Juror #18

     Yesterday, I had jury duty. I was not happy about it at all. First of all, I was unhappy because it was at a courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. Ew. I never go there unless I’m looking for some crack. (Kidding!) Secondly, I don’t like being around people who live south of the 10 freeway. Well, unless they’re west of the 405 or below the 105. It’s all very complicated, but won’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t lived in LA, so I’ll just leave it at that.
     So, I get called in along with 30 others to a courtroom for questioning. The defendant was a hefty, black woman pushing 60 who was busted for selling cocaine on 5th Street, pretty much the skid row area of LA. So already I’m thinking, duh, she’s so guilty. No woman her age caught with cocaine, on 5th Street no less, is visiting her grandchildren.
     They get through the first half of the jurors then break for lunch. On my way down the street to an El Pollo Loco— a fast food type restaurant that made “pollo” bowls I loved, with chopped chicken, salad, rice and beans— I start to form a strategy for how to answer my questions so I sound like a judgmental prick who can’t be trusted with the fate of this woman. Also, I wonder why the hell Mexican-made food in L.A. is always crazy, even when it’s just pizza, and why that makes it appetizing. I want to open El IHOP Loco. You can have chorizo for dinner.
     I decide my answers to the questions “Do you have anyone close to you who has been arrested for drug related crimes?” and “Does this affect your opinion on this case?” will be “My brother was busted for dealing coke” and “There’s only one reason anyone would be caught with a bunch of cocaine downtown. She’s guilty.”
     The only thing to decide now is if I have the guts to say it. Everyone who had attempted to give biased answers to sound unworthy so far was quickly backed into a corner. It went something like: “Have you ever had a bad experience with a police officer, and if so, does that keep you from being open minded about the testimonies of the officers in this case?” Their responses: “Yes, and yes.” Then the judge asked “If you had a bad experience with a doctor or a teacher, would you assume that all doctors and teachers are bad?” The reply: a sheepish, “No.” Their expressions read “Drats! Foiled again!” (Wouldn’t it be fun if people actually said things like that?)
     Over my very Mexican “Chicken Caesar Salad Bowl” (it did have crunchy tortilla strips sprinkled on top after all, and Mexicans LOVE crunchy tortilla strips— Mexican croutons, if you will) I decided, “what the fuck do I care what all these bitches think of me? I’ll never see them again.”
     I get back into the courtroom and immediately I notice this really loud breathing sound. I think at first that the judge’s assistant, an older man, has emphysema or something (And yes, I had to look up the spelling on that). Then, to my great surprise, I realize the sound is the defendant…….snoring. She had fallen asleep! Her attorney kept nudging her and asking her to wake up, to which she would respond with a drunken Dumbo smile before returning to sleep. It was official. I had NO PROBLEM saying I already thought she was guilty.
     I have to admit, my heart started to beat faster as it came closer to my turn to answer (I was last and so far no one had gone where I was about to). But when my turn came I thought, “oh hell, Id rather be an asshole too than serve duty for this asshole and hear her snore through 4 days of trial.” So I did it and I have to say it felt pretty liberating. In my head as I walked out, I said “The hell with all you suckas! I’m outta here.”
     On my way home I decided I wanted to broil some bbq boneless pork ribs for dinner and that I would have sliced cucumbers on the side to make them healthy.

The Pacifier

     I start out each morning by hopping in the shower and shaving my head. On the windowsill I have a mirror, a can of shaving gel and a razor. I shave my head before even stepping under the water, because after my head gets wet, I don’t get as close of a shave. Afterward I rinse my head under the water and start on my beard, which must be done as symmetrically as possible or the world would end.
     As detailed a shaver as I am, aside from getting dressed, I basically step out of the shower ready for the day. My morning shower is crucial. Without it I would sleepwalk until I got back in bed at night.
     The next morning I pull back the shower curtain to find my boyfriend, Carlos, has taken my can of shaving gel and razor and put them back into the cabinet. It drives me crazy but I say nothing.
     Instead, we enact this ritual every day. I take out my razor and gel, use them and leave them on the windowsill. He comes in after me, puts them back in the cabinet and takes his shower.
     Today I decided to get back at him by taking his soap scrubby things (loofas, they’re called?) off of the showercaddy and putting them in the cabinet. It was trivial, but felt good. I wonder if and when he will notice.
     It would be of no use to argue over something that always plays out the same. I will say that I use those things every day, why put them away? He will say he does not want to see anything out on the windowsill and remind me I agreed to do this before we moved in together. I will say, yeah, and you also said you wouldn’t nag me about stupid stuff like this back then, so we’re even.
     This is how two starkly different people cohabitate. He’s the anal one who wants our home to look like no one lives in it and I’m the careless one who let’s things lay wherever they may fall. Yet, I am groomed to the millimeter and he lets his sideburns grow wild until I am forced, yes forced damn it, to sit him down and trim them. My reasoning is, well, I’m the one who has to look at him after all.

