As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep

The Tempest

I had a dream last night my friend, Sergio, picked me up in some 1970s Pacer with a Saxon yellow paint job. Its body was covered in rust like some malignant expansion of pox, and that it pulled up with a phlegmy cough didn’t improve its look either. What a rotting pear ready to be thrown away, but I didn’t wonder too much about where he got it when I got inside. The reason was due to the fact that Sergio kept repeating this story about picking up his Asian girlfriend from the airport in the morning.

He kept bringing it up throughout the night as if it were the only conversation he knew; and every time he re-told it, he made it his priority to make me understand that the most important part was the fact that his girlfriend was Asian. The stranger thing was that he didn’t emphasize this point out of a certain pride, but as if this bit were crucial to understanding the whole; as if this were the kernel from which to make sense of what he was saying.

I listened half-caring anyways so I don’t know why he even bothered. Part of my attention was more focused on the shadowy streets we passed that only seemed to go as far as my mind could create a setting of. Everything seemed incomplete: the car, the barren buildings we passed as he drove, and the simple two lane streets within a short horizon. All of it lacked enough detail to form a single whole. It was as if the world existed within a narrow range of vision and the rest was empty space.

I remember sitting in the backseat because for some reason I thought it was just going to be Sergio and me. I had this whimsical idea that he was going to be my chauffer for the night, but after driving through the obscured city streets of my mind for less than it took me to get into the back, Sergio stopped in front of a browned wooden tiled house with a porch supported by two pillars that held a sheltered roof. The rest of the house was incomplete as well as if it had been build from one side to the other instead of from the ground up.

Two girls came out of the front door, laughing as they shoved each other, and got into the pacer as well. One was a tall, milky-skinned girl with red hair that fell down her back. She looked like she was dressed to go practice yoga or ballet in her form-fitting black sweats. Her arms were bare and I could see the river of ruby moles that ran across her skin. Her friend was much shorter, had Blond hair that was cut to her neck and parted down the middle. She was wearing some silk emerald dress that complimented her soft peach skin and her pretty face. She sat in the back with me.

We drove on only to stop at another tackily-painted house where this time an Hispanic man who seemed to be in his late thirties with some bee-inspired flannel shirt, tight blue jeans, and burgundy leather boots with some tapered design I was too far out of focus to view came out and sat in the back with us. He was silent the entire night. The girls, on the other hand, started chatting to us in a lively language, but one in which I could not understand their words. It felt as if I had never learned how to speak like that—with that tongue or with those gestures. However, It did not matter because it seemed like we were having a good time and getting to know everyone; Sergio with his obsessive retelling of having to pick up his Asian girlfriend, the two girls laughing at their own jokes; and the Hispanic man sitting silently and staring ahead without any sign of interest to what anyone was saying.

We drove on until we arrived at a party, club, or bar, I was unsure of which. I could not distinguish because once we got there it was as if the scene would shuffle between these three points of axis as my mind decided which setting it preferred best. The events at the party/club/bar were a blur except that I remember Sergio getting separated from our group, yet still within earshot to hear his story; the Hispanic man disappearing completely; and myself spending all my time talking to these two girls, not remembering the conversation we had, but it seeming to appear as if we were all enjoying what we were saying.

Then the party ended. At this pointed the scene was a house party, and everyone was exiting into the street as the music that I only noticed now because of its absence stopped playing. Sergio seemed to wave me over with both arms coming down his shoulders like a tarmac guard; either that or he was describing the airplane landing at the airport in his story. I took it as a sign we show leave and proceeded to escort the two girls to the pacer.

I helped moved the seat back for the Blond girl to get in, and then went to the back because the hatch was open and I was going to close it. That’s when the Hispanic man reappeared. He was standing with his right hand by the bottom edge of the opening, and I remember I noticed this with an acute sense of vision as if my eyes magnified to focus on his hands; his thumb was just out of the way of the opening for me to close the hatch. This closeness gave me a mild anxiety, which my arm ignored as I brought the hatch down with a forceful push. He turned to look at me then and we stared at each other in knowing silence. His foreboding eyes told me, “That was close and you could have hurt me, but lucky for you, you didn’t.’”

My apprehensive eyes could only say, “Sorry. Please don’t ruin the night” before they all too quickly broke our stare and I went back into the car and sat by the Blond. The Hispanic man let us drive off and then this time disappeared forever into the blur.

The blur continued until Sergio arrived back at the house of the two girls and dropped all three of us off. I was telling Sergio through the driver’s window yes, yes, I would hear his story later, and then remembering watching him drive away only to be suddenly sitting in a dark couch in a dark living room where the only source of light was the little noise of a television set.  I was sitting to the left of the redhead while Blond was on her right, when Red suddenly stood up with a passionate cry and a violent swat of her ruby-deck arms. I knew somehow it had to do with Sergio; she must have liked him and Sergio had ignored her the whole night. Red stamped out of the room with Blond closely following still to her right like a friend ready to fall in front of her.

