Super-egoiste. Fabulous.

I like to Google my own name periodically. Who doesn't?

Someone from Queer Cultural Center, the folks who bring you the National Queer Arts Festival, has a YouTube account and posted excerpts from the June 2007 Transforming Community event.

I look hot.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

Psalm Elemental

Begun while grieving the tragedy in New Orleans and the tsunami of December 2004.

A lost eyelash my gift to You—
May Your lifebreath wish my detritus into
A destiny that is anything but the present,
This time of sorrow for human and divine alike:
People drowned and lost across oceans, lost to distant shores,
Their cries rumbling beneath continental shelves
Like underwater earthquakes.

Sorrow is a tsunami;
Lost hope is a flood.

O pretty brown Ones, sweet sweet Creators
Do You mean to save us?—
Just as a slave mother means to spare her child,
A tender slit across the throat, the sound
The soul’s satisfied sigh of liberation?

Only a jealous god, a god without mercy
Would have us preserve this lifetime at all costs
Rather than whisper us the genius of Rebirth,
The possibilities offered by a new providence
That does not hold the whip, the poison,
The crushing blow,
The bludgeoned soul,
The realization that we are nothing
But the toil of our bodies,
A pound of flesh for a dollar of labor
No mind, no spirit, no love, no future.

O old deities of burnished brown skin,
O divine beings with Your pretty songs
And golden embroidered mantillas,
I feel Your fear
Your cries to be reborn in these new lands.

O ancient avatars of the blood and the drum
Of the mud and the sun and the sweet and salt waters,
Your children continue to feed You,
Much as You are children Yourselves,
Thriving on the nourishment of our
Love and devotion.

Yes, Santo Niño,
Yes, Saintly Girlchild,
I would hide You quick and safe both,
Tucked behind the fluttering wings
Of my ribbed chest.

Yes Saintly Boychild,
Yes Santa Niña,
I will be the beast within
Whose belly the earth resides,
Keep You hidden close to
The steady rhythm of my heart.

Yes yes
I shall manifest Your divinity,
Jonah’s whale holding a galaxy
Of oceans within the cavern of my gut,
The only being the wiser for the galaxies
Of oceans just beyond the reach
Of my flipper tips,
Planets like plankton caught in the spiny
Caress of my teeth.

Yes yes
I shall love You and love You,
Alive or dead.

O my lovely, lovely Gods:

I only ask that You remind me
Why You put us here in the first place.


You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

OMG, Did Nico Just Put Up a Blog Post??

SUNFISH

One day this summer
I lay with a lover
On a blanket at the beach.

We were trying to resuscitate our love,
But it had expired long before the dawn
Of that cold gray morning.

The Sun hid behind the clouds
And I became convinced that it was
Definitive proof that our love had died.

I thought of all those centuries,
Times even before there were such
Things as centuries,
When the Sun was a most-loved thing,
A God.

I told You then, if You would just part
The clouds for a time
That I would build You a grand shrine
O Most-Loved, O Life-Fire-Father.

Sure enough,
You parted the clouds expectantly,
Demanding my love like all the others.

I built your shrine,
Didn’t I?
Candles, baubles, the fire lit
The offerings made.
But I admit that
I was hardly left in awe
Of your powers;
Perhaps the blood of my ancestors forgets.

One day this fall
I traveled with a lover to the sea,
Parts of its immense wetness held fast
Between thick sheets of glass,
Select specimens herded inside
For the pleasure of us humans.

That day, I remembered the love promise
I made to you in the Summer;
I watched Your namesake
Emerge heavy and numinous
From the far shadows of the aquarium,
Face like a relic,
Worship-ready.
Something in me knelt before You,
Prone.

psalm

for t.

i imagine these words a plait, intertwined and coiled about my heart:

i trust you to love me.
i trust you to love yourself.
i trust myself to love you.
i trust myself to love me.

someday, lovely, i will grow my hair long and black and flowing. i will say these words over and over, wrap them around my tongue as i braid one section tight. i will take these words, these promises and free them from my scalp, gift them to you so that you can feel the curves, the undulations of my covenant in your hand or against your tongue, place me under your pillow, sweet, and sleep, sweet, sleep, until i return...

Just a Man

The thought of being just a man makes me sad.

Walking down the street the other day I saw this guy. Cute from head to toe with his handsome, light-skinned Latino-and-maybe-something-else features, chunky-solid body frame, Saturday morning stubble, thick black glasses, and emo-Latino dress style, he was a man just like any other, enjoying the sun as it cut through the cold of mid-January.

As I looked at him I heard the voice in my head say, That could be you.

For some reason, that was disappointing.

Laying in bed this morning I thought that maybe what makes me beautiful are the contradictions that writhe/write/ride my body: the curve of my hips hidden under blue jeans, the swell of my chest mitigated by a tight strip of cotton, lashes so dark my lovers ask if I am wearing eyeliner, the planes of my face suggesting a 5 o’clock shadow that is smooth and cool to the touch. Beauty that invokes a desire that is frightening for some, but that for others, is just what they have always been seeking.

Will I still be beautiful as a man? What will I forget? What will I lose forever?

The blood that flows from between my legs each month reminds me just how little control I have over my body. The pain and emotion that accompany this bloodshed reminds me of how profoundly my body is bound by biology.

There is a voice inside me that thinks that if I wanted it bad enough, I could convince my body to change sexes like a reef fish, dig back through the mud of evolution to remember the chromosomal puzzles that give birth to monsters.

A monster, after all, is only monstrous because she is aberrant, no mother or father to call her home. A man with estrogen flowing through his body is the return home, the journey towards the origin of every body.

Have I never left home or am I in exile?

