Too sensitive to smell

The cool September wind was playing a song as it passed over my half-full Heineken bottle – my feet steps ahead of his just so he could see how pretty I looked with my hair whipping across my face and my shorts covered by a long sheer salmon-colored shirt, exposing my newly flattened stomach and floral print black bra.

I’ve been stressed. I don’t usually notice stress, but it’s evident because every bite of food, besides potato chips and McDonald’s makes my stomach turn, so my body thins. 

Every rough step, every dive the boys took into the alluring dark waves, every burst of laughter and “come on man” while I marveled at the stars I hadn’t seen in months, sent me into a spell of déjà vu.

It feels good to have déjà vu, but what does it mean? It’s the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an experience currently being experienced has been experienced in the past. Most don’t understand what is really happening when you experience déjà vu, and for the sake of prose I’ll pretend as well.

It was as if I was supposed to be there. I was happy, very happy.

 

Does it have anything to do with that night?

 

Texas hasn’t been as good to us. His eyes don’t pull up in the corners as his mouth does the same when he looks at me. It’s almost a blank stare. And then when I smile he asks, “What?”  

He’s mad at me all the time.

I wonder if someone outside the situation would see it his way. Maybe I am wicked. I try really hard to make him happy. Or at least I think I do. I guess I’ve never been good at it.

When I want to put my lips all over him, when I want every inch of my body to fuse with his, when I want our bones to grind and make dust that soaks up the blood forming on the top of the skin on our necks… I’m turned on now… But he thinks I’m too clingy and I ask too much.

But when I sip rum on The Looking Glass patio alone staring at the beautiful people doing beautiful things and daydreaming about the beauty they bring to my life, when I walk away to smoke without asking him to come, when he asks me a question and I don’t answer to think about the answer… I can’t give him enough attention.

He would rather sit for hours and look at others’ pictures on Instagram and Facebook then see the picture in front of him that he can reach out and hear, smell and touch. And I guess he wants me to do the same – having relationships with others only online.

Missouri – like always – has been tumultuous. I broke up with him. He’s begged, but my pride is stronger than my grace. It’s something I should work on.

I can’t eat and neither can he. I’m shaking and I see his hands twitching above the keyboard.

The difference is I’m sitting alone while he’s downstairs laughing with my friends, although the best part of him lingers to keep me preoccupied – the smell of his deodorant.  It could practically induce my vomiting – I danced around Target while he held every men’s antiperspirant up to my nose until I was woozy and sick and giggling, while couples looked at us and wished they were in that simple, bothersome moment.

That mirage will forever trick me.

I long... for this love... to be my demise.

Like an adolescents Las Vegas, neon lights shine on the water-stained boardwalk where hundreds of kids, age 13-19, roam around in wife beaters and bikinis. Instead of strippers and casinos, the lights draw the flies into piercing shops and carnival life.
That's Ocean City. A tourist trap. A dirty beach. Awkward stares.
That's where I met him. The love I never  knew I'd have, walked right up to me at a lecherous, sandy-floored bar. Seacrets... Is there some irony within that name or I am subconsciously making one?

The places my life has taken me has led me to some amazing people. He's not the first nor the last, but there's destruction in those big brown eyes. He plays it well... They look so innocent set into a tan cleanly-shaven face, with a body that has just the right amount of hair covered by cut-off shorts and hipster Tees.
He said to me -- the night it all ended -- "I want to be that guy you come home too." Meaning after I went out and had my fill of tongue and teeth and lips. No blood though. That's only for the really special.
That tune quickly changed and by no means am I upset with it. He is mine. And I won't be hypocritical; if I am going to be some territorial, selfish, craving sanguinaire, I will let him do the same. I don't mind being his chew toy.
It hasn't come without consequences though. I'm sure it has a lot to do with this new city that's eating me alive. Anyone that could help me resurface is leaving. And I'm trying to do the same, in my own way.

