Blog, Aguilas Off Pine

A Birthday Dinner in San Diego

August 21, 2022 Aguilar

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.

Loving and Forgiving an Abused Body

November 12, 2021 Aguilar

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

October 22, 2021October 22, 2021 Aguilar

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!

Numbness from CPTSD; In spite, the Intense Desire for Intimacy Remains

September 20, 2021September 20, 2021 Aguilar

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.

The Struggle for a World in Which I Would Not Exist

September 12, 2021September 12, 2021 Aguilar

I most recently posted the immediate thoughts and feelings after telling my therapist about my father’s role in my life, which I wrote about at length here. Over the past several days I have been largely depressed as I mulled over the impact childhood abuse has had on my life. I had been contrasting the trauma from both my parents and trying to find a thread to pull on, a story to tell myself that could help me integrate these events and how they have shaped my personality. I hadn’t immediately realized that’s what I was doing, but I knew that in order to move on I would need to find a way to accept the past, when my parents took advantage of my youth to abuse me. But it wasn’t just that I had to accept that it was ok for me, as a young child, to have been at a disadvantage, physically, mentally, and emotionally, to defend myself against the two people who are supposed to have protected me. No, I also had to come to terms with the ways some of that abuse has prepared me for a harsh world and has left me, in a way, unable to fit into the kinder softer world that I desire. Or, more pointedly, I desire a world in which I wouldn’t exist, in which parents protect their children better because they have the resources that enable them to be kinder.

Let me be clear that I don’t think what my mom did was correct, but that, in the severity of it, I have become accustomed to a harsh world. I was telling a coworker of mine how I have my younger sister living with me, almost rent free, while she gets her life together. He commented that I was a nice older brother and I let him know that I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing, necessarily, because I saw how quick to fall apart some of our coworkers were. This included, as I shared with him, some of our supervisors. By contrast, I felt that the worst things in life had already happened to me, my parents gave me no leeway and rather than let me live with them for extended periods of time, had kicked me out at seventeen and bid me make my way in the world. He said, “See, sometimes I think tough love is important.” Because I crave a kinder, softer world, I didn’t agree with him, but I did stay quiet and let him keep talking. I sometimes worry, am forced to acknowledge, that in my behavior I’m not creating that softer world, I’m just thriving in this one and wishing things were different. As I told my therapist during this most recent session, I can live with my mom’s trauma in that I can see the good and the bad in the effects of the trauma I have suffered at the hands of my mother. When the woman who birthed you has beat you, berated you, bullied you and then lied about it, nothing a coworker or contractor can legally do will phase you. And you’re not expecting anything from a cold world.

Not so with my father molesting me. That still feels like the pits of hell, although less so with every day I truly acknowledge it and the depravity of those actions. There was no well-meaning intent behind his perversion. There was simply the act of a physically larger person, a person who was trusted to take care of me as a child, unchaperoned, there was the act of this person taking advantage of my youth, my childlike body, my literal weakness. There is no making light of it nor finding a silver lining in my sexual awakening being at the hands of my father… And my therapist agreed with me. She affirmed that to even try to find one was folly, because while she seemed to appreciate that I could find something good in how my mother raised me, there was no doubt in her mind that I was right to say this was just all bad. As she reiterated, my father is a monster.

She even tried to get me to write a letter and I told her I understood the therapeutic exercise but that I had nothing to say beyond I hate you and I wish you had never come into my life. I told her that I had seen people, met others who had been abandoned by their fathers. Not to play the oppression Olympics with them, but I let her know that it felt like I could have overcome the painful guilt of abandonment so much easier than the feelings I have regarding my molestation. To belabor the point, I did have those feelings of abandonment, I do remember feeling in some way responsible for my dad not being around before I met him.

For the first decade of my life, I didn’t know my biological father and I was distinctly aware of this. I recall the elementary school yard watching other young boys who were playing soccer and wishing I knew how to play, but my mom didn’t know and my stepdad didn’t want to teach me. I never even felt safe enough around him to want to ask. I can recall these thoughts and feelings I had, watching these kids play at recess and knowing this was just something dads and older brothers taught them and that I was going to be excluded from that. I didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone to teach me, didn’t even feel like I could join the other boys at play. This isn’t a moment where I went and discovered I preferred to be friends with girls either. No, I just sat alone and read, trying to push away the feeling of being left out because I didn’t have a dad.

I must have then, at some point, asked my mom about him. Given that the above is a memory I can recall and that I was at least in the third grade, if not a little older, this does line up. Not too much longer after that, I got to meet my dad. I remember being very excited, thinking that this was the best thing that ever happened to me. I remember feeling special, ready to forgive him for not being around and finally feeling like I was worthy of having a father, again, because it felt like my father hadn’t stuck around due to some character defect in me. And then things went downhill and my memories of the time are scrambled. Before I turned ten and after about fourteen, my memories have temporal relationships for each other. I can generally recall when two memories happened in relationship to each other. For example, one of the earliest memories I have is about catching and playing with a ladybug in the garden, which came before a particular afternoon in the pool during which I swam behind a woman because I had mistaken her tan swimming shorts for nudity and was shocked by what I thought I was seeing. From about ten to fourteen, when the childhood abuse peaked, the combined effect of the traumatic events shattered my perception of time. It wasn’t that I could no longer tell when it was morning or night, but rather and for example, I can’t place when my dad molested me in relation to other events involving him. Similarly, I don’t know if that most severe of beatings at my grandmother’s hands had already happened by the time I was molested, although I remember that these things happened around the same time. In order to live on, I had to bury the pain of these events, had to bury the boy that happened to. I couldn’t undo what had happened, but I could attempt to freeze them out of my timeline, to trap those memories and that body feel outside of my timeline.

That day changed my life, and suddenly, the pain of abandonment didn’t seem so severe. I began a long campaign of getting away from my dad, of skipping weekends with him. Suddenly I wished for the days I had never known him. I used to say at least I got to meet his family, but the truth is they had always been in and out of my life, had always tried to maintain a relationship that he did not appreciate. Problematically, rather than my mom blaming an absent father for my sexuality, once she found out, she blamed my father molesting me. She didn’t even wait a while to ask this question, when I told her what my dad had done she and my grandma immediately and openly started theorizing that this is why I’m uno de esos. This must have been easier than listening to what I was saying, which is that I had fought and argued so much with the two of them for me to stop being left in my father’s care and that they had each and every time yelled at me and told me I was stupid for advocating for myself.

