“…That one night at the bar…”

It happened. That one night at the bar it happened. A straight bar. There sitting two tables over was a man. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as I cheered my friends’ band as they played. Covering some songs whose names I don’t remember. Some rock song and a little John Lennon.  I silently prayed to God that the band would sound somewhat good so I could be somewhat impressive to the attractive man and be “like yeah, so I’m friends with them.”  I then quickly sent up another prayer that if I did manage to talk to him that I wouldn’t sound like a complete idiot.

Talking to him. That was another challenge. I’ve never been amazing at walking up to a stranger and starting a conversation. Before I walk up to the person there is usually some high anxiety, breathing exercises, and a mental pep talk. This process can happen in a matter of a few seconds or stretch over a fifteen minute period. All depends on how bold or intimidated I feel. Luckily I had an in. I knew his friend/roommate. A girl I worked with. Thank you Jesus for this small little favor or else I probably would have never walked over. My normal process was taking longer than fifteen minutes and now I felt as though I would probably lose my window of opportunity.

Deep breathe. Mental pep talk, “Grow some cajones and walk over Rodriguez.” Walk.

CRITICAL REVIEW OF WALK TO TABLE:

I somewhat ignore the attractive man and talk to his roommate—NEGATIVE. I walk over the table and acknowledge his existence—POSITIVE. At least I got over to the table and did not completely ignore him. The attractive man, Nick, is friendly and asks questions—POSITIVE. My response is “like yeah, so I’m like friends with then.”—I guess God can’t answer everyone’s prayers.

Nick was very friendly and slightly drunk. Another small favor from God, if he’s drunk I have a chance that he won’t remember any of the stupid shit I say, but hopefully I’ll make a good enough impression that he’ll at least remember who I am.

The details of that night have faded with time. There are flashes of walking through the tunnels of Center Street to travel to different bars. An ass grab and an intense kiss. A flash of a girl’s pierced nipples. Karaoke at Charley’s. Exchanging of phone numbers. A kiss good night, and another cheesy line, “I hope you remember me in the morning.”

I laid in bed waiting for sleep to come. I remembered only two months prior words that were spoken to me. I laughed at the memory because it was told on a night where the floor was constantly moving and we were the greatest singers in the world. A drunken prophet in the gay bar once said to me, “Luis, it will happen to you. But not here. It will happen to you like it did to me. I meant my girl here in the gay bar. For you, it will happen somewhere else that is not here. Not here. You will be in some straight bar, and you’ll see a guy, and he’ll see you, and you’ll know.”

The chime of a text message woke me the next afternoon. “I remember you.”

"I would never commit suicide by cutting my wrists. I wouldn't want to fuck up my awesome tattoo."

I made a summer wish list back in the beginning of June. It was a short list, composed of the following items:

1.      Get a tattoo

2.      Pay down credit card

3.      Discover new favorite place

4.      Save up for next summer vacations – Portland & possibly New York

5.      Write a short story

I made this list in what seemed to be a slight moment of despair about this town of Pocatello. This place, in case I haven’t whined about it enough, has a way of bringing me down. The list was a way of trying to keep my mind distracted because in the past three years of living here, I hadn’t had a decent summer. Personal issues, usually involving a man of sorts, always seemed to be a cause of much turmoil in my life and tended to make my summers a living hell. In a previous post, I remember saying that I had a feeling that this summer was starting like the previous ones. I needed to leave; I needed to runaway. To be completely honest, to say that feeling has disappeared would be a lie. To be destined to live in Pocatello forever would be a death sentence. I would not hesitate to step in front of a bus or jump off a bridge. Cutting my wrist is out of the question because ever since my adventure with goal number one on the list, I realized that I could never bring myself to pull the blade down hard enough.