     A lesbian couple whom I refer to as “our lesbians” took us out to dinner at our favorite restaurant recently and they declared what they and Paula Abdul have long known: opposites attract. They know this because they mirror our differences in many ways.
     One is a neat freak, while the other is not. One is private about what information she will share with friends while the other deems no subject off limit. One will eat anything while the other is exasperatingly picky.
     Upon discussing this over pasta, I wonder how true it is that opposites attract. And if it is true, why is it true? The tone of the whole idea makes it sound like a natural, fated, unexplainable mismatch that works out joyful for everyone, like how cow shit fertilizes soil for new spring trees to grow or how the miraculous beauty of childbirth is worth the hemorrhoids that follow.
     I can’t say I find all the ways Carlos is opposite me all that “magnetic pull”ish. In my mind, I pictured myself dating, oh I don’t know… someone with a big mouth who orders his burgers without mustard or onions and doesn’t see the point in making the bed.
     Instead, I am with someone who asks me to please move as little as possible while I sleep so as to not mess up the sheets; someone who makes the bed while I am still in it. Instead, we engage in the silent loofa/shaving gel battle and make it work.
     In doing this, how much should a couple compromise their feelings? How much are stubborn people supposed to venture over to the other’s side before they feel like their own needs don’t matter any more? Is this the healthy thing to do or will we regret it one day and blame each other? When does the art of compromise become the art of delaying the inevitable?
     These are the questions I ask myself when I rush to wash the dishes. It’s scary to hear friends say they had a boyfriend or girlfriend for like 5 years, but they ended it and now it is over. Ended it? What? Why would you do that? Carlos and I have been together for 3 years now. Am I to believe it possible that in just 2 years time things could change so drastically that we could end our relationship? I just can’t even imagine it. Not us.

     I clearly remember the day my parents renewed their vows. My mom was between the weight she gained when I was born and the weight she would gain after my little sister was born, so she was thin and beautiful in her white dress. Her hair was up with a curly tendril dangling on each side of her face. My dad wore a white dress shirt, gray slacks and a matching tie. It was the most dressed up I have ever seen my lumber mill-working father.
     The head priest at my Catholic school performed the ceremony, the same priest who would later teach my class sex education, much to our confusion. They were married in a small, private room that was upstairs from where masses were held. To the left of my parents were their best friends at the time. To the right of my parents were me and my sisters, sitting on a pew and watching. My little sister, Julie, was less than a year old, so that would have made me around 6 and my older sister, Angie, around 13.
     Whenever a time comes when everyone is supposed to remain reverently quiet my first impulse has always been to laugh. It’s like an allergic reaction when instead of breaking out in hives, I break out in giggles.
     Growing up, this was most often while in church. Anyone who has ever gone to a Catholic mass knows not only is it mind numbingly dull, but those in attendance are expected to remain absolutely silent until the designated recite and response portion of the show.
     At 27 years of age, I still have to think of ancient Greek warriors pillaging villages, grabbing infants and swinging them by the feet until they crush their skulls into stone walls, or something equally as gruesome, so as to not start laughing during prayer. There can be no doubt, if someone invites me to dinner, asks everyone to join hands and bow their heads while they say grace, I am picturing sacks of puppies being dumped in the river until I hear “amen.”
     When my mom and dad renewed their vows, this was not necessary- at first. I was in love with the whole idea. Watching them, my mom in a white dress and my dad out of a baseball cap, was enough to keep me captivated.
     Until I started uncontrollably farting. I don’t know what triggered it, but to make matters worse, pews are usually made of wood, so those farts resonated. Well everyone laughed and attempted to recompose themselves. My mom told me to stop laughing and I tried. Honest, I tried.
     My dad’s best friend, however, could not stop laughing. His fat face turned red and was about to turn blue, he held his breath so hard trying not to laugh. This made me laugh more and in turn, keep farting. Finally, I had to wait outside so they could finish the ceremony.
     Perhaps, they should not have. My parents were just not meant to be together. They fought more and more over the next 12 or so years and when things became really heated I would step in. I’d go to my dad and talk him down, then go to my mom and do the same. I somehow always knew the right thing to say to make them forget they drove each other nuts, and remember they loved each other.
     When I was 18 I moved away to college. Six months later my parents separated after 28 years of marriage and deep down I felt it was my fault. I wasn’t there to patch things up, to play mediator and placate the situation.
     I had thought it better for everyone if they just got a divorce for some time by then, but I did everything I could to keep them at peace. It is what I thought was right because I could not stand to see them angry with each other.
     Maybe, though, just maybe, if I had just sat put that wedding day and farted my little heart out, they couldn’t have finished the ceremony and none of that would have been necessary.

