Halfway to Hell

I get headaches a lot. It’s probably something I should get checked out, considering these days pretty much drinking too much milk can give you cancer. But I’ve always just brushed it off as either my mind’s abhorrence of the world’s …

Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.

When I was a kid, my brother and cousins and I used to run around and play games on our grandparents’ property, which was right next door to my house. We’d climb the large old oak tree and this giant boulder …

Playing by the Rules

I’ve gotten a lot of shit in my life from saying what I feel or feeling confident in my choices. Being so vocal is what I see as being honest. It’s a mainstay of the life of anyone in theatre, a career path I’ve (willingly) decided to take. But it’s also a burden of anyone with a big mouth and a rambling mind, like me. But I didn’t always used to be like that. I used to be much quieter when I was younger. Never one to rock the boat or even stand up in it.

Until one time, in the fourth grade, during a savage game of dodgeball I called someone out on their shit. Philip was a scrappy, red-haired, mentally disabled student in my class. We had problems with Philip at my elementary school before. One time he threw a desk at a group of students during a bout of cabin fever caused by indoor recess. AN ACTUAL DESK. Another time he nearly took out a yard lady with a yard stick. Which I found very ironic to some degree. This time, however, he was simply not playing by the rules in a game of dodgeball that went TOO far and chucked a ball that nearly took out a girl named Heaven’s head. Her name was Heaven, didn’t you think she had enough problems?

So I called Philip out on his shit. I called a penalty to the P.E. teacher and that meant Philip was out of the game. After class was over, we were all lined up at the front of the gym to head back to class. Our teacher, AN IDIOT, was not in the room at the time. I think he was in the back of the room inside the cafeteria chowing down on discount chicken nuggets as our school was very small and had a combination “gymnasacafetorium”. So he didn’t see exactly what happened next. I was in the line with my other classmates, waiting to leave this gym that smelled like sweaty feet and low-income. I was talking mad shit about Philip to Heaven, about how he wasn’t playing by the rules, stepped out-of-bounds, and how he also could’ve hurt her.  Heaven’s face immediately turned a shade whiter than she already was, which was pretty damn “New England white girl white”. It turns out Philip was standing right behind me. I turned around. His pale eye brows had became so heightened they were nearly off his face. His freckle-faced complexion was red with rage. I gave him one massive glare of shade, and turned right back around. “I don’t care” I said. “He wasn’t playing by the rules.”

The next thing I knew, Philip’s hands were clenched around my neck, pushing me to the ground and bashing my face into the sticky, Yoo-Hoo stained floor. I screamed in terror. The whole class didn’t know what to do. Literally, they didn’t know what to do. “GET MR. MUNIZ, YOU FUCKERS!” I screamed. Except for that last part, but looking back, I wish I had added it in.

Philip was breathing quickly and heavily. Muttering something vicious in some tongue I couldn’t comprehend. His spit splattering against my neck, I began screaming louder and crying more and more as he slammed my face into the ground. I tried to get him off of me but he was strong for a scrawny kid. I did the only thing I could do, and DIDN’T play by the rules of manhood as I kicked him straight in the balls. He flung off in agony, his Pokemon sweatshirt nearly ripping off in the force of his fall.

Mr. Muniz came waltzing in with a semi-jog, I’m assuming with a few nuggets in tow. The material of his gym-pants swiftly swishing against each other making an audible annoying sound. But he was moments too late. Mr. Muniz grabbed Philip by one hand and me by the other. My face was blemished red and soaked with streams of tears. I immediately wiped them with the sleeve of my shirt. I couldn’t be seen like this in front of my classmates who already gave me enough shit for going as Harry Potter for Halloween three years in a row. I regained my composure and walked out of the gym with Mr.Muniz, trying to make a clean getaway to the bathroom but I was stopped by my tall, round-hipped teacher, Ms. Engemann.

Ms. Engemann was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, but for a kid who just got the crap beaten out of him, you’d think she’d have a little more sympathy for me. I know it was Philip and he was technically mentally disabled and probably a ward of the state, but did I really deserve that type of punishment? She asked if I was alright and that was about it. I was led back to the classroom where the rest of my class already was. Everyone immediately stared at me as I entered through the doorway, it was kind of like when the principal asks you to come to his office and everyone “ooOOOOOH’s” in mocking. This time they just looked at me with a mixture of shame and pity. To this day I still blame gym class for turning me into the man I have become.

Phillip was nowhere in sight. Was he detained? Had they shipped him off? Was this my fault?

A few moments later, Ms. Engemann led me out of the classroom and into the hallway. There was a woman standing there in a Hillary Clinton pantsuit with a haircut to boot. I don’t believe I was ever introduced to what her name was, but she referred to herself as the school psychologist. My school couldn’t afford the real chicken nuggets, but we had an in-house psychologist? She immediately whipped out a box of tissues I’m not sure if she had in her hand the entire time, and offered me one. My fourth-grade self adamantly believed tears were for the weak. I wasn’t about to shed any more today. She asked if I was okay and how Philip’s violent attack made me feel. “Angry.” I replied. She affirmed my feelings and claimed them to be “understandable” and “real”. But also she asked me what exactly happened. When I told her it all started when Philip wasn’t playing by the rules, she tried to explain to me why Philip did that. “Some people act differently than others and express themselves differently.” Even at a young age, I knew she was referring to Philip’s mental disorder. But was maniacal rage really a form of expression? “Philip didn’t mean to hurt you, he just didn’t know how to handle himself and made a mistake.” A BIG MISTAKE CLEARLY.

The next day in class, the day had gone along with few threats to my life from Philip or any of the other fourth graders during silent reading time. A girl in my class, Jackie, walked up to me and told me Philip had a note to give me. I walked up to Philip, took his letter and opened it, trying my hardest to decipher his scrambled handwriting. It said something along the lines of “I’m very sorry I tried to strangle you. Please forgive me. From Philip”. Being the sassy bitch I was already at 10 years old, I ripped up Philip’s letter right in front of the class and threw it in the trash. But I do remember smiling. I returned to my Magic Tree House book without a care in the world. Jackie later returned to ask me if I had forgiven Philip, probably to relay the message. God knows why she cared so much, because we all thought Phillip was the biggest crazy since Tanya Harding. But I told her “I guess”.

Philip clearly hadn’t believed my heartfelt acceptance of his apology. Because the next few weeks after that, I was his number one enemy. On Valentine’s Day he didn’t send me a card in my mailbox. In gym class, the scene of the crime, he tripped me in a game of Capture the Flag. And on Character Day, I went as Albert Einstein, but during our free time after the recital, I walked to the pencil sharpener to see his artwork on a small white board. It was a picture of me as Albert Einstein WITH A SEVERED HEAD DETACHED FROM MY BODY. E=MC2 was scrawled in blood, spouting from my neck. For a kid with serious mental disabilities and emotional trauma, he was a hell of an artist. The illustrations were beautiful. BUT WORST OF ALL, he stole one of my favorite scented erasers and never gave it back. He knew how to play the game.

For the rest of my short elementary school life, I feared Philip. Always wondering when he’d strike next for his revenge of me kicking him in the balls. The next time I ever saw him was years later in high school, walking down the hallway. He was about a hundred pounds heavier. His face was fat, contorted still with anger and what looked like even more freckles. He was one of those kids wearing those large camo army jackets. He looked just as terrifying now as he did then, if not more. I never spoke to him, nor saw him much in high school. I was too nervous he’d remember our past transgressions and be out to get me once more. But it still baffled me that the whole thing started ALL because he didn’t play by the rules. Or was it because I called him out on it?

