Good Times in the Chi...

So I have taken two trips to Chicago in the last two months and I am planning another trip at the end of October for my birthday celebration. What gives?

The truth is that I have fallen in love with Chicago. From the straight forward arrangement of streets (though I still prefer the numbered and ordered simplicity of DC) to the very way cool people I have met from there and presently there, Chicago has not only enchanted me, it has captured the attentions of my future plans. Yes, thats right kids, I am presently working towards moving to Chicago sometime within the next 3-4 years. In this time frame, I expect to have finished my master's degree in electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins, finished all renovations to my house and have ten years of engineering experience under my belt. It also does not hurt that my company has a site out (relatively) close to Chicago in Rolling Meadows.

What I've found in Chicago is a city as liberal and as alive as New York City without the preposterous cost of living and claustrophobic, turn-of-the-century living conditions. There is no way that Washington DC would ever foot a penny towards recognizing Dupont Circle as a "gay-friendly" area as Chicago does with Boystown. There is no place in DC that continues to serve liquor past 2am. With the exception of perhaps New York and San Francisco, there is no other city where an obvious drag-queen/tranny would just casually climb on the elliptical next to me at the gym and start her workout without drawing gawks and stares.

These may seem like crazy and superficial reasons to uproot and move to an entirely new city; however, the real reason has more to do with the wander bug finally taking a big and juicy bite out of my plump and complacent ass. It is not until recently that I have had the financial capability to really start traveling. Before this time, I was quite happy having been born and raised in the general vicinity of the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. It was not until I saw New York, Chicago and Miami that I really and truly started wondering what it would be like to live in another city. We Scorpios do not make irrational decisions however; after seeing the price of real estate (because there is no way I am ever renting again) in Miami and New York, I knew I'd never be able to live there without becoming some greedy landlords butt-boy. Chicago, however, has relatively cheap real estate in and relatively close to the city. This instantly piqued my attention and here I am, making plans to move there someday.

As promised, here are some pictures from my last and before last trip to Chicago:


Me and my Juana, Miguel. Fresh off the plane and I am already drunk off my ass.







Here I am giving you femme-trade-face-in-white belt. Yes, I just recently started appreciating white belts and yes I wanted to get it in before Labor Day!



Oh my... is it a little hot in here? This picture makes me want to run to the bathroom with a spoon after every meal. And for the record, I was NOT trying to rub his nipple!




Some boy that I always run into but I always forget his name as easily as he obviously forgets the Jergens on his elbows. He serves beautiful face though! Aawwo!






Sweet but sad and unrequited Jonathan. How can someone so sweet be so damn single! Chicago, WAKE UP and come snatch this boy up!






Now normally I am not into the big girls but this one could have got it on the flo' baaybaaay! He look like he could have whipped up a tasty breakfast in the morning too. Alas, I had too many of that guy on my shirt to remember his name..




Gorgeous green eyes? Check. Very talented dancer? Check. More cheese in a smile than the whole state of Wisconsin? Check. Fierce snatched eyebrows peeking from under a sickening hat? Check!! Domenico bettah work!







Me in just about the gayest shirt I have ever worn. Appropriate as I was about to go to the gayest event ever: Miss Continental, the apex of drag competition.





At a BBQ. Something about putting my ear on Carino's breast makes me happy. Also his red shirt is the plate upon which I can serve FACE!!






Ooh, I'm a little moist. A whole night of dancing at the Prop House and a few of their creative, colorful and POWERful drinks and this is the result: A hot, moist, sweaty mess! Danny is dry by comparison. He must have adapted!



Okay I'm drunk, Ryan is too but Miss Dominic is giving us thug-face for no damn reason!








Hot picture of my future Chicago fam. I didnt' know I could give thug face too but there you go!







Me and Dome about to do a pop-and-lock on the dance floor. Eat your heart out Darren's Dance Grooves!





Yes it looks just as stupid when YOU do it. For the record I am a non-smoker!








Why does it look like I am up to no good? Whats going on? And why does that lollipop look so damn good? This is when we were there for Market Days. The hair was a lot shorter!





OOOOH.. I hope this doesnt' spark an inter-fraternal incident! Despite the sentiments of some of my Hermanos, I got mad love for the Betas... (the ones I like that is!)





.... I told you I was up to no good. Gotta love Prop House for handing out watermelon Now & Later lollipops with their sour melon ghetto-tinis!








..... fun picture with Carino. I just love resting my head on his breasticles! Love you girrrrrrrr!







... eyebrow competition with my new white friend Dominic. Sad to say but he wins hands DOWN. Gotta love him! So after I tell him my name is JULIO he asks "so are you black or something"? LOL!!!





.. ashy elbows or not, this boy has what I call OFFTG.. (ovah face for the gawds!!)






And thats it kiddies. I leave for Chicago yet again tomorrow. (Yes, its taken me this long to finish this post. There is a lot going on. More on that later!).

It's God's Fault!

I've got a bone to pick and its with this asshole right here. According to people like Pat Robertson and Alan Keyes, both posessing seemingly sharp insight into the mind of God, all the awful shit that has happened to us within the last five years is actually God punishing us for among other things abortion, letting the gays run amok, pornography and teaching evolution in schools. Pat Robertson even went as far to predict where catastrophes will strike next based on who has kicked God out of their community.

In all seriousness, the whole "God Is Punishing" us mentality is dangerous, it is lazy and it is simply just not true. Believing such a fabrication only makes it easier for our elected officials to shirk responsibility for the catastrophes that have visited our nation.

Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that has gone wrong in the US within the last few years has been completely preventable and has occurred not only because of human error, but an unwillingless to LISTEN and to ACT. Shall we take them one by one?

