A Birthday Dinner in San Diego
8/21/22
Yesterday was one of my sister’s birthday, Paola’s twenty-third. We went down to San Diego to celebrate. I had told her I was planning on spending the whole day there and meeting up with them for dinner, but that she could come along if she wanted. She decided to come with, invited a friend, and we spent the day down south. After a long day, we met up with our family for dinner.
Our family had showed up at the restaurant first and then I had to use the bathroom, so I didn’t pick where I was sat. I was disappointed to see that they had left me a seat next to our mother. I had a headache, and I was tired from being out all day, I didn’t know if I would have the energy to be so close to her and listen to her talk. I ordered a coffee right away, got back up pretty quickly to take of my contact lenses since I remembered that after a while of wearing them, they irritated my eyes. I needed to get into a better mood quick.
My stepdad recently received a green card. After near thirty years of being in this country without any papers, he finally had legal permission to work and be in the country. So this was his first time in many years visiting San Diego and he had driven them down, so my mom had permission to drink. She had one, then another in short order. After she stopped trying to hover over another sister, Yvonne, and her youngest, she relaxed more. We talked about my stepdad’s status for a while and then Yvonne brought up that our grandmother had been calling her youngest by her eldest’s name and couldn’t remember the difference between her two daughters, roughly four years apart, despite being reminded repeatedly.
I pointed out that sounded like a sign of dementia and that she had already been hospitalized once for a stress related panic attack. She had temporarily forgotten something like everyone’s names and didn’t know where she was, I myself don’t remember the details because I had minimized my involvement… But I’m remembering it happened after a brother of hers back in Mexico had suffered a stroke. I talked then to my sisters about the importance of finding healthy ways to process trauma and to deal with things like grief and stress, but didn’t feel it was my role to walk my grandmother through that. Yvonne wasn’t too sure about the mixing up of names being a sign of emotional distress and mental health, but I pointed out the ongoing pattern and my mom, who was seated to the left of me and listening, agreed.
She then took over the conversation and told us that it was just so that the previous night she and her mom had been having a difficult conversation. My sister was impatient with our mom and kept interrupting her with questions, or maybe she felt she was guiding our mom along a conversation. Eventually, mom was able to explain that she felt her mother would be depressed today. They had talked the prior night about how grandma had really messed up one of her youngest siblings, a half-sister named Alejandra. Alejandra was young enough that she was born into my great-grandmother’s alcoholic era, after my great-grandfather had passed and after La Bocha, as they called her, had given into despair and began living from bottle to bottle, man to man, had walked out on her eldest children and would go on to birth, but not mother, several younger half-siblings. Alejandra’s father was one such man, neither wealthy nor educated, but he had wanted to take responsibility of his daughter.
My grandmother decided that she would not permit Alejandra to go live with her father. She threatened to sue, to involve every legal recourse at her disposal to keep Alejandra with La Bocha. And permit me this aside, I forgot to ask when this was all happening, but, based on the threat of legal recourse, I have to imagine this is after my grandmother had attained some sort of establishment within Mexico City and had friends to call on, so by this point my mother was already born. At least, from the way my mom was telling us, it sounded like she had been there to hear my grandmother’s rationalization. My grandmother had decided that her sister could not go with her father because, having already lost her husband, my grandmother figured that La Bocha could not bear the loss of a daughter. So, to spare the mother’s feelings, my grandmother damned her sister to live with an alcoholic mother who beat her and exposed her to the hard life of an Indigenous alcoholic woman in the metropolis of Mexico City. On the outskirts of society, Alejandra was made to suffer untold horrors to spare her mother’s feelings.
It seemed my mother and I were on the same page of what else was being discussed at the table last night. I said something in a very academic Spanish, using bigger words to convey exactly what I meant and to hide from what I was feeling. My sister said something like, “Grandma couldn’t have known.” To which I responded that, “Me parece que esta familia tiene un patrón de poner en alto los sentimientos de un adulto, y especialmente poner esa carga sobre el bienestar de los niños a su alrededor.” My mother agreed with my sister that she will always prefer that a child go with its mother, but that in this circumstance, Alejandra should have gone with her father and that my grandmother should have allowed La Bocha to suffer the distance rather than subject Alejandra to living with a parent who was mentally infirm. She told us she placed that blame squarely on my grandmother, for fighting so hard to prevent Alejandra’s father from taking her. Yvonne protested we seemed harsh, but I said, kindly, that at a certain point it does fall to older siblings to do their best to protect their younger siblings. It isn’t fair, I said, it’s just birth order and responsibilities.
Then, the issue my mom had been dancing around. In discussing this pernicious pattern in our family with my grandmother, she let us know that she had told my grandmother she also saw that in effect in how persistent they had been that I should see and visit my father, be left alone with him, despite my protests to the contrary. We did not revisit that topic in full last night, but when she said that I remembered giving up asking my mom and grandma to stop sending me to my dad’s. Every time I did, they would point out that he gave us money and bought me toys. For a price that was too much for me to talk about then. I couldn’t overcome their concerted effort to keep me going to his place, I didn’t have the language back then to explain that he was molesting me. And, since they simply ignored me every time I said I didn’t want to go back, I kept having to be alone with him.
It is with a bittersweet sensation that I reiterate that it only happened once. Sweet because it did not go further than that, did not happen more than that once. Bitter because it should never have happened. Last night, I simply looked ahead as I heard my mom admit some fault, saw that she was trying something. I don’t know what, I didn’t and don’t currently have the heart to hope. Yvonne didn’t let the silence linger and asked my mom what she hoped to accomplish by having these conversations with grandma. My mom said she wanted our grandmother to grieve, to accept the ways that La Bocha was a horrible person, because since her death our grandmother had done the opposite and was sanctifying the poor woman. I interjected that this felt similar, “Ella tiene que santificar a su madre. Si admite las maneras en que su madre a fallado, tendrá que ver también las maneras en que ella también fallo como madre y abuela. De hecho, nosotros emos hablado eso mismo e…”
I stopped myself as I realized what it was that I had been admitting. I had said the same thing about my mother and our grandmother in our siblings group chat. My sisters had been complaining that our mom couldn’t recognize our grandmother’s faults, couldn’t accept that my sisters needed and were asking from space from our grandmother, space our mom would not allow them to have and would pester them about needing. I had said that exact thing, that our mom could not accept that we were distancing ourselves from our grandmother, could not accept us holding her accountable, because to do so would be to accept that the things our mom had done as well were sufficient to cause harm, to justify distance and possibly the end of a relationship. My mom looked over at me as I let my sentence die mid-thought, but I did not match her gaze. I had told myself I didn’t want to talk about us, about my mother and I, while celebrating my sister’s birthday. A waiter interrupted and I did not pick the topic back up, nor did the opportunity present itself again that evening.
Los Dos Hermanos : Abelardo e Isidro
Quick note. Basically, I was gone because I had to study a lot for two specific exams. I am waiting to hear about the third, but I’m on vacation now and one of my goals is to catch up on writing. I did have things come to mind and I would jot down the skeleton of the idea. Well, here I am now fleshing them out. I’ll say more on a blog post, this is something I want to include in a novel.
A Abelardo nunca le había gustado como se vestía Isidro. Se le hacía como que presumía su feminidad sin cruzar a usar vestido de mujeres. Se ponía anillos, collares, artículos de oro y plata que usaban los otros hombres del pueblo para presumir su dinero, pero la manera en que Isidro los portaba llamaba más la atención a sus manierismos. Cuando se lo reclamaba Abelardo, Isidro contestaba que era su manera de anunciar su negocio. Aparte de ser como juez del pueblo, Isidro vendía hoyas, compradas en Morelia, a donde Isidro se desaparecía cada cuánto.
Y Abelardo no podía negar que Isidro era un buen tío. Sus hijas lo adoraban. Su madre siempre le había pedido que cuidara a su hermano, y así llego a hacer Isidro el padrino de sus dos hijas. Para sus bautizos, a cada una le regalo una cadena lujosa, y cada cumpleaños les tocaba una que otra hoya de su padrino.
De niños, a los dos les toco trabajar en los campos y ayudar a la familia con el ganado. Ya de adolescentes, todavía les tocaba ayudar, pero mientras Abelardo salía con sus amigos, Isidro se quedaba en casa, estudiando. Abelardo y sus amigos iban a los pueblos cercanos a perder los nervios con otras mujeres, antes de que sean de edad para pedir la mano a las novias del pueblo. A Isidro lo invitaban, pero él les decía que se quería ir a estudiar en la universidad de México, así que se quedaba atrás. En verdad, ya veía que por más que los jóvenes del pueblo chuleaban a una chica, a él no le gustaban. Se fue escondiendo en sus libros, con el meta de salir del pueblo y nunca regresar.