Thank god for lists being flexible and with no definite deadlines at the end of the summer.  Number two has a plan in action that will take place over the course of several paychecks, number three has yet to happen, number four has altered from New York to Ashville, NC for Christmas with Portland still on the agenda for next summer, and number five has an outline. But number one, the tattoo, I can proudly say has been completed—July 22, 2011 @ 5:00pm, Rich Ink. I am now marked for life with a treble clef symbol on my right wrist.

The pain is what I feared most. And peoples’ description only increased my anxiety before my appointment. “It feels like a cat scratching your arm, glass being dragged across your skin, it hurts like a mother fucker.” Okay to have someone describe pain has hurting like a ‘mother fucker’ brings an intense sickness to my stomach because to me that kind of pain is the equivalent of shoving a watermelon up your peehole, kids in a sandbox, or having an open fractured wound and some bastard rubbing salt and then peeing in it. No amount of simile or metaphors can describe the intense pain I was expecting to feel. Needless to say this fear caused enormous amounts of anxiety and adrenaline. When the artist began the accurate description I would say is a cat scratching your wrist. It does not hurt like a mother fucker and I would not use that description to ever describe getting a tattoo. I would leave that for men passing a kidney stone. That pain is equivalent to child bearing or so I’m told. The pain was still slightly intense and Teaira captured a beautiful picture of my jaw tightly clenched. I just also would like to say, I was able to watch, and even when I began to bleed I was still able to watch. Yes, right now, I feel like a slight badass, but I would never commit suicide by cutting my wrists. I wouldn’t want to fuck up my awesome tattoo.

This summer has been one of the best that I have had in a long time. There has been no real drama other than my own internal struggle. I still continue to go to counseling, which every session seems to remind me how much I’ve put myself back together.  I am becoming more content in being with myself, and have come to terms with the fact that what I’m looking for in a partner may not be and most likely is not here. But God knows if he is, he better show up soon, just saying. I would kill for some awesome sex again!

Also, because I’m feeling slightly sappy, I feel like throwing in shout outs to ETHAN MCWILLIAMS, TEAIRA BURGE, SHASTA TWITCHELL, and DEREK SCHIABLE—for being the longest person I’ve ever lived with. These friends have managed to keep me together when I am about to shake apart. I love you guys. Thanks for making this summer amazing.

Responsibility

I woke up this morning and realized that even after a year everything is still the same. This summer doesn’t seem to be taking off in any different direction than the previous two and it’s terrifying. It’s time to leave. If I could at this very moment, I would have everything thrown into a bag, and I would be gone without any goodbyes. I would just take off and disappear. Leave behind everything, including the cell phone, and completely start my life over. Yet what is stopping me? What is holding me back? Responsibility. I was raised not to do anything too irrational. I was raised to make sure I do everything properly and then life will be easier, everything will come to me as it should. This sense of responsibility is so ingrained into my personality that I feel guilty for having spare time.

 I remember sitting on the edge of my bed in a state of unrest, crying until I thought I could cry no more, thinking, “Today I am going to end it all. Oh wait, I have to work tomorrow and I can’t leave them in the lurch. Also that would be such an inconvenience for my roommates to have to find another roommate at such short notice. That would just be irresponsible.”

This place has put me in such a state depression. And maybe I’m just on some high horse, and I have been told it is all about the attitude. I try. I honest to God try to be happy here. Yet it’s hard to be happy in a place where it’s not okay to be gay, and with the gay community that seems to think my standards are prudish. Promiscuity, open relationships, and extreme flamboyance may work for some. I seem to have a more traditional sense about relationships and more reserved view about sexuality. Being gay doesn’t make me any different than anyone else.

The smile that is often times shown is just the shallow customer service smile that I have been trained to put on for the last two years when I feel like reaching across the counter and punching someone in the face. “Remember, the customer isn’t mad at you, they’re just mad.”

So until further notice this is where I am: working on being happy, trying to find a responsible way of leaving Pocatello, even if it involves transferring colleges (after all to me education is very important). I wake up every morning, and pull myself together. I stand in front of the world and put on that smile I know too well and say with in a cheerful tone, “Hi, welcome to Luis’s Personal Hell, how can I help you today?”

