City of Angels

I've been told from time to time to learn to appreciate the bad hand I've been dealt by being forced to move to Reno.

The problem is, Reno is a boring place full of people I either don't like or people I can't understand.

Admittedly, it's an unfair generalization about a place that I've learned to appreciate more (well, to some degree) in the last three years-and-then-some that I've been living here. The problem lays in the fact that, from the day I was born up to the day my family (well, my father) decided to pack up and move to the land of cheap property and plentiful casino labor, I had been living in Los Angeles, that emerging area known for its moving picture industry, crime problems, and occasional earthquakes.

To me, however, L.A. was more than that. Despite the national perception of L.A. created by shameless celebrities, self-loathing movie producers, and national news people who find the rare local riot to be newsworthy, L.A. is no different than a lot of major cities in that it contains a large variety of people and activities. And, of course, with L.A. being as large as it is, we had a better variety of people and activities than most American cities could boast.

But despite my having lived in L.A. for such a long time, it wasn't until my senior year of high school that I really learned to get out and experience it.

***

One of the most embarrassing periods of my life was when I decided to leave high school at the tail end of my senior year. Not as in graduate, or even get a GED and finish early... I mean, literally, stop showing up without telling a soul. The reasons for why I decided to do such a thing are too complex in nature to accurately explain, but I think what it came down to was the fact that I didn't like going to school, and never wanted to go back. Now, I've probably written thousands of words to date on my high school experience, so I won't waste too much text explaining why I hated high school, but basically, I was consumed by an environment that seemed to think anything less than a public Ivy was wasting your life away, and my classmates were either major assholes or simply people who prioritized their college dreams over their loyal friends, and . So I responded by ditching and going wherever I could until I could come home late enough that my parents would think I had been going to school all along. The ruse ended when my friend Brian noticed I hadn't shown up for weeks, and decided to call my house when I wasn't there but my parents were. Hilarity naturally ensued.

The ditching meant going to different places every day and finding my way around a city which I had only managed to navigate through the backseat of my parents' car. (Yes, even up to when I was about 17.) It began innocently enough with me walking all the way up La Cienega Boulevard (which I lived near) to the Beverly Center, a shopping mall near Beverly Hills and West Hollywood that wasn't unlike most shopping malls, save for the prohibitively expensive neighborhood it was surrounded by. Oh, and the Souplantation. Then I started taking the bus and going much farther, albeit not too far. Santa Monica for me was a 50-cent fare and a transfer away, as were the beaches and the crowds on the Third Street Promenade. For the first time in my life, I was navigating through huge throngs of people all by myself, completely free to visit any store I wished without fear of retribution from parents who wanted to do whatever they wanted to do. I then used the bus to go different places, like Downtown to the Central Library, which ended up being my favorite haunt for many years up to the day I moved out.

But perhaps my favorite place to go during that period was a small park on La Cienega and Olympic Boulevards which sort of sat between the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles city limits. It wasn't the most extravagant thing, but it was a very comfortable public space where you could just lie on the grass or play frisbee with your dog or whatever. It was a simple park. And yet, lying on the grass there, you felt like you were inhabiting a space of great importance, one surrounded by traffic and the houses and apartments of important people making more money than I may ever see in my entire life.

These initial forays into the city I had grown up in but never properly lived in allowed me to gain a new perspective on what kind of place L.A. really was. The months passed, high school was officially over, and I ended up attending Santa Monica College for a year and a half. Going to SMC ended up being an eye-opening experience in that, in addition to allowing me to rethink education, it made me rethink what it meant to be a lone citizen among a huge, huge population. SMC, being a top-notch institution for a two-year college, had a multitude of students from all over the area, ranging from ghetto-dwellers in South L.A., to trust fund kiddies from Bel Air. It was a beautiful school, and I hate the fact that I couldn't figure out a better solution to my educational woes, as I ended up being kicked out for poor grades. But it wasn't just the people or the institution itself -- it was the surroundings of Santa Monica, an independent city which oozes with California indulgence, with its palm trees, expensive boutiques, and overpriced property. Slowly but surely, I began to start appreciating what it meant to be an Angelino.

Having lived in West L.A. for a long time, it was jarring and somewhat frightening to find out that my parents decided to move out to a house in South L.A sometime in late 2003. However, I quickly grew to appreciate the more communal feeling of a neighborhood that wasn't so bad as it was slightly decrepit and full of people who were just struggling to get by. It wasn't easy to live in a place where helicopters would regularly hover over the house every night to seek out drug dealers, but it was a humbling experience that added more perspective to my life. Plus, living in the ghetto actually meant better access to public transportation, and the occasional sight of blimps hovering over the nearby Coliseum during USC games.

