June 2006 Archives

So what? Damn it. I kept my shirt on all week.

This last month has been the most fun I have had in the last two years. I would love to go on and on about what an incredibly fun Pride weekend I had but I won’t. I rather keep it short because honestly I just lack the energy/motivation to tell the story, which I hardly ever really tell without the mass editing all of the juicy stuff I believe people would rather have me omit to maintain the better of their two halves enshrouded or one eye closed.

What I will say is that I have been in NYC almost eleven full years now and due to one impossibly controlling situation after another I have only made it out to the festivities about three times. Mostly, I choose to do so out of a deep desire to not deal with the sea homo-negative energy but most likely to avoid any insecurity driven rants.

I managed to keep my word about getting any numbers or having sex of any kind, despite the all so many willing hotties that made advances. I just feel like Pride week is an open invitation to a new hybrid sting of Chlamydia. It is always better to wait a month or two after the Penicillin has been administered and bed sheets de-loused before partaking in any post pride sexual encounters. It’s all just a tad bit over dramatized, sexualized and not very inductive of any long term merits. It usually translates as a game where everyone tries their best to keep their score a secret from others. As a rule of thumb, I think that one who fucks during Pride remains just that, a fuck. Hopefully there were no expectations and they too were secretly keeping score.

It wasn’t surprising to see a lot of the faces that usually go on and on about how out of character such events are for them at said events, having just as good a time as all the lot, meanwhile desperately attempting to remind us how out of character the whole thing was for them. I didn’t necessarily feel out of character but I definitely felt out of practice. It was great and empowering in its own way, being able to go to such affairs without the need of permission and the lengthy I am a victim and you a faggot crap.

You know who you are…

It was sort of like coming out of a self imposed exile and choosing to not really worry about the endless stream of bullshit that half of the population in New York seems to always spew. Who needs enemies when you have “friends” right? I say fuck it. Find wholly genuine people in your life and replace the others, re-categorized the theory stricken ones as acquaintances and go on with your life.

Getting on with my life has been what this last month has mostly been about. Moving on, letting go, and getting on with it. Despite the past’s here-and-there need for you to re-penetrate it, with spit not lube and maybe Vaseline, so that it can remind you how much it actually passively loves you. Contradictions, false-promises, sex and omission is the stuff good history stories are made of. Don’t you think?

I guess that what I am saying is that I have been writing history boys and girls. And I have had a fucking blast doing so and learning from it these last thirty days. The music has been unbelievable and the party favorites aren’t called favorites for nothing. I don’t condone systematically losing touch with reality but recommended it every now and again. Besides the reality part is sometimes as unbelievable and odd as altered states of being. And lastly, as I said before it makes for great story telling, just be careful who you tell and remember to include contradictions, false-promises, sex and omission.

That’s all I am telling, for now.

I love the BBC. Its hard core real shit. None of that Americanized Protestant washed media jambalaya. No, they say it how it is. Today’s headlines read:

The world's top scientists have joined forces to call for "evidence-based" teaching of evolution in schools.

A statement signed by 67 national science academies says evidence on the origins of life is being "concealed, denied, or confused" in some classes.

Stuff like that really gets me thinking...

I was raised in a very Catholic family where neither God nor creation was up for open discussion, let alone challenge. My family believed that creation like all things began during the time of Genesis. Forget fossil records or the carbon dating of items that contradict the Christian account of things. Such questions were a faux pas. I accepted that the earth and all life including man was a one week creation by the Almighty. According to the good book, the dinosaurs never existed, so forget you ever went to the Museum of Natural History, and woman, not man, thanks to a rib was last in the creative chain of events.

I had a really hard time buying into all of this. I once told my family that I thought that God was perhaps something that people made up, sort of like Santa Clause, to force us to be good. For this I was sent to weekly bible classes, which only furthered my disapproval of theological vagueness and cosmological questioning. This resulted in a life long continuum of open questions, a not-so-easy feat considering my spiritual beliefs and deo-centric cosmological understanding of the universe.