One year

One year. This month marks the one year anniversary of the most life changing experience I have encountered so far in the 21 years of my existence. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself rereading through a notebook I began last summer as I dealt with the emotional crisis that crippled me. My life stopped. The memories still hurt, and occasionally a phantom pain finds its way back into my chest as I reread these pages which were witness to my deepest torment. I never could understand how a person could fall apart in that way, but it takes firsthand experience to truly understand how the loss of love can affect a person.

 I never really talk about this. Some were there and watched, while others just hear bits and pieces. There are two people I’ve have told the whole story too. Interesting, one of the most significant moments in my life, and I don’t really discuss it in detail.

It’s odd now for me to think that he was capable of causing me so much torment. There were times when I would awake in the middle of the night, stand outside his bedroom door (I had my own room by this point), and wonder why I was on the outside. I would stand for hours in the late night staring at the window, watching the few cars that drove outside, and contemplate just running out in front of one. I moved out soon after.  I couldn’t understand how someone I loved so much seemed to be able to just stop loving me. I was jealous of this ability and wanted so much to do the same. I wanted to stop loving. Stop feeling. Stop any emotion that was connected to this man.

One year. God, it seems so long ago. One year since I moved out, one year since my world completely fell apart. One year. And now what? What lies ahead?

 Walking home today, I saw a person in front of me that looked so much like Von from behind that a secret fantasy of him coming back to find me and say “I love you, I never should have left you” began to play out in my mind. It almost seemed plausible and I speeded up my pace just to see his face because I was for a moment, so sure.

A part of me left with him to Boston, but I am glad that I am here. Sometimes when the sun is setting I sit out on my front porch and reminisce about the past, or dream about what might have been.

And sometimes, just for a moment, I feel him hold my hand, which makes me smile.

"You're still here...You have not broken."

I sit in her office on one of those gloomy Thursday mornings with my rigid in control posture. Tightness in the neck, shoulders, back, and slightly in the jaw that makes relaxation almost impossible and the wrong person giving me a massage creates more pain that I wish that I would just fall through the floor and die. There I am, sitting on the brown couch with my therapist across from me in her comfy looking chair staring at me, seeing beneath the façade that I put up. She is always impressed with the honesty and openness I bring to the sessions, but the way I maintain control over my emotions seems to impress her even more because I at times it almost seems that she is expecting me to breakdown and cry. There are moments when tears could be a possibility, but I am in too much control for that.

“I feel that I am not going to make it. There are moments when I find myself silently sobbing so that Derek won’t hear it. And in those moments I feel on the verge of losing myself to something bad, to letting those dark thoughts take over. It just seems like it’s too much and that I’m about to break.”

She sits there in her chair, silent after I finished speaking. I stare at her for only moment and then look away because I could see her eyes looking at me, almost in that cliché sort of way, seeing through the façade and seeing right into the soul. Then she finally speaks these words that will echo through my mind, “But you’re still here.”

I give her some look of confusion. “You’re still here Luis. You have not broken. Just when you say you’re about to break, you never do. You’re stronger than you think.”

She is right. In all those moments where I’ve found myself lying on the floor, with a bottle of pills, or a blade to my wrist I have stopped. At some point rationality kicks in and I remember who I am. Yet it still scares me. It scares me that I reach that point, and admittedly have almost reached that point a lot more frequently.

This journey, this internal struggle, is exhausting and frustrating. I am becoming less tolerable of person, finding excuses and blaming others for my actions. I find myself no longer having to push people away because they’re already walking away on their own. And I let them. I let them walk away because they have every right to. Please, don’t give up on my yet. I love you and I am sorry. I know that you are frustrated. I know that it’s my fault, but please, please don’t leave me.