He leaves without telling me. A straight week of hugs and kisses, sweat and pounding sex means nothing to him when he's angry. And he gets angry at me quite a bit. I'm too open about the flaws that ail me. You can rein in the bad ass, but she'll always be there swimming through the veins ready to blurt out something inappropriate and test the limits. Although I've really tired hard to show him unconditional devotion, as far as I know the definition.
He said, "I've dated plenty of awesome girls" -- and just so I know I'm not even in the running -- "one for 6 years and one for 8 months, and they never said they were incomplete."
He's not dating them anymore so I'm guessing they weren't really that awesome. Not to say I am either... I think people like the calm just as much as they like the storm; they enjoy the warm tongue on their neck  as much as they like the teeth breaking the skin.
But... It's more appropriate to call those people liars. They probably do not mean to deceive, but I'm fascinated with how little self-awareness humans have.


And then I could hear nothing... But the ambulance. The cars sat still and topped their honking. The wind died and the rustle of leaves non-existent. The world had stopped in mid-action.
I almost felt compelled to stop walking, myself, as if the ambulance was coming to rescue me and everyone was watching, mouthing for me to stop and take a break, let someone care for me.
I'm heartbroken, you see. I need someone, especially right now, who understands me. But I won't get it... so...
I want the world to stop for me. I want everyone and everything to stand still will I walk all over it. I want to love and then crush. I want to create and then destroy. I am the god people speak of. I make that phantasmagoria in the sky humans. It is us.
Make all you can and rip apart even more. You will only find satisfaction, physically or mentally, once others have longed for you, once you know the pain of killing your own design, once you have been the cause of death. Once you have longed for an illusion, once someone has trampled on your design, and once they have caused your death.

Life, liberty and the passion for travel

We live in an age where small businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators have to produce the most linked products, ones that make life unnecessarily easier.
But the thought of laziness frightens me. I envision a world, where humans are detached in a Wall-E-esque world.

That's why Google's new platform, The World Wonders Project, makes me cringe at the thought of the future of travel.

You know me. I'm a traveler, a vagabond, a gypsy. The road is my mate, as I've said enough times.

The price of gas skyrockets, discouraging travel. Tensions between countries, whether regarding race or religion, will escalate, scaring people from wandering outside their comfort zone. In a world where terror is high, people aren't able to travel with luggage for fear of hijacks and bombs, making it possible for only the wealthiest to pay for a plane ticket and a whole new wardrobe once they reach their landing-place. Instead people use platforms like Google's, below, to see the world.
World Wonders Project
Google's platform is a tad muddled. It's hard to find your way around the quarter globe under the landing page for the destinations and exploring the destinations is glitchy, but the project is impressive to say the least.

Could this be the future of travel?

A ram by Zodiac, a scavenger by profession

Driving out of DC, I saw the Washington Times headquarters--usually full of canaries--a tan building with the Gothic old English font hanging huge on the side. The building wasn't in downtown DC, but instead on the outskirts in the northeast section of town.
When I was searching for places to call my own at the group house of nine, I found a two bedroom, one bath for $725 in Anacostia. My roommate, the politico, one of many, said, "Hell no." I was told to stay out of the eastern areas of the city.
Anacostia is known for being on of the worst parts of town, although I can't speak on it since I haven't been... yet. It's an area in the southeast, pretty close to the Washington Times building.
The hood seems a strange place for such a big newspaper. Although the Times has lost money every year since it's inception, its founder seems willing to spend money to make no money.

I got on the highway around 12:30 PM, and before hitting traffic in 97 degree weather with my air conditioning giving out, I saw a three vultures circling in the air over a dense tree line. When vultures smell, hear or see an animal close to the end they circle, watching, waiting for the woodland creature to finally slump over and exhale its last. They're almost taunting their fellow brutes below. The site of the reaper is hard to transcend. These feathered dinosaur ancestors inhabit the treacherous terrain, and the anticipation of death may seem grotesque--alas vultures do have a bad rep.