The problem lay not in wanting to choose between Creationism and Darwinian sides, but in finding a middle ground that would accommodate my deep desire for a God and the irrefutable findings of the scientific world. I was faced with many hard questions. What made it most difficult was not the accessible scientific and philosophical theories available. The real challenge was in the aspect of challenge itself. To entertain say for example Darwinist theory, one is required a momentary abandonment of fixed cosmological resiliency, no matter how absurd. How could I even begin to question cosmological shenanigans of human construction, let alone a spiritual force I based my life around, a three letter word I am programmed to capitalize?

So I asked of myself, Is the idea of intelligent design really that intelligent?

God and evolution do not seem to mix well. We seemly have Darwin to thank for this. It however wasn’t Darwin’s intention to start an anti-god catalyst of sorts. He was not against the idea of a God. What his findings resulted in was a Godless theory of evolution. It is simply a theory that allows for the possibility of a deity without blinding ourselves to observable truths, the likes of genes and fossil records, the best supporters of godless evolutionary theory.

The previously mentioned provide a strong case against theories of intelligent design. Intelligent Design in fact only seems applicable to man’s toying with the natural state of things. For example, where is the hand of God during man’s selective breeding of certain animal breeds? Can we justifiably argue that God intended for the creation of Cocker Spaniel, Great Danes, and Chihuahuas, non reproductive donkeys, ligers or other hybrids?

Natural selection has indeed become more than biological phenomenon. Man has been able to learn from nature’s long process and began its own process of un-natural selection which results in most of the new and hybrid species of plant and animal life which one day might even take the place of many of its weaker Eden originating cousins.

Gene variation is another great indicator that life originated as a long process of mutation as opposed to the result of an unseen deity’s one week fling with creation. Biological variation is endless. The fossil record indicates that many of the living species of today are merely the descendents of similar species no longer present. Genes provide a much more conclusive and believable explanation then Fundamentalist and Creationalist arguments. One can literally trace genetic code all the way back to most primal of single celled organisms. Random mutation and heritable variation are much easier to swallow then all of life, including T-rex and platypus, being created when the earth was four days old. After all, life did not simply subside and become a fixed celestial happenstance.

Life continues to take its own shape. It molds to fill niches, to specialize a beak for a certain flower, to warm the skin as climates change, every now and again to produce a needless cancer or the beneficial resistance to a certain synthetic strain of man-made antibiotic.

All in all, it is easy to accept that there was an unseen hand responsible for present day life. This was not however the unseen ethereal makings of the heavens but the process of time. If God is to be considered an unseen force which has no physical properties, then perhaps the law of time is as close to Godly creative force as we might explain. Time, being the alpha and omega, its starting point the big bang and its ending although plausible will forever, like that of intelligent design, remain improvable.

The Bible says, “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18) and so is the ongoing sporadic, at times purposeful, variations of the tree of life. It is the constant change of time and variables that hold true to our abstract notions of divinity but ultimately not divinity alone.

Yesturday, was one of the worst days I have ever had at work. I got off at four, jumped on the train, got home by five, and at 5:15 learn that I was scheduled to do a double. I jump on the train and head back to work. By the time I got there my migraine was pounding all thanks to the stress of moment and an impacted wisdom tooth that’s been acting up these last few days. It not looking nice although the gargling, compressions and Waterpik flossing is helping.

Anyway, I wasn’t really very upset about working a double I kind needed the money but it sucked to have gone all the way home just to return. Besides the pressure of having two writers for the NY Times culinary section scheduled to pop up in the next few days, it seemed like it would turn out to be an easy not so hectic night. Boy was I fucking wrong. I have never experience such a difficult rush to manage.

Everybody and their mothers came in for dinner. Everything was taking forever, there was confusion, lost checks, angry people, happy people who walked out, wines out of stock, items breaking, understaffing, new bus boys, not very helpful co-workers and a hundred not so good other little things. Did I mention the migraine? I got home at 1:15.

My next shift starts at 10:30 this morning.

On the train, on the way here from work, I came across a situation that I felt obliged to have gotten involved in. Sometimes, one has to do such things to set examples, set standards, break norms, and defy expectations and share of one’s spirit, for the elevation of another’s. I say this because most of the time the world would rather turn its proverbial face and pretend that nothing is happening when everything in fact is.

