The title says it all. for four years i galavanted and did what i thought I wanted, because i didn't 'have to' take meds. and now with a case of hurting gums, I was told that it may that time now... to take meds. I wanted that to never. However in the long run, in the run of things, i guess it was inevitable.
And I come home and I'm listening to Thinking of you by Lenny Kravitz, and I'm thinking to myself, is it that i have been running from myself? Is it that my former, friend/enemy/bullshit friend, was right? Have I been running from myself?
Maybe. Ii didn't think I'd get caught with what i have, I thought I'd be in the clear as I was trying to find myself in life, in DC. However, that was NOT the case.
And when I found out, I was ok, just trying to get through my uncles death, my grandmother's and still find who I am. I find that now, i was just a stupid kid. I thought I was invincible, even when I told others we were not.
Being 20 something does not make you invincible.
Nothing does.
But now i want to try, I want to try to be the things that my mother knew I could be.
Responsible.
Reliable.
A role model.
and someone that wants to live his life, with his family, friends and blood
i don't know--lol
I have to think....
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
life down on me
I have had a instance where i like some one and didn't jump for bedding them the first time I meet them. I met a guy on myspace and in that, it was months ago, but at the same time he seemed cool and I thought i would say hello.
for awhile there I didn't even think to think that I might get a response...but lo and behold I did. and then nothing, then after i answered the follow up, nothing, then I get a response to my response and send my number in the next message.
two days ago,I get a txt, from the myspace guy and we txt back and forth for two hours. it was nice, no sex talk, not dirty 'gettin it on' type of talk, just talk, and plenty of laughs in between.
He's nice, and bitchy, and cute, and sweet. and more than that he has confidence (love that about a guy) I wouldn't need to tell him to feel better about himself, he's developed his confidence over time and he's only 21.
so he comes over last night and we watch poltergist (which for some reason he has never seen) and we talk for two hours afterwards and I loved every minute of it. I haven't REALLY liked a guy in a minute, but I like him, and hope to keep hanging out with him and get to know him more.
I want to get to know him more. and part of me feels that he feells the same too.
i don't know, but i do know that time will tell. well either end up hooking up and being something or just friends, and i can at least say that I have a gay friend in AZ that likes to do some the same things that i do, and is smart confident, sexy (in his own way) and kind.
either one, would be very nice.
for awhile there I didn't even think to think that I might get a response...but lo and behold I did. and then nothing, then after i answered the follow up, nothing, then I get a response to my response and send my number in the next message.
two days ago,I get a txt, from the myspace guy and we txt back and forth for two hours. it was nice, no sex talk, not dirty 'gettin it on' type of talk, just talk, and plenty of laughs in between.
He's nice, and bitchy, and cute, and sweet. and more than that he has confidence (love that about a guy) I wouldn't need to tell him to feel better about himself, he's developed his confidence over time and he's only 21.
so he comes over last night and we watch poltergist (which for some reason he has never seen) and we talk for two hours afterwards and I loved every minute of it. I haven't REALLY liked a guy in a minute, but I like him, and hope to keep hanging out with him and get to know him more.
I want to get to know him more. and part of me feels that he feells the same too.
i don't know, but i do know that time will tell. well either end up hooking up and being something or just friends, and i can at least say that I have a gay friend in AZ that likes to do some the same things that i do, and is smart confident, sexy (in his own way) and kind.
either one, would be very nice.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
isolation
for the last few months I have been in a state of isolation, even to the point of when my brother came down from tuscan after finishing business, took me out to see star trek, and i could have gone out with him and some fluzy he met here to have drinks and laughs and have a good time. Instead i retreat home and wallow in my own self loathing.
why is it that I have succumb myself to isolation? To being a hermit? Of course now the main thing is that it is 'too hot' here (which it is) to do anything most of the day without a car. however i understand that is more than that. i can't blame it on alchohol anymore because I've actually slowed down (at least to the point of not getting drunk immediately after work), i can't blame it on shitty friends who were never friends in the first place (a bitch who will always see her self as the 'rightous one')
But in the long run, who is to blame? It's def. not anyone elses, only my own. i decided that every expereince was something that i didn't want to expereience, and therefore it was better to just be alone. and in someways that is true, seeing that I am trying t find my own FULL identity.
