(Yay for Death Cab for Cutie allusions.)

Wow, a new year; a fresh start. Maybe. This year has been a never-ending assault of trials and tribulations, and I don't know if I'm ready yet to completely leave them - and 2008 - completely behind.

2008 was a disappointment from the start. I was still reeling from having the guy that I loved more than anything treating me like less than nothing. When a new, perfectly perfect guy arrived on the scene, I thought that things would be looking up. Of course I was wrong. He wasn't interested. So I struggled on, moving from the romantic arena to the political one. The gay? fine by me t-shirt project was a success against all the odds, and I'm very proud of what I accomplished. The gruesome amount of stress and marginalization that I experienced left yet another dent in my flagging optimism, but it was worth it.

And then came summer. Just a few days after school let out, I was sitting on a school bus, on my way to Eastern for Boys' State. I thought I was going to gain so much from the experience - political knowhow, oratorical skills, a chance to become just "one of the guys" and see that straight guys deep down are really just like I am, and maybe even a shot at meeting some new gay guys. Unfortunately, the theme of disappointment that had slithered through 2008 rose to the surface once again. I learned almost nothing. The guys were complete jackasses. I didn't meet anyone interesting - straight or gay. All the camp served to do was to make me bitter.

However, there was consolation in the fact that at least I was going to go to the Iowa Young Writers' Studio following my dreadful Boys' State experience. I knew that there I would be able to learn useful skills and to meet interesting people who could accept me for who I am. Well, that was until I received an email that said the camp was cancelled due to flooding in Iowa City. 2008 was sliding further and further downhill.

Ah, well, even with Boys' State and IYWS down the drain, I had band camp to look forward to. Band has always been my family and has meant more to me than just about anything. Until this year, that is. I was miserable all throughout band camp and the fall marching season. The program was strict, severe, and not in the least bit fun. I felt like an island, unable to talk to or connect with anyone around me. I think when I realized that even band had become a disappointment was when my last scrap of optimism floated away in the wind.

The beginning of the school year was terrible. On top of the macabre marching band experience, I also had to contend with classes that were simply ridiculous. After a month of doing almost nothing but AP Biology, I was simply miserable, and I had to drop my first class ever. My AP English class, which I had been looking forward to all throughout high school, was dull and uninspiring. For the first time in my life, I didn't want to go to school. School, like band, has always been a lifeline for me. I knew that something was seriously wrong with my life when I could no longer enjoy the finest gift that has ever been given to me - my education.

I had felt a general feeling of sadness and isolation ever since band camp, but I thought I was just stuck in a rut. As my emotional state deteriorated, and I found myself wondering more and more frequently why I even wanted to live, I should have given my situation more credence; I really should have. But I didn't. Not until I was holding a phone and speaking with a counselor from a suicide prevention line did I realize that I even had a real problem.

The things that led me to rock bottom were more than just a serious of disappointing events, though. I've had to contend with so much more this year. Being gay in high school is something awfully tough for a teenager to go through. It's basically thousands of years of hate and oppression vs. ...you. Because it's seldom that you'll have other gay friends to confide in. I'm the only openly gay guy in my grade, and I have been for four years. It's also hard being a Buddhist when there's no temple or spiritual leader around to bolster your faith. And of course my parents have always been a problem, but things have spiraled out of control this year. It's rare that my father will be sober any night of the week now. And it seems that all my mother knows how to do is berate me and make me feel like a terrible, insignificant person. These things too add up and have a way of hurting you when you least expect them to.

So here I am at the beginning of 2009 - broken, hurting, and not even trying yet to pick up the pieces because I can't even find them all yet. I don't know who I am or where I'm headed. My greatest dream is to get into USC and somehow be able to pay for it, head out to LA, and become one of the damn best screenwriters this world has ever known. Okay, I lied - it's not a dream. It's an obsession. I will stop at nothing to get to LA and achieve my dreams. Yet so many variables hang in the balance...I don't even want to think of them all (although most of them revolve around cost). I promise you this, though - I'm going to get there. It's foolish of me to say this, especially when so much is uncertain, but this is my new year's resolution: to do whatever it takes to pay for USC. I have a dream, and no one can take that away.

No matter how lost or hurt I might feel in this world, there is always something beyond. There is always something hiding beneath the surface or hovering up above, waiting to appear. Truth, beauty, hope, power, intrigue, love...whatever you want to call it - it's never gone. Sometimes it can be hidden; so hidden that we forget it exists. But if we have faith, both in ourselves and in the intricate workings of this mysterious world, we can meet it once again and remember that it was within us the whole time.

It's been a long time since I've written an entry that hasn't been poetry/tidbits. I think I'm due.

