My PhotoShop Addiction

I have long accepted the fact that unlike the rest of the world, I do not have the best skin. While others get by using Dove and water, I have to do a little extra just to maintain a decently acne-free grill. It does not help that my philosophy is that of "pick and pop" as opposed to "dry and treat." (I have been working on this and I think I have finally made some progress.) It does not help either that though I am Latino, I am "black enough" to have to deal with skin issues faced by those with more direct African descent; hyperpigmentation and ingrown hairs for example. This makes taking pictures all the more traumatic for me, especially when I am not having such a good skin day.

But then the good folks at Adobe created Photoshop. Now every time I take pictures I have the confidence knowing that any of natures little tantrums on my face can easily be corrected with software. It was a little tricky at first but the more pictures I edited the better I became. In about 15 minutes I would have a picture that was blemish-free and ready to be made into prints.

Then came the addiction. What started out as rubbing out pimples and marks eventually degenerated into the digital equivalent of beating my face only instead I was using pixels instead of Mac. Its not like I did it all the time and I could stop when I wanted to right? I finally hit rock bottom after this picture and decided that I needed help.






I had simply wanted to go over some blemishes but I could not stop! I kept changing, editing, paint brushing, blurring until I ended up looking like J. Lo in that advertisement for Glow.


I started attending PA meetings (Photoshopaholics Anonymous) and learned that I was not the only one. There were folks that ended up looking like aliens from having photoshopped their faces so much. Then there were those that did things like changed their eye and hair color. It was a mess!

I am glad to say that I am now better. I have bought stock in Mac and now everytime I take a picture I make sure to cake my face with foundation.

Thank You Pat Robertson!

The news media was in a frenzy yesterday as televangelist Pat Robertson called for the assassination of the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. While everyone was busy responding to this latest outrage from the so called "Christian right", I sat back, chuckling and sent a prayer of thanks heavenward.

This is not the first time Robertson has made controversial statements. On his television program, the 700 Club, Roberts prayed for more "vacancies" on the Supreme Court which presumably would lead to more conservatives appointees from his hero, President Bush. (FYI for those who did not pay attention in civics: Supreme Court vacancies occur when a judge dies or retires). So indirectly, Roberts has prayed for the death of Supreme Court judges; or their retirement. Either one will suit him. Roberts is also on record for blaming 9/11 on pagans, gays and abortions rather than blaming the Islamic extremists who were piloting the planes. He seems to have overlooked the fact that one of the people who helped crash one of the planes in Pennsylvania (thus keeping it from smacking a 4th building) just so happened to be a gay man. Maybe he recognized the face of religious extremism when he saw it and did not like the similarity to his own reflection.

I thanked whatever supreme intelligence runs the universe for Robertson finally exposing the ugly face of the Christian right-wing extremists that have taken over the GOP. They (the GOP) were bad enough in the good old days of laissez-faire, less government involvement and destroying the environment. However, now that they have convinced themselves that they have God on their side, they have persistently tried to control the lives and moralities of Americans and those they see fit in the rest of the world. From the Terri Schiavo fiasco and the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to invading a sovereign nation on lies and fabrication without properly preparing our troops or making sure we had substantial allies, the GOP has made it their mission to force their religious views on us. This makes them no better than the Taliban, al Qaeda or any of the other religious extremists we find ourselves fighting today.

Being such a staunch supporter of the GOP and especially Bush, I also pray that in 2006 people will remember Robertson's comments and pay careful attention to whom he gives campaign funds. The country needs to wake up out of this religious stupor and get back to reality.

Finally, let me end this with a prayer. Let us hold hands, brothers and sisters, bow our heads and pray for non-death related GOP vacancies in not only the House and Senate but in state governments as well. Amen.

Why Are People So Nasty?

Okay, I've had enough! It seem as though the older you get the less common your courtesy becomes. Allow me to explain.

Picure it: A well known and reputable engineering firm after lunch. I've had my light lunch consisting of mostly vegetables and a chicken sandwich. Naturally, I will need to relieve myself in the bathroom after consuming so many greens. I head to the largest bathroom in the plant consisting of several toilet stalls and choose one far from the door and in a corner. Unlike some folks, I like to keep my personal doings in a bathroom to myself.

