Lust in Translation

how you say?

My coworker asked me for help combing through the profiles on her OKCupid account last week. She was shy to ask me. She is from Thailand originally, speaks English with an adorable accent, and puts her face in her hands and giggles with embarrassment at the slightest hint of social awkwardness. I knew this might make a normally god-awful, boring task marginally fun, just because watching her squirm with embarrassment would be worth the price of admission alone. But there was another reason, besides my endless font of selfless generosity, of course, that I agreed to help her.

I’m fascinated by the mating rituals of straight people. I mean, with totally different body parts, where do you even know where to begin with each other? How do you even know what the other one likes? Straight men, I presume, get their info from porn, with all the disastrous results that we know play out so predictably ad infinitum. But straight women, who ought to know better, seem to get theirs from magazines like Cosmo, which is written by lonely, frumpy, not very sexually active women in their twilight years from what I can gather, who have time to write articles filled with advice that is batshit crazy, instead of doing what they claim to be experts at, achieving the perfect orgasm, driving men wild, and getting power envied for their desirability.

Women shouldn’t be reading articles by out of touch, out of shape, out of their minds women with nothing better to do then to perpetuate insanely useless advice. I scanned the recent online edition so I’m obviously an expert on this. The great nugget of wisdom for keeping a man interested according to a leading women’s magazine? Tell him a secret, then don’t reveal the answer until at least a week later. What? Do that and he’s going to think you’re that level of crazy chick that thinks your Hello Kitty talks to her, actually talks, and since Hello Kitty doesn’t have a mouth, that means you hear her talk to you in your brain, and that’s some new level of crazy, and no you’re not being gaslighted, so don’t start with that.

Sexually adventurous straight girls need to be reading sex advice from a gay porn star, or a male prostitute, or someone like that. They can tell you how to please a man. They can’t tell you what a man is looking for in a woman most likely, that’s not exactly in their wheelhouse. But how to keep a man interested sexually, well, you’d be hearing it straight from the manwhore’s overworked mouth.

So back to my friend, who needed help combing through the profiles on her OKCupid account. Her main problem figuring out what was going on was the language barrier. I think she asked me to help because I lived in Thailand for a few years, when I was working at a bank teaching English to Thai bankers at the turn of the millennium. She trusted me, for some terrible reason, thinking I was a perfectly normal person who would steer her in the right direction.

Her first question was, “Jame (how Thai people like to say my name, but imagine stretching it out so that it takes three times as long to say it, and add a sense of urgency to it, as if you’re yelling ‘fire’), “Jame, what means entrepreneur?”

Well, I figured it was best not to simply translate, to tell her the Thai equivalent to the English word, but to decode, to get to the deeper meaning, and to what it means in this context, so she can really weed out the bad ones here. So of course, I told her, “entrepreneur means unemployed.” She looked at me, tilted her head to one side, not quite getting it. So I elaborated. “No job, not working…entrepreneur. Keep clicking, next profile.”

“Oh, okay,” she said. But she was taking notes. She jotted down the definition in Thai, as if it were the real translation, so now she thought entrepreneur really translated into Thai as unemployed. I’m pretty sure that’s what she was going to teach her kids too. But we had work to do so we pressed on.

“Jame, what means ‘family oriented?’”

“Just click past that one too,” I said.

“Why? I family oriented too. I love my family. Thai people love spend time with our family.”

“Family oriented means he still lives with his mom.”

She took more notes, scribbling loops and squiqqles and more Thai script.

“And there’s a good chance he has three kids with different baby mamas.”

“But he’s cute. Look at the picture.”

“Fine, send him a wink or whatever if that’s what you want to do. He’s probably not paying child support, so he can probably pay for your date, just make sure he takes you out on the first or the fifteenth, cause that’s when his EBT card will reload.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a magic credit card you can use to buy things that you don’t have to pay back. It reloads twice a month.”

“I want that,” she said.

“No you don’t.”

“I have a lot to learn about America still, don’t I Jame?

I nod, and sigh.

“That why I get online. I want to find a good American husband. You think I find one?”

I sigh again, push her aside and take her place at the keyboard.

“Let’s just weed out the criminals first and see how it goes from there.”

5 People Who Should be 86ed from Starbucks

In my last blog entry, I rhapsodized about a VIP area of Starbucks where premium members could enjoy such high end perks as counter to table service, a private area free from loud cell phone talkers and other people likely to ruin the overall vibe of your Starbucks experience, and a bouncer, who could remove these offenders on the spot. While I was fantasizing about having an actual bouncer in Starbucks, or more specifically, my own personal bouncer, who could eject those I find personally offensive on the spot (yes, I know this has the potential of creating a petty dictatorship, an espressotocracy perhaps?), I began to consider just who would be most deserving of getting the proverbial boot in my new swirled order.