September 11
did not happen because of abortion in this country, as Keyes would have you believe. Osama bin Laden was a monster that the U.S. created starting in the '80's. That's right, the CIA trained and funded him although we knew he was an extremist. The big bad wolf back then was the Soviet Union and we made a deal with the Devil. It came back to bite us in the ass that morning when the trade towers came down and the Pentagon was attacked. Lets not also forget that memo warning of an imminent attack which was ignored by the powers that be.

Have we learned our lesson? Doesn't seem so. Our biggest "ally" in the "war on terror" seems to be Saudi Arabia where public beheadings and other barbaric punishments are still practiced. How long before they stab us in the back as well? When we they run out of oil or when we stop needing it as much?

Katrina
did not happen because of the promiscuous gays acting a fool in the French Quarters (which was spared most of the damage.) Although nothing could have been done about the hurricane, scientists and engineers had been saying for years that the levees would not hold against a category 4 or 5 hurricane. Environmentalists had been saying for years that the destruction of the ocean-swell absorbing marshlands around New Orleans could mean disasterous flooding in New Orleans. FEMA even had simulations of what a theoretical Hurricane Pam could do to New Orleans. All this was known way ahead of the hurricane. Instead of building stronger levees, our elected officials chose to under-fund them. Instead of piecing together a contingency plan that included rich and poor people alike, the government sat on its ass. To add insult to injury, Bush AND our Congress appointed someone with zero disaster experience to handle the crucial job of running FEMA. It was not God that flooded New Orleans, it was the unwillingness of our government to listen to the folks who knew better than anyone what needed to be done.

Ariel Sharon's Stroke
seemed to be caused more from his age and carelessness when it came to diet and exercise than any act of God. Had a blood-clot mysteriously appeared in the brain of an otherwise healthy man, then maybe you can run for cover, clutching your Bible and praying to be one of the few to be Raptured into heaven. But anyone with a eyes can see the man loved having his cake and eating it too.

The sad part is that Sharon was key to finally achieving peace. What Robertson claimed was "dividing God's land" was actually returning land that Israel had no business keeping. Signs indicate that Sharon's successor may not be as open to compromise as Sharon was. This coupled with Hamas now being the dominant party among the Palestinians cannot bode well for peace.

Man kind has been blaming catastrophe on an angry God(s) for millenia. Its only natural that we do it now. But honestly, lets give God a break. Afterall, He evolved us to have a highly sophisticated brain so that we can solve our own problems.

The Epiphany

So I have just returned from my super long Labor Day weekend in Chicago with my best friend Miguel and my new best friend in the Chi, Miss Dominic "Dawgs". Good times were had by all as will be shown at a later post (once I am done Photoshopping the pictures from my new camera.) No I am not airbrushing, just cropping and reducing size. *Giggle* okay not even I believed that one!

The trip was not, however, without its low points. Specifically, I felt depression's downward tug while driving on Lake Shore downtown and at Club Zentra. Significant events relevant to my last relationship unfolded at these exact two locations. My memory was vivid enough on Lake Shore that I was able to recall what was said as we passed each ridiculously over-priced store. Being at Zentra also brought back vivid memories of that bitterly cold weekend. It brought back more than I cared to remember around the group of people who were there with me to have a good time. But as the saying goes, God does not close a Walgreen's without opening a CVS. Or something like that. If you are lucky He also opens a Target.

My epiphany came so quickly and with such crystal clarity that I am tempted to believe that it was divinely inspired; or maybe I was just lit and my brain farted. Who knows? The point is, epiphany in mind, I got my hot sweaty ass off of depression's bench and brought it to the dance floor. What happened was that I finally saw the blessing in the lesson that had been evading me from the moment I became single (yet again).

And here is this lesson:
Nothing in this life is truly yours, be it a person, place or thing. The moment you buy into the delusion that someone(thing) is yours, you open yourself to loss. (I made the concession later that perhaps your soul/mind/conscious is the only thing(s) in life that you truly own.)

I realized that (like the rest of the world) I was buying into the societal deception that you are somehow less of a person if you are not married or at the very least "bunned" up. It seems we also need to own the person we are dating/married to in order to be someone acceptable to society. The idea of ownership when it comes to dating/marriage is quite evident in our very language: "He is my man/woman." "I am his/her husband/wife/girl/boyfriend." "I belong to you." Virtually every love song and broken heart song has at its core one person owning another at least in an emotional sense.

So what if two people want to own each other? What is so damn wrong with that? Well the answer is absolutely nothing. The problem is that more often than not, one and sometimes both members of mutually ownership-based relationship erroneously believe that they are in one! Just that weekend I saw two examples of MRI (mistaken relationship identity), where what someone assumed about their relationship was in fact not the reality. What made these situations all the more tragic was that though the true nature of the relationship was painfully obvious to everyone external to the "situation", the party internal to the situation was absolutely clueless. Since coming back from Chicago I have seen even more examples of MRI's in both hetero and homosexual relationships.

No, this is not my personal endorsement of open relationships. (Though it seems to me that the longest lasting gay relationships are those in which there is some sort of "agreement" between the parties though upon close reflection, I know I would never be able to successfully participate in a relationship with these "agreements".) What this is an endorsement of is a total revamping of my outlook on my personal relationships, platonic as well as non-platonic (while I am at it).

People are not meant to be owned either literally or emotionally and up until this point that is the expectation and the assumption I have been making with the people I dated seriously. This only sets me up for frustration and irrational anger when it becomes obvious that 1) the person does not want to be owned and/or 2) they dont want to own you.

After acknowledging what the problem is, I have caught myself reacting in the "old" way several times. More often than not, I can stop, run a mental diagnostic, analyze and then move on. Sometimes even knowing it, I react anyway like the knuckle head I sometimes am. If only personal re-programming were as easy as recording my favorite shows on my DVR...