I felt sleepy then (yeah, in my own dream). I picked myself up from the couch and walked to the next room where the girls had run off. There was a bed there against the center; while on the other side another television placed in one of those fake wooden living room stands laid adorned with plastic beads hooped around it like some cheap idol, ignored and seen as little value, but still deeply worshipped. It too gave a little light with its little noise. It at least made the soft comforter on the bed visible enough to see it’s purple polyester tapered in a diamond pattern with curves for edges. That was enough to smooth myself onto the bed until I lay hugging the pillows to my face.

I was beginning to slowly drift into a sleep within a sleep when Blond came into the room and lay beside me. She had this look of consternation as she told me about comforting her friend; a look that saddened me to see, but reminded me that I recognized the language she was now speaking—if only because it was the language I desired to speak with her. It was a language of compassion, a language of intimacy, a language of wanting to know you, it said oh Blond, what’s your real name? Who are you really? I moved my hands onto her soft shoulders and rubbed them down and back towards me until we were both facing each other side by side. I kept sliding myself closer until our bodies were nearly touching. I could see her darken face. It was round and soft and had a reddish glow where blood would rush into her cheeks. She still had her dark mascara over her green eyes with irises so large they left little room for the white inside. Her hair was still parted, but a cluster was making its way down. I moved it aside and neared in close for a kiss. I pressed my lips against hers until they were softly touching and left them there for the longest second. Neither of us opened them nor made any other movement during this time. These soft lips holding themselves together like soft hands comforting each other. I moved my head back and smiled at her like a child saying, “look, now it’s all better.” She smiled back and kissed me with more passionate lips. She pushed me gently on my back and took off her silk emerald dress to reveal in the obscurity of the room that she was wearing matching silk underwear. She then straddled on top of me and we began kissing more passionately still, and I could feel my hands rubbing down her supple legs and up her even back. I could literally see my hands at this moment. They were pressing towards her bra strap; I could see the fingers of my left hold the hooks steady as the fingers of my right pushed against the surface of the hard band until the first strap was free. There was another strap on the bra, so again my hands moved and talked in the silent language all their own. They repeated their same conversation over again and succeeded to break through. And then she eased her elbows up and rested them on my chest until she sat halfway. I could now see her bra slide down slowly about to reveal the beginnings of a new dream.

Then my alarm goes off.

I awake from bed bereaved and run quickly to shut it off, but I know already it’s too late. I have lost the dream. I have lost her. I stand between the alarm and the bed with my eyes half-closed and a glazed look over them, my arms limp while I teeter on my knees as I try to find balance. Inside my mind, I am slowly coming to the realization of what has just happened. I look at the bed still with my disbelieving eyes; there’s no point going back. She is already becoming a distant memory, and I know I wouldn’t allow myself to recreate the dream with its former honesty. I would know it was an illusion this time, and it would feel like self-pleasure in bad faith.

Dammit! Don’t you know how hard it is to get a wet dream? They’re like one-in-a-million and when they come if feels like you have been visited in the night by some magic nymph who has left you with all the evidence of the after-sex you’ve had. You feel a little deceived, a little piqued, still a little frustrated, but overjoyed with ease. I looked back at the bed, then at the time.

My God, 4:00 am in the morning! Why am I up so early? I know why though. I have to wake up to the dreariness of work; I have to wake up to the dreariness of customer service; I have to wake up to the dreariness of my life. I put on my khaki slacks, I put on my faded and stained polo shirt, and I put on my name badge. I wash my face of any semblance of resentment, though I know this too will not fool anyone but me. I walk out into the cold morning light where the sun is still not here, but the moon is smiling, wishing me a good morning, as I warm up my car and listen to the same songs from the same station interrupted by the same commercials, already forgetting details of my dream.

When I drove up to the complex, it appeared to be an assemblage of concrete and brick buildings dispersed throughout a grid encompassing a city block. Each building was formed of unequal length and design. Some had intricate fire escapes beginning on one side of a structure and then snaking their way to another; others had barges that supported a network of rafters between two and even three buildings; and while some buildings had no flourish except the pale grayness of their walls, others had rich brick veneers and skylights illuminating light outwards towards the blue night air.

Instead of entering into an enclosed unit structured by hallways and easily recognizably numbered doors, this place expanded as if it were a city within a city. There were no entrances on the outside perimeter. I found a glass door, but it was locked and with a view of an empty space in what seemed to be an abandoned office. My other option was to venture through the spacious parking spots planted around the fissures in-between buildings.

I knew my friend lived in number 223 and he had given me a map, which I downloaded to my phone, but the abstract layout came to be of little help. There were the 600 buildings, the 500, the 200 and the lettered numbered buildings. I found myself across number 600, which on the map told me the adjacent building had a clump of 200 lofts inside. I entered through a backdoor and climbed a flight of narrow stairs to a 200 level, but the numbers only went so far as 205. I went back down and tried the 600 building instead, thinking that perhaps I had misread the map and saw it backwards. But as I went up the stairway to the 200 level I only found numbers 213-18.