Either way my body speaks with a hunger that has never been fed.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

telltale

i am here today because my ancestors escaped.

i am here today because my people ran, hid, fought, begged, borrowed, stole, hustled, and killed.

i have survivors guilt.

i worry that that fact that i exist means that my people have a propensity for treachery, back-stabbing and cowardice. i imagine who my ancestors had to sell out to make it through the conquest of the americas. i wonder which ones bowed and kept their mouths shut when the priests set foot on one of their islands and claimed it for their king.

i don't know these things for sure, only this shame that whispers to keep such thoughts to myself.

i do, however, know my father's tendency to side with the winning team, even when the winning team would rather see him dead than share their glory.

i do know that my paternal grandfather's family has an indigenous name, that their people lived isolated in the mountainous regions where missionaries ended up like dr. livingston.

i do know that i am the legacies of clandestine lovers:

a german immigrant crossing over to the US border with his stolen india bride, federales hot on their trail.

a too-tall-to-be-igorot poor laborer romancing a proud family's pristine, china doll daugther, shaming both families with a baby born three months after their wedding.

an acid jazz, finger-snapping filipino navyman and a chicana rocknroll daughter of a preacherman shotgunning their love in a tiny chapel at lemoore naval air station, their only witness a man of god and a stranger.

there are so many stories and i want to know them all.

i want to feel the breath of my white great great grandfather's german accent tickle my earlobe with sweet nothings--or brutal threats--as if it were my brown india great great grandmother's.

i want to know the cadence of the train tracks clacking painfully against my great grandfather's back as he headed home to new mexico, his curandera mother waiting to exorcise the arthritis from his aching joints.

i want the blood on my father's hands in vietnam and the rage of my abuela in the last five years of her life and the rapes committed by my menfolk and the incest experienced by my mother and my auntie. i want the love of my lolo's hands pruning his rose bushes and the glory of my bisabuela's thighs grasping a lover's hips tight and the honor of my abuelo's conscientous objection to WWII and the sweetness of my great grandmother shaping tortillas.

ojala that i could spend my life listening to ghosts conjure me stories of my past, shut my eyes tight against the present.

there are no books, no pictures, no recordings, few oral histories.

only visions, dreams, fantasies, and lies.


You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

oaktown song, pt. 1 & gunpowder lullabies

i love that i am living, herman@s.

i love that i am living here
in this place not named for a santo, or a man,
but a tree.

i love waking up on a weekend morning to "praise jesus!"
outside my window

i love stepping out my front door midday
to "white folks don't even give a shit about their own poor,
why would they give a shit about us?"

i love the "good mornings" and "how ya doins"
from people i pass on the street.

i love the bright sun winking through the fruit trees
behind my house, laughing with me because
that city across the bay, who is indeed named after a saint,
shuns the sun with thick gray clouds
gathered around a cold shoulder.

i love standing in my backyard in the dark of almost midnite,
watching the young banana tree dance with
the breeze from the bay,
hoping hoping hoping that the beautiful soul next to me
will lean her lips just a few inches forward to meet mine.

i love that she did not kiss me then,
but later, in that awkward moment
with my front door already open for her to leave,
a long silence finally bridging my arms around her shoulders.

i already love these young people with whom i have spent the past week and a half
(even the one who called me "little girl" with a sneer on his face).

i love my tendency to fall in love so easily
because i understand more deeply now that it is a strength
to be exercised on more than just lovers.

however,

i do not love seeing a bunch of kids kicking a single, solitary kid's ass on the sidewalk.

i do not love the gun shots outside my window at 1am.

*******************

gunpowder lullabies

i shot a gun for the first time at the age of eight and then on a regular basis for years aferward. that first time, a caravan made up of me, my father, my brother, and my mother drove two hours inland to where the land lay burnt and brown in the sun. we parked the car and trudged through trails where rattlers and shot-up rusty car tucked themselves into the craggy hills, the dry crack of gunshots echoing across the canyon.

we brought a folding table, which was set up to display an impressive armory: several pistols including a dirty harry handgun, and a russian one from WWII, rifles that are no longer legal to purchase, shotguns, and my very own bolt action 22 caliber winchester rifle.

there was no playing on the shooting range, no g.i. joe reenactments, no rambo playtime bull. this was solemn shit. ritual. never point the gun at a person, even if you know it's not loaded. always walk with the gun pointed towards the ground. do not put your finger on the trigger until you are absolutely ready to shoot.

as my small body cradled the butt of an ak-47 to my right shoulder, my right index finger extended, my palm wrapped around the stock, my left hand ignoring the hot burn of the wood where i steadied the barrel, i focused on hitting the bullseye my brother had spraypainted onto an old piece of wood. i loved to hear my father praise me for all the things i did early: read the newspaper. do the crossword with him. aim a revolver or a rifle and hit a target head on. as the bullets rang through the air my brother would let out a wild whoop, the same noise i always heard as he stood with his surfboard in one arm, his body all forward motion, his eyes glued to the waves breaking on the shore.

boxes of bullets later we would leave with big grins and racing blood, a cloud of gunpowder tickling my nostrils and drying my tongue.

later that same day, i would sit with my father in the living room as we took each gun apart, peeking down the gunshaft for hidden bullets. check and recheck. i feared that a bullet would magically slip into the chamber when i wasn't looking and wreak its thunder upon the small space where my father sat with the gun oil and old rags. so i would check. and recheck.

we would work together, as he explained how to clean each part and then reassemble, the names and stories of each gun told in the friendly but firm tone he used when he was teaching me something. in these moments, my father was the best teacher i ever had, gentle and open, just like when i helped him cook. not like when he tried to teach me math though, which usually ended with me shaking red with anger and crying, a hard "goddammit" fired under his breath.

***************

all this has had me meditating on the lyrics to "chaos" by skim:

please / stop bleeding / need you to see / the real demons / they don't give a damn / if we / breathin / yo we need a plan / we gotta fight the fight / to fight / think of your loved ones / while you pullin out guns / well if you must / then hit the right / one

peace and pacifism be damned, herman@s. i am thankful for the things my father taught me, even as i try to make sure that certain lines of knowledge stop with me.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

On Almost Being a Survivor

Dedicated to those who are

Thank god that David was gay
Because out of my half-sleep
I heard them in the kitchen,
Sean pleading,
“Let’s rape ‘er!”
As if entreating him
To a boyish prank.