Philip did make a mistake that day in attacking me. It was a wrong form of communication and powered by ill feelings. I was always so sure that I was in the right for calling him out on not playing the rules, on stepping out-of-bounds and nearly hurting someone. I thought it was always right of me to be honest, a trait I still keep to myself today. Life is too short to not say what you feel. To not be open and tell it like it is. But lately, I’ve been feeling maybe some things are better left unsaid.

Recently, I made a girl literally cry in one of my theatre classes who for the love of GOD could not take constructive criticism for anything. I felt bad she got so upset, but I was just being honest. If no one was honest with her, she was going to be under the delusion that she was completely right in her choices and that they were for a justified reason. I felt there was something she could learn from a little honesty, a little bit of a strong opinion. Maybe I was wrong to be so vocal, but that’s what theatre is about and that’s what life’s about. If you never say what you feel, whose going to ever believe you care?

I also have been told I’ve hurt several people’s feelings in my honesty in some of my stories. I’ve been told by my own Mother that the material in most of my stories is inappropriate and unnecessary to talk about.

But I disagree. My stories are my stories. They’ve happened and it’s my right to tell them. They’re a freedom of expression and lessons I think people can relate to. Some stories I think people might see as parallel to many of their own. If things had gone differently, more positively in these events, I would’ve still written them that way, the way they happened.

But life isn’t pretty. Which is why when we write about what we know, it often is so raw and unforgiving. However, it stimulates learning and expression. It begs us to grow up. As people change and come in and out of our lives, as our landscapes and cities change around us, as the elements of nature and chance and possibility force us to collide into ourselves, we come out looking like either a piece of shit or a million bucks. We learn and we change and we grow. And it’s the choices we make that help us along that path and shape what we turn out to be.

This is all why I feel so strongly about the quote “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better”. Every action has a reaction. Honesty doesn’t show a lack of care, it shows truth which beckons that change.

When I thought about how sure I felt about calling out Philip, the crying girl, past friends and lovers, and even my own Mother, I realized I was only so confident because I was shaped to be that way. Every decision I’ve made has only ever been based on how shitty a similar decision I made was the last time. Once I started to realize how stupid my own choices were, I realized it was my honesty that made me into who I am. Honesty was the foundation for many if not all of my choices. Being honest with yourself is just the first step. With others, it’s a whole different dodgeball game. There are feelings and other stupid crap involved. And there is no real rule book to go by.

What really is “playing by the rules”? Is anyone doing it? Are we stepping out of our own boundaries that we made ourselves and hurting others? Do we even care or is that just how you play the game?

Maybe I’m in the minority for thinking I can play by my own rules and be honest when I feel. But I’ve always been a firm believer in honesty. Respect is a two-way street. You have to give it to earn it, that I know. But honesty is something different. Many are shocked by honesty, but few by deceit. That’s what’s most discouraging to me.

And maybe some things shouldn’t be discussed. Maybe some stories shouldn’t be told. Maybe no one really gives a shit and thinks Philip was dead right for smashing my face into the gymnasium floor. There’s always going to be someone who disagrees with you. Whoever thinks that, that’s their honesty.

In the end, I think I was right for calling out Philip. And I’d do it again too. It was worth getting my head smashed into the ground. I’d rather die honest than silent.

The moment we stop telling stories is the moment we stop caring about what it means to learn. And that’s when we’ll stop growing. That’s when we’ll fail to be honest, to educate, to learn.

And those are rules I’ll never play by.

P.S. If you don’t like a story, DON’T FUCKIN READ IT. Chances are it doesn’t like you back.

Just being honest.

Mountains to Climb.

I was thousands of miles away from home when my city’s sense of security and comfort was changed forever.

During the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, I was studying abroad in London. I remember sitting on my bed in my dorm room, as I did many a late afternoon after a busy day of classes. Unfortunately, there was of course no day of from school for Patriot’s Day here, being in the very country the patriot’s defied. As well, no Marathon Monday mania to revel in. I was on my laptop, scrolling through Facebook, longing for the familiar faces and places of home as I was getting very antsy to return to America during my last few weeks there.

I remember all of a sudden posts and links to articles started popping up out of nowhere all over every popular social media outlet and news site. “BREAKING NEWS” glared over my computer screen. I of course, immediately clicked on them once I saw my friends were all sharing them at a rapid speed. I looked on in horror at what I saw. Just a few seconds in after I started digesting the first link I clicked on, my friend Laurie, who lived in the room next door came bursting into my room to ask me if I had seen what happened. We started frantically messaging friends and family to see if our loved ones alright. Thankfully they were, but a lot came very close to real life danger. Everyone in the city was, really. As the who’s, what’s and why’s were still very much unanswered following the events for about a week. Most of our friends were of course in rehearsal for their upcoming show, which is probably where we would have been, had we been in Boston at the time. Theatre, being the safe haven it is for so many, served its’ purpose that day.

Over the next few days, my fellow Boston friends and I felt very numb to the whole situation. We were constantly looking up for all the incoming details. I spent a whole day just watching live feeds from CNN and the local Boston news outlets to get all the info. We felt so left out and uninformed, and just lost. Many of our family and friends had messaged us, praising how glad they were that we were here and away from harm. But so badly I wanted to be anywhere BUT here. I didn’t belong here. London had become my stomping grounds at that point in time, but while I loved it very much, it was never my home. Having lived in Massachusetts my entire life, growing up just an hour away from the city, Boston had always been my home. But I had never really experienced it all until I moved there for college in 2011. It’s the place where I’ve danced with friends on dirty couches from apartment to apartment. Where I’ve strolled through the Common on a late summer night, laughing with friends and laying in the grass to pass around a bottle of cheap wine as we gazed up at the stars that we could barely see. It’s the city where I’ve lost myself in the sights and sounds and beautiful people of a “strong, resilient town”. And only now had I felt so far from home. I should’ve been there, with my friends and family and people and places I had grown to love. I wasn’t home.

I got a bad bout of strep throat that week, probably from over stressing and long nights. Our college not having the best health services, I had to travel to a free clinic off Oxford Street, in a hidden, quaint area. It took me quite a while to find it, but as I walked into the health clinic, the blotched glass automatic doors quickly slid behind me. I looked around at the amount of people in there, trying to estimate how long I’d have to wait. The answer was “long”. There were tons of people in there. The receptionist had curly brown hair and a thick accent I couldn’t place just in one district or country. She told me to “take a number and wait, please”. So, I did. The waiting room was rather large, filled with rows upon rows of plastic chairs facing three large television screens to entertain us as we waited. I, of course, sat in the very last chair in the very last row. I was not about to make friends with the ill and maimed. I was in no mood.

The room was filled with all kinds of people, there were a few rather, I should say “unkempt” people in the room, who I had assumed as homeless, but I wouldn’t want to stereotype. Of course, they were wearing many different layers of mismatched sweaters and coats with large pockets while grasping onto push carriages holding everything they owned and various signs boasting pitiful stories of lost jobs and pleas for spare change. So, maybe they were homeless. But there were also your everyday people here. Coming in for flu’s, sprained ankles, medications, anything. It was a free clinic after all. I looked up at the televisions. They were, of course, broadcasting the total coverage of the events of the bombings. Everyone seemed to be tuned in and discussing the tragedy as well as the crazy news coverage that was going on at the time. I wanted to shout out, “I’m from there!” “I know that place, I see it everyday!”, and most of all, I wanted to tell people it’s a very safe city, or was. But no one would care. So I kept my mouth shut, and already feeling sick, felt much sicker as I took in every little detail of the news updates sweeping across the screens. That was when I saw President Obama’s speech concerning the events for the first time. I felt a bit safer. Obama is such a wonderful orator. Say what you want about his politics, because most of them I won’t understand, but you can’t deny that he ensures a supreme sense of comfort and reassurance. It was much needed at this point.