Pardon for abruptly changing topics, but during the session we also discussed my extreme aversion to unwanted physical contact. She said, “sweetheart, no one wants to be touched that way by strangers.” I got her point, I think perhaps she feels that I feel alienated by my emotions, like they’re not normal, but I don’t think she got mine. There’s a physical pain I feel sometimes emanating from my body… That’s not the right verb. There’s a physical pain I feel throughout my body and internally reverberating, almost like my body is shocking itself in disgust at any casual contact with another body. She asked if this happened in relationships too and I told her that, no but yes, that not often like she was referring to but sometimes and I would have to take a minute to collect from this intrusive recollection. There are times when someone brushes up against me, just to pass by, without lingering or even really acknowledging me and this shocks my body. We talked about concerts and packed venues, gay bars after everyone’s a little too drunk and starts to get too handsy. I told her of a specific time in WeHo, I had gone alone to the bars to take a break from my schoolwork and ran into someone who I couldn’t get off me. He was trying to undress me, the entire time insisting that he would make a good boyfriend for me and that I should have a drink. I had repeatedly and firmly kept telling him to get off me but he didn’t listen and instead tried to force me to drink, at which point I had swatted the drink out of my face and had run away. I didn’t tell her, because that wasn’t the point, but I had called a close friend crying, disturbed by what had happened. It was only during this week’s session that it clicked, my mom had always shamed me for getting angry or for physically engaging with the world and that had left me with tremendous guilt every time I had to act to protect myself. My body’s reaction to casual contact seems clearly linked to my father molesting me, but the anxiety around my inability to protect myself and my guilt when I have used anger to act in self-defense, that comes from my mother.

My parents have done all this only to abandon me again as an adult. I needed to cut off my father anyway, but even before I had exposed him, he had been growing more and more distant. I mentioned it in the past, but, once he was back to himself and following his mental breakdowns, his pride and shame led him to run from any support system. So it was that when in college I took him to Mexico to get mental help and he finally returned, he took a while to reach out to me and ask to see me. I had never been particularly close to him, but the time between our visits began to grow. Eventually, in graduate school, I started going to therapy and so it was that after his next breakdown, I was ready to confront him, to take the time after he’s back on his medication and rational, but before he has been on them too long and emotionally cold, to ask him a series of questions. Per our short interview, he had never wanted to be a father, had never loved my mother, and figured she would do a good enough job raising me, even though she was much poorer and undocumented. With these answers, my mother could move on from him and I could confirm to anyone who cared to doubt that my father was indeed a massive asshole. Of him molesting me though, there wasn’t much for him to say except, “It’s just how things are in el rancho…”

It isn’t as if I need either parent to put a roof over my head and feed me. But, especially as an adult man, having a rough time and not being able to go to your parents’ house or to call them for comfort, to vent, to feel reassured, that sucks. There’s no getting around the fact that I have living, breathing parentals that are not able to care for me in a way that I need them to. That support all must come from relationships I build with strangers, have thankfully built with many friends, or I have to allow myself to lean on my younger siblings. All of this could be worse, but still, what I really want is to go home and lay on my mother’s lap and have her sing me a lullaby or tell me it will be ok and to have me believe it, to feel the love and warmth from an older relative. Instead, I am coming to terms with the reality that I won’t get to experience what I’ve described. My father chose to exit the picture and my mother I had to block to stop her from spamming my phone with her anger and frustrations, disappointed as she is with her own living relationship and only able to process that by being angry at her two oldest kids. Add to that my mother’s sexist and machista attitudes, which lead to her specifically lashing out at my expressions of feelings and emotions, things she wasn’t allowed to have as a young person either but that her culture specifically only allows in certain kind of men.

That’s the depressing part. I had said at the beginning that I was looking for a thread to tie this all up neatly in my past, allow it all to become part of my story, part of the drive that I have had thus far in life. There’s a couple quick things. I grew up in a harsh environment and am now in a harsh environment that pays well. Construction and engineering are somewhat lucrative fields, completely dominated by men that struggle to express what they really mean, men who let ego and feelings get in the way of work, but are unable to recognize that happening because men don’t have feelings. So my parents teaching me to disregard my emotions, to swallow my ego, lets me take in everything around me and synthesize the needs of many people to find a solution that seems most reasonable, minimizing the burden on specific groups but recognizing how our contracts obligate certain responsibilities onto other groups and having enough ego to insist on and see the solution through. I was praised recently by several coworkers and supervisors for how I had been handling a couple weeks of touchy situations recently. A superintendent said, “You don’t even seem bothered by all the ranting he does,” in reference to a specific and difficult coworker. I told him my parents were worse and that no matter how long the rant, I still got my paycheck at the end of the day. That I owed so much professional success to my childhood background caused a tinge of pain but acknowledging this and incorporating it into my story will help me move on.

As for moving forward, I have to borrow from Cruising Utopia to abate the despair in realizing that I’m too harsh for the kinder, softer world I desire. I know that the phrase itself originated from a webcomic, A Softer World, that I used to read, although I had found the idea first and the webcomic second. In fact, the original comic relates a darker setting, a softer world that doesn’t judge the dark and sexual violence of the protagonist. Perhaps at the time I saw my sexuality as something dark and could only relate to the idea of a softer world ironically, but now there is no sarcasm or ironic defense, what has always driven me since I was young was the desire to create a kinder, softer world, for the young versions of me that I couldn’t go back and raise. In honor of when I needed a helping hand and in gratitude of those who extended one, I have dedicated myself to this idea. However, I have feared and have seen how my upbringing has prepared me for rougher environments, emotionally cold and stunted, but profitable. These fears have been assuaged by the idea in Cruising Utopia that those of us who work toward a queerer world are then left behind when that queerer world is created; we are the products of a straighter environment and so do not even know what we need to unlearn to continue being able to push out further and further the acceptance of our ever changing society. A different synthesis to Munoz’s argument is that each generation must push change and then must step aside and let the newer generations push as well. In this I find some permission to continue being myself, to note the things from my upbringing that I want to change but also not to excessively blame myself for not being a softer person, for not having the ease and loving attitude of someone who grew up sheltered, with stable parents and in affluent neighborhoods. And most importantly, simply to accept that I can have grown in the environment I did and still aspire to see a healthier change in the world beyond just revenge against my parents but not feel guilty when those feelings occur.

Reflecting on Telling my Therapist About my Father

September 5, 2021 Aguilar

Last week during therapy I read parts of my last post regarding my relationship with my father and this coming week we’re supposed to discuss how I feel about it.

One of the questions she had during our conversation was asking whether it felt better to finally tell someone about this. I corrected her and let her know that I have told many people in my life what happened. Specifically, I had to tell my dad’s family that he molested me when I noticed that my older cousins were letting their kids be around him, presumably unchaperoned. I mentioned that the guilt I felt hiding his secret led me to speak out to prevent something awful from happening. Even writing this down, I still feel a tremendous nausea and disgust, my mind doesn’t even let me imagine what could have happened I just have an extreme feeling of pain, a ball of hurt that won’t let me put to words my fears of what could have happened. I have to allow myself to feel that pain, it’s coming from my own past, but I also have to note that it didn’t happen. I did the right thing, spoke up, righted what I could.

