RED BURNS
I'm standing on the corner. The sun is hot, hot, hot.
The pavement stings me through my tennis shoes. The sun bears down on my back, searing my neck red hot.
I see her under the stoop; the sun stretches her skin out, and red burns cross across her figure like kinbaku.
Her milky skin sweats, kids run down the block, and someone scrapes their knee, someone cries, someone’s always crying. And the sun beats down on the two of us. So hot, hot hot.
Her smile binds me, the upturning of her lips like the curve on the corner I see every night.
The sun dips beneath the horizon, and it bleeds out through the sky. The town is turned maroon and violet all upside down. Red hot.
She says something to me, so sensual and sweet. And I say nothing/something.
I make a promise I know I won't keep and she smiles at me as the rolling disk behind her head dips until it's dark.
We stand on the stoop and look at the sky; I hold her hand, and her red burnsssss cut me deep.
Her skin is charcoal, her face is so bright. I can't see anything past her.
The red stars shine, and I know we will never let go.
I know this summer will never pass. And I know the sun will come back and cut through me again.
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This is the first piece of writing I've completed in quite some time. I can't really tell if it’s good or not, but I'm going to post it here anyway. The common thread of my life is quitting. I don’t say this in a self-deprecating way or to elicit any sympathy; it's sort of just an observable fact in my life. I always give up, whether it be football, drawing, writing, Japanese, editing, etc. I always throw in the towel after a couple of weeks. But two weeks ago, while visiting family in Mexico, I suffered a horrible bout of food poisoning in a hotel room in Roma Norte where I was staying alone. As I laid on the slightly damp bed with nothing but my gurgling stomach and my thoughts, I was struck with a strange sensation of having to make something, anything. It didn’t matter if it was a drawing or a poem or an essay. I felt like if I went back home to the states and didn’t commit to doing something, I was going to die. Now I’ve had thoughts like this before, and inevitably I just give up after a week like always. But this time around it was a much more physical sensation. Perhaps it was the undercooked Al Pastor plundering my guts, but I felt sick even imagining myself not committing to creating ANYTHING. My friend Alexander Robinson (check out his Patreon here) also recently published something that helped me solidify this nebulous desire; he says in the post, “Now, I write at a time where that creativity is turning outward, even with lingering awkwardness in not having mastered my hand yet. I accept that awkwardness. Rather than a collection of accomplishments, I see practice as a continual plunge deeper.”
I was always so concerned that anything I made would be juvenile and embarrassing. So much so that I never even bothered to start making anything. But I just can’t be bothered with such insecurities anymore; my body cannot be bothered with it. And perhaps this realization that I must do SOMETHING is the beginning of my transition to adulthood. So I’ll post this poem here, the first baby steps of an original work of mine. Even if it's awkward, purple, or whatever else you want to throw at it. Even if someone may look at it and scoff under their breath and say “How trite, how redundant.” Because if I do not do this now, if I do not work on this. Then I truly believe I will lose something fundemental to myself.
Portillo Thoughts
One week ago, I waved goodbye to my teenage years and finally turned 20.
I had a sort of "graduation" gift for myself as I left my teens. Embarking on a long-anticipated trip to Japan a month prior, coming back just in time for my birthday. The plan was to soak in a totally foreign culture and perhaps uncover and confront things about myself that I had hidden deep down. None of this happened, of course, and I spent the vast majority of the trip ordering katsudon bowls and trying not to have a panic attack in my hotel room.
This isn’t to say that the trip was not incredible, because it was; rather, it felt a bit hollow. When I pulled out of the international arrivals lot, I felt an overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction. I did not find out anything new about myself; I simply stewed in the same thoughts I always did, and behaved the same way I always do, except I did it in a Bishojo figurine store instead of my bedroom. My lack of anime protagonist character development was highlighted not even a week after I got back. With my fumbling attempts to stitch up a doomed work situationship with an older woman whom I did not treat particularly well, to say the least. Ultimately, my effort resulted in me putting that “relationship” out of its misery like a groaning racehorse that broke its leg. All this to say that if you plan to “find” yourself in a foreign country, it’s probably not going to work.
Anyway, my birthday.