I began to feel a mixed sense of frustration and curious pleasure as I began to lose myself in these barren cloisters of a hallway. I was beginning to fear with joy that all the apartment halls would have the same non-descript features to them, the only thing distinguishing one from another being the non-linear order of numbers and the sometimes-opened doors into unknown apartments. Some of which had clusters of people talking amongst one another, some with a single man or woman working to put together some un-yet defined piece of art. And then there were the doors that opened into darkness. They were like entrances that opened to a vacuum where light faded into black. I stopped by one where a red glow diminished like vapor. I wanted to enter through that door into that red room, curious to see what I might find while excited by the fear of not knowing what to expect.

Instead I went outside to the enclave between buildings and called my friend. As the phone was ringing I heard my named called out from a rooftop. It was Jason and he was directing me to go up towards the entrance through a truck-loading zone. I walked up another flight of stairs and met him on a balcony where he was waiting with some friends. Once there I took a secret moment to catch my breath and peek at the city. From this view, the whole opened up and I could see not only downtown, but also the L.A. riverbed like a porcelain faucet seeping a veiny brook towards the west, the shipping yard waiting tensely like a block set anticipating the morning when little children would come play with it, and the 5 freeway circling behind it all. All I could say was “amazing” as I found myself in a new, majestic opening beholding the towers of the city I longed to enter. So close were we to the bright lights of the skyscrapers that it felt as if we were in the city as well as watching it from afar.

I followed Jason into his loft and got a little tour before settling down with a Bud Light on the couch while everyone socialized. I found myself not knowing many of Jason’s new friends, and realized I would have to introduce myself to each cluster in order to participate and not awkwardly stand out against the couch by the wall; I didn’t want to give the impression that I was disinterested being there by sitting alone with beer in hand and maybe my cell-phone pulled out in order to give an appearance of distraction.

. . .

I made my way over to Art’s side. “Hey, My name is Jose, how do you know Jason?”

“I met Jason at his old apartment,” He responded. “I’m friends with his old roommate. How about you?”

“Oh uh, I used to work with Jason at Starbucks a long time ago. Ohm, we met there and just stayed good friends. Actually I still work at Starbucks.” I added.

Art nodded with acceptance, “that’s cool, I used to work there a long time ago too.”

“Really, what do you do now?” I asked eagerly.

 Art told me he was a CGI artist. “I make environments, landscapes; things like buildings or houses in backgrounds.”

“That’s awesome.” I said, not really understanding what that involved, but interested to learn what it meant. “How did you end up doing that?”

“Well, I went to school and studied drafting and then got a job working for a production company as an office assistant. I remember seeing all the artists work on programs and create parts of worlds they included into the whole of others, and me asking them if they would teach me how to do that. They told me ‘why don’t you consider this an apprenticeship’ and I did that for three years. Honestly, it was one of the best experiences of my life.”

“That’s really cool man, I don’t think many people get those opportunities.” I remarked.

“No, that’s right. A lot of the guys who taught me went to expensive art schools where they came out with massive loads of debt. All my school got paid by Cal grants and financial aid because I went to a public university. And these guys taught me; I guess I got my education for free.”

“You’re lucky, man.” I said, inspired by his story. He seemed to have found a way in. “So, where are you working now?”

“Actually, I’m between jobs. Environments aren’t in demand at the moment. If you can create dynamics then you’re in demand.” Dynamics, Art explained, “Were anything with fire, imagine buildings crumbling to the ground, or a huge tsunami surging through a city block. Anything that involved dynamics, you get me.”

“I get it,” I said, “destruction’s in demand, not creation.”

That interrupted the conversation, and I felt as if I had said something carelessly, but then he continued it again and asked me what I wanted to do in my career.

“Me, oh, well, I’m studying English at the moment, but man! Your story really inspired me. You know what I really want to do; I want to write. I would love to write for television or make skits or something. I have another semester in my program, but I think I would like to find a job where I can write, closer to the city.” The city of industry, I thought to myself.

“Man, stay diligent, you will make something happen.” Art said encouragingly. I smiled and looked down, relieved.  We talked some more about his life and I discovered how he met his wife, and from there I gathered that he knew more about beer than I ever would. I then went to the kitchen and clicked open another Bud Light.

. . .

I made my way back up to the balcony. Jason was there, smoking a cigarette. “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m lost, where’s the bathroom?” I asked back.

“Downstairs, come on, let me introduce you to some friends I want you to meet.” We walked back down and Jason kept telling everyone I was a writer the whole way. “Hey Dylan, David, I want you to meet Jose, he’s a writer too. Dylan and David have their own production company.”

“Hey, how you guys doin?” I said as I shook their hands, “I’m not a writer, don’t listen to Jason,” I said embarrassed, “I just take some English classes and now Jason is spreading this rumor.”

Jason was already walking away before I could ask him to support me. So I was left with the uncomfortable silence of what I had said.

“Well you must write for your English classes?” Dylan said

“Well yeah, I do, but I can’t sell English papers. I don’t write for money, so I don’t think I can honestly call myself a writer.” I said, less than what I felt.

“Do you want to write?” David asked before taking a sip of his beer.

“Yeah, I guess, I don’t know. You guys are writers. How’d you start your production company?” I asked.