But since talking with his family about it, it’s been more like a family secret than a family reckoning. I do think I would have moved on from this, except my aunts keep sending me updates of him now that he’s moved to Mexico. It is uncomfortable but manageable to see him once in a while at family events. It’s disturbing to have his pictures sent directly to my phone. I will probably need to mention this to my aunts at some point. I do know that in the aftermath, one aunt and uncle specifically chewed him out. They called him out for his pathetic justifications that it’s just something they do back where he’s from and iced him out for a while. He showed up at their son’s funeral, there are some events that unfortunately all people show up for. I have only talked once or so about this with a couple family members, they just wanted to confirm what they had been told and I said, basically, that my mom hadn’t handled telling them well and I acknowledged that, but the truth remained the truth.

Complicating matters are that my father has been diagnosed as a bipolar schizophrenic. His diagnosis has varied with time, as medical science has advanced and clarified the differences between the two. A quick google search and based on my experiences with him, it does seem like he’s on the more extreme end of his illness. I have seen him have hallucinations and speak in tongues… When he has episodes, we often have to get him into a facility where they will bring him back under the effects of medication. He has several times now decided on his own that he will be lowering his dosage, because he doesn’t feel good on them. I empathize, but his illness is not manageable without a more complex support system, both from the medical field and from his family. While not in an episode though, his pride leads him dismantle the support systems and ignore the medical field. To highlight how distant I am from him though, he had an episode after, or was in the midst of one, during my cousin’s funeral. I learned from his younger brother that he had been experimenting with his dosage before he’d even gotten onto the plane from Mexico and the emotional distress of the funeral knocked him off course. I haven’t gotten an update from his family and hadn’t bothered to check in…

Briefly, I’ll mention that I have also told my other parentals, one of my sisters, some friends, older partners… I actually prefer not telling people anymore. Unfortunately, it also means I don’t provide context for my past sexual behaviors, but I also haven’t met someone who I really wanted to know me that way, with full context. Knowing what I know of my experience, I don’t feel shame. My younger self was doing what I thought was correct at the time, reacting in self-destructive ways but I outgrew that mindset.

I found my high school journal and I cringed while reading it. I was so excited to be hooking up at the gym, I had made a game of it and felt I was so grown up to be exploring my sexuality in this way. I even noted the times it went too far and I just wanted it to stop but I just didn’t. I knew then this wasn’t great, but I kept doing what I was doing, apparently not sure enough in myself to stop, to advocate for myself. I see that mindset now in people even my age, where it’s just about numbers, just about keeping the sex going, and that’s why I cringed. I feel like there’s more to life than just having sex, there’s prioritizing having good sex with good people and really enjoying each other on those personal levels. There’s also still going to bathhouses and nude beaches, we do contain multitudes after all. But for younger me, it was specifically running away from what had happened, that pain underlied those interactions.

Continuing the question, what does it feel like to have talked about it? She asked me more about him, did I want to hurt him? I told her yes, obviously. I explained to her that it was unlikely I could do so without getting caught or hurt myself, so I wouldn’t, but I wanted to. I have even imagined turning up at his home, back in the ranch he grew up in and lives in now, and just shooting him in the head and ending him. I told her I felt justified, not just because of what he did to me, but because I felt it likely that he would do it to other kids. After all, his justification was that that’s just how things are done back where he’s from. So now that he’s back where he’s from, why would I doubt that he’d go after the young people in El Timon, Guerrero. If she presses me on it, I’ll explain to her that this is a place so remote that I wouldn’t be able to get back there without help from my family, he would literally know I was coming. I’ve only been once, maybe twice in my life, spent several months there one summer. This is a remote and disconnected place, rural and lonely. I would argue that I can connect with the rural people of the USA, but back there was the added difficulty of political and narco violence. I had an uncle who ran to be mayor of a larger municipality adjacent to the pueblo they grew up in. He won, but was told the same night of his victory that he had a couple days to leave the region and never come back, or he and his family would be assassinated. Las Tierras Calientes…. Both sides of my family come from this region and I’ll need to mention more about it but I want to do so separately.

To wrap up for now… I feel relief to have told my therapist about all of the prior things and can work with her to continue working through the issues, processing the feelings of weakness? I certainly think I was still judging my younger self, wanted to have been not so young, not so weak, not so exactly tuned for victimhood, so that I could have done something sooner. But those are ways of thinking I need to leave behind, to allow my younger self back and to acknowledge that pain and how young I was… How I didn’t need to be anything more than what I was because the adults in my life should have been better equipped to have helped me and or not been fucking pedophiles in the case of my father.

I’ll never get that clear shot with him. And now I’ve put this out into the universe, showing premeditated intent to harm him. But I don’t doubt that I’d enjoy it. Fuck him.

I want to take some time to go work out but I don’t think I’m done with this prompt unfortunately.

Gender Confusion

August 14, 2021August 21, 2021 Aguilar

I have been struggling with my gender lately, even though I still find myself defaulting to masculine presentations. I have previously mentioned that I experienced dysphoria in response to trauma and to being treated as a grown man since I was young. That dysphoria felt more like a resentment of girls, who are in these specific instances, treated better than young boys of color, to my own sisters who were protected by my parents in ways that I hadn’t been. I discussed this type of dysphoria recently with my sisters, acknowledging that they felt resentment toward our parents for being overprotective of them, but pointing out that they down right neglected me at best, or unintentionally put me in harm’s way. This feels different, maybe just as reactionary though.

Earlier in the week I was listening to the Savage Love podcast. I was listening to the host, Dan Savage, respond to what sounded like a joke call from someone who claimed to be a “half-breed” with “Aryan preferences.” It absolutely sounded like a prank and if it isn’t, I feel bad for the caller who is not able to find pride in her non-white background. He pointed out that even if calls are fake, they sometimes pose interesting hypotheticals and after all, every call is just a hypothetical scenario for everyone but the one caller. The way he frames the rest of his response, while logically sound, is perhaps not as forceful as I’d like to hear from him. He reassured the caller that while ultimately, no one can make you sleep with someone you don’t want to, that you should interrogate your desires and really acknowledge the difference between your own desires and what society has handed to you. It felt like he answered with a bit more hem and haw than this, but I had a flash of desire, I pictured my naked body, a little leaner but without a penis, instead some sort of pubic mound.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this mound and listened to another caller describe the dysphoria they have been feeling. As they said those words, described their discomfort in their own body, a sense of unease came upon me. I recalled how I had selected something like non-binary on a new dating app I had downloaded, well new to me, and how that somehow felt more appropriate than selecting man. But as I was jotting down these feelings, noting them down on my phone, an old friend came up to me at the gym and we lifted together for a while. I pushed the feelings aside and let something new in, this sense of comradery to be lifting together. I let him talk and wondered what to make of this, how I had been feeling disconnected from my male body until someone I had known, intimately, came up to me and suddenly I was partially back into my maleness.