Suddenly, my name was called out and I walked into the office. I was out of there in about one minute. A very quick-talking, tall doctor with short blonde hair inspected my throat and tonsils and had discovered that I had strep throat. She didn’t do a throat culture or anything of that sort as it would’ve been ” a waste of time”. She was very short with me, so I decided not to ask questions, grab my prescription for penicillin, and get out of here. I felt I was getting sicker just by sitting in this place. As I left the building, I looked back at the televisions one more time to see if there was anything new on the bombings. Someone had changed the channel, to what the British and the rest of the world call “football”, but most of us know as soccer. Guess no one in the room really did care about where I was from.

A week went by, with few answers on the event. I felt a variety of mixed emotions and unsureness. My roommate back in Boston had told me all about the lockdown and how eerie it was. She especially told me how unsafe she felt, as we had discovered the car chase that happened in the middle of the night and ultimately resulted in the tragic death of an MIT officer ended up with the terrorists speeding right down my own street. It was all so strange. My home might have been shaken by a tragedy, but it was by no means broken.

However, I couldn’t think much of it. Laurie and I had a planned trip to Scotland that weekend. It was our very last trip of the semester. We had seen the lights and luxury of Paris, traveled across practically the whole boot of Italy and Barcelona, and had a bit TOO much fun in both Dublin and of course, Amsterdam. But a trip to the beautiful city of Edinburgh in Scotland was our last big venture during this journey.

For a few trips, saving big bucks, Laurie and I took travel buses to our destination. They were by no means glamorous, but they were affordable and got us to where we were going. We actually had just planned for a day trip in Edinburgh, to get there extremely early and leave around nightfall. It would be one long journey, almost 6 hours, but it would be worth it. Plus, earlier in the month we had driven much longer (11 hours from London to Amsterdam, by bus, ferry, and crossing three countries, don’t talk to me about it). We got up rather early to set out to for Victoria Coach Station. With just our day bags on our backs and coffee in our hands, we set out on one of the MegaBuses for Edinburgh. It was of course still dark out and everyone was extremely cranky and a bit smelly while piled up in this over-crowded bus for the land of the Scots. But Laurie and I were excited, having both been very inexperienced travelers up until we journeyed to Europe, we were thrilled to experience our last crazy trip together. And very tired.

When we first arrived to Edinburgh, the air was chilly and the sunrise- gorgeous as it poured over the rolling green hills and behind the old castles. It truly was a fairytale land here. The city reminded me so much of the villages of the Harry Potter universe, with it’s stone buildings and cobbled streets. The architecture was a mix of old medieval and neoclassical, it was beautiful. We took some time to just explore our surroundings, just before coming across a coffee shop while walking The Royal Mile to rest a bit and wake up. But to be honest, I think we both were ultimately grateful we had finally found a place with WiFi to finally catch up on all the news of the marathon bombings. We were sitting at a small table in the back of a crowded cafe in the middle of Edinburgh when we got the news. I checked my Facebook on my phone to find tons and tons of posts claiming the marathon bomber had been captured after the whirlwind of events. I then checked my LONG list of snapchat’s from friends back home, as a large group of students, including many college students, had run into the Common in the middle of the night to scream and cheer in triumph. Chants of “Boston Strong” and “USA” pounded through my phone’s speaker as I saw my friends dancing and screaming, chugging beer and taking pictures with half naked men. The amazing sense of pride and victory and justice and strength was so evident, and it truly made me long for home. I was so grateful my city could begin to heal the wound, and that their security could be restructured.

With hearing the great news and the worry off our mind, Laurie and I decided to set out into the city again. We started to peruse the streets, visiting various shops and museums, including a very creepy walkabout through the Greyfriar’s Cemetery. But after enjoying a spot of tea and cookies at the Elephant House, (where JK Rowling wrote many of her novels, I DIED) and enjoying bagpipe street performers, we finally came across the behemoth that had been standing amongst our horizon the entire day, the mountain that was Arthur’s Seat.

The giant hill was located in the center of the city, it was pretty hard to miss and was a notorious point of interest for travelers, as it’s been fabled to be the possible location for the legendary Camelot. I had never been one to do any hiking or mountain-climbing, partly because it never really interested me and partly because I never had the right shoes for it. Today was no exception, as I was wearing very thin gray desert boots and skinny jeans that were not meant to leap across rocky gorges. But this was part of our big adventure. I always said to myself while I was abroad to “live without fear”, and this was no exception. Being something I had never done before, it made it all the more enticing.

We set foot on the steep slope that provided a dirty trail to start off climbing the mountain. It was relatively easy to climb for the most part, and every step up the mountain gave the most amazing views of the city below as we escalated higher and higher out of sight. It wasn’t so easy on the feet or knees, but it was exhilarating. I took out my phone and started to blast “Big Rock Candy Mountain” in order for us to gain some momentum.

A few weeks before this trip, Laurie and I had gotten into a rather unsettling fight. We were best friends but being together so much for that amount of time, in addition to the various crazy events we went through while in London really took a toll on our friendship. The fight of course resulted in a lot of crying and even more hugging, our favorite activities, but it was still eye-opening. I think every good friendship has moments that either shake them or break them. Ours would be fine, we knew too much about each other for it not to. But as we set out for Edinburgh, I was really hoping our last trip together would give us a chance to reconnect and resolve the past issues, to really strengthen our relationship. And it did.

The whole way up the mountain, Laurie and I were laughing, cracking jokes, absorbing every bit of the nature around us for what it was. We bumped into frantic dogs chasing rabbits, tourists taking pictures, and other travelers from all over the world, all climbing the mountain for one simple goal: to reach the top.

Every so often, the trail would let loose, leaving big rocky fields for us to pass through, jumping stone over stone to get by. Past these little dips, the trail would go up, leaving us to climb steep rock stairs, almost like a ladder in order to get to a more stable ledge. At one point while climbing  one of these difficult spots, Laurie had lost her grip and almost slipped off a rocky ledge. I grabbed her hand and helped pick her back up. It wasn’t the most difficult mountain in the world to climb by any means, but it was still a feat and rather difficult. It could prove to be extremely dangerous were you not looking where you were going or took a wrong step. After her brief brush with a long falling death, we got back on track to make it to the top, taking just a few breaks to stop and enjoy the magnificent views of the Scottish highlands and lochs off in the horizon. We found a trail of steps that looked like they were straight out of a fantasy novel, leading up to a large plain in the mountain. As we ran up them in excitement, we had made our way to what we THOUGHT was the top. The wind was blowing extremely hard and very chilly. The large plain at this part of the mountain was flat and rather expansive. The green field of grass swept across this side of the mountain and swayed with the push of the wind. Many people were taking breaks here to rest, have lunch, or take in the near fantastical landscape. We had noticed that we had just a short ways to go to the top, but took a moment here to fully take in what we had accomplished as we ran around the plain spinning and laughing while recreating the hills scene from “The Sound of Music”, because they truly were alive. No wonder this place was fabled to be a land of legends.

At this moment, we took some time to eat lunch. We found a nice patch of the grass to sit on, away from the noise and cluster of tourists snapping pictures like crazy for their family Christmas cards no doubt. So the two of us sat on the grass and started to eat our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the top of a mountain. We were two friends, for the first time in a long time without a care in the world. It was so beautiful to just be able to sit freely in such an unlikely situation, eating PB&J on a mountain in Scotland. We were miles and miles away from any home we had ever known. With just the beauty of the mountain, some homemade sandwiches, and of course each other to keep us company. A PB&J never tasted so good.