Pero esos metas no se lograron. Para continuar sus estudios y hacerse candidato para las universidades, Isidro tenía que salir del pueblo e irse a las ciudades para estudiar. Si su padre hubiera vivido, quizá lo hubiera apoyado. Pero a él lo mataron una noche, cuando ya tomados, dos hombres del pueblo se pelearon. Sacaron pistolas los dos, pero no atinaron ni el uno al otro, y una bala perdida se colocó en el estómago del señor. No hubo tiempo de buscar médico y a Isidro y Abelardo les toco hacerse los encargados de su madre y los terrenos y ganado que les dejo su padre. En vez de salir a las universidades, Isidro termino una carrera simple para ser notario público.
Y fue así, como notario público, que la gente del pueblo lo empezó a llamar el juez del pueblo. Aunque eso le decían, su puesto era simple: firmar papeles, sellar los y someter los al gobierno del estado para registración oficial. Le iba bien, ya que cada vez que trían otro crio a este mundo, a los padres del pueblo les tocaba pagarle a Isidro doble, primero para el acta de nacimiento y después para las hoyas del bautizo. Y también les tocaba ir con Isidro al fallecer los padres, para notarizar el adueñamiento de los terrenos. Tan poco se metía el gobierno en San Jerónimo, que llegaron a considerar a Isidro el representante del gobierno de Michoacán, y así le aumentaban la influencia que tenía.
Mientras su hermano seguía su carrera, Abelardo le dio por buscar la riqueza. Esas noches de adolescente que salía con sus amigos, se encontraban con los meros meros de la región. Entre los amigos se susurraban el nombre del cartel, pero no se atrevían a acercarse. Abelardo se les quedaba viendo de lejos, con envidia en los ojos. Las mujeres que los rodeaban, los tragos que se echaban, carros, ropo, hoyas, todo fino y hasta sus armas chapadas en oro, cada detalle lo notaba Abelardo y se visualizaba en ese mundo. Se dio cuenta cuando y a donde salían esos hombres a patrocinar y los empezó a conocer. Después de un tiempo lo empezaron a usar para mandados al norte, cada vez más lejos. Y así avanzo a su primera cruzada de la frontera, con su carga de armas compradas legalmente en Texas y transportadas ilegalmente a México. Al regresar al pueblo, con la cartera llena, le pidió la mano de Rosa a Don Ignacio y se hizo una gran boda. A los tres padres, que por la voluntad de dios seguían con vida, les toco también estrenar trajes y vestidos, tanto quería presumir Abelardo sus nuevas riquezas.
Si así terminaba la historia, ni la estuviera contando. Obvio que a la Señora Asunción no lo encantaba que su hijo se metiera en ese mundo. Y cuando se dio cuenta de lo que hacía Abelardo, le rogaba que se saliera, aunque ya era muy tarde para quebrar con sus amistades, como los llamaba Abelardo. Se ponía a llorar cuando Abelardo le decía que se iba a un mandado, hasta que se cansó Abelardo de los llantos y le alzo la voz, de manera firme pero con todo respeto, que ya no quería escuchar estas preocupaciones. Con él se los callo. Se iba a casa de Isidro cuando Abelardo salía del pueblo, para seguir so otra preocupación. A Isidro le decía que lo quería ver casado antes de que ella se muriera. Ni Abelardo dejo de trabajar con los narcotraficantes, ni Isidro se casó, y fue así como los nervios la mataron.
Este no se trata del narcotráfico, así que bastante con decir que, en San Jerónimo, se fue metiendo más el narcotráfico, y así disminuyo la influencia del gobierno oficial. Si es cierto que el narco no siempre jode al pueblo, ya que terminaron la carretera a San Jerónimo y a la escuela le construyeron un nuevo edificio, eso típico que se escucha en las series de narcos. Pero también buscaban reemplazar a gente en posiciones oficiales con su gente, sean comprados o colegas. Y por eso se le acercaron a Isidro. Ya tenían a un hermano en la nómina, no pensaban que el otro se les negara.
Quizá pensaba Isidro que Abelardo lo iba proteger contra sus socias. Hasta que le taparon la boca, le rogaba a su hermano. Invocaba el nombre de su madre, de sus sobrinas, pero Abelardo sabía que ya había poco que podía hacer por su hermano. Le había advertido que lo iban a querer sobornar, que, si no quería estar en este negocio se tenia que ir, pero que él no lo podía ayudar. Pero ni esfuerzo izo Abelardo, y estaba con sus socios cuando asaltaran a Isidro en la carretera, iba de regreso de Morelia. Les pido nada mas que lo mataran rápido y que lo enterraran con las hoyas que traía puestos. Pues es que por fin se pudo deshacer de esas hoyas, y les dijo a sus socios, “Se van a ver como un par de maricas si los usan ustedes. Mejor entiérrenlas.”
Lost Connections and Birthday Wishes
I deleted all my social media. I wanted to focus on studying and get my state license out of the way so I can potentially transfer out of the agency where I work at now. The pay raise alone was not incentive enough for me to care, but I realized I didn’t truly like where I was working. It’s not the job, but the environment, isolated from my coworkers because I don’t want to get to know them and I don’t want them to know I’m queer. That’s what I told some coworkers who do somewhat know me, who I am out to because they themselves are family or allies. As I complained about at work, if there’s about 250 engineers at work and let’s say 6 or 7% of us combined are some form of LGBT per the latest company survey, that’s only about 15 total? One of my friends admitted she had preferred not to say, so we rounded up to 16 total engineers throughout the agency who were some flavor of not-straight.
I complained, it’s not about the numbers, but that conformity, that adherence to socially conservative values was felt. Our upper managers with their stay-at-home wives, the way everyone was always talking about marriage and then kids. I didn’t admit it at our dinner, but it’s been harder to go through this family stuff and have to say very little about it at work.
See, I couldn’t mindlessly scroll on my phone at work this week since I had deleted everything to focus on studying. It was good for my work flow too, I might as well focus on work to prevent any boredom. Ok, finally outputting what I used to in my old section, when I could work so much that I didn’t have to think about my personal life. Well, this job is more steady than that, lots of work but all a constant steady stream rather than a constant chaotic stream. So I needed a lunch break, I took my lunch break and went out to get coffee at the local shop up the street, perhaps it counts as the heart of Compton. Inside the shop, plenty of students working a local zine, a new addition to the shop. Writers and poets of South LA, the eleventh edition. I grabbed it and my coffee, took it back to my car. I had been planning on reading anyway, although a different novel, more academic, less artistic.
I read about family, about growing up in South LA, Covid, the things people had lost, the ways their families had been mistreated. Then I read about a guy who, this poet who used English in one half of the sentence and Spanish in the next, Spanglish here and there. He really mixed it up, the magic lost on me. He said something about English, this tongue we’re all forced to learn here, our second language. Then Spanish, the language of our homes but itself a colonial legacy. Then he mentioned Nahuatl and I rolled my eyes. Yes it was the most common language in pre-colonial Mexico, but first, we can’t all be descended from them and second, they themselves were conquerors. They didn’t stamp out the other languages, Mexico recognizes something upwards of 60 different Indigenous languages and many, many more dialects, so perhaps they were kinder in their conquest than the Spaniards.
But that’s not why I started crying. This poet traced a connection to Nahuatl through his antecedents, through his parents (not Nahuatl speakers themselves, as if it mattered). I started crying because of how disconnected I felt from my own parents, how abandoned from them I felt, again. And again. I had recently seen my biological father, but that gulf would always be there. My mother was still blocked from contacting me directly, but our connection was never good. I couldn’t call and ask for motherly advice, seek her out just to hear her laugh. She only called to yell at me, only texted to be upset, or to her credit, sometimes just to make plans to see her on the weekend, but the last time she yelled at me it was because I wasn’t available. She had told me she wasn’t to blame for anything that happened in my childhood. She confirmed what I had always felt, that it was just me taking care of myself.
And maybe it was that I had been drinking and smoking all weekend, but also it was that I didn’t have social media to numb that pain, but I felt so tired to acknowledge that again, that it was just me taking care of my mental and emotional health. No one was around to lend a hand, no one to reassure me.