Presenting, the top five people who would be tossed out on their asses if I were in charge of Starbucks personal security (not a real thing still, though I can dream, right?):

1) The guy whose full time job is pretending his office is a table at Starbucks. We all know him. He’s in his fifties, dressed for success, seems like he’s conducting perfectly legitimate business, at first glance. But something’s off. He wears the same clothes every day. His socks are mismatched. He sweats all the time even though it’s never hot in Starbucks. It’s always freezing, that’s why you bring a sweater in the middle of summer of course. He spends a lot of time on the phone, goes over countless spreadsheets, and promises he’ll send that fax “right away.” The gig is up on this guy. No one has sent a fax since the last person to own a flip phone chose a JPEG photo to post on their myspace profile. He’s clearly there taking up a whole table for eight hours a day and polluting the air with his nonsense late eighties fake office talk. The jury from L.A. Law has spoken, Susan Dey agrees. This anachronistic pain in the ass has to go.

2) The person who is too comfortable in the comfy sitting area. I’m not talking about the adorable college girl from Morocco or Egypt or wherever who smells like cinnamon and sandalwood and wears a beautiful batik print scarf who has her sandals placed neatly, one next to the other, directly under her chair, and now has her feet folded delicately under her legs, the one who is perched like an exotic bird precariously balancing on a nest, ringlets of hair spilling over her well-worn copy of Proust or Foucault. Not her, she’s fine. I’m talking about the sloppy cab driver on a six hour break who is lying prone and snoring and has one shoe on one side of the sofa and the other six feet away blocking the door. The one with a newspaper that he didn’t buy covering his face. Yes, that guy. Not the time or place.

3) The group of people who are on a picnic. Not the on the go teacher with an apple or a banana in their bag, they’re fine. I mean the tribe of werewolves that decide Starbucks is the perfect place to bring in a full plastic bag of stinky fast food and spread it out for an afternoon of too loud conversation about how unreasonable it is that they should be expected to pay for things that they use. Example, their electricity bill, their water bill, their cable bill. The nerve of these companies to expect payment for the services they provide. Not sure why the handicapped table at Starbucks is their number one choice for spreading a bag full of take out from Taco Bell. Most tacky people in the neighborhood choose other locations when scouting dining options, for example, the bench at the bus stop, the sidewalk in front of Walgreens, the back seat of the bus, my front lawn, the hood of my car, the front seat of the bus, the public library, etc. Take it outside please. Or inside. Just take it somewhere. I’m trying to enjoy my iced tea.

4) The lady who brings her dog and talks to him until everyone MUST pay attention. We all know her. She ties her dog to the table and makes a show of apologizing to him for ten minutes before leaving him alone and running inside to get herself a venti soy latte and her dog a venti ice water. Sure she’s marginally less annoying than the panhandler who claims he’s a vet (the war kind not the animal kind) who brings his three dogs by wearing sunglasses and bandannas who orders water and is obnoxiously friendly to everyone just so he can try to weasel money out of them later. But she still has to go, because she is a master manipulator, and everyone is tired of her shit. Sure, not everyone is there to write, study and read, but most people don’t want someone there to telepathically assault them with passive/aggressive cues that bombard them with the message “look at me, look at my dog” ad nauseum. This cunning, canine-loving coffee lover has got to take her clingy vibe elsewhere.

5) The guy who smokes in front of the no smoking sign on the patio. Every. Freaking. Time. The sign is so clear. You literally cannot miss it. I know there is something of the wannabe rebel and rock star in every smoker. Something that makes you want to say fuck you to authority. The very act itself empowers you to be defiant. It says, I know this is wrong but I’m doing it anyway. And there’s something pretty punk rock about that, which I respect. But most people are pretty good about not being assholes with their second hand smoke. MOST people. There is the guy at Starbucks who just loves to light up on the patio even though it says like everywhere, in words and even in, like, you know, pictures, in case reading is not your forte, that there is no smoking allowed. Maybe he thinks this just doesn’t REALLY mean there is no smoking, because it’s outside. But guess what bitch, no smoking means no smoking. And when you ask him to please not smoke, guess how that goes? He thinks it’s his right, because he’s you know, outside. How could smoke bother you when you’re outside? Even though you’re three feet away at the next table, he can’t fathom that you don’t want to be around smoke. Now maybe I sound touchy, but it’s not too much to ask for one goddamn tiny little area to enjoy a space with no smoke. This is Las Vegas, he can go smoke literally ANYWHERE else. Any casino, any other place, any street, wherever he wants. Does he really have to throw a fit that I ask him to comply to this very clearly stated rule that applies to five tables? Where’s that bouncer? This guy needs to be 86ed. Stat!

Anyone I missed? Anyone you see at Starbucks you wish you could have tossed out, just because they annoy you? You know you can’t be the only one who thinks inappropriate thoughts, right? Share them with me. Your secrets are safe with me. No one has to know it’s you. Let me know, here, or email me…

followJJB@gmail.com

Maybe this list will grow…

Starbucks Gold – Bottle Service not Included

My boyfriend is envious of my new Starbucks gold card.  It came in the mail the other day and the first thing he said when I pulled it out of the envelope was ‘oooh, sparkly’ (this is what happens when you rob the cradle, you get a boyfriend who ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ a lot).  He immediately called the Starbucks service hotline (yes, there is such a thing, to handle all Starbucks-related emergencies) and reported his card missing, so that he could get his current gold card replaced with the new, improved version that glitters like actual gold.