Life is okay. That's all - okay. I'm coming out of a really bad time of my life. I was depressed for several months, and just a month ago I was contemplating suicide. School has been stressful; my family has been overbearing; I don't feel like I can connect with my friends; and god knows if I'll be able to afford the college of my dreams (pending acceptance and financial aid decisions). For a while I really hated myself, too. Not good.

I'm getting over it, though. I'm taking care of myself; making good decisions. I'm exponentially better than I was a month ago, but of course I still get occasional pangs of grief, as any normal human is bound to experience. Right now I'm feeling dejected after spending an evening with friends. Straight friends - like always. Don't get me wrong - I love straight people; my best friends are straight people - but I really need gay friends, too.

I feel left out a lot of the time around my straightsies. Around the couples, specifically. It's been well over a year since my last relationship, so I'm sure jealousy is a variable in this equation. It's so disheartening knowing that just about any straight person can find a partner more or less with minimal effort, yet here I am - an attractive and amiable whizz kid leading an interesting and unique life - without a hope of finding a mate. It's not always something I think about, but when it's this late at night, oh boy, yes.

Right now in my life I'm just trying to improve myself as much as possible - to make me feel good about myself and to prepare for the challenges that college will most definitely pose next year. I'm writing everyday, no matter what; reading without abandon; TRYING at least to exercise; learning about new areas of interest such as world history and mythology; and also building former areas of interest, such as saxophone, piano, German, Spanish, and drawing.

Keeping busy makes me feel good, so, like I said, I'm doing okay. I'm not great, since I'm still fighting some inner demons, but hey, feeling great doesn't happen all the time, so I guess I'm holding out pretty well.

Alley Cat

sometimes it still happens, even now.
usually it’s somewhere around midnight,
when only alley cats, groping for a spot of milk,
stalk the silence of asphalt beneath the stars,
and the padding of their sliced-up paws
is a whisper outside my bedroom window.
when my heavy yet sleepless eyes
see them weaving among the parade of
neighborhood garbage cans,
that’s when it happens, yes, even now.

this is how it goes:
i imagine black hair and brown eyes,
once close enough for me to touch,
for me to love…
i hear words about blue jeans,
pianos, the weather,
all coated in his smooth and
all together inaccessible voice…
and even the pillow, for a second,
becomes a soft hand cupped
beneath my silly head.

and i dream that he never broke me,
never told me he’d never love me.

like an alley cat prowling
outside of bedroom windows,
i lurk from the sheets and
finger through old photographs
of his face when it still smiled,
hoping to find maybe just one drop of milk
that could sate this alley cat’s thirst.

weaving among garbage cans
is pathetic for most cats,
but few cats have lost
their claws like me.

MIA's Paper Planes is playing nonstop for me right now.

I didn't win homecoming king. I'm silly and selfish and misguided, but I really wanted to win. I thought I deserved it. But that's not how things work. There's no such thing as deserving something--you just either get it or you don't, and that's that. It's not a question of fate, but of probability. Sometimes the cards aren't in your favor.

I feel any lesson in humility is exponentially more significant than any accomplishment you can earn. Humility's lessons are the hardest, and the most transforming. I've been hit with quite a few. I walked into school on Thursday morning with the straps on my backpack damp with piss, because my dad was so drunk the night before he couldn't find the bathroom. He didn't come to the coronation ceremony. And these things make me feel like Paper Planes by MIA. The topic of the song is gritty and pulled off the street, but she turns it into such beautiful music. I feel my life is the same way. I take all the unclean things that come my way and polish them off--into passion, or effort, or art. This homecoming experience will help me propel myself, too.

But in other, juicier news...a guy got HIGHLY sexual with me last night. It wasn't on the dance floor. To be honest, I was too upset to dance. The guy that I wanted to take to homecoming sophomore year, who I thought was the cat's pajama's then, but who I now think is a grade-A creeper, came up to me while I was sitting with my friends on the big patio outside. Although he's really creepy, he's also really...hot. He was talking with me and trying to get me to dance, when he started rubbing his leg up and down my ass! I seriously thought he was going to bone me right then and there. Of course I did not whore myself out, and definitely did not dance with him, or even give him the time of day. I just kind of sat there, ignoring him while he rubbed my ass, until he went away. Haha. How awkward. It sucks, though, because I never get ANY attention from guys whatsoever, and although I respect myself enough not to be a man-whore, I'm not made out of stone. I still need to be touched every once in a while. So I kind of enjoyed the attention, and kind of wanted more of it, and I kind of think I would have gotten funky with him if my friends weren't all sitting right there. Gah. I need me some man! As usual....

I'm nominated for homecoming king. Exciting, no? If my lesbian friend and I both win queen and king, we're going to turn homecoming...

...into homocoming. Bwa haha.

P.S.
Isn't Sarah Palin fucked up?!