L.A. in general was a life experience, and living my life on several ends of it meant learning to adapt to different environments. Meaning, I knew the difference between walking the streets on Sunset near the Strip, and walking the streets on Sunset near Vermont Avenue. Even without a stable core of friends (they were all in college, or I was avoiding them because of my little walkout incident) I could manage to live a full life just by soaking in the L.A. culture, or even going to a random place like Montclair if I felt bored enough. So when it came to a halt in December of 2004, I felt as though I had been shot in the chest, robbed of my life.

What made the move so damaging, in retrospect, wasn't so much that I moved to a smaller town as it was the fact that I moved to a suburb of a small town. I don't blame my parents for wanting to move to a neighborhood that was comparably safer, but suburbia at best really seems to be nothing more than manufactured living conditions for people who want the nicer things in life but don't mind being in an environment that suppresses individuality and character for the sake of keeping some horribly outdated fantasy alive. Living in a suburb means living amongst people who seriously care about pointless crap like property values and garages and high-definition televisions that we didn't need three years ago. As much as I hated high school, I don't think I could've handled going to a high school in a suburban community without wanting to commit Harry Caray hari-kari.

***

So, in general, I miss L.A. and ache to go back.

I don't understand how I can be so enamored with a place that, no matter how much rose-scented prose I can write about it, is still full of bad people, in the form of gang members, Hollywood types, and, of course, Scientologists. Living in Reno, admittedly, added more perspective to my life in that it gave me a sense of what normal people and rednecks are like, neither of whom existed in L.A. (Except for Britney Spears, who, really, is nothing more than a rich and famous version of every slightly-overweight chain-smoking mother of two or more annoying children that I run into at the bus station every day.) As a result, it caused me to realize just how friggin' weird L.A. people tend to be, even if I have many not-immediately-visible similarities with a lot of them.

It's not even a matter of not being able to go to other places and appreciate them. I've visited New York City and San Francisco, and loved them enough that I find them to be superior on several levels when compared to L.A. I've even been to a mid-size city -- Baltimore, whose suburbs some of my family reside in -- and I liked the major area enough to consider moving there someday, even if Baltimore has a high crackhead-to-mentally stable person ratio.

But for some reason, I prefer L.A. more to all those places.

You know, maybe it's as simple as the fact that it's the town I grew up in, and moving back, despite the high costs involved, would be like some sort of silent triumph to prove that I can make it in L.A. and be amongst those who live in those apartment structures that stood a few blocks from that park on La Cienega and Olympic. Maybe I just want to relive that moment of bliss from so many years ago, where I laying down on the grass in that park, staring at the sky, and realized how beautiful it is to be a minuscule part of something large and wonderful.

A Sexless Loser's Tale

I want to start this entry by revealing a little factoid about myself: I have never had sex before in my life, consensual or otherwise.

(Too much?)

I generally tend to feel sheepish revealing that fact to people who, for the most part, I consider close friends. Not that I feel any sort of hidden obligation to interrupt a conversation with, "Hey! Have I mentioned I'm a virgin?", but it's weird when the subject matter of sex, or, for that matter, inter-gender sensual contact is brought up, and I have to stand there with an attentive expression without ever actually adding anything. Why? Because I have nothing of value to add. Mostly theoretical stuff, in the same vein of theories about the Earth being flat.

I don't know anything about relationships with women, because, well, I've never had any. I've had friendly deals with a few, but so far the ten most important people in my life who aren't members of my immediate family all seem to be male.

I have no problems with the female race. Like any man, though, I don't understand them. In this day and age, where the concept of treating women as equals in society is almost considered an accepted fact of life, we're slowly but surely realizing just how complex the female state of mind really is. Of course, the only reason why we're just finding this out right now is because every religious and political overlord since the beginning of time has attempted to suppress this fact for their own personal gain. It wasn't until the 1960s that we were beginning to discover the long-denied fact that women are born with brains, too. And they can use those brains to solve math problems that DON'T have anything to do with cooking!

