Looks Aren't Everything....But They're Something

So I'll be the first to say that I find ugly people attractive.  I do.  I'll see someone and say "ugh, they're gorgeous" when all my friends see is a beard, beer belly, and missing belt.  I'll stand here naked in my truth, holding myself due to the subzero temps in Chicago of course, and let the world know: I like 'em ugly.  But not all the time.  I'm someone who really operates off of vibes people give off.  A lot of people do, sure.  But I merely see someone and if they look like they're laid back and easy going and smart, I find them physically attractive--not even knowing them, this doesn't make me better than anyone, just weirder.  But I have some friends out there who believe that just because someone is cute or hot and fits this conventional mold of good-lookingness, that this automatically means that they have the depth and understanding required to sustain a healthy give-and-take relationship.  When in actuality-they don't.  Word to the wise, and also to you reading this blog, some attractive people out there, not all, probably not most, but some, are so consumed with appearance that the idea of the self (and I'm talking deep depp self) and the idea of the other simply do not exist.  They have the emotional encyclopedia of jar of mayonnaise.

Two things in my world have brought about this blog post.  One is last nights episode of The Bachelor.  This week we saw Juan Pablo take his final 3 damsels in distress (because lets face it, whether on land or sea, these women are drowning) to St. Lucia for some sand, sun, soaking and.....sulking???? These ladies are in St. Lucia, the very place where my sweet sweet Amy Winehouse spent some of her last months!  Why they insist on staring into space contemplating God knows what, I'll never know.  Anyways,  this isn't gonna be a recap so I'll skip to the moment I personally have been waiting for for as long as I've been a viewer of the Bachelor/ette franchises: the moment when a contestant would finally call out the Bachelor/ette on being an empty, shallow, self-centered, egotistical, narcissistic, robot, shell of a human being who cares about nothing but "falling in love" and not actually falling in love.  Andi is by far a fan favorite and rumored new Bachelorette and I think we see why.  After spending an evening with Juan Pablo away from the cameras in the fantasy suite, typically where people measure the circumferences of one another's areolae and check out their lover's brown star, Andi wanted out.  She had come to the realization that Juan Pablo was not the man for her (which is ABC talk for: She had taken advantage socially and geographically of everything this 6 week long trip had to offer).  Yes, somehow it took her this long to see him for the idiot that he is.  But "that's ok" (<--more on this gem and why its in quotes in a minute).  So we must understand that Andi needed the romantic once-in-a-lifetime dates and trips to see him for what he really is "which is a big nothing!" (<--"The Mask" reference, Jim Carrey comedy, not Cher drama)  She found that after the cameras went away and it was time to really get to know Juan Pablo on a deeper level, that he was all talk and no listen.  He did not let her divulge and self-disclose anything about her life, interests, hopes, dreams, fears, etc.  He just would kiss her, say something stupid in spanish and use his "I'm an innocent yet sexy foreigner" charm to just steer the conversation back to him if continue it at all.  She was repulsed and rightly so.  She let him have it in one of the best Bachelor confrontations you have to see to believe.  I say you must see to believe only because this show has a history of editing conversation between its contestants and its stars down to three topics, bulleted below:

• How crazy the experience is (no fucking duh you idiot, you just signed up to travel the world with 25 strangers who are either all cycling up on their periods or bro-ing up, flexing their muscles in competition and farting, not to mention you've elected to marry someone after only knowing of them a cumulative 6 weeks and lets be honest spending about 5-7 actual days with them on an intimate level)
• Traumas (seriously these people seem to lead into their intros with "My father tried to kill me when I was 8", "I witnessed my friend get killed by a falling tree", or "I was left at the altar [and now the only way I can find love is through this television show]"
• What kind of significant other they're looking for (this last topic is the closest to normal we human viewers actually enjoy engaging in in the early stages of a romantic relationship and even some of us find this topic something of a back burner saved for the 10th date or 3rd bj)

