Alberto Castillo's Blog

Original - “The Last Judgment” by Jan Van Eyck

We are flying high over the city of Los Angeles, California. It’s nighttime. We glide into the SoFi Stadium, where a constant cacophony of over 70,000 people screaming envelops the entire movie theatre, shaking my senses. I can’t tell if the bulk of the screaming is coming from inside the film or from the late-30s woman sitting next to me. A massive screen on an equally massive stage displays a clock counting down “10… 9… 8…” I can feel the air getting hotter—my face too!

When the clock hits 1, its big hand stretches outward and pulls us in. Blackness.

Colored rectangles slide through the screen, depicting miniature dioramas. At the same time, a bunch of audio nuggets spewing cryptic quotes fight against the screams for the sensory spotlight. In the middle of the screen, a white rectangle of light opens. “It’s been a long time coming,” can be subtly heard as if emanating from a heavenly female voice up in the sky.

A flowing piece of fabric appears inside the white rectangle of light and elegantly shoots up. It’s actually a person. They are holding their arms up while holding this massive, shell-like, pink and purple…folding fan (?), which dwarves the person on a one to three ratio. The entity starts walking followed by four equal shell-looking creatures behind. They are slowly fanning their fabrics back and forth while creating a circle in the middle of the stage—like a coven of purple-pink oysters. The projected dioramas on the screen behind start closing in to form what looks like a multicolored dollhouse.

The screaming grows louder and suddenly stops as the shell creatures swiftly converge their fabrics down in the middle of the stage, forming a cocoon. Something brews inside my chest as if I’m about to sneeze, cry, climax, or scream. Then, as if deep inside my head, I hear “My name is Taylor, and I was born on nineteen-eighty-nine.”

BOOM!

The shells shoot up, breaking off the cocoon. The screaming resumes and the woman sitting next to me grabs and squeezes my arm in surprise. Taylor Swift appears onstage wearing a sparkly dress as if made out of diamonds. She sings into the mic: “It’s been a long time coming but…”

Welcome to The Eras Tour… Movie.

Back in 2023, I caught the “Tay-bug”, as people called it (no one called it like that). How could I not? On one hand, I was constantly bombarded on TikTok with clips of her massive, record-breaking tour, and on the other, Taylor Swift was CHURNING out music like it was her business (it is). The Midnights album, the Deluxe version, the extended edition, the director’s cut, the producer’s cut, the cut with two guitars instead of three, the Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) album, the Speak Now Acoustic, the Speak Now Autistic, the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) album. You get the gist.

So, for a spell there, I became a swiftie. I was a fan of the much-lauded Taylor Swift. And it was fun! Well, mostly fun.

I call it a spell because it came on fast and vanished just as quickly. I can tell you exactly when it started: when Spotify shuffled her song, “The Last Great American Dynasty”, into my workout mix. (Why did this lyrical, folksy song would relate to a high-intensity workout? I’m not sure.) I can tell you when it peaked: when my brother played “Love Story” from Fearless (Taylor’s Version) as we drove back from a day trip to Golden, Colorado, during a visit to Denver. And I can tell you exactly when it ended: that fateful night, December 7th, 2023.

The following story I started writing a week after.

Listen, I’m not going to sit here and pretend like Taylor Swift isn’t set to be my Spotify-Wrapped top artist of 2023. Like I wasn’t GUTTED when me and my friends failed to get tickets for her Eras Tour concert in Vancouver. And I’m also not gonna sit here and pretend like I don’t think Taylor Swift is the embodiment of American, late-stage capitalism and influencer culture. Like I don’t know her 37 variant vinyls per new album and her accompanying nylon-and-polyester merch prey on the vulnerabilities of her young fanbase. Like her whole logistics machine actually isn’t bad for smaller artists and the freaking environment. Like her practices aren’t really art-focused and more business-focused. And like she isn’t ultimately a fucking billionaire that carefully chooses when to barely take a political stance if, and only if, the interests of her machine won’t be affected.

Those are two separate topics from what is going to happen here.

With that out of the way, the other night I got high and went to the cinema to watch he Eras Tour movie.

As I’m sure is the same for a lot of people my age, growing up I knew of Taylor Swift. I wasn’t too into her music though, equating it as country-lite and then pop for teenage girls—music genres I usually avoid. A couple of singles were catchy enough, but nothing too interesting to me. That is until the COVID-19 pandemic when she released Folklore.

What an AMAZING album.

I know, I know. You indie-Swedish-grunge-music-erudites are already checking out of this story because of that last sentence. I’m a simple person, alright? I like my U2; I like my The Killers; and now I like my Folklore by T-Swift. Life is depressing enough as it is to be listening to other depressing, struggling artists with Zodiac-Killer-level of lyric decryption. I like my lyrics clear, basic, and relatable. I’m a hoe for story-songs like “Jolene”, “Hotel California”, and—yes—”The Last Great American Dynasty”.

Folklore was a departure from what I assumed Taylor Swift was capable of. Now, after revisiting some of her other albums like Red or 1989, I can see the breadcrumb trail leading to what I found on Folklore, but it wasn’t clear for me at the time I first heard her music, back in the early 2010s. For me, the album was a massive shift. Here I was thinking Taylor wrote songs for 12 year-old girls experiencing their first crush (I’m not that wrong, though) and I was suddenly hit with songs like “Seven” or “Mad Woman” that explored complex themes like emotional abuse and internalized misogyny all packaged in a folky, woods-ey vibes album that sent this Mexican city-boy living in sepia-tone Mexico City straight into the Appalachia or the Pacific Northwest. Added to the timing of its release, the COVID-19 pandemic, the album gave me an escape from my concrete confinement to the freedom and mysteries of the woods. It was so delightful.

So anyway, by the time the history-making, industry-breaking, teenage-hypnotizing Eras Tour happened, I got swept by the glittering wave. I had heard Folklore to a sickening degree, and it managed to make me go back and reevaluate her past discography with the aid of Taylor re-releasing her old music via her “Taylor’s Version” series of albums. (In a short span of time, she re-recorded her first albums with slightly refreshed arrangements and bonus tracks on account of a legal dispute with her former management label.)

So, the months went by after the start of the Eras Tour on March 17, 2023. I kept watching the TikToks, listening to the news, and seething with envy over my friends who happened to live in cities where the tour visited and got tickets to experience this The Beatles level of craze. And when this incarnate corporation of a woman decided to open up dates for Vancouver, BC, where I’m living at the moment, it was ON.

Alas, even though my friends and I tried to get tickets via Ticketmaster’s lottery system, we failed. And as much as I’d love to see Taylor Swift live, I will not pay the 3k and up prices for tickets. I’m just a poor peasant breaking my back for the shareholders on top. I’m also ultimately not a die-hard fan, missing out on this musical experience is not a big problem. Whatever. Life goes on. (Unless you are selling fairly-priced tickets. In that case, please contact me immediately.)

