Tag Archives: Travel

The Patriot

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I’m repacking my snake shirt, hoping no one sees it and reports me to airport security for trying to smuggle snakes onto a plane. No, no, they’re not real snakes of course: I spent the night before hot-gluing plastic and rubber snakes onto an old shirt that doesn’t fit me anymore. See, it is Pride month and I am naturally celebrating by embracing my dadbod and making bad food choices, and only the softly screaming side seams of my fitted button down shirts are my witness. In the meantime, I’m also planning the staged photo I’m going to take after everyone deplanes: “Snacks on a plane”. It’s not my best idea.

I walked up to the podium at the gate. “Wow, looks like someone really did a number on your heart” quipped the chirpy gate attendant as I handed her my ID. My eyes grew wide and I caught my breath. Jesus, does it still show in my eyes? Can people still see the pain I sometimes feel? Does she know I still have occasional dreams of him and I together, like a cruel glimpse into some parallel universe where-

Her brow furrowed as she saw my reaction. “Oh wait, I meant someone did a good job on it. Your heart.” She gestured to the heart tattoo on my arm that was extending my ID.

“Oh. Yeah! Thanks,” I stammered back. One of the rubber snakes coughed, cleared his throat awkwardly, inside my duffel bag. Continue reading →

My First Threesome

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We meet like any other guy I meet online: “Hey how’s it going? You’re handsome and seem interesting.” He either replies, or does not. If he does, it then becomes a delicate conversational dance to eventually work up to meeting up. In my case, that delicate dance is usually a stumbling waltz to bad music and I end up falling onto the other guests, grasping at a tablecloth and then I’m pulling the buffet down on top of us. In this instance, though, this guy Jerry is startlingly handsome, and is weirdly nice. He compliments my photography and we chat about our jobs, our art. We seem to vibe well, the chatting is easy and kind, which is a relief after a couple recent incidents online with clearly unhinged people. Jerry mentions he travels a lot and it’s then I look at his profile closer, he lives across the country. Because of course he does.

It’s around this time that someone else messages me. It’s Jerry’s partner, Ben. He says they’re in an open relationship and he finds me attractive too. Oh! Continue reading →

Cowboys And Angels

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“We’d like to welcome you to San Antonio, if that’s your final destination” the flight attendant intones as the plane taxis on the runway, seeking a berth. Final destination, you think, as in for the rest of my life?  You shudder. San Antonio is not your favorite city by a long shot. It reminds you of parts of your hometown Albuquerque: it’s very very flat, it’s the color of concrete and adobe and not much else, it’s largely conservative (on your last trip, your pale pink shirt made headlines for weeks after your visit), it’s only navigable by car, it’s a military city. This city is like the anti-Portland, and yet it has some of your favorite humans in it. One of them, your mom, texts you now: “Do you have any baggage with you?” “Only the baggage in my heart!” you cheerfully reply and wait. She does not reply. You then text, “No, just my carry on” and head to the arrivals curb. Continue reading →

Departures

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“I love you” he says, softly and sincerely. Your eyes grow large, your breath catches, you stop what you are doing with him. He turns suddenly to you in the bed, his eyes also grow large.

“I meant…”

“No, I know that was accidental.”

“Oh shit.”

“No, it’s okay, I know it’s too soon.”

“Yeah I was just caught up in the moment. I meant to say “I love you being here” but ran out of breath.”

“Okay.”

Your apologies and explanations stumble over each other, the walls recede, the bedsheets catch on fire. Somewhere in the distance a air raid siren starts wailing, the bomb goes off, and your last thought before you are vaporized into tiny particles is “thank God at least we wont have to talk about that tomorrow…” and the blast hits the building and breaks your body into sweet sweet gay radioactive ash. Continue reading →

Homecoming

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I feel it the minute I get off the plane: the air itself is different. It’s warmer, drier, thicker, if the air was a tortilla chip it would be stone ground. I leave the terminal, look for my rideshare. I glance across the airport at the Theme Building, the midcentury UFO-with-landing-gear, whose restaurant closed a few months after I left this city in 2013. It’s then that the chorus swells with the noises I rarely hear in Portland: the car horns raise their frantic duck voices in harmony, I hear the nearby lilt of a family speaking Spanish and I smile. I’m in Los Angeles. I am home.