Dylan answered first, “I studied film criticism in school—”

“I know a little about that,” I exclaimed, “I took some film classes as an undergrad. Yeah, things like perspectives and third cinema, right?”

“Yeah, things like that” Dylan said in consent, “After school, I started writing spec scripts for competitions networks like ABC held.”

“Really, ABC has competitions for that?” 

“Oh yeah, every year. I sent one in for Modern Family but it takes a really long time for them to get back at you and I got tired of waiting for them to say ‘thanks, this is great but not what we are looking for,’ so me and David just decided to start our own production company.”

“That’s awesome, and now you guys have been running it for a year, right? What kind of things do you guys do?”

David responded this time, “anything; we write scripts, we create ideas for commercials, we film, we cast actors; really the whole process.”

Enthusiastic from their response, I asked them what their favorite part of the process was with my concealed excitement.

“The best part,” Dylan responded, “has got to be coming up with ideas. Sometimes you have these really great ideas for projects but the budget can’t afford it, and it sucks, but you find ways to make things work with the amount of money you have. I just wish sometimes I had more money to spend on ideas. But it’s all fun; everything is always a creative search for some solution in order to produce an even bigger idea.”

David nodded. “We always have to search for something under budget, but, hey, it’s what we like to do.” He continued, “and if anything, I have my day job.”

“Do you really have another job?” I asked, impressed that he could do this as well as work somewhere else.

“Yeah,” David said, “I work as a site coordinator for another production company. I find out where I can get permits in order to shot locations. It’s a pain, I swear, it’s never ‘can I shot here,’ ‘oh yeah, sure.’ instead it’s always ‘I want this in exchange for that,’ ‘Okay, but I want this included as well then,’ and then back and forth and I’m the middle man between the production company and the owners of where we want to shot.”

“Sounds frustrating,” I said.

“It is most of the time, but it’s a good job. So what do you do?”

“Me? I’m in school right now . . . Ohm; I’m also taking acting classes. I guess that is another passion I have.” I continued on with a new thought in mind, “You know, I think I want to be an actor.” I said. I thought to myself, where did this come from? I had taken an acting class last semester and was enrolled to take another the next, and I was really interested in acting as an art, but why share this with Dylan and David? They looked at me surprised as much as I was by my answer. “I have fun when I do it,” I said. “But I’m still in school, so I have some time to decide.”

They smiled but didn’t comment to my response. I knew why: I hadn’t given them a real answer yet. I had neither committed to being a writer nor an actor. Instead I had only expressed interest in both, and with such sudden transition in thought that my story was losing its plausibility. What would I say to myself with the answer I gave? I felt foolish, but what could I say, I was improvising on the spot and had to follow the direction the story was taking. Before I had more time to think about it, Dylan and David’s friends joined them and we talked about more general topics. Once again I felt relieved as the attention was drawing away from me and I was becoming part of the ambiance again. I then went back to the kitchen and clicked open another Bud Light.

. . .

I found Jason again by the Kitchen island and cheered with him as we took a pumpkin flavored shot. One of Jason’s friends who I had not yet met had just finished making a whole pitcher full of this pumpkin drink in order to celebrate the occasion that the party was between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They were now distributing the pitcher into shot glasses and lining the bleached brown milk towards the edge of the counter. We all toasted to the festive ambiance of the party, and as I tasted the sweet-spiced cream I took a moment to look at the shot glass and enjoy the novelty of the drink. That is all it was, the novelty of a moment and I felt caught up in it.

Kristin joined us. Jason introduced her as his date, and I congratulated the young couple before I began my prying questions into how they met.

Jason smirked at Kristin, “You handle this one,” and left to greet some new friends who just came in.

“I met Jason at a wedding reception. I actually wasn’t allowed to talk to him. I was with my brother and he can be really overprotective, but Jason kept insisting on talking with me, so I gave him my number, and we started hanging out.”

“Cool, and how long you guy’s been dating?”

“Oh, about three months now.” She said sincerely.

We chattered about the apartment and how cold it could get at night among other things in order to establish a basis for more earnest conversation. I asked her where she worked.

“I work for a wine distributor as a scheduler. I handle setting up all their events and promotions. It’s really fun but I’m thinking about going back to school.”

“Really, what do you want to study?”

“Well, I either want to go back and get a Masters in Communications or Marketing, but I don’t know which I want to pursue more. Sometimes I like one more then the other, but then it changes, you know.”

“I can relate,” I said.

“What do you do?” She asked interested in my response.

“Well I’m actually in school at the moment. I am getting my Masters in English and I work part-time at Starbucks and part-time for this program for the Long Beach Unified School district that helps high school students learn pre-employment skills. I teach lessons one-on-one, with groups, and even to a classroom once. It’s really fun and I like the work.”

“So do you want to become a teacher?”

“Yeah, my plan is when I complete this program to enroll into a single-subject teaching credential and teach English. But you know what I really want to do? I would love to work at a community college, I don’t care what I teach, but somehow I feel I would like working at that level.”

