Costume Party

Carolyn Burnham: Are you trying to look unattractive?
Jane Burnham: Yes.
Carolyn Burnham: Well, congratulations. You've succeeded admirably.

- American Beauty (1999)

A thin shirtless guy sat leaning against the wall, swaying back and forth to the pulsing music emanating from inside the buildling. I glance at Alex and give him a look of uneasiness. His face is glowing blue from the giant neon sign located above us that reads The Saint-- an intentionally ironic title for a gay club. He smirks back. Somewhere between having a drink with Alex at a restaurant and standing in line amongst men dressed like women, Alex had convinced me to join him and his friend Laura at The Saint.

We shuffle into the building and I am suddenly overcome with the powerful stench of cigarrette smoke. To the right is a billiards table and to the front is an unoccupied bar. "This is normal", I thought. I'm not exactly sure what I expected though...maybe people dressed in rainbow flags throwing glitter in my face upon entering? Alex has to pee so we head straight for the bathrooms. I'm standing in a darkened hallway outside the restrooms and texting "help me" to Brittany when I realize how suspicious I probably look loitering in a shadowy corner of a gay club. I quickly move away when Alex appears again.

I follow him and Laura into the main room of the club where a small woman with a microphone and unusually manly voice begs the crowd for male volunteers to join her/him on stage. This is when I almost crap my pants. Alex keeps moving amongst the crowd and waving for me to follow, certainly attracting attention to ourselves. I am terrified that she/he will see me and call me to the stage where I will surely be humiliated. Thankfully I am undetected and thus begins a dance-off between about five different men. The winner turns out to be a chunky straight guy with glasses who was clearly drug to the club by his excited girlfriend.

After the show the music starts and we dance like crazy assholes. I'm certain that if I had just flailed my arms in the air and kicked my feet while screaming, I still would have been dancing better than most of the people in that club. Alex and I have fun mocking the dancers around us. Laura is impressed with my ability to "walk it out" and "pop lock and drop it". As the night wore on, Alex and I sit to take a dance break only to be approached by our old friend from high school, Nick. Nick is gay and has come to The Saint with his gay posse; one of which includes a drunk Latin transexual. I recognize her as the transexual whose blonde wig fell off, exposing her wig cap not ten minutes earlier. Alex and Nick catch up by themselves and exchange phone numbers on the dance floor while I sit and catch my breathe. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I see someone barging through the dancing crowd towards Alex and Nick. It is Latin tranny and she is angry! She stumbles through the crowd in her stilettos, boobs jiggling, arms thrashing until she reaches Alex and knocks his cell phone right out of his hand while shrieking something indiscernible!

Now, I pride myself on being a fairly unshockable person. I've seen a lot of crazy shit in my life, but witnessing a drunk tranny attack your best friend with fake nails has to top my list of craziest shit ever. This is too good.

Alex inevitably breaks up the catfight and we are able to carry on with our dancing. Laura and Alex take advantage of the fact that I am the self-appointed designated driver of the night by drinking themselves into a dazed bliss. Because of this, Laura decides that I should dance with one of the drag queens roaming the dance floor. The drag queen she shoves me toward is truly daunting. Her homemade boots are close to fifteen inches off of the floor and shrouded in white fur, making her at least seven feet tall. She wears a Hello Kitty tank top, short shorts, a tiny Hello Kitty doll adhered to her ass, and a long yellow wig that sticks to her glittered face. I do most of the dancing since she is only able to take tiny half-inch steps in her boots. When I turn away from her she begins to ferociously grind her taped-down crotch against my back. This is the second time I almost crapped my pants. Having a seven foot drag queen grind her penis against your back is not something I would normally do sober. Alex and Laura are clearly amused. I am not.

Before dropping Alex off at his house he asks, "So did you have fun?" I replayed all the events of the night in my head: looking like a pervert in the bathroom hallway, being scared that I might have to participate in a dance-off, watching Alex get attacked by Latin tranny, and being molested by a seven foot man/woman with a bad wig. "Fuck yeah I did", I respond.

Enjoy the pictures:

Can someone please tell me why I'm single?


Glamour shots


The blonde wig was a purchase I made at Party City for a short film I shot a couple days ago with my sister. Probably the best $12 I've spent in a while.


This is Kimberly's impression of our sister Laura.


Oh god.


I think this should be Kimberly's facebook profile photo.


Hailing a cab.


Laters for now.

Bite My Tongue

Victor: I no longer know who I am and I feel like the ghost of a total stranger.

- The Rules of Attraction (2002)


We exited a street called "Slaughter Lane". Perhaps I could have interpreted the ominous street name as a sign to keep driving, but we exited regardless to satisfy our insatiable hunger for pornography. Mary, Brittany, Danté and I were driving home from spending the afternoon in Austin, Texas. On any road trip I identify my location by surrounding landmarks. One of them includes an Adult Video Megaplex located just off the highway outside Austin. Half joking, I suggested we make a pit stop at the store. This was met with an enthusiastic cheer from Mary in the backseat.