Then this past November the concert was released in theatres to, again, record-breaking numbers. But sitting my old-ass down inside a movie theatre to watch a 3-hour concert kinda didn’t make sense to me. Also, I heard the stories of teenage Swifties wreaking havoc inside AMC cinemas in the US and I got this thing with people not acting accordingly inside movie theatres,

I guess I’m never seeing this woman perform the Eras Tour, I thought.

“Well think again, you idiot,” the universe shot at me, because one night, out of the blue, my friend Michael sent me a text inviting me to join him in watching The Eras Tour Movie at the Rio Theatre on a Thursday night.

It’s on, Taylor!

The Rio Theatre is an independent, historical, one-screen cinema located in East Vancouver. I love this place because they have a wide selection of events catering to most types of audiences. Because it features a stage, you can find live performances such as cabarets, drag shows, stand-up comedy, chill concerts, and the like. In terms of movies, The Rio shows independent films, re-releases old movies, and screens new ones with a slight time delay of a couple of weeks (because of the almost-monopoly that Cineplex has in Canada, they aren’t allowed to screen new movies at the same time as the mainstream cinemas).

I’ve been lucky to be able to see a lot of my all-time favorite movies for the first time in the big screen: Alien, Aliens, Kill Bill Vol.1 & 2, The Terminator 1 & 2, The Abyss, The Royal Tenenbaums, Se7en, The Big Lebowski, Shaun of the Dead, Suspiria, Scream, The Thing, and many more. I love going to the Rio—it’s a vibe.

So, when it came to The Eras Tour Movie, I figured I might as well go see it at the Rio. To support this beloved venue with this wacky event.

I was walking to the theatre that Thursday, December 7th, around 8:40pm. The night was cold, so I was looking forward to getting inside The Rio to warm up. Just as I turned the corner on Broadway Street, where the Rio is located, an idea came into my head: I should get high for this.

At the time, I was still experimenting with THC-infused consumables, and I had gotten myself a cute and tech-y “THC vape pen” that looked like a black USB drive and provided peach-flavored, popcorn-lung enabler. It was so cool, I thought, the fact that it made me look less of a Shaggy from Scooby Doo and more of a Silicon Valley tech bro. Because we all know those last ones are so very cool—the coolest! So, just before I went inside the theatre, I gave the thing a couple of puffs. Delicious! Peach-flavored drug!

I knew it took the thing a couple of minutes to hit, and when it did, it made me go completely stupid. So, I quickly went inside the Rio and beelined to where my friend sat, because if I somehow delayed and started tripping, I was certain I wouldn’t be able to find my way under the veil of darkness of the theatre and would end up sitting on the aisle floor with my back to the screen the whole duration of the film.

I found my friend Michael sitting halfway through a middle row—AKA: perfect theatre seating…

… in any other context.

As soon as I sat and finished our greetings, I felt it. From 0 to 100 I was in a deep state of barely-functioning. My eyelids turned heavy and my grin uncontrollable. Time slowed down. I was ready for Taylor and Taylor was ready for me.

Even in my challenged state of being I quickly confirmed that this wasn’t going to be your regular movie-going experience. Being a former nerd, I’m no stranger to people getting dressed up to go to the theatre. I can’t count all the times I’ve attended movie premieres where fans dress up as a low production quality version of whatever we’re about to see on screen. It’s part of the celebrations. Even I once attempted to dress up, back in 2010, when I went to the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 wearing a knit sweater and a lighting scar on my forehead drawn with a Bic pen. Was I wearing Harry’s iconic glasses at least? No.

Still, It might’ve been the weed, but I was kind of dumbstruck by the outfits inside the Rio that night. It was as if someone had a bowl of Froot Loops and had vomited all over the theatre. Women were wearing outfits I’d see at a quinceañera early-afternoon-party back in 2007 (some even fitted like a 2007 dress, but—hey—no shaming). Most drowned their wrists with DIY-ed bracelets that spelled out words like “Friendship” or “Lover” or just, what I assumed were, its owners’ names. Pastel-colored high heels were matched 50/50 with pastel-colored flat shoes, for the more comfortable-focused individuals. Headbands, chokers, and tiny, shiny handbags completed the looks. And blonde hairdos flowed thanks to the Rio’s 40-year-old AC system. It looked like a blast!

On the flip side, on the best of days, I LOATHE those motherfuckers who are late to the theatre and not only come in and block people’s views while navigating through the rows but also blind people with their phone’s flashlight—arguably, one of the worst human inventions of the 21st century, no one even takes photo pictures with flash. So, when a group of what I statistically could assume were four Caucasian, late-30s women stumbled into our row and sat right next to me, the fuzz they made exacerbated by my state of being felt like I was living the last book of The Bible.

But like a baby on Cocomelon I quickly came out of that funk and shifted focus because I found myself flying over the Los Angeles skyline at night, gliding into the SoFi Stadium…

If you’re out of the loop, I congratulate you, you must be quite employed, and also let me quickly fill you in on the format of this movie/concert/event. This concert called The Eras Tour was Taylor’s way of performing her greatest hits from throughout her career. It was a concert divided in blocks of 4-7 songs each depicting an “Act/Era” (meaning an album) from her career. The full concert was comprised of ten eras totaling 44 songs, which gave it a runtime of three and a half hours. Luckily, and for reasons I can’t comprehend, the movie lasted just two hours and 50 minutes. You know what else has a similar runtime? The Godfather Pt. 1. But that’s neither here nor there, I guess. Back to the show.

It’s been a long time coming, but

It’s you and me

That’s my whole world

They whisper in the hallway,

‘That’s a bad, bad girl.’ (Okay!)

As I explained earlier, the Eras Tour is segmented by blocks of songs from specific Taylor albums called “eras”, the first one of which was the “Lover” era where, you guessed it, she performed songs form her 2018 album Lover. This album follows a very cutesy pink, purple, and fantasy aesthetic, so the stage, costumes, and projections followed the vibe. I guess that explains why we were welcomed by those weird purple conch-people.

I’m not going to explain and describe every “era” that happens during this cinematic event because, for one, I can’t really remember every detail of this 3-hour concert movie; and two, I don’t think you really care. So, I’ll give you the highlights.

I had never seen Taylor Swift perform outside of that documentary/glamping-around-the-fire-pit-video where she performed songs from Folklore with her other rich friends during the pandemic, and I quickly realized something: she doesn’t “perform” that much?

And she doesn’t have to! Let me explain. I am of the opinion that Taylor has three basic elements in her sparky tool-belt:

1 - Consistent, unchallenging music.