“Oh yeah, and that’s where many students need the most support. I remember it was my professors who really helped me and guided me along the way in what I wanted to do. That is part of the reason I’m torn between Communications and Marketing. Some of my favorite teachers who gave me the most encouragement came from my Communications courses, but I also like Marketing as well from what I do at my job.”

“So what are you gonna do?” I asked for both of us.

“You know, I don’t know, but things have always worked out for me. I used to work at Ritz Cameras and that was my only job I ever had before this one. And when I graduated from school I didn’t have much of a plan, I just went to the school’s job link resource and found this job. It just came easily and now I’m here.”

“Yeah, I agree.” I smiled back. Maybe things would just work out for me too, I thought. But ‘maybe’ was an uncertainty; ‘maybe’ was a doubt. I needed to believe in something, specifically in one thing and follow it through.

We talked more about teaching and then digressed into the trivia of the night. Someone was changing the record to a song I had never heard; Art was swigging some IPA I had never seen; Dylan and David where laughing to some comment I would never know; and my Bud light was empty.

. . .

I pissed away half my buzz in the bathroom and came downstairs. People were still talking. New people were coming in and the room was becoming livelier, but I felt momentarily out of the festive mood that everyone seemed to enjoy. As much as I would like to get to know these new people I didn’t want to explain another story about myself that was still untrue. I looked across at all the wonderful people whose stories I did not know, but was tired for tonight of sharing my own stories in exchange for theirs.

Besides, every time I talked about myself I would share the same details, but the direction of every story would take new turns and I’d end up surprised at the destination I found myself at. Who I said I was to Art was not who I was to Dylan and David nor was it the same person who was talking to Kristin. Each voice resembled me and inhabited the same body, but the disconcerting thing about them all was who the real me was. A terrible suspicion entered that I was nothing more than a bunch of lyrics playing their melodies to a distracted room.

I knew those were, in part, stories I told to establish some sort of relationship between others and myself. But they were more than stories because I believed in each of them; they were all a part of me—separate yet united by their common bond to my hopes—but they were still fictions that rested on some future realization of them. They were, for this moment, unrealized desires playing to the sympathies of my audiences.

Each story brought a whole new excitement as a door opening into a new space where we all felt a new discovery emerging out of the chaos of an impromptu moment. But the excitement was tiring me out, and I felt content with telling three stories I believed, so I made my way through the people I met and prepared to leave on a good note.

I said my goodbyes and walked outside to a crisp clear night. I could find myself now in the apartments and I had no trouble getting to my car. My tipsiness was returning as well, to my delight, as if it had lane dormant briefly and kicked back at the excitement of a new surrounding.

I drove home with that mildest of excitement that came from my drinking commingled with my diverse thoughts. As I left the 5 and entered into the 605, I bellowed a heavy yawn that made my eyes close a second too long to make me swerve a little in the lane, but I regained my flow and laughed so quietly I could still hear my thoughts, “oh, the stories we tell,” I told myself. 

—Since September to now.

Left open on a page on my desk where the sun lit upon it every morning and afternoon.

There’s a heading for priorities and a heading for a shopping list on top of it.

—A page filled with lines.

Under Shopping list

—Dashed followed by 3 notebooks

—Dashed followed by books for classes

—Dashed followed by New button Shirt

Then Priorities

God is underlined.

—Another dash and School

An L-shaped line connecting particularly to English classes

—Work

TPP

—Health

Eating well

Sleeping a healthy amount of hours

Exercising through running, workouts

—Saving money

$200 dollars a month

—Deadlines

Foreign Language requirement

Speak with academic advisor

Speak with SSCP English advisor

So after all this time the lines on the page have disappeared. They have been exposed to the light of the sun and the sun has erased the lines,

—But the words remain.

In honor of Movember, a movement that appropriates the month of November with the growth of mustaches in order to raise awareness for prostate cancer and men’s health issues, I thought I would raise awareness to some of the experiences of growing a mustache.

Besides growing a mustache for a cause, as if that is the only reason, having a mustache offers an individual other benefits as well.

Growing a mustache is also a sure way to attract attention from others.  Before I decided to grow my mustache I asked my female cousin’s advice on the decision. She told me that if a guy with a mustache tried to talk to her then she would ignore him and walk away. At least I’m in a woman’s radar as something to avoid, score. Afterwards when the first sproutlings of my growing mustache began forming in my otherwise bare face, I received many strange and long looks from people I met. One friend went so far as to get inside his car and drive away after seeing me with my mustache for the first time. He came back, but things were never the same. . .

So far the attention as been negative, but that’s only in the beginning stages. After you pass the stage of creepiness and ridicule, losing some friends along the way and scaring off some women and their children, things improve. These initial experiences humble you to an awareness of others. Feeling the sense of difference you portray with a mustache makes you aware of a few things as a result of these first experiences:

First, your mustache is an individual choice that exposes the bland regulating guidelines of appearance that some people use to judge who is acceptable and who should be avoided. Furthermore, realizing this, you begin to notice the individualism in others beyond these regulating functions. You are able to notice difference and diversity and embrace it because your difference resembles the differences of others that otherwise get ignored because of conventional standards of appearance.