I remembered sobbing at the end of Gentified, the grandparent was finally able to return to Michoacan to see a grave of maybe his own father? I saw the name again just now, I wanted to verify they had gone to Michoacan, all the reviewers just said Mexico as if that was specific enough. But the tears have already started and I couldn’t make out the name. My grandmother couldn’t go see her mother before she died because she was scared of crossing back across the border without papers and she didn’t want to risk it. We tried to convince her, my mom and I, telling her we were old enough, her son was only a year younger than me he was old enough too. She didn’t go in the end, didn’t get to say goodbye. I’m thinking it through now and actually, she was probably in Mexico City getting help from one of my great-uncles, being cared for by his wife. But we are from Michoacan so that and the song plating near the end, one by La Santa Cecilia. The familiarity made the scene far more painful than it was intended. I just rewatched it, there’s not a single tear in the scene and they joke about tacos. I was sobbing the first time I watched that scene, wailing into my pillow so as not to scare my neighbors.
Anyway, I wasn’t sobbing like that in my car at lunch, but I was crying. And I thought, this old pain again? It wasn’t as bad as watching the show finale, but it felt disproportionate to what I had just read. So I figured I’ve just been holding on to all of this for a while. I didn’t have social media to help me numb the pain anymore and so it was allowed to surface. Indeed, the rest of the week has been a mix of the best days and the worst. I cut out the pre-workout too, the blood it was drawing elsewhere was making certain things difficult, combined with all this anxiety from scrolling through the apps. I still set a new PR for deadlifting. But there have been nights where the sorrow takes the spotlight and I feel the loneliness, aching as I am for physical connection and warmth. I wonder, what would I feel like today had my parents been that for me, cared for me and nurtured me in that way. Would I be a colder man, less aware of the myriad ways to feel at odds with the hegemony?
I was sitting in the barber chair, telling myself I deserved the extra cost and pampering of asking for a shave along the fresh cut. The thought occurred to me that I should forward you some money so you could do the same on your fiftieth birthday next week. Well, whatever the equivalent would be for you, to have your hair and makeup done up perhaps. My barber had been telling me of her travels, a concert she’d been to and I was jealous, glad she was out travelling but wishing I had seen that artist in his home country. “Bueno, esta vida solo hay una.”
So I sent you the money and cried, because it wasn’t enough to take away all the pain that you had gone through but also, because of all the pain you had put me through. I know better now, what I didn’t know then when you raised your hands in anger to strike me. That was all you knew. Faced with the uncertainty of the world and the difficulties of a country that did not welcome you even as it sought to exploit your labor, you took all that confusion out on your eldest children. The younger sisters you told us were too young to understand. I suppose you really believed that, that we were old enough to understand, and needed that to be the case, so you could hit us when it was all too overwhelming and we spoke out of turn.
I wish I knew then how to stay quiet. I wish back then I had the resources to help, instead of being another mouth to feed. I didn’t have much of a childhood anyway, you swept me up into your problems.
But I know now and see that your mother did the same, as was done to her as well. She was the eldest and orphaned. Did I see the connection growing up, between what had happened to my grandmother and what the state here threatened to do to us. Only once have my sisters seen the contortion in my face, when you accused me of saying I didn’t know what you had been through. I answered back, trying not to cry, squeezing my face muscles to prevent any tears, “You never hid anything from me and I was always your smartest kid, apologies to my sisters. I grew up in fear that one day I would come home and la migra would have gotten the three of you. I knew I would drop out of school to take care of my sisters. I hope they never knew that fear.”
But you didn’t put me through that, not directly and not without trying to improve the situation. Still, you didn’t really have the means and you didn’t have the people to lean on around you. Neither did I. There were no uncles and aunts around us, they were all back home in Mexico. We were alone, the three of us, then the four of us, then the five of us, our family grew and relatives migrated here. In time we had connections, but the burden often falls on the first, the oldest or the ones who moved away, and the three of us in a straight line were the eldest: your mother, of her five siblings; yourself, first of all the cousins and then many years later, the much older sister of my uncle; myself, only four of us total and the only boy.
Part of the love I have for my siblings has been in seeing the pain you had dealing with this all alone. My sister and I have never been alone dealing with you. We’ve backed each other up, called you out on each other’s behalf, reminded each other that yes that really happened after confronting you and you saying no it didn’t. Your mother does the same to you and I see it in your face that you doubt your memories, the childhood traumas that on the eve of your fiftieth birthday still give you nightmares, can still break you down into a sobbing mess. I have seen it, but I cannot heal you any more than someone could heal me. I could empathize, but it’s hard to do so when I know you’ll turn around and blame me, somehow. So when my sisters ask for something that is within my means to give, I do. And I always try to be there for them, as, they were for me without knowing it.
I wouldn’t have made it this far without something else to live and work for. I was ready to throw my own life away, to chase the dragon and leave this unloved flesh behind. Back then especially, before I had even begun to process what had been done to my body, I couldn’t stand to be in it, to feel that same flesh that responded in pleasure to unwanted stimulus. But I held back from destroying myself after you kicked me out of your house because of them, my sisters. I knew you’d fall apart and blame them, hurt them as you had hurt me. I have seen the people who taught you that behavior and they are not happy in their old years, though they may still outlive me.
So I don’t blame you for taking it out on me. They took it out on you first. You were and are responsible for your actions, but you also truly didn’t know better. And you pressed on anyway, as I did, so you should still have that money. Treat yourself… I believe you did your best for what it’s worth…
A Place for my Head
I promised myself I’d write more frequently and even tried to set a schedule, but then I thought about what I was writing and wanted to write about and realized I didn’t actually want to go through with it then. Instead, I went from one plan to another, on a trip here or there, hiking with friends, sometimes just playing video games, but always living in the moment and participating. I knew I was running away from the people that bring problems into my life, but I didn’t think it was a bad thing. I was out looking for people and things to enjoy life with, I’ve worked so hard for this why not bury the past and enjoy the present.
It wasn’t that any of the childhood pain had really gone away, rather, I no longer needed to acknowledge it if I was never around any of the triggers. I had blocked my mom and grandma so they, especially my mom, could no longer directly reach out to me. I had worried it would put additional labor on my sisters, but my mom only acknowledges it indirectly, making the mildest of comments such as “Oh, I can send you that pic if you want.” Meaning, if I unblocked her. How absolutely benign compared to her tone when I was younger. How respectful compared to the last things she texted me before I blocked her.
My father was in Mexico and it was truly, out of sight, out of mind. Yes, when a cousin had come by and prodded about our relationship, I snapped at him, because I carry around so much anger and hatred at him. What he did to me and how normal he wants things to be annoys me. I hate him so much and I let it burn through me and refuse to let it go; I see it as a source of comfort, in its familiarity, but also strength, in the way the anger propels me on a swim, at the gym, on a run. So when he called to ask if I had time to see him, I quickly said no.
And that would have been that if not for his sister, my aunt, meddling. She asked me directly if I would make the time to hang with him and I couldn’t say no to the aunt who took me in when my mom kicked me out. My brother-in-law, and my therapist I’m sure would have agreed with him, said that I could absolutely have said no and not offered an explanation to my aunt as to why it disgusted me to be around my father. But, as much as I hate my father, this was the aunt who stepped in when I was a spiraling youth, reeling from what my parents had done to me, and offered a loving home, a place to stay and recover. So I made plans to see him for breakfast, agreeing to pick him up from a different aunt’s house.
I knew I was anxious about seeing him so I set an alarm to get my up early for a swim and, because I wanted to run from what I was feeling, I stayed up late playing video games in an attempt to escape from reality. It was too late to get up that early on a normal morning but I was up the next day before my alarm, snoozing it out on my way out because I couldn’t sleep. A quick swim, deliberately wearing extra layers over my clothes and under, boxers, shorts, pants, and then I headed to my aunt’s house.
Until I parked my car, I was thinking, any little thing from him and I’ll take off. If he greets me wrong, if the breeze happened to blow a certain way, if any of my aunt’s neighbors had said anything; I was praying for a reason not to see him as I walked up to my aunt’s house. I knocked on the door and he opened it. He went for a hug, I raised a shaking hand, and then settled on a quick hug, trying to be polite. My aunt came out of her room to see who had come in and I was relieved, a warmer hug. It’s not that I was trying to slight my father with the contrast, it’s that my body was yelling at me for letting his come into so close contact with mine. Every cell in my body was working overtime to alert me and I was fighting with equal parts numbness and distress, mind over matter, breathe in and breath out.
We had breakfast together, a place recommended by my aunt. The conversation was short, cordial. I think there were times my dad delivered lines that were punchlines, he would pause expecting laughter. I no longer had it in me to perform those reactions for my parents and least of all my father. He mentioned how large the chickens he is raising are and paused, saying, again “mis gallos.” I repeated it “tus gallos,” indicating I was listening then looked back into my coffee cup. As much as possible, I avoided eye contact, something that I have to conscientiously remind myself to do with friends but was not going to fight to do for my father.
