co-ed

He was sitting on the toilet seat with his legs spread out in front of him, scratching absently at his bare chest. The water-proof shower radio was humming outdated Christmas music between static breaks, and his eyes kept drifting back to Anna's softly bouncing breasts as she furiously brushed her teeth.

No bra, he thought, silently proud he agreed to this co-ed slumber party of theirs while his parents were out of town.

"So, Anna..." He watched as Anna leaned closer to the mirror, squinting and widening her eyes to herself, "When you suck, do you spit or swallow?"

Anna's face dropped in a second and her toothbrush went clattering to the ground. A rising yell started up her throat but got caught on globs of foamy toothpaste and spittles of it went flying at the mirror before she went curling over the sink twisting faucets roughly to spray water into her mouth, switching between trying to curse at him and cough.

A deep laugh erupted, and he fell forward to rest one elbow on his knee as he stretched to pick up her stray toothbrush. "I guess that answers my question,". A spray of water flicked from her fingertips answered him.

An Open Apology

I’m gay, but I’m also critical, curious, and scientifically oriented. Being gay isn’t the most important aspect of who I am. Yet, it is the aspect that elicits the most attention from those around me. I wouldn’t want my parents to pay any kind of special attention to me simply because of my orientation--even if that attention was “positive”. Being gay doesn’t make me any more or less of a decent human being; it is simply a preference. It doesn’t say anything about my intelligence, compassion, or values. All it says is that I have romantic interest in the same sex.

To drive the point home, I know many other gay people, and not one of them is the same. There are millions and millions of people in the LGB community, and the only thing that ties us all together is that we are not heterosexual. Each and every one of us has different needs and preferences, different personalities, different everything. It frustrates me to no end that many people will change their opinions about me (or any other person) simply for being gay. And that’s not just aimed to homophobes, but also to people who idealize being gay, who somehow think I’m cooler or more down to earth simply because of my sexual orientation. That’s even more frustrating sometimes, having my romantic preferences seen as some kind of trendy political statement.

What's perhaps more frustrating than anyone else's reactions to this issue, however, is the fact that I'm guilty of these same crimes. "I love gay people", "Gay best friend", and "Oh, yeah, the gay one" are all phrases that I've used in the past year. I've only now come to realize that these types of phrases only add to the small-minded attitudes and stereotypes that harm gay people every day. And for this I can only offer my deepest apologies and my reformation of self. 

I can't do much to change the past, but for now here's a list of gay stereotype breakers:

Not all gay people are the same.

Not all gay people are cool.

Gay people can be racists, sexists and, yes, even homophobes.

Gay males aren't all fabulous.

Gay males don't all have high-pitched voices.

Gay males aren't all sensitive and mild.

Gay females aren't all butch/alternative.

Gay females are not all good kissers/good in bed.

Not all gay people are flamboyant/in your face.

Not all gay people are promiscuous.

Not all gay people will have long-term relationships.

Not all gay people are atheists.

Not all gay people are open-minded. 

And there are so many, so many, oh so so many more. 

My goal right now is just to break the image of all LGBT people being the same/standing for the same thing. 

Even though sexual orientation is important, it says so little about people as actual human beings.

eleven years

every year, we americans take this day to pay respects to the lost lives of innocent people. we honor the service of our policemen, firemen, and soldiers while recognizing the tragedy of the september 11th attacks.

tragedy is a funny thing. it brings people together. funerals bring families together; this event brought our nation together.

my physics teacher told our class about the 9/11 memorial at the pentagon. there's a little bench for each person who died, with those lost in the airplane facing inwards and those killed inside the pentagon facing outwards. and the worst part is that they're arranged by age. you can see all these different people, ages three to eighty-seven, tied indiscriminately together by nothing but this tragedy.

i partake in the annual recognitions, the ceremonies, the moments of silence for everything america lost on this day eleven years ago. but it's taken me a long time to understand its significance more than nominally.

