The Thunderbolt (6-20-10)

Sometimes you meet someone of the opposite sex and you don’t have any expectations or hopes. You think, well this seems like a cool person that I should know but you are intrigued because you feel this connection to them that you can’t explain. How often does that actually happen? Furthermore, this female is not what you would normally be attracted to physically, short and blonde instead of tall and brunette, which is what always drives me crazy. Does it mean anything?

Over time and continued meetings you begin to find that the skepticism fades and embraceable warmth takes over. You start to like the person and feel comfortable in their presence. Before too long you become real friends. I guess that’s what happens to most people. However if you are me in this case you get hit by the thunderbolt and fall for someone who hasn’t fallen for you and find yourself feeling like the stupidest person you know.

Hindsight starts to beat you down with insecurity and self-doubt. You start to think I should have known that someone like her would never go for a guy like me. You ask yourself, what was I thinking? Why would I do this to myself? Why did I get so hopeful that if I let her in a little she’d like it there? The answer is I didn’t do it. Neither did she. Sometimes the thunderbolt just hits you and you are powerless to change how you feel until it’s too late to reverse your ground. Suddenly you realize you are in over your head and you like someone more than they like you. Such inequalities are never pleasant. Maybe you misread things. Maybe indisputable factors start to dawn on you. Like for instance, perhaps you realize that she in fact has many suitors and guess what, these other guys are thinner than you are. They have more security, money and some might be better looking. See, I told you there was an insecurity beatdown.

The fact of the matter is that I got to know this person a bit over several dinners and activities and I started to develop feelings for her. I care about her. Now this is me, the guy who’s so comfortable being single most of the time. This is me, the guy who’s hardly attracted to anyone and never lets anyone in. This is me, the guy who is more attracted to fantasy than reality. This is me, the guy who always gets hurt if things go past a few initial dates.

Whenever I break it off with someone it always happens quickly. I go a date, maybe 2 and I just know. Whenever things go on longer than that the female always breaks it off with me. Do I have a clearer idea of what I want, is workable or what I think I can fall for? I dunno, but I wonder about it. I think that because we continued to see each other I thought that meant we were building into something, like a natural progression. Whenever a woman takes such an interest in me I assume it must be romantic attraction. You know what they say about assumption.

When did I go from just kinda liking this girl to really liking her and caring about her so much? I don’t even know. It just hit me… like a thunderbolt. Unfortunately I can’t take it back. I mean, I can cut the feeling off. I can ignore it or convince myself that those emotions are useless and shelf them. Guys are like that. We compartmentalize and can separate work from play, business from pleasure and feelings from friends. We can be completely warm to someone on our right and completely cold to someone on our left. The point is I’ll get over it. It isn’t like this is when the woman I thought I was going to spend my life with left me and shattered my world.

When it boils down to it that is what I am looking for. I’m looking for someone wonderful who I don’t just want to date, hook up with or even have sex with. I’m looking for someone to share my life with. I want someone who will make me laugh everyday and vice versa. I want someone I can give unique heartfelt things I’ve created like poems, CDs and videos. I want someone who inspires me and appreciates me for the weird, thoughtful, silly, sensitive, funny, supportive, simple enigma that I am. I want to be with someone that no matter what I am doing with them, I know it’s going to be better because they are there beside me. I thought I might have found her but I didn’t. I’ll get over it. People go through this all the time. I never really do and maybe that’s why I take it so hard.

Despite getting a bit hurt here, I have no regrets. I learned long ago that the heart wants what the heart wants. I don’t question it nor do I regret any feelings I had. However, it is embarrassing to have misread a situation like this so badly and to have cultivated the conditions the correct way for something like this to develop within and the heart to intervene. For someone who trusts his instincts and follows them religiously, to goof up like this is a real blow to their credibility. So back to the lab I go to learn from mistakes and sharpen my senses. In conclusion, I’ll be okay in a short period of time. I’ll still care about this person despite my disappointment, the redefinition of our relationship that will now have to take place in my mind and the subsequent ridicule I feel. Yeah so I fell down. I know the world will keep on turning.

