Friday, August 21, 2015

Notes. Ideas. Direction.

Blogger Note 1:

I really want to relate to a vast amount of perspectives in this current existence of mine. I am not too sure how possible that is, but it is really all I want to do with my life. It is not because I think I am smarter than anyone, or I am more important than another human being. I just think that if I share my ideas, my stories, and my fantasies with anyone who chose's to take me seriously, there is something I can give the world it has never been given. 

I only want to write down what my eyes see, so someone can convince me that I am not seeing the world correctly.That is not a challenge, it is a request. Truth be told, I hate how I look at the world. I am not really sure how I look at the world in it's entirety, and that scares the shit out of me. I don't understand myself. I do not understand why I think that what I have to say is something to be looked at as art. It is just my brain.


This is my brain. My brain tells me to love everyone. My brain tells me that everyone I know is aware I love them so much. My brain is one step ahead, and 14 steps away from everyone else. My brain takes time. It takes longer than everyone else's. My slow brain is a gift from my ancestors. It has a rhythm. It only functions on a one track cadence. My brain only can express itself in the moment. My brain is very good at pretending. My brain is not yours. 


Here I go...into the abyss of cyberland, and invading the one track minded socialmedialites of the given free world. Brace yourselves, here comes the motherload. 

Monday, August 10, 2015

Part 1 of Chapter 1 : A Holiday Note

Chapter 1
(Pt. 1)
A Holiday Note

At the end of last year, I was caught off guard by a casual message from a former teacher of mine. It wasn't from just any teacher though. It was from an educator I felt respected by for the first time living in my new, permanent, west coast address. The sender of my valued anecdote happened to be my favorite teacher throughout my entire high school experience. To me, she really seemed like the only person in my surroundings that really had my number, and never used it to her advantage. I am not too sure why I was so obvious to her, but I enjoyed having one adult in my corner from the start of my endeavors of the most unique high school experience you could imagine. 

It is a proven fact that good teachers, never stop teaching. In the quaint note, she had told me of a man she had met that grew up in Milton-Freewater, OR who had become successful in performance arts that had reminded her of me. He happened to be performing the following February at our local liberal arts university, and insisted on buying me a ticket to meet him and enjoy some delicious art on a glum winter evening. To my dismay, I had to decline because the stage also required my presence that night. Even though my soul was desperate to sit in an audience, the almighty Theater Gods refused to allow it.

Bummed is an understatement for how I felt about not being able to attend the recommended musical revue she generously placed in my lap. I still carry around a vast amount of curiosity of what I missed out on by missing that display of educated self expression. All I really wanted was to have a real conversation with a seasoned someone who could understand 90 percent of what came out of my mouth. It had been so long, and I was depraved of artistic ingenuity.

Even though my schedule didn't allow me to experience one mans display of talent, disappointment didn't hang around much longer for a gloating jeer at my delicate life. I was overcome with a sense of realism that had gotten lost in translation between my teenage and adult psyche's.

There it was! One of the most prominent segments of my life found its way to me during the peak of the single most depressing holiday season I have yet to encounter. At the time, there was not much I could hold on to other than the keen sting of community theater dramatics and a bi-curious aspiring model/actor with severe Jesus issues and a disgusting sense of realism.

I digress...

"Jimmy, I have been thinking a lot about your high school education experience lately, and I must say it really was surreal to see you walk those halls as you did. Your experience alone was like watching my own personal movie with a direct incite on you surviving high school as the only out gay student in school. It was unlike any other student I have ever taught to see how effortless you made it look to be you."

It took me a minute to respond because I could not tell if she was patronizing me or not. I had been so used to being treated as inferior, that when someone complimented me I typically ruled out real affirmations as the directed first intention. After 5 minutes of contemplating on the most appropriate response, all I could really say was a polite, "Thank you," and maintained my bewildered state of mind.

Was she serious? I had always known I had made an impact on the students and staffs daily lives like everyone else, but it was never anything I was proud of or thought mattered. How I saw it was, that I was the poster child of sexual confusion in my new community, and it alienated everyone I had encountered throughout the latter part of my public education experience, including my family.

Unfortunately, due to (as I like to call them) cultural differences, I wasn't entirely aware how much attention I was going to get from my peers by coming out of the closet at the ripe age of 15. All I really considered was my own happiness when it came to coming out. I thought I was in love and I wanted to share with the world how I felt. I was comfortable with the cutest guy in school being the center of my school boy concessions, and blindly opened my closet door in extreme insensitivity towards anyone else I knew. I thought everyone would see my true happiness, and leave me alone because it was genuine. That's what I try to do to people. Doesn't everybody do that?

Call me passionate, call me selfish, or call me insane, but the only conscious effort I really made was to be honest for the first time in my life. It didn't hurt me, so how could it possibly hurt anyone else? In retrospect, the only thing I really was sure of at the time was my sexuality, and that was it. There was something in the world telling me to express an adult perspective in a vicious teenage world that was drenched in red paint. I eventually ran out of reasons to not say anything anymore, and exploded. It was a new school, a new start, and the timing could not have been more perfect. By the end of my freshman year, I knew exactly how I was going to introduce myself to McLoughlin High School, again.