     When my parents divorced I swore that I would never be like them. I swore I would never compromise my feelings for the sake of staying together and that I would never carry the hope to stay with someone forever.
Were my mom and dad opposites who attracted each other or just not in love enough?
     If a couple can be together 28 years and then suddenly decide, “You know what? I’m over this,” what hope is there for me? Am I placating a situation that will one day just make the fallout all the more painful?
     Or is this merely the way it is done, what every couple has to do, and the lucky ones just happen to last?

T.M.I.

     My boyfriend and I have come to that disgusting part of a relationship where nothing is too disgusting to discuss. This, at the very least, surprises me.
     In college, an acquaintance became engaged and when we were talking about how close they were she said, “We’re so comfortable around each other. Like, we can poop with each other in the room, even diarrhea.”
At that point in time I had absolutely no interest in getting married.
     Here I am, 5 or 6 years later, and I’m engaged. To compound the situation, we talk about our poop. We don’t call it poop, though. We have our own term for that.
     One of my favorite thinkers is Margaret Cho. In “Notorious C.H.O.,” she tells a story of when she went to get her first colonic at a place in Santa Monica called “Water’s Gift.” Margaret Cho rolled her eyes at the name and continued, “I don’t know that I’d call it a gift. I don’t sit there and think, ‘Oh, I’m making a little gift.’”
     So whenever we have to go number two we say, “I have to make a gift.” It’s so dumb, like we even need to be that specific about the reason we’re heading to the restroom.
     More than anything it is our habit of quoting lines from movies and songs constantly. It’s our own private language, a shorthand way of making ourselves laugh all the time.
     Gifts don’t seem so graphic a thing to talk about. We tell each other when we’ve made a good gift and when we’ve made a bad gift; last night my boyfriend used not one, but THREE adjectives to describe his gift, to which I responded, “T.M.I.”
     Most often this much information is unnecessary to verbalize anyway. Our bathroom door is not at all soundproof, no matter how much one runs the water in the sink.
     We laugh from the next room at the noises each other makes. We tease each other’s poor giftmanship by running to the door and saying, “Oh my God! Are you ok?!?!”
     This is evil. How did this happen to me? I’m the one who smacked my lips at the notion that there would ever come a day when I would understand what others in relationships had known all along. It implied there were things I did not know– unacceptable.
     So, here I am, caught off guard and I have only one question: was it being gay that made me not consider the revelations of breeders for myself or was I simply not the kind of person to get this close?