In the short term, I feel stupid… and alone. But at least I’m used to the last part.

100 THINGS I LIKE... in no particular order (6-17-10)

In the course of our days we are constantly running into people complaining about everything and everyone. Sometimes we do it too. This person is an idiot. This person pisses me off. I hate people who do this. Did you hear about such and such. It goes on and on and the negative energy grows. I say enough! I'm going to start a wave of positive energy by writing down 100 things I like. Take a moment to check it out. If you don't feel like doing the same I hope I can convince you to think about some of the things YOU like. Maybe we share a few. Maybe my list will remind you of some of those things or of happy times. The weekend is upon us, let's get the positive energy going! So with that in mind,

Off the top of my head, 100 things I like:

A good beat
Pepsi
Sports
Television
Kissing her neck
Thinking
Philosophy
Love
Poetry
Movies
Sex
Removing my shoes
Kindness
Freezie Pops
Hats
Opera
Little Things
Bicycles
Books
Breezes
Photographs
Giving
Sharing
Dreaming
Hoping
Laughing
Smurfing
Singing (off key)
Making mixtapes
Eating
Sleeping in on weekends
Coconut
Art
Hugs
Writing
Web surfing
Good conversation
Saying yes
Loyalty
Shortcuts
A woman’s legs
Smiles
Buying things
Comfy clothes
Muppets
Rubbing her shoulders or her rubbing mine
Sunsets
Honesty
Stars
Luck
Roadtrips
Useless information
Funny voices
Sarcasm
Hot chocolate
Passion
Ice cream and the ice cream man
Leaves
Attention
Board games
Animals, particularly dogs
Money is nice
Jokes
Holding her hand
Warm rain
Indie rock
Her curves
Creating
Planning
Listening to people speaking Spanish and trying to figure out what they are saying
Cookies
Barbecue
Family
Ideas
Convincing someone of something
New experiences
The taste of her lightly scented skin
Winning something
Freshly washed hair
Keeping my balance
Being there
Quoting things correctly
Respect
Old jazz
Showing people you care
Authenticity
Kisses on my cheek
Stretching out my legs
Walking
Being tall
A good workout
Intelligence without arrogance
A damn good cheeseburger (sorry vegetarian friends)
Honor
Affection
That look in her eyes
Nerds
Uniqueness
Doing the impossible
Those who are mature enough to live an adult life and immature enough to see the humor of it

Sign Language (6-10-2010)

I’m a firm believer in following the signs. I like to go with the flow, let the breezes blow me wherever they see fit. I’m willing to do this inside of the context of my life. I have rules and inside those rules resides flexibility. It’s a formula I like very much. I have iron clad ideals and morals and they will not bend for anything. That gives me honor and self-respect. Inside of that I have a deep love for life, new experiences and all the little things. That gives me pleasure.

One of the most pleasing things I find in life is when I feel like nature, fate or something I cannot easily explain gives me a sign, or a nudge and I follow it and there is a positive result. The hard part is, what things can be interpreted as a sign? If we want to see them signs are everywhere. Ever notice how many silver hatchbacks you see out there when you buy a silver hatchback for yourself? I guess it’s up to us to figure it out. Perhaps it’s all ridiculous belief. Perhaps it’s ridiculous disbelief. I don’t know. I don’t claim to have the answers. I just know what I like. I know what I believe works for me. Sometimes I notice things and I let them guide me. When this happens for me, it can feel like there is some mystical force out there lending a hand. How cool is that?

Today at work I had the pleasure to meet Sam. Sam is a guy from Toronto who comes to town once in a while to sell us merchandise. He calls all the time. He’s always trying to talk my boss into buying music in bulk. After being in his presence for a few hours today I can tell you a lot more about him. He seems like a great guy. He knows a ton about music. He tends to curse a lot and oh, he has a very advanced case of Parkinson’s disease.