I’ve already told you how I’m a sucker for easy and clear lyrics and Taylor definitely fits the bill. I believe the biggest reason why she is so big is that she has managed to be artistically consistent throughout her career. Her lyrics, arrangements, and even her tours are iterations of the same formulas that cater to her main audience. Her music themes do not usually stray away from love, family, reputation, and perception. Her practiced and solid themes, mixed with good (and, again, simple) storytelling, make her music as relatable as accessible. So, a 12-year-old can find the same enjoyment in her songs as a 35-year-old.

2 - A practiced, even image.

Sure, she has been in a few kerfuffles in the past with Kanye West and the Kardashians, but her career and image have remained mostly untouched by time. As much as she wanted in a couple of occasions to portrait herself as a tortured artiste like in her “Reputation Era”, where she released an album depicting songs of mild-anger and defiance, no one has really made a chink in her carefully cured, produced, and protected armor. Threats to her have mostly been of the teen gossip or drama nature at best. And listen, I’m sure these problems are definitely anxiety inducing, we’ve all experienced a version of them through high school, I’m not trying to invalidate them. But I don’t see how “Resilience” is second to “love” in this analysis of her lyrics:

So, what I’m trying to say is this: Taylor has lived a privileged life that has allowed her to create a neutral image of calm, cool-ness, and aspiration that is really attractive to her audience. And as much as she’s tried in a couple of times in the past to portray herself as a struggling character in the likes of Amy Winehouse or Kurt Kobain, the fact is that she has always been a well-off, white, classic American woman that—honestly—is still the mold to follow for a lot of her audience. She has remained like that for all her career, and it has paid off.

3 - Her signature “move”.

She has a single, signature move when she performs that goes as follows:

One step forward, two steps, three—and mid-squat while pointing a finger out.

… If it works, it works. I guess.

So, yeah. In the only experience I’ve seen her perform (The Eras Tour Movie), I got the sense that Taylor Swift doesn’t feel like she quite needs to “perform” in the sense of having complex choreographies or doing crazy stuff on stage. She lets her status of an icon, the hype around her and this tour, and her songs do the work. She stands there, doing her pointing finger thing, sometimes she lets her dancers toss her around as you would a long pillow, and she changes into different outfits. I don’t want to sound like I’m minimizing her doing a 4 hour long show almost every weekend for the past three years. It’s quite a feat! But I found her “live performance” less akin to a Beyonce or a Dua Lipa (post-memes), and more into a topsy-turvy Joan Baez or June Carter.

Anyways, the other thing that I quickly realized was that this was going to be a long show because one of the dark figures that sat to my right and accidentally squeezed my arm at the beginning of the movie started talking to me.

“Are we going up front to dance or what?”

“(This is a movie theatre, strange woman.) Excuse me?”

“Yes,” she continued. “We GOTTA go dance. We just gotta!” She said. Her eyes all glassy, reflecting a dancing number happening on screen.

“Umm, yeah, I’m not sure--listen, to be honest, I’m kinda high right now so I don’t even know where I’m at.”

“Oh! No worries. I’M DRUNK! WHOO!”

“(Oh my god.)”

“Qué pasó?” my friend Michael whispered in my left ear. (He’s Puerto Rican.)

“I don’t kno—digo—esta mujer quiere ir a bailar.”

The following interaction between the drunk woman addressing me in English on my right ear and Michael in Spanish on my left one felt like my currently-compromised motherboard was going to short-circuit. I’m sure my ears started smoking like in one of those cartoons of the 40s.

The show kept going and I started playing this game with my friend where every time a new song would pop on, I’d lean into his ear and say whether I knew this one or no.

“I recognize this song, I think.”

“Oh - yeah. This one’s good,” he’d reply.

…

“I don’t know this one.”

“Umm - ok, yeah. This one is good too.”

In no time, we transitioned from one era to the next and immediately recognized the song “Love Story”. This one is special to me because the first time I really paid attention to it was while on a trip to Denver, CO, back in 2022. The song came on either on the radio like this was 1938 or on the Spotify shuffle while my dad, brother, and myself were driving on the highway back to my uncle Leo’s house. My brother, who usually always wears himself as the dudest of dudes, had his mask slip off when, out of the blue, he said something extremely cheesy like “Wait—don’t change this one. I like it because it tells the story of unreciprocated love” or some shit like that. The three of us had a big laugh. Ever since this song takes me back to that car ride. So, seeing it “live” was a treat.

But from that “Love Story” high I slapped back down like a bag of sweaty briefs because as soon as that performance ended my bladder suddenly was two seconds about to explode.

I quickly glanced over to my left. Michael was enthralled by whatever was happening on screen and next to him was a cadre of Swifties locked in––pupils wide––white-knuckling their armrests. Maybe it was because I was still high, but I can vaguely remember all of them suddenly turning their heads towards me with red eyes like indicating: Don’t even think about it, HETERO-LOOKING CIS MAN!

So that way was a no-go. Right side would be it.

I stood up from my seat while hunching over and proceeded to perform the age-old ritual of “Excuse me. Sorry. Yeah—no. Thank—sorry! Lemme just—oops! Sorry” while trying to get out of that row of seats. During my performance, three things stood out to me. The first one, was that the woman right next to me and her friend to the right were completely blasted, that pre-game was a strong one, I assumed. The second one was that the other two friends sat next to the first pair were enthralled not by the movie, but by themselves, they were whispering energetically and looking at each other while holding hands, completely ignoring the movie. And the third thing is that I stepped on a soft thing on the ground in front of the first pair that made a crunch, but luckily, we were all drunk or high to realize and/or to react.

When I finally got out to the aisle, I wobblily beelined to the back of the theatre and to the foyer for the washroom.

The washrooms at The Rio are genderless which I don’t mind and even champion for on any given day. But on account of my current condition and aided by the fact that they lean closer to a closet rather than a normal facility in terms of square footage, it made my public pee-shyness grow exponentially.

It bears repeating, since this is the whole angle of this story, I was high. This meant a second stretched to 10 minutes. So, the time that I spent standing up, shoulder-to-shoulder with other swifties with our penises out of our pants, trying to make my pee start, felt like half an hour.

“Pee, you fucking idiot,” I kept saying under my breath to my penis. “Please! Just pee!”

45 minutes to an hour later I was finally opening the doors back to the theatre and had the fact that The Rio had only a single screen wasn’t true, I would’ve turned 180 and ran in a panic to my actual showing. The vibes were completely different now. Gone were the pinks and golds of the previous performances. Everything was now dark purple and dark blue. On the screen, and it felt on the whole theatre, a dark mist had come over. We were now, not anymore at the cinema, but inside a dark and scary forest. Black trees loomed over the screen, and a soft, intermittent hum could be heard. Then a demonic “Wait….for…the signal….and I’ll meet….you…after…DARK!!!”