i was six on the day of the attacks, old enough to remember what happened but too young to comprehend the gravity of the situation. i'll never be able to understand it as today's adults do. as a sheltered child of the suburbs, it took me years before death became to me not merely a fact, but a feeling; years before the humanity and the grief of lost innocence sunk in--and by that i mean not only the death of innocent people, but also the end of a naively trusting era that shattered along with the windows of the world trade center. we kids of the Y-generation have grown up in cynicism. racial profiling and the TSA are not particularly ominous new installments into our society, but rather facts of life that are unfortunately uttered in the same breath more often than not. airport privacy is harder to come by than the internet variety. war and shootings and bashar assad are nothing but headlines, numbing us from the humanity of death. how many more colorado movie killings and wisconsin sikh attacks can we grieve and process?

but if personal emotional reconciliation took years, understanding how 9/11 attacked our nation's identity took longer still. to six-year-old me, the world trade center and the pentagon were vague abstractions. nationalistic abstractions, certainly, but still abstractions. arguably, those two structures are little more than abstractions for many adults, too, but that's aside from the point. i'm not sure how many years of american history classes and civics activities it took for me to even begin to grasp our country's role in globalization, our nation's pride in our greatness, and how the world trade center represented american faith, faith that was destroyed.

i don't know how long it will take to rebuild that faith. i can't say that we'll ever succeed in doing so. but today is the day when we remember to try, to bring ourselves together with the memory of tragedy and to find hope from surviving difficulty. because that's what we need now in order to give ourselves the strength to do the right thing.

hope.

manifesto against the SAT and herman hesse

a red blinking sign flashing white letters affronts me every time i try to explicate my feelings about this. a personal scarlet letter A. word access denied. subject forbidden.

life is so much simpler when there is a right and wrong answer, but in reality all of the choices have some merits and some weaknesses and it's not a matter of correct answer, but best fitting answer.

if pure existentialism was real, then pursuit of success would be so much simpler. perhaps not better, but simpler. no one knows what a single person is capable of achieving. it would merely be a matter of trying and trying, and if success follows, so will amazement. but this world is not existentialist. there are structured expectations that appear in the form of rules and laws and institutions. they try to make right and wrong, light and dark. dichotomies that cannot remain separated, but mingle together, weaving constantly into the fabric of humanity.

maybe this is the result of standardized thinking. i'm stuck assuming one answer is right and the rest are wrong, not by reason but by default. but i know better. there are no right answers. yet i'm still living out this multiple choice test, and i still have to select one choice even if it's a trick question, a badly written one that i can't win. 

no, i'm more worried that i can't differentiate between my moral instincts and the false expectations i've created for myself. while battling to reconcile my inner stirrings with what i believe to be right, i looked for myself and found only this warzone of shielded desires and arrow-sharp reasons working up a fog of confusion in the landscape of my consciousness. they say all is fair in love and war, but this isn't fair. it certainly isn't pretty. 

perhaps i will find myself in faith. but my convictions remain unknown until consummated by action, for there is no to be or not to be; there is only to do or not to do, so i must do, and carry myself to the altar of my beliefs, where thought and feeling can finally marry and i can say

i do, my friend. i do.

Post Traumatic Munchies

Walking walking walking

Down

Down

Down

Strangely familiar ally ways

The sound of new friends with old friends with laughter with memories

Smoke

Smoke smoke smoke

Chimnies, all of us, strangers to friends in an instant

tied together by the bonds of wax paper and all that

smoke.

Time moves

Slow, but fast

A rollercoaster of events seeming to zoom by

but sure enough you roll back into the station

(the one you waited two hours in line to get to)

check your watch and it's only been two minutes

But in your head it's eternity.

Teeth, tongue, caress, caress

Turn away, turn away, turn away

It's not fair

When all this time I've been waiting for someone else.

Walk away, away

Familiar roads, familiar brick, familiar entrance, elevator, back door

Don't look your mother with those eyes

Bee line towards food

Pass out

Wash, rinse, and repeat tomorrow.

wow oaky.