But is total isolation really the answer?
well that answer will come in time.
why is it that I have succumb myself to isolation? To being a hermit? Of course now the main thing is that it is 'too hot' here (which it is) to do anything most of the day without a car. however i understand that is more than that. i can't blame it on alchohol anymore because I've actually slowed down (at least to the point of not getting drunk immediately after work), i can't blame it on shitty friends who were never friends in the first place (a bitch who will always see her self as the 'rightous one')
But in the long run, who is to blame? It's def. not anyone elses, only my own. i decided that every expereince was something that i didn't want to expereience, and therefore it was better to just be alone. and in someways that is true, seeing that I am trying t find my own FULL identity.
But is total isolation really the answer?
well that answer will come in time.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
i i fell
I sit at home cooking some damn good fried chx and just listening to the soundtrack to Across the Universe and loving every minute. and I wonder, was I meant to come to PHX or just planted myself here, on a whim? I keep thinking the last week or so, that maybe I should just friggen go back to MD, and part of me wants to so bad, but at the same time i find myself,today, after talking briefly with a co worker of mine, that maybe I'm jumping the gun. I wanted to expereince the west coast, or at least get closer to it, and just sitting around and then saying 'it's not working. gotta go home' is more of a give up cry than giving it a real look see. some of the people I have met, the places I have seen so far, have been beautiful. My time here, hasn't been great, I'll tell the truth, but is it really 'easy' for anyone leave everything the ey knew, to venture out and try to go beyond what they know, who they thought they were/are?
So I have eight months before my new lease is out, maybe I will figure it out by then...
right now, as the track changes to Lenny K. I don't give a fuck. My food smells too good to do so--lol
So I have eight months before my new lease is out, maybe I will figure it out by then...
right now, as the track changes to Lenny K. I don't give a fuck. My food smells too good to do so--lol
Monday, July 13, 2009
Just another sunday short
This is jus a story that I composed. Here in this blog I post the first thirteen or so pages of the stories' hero at the beginning of the story. I hope all who reads enjoys:
The feeling is what I’ll remember the most. My smile grew as wide as the milky Caramel nose on my face. My tarnished-white shine of my teeth as it gapped from my ruffled and slightly chapped lips. My eyes grew wide at what I accomplished emotionally. And the feeling, the truest feeling that appeared at that very moment was satisfaction. Satisfaction: pure and very simple.
This Reverend was on the ground and as the sun beamed on his slightly wrought face he twisted and contorted in pain. I flashed back to words spoken to me not more than a year ago. Words that the leader of the congregation said to me without remorse:
“You are beyond saving if you chose to lead this life. It’s plain and simple: you are going to hell if you chose that road.”
Those words: Plain and Simple.
Those words to me at that moment had the greatest meaning. As my body rose out of my seat slowly, the wood behind me left me with an ached and tired feeling in my bones. The pew as I looked back had a slight glimmer in the semi-fluorescent lighting. Back then as I rose I knew that I have had enough!
So as I looked amazed at what transpired in my very eyes, which were as wide as the eyes of a on looker of a speeding train coming towards his car, I turned at that moment to the congregation stunned and aghast at what happened in those few moments. The very subtle eyes caught my gaze. Disappointment was one such look I received. Another look was anger in their eyes, and for just a few, hate. Hate, in their eyes for what I’d done. I avenged my right as a human being against a Reverend that many of only a ‘select’ and unfortunate few came to revere and admire.
I sacked the bastard in the balls for letting me down. I punched him for telling me I was nothing, for hating me for something I can’t help. He looked at me then, in that moment, with more disgust than any of the individuals around me. That look, I will remember it for years. It was a look worse than anything I have seen before. It was a look that despised everything that I was, and in truth everything that I ‘will be’ in my life of ‘sin’.
‘My life of sin’, I thought as I began to walk out of the crowd. The crowd that was too stunned to do anything but watch, the crowd that could not stop me even if they had really tried to, the crowd that could do nothing.
As I walked back to my car, I looked ahead, tunnel vision towards my silver corolla gleaming in the sun creating a flash of light not hard to describe as spectacular. It was a spring day, March 24th 2007.
That was the day that I took back my life.
And, out of it all, it was today marked the day that a year ago I confessed, if you will, to the Reverend Wallace that I was a Black, Gay, Man living with HIV.
Most of all, it was the day that I have done more than anything else:
I stopped giving a shit.