What the constants fail to realize is whether or not the type of person who says "I'm ok with people competing for my love in a Hunger Games style tournament of love, lust, lies and laughter (for those of us watching at home, "Everytime they cry, we drink", sorry liver)" is the type of person they really want to end up with.  Except for Andi.  She realized it.  She told him that she found his cavalier way of responding to her anguish over his indifference to her identity to be "annoying" and condescending.  She tried to teach him that theres a difference between rapport talk and report talk, and theres asking questions, listening, and asking more questions, which should typically take place when getting to know someone.  He was only engaging in the report talk.  Report talk is a term I learned in my studies in college as a Communications major where you simply one-up the person with your self disclosures, where its a competition or sometimes merely a presentation of yourself.  Men are easily found engaging in this type of talk.  I've known a few men in my day who engage in this.  Thirsty bottoms all too eager to tell you about who they hooked up with before you (as if its a competition to be the biggest slut in boys town....actually it is a competition, just one I've yet to sign up for) and straight dudes like my college roommate who bark on about how they were in a car accident where there truck flipped 3 times yet they walked away unscathed (the only scars that remain are seemingly on their brains making them not only dumb but chauvinistic).  Rapport talk is when you seek connectivity and bonding by sharing and listening to others disclosures and comparing those to your own in discussion.  This is typically employed by women.  The best kind of people can engage in both and know when its best to choose one over the other.  (*spoiler alert* its always best to engage in rapport talk with your significant other whether its the first date or choosing which retirement home you'd like to live in).  All in all I think Andi and some dumb viewers at home were surprised to see someone with such good looks have such poor people skills.  Some people might argue that the miscommunication is due to the fact that Juan Pablo is foreign and English is not his first language.  Human beings are a planetary epidemic and respect is an internationally used currency.  So simply put, Juan Pablo es un cerdo. 

So there you have it.  An example of someone who's looks got the best of his onlookers.  He was not Mr. Perfect simply for appearing to be perfect.  It can be conversely stated that just because someone is ugly doesn't necessarily mean they're a great person.  I've met some people who are just as nasty inside as they are out.  I'm just saying, War and Peace may come with gorgeous cover art but it still just a table leveler in my house.  Don't a judge a book until you've given it a good read (cliffsnotes.com). 

The second instance that brought this topic to my attention and fingertips was one in my actual life.  Not my vicarious one on the telly (ugh I wish I had a British accent, or a British boyfriend)  My friends mother, on her everlasting quest to find my friend a lobster-for-life (<--not actual crustacean more the Pheobe Buffay sort) had informed her daughter, my friend who we will call Janet, that a friend of the mother's had given a boy Janet's name as a single white female looking for love.  The boy proceeded to Facebook friend request Janet.  Janet's a classy broad who doesn't just accept anyone as a friend on Facebook and only goes hot-tubbing with you if you're a local cop who could maybe get her out of a speeding ticket or two down the road (double meaning, ugh, love it).  So she did not accept.  In addition to him being a stranger, this guy was quite the Quasimodo.  Now now I know what you readers are thinking, "who does John think he is? who is he to judge? who says he's so good-looking?"  I don't think I'm worthy of judging or surveying anyone and the only people who have called me good looking are people who have eyes so...there.  But there is something to be said about physical attraction.  It has to exist.  Now sure, I've gone on dates with some uglies and typically I would tell my friend to go on the date FTS (for the story) [Aside: I live most of my life not by #YOLO so much as #forthestory.  I believe every experience teaches us about ourselves if not the world around us so I always say "do it FTS" This brings me to my next point of why FTS works.  Personality adds to looks.  Just as we saw personality take away from Juan Pablo's looks, we can see it add to Quasimodo's looks.  Wasn't everyone a little jealous of that gypsy Esmerelda in the Disney movie when she ended up with Quasimodo?? I'm assuming she ended up with him because hopefully Disney had the wherewithal to show a woman who looked like Penelope Cruz fall for a man who looked like Mickey Rourke after a 3 day Vegas bender on no sleep.  I would've hooked up with Quasimodo at least to see what his thing looked like...........that point was counterproductive.  Forget you read it/I said it.  But truthfully, get to know someone and you'll see they're sense of humor, familial ideals, views on social issues may straighten out their nose, ungrease their hair, clear up their skin.  Juan Pablo began this season looking all sorts of David Beckham and just as nice.  No he's this melting blonde Ross Gellar looking blob who needs to be scraped off my shoe.  All because of one thing: we got to know him.  Like I said, don't judge a book.] but this guy is really really really not her type.  If you're not a #YOLO person and if you're not a #FTS person, there needs to be something that draws you in to inquire about a person before you can have an interest and want to know more.  But if the person is unfortunate looking, like car crash unfortunate where you kinda look and say "Oh jeez, I hope no one got hurt" while wincing, then they're may not be hope for a connection.  