—BLACK.

I am dead. My high-ass slipped on he/she/they-them’s pee at the washroom and broke my neck Millionaire Baby-style on a urinal and now I’m in hell. Obviously not in heaven. THC-vape-pen-users do not go to heaven—THEY GO TO HELL AND NOW I AM HERE IN HELL. HELL!

The screen dimly came back on again to show a group of dark hooded figures holding balls of fire. They appeared walking in line to the front of the screen, making a circle while moving said balls in lyrical motions.

Witches. Demonic witches and demons came to welcome me to hell, I thought. But then a soft guitar riff started playing. “I’m like the water when your ship rolled in that night.”

“Oh - I recognize this one. This’ a good one!” I muttered.

Rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife,

One of the demon witches pulled back their hood to reveal—who would’ve thunk?—Taylor Swift, wearing a golden dress.

Ok—we are safe now, I thought while clutching my non-existent pearls.

I swayed my body back to my seat, jazz hands shaking, to the tune of Taylor’s song “Willow”. I recognized now that we were not in HELL but rather in the “Evermore” era. This was honestly a whacky one, because in this demonic performance Taylor switched her iconic “step, step, step—mid-squat and point out” move for several which I can only describe as “Gollum if he had bangs”. The hooded figures kept making formations via janky/lyrical movements around Taylor while she sang. Again, all very demonic. I feel this wouldn’t have flown back in the 80’s, during the satanic-panic (Or in 2025, with this new administration—AYOOO!). Then for the next song she pulled out a rotten and mossy piano, and then in the next one she had a fancy dinner with a guy?

We never got back to those dark depths during the show. So now I don’t know if all that really happened or were just machinations of an intoxicated mind (mine). I guess it’s now canon that “Willow” is Taylor Swift’s most demonic song. Give it a listen, though. I highly recommend.

After an unquantifiable amount of time, we were out of that wackadoodle era, and we were in the “Red” era. This one was particular for me since its songs are the first ones that came to mind the three or four times I thought about Taylor Swift pre-2020. I was able to recognize them all: “22”, “We are never getting back together”, and “I knew you were trouble”, basically because back in the day people used to create funny video edits with them on the app Vine. (Remember Vine?) So, this era to me exactly represents what I high-level think Taylor Swift music is: songs for girly girls. Which, again, is no sin and anyone can enjoy. Okay?! Sheesh!

Credit where credit is due, this era ends on probably the highlight of the show for me: “All too well (10-minute version)”.

This is Taylor Swift greatest song by a mile. If aliens came to earth and were like “Show us what Taylor Swift is” this song would be the perfect encapsulation of her ethos: a clear, sing-song-ey pop-rock-ey ballad filled with basic storytelling lyrics that includes love and heartbreak, gossipy celebrity drama, resilience and empowerment themes—basically the whole set of angles Taylor has shown throughout her career.

It’s my favorite song of hers. And this performance in particular showed me the elements behind why she has had the spanning career she’s had and why Taylor Swift has become one of the most iconic women of the century.

Like its title suggest, this song lasts ten minutes, and I feel a lot of other performers would have to support this performance with dancers, visuals, or bungee-jumping cables (see Pink!) to try to curb our deep-fried attention spans. But Taylor chooses not to do that. She stands up alone on the stage in front of a mic, acoustic guitar in hand, wearing a coat which looks like made out of a million rubies, spotlight on. And she just sings.

It was hypnotic. Here is a woman that has, via the power of music, became something that seems bigger than human. Like staring directly to the sun, I could feel my eyes water and hurt but I couldn’t stray them away from the screen. The closeups made it seem like the screen of The Rio was an open window and a giantess was on the other side, performing this vulnerable song privately for us. Opening her heart and confiding in us the secret of this rocky and failed relationship she had with actor Jake Gyllenhaal in 2012. Had he’d been sitting in the audience; I feel the trance would’ve made us ravenous baboons out for blood. Jumping on him and tearing his flesh to pieces with nails and teeth. And we would’ve done it gladly and happy just to make Taylor smile again.

Anyway, I was high. Have I stressed that enough during this story?

I didn’t even have time to compose myself after that 10-minute religious experience because after it came the “Folklore” era and THAT IS MY FUCKING JAM, MAN!

This set consisted of seven songs—including the one that radicalized me: “The Last Great American Dynasty”—accompanied by this folky, cabin-in-the-woods vibe. The stage featured a cottage-core house with moss on the roof, where Taylor sat and sang a couple of songs. It was lovely, it was amazing, the house had a working, smoking chimney. Taylor really put her whole puss into this one.

The lovely and soothing set ended with Taylor, dressed in a white gown that made her look like a Victorian pleb, jumping to her death into a pool that had appeared in the middle of the stage. And she hasn’t been seen ever since. Rest in power, queen.

While I was juggling the conflicting emotions between elation of seeing the songs of Folklore being performed and Taylor’s demise, I turned to my right to see what my drunken fellow swifties were up to.

Turns out, in my efforts to pay attention to only and just only overlady Taylor, I had clearly missed some chapters in the lore of the four friends sitting next to me. The couple right next had crashed out as if coming out of a sugar rush and were, still glass-eyed and locked at the screen, slumped and melted over their seats. Face, shiny. Mascara, melted. Batteries, run out.

I kinda get it though, I myself had already started coming out of the THC/CBD haze and into my regular high-IQ self. And started recognizing the damage this three-hour event combined with the historic, 45-year-old seats of The Rio, had been doing to my spine.

The pair sitting right next to the drunk potatoes displayed a more interesting story. What had started as a playful whispering game had devolved into a crying and pointing fingers at each other. They seemed both angry and sad at the same time. I kept trying to figure out via lip-reading what was being said but one of them noticed my curious visage and sent a quick jolt of electricity to my body that forced me to reincorporate back to my business—the one of watching Taylor Swift perform. Did not have time to evaluate whether those were tears shed of joy, sadness, or female rage.

In any case, after Folklore came the “1989” era, which is another one where I recognized most of the songs, particularly “Shake it off”. This song, which became a massive hit, I remember being so annoyed by back in 2014. I believe it’s Taylor’s cheugiest song to date and was aimed at people who made memes about her not being able to dance well. A far cry from the aforementioned Folklore and “All too well”, as you can tell. But an incredibly unpopular opinion, it seemed, if you’d taken a look at the inside of the theatre. Women were up and dancing over their seats and in the aisles. Some were even up and in front of the screen. The scene reminded me of that one from the movie Mean Girls where everyone at the mall is an animal around the watering hole. I figured the smartest move was to be as invisible as possible, so I just made no further eye contact with anyone and stared intently at the screen as if we were watching a regular dramatic film like Kramer vs Kramer or A Marriage Story.