I was driving around in my silver Corolla afterward. ‘Karma’ is the name I have given her; the idea that the balance of what one gives comes back on you. I purposely named her the name of the only one true ‘bitch’ in the universe that we should all give a damn about. Riding inside her carpeted interior, the steering wheel gliding my hand ever so slightly, I feel the light headedness and comfort of knowing that with Karma. I have finally gotten what has come to me, in a sense.
I stopped in the nearest parking lot that morning after everything happened, abandoned and empty all but one car still and parallel to Karma and me starring us down with slightly penetrable hood light eyes. The ‘eyes’ of the car were meant to create a smooth, aero-dynamic feeling and style to the car, but came across as an evil stunt car from a reject Stephen King Novel.
We sat there, Karma and I, in silence and I breathed the brilliant and cooling breeze, and thought to myself ‘what’s next’; but I didn’t know.
All I did, all I could do, was to scream to the top of my lungs.
“YES” I exclaimed in a penetrating yell that seemed to echo beyond Karma, and into the emptiness of the abandoned parking lot. I had begun to feel that that year would be very interesting year for me.
I was right that time.
. . .
Time pasted and I turned slowly, and pushed gently on the break in Karma and allowed her to make a swift yet gentle glide into the Borders Books and Music parking lot in German town, Maryland. The parking lot filled my ears with distant haunting sounds in a far off lot the next block down. The parking lot in front of Borders gave a stench, not unpleasant yet it was hard to place. More than likely the smell of too many spilled cappuccinos fallen to the asphalt over the course of weeks, which created an aroma of wet fish and cigarettes: speaking of which; I slammed a cigarette into the edge of my mouth lining it with a mahogany line of lips. Blue and orange fire lit up in the air from my disposable lighter within Karma and as I inhaled at that moment, in that very first puff there was a sense of created calm in my lungs as the burning sensation put a hole through my chest and overtook me. As I rolled my eyes I remembered that I was to quit with a co-worker of mine only weeks ago, now I found myself enjoying the once sweetest pleasure as a blessing and a curse.
I looked around then, around the lot, windows down in Karma and I noticed the light from the sun blazing the presence of golden reams on each car. The light pierced the ever elusive color schemes; Red and Black, Green and the ever present Orange, all the colors shimmered the golden portrayal regardless.
“What am I doing here”, I wondered.
And then I knew.
They walked out of the front doors suddenly and laughed something inaudible that my ears perked to listen but could not knowingly hear. They were both tall in height; their pale cheeks raised a very distant red. The kind of red I noticed only with white men or pale men in general. The skinnier of the two, glasses dimmed from the every present sun, seemed happy. “Skinny” as I’ll call him, wore a Monty Python t-shirt that hugged him, presented the fact of a shirt too tight for his size.
It should have fit me. Just like his lover and I should have fit then.
I sat there, my eyes blood shot with anger and disappointment knowing why I am here; the second gentleman who walked beside him staggered to keep up. His belly showed and had been hard to conceal in his white shirt, sleeves rolled up to mimic a tee shirt style of clothing. His cheeks rosy he smiled back at ‘Skinny’, happy as well. Jude smiled at his new lover. I had known then, at that moment, why I was there.
I felt my hands in my lap turn to fist, and I knew why I had been there. I heard a cry in my head, a scream to move, but I ignored it; I knew why I had been there.
Skinny lives in Germantown. I hadn’t been there to get away from what transpired earlier that morning; I was there to see Jude and his new lover.
I had come there to find out why I wasn’t worth the time.
I had been there, come there for a final confrontation; and let’s face it I might as well, I thought.
I was on a roll.
The day that I met Jude it was warm, with humidity and all that and just a slight case of low winds that didn’t do dick to calm the heat of the impending summer to arrive. It was on 7th street Southeast in the District of Colombia and I was hanging at a small little youth center for Gay and lesbian youth. The ‘name’ you ask is classified. Well either that or I can just tell you that it still exists and what has gone on in there stays there; kind of like Vegas. I sat in the main living space area, bored off my skull with associates of mine at the time, talking of nothing. Add silly incomprehensible music and New York narcissism and you would have a cross between a Seinfeld episode and a minor version of Sex and the City.
