On the Verge of Christmas Eve

Two blogys in a day! Shortly after I wrote my last blog post roughly ten hours ago, I came down with one of those massive migraine headaches that I get every so often and every last good intention I had of going out into the world and socializing was put on indefinite hold. Mostly I feel bad about not getting around to my brother’s house and visiting him yet. He was in a construction accident at work and crushed his heel, resulting in a big surgery he had on Friday. I will visit tomorrow…and I’m not sure if he reads this, but …. love you brother, I’ll see you soon!

So with the headache I made my way out to my car for my bottle of Advil and an unopened pack of buy one get one free Camel No. 9 Menthols (because a cigarette always helps, right?) and after smoking, went back in to get some water and lay in a cool dark room. On my way to my room, I scanned our newly-acquired El Salvadorian roommate’s collection of dvd’s, and decided to pick one to have on in the background while I tried to sleep. I usually can’t sleep through migraines but I try, and it’s nice to have something on the tv besides yet another horribly unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. The movie I picked was Requiem for A Dream. I have never seen it before, but it has been recommended to me as “amazing” and “kind of fucked up” for the last ten years or so, and I decided to pop it in having no idea at all what it was about. Now, if you’ve seen this movie you’ll understand why I say this now: I was already in a very dark, depressing mood most of the week, as I generally get when I’m bored and unmotivated. It’s not depression or anything, it’s just those moments of sober thinking when everything means nothing but you plow ahead because that’s what you should do and the crossroads and decisions and relationships and life leave you with a pick of less of the two evils (was that a mini-rant?). So I put this movie in, knowing it was a bit fucked up, but hey, I loved Momento, Lord of War, Fear and Loathing, Battle Royale, et cetera. So cool.

Let me just say: fuck. Sorry for my lack of eloquence here, but fuck. I watched the whole movie, alone in my dark room, and actually sat there just staring at the screen, in my bed, for a good ten minutes after the credits were over. Fuck. An amazing movie? Maybe. But damn – I don’t know if it was a combination of the movie and my personal life experiences or just the movie itself, but I (and having seen some pretty hardcore films, so much so that I did *not* list them above just now) have NEVER been that personally thrown, kicked in the ass, hurt, depressed, shocked, numbed, or just (again pardon the expression) mindfucked by a film in my life. I’m sure alot of it was personal; I’m sure some people who have had more normal lives could watch it and not think anything of it, but not me. Never watch this film alone, especially in the state of mind like I was in.

My migraine had gone someplace – somewhere else – and I left my room and went to the living room and sat there in front of the blank tv, feeling extremely hopeless yet feeling like I needed to hug a Care Bear at the same time. I felt like I needed to take something in or experience something almost Disneyesque to get my mind back in order. After awhile, our new roommate Juan came home, and I told him I watched that film. I didn’t say how I felt, just that I watched it.

“Oh dude, alone? Fuck.”

He decided it was best to get me out of the house and from there we went to dinner at a dim sum joint neat Mesa Community College, and I have to say – some of the best Egg Foo Young of my life did a good job at slightly cheering me up. From there we went out to Borders where I picked up a couple books, and then back home.

And as soon as I was back, I put that movie away. Far away. I am not kidding you – I have “Cinderella” out to watch tonight. Okay, maybe “I, Robot,” but still.

So here we are, a few days before Christmas 2007 … actually not even a few days … tomorrow is Christmas Eve already! My Christmas shopping culminated last night when I went out to five different Targets/Wal-Marts trying to find my nephew the WWE action figures he wanted. Of course, the popular list was already bought by other uncles and fathers and mothers and aunts. I got some things for him, but not what I wanted to find in particular. I know, and agree, with all of the sentiments that Christmas isn’t about the gifts and the items themselves, but that’s another lesson for another day.

Last week I found myself extremely bored with not having school. Justin and I were hoping to take advantage of our extra free time to actually associate with one another on more than just the weekends, but he’s been swammped with work — his job is in retail — so we haven’t had the time we both wanted, but that’s okay. I’ve been trying to use the time to hang out with some other friends whom I haven’t seen in awhile, such as Tim, Jamie, and David. Tim and I hung out at a local Starbucks and caught up on the last couple months, and I bought  cigar to smoke for the occassion – my first cigar in nearly two years. Can’t say that I enjoyed it that much; chalk it up to a youthful attraction or maybe just a bad cigar? Jamie called me the other day when I was at work, and she was visiting our mutual friend David Wheeler, the same lad whom I visited in Israel and then returned a few months ago, dissappeared, and was discovered in a local hospital sometime later with massive heart problems. In short, the three of us haven’t been together since Jamie split up with us to join her other friends at the Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem back in April 2006. It was good to reminisce and talk about our walks along the coast of Tel Aviv, the one evening where Jamie cleaned David’s bathroom in his Haifa flat, our late-night conversations over Hookah on top of the bomb shelter, and our arguments at the Sea of Gailee. When David had his medical issue back stateside, he had some tempoary memory loss, so I did my work of jokingly trying to convince David of things that he never did and moments that never happened. He would always quickly catch on and punch me. Hey, it sounds cruel but David would be doing the exact same thing if the tables were turned!