Now my advice is to always say yes to a date.  Why?  I have seen people hook up with other people I'd never go for and I never believed they'd go for but its because of something they learned on a date.  At the very least, a date is a free meal.  But knowing my friend, knowing her typical type, and having eyes and seeing this guy (who quite frankly I can't unsee, thanks Janet) sometimes there needs to be some good looks.  But alas! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so how can I say all of the above without hating myself and feeling vapid and shallow? Well, I do feel vapid and shallow but you would too if your days were spent watching Vanderpump Rules.  But I am confident someone has found and will again find this man attractive.  To each his own, he is someone's type, just not Janet's.  If I'm Janet, I'm wondering why my mother's friend hates me so much to sick this dog on me.  Someone needs a drink thrown in their face and....oh would you look at that? Its Wednesday, its me who needs the drink thrown in my face!

As I was saying....

...before I was rudely interrupted by own neuroses,  I want to tell you how I got here.  Or rather, there.  As in the car with the crying and the cheez-its.  To catch up all you late comers - I'm a hot mess who isn't where he was a year ago, which was an even bigger mess crying on the highway stuffing my face with sodium enriched processed cheese crackers.  They may even be fried.  I'm not sure, but this isn't a food blog, that would be www.cookingwithtaylor.com .

Anywho,  it was November of 2012 when i visited a friend of mine in the great city of Chicago when I decided that I really could make a big city move and make it work for me.  Chicago has all the trappings a person could want: great food, great architecture, great sights, a plethora of professional opportunities the like of which only matched or exceeded by those in New York City, San Francisco and the like.  I visited her for just a weekend while my sister was interviewing for her medical residency.  We discovered a city with all the offerings of NYC but with a much lower cost of living.  I began to drool and salivate.  The fire under my ass that dwindled to soft glowing embers and wilted ash, was suddenly reinvigorated.  OH THE HUMANITY!!!! Maybe that was just the seat warmer in my car, BUTT either way I was back on track to forging my own path to happiness. You see, I had always dreamed of New York as my true home but was discouraged by the price tag.  I felt discontent in Buffalo.  It was too small.  It was like a sweater that shrunk in the dryer.  I had tried to make it better but it ended up shrinking and suffocating me.  I began to discuss it with friends.  I needed to put this idea out there if it could ever become a reality.  I get much too easily defeated inside my own head. My friends supported me as they always have (such great friends).  They even loved my first blog entry where I lead in claiming I'd explain the cheez-its and the crying and the driving but somehow just ended up abandoning any and all readers (all of about 6 people total).  My fan base is growing! So anyways, my friends supported me but it was I (twas I!!) who needed to make something happen.  So I broke my lease by giving my landlord my 60 day notice, a customary requirement and began the job hunt.

I wanted a job you couldn't find in Buffalo.  Everything was going to change about my life.  Or at least the big things were.  I firmly believe everyone should strive to work a job that they enjoy, or at the very least, a job they don't complain about.  So I wanted something creative and something that you see people in the movies or E! reality shows doing.  Aside from styling Kim Kardashian's enormous ass, I'd do anything! Or so I thought.....(I just had a visual of me adorning her buttocks with a feather boa and now firmly believe I've missed my calling as an ASSistant Stylist to Armenian Good-For-Nothings.)

Long story short: I realized I was not going to get a job with a Buffalo address on my resume.  So I decided I would move to Chicago without a job and no place to stay.  That would put me right at the doors of my future employers ready to work the second they said "You're Hired!"  I imagined they would say it like Donald Trump only it'd make me feel so much more happy than when he'd say "You're Fired!" to my favorite Apprentice contestants.    So I put in my two weeks notice at my job (Assistant Coordinator of Volunteer Services at a cancer hospital) and up and left.  That's what brought me to saying goodbye to my mom.  Thats what brought me to tears and thats what brought me to my Cheez-its.