We got through it though. He didn’t say anything shitty and I tried to ask follow up questions sometimes. I picked up the tab. He talked about his finances and I told him I was happy to hear he had enough to fund his lifestyle. I didn’t elaborate that I have been worried for some time that the day will come when I’ll be asked to help him out with money and I’ll have to communicate that he never once tried to help my mom and I with our financial situation. Hell, he fought not to give me money for school programs or the like, things that contributed to my position now, but that he opposed then. What could I owe him? But what was the point of having that fight now.
When we got back to my aunt’s place, her boyfriend was there. He commented that I had grown, was even greeting him differently and in a more mature way. I laughed and my aunt was confused a bit by what he meant. I caught on right away but I let him elaborate and then said, “Hey, it’s nothing personal, it’s just usually when I see you it’s when I’m with my cousin and that’s always a little awkward. It’s nothing against you and I’m not trying to interfere or anything, but you know my cousin and well it’s easier to just keep some distance.” He was cool, wasn’t surprised, and then my aunt let us know that’s why she’d had tears in her eyes when we came in, they were having issues again, her kids, her ex, lots of anger still swirling around. She was in and out of our conversation as she had to get ready to leave for work, then she did leave and her boyfriend kept talking.
He talked and talked, his issues with his kids, his side of the story with my cousin, how he knew my cousins blamed him for the divorce even though my aunt and uncle had split long before their first date. They were business partners and already knew each other though, so it was easy for my cousins to see him as the cause rather than a symptom of my aunt and uncle’s marital problems. That part was good, relieving, lots of laughter, he’s a schmoozer. I could ignore my own feelings and just relax, not having to carry the conversation for my father, who was once just as quiet as I am now. At some point he discussed a therapy lite program he had been to, some sort of 6-month self-help, emotional wellness program. Well, he mentioned a woman who had gotten up and told the program how her dad used to come home drunk and get in bed with them, in the morning excusing himself as saying that he’d been to drunk to tell it wasn’t his wife he was sleeping with. She said she never recovered from that. And my usual stone face broke, because I felt my eyes dart to my side, where thankfully my father no longer was.
I left soon after, too many feelings, too close to home that end. Except the poor woman said she had developed certain feelings there, the lines between father and lover more blurry because he’d actually raised her. Perhaps that has been the silver lining in all of this. I can hate my father for what he did without any feelings of guilt for the typical ways fathers support their children. He did none of that and thus freed me from obligations to his feelings, his well-being. None of that belongs to me and so I can go off the rest of the day and relax. Lift weights, catch a nap, go out with friends and return to the bachelor lifestyle without caring for him. But perhaps too, it is time to let go of the rage. I don’t need it anymore.
The sad old man who sat across from me at breakfast is not the same man who molested me. If I could go back in time and kill him then and there, fight him at that moment, perhaps I would experience some satisfaction. But beating up the pathetic senior from this morning… It’s not that I’d feel guilty, it’s just that it wouldn’t be much of a fight. His life has already worn him down, as it wears us all down.
I went out hiking with a guy I have a little history with, not a casi algo but a todavia nada complicado? Like communication is spotty and we’re both happy to drop each other at a moment’s notice but we’ve also been fucked up and naked together. After hiking and dinner we went out for drinks, although before leaving we’d smoked some of his pot. He had told me he’d preferred indicas to sativas, the sleepy stuff to the fun stuff. I preferred the opposite, the fun stuff. We very quickly drank a lot and I got to the moment where, had I been with my friends, I would have been wrapped around them, “I just love you guys so much! You’re so great.” Yes, I am that friend when I’m around the people I hold dear. But I wasn’t in that moment so I started texting them instead and his friends noticed. When they asked why I was so distracted I let them know that I missed my friends and was telling them I loved them, didn’t feel like I could tell them that. In fact, I told one of them, I thought this guy would react very poorly if I started saying I loved you to people around him. He self-described as cold and carried that energy even into the gay bars. He reminded me of my parents, not surprisingly, they had been raised in the same country. As cold as ice, as brittle too and quick to shatter.
I left the bar soon after, I knew I wanted to be around people who could reciprocate on the emotional front too. Not just fiery passion and anger but love and light. I knew in that moment that I wouldn’t find anything different that night than what my parents have always given me, burden without comfort, responsibility without reciprocity. I could always depend on my parents asking me for things, but I could never depend on them letting me have a moment of comfort with them.
Denial of Desire
I took a long break from updating the site because of the holiday season and to wrap my head around where I wanted to go next with my writing. Basically, I have had an idea going around in my head for quite a while now and I sat down to outline it, create a writing schedule and give myself prompts to flesh out the narrative. Life has its own plans, but for now the schedule is to sit down and write weekly. The posts themselves are not going to be in any specific order, but I figure this way I can get my stuff up and string together a cohesive narrative. For the sake of organization, I’m keeping it all under one category, Ricardo. Other posts will be categorized accordingly but I’ll reserve this one for this new project. Anyway, without further ado:
—-
I registered a flash of recognition on his face before he approached. I had just seen him in the gym locker room and we’d both had the same thought, head to the park afterwards to cruise. It answered two questions, “Had I met him before?” and “Do people here recognize me in our outside life?” The answer to both questions it turned out was yes. He stopped in front of me and as I reached down to grab him, he returned the gesture. I was relieved to feel that he wasn’t hard yet either as I was worried, he would move on if I wasn’t ready.
“I’ve seen you at the gym right?”
“Yea man, I just saw you at the locker room, but we’ve met before. You’re looking a lot leaner by the way. Keep it up. So?”
“Let’s go to the darker spots.”
We walked through the park bleachers to a darker area. I leaned back against the little league fence and pulled my sweats down a bit. He pulled his own down and then pulled mine to my ankles, groping my legs and running his fingers through my body hair. He started stroking himself and squeezing my ass, then went down on, his hands still holding onto me and pulling me closer into him. For a moment I froze, unsure if this was affection or lust on his part. I figured it didn’t matter right now and moved his baseball cap aside so I could grab his head, stroke his hair and push in with more leverage. He stayed down and kept using his hands to push my clothes further off me, letting his hands explore every fuzz covered part of my body.
I let him know that I wanted to eat him out and asked to switch positions. I pushed him up against the fence and pulled his pants down, pulling mine up in the process. I dropped to my knees and pushed his cheeks aside so I could get in there. He had definitely put on more muscle since the last time I had seen him at the gym. I started to finger him to see if he was comfortable with going further and although he said yes, he kept shuffling his body in such a way that I could not enter him. He was just tall enough that I would need him to angle differently to enter and he kept hovering just out of reach.
I persisted in the position, less so because I wanted to be inside him and more so to continue pressing against him, kissing the back of his neck and reaching around to feel his pecs and pinch his nipples. He wasn’t completely smooth either, although I was the hairier one of the two. I felt the hair on his stomach, around his nipples, kept kissing his back and holding him while I thrust behind him, not quite in him but with my member rubbing along his crack. I couldn’t deny that I was enjoying the moment, but beneath it all was a different type of desire.
I had noticed him in the locker room because he stood out from the older gentlemen, who were all rushing to finish their own trysts before the gym closed. That gym in particular has an active scene and even before I had moved to the area, I would go there on the chance that after a workout, I would find a warm, willing body in the showers or steam room. I hadn’t been looking at that moment, seeing no point in rushing to hook up at this gym in the moments before closing when I knew the park was nearby. So it was that I flashed a smile in his direction, seeing that he was also rushing to get dressed and therefore wouldn’t take it as an offer for anything. I just hadn’t seen him in a while and I remembered having a good time prior.
He registered the smile and looked down but I thought nothing of it. I figured perhaps this wasn’t the guy I remembered. I didn’t think more of it and headed out to my car, drove a couple minutes away to the park and pulled in. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re out of the little league season or if the park closes earlier when it’s cold, but I was glad to find the park dark, with the lights already off. I recall being worried about actually stepping outside of my car because although I was open to the idea of getting off, I knew that what I really wanted was to spend the night with someone. It had been cold recently so the thought of watching a movie, kicking back with some weed and beers, and making out on my couch had been running through my head.
I pushed the thought away and stepped out, figuring that I was there anyway, may as well take care of business. I had just stepped into the area by the bleachers when I noticed him approaching me and we got down to it.
We continued, not as we were but changing positions and moving when other people got too close. Neither seemed interested in having others join and I appreciated the way he kept running his fingers through my body hair, finding new spots to caress, and pressing his body against mine just as much as I was pressing on his. That earnestness and desire brought to mind the scene on my couch, back home, cozy and enwrapped in each other. For a moment, just a moment, I waded too far into daydream and began to lose my erection, too much of my blood was being pumped to my heart instead of my dick. So I pushed the thoughts away again.
“Are you close?”