We see people like Michael J. Fox or Muhammad Ali on television and we see them twitch and our hearts cry out to them. Hell I do it too. I love those guys and what they’ve given to us. I wish no one would ever have to have their life taken away in this manner. Today I saw a guy who looked 5 times worse than those celebrities ever have on television. It broke my heart. In fact other than a few quick words in the beginning we didn’t talk at all. I was entrenched in my work and he was negotiating prices with my boss for most of the time he was there.

Needless to say he couldn’t sit still. He was all over the place, all over the room. It’s a huge room too. While my attention was mostly on my duties, out of the corners of my eye I could see someone moving around so spastically that it almost looked like dancing. That is until my eyes gazed upon him completely. I could see how crazy this disease looked 10 feet away from me… arms and legs jerking in every direction. Occasionally I’d hear him curse about his condition when he’d try to pick up something or if a kick was a little harder than usual.

He never really looked at me. I made sure not to look at him for more than a few seconds at a time. One, I didn’t want him to see me looking at him and two, if I looked at him for more than 2 seconds I would start to well up. There was a period of about 30 minutes where he wasn’t in my peripheral vision and I had my iPod turned up high enough where I couldn’t hear the thrashing but I knew it was there. Then there was about 15 minutes where he got really bad, so bad in fact that you couldn’t understand what he saying. Luckily he had a few friends with him who made the trip down and they knew he needed his medication. So that medication kept him how he had been for most of the time he was here. I was amazed. About 20 minutes later when the meds kicked in he was back to incredibly spastic and joking again. I felt so much admiration for his courage. He is obviously in terrible shape yet he soldiers on. He’s still doing what he loves, buying and selling music. He has every right to throw in the towel and he won’t do it. No one would blame him if he did.

After a few hours he finally completed his sale to us and left with his friends on the drive back to Toronto. The room stood still to me. It was quiet. There was no movement. My boss sat down exhausted, not only for trying to do business with Sam for several hours but also for trying to get the old man who owns our company to shell out some cash to buy product. I was doing my work with my fingers clicking away at my computer but my mind was far away.

I started thinking about the big picture. I started thinking about why I saw what I saw. Was this a sign? Like I said earlier who knows, but it certainly makes you think. Between this, my oldest friend’s niece getting brutally murdered last week and many other things I’ve seen and heard very recently I’m reminded how precious life is. Life is a miracle and we are all examples. I’m thinking about getting more serious about my life so not to squander the gift we’ve been given.

For example, I think about my life and how I’ve been lonely for years. I think about how I see the world. I’ve been waiting around a long time. I’ve been incredibly picky and aloof. I feel like how dare I act this way. Ever since my last relationship ended many years ago I’ve been looking for the perfect person. I think the reason for this is fear. I think because I’m afraid to let someone in, afraid to love and afraid of getting hurt so deeply again I’ve been missing out on life in some way. I think that the perfect woman would never hurt me. After all she’d be perfect. Unfortunately Milla Jovovich isn’t coming through my door in ace bandages. People are dying, deteriorating and changing all around me and I’m sitting around waiting for this angel to come release me. All the while so many wonderful women have come and gone in my life. In fact, I’ve met some of the most beautiful and amazing women I’ve ever met recently.

The truth is, there is no perfect woman. As I am not perfect the woman I love will not be either. Furthermore I think the signs have convinced me to no longer be afraid. The signs have convinced me to give love, let love in and live. The signs are speaking to me… I think I understand. I'm sure something or someone will let me know if I don't. :)

A Good Case of Mistaken Identity (6-7-2010)

When I was growing up I was a very confused kid. I was Hispanic by name but as far as many of the neighborhood kids thought, I was a gringo. This distinction was placed upon me for one basic reason: I could not speak Spanish. Kids can be cruel and they can also be very simple. A common thought was if I could not speak Spanish I was not Spanish. It was unfortunate but I became friends with many white kids and many black kids. For someone who wasn’t sure what he was it was an amazing experience to be exposed to different aspects of culture. My love for music, film, comedy, style, sports and so much more was cultivated by having friends of all types. My personal philosophies and my love for people also were born of this. Unfortunately so was my deep isolation.

