Southern Esteem

Last night I had dinner with Brock, the Cute Fayetteville Boy. We've been hanging out some, and he's been opening up a lot. He's pretty shy and quiet, but he's super nice and pretty interesting. He came to Mexico, primarily, he told me last night, to try to determine his stance on globalization, and whether or not international business is something he really wants to do. So he's interning in the offices of a factory every day.

He asked me in the midst of our conversation if I'd met any of the kids here from Yale. There's a fairly sizable group of them. I said I'd met one of the girls the other night, but couldn't remember her name. When I asked him why, he said it was because he wanted to see if they were all as smart as they were supposed to be, since none of them were taking any classes, and they were all interning as well all summer.

Which reinforced an interesting thing I've noticed down here. There are kids here from all over the United States, and a couple of other countries, from both private and public schools, Ivy League and state. And the kids that go to the public or state schools seem to have nothing but contempt for the all the Ivy Leaguers. It seems to be a pretty common thread. Everyone badmouths the kids from Yale and Princeton, and I have to say, the rich, Ivy League kids also seem to live up to their reputations to some degree.

I met a kid from Princeton last week and we talked some. Totally openly gay, friendly, whatever. So he invites me to go to the pool with his friends from NYU. Which I do, and everything is fine, until we start talking about where we're from. Well, Princeton Guy is from Texas, but because he goes to fucking Princeton, he thinks he's got it all figured out, and when I told them I was from Arkansas, he totally freaked. He started talking about how shitty Arkansas is, and how everyone from there is an idiot, and on and on. And he wouldn't shut up. So I asked him if he'd ever even been there, or met anyone from there, and he said no. But he was all, "I've been all over the south: Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas is by far the worst." Even though he'd never been there. So one of his NYU friends piped in and was all, "Well, it can't be all bad, if Bill Clinton is from there." Great.

I know I have somewhat of a personal bias against people that went to private, northeast liberal arts colleges, due to personal experience (ahem!), but I've had a hard time determining whether or not it was my own insecurity, or whether I actually had a point. And being down here is making me think less and less that it's just me. But instead of making me angry, which I guess it should have done, or maybe it shouldn't have, my conversation with Princeton just really hurt my feelings. I felt attacked and judged by this person that had met me for a total of less than an hour, and admittedly a little embarassed as well. His friends were just sitting there looking at me, as if what he was saying was the most reasonable, common thing for anyone to say to someone else.

There have also been several discussions down here about North vs. South, some of which have been fairly heated. I didn't realize college kids these days thought so much about this stuff. Jaisen even started a Facebook club last year called, "Southern Esteem: Superiority over Yankee Effontery" up at Carnegie Mellon, and it has, like, a million members.

It all just seems a bit silly to me, and I wonder if maybe a lot of it has to do with the political scene, and all the red state-blue state bullshit that everyone was so big on a couple of years ago. But having said that, I feel it as well. I totally buy into the stereotypes, and the first time I met the Princeton kids, or the Yale kids, I immediately formed an opinion about them, without even talking to them. Even the NYU kids I find incredibly standoffish and sort of quietly pretentious. But that could be their guilt by association, since they're always with Princeton, or maybe it's just my imagination.

Anyway. I don't have any great profound insight into any of this, it's just something that I've noticed, and frankly, has made me feel a little better about my own insecurities. At least I'm not the only one.

After talking about the Yale kids last night, Brock said, "I got into a couple of those schools, but decided not to go. I figured I'd just do too many drugs and would probably never fit it with anyone there. I think most people only go to Ivy League schools to try to make themselves feel really smart, and they're the insecure ones, not us."

I'm not sure if I entirely agree with this, but I think maybe he has a point. Obviously, a diploma from Princeton is going to be more impressive than a diploma from Hendrix, but ultimately, does it really make that much difference? I suppose it probably does, but if you're going to Princeton, or Yale, or Harvard, or wherever, most likely you're already somewhat in the "in" crowd to begin with. Maybe I should try to spend more time with the Yalies and see what they're all about. I might learn a thing or two. Or unlearn a thing or two.

Don't they know it's the end of the world?

Last night, after the dustiest, and probably hottest, soccer game I've ever played, with the St. Eds crew, a bunch of us decided to stay in, order pizza from Domino's down the street, and watch a movie in the theater downstairs. We ended up watching Girl, Interrupted, which, I have to admit, I really liked.

I think I've always had a bias against that movie for 2 very particular reasons: a) it stars Angelina Jolie, whom I find so disgusting and hideous and....just, Angelina Jolie, that looking at her makes me want to stab my eyeballs, and b) one of the girls I lived with when I first moved to Austin was this girl, Brandi, who was totally obsessed with the book. She was just about the most melodramatic, self-absorbed, pseudo-lesbian I ever met. And of course we were great friends at first, until she started being too melodramatic for even me. And then she took off after our lease was up, owing us all a bunch of money, and nobody ever heard from her again.

But I kept an open mind and found the film completely engrossing and sort of fascinating, and even very emotional. But mostly it just made me want to read the book. It also featured two of my favorite songs ever, which are "How to fight loneliness," by Wilco, and "The end of the world," this obscure country song from the 60's sung by some woman named Skeeter something-or-other, and doing my research just now, discovered that it was actually written by a woman from Little Rock, Arkansas. Anyway, it has the most insipid, pathetic, woe-is-me lyrics ever, which of course is why I've always loved it.

Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don't they know it's the end of the world
Cause you don't love me anymore?

Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It happened when you said goodbye.

And on and on.

Today I was supposed to go back to the school with the autistic and disabled kids, but it got cancelled, so I laid out by the pool for 2 hours, then went to the gym for the first time since I've been here. Which is also where I caught the video for the LL Cool J/J.Lo joint, which I kind of liked. But why does it sound just like "Funky Cold Medina?"

If I have to hear that "My Humps" song one more fucking time, somebody's gonna pay!

The Macroplaza at night.

Last night a whole bunch of us went down to the Barrio club area to go out. I've only been out once, pretty much, at night, the whole time I've been here, and after last night I remember why.

We all went to this club that charged a 150 peso cover ($15), but had an open bar. As I'm not really drinking much anymore, this wasn't really a bargain for me, but I went anyway. I had one beer the whole night. I had also gone down to his room and invited Fayetteville Boy along with us, but he then took off by himself as soon as we got downtown. Oh well.

So we go to the club, which plays mostly
Reggaeton, which, I have to say, I'm not a big fan of. But the crowd is nuts for it, and everybody basically gets plastered out of their skulls. It was fun for awhile, but after about 2 and a half hours, and especially since I'm not drinking, I started getting really bored and tired.

So around 1 we finally leave and decide to go find another club, which ends up being this awful little dungeon called Libido, where you literally have to climb through this tiny aluminum door to get in. Once inside, it goes way back, but it's very narrow, completely packed, about 4,000 degrees, and everyone is smoking. And they're playing awful, awful music. Most places here seem to be fairly obsessed with American pop music. You can't really go anywhere, whether it's a restaurant, clothing store, gas station, anywhere, without hearing Avril, Madonna, the Black-Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson. And Placebo. They're fucking huge here. Except for most of the nightclubs, which play mostly reggaeton and a sprinkling of Amercian hip-hop, like 50 Cent. Which this club was playing.

So everyone heads to the bar, grabs a drink and hits the packed dance floor. I'm totally over it by now, but in serious doubt of my abilities to take a cab back to the Tec by myself, so I decide to wait it out. Being with a huge group of 19, 20-year-olds who are all fucking totally wasted, having a great time, dancing, making out with each other, not wanting to go home until dawn, etc. etc., I have to say, made me feel more alone than I think I ever have in my entire life. So I finally find a table in the back and sit there and chain smoke, basically, and don't drink. It was absolutely fucking miserable.

Finally Deneise and this guy Charlie come and rescue me, and we leave, and for about 15 minutes half-heartedly search for the gay clubs (which Deneise wants to do; all I want to do is go home and go to bed) until about 3:15, when we finally get a cab home.

This morning Deneise and I met up for breakfast at VIPS, then went with the other Girls down to the Macroplaza to do some sight-seeing and shopping at this huge, outdoor mall down there, with everything from upscale clothing stores, to little kiosks with handmade items. It's very eclectic. We also found ourselves smack in the middle of a protest rally, apparently by a group of blue-collar factory workers and such that are supporting Lopez Obrador for president. He's the current mayor of Mexico City, and a member of the PRD liberal party of Mexico. He's extraordinarily popular in Mexico City, but not so much in Monterrey. Monterrey is apparently one of the most conservative cities in Mexico, both politically and socially, and most people here aren't going for him. To give you an idea of its conservative tendencies, the mayor that took over in Monterrey in 96 or 97, apparently shut down all of the gay bars, which I discovered doing my research. A few have reopened under different names since then, but most haven't, from what I understand. So that was interesting. I'm becoming pretty fascinated with Latin American politics and really want to start learning more. That's one reason I love hanging out with my professor so much, because he's just one giant, walking history lesson all the time. He has 2 PHD's in it and definitely leans more to the liberal/socialist side politically (he was very impressed when Patricia Mercado mentioned "the gays" in the debate the other night, and how Mexico belongs to everybody. She's a very marginal candidate, and very liberal, but she certainly won't matter in the real race) but goes to great lengths to make sure we understand all sides when he's explaining things.