Furthermore, once you embrace your mustache and your individual difference, it starts becoming a part of you and you begin getting compliments for it. I met a group of guys at Sharkeez in Huntington Beach and one of them told me, “man, I like your mustache, it’s brash.” Most of the time I am the opposite of brash: reserved, cautious, and quiet. But when I started thinking about this compliment I became aware of the fact that I was appearing bolder, more confident, and that it opened up the potential for me to let go of hesitations. I had to in order to accept the early hypnotic looks I seemed to arouse in that beginning stage.

Growing this mustache has made me more confident and expressive around others. But I can’t say it was only the mustache, it was the awareness having the mustache caused inside me that inspired these realizations.

In this month of awareness I want to invite you all to grow your own mustache, whether it is a literal one or through some other individual action, in order to raise awareness of yourself, and even if you cannot grow a mustache there is also No-Shave-November, a similar movement in which you don’t shave any hair in your body but instead allow all your natural difference to grow and flourish.

In this way we can all raise awareness of the issues that otherwise get ignored most of the time but that seem to affect us all.

Simply answer the following question:

Let’s assume you only have three categories to choose from in a romantic partner. From these three categories you can only choose two. Select two of the following for a partner:

A.) Attractive

B.) Intelligent

C.) Nice

and e-mail your answer with a way to get in contact with you to Ablogideas@gmail.com

I am looking for serious participants who want to be a part of a documentary.

Research on sexual attraction is guided by social evolutionary theory that provides motives for the way men and women choose partners. This evolutionary theory provides a basis for researchers to understand how men and women have developed socially predetermined potentialities in response to mate selection. Just to share what assumptions have developed in response to social evolutionary theory, allow me to quote from the last article I read, “Sexual Attractiveness: Sex Differences in Assessment and Criteria”:

Women’s emotional-perceptual mechanisms motivate them to seek out and detect partners’ ability and willingness to invest, to evaluate the quality of investment, and to counteract behavior that interferes with their quest for investment.

Men’s emotional-perceptual mechanisms motivate them to copulate with a variety of nubile partners, to spread investments among several individuals in order to realize this goal, and to evaluate coital acceptability largely on the basis of physical attributes.  (172)

Investment in this context means the investment in raising a child. The assumptions that social evolutionary theory seem to be making is that women, since they have to carry the burden of raising a child, seek potential partners that will remain loyal and faithful to them in order to share this labor.

For men, their investment depends on producing offspring with a variety of different partners in order that their reproductive familial line has more opportunities for success. The fact that men choose partners largely on the basis of physical attributes has been described in the articles I have read as relating to women’s fecund and fertile health, and observing physical attributes as signs of either healthy or unhealthy markers of women’s ability to conceive.

From this social evolutionary view of men and women, both their investments seem to be at odds with each other in that women seek a partner to remain exclusive with them, while men seek many partners to increase their opportunities for reproductive success.

And yet we compromise and I find many couples live happy together as family units. I do not know how much influence these predetermined potentialities have among us; for some the extent may be greater while for others this investment may not factor in their decisions in choosing a partner. However, I thought it worth considering when making a choice as to why we are attracted to others.

Based on my readings, I think it makes more sense to say that both of these types of investments are in all of us to different degrees. With that consideration, I think it is possible to re-assess our needs in a partner and to seek people we really want to be with.

But what remains to be answered are the reasons we seek partners. I think it would be a worthwhile question to ask why you want to be in a romantic relationship with a certain person. If you are already in a relationship, what makes you most happy to be with that person? If there is someone you want to be in a relationship with, what will make you happy by being with that person?

Leave a comment if you wish to answer this question. I would love to hear your response.

Townsend, John Marshall., Timothy Wasserman. “Sexual Attractiveness: Sex Differences in Assessment and Criteria” Evolution and Human Behavior 19 (1998): 171-191. Print.

At the time I considered how I felt about this girl in light of her decision. I had gotten the opportunity to know her and realized that she was a very nice and sweet person, and that she had a compassionate spirit towards others, especially manatees. Now that last comment may sound somewhat out of context in light of the situation I found myself in, but that benign quality in her couldn’t let me judge her.

This was taking place as we were driving in her black mid-90’s corolla, and I was very quiet as I thought about the right words to say to her. In my thoughts, the only thing I wanted to tell her was that I didn’t see this as an issue, and that I didn’t want to judge her for what she did, even though my opinions on the matter have always been complicated. In light of the situation she was in and on the choices she had to make, I could never understand or condemn her based on any past decision.

But I didn’t know how to express those thoughts to her. I kept looking around the crumpled wrappers and plush stuff animals she had scattered in her car in order to occupy my attention. However, the drive was becoming very silent and I felt I should say something.

So I told her what I felt; that I could never judge her, it was never my place. Then I said that I would not hold that against her if what was going on between us became serious. She looked at me with a slow turn of her head and a brief smile. We had just arrived at a jewelry shop she wanted to look inside as this happened so I waited as she concentrated and parked.