...AP Biology. And it was the best decision of my life. =] Some things just aren't worth it, you know? I'd rather be happy and somewhat slacking than miserable and "ahead of the game"--whatever that means.

I think I'm going to go back to focusing on English and its subsidiaries, reading and writing. That shit I actually ENJOY. =]=]=]=]=]

...are utterly ridiculous. Thank you.

The Willow

He took them like drugs. Photos from the summer of 07. The park, the woods, the crummy seats of an ancient Buick. Cocooned in Jimmy’s farm brown arms, soaked up by his firm lips, inebriated in the dirty jean blue of his eyes. Fireworks, birthday parties, sunsets. Dances, football games, just-for-the-hell-of-it’s. Hundreds of photos flickered across the computer pixels, dazzling Austin’s eyes. The pictures were like a favorite pair of jeans—he’d slip them on as often as possible, aware of every rip, wrinkle, and stain, but refusing to throw them away.

Slumped forward and concentrating on the computer screen, tennis-shoe-white in the midnighted room, Austin struck the figure of a desperate artist waiting for inspiration to strike, elusive as he stared down his LCD canvas. He had developed a mastery of noting every detail in the pictures—every cloud in the sky, every glass on the table or bystander in the street. In a way, what he was doing was his art.

“See how the Pleistocene white of his t-shirt seems to bounce away from his sun-tanned skin? This portrait is quite characteristic of the early Jimmy-Austin dynasty, which reached both its peak and demise late in 2007 A.D,” he could imagine an art scholar remarking a thousand years down the road to a full house at the museum, all the ladies oohing and aahing in their satin dresses, the gentlemen nodding solemnly.

Austin rubbed his eyes. It was time to go. A year previous he would have been sneaking off to catch a late movie with Jimmy; this night it was for a different reason.

Slipping on his dust-plastered Pumas and a jacket, he opened and closed the back door as loud as a breath, so as not to alarm his mother, roosting upstairs. He took off running down the side of the street; he soaked in the sleeping sights of the world with absorbent, artist eyes. Skirts of light draped from the streetlamps, guarding the quaint suburban homes dozing behind them. Crickets played Puccini on their leg-violins. Bits of gravel scattered like shooting stars beneath Austin’s flying feet, aimed for the city park.

When he arrived, slaking his cilia with whooshing breaths, the first thing he noticed was the air of reverence about the place. Row upon row of grass stood massed in a silent congregation; every oak spread its weathered arms to the sky like a zealous worshipper; even the weeping willows seemed to be hunched over in prayer rather than mourning. Austin stepped through one of the willow’s veils of leaves and was immediately drenched in shadow. Running his hands along the trunk, he began to search for something. A bolt of energy raced through his brain when he felt it, a few rough gullies in the smooth bark, and the memory came back swift and clear.

Summer sweat rolling down under his shirt, between the fans of his broad shoulders, Jimmy led Austin by the hand into the weeping willow’s arbor, where they sat against her body and admired how the sunlight sketched on the ground through her hair. They had been dating for a week. Their heads, leaning back against the bark, slowly rolled toward each other’s until their lips met, as soft as two leaves brushing. And Jimmy murmured, “Happy birthday.”

Opening his eyes and reaching into his pocket, Jimmy removed the key to his old Buick and scratched their initials in the bark (JH + AW) and enclosed them with a lopsided heart. Austin laughed at the horrible penmanship, leapt up, and walked hand-in-hand with Jimmy outside the leaved sanctuary. He didn’t know then that love is like food; something that, unless incredibly well-preserved, spoils and molds over time. Their expiration date was five months later; Austin still refused to look at the label.

He had come to the park that night with a screwdriver in his pocket to shred out the letters. He had decided two hours earlier, somewhere between birthday and homecoming pictures, that he would come to his senses and get over Jimmy immediately, as his friends had told him to. He had to erase the letters etched in the bark before him to prove to himself that Jimmy was now nothing to him. Symbolism, symbolism.

But looking at their jaggedly perfect shapes, weathered nearly into hieroglyphics since the last year, he realized a Phillips Head is used for screws, not screwed-overs. He dropped the tool.

“When I’m done with you, I’m done with you. I won’t need a naked tree trunk to tell me that,” he whispered.

It was time to go home. Austin jogged back through the park’s gravel trail, then stopped so suddenly he surfed along the rocks for a second, nearly tipping over. He balanced himself and turned around. A bittersweet smile cracked his lips while he reached into his jacket, pulled out a camera, and took a picture of the park, empty and dark, but the most beautiful he had seen it.

[This should be pretty relatable for everyone going through HISS (homework induced stress syndrome).]