After our lunch, we decided to brave the last stride up Arthur’s Seat. But after getting up to go, we noticed that many people on the mountain were picking up various stones scattered across the plateau and arranging them together to leave their mark, or messages of love in the deep green grass of Arthur’s Seat. Laurie and I decided it would be right of us to spell out something for Boston in the stones that laid around us. But someone had beaten us to it! As we stumbled right into a large formation of rocks that read “BOSTON”. I can’t be sure if the people who left this gift were from Boston or even America. They could’ve been from anywhere in the world leaving a message of support, prayer, and well wishes. Whomever it was and whichever the reason, it was a beautiful gesture. And it was made from just rocks in the grass.

We climbed the last few ledges of the mountain, but it was very steep, so we each had to help the other up at one point or another as we grasped onto nearby rocks, in order to not slip on the soft dirt that looked almost untouched but had to have seen footprint over footprint over thousands of years. The air was getting thinner and thinner and tried to push us in all sorts of directions as we made our way to the summit. It was only when we scaled one seemingly miniscule ledge that we saw the bobbing of heads over the extremely rocky span that had a stone post to signal it as the top of Arthur’s Seat. We had made it to the top of the mountain.

The wind was sweeping by us, the air was sparse and bitterly cold. I nearly lost my hat and Laurie’s long, red hair was flowing by a mile a minute, slapping me in the face one too many times. But we didn’t care. We had made it. We looked around at the land below us. The view was breathtaking. I could say it was truly magnificent, but it wouldn’t do it justice. The feeling of finally reaching the top was exhilarating. It was an accomplishment I could never previously say I had done. I could finally add “mountain climber” to my resume, just like I had always dreamed.

We looked around at the horizon in front of us, gasping for air. As beautiful as it all was. The wind was too much to handle and it was freezing up here. We asked a nice woman if she’d mind taking our picture, proof we had accomplished what we set out to do. When we looked at it, we couldn’t stop laughing at how gross and exhausted we were, painted smiles cutting through the chill of the gusty mountain air. It’s a terrible picture, my beanie was lopsided and the woman’s thumb was in the lower frame. We look ridiculous in it, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

We stayed for only a moment before making our way back down, as we had a few things left in Edinburgh we wanted to do. It was still early in the day and we didn’t want to waste a second of it. We felt like warriors for accomplishing what we had, truly skilled mountaineers. Of course, coming back down, I almost slipped to my death, and had to crouch my way down for most of it, while Laurie helped me much like I had aided her earlier. Watching me try to get down the mountain’s crazy ledges while in a crouching position and my beanie so far down my eyes it nearly covered them so it wouldn’t fly away was quite the sight. It took everything in our power not to die laughing, literally.

As we finally made it to the base of another side of the mountain, completely opposite of where we had started, we found the most beautiful knoll of grass in a field of dandelions. We decided this was a perfect stop to take another rest before setting out of the fantasy world of the mountain and back into the real world in front of us again. We layed on the warm grass and basked in the sun, the first bit of warmth we felt all day. Spring was nearing on this side as the rays of sun cut through the bright white clouds that drifted across the sky. We just laid there, talked, practically about nothing, just enjoying the day and each other’s conversation.

The rest of the day was spent exploring the remainder of the city including Edinburgh Castle and a pit stop at Pizza Express (mountain climbers gotta eat too). When evening approached, we set out for the area near the bus station. We got there very early by happy accident of not realizing how close it was to us. But we didn’t want to miss the bus of course, so we decided to sit on a park bench in the nearby neighborhood. We sat and people-watched residents of Edinburgh go about their day, crossing over the sloping hills and stone streets. We talked for hours sharing stories from back home, laughing, talking about the people and things we missed. As amazing as this trip was, in light of recent events, we were sure antsy to get back to our real home.

As we made our way to the coach station, loading up on the bus back home, Laurie and I sat in the front on the top deck in order to get some better leg room and hopefully some sleep. It was late at night and we were exhausted from the unforgettable last adventure we had. As we sat in our uncomfortable seats together, with nowhere to put our feet, just as we tried to get some shut-eye, a very large, LOUD Hispanic family gleefully sat next to us on the bus. They were certainly in high spirits as they talked and yelled and joked and laugh and sang the whole way home. I turned to Laurie and could do nothing else but just laugh with them. And she laughed back. We had strengthened our bond so much that day. We both climbed more than one mountain together, in terms of friendship. We rescued each other. Shared stories together. Made memories with each other. And longed together.

But on that midnight ride back to London, I thought about how much I was missing home that week and how sad it was. The marathon bombing to this day has influenced my course of thinking and sense of security to a great degree. But I didn’t want to look at what happened then as purely a thing of tragedy and sadness. If anything, it brought people closer to home. It instilled a sense of pride, resiliency, and strength. It had people talking about relationships with both the city and Bostonians, as well as memories of the past and hope for the future of the city. Yet in this moment, I was thinking about how even though Boston is my home, you can have many homes. Some people are born adventurers, restless and ambitious,  always looking for the next journey traveling from place to place. Some are born planters, firmly adjusting themselves to the home they have known, dedicating themselves to their preservation in it. And some people are born wanderers, who don’t really know where they’re going, but know where they want to be.

People can have many homes. People can find a home in themselves. I can’t be certain if I’m a wanderer, but so far it suits me best. Because a home is not defined as a place you’ve known, or experienced, or even lived in.

It’s a place where you’re happy.

Boston is my home for now, but as long as there’s still mountains to climb, I will wander.

You’re Just a Boy.

Anyone who knows me well knows I don’t cry. You have to really hurt me in order to make me cry. Sometimes I even have trouble letting out a few tears at a funeral. It’s just not part of my …

She Doesn’t Live There Anymore.

I wasn’t much of the outgoing type when I was younger, as you generally aren’t when you’re five years old with a bowl cut hair-do and plaid pants. However, I seemed to easily be able to make friends with the …

If You’re Willing to Take the Risk.

If you are related to me at all, STOP READING RIGHT NOW. The following story is not for you.

Please turn away. See you at Thanksgiving. 

The story begins and ends with me not wearing a coat.

Before I studied abroad in London, I had a very weird track record with men I had seen or been in relationships with. I still have a weird track record today, don’t get me wrong, but back then it was different.What some would call as prude, I called self-respect and patience. I was 20 years old and still a virgin and in no rush to change that. It didn’t really phase me. Like I said before, I’m not a very sexual person, much to a lot of my friend’s surprise. I’ve been told once, by a guy who barely knew me, “You’re a VIRGIN? But you give off such a promiscuous air.” Nice.

Maybe that’s true, but it just never presented to be a big deal for me. I was still figuring out what I liked and the kind of people I liked, although I found there was a lot of people that I definitely disliked at the time. Maybe it’s because I was scared. Maybe I didn’t trust people. I had a very rocky end to a relationship just before I left for London. We had been going out for only about 3 months, but had been seeing each other, you could say, for about 8. But we had never had sex. It’s not that I wasn’t attracted to him in that way, but I just couldn’t see fully giving myself to him. He was a great guy, still is, but I was a little off-put by a lack of trust at the time. Maybe that was my first mistake going into a relationship. Maybe not. But I really didn’t trust him in that way, which I let him know, and he graciously understood.

When we broke up, I was very upset it had ended so poorly, but sort of glad I hadn’t given him my virginity. Otherwise, I would have felt like I had lost something bigger than me.

Just a month later I was off to study abroad in London, which is a whole ‘nother saga in itself, with stories I will definitely have to divulge in later.