Scavengers...

Let me have some of what you're smoking

DC is no New York. Where New York is the rebellious, hipster son of immigrant parents, experimenting with drugs, sex and anything taboo, DC is the son always destined for fortune--maybe not fame-- from a businessman's romp with a secretary, a tad pretentious but hard-working and a true leader, wearing argyle socks and ties even to work out.
But even the successful, normal son knows freaks, and in DC they stand out even more, without the jealousy of the other "weird" kids vying for attention.

I've met many strange characters in the city...
The bouncer at The House...
The House is a African American strip club down the street from my house in Petworth. I've been there several times because the inaugural event there with a friend from Missouri, Josh--equally intrigued by oddities--I met this man.

The bouncer was quite friendly and after standing outside smoking and talking to him decided to show us his woman, all of his woman. As he flipped through the nude photos of his girlfriend--a 20-something with this 50-something--Josh and I were laughing hysterically. But my insides were saying, "Awww, how sweet."

He loved her. At least the love that I know, that won't last forever but for the time being is, to take inspiration from "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," infinite.

And then you see his buddy, riding shotgun in the white police-looking car, wearing his seat belt and holding what looks like grape drink. We didn't find out exactly why the bouncer kept the dummy in his car, but again there was an  "awww" moment. I wonder if the bouncer wasn't a little mentally slow, and in that case this brings me back to childhood, when I used to drag stuffed animals around with me wherever I went. I used to teach them and mentor them, and in a family where my brother was 8 years older and my parents were always working, they were my only friends to confide in. I believed they had life, and it hurt me to love one more than the other.

Dr. Shine, the rapper on U Street...

Margaret and I had been dancing upstairs at the Black Cat, to sexy 80s industrial pop, when we went outside for a smoke. I'm not really sure why this man came up to us, but he started rapping the story of his wife cheating on him with a midget. Dr. Shine walked in on 4-foot man and his wife fucking, the midget jumped out the window, and then punched the doctor in the nuts.

Never once did the good doctor ask for money, although Kamal, an African American man we met and then proceeded to grind on downstairs at rap battle/gangster jams night, gave him $5.

Candyman...

Outside Callahan & Associates stands a well-spoken, well-dressed African American man. He was picked up before I got to DC and taken I suppose to jail or some kind of rehab facility. After several months the facility said something like this, 'Well, there ya go, a couple new polos and a pair of jeans. Back out on the street for you.'

And there he was again.

In the morning, Candyman is standing by the entrance of the 11-story building, where Callahan is busy on the 10th, and is quick to say hello and give you nice words.

"Hey cutie. How ya doing today?"

By the end of the day though, he is completely unaware of what's happening around him. Instead he's making a passionate speech, about rights, judgement, sex, presidents to no one. He's looking above everyone's heads, like you're told to if you get nervous while giving a speech. He's moving his hands and shifting from one foot to the other.

It's a dramatic switch, from the morning to the evening and it pulls me to figure out.

One afternoon he was talking to Mark, Michael, Melissa, and I--brought to you by the letter M--about applying for law school at Georgetown. He's extremely literate and when he's not drunk or high or mentally unstable could be a lawyer.

The M-group and I have decided to take him to see The Avengers soon. And soon I might start filming him. I'd like to get his real name, but the last time he was asked, Mark said he skirted around the question and finally changed the subject.

The Russian hit man at Metro Center...

As Arun and I sat at Metro Center smoking and digesting our food, we noticed a tall man in all black with the light blue eyes that could entrance you from miles away. He was squatting and rotating his arms like the characters from movies that have super powers--turning someone into ice there, calling upon the lightening here, karate-chopping there.

In between bouts of Dragon Ball-Z type rampages, the man would sit on the sidewalk and chat with people that passed by, not coherently I'm sure. When people weren't passing by he would look around with longing, or hold his head in his hands. I'm sure because his face orifices were about to pour brain blood from the amount of hallucinogens he had ingested. But to me it was as if he was hurting, depressed with his aloneness.