No sooner have I "taken a seat" then some 350 lb old white man, sweating from his trip to the bathroom and breathing like Darth Vadar plops down in the stall RIGHT NEXT to me. Mind you, there are about 20 stalls in the entire bathroom and this a-hole decides he likes the one adjacent to where I am. I watch in muted horror as his feet turn and point towards the stall door in the "number 2" position. Trapped by my own bodily calamities, I have no choice but to stare like a white woman trapped in a closet with an ax murderer on the loose as the aforementioned monster unceremoniously lowers the jeans his wife bought in 1985 and claps his generous ass cheeks on the toilet stall.

What occurs next is no less than the brutal raping of my ears. In between the animalistic grunts and groans comes a sound more at home in an Iraqi battlefield than in a civilian bathroom. Someone did not take their Metamucil this morning! I cover my ears and begin to rock back and forth, "Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly... fly far far away. Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly... fly far far away."

After quickly finishing my own business, I run to the sink, hurriedly wash my hands and run out of the bathroom, feeling like I could collapse in tears in a hot shower after scouring my flesh with a Brillo pad.

Why the hell do people do this? Its not like I am hiding my feet so that you can not see that you are jumping into a stall right next to someone else. Perhaps they think I need the companionship or maybe a hand to hold?
Fuck it. I'm just going to go home after lunch from now on.

Good times in Chicago!

Two weeks ago I went to Chicago with my best friend and had a blast! We saw a very entertaining drag show, went to two clubs and attended a two day festival known in Chicago as "Market Days". I bought two pairs of earrings and got a very handsome local celebrity to put them on me (THAT tea is classified!) I also ran into a frat brother celebrating his birthday that weekend and we had a blast getting shit-faced! I almost threw up (but didn't) Thank God! I pride myself on my control with alcohol.

Happy Birthday Hermano! (And yes, I noticed the shirt looks painted on but I assure you it was NOT!)






These are just about the coolest people I met
while out there: my new white friend and someone that has smaller eyes than me! Yay!





Me and my best friend in the whole wide world. We're thinking of starting a band: The Pastel Crew. Thanks for the great time in Chicago and for helping me through this rough time. You're the best!

Emotional Analgesic...

Quite recently, (since I started filling the void), I have discovered an analgesic of sorts. Doing this one simple action has lead to drastic changes in my everyday life. I have more energy and I will even go as far as to say it has helped alter my outlook on life. What did I do? I took my ass to bed!

On average, I would get around 5 hours of sleep per night during the week. Sometimes I would only get 4. Occasionally I would be forced to decide between taking a three hour nap and risk getting to work around noon or just staying up and getting to work ultra-early. (The fact that my job only cares that its employees get 40 hours a week and not exactly WHEN you work them does not help.) Either way, the next day would be spent being tired as all hell, extremely irritable and sometimes too tired to hit the gym. The weekends would be even worse! I'd stay up very late at night and then practically sleep away the entire day. Seeing as how most of my home improvement time is on the weekend, its a wonder I've gotten as far as I have in remodeling my house. This has been my schedule for the longest time now; so long in fact, that I forgot what a good nights sleep felt like and just accepted for "normal" how miserable I was at work during the day.

What was I doing that I was staying up so late during the week? I was either visiting the sig O (significant other) or watching TV or playing video games or watching a movie. I'd go to sleep late, wake up late, get to work late, leave late and then go to bed late. It was a vicious cycle and I am not alone. The average American adult gets 5-6 hours of sleep a night. Its no wonder that StarBucks is making billions selling caffeine to people! The reason, at least for me, was that there is SO much information to process. There's the TV, my books, the radio and my sig O. Or rather there was the sig O but when I had one, our relationship would take up much of my time.

It was the absence of the sig O in my life that started getting me to bed on time as well as the motivation to start hitting the gym a lot harder and more frequently than I had been. I made up my mind to start prioritizing my interests so that I'd be in bed by 9-10pm so that I could be up and out of the house by 6:15 the next day. My DVR from Comcast also helped a lot. My two favorite programs (The Daily Show and Family Guy) come on late at night. Rather than staying up late and watching them, I'd record the shows and watch them the next day or on the weekend have a little mini-marathon.