It was alright, that the group of Caucasian punk-like kids was loud. They after all seemed fueled by the often inherent sense of entitlement that good suburban brats who denounce acknowledgment of mommy and daddy’s money, in a cry for help and attention mixed with a touch of defiance, often adopt. They had the tattoos, and freshly deconstructed new garbs with safety pins and patches, which they long ago started wearing as an act of non conformity not realizing it would in turn become if anything more uniform and predictable than anything mainstream. They were loud and rambunctious and probably believed themselves to be anarchist because they had a downy scented Misfits t-shirt folded up in a nice cedar dresser somewhere. It was cool though, I got it and they weren’t bothering me.

Then she walked in. She was African American and on her way to a party. She wasn’t giving the light skinned Cherokee mix Thomas Jefferson was my great-great granddaddy thing either. She had strong phonotypical features. She was a beautiful black color, the kind that looks like it has been kindly and self lovingly rubbed in coco-butter for a lifetime. She wore her broad nose proudly over a full pair of lips that knew the secret entire life in flavors of one soul’s reincarnation. She had on extensions that must have taken her an entire day to get and not the most expensive of cloths but they were clean and pressed and you can tell she felt pretty walking into that train. That is, until they all laughed at her.

They looked dead at her and laughed hard and hysterically. They laughed because they were ignorant, uncompassionate, and spiteful. They laughed because she wasn’t a pin up on a magazine representing the very society they shy from. They laughed at her because she was different, because they were white and she was black, because she wore a headdress they didn’t approve of and lastly because they could-wouldn’t see the pain that I saw in her face the second the luster of joy left it.

It fucking killed me to see that young woman’s face. She was so animated and statuesque a second ago that one couldn’t help but to turn and with one’s gaze follow her tread. I didn’t know what to do, yet I knew I had to do or say something. Getting my ass kicked by five guys at 1am in the morning while already with a migraine and bad tooth was not an option.

She looked up and caught me looking at her, aware of her pain. I felt it only caused her further discomfort. I then felt the urge to really do something so I got up from my chair and I walked up and took a seat near her. I told her, “Hey, I don’t know what they are laughing about because you look beautiful this evening.” She smiled the best smile ever covered, and one long tear, she quickly caught, rolled down her cheek. She replied, “Thank you, you just made everything so much better.” I believed her.

And we both just sat there smiling knowing that everything was going to be o.k.

M-FT: OH NO! Mr. Bad Squirrel

M-BS: OH SI! Miss Fluffy Tail.

M-FT: Please Es-Stop-eh! I eh-falling

M-BS: You eh-falling in love, Yes.

M-FT: Please Es-Stop-eh

M-BS: Oh No, Miss Fluffy Tail. You know u wan it.

M-FT: OH NO! Mr. Bad Squirrel. Es-Stop-eh! Please. I give you all-le my acorn.

M-BS: Oh, I no wan-ne you acorn Miss Fluffy Tail. I wan-ne dis.

▲Guarding the scratch post

There are several things my cat goes crazy for. They all however require some level of animation or life prior to her getting her paws on them to extinguish whatever life-likeness they happen to have. Bugs, birds, rodents, anything that rolls or moves short distances after a paw swapping, anything that happens to ever so gently move by like shoestrings, pant bottoms, hemming on shorts, a non rolled up belt, the sleeve to a cashmere top, ipod headphones, you name it all of these things give her a license to pounce and kill.

There are a few things that do not require animation to drive her insane. These things are caned food, catnip, rugs, which she loves running at full speed and then sliding on and of course her scratch post. I buy her one every month or two depending on the level of abuse they get. She absolutely loves these cardboard contraptions and guards them with dear life. No one is allowed to touch the damn thing or otherwise she attempts to either nip you or remind you of what sharp nails she sports.

I of course teased her by pretending to sharpen my own nails on her scratch post. She went berserk! I might as well have shoved a cattle prong up her ass. She basically let me know that she was not having it and two point five seconds later when I stopped playing and least expected it the little bitch attacked my hand with everything she had.