This feelings have been ebbing and flowing but I still default to maleness. At this point it feels like the default for me because I was born male and have “masculine” features. Case in point, I am worrying about a circuit party I’m going to later with friends, well… somewhat friends and the first one I’m going to. I stay active, but I’m not fit enough to feel totally prepared for the event. I know, I know, I’m perpetuating unrealistic expectations of what our bodies should look like in the gay community, but this feels like the one place where I’ll have to prepare myself for stares and looks of “You don’t belong here.” If I’m lucky, it’ll be just that. If we’re both lucky I’ll stay quiet if it raises to remarks…

Returning to my male body though, the hairiness of it may be enough to help me “fit in.” I’m trying to convince myself that I’ve never really cared enough to fit in, which is true and not. I never cared enough about fitting in because I just kept my head down and assimilated, even though in my heart and soul I didn’t care for it. It’s just what was easy. So too in this moment, I’m hoping that my body is enough that I can just enjoy the evening. I’m not going in with expectations that I’ll get laid or that everyone will want to be with me, no, what I want is to roam and enjoy myself but not have to justify my presence there. That’s where I’m trying to convince myself that I present in such a way that I’ll be left alone.

And that feeling… that feeling that I can relax and just allow my “natural” masculinity to protect me, is conflicting with prior feelings I had had of dysphoria. I am wondering of course, if in the same way that I wrestled with my sexuality when I was younger, if the same will hold true now as an adult. When I was younger, I felt very off put by the labels gay and straight, as I didn’t fit into either well. I know there are times now that I’ll default to gay when I don’t feel comfortable around people (gay or straight), if I even feel comfortable enough to acknowledge sexuality. Even as I explore gender expressions, will I still default to “he/him/his” just to make it easy on the general public? Will I end up then, in the same way, only able to acknowledge myself as a whole person in queer spaces… In time those queer spaces may grow, but that isn’t the present I live in yet.

—

I didn’t want to make this a separate post because it is so inconsequential in the long run. The people at the circuit party looked exactly as I expected: muscular, hairless, white bodies. A handful of people of color were around, but not enough brown skin for my tastes. I’m sure the people were lovely, but it was so loud that I couldn’t hear anyone talking and didn’t try to raise my voice above the steady thump of music. The bass in the beat shook my body delightfully and I stayed near the speakers, letting the vibrations pass through my body. I went back and forth on whether to stay or not, on leaving before my friend and his friends got there. Eventually, they did show up but the place kept getting more and more crowded and that made me uncomfortable, the casual ways that other’s near naked bodies touched mine. I understand that other people might enjoy that, might find a sense of community in that, but I couldn’t bear it. I have been to plenty of nude beaches now and have gotten more comfortable with my own body in that way, but I still can’t handle people brushing up on me. None of it was mean-spirited by the way, I do want to make clear that everyone seemed lovely, on drugs and alcohol, but lovely. It just felt overstimulating to have so much casual contact on my bare skin. My friend showed up with many other friends and that was ok… One of his other friends took it upon himself to move the group around and that was fine, there was just lots of checking in which I knew would annoy me if I stayed, because I was not having a good time and was trying to hide it. My friend didn’t pick up on it and he even invited me to the next one. Recently, out at dinner, I told him how I actually felt and why I had tried to hide it more that night, didn’t want to bring the mood down but I wasn’t comfortable. His friends were nice enough and with them I felt included, but the recurring thought was, “Do I actually want to fit into this?”

I knew I was too high for the event. Too in my head and too critical and too observant and too anxious. No one was distasteful in any way, there were no disgruntled looks as I had been worried about, but I couldn’t stop the question repeating over and over. For me, the answer is no although I’m glad I went and have reaffirmed lessons I’ve learned about myself, time well spent, but wouldn’t go to another. Similarly, I’m posting this update to move on and let my mind drift to other topics at hand.

A Documentary of a Suicidal Creative: A Stream of Consciousness Response to Roadrunner

July 29, 2021 Aguilar

I watched Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain this weekend. Spoilers about all that from here on, but in the back of my mind was the fragment of a memory, a friend telling me about him after he’d read Kitchen Confidential that Bourdain had committed suicide. I wanted to watch this film over everything else that was currently out. I’d watched Zola days earlier and The Green Knight hadn’t come out yet. So I picked Roadrunner, at least aware that I’d be watching something with emotional weight to it without really stopping to think about it.

The first two thirds of the documentary are fairly standard as far as profiles of brilliant creatives go. This is not to minimize Bourdain, but to say that I recognized in him the common traits of his peers, these brilliant creatives: a storm mind, wandering eyes and heart, the seeming inability to be still, obsessive focus and passions. Again, this is not to minimize him, I absolutely loved hearing this in the first two thirds. So there I was, absolutely giddy for this creative madman, when they started in on his negative traits.

It’s around this time in the documentary, when he’s on his third marriage, that they really got into the negatives of his personality with his friends and family. Hints had been there in the documentary throughout, there had been the first divorce, him rejecting that stability despite a claim that he once desired to be normal. Did he really? I wonder now if that desire didn’t only rear its head when he was feeling down on himself, unsure of his work or life choices. Again, when one of his friends said that nothing could last for him, I realized I would need to get out my phone and start jotting down thoughts.

Before I continue, I want to be clear that I wasn’t nothing his accolades and brilliance in an attempt to elevate myself to his stature. Rather, it’s to give myself the permission to be honest about the ways in which his mental illness resonated with mine and to give myself the space to pity him, to hope for a better outcome for myself. It was at first only a mild not of similarity, the hints of his sexual infidelities, perhaps they were just unrealized desires, but the way he joked about his first wife’s divorce lawyer only needing to subpoena the film suggested more. In that grimace as he turned to the camera, for it was no joyous smirk, I saw a man aware that his desires and passions could lead him astray, they greater in fervor than his spousal obligations. I had my phone out already when a friend of his admitted that it felt like nothing could last for Bourdain.

I bristled at the though, at that character note. I had earlier in the day been noting my annoyance with my college friends, their way of upgrading any passing reference to something more serious. At a recent get together, I had thrice separately had to correct the record, as the guy who I had been seeing and somewhat interested in had received the label of boyfriend. I explained to them that we actually did not know each other all that well, hadn’t even gotten to a point where we could talk about a future together. I had then, in the back of my mind, thought of Jose Esteban Munoz’s description of queer time and straight time in Cruising Utopia. My friends, married and straight, only had this timeline in their heads of dating for a relationship, a pressure I had thought I’d felt from my therapist in our last session as well. Not all straight people subscribe to this notion of course, but these beloved friends have married in their 20s and thus could not understand, not immediately, just dating for intimacy without concern for it lasting.