And before we all realized, we were in the last era of The Eras Tour Movie: the “Midnights” era.

This one was the hottest one (in terms of popularity) because it featured songs from the recently released eponymous album. I was happy about it because it was another era that had songs that I recognized like “Lavender Haze”, “Anti-hero”, and “Belleweled”.

At this point, the swifties were onto the fact that this once-in-a-lifetime experience was almost over. Never again would we ever have the chance to relieve our middle school and high school years at our ripe age of mid 30s accompanied by others in our same age bracket. Outside of the theater, rent, bills, kids, social and professional appointments, body aches and health scares, and the ever-growing terror of impending economic and societal collapse awaited. But inside, we were back in an era where the biggest problem we––as a middle-class, conventionally attractive, blonde Caucasian teen-age woman––had was that a boy we liked didn’t like us back. By sharing the illusion created by Taylor Swift’s stories, we were transported to a place where any problem could be solved by the power of believing in yourself and thinking positive. A place where one could dance away any anxieties and frustrations. A place where anyone could achieve happiness by ignoring the “liars and dirty, dirty, cheaps of the world” and by “getting down to this sick beat.”

And you know what? On that cold, fateful night. Yeah—it felt a lot like it.

The last song of the set and the whole show was “Karma”, at that time, the biggest hit of the season. The Rio erupted in energy. Almost everyone was up and dancing. My compatriots that were previously sat to my right had found a new burst of energy and were up on the stage dancing with other swifties. “Come on!” They kept motioning towards me.

I turned to Michael, “Want to dance out this last one?”

“... Yeah - ok! Let’s do it!”

We got up and went over to the front of the theatre with the rest. It felt like everyone inside that theatre was up and dancing. We raised our arms. We shook our butts. We “step, step, step—mid-squat and point” out. Any fear or worry had no place there. Nothing was important other than being there, hand-in-hand with other strange women that had now became family, dancing to Taylor Swift’s “Karma”. Through the corner of my eye, on the screen, I could see Taylor joining in the party, making a single line with her dancers, everyone wearing colorful and sparkly clothes, walking down the Eras Tour stage into The Rio. They were there I can swear by it. I reached my hand over to Taylor. She reached back. As our eyes locked together her body started to shine through her profile until the light consumed her and became a beam brighter than the sun. Our fingers were nearly touching—I could feel the heat emanating from her body—when suddenly—CUT TO BLACK.

Outside, people started pouring out of The Rio into the cold, Canadian December air. Michael and I walked back home. I was already all sobered up.

“That was a surprisingly neat time,” I said. “She really has it when it comes to her version of ‘performing’.”

“Yeah—she’s amazing,” Michael agreed.

After dropping him off outside his apartment complex, I walked alone back home through the darkened streets of East Vancouver. Not sure if it was from THC hangover or the experience but I was still buzzing with excitement. What a night!

As walked while mumbling under my breath, “Cause karma is my boyfriend. Karma is a god. Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend,” something moved inside the bushes right next to me.

I stopped and stood expectantly. Like a dog with its ears perked up when it hears something suspicious.

“T—Taylor?”

A rat came out running out of the bushes and zipped across the street.

The following Monday I had to go early to the office. The morning was cold, the sky was choked out by gray clouds, and a thick white fog veiled the ground.

The train was cutting through the fog while I sat, overlooking the window. You couldn’t see anything outside further than a couple of meters, so the only thing visible were the few elements right next to the train tracks and the fog—that dense, white fog.

There’s a segment on Vancouver’s TransLink Expo Line between 22nd Street Station and New Westminster station where the elevated train tracks briefly cut through a semi-forested area. Tall trees line up on both sides of the train that give out the illusion of going through a maze. That late-autumn morning, though, the trees were bare, only branches could be seen as if monstruous fingers growing out of the earth about to wrap the train car.

Any other person who also looking outside right there might’ve only seen branches and fog, but not me. What I saw was a dreamlike forest, muted in black and white. For the brief minute that the train traveled through that section of the line I felt cozy, at peace—I felt happy. The image looked exactly like the album cover art for Taylor Swift’s Folklore.

Even though the Eras Tour experience was over, I could still feel it inside me. Like a whisper. Like a breeze in my hair on the weekend.

Consider me reluctantly influenced, Taylor, I thought, and continued making my way to my nine to five.

This is a version of an essay that will be featured in…

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Original: ‘Pauline as Daphne Fleeing from Apollo’ by Robert Lefevre

Today, it’s been a whole year since that fatefull night when my then roommate dragged me to go for a run with a running group he had found on instagram. It was one of his attempts at finding friends in Vancouver. I had been on the record stating how this was an activity that was NOT for me, yet here I am, a year later, with 1,130.8 kms under my belt—according to Strava.

The story of how I ended here, how/why I changed my perspective on running, and my overall experience with it, I will tell another day. In the meantime—today—I’ll share with you a version of a story originally published in my first book back in 2022, which is turn a version of a blog post I wrote in November 2016.

This is the story of when I stalked Ethan Hawke throughout the 2015 New York City marathon. I thought, being the first anniversary of when I started runnning and the almost 10 anniversary (damn) of the events happening in this story, the tale fit perfectly.

I hope you enjoy.

Now I’m going to tell you about the time I stalked this international star for about five hours around Manhattan.

Why, Alberto? Why follow Ethan Hawke through the streets of NYC?

The answer is plain and simple. But, as a good contemporary storyteller, I’m going to wait until the last damn second to give vital answers to the story. They are not going to make sense and you’re not going to get emotional satisfaction from the time spent dwelling on them. (See also ‘LOST’ by JJ Abrams & Damon Lindelof.)

Anyway, here we go.

—

NOVEMBER 1, 2015 – 7:45 AM – Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Int. Apartment

The alarm clock on my not-that-smart Motorola phone wakes me up from a deep sleep. I am in my luxurious chambers. I turn off my alarm and my nose fills with the smell of eggs and beans that my cousin cooks on the stove five feet from the sofa where I’ve been sleeping every night since I moved to New York City in search for fame and glory, a couple month’s past.

I sit up and push the sofa cushions back into place. I grab my phone and take a good look at the time and current location of my target: Ethan Hawke.

MY COUSIN: Are you ready?

ME: I was born ready––I mean, ready for this event.

MY COUSIN: Umm… ok. Good luck.

He grabs his breakfast and returns to the privacy and privilege of his room. I put on some sneakers and a jacket, and leave the apartment.

7:59 AM – Ext. Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I’m walking fast. It’s a little chilly, enough for your breath to evaporate on the way out of your mouth. The streets near my apartment are almost empty. In the distance, you can hear the rhythm of drums.

My gaze is completely focused on the cell phone screen. The night before I had calculated the exact moment when Ethan Hawke would be near me …

FFFFFFFFWWWWWWWWTTTTTT!!!! (Flashback sound effect.)

