from since high school. strange to think it's been nearly a decade. he threw his shit in the dryer, and then we walked up a few blocks to his apartment.

his apartment was on the top floor, 5a, and it was half the size of my seattle apartment. "if you don't mind me asking, what's the rent?" i hate it when people say, if you don't mind me asking, but i know it's what people do, so it's what i did. "$1,250," he said. double what i pay for my place in seattle. "jesus," i said. "yeah," he said, "it sucks." he had a similar setup to me. not much shit on the walls, a black futon and small flat-screen. what set our places apart is that he had cigarette butts, marijuana ash, and empty beer cans all over. "let me show you the roof," he said.

i took in the view of the manhattan skyline, and i told him it was awesome. "i know it is," he said. he told me to crouch down, and then we got high. i took a big hit, held it in as long as i could, and coughed it out. it felt like i wouldn't stop coughing. here it is, i thought. an hour into my first visit to new york, and i'm already blazed. i moved my head and everything was super slow. "let me take you to my neighborhood bar," he said.

it was some old irish pub, and there was a romanian girl behind the counter. "magda, this is my friend from high school," he said. we shook hands. he and magda spoke for quite some time, and i kept silent. they were talking about their friends, ed's exes, and all these people i'd never heard of. she told ed she liked his glasses. and then she turned to me. "and you," she said, "you probably don't get many compliments." i told her i didn't, and i wondered if she was calling me ugly. "because you're so quiet!" she said. "oh yeah," i said. "i'm really high right now." "high as a kite," she said, and then we all laughed.

we took the seven to grand central station, and then we went to the east village, where ed's buddy, vic, lived. vic lived in an even smaller apartment, and he paid even more for rent. "he's really paying for the location," ed said. vic also lived on the top floor, and he had his music going full blast. he was a dj, and he had everything set up by the window. i was still kinda high, and i could only wonder who these people were. east coasters who made just enough to get by and continued to party it up everyday like they were still in high school and their parents were out of town.

we started the night off at this bar called simone's. everyone knew vic and ed. i got introduced as "the friend from high school," with the additional, "it's his first time in new york." and everyone else would always be like, really? we had shots of jameson on the house, beer after beer, bar after bar. from there, we went to lucky jack's, and then to pianos, and then ended the night at sing sing. ed's buddy, paul, said he wanted to go hit on some girls at sing sing. he had just finished med school, and i told him that he should tell them that. "dude," i said, "just got up to them and be like, 'i'm a fucking doctor.'" he laughed. "not quite yet," he said. "it'd be more like, 'hey, i've got a lot of debt!'"

around 4 or 5, we cabbed it back to his apartment, smoked some more, and watched the simpsons. a great way to start the week.