Being a gold member comes with certain privileges.  You accrue stars, like a video game hero acquiring loot in an adventure, merrily moving forward in your routine life, but now with a renewed sense of purpose.  You start building something, stacking imaginary stars in your account, like Mario picking up shiny gold coins with a satisfying jingly sound that brings so many of us back to a fuzzy state of nostalgia.  It’s like receiving one of the stickers a favorite teacher would place approvingly on top of classroom assignments.  Starbucks rewards us for spending, for consuming.  The free grande iced tea every ten stars garners me is a negligible prize, it’s the thrill of watching those stars march across the screen in the magical Starbucks app that make it all worthwhile.

And there are the refills, which make me irrationally greedy for more.  I become as thrift conscious as my Lithuanian relatives were when they just got off the boat.   But it’s a free refill, I reason to my normally laid back self,  I have to get it, even if I’ve already had three.  Fill it up.  I’ll get it to go.  I end up drinking more iced tea than Delta Burke used to on the set of Designing Women when she had to wash down fistfuls of Vicodin just to get through a day of filming.

I find myself wanting more from my gold card membership at Starbucks though.  I live in Las Vegas, where membership anywhere comes with outrageous privileges.  Casinos offer their premium members all kinds of perks, and they increase in a tiered system that gets more obnoxious at every level.  I find myself idly fantasizing about a Starbucks with a velvet rope and a bouncer, where I can bypass a line of undesirables and glide up to the counter, where my drink is already made, where I can text in my drink order and have it ready for me.  The next step I suppose would be bottle service, where I can sit at a table cordoned off from the general public, the loud cell phone talkers, the people conducting job interviews right next to me, the cab drivers with their shoes off who spread their pungent lunches out on our shared table.

Am I the only one who dreams of such a privilege?  Am I the only one who would be willing to pay for it?

 

Putin’s Latest Dick Move

Just in case no one has noticed, Vladimir Putin, leader of the largest nation on the planet, is acting like a complete asshole again. He’s throwing a tantrum worse than one of those spoiled bitches on My Super Sweet 16. He’s acting just like a girl who needs to get everything her way and has somehow made everyone around her so terrified of her irrational wrath that they simply kowtow to her just to keep her placated and quiet because they don’t want to deal with her shit.

I saw a lot of this when I was living in Russia. Bullies in power acting like dicks, and everyone around them stuck under their heels, just trying to get on with their lives. Russia was in need of a wake up call back then, and it desperately needs one now. A proverbial bitch slap, en masse, to its corrupt leaders.

Putin’s latest dick move is his annexation of Crimea. He justified it with a sham referendum but disregarded the fact that modern diplomacy does not allow for the annexation of territory in a sovereign nation, no matter what the ethnic composition of its inhabitants. His logic would make for a VERY different looking map and the forcible displacement of entire populations, not to mention the fact that what he’s doing is illegal, brutal, unwelcome, clearly an act of aggression, and, as I’ve already made clear, a total dick move.

Other Russian leaders have pulled this same bullshit for generations. And the leaders of the West have reluctantly put up with it in an effort to maintain diplomatic ties with them. Do you know what we used to talk to each other about when I was living in Russia? How stupid the Americans were, how completely fucking stupid they were to believe anything that came out of the Russian diplomats’ mouths. Of course they said one thing and did another. That’s how things work in Russia. If you can get away with it, you do. And if someone believes you, they’re a fool. Why do those stupid Americans keep falling for the same bullshit? It’s not even believable anymore and they keep buying it? Russia was like the addict kid and America was the parent that kept wanting it to get better. Again and again Russia fucked up, lied, cheated, stole, defied, pleaded, cajoled, apologized, and repeated the cycle. And America was stupid enough to believe things would change. Instead of just saying, no, enough, you’re done. I’m calling your bluff. You’re on a major time out of global proportions. Go to your room Russia, and SHUT THE FUCK UP. No one wants to hear your bullshit anymore. Nope, give them more aid. They wasted it again? But they promised last time it wouldn’t happen again. Okay, better give them more.

So here’s Putin, annexing sovereign territory in Crimea, and it sends chills up my spine, because this is what Russia did to my family’s country of origin, Lithuania, which has only been back on the map for the past 25 years, because RUSSIA FUCKED THEM OUT OF THEIR INDEPENDENCE TOO. That was 75 years ago and back then Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were forcibly occupied and guess what? They vanished from the map. Their languages, cultures and customs were on the verge of extinction. All because of some batshit crazy assholes who got away with being dicks with no one to stop them.

So if I ran the world, here’s what I would do.