Thank god that David was gay
Because as I lay there on the couch
Frozen with fear
Listening to them debate my violation
I thought I would finally know
What it meant
To be my mother’s daughter.

love, loving, loved

did you know that i'm moving to oakland in a few days to become a public school teacher, herman@s? i am. crazy, huh? i've been packing frantically for the past few days, which has been really difficult due to the sheer amount of crap i've had to wade through and decide whether it should come with me.

my mami is the kind of mami who has saved almost every little bit of paper i've ever scribbled upon. much of it has been under the bed upon which i sit at this very moment, stacked haphazardly in giant plastic bins along with other detritus of my past. things like scraps of poetry, old journals, hopelessly expired condoms, decks of cards, cords with nothing to connect to anymore, sad samples of my half-assed college scholarship, postcards, old nitrous cartridges from my huffing days, love letters...

it has all put me in a melancholy mood. i read the entirety of one my relationships last night. letter after letter, hers and mine. i cried a little bit, for her and me. we went through a lot of hard shit together. we grew a lot. then i finally threw all the letters into the recycling. not in a cruel, angry way. just in a i-don't-need-these-anymore way.

i've been thinking about the way that i love. every major relationship i've had was foreshadowed on my part by really intense and immediate attraction. in each case it took anywhere from 6 months to 6 years before anything came of the attraction, but my desire was always there somewhere, waiting to be sated. i knew, with absolute surety, that i needed to be connected to that person. when i finally was (wow...in all cases through a crazy explosive night of hot sex NOT preceded by dating or even much courting) i fell in love right away.

i think to some of you out there that's crazy. but for me, my way of loving works. i am thankful for every relationship i've had/have. i honor the love that continues to exist between each of us, even if the relationship was in some ways fucked up or hard.

what is falling and being in love anyway? part of me thinks of it as this magical mystery, sometimes preordained, or even like being called to a soul i've known before; part of me realizes that it's not romantic at all and hard fucking work; part of me wants to be very careful to acknowledge the ways that love is a social construct impacted by my historical moment and subject position. but whatever love 'is', it's how i define my existence.

and that, my friends, is another reason why i'm poly.

sorry. i meant talk more about my move and prospects for the future, what i've been up to in the meantime, etc. but oh well. next time.

i had to put all this neuroticness somewhere

it's been a while, huh? i'm a little stressed out, caught up, freaked out...

it's even worse than SATs, APs, IBs, and undergrad college applications. it's called the CSET and i am scared i'm not going to pass it this saturday. what makes it so crazy is that i have already been accepted to a teaching program to begin teaching special education in oakland this fall contingent on my passage of this test. i've also been accepted to grad school contingent on my passage of the motherfucker. i am in the process of signing a lease for an apartment assuming that i will be moving in june. i will be in oakland with all my shit on june 3. teacher training will begin june 20.

i will not know if i passed the test until june 19.

madredediosmiolordonhighelleguaacheamenporfavor

por.

favor.

what i want to hear right now is NOT "oh i'm sure you'll pass. what are you talking about?"

what i want to hear is "if you don't pass i'll still love you. if you don't pass, everything happens for a reason and you will just figure out something else to do. it'll be fine."

i am leaving this fear here, trapped on the page.

leave your fears on this post, herman@s.

that love and hope may flow in to fill the void.

ache'



You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

fuzzy fuzzy cucurucucu

there are many, many people in this world that i love. i was thinking about this while i was checking out at the grocery store the other day and thinking about how in february i wrote all my friendsters and asked them for their mailing addresses so i could send them all cute little valentines. of course, i never finished the valentines and all the pretty paper and shit is sitting crumpled beneath a bunch of other shit in my room and i don't even know when i'll send them now cuz it seems pretty embarrassing, even for my procrastinating ass, to send valentines in april or may. but still. in that moment walking out the grocery store i thought i might spontaneously combust realizing just how many particular souls in this world make me feel all warm and squishy and floaty and swishy when i think of them.

i also love the people i know who are transitioning from feminine-identified to masculine-identified after a long time time of being seen as femme within a queer context. you are brave and fierce and evidence of the space that is opening up for all of us to manifest.

speaking of, emo hilot, i love you for struggling with me thru this new phase of our relationship. i love you for listening to what i have to say about masculinity.

i also love you, ms. la v, because i believe in everything that we've built even as we deal with all the difficulties, and i'm so committed to what is yet to build.

yes:

love
love
love
love
love
love

that is all.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

stopover

i'm sitting in the las vegas airport. there is a young woman having a panic attack on the floor about 100 feet from me. she is surrounded by her friends and some EMTs. breathe peace, hermana, breathe peace...

also, the person who plays mini-me in the austin powers movies just went by.

las vegas is such a strange place. as we began the descent into lv, i looked below at the grids of lights, not much brighter than the average lite-brite layout of any large metropolis as you fly over it. i saw all the miles and miles of inhabited land surrounding the crazy over-the-topness of the vegas strip and thought about all the regular people who live here just to clean the hotels, cook the food, bus the plates of wasted food at the buffets, open doors, run and drive feverishly around the valet kiosks, handle thousands of dollars from tourists and compulsive gamblers at gaming tables, drive the cabs, kiss ass, shake ass, sell ass... and how there's entire metropolitan epicenters of american culture that draw in people from all over, mostly poor, working class, of color, immigrants, so that these places can exist. orlando. anaheim. whole countries too, devoted to nothing much more than the vacation idylls of the first world.

they're calling my flight now. despedidas.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

the centesimal post

hmm. not that i think it's that auspicious or anything, but i did just notice that this will be my 100th post on this blog, since i started it in december 2003. damn, i've been blogging for over two years. i really think it's been one of the best things for me. it got me writing again, that's for sure. there was a good chunk of time post college where i didn't write a damn thing, mostly thanks to, i think, the "advanced verse writing" class i took my senior year, which left me convinced that my writing wasn't worth shit. or, more accurately, that no one else thought it was worth shit. i forget what got me blogging, tho i think it had a little to do with reading geekslut, who, sadly, doesn't seem to post anymore. [ooh wait. it seems he's back. yay!]

isn't blogging funny? for a while i was making all these delineations between what constitutes "real" writing, what is journal/diary, what is for performance, what is for academia, what is for the blog, and so many other genres it's ridiculous. i'm really coming to place, tho, where i don't give a fuck anymore. i just submitted an article for an anthology that was my first attempt to stop worrying about the delineations and just let the everything flow where it may. while i'm not sure it was too strong idea-wise, i was really excited about the voice i was able to find for it. i don't think i would have been able to break out the tyranny of genre without this blog, which has let me just do whatever the hell i want, at first because i thought that no one was listening, but now because there are people who do. so thanks, my lovely readers. and also, i am so inspired by all the folks that the blogosphere allows me to read. i mean, damn. y'all are some fantastic, fabulous, fierce muhfuhs. for instance, i just read the post "Creating tongues of fyah" by Dark Daughta, which totally relates to what i was just saying about genres, languages, etc. and how us people at the crossroads become so fluent with so many of them.

so, in celebration of myself and blogging, here are my 10 Favorite Posts from mentality, listed oldest to newest (with the newest posts that you could simply scroll down and read not taken into consideration--cuz i think the past couple months of posting have been stellar, if i do say so myself):

1. "House Home Memory" - in which the author discusses his wacky family life, both past and present


2. "Pamana Dacumos" - in which the author attempts to contemplate his first world, middle class privilege


3. "Science Fiction, The Revolution, and The End of the World" - in which the author reveals himself to be a big scifi nerd waiting with bated breath for the apocalypse


4. "August 18, 2004" - in which the author tells a story about sex as a sacred act


5. "Scorpio Love" and its punchline, "Aw Shit" - in which the author celebrates that beautiful yet deadly species known as the scorpio and talks a tiny bit of shit about an ex in the process (ooh, did i ever tell you about how said ex ending up reading that post? wow. we still got love for each other tho...)