“Yea, I can get there but I have to use my hand. This is good but,”
“Oh no,” he interrupted, “I’m the same way.”
“Can I eat your ass while you jerk off? You’ve really been putting on muscle, haven’t you?”
“Thanks man and yea,” he turned around and I pushed his cheeks aside with my hands, taking a firm grasp before I spit at his asshole, the hair catching my saliva before I pushed it in with my tongue. As he finished I could feel the spasms running through his body and he clenched his cheeks against my face and tongue, both squeezed rhythmically. It was my turn and I stood up and he gripped me again, facing each other and pulling me into him. My chin came up to his shoulder height and I remembered dancing with an ex this way, he was slightly taller than me so I had rested my head on his shoulder as we drunkenly moved along to the music.
I turned away from this man and asked him to keep grabbing my ass but faced away from him and didn’t back up into him. I was forgetting myself for a moment, forgetting the time and the place, and needed to ground myself to wrap up. I finished, making sure to miss my sweats which were still down to my ankles, squeezed out the last drops and flicked them away. We thanked each other and headed out. No other words were spoken, but he beelined to his car and I detoured to the restroom to rinse off my hands and face, not wanting to smell like anything when I got home.
I drove to my empty home and went to bed, pushing away the thoughts I had had of passing the night in another’s company.
Loving and Forgiving an Abused Body
I went back and forth on how to start this post, because it covers a lot of recent progress. In short, I had been having dissociative and dysphoric feelings lately, including wanting to transition to leave my body behind. This seems to be the more mature version of the suicidal ideation of my youth, itself a response to childhood sexual trauma foremost and shame at how my body reacted then. However, in so far as I can’t leave my body and memories behind, I have no choice but to continue living life to the fullest. Further, I vowed to work toward building a stronger support system such that, if in the future I want to transition, I will have an easier time doing so than if I started that process today.
I had just written about trans thoughts that had coming and going. It is perhaps more appropriate to identify them as a type of intrusive thought, not exactly a desire to transition. These intrusive thoughts come in different shades, sometimes violent, sometimes critical, near constant. I had worried there was something more there and, as if it was reading my thoughts, Tik Tok showed me a video of a marine who had transitioned later in life after being a meathead and gym rat in his youth. The music for the video is MGMT’s “Little Dark Age” and the specific lyrics that triggered the discomfort are “forgiving who you are… just know that if you hide, it doesn’t go away.” I have been struggling with this idea for quite some time and saw its echoes in different media I was consuming. I’ll return to the idea of transitioning further below, but at this time and as I’ve stated, these thoughts feel more like aspects of the way I’m still responding to childhood trauma.
I hadn’t connected the dots until this past Friday, after a Halloween weekend that I spent out drinking and not sleeping. I was listening to the Cerebro podcast episode on Illyana Rasputina and the host, Connor Goldsmith, and his guest and current writer in the X-verse, Leah Williams, were commenting that Chris Claremont intentionally wrote parallels between the way Illyana’s and Magneto’s lives were shaped by trauma. They continued to reflect on how both these characters took an immense trauma in their youth and made it a source of strength. Beyond the aforementioned characters is the trend in comics for characters to have a defining moment rooted in trauma, which usually results in a new code name or new powers. I considered how I have tried to move past my own trauma in the same way, turning it into a source of strength. I recalled a recent interaction with a laborer, staring up at this 300 pound plus worker who, in a moment of frustration, had gotten in my face to yell at me about a side decision I was enforcing that would result in an expensive rework. I had recently told my mom how all the physical abuse from her and her mother had toughened me up in this way, let my blood run cold when I should be worried about getting swung on. I had the opportunity then to show that strength, took a short breath and then, “I understand that you are upset and can empathize, really, I know it will cost time and money, but the decision has been made.”
To be clear, the problem isn’t that I can keep cool in these situations. My parents taught me to keep my face still and not show emotion, lest I suffer the wrath of their insecurities. When my mom saw the wrong thing on my face, she would pick a fight with me and make the problems in her life my fault for having been born. This is not an environment that encourages softness, vulnerability, and emotional expressiveness, especially toward my parents.
I can, by appreciating how that upbringing allows me to work in a male dominated, homophobic and racist environment, make peace with that trauma. However, even after these years of therapy, there are still times I wish I wasn’t. If you could could fall asleep on the plane and wake up as someone else, would you? I thought this came from Chuck Palahniuk’s books, but I can’t find the quote. The short answer is yes, absolutely; the longer answer is that I’m going to have to talk to my therapist about this, because I think at the root of the trans thoughts I’ve been having lately is a desire to not exist anymore, to escape from my traumatized past and just move on by leaving my self behind. Back to the comics, I envied characters that could transform their bodies and I envisioned being able to change my body and leave the trauma behind, leave behind the way my body responded to the physical stimulus of when sex was done to me. The greatest shame I still carry is that my member grew erect when my father was touching it, touching me. Perhaps it is the last bridge I have to cross, especially now as a grown man whose body does not react to such stimuli. My young body was overwhelmed, the newness of the physical sensation overcoming the emotional turbulence, and I have to accept that this didn’t mean I was enjoying what my father was doing to me.
I had hoped I was past this… past the thoughts of escaping my body due to the sexual trauma. Halloween gave me the opportunity to transform, to put on a different character literally and leave myself behind. I took advantage of it, worked on different costume ideas, and then partied hard. The revelry left me depleted and in desperate need of some alone time. I stayed up two nights playing video games, strategy games in which I could perfectly micro-manage everything until I snowballed into a victory. A gentle form of escaping life, because, even after all this success, I do not want my life or my body. The shame is still gnawing away and came back, manifesting this time as desires to transition.
I had been scared to look at the thoughts head on, was terrified that perhaps these feelings were legitimate and that, if I engaged them more fully, I would end up wanting to transition. It’s possible they are legitimate, but there is a greater context of a history of self-destructive tendencies that I developed over the years to deal with what was going on to me. Ever strategic, I found socially approved but still masochistic hobbies: lifting heavy weights, running long distance, grueling hikes. Other hobbies tended toward escapism: reading, video games late into the night, binging shows. In them I was looking to either hurt my body or escape it, driven by shame and disgust. So it was this newest obsession, transitioning to escape my body, in hopes that the memories of what had happened and how I reacted would stay with this shell. But this isn’t a comic, and the memory wouldn’t suddenly disappear, it would go with me.
Since I can’t escape, I have to move toward acceptance. Reintegration. Allowing myself the grace to have been a child then and know that the situation wouldn’t turn out the same way now. Couldn’t. I have confronted my dad on this and have even gone so far as to fight him. I have done right by my younger self thus far, but I need to find a way to forgive and love my body. To treat it right as it’s the only one I have.
What if the feelings are legitimate though?
On Twitter, I saw a chart posted from a study on why people were detransitioning. The chart included things like job insecurity, familial disapproval, and generally other societal pressures. I don’t have the energy to deal with the worst of us right now. I’ve already been exposed to the depravity of humanity and those scars have not fully healed. Thus, if the feelings are legitimate, they will need to wait. And I will be ok with that. I will focus on building for myself stronger support systems, continuing in therapy, and advancing my financial well being such that, if I wanted to transition later in life, I would be better shielded from the worst of us. That’s not the here and now. Just this week, I was the butt of homophobic jokes from my coworkers, with my supervisor joining in.
To my future self though, my sole focus and drive won’t be to transition. It will be to build a support system that lets me be happier. If, once that is more established, future me wants to transition, so be it and I hope not to judge myself for waiting. After all, just transitioning won’t bring me happiness, won’t let me escape what happened.
On that final note, I have learned and am learning how to sit with the discomfort of life. The least I can get from all of this is resiliency, learning how to process negativity and move on from life’s little struggles without letting them steal the moment’s joy. Given how bad it can actually get, why ruin the present sweating the details.
Wanting Not so Much as to Transition
Last week I went out with a friend to Rough Trade in Silver Lake and purchased another set of leather gear. I had a cheaper one, fake leather, this was the real deal. I needed to go to purchase leather arm bands for a Halloween costume and had invited Ben to come along. The store itself was great, the service perhaps a little too friendly, but I was happy with what I had purchased. Butch, masculine, hot, all these words ran through my mind while I flexed into the mirror of the dressing room. The attendant was quick to compliment my body hair and was letting me undress in the middle of the store to try on more gear, a stark contrast to the local store in Long Beach that hadn’t let me try on a harness without a shirt on. Ben seemed a little underwhelmed with the attention he was getting at the store, or perhaps had wanted to join in. I wasn’t sure whether the attendant was his type and I didn’t know how to tell him I was just playing along to see if I could get a discount or freebies.
Yes, I have no problem admitting I am that sleazy and available.