This weekend I find myself starring at a five-day break from work, and no school. Just lots of holiday stuff. Normally, I would find this relaxing and take the opprotunity to get some writing work done. Not only can I not seem to get myself in the swing of things creatively, I am also having a hard time with the lack of structure at the moment. I can’t seem to calm down or truly relax. My empty house is alternating between welcome and depressing, and my moods are swinging between couch potato and social butterfly.

It’s emberassing to say the least, but it’s 1:31pm on Sunday and I still haven’t done anything save for putting my clothes in the dryer and taking the dogs out. I would finish wrapping my presents – only I decided to do all my shopping, for the most part, online this year, and am still missing several items! But there are the people I could hang out with, so I may make this a day for that. I need to visit my brother, my grandmother, David, and Linda. I want to visit all of these people, I’m just having a hard time getting moving! In any case, if I don’t get on here before then, have a Merry Christmas everybody!

Hillary on Gay Marriage

My favorite presidential canidate this far has been Hillary Clinton … for numerous reasons, not all of which I’m going to get into here. However, one reason I love her is that she has been one of the more (actually the most) committed proponent of gay civil unions in The United State of America. True, civil unions are not quite marriage, and that is something that all of us gay Americans want to work towards, however we are in a culture of “baby steps” more or less. Hillary advised that the issue of marriage should be left up to the states, so that perhaps once the government begins recognizing civil unions, progressive states like California and hell, maybe even Arizona (evidence hoped upon the results of the last proposition regarding banning same-sex civil unions), will begin to follow with nods towards gay marriage.

I have more thoughts on this that I’ll probably blog on at a later time, but in the meantime, let me share this clip of Hillary Clinton on the Ellen Degeneres Show in New York a few months ago. As much as Ellen does sometimes borderline-annoy me with her brand of humor, I have huge amount of respect for her for directly addressing, quite bluntly, the issue of gay civil-unions vs. gay marriage, a topic that other interviewers, including our closeted Anderson Cooper, have refused to tackle head-on. Watch the clip here.

The End of “Churches, Pubs & Hostels”

Hey everyone … this December 31st will mark the end of the publishing of my first book, “Churches, Pubs & Hostels.” It has been out for two years now from Project Forever Artist Collective, and while it has (strangely enough) continued to sell here and there a few copies a month the last year, I think it’s time to put it to rest. Besides doing my (again) annual clean-up and re-focus of Project Forever these last couple months, and pursuing new literary projects here and there, I do not believe the book any longer truly reflects my current lifestyle, religious, or philisophical views any longer. That’s the trouble, as I’ve told many of my close friends in years previous, with creating autobiographical material in your early/mid-20’s that you feel safe labeling as “non-fiction”: you change so much in such a short amount of time, and your views change so consistantly, that it’s quite the challenge to truly capture anything and have it be accurate. I was 23 when I released it, but it was written for a timeframe in my life that was the 19-21 year age range; and even at 23 it became difficult to focus the book appropriately through an acceptable lens. Besides not being anything close to my finest literary work in terms of pure skill and storytelling, I also felt the book was inappropriate because I *hint* at a struggle but don’t ever reveal what that struggle is that is causing me such great conflict with the Church, Christianity, and severe depression. I wasn’t fully “out of the closet” when writing it, and also was overtly and erronously concerned with what implications that a public revelation of my homosexual “struggle” would have on my self, any ministry I was still working on with the church, the non-prof I was invovled with for a number of years, and my family. I have come to understand that my family and true friends wouldn’t care, and even if they did, I shouldn’t. It was a long time ago that I was concerned about such relatively trivial matters, and it’s been a long time now that I have been freely and openly (and proudly) declaring that I’m gay. Of course, this doesn’t define me, or catagorize me, but neither does any other aspect of my life: it’s all a package.