As a funny side note to that, I've met a few native Mexicans here who have basically told me that Austin has a reputation down here for being a giant, liberal, southern-U.S. gay paradise, and just being this wild, crazy place of partying and debauchery and homos everywhere. Which I think is very funny and interesting. I've mostly told them they're sort of half right, but not really, but that definitely according to Texas standards (and Monterrey's), I can see how people might think that.

I'm definitely staying in tonight, except for a small gathering at the aforementioned Charlie's apartment around 10:30. Everyone's going back to the Barrio after that, but not me. I'm actually going to go to mass in the morning with my professor. I feel like I should experience that while I'm here. I'm looking forward to it. My professor also organized a St. Edwards picnic and (voluntary) soccer game for tomorrow afternoon, since we've all kind of scattered in different directions since we got here. He wants us to be sure and bond as a group, even as we make other friends. So we're gonna cook out and just hang out in the park, which should be really nice. I'm looking forward to that.

I can't believe my stint here is almost halfway over already.

Fag Stag

Jaisen has been going to this Salsa class 4 nights a week, and last week, he met a girl there that plays flute in the Monterrey symphony. So the other night he suggested that we should go see the symphony, which we had tentatively planned on doing last night. Anyway, turns out it was pretty costly, so we scrapped our symphony plan and decided to go see a ballet being performed on campus instead. For only 50 pesos ($5). I was disappointed, as it's been years since I've been to a symphony performance. I used to go all the time when I was a kid to hear my mom play, which of course at the time I hated, but I appreciate so much now.

But yesterday afternoon I'm in my room reading, and Jaisen walks in and throws down 2 tickets to the symphony on my bed. Turns out his little salsa partner hooked us up with some complimentary tickets. So last night we went and it was wonderful. They were incredible. The first half was 2 Mozart pieces, about 15 minutes each, and the second half was a 54 minute Mahler piece. I adore Mahler; he writes some of the most exquisite cello parts I've ever heard, and last night's symphony featured them prominently throughout. There were 4 movements, and the third movement was incredibly sad. I leaned forward in my seat and totally forgot where I was for a bit, and just got completely caught up in it. It's been a really long time since that's happened to me.

We had also planned on going out to the gay bars after the symphony, but we didn't get back to the dorm until almost 11, and we both have class today, and I have a test, so we scrapped the gay bars. Perhaps this weekend we'll go. Jaisen is the only person I've ever heard actually use the term fag stag in reference to himself, or use the term at all. I was impressed.

On another note, I'm kind of hating my Spanish class. It's incredibly difficult, and the teacher seems fairly disinterested most of the time. She did finally separate the Baylor boys yesterday and make them sit apart from each other, thank God. But she just assigns tons of homework every night, and a lot of it feels kind of over my head, and I get really frustrated with it. I have a tendency in these kinds of situations to feel really put out, and just say "fuck it, I'm not gonna bother," but I can't really do that here. I need to start doing my homework with other people I guess, so we can figure it out together. The main consolation I have at this point is that it's a pass/fail class, and I won't actually get a grade, so it won't affect my GPA at all, which takes some of the pressure off. But it's disappointing that it's frustrating my efforts to simply learn Spanish as well. I need to figure out how to rise above it. All of this really makes me miss my St. Eds spanish teacher. She was phenomenal, and really made it fun and exciting to learn, and she had a great sense of humor, whereas my teacher now feels like she's doing it for community service or something. It's very disappointing.

Pictures from Saturday

Our Torture Wagon. Look how excited and unsuspecting everyone is. Except the Mexican; he knows what's up, but he ain't talkin'.
In the Sierra Madres. This was maybe 1/3 of the way up the mountain.
Climbing....
A total of almost 6 hours on this road.
Our Waterfall and some boys.
More.
Our waterfall and some girls.
The Girls and me: Jacque, Sandra, Me, Deniese. In our spelunking outfits.

My Mexican (Mis)Adventure

There's a group in Monterrey called Bungee Adventures that's basically a tour guide group for like, "extreme" outdoor activities. They have a deal through the Tec to take groups of students to do stuff for a highly discounted rate. Which is what the waterfall/hiking/spelunking tour I went on yesterday was.

Suffice to say they're quite unorganized, and pretty much nothing went as planned yesterday. We were supposed to return back to school at 7 pm, and we got back at 4 am. But not before being left on the side of a mountain at 1 in the morning for almost 2 hours. By the tour guides and the truck driver.

Though I don't regret going in the slightest, if I'd actually known what I was signing up for yesterday, I probably never would have done it. We were whipped, beaten, starved, submerged in freezing water in pitch-black caves a mile underground, and left on top of a mountain in nothing but wet swimming suits in 60 degree weather. At 1 am. So we built a fire and huddled together for warmth, our filthy, damp towels wrapped around us as a slight barrier against the wind.

But we bonded. There were about 19 people on the trip. The only other St. Eds people besides me were The Girls, and nobody else really knew each other, but we all decided we'd seriously been through something together yesterday, and we joked about it being so traumatizing that it would just have to be our secret, our own internal grief about which we would never speak. But of course we all had a total fucking blast.

But it was all amazing. The waterfall, the cave, the weird, poor family that lived on top of the mountain that it takes 3 hours to get up. Which, incidentally, we were taken up in in one of those flatbed trucks, with the wooden planks going around the outside, like what they used to haul people off to concentration camps. There were 19 of us stuffed back there-for an almost 3 hour trip up the side of the Sierra Madres, on a rocky, curvy path usually no wider than the truck itself. It was absolutely the most horrifying thing I've ever been through. But not as horrifying as the realization that after we were finally done "adventuring," we all had to pile back into the back of this truck for the trip back down. It freezing cold. In the dark. After being wet, muddy and completely exhausted. And for "lunch," all they gave us was the equivalent of about a half-sandwich on some bullshit croissant thing, and cans of generic fruit soda. So we were all starving to death.

After lunch we did the Cave. Which was supposed to take 30 minutes, but really took 3 hours. We had wet suits, helmets and heavy-duty life vests. And about 5 flashlights to share among 20 people (2 of which burned out during the spelunking, by the way). We crawled and crawled through that giant pile of mud. We shimmied through jagged holes not much bigger than an air-conditioner vent. We submerged ourselves in water that couldn't have been more than 60 degrees, up to our chins, with the ceiling baring down on us in almost total blackness. I've probably never come closer to completely losing my shit than when I was in that water. It was so cold, my body just went into a sort of shock: everything went numb, I couldn't breathe, my heart was racing to keep my body warm. I started to panic, but managed to get control, because there was absolutely nothing to be done. You can't fucking go back once you're in there.

After the tire popped on the way back down the mountain (for the second time that day; it popped on the way up, too), and we had to stop, because there was no spare, and the tour guides and the driver all abandoned us up there to empty out the pickup the tour guides were driving and come back and pick us up (or something; no one really knew what they were doing), and after we built the bonfire, we starting talking about what we would most like to eat. The most common consensus was hot dogs or pizza.

I love everyone on this trip (Baylor frat boys excepted). Everyone is so nice, and inclusive, and curious, and open-minded. Smart, very literate. After all of this yesterday, on the way back, the multiple conversations I was hearing were about literature, one about agriculture, and one about Cuban politics. But mostly I just can't get over how nice everyone is. There are so many walks of life, backgrounds and personalities here. There's just no bullshit or pretense. It honestly gives me a lot of hope for the future of America. I'm not being hyperbolic; it truly does.

My roommate and I are getting along really well, too. He's taken to calling me Senor Poopy, for obvious reasons to anyone who knows me. The other night he told me all about going to a gay bathhouse in Pittsburgh with his gay friends because he was curious. Which led to a very long and graphic conversation about anal sex and enemas. He's really funny. He also always makes fun of my Spanish, because apparently I speak it with a very thick Southern accent that I don't normally have. Which must be hilarious; I can't imagine what I sound like.

Today I went to the mercado negro (black market) with my prof and some kids, and bought a real cute shirt for $12.

Insomnia

Monterrey is a very noisy city. My dorm room is on the eighth floor, and my window has a stunning view of the western side of the city and the mountains, even if I never get a sunset because there's too much pollution and the mountains get in the way. It also looks down upon a giant traffic circle in the front of the Tec. Jaisen and I always leave the bottom portion of the window open (it's divided horizontally), even though the air conditioner is always on. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because it keeps the room from getting stuffy, and the nights are always very cool. But I also like to think it's because it connects us to the city somehow, even if the city noise often keeps me awake. All night long I hear the roar of traffic in the circle and on the highway; the screech of tires on the asphalt; car horns constantly blaring; people yelling, music playing; the peacocks on campus honking incessantly. But the bottom of the window is also at my precise eye level if I'm lying flat in bed, on my stomach, and I can look out of the window, at the endless loop of traffic flowing past, and the line of headlights always coming down the mountain towards campus from the street on the opposite side of Av. Garza de Sada, which is the very busy street that runs north and south in front of campus.