Then he arrived:
He was what I described now as ‘my kind of cute; geeky cute’. I have a slight affinity for the highly intelligent because in some ways they know how to have a good time, in their own way. The heat from the door is what I noticed before I laid eyes on him. When blasting an extreme amount of air in a low level, slightly remodeled row House in the Capitol Hill area of the district will allow one to notice even the slightest change of temperature, much less a drastic one. But then I saw him staggering slightly into the door with a purpose and ignoring anything that was not in his immediate line of sight. His hair was dark, dark brown then, face round and rosy from the heat outside. And even to this day I have wondered: was it only the heat, or was I genuinely nervous? Because at that moment, I began to feel a feeling that I had never felt before until meeting Jude-it was a slight wave of fear and excitement that I have yet to truly experience completely with anyone else.
He was six foot tall yet he only reached five ten when he walked because he hunched over. He hunched back then, just as he still hunches now a days. He wore what any gay man would personally call ‘loud’ gold shirt with a hint of white outlining the shirt’s tapestry. His pants were that of many pockets and aligned hooks, the type of pants that I had seen in raves or in clubs as a whole; even the more gothic kids wore them-it was a ‘known’ thing back then to have seen kids walk around with that type of style pants, even now. As I, with my dark black hair, not yet jet black but close enough in twists, and my bright subtle eyes gazed upon him I could only think of one thing:
“This is a writer’s dream; the oddity in crazy familiarity.”
And unfortunately I was right.
However even before that thought popped into my head, another one showed up with out my consent and very much to my surprise:
“I think I’m in love.”
…”I think I’m in love,” I said then.
Now, I know I was, but the feeling of abandonment was stronger as I saw Jude and his boy ‘Skinny’ walk to their car. Then it happened; Jude glanced over and with a quick, sudden movement we locked eyes. Jude looked at me, unknowingly and then as soon as he did, he looked away.
Now was my chance; face the guy that broke your heart, to hurt him as he did you. A sense of exact revenge, but would it be as sweet as they say or just hollow?
I sat in Karma clutching the wheel wondering, staring and then it happened: I moved slowly out of Karma in a swift movement that resembled an action scene in a movie where the protagonist of the story is put in slow motion and the music beats loud in the theaters. I was out of Karma now, sun grazing my eyes and forehead and pressing itself against me as if face to face with me. The sun pressed on me like a simple embrace of friends, but the truth is that it was an object far from me and an old friend and, in some ways, lover, was closer that I would have liked now. Jude was closer to me, more than I wanted and now I had the opportunity to find a way to mend my heart with a confrontation-a confrontation that in many ways, as began to walk in the stale smelling Borders parking lot, I truly wish to avoid as well. However I was there now, each step getting closer to seeing their happiness and pain choke me with every step at that precise moment.
Time now; it’s time to end this.
It was 3:15 in the afternoon when I walked up to Jude’s pale swollen face. The humidity must have made him a little bloated. He always complained about it, in a joking manor of course. The few inches in height between us made it easier to face him, his six foot talk height blocking the sun from my eyes and the measurable heat behind it. His eyes widened now with in my presence showing signs of disbelief; kind of the look a deer looks just before it is hit by a car in a cross roads: a Deer caught in the headlights.
Bewilderment comes over “Skinny’, Jude’s lover. And he stands still motionless as if wanting to protect Jude from what may come next, yet not knowing exactly what to do to prolong or prevent whatever that may be. A gentle smile escapes my lips.
Gentle, now at this moment?
It was confusing to me even then, yet it was so sweet, completely sincere. Part of me even after everything, even in that moment wanted nothing more than to hug him, and kiss him on the forehead. I wanted to even then to tell him it was ok between us. I wanted to look up into his eyes, his deep hazel gray eyes, and eyes intense and full of life begging to truly release the emotion wrought on his face, that things were ok between us. I wanted to talk to him and find out his boyfriend’s history and how they were doing and that nothing was wrong.
But that would be a lie.
It would be a lie and it would get me nowhere. Something WAS seriously wrong between us, and he knew just as I. He knew he was wrong in dumping our friendship because of my health, because of his new man. He knew it and in his movement, a sudden slight move backwards at the sight of me just now showed me this; He knew he had “done wrong”.
So as time stands still for the three of us, Jude, myself, and the new boyfriend Skinny, in the stale coffee and cigarette smelling parking lot in front of Borders books and Music in Germantown, I did the only thing that could come to mind….