So there we were two minutes later sitting in a darkened parking lot in front of the disreputable store that suspiciously had no windows. It was unexpectedly vacant inside, with the exception of a couple that appeared to have come straight from the Jerry Springer stage. The girls went straight for the wall of dildos while I browsed through some DVDs with vulgar cover-art making sure I hid my intense curiosity by fake laughing loudly every few seconds. Just then, I glanced up briefly from the shelves of endless nakedness only to catch sight of an old friend from high school! I froze for a few seconds while contemplating whether or not to say hello or to run and cower inside a private viewing room. "Max Rodriguez?" He looked up. "Patrick!" He was surprisingly comfortable catching up with an old friend in a porn store. I was as if we were catching up in the middle of a Christian bookstore. I talked to him for a brief moment while trying desperately to ignore the fact that we were surrounded by double penetration DVDs and rubber fists. "Well, I hope I don't see you buy anything," he said. "I had my eyes on those ass beads," I responded. (I'm glad I'm able to find humor under unusual circumstances.) My friends and I eventually became bored and immune to the graphic porn and decided to wrap things up. As we were leaving, the door to a private viewing room opened and a small, sweaty man sauntered out. I knew exactly what he was doing in that room. Looking back, I'm relieved that I chose to greet Max instead of hiding in that private viewing room.

Things have been going really well in San Antonio. I've seen more of my friends than usual and I've yet to tire of them. I've been busying myself with celebrating 21st birthdays, meeting friends for a drink, and spending way too much money. At the end of July I'm heading back to Denton to move out of my current apartment. I was able to convince my father that I can move out by myself, so this will be a much-needed break from my sometimes over-bearing family. I'll keep taking pictures and will update my blog sooner than later. For now, enjoy the pictures from the past week.

Kim's friend Sarah babysits a set of triplets. They've learned to mimic her quite well.


Danté takes a break from shopping at IKEA to munch on a piece of cake.


Brittany listens as Mary proclaims her love for pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches.


Basking in our own filth in the summer heat outside of Hula Hut in Austin.


Food.


Walking back to the car. Mary is hot.


A strange dog wandered into our backyard the other day. I thought maybe it was a dead relative reincarnated, but it turned out to be the dog from two houses down that escaped. The former would have been much more interesting. Moses was afraid.


Kristen turns 21 and we celebrate with drinks at Stonewerks.




Laters for now.

Beard

Paul Denton: Sometimes I'm amazed at the shit that spills out of my mouth.

- The Rules of Attraction (2002)

I awoke from a nap to a relentless thumping in my head. I've always despised naps. They make me feel wasteful and disgusting. It took a few seconds to come to and realize that someone was pounding at my door. I sprung out of bed and threw on a t-shirt and dirty basketball shorts. At the door were two over-enthusiastic blonde women sent to inspect my apartment for damage. I am wary of letting strange people in my house. Still dizzy from my hasty awakening, I staggered around the living room and tried to clean up around them as much as possible so that the women didn't get the impression that I intended for them to see my apartment resembling a disaster zone. They pretended to ignore the mess and complimented my art work on the wall. I walked back to my room and pretended to read a book at my computer when they entered my room and continued to search for damage. I have nothing to hide, but the presence of some strange person in my home made me think, "Do I have something embarassing to hide?" And of course, as the women made their way into my bathroom, I realized that in the middle of my nap I had peed and forgotten to flush in my sluggish stupor. I glanced in their direction just in time to catch one of the inspectors glancing down at the toilet and curling her lip. Humiliation. I turned my head, mortified. They left soon after and I immediately flushed the toilet thinking, "It could have been doody in the toilet. Thank God."

I visited San Antonio this past weekend to celebrate my 21st birthday just in time to see my parents off on their ump-teenth Carribean cruise. They make it a sort of annual event each year and drag my poor grandmother along each time. This year she will be wheelchair-bound due to a bad knee. My mom called yesterday from St. Thomas and informed me that, while helping my grandmother in her wheelchair, stepped off a curb the wrong way and twisted both of her ankles. So now she too wil be wheelchair-bound. I can see them now: My dad in his expensive Tommy Bahama shirt and ridiculous hat struggling to push my mother in a wheelchair while she carries a piña colada in one hand and a camera in the other.

Since they would be out of town for most of my birthday weekend, my mother was understandably apprehensive about the idea of me drinking. She must have forgotten that I've been doing this since high school...except instead of "drinking", I would say "spending the night at Alex's house." She threw at me many scenarios including my friends driving home and dying in horrible car wrecks, and me getting alcohol poisoning. But alas, there was no party and no need for her to worry. I was too exhausted from going out the night of my birthday. Here are a handful of photos from the weekend:

I guess it was understood that on midnight of my birthday my friends had to take me out to my first bar. Loud heavy metal music and drunk horny white people really aren't my scene, but I made a good time out of it by owning Mary in a game of darts. (That is Mary's brother in the second photo)



My mom thought it would be fun to take me to The Palm for my birthday dinner. Kimberly and I had more fun playing with the lobsters than eating them. Talk about overrated food.


Waiting for the valet. I like my mom's expression here.


Maybe Kimberly shouldn't have had a glass of wine at dinner.


Outside a club on my birthday. Alex looks stoned, but he just doesn't know how to keep his eyes open during a flash.


Waiting in line sucks. Although we made it fun by judging people in line.


It had to have been 100 degrees in this bitch.


Alex, Me, Danté, Brittany, Ross, Mary.


My bests and I at a birthday dinner.


It's disgusting how much I love Mary.


Kristen and Darren made it to dinner...even after getting into a hit and run car accident early in the day. I felt really bad for them.


Don't let Kimberly near a camera after she's had a margarita.


Laters for now!