He cradles his face in his hands, left foot tapping out rhythmical nonsense on the sterile floor. Every couple of  taps his foot squeaks against the tile floor and he digs his fingers into the corner of his eyes tightly. Every nerve in his body is pulsing and pulled so far stretched he feels like he could smother the universe with his tension.
----------
Her voice broke long ago and she's left a pain-filled mess on a hospital bed with muscles twitching in her thighs and her eyes are starting to roll back but she blinks harshly and the twinkling lights reassure her that she's still conscious.
Nurses are flitting in and out of the room and one of them drags in a small wheel-y chair, and a creaking means she's seated and at the foot of the bed.
She's speaking from behind a surgical mask, rubbing her thumb absently on her left knee, and she realizes this is the closest she's ever had a girl come to her vagina before before another surge of pain racks up her spine and a scream twists itself out of her throat that ends with a scratch.
She faintly hears an, "I think I see the head!" before black spots spiral into view and she knows nothing more.
-----------
He hears the nurse clear her throat across the room and his insides are twisting inside him, pulling him into standing before he's aware of what he's doing. The nurse stares at him for a second, two, five, ten. Her face is taught and her furrowed eyebrows are casting his heart into pounding furiously against his chest.
She offers him a hand, and he allows himself to be led through a series of hallways a doors. A hand is constant on his back and he vaguely wonders about the silence of the trip. As they walk passing hospital staff seem to stop and stare at them, and he realizes with harsh twist of all the thrumming blood vessels in his body that they're marching the death waltz towards the pregnancy wing.
----------------
She's been awake for three hours and twenty-four minutes but all she can focus on is the pitying look on the nurses face, and the doctor who rested his hand gently on her arm as he told her the news. How it wasn't her fault and that it could happen to anyone, but words were spilling up inside her chest, about why this happened to her, if it could happen to anyone, why not them?
Words and accusations are cycling through her mind, a proverbial cyclone of anger, depression, grief, denial, and self-hatred that had her turn away the ham and cheese sandwich a nurse offered her for lunch.
-------------------
He's standing outside the hospital room, incapable of bringing himself into the room. The floor is seeming to pulse beneath his feet and a quick glance at the ceiling consists of swirling lights and ceiling tiles. He swallows but it's hard as it falls down his throat and he digs his fingers into the sides of his neck as his breathing quickens and he allows the full realization of the situation to dig into him. As he loses himself in his heavy breathing he hears screams from behind closed doors, and as a nurse rushes in, he hears in between door closings sobs of 'let me see my baby'.
He almost believes he can feel tiny fingers wrapping themselves around his heart as he breaks down into silent sobs, sliding down the wall with shaking shoulders and a heavy heart.

Seventeen

It’s her birthday.

Part of me wants to say “Dear Darling, Happy birthday! Love you lots! Signed, Me”

and part of me wants to rip out my heart, stick a candle in it and give it to her
to say, “here, make a wish, and while you’re at it, blow out the fucking candle that’s keeping this fucking flame alive, cause my heart just can’t take it anymore”

and part of me wonders if she would wish for what I want her to wish for.
I wonder if she would wish for us back.

we are nowhere and this is now

It was her 4th party that day, so she called it her 'after-after-after party' and spent it in the basement bathroom with a Spanish stripper named Fabio and a boy who had love bites scattered all over his chest playing Mao in the shower stall.
--------------
"The only person who's ever given me their number was the police officer, and it was the suicide-prevention number, too. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere!"
-------------------
"I fell asleep on the bus today while some chick was hitting on me," Aaron muses into his red plastic cup. "But, in my defense, I'm gay."
---------------

fluid pistachios

"I'm not sure what sex i am"
"you're a female."
"but i think i'm a male."
"then you are a male."
"but you just said i'm a female?"
"your gender is male, but your sex is female"
"aren't they the same thing?"
"sex is between your legs, and gender is between your ears"
"but what about the days where i feel like i'm nothing?"
"then you're genderfluid"
"but what about if i felt like i was a female?"
"then you would be considered cis."
"but i'm not,"
"so then you are a transgendered."
"does the trans stand for transformer?"
"only if you're willing to morph yourself."

gender issues

"if i shove this dildo into my pants and keep it there for a few days, do you think it'll blend itself into my skin and i'll end up with-a penis instead of a vagina?"
"I think you've reached your marijuana limit,"

voeux.

i want to be gone, to dissipate into the breeze like a breath of dandelion seeds
a thousand infinitesimal possibilities scattered beyond the realm of perception
caressing mortal souls, yet elusive to their searching grasp
floating tranquilly until the wind settles, and i am at home in the world,
free in the open embrace of forgotten nothingness at last.

a jog.