While I hung around with nearly anyone I never felt like I belonged. It was something that ate away at me until I reached my twenties and began to not only accept but embrace who I was. It was a long road and during my teens when I was a very long way from the answers it meant following the crowd and making what could be considered in hindsight as some bad choices. I grew up in the Allentown neighborhood which was mostly on the poor side but had deep diversity which I’ve always cherished.

During these years my best friend was Paul. He was an Italian kid whose most notable physical characteristic was that he resembled Fred Flintstone. He was a big guy, lazy; narrow minded and completely insensitive although being insensitive isn’t something that matters much to the typical teen. He was my friend when I had very few and that’s something about me that endures to this day. I don’t have many close friends and the ones I have I feel a great deal of loyalty and dedication to despite their flaws. The difference is the friends I have today are actually decent people who I respect or admire in some way as opposed to my teen years when I’d be friends with anyone who’d be friends with me.

Growing up in a mixed neighborhood had many advantages but the white kids didn’t always see them. There was a small group of white kids who always hung out together and they didn’t have much love for the black kids, Puerto Rican kids or any other types. In fact those kids used to beat me up occasionally. They didn’t like me much either, not because I was mixed or anything like that but more because I just wasn’t a dirtbag who sat around and smoked joints, drank beers and listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd like they did. They did those things and I didn’t bother them or judge them (until now) but they bothered and judged me because I was around and I guess they had some deficiencies to work out.

There were a few other odd kids who were the subject of abuse from those guys and other packs of kids. This is how I met and because buddies with Paul. He was one of the outcasts and so were these two brothers who lived a few houses from him. Now the Brown brothers weren’t the brightest kids and they had a very strict mother so they couldn’t run with the packs. They were often picked on for being dumb and they were friends with Paul because well they lived right across the street from him and he didn’t beat them up or call them names. He did however make them do things for him, sometimes at great risk to themselves. He enjoyed manipulating people and I sometimes fell into that role as well once I became friends with him.

Paul was careful not to push me too hard because he knew I was smarter than him and he learned over time despite my easy going nature how sensitive I could be. Since his only friends were the Brown brothers he appreciated having a friend who he felt was his equal in most ways. I was just happy to be friends with anyone at that point in my life.

After many years and many regretful stories I could tell you about, we started college. At this point in our lives being an outcast in the neighborhood wasn’t that big of a deal. Many people had cars and life became bigger than Allentown. We went to the malls and to the clubs in Canada. Our worlds grew tenfold and so did our adventures. When your existence becomes more than 10 square blocks you get a chance to see a large number of different things. Your eyes become wide open. I had the chance to mix with people of different classes, different philosophies and different perspectives. When this occurs, you can go in one of two directions; you can embrace it or you can close yourself off to it. I chose the former. College changed me.

I met a half Puerto Rican, half white female named Melissa Morales. Until recently she was the only blonde woman I’ve ever been attracted to. She was the nicest person you could ever meet. I’ll never forget the day I met her because I met her through her kindness but that’s a story for another time. While my first year of college was based in humility and mostly bad experiences she was the one bright spot. When I was kicked out of school after that first year for bad grades I spoke with her occasionally on the phone and a few times I’d see her out at the clubs. I was often too afraid to tell her how I felt. She obviously liked me because I felt like she was the kind of person who wouldn’t waste her time on someone who wasn’t a good person and she certainly wouldn’t waste her time on someone she didn’t have interest in.

After the next year, she was still at Buffalo State and I had been going to community college and we lost touch. We lost touch because of my immaturity and because Paul would always speak badly of her and maybe for a short while I believed the hype. I don’t know why he did it but maybe he was afraid of losing me in some way. I was really his only good friend and if I had devoted my time to a female like her who I could have easily fallen in love with it would have meant a whole lot of less time for him. Many times he would only be supportive of me trying to connect with a female if he had a chance with her friend. That way we could all hang out together.