*everything is black and white*

OCTOBER 31, 2015 – 9:23 PM – Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Int. Apartment

ME: … and it says here that Ethan Hawke is going to run through Williamsburg at about 8:30a.m..

MY COUSIN AND HIS GIRLFRIEND: Ah, ok.

FFFFFFFFFFWWWWWWWTTTTTT!!!!!! (Flashforward sound effect.)

*color returns*

8:10 AM – Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Ext. Main Street

Hundreds of people are on the sidewalk lining both sides of the street. The drums I had heard in the distance come from a band playing next to an intersection. Here, being that close to them, they sound like explosions. People chant and dance to the rhythm of the music.

Hundreds and hundreds of people are running uncontrollably on the street. And those on the sidewalks scream and violently wave their hands at them.

I am shocked by the amount of positive social energy in the environment. In an impulsive moment of madness, I reach my hand over towards the street. In the 10 seconds that I have it there, dozens of runners beat it with the palms of their hands without mercy and with the emotion of the event. When I pull back my hand, I find it red and drenched in the sweat of a hundred nationalities.

I wait for a while standing there on the sidewalk. There is, in all people present, a sense of community and solidarity that I have never experienced before. Many came to support their families for the second and a half that they would be in sight of them before they moved on with their race. They screamed as if the world was going to end when they appeared nearby. “Come on, Nick!”, “I love you, Jane!”, “We’re so proud of you, dad!,” blasting over the loud music. Many others are just here as moral support for their fellow athletes. They also reach out to the street to give a high five to whoever wants to receive it. I imagine that, for the runners, this serves as a small and unconditional show of support from a stranger; and as a tiny distraction from the most likely HELL their feet, and whole body really, are experiencing.

All very nice. A scene I will never forget.

But I, on the other hand, have a mission. Ethan Hawke just didn’t make an appearance, I guess. I must’ve missed him.

I decide to go up the street a little to at least see more people and so on.

8:24 AM – Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Ext. Main Street – Up the street a little

I get a little geographically higher. A girl of about 11 approaches me.

11-YEAR-OLD GIRL: Do you want cookies?

ME: How much, mija?

11-YEAR-OLD ENTREPRENEUR: It is by donation. We are a Boys and Girls Club that supports––

ME: ––Yeah, yeah.

I grab the cookie and drop a 25-cent coin in her tin. The girl rolls her eyes at the amount donated but it doesn’t bother me. I don’t even live around here.

I wait a few more minutes, glancing at my phone to see where Ethan Hawke is coming from. He is already a few blocks away from my location!

I start to pay more attention to the running crowd, so I don’t miss Ethan Hawke, and suddenly it’s already...

8:29 AM – Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Ext. Main Street – A little geographically higher

OMG IT’S ALMOST TIME TO SEE ETHAN HAWKE!! I see Dorothy, Toto, and their entourage run by, someone dressed as a waiter carrying a tray with glued-on glasses, and a man dressed as Gandalf––staff and all. No Ethan Hawke, though.

Dammit. Where is he? I’m afraid to look down at my phone to search and him running by without me noticing.

I keep watching people run.

8:35 AM Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Ext. Main Street – Still a little geographically higher

Fuck. Whatever. I’ll check my phone.

ETHAN HAWKE IS ALREADY 4 BLOCKS DOWN FROM ME.

I missed my chance to see Ethan Hawke. One more defeat in this fatal life… No. Damned if I’ll yield at the end of the chase. As Javert’s Soliloquy in Les Miserables says.

I run down the street going south, and when I get to the subway station, I go in.

8:50 AM – Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Int. Station

I run my card through the roller and it lets me in. I go down the stairs to the platform.

There’s a hipster playing guitar in the middle of the platform and I get a little bit mad because he’s got a lot of talent and a lot of dollar bills inside his guitar rack.

“The next train arrives in 25 min,” plays over old station speakers.

WHAT!? … Right, it’s Sunday and it’s a holiday. Dammit. I guess I’ll have to wait.

9:50 AM – Manhattan – Central Park

I run and I run. I’m running because I haven’t had any reception in over an hour and I don’t know Ethan Hawke’s current location.

Out of the station and THERE ARE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ON THE SIDEWALK. A metal band from the mid-80s plays in front of a group of fifty-somethings.

On the street, hundreds and hundreds of people are running. They already look much more devastated than the ones I first saw back in Brooklyn. Their faces reflect the pain and heaviness of our planet’s 9.8m/s gravity. And perhaps also the heaviness of this damn dog-eat-dog society, focused on always being better, being your best version, showing on Instagram how good you are and how ripped, rich, and well-adjusted you are, having a good job that gives you a lot of money, and having more and more and—OH SHIT IS THAT ETHAN HAWKE?!?!?!

No, it was not. He was just another blonde gringo.

My slow phone takes time to tell me the location of Ethan Hawke. He is still in the Bronx.

Yes! I got time to waste… NO, to plan out my route and strategies.

Ok, I’m going to––Woah, what’s happening to me? My insides are starting to ache. That’s right, I’ve only had that rickety 25-cent biscuit in me.

I dive into the sea of ​​people and start walking, looking for a food source. The train dropped me off at a corner where Central Park begins and my map says the final line Ethan Hawke will pass through is to the northwest. So I walk in that direction.

10:20 AM – Same fucking place, almost.

JE-SUS. I have spent a lifetime trying to walk but there are too many people and it is difficult to pass. I’m about to bite a finger off of a baby being carried by some dude in front of me in one of those baby-carrying backpacks.

A FOOD CART!

Salvation. I have started to believed in God again. And God manifested in the form of a middle-eastern man next to a big-pretzel cart.

I ask Ibrahim for a plain big-pretzel because I’m so damn poor. It’s $11.25 anyway. I hop it down my throat because he’s out of Mountain Dew.

I decide to leave the sidewalk and go into Central Park. I find an empty bench and sit down in total solitude to eat my food.

As I eat my pretzel and watch people walk by accompanied by their lovers or their pets, I begin to ask myself, what am I doing here at this time in my life so far from home? What do I want to do with my life? Why wasn’t I born Kardashian or Slim to have a lot of money? Why did my dad decide to be an honest public servant instead of a corrupt politician? Right now I could go up to my park-facing apartment and spit on Ethan Hawke and Ibrahim from the 34th floor if I wanted to. Why are there people who have to work their asses off all their lives just to survive and others who don’t have to do anything but travel and buy iPads?

And in that loneliness and uncertainty, like an epiphany, I realize that––FUCKITY-FUCK-FUCK! IT HAS BEEN ANOTHER HOUR!! WHERE IS ETHAN HAWKE!?!?!?!?!!