When we got out of the car, she came up to me and gave me a very motherly hug, the kind that wraps around you, pulls you in close, and soothes you with her arms. I didn’t know if I was the one that needed it. That was another gesture I couldn’t understand at the time. When we let go, she tried to thank me, but I told her there was nothing to thank. There was nothing to judge, and nothing to forgive.

But that instance made he wonder why she even felt it necessary to bring up. The conclusion I have come up with is that this was very important to her and it was something that she held on to because she was uncertain about how she felt about it. I think the situation she found herself in was one in which she made a decision that she questioned whether she was right about. And as much as anyone can abstract the situation and look at as objective as possible, to personally experience it would be something else; something less defined by sets of morals and what one believes as good or evil.

Yet in light of her choices and herself, she was the one judging herself for this. I feel that her questioning me was part of an uncertainty within herself about this as she sought the opinions of others to guide this decision. This seems relevant to the fact that in part all of our actions are based in comparison to our relationship with others. Questions like ‘how is this person going to feel about me when I tell them this’ permeate through our minds.

I have come to conclude— if this was uncertainty on her part— the only thing that could resolve this is if she forgave herself and no longer held this against herself. That’s a process easier said than done, but not impossible.

That’s why I thought about her today. I think there are things that I have to forgive myself about. The reason this is entitled as an excerpt to something still unwritten is because I want to discuss things I feel uncertain about in my choices. And although I feel the fear of sharing myself in such intimate detail, I think sharing these things will be a necessary part of my process of forgiving myself about things I feel unsure of.  That is how I understand what she told me, and that is what I would like you all to understand by what I will tell you.

Silly. Adj., N., and Adv.

1. Deserving of pity, compassion, or sympathy
2. Weak, feeble, frail; insignificant, trifling
3. Unlearned, unsophisticated, simple, rustic, ignorant
4. Weak or deficient in intellect; feeble-minded, imbecile
5. Lacking in judgment or common sense; foolish, senseless, empty-head

How insulting! My friends have been calling me silly all this time and I thought it was a form of endearment. Now I know they have been pitying my ignorant and weak mind or thought of my judgment as senseless and empty-headed.

But Silly derives from the word Seely. Adj.

1. Happy, blissful; fortunate, lucky, well-omened, auspicious
2. Spiritually blessed, enjoying the blessing of God
3. Pious, holy, good
4. Innocent, harmless. Often as an expression of compassion for persons or animals suffering undeservedly
5. Insignificant, trifling; mean, poor; feeble

Could my friends be referring to these definitions when they call me silly? No, I’m not that simple-minded.

I think the term Silly is used under the context when one is referring to someone’s ridiculous and playful character, whether at some idea they share or at their behavior at the moment. What is interesting is how the word Silly progresses from the word Seely.

Seely refers to being innocent and good. As the definitions of Seely progress over time they become associated to showing compassion to one who is innocent but suffers undeservedly; from there the definitions move to insignificant and trifling, moving the feelings from compassion towards blame on the part of the person who is Seely, giving the impression that there is a progression from being an innocent and good person or thing, towards being pitied for suffering for this goodness, and then towards blaming a person for their goodness and innocent nature.

Am I to conclude that my friends are referring to me and my ideas as naïve, and blaming me for thinking silly notions as a way of correcting me from behaving in a way that might cause me to suffer because of these ideas?

That would be too extreme of me to assume as well. I think I still believe the term to be a form of endearment and teasing from my friends when I begin one of my ridiculous and joking debates, such as this one here. In part I know I am being silly to take this debate any further or even to dedicate a post to the word Silly. However, I enjoy using the word, and when I discovered it in the dictionary I seriously questioned if I was using it appropriately towards others. My concern was not really with any negative opinions of my friends. If they have any they would tell me, I hope?

The interesting aspect of Silly’s etymology is that it seems long ago it once had a positive meaning and then evolved to become a parody of itself. I prefer the older meaning to its current use. Today’s definition has a negative definition and is used in my experience when a friend playfully wants me to stop acting ridiculous. I now feel that I may even be taking a leap of faith in assuming that their intentions when they use the word towards me are a term of endearment. I suppose with the slippery context of words and intentions of people when they used them, whether consciously or unconsciously, we should take some time to respect the importance of the meanings of some of our words. They are serious.

However, what I found most important is what three values have remained constant throughout 50 years of American culture. I looked at the top three values for each year data was taken and discovered that the first ranked value that both sexes chose was Mutual Attraction and Love.

As for the second and third most important values in mate preference, those fluctuated between Emotional stability and maturity, and Dependable character.

It makes sense that these three values are most important for a mate in a long-term relationship. I suppose without any one of these how could one find security in a mate’s commitment. And although these values seem modest compared to other items on the list like Good looks, Education and intelligence, or Sociability, they lend themselves to a more basic need, that of our security. Knowing you can have everything in a mate but always worrying you could lose that person would never bring true peace.

Perhaps the most important need we have in someone we love is that they love us in return, that they are considerate enough to understand us, and that we can depend on them. It seems these qualities are universal that we can find them in all of us, but I think the task should be more concentrated and begin in ourselves becoming more like these values instead of looking for these values in others.

