#52essays2017

Strap the fuck in, y’all. We’re about to go on a wild ride.

On Friday I had a date planned for 8 at the San Pedro Market Square in San Jose. For some background, I messaged Andria on Okcupid because her profile said she is gay and interested in writing. She told me she’s Latina, which made me confident that a “date” would be fun. I didn’t expect anything romantic, and was just looking for conversation and some company.

I showed up 15 minutes early because mami taught me that if I wasn’t 10 minutes early I was late. 5 minutes before we were meeting up I got a text from Andria, Okay so I’m actually running super late :( does 9 work for you?

I responded, I was in Salinas and drove up already, but don’t stress it. I’ll be here whenever you get here :)

I felt unbothered; I was in a particularly good mood and glad for the time to take selfies. I put up a video of me appreciating me on IG, and responded to messages from friends hyping me up. Then I sat in my car to charge my phone a bit and watch some DOTA videos.

At 8:30 she texted again to say she was there, so I went down to meet her. She got a beer (and offered me a drink), but I told her that I was good and didn’t need the alcohol. We sat down on the brick steps in the middle of the open courtyard and started talking. We bonded over both of us having ADD.

After an hour of talking about anything and everything that popped up, we decided to try to find a tall building to appreciate the Downtown View. We walked towards 3rd Street, until she stopped me and yelled, “We should go into Olla!”

Now she mispronouned ‘Olla’, and I had to ask what she was talking about. She pointed out the restaurant and I asked, “Olla Cocina?”

She looked a little embarrassed, but said, “I don’t know the first word, but the second means kitchen right?”

“It’s literally ‘Pot Kitchen’,” I laughed and we walked in.

She ordered elote, and I ordered ceviche. Once we got our food I joked, “This is the type of place that preys on white hipsters.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, I could go in the hood and get 3 times the food for half the price. White folk are too scared to get the good shit though.”

She seemed defensive about my explanation and pushed me to say more. My answer insulted her sensibilities, and she asked, “What’s the difference between appreciation and appropriation anyway?”

I should have let the subject go, but I assumed that she agreed with me. She’d been very clear that she disliked Trump because she was a feminist, and that she disagreed with her parents about their hatred of Mexicans and her dating women.

Instead, I tried to answer. I told her that if the owner was Latinx, or if they employed Latinxs, that I supported them getting their cash no matter who they got it from. I continued, “It’s admirable that you want to educate people about your culture, but I’m not the person that can have ‘Devil’s Advocate’ conversations. That’s the kind of thing that white men pulled on me at Vassar way too often, and I’m tired of repeating it.”

To me, I’d made it very clear that I didn't want to continue the conversation, but she took it as a slight bump on her journey to ‘get me riled up’.

“What if someone wants to understand your culture, and they’d support you if you spent time to educate them? Like I hate Trump, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but don’t you want to spend time to understand him?”

Her riling me up worked, and I’m not sure what I said next. I know my eyes rolled so far back that mami would have slapped me, and that I was completely fucking done. I offered to pay for dinner and told her I was meeting friends to go out dancing. She invited herself to walk with me, and continued asking about educating ignorant people.

I responded, “If they want to understand there’s art like Get Out. It showed everyone else a black man’s perspective of racism.”

“Oh I didn’t watch that movie, I thought it was stupid to make fun of racism like that.” I hadn’t been surrounded by that much whiteness since dealing with blizzards in Poughkeepsie. I didn’t respond, and she continued, “Like do you remember learning about the holocaust? I was so heartbroken and wanted to write something serious about it. I should be able to if I want to support those people.”

We got to the bar and I told her, “I’m done with this conversation. I’m gonna meet my friends.”

She started crying, grabbed my hand, and said, “You can’t go! You hurt my feelings and made me feel like I’m a bad person. You have to fix this.” That level of entitlement seemed almost childlike, and I felt bad enough to agree.

“You have one minute to get some closure then I’m meeting my friends.”

“What about this did you hate?”

I hadn’t had this kind of conversation since Vassar, and never to this extent. I’d never talked to someone who pretended to care so strongly while prioritizing their own feelings above all else. I tried to explain again every single thing that I’d disliked: that she couldn’t disregard how other people presented their experiences, that I’d made it clear I didn’t want to have that conversation and she’d pushed anyway, and that her perspective came from her being perceived as a white woman (as I was often perceived as white).

She yelled, “I told you I’m 75% Mexican! You can’t ignore my identity and call me white!”

“I said other people perceive you as white, and you’re playing the victim now.”

“I am the victim here! I have such a big heart and you’re calling me out on all these things and won’t even take the time to help me grow.”