But my failed efforts to understand them falls on a different level than your average frat boy who can't discern why his significant other is so upset over the fact that he forgot their anniversary, especially since The Big Game™ was on that day. Those who have read my main journals over the years already know what my childhood consisted of: many video games, and very few friends. I didn't have the average childhood of going over to a friend's house every weekend to hang out, play Street Fighter, and then go throw rocks over fences or whatever. It was mostly me, my NES, my vivid imagination, and whatever pieces of paper I could draw on. Despite the fact that it wasn't an entirely sad childhood, it was still devoid of trust in people who were not related to me.

Unfortunately, it continued all the way up through high school, and it took many years before I managed to willingly get someone to come to my house for the purpose of conversation and general fun-having. I really don't want to delve into too much information about my life, but this was the reality and the world I faced for many years. As an obese child in a very rough grade school environment (stereotypical black/Latino school in which maybe half the kids ended up going to college in one form or another) I was faced with all the taunts and names you could possibly imagine... plus more. Unfortunately, as an obese adult, I really haven't brushed off the personal and emotional trauma it caused. And, in fact, I still have several childish fears about what many may view as the simple task of approaching others.

***

But back to the fact that I haven't gotten laid.

I'm not a willing virgin by any means. It makes for a fun lie to tell people that I haven't had sex because I'm waiting until the right woman comes along. But if I were faced with a situation where an attractive woman was drunk enough by her own means, and she thought I was worth a shot, and she wasn't totally blitzed to the point that it was disgusting... well, hell, don't wait up for me. And don't leave any coffee out for me, either.

At the same time, I have something of a moral core, possibly created by living in a Catholic household, so I don't consider unfair shortcuts (like prostitutes or roofies) to be a favorable alternative. Of course, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't compensating in some form or another, and if you haven't figured out by now as to just how I compensate, you're either under 13, stupid, or a hardcore Christian.

So, to me, sex and sexuality are like this big, ancient mystery that has great meaning, where most people just see it as a way of life. Several societies exist that do, in fact, view it as such, but I clearly do not belong to any of them. I view myself as a single island in which I, and only I, inhabit.

My vantage point, as a result, is quite the interesting one. For one thing, sexual jokes aren't as funny. (Of course, I would bet my cousin's child that a few years of regular sex in my life won't cause them to be funnier.) For another, it's easy for me to pick out who are the truly unmoralistic heathens and who are the overly staunch and judgmental fundamentalists in a sex debate. And for another, I find that having interests in various subjects and devoting to said subjects for the majority of your free time is not an altogether bad thing.

The latter has caused in me a seething hatred for people who go after innocent individuals for being a wee bit into their hobbies by calling them virgins. What have they done to you to cause you such great indignation? All they do is express themselves freely and go outside the norm of society, instead of following restrictive social mores that attempt to make everyone the same joyless individual with no personality or flavor. Does that upset you because you wish you could be just as expressive? Or do you just hate humanity in general? Okay, congratulations, you've fucked once in your life. So has pretty much everyone else in the planet. (Except me, of course.) Here's a medal, go die in your own self-made hell now.

It reflects on one absolute belief I've held about society, which is that, over the last few years, we've been putting sexuality on a pedestal for all the wrong reasons. Is it an important reality of life? Yes. Is it sort of disappointing that I haven't even kissed a woman, much less had an intimate moment in which we expressed our love in the most passionate way? Well, yeah. But am I glad I haven't dealt with anyone who's given me shit about my penis or my lack of a history? Well, it does make life easier.

The most annoying thing about the Very Real World of Sex is that there are people who treat sex as a judgment of an individual, as though it's a vital part of interaction between two people who could otherwise have synchronized personalities. Even as an expression of love, it doesn't mean much in the large scheme of things. It's a good time, yes, but attraction between two individuals should always be about the intangibles, the things that really create love in the first place. You know why there's high divorce rates? Because instead of thinking, "Is this person compatible with me and my personality?", many people are instead asking themselves, "Wow, he/she has a pretty nice butt, all things considered."

To me, the continued existence of that treatment of sex by a small but very loud and prominent portion of society makes the whole thing feel cheap, even if it really isn't. As an impartial viewer who has yet to deal with people in general for a length of more than seven days, I really don't know what kind of mindset I'm getting when I have a partner. It makes sex all the more scary to me, as though I'm dealing with my childhood all over again, and not trying to embarrass myself for fear of name calling and taunting.

Maybe some day I won't be so skeptical. It's just a matter of finding the right kind of person, and not freaking her out by IMing her about how sad it feels to be lonely or something like that. And no, it's not like I'm a complete physical mess. I actually have a pretty decent face, all things considered.

But, you know, as long as they can endure a 90-minute lecture about HTML coding from me.