The results were dramatic. Every morning I would literally have to drag myself out of bed and into the shower. Nowadays, I am awake and energized a little before the alarm goes off. I find it a lot easier to focus at work whereas before I would make very silly mistakes as well as spend a lot of time correcting them. I also find myself more at peace and a lot less irritable. The morbidly obese diabetic man on crutches sounding like Darth Vadar who works near me no longer annoys me to tears with his heavy breathing (from hobbling to the bathroom) or his snacking. There was a point where I considered asking to be moved as to not be around him. His noises are still a mild annoyance though (more on that at a later post). I have also managed to paint over the burn stains in the kitchen. I woke up early enough on a Saturday and just got it done. Much to my delight, I had enough day time left to go to other things! I have also been to the gym a lot more nowadays than I used to before. Where I would take days off because I was too tired, now I have the energy to do what I need to do at the gym as well. The results will be the subject of yet another later post.

Who would have known that such a small thing as making sure you get enough sleep would lead to such drastic changes? I encourage anyone who feels irritable at work, is ready to pass out at 2pm or who goes home and just falls out to look at their sleep habits and to MAKE time to get at least eight hours each night. I gaurantee that it will help. (Unless you got some kind of sickness, are taking drugs or your irritability at work has more to do with your coworkers than your sleep; in that case, I can't help you there!)

In retrospect, my lack of decent sleep was, at the end of the day part of The Void. Restful sleep was yet another personal sacrifice I made for a relationship. Some were worse than others; "Murray" lived a lot further away and so I had to get up a lot earlier to make it to work at a decent hour. Sometimes I'd eat up some vacation time by taking an impromptu day off.

One thing is for certain. Whether it be books or video games, Comedy Central or "The Family Guy", new "situation" as Erykah puts it or a date, I will make sure to get enough rest, at least during the week!

Filling the Void

You never know how much someone was a part of your life until they are gone. In their place there is a big gaping void that leaves you feeling incomplete.

When I say “incomplete” I mean it in a very real way. When “Dorian” and I were together, just about all the time I was not at work or school was spent with him or driving to see him or planning on seeing him over the phone. Any “spare” time I had was based on his schedule; for example, I’d go to the gym or hang out with friends when he was in class or visiting his family (who despised me, more on that later). This was “filler” time for when I could not be with him. Often I would bring him around my friends to hang out with both at the same time. (This brought about another headache, again, for later). Now that “Dorian” and I have parted ways, I experience the void as a lot of free time. Those with little free time are right to want to jump up and punch me in the face for not seeing this as a blessing. Maybe in time I will. But how do I begin to fill this void?

I had an epiphany today, while at the gym. It was not really an epiphany but more of a cognizance of something I have heard before from various people. Allow me to explain the mental avalanche that lead to my pseudo-epiphany. I was contemplating the void and various ways with which to fill it. After pondering the obvious (like my poor burned house, my fitness goals, fraternity stuff, maybe some volunteering), I wondered what was filling the void before “Doryan” and I got together. This is from whence the epiphany came. I stopped dead on the elliptical as what many friends have known and I have refused to acknowledge suddenly hit home: the void has always been filled with someone not something. Before “Dorian” there was “Murry” and before him there was someone else and so forth. (In fact there was a point where both Murry and Doryan were filling the void, a fact of which I am neither proud nor boasting about, simply stating). For the last eight years of my life I have either been in a relationship or dealing with someone on a non-platonic level. When I was not filling the void by pouring myself emotionally, financially, sexually, intellectually and/or spiritually into a relationship, I was out looking for the next “void-filler” and was not complete until I found him. This is not to say I did not love them. I have loved several times and been in love twice. I guess you can say my motives were not entirely pure in entering these situations however; I needed someone to fill this void in my life.

