Vivir Lars Vegars: Chapter 2

The drive to the Canyon was worthy of a movie montage what with the stops at racist outposts and all.

But as we neared Mecca, I couldn't see any sign of it. "How will we know when we're there?" I wondered. Will we just drive into it like Thelma and Louise? I'd always pictured Margaret as my Thelma, not Jaime, but he'd do in a pinch. 

Turns out you can't just accidentally drive into it because you have to pay thirty freaking dollars at the door. 

Anyway, I'm not going to focus on the majesty of it because most of you know, and I'd never be able to do it justice. But what I can do is focus on how cold it was, and the fact the cold prevented me from taking cute photos of myself at one of the greatest natural wonders of the world. 

Anytime we go somewhere new, I am Jaime's unpaid personal photographer. I try to capture him at his best angles during precious hipster moments. He doesn't ask for it, but nor does he return the favor, and it really hurts me. 

What he doesn't realize is that he has hitched his wagon to the least photogenic person in the world. One snap after 5 minutes of pleading does not yield the fruit it would if he were the subject. You have to try and try and try again. He barely tries the first time! 

Anyway...

One thing we like to do to piss people off is walk great distances. We're usually urban hikers, but we can handle being in nature, too. The path along the rim of the Grand Canyon may have been our finest. 

At some point, Jaime mentioned for the bajillionth time how he'd really like to see some giant elk or something. His words were still hanging in the air, as I caught my breath and my eyes locked on a gaggle of gigantic bucks mere feet from the trail. 

He gleefully but sneakily ran towards them while I prepared to watch my husband be hoofed to death. It was cool and all, but his love for animals really turns me off and grosses me out.

One of the best things about traveling with Jaime, and I believe I've mentioned this many times, is that we're ready to call it quits at almost exactly the same time every time. 

The giant fucking hole was no exception, so we got back into the world's most boring car and pulled onto Route 66. 

I forgot to mentioned that this all took place on Thanksgiving day, and finding a place open for dinner was very difficult on such a small highway. We finally found a place that claimed to serve Greek food, but was really just the best kind of shitty diner.

They had about five things on the menu (one was a Greek salad for $15, and that's what made it a Greek place), but nearly everything had meat. 

I apologized to our server for having to work Thanksgiving day. However, she assured me that she wanted to because everyone in her family was working anyway. She tried her best to work with the annoying vegetarians, and I really appreciated it even after she plopped down the chicken and dumplings soup of the day in front of me.   

We smiled at the Indian family next to us who'd left the restaurant after looking at the menu and were back a second time totally defeated but unwilling to let their children starve to death.

We continued to our cute vintage motel and ding-a-linged the bell. Another Indian lady stepped out from the back. 

Vivir Lars Vegars: Chapter 1

When frantically searching for the cheapest tickets to get you the furthest from your jobs in Kansas City over a holiday weekend, you're going to go to Las Vegas. You may not like it. You might even hate it. But it's your only option.

We decided to make it an ironic trip.

Instead of resenting us, my mom suggested we go to the Grand Canyon while we were out there a somewhat sore spot for her because in spite of the dozens of family road trips we took, I'd only ever been there in utero. Jaime couldn't even say that, so I spent time planning. My least favorite thing to do.

We spirited away on that airline with the flight attendant who told us to close our eyes and pretend we were flying Delta while he pretended he was getting a Delta paycheck. We didn't die.

After shaking their exotic coconuts at each other, the Brazilian guy at the car rental place told Jaime we could chose any car we wanted in the economy row! He blew past the cute cornucopia of brightly colored Chevy Sparks to a black sedan.

It reminded me of the time we were at a famous ice cream place ordering a banana split. The woman asked us what three flavors we wanted, and he excitedly blurted out, "Vanilla!"

I wasn't driving nor the one who needed leg room, so I got in the damn car but not before I made note of the group of women ahead of us who'd chosen a yellow convertible.

I hoped they'd noticed how hot my husband is.

Our first stop was Hoover Dam. Actually, our first stop was a place called something like Fidel's Neato Tacos open 24 hours. Fucking amazeballs.

Hoover Dam was pretty cool, too.