Nothing I do tonight settles down my brain. It's the kind of night I have frequently in Austin, but usually dull with whisky or wine in order to sleep. But I'm not doing that here, not so much because I can't, because it is possible to sneak alcohol into the rooms (plenty of people do it), but because I've made the very conscious decision not to. These past two weeks, even though I've had a handful of drinks, have been the first time I've honestly felt totally sober and lucid in almost a year.

I went to a party tonight on the roof of an apartment complex about three blocks from campus. There are about 45 kids living there from Texas Tech (I had no idea), and I went with these two girls I met from McAllen, but who go to school in other places. They're both very nice and very funny. Whenever I'm with them, I laugh constantly. The party was lame, so we busted out early. They grabbed a cab to head down to the Barrio Antigua area for some nightclubbing, and I started walking home. It was about 12:30, and I was so close to campus I thought nothing of it. But on my way home, a big black truck full of Mexican boys drove by me not once, but twice (in totally opposite directions), yelling things out the window at me in Spanish and laughing hysterically. I have no idea what they were saying. They could have been yelling, "The weather is magnificent, I'm so happy to be alive," for all I know, but where I come from, when you're me (or a reasonable facsimile), and a big truck full of boys drives by you and they yell things out the window, it's never good. The first time I didn't think much of it, despite the fact that they slowed down next to me on a very busy street to yell, but the second time, when I had turned a corner and was heading totally away from the direction they had originally been traveling, and it happened again, my heart raced. I was only about a block from my dorm, but I was already scoping out escape routes and judging how quickly I could run in my Maddens if it became necessary.

I feel much more connected to this city than I did even two days ago. Something in me shifted when I woke up on Thursday morning. It was literally overnight. I can't say what, but I think it might have to do with all the shifts currently going on in my body and my emotions. I already feel changed, and after another 4 weeks or so, who knows how I'll return to Austin. Obviously, on a fundamental level I'll still be the same person, but being here in this capacity, and spending so much time alone, and truly being sober and quiet in that aloneness has already started opening up pathways in my brain I haven't been in touch with in years, and in some cases, ever. I can't say it's for the better or the worse, but I'm assuming for the better at this point. I should have been doing this nine months ago, but you live and you learn and you have to figure it out on your own time.

Very Expensive Cat Toy

If you haven't seen it already, before you die, you absolutely must go watch this! I insist.

(via You Can't Make It Up)

Good night.

Horse Therapy

I just got back from visiting the Centro de Rehabilitacion y Educacion de Infantiles with my professor. He wants us to start getting involved out in the community, and he had researched this place as a possible place for us to go help out. It's basically a school for developmentally disabled and retarded kids, run entirely by private funds, right in the center of Monterrey. So today he went to investigate, and it sounded interesting, so I thought I'd go along with him. Most of their kids they have in the morning (76!!), and then some in the afternoons, but it's much slower. Terry (my professor) and I got to actually help out in some of the therapy of this 12-year-old autistic boy who comes in there in the afternoons. They started him out on a horse, which they do everyday. He is led around, and as he's being led, he has to do mental exercises, like look at flashcards that we showed him, and after looking at 5 or 6, repeat back the order in which the objects on the cards were shown to him. And then he had different colored hula hoops we tossed at him, which he had to catch, and when he had caught them all, had to then place them on the different colored cones that we told him. Like, we would say, "Verde con azul," and he would have to drop the green hoop on the blue cone, etc. etc. You get the picture. So we did this stuff with him for about an hour. He was a really sweet kid, and only got upset once, at me, of course. I was walking next to the horse he was on, with a box of different colored pegs he had to put in a board to match a picture they'd just shown him (autistic people think in pictures, similarly to animals, actually; my professor was very impressed that I knew that), and I was supposed to hand him the amount and color of whatever peg he asked for, like cinqo amarillo (five yellows), and as you know, my Spanish isn't great, so I often couldn't understand what he wanted, and Terry and the therapist would forget to tell me what he was saying, so I wouldn't give him what he wanted, and he'd get mad. But all was well. It was really fun, actually. I guess I'm gonna start going back there next week in the afternoons for an hour or two. They told us to stop by anytime, but as a courtesy to them, I should figure out some kind of schedule. And talk other people into going with me.

After the kid was done with his therapy session, he went inside the school, and the therapist found out I was really scared of horses, so naturally, he made me get on it and ride around. I was very tense at first, and kept feeling like I was gonna fall off, but he kept telling me to relax, and eventually I did. Horse's heart rates are about the same as humans, and they give off a lot of heat, so there's all this theorizing that that's why humans bond so well with horses, because we sort of meld together, and it's very inherently relaxing. Which it was...once I relaxed. I haven't ridden a horse in probably close to 20 years, so it was nice to sort of get over that hurdle. My professor was joking on the drive back to campus that I got my own therapy. Which I guess I did.

So that's pretty much been my day. I think I'm going to switch out of my Spanish class at 11, into one that's at 9, mostly because the fucking Baylor frat boys are in my class, and I just really can't tolerate it much longer. They're so obnoxious, and it makes the class kind of chaotic, and the teacher won't do much about it, and it's really starting to piss me off. I didn't pay $3,000 to come to Mexico to get pissed off and intimidated by fucking asshole idiot jocks in class every morning. I just don't get it. Who are these people and where do they come from? I hope some horrible fate befalls each and every one of them to force them into some kind of humility.

Tomorrow I'm going here for the whole day, and I couldn't be more excited about it. But right now I'm going to grab some grub somewhere, and then go drinking with my professor and some 40-something-year-old friend of his. Should be interesting.

Muerte

So, after writing the last post I went to grab some breakfast and then go check on my ducks and my goose before class, which I've decided I'm going to go do every morning because it makes me feel good. I felt like the biggest dork this morning. The pond is surrounded by people, and I walk up and see my goose, sitting on her eggs, and this huge, involuntary smile crosses my face, I'm almost beaming. I love that goose. So I sit and look at her for a few minutes, then decide to go find my ducks and see how their morning's going. And lo and behold, the horror I see in front of me is one of the little ducklings floating dead in the pond. I was so sad, ya'll, I seriously almost cried. So I looked around for the mommy and remaining duckling, and found them strolling around, side by side, in the brush by the pond. I felt so bad for them, walking together in mourning. I hope they find solace in one another and that the remaining duckling makes it all right. No mommy duck should have to lose more than one duckling. And since there's only one left, it makes me think she probably lost more, because don't most fowl give birth to batches, or litters, or whatever they're called when they're ducks? Like, the goose has tons of eggs. I hope they all make it.

I ran into my professor, and my friend Christy from the last post, walking around together after my class, so I took them to the goose too, so they could see. Christy took a picture that she's supposed to email me, so if and when she does, I'll post it here so ya'll can see this amazing goose for yourselves. Christy tried to get a picture of the duckling, too, but it kept moving too much, so I don't know if any of them came out. But if so, you'll get one of those too.

I wonder if Ayn Rand would approve?

Yesterday a group of us went to the Museo Marco in downtown Monterrey, which is the contemporary art museum. They're currently having an exhibition on this amazing and apparently very famous architect named Ricardo Legorreta. His stuff is very blocky, but colorful and with a lot of interesting flourishes and tons of natural light. He has designed many buildings all over Latin America, but he's done a lot in Texas and California too, including the San Antonio library, which I think I'm gonna drive down to look at when I return to Austin.

The San Antonio Library

Some of his stuff looks vaguely sort of Soviet-style, too, especially some of his European and Korean works (go figure), but even those have a lot of personality. For anyone familiar with the San Jose Hotel in Austin, a lot of his stuff looks like that, even the houses. Which were absoutely phenomenal. My favorite part of the exhibition was all these little dioramas and models they had of a bunch of his buildings that you could look at. And most of them were missing roofs, and maybe only only had half-walls, so you could actually see what the floor plans and layouts were. I guess they were the actual architectural models that they used, because they were so detailed and vivid, and even had little plastic people inside them, so you could get a better idea of the scale. It was amazing.

Yesterday on campus, right outside these crazy buildings, , I discoverd a pond around them, which contains many water-fowl, including a duck with two tiny baby ducks, and a goose sitting on a large nest of eggs. I counted 12 eggs yesterday, when she would raise her little butt to pull some grass or twigs onto the nest and squawk quietly, but I might have missed some. Watching her sit there, guarding her eggs, in the middle of this busy campus, is somehow one of the most touching things I've ever seen. It's so sweet. I'm going to keep going back there every day to see if they've hatched. I can't wait. I don't know how long little geese incubate, but surely not more than another 5 weeks?

Also in that pond are the baby ducks. Holy God, you've never seen anything cute until you've seen these two tiny ducks swimming around in the water with their mommy. They could probably both fit in one of my hands and they're still all fluffy, like how kittens are when they're first born. They both swam away from their mom yesterday when she hopped up on the shore for something, and she totally freaked out! She started squawking and jumped back into the water, chasing them and yelling, until she caught up with them, and then swam between them, and was quiet and still. Amazing. I sat there for about 20 minutes and just watched them swim around. I probably could have sat there all day.

I've been playing racqetball in the evenings the last couple of days with my professor, and yesterday we played with this Polish guy we met down on the courts, who's lived in Mexico for several years. Another girl from St. Eds came with us yesterday too, and then we played doubles tennis. Or, we tried to. Christy and I weren't very good, but my professor and the Polish guy are. My professor, especially, just ran circles around us, and wore me and Christy out! I hope I have that much energy when I'm almost 70!