By the END of my study abroad experience in the UK, I had spent many a night dancing and making out with many foreign men in pubs and night clubs across the Queen’s city. Irishmen, Germans, Brits, Frenchmen, Italians, it was like a slutty trip through Epcot. Everyone was doing it, being wild and getting cultured while sipping on far too expensive mixed drinks we payed for in a currency I still don’t understand.

Just two weeks before our imminent trip home was approaching, spirits were high, as was our Blood Alcohol Content. We had a few friends staying with us at the time, who were studying abroad in Florence and came for a trip to London. Kim and her roommate Madison stayed in my current roommate and best friend Laurie’s room. On their last night with us, I wanted to show them a good time. Laurie felt too sick to go out, as well as at that time all of our funds were extremely low. So it wasn’t the biggest group going out, just Kim, Madison, myself, as well as our friends Carolyn, Emma, and Laura. I wanted to dance and be gay, as always, so we went to SoHo. My RA Gilmar had shown us the absolute best places to go in SoHo; posh gay bars and clubs, some more boujie than others. Gilmar was the absolute best and got us in for free at a lot of places because he knew practically everyone it seemed in the London gay club scene. SPECIAL NOTE: If you’re planning to or currently studying abroad: MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR RA, they’ll show you the best places, give you all the best tips, and shower you with free champagne like Gilmar did. If you’re lucky.

I went out into the brisk London weather with no coat, to avoid a check charge, as well as without my glasses. I hate wearing my glasses going out because they just get dirty or foggy. Also, I would always lose them dancing so feverishly in a crowded night club, as they once flew off my face and almost crashed into some French girl’s drink who was NOT having it. We first tried to get into the Shadow Lounge, a club I had been to a few times. A club where I once saw a stripper in nothing but a black speedo, sneakers and a painted on mime mask do contortion tricks with his body I had never seen outside of a Cirque du Soleil show.

Unfortunately I had too many girls with me, which apparently is a crime at any self-respecting gay club. I exclaimed to the bouncer in my most “trying to sound sober” voice possible, “SIR YOU KNOW ME, I’VE BEEN HERE”, expecting me to be more important and noticeable than any of the other gaggle of faggots this tall burly man had seen so many nights before. So we went right across the street to this far less fancy and far more sticky place called Escape. The floors practically stuck to my mahogany combat boots, glazed with the remnants of cranberry vodkas, gay boy’s tears and other bodily liquids. My friends and I started dancing, and ordering the cheap ass 99 pence shots. I had one too many of “Britney’s Tears” that night: a combination of Goldschlagger, more vodka, and something very strong I didn’t bother to question. We started goofing around and making new international friends. Cheap, weird places like this were great for meeting cheap, weird people from across the world. I once made two short Irish men I kept calling “leprechauns” that night do the Irish jig part in “C’est la vie” by B*Witched, as it boomed over the sound system, before I made out with one and told the other to buy me a drink.  This was the place for that.

My friends kept egging me on to dance with a guy that night but I was not having it, it was girls night! I wanted to just dance on my own with the security of not having foreign hands thrust down my tight jeans at an uncomfortable ease and speed. Ultimately though, I locked eyes with a very charming looking Italian across the room. He was about my height, and was most clearly definitely an Italian, with his olive skin and short but curly brown hair gleaming under the neon spotlights from above the dance floor. He wore an optic white dress shirt and a gold crucifix chain dangled from his neck. Yep, definitely an Italian. My friend Kim screamed “Dance with that Italian guy!”, she must’ve noticed me staring. I wasn’t opposed. I had never really been the type to hit on another guy, but I figured it was worth a shot, and if it would make my friends shut up, I’d do it. I walked over to him and asked him, “Do you wanna dance!?” to which he responded in a loud whisper in my ear, something very mumbled in a THICK Italian accent that I could only roughly translate as “I don’t speak English very well”. I laughed, gently touching his forearm and replied:

“You don’t need to speak English to dance” (New title of my future foreign romantic dance film, don’t steal it)

And I walked away. Mere seconds later, the Italian grabbed me from the waist and ferociously started making out with me. Was this how Italians danced? I was learning other cultures after all, I guessed.

We made out for far too long, until I broke away to gasp for some air, the little that remained in this crowded club. I could inhale the London smog from here. My friends started cheering, laughing, taking pictures that I pray to God don’t still exist today. I tried to get us all to dance as a group, which the Italian wasn’t necessarily having. He kept trying to say things to me, maybe it was a combination of the loudness of the music and how drunk I was, but I couldn’t hear a thing. The next thing I know, the Italian grabbed my hand and led me through the club. Now this is the kind of place you’d find lewd acts of indecency happening around every corner, none of which a gentleman such as myself would partake in while in a public setting. ESPECIALLY at a place like Escape. But the Italian instead grabbed for his friend, Beatrice. Beatrice was very cute, curvy, and wearing too much red lipstick. She had a thick Italian accent as well but spoke very good English. He spoke something in Italian to her to which she said to me:

“He wants to know if you want to come over his place tonight.”

My heart sank into my gut which came back up my throat. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t really that drunk at the time but this also was something I’d NEVER do. At least not in a country overseas with a man I barely knew. He was as foreign as a stranger could be. I took a moment to remember these were my last two weeks in London, and I was out to make memories. I had always been a risk taker and a lover of adventure. This wasn’t a huge adventure, but it was definitely a risk. Not very smart at all, and I definitely regret how I could have gone about it much safer, but once again I threw my comfort zone at the wind and said “Sure!”.

My friends gathered outside as I told them I was going home with this mysterious Italian man. Them being excitable white girls could not be more proud of me. The biggest mistake we all made though was that no one bothered to ask for his name, or his address, or a number they could reach us at should they need to. However, spoiler alert, he didn’t turn out to be a serial killer, so all was well. But still.

I said goodbye to my friends and went off into the night with my strange, new, short Italian man. Hand in hand, we walked towards Piccadilly Circus in order to hail a cab. I stopped short just moments after leaving my friends to ask him a very important question: what his name was. It was then that I learned two things about this man:

1. That he didn’t speak any English. When I mean no English, I mean No. English. I had never met someone before who couldn’t put together at least one full English sentence. I was raised in a very Italian family and town, but I didn’t know the language much beyond the menu at the local pizzeria or colorful words I heard my grandmother yell when she was drunk. This was going to be a long night.

2. That his name was ironic as hell. He first muttered out something that sounded like “Andrew”, to which I shit my pants. Andrew is a friend of mine that I was just being stupid and horny with in London, by this time while studying abroad we were just good friends of course, but I still was about to laugh out loud at the fact that I was about to hook up with an Italian Andrew. But his name was actually “Andrea” (Pronounced An-dre-uh), the name of one of my best friend’s at home whom we had discussed the nature of our virginity with at length. I said “Ya, I’m gonna call you Andre”. It was just easier.

We got in the cab and set out for his flat, which was in East Acton which actually was in EAST BUMFUCK OF NOWHERE. I turned to him during this long cab ride and tried to get to know him a little better. But the language barrier was far too much, I am not exaggerating here. I couldn’t understand a word he said most of the time, but I was very into it. I didn’t have to talk to him, he didn’t have to talk to me, bing bang boom, I’d be back in my dorm bed by sunrise.  All we discussed in the cab was that I was Italian too, he had just recently moved to London from Milan to work, and that he liked Stanley Kubrick movies. It was enough.

After finally arriving to his flat, we tiptoed to his bedroom, which was very open but cluttered, with strong evidence that no one had been here very long. Two huge suitcases still open and unpacked. Strange Italian hair products littered the extra bed that was next to his, which was draped with a “Rolling Stones” blanket. Why were there two beds in here? How had he not unpacked yet? Did he even knows who the Rolling Stones were? These were questions I didn’t bother to ask, mostly because Andre couldn’t answer them.