I walked back to Karma, those few minutes passing by as I hear the throws of pain behind me and this time the pain was not only echoing in my head, but in my heart as well. It was more than a year, and to see Jude today was not a great day for me. I hear a whimper now as I turn to get into Karma and as I sat down inside her the heat fill me with a gust of humidity that could only really explain the true definition of the times: its summer now. And as I sat in ‘her’, in Karma and close the door I embrace the heat for a few moments and I hear the whimper once again but it’s not coming from me.
I look over in the parking lot, a parking lot which moments ago I stood face to face with the friend that broke my heart and see him lying on the ground, the stale ground holding his mouth where I punched him square in the jaw. The blood coming from the slit in his lip poured out. As he lays there his lover, “Skinny’ curses at me from afar and holds his lover, my ex-friend Jude in his arms.
I punched the Son-of –a–Bitch but gained only a minimum satisfaction from it. It was only the build up of months of wondering why he threw away five years of friendship in a cowardice move. It was the build up from wondering why he couldn’t really just be a man and tell me the truth instead of leaving me in the dark.
So in Karma I start the engine and take a deep breath, inhaling the heat inside my lungs, inside the interior of my car and look down at the blood on my hands. The blood dried and crimson makes my caramel skin slightly pale. I look down at Jude's blood on my knuckles and then with out realizing it, with out knowing why, gently and very suddenly I began to laugh. I had to laugh. And I as I began to laugh, I realized that I have had the most unusual day.
I truly didn’t give a damn anymore.
I clicked down in karma and heard the sound of my Automatic car’s gears shift to drive. I heard in the distance the faint whisper of curses and the slight whimper of a pussy in glasses and his lover holding him up as they began to continue their journey to their car once again. However there was no joy in their faces as they made their way back because I wiped it away in my actions and that, to me, felt unusually good. Driving off slowly I began to feel the beauty of the wind hitting my face and showing me that it is not too late. I drove out of the stale coffee and cigarette smelling parking lot; wind, gusts of wind hitting me with every movement of the car in motion and I realized that it’s not too late. It is not too late, nor too soon to start living my life.
The feeling is what I’ll remember the most. My smile grew as wide as the milky Caramel nose on my face. My tarnished-white shine of my teeth as it gapped from my ruffled and slightly chapped lips. My eyes grew wide at what I accomplished emotionally. And the feeling, the truest feeling that appeared at that very moment was satisfaction. Satisfaction: pure and very simple.
This Reverend was on the ground and as the sun beamed on his slightly wrought face he twisted and contorted in pain. I flashed back to words spoken to me not more than a year ago. Words that the leader of the congregation said to me without remorse:
“You are beyond saving if you chose to lead this life. It’s plain and simple: you are going to hell if you chose that road.”
Those words: Plain and Simple.
Those words to me at that moment had the greatest meaning. As my body rose out of my seat slowly, the wood behind me left me with an ached and tired feeling in my bones. The pew as I looked back had a slight glimmer in the semi-fluorescent lighting. Back then as I rose I knew that I have had enough!
So as I looked amazed at what transpired in my very eyes, which were as wide as the eyes of a on looker of a speeding train coming towards his car, I turned at that moment to the congregation stunned and aghast at what happened in those few moments. The very subtle eyes caught my gaze. Disappointment was one such look I received. Another look was anger in their eyes, and for just a few, hate. Hate, in their eyes for what I’d done. I avenged my right as a human being against a Reverend that many of only a ‘select’ and unfortunate few came to revere and admire.
I sacked the bastard in the balls for letting me down. I punched him for telling me I was nothing, for hating me for something I can’t help. He looked at me then, in that moment, with more disgust than any of the individuals around me. That look, I will remember it for years. It was a look worse than anything I have seen before. It was a look that despised everything that I was, and in truth everything that I ‘will be’ in my life of ‘sin’.
‘My life of sin’, I thought as I began to walk out of the crowd. The crowd that was too stunned to do anything but watch, the crowd that could not stop me even if they had really tried to, the crowd that could do nothing.
As I walked back to my car, I looked ahead, tunnel vision towards my silver corolla gleaming in the sun creating a flash of light not hard to describe as spectacular. It was a spring day, March 24th 2007.
That was the day that I took back my life.