This is the best picture we got of it.

We left the dam and started our long journey through the open desert where the landscape morphs every 80 miles into something even more breathtaking than before and ends in a giant fucking hole.

A Righteous Surfer's First Time

I am now a righteous dude, and you can be, too, if you don't mind being pummeled within an inch of your life and driven to absolute madness and blinding rage by the cruel sea mistress, Calypso.

I grew up about as far away from saltwater as one possibly can. I learned to swim in the gross but still waters of pools, ponds, lakes and rivers. Meanwhile, Jaime was spending his summers sleeping just yards away from the Mediterranean Sea like an asshole. 

I saw him surf for the first time on our recent trip to visit his family in Valencia. It was evening, and as I sat on the beach reading, I'm embarrassed to admit that I was terrified watching him. Don't get me wrong, he was being a totally righteous babe, but every time he would dismount (?) a wave, I would lose sight of him for what felt like five shark minutes. 

However, on our way back to the apartment, Jaime was swarmed by little Spaniards. 

Niños: "Did you get some really big waves!?" 

Jaime: "Meh. They were okay. Nothing special." 

Niños: "Oh man! He's surfed bigger waves! He's probably surfed the biggest waves in the world!"

Jaime: "Get away from me." 

I craved that kind of fame for myself, so the next day, I asked him to teach me. He walked to his abuelos' house and brought back a child's surf board. I was sort of hoping he'd say no. 

The thing about good surfing waves is that they're bigger than normal waves, and you have to fight through them while tethered to a heavy plank that's longer that you are. Every time a wave came, I was flipped over and dragged by my ankle until the entire sea was in my lungs and my bandeau top was around my waist. Normally, I wouldn't care, but 75% of the people around us were related to Jaime. 

I made my way back to shore, took my top off and put Jaime's t-shirt on. He wasn't thrilled. "Ugh. When my shirt gets wet, people are going to know that you have boobs." I figured that they had already figured out I have boobs when they saw my boobs, so I tried again. 

When I finally caught a wave, I started to realize how a person I love so much could love something so horrible so much. I was hurtling towards the beach; it felt like my feet were in my ears. I wasn't about to ruin it by trying to stand. 

The end result of being flung onto the sand miles away from where I needed to be to catch the next wave really harshed my buzz, though. 

My advice is to cuss as much as possible on your way back out. I like "motherfuckingshitgodfuckingdammitwwwwhhhyyyfuckyoufuckingfucker!" but really, whatever you say won't make a bit of fucking difference, so just say what feels right in your heart. 

Another piece of advice I have is to take regular breaks to reapply your sunscreen. I don't care if all you want is to get just a little bit of color on your legs for the family dinner celebrating your marriage that night. Do it. 

"Your ass looks like a tomato, and I'm actually scared," Jaime said. 

Just never, ever give up. Keep trying and trying and never stop unless you want to. 

Well, I hope this post got you stoked to try something new! Hang ten, Broseph, and other things!

A photo of us at our wedding celebration later that night.
I'm on the left.

We Don't Have a TV

Cashier at the grocery store: You guys watchin' the game tonight?
Us: Oh...haha...no, we don't have a TV.

Friend: Did you watch the debates last night?
Us: Ugh. Like, we wanted to be informed, but we don't have a TV, sooooooo.

Person: Did you see that thing on TV?
Us: No! We missed it because we don't have a TV. Damn...it.

We love to tell people that we don't have a television because it makes us feel cool and better than they are, but no one really cares because that's like more of a 90s, early 2000s thing.

When I was a kid and learned that someone didn't have a TV, I was more shocked than if they'd told me they didn't have a toilet. But how on Earth do you get through the non-day that is Tuesday if you don't know that Full House is waiting for you at the end of it? And how do you know a thing about New York if you don't watch Seinfeld?

These people were cool. They were bad asses. And they were poor.

But in the years I haven't owned a television, television has almost completely taken over my life, and it's so uncool. 

The moment I realized that I couldn't access Netflix in Barcelona happened a nanosecond before I was frantically searching "full episodes" on Youtube. I tried to convince myself that I could live off of reruns of Ellen (the sitcom, not the talk show) for two years.