Andre went to the bathroom and I checked my phone. It was about 2:30am, which is a time I just made up, because I can’t remember how late it was. I had about a dozen missed calls, texts, and angry tweets from Laurie: “WHERE ARE YOU”, “If you are dead tomorrow I’m going to fucking kill you”, and the like. I’d later find out that Kim gave Laurie upon her return huge misinformation about Andre. That he was bald and had several tattoos and an earring, painting him to be some badass version of Mr. Clean. This was not true, but then again Kim was drunk, she did her best.

It was then that my phone died. I figured they’d find out eventually that I was still alive, but that wasn’t so safe of me either. Andre came out of the bathroom in just his tight black Armani boxers, looking even more Italian. I could tell he was very built, as he gently rubbed his strong arms and muscular chest that sprouted thick but smooth black chest hair. He started to touch his lower abs, looking in pain and complaining about how he hurt himself working out earlier. I didn’t know if that was a line or what, but next thing you know, he climbed on top of the bed and took off my pale red button-down, a very strange alternative to my usual all-black club attire. I don’t need to go into the details of how suave and attempting to be romantic Andre was because he was just being an Italian. This is where the accent and lack of English came in handy. We fooled around up until the point Andre pulled out a condom and said something in Italian that I for sure as hell couldn’t translate but definitely understood.

I thought about how hesitant towards sex I was before I came here. How I was the type of person who used to shiver at the slightest touch. How one time I told a guy to stop because I was “too ticklish”, which is actually very true. And how, in this moment, I really didn’t give a shit anymore.

I only knew one word in Italian that would be useful at the time:

“Si”

I’ll spare the details of course, but I lost my virginity that night to a man who spoke no English, in a country overseas, thousands of miles away from all the previous mostly awful men who couldn’t get it if they tried. And it was pretty awesome.

After that, we had pillow talk, or lack thereof BECAUSE HE DIDN’T SPEAK ENGLISH, but I tried to reenact a scene from one of my favorite chick flick’s “Under the Tuscan Sun”, as I grazed over his body, asking him what the Italian word for “dick” is. I can’t remember.

The next morning I woke in a haze, I looked like a mess and as good as it all was, I was trying to get the hell out of there. I forgot that Andre the night before was hardcore trying to hang out again, as he kept exclaiming “Domani, domani”, which means “tomorrow”. But as beautiful as he was, I was not about to get lost in translation. I scrambled out of bed, but Andre kept saying he’d show me the way to the bus stop, that he had to go to work that day too. I kept explaining that it wasn’t necessary, but he didn’t get it, of course. THEN Andre tells me he needs to actually move that day to another flat, as this was just temporary. So he starts to pack up all of his belongings, and I watched him for 20 minutes struggling to fold up his Rolling Stones blanket in a way that would provide easy travel, to which he finally cried out, in the first full English sentence I had ever heard him say: “Please help me.”

And so I did. Together we hobbled down the stairs with all of his bags and suitcases. I held one suitcase and his Rolling Stones blanket. I was helping the Italian move! Never one to pass up a good story, I went through with it. We opened the door into the fresh London morning daylight, the cold air hitting me like a wall of pure ice. I was still not wearing a coat, and no glasses to see the strange non-city London neighborhood that laid before me. Andre and I walked the three blocks or so to the local bus stop. When we got there, he noticed I was shivering and gave me his  far out-of-date denim jacket, which I happily obliged. Suave as he was, he was an idiot. He couldn’t find his metro card, even though I told him several times it was in the suitcase he was carrying. He couldn’t understand though and asked me to please watch his stuff before he rushed back the 3 blocks to the old flat.

So there I was standing in the middle of nowhere, in a country I did not belong to, wearing some Italian man’s denim jacket, holding his Rolling Stones blanket, and helping him move the morning after I lost my virginity. I looked up at the clear, blue sky, which in London it often was not, and surely thought this must be God’s punishment or at the very least some funny joke about gay sex. God hates fags? No, God loves fags. God loves to see the stupid shit they do and laughs in hysterics watching me wait at a bus stop at 7 in the morning, wanting to slowly die. Very funny.

Andre ran back because it turns out the metro card was in his suitcase THE WHOLE TIME, LIKE I HAD SAID. The bus pulls up about thirty minutes later, to which we took our seats, clutching onto everything that Andre had owned. It was strangely beautiful for me to be holding in my hands essentially Andre’s life, while he was far from home in a city he was unfamiliar to but was gaining so much from: money for his family, security, new friends, a new life. And I barely knew the guy.

I held something of his (even if it was a Rolling Stones blanket), and he, of course, now held something of mine.

Andre turns to me and asks for my phone number. The poetic moment had passed and now all I wanted to do was escape, (funny how that was the name of the club we met at, right? No? OK). I gave him a fake number, just switching a few of the numbers of mine, thinking he’d be too stupid to notice. But he pulls out his little “go phone” right there, to call me, and it doesn’t work, so I pretend to correct him, and he now has access to my life. Awesome.

We got off the bus at the same metro stop, as his work, an ice cream shop, is just a block away. I plan to never see Andre again, but as I hand him his blanket and his denim jacket he kisses me on the lips and says “Ciao, Bella”. 

I’ve seen the Lizzie McGuire Movie too many times to not think this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, so I melt.

I make my way home on the Tube, no coat to protect me from the cold London air once more. I look at the other people next to me on the subway and wonder if they know what I did last night, based on my lack of coat alone, as I feel their eyes staring at me with shame and disgust.

As I finally make my way back through Regent’s Park to my college, it’s so early in the morning only the loons and egrets in the pond are their to judge me. But it was then that I realized this was no walk of shame, it was a walk of triumph. A stride of pride. The way it happened, I never felt shame or regret, in fact I didn’t feel like I truly “lost” anything”, except for fear of something I could never previously allow myself to do. Instead I gained confidence, independence. And with an Italian in London at that.

Over the next few days, Andre texted me, a lot. Except it was all in Italian so I had to Google translate our conversations and reply back in his native tongue. It was so funny and weird, but slightly thrilling, so I was enticed to see him again. We hung out a few times after that in my last weeks there. I hung out with him and his Italian friends one night, going to a blues bar. His other friends spoke English well, but most of the night was spent listening to them chat in Italian and laugh at jokes I wasn’t in on. For the first time in my life, I felt what it was like to be an outsider by a language barrier and how complicated it was. Had I known what this felt like in high school, I would have hung out with the Brazilian girls a lot more and let them know I loved their hair.

One night, with just days left in London to go, Andre and I met up. His combination charming smirk and goofy smile, the thing that attracted me the most, approached me from out of the crowd at a Tube stop we planned to meet at. He kissed me on both cheeks to greet me, yet another Italian cultural norm I had always strangely longed for. After a night of dancing and drinking with his friends once more, we left the pub only before Andre whispered something in Beatrice’s ear in Italian again, which she translated for me:

“He doesn’t want you to go. He’s going to miss you very much.”

I had never heard something like that before. From anyone. And it felt as good as it was sad.

We made our way back to his new flat on a late night double decker bus. As I fell asleep on his shoulder on the top deck, I oddly felt connected to this man I could barely understand. But I didn’t care. We went back into his flat, into his bedroom. He went into the bathroom to change as he had the nights before, and came out in a bright yellow pair of BART SIMPSON UNDERWEAR.

The fantasy was now over. And I had woken up.

Later than night, after tussling in the sheets, Andre asked me if I was ready to “splash”, a strange, I’m assuming only Italian, slang term for something I’m going to let you figure out for yourself.

I was now even more done.