Not telling her how I felt is the biggest regret I have in my life. Unfortunately, a little while after we lost touch she moved to North Carolina and I never heard anything about her ever again. She was such a selfless, intelligent and beautiful person and I’m sure she’s enriching someone’s life somewhere. I’m really happy just to have known her and experience her selflessness. It’s really taught me a lot. I wish I could have made a more permanent bond with her either as her friend or more.

The truth was I wasn’t ready yet. Instead I spent my weekends going out to clubs and trying on hit on “skanks” as Paul called them. He wasn’t very successful at it. He had hideous fashion sense and wore some of the ugliest shirts you’ve ever seen because he saw them in a rap video. He’d combine that with two heaping handfuls of hair gel and gold chains with ridiculous charms attached to them like dollar signs. His reasons for striking out so often was that he had no game. He had no style and he had no charm. My excuse was that I sucked at hitting on women. What I would discover later on was that my heart wasn’t into it.

I’ve always found talking to women at nightclubs and bars as kind of disingenuous. People say what they think people want to hear. People paint pictures of themselves without blemishes and if you want a more transparent example look at how people dress. Girl you know you don’t dress like that every day and fellas you know you wouldn’t put that much time into your appearance if you weren’t trying to hook up. It’s always felt very phony to me and when I meet people I want that meeting to stand up on its own, not on some silly fantasy or shaky ground potentially rooted in lies and exaggerations. I’m not telling people how they should live; I’m just discussing what works for me.

After a few years in community college I got the itch to resume my studies at Buffalo State. It was around this time I began to have some direction and motivation in my life. I began to understand what kinds of people I wanted to be around. I began to realize who I was and I really began to embrace that idea of me as that person. Soon, the idea of hanging around all the time with a deceitful, manipulative, ignorant, hateful, homophobic, abusive friend was no longer one that was appealing to me.

Sometime around 1995 when I returned to Buffalo State I went through a very rough period. I contracted bronchitis for the first time and followed that with a brutal case of pneumonia that almost cost me a whole semester. While that was going on my father became really ill and after a few months in the hospital withering away he eventually died.

When I emerged from that period I was a changed person. My sense of morality and values were intricately defined and there was no more room in my life for Paul. I basically stopped hanging out with him and while he’d occasionally get me to chat on the phone, before too long we stopped talking completely. While I did feel bad because we were really good friends for about a dozen years I felt like he would have tired of me anyway. He wanted to bang sluts. I wanted to fall in love. He wanted the girl to leave the next morning and more importantly leave him alone completely. I wanted to give and receive attention and affection in the hope of building a meaningful relationship. As an INFJ personality we are gentle, caring, warm, complex and highly intuitive individuals and he was the opposite of every one of those qualities. We didn’t have nearly as much in common now that we were living in different neighborhoods, attending different schools and living different lives.

Many years passed and while occasionally I’d wonder what happened to him most of time if I thought about him I simply hoped he found happiness out there somewhere. I don’t know if he knew what he was looking for when we last spoke but I had hoped he found it. I just couldn’t be close with someone like that or more importantly let someone like that be close to me and I think he understood that I grew in a completely different direction than he did. I don’t think he held a grudge about it.

My parents had the same phone number for about 20 years and because of this he found me when he came into town one weekend in 2003. He told me had he relocated to Virginia and was a guard at a correctional facility. He told me he’d heard that I was on the radio for a while and that I had done some writing for school papers and websites. It was nice that he still cared enough to wonder how I was. I didn’t hear anything at all about him because I was his only good friend at the time and the Brown brothers found their way into a life of crime and jail so I hadn’t spoken to them longer than I hadn’t spoken to Paul. I didn’t know anyone else who knew him.