Anyway, after raquetball and tennis, Christy and I went and got tacos and beer at this place I like near campus (which, incidentally, Kurt, if you're reading this, played Avril Lavigne the entire time we were there). I like her a lot. She's really sweet and smart. After that, we met up with a bunch of the Tec people at our adopted bar we call the Blue Bar, because everything in it's blue, even the lighting. I don't think any of us know what the real name of it is. But while there last night I met this guy I've been sort of mildly crushing on since day 2 of this thing when I saw him in the lobby, but I hadn't spoken to him until last night. Turns out he's from Fayetteville, Arkansas and goes to Hendrix College in Conway! Totally cray. So we chatted for a bit, and that was nice. He's tall and skinny and nerdy looking. go figure. When I said I was leaving and walking back to campus, he was all, "Oh, I'll walk back with you." But I'm pretty sure he was just drunk and tired.

A.M. conversation

As Jaisen and I were getting up and dressed this morning to go to class, the following conversation took place (totally randomly):

Jaisen: You have some hot man waiting for you back in Austin?

Me: Uhh...no.

Jaisen: Are you gonna try to hook up with any Mexican dudes while you're here?

Me: I seriously doubt it.

Jaisen: Racist.

Me: Whatever. I've had sex with more Mexican dudes than you have. Plus, here, I
don't really know what the mores and stuff are. I'd be sorta scared to.

Jaisen: Yeah, it's a lot more taboo here. Plus it's harder, because everybody
looks.... (Jaisen trails off)

Me: Everybody looks gay? Cause they're all skinny and dress well?

Jaisen: Well, I was trying to think of a nicer way to put it.

At this point, Jaisen and I are both only about half-dressed, sharing a sink, while he brushes his teeth and I apply Neutrogena facial moisterizer with SPF. This is after having applied my eye and face stress gel.

Jaisen: At least it would be easier for you to actually do it, since you can have
other guys in the room.

Me: What about you? What if you walked in in the middle of it?

Jaisen: You could put a sign on the door: Having sex. Come back later.

Me: That would work.

Jaisen: Well, one of us should be getting laid.

So I guess I now officially have permission to have sex in the dorm room should the occasion ever arise. Good to know.

Lost in Translation

Anybody who wants to hear something funny should have been in my room this morning when the maid walked in to clean. They come in every morning around 8:30 or 9, and ever so gently rap on your door, then use their keys to just walk in. I guess there's no other way to do it, really, but almost every morning they've walked in on Jaisen and me still sleeping. (Last night he said we should sleep naked on top of the covers and see what they do. Well, if you insist....) Anyway, it was just funny listening to me try to tell the maid to come back in one hour, at 10:00, and that I needed towels. She spoke not a word of English, and I speak about 2 words of Spanish, so the conversation took about 4 times as long as it needed to.

A couple of nights ago we also discovered some kind of strange flashing red-light on our ceiling that appears to be a motion sensor. Neither of us can figure out what the hell it's for, so we decided it was probably a web-cam for hotgringos.com or something.

Me and Jaisen, posing for the web cam.

Last night we watched Like Water for Chocolate and I loved it!! It was so good, and it made me want to read the book. Our professor said he might let us write a short paper on the origins of the story for class, for one of our papers if we want to. Which might be fun. There's a very nice metaphor in the movie about how everyone has a matchbook inside of them, and something, or someone, has to come along eventually and light the matches for you, to light your fire inside, or else the matches get soggy and dissolve. But if the passion is too strong, all of your matches get lit all at once, and you quickly burn out.

And then after that, we watched The Rules of Attraction. Which has no meaningful metaphors.

Bunches of people started arriving last night, and campus is starting to feel more full of people. Classes start tomorrow. ¡Necesito el cafe, malo!

Texans

Horsetail Falls

Yesterday we went to Horsetail Falls state Park, which was pretty stunning, except for if you hiked up the mountain behind the waterfall, there's fucking mounds of trash everywhere. It's really sad, but the place was beautiful. But I also had my first taste of churro, which made me want to live in a house made of churro all the time, so I could eat it, the rebuild it, then eat it again. I can't believe I'd never had it before, but everyone there said that the churro you get in Austin didn't compare to this churro.

Some girl, enjoying my churro. Also, not in Monterrey.

I also finally found some coffee this morning. I've been lamenting, nay, constantly whining, about the lack of coffee here, which I found shocking. You can get it in the cafeteria of the Tec, but it's from a Nescafe machine, and it's watery and tastes like toilet water. And there are no coffee shops. There are 2 Starbucks in this town of almost 4 million, but they're both in the rich part. I don't even need Starbucks, in fact I'd prefer not to have Starbucks, but give me something!! One of The Girls, Sandra, whose family is from Mexico, told me yesterday that coffee shops aren't something that middle or lower class Mexicans do. They might grind some in the morning for breakfast at their house, but that's it. Which would explain why there are no coffee shops in Monterrey. *Sad Face.*

Buy there is a chain of restaurants here called VIPS, that's just like Denny's, and there's one about a block from campus, so Jaisen (my roommate, and yes that's how he spells it) and I had breakfast there this morning and I finally got some coffee. And it was exquisite.

There are also a lot of other Texans on this trip. I met one the other day named Matt, who's a native Austinite, and judging by the looks of him, King of the Hipsters. He has not only a slight mullet, but also a rat-tail, that he braids, HUGE, dorky glasses, a scumstache, wears t-shirts that are 2 sizes too small, with the sleeves cut off, and rolls his pants halfway up his calves to show off his Sauconys. It's pretty extraordinary.

There are about 3 other Texans, however (I mean, there are a lot of Texans, actually, but these are the ones that stand out), that are ruining it for all of us, I swear. They're totally fat, beer-swilling, backwards baseball-cap wearing assholes. They call each other "fucking faggots" a lot, say things like, "Dude, you are so fucking gay!" and are otherwise very loud and obnoxious. I went into the TV room this morning while I was waiting on Jaisen to take a shower, and they left it totally trashed last night while watching some game. There were empty sodas, bags of snacks left laying around, and trash on the floor. I ended up cleaning it all up, partly because it grossed me out, and partly because I was embarassed for the maids to see it, lest they think all the spoiled Americans just leave all of their garbage everywhere for the maids to clean up. And the boys, of course, are from fucking Baylor. Explains a lot. Jaisen's funny because he first brought them to my attention, and pretty much refuses to be within 100 feet of them. We took 3 buses out to the falls yesterday, and he refused to be on any bus that contained the "Texans."

I'm ready for classes to start. There's not really a whole lot to do around here without pretty much striking out on your own, and most of us are too big of pussies to do that just yet. I actually started kind of feeling the disconnect yesterday for the first time and got pretty lonely last night. I ended up going out barhopping in the neighborhood around the campus for a couple of hours last night with all the St. Eds girls, just because I was really bored, but eventually they all took cabs down to the Barrio Antigua, and I didn't want to go. The Barrio Antigua is pretty cool, though. It's a huge bar/restaurant/nightclub district, but it's all in the old, colonial part of downtown. Most of the buildings and cobblestone streets were built very early 16th century. We went Friday night, though, to some club there, and I was pretty unimpressed. Except for all the security, which is insane. Huge, beefy dudes in suits; about 5 at every entrance and exit, and talk about getting frisked when you go in! They leave nothing untouched, believe me. They're not fuckin' around.

Barrio Antigua

Mine and Jaisen's suite-mate moved in last night, too. He seems cool, and is actually a local, from Monterrey, which is exciting. I really want to meet some locals and maybe have them show me/us around the city a bit. That seems like the way to do it. He said by Tuesday there would be people everywhere. Cool. The campus has been so empty these last few days. I'm glad more people are arriving.

We All Feel Better in the Dark

Earlier today I got quite a scare when I tried to withdraw money from the ATM, and it wouldn't let me. Of course stupid Bank of America froze my account as soon as they saw funds being withdrawn from Mexico, even though I had already given them a heads-up about it. It wasn't too much trouble to call them and tell them they were morons, but it freaked me out for a bit.

The Tec took us on a bus tour of Monterrey today that was nice. I already knew that it was the richest city in Mexico, but it also contains the richest neighborhood in Latin America, which they drove us through. It was nice, obviously, but honestly, I wasn't floored by the wealth or anything. Maybe we just didn't see enought of it or something. It seems like a fun place to go spend an afternoon rummaging around in the shopping, though.

On the tour, I sat next to Denise, one of The Girls. She's a tiny little Vietnamese girl that wears gigantic sunglasses and makes snide remarks about the general student body at St. Edwards ("It's mostly a bunch of really rich kids with daddy's credit cards, but they don't take showers, so they think they're cool.") We also got to talking about TV, and of course we both love Sex and the City. One of the other girls brought a bunch of the DVD's, so we decided we needed to start having a Sex and the City night once a week. There's a movie theater on the bottom floor of the dorm that you can reserve and watch whatvever you want on DVD, so maybe that would be a fun place to do it. My professor also brought a whole box load of DVD's I'm curious to thumb through.