I left the next morning, telling Andre I had to go. This would be the last time I would see my foreign plaything, because I could barely call him a lover. He was under the impression we’d go out again “domani“, but I couldn’t bring myself to break it to him, so I kissed him goodbye and said the only thing I could say,

“Ciao, bella”

And I left. Back to America a few days later, and that was that.

It took me forever to get back to my dorm, two buses and three subway exchanges. I guess I really was living in a fantasy world, because it was sure as hell hard to get home.

It wasn’t the fact that it was a good story to tell, or how I gained new independence, or how I met someone who wasn’t like anything I had experienced before that made me enjoy this sweet, funny, and crazy memory. But it was how I didn’t worry. I wasn’t scared. And I finally trusted someone. Even when it was someone I couldn’t even share more than three words with. It was the fearlessness and the freedom that I still cherish.

I talk to Andre every now and then, still using Google translate. The time difference isn’t great so it’s not often. And I don’t have any plans to pursue much else with him. He still works at the ice cream shop, but now has dreams of being an architect, which I hope he’ll be one someday. I like to think of this as a memory that could have gone so many different ways, but I’ll keep it for what it was. And maybe the next time I travel to Europe (which I fully plan to), if I’m still single, maybe I’ll ask another charming foreign man to dance. It might just be worth the risk.

When in Rome, right?

Social Disease

“Well look at that, you have mono!” the “doctor” at my college’s health services exclaimed, all too cheerily. WHAT. I started hyperventilating. “HOW” and “OH MY GOD DON’T TELL MY MOM” were just a few of the thoughts swirling through my head. Still hungover from the night before, as I was many of the nights of my very hazy freshman year in college. My tongue still stained with shades of deep purple from sharing a handle of sugary UV Blue the night before-a former trashy, favorite vodka, now poison to me. I was no stranger to getting sick. My immune system has never been up to snuff and I’m really allergic to cats.

But this was a different disease, one I was foreign to. I always thought mono was something only extremely promiscuous  girls with tongue rings in my high school got. A type of cooties you got from kissing boys by the canal and swapping spit with teenage biddy after teenage biddy in a clockwise cycle. 

Yet I still got mono. I like to think I got it from sharing drinks, shot glasses, bowls, it was inevitable. And still very possible to get it through other means, especially in my friends circle at the time. Turns out, I must’ve found out a bit too late, because within the week I was diagnosed, almost every one of my friends had caught mono themselves. Sluts! Apparently, mono wasn’t so uncommon for people in their first semester of college, especially for formerly sheltered and recently out and proud gays such as myself. I sat on the weird roll-out paper on the patient’s table, trying my best not to move. Every crinkle of the paper seemed to scream “WHORE”, “SLUT”, “TROLLOP” (I don’t know what “trollop” means). But hadn’t I been…good? Or at least kind of good? Sure, I had been meeting new people, spent many an evening being drunk and silly after a night out at the shitty underage clubs or sweaty Allston house parties. I had my fair shares of playing 45 minutes in Heaven. Overnight…But I was by no means a “slut”. I was a freshman. I was trying things out, trying people out, like clothes in a dressing room. A good man is like a good pair of jeans. You have to try on all different kinds to see what you like best. The best ones fit you right and compliment you. And they make your butt look good.

Having mono was sorta awesome at the time because I lost a ton of weight and got to miss class, as well as nap a lot. But when you email your professor explaining why you weren’t in for an exam and she responds “Oh, that explains why you’ve looked so bad lately” AND SHE’S BASICALLY CALLING YOU UGLY, you know you’ve hit a new low. Sure the steroids were great, but they also told me I couldn’t drink or kiss anybody good looking for like a month. Two things I was not at liberty to give up at the time, which is probably how I got mono in the first place.

BUT ANYWAYS, I spent a few weeks in my misery, drowning in Gatorade and Yoplait, as did most of my friends who I infected with my slutty germs. Another weekend was approaching and I had ENOUGH. I was not about to miss out on another night out, lecherous social virus or not.

So you can imagine my amusement when this guy I had previously been with, Stevie, asked me to hang out. We had hung out a few times earlier in the year when I was more disease-free. We met at a party in Brighton one year, at an apartment like many others that I had went klepto at and stole all their alcohol when no one was looking, pouring it into empty water bottles and stuffing them into my faux leather messenger bag. Freshman behavior.

I remember the first time we met. He walked up to me, his short blonde GI Joe buzz cut, an immediate turnoff for me, stood out in the crowd. And his head was kind of square shaped, I felt I could sit my glass on top of him with ease. But I admired his confidence. He came up and started talking to me about just casual stuff: my roommates, my major, anything to get a conversation going. Boring talk that somehow led to us making out on the back porch while a game of beer pong resumed just inches away. The next few nights with him after that included getting incredibly high and not much else. When he asked me to come over his cluttered North End apartment this time, I wasn’t expecting much else. Truth is, I never really found myself attracted to him, but he asked me to come over so frequently that I felt, maybe, bad. Obligated. I think deep down I knew it was wrong to go over, knowing full well I was still sick and that I didn’t really have any strong feelings for him, but I couldn’t help it. I was going stir crazy with my isolation and needed some adventure. I hadn’t seen him for a while and remembered him still being really cute, funny, and there was a certain “dirtiness” to him that I had never really been attracted to before, but now found enticing. He wasn’t like other prissy, snobby gays I had previously encountered. It wasn’t a refined style or personality but it was something…wild, and seemingly dangerous.

The bedroom reeked of weed. His mattress simply lying on the floor, no frame to support it. It was lined with one plaid, white and blue sheet, yet somehow I still lost a sock in it. The TV glared an old episode of “George Lopez”, a show I hated. I  knew I shouldn’t have been here. Not only was this guy not my type, but I was hating every second being in this bedroom, and I didn’t know if I was still contagious or not. I said “what the hell” and took a chance.

A few days had gone by and I didn’t return any of his texts. I didn’t care to really expand my relationship with him anything more than friendship. I hadn’t really heard from him at all until I saw his most recent tweets and Facebook statuses discussing how sick he was feeling, how he thought he had mono. Oops.

I gave Stevie mono. I felt like I had passed on a life threatening disease and I was responsible for all of his family’s pain and suffering. As bad as I felt, I passed it off as a woeful indiscretion. After all, Stevie hadn’t contacted me asking me directly if I gave him mono, so it wasn’t really any skin off my nose. Plus I decided if he ever did, I’d share him some of my steroids.

About a week after Stevie’s illness surfaced, a new one of mine did. I noticed them, coming out of the shower one day. Red rashes and raised bumps, almost like bee-stings, all over my arms, torso and legs. I was about to throw up, as I of course was quickly under the impression that I had contracted some sort of strange STD I had never heard of. One that you probably could only get in a third world country, as these rashes were WHACK. They became extremely itchy and unsightly and I wanted to die inside in so many ways. I thought I would have to call Stevie and be like “Hey, sorry for giving you mono but I actually think it might be Super AIDS, and we might have to go to Indonesia for a cure, lol bye”. But another trip to health services turned up a few answers.

First they said “Uhh…I think I know what this is….” then “Oh my God, WHAT is the name for it!” and then finally they told me it actually was just a skin condition that was a side effect to the mono. They said I was perfectly fine and that just cosmetologically it was an eyesore. UHM HELLO DO THEY KNOW ME. MY COSMETOLOGY IS ALL I HAVE.

So I ended up passing on mono, probably knowingly, to a friend. And so I ended up thinking I got a strange STD from it. It happens, right? I’m still friends with Stevie today, but I only see him every so often because he goes to a different school and we’re kinda not in the same friend circle. And I have to admit, it’s always a little awkward. I don’t think he wants anything more than a friendship, and of course neither do I. His sheets still smell, I’m assuming. But I couldn’t help feel a little burned from it all.