To that end, I ended up writing a book that was about a struggle without naming what the struggle was. In addition, I also have changed perspectives religiously, and don’t quite hold the same views towards organized religion (good or bad) that I did back then. Israel did alot to me, and still does. I want to go back to Jerusalem. That change will not be the sole subject of any future book, however. The second autobiographical book I am working on right now does indeed encompass much of the events of “Churches, Pubs & Hostels” but written from a different perspective, and continues on from the Huntington Beach hostel (yes, you will get to read about that … again) and onto my summer 2005 trip to Seattle and April 2006 trip to Israel, eventually wrapping back around to a trip I take back to Huntington. It’ll be interesting (at least to me … although I do hope you enjoy it) but it will tell my story from an accurate perspective … which really wasn’t done during my younger days writing CPH.

So, since people do still buy it and occassionally do tell me that they want to, I thought I would give a bit of notice before I pull it. It can be found here, for $12. Or, you can just wait for the better story.

One More Day…

Just got one more day of this semester to go … I would be done already, but I chose to take my final tomorrow instead of yesterday. So wish me luck on my history final … not looking forward to it!

Lonesome Girl

In the thicket of trying to figure out what to do about my photography conundrum, I somehow managed to finish editing my finals, albeit briefly the time that was granted to me to do so in Photoshop … so, the results are a bit less than what I was envisioning, but it works. Check out the six-photo series of “Lonesome Girl” by clicking here (warning – naked girlie parts ahead!).

So of my four classes this semester at Mesa Community, two are now done (well almost done … have to actually hand the photo assignment in). My psych class was at the first to finish up, and it was by far my most enjoyable. The professor was top-notch and I have never had that much fun in a class whilst simultaneously learning something new and valuable every session. My 40-person banquet final for my gourmet cooking class went extremely well; we did stay until midnight cleaning up, however, which caused me to be completely exhausted by the time I finally crashed in bed (after a non-stop, 21-hour day), resulting in my being extremely late to work Thursday. Oops. Our last official class date is not until this next Wednesday, though, and our teacher decided to have us all bake our favorite cookies and bring them in for a last-day cookie party. The idea is cute enough, but I can barely find time to do laundry, much less bake cookies. I also am going to be writing an article Wednesday night, to email to my cooking class teacher Thursday morning, about the banquet for the Mesa Legend (school newspaper). I need to make up some points for some missed classes, so the chef assigned me this chore – which is well enough! As for history, I had a choice of taking my final either Tuesday or Thursday, and I orginally chose Tuesday, just so I would have everything done by Wednesday night and have the semester wrapped up. Only problem: I haven’t studied. So I’ll be taking it Thursday. Extending the semester our another 24 hours won’t be the worst thing in the world.

So, my schedule for this next couple days is work tomorrow till 4, come home and run to Fry’s to buy cookie stuff, come home and bake whilst saving my photo files to disc. I’ll also study for my history final, and be back at MCC at 7:40pm to turn in my final. Wednesday morning is back to work, then break for studying for an hour at Starbucks before heading to cooking class with my cookies. I’ll leave there, write a quick article and shoot it off to the school newspaper and the chef, and then study more for my history final. I’ll work on Thursday and then jet from there to school to do my final (which is a large, essay-esque final might I add) and then – think I’ll come home and have a beer. Or two. And it’ll be over.

Catching Up

As stated below, I was going to take/post daily pics on my The Story of A Boy photoblog. The loss of a laptop, and then Flickr being restricted at work, put a pause to this. But now this should be back up and running … I can’t promise daily photos, but I would say an update several times a week would be in order. Until then, I have posted some pics up on my Flickr photostream of what I’ve been up to these last few months. This includes work, desert road trips to the Superstitions, doggies, and a couple pics of the Rainbow Fest in downtown. This photostream also includes some work I’ve done for my digital photo class this last semester, including a burning Book of Mormon. Check it out here.

Photography Final

 I did my photoshoot Friday night for the final; it went well, took a bit longer than I expected, but it went well. I may have inadvertently screwed myself over on the photo final though … I thought it was due Thursday, when it’s actually due Tuesday. I was going to use Tuesday night in the photo lab to photoshop my images. Guess I should’ve verified that due date well before I decided to skip the optional Saturday morning photo lab. So … I MAY get time to print the pics, but mounting them and photoshoping them is just out of the picture now. Hmmm … I have enough A projects in the class that it won’t drop my grade that much, but it is a bit of a downer for me. Oh well.