I'll just learn Spanish, read more and write a book about all the crazy experiences I'll have while I'm not watching television is what I thought. Then my roommate taught me how to pirate shit, so I didn't do any of those things, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Oh the plethora! Oh the cornucopia! Fuck you HBO!

Why doesn't everyone do this? I wondered probably out loud. Not paying people for their work is great as we've seen so many times throughout history. How could this fail?

Two and a half years later, I moved back to the U.S. with a man who comes from an entire country of couldn't-give-a-fuck-lessers, and we eagerly awaited the new season of a show I'm not going to name for legal reasons and because I'm embarrassed to admit that I watch it.

When the blessed day finally came, we downloaded the hell out of every episode  and made it through to the finale. I arrived at work the next day sad that it was over but happy to have been a part of it.

Sitting at the top of my over 2,000 unread messages was a cease and desist email from two companies that would make you shit your pants.

So after I shit my pants, I called Jaime. At that time, he wasn't able to work, and my call roused him from his sweet dreams. He was perturbed and told me I was overreacting. Why would a Fortune 500 (whatever that means) company waste its time with two "beggars" like us?

I'm easily convinced to do nothing, so I was prepared to let it go.

Three minutes later, Jaime called.

"Ummm, hey, babe. So, yeah. I don't think we should do that anymore. Okay?," said the man who'd just shat his pants.

Jaime once excitedly told me there was a pirate convention in town, 

and my equally excited thought bubble was this: 

...but that's not what he meant apparently.

Black Lives Matter

The first thing the white woman standing behind me in the voting line asked me was, "Do you have any black friends!?"

It was one of the neatest conversations I've ever been invited into.

I'm kidding. It was a fucking nightmare.

Everyone around me (mostly African Americans) did not believe me for one cracker of a second when I blurted out, "Yes!"

To this day, I'm not sure why she asked because she wouldn't tell me when I asked her why she asked, but you better believe that I've been obsessing about it for more than a month.

I've finally decided that she is my neighborhood incarnate.

A distant (in time and space) friend once posted on Facebook something like, "If you're white and surrounded by other white people in your neighborhood, you're part of the problem."

Whew! Not me says I! Look! There's a black guy walking home from work! Over yonder in the park is a black family playing on the swings. The charter school directly across the street buses in a greatly diverse student body!

Blessed are the peacemakers (me).

I chose to live in our neighborhood because Jaime didn't know the city. I knew we could walk to locally owned bars and restaurants and hoped maybe (just maybe) Jaime would get a job at the hospital nearby. But mostly I chose it because I knew it was safe. Safe. SaFe. SAFE.

For those of you who have never lived in Kansas City, I'll share a secret with you that everyone who has knows...Kansas City is segregated.  There's a wall that's disguised as street called Troost, and it indisputably separates the city by race. Nearly everyone living to the east of it is black, and I live well to the west.

Of course we've got some neighbors who are black, Latino, Middle Eastern and Asian, but I'm willing to guess that most of my white neighbors, like me, chose to live here because it's "cool," "diverse" and "safe."

Let's face it. Safe means "people like me." I'm comfortable here because most people look like me.

But I don't deserve to feel "safer" than anyone.

How safe did Trayvon Martin feel walking through that gated community? How safe did Ryan Stokes feel in the Power and Light District while conforming to its racist dress code before he was shot in the back running for his life?

This entire fucking country isn't safe for African Americans and other minorities, and I'm tired of pretending it is. I'm tired of defending it. I'm tired of being part of the problem.

Systematic, subconscious and overtly conscious racism has to be stopped now because at its most benign, it makes us the laughing stock of the world, and at its most malignant, people are murdered.

Don't tell racist jokes. Don't laugh at racist jokes. Don't overlook an application with a certain type of name. Don't pretend racism magically disappeared in the 60s. Don't pretend everyone has the same opportunities as you. Don't forget for one second all the privileges you have. Don't accept that this is normal.

Black Lives Matter matters because black lives here have never mattered. White lives, on the other hand, have always mattered and have always held more value in our government and courts, in our media, in our economy, in our education system, in our society. We can't pretend otherwise because to do so would even further diminish the value of all the black lives lost to racism...so far.