I hardly ever hit her maybe two or three times a year depending on the level of cat trouble she gets into. Today, I gave her one good hard open hand smack to the ass to let her know that it was not ok to turn my hand into confetti. I must admit that I felt bad watching her ball up into a victim pose and forget all about her new scratch as she looked up at me through squinty eyes trying to understand why I just rained on her parade.

I got up yesturday morning at 7am after a shabby 4 hours of sleep. It was an overall busy day. I did so many things like cleaning, errands, meeting up with friends for brunch, hitting the gym, rollerblading up and down Roosevelt Island, smoking one too many blunt objects with Tony and thereafter the night just became an uneventful waste of money.

I met up with my favorite pizza boy for a movie. Nacho Libre sucks, do not go and see this movie! Wait for the DVD, watch it, and then talk bad about it. After the movie the pizza boy and I just looked at each other thinking the very same thing. We had just been bamboozled out of thirty something dollars and the highlight of the night was the popcorn.

He had to work and I had to party. We said goodbye and I jumped on a cab to meet up with my buddy Tony for a few drinks. After the 15 dollar cab ride back to Astoria, Tony and I rolled a fat one, and spent another 15 dollars on a cab ride back to this place called Show.

I WILL NEVER EVER BE SEEN AT SHOW AGAIN! What a horrible experience the whole thing was from the very beginning. Let’s start of with the cover charge. It was 30 dollars per victim. Perhaps, I have gotten a bit spoiled thanks to an array of New York guest list I am lucky enough to be able to get on and hardly ever having to pay a cover but thirty dollars on a non holiday weekend Sunday night seems a little steep. The guy at the door searches us and acquisitioned a nice fat rolled up one we were saving for later, that was the second infraction. We walk in and see that the population was 90 percent Asian, most old men who were around to see the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the remaining 10 percent were Transsexuals with the largest tits that money could buy. By the way Asians smoke a lot. At least that’s what I gathered at the event. Oh, and the New York smoking ban does not apparently apply to them. There must be a clause or something.

I went straight up to the VIP lounge where no one or anything of importance going on. I had a drink made by one of my favorite New York City bartenders, Marible. She always hooks it up. I ordered two long islands and she charged for one and made both of them deadly. A five dollar tip is always required in situations like this.

It was unbearable being lost in that Asian sea of outsiders and huge floatation device like Transsexual breasts around us. We decide to step out. Guess what? No reentry. 30min, a 12 dollar drink, a 10 dollar blunt, a 5 dollar tip and a 30 dollars entry fee gone just like that.

So I did the next stupid thing a person could possibly do it a night like such. I went to the next stupid bar. Esquelita was the closest bar/club in walking distance. They wanted 20 dollars for the entry fee and forgot to say that there was a ball going on.

Everyone was for the most of African American identity and no one who I knew. Again, I was lost I a cultural specific sea of boredom surrounded by huge transsexual flotation-like tits. Spent 8 dollars on a drink and left after 20 min, to catch yet another cab to leave me where I should have stayed in the first place.

Daily total:

Cuban espresso: $1.50
A shake @ the gym: $4.00
Smoothie, Panino &
-tip @ Bruch: $14.00

Machiato: $4.50
Herbal remedies: $20.00
Light Snack: $8.00
Cab rides: $40.00
Nacho Stupid: $16.00
Show: $42.00
Esquelita: $28.00

Feeling rather stupid: Roughly about $178.00

I live in Astoria, Queens, where the largest population of Brazilians lives in New York City. Whenever there is a game everyone seems to get ethnocentric crazy. Incidentally, whenever anyones home team wins a game everyone gets even crazier. Brazilians do not need a great many reasons to party. A Word Cup series however, calls for painted faces, flags everywhere, caravans of honking cars and/or motorcycles, etc.

Brazil and Australia played against each other today for the World Cup final. It was a great fucking game. I thought that they would have tied at zero-zero but those two final goals towards the end of the game were amazing. I have never been into soccer other then when I played it in middle school. I have however been following the World Cup games because they are playing the games on the giant flat screen at the restaurant where I work.