We all know Putin hates gays as much as he hates freedom, the fading status of his crumbling empire, and Pussy Riot, right? I mean it was obvious during the Winter Olympic games in Sochi when he insisted no gays participate. Which by the way was hilarious because somehow he forgot to ban figure skating, forgetting that putting on a pair of skates and one of those skin tight, sparkly outfits automatically makes boys gay. And then everyone, everywhere did whatever they could to fuck with him. Athletes wore rainbow colored socks (the gay flag is a rainbow for all you straights who know nothing about the big, scary world around you. You’re welcome, sheltered hets), the figure skaters minced and pranced and sashayed so fiercely they could have been contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, clearly in proud defiance of Putin’s ‘no gays allowed’ presidential decree. And then there was Johnny Weir. Where do I start with that gorgeously flamboyant sparkle pony? In case you don’t know who he is, he is a former U.S. national champion figure skater who was given ridiculous amounts of camera time, along with his co-host, fellow former skater and gold medalist Tara Lipinski, providing commentary during the Olympics. I’m pretty sure he was there for the sole purpose of raising Putin’s blood pressure, or enraging him to the point where he would fly into a murderous rage and go on a killing spree, allowing counterterrorism agents to gun him down and eliminating him as an international threat and ending his corrupt dictatorship once and for all. Johnny Weir and his co-host were so radiantly fabulous I thought I might have a gaygasm every time they appeared on the screen. Johnny was so well-coiffed, so meticulously made up by his stylist, his ‘TV make up’ so carefully applied, at first I thought I was watching Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding with facelifts. But then when they didn’t start fighting I realized it was just a man in half-drag and a different mannish-looking woman, not Tonya Harding. One day Johnny wore a headband bedazzled with glitter and beads, the next, delicate yellow flowers that cascaded artfully past his ear, clearly arranged by a master of ikebana. The whole time, I reveled in what I imagined Putin’s reactions were to this glistening gay slap in his smug face. The Grey Cardinal would grip the arms of his chair, not speaking. Then he would stroke his chin like a Bond villain. Finally he would stand, furious, and bellow. Kill ze gay! Ze gay must die!

But Johnny would be untouchable. How could he be hurt by someone so crass when he was so fabulous? On camera he looked like he didn’t even come from Earth. He looked like something out of Japanese anime. Not male or female, not human or inhuman. He looked like a cross between My Little Pony and Selena Gomez, with a dash of young David Bowie. Even if Putin had snipers waiting for Johnny at Sheremyetovo Airport, they couldn’t hurt Johnny Weir. The bullets wouldn’t draw blood. He was so fabulous he would just explode like a gay piñata in one bright burst of glitter, dildos and flavored condoms.

But back to my plan. So since Putin’s being a dick, and since Putin hates gays, and no one seems to be willing to stop him. Maybe the only way to shut him down is to bring the one thing he fears most right to his doorstep. I might be just the person to do it.

What I’d really like to do is commandeer a giant plane, a really sleek one, something that will make a statement, big, silver, maybe shaped like a penis, and fly it straight to Russia. I’ll do it to protest Putin and his troubling foreign policy, and also his atrocious human rights abuses. He’s annexing Crimea, he’s outlawing and persecuting gays, and he’ll stop at nothing short of world domination and the elimination of all gays. And what kind of a world would that be? A world where Russia is in charge and there are no gays? I lived in Russia before. It sucks. And as if that weren’t bad enough. No gays? Try living in a world with no gays. Wait till your wedding day, ladies. See what your hair, make-up, dress, photos, band, catering, reception, waiters, bartenders, and mixed drinks will look like then.

So I’ll fly this giant, penis-jet straight to Moscow to confront Putin, but I’ll make sure this plane is so gay even Tom Cruise will look straight standing next to it. I’ll make sure it’s throbbing with nothing but loud dance music, like remixes of Miley Cyrus songs, and it has disco lights flashing and there are no seats, just a dance floor, and it’s filled with a group of hot, sweaty dudes standing under a giant shower tripping on Molly and dirty dancing with each other wearing nothing but Andrew Christian jockstraps. And they’ll all be underwear models and firefighters and married senators and all the other jobs that gay guys typically do. And we’ll all ride the penis jet together because we’re on a mission for freedom. There’ll be video screens blasting videos of Lady Gaga and Elton John singing duets and looping in with that will be clips of Taylor Lauetner and Booboo Stewart taking their shirts off and wrestling.

And when we finally get to Russia I’ll get off the plane with a massive hard on. Not because I’m excited, but just because I’m so proud to be an American and to be on a mission for freedom. It will be a hard on for America, the mark of a true patriot. I’ll march straight up to Putin and slap him in the face with a huge dildo, one of those ridiculous 15 inch long black ones with a head the size of a fist that rotates and squirts, one that’s so big the only thing you can do with it is slap someone in the face with it. And I’ll make sure he knows what it’s for.

That’s for Crimea, I’ll say. And then I’ll do it again and again. Fifty times, one for every year Lithuania lived under Soviet occupation, because those fuckers still haven’t paid for that. And then, because there’s still all those people that got sent to Siberia, and all those gays who are being tortured and repressed right now, and more to come if Putin isn’t stopped, I’ll wrap my dick in a rainbow flag, bend Putin over, and make him really regret being such a massive tool.

Card Declined on Account of Being Poor

Spare a Dime?