11:20 AM – Manhattan – Central Park – Bench

I take out my idiotphone. ETHAN HAWKE IS, as we speak, RUNNING ON THE WEST SIDE OF CENTRAL PARK!!!!

Fuck. What do I do? I didn’t even plan strategies. Fuck it! The best things in life happen spontaneously, says some Barnes & Noble self-help book.

I start running east.

11:20 AM – Manhattan – Central Park – Grass, Path, Plains, Lake

I run and run through Central Park.

This is my last chance to see Ethan Hawke. If I don’t get to see him, it’ll add to the long list of failures I’ve had in this cursed place. And if I am to return to my country defeated, tired, underfed, sick, and having spent all my life savings, at least I will do so while having seen Ethan Hawke run in the New York City Marathon, goddammit!

I can’t even see where I’m going. Surely I’m crossing roads, picnics, walking on top of a puppy, fields where people play, and pastures where you can’t legally step on. But it doesn’t matter, I only see ahead. I have a mission.

11:35 AM – Manhattan – Central Park – Entrance to the final stretch of the race

There is a long queue of people in front of a fenced area. They go through it little by little while some policemen search them for bombs, knives, and jihadist paraphernalia.

I join the queue. I am short of breath. I check the marathon app on my phone for Ethan Hawke’s location. He’s around where the train had dropped me. There is little time left.

Two people before me going through the fence. The policeman says, “Sorry, this area is already full. You’ll have to look for another entrance.”

No. I’m not going to make it. After all this adventure, I’m not going to make it.

The slightly upset people begin to spread out but I stay in my place. And after hyperventilating for 30 seconds to create a brief vacuum free of social anxiety in my mind, I approach the police.

ME: Please. I have to go in. I don’t have time anymore.

POLICEMAN: What?

ME: I’ve been trying to see Ethan Hawke run for the last four hours and he’s about to run by here. If I go somewhere else, I’ll miss him. I won’t be able to see him.

POLICEMAN: Really? Are you a fan of Ethan Hawke or what?

ME: Not really. I mean, he’s kinda good but––It’s a long story but please, I have to see Ethan Hawke.

The policeman turns to the female officer behind him.

POLICEMAN: He says he has to see Ethan Hawke.

The woman lets out a small laugh.

POLICEWOMAN: Ok. Come in.

ME: THANK YOU!

I run.

11:40 AM – Manhattan – Central Park – Homestretch

There are a lot of people leaning on the retaining fences. I don’t see a place to stand and be able to see the runners well. I check the app on my phone and Ethan Hawke is just a mile away from me!

I start to walk-run looking for an open spot where I can see properly. Suddenly, a Chinese man who was leaning against the fence drops the lens cover of his camera and while he bends down to pick it up––BOOM!––I won the place over you, sorry not sorry.

He gives me a stern look but I don’t care because I’m about to fucking see Ethan Hawke.

This is my moment. I have to pay a lot of attention because there will no longer be a second chance. In the distance I see some familiar faces. It’s Dorothy, Toto, and the other elements from Oz! Dorothy has already lost her wig, the Tin Woodman has already grown human legs and there is a human peasant who was surely once a scarecrow and who lost all his straw in some mile of the THOUSAND that they have ran. The Lion died at some point because he was no longer with them.

Dorothy passes in front of me and when I return my gaze, in the distance, wearing a white shirt and a black cap…

11:48 AM – Manhattan – Central Park – Homestretch

… IT’S ETHAN HAWKE!!!!! OMGOMGOMG.

I open the camera of my plastic phone and without even looking at the screen I record him passing in front of me. He looks VERY tired, just like all the other runners. Right now he is not the star of Gattaca, Training Day, or the spectacular and life-changing “Before” trilogy––he is one of us mortals. And 5 seconds after the first sighting, I lose him in the crowd.

12:30 PM – Manhattan – Some street on the Upper-West Side.

I walk quietly to one side of the street where the runners exit the fenced area to be greeted by their families. Most appear to be on the verge of death. There are even ambulances with people who fell, exhausted. It looks like a scene from what I imagine is seen on the streets of a city that has just experienced a disaster such as war, a terrorist attack, or a major natural disaster. But no. I mean, physically they’re devastated—but they sure feel incredibly happy and proud of themselves. Well done, you guys!

I arrive at a closed street where the runners and their families hang together and I sit on the sidewalk. I guess it’s hard for runners to explain to us, the sedentary, why they put their bodies in those situations. Their motives and victories are personal and mostly internalized. I can clearly see that it is an interesting physical-mental experience. But honestly, it doesn’t seem like one tailored for me.

It’s a bit absurd for me to think about it, because having run a thousand miles all over New York cannot be compared to having power-walked for 10 minutes through Central Park looking for Ethan Hawke, but I also feel triumphant. When you’re at a point in life where it seems like you just live through defeat after defeat, any small triumph––getting up early, doing 25 squats, not burning your fucking breakfast egg, watching Ethan Hawke run by you for 5 seconds––feels like the size of an entire Manhattan.

I get up from the sidewalk and continue walking.

…

…

…

8:46 PM – Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Int. Apartment

MY COUSIN: … And did you see Ethan Hawke?

ME: YES! I took a video of him and everything!

MY COUSIN: Well, let me see it!

I open the gallery on my phone and my jaw drops.

My stupid-idiot phone couldn’t record Ethan Hawke.

...

NOVEMBER 1, 2016 – 11:50 AM – Mexico City – Satelite

Exactly one year later.

Here’s a photo of Ethan at the marathon taken by someone else:

And here are some that I took during my journey and the app that I used to track it (Ethan Hawke is the red balloon):

Oh! I almost forgot. Why did I follow Ethan Hawke all over town if I’m not even that big of a fan of him?

Because I could.

Thanks for reading and see you again very soon. You’ll want to get subscribed so you wont miss the next story. It’s a good one!

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Original: ‘Academic Study of a Male Nude lying on a Shroud on Rocks’ by William Etty (1787–1849)

As previously explored, throughout my 20s I battled with self-confidence issues stemming, mostly, from my physical appearance. Media influence such as Tom Wellington’s supposedly-17-year-old physique in the TV show Smallville or Zac Efron’s biceps in the movie High School Musical 2, social influence such as people commenting on my body or other peers looking “stronger” or “manlier”, and physical factors such as my lanky build fostered a set of self-deprecating ideas in my mind that were anything but kind.

Not loving your body, especially at a time when everything within it is in a state of constant change, is not a new concept or something that only I’ve experienced. I’d argue the feeling of being unhappy about a part of your body is as universal as curiosity, or fear. It’s that primal.