     During my whole coming out process and adopting a lifestyle for myself, I guess I was so distracted with everything that involved I didn’t stop to picture another level.
     To work up the nerve to walk up to the clerk in the video store with gay porn in my hand was an achievement. It was as though to say, “Woo Hoo! I just came out to the porn counter chick!” To walk down a street holding hands with my boyfriend was a breakthrough. To tell every person who knew me that I was gay was a triumph. It seemed all I needed or could have hoped for as a teen.
     While all those things happened I always knew marriage wasn’t in the cards for me as a gay American. I always accepted that because that’s just the way it is. I thought, “Well, what do I need to get married for anyway? I can always just live with whomever I want and it’s not like we will have kids.”
     I’m not so sure now any law was responsible for train of thought. Was it simply too much to fathom because I had never been close enough to someone that I would want to marry them? Or was I just squeamish?
     It’s true, my fiancée is my first real relationship; before him, I had never lasted more than a couple months with a guy. Likewise, I have never been able to admit I was human enough to poop, let alone get diarrhea. Ew.
     Oh, I never denied it, but it was never a subject of conversation either. I’ve always required the utmost privacy to even perform such a task.
     If the horror that is suspecting, realizing, denying to myself and then accepting that I am at the mall and REALLY need to make a gift, I will sit in the stall until every person in the room leaves. If the last person exits just as another person walks in then damn it, I will squeeze my cheeks together until all possible witnesses are gone.
     Public restrooms make no sense. Why anyone would make it possible for multiple people to shit next to each other is beyond me. A whole row of single occupancy restrooms would simply make this world a better place.
     And while I’m at it, I hate sensor flushers too. You can’t even courtesy flush for others who walk in, mid-gift-making, without standing up and taking a step forward to trick the sensor into flushing.
     Once, I had just finished setting my paper seat cover on the toilet seat perfectly, took a step back to unbutton my belt and the sensor thought I had walked away and flushed, taking my seat down with the water. I had to set it up all over again much to my frustration, but I’ll let it go.
     That was definitely a tangent but the point is: I’m neurotic anyway. I feel like even if gays were allowed to marry, I still wouldn’t have imagined marriage for myself and I certainly wouldn’t have found myself reminding my boyfriend to make a gift early enough in the evening so he will be ready to accommodate my advances by bedtime. This is just too familiar. It’s too much information. But this is where we are.
     An important thing has happened, however trivial the topic may sound. We know each other’s humanity.
     Like the day you realize your parents are human and do some really fucked up things, I’m not sure you ever truly love someone until your shame is gone. As a people, the information about ourselves we keep most guarded is what we are ashamed of. And to think, the thing I’m most ashamed of is being a human being.
     I realize how silly it seems to make the leap from talking about bowel functions to evidence of true love. Am I so delusional?
     Everyone I am sure has their own version of this. For some it may be the mess they keep hidden behind closed doors. For others it may be kleptomania or pathological habits. Perhaps it is excess hair in weird places? Whatever it is, we all have things we’d rather just keep to ourselves for fear of how others will react.
     What makes this fear unnecessary is there is nothing one person experiences on this earth that someone elsewhere in the world hasn’t as well. Nothing. We are human and not as individually unique as we would like to believe.
     If you keep the things you are ashamed of from the person you love, you keep them at a distance. You prevent them from knowing you completely, of understanding you and ultimately, accepting you. To allow them to do that you must trust them. To give them that choice is scary, but that is love, no?
     Does it seem like such a better idea to be so without flaw you are admirable to all those around you? Or, do you reach a point in life when what is admirable is a man who not only acknowledges his irregularities, but shows no shame for them?