In other news, Brazilians celebrate Gay Pride. Only 2.4 million showed up for the event.

Click here for last years Sao Paulo Pride pictures.

I love Starbucks coffee and I love roller blading (several times) around Roosevelt Island which is not far from where I live. You know that I was happy to learn that RI opened their very own Starbucks overlooking the East River and Manhattan. Now its all about doing a few extra laps and then infusing my gut with a gazillion calorie iced caramel macchiato. Five bucks a cup! I should have invested when they went public.

Today, I photographed at an art exhibit event for my friend. There were as much people, as there were wine and yummy snacks. The apartment is a beautiful penthouse by Columbus Circle. I pray that someday God and hard work will bless me with a space like that. Everyone at the event was a happy person. All the smiles were genuine and everyone lingered long enough after a handshake to learn a little something from everyone. It was nice to get to hide behind the camera and notice these things. One almost disappears and becomes an instrument. It is funny how different people react to a camera and how with enough given time they tend to embrace having their image taken and almost always go from an uncomfortable extreme to a Kodak commercial-like attitude. The apartment was a lighting nightmare. Finding the right exposures were near impossible since the lighting and structure of the apartment were so dramatically different every few feet apart. It was rather challenging and annoying. But, hey I did I mention the wine and yummy snacks?

Saturday, I wrote about not waiting for life to happen and about making stuff happen for myself. I went out with a really positive outlook. Why does there always seem to be a high and mighty jerk in my life trying to knock me down? Let me explain. At Saturday’s party I did my usual. I smiled, walked around, drank casually, and attempted my best at not making eye contact with any stranger long enough to give the idea that I was interested or there to pick anyone up. So like anyone who has ever known me I found a spot in which I stood mostly by myself for the better portion on the night.

I am minding my business I kept telling myself but I already knew that he had taken notice. Every now and again, I would look over, confirm and quickly look away. It wasn’t long before he made it a point to make conversation. He was nice, funny, and charming. Was, being the operative word. The only time I was made to feel uncomfortable was when nice-funny-and-charming tried to pin me close to a wall. I explained that I didn’t like that. I’m sorry it just doesn’t look right being pinned up against a wall by a newly met stranger in public. We don't have to be a foot apart with your arms streached at my sides to have a meaningful moment.

After perhaps 30min of us talking a little here and there, in between me dancing, alone, because the other way I explained made me feel uncomfortable, we exchanged numbers in hopes of communicating at a better suited time. (It is important to mention that this is 2nd person I give my number to in a club in a year. I have a knack for knowing how to pick em.) I told him that I was going to get my coat because I was leaving soon. I said by to my friends and on the way out said goodbye to him. It was all very sweet, no inappropriate anything, no “what-are-you-doing-afters”, no kissing of lips, cheeks, or ass. There was just a little pleasure-to-make-your-acquaintance theatrics and the promise of perhaps meeting someone down to earth who was nice, funny, and charming.

Since then, a four day span, I have texted him twice and left one message. My last text to him was asking about what happened to that seemingly interested nice-fanny-and-charming man that I met at the party. To which he replied (no lie) the following:

“ur too cocky n conceited yo…I aint feelin that”

What the fuck! Gathered all that from maybe an accumulative 20min talk over load speakers? Do I suck or does this guy suck? Someone please tell me. Because for a cocky and conceited guy, I really got offended, or was it hurt? I mean, I know that I kind of have certain guards that come across as boisterous and overtly self assured but that’s what happens when enough people try and tell you that you are less than. And well those antics can be misconstrued and are open for interpretation but I would liked to believe that at the end of the day I am a rather humble person. If this blog doesn’t serve as a testament to my overall sense of humility, insecurities, fears, sorrows, faults, humanity, and everything that makes me imperfect at the end of the day, I do not know what is.

Perfection lies in ones ability to face the not always greatest of experiences and having the humility to own, grow and learn from them. I have learned that arrogance is implicit of conceit because it comes from a space of judgment, fueled by a sense of superiority which in turn is requesting the watering-down of mine.

Not very nice, charming or funny.

Wanna hear something conceited? He missed out.