I watched him for about an hour sitting on Arun's lap.

"I love him," I said.

He looked up at me and said, "I'm not yours. I can't be, because you're in love with everyone."

"I hope you can understand," I said.

Before heading back to Petworth, we went to toss a bottle of Naked juice in the trash can beside the hit man. He had gotten up to speak with someone and was walking back to his stoop, so I was dragging my feet to time running into him. We made eye contact and he started rambling.

"I have my eye on you," he said to Arun. "Take care of Sophie and [some male name]."

And then, "Hold on a minute, I've got to fly," as he closed his eyes and tensed his muscles.

He was beautiful. And wasn't at all unhappy. Just in another world.

I wonder what they're thinking, what they're hearing, what they're seeing. I want to be in that world with them, to relate with them and tell them that's it's all going to be alright.



Wes Anderson makes another awkward beauty

Moonrise Kingdom, the new awkward love story by Wes Anderson, showed last Saturday at E-Street Cinema in downtown DC.
Anderson is always able to make his scenes heart-wrenching while clumsily smirk-inducing.

Here's an interview with the two child stars in the film, Kara Hayward as Suzi and Jared Gilman as Sam. Anderson has a knack for picking and then cultivating the actors to be the characters. These kids have such potential but they're undoubtedly awkward as the movie suggests.

Uncontrollable

I've never met someone that can make me feel so terrible that I'm effectually rendered useless, until now.

I like him, meaning that he makes me fucking crazy and I would give anything for him to be sent back to Chicago.
He's talked about suicide in recent days, and I doubt I'd even mind that, as long as I was there to watch.
I look past him when he's talking to me. I roll my eyes at him. I yell at him. But when he turns on that face, eyes welling, lips trying to smile but puckering so the corners creep down, pleading, shoulders hunched, hands not strong anymore but easily pulled away from, there's nothing I can do.

He's been talking dark lately. "Give me more pain." "Make me bleed." "Maybe I'll just kill myself." But he doesn't say those things with the face above. No, those things are said with a smirk. It's a smirk that hides whatever is really going on in that brain very well.
I'm scared of him. And I think I always knew I would be. From the very beginning I got this sense that he was lying to get what he wanted. Those kinds are frightening; you never know what they'll do and then be able to trick someone into thinking they didn't.
But am I only alarmed because for once I'm not the intimidating one... I'm not the one dominating. I'm not the one that makes or breaks. It's not my decision to take the life.

We were walking in Crystal City a couple days ago. It was 10:13, after I had seen him looking at himself in the art exhibit windows--he was clearly reflected in the silver--putting his finger perpendicular to his throat and sliding it across his neck. There was this creature, thoughtful, kind, in love with me, with his back to me, but the window showed something so different, an angry, uncontrollable, jealous beast. I wanted to console the one and run from the other.
We were walking through dimly lit parking lots with sparsely scattered trucks and vans, on our way back to my SUV--a haven with all my self-defense tools locked uselessly inside.
He touched my back as he whispered, "I'm falling in love with you all over again." The muscles in my butt tightened and made my back clench. It wasn't the kind of tensing because he is my love and his touch makes me melt; it was the kind of tensing that someone feels when their kidnapper puts a blade to their back and tells them it's going to be alright.

I'm scared though I love it. I can't get enough... It's like being addicted to skydiving, tattoos or performing onstage. The adrenaline rushes through your body, fight or flight are both vying for attention, and, like that, it's over and you're still alive, stronger. The adrenaline slowly subsides tingling under your skin, like an orgasm dissipating.

Even if he hit me, even if he raped me, even if he killed me, would I be able to despise him. I already do despise him, but like he says, "I'm addicted to the pain."
Would I forgive and forget? He'd show up outside my work a couple days after the attack with that look in his eyes. I would have no choice but to touch his face. My arm would lethargically rise as if I were in one of those fair rides--spinning so fast that the G-force makes your body heavy. The world right outside the metro would spin, colors blurring and noises softening and I would only see him in that moment.