7 blocks.

She was only 7 blocks from her house in perfect white suburbia where kids spend the evening hours screaming and chasing each other up the asphalt street.

7 blocks had her jogging down a street where the curbs were smoothed to the point of no definition, and the lawns are only grassy patches on dirt continents. The houses were silent, blinds drawn in front of windows made from dusty glass and screen doors that didn't quite fit the frame.

On one side of the street a YIELD sign was angled facing the ground; on the other side was the 50 feet of empty asphalt and sidewalk of a dead-end street.

She turned over the corner, only to find the eyes of seven kids all under the age of 8 watching her. As she jogged closer they quickly ran about the yard, shoving their scooters off the sidewalk but never leaving their gaze from her. They watched her till she was four houses away, before they started to scream and cheer again.

The driveways are cracked and crumbled in some parts, with trees taking over the main front lawn of some houses; encasing the silent neighborhood in long shadows.

On the other side of the street teenagers are talking. Their walk is measured with percise steps taken so their heels meet the ground with legs outstretched and spine curved backwards. Their hoodies are gray and covering their faces and she wonders if any of them will grow up to be victims.

Turning a corner a block away from her is a mother with a baby in a stroller. A minute pass and soon she's jogging past, nodding in greating to the mother who seems startled and nervous. The baby gurgles and claps its hands messily, the mother hushes it softly.

9 blocks later, and she's crossing the invisible line between the housing districts.

A block later and the houses are getting larger, the lawns are getting greener, and the sidewalks are perfect.

7 blocks later and she's stopping in front of her house in a white suburbia, listening to the children run up and down the asphalt street. Her breathe is caught in her lungs and she's struggling to regain it, and her adventure to the other side of the fence is done for the day.

7 blocks away is her secret entrance to to a different world hidden in plain site.

7 blocks.

Limits to Infinity.

Some friendships end abruptly—maybe over a love interest, maybe over money, maybe over personal ambition. There might be drama, complete with some exchange of screaming and crying and hysterical reminders of past promises. It's true. Breakups are often ugly.

Not us, though.

One of my favorite authors, John Green, liked to talk about numbers and infinity and how some infinities were bigger than others. Take 0.1, for instance. Then suppose you follow it with 0.11, then 0.111, 0.1111 and so on until you have an infinity of ones. But this isn't as big as the infinity of twos, with 0.2, 0.22, 0.222, 0.2222, and all the rest, each number adding to an infinity twice as big.

I liked to think that we were whole once, years ago--or at least as whole as we could be. Within the wholeness of our selves, we shared a warm, stalwart infinity that would stretch across years, college, careers, marriages, children… We'd remedy our midlife crises with a great big heat-to-heart talk and equally great big quantities of chocolate. I realize now that I was wrong. What we share is not so much infinity as it is infinitesimal, dwindling with every passing week of booked schedules and cancelled dates.

0.1 You play varsity tennis, I do varsity speech.
0.01 The day we're supposed to meet up with old friends, I have plans with my boyfriend.
0.001 I just don't see you at school anymore.

One day, you decide that our infinitesimal is no longer worth the recognition. It has become negligible, no longer a significant figure. Humans may not be inverse functions with asymptotes, but we still have limits that converge on values, except that instead of numbers, those values are usually things like trust, perseverance, and integrity.

So you took our 0.0000001
and rounded down.

From time to time, I still see your face, the flicker of light in your irises, the way you twist your mouth upward into a smile. For a moment I wonder if we are still clinging to that 0.000000001.

But I know better.
We are nothing.
I have other infinities to seek.

fridays

Friday afternoons felt like the only time she ever saw her father, even though every evening when she made the table for dinner she asked if he wanted ice in his water and he always responded.

"No ice, thank you,"

But on Friday afternoons she would treck through the front door, shoulders aching and feet blistered and he would be sitting at the kitchen table, Wall Street Journal in front of him.

To his right, his glasses and a bottle of diet Pepsi.

To his left, a bag of Doritos and Salsa con Queso.

The only sound between the ruffling of his papers was the sound of the jar of queso being slid across table, and they both ignored the countdowns they each were preparing for.