We left there and after a quick detour for ramen, headed to the Eagle with our gear under our street clothes. I had let him know that I had been there recently and stuck with my friends, most of the guys seemed these unapproachable packs of white, hypermasculine alphas. The vibe this night was different, a slightly more diverse crowd but largely still crowds of friends sticking to each other and not leaving much room for strangers to approach. We fell into the same pattern until a handsome stranger came our way. There’s nothing exciting coming next though. I learned Ben is even quieter than I and at some point we both let the conversation drop and the handsome stranger wandered away. Moments passed when I realized I should have asked anything to have kept the conversation going. These moments in the bar happen quicker than on the work site, where I can leave space to gather my thoughts, although there the contractors have to let me talk.
I had been angling to go to Puteria in downtown LA and Ben eventually agreed that would be the better spot. We headed out and drank and danced till the shirts came off and our harnesses were on display. It was the point of the night that other guys were taking their shirts off and we weren’t the only ones with light gear on. By the end of the night, back at his place and in his own way, Ben noted that he was somewhat jealous of the attention I had received. I was serving masculinity, muscle bear top, short king. I was disturbed to discover one of the guys I had made out with was looking for masc4masc on Grindr and had written an article on how to attract a masculine boyfriend.
All this over attributes I’ve either been forced to adapt, for ease of work purposes, or never had any control over, the copious amounts of body hair.
Yesterday at the gym I had what I saw someone on Twitter summarize as trans thoughts and I wondered what all the guys I talked to last weekend would have to say about that. When I had brought it up in prior sessions of therapy my current therapist hadn’t seemed to care? Maybe she hadn’t noted it down or I just hadn’t given it the weight. I had told her, “I wished I had been born a girl, so that these grown men and women would have treated me as a child rather than a young man.” In the context of our conversation regarding childhood trauma, it seems easy to imagine she had other topics to cover. Recently I mentioned these thoughts and she discounted them, perhaps didn’t catch them again. It’s not that I believe she’s uncomfortable with the topic but it does seem like she doesn’t have much experience with trans individuals. Not that I want to transition…
I was stoned and adding music to my playlist and I remembered Laura Jane Grace in Against Me!’s lyrics, “You’ve got no cunt in your strut/ You’ve got no hips to shake…” and “A fucked up kind of feminine.” A wave of emotional resonance passed through me, the weed doing its job to inhibit my emotional guards. The next second, an unease and queasiness emanated from my stomach and I thought to myself, “I thought I was over this.”
Lately I’ve been trying to accept the parts of my personality that come from the traditional way I was raised, full on Mexican machismo. My mother still won’t admit to it, but there’s a reason I’m able to get along with my conservative, old school coworkers. These are men, we are men, and we’re working together to complete construction projects. Grunt! No feelings! Anyone who gets overly emotional gets mocked, although I’ve gotten worked up and shown the range of feelings stemming from anger that are appropriate for men. I’m sadly more scared to join our design teams because there are more women and I don’t know how I’ll fare there and stay closeted. It’s not too hard to dodge relationship questions, because again, these are traditional men. Most of them are easy to set off on a rant about their wives and just want sounding boards. I’ve even stopped trying to lose weight and have focused on just gaining muscle and fat, getting bigger and heavier. The last break through at therapy was that it was totally ok to throw down to defend myself. My words not hers, but the more clinical way she put it isn’t as funny.
So I was surprised to still be imagining myself as a woman, desiring my body to be lighter and curvier in their way. In the past I know I have recoiled at the attention I got from other men, hidden myself from the male gaze. Lately though, I had been feeling more comfortable in that spotlight, had been defending myself from unwanted touching and had even experienced a resurgence in my libido. So again, why now?
Perhaps more terrifying was the thought, “What if this never goes away?” What if I will always find myself desiring to have been born a woman. To the questions of what superpower I would want, I have often answered shapeshifting and mentioned wanting to be able to switch between man and woman. Flight was the other frequent answer, to fly rather than run from my problems. Often too, I have lamented that I wish I were a lesbian, with all its implications. I see the chasm I could cross but like a green light across the lake, I will not reach it.
I don’t want to undergo an expensive process and find myself regretting it, desiring the ability to pass again as a straight man when necessary. Look at today. I have walked about 10 minutes away from where I parked, perhaps more actually because the entire time I was looking at my phone, chatting away with my cousins. I will walk back through downtown Los Angeles to my car, drop off my laptop, and go get myself into trouble. I couldn’t do this so easily were I woman. My costume for this adventure? My work boots, business casual attire, a jean jacket and my virility. It’s not that I won’t be fucked with if I stupidly walk into Skid Row, it’s that I am not scared to wander around on my own.
Also, the body hair will be really hard to get rid off… And there’s a lot of that!
Stepping into Kink and BDSM: Taking Inventory of my Mental State Before the Journey
Dan Savage hosted Leigh Cowart to chat about their book Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose on this week’s episode of Savage Love. As I was listening during work, I only caught bits of it but was excited to learn that our bodies and brains are complex enough to be able to interpret physical pain during sex as something erotic, to take into consideration that you’re in an aroused state and let you enjoy what in another situation would only be pain. I have wanted to explore BDSM, have my ropes and regularly ask guys to bite a little harder, but have been too scared to jump further in. I’m afraid of triggering some trauma response, especially right now when I feel I am doing so well. Plus, I’m still carrying around this shame for how I used to be in the bedroom, often channeling anger and insecurity to hammer away, to choke a little harder, to take out frustrations on mine and my partner’s bodies. This was back when I couldn’t bottom either, too angry and insecure in my sexuality to relax. I’m also ashamed of how I used to be in the bedroom, often channeling anger and insecurity to hammer away, to choke a little harder, to take out frustrations on mine and my partner’s bodies. That’s why my sex drive had lowered since my first bout with therapy and now I’m looking to learn how to enjoy sex, pain, and pleasure to bring that drive back.
I am going to read Cowart’s book but felt it apt to write an initial post that I can look back on, to take stock of how far I’ve come.
First, contrition for how I behaved in the past with hookups and long-term partners. I remember once waking up next to my college boyfriend and seeing all the markings I had left on his body, mostly hickies and hard slaps. I was tracing them out and we chatted about it. He said, admittedly, his friends asked him about the marks because in their med courses he routinely volunteered to take his shirt off and let them… listen to his heart? He didn’t mind it he said, but was annoyed that one of his friends said out loud that she couldn’t imagine what kind of person could enjoy receiving so much pain during sex. Clearly, my ex did and I were able to have ongoing conversations about the kind of sex we were having. Not as much for the guys I was hooking up with. I enjoyed ravishing men back then, thrusting in anger, slapping away frustration and rage. I am not there anymore, but I remember the need to feel large, imagining greatness while I was manhandling my partners.
I want to make clear I don’t feel guilty for my actions, but my intent. That was my stress relief, my therapy, when I was young. The guys I got with seemed to enjoy it, although every once in a while a guy would tell me I was a little rough the last time or complain that something was still too sore. I recall a guy telling me his nipples felt like they had chafed and that he seriously didn’t like it. I remember laughing at his text message, although in response to him I said something like, “Thanks for letting me know. I’m sorry and it won’t happen again.” I wasn’t planning on seeing him again, as back then I would already have been looking for the next guy, but neither would I have him on the list of guys I would send the infamous text, “You looking?”
Back then I wasn’t interested in their pleasure, or mine even, I just needed a release. So, once I started going to therapy, I was releasing and processing the wrath and hurt that used to drive these urges and my sex drive went down for a while. It came back for a time while I was a construction manager, working 60-80 hours a week and desperately needing a way to relieve tension. I’ve switched out of that environment and have resumed therapy, so now I’m learning ways to prioritize pleasure and joy, which has brought on its own drive. I’m still looking for release, but now it’s orgasmic and sexual release, not rage and fury driving me to the bedroom. The kind of sex I’m looking for now, the kinks I want to explore, these adventures can’t be so selfish because I’ll be looking to repeat with people, find a community of like-minded heathens.
Second, the idea of building up a community of pleasure is exciting and will be necessary for my journey into kink and BDSM. I have long term casual relationships, one that is for now only digital but I’m hoping he returns from Florida, and in the past two to three years have started making friends through friends with benefits. I find it necessary to note that we are actual friends, we meet up and hang out without sex being the primary reason, but it’s not uncommon for us all to end up somewhere, multiple bodies arranged naked and on each other. Thus far we have managed to avoid drama and perhaps it’s because there’s an informal vetting process before someone is there for the group sex, usually prior connections are drawn in to form new connections. As far as safety in kink and BDSM communities goes, from what I’ve heard on Dan Savage’s show, there is a less informal vetting process.