Livestock in the City

    When I was a kid, my parents decided they wanted to raise chickens. We did not, however, live on a farm. Oh, no no no. We lived in a city— a small one, but a city nonetheless, with neighbors and buses and a JCPenney.
     They built a big coop in the backyard and subscribed to chicken catalogs. They would peruse the pages and pick out their favorites. There are actually some very beautifully colored chickens out there, I’ll admit, beyond the plain white ones raised in mass quantities you see in PETA videos exposing KFC. My parents particularly liked chickens who laid brown or green eggs. At the peak, we ended up having about 50 chickens in our backyard. I had a round, fluffy pet chicken with short legs I named Q-bert.
     We also had a psychotic Husky named Nikki. He was just one stupid oaf of a dog that liked to tear things up. He was virtually worthless, but my dad was a Mexican living in the ghetto and Mexicans in the ghetto love big dogs that can pull you on a sled and/or injure someone.
     I realize these things that connect me to the rest of my people only in adulthood. I was born in Seattle, a third generation American and sent to a private Catholic school. The only real interaction I had with other Mexican-Americans was with a couple neighborhood kids I never understood and my extended family members who were just as white-washed as I was. 
     As a child, I thought only our family said “Ooh Cucuy,” when something scary loomed near. I thought my mom made up the term “Teta” for a baby bottle. I grew up not knowing “sopa” was the word for soup; I thought it was what you called noodles, as my family was prone to do. We were a mish-mash of everything Mexican and American, unaware we were so in between either group. Or at least I was.
     Today, I know only a Mexican family would build a coop in the middle of a city with sidewalks and traffic lights for their chickens.
     One summer day, we returned home from wherever we had gone to a lawn covered in a blanket of white feathers; it was winter in June— Texas Chainsaw Massacre style. As we pulled into the driveway we learned that among the white feathers were dead chickens EVERYWHERE. That damn Husky had broken into the coop and, for sport, chased down and executed every chicken, leaving their scattered carcasses for us to roll into snowhens.
     That was the end of the chicken run, and thankfully, the end of Nikki. He was given the old heave-ho. My parents went on to raise something else after.
Before I get to that, though, I should tell the stories of 2 other chickens who had met untimely demises. They explain so much.
     Most of the time, my parents bought chickens as chicks and raised them. They’re really cute, but also kind of messy. They would number so many and were still so wobbly that they would often fall back onto their own droppings, which would seal their bottom ends up.
     We would have to soak them in some water and remove the shit from their ass so they had clear exits. I didn’t want to, but my parents would force us.
     One hapless day, I took a chick into the bathroom, filled the sink with water and dipped its bottom in the water to soak it. Then I had to turn it over and remove the shit. It always grossed me out so I would try to look away as I did so…
     When my mom came in to check on me, she had this shocked look on her face. I took a step back, and when I did, I realized I had dunked the chick in the water when I turned it over to clean it, and had inadvertently drowned it in the process. The poor little guy’s head just dangled over the edge of my hand.
     Another day that summer, my evil parents coaxed me into joining in the fun that is butchering chickens. I had witnessed enough wrung necks to know it was not something I wanted to do. But my parents lived to make me do all sorts of things I didn’t want to do: learning to moonwalk, joining the basketball team, enrolling in video production class for summer school….
     I was nervous. I was upset. I wanted the bitches off my back. So I picked up a chicken by the head and began to twirl it in my hand. I must have spun it around one too many times because all of a sudden, I looked down and I had a bleeding, severed chicken head in my hand while a headless chicken ran around the yard.
     The expression is true, they do run around with their heads cut off and it is not as Norman Rockwell of a scene as the trite saying might suggest. If that was not enough to traumatize me, the next little anecdote finished the job.  

     Here’s a little story I call:The Silence of the Rabbits.            Chickens were just not enough. Oh no, my parents had to raise rabbits too. And not just for cute and fuzziness, the psychos wanted them to eat! Like, hello, there was Albertson’s. They didn’t need to raise their dinners.
     At first, it was a cute enough thing. They built cages and let each of us kids have a pet. I named mine Raspberry because I was pretty obsessed with that berry at the time.
     My little sister, Julie, followed suit and named hers Blackberry, who by the way, nearly bit her finger off when she stuck it in his cage and he thought it was a carrot. Julie was always suffering random injuries: slicing through the skin in between two of her fingers when cutting an orange; spilling boiling Top Ramen broth on her legs; falling off a tree swing when I was seeing how high I could push her (well, I did tell her to not let go damn it).
     One day, harvest time had come. No normal person should know this, but when you kill a rabbit for dinner you usually whack it over the back of the head with a 2 by 4. Here’s where my Clarice Starling episode kicks in.
     If you don’t whack the rabbit hard enough to kill it the first time, they squeal to high heaven until you do it again. The sound echoes for blocks. Dogs start barking. Cats hide. Toddlers cry.
     I stood in horror in the front yard as every clapping sound of wood was followed by rabbit screams in the back yard. And if my parents weren’t sick enough, they expected me to EAT the damn things. They would serve up rabbit legs like it was lemon herb chicken quarters and marveled at how tasty they were. All I could see on the plates were the creatures as they once were, the legs that they once hopped on. It was one of the few battles I won. There was no way I was going to eat that Raspberry.
     These are the tales of death and destruction that form my history. So when people tell me I am cynical and a smartass, I say, “No, I am remarkably well-adjusted, considering.”