Wheel

i am a wheel, i go around
and around around and around around and around.
crooked grooves run down my black body
like cattle brands or bar codes;
men with greasy hands tell me i’m efficient,
i’m sorry, but i’m just ugly.

have you ever showered in oil?
greasy, scalding, and miserable, i run like a dream
beneath the ass of a ferrari,
it’s more like a nightmare,
but the wheel turns on.

yes.
turning, turning, turning,
i move in circles so others can move places,
i’m sure the leather seats are comfortable.

i am tractable with traction,
submissive to speedometers,
oppressed in the midst of high octane.
i am always moving, and most times i don’t know why,
or where i’m moving to.
i guess i’ll keep spinning
until i pop.

[More of a story/catharsis than an actual poem with a theme, but if you can find a theme, tell me!]

Black

black—too close to lack
to be a comfortable word.
black like your unchallenged hair,
running in waves and rivulets
across your lonely head.
black as in the night
when i ran into streetlamp shadows
and practiced sonnets with the pebbles,
that knew the words as well as you did.
black in the dimple of my pillow,
cupping my tears and scratching my cheeks;
you saw the black of eyelid drapes,
sheltering a sleep some twelve or thirteen miles away,
where you dreamed of yourself and no one else and your beautiful black hair.

[Pretty vulgar.]

I Am Not a Fag

i am not a fag.

i am not a tutu-toting,
prada-proffering,
limp-wristed vagina,
looking to get fucked.

i am not a back alley,
bending-over boy,
with a dildo on my key-chain,
a grin on my glossed lips.

or a walking rainbow,
a puddle of sunshine,
looking to brighten your day
and trim your nails and
renovate your house
all at the same time
while the crème brûlée cools.

i am not a fag.

i am who i am—
don’t call me a fag;
just treat me like a man.

Band camp. Deeeeeath. There was a heat index of 118 today, and I was lucky enough to be marching for 7 hours out in it. Band is pretty ridiculous, and I fail to learn just about anything from it anymore, but I'm sticking around just to finish it out in my high school career. Pffft, I'm such a tool.

There's actually a guy in band I think is transgendered. He's this real stoic, masculine guy, but he's raided ex-girlfriends' closets and even admitted to one of my friends that he likes trying on ladies' clothing and gets turned on by it. He makes a big show of hating gay people, which I think is a projection of his own insecurity about the incongruence of his masculine and feminine identities. I don't know, maybe I'm over-analyzing, but I REALLY want to meet transgendered people! I never have before.

I'm learning piano. I've ALWAYS wanted to learn! There ain't enough room in my house for a real pizzano, so I'm using a keyboard...and teaching myself how to play. As of now, it's insanely difficult.

Hey, wanna see a short movie I wrote, co-directed, and starred in? Ya bet you do. I'm the ref! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ngg8m2QXyg

I think I'm the first person on the planet not to like Dark Knight. Did anyone else notice that it was way too drawn out, had barely any good action, and lacked a central conflict? Although I am on par with everyone else that I think Heath Ledger was masterfully fabulous.

I'm getting way busy preparing for school and college so I have less to worry about during what will most likely be a heart-palpitating school year. I have every meeting and every event for my gay-straight alliance planned out (pending co-president and club approval and suggestions); I've finished most of the common app; and I completed a kick-ass college personal statement about how I faced down my school administration and won students the right to wear gay-friendly shirts, then sold over 200 of them for a campaign, even after my superintendent said we couldn't sell them, without any substantial reasoning. (Hm, I probably should have written a journal about all of this a while ago, eh?) It's a good feeling having an amazing story like that to tell. I've ALWAYS wanted an amazing story to tell!!!!

Grrrr, why is it that I can't fall asleep any earlier than 3 AM? Waking up at noon does not bode well for productivity.

Dry Confession

“hate is a rather strong word,”
he says, pulling the mug from his lips,
setting it down with a hollow clatter
on the diner’s cold and freckled table.
the mug sits close to the edge.
if i pound my fist on the table,
like i’ve been planning to do
for all these years,
it would fall.
the words “world’s best dad”
would shatter into
a hundred porcelain pieces.
is this deja vu?

when the waitress scurries up
with a refill for his coffee,
he declines.
he’s not drinking coffee—
coffee won’t get you drunk.

i can smell his demons
from across the table,
lurking behind yellow teeth,
yellow stains on his jeans;
they are my demons too.
when i pass by empty baseball fields,
when i see a kiteless sky;
when i search for missing pictures,
when i look in mother’s eyes—
those demons laugh inside my nose;
i wish i could sneeze
and get rid of this cold.

his mug is empty, my eyes are full.

“dad is a very strong word.”

Father’s Day, 2008

are you god?
because you are everywhere.
i see you all the time:
puddles and mirrors,
picnic tables
and empty parking lots.

half-empty beer cans
breathe your name down my neck;
hallmark made a day for you.

you’re probably still washing yourself
with my power ranger soap.