I get neither excited nor disappointed when my birthday comes around. I enjoy spending time with my family and getting my pick of food and dessert, but it more often than not puts me in a rather melancholic mood. And especially after just coming back from a one-month-long solo trip, I was feeling a bit more introspective than usual. None of my qualms with my birthday are anything particularly unique to me. It makes me feel ancient and withered, and simultaneously makes me feel like I just popped out of the womb. I’m too old to be able to use my age as an excuse for my bad behavior and lack of social graces, and I’m too young to bear the weight and responsibilities that come with being an adult. I look around at the people my age, and everybody else seems to have found the secret trick to get things together, something I apparently missed out on. They don’t, of course, and are probably ruminating on the same thoughts I am at this very moment. But sometimes thinking that everyone is ahead of you in life is just the soothing balm you need for your self-pitying compulsions.
My uncle always repeats the famous Holly Bourne quote, “That the end of childhood is when you realize adults don't really know what they're doing." And when he says it, I laugh and nod my head and agree. But a part of me, deep down, always thought he was lying. I thought that when I left my teens, there would be some magical power-up moment where I could correctly diagnose and handle all my neurotic compulsions and finally let out a deep sigh, wistfully and condescendingly wave goodbye to my adolescence, and move forward. This obviously does not happen. It didn’t happen when I was on the sandy beaches of Amanohashidate, and it didn’t happen when I was back home. As they say, wherever you go, there you are. And so, I think these thoughts on my birthday as I eat my raspberry cheesecake, the one I get every year, and I go to bed. And then I wake up the next morning, and I’m 20, and everything is still the same.
I go to IKEA to pick up a display case for some figurines I bought in Japan, and on my way back, I stop at a Portillos. I order my slop and wait at the pick-up counter, where a frantic-looking high school girl is packaging orders at the expo line. Behind me come two older portly gentlemen and an older woman. Who impatiently look around and tap their feet like old people do at fast food restaurants. Our orders are called at the same time, and as I pick my bag up, I hear one of the old men opening his, and sighing before asking the girl at the counter.
“Did you mark the sandwich that asked for no peppers?”
The girl responds kindly, but frazzled. “Uh, sorry, I’m not sure I'm just the one packaging orders so-”
“You're…not sure?” The man cuts her off with that obnoxious smile that anybody who has worked a fast food job can immediately recognize.
“Haha…no, sorry.” The girl smiles stiffly before turning away, and I give her a solemn nod.
The old man sighs again and looks around at the throng of people around the counter with an exasperated expression on his face, trying to connect eyes. Hoping, praying, someone indulges his obnoxious, meaningless complaint that the tin-foil wrap around his wet fucking slop sandwich was marked with no peppers. I meet his gaze for a fraction of a second, and then I go to sit down. I bite into my okay-tasting hot dog, and I see him and the two other old people he was with sit down in the booth in front of me. They unwrap their sandwiches and begin eating before he immediately starts regaling the other two with what just happened at the counter mere seconds ago.
“You know what that girl said? She didn't KNOW which sandwich didn’t have peppers in it.” He snorts in that same obnoxious tone as the other two murmur something vapid and noncommittal, and then he looks around, almost out of instinct. And I meet his gaze again, and I stare.
And I am suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of dread, pity, and camaraderie. I’m looking at someone I may be, someone I don’t want to be, and someone I can feel for. Will I be this old man in 50 years? Whining at the teenage girl working at Portillos over a meaningless complaint? Forcing others to indulge in my narcissistic nonsense? Desperately scanning my eyes around the room to connect with someone, even over something as ridiculous as this? It terrifies me and upsets me. And yet I can understand the impulse of the old gentleman. I can understand using empty words to try to forge something with someone else, even if just for a moment. And I understand that as much as I resent him, this slovenly, bearded man is my brother.
And then he furrows his brow slightly, probably wondering why this faggy looking boy-girl has been staring at him. And I bow my head, clearing my mind from my navel-gazing nonsense, and I finish my fries, and I get up and throw my bag in the trash. I drive home, and as I speed down the I-90, my thoughts are with the Portillo's man.
I come home and spend the next 4 hours yelling at the IKEA display case for being too hard to put together.