And, out of it all, it was today marked the day that a year ago I confessed, if you will, to the Reverend Wallace that I was a Black, Gay, Man living with HIV.
Most of all, it was the day that I have done more than anything else:
I stopped giving a shit.
I was driving around in my silver Corolla afterward. ‘Karma’ is the name I have given her; the idea that the balance of what one gives comes back on you. I purposely named her the name of the only one true ‘bitch’ in the universe that we should all give a damn about. Riding inside her carpeted interior, the steering wheel gliding my hand ever so slightly, I feel the light headedness and comfort of knowing that with Karma. I have finally gotten what has come to me, in a sense.
I stopped in the nearest parking lot that morning after everything happened, abandoned and empty all but one car still and parallel to Karma and me starring us down with slightly penetrable hood light eyes. The ‘eyes’ of the car were meant to create a smooth, aero-dynamic feeling and style to the car, but came across as an evil stunt car from a reject Stephen King Novel.
We sat there, Karma and I, in silence and I breathed the brilliant and cooling breeze, and thought to myself ‘what’s next’; but I didn’t know.
All I did, all I could do, was to scream to the top of my lungs.
“YES” I exclaimed in a penetrating yell that seemed to echo beyond Karma, and into the emptiness of the abandoned parking lot. I had begun to feel that that year would be very interesting year for me.
I was right that time.
. . .
Time pasted and I turned slowly, and pushed gently on the break in Karma and allowed her to make a swift yet gentle glide into the Borders Books and Music parking lot in German town, Maryland. The parking lot filled my ears with distant haunting sounds in a far off lot the next block down. The parking lot in front of Borders gave a stench, not unpleasant yet it was hard to place. More than likely the smell of too many spilled cappuccinos fallen to the asphalt over the course of weeks, which created an aroma of wet fish and cigarettes: speaking of which; I slammed a cigarette into the edge of my mouth lining it with a mahogany line of lips. Blue and orange fire lit up in the air from my disposable lighter within Karma and as I inhaled at that moment, in that very first puff there was a sense of created calm in my lungs as the burning sensation put a hole through my chest and overtook me. As I rolled my eyes I remembered that I was to quit with a co-worker of mine only weeks ago, now I found myself enjoying the once sweetest pleasure as a blessing and a curse.
I looked around then, around the lot, windows down in Karma and I noticed the light from the sun blazing the presence of golden reams on each car. The light pierced the ever elusive color schemes; Red and Black, Green and the ever present Orange, all the colors shimmered the golden portrayal regardless.
“What am I doing here”, I wondered.
And then I knew.
They walked out of the front doors suddenly and laughed something inaudible that my ears perked to listen but could not knowingly hear. They were both tall in height; their pale cheeks raised a very distant red. The kind of red I noticed only with white men or pale men in general. The skinnier of the two, glasses dimmed from the every present sun, seemed happy. “Skinny” as I’ll call him, wore a Monty Python t-shirt that hugged him, presented the fact of a shirt too tight for his size.
It should have fit me. Just like his lover and I should have fit then.
I sat there, my eyes blood shot with anger and disappointment knowing why I am here; the second gentleman who walked beside him staggered to keep up. His belly showed and had been hard to conceal in his white shirt, sleeves rolled up to mimic a tee shirt style of clothing. His cheeks rosy he smiled back at ‘Skinny’, happy as well. Jude smiled at his new lover. I had known then, at that moment, why I was there.
I felt my hands in my lap turn to fist, and I knew why I had been there. I heard a cry in my head, a scream to move, but I ignored it; I knew why I had been there.
Skinny lives in Germantown. I hadn’t been there to get away from what transpired earlier that morning; I was there to see Jude and his new lover.
I had come there to find out why I wasn’t worth the time.
I had been there, come there for a final confrontation; and let’s face it I might as well, I thought.
I was on a roll.
The day that I met Jude it was warm, with humidity and all that and just a slight case of low winds that didn’t do dick to calm the heat of the impending summer to arrive. It was on 7th street Southeast in the District of Colombia and I was hanging at a small little youth center for Gay and lesbian youth. The ‘name’ you ask is classified. Well either that or I can just tell you that it still exists and what has gone on in there stays there; kind of like Vegas. I sat in the main living space area, bored off my skull with associates of mine at the time, talking of nothing. Add silly incomprehensible music and New York narcissism and you would have a cross between a Seinfeld episode and a minor version of Sex and the City.