6. "El Proceso" - the post that later became a performance piece in which the author discusses masculinity. yup.


7. "Once You Leave Whitey, It Can Never Be Right-y" - in which the author talks about interracial romance and gets a small preview of the shitstorm of drama it is to be involved in any way with a certain raquel gutierrez (someday i'll tell you about the full-production shitstorm that occured)


8. "The Superslut Files, Volume One - a multi-entry post which spans many months in which the author discusses the trials, tribulations, tragedy, hot times, and triumphs involved in polysexual, polyamorous life


9. "Queridos Hermanos" - in which the author talks about gender (um. yeah. as if every other post isn't about gender)


10. "Oh Yes I Did" - in which the author reveals his darker side when it comes to little old white ladies

do you have any particular favorites, herman@s? come on, stroke my ego a bit... just a lil bit... please?

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

The Daddy Files: Volume I

Ever noticed how EVERYBODY wants a Daddy? I never necessarily wanted to be anyone’s Daddy, but somehow that’s what happened. Oh poor practically teenage papi me. But does that mean I want a Daddy for myself instead? I mean, my biodaddy is definitely much more than I can handle sometimes… Oh yeah, I got Daddy issues. Shit, I got the Daddy blues even.

First of all let me just say unapologetically that it’s hard to be tryin to be a man in a world full of boys. It’s kinda ridiculous how deep I feel shit like Black Thought saying, “I’m a grown ass man / I done paid my dues / Learn the rules lil homie / you can be one too.” Or Mos Def when he says “This is grown man business / I am not in school.” Yes, I am a man. I can finally own up to that. But I’m still definitely a young man. The type who is scared and is sure that big mistakes are just around the corner no matter what he does. The type of man who wants to run away from responsibilities and only knows to stay because he learned that there was no other way.

As it is I will never feel responsible enough. I watch my 40-something brother struggle with his masculinity, walking the thin line between the sweet, heavy like honey sensitivity that is my mother and the cooler than cool, ice cold steel that is my father and I feel less alone in my inadequacy. I remember a time I was about 4 years old; I walked by the door to my brother’s bedroom (the room I sleep in right now) and saw my father in there with him, my daddy’s fist twisted into my brother’s t-shirt, my brother’s teenage back pinned to the wall, feet practically off the ground, head hung in shame. Sometimes I see that boy waver in and out of my brother’s solid torso like an apparition, head hung low. Because really, my father never even had to touch us to make us feel that way. I know that moment will always mark my brother just like my own memories mark me.

Damn. I promise someday I will tell good stories about my daddy, bout how much I love him and what he’s given me to make me strong and beautiful. But not today. Not today.

In the meantime, let me go back to when I was bemoaning how I got pushed into the Daddy role before I even knew if that was what I wanted. You try to resist when some pretty boy or girl bats their lashes at you and practically sticks their ass in your face to spank and abuse! Heh. Fer reals. I always fancied myself a bottom who got pressured into topping, the type who topped from a place of bottoming and did a fucking good job of it anyways. These days I’m not so sure...

Further, I sometimes feel like I have been put in that veterano, elder position at a tender young age that makes me feel like I’m not ready at all. For me, coming into my masculinity was like reinventing the wheel. As a teenager in the mid-late 90s I picked up random books here and there that talked about butches, bulldaggers, and studs (thank goodness for Patrick Califia and others is all I gotta say). I understood immediately that that was me. Somehow, though, I thought that I had been born a few decades too late since the dominant queer “culture” I had access to had declared butch and femme long dead. So I made my own way until I started meeting other butches and bois of color and discovered that transmasculinities were alive and well all over tha damn place. But these days I find myself in an elder position even to people who are chronologically older than me. And that’s a beautiful thing. I mean, I am so finding my path in this life in the ways that I am able to mentor and daddy other boi/ys. Yet I still yearn sometimes for that older vato/manong/captain/head space alien who’s gonna take me under his wing and tell me what’s what from a place of anti-misogyny, love, and patience. And I do find that once in a while, but not as often as I’d like.

I’m thankful that I went through boyhood and the adolescence when most other boys were doing it too, because it has saved me a lot of grief. I’ve seen teenage papidom in a thirty-something with too much power to be having public adolescent tantrums and lemme tell you herman@s, that’s some unfortunate shit. Okay, okay. Maybe that’s mean. I want to show people love as we all struggle to become whoever it is that we need to be. I want in general for communities to allow space for the inevitable mistakes that we are all going to commit instead of the quick, almost bloodthirsty tendency we have to attack people and label someone as permanently fucked up the first time they do something wrong. Because damn, if I was judged for some of the things I’ve done in my more immature moments no one would even talk to me anymore…

But beyond all that, I cannot even pretend because I am a fucking Daddy. Dammit. As in masculine-identified parental figure to two small people who actually believe me when I say everything is gonna be okay, who actually believe that I sometimes know best. And that is some grown ass shit. Deciding to parent and parenting is the hardest shit I have ever done. There were plenty of times when I didn't/don't think I have the strength for it. When it comes down to it, it’s the only reason in my mind for being a Daddy that really matters. It’s where I can simultaneously draw my strength and humility from.

Truthfully tho? I hope I always have the same uncomfortable relationship to daddyness that I do today. Cuz when I don’t, it’ll mean that someone needs to check my swollen-headed ass and I hope those of you who love me will love me enough to do so. Like, maybe right now? I dunno. It’s just that somehow the recent events of my life have brought me to this point of realizing that my body, my experiences so far in this lifetime make me someone who I need to stop being so scared of becoming and just be. Someone with so much love to give. Tender-tough like the straps of a harness lashed tight to my thighs. The kinda solid that just may melt if you heat it just so. Upright. Hard like tree trunks when need be.