For dinner a bunch of us went to this hamburger stand in the parking lot of strip mall about a block from campus, which was pretty tasty. I got to sit next to the really hot French guy that everyone's whispering about. After the course is over, he's traveling through Latin America for another 6 weeks, then going to New York, about which he is very excited. I told him he would love it, and that I'd never been to Paris, but that I'd heard they had a very similar feel. He looked at me skeptically and said, in his adorable broken English, "We will see."

Tonight we're going to another dance club, and then tomorrow it's >Horsetail Falls State Park. I'm very excited to do that!

All right, gotta run. The bus waits.

No Clever Title

So, ladies and gentlemen, the unspeakable has happened, and just what I was afraid of: my fucking shitty-ass Apple laptop has pretty much died. My second day here. When I get home, I'm gonna walk into their fucking Genius bar and beat somebody with it. So unless I can get it to start back up, I'm going to have to use the computer lab from now on. Which might not be such a bad thing. That will mean in my room I don't have a computer, a TV or a radio. I think the sensory deprivation will be good for me, frankly. But I'm still going to try to fix it.

Last night a bunch of students went to some crazy lounge called AVA. I couldn't find it on the internet. It sort of reminded me of Club de Ville, but it was mostly inside. Everything was red, including a tiny red dance floor, that was about 4 feet x 4 feet. Otherwise you couldn't really dance, and the music was too loud to talk, and no one really knows each other anyway. But "The Girls," as they will heretofore be affectionatally known as, got very excited last night about going to a gay club and seeing a drag show. So there you go. I guess we're gonna try to make that happen eventually.

It's true, I guess, that Monterrey is very Americanized. I wasn't sure what people meant by that, and I'm still not totally sure, except that there are Wal-Marts and HEB's, and the club we went to last night was in some upscale part of town that looked like any American city. It looked like the Arboretum, in fact. Our professor took us to Wal-Mart yesterday to buy some groceries and stuff, and it looked just like any American Wal-Mart as well, except actually cleaner than any American Wal-Mart I've ever seen. I really want to write about some of my first impressions of Mexico, and how I've been feeling, and what I've been observing, but I can't really think of much very meaningful or profound to say about it. Maybe Monterrey does feel too much like an American city for me to be struck by any kind of deep culture shock at this point. one thing that made an impression, was when we first crossed the border, and right next to the highway were these incredibly dismal shanty-towns, really, just shacks and shacks and dilapidated shacks everywhere. But stuck around in between these shacks in various places were billboards for very chic products like perfumes, with sprawling naked white women hawking the stuff. Among some of the worst poverty I've ever seen. I wasn't exactly sure who these advertisements were intended to reach, unless it was just the people on the highway, but how depressing.

My schedule here is going to be horribly easy. I'm going to have a Spanish class from 11-1 every day, and that's about it. Yesterday when I was in my professor's room helping him move furniture (don't ask), he said our class was only going to meet once a week, and then mostly just to talk, and that he wasn't really going to make us do anything. More than teach us history, he just wants us to go out and live in the culture and go to museums and learn things that way. He pretty much said everyone's going to get an A. So that's cool. There's this dude in my group who's been dying to go see X-Men, so I think we might do that tonight. Or whoever wants to. There's also another club outing tonight.

Last night my roommate had a nightmare, apparently, in the middle of the night, and shouted and jumped out of bed, and of course I woke up, and was totally freaked out, but once he realized it was a dream, he was fine. I also grew a cold sore on my lip yesterday, which totally pisses me off.

Nuance

I learned today that there is a big difference between "tengo mucho hambre" and "tengo mucho hombre."

The first one means "I am very hungry." The second one means, basically, "I have many men." Although literally, it's "I have many man," it's still embarassing.

You seem pretty young to be searching for that kind of fun

Yesterday, amidst our touring of downtown Monterrey and museum-going, these, like, 4 girls decided to adopt me. They're from St. Eds, but I don't know any of them, and none of them are over 21. When I told them last night I was 29, they were all, like, whoooah, like they'd never met a 29-year-old before. One of them replied, "We must seem like little kids to you." No comment from the peanut gallery. I like them, though, and it's nice to have more or less complete strangers approaching me, asking me if I want to go get drinks with them after dinner. So I do. We go to a bar where I buy a pina colada for 60 pesos that's the size of my fucking head. We pass a group of men on the street that all whistle and hoot (common Mexican behavior, I'm already learning; the men literally leer), and one of the girls says, "I don't know, Ryan, maybe they were whistling at you. You are excessively pretty." And the girls laugh. Um...awkward. And there's "club night" tonight, apparently, and tomorrow night, and saturday night, and they've all insisted that I come with them.

So here's what I don't know, and probably it doesn't matter: do they know I don't go to their church? Have they decided to befriend me because they can smell the gay and they like that, or is it because of more prurient interests, or is it maybe neither, that maybe they just thought I seemed nice and standoffish, and they're being friendly? Am I being ridiculous for even caring? Probably, because they're nice and they make an effort to include me, and I appreciate it, and despite the fact that not one of them is even 21, they're pretty smart kids. It just gives me this weird feeling of being the camp counselor or something. Like, I have to walk this fine line between sort of being the responsible example, and just totally cutting loose. Not that I plan on getting shitty and stupid in a foreign city, but you know what I mean? Maybe not. In other words, I guess, I feel that if I don't act like an adult, and act like the 10 years older than them that I am, then I seem pathetic or something. Anyway, way overanalyzing.

My roommate also arrived last night about 7:05, just in time to wake me up from my accidental 2-hour nap and get to dinner. Which started at 7. He seems real nice. His name's Jason, he's from Birmingham, but goes to school at Carnegie Mellon and hates it, because they don't encourage anyone to actually think, and he calls it a "factory of mechanized thinking." He also hates people from the Northeast, he said. He described us as "two friendly southern boys." He's shy, and kind of mumbles, but he seems cool, and easy to get along with. We're already talking about maybe taking a bus to the beach some weekend while we're here. Assuming there's any time.

Not much else to tell at this point. I registered for my Spanish class this morning, and I think my professor is taking us out again this afternoon, but I don't know where anyone is. Maybe I should go see if I can find anyone.

Aqui

I'm here. I've been having a serious internal debate about whether to actually start "blogging" or not yet, since I don't have a whole lot to say at this point, but I am. Mainly because i've gorged myself on breakfast (food here is cheap! I got eggs, bacon, a huge bowl of fruit, a bottled water and a large coffee for $4.50!), had a tour of campus, taken a relaxing shower, and I don't have to be anywhere for another 30 minutes. I'm exhausted, and I'm afraid if I lie down on my bed I'll never get back up.

I managed to get some sleep on the bus here, mainly between about San Marcos and Laredo, but not much after that. And somewhere just before dawn, the bus driver turned on the radio. Really loud. It was just talk radio, and it was in Spanish, so I could sort of drown it out, but not really. Not to mention the bus was about 20 degrees. My muscles were literally tensed up when I finally got off from my excessive shivering.

But other than that, everything's great. Our professor arranged for the St. Eds students to arrive a day before everyone else, so the campus is fairly empty, and my roommate won't be here until tomorrow. Which is great, because that means I'll sleep well tonight, and I can sit here and write in my briefs, comfortably. Just like I would at home.

There's a lot I want to say, but I'm lazy, so I won't. I'm already incredibly glad I'm here, and am so excited about the prospects. The professor gave us an informal campus tour (this campus is amazing; there are peacocks and ducks and deer just walking around; they just live here). His enthusiasm is infectious. He started this St. Edwards-Monterrey summer program 13 years ago, so it's his baby. And you can tell he just loves doing it, and sharing his experiences and knowledge and youthful energy. We have registration at 1 today, and then some orientation tomorrow, but tomorrow afternoon, he's going to take us downtown and show us around. They also offer free "recreational" classes while we're here, like salsa dancing, guitar lessons, sports stuff, whatever. I can't wait to check out that list. I guess I'll get to do that tomorrow. And within a mile of campus are many restaurants, 2 movie theaters, a large supermarket, tons of shopping, and a mall.

I'm gonna have a good time.

Monterrey

So, I figured out today how to post photos in this thing, so watch out!!

The picture is of Monterrey, in case you hadn't figured it out yet. The football stadium at the bottom left is the campus of the Tecnologico de Monterrey, the school where I will be staying. Not sure which tower is mine.

I'm leaving a little less than 5 hours. I'm very excited. And very restless.

That's Just the Way it Changes, Like the Shoreline and the Sea

I'm sitting in my now empty apartment, with nothing but a small table and my computer and my stereo, blaring some Leonard Cohen. I love Mr. Cohen. I find his music incredibly depressing, and not in a good way. But still fantastic. During a certain relationship from which I extricated myself about a year ago, there was a lot of Mr. Cohen played when we were together. It was something we both deeply shared. I haven't been able to listen to him in almost a year. The combination of his inherent sadness, and the associations I now have with it, were a little too much. But I'm okay with it now. It's nice to have my friend back, though I'm still a little uneasy around him; still a little guarded.