Love Has No Pride

    Every few weeks my boyfriend, his mother and sister set out for a day of bonding. I’m not sure they think of it in such terms, but from my perspective this is what it is. They meet at his mother’s place where they begin by snacking on all the junk food she can’t eat herself because she is diabetic.
     You’re thinking, “How sweet, she stocks up on goodies just for them.” Well, ultimately, but not really. She just finds coupons she wants to use.
     I’m not complaining. She always seems to send us home with some sort of necessary item: kleenex, saran wrap, toothbrushes…..chicken nuggets– all paid for with double coupons from Sunday’s paper.
     It’s a sign of love and affection; she is the single mother who can’t stop giving to her children long after they have left the house. Where my family gets together and drinks till we’re in tears and telling each other how much we love each other, my boyfriend’s family has long employed a different method. They power window shop.
     After raiding mom’s cupboard they set out on a day of retailtrotting to everywhere you can think of. Target, Walmart, Kmart, Ross, The Grove, swap meets, strip malls and shopping centers. Sometimes they actually buy things. Sometimes they even have something in mind they need when they stop somewhere. Mostly, however, they just look around.
     And I mean LOOK AROUND. Every gizmo and gadget and knick knack on display they stop, pick up, discuss, consider, put back down and walk away. As I describe it, it actually sounds cute and quirky. Maybe this is because I have long separated myself from what I refer to as “Chavez Family Outings.”
     I just can’t do it. They always invite me and I feel fortunate that they want to include me, but the CFO’s are agonizing to a Cardenas. A Cardenas wants something, goes to get it, then returns straight home to put it to use.
     The important thing is his family spends quality time doing what they like to do and enjoying each other’s company. They have been going on CFO’s since my boyfriend and his sister were able to walk behind their mother.
     What they don’t do much is talk about their feelings. They talk about a handheld vacuum or a pair of flip-flops or cute elephant figurines, but never about what is going on deep down inside. And maybe that’s not so bad. They rarely argue and they NEVER cry. This affects our relationship nonetheless.

     I am a big bundle of emotions. Growing up in my house, with my mom and sisters, was the one place I could always voice my feelings. We would argue and cry and make up and laugh and feel closer afterward than ever before.
     My mom has a lot of issues that stem from a very troubled childhood. So with each fight I learned a way of understanding her, of knowing why she felt the way she did without her having to tell me. Every story she had ever told me was used to diagnose the problems that sprang up.
     Outside of our home was a different story. I was an observer. I was a thinker. I was the quiet one on the sidelines running plays through my head, but never part of the game. Once in a while a teacher or other adult would stop and take notice of the wheels that were turning. They would say, “That one there– he sees everything.”
     I would, nevertheless, sit in class when the teacher asked a question of the students, knowing the answer, but saying nothing.
     Well, I didn’t like myself much then. I was embarrassed and ashamed of just about everything about myself. Any time I had to get up and speak in front of the class, even in college, my temperature skyrocketed, my face became flushed and I broke out into a sweat.
     Kids in high school would ask/accuse me of being gay and I would deny it and push attention from me as quickly as possible. My one chance of surviving was rocking the boat as little as possible and that meant avoiding confrontation at the cost of my pride. I felt somehow that something about me brought it on myself, that I deserved what I got.
     But you know how sometimes you think of the best comeback to a remark after the other person walks away and you kick yourself for not thinking of it sooner? That feeling ate me up for pretty much all my teenage years.
     When I entered my twenties, I began to see that everyone is fucked up in their own way– not just me. I was not less than. I was equal to or greater than and that was about the one thing I took with me from Algebra. I started to gradually feel less insecure and more proud. Maybe I became too proud.
     Pity those in my path in the years that followed. I could tear down those who opposed me without hesitation. As I met people who I deemed the enemy, I sized them up, analyzed them, catalogued their weak points and should the time come they made the mistake of crossing me, down they came! Let me just say, I was a natural in debate class.
     Here I am today, just realizing I do not have to defeat anyone anymore. I do not have to prove my adversary weaker than me. My “Don’t fuck with me,” mantra is no longer a symbol of power, but once again, evidence of my insecurity. Why is it power to win? Why is it strength to overcome another? How can empathy make you weak?
     I’ve learned this from my relationship with Carlos. Here’s a man I love more than anything, yet my “seek and destroy” missiles can lock target on him as quickly as the rest of you. Only now when they strike the target I no longer feel vindicated. I feel lonely.
     What makes this unfair to him is I know my advantage. I thrive in confrontation. I get a rush from facing people head on. I have always known how to express myself. I just didn’t do so outside of my home for 20 years.
     My boyfriend? Not so much. Like I said before, he wasn’t raised in a family who had heart to hearts.
     Yet anytime an argument brews between him and me, even if he starts it, I finish it. I’m on my feet, bobbing and weaving, throwing combinations, left hooks; I go for the knockout. We part ways, he goes to his corner, I go to mine and then come the most miserable hours imaginable.
     I sit and fester and go over all the reasons I am right and he is wrong. Every possible point and counterpoint is considered until I am certain I have been unjustly accused and deserve an apology at once. I will know why he said everything he said and even worse, know he didn’t mean it, and I’ll still be a stubborn ass. Just because I know that, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t tell me himself, right?
     So I vow to myself that he will come to me, admit how wrong he was and beg for my forgiveness…
     And then I sit…and sit…and sit some more. Something didn’t add up. The problem with waiting for an apology from someone who can’t express his feelings is he doesn’t exactly rush to your feet and, well, express his feelings.
     In that time of silence, one can do a lot of soul searching. I can be justified, attacked, self-defended and victorious, but then be completely alone. I will start to realize that you can win a fight and still be the loser.
     If I am so good at understanding people, why does that not help me when I need it to most? My feelings may get hurt, as I am a sensitive bastard, but I have come to feel even stronger when I can sort through those emotions and communicate them without knocking someone down.
     I would love for him to be the one to come to me after a fight once in a while and we’re working on that. Until then, however, I am still learning that it is okay if I am the one to go to him and say I am sorry first.
     If I care for him so much, why wouldn’t I? As I see it now, it takes a strong person to be vulnerable; it takes a weak person to be impenetrable.
     I don’t believe in trying to change your partner. He is the way he is and I have to learn to accept and understand him as is, if we are going to last. What I can do is point the inquisition toward myself.
     What does it matter who is wrong and who is right? Who cares who has the upper hand? When you are in a relationship, who do you love more— your pride, or your boyfriend?