So yeah, you want a Daddy? I know you do. I’ll be him. I’m right here. Right here. Just don’t be surprised when you get what you asked for.


You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

pimps, cowhomos, and racists, oh my!

caution: there is an endnote in this post. it's a little out of control.

wow. so i watched the oscars last night.

when i woke up this morning i had a myspace bulletin message that sort of lambasted three6mafia for getting the best song oscar. well. can i even begin to articulate the palimpsest of racial dynamics at play here? yes yes it is unfortunate that denzel finally won for playing a crooked cop, that halle won for fucking a white man, and that the first "best song" by a rap group is about how hard it is to be a pimp. sigh. yes, i do wonder, what the HELL made the academy think that this was the best choice for a song (and this is considering who makes up the academy of motions picture blah blah blah or whatever they're called).

i'm not even gonna pretend that i have any idea about the world of pimping. i've known a few hos and been one myself (in the safest, most privileged way possible), but i'm not gonna try to speak about people who pimp and its rightness or wrongness. one thing i have to say about pimping though: if sex work activists are building a new paradigm for sex work that no longer includes pimps, then what happens to the pimps? what happens to people who are also struggling with systemic oppression in the united states, with poverty, limited resources, the legacy of drugs and guns flooding urban and other neighborhoods, the state's concerted efforts to economically, physically, and psychologically debilitate men of color (especially black men) and/or incarcerate them? as i contemplate questions of masculinity for myself, more and more i wonder how we can all come together to ensure that no gets left behind in our visions of a more human and just future. that means thinking about the ways that men need to heal ourselves and how we ALL need to dismantle the systems of oppression that put poor men and men of color in impossible positions with no choices but violence and dehumanizing ourselves and everyone around us.

ooh and also can i just say that i loved _brokeback mountain_ and how thrilling it was to see ang lee win best director for it? i wrote some high-falutin shit about the movie for this essay i wrote a few weeks ago and since i'm all tired from the last paragraph, here's what i said in that:

"I find that I fail miserably at being a guy whether it’s with butches or transmen or any other masculine-identified person. I feel more comfortable with femmes of any gender, but I don’t quite present or feel feminine enough to call myself a femme. I’m like one of those 70’s feminist men trying to make it okay for other boys to cry. And nobody ever liked those motherfuckers, right? Watching Brokeback Mountain recently struck me with its understanding of how violence and intimacy interchange so easily in masculine relationships. Love is my fist slammed into your face; love is my cold shoulder pressed into your hot back as I fuck you deep. Is it my fate to end up beaten and thwarted like Jack Twist, too stupid or brave or desperate to hide the soft, sweet parts, to just wear the mask that masculinity has carved out for us and ignore the rest?"

the last thing i have to say about the oscars is whether i should be kinda happy that race seemed to be a topic that people almost seemed to want to talk about during it, because of crash, etc. i mean, should i be kinda happy, or should i be cynical and suspicious as always? errrrmmm.... well, the latter of course. but i do have to say that there seems to be some sort of discursive shift since hurricane katrina that has made people seem freer about addressing race. and just in general there was more of a progressive lean to things, cuz didn't that annoying _bowling for columbine_ dude get booed just last year? and when i say progressive, that's what i mean. cuz really, seeing radical politics in mainstream TV or movies? altho... i did see _block party_ on friday night and i have to say several things about it:

1) seeing it and then reading an early draft of this post by ms. cherry galette left me thinking, "just tear it all down, goddammit! blow it up! amerika is going dooowwwn!"
2) it got my little cousins hype enuf to actually ask me for some of the music from the movie, which i've been trying to get them to listen to for years. but you know, i understand that if it took dave chapelle and actually seeing the performers live.
3) it made me miss my brooklyn friends. besitos, lovelies!
4) just in general, i have lots of respect for dave chapelle.

and in conclusion, why do i even give a fuck about all this anyways? i mean, i haven't watched the oscars since high school. who gives a fuck what hollywood thinks makes a good movie? i would love to make even videos but that's a hobby that i am at least $1000 short for in a world where $6 million is a low-budget, independent film. and shit, fuck TV anyways.

tho i have to say, what really interests me about TV are the moments when humanity bulges through the cracks. even the sensors, the pilot producers, the people who preview things in middle america and survey the shit of out them, the executives, the programmers, and the media conglomerates cannot stop some of those transcendent moments that happen in motion pictures and television. they also cannot control what our minds do with all this crap that they give us. like hello, i am SOOO excited about all the future gender deviants that are going to pull some really positive moments from _she's the man_ even tho it's probably some foul shit overall and it will probably do all it can to hysterically reinforce the main character's "natural" gender and heterosexuality once all is said and done. cuz, can we talk about how movies like _just one of the guys_ and _willy/milly_ aka _something special_ were totally formative for me?

yeah. totally.

*what i'm trying to get at is some _disidentifications_ by jose esteban muñoz kinda shit here. you should read jose if you haven't already.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

9 february 2006

Last night I made my mami cry.

Last night in the midst of a sadness so heavy it held me tight to my bed even as the sun rose, passed over this house, and sunk into the canyon that was once the edge of the world to me, I fell backwards through the past to the one other time I made her cry.

That first time I was a rageful, scared, and exhausted twelve year old, tired of the breaking glass, the screaming, and the hurting. I was tired and frightened of the skinned red scratches on my father’s arms, his face. The gash on his forehead that left a scar I can still see today. The stink of Cutty Sark on his breath. Her smeared mascara, running running running down her face endlessly. The way she cried, the way it carried down the hall where I slept and crawled beneath my skin.

So I wrote her a letter about about it. Oh yes, even then I knew how to turn a phrase for maximum damage. I asked her why she didn’t leave. Just leave, me to my headphones and books and denial, my father to his bottle and silence and sometimes, when he thought no one was listening, a song strummed from his guitar so sad that I hid and cried. Afterwards my father took me aside told me what he would do to me if I ever made my mother cry again.

Sometimes all I am is the silence of dark clouds on the horizon. Sometimes all my mother is is thunder and lightning before the flood. Or maybe the rain itself, its insistent drone against the earth uttering secrets I don’t want to hear.

Last night I made my mother cry because our sadnesses collided like the first time my own eyes slammed into their reflection in a mirror and saw the sadness there that slung the lids low and stained the irises deep almost-black.