On Saturday morning I ran errands and got my place cleaned up a bit; Saturday night Justin came over and I made us a snazzy dinner with garlic Mozerella mashed potatoes, proscuitto-wrapped shrimp sauteed in olive oil, and fresh ground peppercorn-crusted pan-seared Ahi tuna. We were FINALLY able to rent a copy of Planet Terror, which we watched after dinner – it wasn’t that great but was still far superior to Grindhouse’s accompanying Quinetin Tarentino-directed Deathproof. Sunday morning we went to our customary morning breakfast at the Valley Restaurant Diner Eatery (real name) and then watched Black Snake Moan with Samuel L. Jackson and Cristina Ricci. Decent movie, but a bit too long. It was kind of like Forrest Gump, in the sense that it could’ve ended in about five different places but kept going anyway.

Then … the very best part of the weekend … Justin took me out to Best Buy to purchase my Christmas gift: a Gateway laptop! Score! I am now able to blog from home (wow, what a concept!) and should be finally able to update my photo blog now. Anyway … it’s off to getting some more studying done for Tuesday’s history final. Have fun everyone.

Miss Dottie Movin’ On

My roommate, Arica, works with a local boxer (the dog, not the fighter) rescue mission based here in Phoenix. A couple months ago, Miss Dottie came along to us. She didn’t have a name at the time, but we chose to name her after the lovely drag queen of the same name, who oft performed at the now-extinct Jaded. Miss Dottie (the dog, not the crossdresser) has been in our home for much longer than expected, much longer than any boxer previous. She came to us with a broken jaw, bad and burned skin, hair problems, and severely overweight. We have fixed all of this, albeit she is still a bit overweight, but not nearly as bad. This weekend she goes off to a new home for a trial period for a permanent adoption. She’ll be missed. Luckily we still have the stray English Bulldog, Bear, who sleeps in a crate in the front room and whom snores so loud that he often wakes me, and sometimes Justin, up. Now if we could just find Bear a home …

But until then, a picture of Miss Dotie:

Payson, Christmas & Napa

  

So – I have been away – or quiet – for a while. What can I say? Things have been busy. I had no idea (although I should have) that full-time school in addition of full-time work would so severely, to put it frankly, kick my ass. Now I know. And again I singed up for the same next year – actually letting my school schedule penetrate into my weekends this time. I shall only have Sunday for rest, or laundry, or writing, or whatever else it may be. Luckily, albeit finding me in a rather unprepared state, this next week is my final week for the semester. This day, Wednesday of next week, shall be my last class for the semester. Things I have to have completed in this next week:

 

-History: Final on Tuesday, plus three readings and three essays from a history book.

 

-Psychology: Final, and last class, tomorrow night. I loved this class the most of them all but is glad it’s over!

 

-Digital Photography: Friday night I am spending my evening with a naked Puerto Rican woman. What’s this have to do with photography, you may ask? She is asking me to take some artistic, nude black and whites for her boyfriend for Christmas. I need something interesting for my final photo project. I was going to take my camera up to Justin’s parent’s house in Payson last weekend and take pictures of the tree decorating and storms, but I forgot it. My mind was racing for what I could do for my final project (I just have to drop it off next Thursday), but alas, I was approached by a beautiful woman who wanted to be naked for my camera. Problem solved.

 

-Gourmet Cooking: Final cooking assignment tonight.

 

I was having a near-mental breakdown with the work I had to do, plus my day job, plus an ever-growing list of writing and editing commitments, when Justin had the good grace and foresight the day after Thanksgiving to come over and keep me company for the rest of the weekend, followed by an invitation to go up north and get away from everything. I’ve been needing this for awhile, and times were good as he and I spent time together in the rain and just relaxing. I also enjoyed late-night, slightly drunken hunting for a pack of javalinas that had chased us a mere hour before, and forging a flooded creek in a pickup truck. Good times in the country!

 

Whilst we were up north, we also took advantage of the time together to make some final preparations for our upcoming San Francisco trip, February 2-7^th. We already had an airline credit on Southwest for a trip that we ended up not taking to Orange County earlier in the year, and decided to use it to go someplace we both really wanted to go. We booked the flight, booked the beautiful boutique hotel overlooking Union Square, and made our Alcatraz reservations. We also looked into the possibility of taking a ferry from the San Francisco to Vallejo Terminals, and a bus ride, up to a train station where we can take a sunset dinner wine-tasting trip about a train through Napa Valley. We didn’t book it, but I think I’ll surprise him with it during the trip.

 

Now I’m just waiting out this next week, waiting out Christmas, and going to try to de-stress as much as I can during the few weeks without school. My main happy place right now is looking toward San Francisco! Soon.