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.