Looking further back I realized that the void was not always as large as it has become. In high school I was a social hermit. I had made the decision a very long time ago (before I even remember consciously making this choice) that I was not going to pretend to be what I am not; that is, heterosexual. At the same time, I did not want to deal with what I perceived to be the incredible ignorance and homophobia of my peers when it came to this subject. The result was that I only went to school to attend classes and to keep to myself. Even though I participated in extracurricular activities such as the National Honor Society and wrestling, I had constructed an impenetrable barrier so that no one could know who I really was. I had no friends outside of the associates I communicated with during school hours and though I was lonely at times, I was also very self-reliant.

During this period in my life, I lived in my head and no where else. I was fine watching my sci-fi shows, reading my Stephen King books and doing my schoolwork. I remember reading Dante’s Inferno and being challenged by my junior English teacher to write our own version of Hell. I practically re-wrote the entire thing only with my vision of who should be punished and where. I had that much free time on my hands. Needless to say, I received an A for my efforts and glowing compliments from my teacher. When I was not tearing through assignments I was either reading, playing video games or watching Star Trek. I realized I was a geek and that I was missing out on the social aspects of my life and that I could find some friends somewhere but I did not see the need. I was getting very good grades that would eventually lead to a free college education and more importantly, I was happy. This is not to say I did not have my dark days. I got depressed like any other gay teenager but I always managed to pull myself out of it. My being happy was totally my responsibility and for the most part, I took care of myself. This was not the case however, once I started college.

With college came unbounded freedom to be myself. Ten years of repressed sexuality came out and fairly quickly I became notorious among the LGB community at College Park. I simply loved the idea of finally being able to express myself sexually and possibly even have a boyfriend. This is where the void came into being. Before I was complete and needed little from the outside world (except for family), but in order to make time for my new “hobby” (men), I had to create the space. Thus, I started diverting more of my time and energy into processing situations that I found myself in, whether positive or negative. Looking back, most were negative although with them came valuable life lessons which were as important as my positive experiences. Pretty soon, however, a cycle of addiction came into being. The more I interacted with the LGB community, especially the men, the more time and energy I devoted to it and the less time I spent on myself. Now, some people have had it worse than me. I never failed out of school, or did drugs or anything SUPER destructive, however, slowly but surely I shifted responsibility for my own happiness into the hands of others and every time, I would be let down. This experience in itself has taught me much about myself and people in general, however I am somewhat of a hard-head when it comes to life lessons. It appears I still have not learned because here I am almost nine years later, repeating the same mistakes. After yet another failed relationship, I feel detached and floating in the world; I feel purposeless.

So now what? A history lesson is no good without having learned from it. All philosophical contemplations aside, I am someone that deals in specific plans and actions and words; I have trouble dealing with abstract emotional concepts as they apply to real life. Maybe that’s why I am so hard-headed. So what is the plan? Well this blog is step one. I’ve always found writing to be very therapeutic in the past though I have not written poetry or “blog-like” articles in a long time. I guess writing was one of those things I sacrificed to create the aforementioned void. I actually had a novel in mind a few years back that I started to write. Who knows? Secondly, I am going to continue this Mary-J-Blige/Tweet/Keyshia-Cole “I’m going to take care and love myself marathon”. As cliché as many R&B artists (mostly women) make this process, it truly has been remarkable how much I have been neglecting myself and my needs and how much better the world seems once I stopped doing that. Since painting the burn marks and cabinets in my kitchen (the one my blessed little sister made) I’ve been a lot less depressed when going to the kitchen. Since getting to bed early (a luxury that living in Laurel and filling the void with someone who lives far away did not permit), I have had much more energy and a more positive out look on live and much more motivation to hit the gym. It has been these “me” types of activities that have kept me sane and have made the healing process all the more bearable.

Now, I will not make the unrealistic and cliché denouncement of all men that everyone seems to make after experiencing a particularly heart-wrenching break up. No, I am not about to retract all I have said thus far; instead, I am just going to be real. Just because I am going through it and have decided to do a lot of “me” things, does not mean that “me” will not need some “attention”. Even if its from a “maintenance” man. The key is that I will make sure that I have taken care of all my personal responsibilities to Julio before I go devoting any of my resources to someone else. And that’s REAL.