Buss, David M. et al. “A Half Century of Mate Preferences: The Cultural Evolution of Values.” Journal of Marriage and Family 63.2 (2001): 491-503.

The article used an evolutionary approach to discuss the idea of why men fall in love first more often than women. The reasoning behind the idea was that romantic love serves two purposes:

1) It makes one feel committed to one’s beloved

2) It signals this commitment to the beloved

The article held the view that over the course of the nature of men and women’s love relationships in society, women have evolved to become “skeptical of men’s commitment, so that men have evolved to fall in love first, in order to show their commitment to women.”

This may be the unconscious reason why men are more prone to saying they have fallen in love with someone they have only met or seen for the first time. Another reason for this propensity to falling in love is that if someone highly values physical attractiveness (and I admit a majority of men do) then it is easier for them to fall in love. The article states, “Physical attractiveness is an easily observable attribute. Individuals of either sex who value it more highly can more quickly assess partner desirability.”

Then it does seem possible to fall in love at first sight, if you are a man who values physical attractiveness. The statement comes out shallow and sexist, but this is not accurate for me to say. The article makes it clear that men do tend to value physical attractiveness and that makes it easier for them to fall in love, but also that this feeling of falling in love is connected with the desire to be committed to their beloved as well.

This may sound confusing but explaining the thought process will clarify this matter. The article states that there is a distinct difference between love and sexual desire. The article is talking about romantic love as opposed to only sexually desiring someone. “Love promotes pair-bonding with a specific individual, whereas sexual desire motivates sexual approach-related behaviors.” There is some overlap but the influence of sexual desire on love in a person’s propensity to fall in love varies among individuals. The important thing is that men are seeking a commitment in love.

Of course it may be said certain men, in order to satisfy their sexual desires, pretend to feel romantic love and this has lead to skepticism in women, but for anyone who honestly feels romantically in love with another, romantic love signals their commitment to their beloved. “People in love tend to invest tremendous amounts of time and resources into their love interest – time and resources that cannot be given to other potential mates. This costly nature of being in love allows it to function as what Zahavi (1975) called an “honest signal”. Love honestly signals commitment because it is difficult to fake love, so the target individual can be reasonably sure that his or her partner is committed to the relationship.”

It seems falling in love is more complicated then I thought. With this whole skepticism and deception in love, it seems like a person is always on the negative side when they feel they are in love. But I think going through the romantic love feelings and investing the time and energy for that person is a way of testing one’s feelings of romantic love. Regardless of whether the beloved believes you love them or not, if you have really put the time and effort because you love this person then you can prove at least to yourself that you do love that person.

I am not saying that because you love someone and you put effort into loving that person, that they will return that love to you. Their love depends on how they fall in love and whether they want to fall in love with you. The results of the findings showed that “whereas women and men did not differ in either their lifetime number of loves or likelihood of falling in love first, men did report a higher number of “loves at first sight”, as well as a higher percentage of loves that were not reciprocated, indicating men’s greater willingness to fall in love during the courtship stage.”

Men will experience more moments of unrequited love than women because of the way in which they fall in love. The sooner you fall in love the higher the risk of your love being unreciprocated to you. The article is saying that men are willing to fall in love sooner than women in the courtship stage, the logic being that men need less of the context of an established relationship to identify with themselves that they are in love. In evolutionary reasoning, men feel less skepticism.

The view of how women fall in love in the article also depends on how they connect their love with sexual desire. It differs from men because love and sex is more closely connected in women. Women feel more sexual desire in the context of a relationship so that makes it easier for them to fall in love because of the associations that a committed relationship entails. Sexual desire seems to develop along with the progression of the relationship at the same time as the feelings for love develop. This sounds like simple enough reasoning that agrees with the need to adapt to romantic love as a signal to show commitment. The more one feels they can trust the commitment of the other, the easier it is for them to feel romantic love for this person. It seems because of justified skepticism that women don’t fall in love at first sight as much as men do.

Another interesting topic of discussion was the kind of romantic love the article was exploring. The researchers differentiated the love one feels in the beginning of a relationship with the love one feels in a long-term relationship. Long-term love is called committed love and this article is interested in how people experience passionate love. What I found very intriguing was that their sources did not have a simple definition for them to use for their research. They needed to conduct surveys explaining passionate love to participants so they formulated their own definition based on the information from their sources. They defined passionate love as:

A very powerful emotional experience that might include excitement and anxiety, tender feelings and physical attraction toward a particular person, constant thoughts of the person, and an intense desire to be around the person.

These are all honest indicators to me whether a person is in love. If someone needed to test whether a person or themselves were in love (passionately) with another then using this criteria would help.

I should state that this article was a heterosexual study and that the article finishes by stating that they have found only “modest evidence that men fall in love more easily than do women.” But these ideas about romantic love are interesting to explore because our own interest in matters of love. As I continue my own work in progress on this subject I think this adds to my understanding of love and perception.

If you want to read the article send me an e-mail and I can send you a copy or you can find the article through the citation.

Galperin, Andrew. Haselton, Martie. “Predictors of How Often and When People Fall in Love.” www.epjournal.net 8.1 (2010): 5-28