Going back to the documentary, either the man himself or one of his friends, somehow the idea was raised that life goes on for a long time and asks whether it’s possible to escape our younger self’s anger or cynicism. It could have been his friend, but, funny enough, there was a scene with a therapist. His therapist asks him to reflect on his life, his resources, and whether he really wanted to change anything. Bourdain responds that it’s too late for him. When I recounted this scene in particular to my therapist, she seemed annoyed that I was comparing myself to him. “Sweetie, it is never too late to change!”

“I know, I understand, it was just an emotion that came up during the documentary,” I realized as I was telling her some of this that I would need to moderate what and how I said things to her. It was relieving to hear someone finally say that it was never too late to change, but I didn’t note that till just now. I think it may be prudent to explain to her that I have often used external media to help me process my own emotions, to face up to them.

After all, at our last session, we had been discussing my anger and bitterness. Her response, then and now, was to recommend that I work out more, more gym time and specifically to get into boxing. Bourdain’s friends felt that him getting into jiu-jitsu, courtesy of his last wife, did a lot for him. I haven’t told her that I am hesitant to learn how to actually fight, although we’ll see where I’m at several lessons in. Perhaps it will make me more committed to pacifism. Asia Argento said, of her own practice, that she wanted to be able to hurt anyone who had tried to hurt her. Again, for myself, the concern is that I would do exactly that, violently lash out and hurt anyone who had once hurt me. On that again, the resonance was with the negatives, as Bourdain himself also said he wished to inflict violence on people and dreamt of one day being happy.

Of his suicide, one of his friends discussed what seemed like an explosive anger, a need to lash out. “Had there been someone in the room with him, it would have been a homicide, not a suicide.” I wondered about that sickly feeling, when my thoughts and feelings crescendo into a desire to maim myself, to burst at the seams, to feel the release of anger by destroying a limb. On this subject of violence, I recalled the statement, the likely claim in Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents (ACEIP) that men tend to be more successful in both suicide and homicide attempts. She doesn’t elaborate, or hasn’t yet at the point in my reread. I brought this up to my therapist and she agreed and circled again, back to boxing, to help get the anger out. I agree with her wisdom and note with sadness that Bourdain’s friend thought either murder or suicide were equally likely.

Finally, the obsessiveness as an alternative to deadlier addictions. I am not surprised by this. It often feels like I’m in that boating, weening off alcohol but not sex, not video games, exercise, weed, fishing for attention on the apps. Perhaps these are less destructive than addiction to hard drugs and alcohol, but this desire to chase something, someone, anything new that could give a dopamine rush, that was familiar. What was new to see linked to this type of behavior though, was that Bourdain would cut off people regularly at the smallest slights. Again, behavior that I have seen in my life, but I was surprised to see it mentioned with these other bad habits. I thought again of what I’d recently read in ACEIP, that the emotionally immature parent will engage in black and white thinking. However, as I had been reflecting on my own behavior, my own black and white thinking and my own ability to cut off people, I wondered too if that book wasn’t written to help the reader engage in their own bad habits, to help unlearn the emotionally immature lessons we’ve carried with us into adulthood. I wondered how much the manifestations of my childhood trauma had helped to hide other nefarious characteristics of mine, how the fed into each other. Am I an asshole, I wondered. After all, Bourdain stated his parents only committed the sin of loving him, otherwise gave him a nice childhood. That is not true in my case, but the resonance with his shitty behaviors was hard to ignore. I thought they shouldn’t be ignored, not if I wanted to heal. Again, my therapist didn’t seem to care for this style of emotional analysis… She was quick to point out what she knew of Bourdain, of his drug addictions, of a relatively stable childhood versus what she knows so far of mine.

To end on a more hopeful note though and riding the idea that you don’t escape the emotional tones of your childhood: if we don’t truly break free of the pain and anger, perhaps I’ll be able to replicate some of the successes from my early life. I had strived in my youth to be myself, regardless of and often to spite societal pressures. So it was that I started to come out young, in middle school, as bisexual. I had, with a child’s understanding of sexuality, stared my pubescent desires in the face and acknowledged their truth. Perhaps, the reality is that I’m pansexual, but these are labels that ebb and flow into each other. What mattered then wasn’t getting it 100 percent right, but the feeling of relief when I could finally speak my truth, find love for myself in being seen and no longer hiding. It is true that I had to hide to survive my parents, to fit in, but do I care anymore to fit in at work? Isn’t it better to be myself than to fit in where I am now? I do acknowledge though, before I came out to my parents I had a plan for what to do if things went south, a plan I needed in the end. So it is that I have begun to seek out a new section, for this and other reasons. Still, in spending so much time worrying about the past, I need to also, if I’m going to be dragged back to then, spend time acknowledging what worked, what steps I took to improve my situation, and repeat those with the greater experience and resources that I have available to me now.

Coworkers Punch Down but Can’t Take a Joke

July 29, 2021 Aguilar

Two weeks ago I was standing around with a couple of subcontractors, the prime contractor had decided to just not show up that day. Technically, he should have been there and he hadn’t informed me he would be gone, but I also didn’t care to be wasting some additional time on site, chatting with the company foremen and presidents. We had finished discussing the job tasks and somehow the topic changed to every white man in this industries favorite thing to say, which is that everyone is too sensitive these days. One of the guys there was a technician but it’s his comment specifically that is still in my head, “It’s like no one can just laugh at themselves anymore.”

Early last week, I was showing color samples to one of the supervisors, he had to pick the color of the new bathrooms at a warehouse we were refurbishing. I’d quickly picked up the habit not to email the non-engineering supervisors for these things, as it remains easier to just print something out and walk around the facility until I find the supervisor and ask my question. I headed toward his office, empty, but heard his voice down the hallway at the superintendent’s office, his supervisor and technically another possible opinion I should check in with for the color samples. I walked over and they asked how I could help, so I showed them the print outs and explained what they were for.

“Man, who cares about these colors! Hell, why don’t you try and get them in a rainbow for us?”

“Wouldn’t that be something. Ha! Rainbows… I bet those are completely sold out right now.” Frankly, I didn’t expect the superintendent to say anything, given that any time there was too long a lull in conversations he would bring up how much he hated California’s liberal politics. However, I was surprised that the supervisor, normally very picky about everything, was having a hard time selecting a color. I realized it was probably because there was a second supervisor in the room and I had interrupted their man time, I figured he needed to show how little he cared about these colors.