Till his retirement in three years.

Till his eventual knee-surgery sometime this year.

Till his elder daughter finally straightened out her life.

Till his youngest daughter figured out hers.

Till his wife aligned out her spine.

Till the Exterminator comes next Tuesday.

Till the lawn needs to be mowed again.

And all they did was rap their knuckles on the table and slide a jar of Salsa con Queso between the two of them because there wasn't a use waiting.

They never talked during these moments. Then again, they never talked, ever. They were strangers connected by a bond of parent-and-child; now only a girl who made herself grow up when she was 4 and went to her first funeral, and a man who stopped trying to dye his hair after the first of numerous times his health was sapped from his bloody fingernails.

They pass each other in the hallway with nary a glance, but sometimes they ask how the other is doing, and they listen with half an ear; they speak with a quarter of enthusiasm.

When she comes home with tears in her eyes and a heart broken within her crushed and crackled knuckles he offers a band-aid, and a promise of wisdom to come. Stretching his wisdom across a chasm that neither are sure exist anymore, she heals her cuts and he watches, too weary to even attempt to pick up the band-aid that's fallen to the floor.

And when he comes back with curses on his lips and a suitcase full of papers of wrong ideas, she can only offer a reprieve in the promise that he'll be done soon. She lends him an understand look leveled with a promise of brownies over the weekend, and the unspoken deal of not mentioning either of theirs diets.

Sometimes she wants to remember when she was younger and they went on carnival rides together and he was able to pick up dollar bills when they fell to the ground an she wasn't afraid of touching him in fear that his skin will burst from the pressure.

But she dips her doritos into a jar of Salsa con Queso before sliding it back where it barely touches the edge of the Wall Street Journal and she's fine with waiting for deadlines.

Envy.

I know I’m supposed to be happy for you or whatever
but it actually really hurts, like a punch to the stomach that makes me want to vomit.
You're disgusting, you know that?
You're disgusting because you embody all of my id's desires,
everything for which I can't help but lust no matter how much I try and hack away at the baobabs;
the weeds just keep spreading and spreading like a neurotoxin in the bloodstream
until paralysis threatens to clench its vise on my mind
and I can't look at you anymore.

The Music Box

The tiny ballerina twirled on her golden pedestal, a slight smile painted on her rosy lips. Her perfect golden locks were bound up in a bun on the top of her head, and her eyes were closed in Madonna-like bliss. She twirled and twirled, her leg bent gracefully and her arms in a perfect O above her head, heedless of everything but the Tchaikovsky waltz emanating from her music box. She did not notice the little girl who watched her with disheveled blond hair and blue eyes filled with tears, did not notice the yelling from the hall, did not notice the smell of alcohol or the sound of breaking glass. She simply twirled, oblivious to the world around her.

As Marissa watched the dancer in the music box, she sobbed. She thought back to when she got the music box, after her first ballet recital two years ago. It was a gift from her parents, back when Father laughed more than he yelled and when Mother smiled more than she cried. Everything she could remember from those days seemed magical, like a fairy tale-- no, like a dream sequence in a ballet that would never end. Now almost every night there was screaming and shattering and crying coming from the kitchen, as Marissa sat in bed holding her breath, dreading that the angry footsteps and slamming doors would find their way to her room.

One more bottle shattered, and the kitchen door slammed. Marissa heard the dreaded footsteps stomping up steps. She heard muttering now too, angry and threatening and dark. She heard the Tchaikovsky waltz still playing softly, the ballerina's dance winding down. Marissa looked at the golden dancer in the music box. "I wish--"

Marissa twirled on her golden pedestal, a slight smile on her rosy lips.  Her perfect golden locks were bound up in a bun on the top of her head, and her eyes were closed in Madonna-like bliss. She twirled and twirled, her leg bent gracefully and her arms in a perfect O above her head, heedless of everything but the Tchaikovsky waltz emanating from the music box. She did not notice the little girl slumped like a rag doll, disheveled blond hair nearly touching the floor, did not notice the muffled sobs and far-off sirens, did not notice the smell of blood or the glint of shattered glass. She simply twirled, oblivious to the world around her.