I’d told friends earlier that night that nothing could ruin my mood, but at that moment I started crying. Not because I felt bad for her, but because I was so frustrated in trying for a whole night to explain to someone that they should care about other’s feelings and ownership of their identities and failing. I felt scared because she is the type of dangerous ally that enters spaces to center themselves, and she was so good at hiding it.

I brushed the tears away, smiled, and said (honestly), “I hope you have a good night.”

She yelled back, “NO YOU DON’T!”

I joke that I don’t fuck with white people, and when I say that I’m thinking of people like Andria. They can be (75%) Mexican and gay, but if their experiences as white folk make them incapable of understanding or caring or even listening, I don’t fuck with them. Online dating makes this shit hard because most people on there are white, but I’m completely fucking done even trying.

#52essays2017 Poetry exists even if no one hears the tree falling in the forest.

I’m going to accept that maybe it never dries. The words just speak on and on and effect emotions as long as they exist. I hear you ask me what this is, and the answer leaks from my lips like poetry.

Talking to other poets is amazing. Creative people overall have a sort of flair to them that they exude regardless of if you communicate in person or online. I love the connection. The fact that they…

In the 18th century people thought that Tuberculosis (TB) affected the most beautiful and gifted. It was suffering in its loveliest form. People sought to catch it, to die romantically of ‘consumption’.

I have the same obsession with heartbreak.

I don’t actually remember meeting. I know it was at Vona, and most likely the night that I joined your group for empanadas. There’s a picture of that dinner on Instagram: I’m on the far end, and you’re presumably behind the camera. I guess that means we were on opposite sides of the group and didn’t talk much.

The only other conversation we had was the last night. You told me you were Colombian and Chinese, and like the white boy I pretend to be, I responded, “That’s a cool combination.”

Then nothing until November. We had a quick back and forth about bulking (of all things). I tried to figure out who you were; I looked through your pictures and wondered how I didn’t remember more about you.

In December I messaged you to congratulate you on a submission, and from there we started talking every day. You didn’t always respond, but you sent me your writing and I felt special to see it before the rest of the world.

I fell in love with your thoughts and feelings. I read everything and wished that I would have spent that last night in Miami with you. I dreamt of you - of us - sitting on a beach, you telling me the things in your essays.

In February you visited San Francisco. We made tentative plans to hang out, and I asked if it’d be okay to flirt with you and take you dancing. You said I was in luck because you loved dancing. I got excited to see you, but you were busy with friends and we didn’t get the chance.

You were the first person that I told when I was suspended and then removed from my teaching position. We talked on the phone, and hearing your voice made me think everything would turn out okay.

Then life happened. I gave in to my depression, we messaged less, and I felt like I’d lost you.

We matched on Tinder in August. You told me I couldn’t come see you in Monterey because your family wouldn’t like a guy coming by. You shut me down every time I asked to come see you in Berkeley. 

You told me about some guy and I figured that was the end of it. I sent you memes (mostly puns), and every month a longer message asking how you were doing.

After a few months of that we started talking more often. I’d try to send you a meme every day just to get a “smh” or eye roll emoji response. The deeper conversations came more often, and eventually I asked if you were still pursuing other people. You told me you were, but that our relationship was deeper. That you were going through your fuckgirl phase. I joked that somewhere down the line we’d date.

In April you finally agreed to let me drive up to Berkeley to see you. You made us milk tea and we sat in your kitchen talking. We moved to your room and kept talking. We cuddled and kissed and I pulled away and rolled my eyes and said, “And you thought there wouldn’t be a spark.”

What was supposed to be a lunch date turned into a whole day. I held you and played with your hair and we both rolled our eyes more times than I could count. 

You walked me to my car, and I drove you the single block back to your apartment to squeeze in as much time together as I could. I kissed you good night, and you told me not to text and drive because you wouldn’t respond anyway. ‘Drive safe’ really did feel like a way of saying I love you.

A few weeks later I teased you and said you should teach me how to love you. You shut me down as usual, and went on to say (again) that you weren’t in a place for a relationship. I told you I understood and decided not to push anymore.

“I figured you fell in and out of love quickly.”

Maybe you were right. I’ve been back in Salinas for two years now, and the loneliness is crippling. The omnipresent mountains that make up the valley have become a cage, and my family the wardens guilting me about wanting to escape. 

The above scene is one of my favorites from Sense8; partially because Lito and Hernando were the best story line, but also because I enjoy Hernando’s insight to the idea of what “art” is.

“Art is love made public,” he ends, but in this cleanly written TV moment he leaves so much out.

I spent the last two weeks drifting between staying in bed and laughing with my family. Leaving my room was too tiring most days, but I wanted to fake being happy for them. I went to my parents’ house and played video games with my brothers and joked with my mom and chased the dogs around so that they could see me acting out life.