Once upon a time my path was my mother’s and hers mine. Simple. My arms outstretched to be lifted into hers. Now I can only see her from the crossroads as we walk our parallel lives. Parallel, but separate, different. Even being under the same roof again we sometimes dance around one another as if the other were a ghost, each caught in a melancholy world of our own. I cannot remember the last time that we touched, that I noticed her scent or let her cradle me on her shoulder.

I miss it. When I was nineteen I left college abruptly, thinking I wanted to die. No one knew yet that it was my immune system that wanted me dead; it whispered me thoughts of pills, of bridges and falling as it ate away at organs and flesh. I came home to my mami then. I was so scared. Scared of everything. Especially of myself. I’ll tell you a secret: for months I slept between my parents the way I did until I was two or three, kept safe by my mami’s dama de noche smell and the warm folds of her flesh.

Oh, and after I made my mami cry how I cried and cried. Because I love her so fiercely that I want to make it all better for her even though I know I can’t and won’t. Also because I needed to cry, had needed to cry for the past months but had kept it inside, maybe let it out a two or three times for a few minutes at a time and then pushed the sorrow back down.

It is my mami’s need to talk that makes me want to hurt her, reminding me of all I keep shut inside with my silence.

My grandmother talked as if her life depended on it. After a while most people stopped listening. Family members would joke about how you could leave the room and do other things. When you came back a few minutes later, she would still be talking.

Sometimes talking is the desperate struggle against being silenced. Manic almost. Frightening.

And sometimes, you are silenced anyway because no one listens.

Last night by making my mami cry I allowed myself to cry too. I should thank her but I don’t know how.



You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

an excerpt: when i was a man

from a longer essay

Five years old and the summer sun beats down on my black bowl cut, heating my scalp and sending streams of sweat to the tips of my hair and into my collar. It’s so hot I could take off my shirt, but me and my mom already had that battle:

“Ay! M’ija! What are you doing, you changa? Loquita! Put you shirt back on NOW!”

“Why? They all get to take off their shirts! It’s not fair!”

“You are a GIRL. You’re too old to be going around like that anymore.”

“But Mami!”

“Do you want a spanking? Put that shirt on right now, girl, before I tell your daddy!”

Five years old and my favorite outfit is a navy blue velvet sailor suit. Blue like boys. Navy like my daddy. I smooth my chubby hands over my belly, fuzzy like Grover and round like E.T.

A shadow falls over me as I play with my Voltrons in the yard.

“Hey, you wanna play?”

He may as well have come from the moon. He may as well have been Jesus come down to hold me close like his little lamb. He was blond like Jesus. Blue-eyed too, his hair curling soft around his pink angel cheeks. He is so nice to me, not like the other boys I play with, who make sure to be extra rough when we play or wrestle cuz they don’t want to get beat by a girl.
He never sees the wrath that lets me knock boys who are faster and older to the ground. I let him boss me around and choose which toys we will play with. I even let him be Lion-O and settle for being old ass Panthro.

I don’t know his name and he doesn’t know mine, but at the end of each day I dream about bringing him into the house, tucking him into the bed with me so we can giggle and wrestle ‘til we fall asleep, our mouths pushing breath against each other’s faces all warm and dewy.
As a cynical grown-up faggot, I know that he was just hustling me for the toys that he wouldn’t ever get to call his own. He didn’t have the kind of mother who would comb the thrift stores and swap meets for all the latest Toys “R” Us cast offs. But still, it was one of the first times I felt those jolts of boylove slide through my body…

I am now twenty-two years old and home from college. My mother is ashamed to show the rest of our family my graduation pictures, the anime boy hair beneath the graduation cap, the brown slacks and cashmere sweater beneath the gown.

Twenty-two years old and my mother, as always, is telling me stories:

“Remember that white boy that lived on the block, M’ija?”

“Which one, Mom?”

“The puti, the one that used to play with you sometimes…”

“Oh yeah! What ever happened to him? He never came around anymore after a while.”

“Yeah, well, I never told you, but there was this one time you weren’t home and he came to the door and he says, ‘Can I play with your little boy?’

“’I don’t have a little boy,’ I says. ‘Oh…You mean my little girl. Her name is Mah-nee-kuh.’

“He just looked at me so confused! ‘Oh,’ he says, and… he just left, baby. He never did come back after that, did he, M’ija?”

“No, he didn’t, Mom.”

Twenty-two years old and I can hardly explain the sadness that I feel. I think that I may never know boylove like that again, the intimacy that passes between men that most women never know and is never spoken aloud.

I may never pass like that again either. Or be so completely and heartbreakingly betrayed.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

it's really a wonder that i ever have sex...

i had a really nice afternoon today (or yesterday rather). first i went to the gym, got on the elliptical runner for a while, then lifted lots of weights (grrrr!!!) and then sat in the hot tub for a while.

then came the part that proves why i really don't deserve to go on dates or get any play. i was starving after all that, of course, so i decided to go to this mexican vegetarian place in northpark called ranchos. it's a great place. there's at least 30 pictures of frida on the walls and other assorted mexican/chicano radical chic. love it. so i'm sitting in the corner by the entrance when two dykes walk up to the register to pay for their food. one of them i think is really cute in a tomboy but not really butch sort of way. i totally steal lots of glances, some of which she notices, while they complain to the cashier about how they hated the person they were sitting next to and felt really sorry for the waiter that had to serve her, which was kind of sweet. i was totally eavesdropping.

as they leave i work up the courage to look up at the cute one and smile as she goes out the door. if you know me, you know that this was majorly brave of me. i was very proud. but then as i watch them walk away cute girl turns back around and i just know that she is going to come talk to me. oh my god! what do i do? i decide to take a drink of water and try to calm down. as i grab my glass of water, i also grab the branches of the tiny fake tree that decorates the table. as the door opens and she walks through it i try to extricate it from my under my fingers. i am panicking. something is going to fall. it let it be the small tree. which promptly falls right into the little bowl of salsa.

"hi! didn't you perform at TMI last weekend?"

"yeah, yeah i did. um...." i am trying to surreptitiously remove the tree from salsa.

she is watching me do this, "you were so good! i was with my friends so... uh... [wait is she implying that she had wanted to come talk to me and for some reason didn't?!].

the tree is now in its rightful place. we are both thoroughly embarrassed. "we totally thought you were the best one that night!"

"aww... that's so sweet! thanks."