 I find it slightly cruel and humorous, right as I start to go through all of this, someone enters my life that could have the potential of being something more, and it scares the hell out of me that now is the time that I am really fighting like hell to stay above water. Just another one of God’s cruel jokes, right along with always being surrounded by beautiful women and straight men. Outside of the therapist’s office, I was told “focus on building your relationship with this potential new guy.” But if I am struggling on making my friendships last through all of this, how the hell am I suppose to make a relationship work? And why do that I have to come into my life when I seem to be at my lowest?

Now once again, I find myself here on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, and waiting for that sense of rationality. I know that I am stronger than this. I know that eventually I am going to pick myself up from the floor, put the knife down, set the bottle of pills aside, and go on living. But that isn’t enough. In every one of those instances where I’ve stopped, nothing has changed and it’s only a matter of time before I find myself once again down on my knees praying to God that rationality kicks in before it’s too late. It’s hard, this struggle, this fight, it’s hard. I feel that I am not progressing. I am stuck and I need help. This time I need help. I know I am strong, but I can’t do it alone, not this time. I can’t bring myself to get up because there is no point if I am just going to end up on the floor again. I need my friends. I don’t have very many of you, and please, I need you.

Damn myself for emo blogging!

It’s a little after five in the morning and here I am wide awake, my stomach still turning from Friday night. Damn you tequilia, why must you be so cruel to me? I have a couple of hours that I have no recollection of and Lindsey Galow apparently came over to my house. I do not remember. Every time I find myself waking up in the early morning hours it usually turns out to be for some reason that either involves illness, future, friends, or family. This morning, it happens to be one, two, and three.

The illness happens to be my stomach cursing me for Friday night, and also probably Saturday night. Saturday was only one beer though! And it was with Megan Griggs! There are just some things you can’t say no too! Megan Griggs+$2.50 domestic drafts in a big glass at Goodies=intense happiness and warm fuzzy feelings, and an already hungover Luis feeling like shit for about two days. There was also a huge glass of water involved with the beer, but that doesn’t seem to matter. It was totally worth it though.

The future, as always, seems to involve that necessary evil of money and that awesome little monster, music major doubt, seems to have found its way into my bed tonight. He is a very interesting creature that appears whenever he pleases and leaves me feeling vulnerable and insecure about myself as a musician. I had been feeling his presence for the last couple of days and had hoped that the amount of confidence I received in my lesson Friday morning would deter him away, but no, he has come once again. This time he has come to talk about March 15^th, my first performance of the semester in studio class. He whisper softly in my ear with a slight evil giggle, “You know music is a collaborative effort. It takes yourself, your voice teacher, and your accompanist all working together at their highest level of efficiency in order for you to succeed. And it seems this time all your hard work and preparation isn’t going to pay off because 1/3 of the musical trio is failing.”

This morning the friend that crosses my mind is Sammy. My martini. My best friend from grade school. My 100% Mexican friend who is slightly self hating because she is Mexican. It has been so long since I have seen her, and the very thought that it may be a little bit longer until I can see her again actually brings tears. Yes, I am crying a little as I write this because I miss her, I’m tired, and I can’t believe I still like this whole blogging thing. Don’t judge.

It is now six in the morning. It has taken my hour to write this short entry. Nothing has changed. The pain in my stomach is still here, the little monster is sound asleep on my bed, and Sammy is still far away.

Eventually I am going to write something happy and not so depressing. Damn myself for emo blogging!

Here are some positive notes:

I have breakfast at Evan’s in about three hours.

I’m going to kick that monster in the head.

Tequila is amazing but only when used in moderation.

I like my Martini’s a little bit Mexican.

And I have am going to have a fanfuckingtastic week. Spring Break is almost here!

"...A conservative gay might just be as crazy as the moon being made out of cheese..."