My relationship with my mother is probably the strongest relationship I've ever come across in my life.  Its the strongest I've ever had.  She cares deeply and loves unconditionally.  Its taken me a while to realize this but I have.  I regret leaving her and can only hope she knows that I'd take with me everywhere I go for the rest of my natural and unnatural life if I could.  Maybe I can. OMG. ROAD TRIP! Kidding.  Although we do have the same taste in music so the ride would be a fun sing-a-long.

I love the idea behind parents.  That someone wants to extend themselves into another being.  They've clearly had a fun time on this earth and wish to guide someone else through its entirety.  My mom is someone who has always done right by her family and friends.  She did not hold a grudge against my father during or after their divorce and continued to co-parent with him quite successfully if I do say so myself, if I do say so myself, if I do say so myself.  (<--if you don't get the Beyonce reference right there and this ain't the blog for you honey, okay? *flips hair*)  I think life is so interesting.  I really do.  I think what is placed in our paths but fate is so interesting.  I think the human experience is so interesting.  The word interesting is so interesting.  A thesaurus and or well used education would really come in handy right now.  I love how as I've grown older and experienced more I've looked at everything differently.

Growing up we see our parents as our rule makers and enforcers.  But only when we get to know ourselves as human beings do we really get to understand them as human beings.  If you've lived enough life (and I'm talking mileage here, not years) to have loved then you understand that enveloping feeling of obsession that come dover you with a new found love.  When you feel someone truly understands you as a person and truly loves you as a person.  Well, your parents felt that too at one time or many.  That longing that we feel, for that instant, no one else in the world understands, was understood by our own parents.  Our dorky moms who dance at weddings like they're reeling in fish in the Adirondacks or our unfiltered fathers who talk about getting crabs in the 70s right in front of our college friends.  Theres a quote that I'll butcher here.  I think I heard it on Oprah but it probably originated from a more profound place like Rikki Lake or Sally Jesse.  I believe it goes: we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. I think that applies here.  Either way it brings me to my point that the experience of being human is wrought with emotions that really test our limitations.  The heart is a strong muscle both biologically evidenced by my late father as well as emotionally evidenced by everyone's own individual paths.  And our parents have been through it all before we have, probably before having us.

Its sad because I think when you have kids you expect that maybe life with be emotionally easy on you from thereon out.  But I made my mom cry that day I left.  And thats something I think about from time to time.  I made her emotional.  I made her feel that loss, that longing for someone she loves.  I hate that I did that but had no other choice.  And isn't that beautiful?  That we can want something so badly, that comes at such a high cost?  Its tragic.  And thats why all the great plays are tragedies.  Because the human condition is to want what we can't have or to want that which is unattainable if only by some large sacrifice we wouldn't dare wish on an enemy.  In the series finale of HBO's Six Feet Under,  Ruth Fisher, played devastatingly beautifully by Frances Conroy says: If my experience is anything to go by, motherhood is the loneliest thing in the world.  She says this to her daughter right before her daughter moves away from home.  I want to be a parent so badly.  I will be a parent.  I will love this person from the moment they are born and when they leave me, every time they leave me, in all the ways they can leave me, I will mourn.  I will feel that loss that penetrates so deeply I won't know how to stand.  I can feel it now.  I feel homesick for my mother.  I yearn to just be by her side.  And somehow I know that its that loss and that emotion that makes us truly human.  So we have to go through it.  We cannot turn back and we must endure.  That way, at our life's end, we've done what we needed to do.  We've chosen that very loss that feels at times like it could kills us.  We've chosen to endure that loss so that our children can also endure that loss and keep the cycle going.  It's almost sick.

This blog has tired me out.  I don't know how long it will last.  I don't like to think deeply about things because either I make no sense (to myself or to anyone else) or I make too much sense (or so i think).  I get this feeling of infinity.  Like, going on forever.

It's not fun saying goodbye to any one, in any way.

Alright, I gotta do some actual work, bye!

Transanxiety

There I was, minutes away from my childhood home, moving further and further away from my best friend and biggest supporter, my mother.  I was sobbing uncontrollably.  I never thought anyone could cry that much, let alone me.  But I was a mess.  I passed each exit and said to myself 'Ok, at the next one, I'm going to get off, turn around and go home and tell mom I made a mistake'.  I had planned after each exit I passed to return home and tell my mom that I was going to stay in Buffalo, NY and start over and be happy.  But I never got off.