 

I was at the 7/11 after work again, flirting with the new cashier, a tattooed boy, a little thick, just the way I like them, and just when we were getting into it, my card came up declined. Now I’ve gotten over that sense of panic that I used to get when I was younger, where a cold sweat would wash over me and I felt like I needed to explain myself. As if the person behind a register were going to judge me, as if an audience of strangers in a line were going to think less of me due to a random occurrence in a store. I used to be so neurotic that an experience like this would have scarred me once. It is so emotionally charged for most people. It’s like a panic, a feeling like you’re going to look like you don’t have any money, like a scam artist. Many, MANY people turn into insufferable assholes the minute this happens, characters from a live action version of monopoly, complete with monocle, top hat, and handlebar moustache. Well there is $30,000 in that account, which by the way I’m not sure I ever believe. I think they pull that number out of thin air and then add a few zeroes. I mean we don’t care how much you have in your account. The person behind the register doesn’t care. They’re not calling you a bad person. They’re not accusing you of being broke. They are just trying to complete a transaction. End of story. You are not the first person this has happened to. You will not be the last. Don’t presume they are thinking anything of you. Don’t presume they are judging you. They probably could care less about you. They have other things to do. Most of the time the person at the register is the person who cares the least about what’s happening at the store, they are the lowest paid, the least invested. When there is a glitch in the register they are annoyed, not with you, but at the interruption in their day, in the flow of events. The look of disgust on their face isn’t, ‘who is this broke asshole coming in here with no money?’ It is, ‘why is this interruption in my quiet afternoon taking longer than planned? I want any interruption (i.e. customer) to take a minimum amount of time because I am being paid the same regardless of how many customers come in here so I’d like to make as little effort as possible. This is now proving more cumbersome than I care for. This face that I’m not even aware that I’m making is reflecting that.’ It is not an indictment on your character. It is not a reason for you to make an inventory of your state of dress, lack of sleep, your state of dishevelment, the fact that you may not be aging to your liking, the fact that no other person of your race or gender had this issue come up. Your card was declined. It could be anything. Just deal with it. Maybe you put it in backwards. Maybe the moment you put it in the connection just didn’t work. All of these things happen. Maybe you did everything right and the cashier is still snippy and barks ‘you did it wrong’ and you have to calmly say, ‘well, let’s just try it again, shall we’ in your most calm, professor voice. And then it works and you have to do your best not to do your ‘I told ya so’ chant, complete with gyrating hips dance move and thumb to nose hand gestures, because it might be interpreted as too aggressive and set off the security cam alert system. You have to just remain calm and give your best beatific smile, serene, Buddha-like.

When my card was declined while trying to buy whatever crap I was buying that night, probably five dollars worth of candy bars and Fuji water, I asked the cute cashier to try it again. We were continuing our conversation but I could feel two people, one right next to me at the register and one in the aisles behind us sort of gathering around and paying attention, putting in their two cents. I was only half paying attention to them, sort of wanting them to mind their own business because I was trying to chat up this cashier and he was sort of into it too so we weren’t really interested in what they had to say. We tried the card again. It didn’t work again.
One of the guys, yelled out. It’s not going to work. The banks shut down today. First and the fifteenth.

Oh yeah. The cashier said. EBT won’t work.

EBT for all you privileged suburban dwellers, is the magical credit card that poor people use to get free money from the government, and apparently it refreshes twice a month. And here I thought I was a hardcore, streetwise urbanite. This was news to me, this first and the fifteenth thing. When you try to use a debit card in the early hours of the morning on the first and the fifteenth it can be problematic because the banks are overloaded processing all the money that is being transferred onto EBT cards.

My transaction was denied but on the plus side I was getting a free education right here at 7/11. Which just about evens things out because I didn’t get one cent in government aid when I attended graduate school. This is not so bad because Nevada’s tuition rate is relatively low compared to east coast universities, though the fact that it almost doubled while I was enrolled due to a financial crisis that got put on the backs of the students is a smidge annoying.

I was about to explain that my card wasn’t an EBT card so it should work, but then I remembered what I already knew about cashiers not giving a shit about your whole life story.

The cashier read my face and just waved me hand away when I tried to run my card through again.
I can just pay cash, I said.

A man next to me said he would just put it on his card.

Oh that’s nice I said, thinking for one delusional moment I had stumbled into a ‘pay it forward’ moment.

I said, it will all come back to you sir.

Oh it’s coming back to me alright, you’re paying me for it.

Naturally, I said.

He ran his EBT card through and it didn’t work because it was the first, or the fifteenth, or whatever day it was, one of the ones when the banks are overloaded with free money being deposited onto magic cards.

Thanks anyway I said, handing my cash to the cashier.

Any chance you can cover mine too?

I don’t think so.

The whole store was watching now, all the guys who told me that EBT wouldn’t work because the banks were closed down because of the date, all of the guys who were watching this guy try to hustle me into letting him use his EBT card to pay for my merchandise and let me give him cash so he could buy the beers he had in his hand. This much I do know, EBT can’t be used to buy alcohol.

The man got upset and stormed out, cursing at me, leaving the beers he had wanted to purchase on the counter.

The cute cashier rolled his eyes. Ignore him, he was just trying to…

I know what he was trying to do.

Yeah, it happens a lot. I thought you were going to fall for it. I wanted to warn you, but I try not to get involved.

Not my first rodeo, but thanks.

On my way out of the store the man was still there, hanging around outside.

You owe me man, he screamed at me, getting in my face, threatening.

If I were as sharp-tongued and witty as I like to think I am I would have snapped back at him, hey loser, you owe yourself a shower, a life, a plan that doesn’t involve shaking down people on their way home from work.