Maybe there was something there or something could have been there, but I blew it all in a moment of weakness, and probably got a really bad skin rash because of it. I still felt bad about the whole thing. The whole time I was thinking how dirty and unkempt Stevie was, how he seemed like a nice guy but not the kind I could expect much from. And then it turns out, it was ME who passed along to him a very embarrassing virus. My first real life experience with shame. Who knew one little social disease could cause such an outbreak? I guess what I learned from it is to not go opening my mouth where it doesn’t belong. Because no one is immune.

“Perfectly Normal”

When I was growing up, there wasn’t a lot to do in my hometown, which is actually a city but acts like a town (ex. all the girls get pregnant at 16 and sometimes married at 17 and I’m sometimes if not all the time actually jealous considering they’ve already got two things off my “Things to Do Before You’re Not Pretty Anymore & Gay Marriage is Reconsidered Gross, Again” bucket list, but that’s another story. Anyways, there wasn’t a lot to do, especially in the winter time. The summertime had the town hopping with the beach traffic and 6 pitchers of beer for a dollar deals at the local dive bars, the ones filled with greasy men who smelled like fish and the non self-respecting women who were really into that.

But in the winter, we were usually left as kids to come up with our own entertainment. For most, this meant smoking weed in the backseat of a Malibu, driving the length of the town until the soft rock show “Bedtime Magic” started playing on the radio, or everyone got bored, or the fattest cop in town, who I think is named Frank, finally caught up to you and either told you to go home or stole your weed, for himself I’m assuming. Rude!

But for virgins like me who were in the drama club (which I reminded everyone daily was instead known as the VERY prestigious THEATRE PROGRAM), we kinda weren’t into that at the time. In fact, I was so not into that, you could usually find me hanging out with the Christian kids at youth group, bible study, or “men’s fellowship” (YA AND IM THE GAY ONE, AM I RIGHT). Truth be told, I had tons of fun reading about Jesus and playing dodgeball after. It reaffirmed my faith in God, instilled something in me that wasn’t really there before. Sometimes it just made me feel safe and welcome. Plus I was with good people, it kept me out of trouble, and by the time I got to my freshman year in college, I only blacked out from low exposure to alcohol tolerance like 9 times in the first week! Pretty decent.

Of course, being bored in a town isolated by both water, winter boredom, and very hormonal Christian teenagers wasn’t always that great. To be honest, when I was 17, I wasn’t entirely sure WHAT I was, in a lot of ways, as most teenagers don’t. And for a lot of the time, that really, really sucked. Like, REALLY. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, mostly because my education system was telling me to decide my future at 17 but also because I wasn’t sure where I fit in. I was having a great time in my THEATRE PROGRAM as well as hanging out with the Christian kids. The one sector of my life that didn’t really pan out was my sexuality, which I STILL think is a gross word. I like to think I was too obsessed with myself in high school to really notice anything about myself, or my preferences for people, or who I had feelings for. I had only had one girlfriend in high school who was the nicest girl in the world, at least 20 feet taller than me, had a new boyfriend on a 6 month basis, and broke up with me over the phone while I cried into a box of stale Goldfish crackers my Mom never let me eat because they were my brother’s favorite, (more on my parent’s favoritism of my handicapped brother later). But in actuality she’s great now and has a long-term boyfriend (Hi, Melissa!). But that was in the beginning of high school, and by the time my junior year rolled around I just noticed I wasn’t into the whole boobies thing as much as all the other boys were. But then again, all the other boys were really gross and stinky so I wasn’t into them either. Like I said, ALL the men in my town smell like fish. It’s a thing, look it up.

I thought this must’ve been God’s calling. I’ll take a vow of celibacy and join the Church and LOL NO. What happened was BECAUSE everyone in my town was so bored during the winter and BECAUSE we were crazy teenagers and BECAUSE I let that boy at a sleepover put his hands down my high school track sweatpants (a team I never ran for) when no one was looking I guess I sorta realized I was gay. That and the fact that I had this huge, unexplainable crush on Ryan Seacrest. He’s just such a powerful man, what can I say?

It turns out, the boy happened to, well I guess you could say develop a crush on me. Which is weird because I always thought crushes were things only pretty white girls in John Hughes films had, things that only happened to good looking guys who didn’t smell like fish and girls who’d fall for their every stupid move and over-gelled hair. In part, this was my fault, considering I didn’t know what I was doing and let him put his hands down my pants at sleepover after sleepover. It was wrong of me because we were good friends and I didn’t feel the same way. I was experimenting. I was experimenting with someone who already knew the formula, never a good idea. Also, I have to admit that I was very scared and had no idea what was going on at the time, which I think is a good description for “adolescence”. The good thing is, we’re still friends today, he has a successful YouTube career and he dyed his hair blonde. I still think he posts too many dirty pictures on Tumblr, but that’s besides the point.What happened then was nothing to be upset about. We were both two young gay males figuring things out, it happens! It’s natural. I’m not ashamed by it, nor should I be. The unfortunate part to the story is that this crazy chick that happened to be at all these sleepovers told ALL my friends, including my Christian do-gooders about my secret slumber party sexcapades. And she did so when I was not so ready to come out of the closet. Hell, I wasn’t even fiddling for the handle. I didn’t even know where the closet was!

I lost most of my friends during that period of time in really weird ways. It wasn’t that our friendships were severely cut, but they were changed. We were all so young and stupid and willing to listen to anything that we didn’t know what we were doing. In truth, I became so depressed and confused and shameful and felt GUILTY of who I thought I was and how I felt that I didn’t know what to do. It was so bizarre, I was feeling guilty for something that I had no control over, for being simply myself and being young and gay and really, really into Grey’s Anatomy. Not so much anymore, I stopped watching when they killed off George.

I need to say now that for a long time I’ve been really ashamed to talk about my VERY personal life, especially in a public setting. I guess you could say I’m a bit conservative in a way, due to the fact I hate talking about sex, or swearing, and I think a lot of things are really disgusting, especially Valentine’s Day. But I’m done being ashamed of who I am, the weird things I’ve been through, and how I feel about people. Eventually, of course, I learned I was a “perfectly normal”, for lack of a much better phrasing of words, gay male who was just trying to figure it all out. My friends of course, the ones who loved me, supported me, and deserved the same from me, stayed with me throughout my whole self-evaluation of who I was and who I wanted to be.

And that girl who told everyone I was gay before I was ready? Yeah, she’s fucking nuts and gained like a lot of weight, like A LOT. I’m NEVER one to mock someone for that, because all body sizes and shapes are beautiful. But I don’t really care, she was a bitch and really messed up my life at the time and I can’t remember who deleted who off Facebook first and THAT’S what really pisses me off. But her, I’ve forgiven. Not to her face, because I don’t know where she is now (probably an insane asylum), but in my heart I have forgiven her. Partly because I hope she gets mental help soon, but mostly because holding onto anger and bitterness is emotional constipation, and too big of a cross to bear. I’m still coming to terms with myself, but at least along the way I’ve learned that the only judgment we’ve to fear is from the man staring back in the mirror. His perspective is the one that matters most. And I’ve learned he’ll judge you fair, if you play your cards right. Even if you’re from a smelly fish town with a sick sense of humor and even sicker stories of teenage sexual epiphanies.

Oh yeah, and my ex-girlfriend? (lol it just sounds funny for me to say) She gave me a lovely copy of the Holy Bible as a high school graduation present. Which I used as a prop in a marvelous directing project that explored concepts of both God and sexuality.

Go figure.