"okay, well, keep it up!"

"thanks."

"bye."

doh! i should be flogged by the playa's club for several reasons:

1) i didn't even try to engage her enough to find out her name.
2) "aww... that's so sweet!" is totally condescending and probably the reason she left so promptly. unfortunately my response to social stress is flippant assholery (but i totally don't mean it to be!)
3) i apparently sometimes forget that i have two hands, one of which could have held the glass of water while the other safely whisked away the tiny tree to a safe place.

after that i went to a really great coffee shop that has a 2nd floor area where you can see the ocean. of course, i never really see the ocean when i'm there because it's nighttime. but anyway, there's also free wifi, extension cords snaking all over the place threatening to trip people and kill them, and you can smoke in there. i'm trying to make a deadline for an anthology, which i should be finishing up instead of writing this, but we all know how that goes. i wrote furiously for over two hours, vibing off the boy next to me who was obviously working very hard on something as well. it was an interesting non-verbal interaction; i could feel that we were both feeling encouraged by each other. also whenever one of us lit up, the other one did as well. it was like yawning, only the opposite.

oh also, my 3rd and final interview with the same school i was getting ready to interview with the last time i posted is tomorrow. woo hoo! i'm a finalist. but i'm also pissed. why do i have a three hour meeting with the director tomorrow *after* already taking a performance exam, then an interview with a 3 person committee? is he going to make me take dictation? talk about identity politics? give him a blowjob? so i should also be sleeping instead of writing for an anthology or for this blog or worrying about whether my interviewer will appreciate that the outfit i picked out makes me feel like andre 3000 about to go sailing in his pink yacht.

all i have to say herman@s, is that i shouldnta had that caffeine at 9pm...

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

thank fucking god for a prompt...

I´ve been tagged by kelseyfrost, otherwise I would be getting ready for my job interview this morning (I've done some editing for my own amusement; tagees, feel free to do the same):

Four jobs I've had quit/been fired from in my life:

• Envelope Stuffer (fired)
• "Activist for the Environment" (quit)
• Telephone Surveyor for the Centers for Disease Control (fired)
• Programs Coordinator for a family owned business (quit)

Four movies I could watch over and over:

• Barry Gordy's The Last Dragon
• Hedwig and the Angry Itch
• Map of the Human Heart (at least until I started feeling suicidal)
• Movies Where People Steal Shit (The Italian Job, Set It Off, etc.)

Four places I have lived:

• Honolulu, Hawaii
• San Diego
• Berkeley
• Northampton, MA

Four TV shows I love to watch:

• I would like to have VH1 Soul intravenously administered 24 hours a day. Or a VH1 Soul anal probe. Yeah. Something.

Four places I have had sex been on vacation:

• the hood of a car
• center stage
• an elevator
• the roof of seelye hall at smith college

Four websites I visit daily:

• kinja (one stop shopping, folks)
• MySpace
• Friendster
• Yahoo! News

Four of my favorite foods:

• soups (faves: pho, menudo, caldo de res, tom yum, the chicken soup I somehow end up eating whenever I hang out with Victor)
• cheese!!! (faves: bucheron, humboldt fog, goat gouda, a good manchego, pepperjack, sharp cheddar with garlic, apple smoked mozarella... damn. ok, better stop.)
• carne asada nachos (sin frijoles, con crema)
• chiles (thai curries, a good red enchilada sauce, sliced jalapenyos in my pho, sriracha on everything, tapatio on my elote and ceviche tostada, tabasco on my breakfast, red pepper flakes on my pizza...)

Four places I would rather be right now:

• Anywhere Cherry is
• By the ocean
• The Philippines
• Employed

Four outfits/items of clothing I love:

• My new tube socks with the following stripe combos: light blue/dark blue, hunter green/yellow, dark blue/red
• The Bob Marley T-shirt my little queer cousin bought me for xmas
• Black pullover sweater with the old-school video game alien pattern from H&M, usually layered over a pink button-down, tight jeans, and pink and black keds.
• The white A-shirt that belongs to my favorite boi

Four bloggers I am tagging:

• Ms. Cherry Galette, because we all miss reading her so much.
• Victor, because I love him so.
• The Spinster, because I'm always interested in what she has to say.
• Logan, because he's fabulously cute and writes like a motherfuckin' dream.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

don't call it a comeback

I'm feeling quite ashamed for my lack of posting, herman@s, but I'm even more ashamed that the post that has greeted people for more than a month is vegetable porn.

I don't really feel capable of saying too much, so I'm just going to make an unordered list:

• I've been in San Diego for almost 3 weeks now.
• It was 84 degrees today.
• I will hopefully be working at a university here soon.
• I have cramps.
• I've started smoking again.
  
• I got in a fight with my mom tonight because she told me that I looked fat in a picture in which I thought I looked quite cute.
• The most exciting social event I have attended was with my little cousins. It involved a drinking game where one is forced to do shots of Christian Brothers brandy if you score below a "70" on karaoke. Was it the Filipino side of the family, you ask? Why, yes.
• I don't know if anyone else wants to weigh in here, but it seems to me that MySpace is more West-coast friendly than Friendster. Or maybe it's just that Friendster is only any good for finding people in New York, San Francisco, and LA.
  
• I think I have an impending date with a Chicana nationalist. I'm not really trying to date right now, but I guess if conversation has turned towards polyamory and sex radicalism, then meeting to see a film about the Zapatista struggle might be a date. Comments? Or actually advice: is it possible to go about making sure that meeting with this person does not turn into a date yet still leave the door open, so to speak, for future booty (if and when it seems appropriate)?
• My heart is such raw, pulsing thing right now. It aches with hope, a creature plunged into the darkest parts of the ocean, learning to draw strong lifebreath from substances that were never meant to support life.
  

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

food diary: pornografica aubergino

eat it up.


lewd


lewder


lewdest/nudest


baba ghanoush

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

nico's confessional booth

or, fuck foucault and your postmodern angst. sometimes full disclosure feels damn good!

1) on monday night la v and i snuck out the of house in the middle of the night while the monsters were asleep to get more buffy the vampire slayer dvds and spend their lunch money on mcdonald's value meals. to say that we're strugglin to keep it together would be an understatement.

2) the only thing that i've done to pack so far is sort through my books and make dozens of lists about what to do and how to do it and where to go, etc.