Instead I just swatted him away like a pesky fly and sped away, somehow feeling guilty and wondering if I do enough for poor people and the homeless

God Hates Gays

‘You’ll never be as hot as me, fat bitches.’

When I get out of work at 4am more often than I care to admit I find myself prowling the aisles of my local 7/11 like a starved rat scurrying through a maze in a frantic search for cheese. I don’t even pretend anymore that I’m not going to buy a handful of empty calories to stuff into my fat face before I even get to my apartment and make it out of the car. And I live right around the corner from the store, which I know is sad, but it’s the truth. I know I’m eating my feelings because sometimes my job gets to me. I work as a casino dealer at a humungous property on the Strip at night. The tourists can be a handful, especially when they get drunk, whiny, entitled, demanding and complain about #richpeopleproblems. After a long night dealing with their problems which are not really problems, I head straight for the donuts and sugary juices. I crave the sugar rush the same way the junkies outside the 7/11 crave methadone.

I just love to stuff my face, what can I say? It’s why I work out. That’s one reason anyway. Another reason is because for gays the gym is like church. We attend faithfully. And my Lithuanian grandma made sure I’d always go church, gay or otherwise. She instilled good, Lithuanian values in me. Our people didn’t get sent to death camps in Siberia for nothing. I will honor their sacrifice by eating empty calories and working them off with other self-hating gays with body issues by lifting weights, and hitting boot camp and Zumba class twice a week. My people died so that I could do swishy choreography with a flamboyant Filipino instructor and a roomful of sassy, empowered Latinas while Brazilian techno makes us glad to be alive.

The reality is that I’m in better shape now than most of the guys I went to high school with, when they were in high school. But like any self-respecting gay, I spit at myself in the mirror and call myself a fat, lazy whore who no one’s ever going to love if I get on the scale and have the nerve to weigh more than I did two decades ago. And I have such a double standard. There’s a new cashier at the 7/11 who I think is hot. He has a few tattoos and a little extra meat on his bones, and I love it. It’s easy to love on someone else.

On someone else I think junk in the trunk, some love handles, some real-man-loves-his-life-meat-on-the-bones is SO SEXY. These little twink bags of bones bitches who’ll look at food but never eat it do nothing for me. I love guys who have curves and are thick. I just love it. But God forbid I show any signs of living the good life myself. I’ll end up punishing myself with extra workouts and reprimands and shame spirals.

I blame God. I think God hates gays.

I figured this out when I was sitting in church one day. Not gay church, otherwise known as the gym as I mentioned before, but real church, with plaster saints and stained glass windows and lots of kneeling and standing, punctuated with brief, desperately welcome periods of sitting which I think are just for the parishioners to have the chance to rest their knees and feet. I still attend church faithfully, even though I’m a grown up now and I don’t have my Lithuanian grandmother around to stuff U.S. dollars into my pocket as a reward. I actually go because I like to go.

And I think I’ll find some respite from my self-hating ways there, but it never happens. As I’m kneeling, trying to feel close to God, I still can’t shake the feeling that my abs aren’t tight enough. I know God loves and accepts me just as I am, but I still find myself sucking in my stomach when I pray, because I know God is watching, and I don’t want God to think I’m a lazy asshole who’s letting himself go. Sometimes I hear God’s voice booming in my ear, so loudly I swear the whole congregation can hear it.

‘Lay off the Raising Cane’s fatty. No one’s ever going to love you if you don’t lose those love handles.’

And I think, wow, God, that’s a little judgey, don’t you think? But there’s God’s voice booming in my ear again.

‘I sent my son down to earth. He is made in your image, and look at him, he’s not a fat fuck like you.’

And sure enough, there’s the statue of Jesus in the front of every Catholic church, hanging from the cross, looking more shredded than Brad Pitt in Fight Club. I swear that statue is there just to torture me, just to remind me that I’m fat and lazy. Who looks like that? Jesus is hotter than an Abercrombie & Fitch model. He looks like a sad, ripped surfer who’s upset that he just lost his job as a personal trainer, completely hot. Like, bangable hot. We mere mortals feel inadequate gazing upon his image.

Jesus is even hotter and more in shape than the guy on the cover of last month’s Men’s Health magazine who has the most perfect body I’ve ever seen, a hot half-Filipino guy who lives right here in Las Vegas. But the thing is, no one looks that hot in real life, not even him. I had sex with that guy a few years ago and even he can’t possibly live up to the standard he helped create. He is a fitness freak, never cheats, works out like a demon, and is impossibly beautiful, and yet, he still can’t look as good in person as he does in the magazine. He is airbrushed and the hint of the love handles which genetics will never let him be totally rid of is conveniently photoshopped out, or he is posed just so, so that the angle will minimize this one tiny flaw in his flawless physique. I only knew about this flaw because I noticed it one day when I was behind him and, well, I already mentioned that we had sex, so I guess I don’t need to paint a picture here, do I?