The Night All My Dreams Came True

We were eating tacos tonight while Jaime was being a huge nerd talking about some kind of computer program he created by coding words and numbers to do groundbreaking psychological experiments or something, so I started to read the salsa jar.

My eyes drifted to the bottom where I learned that the salsa had been made in Frisco, Texas.

I was immediately sucked into a rainbow colored time vortex that planted me in The Better Cheddar (the gay friendly cheese store I worked at throughout college) circa 2006.

Now, before I begin, I want to swear to you that this was a real event that really occurred in my real life. One could also refer to it the greatest thing that has ever happened.

I was working a dead night shift with Joe and Mindy when a cowboy sauntered through the door. That alone won our usually elusive attention, as it was pretty rare to see a cowboy at the Country Club Plaza on a weeknight.

Joe got to him first, and the man asked if we sold salsa. What luck! We did!

He led him to our small selection of overly priced gourmet salsa. He stared at the salsa hesitantly. We stared at him expectantly.

He finally chose one and turned it in his hands.

"New York City!?" he exclaimed. Then nothing. Deadpan.

It had, in fact, been made in New York City.

He didn't purchase any salsa from us that night, and I doubt he ever returned. We did, however, pay him more respect than I knew we were capable of and waited for the door to close behind him before we collapsed on the floor struggling to breathe through the deepest laughter.

To this day, I do not know if the man was rehearsing for a role, making good on a lost bet or being paid by our boss for customer service control.

But I prefer to believe he was real.

Childhood  -Click on this link if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about. 

Everything I Thought About During Yoga Part I

My sister sent me a text yesterday morning that said that during meditation (long story), she thought about Sting's (the man who ruined my wedding) songs which led to thinking about our trip to New York (that Sting ruined) and how much fun we'd had.

I replied that I was going to yoga later that evening, and I'd tell her what I thought about. Here's that text:

Pre-yoga

I fucking hate yoga. 

Before class, I took off my Ganesha shirt (that was given to me) and pulled on a tee with a made up sports team on it for two reasons: I could never live with myself again if I wore a symbol of a religion I know nothing about to a practice tied to that religion that I know nothing about, and it was low cut. I certainly wasn't going to put on a bra just because I'd be bending over a lot.

Why in the hell do white people (the tightest of the uptights) think it's okay to walk around wearing Ganesha shirts and doing yoga? 

The 90s I guess.

But, unfortunately, I care less about the rampant and unabashed cultural appropriation of the practice than my embarrassment about not being good at it. That's why I fucking hate yoga.

However, it was free, so Jaime and I signed up and began playing a days long silent game of chicken hoping the other would cancel but unwilling to be the yuppie who caved first. Our stubbornness got us through the door, but there was still time to bolt.

While signing in, I perused the list of names looking for a penis buddy for Jaime.

Found one! Michael. 

Michael...Jackson. I'm sorry. What? 

There are many celebrities I could handle doing yoga with, but Sting is not one, and Michael Jackson is at the very top of my couldn't list.

Michael was easy to spot when we walked into the room mostly because he was the only man. He was also one of two black people drowning in a sea of crackers.

The back row was already filled to the brim, but my weasel husband (whom I thought was following me) set up his festering borrowed mat next to Michael leaving me front and center of the yogi...alone.

Jesus Chirst. I've never seen a skinnier person. Would you look at that thigh gap!? Goddamnit. She has a tattoo on her foot. Are all the yogis in India now white women in their twenties? 

To my relief, a woman in her sixties (I believe) settled in on my left.

I am going to be so much better than you at this. 

To my horror, a young Indian (I believe) woman sat to my right.

Goddammit. You are going to be so much better at this. Also, I am sorry for appropriating your culture. I swear I don't want to be here.

Yogi bear informed us that classes were free the last Sunday of each month, but that this would be her last time leading the free class because she's taking classes and getting married in June, and that would just be too much.

LOL! 

She quieted her voice and walked over to the stereo. She pushed play. Chimes began emanating from the surround sound.

Oh my god. I can't do this.