Him with the dagger behind his back.

When the sea evaporates, the fire will only be barely burning embers

We were lamenting on men and sex of course, Margaret and I over an IPA pint and a glass of red wine. She was telling me about a friend that people would say was cold-hearted, but Margaret knew that she was merely independent and tough.
"It's like, I want to have a relationship with people, but not the kisses and dinner, I love you's and drawing hearts kind of relationship. It's more like the I want to study you relationship."
And Margaret said that's exactly what her friend had said before.

And we talked about our unwillingness to date right now. She has choices but she's apathetic about working at the kisses and dinner, I love you's and drawing hearts.
"I'm not willing to try, to pursue anything either and I think that means I'm happy." I'm absolutely happy.
And she agreed.

I met someone this weekend though. A familiar face but a person I hadn't noticed before. Sipping on Jameson and pulling me into him until our hip bones ground on each other; snarling when my neck was between his teeth and his skin purple and yellow from my mine.

I was shivering in only bare skin and my eyes were in line with his, but I was straining to see everything I could without turning--in my peripheral a dark spot on the ceiling and the white metal swirls of the bedpost. His face, tanned in front of a hanging photo of a beach where the island native would rather be, was illuminated with blue from the open laptop sitting on the bed, pumping out trance. Fitting music since the burn of sweat pooling in the corner of my eye could do nothing to take my gaze from him. His lips turning up at the corners as if he loved my childish fascination. The stubble making the outline of his chin seem blurred, his maroon lips lighter with the skin retreating away after being attacked, his breath cool as he exhaled my smell from his nose.
It's a moment I never want to forget, but I'll probably have to.

Lust and Passion are both on my shoulder, screaming to indulge them. I'll have to let them go soon enough though so I wish they'd just shut the fuck up and let me be.

He thinks my eyes are the crab nebula, showing him places he's never been before.

"Forever may the mirror remind you of the same; that I see you differently." If he would have been right in front of me when he said that, instead of behind a broken cell phone screen, we would be back at the beginning... I was shivering in only bare skin...

A penny for your dark thoughts dear

It took me almost an hour to get from my current living situation in the group house to my new residence--come two weeks--in Petworth, and I played "Head Full of Doubt" by the The Avett Brothers the whole 56 minutes.

It was my melancholy anthem when I left Missouri... I absorbed those lyrics and they infected me and  ignited until I could do nothing more but send tears falling onto my skin, cooling the burn.

But today I didn't cry to those lyrics. Today I smiled at them, knowing that I had freed that caged little bird. No one whistling or feeding me stale crackers.

I'm satisfied with myself and where I'm going. I have a well-paying job that has me constantly learning in a beautiful action-packed city. I met an Irish American man, with huge green eyes, shy but ablaze.

As I walked to the metro to meet him, smoking a cigarette, realizing I could still see the stars, I wondered, 'What if he rapes me?'

The new housemate Arun--a dark skinned, married, Portuguese Indian who talks so much it tickles my insides--and I were talking about sex while we sat awkwardly at the end of a pizza parlor table full of "writers." 

"Have you heard of Diane Arbus?"

"No," he said as his dark eyes peered beyond what mine were hiding.

Arbus, a photographer, my biggest inspiration, who took photos of bizarre people from midget strippers to the mentally insane. I remember thinking, as I read her biography, that I want to be like her, not giving a fuck what people think, so independent and unafraid. Some might argue I'm already like her...

But before she killed herself, she told a friend that she wanted to be raped. She was dark, obviously, but I remember my thighs getting warm and my back arching as the sensation overtook me when I read those words.

And I wondered, 'What if he rapes me?' Would I walk miles back home, clothes torn, blood dripping onto my calves, tears of black caught in my laugh lines? Would those laugh lines be brand new or forever constrained? Would I be a different person, shamed and plagued? Or would it be a pleasant end to a fantastic day?