3) to deal with the stress i think that my mind is splintering and creating other identities. i found the pictures above in one of la v's notebooks. she swears that her and i made this comic together but i don't remember a thing. i mean, is "scrapolous lumpen" even a real name? i do know that i am extremely whiny and suffering from low self esteem. this has all culminated in proclaiming myself "lumpy" and "fit to be put in a home for people like [myself]." (click here for a larger version)

4) by far my most effective form of avoidance to date has been to spend hours instead of sleeping with my new powerbook (or "fucking little computer"--flc* for short--as christened by a certain lady) reading TV show fanfiction slash in which crazy people write 52 page imaginings of what it would be like if certain television characters admitted their love to one another and finally fucked. it's like free books! or rather, porn. and it never ends!

5) the night before out trip to nyc two weeks ago we were all chillin at home and decided to make a nice, cozy fire. while the familia started it up i went go make a phone call. halfway through the call i heard screaming and general pandemonium coming from the other room. but that's normal for our house so i ignored it. i mean, if someone was on fire they could just stop drop and roll right? i finished up my call and walked into the living room to several versions of "something fell from the chimney into the wood stove and died a horrible flaming death!!!". no way, i thought. i decided to be butch and go check it out, the children just behind me giggling and stepping on my heels. when i opened the door of the stove the horribly charred body of some small mammal lunged forward like it was coming back to avenge its own death. i screeched like a schoolgirl and ran into the kitchen babbling incoherently as the children giggled some more and prodded the corpse with a broom. then i cried. i shoulda remembered that i'm the motherfucker that practically passed out the time that the professor made me hold down her nigerian dwarf goat while she sewed up its bloody split brow with household needle and thread.

*in case you're wondering, flc is NOT poly. he's not allowed to sit on anyone's lap but mine.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

oh yes i did

on friday night, in an attempt to stave off general despair and the stress of an uncertain future, i decided to get down and dirty in the kitchen. my plan was to make the perfect hamburger and homemade chili cheese fries. me, la v and the two monsters went to atkins farms, aka pilgrim market central, where fine upstanding rosy-cheeked yankees go to procure orchard-fresh apples, cider, and other items of new england country charm. i mean, really, they have good shit, but it can be overwhelming to be surrounded by so much wholesome family goodness.

so one good thing they have are these pillowy clouds of hoagie roll goodness perfect for a juicy hamburger. whilst procuring freshly ground beef i, in the most gentlemanly manner possible, asked la v to go get a bag. she returned in full on pout, growling "there aren't anymore fucking rolls. some pilgrim lady over there stood there with the three bags that were left debating over whether she should take them and then finally put them ALL in her basket!"

at that i lost it. if i could not make one fucking thing work in my life, i at least was gonna have a goddamn hamburger with the buns i wanted. i found her near the deli, the kind of sweet-looking grandma who cans tomatoes in the summer and bakes holiday cookies for all her extended family. her basket was piled high with various bakery products, including said hoagie rolls. her crotchey no doubt WWII vet husband was guarding the basket with his life. he had been well-trained to follow her obediently, pushing the basket as she purchased preparations for what i was sure was going to be a weekend visit from her kids and grandkids as a pre-halloween soiree.

before i bum rushed her i tried to be reasonable. i went to the bakery counter and asked if they had anymore in the back. no. dammit! what am i thinking, trying to snatch fucking rolls from this lady. shit, i really need to relax...

then i thought, maybe i could convince them to give me some from behind the deli counter that they use to make sandwiches. i went up. there was a line. i had to take a number. i felt like i was being ambushed by hungry pilgrims. i tried to explain to myself that i would be fine with the overpriced pepperidge farm ones that i had found and left to get some potatoes.

fuck. i couldn't give up. i owed it to my father and his reputation as the most hardass hustla in manila. i owed it to my people, goddammit! i went back to counter. and guess what? there was grandma, sweet talking the motherfuckers into giving her another bag of rolls. it was a conspiracy!

i looked to her basket practically brimming over with hoagie rolls. i saw red. and then noticed that her husband was nowhere to be seen. she was engrossed in her cordial conversation with the girl at the counter. the butcher was bent over the leg of lamb. everyone was in their own little world of country shopping goodness. the place was too hardworking and honest to employ surveillance cameras.

i summoned my adolescent shoplifting skills, walked up and grabbed a bag of her rolls, threw them in the basket, motioned for la v to get moving and grabbed the littlest monster's hand.

"nicky, why are we walking so fast?"

"cuz it's time to go, sweetie..."

ok, ok. i know. stealing hoagie rolls from little old ladies is fucked up, but the way i see it, you take our maize, i take your hoagie rolls, motherfucker. plus, it gave my hamburgers that elusive sabor i was sought that night.

what have you done lately to elicit an "oh no you didn't!", herman@s?

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

geekdom, here i come!

oh to be truly geeky. that's the thing.

please mr. techie for my office, tell me more about domain name servers and mx records. pretty please? please mr. database specialist with the pretty face, explain again why my computer's clock being out of sync with the server's clock is causing my local copy of the database gateway to give me an update message every day!

oh my. i'm getting all worked up here. my heart is singing with the knowledge that i have managed to put up a cute little pretend website for fresa y fuego, the portal through which me, la v, and all our friends will eventually take over the world! right now it just has pretty pictures and links back to this blog, but someday it will be a mighty thing of beauty. damn i am such a foxy html-wielding thug...

really, tho. this is the only thing making me happy right now, what with my house smelling like rotting wet things, my future uncertain, the monsters pissed off and stir-crazy in our now two room apartment, and the mold starting to creep into my lungs...

damn. i just sabotaged my joy. but i'm still trying to remember that shit is gonna be okay. i finally spoke to my parents yesterday and my mom starting making plans to clean out the extra room in their house so we can move in. sigh. it's nice to get some love and support.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.

spinning randomness

i am so tired of the marriage of spirit and flesh. transcendence, astral projection, my soul pushed aside to make room for oya to pinion her thighs about my shoulders-- that's what i'm hungry for right now.

or maybe i could carve out a portion of my soul and weave it into the html of this chunk of blogosphere. like scratch and sniff, and so much easier than trying to communicate with words. but very very dorky, i know.

mmm. death has begun to creep into the corners of things, a sweet smell offset by the season's incense and spices. i do love this time of year. the slow descent. misery made beautiful by the length of the fall.

plus there's the fashion possibilities. i look so cute today it's not even right.

You know you wanna get at me, whether friend or foe: email me.