Then he arrived:
He was what I described now as ‘my kind of cute; geeky cute’. I have a slight affinity for the highly intelligent because in some ways they know how to have a good time, in their own way. The heat from the door is what I noticed before I laid eyes on him. When blasting an extreme amount of air in a low level, slightly remodeled row House in the Capitol Hill area of the district will allow one to notice even the slightest change of temperature, much less a drastic one. But then I saw him staggering slightly into the door with a purpose and ignoring anything that was not in his immediate line of sight. His hair was dark, dark brown then, face round and rosy from the heat outside. And even to this day I have wondered: was it only the heat, or was I genuinely nervous? Because at that moment, I began to feel a feeling that I had never felt before until meeting Jude-it was a slight wave of fear and excitement that I have yet to truly experience completely with anyone else.
He was six foot tall yet he only reached five ten when he walked because he hunched over. He hunched back then, just as he still hunches now a days. He wore what any gay man would personally call ‘loud’ gold shirt with a hint of white outlining the shirt’s tapestry. His pants were that of many pockets and aligned hooks, the type of pants that I had seen in raves or in clubs as a whole; even the more gothic kids wore them-it was a ‘known’ thing back then to have seen kids walk around with that type of style pants, even now. As I, with my dark black hair, not yet jet black but close enough in twists, and my bright subtle eyes gazed upon him I could only think of one thing:
“This is a writer’s dream; the oddity in crazy familiarity.”
And unfortunately I was right.
However even before that thought popped into my head, another one showed up with out my consent and very much to my surprise:
“I think I’m in love.”
…”I think I’m in love,” I said then.
Now, I know I was, but the feeling of abandonment was stronger as I saw Jude and his boy ‘Skinny’ walk to their car. Then it happened; Jude glanced over and with a quick, sudden movement we locked eyes. Jude looked at me, unknowingly and then as soon as he did, he looked away.
Now was my chance; face the guy that broke your heart, to hurt him as he did you. A sense of exact revenge, but would it be as sweet as they say or just hollow?
I sat in Karma clutching the wheel wondering, staring and then it happened: I moved slowly out of Karma in a swift movement that resembled an action scene in a movie where the protagonist of the story is put in slow motion and the music beats loud in the theaters. I was out of Karma now, sun grazing my eyes and forehead and pressing itself against me as if face to face with me. The sun pressed on me like a simple embrace of friends, but the truth is that it was an object far from me and an old friend and, in some ways, lover, was closer that I would have liked now. Jude was closer to me, more than I wanted and now I had the opportunity to find a way to mend my heart with a confrontation-a confrontation that in many ways, as began to walk in the stale smelling Borders parking lot, I truly wish to avoid as well. However I was there now, each step getting closer to seeing their happiness and pain choke me with every step at that precise moment.
Time now; it’s time to end this.
It was 3:15 in the afternoon when I walked up to Jude’s pale swollen face. The humidity must have made him a little bloated. He always complained about it, in a joking manor of course. The few inches in height between us made it easier to face him, his six foot talk height blocking the sun from my eyes and the measurable heat behind it. His eyes widened now with in my presence showing signs of disbelief; kind of the look a deer looks just before it is hit by a car in a cross roads: a Deer caught in the headlights.
Bewilderment comes over “Skinny’, Jude’s lover. And he stands still motionless as if wanting to protect Jude from what may come next, yet not knowing exactly what to do to prolong or prevent whatever that may be. A gentle smile escapes my lips.
Gentle, now at this moment?
It was confusing to me even then, yet it was so sweet, completely sincere. Part of me even after everything, even in that moment wanted nothing more than to hug him, and kiss him on the forehead. I wanted to even then to tell him it was ok between us. I wanted to look up into his eyes, his deep hazel gray eyes, and eyes intense and full of life begging to truly release the emotion wrought on his face, that things were ok between us. I wanted to talk to him and find out his boyfriend’s history and how they were doing and that nothing was wrong.
But that would be a lie.
It would be a lie and it would get me nowhere. Something WAS seriously wrong between us, and he knew just as I. He knew he was wrong in dumping our friendship because of my health, because of his new man. He knew it and in his movement, a sudden slight move backwards at the sight of me just now showed me this; He knew he had “done wrong”.