I don’t know if giving gays body issues is God’s way of evening the score. I mean, we are genetically superior beings for the most part, able to perform makeovers and home renovations in our sleep, capable of learning flash mob routines in the blink of an eye, gifted with spectacular rhythm and choreography skills no matter what our country or culture of origin. So God had to give us a flaw I suppose, and I’m coming to realize that flaw is that we will hate the way we look, no matter how much we work at it, no matter how we stack up compared to the rest of the world.

Most gay guys I know look like Greek gods compared to straight, married guys the same age as them. It’s the reason why so many women have gay husbands, men they hang around with and pretend they are married to. Their real, straight husbands let themselves go, while their gay contemporaries sweat themselves to death on treadmills and indoor tracks, turning themselves into human hamsters just to keep up with an unrealistic body image.

Fortunately there might be an alternative. When I lived in Asia I studied Buddhism and came to integrate it into my life. Buddhism is not only more accepting and compassionate than Catholicism, it also doesn’t flaunt an anorexic twink surfer on a cross as some sort of ideal to live up to. The only thing I learned from Jesus, it seems, is how to martyr myself for an uncaring world, punishing myself with a self-imposed stigmata of guilty work outs that leave me never feeling quite good enough.

Buddha was chubby, at least according to the statues. He was one of those thick guys I see at the 7/11 who turns me on. A little meat on the bones, a little chub for me to chase. I’m feeling the chubby Buddha, and the way he makes me feel about myself. God pisses me off because God hates fags, especially fat fags.

I know, issues.

Thanks Buddha, for being fat, and loveable, and not as much of an asshole as God.

Sex Offender James Joseph Brown

definitely NOT me

I just moved to a new apartment. I almost didn’t get it because I share the same name and date of birth as a sex offender. It’s not the first time I’ve been mistaken for someone else. Usually, though, I get mistaken for a celebrity.

I share a name with one of the most famous men in entertainment, James Joseph Brown, the Godfather of Soul. I love being named after a man with whom I have so much in common. He also got on stage in front of adoring audiences and performed. I find the fact that he had millions of fans worldwide and that I have dozens and most of them are on Twitter and don’t usually recognize me, even when I announce on the microphone, “Good evening, my name is James Joseph Brown,” to be irrelevant. In my eyes we are both superstars of entertainment. He sold out major musical venues the size of auditoriums. I shout to be heard over espresso machines at free open mics in off-Strip dive bars in Las Vegas. It’s pretty close in my book. He also had that batshit crazy look in his eyes when he performed. It’s a look I think I’ve taken to the next level. Tyra Banks calls it the ‘smize’. It’s short for ‘smile with your eyes.’

But I put more passion into it, and smile crazy with my eyes. I ‘scrize.’ Like a true performer. Also because I share the same name as the Godfather of Soul, when people meet me for the first time in person they make embarrassing comments about how they thought I was going to be black. And by embarrassing I mean that they embarrass themselves. Because they think they are the first ones who ever thought of such a hilariously original thing to say. And because more people than you might expect are uncomfortable just saying the word black, and this includes black people. So you need to stop embarrassing yourself people. There are better ways to introduce yourself to me and break the ice. A handshake will do. A how do you do. An ‘I love your work’ will do wonders, even if it’s a shameless lie. Or you could always try a smile, or a smize, or go crazy, in the eyes, and smile at the same time, and try a scrize.

I also share a name with James Joseph Brown, the mining engineer, inventor and self-described member of ‘fashionable society’ who was married to the unsinkable Molly Brown, one of the survivors of the Titanic. (She was played by Kathy Bates in the movie). I love sharing a name with him too because he is proof that this hilarious habit of self-aggrandizing yourself by describing your profession in code didn’t start recently. I mean, this man was ballsy enough to call himself a member of fashionable society just because he liked to wear overcoats and top hats. He was a boss in a mine but he just declared to the world again and again, until it seemed real, ‘I’m now a runway model, watch my walk, bitches,’ (this is actually something I do every day, and I’ve acquired a runway walk that puts my female professional model friends to shame, and I wish I were kidding about this), and for that I actually am not mad at him, not one bit. He was the progenitor of the self-promoter, of the guy who believes so much in himself that you start to believe in him too, no matter how crazy he sounds, and before you know it, he’s made something wonderful of himself. I actually respect that more than every loser I meet who’s just hiding the truth behind a title. I mean, unless you’ve got an online shop up and running, we all know ‘entrepreneur’ means ‘unemployed’ at this point right? Just like we all know if your online dating site profile says ‘family oriented’ it either means you have three kids by different baby mamas or you still live at home with your real mama.

So back to James Joseph Brown, the sex offender, who almost got me denied from moving into my new apartment. It’s not the first time having a common name has led to me spending an excruciating amount of time being profiled as a felon and having to jump through hoops. Specifically because most of the men who share my name ARE felons. Doing a search of my name calls up a rap sheet that’s only slightly less scary than the list of guys I had to come up with at the free clinic when they insisted I list all the guys I had sex with since college. That list at the clinic, by the way, was a joke. It turns out I tested negative for everything. Having me make the list was just the nurse’s way of finding out my type to see if he had a chance with me. I was like, hello, you had me at twisted, unprofessional and elaborately concocted
scheme, what else do I need to know about you to say yes? We clearly have the same hobbies and interests if this is what you do when you should be working.