Los Angeles is everything people say it is. LA is shallow, LA is awful traffic, LA is that guy on Tinder you matches with you and never, ever replies. LA is a city of broken dreams and loosely made promises. Los Angeles is an acquired taste, if you like the taste of garbage. LA is that spoiled child that falls down and looks around to see if anyone is watching before starting to cry.

What I mean to say is: I love every inch of LA. Continue reading →

Pride

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You do this: you ride the bumpiest, smallest plane on the planet from San Francisco to Albuquerque. You have white knuckles and the Xanax is taking the edge off the anxiety you feel, but just barely. You wonder if the plane falls out of the sky will it spin or tumble. Maybe it will just dive down nosefirst, and for a beautiful minute everyone will be weightless in the freefall inside the cabin. You decide that if that happens, you will unbuckle your seatbelt, you will enjoy the last few moments of your life like an astronaut. Continue reading →

Digital Witless

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It’s usually like this: you catch his eye, usually it’s online, maybe it’s in person, you get his attention. He sees past your currently questionable facial hair choices to the real you. Maybe he is good at texting back, though more often than not he’s not: “Sorry I’m bad at reminding you I’m interested in you wait why am I still single?” You flirt back and forth and you’re excited for when the two of you spend time together, which is frustratingly seldom because your work schedules are opposite. You’re eager to explore this because this one is local, for once you’re not FaceTiming or coordinating time zones or coming up with clever photo ideas to send him selfies. A few hours before a dinner date with him he texts you his apology and promises to stay connected. “I didn’t feel the chemistry but let’s still be friends” is nice to hear, but it’s also the sound of never hearing from someone again for the rest of your life.

Continue reading →

4 Things That Set My Brain On Fire: Portland

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"This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" from l to r: SUmmer Olsson, Michael James Schneider, Sammi, the extremely patient bartender

“This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”
from l to r: Summer Olsson, Michael James Schneider, Sammi, the extremely patient Clyde Common bartender

“Two roads diverged in a wood”…no, that’s not the quote I’m trying to remember. “Life moves pretty fast; you don’t stop and look around once in awhile you could miss it.” Yup, that’s the one. Thanks Ferris.

I spent the last week exploring Portland, Oregon, for the first time. I fell in love with the city, as I had a suspicion I would. I met a lot of really wonderful people, reconnected with a crap-ton of old friends, conquered formerly-debilitating fears, and almost sliced people’s fingers off when I gave them my business card. The life-changing consequences of all this love are at the end of this post.

1) Summer in Winter! I had a blast creating art with my friend Summer Olsson (Google her)…she’s truly a fun, talented, smart person to create art with! (UPDATE: This was pretty much our soundtrack the entire visit). One brainstorm of ours was to create the characters of Fern and Clyde, two clowns moving to Portland. With the skilled photography of Aaron Warren, we dressed and painted our faces, and created a story in photos and a 6-second Vine clip that tells their story. Follow me on Facebook to get the whole story, released on Wednesdays and Saturdays! Continue reading →

4 Things That Set My Brain On Fire: NYC

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Pumped-up Kicks photo by Helen Darby

Pumped-up Kicks
photo by Helen Darby

Breathless with the cold, eager eyes open to everything around me: this was a trip I was looking forward to…it’s my third visit in a little over a year. In between seeing friends I hadn’t seen in a long time (and in the case of my very first boyfriend, I hadn’t see him in 20 years!), and making new ones (Nina Robinson’s photography is awesome), I got time to check out some inspiring art that fueled my own brain’s creative juices…and yes, handed out more than few of those crazy business cards. Saw stuff that you should check out too. Except in one case, I tried to pick longer-running stuff to include here so by the time you read this, it isn’t over already. So away we go: Continue reading →