“Well, it’s not June anymore so I can definitely get you a rainbow coloring, but that would look awful for this. What color do you actually want?” Their chuckling died down, we picked colors and moved on with our lives. Later in the week, I was back with the supervisor, showing him carpet and flooring samples. “Well, Eric, I got you those rainbows you wanted, but there’s also other options.”

He laughed a bit, “Good one!” My supervisor was in the room at the time and he gave an inquisitive look, but neither of us moved to explain it and instead flipped through the catalogue of samples. I followed up with an email, did my due diligence and moved on with my day.

I’m not sure why I was reflecting on these conversations I had been having with these two groups, however, I noted that while I was willing to “laugh” at myself, not once had I heard my coworkers or the contractors make a joke about being straight, white, or cis men. One of the other supervisors is Mexican and he and I had certainly made jokes about that. Myself, I have been willing to play along with the homophobic jokes, doing what I needed to keep my job flowing. But I didn’t remember that group of contractors once making a joke they were the subject of, for all their fanfare about how everyone should be able to laugh at themselves.

It’s nothing that at this point is revolutionary, the idea has existed for a while that those at the top of the social ladder don’t know how to be the butt of the joke. If anything, they are most sensitive…

To New York City – A Summer Vacation

July 11, 2021 Aguilar

Here I am a couple days after returning from my vacation, my first-time visiting New York City and the east coast, fighting a small case of the sniffles. Because of the times we live in, I’ll also need to schedule a Covid test and hope I haven’t been spreading that around.

Two of my friends moved out to NYC earlier in the year and I had been putting off visiting them for long enough. I took a week off from work and the trip lined up well with my 29^th birthday, so for me, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I even lucked out in that the weekend I visited was a small reprieve from the heat they had been having, but also just before a tropical storm came down and flooded out parts of the subway. I could tell that my friends had been having some trouble adjusting. Brendan had passed through before, during some time in politics, but the friend I’d met first, Christian, had never been. Christian had been working here in So-Cal as a nurse during the worst of the pandemic and had quit as soon as his boyfriend confirmed that he’d been hired at a legal firm in NYC and that they would be moving. Christian is a very fair skinned, almost white passing Latino, a couple facial features apparently give him away because he’s been having a hard time adjusting to Manhattan.

I can’t blame him. Although I had a great time in the city and will elaborate below, on my last day I passed through Jackson Heights. Perhaps I hadn’t noticed it as much at the restaurant I stopped to eat at on my way to the airport because I had been checking out the waiter, but at the coffee shop I smiled to be ordering in Spanish, asking about the Colombian words I didn’t understand and having the waitress translating them to a more generalized Spanish. I sat down and thought about why it was that I wanted to cry, why it was that I had stopped in Jackson Heights in the first place. I had been searching the entire trip for other Mexicans, other Latinos, desperate to find some sort of hint of what my life would be like had I grown up in NYC instead of in Santa Ana, in the greater LA metropolitan region.

On our first night out, Christian broke down crying once we were back in his apartment. The doorman had stopped us on the way in, asking us where we were headed. Once the club had closed and we’d said our goodbyes to the other friends they had made, Christian opened up and let me know that he’d been having a hard time adjusting. Life in Manhattan was too white even for him and he was not happy to be the only one of his coworkers who could speak Spanish and, as many of the patients passing through the clinic where he works couldn’t speak English, he was often asked to translate. He was most frustrated to come home and not have a partner who just understood what that feels like, who wouldn’t be able to understand without more explaining. I’ll return to Brendan later on too, later on the vacation we had our own heart to heart. When the doorman asked us where we were going, I was expecting Christian to react negatively, as he had mentioned many times during his rant on the subway that the doormen at their building always asked him where he was going, even though he was the first person on the lease, the first person they tried to call when they asked me to announce myself on one of my entrances back into the building.

We made it back up and Christian couldn’t believe what had just happened. Literally, it seemed that some sort of childhood trauma had sprung up because he kept asking, “Did that really just happen?” It was strange to be in that space, because of course it had just happened, he had complained that it would happen and then it did. I didn’t know how to create the space my friend needed in that time and that didn’t feel great. He kept repeating his question and I tried different answers, almost like a video game that was glitching and giving me the opportunity to repeat dialogue options until I got the correct one. Except, it didn’t seem there was a correct one because that moment was about so much more for my friend. Times in which he had been told by his parents that his feelings weren’t valid, times he’d been made to feel othered, times in which his class privilege failed him and he was still the subject of some racist attitudes, all of these reared up in this moment and the drinking till the clubs closed at 5 AM couldn’t have helped.

Christian and Brendan slept in the next day, but I was only able to stay in bed for a couple of hours before I got up. I went and walked down the Hudson, or up as after a while I realized I was headed inland toward upstate New York. The lack of familiarity with the geography around me was exciting. I had travelled before, but I was usually a lot more careful to know where I was going as I was in another country, or on my own, or in the wilderness. This was the first time that I could just relax, as it didn’t really matter what time I got back. In fact, I don’t think I would have thought to check where I was except a guy on Grindr told me he was over in New Jersey. I thought this was hilarious, the profile was only a mile away but he was in a different state, across a large river and might as well have been on Mars for the absolute lack of effort I was going to put into seeing him. Although I still want to visit New Jersey, it wouldn’t have been just to go find out who was behind the faceless profile hitting on me on Grindr. I walked past many older runners getting their Saturday jog in. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t seeing younger folks until I walked past centers for pre-kindergarten development, educational programs for toddlers and other such places designed to assuage the nerves of the wealthiest of parents. That’s when it hit me how affluent this corner of Manhattan was.

The first day I had mostly spent on my own while Christian and Brenden worked. I ran around Central Park, excited to be jogging through such a beautiful park, then showered and gone off to the museums. While there, a man off Grindr agreed to meet me at the museums, we chatted for some hours and ended up back at his place. The short walk from the museum to his place had us both sweaty and while I was comfortable with the knowledge that I had showered, I realized that this humidity probably lent itself to many of these conversations about hygiene on Twitter. I showered often throughout the day even at home, but when going from one air-conditioned space to another, home, car, office, car again and back home, it’s easy to stay clean. Not so walking through a city as dense as NYC. With such a dirty environment, it seemed even more critical to be as clean as possible. Perhaps too, this was a way of enforcing an implicit class divide. If you couldn’t afford to stay clean getting across the city or lived somewhere that would require you to take the subway, you’d have greater opportunities to pick up the odors of this city.