After my name cross-referenced with sex offender James Joseph Brown I ended up getting a call informing me that they wouldn’t be able to rent to me because of my criminal record. Of course it wasn’t my criminal record. I just had to prove that. In this case, as in most cases that occur in real life and aren’t brought before a judge, you are absolutely guilty until proven innocent. This pretty much happens to me every time I move into a new apartment or apply for a new job. I have had to go in person to the Social Security office, spend days on the phone with Clark County records, and talk to the kinds of people I only knew about from watching Oz (and I only used to watch that show for the hot prison rape scenes). I’m a model citizen. I got caught drinking at a keg party when I was twenty. But it was cleared from the record. So it sort of never happened. Plus I was blacked out. So it didn’t even count. It’s like if you keep your eyes closed when you get a blow job from another guy. Totally doesn’t make you gay. Or if you pay a tranny hooker for sex. Totally not cheating. And you for sure are not gay. Hey, I don’t make the rules. And all I’m really trying to say here anyway is that I don’t have a criminal record, not even a speeding ticket, and I still had to do all this nonsense to prove my innocence. And I think it’s pretty clear at this point, I’m a very innocent fellow.

The gentleman who rented me the apartment was very nice, very understanding. He said, well I’m sure this is all just a mix up, but you understand that we just need to get some documentation to keep the main office happy that this guy isn’t you. No problem, I said, used to handling this sort of hoop jumping with aplomb. Plus I was for sure getting this place. I loved it, and when you have your mind set on something, they’ve really got you by the balls. Tell me how high to jump sir? What exactly do you need? So after working the overnight shift at the casino I dragged my ass out of bed and ran out to make a copy of my license (and passport for good measure) and drove over to meet the real estate agent. He shook my hand, called me buddy, took my documents, and then said, now, if we can just get a picture.

Here, now, was why I was under such scrutiny. Most of the felons who shared my name in the past were ruled out as potential matches because we didn’t look alike. They were a lot older or younger, a foot taller or shorter. Different hairstyles, different races. I began to suspect what had happened. It was easy enough for someone to snatch your name and date of birth right out from under you, but something else was going on.

What did this other James Joseph Brown look like? I asked. The real estate agent, a kind-looking, older latino gentleman said, oh he looks pretty much like you. I took a long time to reply. A long time which he seemed blissfully unaware of.

Just like me?

Sure, he said. You know. He’s white.

Usually all the other James Joseph Browns I hear about are black but since, as I mentioned, more people than you think have an odd phobia of saying the word black in public, it takes way longer than it should for me to clear up just why someone is not able to tell me exactly how they figured out I’m not the James Joseph Brown they thought I was. I drive across town to their office. Oh well this one is, well, he doesn’t look like you. No, he doesn’t, I say, because I’m white. Yes, they reply. And he’s…SHHHHH they urge, as if I’m about to reveal secret government launch codes. We could have gotten this over with a lot sooner. I have better things to do than hustle around town clearing up ridiculous misunderstandings just because you’re afraid to call a black person black and a white person white. I already mentioned lots of people are uncomfortable saying the word black. Not me. Not with this name. First words out of every other idiot’s mouth I meet. You’re not black! No, I’m not. And you’re not original!

Anything else? I asked.

Oh, he has a shaved head too. Kind of like you.

Dammit.

Smile, he said, holding his phone up to snap a photo. He caught me by surprise. I didn’t have much time to get ready for the picture. I wanted to look fierce of course. I wanted to smize. But I didn’t, in this case, under any circumstances, want to scrize. The less crazy I looked the better. As a matter of fact, all I could think was, okay James, whatever you do, don’t smile like a sex offender. Then I thought, do sex offenders smile? Sure, they do, they have those creepy smiles, right? No, that’s cliché, that’s profiling. Surely you know better James. That’s what just happened to you. You’re better than that. Now think like a real sex offender and get this right! Wait, don’t think like a sex offender, that’s wrong! This is all so confusing.

Click. Flash. Shit.

Did I look like a sex offender in the picture? Would I be deemed too pervy looking to rent to because of it? I was probably looking confused and creepy while I was thinking about how not to look confused and creepy. I more than likely had a look that said, I’m thinking up new ways to lure children into my basement to eat fruit loops and read passages of ‘The Lovely Bones’ together before nap time. But that’s ridiculous. Vegas homes don’t have basements. And the apartment I wanted to rent was on the second floor anyway.

Try looking in the mirror and smiling and NOT looking like a sex offender. Now try doing it and thinking, what does a sex offender do to try to NOT look like a sex offender and tell me it doesn’t send you into an endless mindfuck loop that makes you start to drool. It’s like a modern day Buddhist koan. If a sex offender, who’s not really a sex offender, tries to pose for a picture and not look like a sex offender, by thinking like a sex offender, in order to NOT look like a sex offender, do they end up looking even creepier and more suspect than a bona fide sex offender, say for example, sex offender James Joseph Brown, not the singer, not the mining tycoon, and not me, but the one who comes up when you try to google any of the other ones of us? And does the tree in the woods hear it? And does the sound of one hand clapping applaud at the news that I’m now moved in and can write my blog in peace?