I'm leaving in about 12 hours. I feel almost like I'm going to be leaving forever, like I'm moving away or something. I guess that's silly. I've been looking forward to it a lot, though with a lot of anxiety and trepidation. Last night, packing up my stuff, I was struck with an incredible sadness and feeling of displacement. I'm pretty thoroughly sick of Austin. I love it, and it's my home, truly, but I need to get out for a bit. I guess I was blindsided a bit by the desperation of this feeling last night. It's funny how when you leave someplace so familiar to you that you could drive its streets with your eyes closed (I don't recommend this, however), when you return, how it feels both the same, and completely alien to you at the same time. I'm already looking forward to returning and sort of wandering aimlessly around my new house, sort of lost, maybe, and not sure what to do with myself, but so grateful to be back and have that luxury again. I don't know if that makes any sense at all. It does to me. The idea of just "disappearing" has always been a little romantic to me as well. Having no one know where you are, just being "gone." of course, everyone knows where I am, but I can sort of fantasize about that.

I spent my hatred every place
On every work on every face
Someone gave me wishes
And I wished for an embrace

How much does one actually have to hate oneself?

Thisis really the most depressing thing I've read about in awhile.

I honestly don't even know what to say about it, except that it shouldn't really be so shocking to me that America can still create a climate where young gay men still grow up so cynical and full of self-loathing, particularly young black ones. It makes me want to weep.

I think I know what my father meant when he sang about a lost highway

I've been experimenting this week with not drinking, which, in my vernacular, means in 4 days, having only 2 beers. To someone who's used to having at least 2 drinks a night, and often 3 or 4, and actually getting drunk at least 3 or 4 nights a week (beer, wine, whisky), is a pretty big deal.

I'm not sure what finally clicked in my brain this week, but it happened on Sunday night, after seeing United 93. I'm not saying United 93 had anything to do with it, but maybe it did. Somewhere around there, I just decided that I don't like, nay, am terrified of, the person I am becoming. Drinking alcohol for me used to be something I rarely did, and it was always joyful, usually in celebration of a birthday, or something special happening, or some kind of holiday. But now I hate it. I hate how it makes me feel, I hate the person I become when I drink now. They say that when you drink, your true personality shines through. Well, remember when I used to get all cooey and hang all over everyone and send out mass emails about how much I loved everybody, and how corny it was? Well now when I get drunk I get angry, I go to bed depressed, and I wake up cloudy every fucking morning.

I've been reading this book, Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair, and I'm not quite halfway through, but it's been very helpful. (It's also funny because she actually makes a lot of arguments against this book, which I read last summer, and learned a great deal from. But her arguments make a lot of sense to me.) It's hard for me to say too much about it at this point, except that it's becoming so clear to me how much I repress, and how much I always have. I guess growing up gay in a small town, and growing up, from day one, feeling almost completely rejected and loathed by all of your peers, for reasons completely unknown to you, except they don't like the way you walk, or talk, can implant some pretty serious neuroses in someone. I'm not blaming anyone, or saying that there aren't people who grew up in MUCH worse environments than I did, who turn out just fine, but I can say that the one survival tool I learned very early on was repression. Keep your chin up, fake it, don't let 'em see you hurt, or they've won. Or, in some extreme cases, pretend like you enjoy the abuse. That'll show 'em.

I always had friends growing up, but the only consistent friends I had were girls. It honestly wasn't until I was in my almost mid-20's that I truly made really close male friends that stuck. All through my childhood, I would make male friends, but they would all decide eventually that I was boring, or too much like a girl to hang out with, or in slightly later years, befriend me, and then turn against me when their friends gave them shit about it. Some of my most vicious tormentors in school were boys who had started out as my friends. I guess I have some pretty serious trust issues. It's also come to my attention recently, that I think I might also have some pretty intense abandonment issues, arising from family situations.

It's funny how when you start really digging into this kind of stuff (basically, once you reach some kind of threshold, or breaking point), how much it seems so fucking glaringly obvious. I've always felt bad about being depressed, I think, or ungrateful. I never wanted the people who gave me my anger, and my sense of smallness, to have the satisfaction of winning, so I never wanted to give in to those emotions, to admit that they had any power over me, or that they had actually affected me in any way. It's only been recently, I think, that I've been able to admit that I was affected, affected very deeply and profoundly, and will probably struggle with these feelings of rejection and fear and rage for the rest of my life; that not having any strong male bonds when I was growing up has seriously impacted my relationship with men, and how I relate to them, and influenced who I'm attracted to in a romantic way, and how I sort of view all of my male relationships as tenuous. Men are cruel, men turn against you, men leave. That's just what I learned.

But in order to overcome these crippling emotions, you have to face them, and admit that they exist, and as the book says, befriend them. Which is what I've never been able to do. But I think I'm ready to start giving these feelings the credence they deserve. The book argues that those "dark" emotions exist in your body for a reason, that they're there to teach you something, to lead you someplace new, and the more you repress them and ignore them (alocohol, drugs, sex, whatever; yes, please), the stronger they get until you pay attention to them. I guess I never thought about things that way before. But it's so clear. And I'm ready to make some new friends.

I Like to Watch

Heather Havrilesky has a great wrap up in Salon today about the season finale of The O.C. last night. It sounds atrocious, and it seems that Marissa was finally killed off in the last 10 minutes of the show, which, even though I stopped watching the show a season and a half ago, I'm thrilled to hear about. I couldn't stand Mischa Barton, and agree that she and that Ryan guy had about as much chemistry as a rock and a blade of grass. Although that might be giving them a little credit. Mischa Barton's idea of acting was to basically stare blankly at the wall/ocean/toilet into which she was puking and look confused. Heather's money quote:

all she could muster was wide-eyed looks of desperation and tears, lots of 'em. Barton could really turn on the waterworks but that was about it, and every scene with her in it had a way of reminding you that you had a Pop Tart in the toaster or laundry in the dryer.

Last summer when all I wanted to do was lie on my couch and watch TV and drink whisky, I started watching the first season of The OC on DVD, and was totally hooked. Their over-the-top hysterics and overwrought drama was just what I needed at the time, and in the finale of the first season, when Ryan goes back to whatever ghetto he came from, and Seth sailed away into the wild blue yonder on his sailboat, and Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" wailed out of the soundtrack, I have to admit, they really got me. I totally wept, for them and for me. Yes, I felt their pain, and despair and loss. I loved it. (Yes, I'm being melodramatic; but I'm serious.)

But somewhere around the middle of the second season, when the porn tapes from the 80's started popping up, and Ryan just kept getting into fistfights, and kept getting bailed out by Sandy, and blah blah blah, I totally lost interest and stopped watching. Apparently season 3 was just more of the same, and many have speculated that this will be the last season. Heather makes a point that the show, despite being called "Douglas Sirk on acid" by some idiotic and uninspired critic somewhere, never really went far enough, that the kids were actually quite bland and boring, and too goody-goody for their own good. I agree. In a show like The OC, you really wanna see the blood and guts and mean-spirited backstabbing that truly make up teenage life. Also, the adults could have been much more interesting. Julie Cooper was a pretty wicked villain (and HOT!), but ultimately, all she really cared about was money, and that just gets boring.

So, I have no idea how to wrap this up, because I have no idea why I'm writing it in the first place. I'm bored.

United 93

Remember how I said after seeing Brokeback Mountain that it was the only time I've really openly cried in public? I take it back. Bryan and I went to see United 93 today, and throughout the first half I felt like I was gonna throw up, and throughout the entire second half, I convulsively sobbed. Not a few tears running down my cheeks, but a torrent, chest heaving, stomach in total knots.

After everything that's happened since that day, it's easy to forget just what it felt like: the terror and fear, the sadness, the confusion, the helplessness. United 93 brings it all back as a grim reminder of what that day felt like on a purely visceral emotional level.

I'm fucking exhausted. It also makes me want to tell every person in my life how much I fucking love them.

So, if you're reading this, I love you.

Shit!

I got a fucking B in Spanish. A's everywhere else.

Genius

I just got home from work and I'm chowing down on a burger from Billy's on Burnet (dee-lish!! They're fast becoming my favorite burger in town, and that's really saying something), watching the news, and they're doing a piece on lake safety for the summer, and they're talking to an "expert" on ways to stay safe, and I swear to God, she actually said:

"Humans don't have gills, so if you're out in the water, and you get tired, you can't just stop and rest like you can if you're on land."

Really?

They also just did a story on a woman who was a teacher at a private Catholic school somewhere who couldn't conceive with her husband, so she got in-vitro fertilization and was fired from the school because becoming impregnated that way went against church teachings. "It's not so much the fact that she got pregnant outside of the proscribed method of procreation within a marriage," a spokesperson said, "but it's the method she used that we have issues with." Or something to that effect.

I wonder if they'd have a problem with my method of shoving my fist up that guy's ass. The teacher and her husband have stopped attending the Catholic church. Thank God.

Kitty Kat and Grandma

I talked to my mom today and she told me my little kitty Allie (short for Allegro) had to be put to sleep yesterday. Apparently for the last couple of weeks she's been dryheaving horribly, and when stuff finally comes up (this is really gross) it's like these giant masses, like chunks, and my mom said it smelled like poop. But then afterwards, she would run to her food and eat ravenously.

Turns out, she had cancer, with a mass the size of a tennis ball blocking her lower intestine, so no food would digest, which would explain why her vomit smelled like poop, and she she was starving.