This man was even more bitter about racial issues and he described a level of entitlement that I hadn’t witnessed back in So-Cal. I wondered aloud whether it was that white people in California were barely a majority anymore and that it felt like we were better mixed here in the LA metropolitan region. He said maybe it was that, but that he couldn’t stand the white people here. His neighborhood was in Manhattan too, but he said it was a more affordable portion, still a short walk to Central Park but decidedly more normal than the spot my friends were at. I asked him if he thought too that the people here were flashier with their wealth, that perhaps NYC was so well stratified along class lines that the affluent white folks were just not used to having many people of color around them, those few who made it into their financial circles still had to behave a certain way that let the white folks feel entitled. I chuckled to myself, for all the hate the automobile gets, perhaps the car was the great equalizer back home. Yes, we were alone in our cars, but we were all stuck on the same freeways. In NYC, I imagined myself as a wealthier person and I realized that would mean I would do my best to never ride the subway.

So it was that I didn’t really have to confront the relative affluence of my friends’ neighbors until the second day. Yes, there is a level of privilege in taking off a whole week from work, flying across the country, and spending the day jogging around a park before going off to museums for cultural enrichment. The irony is not lost on me and I assumed this was part of why Christian was struggling so much. We are well off by most American’s standards and the three of us individually would do, have done, and are doing well in Greater LA. But in that corner of Manhattan, we were nothing. Those two at least, a lawyer and a nurse, could afford to live there now, but neither had grown up in it and perhaps that was something their neighbors could pick up on. For myself, I knew I’d never fit into that world, that no amount of degrees and certifications would stop me from craving to be around people who spoke Spanish, for example.

My youngest sister seems to have adapted far more in that respect, her Spanish incredibly rusty and forced. I met up with her and one of her friends on that second day, another trip to the museums. My friends were supposed to meet us as well, but by the time they had woken up and recovered, my sister and her friend, Clarice, had to go back toward Long Island. Clarice’s family was planning on taking their boats out, tying them up and enjoying some beers and fireworks. It wouldn’t be the Fourth of July until the next day, but like many other Americans, they would be celebrating ahead of time with some illegal fireworks displays. I laughed that the topic of therapy and intergenerational trauma had come up and Clarice was chiming in with her own problems. It wasn’t that I thought affluent, white people couldn’t have relatable problems, but rather I was laughing at my sister. In college, I had found all the broken Mexicans, desiring that sort of familiarity. As I’ve already mentioned, my sister has assimilated much more into the American culture, so her friends are more mixed than mine, but still as damaged it seems. I haven’t brought it up to her yet, but I wonder if she’s aware and actively looking for people who might understand her or if she’s doing it subconsciously, finding others who carry around similar familial trauma.

On the Fourth of July, we celebrated by going out Sunset Park for some dim sum, in a restaurant where less than half of the staff spoke English. This was one of the other neighborhoods I had wanted to see. Not Sunset Park specifically, but I was excited to see that it was a mostly Asian neighborhood, probably majority Chinese although I wasn’t looking carefully at the people as we walked through. Somewhere, there would be a similarly Latino neighborhood, specifically one group over the other. I hadn’t wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, or the 9/11 Memorial, but the ferry back from Sunset Park took us close to the Statue and dropped us just south of Wall Street. We ended up walking through Wall Street, taking in the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Hall and the aforementioned 9/11 Memorial, adding up to the most patriotic Fourth of July I’ve observed yet. Again, I was impressed by the density of even the cultural objects, as we were just strolling through the city and could walk to many sites of historical importance.

On the evening of the Fourth, we watched a play out in Central Park and I got a chance to spend a little more alone time with Christian and one of their friends, Manh, separately. With Christian, I let him know that I had restarted therapy as I felt that there were still things I needed to deal with from my childhood, things I had already been in therapy for, but also specifically I wanted to work on the resentment I felt now and the adjustments I was having to make as I climbed the economic ladder. I pointed out that he likely felt similar resentments and would benefit from therapy. Thankfully, he told me agreed and that he was working toward getting to a job that would give him medical benefits that he could use to take therapy. I was happy for him, glad a friend of mine was trying to take care of himself. I mentioned it often and I said it again, that I was curious to see what my life would have been like had I grown up over there and figured the best way to get a sense of that would be to find raza and ask them over drinks. I mentioned that I could see myself moving now to NYC, to specific neighborhoods, but that it would be so different as a young professional. He let me know too of other places they had considered moving to and listed a couple of places that he knew of that had more people of color, specifically more Latinos. I made note of them, letting him know that I’d like to visit and see what the guys there were like.

Manh was a trip. Even though he himself did not live in Manhattan and was not an NYC local, I felt that he gave me all the look I needed to know that I would hate to date in NYC, in Manhattan even more. Manh is a Vietnamese immigrant, working in some financial capacity for one of the many stock exchanges. He took offense when I said he was a “finance bro.” Our entire conversation that evening had felt like he was trying to convince me of things that weren’t, or making himself out to be the exact opposite of who he was. He started a conversation making some comment about his age and mine, saying that he felt old compared to me. I told him I understood it didn’t mean much coming from a younger guy not even in his 30s, but that I felt the gay community was too obsessed with age as a number. He said something else self-deprecating, and I told him he shouldn’t do that, put himself down just to compliment someone else. So he switched instead to picking on me, saying maybe I was as immature as my age suggested if I spent any time on TikTok. On that too, I asked him not to make himself feel better by trying to put me down. The topic changed to dating, I was clearly making him uncomfortable. He let me know that he didn’t have a specific type but that the most important thing was that there was “chemistry, or something instant, a physical attraction.”

“Oh yea, so like looks?” I asked.

“No! That makes me sound shallow. It’s just, take me for example, I don’t obsess over that but I try to take care of myself,” he nervously pointed at his core while he said that. Perhaps he tried to puff out his stomach to make himself look flabby, but it was quite evident to me that Manh actually cared a lot about his appearance. “Oh stop, you’re making me feel judged.”

“Well, you can say it however you’d like, but I think you should be honest about what you like and how much you take care of yourself. Hell, when people ask me, I let them know I lift often and run almost every day but that I also like to eat. I don’t expect that level of physical activity from people I date but I also wouldn’t mind it.”

“See, you’re the shallow one and you’re trying to make me sound shallow.”

“If that’s what you’ve gotten from that, that’s fine.” I really had no interest in changing his mind, but I thought the conversation very revealing. I had already commented to Brendan that I found it interesting how, the night we had stayed out till the clubs closed, Manh had told us he felt ugly and unwanted. This same man had found three separate handsome guys to make out with throughout the night. I stayed quiet then too, Christian handled that conversation while I looked for food. Still, returning to this moment and trying to continue the present conversation, I asked Manh his opinion on the Manhattanites. Sadly, he didn’t have much to say and turned the conversation to the skyline, the buildings covered by the sulfurous haze of fireworks just past.