I wouldn’t consider myself the most overly flamboyant gay man in the world, nor would I consider myself to be the butchest gay man in the world. No, I would say I’m a mixture of both worlds and certain moments cause my flame to shine brighter than others. That is just my impression of myself, and maybe to some the thought of me being a conservative gay might just be as crazy as the moon being made out of cheese. I am quiet about my sexuality and I find it nobodies other than my own, nor do I consider it a major factor in who I am. There are those that introduce themselves as “Hi, I’m Steve and I like to fuck or be fucked by men!” or something to that nature if not that extreme. Because if somebody said that to me, not only would I nod and say “That’s nice,” I would back my ass up to a wall and try not to make any sudden movements as I slipped away in the vain hope of not being sexually accosted.

Now just because I’m quiet about it doesn’t mean I won’t answer the question if asked. “Hey, are you gay?”

Here follows two “Are you gay?” moment encounters at the Chubbuck, Idaho Walmart #1995. Names have been changed to protect the innocent

SCENE 1

Walmart Front End—Register 5—Night

After being followed all night by a female cashier, Raquel, who is obviously into him, Luis tries to ignore her advances. As he is busy cleaning the register, Raquel beings to question him.

Raquel: So do you have a girlfriend?

Luis: No.

Raquel: Oh. So you say you hang out with Von a lot?

Luis: Yes.

Raquel: You know he’s gay right?

Luis [smiles to himself]: How could I not?

Raquel [laughs]: True. [Pause] Is he your boyfriend?

Luis: Yes.

Raquel gasps. Luis stares at her with interest wondering what she is going to say next.

Raquel: Damn it! Why does this always happen? You’re like the third gay guy I’ve had a crush on!

[END SCENE]

SCENE 2

Walmart Front End—Customer Service Desk—Night

Luis is busy cleaning the counters. He finally takes a break and leans against the back counter surveying the front end, which is oddly slow for a Monday night. A cashier, Eric, comes up to the service desk and stands awkwardly next to him.

Luis: How are you?

Eric: Good. You?

Luis: Good.

Luis goes back to cleaning the counters. Eric, who seems a little more fidgety than normal, begins an interrogation of sorts.

Eric: So Luis I a question for you.

Luis [not looking up from the counter he is cleaning]: Okay, go ahead.

Eric: Do you have a girlfriend?

Luis: No.

Eric: Do you have a boyfriend?

Luis: No. I’m single. Very much single.

Eric: Single and straight?

Luis: No, single and gay.

Luis looks up and stares at Eric who has really no expression on his face except that suddenly he feels extremely uncomfortable. The two stare at each other in uncomfortable silence.

[END SCENE]

Oh yes, the second scene was particular favorite moment because not only was it extremely uncomfortable, I didn’t know what to read into the situation on whether or not this particular cashier named “Eric” was completely mortified at the thought of me being gay or just feeling really uncomfortable because an awkward moment had apparently been created. I later learned that “Eric” didn’t really care either way, but had been told by a CSM that I was gay and couldn’t believe it. He was then told to ask me, which of course created the awkward story told above.

I’m not upset with being gay. Those dark days of inner turmoil and struggle have passed. But there are times when I’m in the “swirling vortex of doom” thought process that I wish that I could just be “normal,” and those stem from the loneliness and isolation I feel at times being a gay man in Pocatello, Idaho. It seems to me, and this could be another moon made out of cheese moment, that the gay population my age in this area is 1) a constant walking gay pride in your face parade with glitters, rainbows, and Cher singing “Do you believe in life after love?” out of their asses, 2) just in it for the sex 3) has religious guilt issues 4) wants a relationship but not really and seems to have slept with their friends boyfriends and their friends boyfriends have slept with each other creating this weird web of possible STD contamination or 5) a combination of two or more of these factors which makes them just as fucking crazy as the idea of Cher singing out of their ass. I mean come on; Cher has more class than that. She’s fucking Cher!

I’m not one of these who are in your face about it. My first encounters with people usually go:

ME: Hi, I’m Luis. Who the hell are you?

OTHER PERSON: You scare me.

Needless to say I’m working on my social skills.