I’m hoping to exploit that vetting process to allow myself to feel safe, especially since I’ve had a very specific submissive scenario in mind since youth. I’ve held back on exploring kink and BDSM because I’m scared of being taken advantage of, of not being strong enough to defend myself or not being aware enough to hear my body expressing discomfort. The fantasy itself is colored by my childhood trauma and I likely shouldn’t enact the scene to the full extent. In this scene a hot domme ties me up and whips me, or paddles me, or in more recent fantasies, uses a dildo on me; the darker version has always had me using my anger to break out of the bindings, strong enough to flex them off, then use my massive cock to take out the anger on her. I suspect this scenario will remain in the background of my conscious thoughts, even as I explore the more realistic and healthier parts of it. To truly enact the scene to its fullest, I would need a domme that trusts me enough to put my hands on her. As I play and explore, I may find that the reality of such a scenario, the safeguards and restraint so as not to hurt the other person, may make it more work than it’s worth. However, I want to be clear that I’m not complaining about that, especially because I believe most of my kink partners will be men, some stronger than me. In the same way that I would want to know that these guys are gentle before and after a scene, that I can trust them not to hurt me outside of and beyond the scenario, I know any women I approach will want to know that of me. This is what I mean by exploiting the vetting process, making it work for me but also being aware of and wanting to build that security for others.
The above is really the second and third point. The second being that it’s cool to have sex with people whose presence outside of the bedroom you enjoy. The third is that the community helps keep you safe, because you’re going to be in compromising positions during scenarios. Fourth on my mind is that I have begun to allow myself, thanks to therapy, to aggressively defend myself against people who are not mindful of my boundaries. In short, my mother made me feel guilty whenever I used physical force to defend myself, warranted or not. So, in the past I have had moments of doubt before raising a hand to push away someone and panicked in crowds out of fear from scenarios in which I’d have to assert my physical presence. Wanting to not be seen in a crowd and wanting to have my physical space respected it is a difficult problem to solve. I have sidestepped this aspect of the issue because I don’t go to festivals anymore, the bands playing at these aren’t those I like enough to want to stand around in a field and the active bands I listen to now and tend to play in tiny venues or large concerts and stadiums.
It’s at bathhouses that I’ve learned how to defend myself. I was in a darkroom making out with someone and felt hands start to touch my butt and asshole. I quickly got annoyed because their fingers were too quickly invasive but first, I brushed the hands away softly but eventually grabbed wrists, threw the hand and firmly pushed the entire person away from me. I had to do that to a couple different guys, they had crowded around in that dark room, but they got the message. It didn’t register until later when I was taking inventory of the night and wondering whether it was time to go that I flashed back to an earlier cruise through the bathrooms and had a very different reaction to guys trying to do that without even the implied consent of scooting my butt toward them. An earlier time, a guy had come up behind me suddenly while I was making out with someone and tried to get a finger in as his opening move. I had stopped, pushed him away, but didn’t resume, instead I headed for the showers and left, my entire night ruined by this one awful interaction. I had every right to defend myself and to expect that my body would be treated with respect. But I was happier by how I had handled it this time, asserting myself and insisting on it, but also not letting it ruin my whole visit, not even registering until later in the day.
In summary, I am going to read Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose and at the same time challenge myself to step into the kink community. I have reflected on the way I used pain and sex in the past and know the importance of prioritizing pleasure over hurting others. Second, I enjoy and want to continue building friendships around mutual sexual interest. Third, I want the safety and trust of the community to play out my fantasies and know I need to respect the others in that community, do the work, to build trust. Finally, I feel that I’ve recently come into a position in my life where I can assert and defend myself without panicking over that.
Best regards to future me!
Numbness from CPTSD; In spite, the Intense Desire for Intimacy Remains
I had initially thought to make a post whining that my peers are too emotionally soft, have childish complaints given their status as working professionals. I even noted this to my therapist, that I wanted to meet someone who was capable of greater emotional range and resiliency than the people I have gone on dates with recently. However, I have now spent several days reeling from a conversation I had with my crush. It remains true that the childhood and familial trauma have hardened me to many of daily life’s injustices and that I am now working on finding gratitude and grace in the simplest of things. For all my lofty self-praise, I’m still human and can be affected, vulnerable, and have expectations dashed. Having recognized how a little indifference can cause me to spiral, I refocus my attentions on searching for the continued capacity to empathize, to find softness for myself and others.
I had spent the week dealing with issues at work that came down to coworkers poor communication skills and their frustrations that we could not deal with technical and contractual problems in the specific way that would vindicate their prior work on our shared projects. In other words, they found a solution that worked only for their team and no one else and were mad we had to take everyone into consideration. I had to deal with the same team on two different projects, under two different supervisors, and both supervisors complimented my ability to maintain a level of composure with the team. I let the supervisors know that I had also grown frustrated but took the time after work to process those feelings and this helped me see through the several weeks of issues. I was riding the high of those compliments into a pseudo-date with another public agency employee, whose hiking pic had caught my eye and the similar views on environmental policy and public service led to us meeting in person.
I say pseudo-date because when I got to his place it was clear he did not have the same thing in mind. I had gotten dressed to go out for dinner in downtown. As both of us were only a short walk from the downtown restaurants and as we had both mentioned being hungry, I did not feel that I needed to specify that I wanted to go eat. He invited me in and I figured, what the hell, why not. Given the assumed roles we’d be taking, I figured he may want to get the fun out of the way and then eat more comfortably after. Eventually we did make it out, only now stoned and more relaxed. We started out eating and drinking in downtown Long Beach before making our way over to the gayborhood bars.
During dinner, a friend had let me know he’d be out drinking at those bars and I told him I was with someone but wanted to meet up and drink with him and his friends too. Instead, at the first bar my date and I went to, I ran into said friend, his friends, a couple of guys I had hooked up with, and other guys who I had chatted with here and there. Although I figured I had handled each person except my friend casually enough, introducing everyone, I was disappointed to hear from my date, “Sometimes I go to gay bars and I just don’t feel like it’s my place.”
“Well, you have spent the entire afternoon telling me that you only have straight friends, so that does make sense. For me, I just need a place that is completely different from the uber-straight environment I have to work in.”
“Yea… I guess I just don’t see myself here.”
“Well,” I said sternly, “you’re here now.”
My friend left for another bar, but I didn’t go with. I told my date that we didn’t have to go and that he also did not have to finish the drink he had gotten. Perhaps I should have realized he wasn’t kidding about not going to gay bars often, as he was surprised by how strong his cocktail drink had been poured. I encouraged him to just leave it, pointed out that I had only gotten an energy drink and water since we’d left downtown and so he shouldn’t feel pressured to finish it on my behalf. He didn’t listen.
On the long walk home, with his inhibitions lowered by sex, drugs, and alcohol, he began to disclose more about his friends. He didn’t have any gay friends, his ex-boyfriend and he had kept themselves separate from the community. Of the friends he was comparing himself to, he revealed that they were two tech workers in the Silicon Valley. “Oh so they’re wealthy?”
“Well, they don’t consider themselves wealthy because they didn’t grow up with this level of money.”
“Duh, no one grew up with that level of wealth. They’re literally top earners of money. You just said one half of that couple took 6 entire months of work to hike the Pacific Crest Trail and is now back in SF with his wife. If that isn’t wealthy, then what is?”
“Maybe, but I don’t like questioning how people identify.”
My inhibitions had also been lowered, the anger already there at the surface and I retorted, “That’s bullshit. That’s how people like that convince themselves that tax policy is unfair. These are two double income, high earners, no kids and the ease to just take 6 months off of work between jobs. Most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”
I was able to appreciate the fact that a small fire, set by local transients, had broken out and interrupted my ranting. There was a person passed out near the fire, but I doubted they had set it. We watched it blaze and he even called the fire department. I was content to let it burn once I realized it was just going to cause smoke damage and there wasn’t much I could do. Perhaps I should have urinated on the fire instead of on a nearby tree. Regardless, this clear sign to change the topic did not take. After we resumed walking, he started in again on his wealthy friends.
“I just admire that they’re having this mid-life crisis. Like, I don’t know that I picked the right career or that I’m really fulfilled by my job. Don’t you feel like you’re in a mid-life crisis?”
Again, my derision and scorn were front and center, “What a privileged and frankly ridiculous take. So many of us don’t have that opportunity to take such an emotional look at our jobs. Perhaps that’s why we’re all angry, but I think those who can do something like that should feel grateful. I don’t have the opportunity to take a mid-life crisis, unpaid break without risking my mortgage. And even the fact that I’m paying down a mortgage puts me in a great position.”
“Well, you never wavered in your major? I changed mine five times.”