So as time stands still for the three of us, Jude, myself, and the new boyfriend Skinny, in the stale coffee and cigarette smelling parking lot in front of Borders books and Music in Germantown, I did the only thing that could come to mind….
I walked back to Karma, those few minutes passing by as I hear the throws of pain behind me and this time the pain was not only echoing in my head, but in my heart as well. It was more than a year, and to see Jude today was not a great day for me. I hear a whimper now as I turn to get into Karma and as I sat down inside her the heat fill me with a gust of humidity that could only really explain the true definition of the times: its summer now. And as I sat in ‘her’, in Karma and close the door I embrace the heat for a few moments and I hear the whimper once again but it’s not coming from me.
I look over in the parking lot, a parking lot which moments ago I stood face to face with the friend that broke my heart and see him lying on the ground, the stale ground holding his mouth where I punched him square in the jaw. The blood coming from the slit in his lip poured out. As he lays there his lover, “Skinny’ curses at me from afar and holds his lover, my ex-friend Jude in his arms.
I punched the Son-of –a–Bitch but gained only a minimum satisfaction from it. It was only the build up of months of wondering why he threw away five years of friendship in a cowardice move. It was the build up from wondering why he couldn’t really just be a man and tell me the truth instead of leaving me in the dark.
So in Karma I start the engine and take a deep breath, inhaling the heat inside my lungs, inside the interior of my car and look down at the blood on my hands. The blood dried and crimson makes my caramel skin slightly pale. I look down at Jude's blood on my knuckles and then with out realizing it, with out knowing why, gently and very suddenly I began to laugh. I had to laugh. And I as I began to laugh, I realized that I have had the most unusual day.
I truly didn’t give a damn anymore.
I clicked down in karma and heard the sound of my Automatic car’s gears shift to drive. I heard in the distance the faint whisper of curses and the slight whimper of a pussy in glasses and his lover holding him up as they began to continue their journey to their car once again. However there was no joy in their faces as they made their way back because I wiped it away in my actions and that, to me, felt unusually good. Driving off slowly I began to feel the beauty of the wind hitting my face and showing me that it is not too late. I drove out of the stale coffee and cigarette smelling parking lot; wind, gusts of wind hitting me with every movement of the car in motion and I realized that it’s not too late. It is not too late, nor too soon to start living my life.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
beginning
so in the course of being in AZ I have come to find out certain things about myself: the main thing about how I am as a person and the things that make me who i am. do i have faith? Yes, but not in the same aspect that one might believe in, i.e. I don't really have a 'faith' just faith in myself and the people that I love.
I listen to queen latifa singing a jazz rendetion of 'california dreamin' and I see myself staring at the sun that beams in the valley of the sun. I see the light and I realize a quote that i said to my mother a long time ago 'my future's so bright, i gotta wear shades'. And in that I see there is a truth to it. I am not a creature to give up so easily by the misfortunes of being human, or forget that I am just that: human. I make mistakes, some really bad, some minor, and in the end I see that the only way to learn from them, is to just keep going and take them with them. But the truth is, no one needs to take those mistakes with them to the grave as something hoovering over them, ready to crash.
Sometimes we as humans are so ready to judge another person, that we forget that we are human as well, and not judge jury and executioner.
so listening to rufus wainwright, i find the beauty of his world (or words as more accurate) is the beauty that we all must bear within our own hearts.
I have disappointed a lot of people in the past, but do i disappoint myself?
no. Not anymore.
I listen to queen latifa singing a jazz rendetion of 'california dreamin' and I see myself staring at the sun that beams in the valley of the sun. I see the light and I realize a quote that i said to my mother a long time ago 'my future's so bright, i gotta wear shades'. And in that I see there is a truth to it. I am not a creature to give up so easily by the misfortunes of being human, or forget that I am just that: human. I make mistakes, some really bad, some minor, and in the end I see that the only way to learn from them, is to just keep going and take them with them. But the truth is, no one needs to take those mistakes with them to the grave as something hoovering over them, ready to crash.
Sometimes we as humans are so ready to judge another person, that we forget that we are human as well, and not judge jury and executioner.
so listening to rufus wainwright, i find the beauty of his world (or words as more accurate) is the beauty that we all must bear within our own hearts.
I have disappointed a lot of people in the past, but do i disappoint myself?
no. Not anymore.
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