Internet Killed the Video Star

    Bless your heart if you move to Los Angeles and are able to find a good group of friends. I don’t mean acquaintances. I mean friends you have many similar interests with, with whom you spend time with regularly and with whom you all seem in sync with each other whenever you hang out. I had a group in college. I miss my group.
     On laundry night, Carlos and I went to the corner laundromat to knock it all out in one shot, rather than use the two machines in our building. We arrived to find, much to our pleasure, no one was there but us. We owned that place. We could dry one sock in each dryer if we wanted to.
     We had just started about 7 washers full of laundry when it happened. Four inebriated, Indigenous Mexican transsexuals whirled in like a tornado. Well, that’s not exactly right. One entered before the rest to begin the initial surveillance of the place.
     She was the scout tranny. I was hunched over stuffing sheets in a vertical washer when she said hi to me, the kind of hello that was accompanied by a flirtatious subliminal wave and a bend at the hip.
     I returned the salutation as I stood to see a 6 foot goliath with her hair pulled into a ponytail on top of her head. She donned a worn out flannel shirt, sandals with socks (the horror) and khaki shorts she rolled up as high as she could but left the fly completely unbuttoned. How they stayed up and why she left it open was a mystery.
     All I could think was, “Damn it! I already said hello.”
     My expression must have showed this because she turned and walked back out. Or perhaps this is what the scout tranny was supposed to do. A few minutes later she returned with her crew.
     Each had grown her hair long and stringy, but only one wore make-up.
     ”What half-asses!” I whispered to Carlos. If you’re gonna do it, do it right.
Their skin was rough and leathery and betrayed any real hope any of them had for passing as ladies. The one with make-up on had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders to use as a cape. These were the few details I could notice without looking for too long. If I did, they said hi again.
     Now, to each her own; we all have to live together. Let me say I have no problems whatsoever with transsexuals, public drunkenness or split ends. But when they pulled out a pint of vodka and poured it into wine goblets they brought filled with orange kool aid, my sensibilities were irreparably offended.
     The day-long hour that followed was an array of pitifully obvious ploys for attention. They sprawled out on a folding table and cracked jokes to each other that each began “Girl…” until they laughed so loud their bodies collapsed on top of each other. They cursed like sailors no matter what gender or age group entered and left the laundromat. Scout tranny pushed a worker tranny onto her back, threw worker’s legs over her shoulders and proceeded to hump her with wild abandon while make-up tranny cheered.
     They acted like 13-year-olds who stole some liquor from Grandma’s cabinet and rode the bus to get trashed behind the town library. We were convinced they had each been gang-banged by their families under the Christmas tree when they were 10. It was the only trauma that could justify such behavior.
     Finally, we finished our laundry and left.
     ”Ok, what luck to find one other Indian tranny alcoholic to run around with, but four?” I turned to Carlos and said (I thought they were Native American at first). “What are the odds?”