“I never had the opportunity. I picked my major at 17 years old and refined my career path from there. But I had to do what I could to survive.”
“You realize that’s atypical? Don’t you feel that you’re unsatisfied at your job? Don’t you feel…”
I cut him off, “No, I don’t FEEL that. I understand and empathize with you if you do. Truly, I know I’m being a hardass, but no, those aren’t feelings I share. I’m much happier finding fulfillment outside of my career too and letting my job be my job.” We had gotten to his place and said our goodbyes with that. I walked home wondering what it was that had upset me in the end. I summarized the above for my therapist and told her it seemed a combination of the constant whining about his insecurities and his decision to cast my situation aside and double down on his own feelings, almost to the point that it felt he needed me to mirror them back at him. I explained to her that I understood that I had to respect the pain I had been through and the strength it took to still build something of value, but that the date had ultimately been disappointing for me. She and I walked through a conversation on the varying levels of emotional resiliency in people.
I’m not sure that I would call it resiliency though. My therapist says I’m strong to have gone through all this trauma and still gotten to the point where I have this great career and education. She says I’m resilient, I just think I’m jaded. I often joke that no coworker will ever say or do anything as horrible as my parents did, no matter how angry they get at me. When a coworker is raising his voice at me or being particularly difficult, I just detach and watch them. In a very real way, I don’t have the sensitivity to be able to react emotionally to their frustration or pain, only to intellectually note the signs of frustration and pain. This inertness comes in handy, working with men of a certain generation, with short tempers and gruff attitudes. I have no issue having my ear talked off for a simple question, my intelligence questioned because I’m asking for a clarification, or my inexperience made front and center as they question how someone without forty years of experience could possibly contribute to the situation at hand. For all their ranting about their perceptions of the poor job I’m doing in that moment, nothing these coworkers say will cost me my paycheck and so there’s no point in defending myself. In that way, I’m so jaded by what my parents said and did, people who were responsible for my well-being and whose opinions did matter then, that my coworkers can’t get a reaction out of me; it’s also true that having grown up believing that at any moment the government could kick down our doors, deport my parents, and toss us all into foster care, it’s hard to care about things like a white-collar professional’s mid-life crisis. It is a telling and unfortunate fact that numbness, emotional inertness, is a strength in our industry.
I want to be clear that is the professional veneer I put on, the mask I wear for work. It is true that I’m quieter and more controlled than the usual person, see also uptight and closed off. That’s not how I’m looking to be in a relationship, nor am I looking for someone who is themselves rigid and emotionally detached. Unfortunately, it appears that as people learn I’m working as an engineer, very adjacent to construction and blue-collar work, they expect a level of emotional inertness in the relationship too, as well as a more aggressive person in the bedroom. Given the sexual assaults in my past, I get uncomfortable assuming that role without first getting clear and openly expressed consent, which seems to be a turn off for my sexually repressed peers. For a hook up, I am willing to continue the same masculine, macho bullshit charade, but I’m talking a hook up at the bathhouse. If there’s even a little conversation, I’m aggressively screening the candidates. For example, given the immense responsibility I feel to provide for my family, I avoid any potential dates that even hint that they’re looking to be spoiled or taken care of in an unequal way. Just the other day, a man on Tinder told me he was expecting to have emotional outbursts but that I was not allowed the same. When I told him I was looking for an equal partnership he responded by saying we didn’t have to bring so much wokeness into relationships. I unmatched him, annoyed at what he said, but relieved I didn’t have to wait until I was sitting across from him at a restaurant to be told my date was looking for an “older brother” to take care of him and sleep with him.
So I finally get to the point, which is that I shouldn’t front like I don’t have feelings either. I saw my crush again two nights ago. I had been planning to go out dancing in DTLA for Puteria at Precinct. He texted me early enough in the evening and asked me out for drinks or for Netflix and chill. I let him know I was already trying to go out but would take him up on the drink. It was a nice night and he had even offered to meet me in downtown, a couple blocks down from my place. I wasn’t sure where the night was going, but he offered to drop me off at home, not take me along to his place. I was a bit confused but said OK, sure, that would still beat walking home. He had his dog with him so I assumed this meant he wouldn’t try to come up but I still joked that his dog wouldn’t get along with my sister’s cats. No response. We said our goodbyes downstairs and I let him know I would wait to hear from him because he had now at several times just dropped our conversation in text messages or stopped responding. He let out an exasperated, “What?!” I repeated my point and he seemed to understand and we said goodbye.
The next day, I caved and texted him first, a simple good morning text. He said good morning and then let me know he had gotten up a little later than planned, was already late to an early morning brunch with his friends. He ended up drinking early and by noon was letting me know he was drunk. I said no big deal that way you’re sober by evening. To which he responded yea, drunk all day but in the mood all day too. I laughed and let him know he should have taken me over to his place last night then, but that I was down to go over too after I finished a gaming session with my friends. He seemed surprised I was open to that, I was equally surprised he had even mentioned it, but then he stopped giving real responses to what I was saying. To my messages, he just started lol’ing and lmao’ing and leaving it at that. I told him I’m sure we were both difficult to read to each other and he stopped responding. I didn’t pursue the conversation either, annoyed at his lack of responses.
I went off to the gym and fumed a bit. I wasn’t sure in the moment why it was bugging me so much. Eventually, I gathered that it was annoying to me that I was over here putting my vulnerabilities on display and he was giving me one word answers. In his inability to meet me halfway, I am reminded of my parents’ reactions to me when I would clearly and elaborately explain myself and they would say they didn’t understand, they would zero in on the wrong thing, or would generally dismiss my feelings. With my mother especially, there’s a refusal to be held accountable, and, as my feelings would be in reaction to something she had said or done, she didn’t want to understand my perspective. In truth, this dismissal of my struggles are what irritated me with the earlier date, as he had dismissed me saying I needed to get through to school and start making money just to survive and focused back on himself and his feeling about needing to switch careers. There’s the element of pride of course, but also then on my end, the inability to see how these relatively minor struggles could actually take up this much air.
I paused writing for a while and as the Emmys happened this weekend I saw Michaela Cole receiving her dues. I have before mentioned that I can’t watch I May Destroy You, knowing full well that it’s about sexual assault. Twitter brought me to an article in Vulture in which she beautifully summarizes what I’m getting after: “I’ve never had a garden. We never grew up like that. I don’t particularly mind, but I think there is something in growing up in concrete and not understanding putting fingers in soil, growing things, foundation. My family has rented our whole lives. You’re always on fragile ground because it’s not yours. It gives you a drive, an ambition, because nothing is certain. That is a resilience no person with stability can replicate. You can’t forge it. There’s blessings to the struggle.”
So it is that I struggle to relate to the people who are now my peers. I told a coworker I can only listen to so many fintech bros tell me about their stock portfolios before I roll my eyes. He had been telling me he felt pressure toward a more extravagant lifestyle and I wondered who his friends were, letting him know that most of my friends did not have white-collar jobs. These coworkers of mine and their friends, these aren’t the kinds of people I grew up with and have always had a level of comfort and affluence that I couldn’t, as an immigrant child, aspire to. Perhaps now I can, but that does not take away that I am the oldest, American born in a family that started here with just a mother, her brother, and her daughter. The specifics of how and why they ended up here are for another time, but I grew up without any sense of familial connections or roots here. Add to that my family’s extreme dysfunctions and I have never had a sense that anyone cared about my feelings. First and foremost, those are my personal responsibility to process, control, direct as I need to suit the situation. Never am I to just let them wander free and express themselves, there simply was no space for such liberties in my youth, any outburst threatened calling attention to my mother’s immigration status. So while I do blame my mother for teaching me to suppress my emotions, for needing that out of me, I can’t deny that it felt necessary. How different would life had been if I had told that child psychologist the truth, had brought Child Protective Services to our doorstep?
Yet it is so clear to me that I desperately want and need connection. As I age, it is critical that I develop a healthy relationship to my feelings and honest expressions of them. There is no room for pride in this post. I am so desperate to connect to someone with whom I can connect, who can empathize with me and I with them. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to take seriously some of the issues that are brought up my by white-collar peers, to not jeer at them once I’ve had a drink in me; I can’t hold that against them. Again then, a reminder to have grace for myself, to accept that I will still react to certain triggers, echoes of my parents’ behaviors in the people I meet; to have grace for my coworkers and dates, sheltered as they have been they have not had to develop resiliency but it isn’t my place to judge them for that; and to lead with love, to be open and vulnerable whenever possible, because just getting by isn’t worth it, I need to fill my lungs with air and breathe in the full extent of life.
To that end, I’m signing off for now to drive around in pursuit of a cheaper, hopefully more satisfying cup of coffee than where I’m posting this from.