I should probably tell you how I got to that place.  To the thruway, sobbing.  With an open box of Cheez-its next to me, stuffing my face.  The picture of embarrassment.  It was the culmination of some serious time in a self-imposed jail I call "my life".  I remember even in high school always wanting to live in a big city.  I had planned on applying to Manhattanville College (if that's even the name).  I'm not sure if I did.  I did not make very good use of my high school years.  I think I ended up only applying to two colleges, one was John Carroll University and the other was Canisius College (my alma mater, ultimately).  I had big dreams but took no real action to achieve them.  I think I seriously believed that like clouds-or rays of sunlight rather- they'd just fall from Heaven and come to fruition.  I. Was. Wrong.

I don't know what anyone will get out of this blog.  I'm hoping someone finds comfort.  Truthfully I am not even sure anyone will even see it.  Which scares me.  Only because, with the comfort of having no one see it, do I post explicitly?  Or, to not run the risk of full disclosure and exposure, do I post discreetly and use fake names?  Now I'm confused.  Let me start by introducing myself.  I'm Roy (real name: John).  I'm writing this blog because someone told me to.  Isn't that sad?  Shouldn't I have started this on my own accord because I have something to share and want to?  Well, I probably do have something to share, as we all do, whether we know it or not.  And I suppose I do want to, deep down.  After all I live in the city I live in now because I wanted more creative opportunities professionally speaking.  The reason for this blog is because someone suggested I start one to build an online portfolio of writing samples.  You see, I am looking for a job that lends the person doing it to some level of creativity.  So I do want to create.  And I did always enjoy writing when I was younger (in those non-productive high school years).  I remember so vividly the feeling of accomplishment I had in high school publishing a film review of one of the first Harry Potter movies for my HS newspaper.  I think it started with "Hear ye! Hear ye!"  Ugh.  I exhaust myself.  All at once I live for those awkward humbling moments that ground us and remind us of our fallibility but then, hindsight being 20/20, its those very moments that make me feel flush and nauseous at the thought that those moments could ever happen to anyone on any earth in any universe.  I mean I started an article with the words "Hear ye! Hear ye!"  An article with my actual birth name attached to it.  Seriously.  Like I can't even go there.

Sorry, I just paused to think about how I have literally no idea if anyone will see this.  It's connected to my gmail so maybe people will get an alert?  How awkward: John just posted a new blog entry, go read it and poke fun of his random stream of consciousness and inner most thoughts and vulnerabilities.  Ugh, my awkward awkward life.

Well, this being a first post I am trying to give you all a preface of whats to come.  A teaser.  Everyone likes to be titillated right? WRONG.  Some people hate being teased.  Sexually or otherwise.  More on that later. (<-- what does that even mean?  As if I'd post about my sexual escapades for all to read.  Except for those two amazing instances which will be retorted here on this blog in GRAVE detail.  Literally, grave detail.  I had sex in a graveyard once......KIDDING. But hey, first time for everything) All will be posted here....Unless my mom tells me she saw this and I'm forced to start a new one under a fake name....Roy maybe.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll write as a female named Claudia. Claudia was the name of my favorite babysitter from The Babysitters Club.  She made her own earrings.  She was a self made woman.  But I can't make earrings so I'll never be as good as her.  But it doesn't hurt to try.  So here I go and you're coming with me.  You're going to read each post and therefore put your trust in me, my thoughts and my writings that I will somehow comfort you.  Maybe I'll make you feel a little less crazed about your own life.  If I can make someone forget about their own dramas and say 'Wow at least I'm not a mess like this kid" then I'll have done my job.  I may have already accomplished that goal with this random insane stream of consciousness that I call 'my first post'.  It's all over the place.  I think its the nerves.  Once I find out that people will only read this if i tell them to I won't be nervous anymore.  But the idea that someone may read this that I don't want reading it?  It freaks me out.

I plan to go over current events, past events (both public and personal) and my thoughts on them - therefore you can see why I'm so nervous as to what people will read on here.  I'm a pretty open book I think but still...some books were made to be burned.  I'm just gonna hit publish and see what happens.  This may be the last you hear of me.  If I do post again and you do return to continue reading, I thank you in advance.  For I am just letting you guys know that its taken me 25+ years to learn one of the most valuable lessons in my life, perhaps the most valuable and that is that I don't know what I am doing here...and neither do you.