He wanted to catch up and maybe grab a beer somewhere. Although I wasn’t quite the drinker I was back when I knew him well I agreed and he told me he’d pick me up later that day. When he arrived I got into the car and found the exact same guy I knew nearly a decade before. He was driving a flashy sportscar, sporting gold jewelry and had the same fashion sense he had then. I wondered how I appeared to him but I didn’t ask. We drove down to the Allentown area to find a bar to drink and catch up. It seemed like a logical choice considering that’s where we grew up.

We drove around and we passed by a few places. He hadn’t been around the area for some time but he still knew which bars were “gay bars” and which ones weren’t… although I think he thought of the Pink as a gay bar, so what did he know. We were cruising around and I could sense he was getting impatient. He didn’t like Nietzsche’s or Brick Bar or even Colter Bay. I started to think that getting food somewhere might be an easier plan and suddenly as we approached Franklin I saw a place out of the corner of my eye.

The bar was called Fugazi. I had never heard of the bar but it was named after a great band so it had to be a cool place right? He asked me if Fugazi was a good bar and because I just wanted to stop somewhere already I said; “Yeah, it’s a great place” having no actual idea if that was true. So finally we had a place to go and we stopped and headed inside.

It was pretty early in bar time. I believe it was around four thirty or just a bit after. We walked into a small and empty place and took 2 seats over at the end of the bar. He bought a beer and I bought a mixed drink. It was a vodka and cranberry I believe. The bar was dimly lit and cozy. Plus they were popping free popcorn for the patrons that weren’t really there yet. What kind of bar does this? I was thinking the place was really cool. It was just us and a bartender talking to another guy at the other end of the bar. Like I said, it was kind of early.

I asked Paul about his life in Richmond, VA and what he’d been doing since we last spoke. I mean, he’d heard a lot about the things I was doing and had done so in some ways it was like I had told him some stuff about me already. While he was going on about his bad back and his job a bunch of guys came into the place and grabbed a table nearby. I remember thinking that a couple of the guys were dressed a bit flamboyantly for a late afternoon but I kept listening and within a few seconds I was focused again on my friend’s life story and not so much my surroundings.

That’s probably why I missed the next two groups of guys who entered the place. I might have taken a look around and saw what was going on but Paul started to ask me a lot about what I was up to. I told him all about the radio thing and some of my writing work. I talked about how I played sports a lot and about some mutual acquaintances and what they were doing but strangely I forgot to mention one of the biggest things going on in my life at the time.

Only a few months before I had a bad break up with the girl I was in love with. It was and still stands as the only substantial relationship I’ve ever been involved in and she was the only person I’ve ever considered marrying. We were together for about a year. As it turned out it took me years to recover from the heartache and baggage of being dumped by someone you love so passionately and thought felt the same way. I really hurt for so long. At this point I was only a few months removed from the break up and I was still deeply wounded but I didn’t bring it up. Maybe I was just sick of talking about it and with someone who didn’t even know at all about the situation maybe I thought I’d have to really explain it which didn’t seem appealing to me. Perhaps I figured talking about deep personal pain to someone so shallow and insensitive was pointless. Looking back, if I had brought it up it might have helped to avoid the misunderstanding that was brewing.

I could tell Paul wasn’t comfortable. We were chatting and things were cool but I noticed that he kept looking around and he was very aware that there were nothing but guys inside this bar and that I was ordering nothing but vodka cranberry mixed drinks or cosmopolitans. In a simple minded brain, these things combined with me talking about art and beauty equaled something he was afraid of and hateful towards. I could tell he wanted to leave after we’d been there an hour and the place with crawling with gay men. So I accidently selected a gay bar, who cares? We still were able to sit down and catch up and that was what was important right?

He was driving me back to my place and I asked him how much longer he was in town and he mentioned that he’d had a few more days before he had to go back. I started talking about how we should go out that night (it was a Saturday) and how I knew of some good places to check out. He probably cringed on the inside. When we got to my place and he pulled over he told me he thought that was a good idea. He put on some fake enthusiasm about it and even negotiated a pick up time for that night. I remember at the time I thought he was acting weird but I didn’t think more of it until he drove off and I never heard from him again. Sometimes life just has a way of working out.