Allie was the only kitten of a litter that my other cat, Easter, had when I was in high school that I kept. I gave the rest away. She was born with one of her eyes sealed shut, and everybody thought it was ugly, so naturally that's the one of the litter I wanted to keep. The vet eventually discovered that her eyelid was just turned inside out, so after a couple months' of maturity, they popped it back the way it was supposed to be, and she was fine after that. She started out very tiny, and about halfway through her little life, she started getting really fat and mean. But I loved her anyway, because I felt a kinship. Last fall, her momma, Easter, wandered away from my parents' house and disappeared. They haven't seen her since. Either she got carried away by coyotes, because my parents live a bit out of town, even though it's encroaching in all around them in the form of these hideous, gated subdivisions, or she wandered off somewhere to die peacefully and alone. I hope it was the latter. I miss my little kitties. Easter would always curl up on me and fall asleep every time I came home to visit. And almost every night, Allie would curl up between my dad's feet on his recliner while he was watching television. I think they had a special bond as well.

In happier news, my Grandma, who has advanced Alzheimers, is doing slightly better. She was in the hospital for weeks and weeks following a horrible fall she took last winter which resulted in a broken hip. She had to have surgery (twice, because the first time the wound didn't heal properly and was leaking fluid and infected) and then rehab, and she's a bad patient to begin with, but when you throw Alzheimers into the mix, she was kind of a nightmare to deal with. But she finally went home, and my mom and uncle hired a live-in nurse that my grandma just loves, apparently. They tried to do that once before, right after they had to take away my grandma's car keys, and my grandma absolutely hated the girl. She was a really sweet little early-thirties nurse, very quiet and demure, but my grandmother resented her very presence, and she was duly done away with. But this new lady is about 70, not a whole lot younger than my grandma, and my mom said they've become great friends, just driving all over town, and shopping, and baking all kinds of stuff. I'm so glad and relieved, both for my grandmother and my mom, who was doing most of my grandma's caretaking, on top of working about 70 hours a week and taking care of my brother. It was times like when I would talk to my mom when my grandma was in the hospital, and my mom was about to absolutely collapse from exhaustion and stress, and just not knowing what to do anymore, that I would feel so guilty about not living at home and helping out. So in some selfish way, I guess I'm also relieved that I don't have to feel so guilty.

My oldest brother Jeremy, who is married with the kid, is also moving up to Rogers with his family at the beginning of June. He lived in Little Rock, about 3 hours away, and my mom is just ecstatic. She'll finally truly be able to see her grandson grow up, and she already has plans to enroll him in Suzuki cello school this fall. The kid is 3 years old. I love it. I can't wait to see him play songs on his tiny cello that will probably be about the size of a banjo. Maybe he'll grow up to be just like me!

Oh, wait. Well, if nothing else, he'll probably be a better cello player.

The Bride Wore Black

I got assigned my dorm today for my Monterrey trip. I will be living in Edificio #3. Hot.

I had a great time this weekend at the Kat & Mark extravaganza. I forgot about half of my toast for Mark because I started getting a little choked up, and then it was all over. I have issues with crying in front of people (I know, I know; I just need more therapy), so once I could feel it coming, my brain froze up and I had to quit. But it was incredibly sweet and romantic. Overall, it was a VERY emotional day, and by the end of it all (it was a 15-hour day!), I was so exhausted, I was totally useless. Of course, I'm sure it was not nearly as emotional for me as it was for some people, but it was all good. Every second.

Even I'm having wedding anxiety

I had a dream last night that it was time for me to give my "best man toast" and I totally flubbed it. My mind went completely blank, and I could think of nothing to say, so I just starting making stuff up, but it was all horribly inappropriate and I was cussing and everyone was totally scandalized and mark and kat got SO angry at me.

Oy.

Whatcha gonna do with all that junk?

Thismight seriously be the grossest/stupidest thing I've ever seen. Can you imagine looking like that in public??? Vile.

Oh my god, I just published the post and made sure the link worked, and then realized it's out of stock!!!!!! That means a whole bunch of people bought it. Let's hope they either only had, like, 5 in stock, or they were all bought as gag gifts by frat boys for each other.

I found what I needed on the seashores of old Mexico

Tonight at work there were a bunch of fat, Mexican workmen hanging around doing some much-needed fix-ups to the bakery. One of them, however, I have to say, really caught my eyes. Which brings me to reveal one of my strange, idiosyncratic turn-ons: which is stocky, 30-something Mexican men. I don't know why, but for some reason, I often find them very attractive. I think it also has something to do with the fact that most of them work in physical labor, and again, blue-collar: fuckin' hot. Ultimately for a relationship, mental labor is much more attractive to me, but a man who makes a living with his hands is really, really sexy.

So this guy was shorter than me, pretty built, had a slight beer-gut (which I also find sexy in very small doses), and had some kind of crazy scar on the left side of his face that looked maybe like a burn, which just made him that much hotter. He also took a weird liking to me, and kept talking to me in very fast, almost staccato, broken English that I could barely understand, but I kept playing along anyway, laughing at his jokes and trying to make my own without looking like a complete idiot. When he left, he forgot his cap, and when he came back in to get it, it was right next to me on the counter. It had the Longhorns on it, so he started talking to me about how long he's lived in Austin (25 years), and how he was "Texas til I die." Or something. I couldn't quite understand. So then he starts talking to me about how he has two grown children, and even a grandchild and how old he is. So I ask how old he is and he tells me 40, but then adds that his girlfriend is 19. He started laughing about how she gets really jealous and checks up on him constantly, and he was all, "I'm just an old, ugly man, I don't know why she gets jealous. I guess I got something she wants." He then leans in very close to me and says, "She wants my dick. And my tongue." And then laughs hysterically.

1. I found this both repugnant and arousing. As I do with most things.

2. I really wanted to say to him, "You better be careful what you say around me; you're talking to a very lonely man."

3. It always sort of amazes and mystifies me when I can effectively "pass" for straight, no matter how short a time period it may be. I feel like I just pretty much walk around with a neon sign above my head, flashing QUEER! QUEER! over and over again. But I guess if you don't actually know me, and you don't really think about such things, it may just never occur to you. But I feel like these days it occurs to everybody all the time. But maybe not.

Which brings me to my next Mexico item, which is that George Strait's new single is one of my favorite songs ever. It's called "On the seashores of Old Mexico," and tells the tale of a man running from the law in Tucson who crosses the border into Mexico, escapes, meets a young senorita also escaping (but from her husband), and they live happily ever after. The chorus goes:

But she loved a gringo
my red hair and lingo
that's all that I needed to know.
I found what I needed on the seashores of old Mexico.

It's so fucking good. There's also an Eddie Raven song I hear a lot, but I think it's old, about a man whose girlfriend leaves him, so he goes to Mexico. What is it with country singers and Mexico? Is this a new thing, or has it been around awhile? Is it the whole outsider image that country singers like so much to portray when they're not singing about God? They're all convicts and rebels and America is just too small and staunch to hold them or something? Anyway, the chorus of the Eddie Raven song goes:

I'm eatin' right and I'm feelin' good.
Doin' everything I said I would.
I shoulda left a long time ago.
Who needs you, I've got Mexico?

Hmm. Very prescient for me. Maybe I'll find what I need in the mountains of old Mexico.

I Don't Get It

Will someone please explain Jake Gyllenhall to me? Seriously. What am I missing?

Yes, I'm ODB, as you can see

I had my first of 3 finals this morning, and I think I did okay. It was in my Lit class, and we had short answers and then had to write essays about the book Borrowed Time by Paul Monette, which I hated, and Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, which of course I love. We also got our last paper back, a drama review we had to write, on which I got a 97. He called it a "top notch review from someone who obviously knows theater." WTF? I guess it's easy to fool some people.

I also bought my bus ticket to go to Mexico this morning. I can't believe that's only 3 weeks away. It's scary and intimidating, but I'm really excited. I've never been away from home for 6 weeks before, especially in a foreign country, but it'll be great fun. I'm really looking forward to it.

Now I'm off to Barton Springs for an afternoon in the sun, and to (theoretically) study for my Spanish final tomorrow.

pee-ass - A VERY large thanks to you-know-who for so eloquently reminding me of Who I Am. It's easy to forget sometimes, and occasionally I make colossal errors in judgement, but thank God for people like you in my life to bring me back down to Earth. I am forever in your debt.

The End

I just finished my very last American Experience class at school. My professor did this really nice thing where if you're happy with your grade in the class, you don't have to take the final. Well, I have a 98 in the class, so needless to say, I'm skipping the final. I'm sad it's over, though. This semester has just flown by, and I'm totally in love with every one of my teachers. Being a much older student than almost everybody else here, I naturally gravitated more towards my professors than the other students when I arrived here, and I've managed to forge somewhat personal relationships with all 4 of them.