In truth, losing my teaching placement has left me in purgatory. I am not truly living: I sleep until my body needs rest from resting because perpetual sleep is all the comfort of death without any of the commitment.

I made these feelings clear on social media and have had multiple people reach out. The messages and encounters were well intentioned and appreciated, but a recurring theme was that I needed to “get over” my depression.

A friend messaged me on Instagram to say, “Depression isn’t real. You’re so cocky! This isn’t you.”

Another friend caught up with me during my workout and told me, “Everything happens for a reason. Dios has a plan, just believe.”

A mentor bumped into me and encouraged me, but also continued and said, “You need to stop being so hard on yourself. You fucked up, but you need to keep going.”

I see and respect people who say that they are not their depression, but I am.

I’m scared of being alone, but when I’m feeling emotional I cut myself off from everyone and everything. This is how I grieve, and it helps me move towards being the love child of Kanye West and Junot Díaz that I aspire to be.

I have not imagined myself as anything but a teacher. I got up every morning happy to spend time with students even though I hated the bureaucracy of teaching and the credential courses. I knew, and know, that I need to be teaching children that grew up in the same circumstances I did.

My students reached out and supported me just as my friends had. They wanted to fight the district for me.

One of the students who attended the Writer’s of Alisal Club told me that it was unfair that I’d encouraged them to write their stories only to lose my position for writing mine. She told me she wasn’t sure if she could keep sharing her story, she didn’t know of a space other than the one that I’d helped build that would accept whatever she had to say.

I cried after reading that message. I intended only to help those students, but my aspirations as a writer have made me unfit to be a teacher in public schools.

The program directors from my credential program asked me if I wanted to continue towards my teaching credential, but added that I needed to choose between writing and teaching. When I tried to defend my ability to do both, they said I’d at least have to give up on sharing anything “controversial”.

One of them regularly chastised me in class for my lack of “professionalism”. At the start of the Fall courses she asked me about my VONA experience: I excitedly responded, “Dude, it was amazing!” Later that class she shifted the lecture to say that none of us should ever refer to a professor as “Dude”, and that we needed to dress the part of teachers (I was wearing jeans and a sweater as was normal for my co-teacher).

This woman has been in education for 30 years. She is the director of a program for teachers. If she is the final judge of what is “controversial”, then I never had a chance in education.

Writing is what brings me solace, and in the last year I have written more honestly. The subject matter is controversial by necessity because my writing talks about my experiences with depression, self harm, and sexual violence.  

Art is a support system to life: I write about my pain and sorrow and joy and love to work through the strongest feelings. Writing is taking the moments I don’t talk about and sharing them with the whole world. 

To stray from controversial topics would be dishonest with myself and with anyone that reads my writing. 

Papi taught me to be frugal. He raised me to think about the cost of things through the amount of work. A game I wanted might been only $30 through the eyes of a child, but he told me that was 4 hours of blood and sweat. Even so, because of his love for me, I'd get that game.

We watched the news reports of Trump’s Inauguration and the Women’s March together. He wondered what exactly those women were marching for and told me that he doesn't approve of "feministas". He doesn't like everything they're trying to change; the work is too much for too little benefit that he'd see. He values his blood and sweat more than the freedom, happiness, comfort, and lives of mujeres around him. He thinks that what they have now is good enough.

He's being frugal with their lives.

I recently heard one of my brother’s friends crack a joke with the other wrestling boys: “Am I the only one that still thinks of women as objects?” This same boy went to DC on a school trip and attended the Women’s March. 

My social media feeds were full of “feminist” men and masculine folx just like this boy. They march and speak out loudly against misogyny for the social capital of being able to say they are feminists. They want to buy “Allyship” with a day of effort, and then not put in the work ever again.

Mira, holding up signs and shouting loudly against men like Trump is not enough when you turn around and keep up the “locker room” talk. It’s also not anywhere near enough to only support white-cissex-non disabled-straight women that society has taught us are the pinnacle of womanhood.

Don’t get it fucked up: the frugality of labor and love needs to be shed entirely.

Men and masculine folx, especially Latinos, can't afford to be frugal with their work for women. Mujeres have done emotional back breaking work for us for too damn long. They have built our families and culture with their sweat and blood because they love our dumb asses so much. They paid the cost for centuries, and we owe it to them to break the bank on this issue. 

We can't look back now and think that the cost of true intersectional-feminism is too high; it’s time for hombres to put in real work for women and femmes. 

Real work looks like shutting down your homeboys’ sexist shit. Real work looks like men stopping the objectification of women and femmes. Real work looks like men doing emotional labor for women and femmes.  Real work looks like men accepting that ALL women are deserving of respect. Real work looks like men knowing that women and femmes may not want us, they don’t fucking need us, and they sure as hell don’t owe us shit.