As Sweet

As Sweet. Bailey Reutzel. Mixed media (chalk/charcoal/oil paints/ink pen) on canvas. Mar. 24, 2012.

Touch their veins and they will rest... from the clowns?

Margaret--a curvy, silly, sex enthralled, red-headed feminist New Orleans--Cerelia--a thin, passionately worried activist, half Polish, half Cypriot--and I went to an Arts and Activists lecture at a now built up and commercialized bar, know for it's arts activities, Busboys and Poets.
Although for the most part the event featured aloof, pretentious artists disregarding questions, Adriel Luis was probably the most interesting, adding humor into the length of his comments and showing actual art, which the others must have thought would be detrimental to their rambling on how ardent they are for social change.
Check out his video below.

You will be executed:Capital Punishment in 2011

There's no doubt it's a homage to Warhol, conjuring up images of Marilyn Monroe. And Luis was a genius in doing so. Just like the Warhol's Monroe makes a statement about mass production and the fake detached celebrities we see present themselves during interviews and confidently walking down the red carpet, brains going wild with self doubt because they're all just so pretty and the same, Luis video seems to be an assembly line production of execution. The bold, changing, unrealistic colors detach us from the human being, making us think of the deaths like a skit from a cartoon, humorous because it's not real.
Some of the people in the video might have slit a woman's throat or shot a 7-year-old kid during a drive by... Maybe that's what they saw in their mind--a switch off, an engine misfiring, a cord unplugged--when they hurt the people they did. Do the faces of those they damaged haunt them until they're on that slab taking needles, flashing with color, an oxymoronic clown. The end.


Another video by Adriel Luis that is worth checking out is Slip of the Tongue.

A new life appreciating the old

The 14 hour drive to DC was invigorating and terrible. I usually stop after 12 hours but the thought of a financial writing job—I could uncover something big, become a celebrity journalist along the lines of Thompson and then binge self medicate on any kind of drug I could name—the friends I’d meet—wearing suits during the day in a 20 story office, then by night smoking cigarettes in the seediest bar in town and carrying out their every fetish—and the man—intelligent but strange, handsome and dark, meeting me on the metro and being my tour guide among other inelegant things—pushed me on.

All of its silly I know. But I have such high expectations for my travels. So those thoughts pushed me on, while there were plenty of times my foot grazed the break pedal and my hands twitched as the memories of the words said to me in Missouri slithered from one ear to the other.

None of those things have happened… yet… of course.  

Before I left, after a double, I was sitting at the bar tables with two friends from the kitchen, drinking Norton and filling the bistro with smoke. I had decided to hang around later than usual and the guy—who reminds me so much of my brother—said, “I’m going to miss you. You don’t let things get under your skin.”

Well it was something along those lines. And although I don’t know if those were just the erratic word to sentence formations of a drunk man, it made me realize that the people I met in Columbia will always be comparable to family. Whenever I decide to visit home, I’ll always have two places to stop now—Cape and Columbia. The friends I found during my 10 months in the hipster hellhole are extraordinary people that enjoyed me for the person I am.

But I think he was onto something. My ability to shake things off, to not get to upset about the things presented, to not care is maybe my best quality. It allows me to get over being stood up by a girlfriend, to be cheated on by a boyfriend, to move across the country with no one and nothing to call home.

It allows me to pack up my life and move without a care in the world, in a month, a week, a day. I feel like I didn’t have time to say good-bye and although there’s a regretful sense I should be sad about it, I’m not. You can decide whether you think this is amiable or malignant.

Every morning I wake up to police sirens, in a small room with another woman. I walk to the metro and there are so many people around, so many beautiful people, but no one even speaks to each other. There have been several times I have missed the opportunity of a handsome man, but today I decided it would be my last day for that. If I don’t ask him I’ll never see him again and if I do, well I still might not. Embarrassment only lasts approximately 15 minutes. People are always in a hurry, running up and down the escalators for Christ’s sake.