I really liked the American Experience class. It was basically the history of America, told through the eyes of the minorities, which seems like a fairly ingenious way to teach history to me, since history is written by the winners. My teacher is a very soft-spoken middle-aged woman, incredibly sweet, with a great sense of humor. She's a widow whose husband died of emphysema, she has 2 big dogs and lives in south Austin. But she's from Corpus and about to move back there to be with her new boyfriend. I got really sad leaving class today, thinking I'm sure I'll never see her again. It's a tendency I have in my life, to want to hold on to every single person who ever makes a difference to me. I know it's impossible, and if I actually did stay in contact with everyone I've ever known, with whom I wanted to stay in contact, I would be exhausted just trying to stay in contact. I know she's just a teacher and there will be more, and her "purpose" in my life, essentially, was to do exactly what she did. But it makes me sad to think about all the people from my past I wish I could still talk to. I even have professors from the University of Arkansas I tried to find recently, but couldn't. I have no idea why, or what I would possibly say to them if I did find them, but no matter. It seems like people just come and go so often and relationships are so fragile, or are there to just serve some transitional purpose or to teach you a lesson, and once that's done, poof, they're gone. I guess it's for the best, but I think it fucking sucks.

Long Time Gone

Hey there. I guess it's been awhile. Only two weeks, I suppose, and not much has really happened. Well, it has, I guess. I've been incredibly busy with school; end of the semester and all. I only have 3 class days left. It's almost unfathomable how quickly the time went by. I've been busting my ass the last 3 days on my final paper for my Theories of Personality class. We have to do a personality analysis on someone, either real or a fictional character, anyone we want, and I chose Brenda from Six Feet Under. She is truly one of my favorite characters that ever has existed. I wish she was real and we could be BFF, I love her so fucking much. She's by far, I think, the richest and most complex character on the show, and really the reason I kept watching it. So that's going well.

Today I started my volunteering at Doug's House, the AIDS hospice here in town, and still the only one in Central Texas (again, God bless Austin). Today was actually my orientation, but I'm going to start this week, probably Thursday, and work one 4-hour shift a week until I get comfortable with it, or have more time or whatever. There were 2 other volunteers with me today at the orientation, both of them women, probably around my age or slightly older. I liked them both a lot right away, and one of them even made a pretty off-color joke to me while we were talking about changing diapers, which of course immediately endeared her to me. I think I'm really going to enjoy my time there, though it's gonna be rough. Today we met 2 of the patients currently living there. One of them is a man in his early-40's, who looks about 70, and is in the final throes of AIDS. He has about 2 months left, tops. He's nothing but a skeleton lying in his bed watching television. He eats around half a sandwich a day, which takes him about 30-45 minutes to eat, and you have to break off little pieces and feed them to him, and even then, it makes him so tired he has to sleep for hours afterwards. The other was a middle-aged black woman, covered with open sores from an advanced Herpes infection, fresh out of prison. She has 3 daughters, but only one that ever comes to visit or seems interested in her fate. I got really choked up about 3 times today just talking to the orientation leader, without even having done anything, or having yet become emotionally involved in any way. But I am looking really forward to starting, to talking with the patients there and just getting to know them, holding their hands, feeding them, giving them their medications, or just sitting and watching television with them, which is mostly what they want. Some company, someone to talk to. Most of them have just been through fucking hell that you couldn't imagine, largely abandoned by family and often even friends. It's so fucking tragic. But that's why I decided I wanted to be in this field: I want to know these people, I want to help them in any small way that I can. Maybe that sounds really self-righteous or pompous, but I don't care. It's the truth.

Oh, and we went through "death procedures" today too: what to do if somebody dies on our clock. We have to fold their hands across their chests and make sure their eyes are shut, and pull a sheet over them. There are numbers for the mortuary and coroner on the wall in the office for us to call, and if the patient has a call list of friends and family, that's our job too.

As an interesting side-note: every room has a really nice wall-mounted CD player and stereo, which the orientation leader said were all donated and paid for by Sandra Bullock. I was always very ambivalent about Sandra Bullock, but that seems like a really thoughtful thing to do. Like, she actually wanted to give them something, improve their quality of life in some small way.

I guess this post is getting really long. There were other things I was going to talk about, personal stuff, but I guess it's all pretty irrelevant. The last 2 weeks have been a pretty mixed bag of mostly incredibly good, and some really awful stuff. But I've learned to just let certain things go, finally. It feels nice. For a brief 24 hours almost 2 weeks ago, I thought things might be drastically different right at this moment, and then my hopes were shattered by indifference and detachment that was incredibly painful. But what I needed, really, to just finally let that bird fly free after a year of keeping it close to me. I know I'm being incredibly vague, but whatever. Kurt & Meredith's wedding, which was just fucking amazing, Matt Kane in town for 5 days, also amazing. It was really nice to see him, and just immediately fall back into our old groove after not seeing one another for almost 3 years.

I've been drinking wine (left over from the wedding and it's delicious!) like water while I've been writing this, and now I'm drunk. I want to go to bed.

Naked Soccer Boys

So last night I finally went to a meeting of GLBTSA group at St. Eds. I've been meaning to go all semester, but just always had something else going on. I learned some interesting things, though, like that St. Eds is the only Catholic university in Texas that has a GLBTSA group, and one of like, only 3, I believe, in the whole country. And apparently St. Eds has been attracting some attention among the upper Brothers of the Holy Cross for all of their "liberalism" and gay organizations. It's pretty frowned upon, I guess, and most people attribute it to the fact that St. Eds is in Austin, as opposed to say, San Antonio or something. One more reason to love Austin.

I've been thinking a lot about teaching lately too. It seems like something I'd maybe like to pursue, along with having a practice. I can't help it, I love academia. I realize now how much time I wasted avoiding school and having a real job and real life. But I guess I wasn't ready for it yet, and I didn't actually waste the time. I learned a lot, about myself, about life, about people. I'd love to teach some kind of psych class on sexuality, or maybe the history of the treatment of sexual "neuroses" in the psychiatric field. Or maybe just a class on interpersonal relationships. That would be cool, too.

Anyway, after the meeting last night, the evening was so beautiful, I walked to the north side of campus that has a stunning view overlooking the city. The sun was setting, the storm clouds were rolling in, and the air was breezy and cool. I sat down to take in the view for a bit, when I looked down the hill at the soccer field below where I sat, and noticed that the boys soccer team had apparently just finished a practice. They were all sitting in a group on the ground, getting lectured by their coach, but most of them had their shirts off. So I quickly forgot about the city view, and the sunset, and the incoming storm. When they were done "huddling," or whatever you call it, they all stood up to leave and collect their things.... and started stripping. On the field. While people stood around, including parents and whatnot. It was amazing. They all just literally removed their pants to put other shorts and jeans on. Most of them were wearing little square-cut black or gray athletic brief things, but a couple of them were just wearing plain 'ole white briefs. And there they were, on the soccer field, standing in them. It was truly unbelievable. But I feel blessed to have witnessed it.

Okay, now this guy is my new Hero

And will the "mainstream, liberal" media pick up on this? Doubtful. Be sure to watch the video.

I mean, seriously, how can Bush sleep at night? It totally boggles the mind.

One More Reason to Love Russ Feingold

In addition to outspokenly calling for a censure of President Bush, he has now shown public support for gay marriage.

"I will be voting against the harsh amendment that's been proposed in Wisconsin, and I thought it was an appropriate occasion to indicate my feeling that if two people care enough about each other to get married, that it probably is a positive thing for society," he said.

"Gay and lesbian people in our country are fighting a mean-spirited movement to harm them and to discriminate against them," he added. "I stand with them against that movement, and I'm proud to stand with them."

Maybe after the last 6 miserable years, in another 2, sanity and reason will return to our national politics. I'm certainly not holding my breath, but I haven't completely lost hope.

God is Gay

Pink News UK, which is apparently a gay news site from the UK (go figure) has an interesting article today about a website that seeks to uproot homophobia from Christianity by displaying a series of paintings done by people portraying Biblical stories from a gay perspective. A quote:


"Every time a gay gets bashed, Jesus is crucified again," said Kittredge Cherry, lesbian author and founder of the new website. "The anti-gay movement uses religion to justify discrimination, so even atheists can see the value in uprooting homophobia from Christian tradition."

Artists who dare to put the Easter story in a queer context have had their work destroyed, if they can find a way to exhibit it at all. Now these images are available on the internet.

Um, okay. But their heart is in the right place. It reminds me of when I was 21, and had just moved to Austin, when my artistic spirit was still very much in the punk rock ethos of "destroying the state" or whatever you want to call it. I had planned on making a sort of softcore gay porn film filled with religious imagery, like two men engaging in S&M and tying each other up with rosaries and eroticizing the crucifixion and bloodletting, all while sound bites of assholes like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were playing. For some reason I thought if I made it, a lot of people would see it and be totally scandalized. I was going to shoot it on super-8 and have a lot of red in it. I even wrote out a shot sheet and talked to a couple of guys who were basically willing to fuck on film for me. But alas, it never materialized, and I'm sure it's just as well. I don't know if I got lazy or just decided it was stupid.

Anyway, you can see the gay Jesus pictures here.

Dead Celebrities

My friend Bill had a party tonight with a dead celebrities theme. I finally got to wear my Michael Hutchence "costume" that I've alway wanted to wear for Halloween, but it's always been too cold. A wife-beater, white boxers, and a belt around my neck. and everyone knew who I was. That was exciting.

And I met Daniel. Daniel is 31. Daniel is getting his PHD in behavioral psychology. and Daniel is sexy as hell. He was dressed as Roy Rogers, but everyone thought he was supposed to be Jack Twist. I'm sure nothing will happen, but damn. That's all I have to say.