     Here I’ve lived in LA for over 5 years now and I have one true friend who doubles duty as my boyfriend and it’s just not fair. Where’s my sub-subgroup? Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for Carlos and the fact he’s my best friend is even better.
     We have many acquaintances and a handful of friends we hang out with here and there. We’ll meet them for a lunch or drinks once in a while, but for the most part it’s me and my man, doing our own thing.
     On a sunny weekend we’ll drive to Griffith Park and go for walks with our camera. We take pictures of the leaves, flowers and hillsides and make video clips of each other climbing trees. On the drive home I bug him to stop for Saltado de Pollo, a Peruvian dish he introduced me to.
     We return home and sprawl out on our bed and talk while the kids (our cats) jump on the bed to nap with us.
     The younger cat, Oscar, will make you stop whatever you are doing to service him with a full body massage. The older cat, Bruiser, was apparently weaned too soon and still climbs on my stomach and kneeds my chest while he tries to nurse on me. All you hear is little sucking sounds he makes on my t-shirt.
     During one of our conversations on a day like I just described, we talked about the jerks we had come across recently online. We complained how it seems no one understands the concepts of consideration, dependability and punctuality. They were merely words that most likely only he and I could even spell.
     Over the years, I have retreated more and more from people, deciding they were a waste of time and I liked it better at home with Carlos. I still like to communicate, however, and interact with others, so I do what many do: I go online.
     I exchange emails with people on Myspace or chat on instant messenger. If I get really bored I go to Gay.com. It goes something like this:

7:15 pm, Assplunger writes,   ”Nice pics stud, you like to get pounded?”
7:21 pm, Hotlatinboi writes, “Hola papi, you looking? My culo is nice and                                               wet for you.”
7:25 pm, Looking4more writes, “You have a very nice face. I’m not looking                                               for a hook up. I’d like to meet someone                                               special. Would you like to maybe meet for                                               lunch sometime?” next to a close-up photo of                                               him spreading his ass cheeks while his                                               nutsack dangles in a leather cockring.
7:26, I log off.     

Periodically, I or Carlos will decide to meet a new friend from online for a drink or invite them to dinner. Things go well for a while, until the usual behavior kicks in. They flake on plans, or disappear for long lengths of time then resurface when they don’t have anything better to do, or just become all around annoying.
    Then one day, while Oscar lay on top of the magazine Carlos was reading until he stopped to pet him and Bruiser was sucking on my t-shirt, Carlos said it: “It’s the fucking internet! Think about it, people meet online because they have no social skills in person.”
    There it was, as simple as ever. Why had we expected social etiquette from social rejects? I then took it one step further and applied it to myself.
     When I was a kid, it would drive me crazy that my dad had the audacity to stop and talk to whomever he encountered. I never understood my mom’s jealousy until one day I went to the grocery store with my dad and he struck up a conversation with the lady clerk that lasted well after she finished our transaction. I was jealous too; it was more than he had said to me all week.
    People don’t think of me as shy because I am pretty well-spoken, but I am. My strength is in the written word, not small talk. I’ve never understood other’s compulsion to talk to strangers. I think to myself, “Why would I talk to that person? I don’t know them.”
    ”Well, numbnuts, how do you expect to meet anyone then?” my conscience responds.
    It’s that initial hello that boggles me. Who do I say it to? How do I say it? What do I say next? After the ice is broken, good luck shutting me up, but until then there is only one place I feel comfortable walking up to someone and saying hello: the internet.
    It’s minimal effort and if you don’t like who you encounter, all you have to say is “later dude” or “no thanks, just chatting today” or “fuck off” without hesitation because they’re not standing in front of you.
    I used to talk to someone and make plans to meet, spend hours regretting it in their company and return home swearing I wouldn’t do that again. I did, of course, until gradually it became just too much energy to waste on human interaction.
    Was I always like this? Did I turn to the internet because I couldn’t hack it in the real world? Or did the internet deprive me of social practice and make me entirely ineffective face to face?
    In college I took it for granted how easy it was to meet people. I walked outside my door and it was “hello there, new friend.” I had my Scooby gang that gathered every weekend to get into trouble and laugh till we cried.
    Now, I’d be lucky to get trashed with a gang of trannies at the laundromat.