Back in the apartment, Manh told me he didn’t want to wear the shirt we had gotten from the performance troupe out as it made him seem too skinny. I started saying maybe he should eat more but he cut me off to repeat himself and bring up a different boy. I saw that he was on Grindr then and was happy I hadn’t checked the app in a while, so my profile’s location would be somewhere north of Central Park, not visible here in the southwest corner. When I saw that he had put his phone down, I logged onto the application and blocked him as soon as his profile loaded. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the places we wanted to go to were open and the lines made it clear that few people were staying in on the Fourth to celebrate with their family. We danced for a while, but this time I was intent on going home at the same time as Brendan, so the four of us ended up at a diner some time around midnight.

The next day I was up early again and wandered around the city for a while, looking for a good bagel and a good coffee. I had been so far unimpressed by the bagels the city had to offer. They felt more like they were such a highly esteemed item because they were fresh. In that way, they were like a fresh baguette in France, fresh bolillos and tortillas in Mexico, other fresh breads elsewhere. In other words, special because they were freshly made and regional because the local shops specialized in providing that kind of fresh bread, but otherwise unimpressive. This morning was no different and as well I was again disappointed by the coffee. I headed back to Christian and Brendan’s, noting that just this once I didn’t have to explain who I was visiting or where I was headed to the doormen. We went out for the day, to the east and west villages, saw Stonewall. Brendan told me that he felt that while people headed to LA to try and become famous Hollywood actors or social media influencers, they came to NYC, to the villages, to become artists. I laughed because I was initially excited to finally see people in NYC that looked like hipsters. I considered whether I cared if they were fake and decided no, not really, and imagined a life in the village. From there we made it out to Astoria, a Greek neighborhood.

We had dinner in Astoria and while we ate I ignored my phone. I almost regret that, as we had started dinner late and by the time we finished, most people would have been getting ready for bed, off to sleep for work the next day on Tuesday. I did wander around myself after, Christian and Brendan made their way home sooner as they had to work. I walked to the riverfront and watched people set off fireworks with the backdrop of two rivers and the skyline of Manhattan. I walked to the end of the park and then back through it toward the metro station. At one point, I heard a scooter coming up behind me on the park paths and I figured, this is it. Instead, I was surprised to see as I turned that it was a young mom and her kid on a scooter. I checked my phone, 11 PM, and figured I would really like living out here in Astoria if it was calm enough for a mom to be out riding her scooter and if the men on Grindr were telling of the guys I’d find in this neighborhood. I was trying to find a similar analogue, as Long Beach is to Los Angeles, so too was this indeterminate neighborhood to central NYC.

Before I left to Jackson Heights the next day, I chatted for a while with Brendan. I already mentioned the coffee shop, so staying on the topic of the men of Grindr, in Jackson Heights as in Astoria I was excited by the kind of guys I saw. I felt like I fit in more, for one, more visually similar to these guys than the ripped, smooth torsos of Manhattan and two, I was back to having even conversations on the apps in Spanish. I promised myself I’d come back one day on my own and actually spend time out here, adding to the ever expanding list of places I want to visit alone.

Brendan is thankfully not blind to Christian’s struggle to adapt to their move. My last morning, we finally had a little time to chat while I waited for my laundry to finish. I asked him how many of our conversations throughout the weekend he had been able to overhear. Certainly the first night, well, the first dawn, I figured he would have heard everything given how loud Christian was talking. On the specific issue of the doormen, I agreed with him that there wasn’t much he could do so long as Christian didn’t want him to interfere. I told him personally I would have already complained, would have absolutely had my white boyfriend escalate it if it was bugging me as much as it was bugging Christian. But, I also told him that I don’t know that it would bug me this much, it seemed a specific issue for Christian because he’s always been a little white passing, a little affluent enough to escape some of the attitudes people have against Latinos, and so he expected more even in Manhattan. He told me he felt frustrated though, because Christian didn’t want to explain many of these issues to him. I told him I empathized but also felt it would be better for Christian to just find some queer, brown friends and vent about these things. Most of the issues he brought up seemed more like things you got off your chest and moved on from, annoyances on the long list of things that queer, brown men will experience in life. We were discussing the racial differences and he brought up that he also felt out of place in Manhattan, himself being from a very rural area. I latched onto that, recalling an earlier conversation the three of us had had, noting that there was a certain privilege from growing up in one of the many metropolitan regions that the world centers around. I told him that was a good analogy for the ways in which we couldn’t understand each other, try as we might; Christian and I would never experience being from somewhere as rural as Brendan and would often make gaffes or speak in ways that showed some bias against him. In a similar way, Brendan would never be able to experience being Latino in the US and especially with a partner as unwilling to be open as Christian. I empathized with his frustration, stating that I saw the unfortunate way in which Christian and I were similar, shutting down sometimes rather than explaining. I told him unfortunately, Christian was holding onto that resentment, whereas I was just trying to get to a point where I was able to let go of things I couldn’t change, to make a certain peace with the racist and homophobic attitudes of my coworkers.

There was no solving the issues that Christian was having, but I hoped that Brendan would understand that there were deep issues that he couldn’t solve himself and that Christian was open to therapy. I could tell that Brendan wasn’t happy with that, but I reminded him that so much of Christian’s frustration right now stemmed from having to work as a nurse through the pandemic. Christian wanted empathy and understanding from us, he said as much, but when Christian brought it up I told him he was minimizing what he had gone through if he thought a couple of white collar professionals could relate to what he had gone through. I think by now we have all heard horror stories of nurses watching people die, telling families of Covid patients, day after day. Christian had gone through all of that but wasn’t allowing himself to grieve properly, even as he teared up while telling me this. I reminded Brendan of this again and again, because I could tell a source of his frustrations was a desire to be the one to help Christian out. I’m single, so I don’t know how much of that comes from a healthy desire to help your partner and how much of that was his own desire to be a savior. After our heart to heart, I left, still making up my mind on whether I would grab lunch with Christian or check out Jackson Heights.

I eventually made my way to the airport. Brendan and I had had a running joke before the trip that, native to So-Cal, I hadn’t experienced real weather yet. He’s absolutely right, but one habit I had already picked up due to my time in construction was to check the weather. The forecast for the day unfortunately had some troubling news and so, when we boarded the plane finally and it started to rain heavily, I was not surprised. When the flashes of lightning came through the window, I was not one of the many passengers blaming the airline for the thunderstorm. We took off 6 hours later than we were supposed to. Many hours later, two additional flights, I finally touched down in Long Beach and walked out, enjoying the dryer heat although tired and dazed. I had used points for my flights, so that meant accepting some less than stellar routes there and back. Once home though, I showered and went to bed, happy to have visited New York City and wanting to return in the fall, but happier still to have found a place for now that I was comfortable in.