I got home from work and looking at a house where a 40-something-year-old pedophiliac looking banker and an old woman who shares a room with another man live, and was tempted to cry. Lately I’ve been feeling on the verge of crying almost every second, but then when I finally give in the tears never come. It’s quite exhausting to feel such different emotions at the same time. It’s quite exhausting to be in a three bedroom house with ten people.

I feel so many different things. I’ll call it, nomadic bipolar disorder.

I love it here; absolutely love it here. There’s so much potential, for whatever I decide to dabble in next.

But I do miss home as well. It seems I’ve spent 22-years trying to get out of Misery, only to realize when I dug my roots into the top soil of a new land, Missouri has made me who I am, and I love and appreciate who I am, so I love and appreciate Missouri. It will always be my home. It will always hold a place in my mind as a god forsaken state that sometimes creates strong independent woman that will adventure around the world to make it a better place.

I've made a small home of red sand

More than 35 hours in five days… My Explorer—probably more of a home to me than any shack, apartment or house I’ll ever stay in—took me to Albuquerque, New Mexico last week. I was calling the trip a small introspective experiment in dealing with utter aloneness. I knew not a single soul, and the closest relative or friend was about 10 hours away.  
I found myself eating New Mexican food in small cafes, where voluptuous Hispanic servers delivered huge plates of eggs, peppers and beans smothered in red or green Chile to tattooed immigrants, alone. I was drinking my liver into submission in seedy bars alone, viewing the skinny-jeaned hipsters and quiet, mustached homosexual artists, all with something quite intriguing in that head I was sure, if only they’d notice me.

But as I was screeching open old rusty cabinets and rummaging through sticky notes in my own brain, I found every so often under stacks of crumbled papers thoughts of the others around me. My lips twitched as I mouthed the words they would say and what I’d say back, being cool and witty of course.

Is introspection not also extrospection? Is there ever a difference between the two? What you have seen and heard and felt all has an effect on your mind—aren’t they all parts that couldn’t work correctly without the mind—so maybe it isn’t that they are the same, but that introspection doesn’t really exist. But then again, after watching a TED video by Julian Baggini, I don’t much believe that we as humans even have a core—a real you—but merely we create what we are and in turn can be absolutely anything we please, at any given moment, especially if we don’t have to perform but instead only speak.

This led me only to another experiment. Be someone else. It would only take a creative mind and a good lie, but think how interesting it might be to absolutely trick someone, maybe even depending on what they like. It would be as if the two of you were meant to meet, or at least that’s what the other brain would think.

I’m not really sure what the implications are to this kind of experiment. I didn’t try it in Albuquerque, merely because I met a lady the first night I was in town, getting a drink at a crimson glowing pool hall.
I asked her, “How far is Sante Fe?”
She said, “About an hour. Hey my friend bailed on me for pool, want to play?”

It was that easy—the beginning of a great friendship. I suppose not all first meetings go so well, but Luck and I get coffee every morning.

There was something about that place. Who knows if it’s because I’ve been dying to move but I came here thinking I wouldn’t leave. That I would just stay and make a new life for myself. How hard could it be with $300.
When you meet someone that you can talk to for hours and the conversation never ceases to interest and before you know it you’re five drinks in and you walk to the bathroom and the mirror whispers to you, ‘You’re drunk,’ it’s hard to find motivation to drive out of the city.
Albuquerque wasn’t the most beautiful town I had ever seen, but the way the buildings were tinged with red dirt and the small immigrant businesses, probably started with only $300, showed cracks and scratches from the winds whipping hard work and tumble weeds across the façade, got to me. The stories of the War Zone and gang battles—the Padilla boys and the West Siders—pushing cocaine and heroin and shooting their guns in the streets on holidays, I was immediately entranced.

For me the stranger the better. I enjoy the filth, I relish in the grime and I’d much rather play in the dirt than sit pretty with dolls.