During my years as a self-hater. I remember not liking the way my arms were, then I moved on and started not liking how my belly looked, then the shape of my nipples, then my chest, then my front teeth, then my calves, then my butt, then my toes—I think every part of my body has, at some point, received the ire of my self-loathe. It would usually start with either me comparing one of my attributes to the ones from a celebrity or by someone pointing something out from my body; either in a passing remark like “Are you eating enough these days?” Or something sharper, like the time a friend pulled back my late-aughts bangs and said, “Woah—you’re going bald.” I was 17 at the time.

Lately though, I’ve learned to recognize that this meat vessel is valuable not because it’s shaped in a certain form but because it works in miraculous ways to help my ghost experience life. So, what if I don’t have Brad Pitt’s bone structure? I can fucking see and talk and walk to the best of my abilities. I should take these features as enough of a privilege that not everyone has—which they are.

Yet, the other day I uploaded a topless selfie at the gym and I felt a brief bite of something negative. What was it? Was it embarrassment? Was it fear? Was it self-consciousness? By all means, I should’ve not felt anything other than satisfaction. Because of a mix of great lighting placement and a dead social life that has pushed me to exercise daily, I looked great! But the feeling persisted for a couple of hours, like a bad taste in my mouth.

Later I recognized it was cringe. A feeling of self-embarrassment and awkwardness. But, again, why?

I had been posting this type of photos more frequently on my Instagram. Usually, my Instagram Story history is filled with landscape photos of British Columbia intermixed with insert shots of books, movies, or music that I’ve recently consumed. But there has definitely been a shift in the past months to gym mirror selfies.

In one of my favorite activities nowadays, which is removing myself from myself and self-analyze my thoughts and actions, I could clearly see that this new-ish conduct was the result of two factors.

The first one is that this year I’ve been the loneliest I’ve ever been in my life. Most of the time, I’m quite fine with it, but there are some elements that my stupid psyche misses every now and then which are, if not briefly quenched, at least managed by those damn Instagram likes.

I know, I know. It’s quite silly, and I’d even venture to say a bit pathetic. But it is a fact that Likes make us feel good and validated. In my case, getting Likes from friends and family back home make me feel nostalgic and like I (still) belong, which are amazingly delicious in this stage of my life. It’s not my fault that Meta pushes these topless pics harder than—say—a photo I took of a mountain or a beach, and gets them waaay more interactions. Every Like becomes a little “Hey—I see you” from people. It feels good! Sue me!

The second factor is the fact that at the ripe age of 34 I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been. I’ve been running a lot, working out a lot, found a protein shake that doesn’t immediately make me feel like my esophagus is being choked by an invisible hand, and overall enjoying being active. Again, the fact that my social life is quite empty at this time of my life has helped me achieve this. Whenever I have no plans, I go: “Hmm, might as well go for a run / to the gym!” It’s great! (Cries inside.)

So anyway, even though I have these—in my head—valid arguments as to why I’ve recently modified my brand on Mark Zuckerberg’s internet, the self-cringe still persisted. After posting that photo, I was suddenly afraid to be perceived as a “himbo”, an empty-headed attractive man; a “thirst-trapper” who farms likes/hearts with spicy photos to get off via the little shots of serotonin notifications provide; or simply annoying, flaunting my body to someone who didn’t specifically asked for it—kinda like a PG-13 version of an unsolicited dick-pick.

But thanks to years of practice in self-reflection brought by an anxious brain, after deconstructing this very familiar feeling of cringe I came to the same though-terminating cliché I always arrive to when it comes to things in social media: Who (other than me) fucking cares? I love myself and I’m having fun!

…

There’s an episode of the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek that, if not changed my mind about how I perceive my own body, cemented the attitude I’ve built up throughout my early 30s towards it.

In season two, episode nine “Moira’s Nudes”, Moira Rose, played by the amazing Catherine O’Hara, finds out that some spicy photos taken when she was younger might have ended up somewhere on the internet. She’s obviously terrified by this idea and immediately goes on a quest to try to find them and removing them with the help of Stevie, a young female character.

If I can spoil the ending of this episode for you, turns out they do find the photos online, but they are edited images of Moira’s face on what “she can only assume to be the body of an Indonesian lady-boy”. At this, rather than feeling peace, she gets suddenly overwhelmed with regret.

“You regret that embarrassing photos of you aren’t online?” Stevie asks.

“No. I regret that they’re lost,” Moira replies. “They were the one perfect memorial to who I once was.”

She goes on, “Allow me to give you some advice: Take a thousand naked pictures of yourself NOW. You may currently think ‘Oh - I’m too spooky’ or ‘Nobody wants to see these tiny boobies’. But believe me, one day you’ll look at those photos with much kinder eyes and say, ‘Dear god, I was a beautiful thing.’”

…

My body has changed in the last 10 years. I don’t mean only in terms of weight or muscle mass. I have scars that I didn’t have before, there are lines where there were none, and there’s even some bits and pieces missing. There are elements of my body that only vaguely live in my memory, because I never documented them, I never stopped to really appreciate them. I was, on a good day, just ignoring my body, and on a bad day, busy criticizing it, imagining the ways that it could be better, that it could be different.

Well, now it is different. My dream was made true. And while some things have definitely improved, some I’ve lost and miss.

All this is part of the game of life, of course. Aging is the gift we, who are privileged to have lived long enough to receive it, enjoy. My regrets are not so much about what has changed, but about what I took for granted or what I failed to appreciate.

In the past years, I’ve worked to appreciate more the body I was gifted. There are still plenty of things that could be… improved upon. A little more hair here, maybe a bit of stretch for this piece of skin, and I’ll may act upon them in the future. Today though, this is the version I’m working with, and I’m so happy and proud of it. This face, this body, have taken me through life and provided me with a vehicle to explore the wonders reality has to offer.

A year and a half ago, inspired by that episode of Schitt’s Creek and by the realization that my body, at least physically speaking, was past its upward developmental trail, its climax, and beginning to start its slow (hopefully very long) and not-very-fun descent into the fucking grave, I decided to take Moira’s advice.

I grabbed my phone and put it up on a stand, set up a 5-second timer, got completely naked, and started taking pictures. I switched poses and positions and took some more photos. Nothing too crazy or graphic (there are specific body parts that I don’t care tracking through the years), everything was done tastefully.

After around 45 minutes, I amassed a good collection of images of me in all my nakedness. I deleted some repeats or out of focus ones and then got the remaining in a folder and uploaded it securely to the Cloud so only me and everyone inside Google’s headquarters can get access to it. A bit of a digital, personal time capsule was made.

Like Moira said, I recommend everyone this: Take a thousand naked pictures of yourself, keep them in a safe place (maybe safer than mine), and wait until the day that you can look back and see them with kinder eyes if you can’t do so right now. I’m sure most of you will get a kick out of them.

You might be thinking, “Easy for you to say, conventionally attractive man!” And I can’t predict exactly how we will react in the future. But experiences I’ve gathered from older people than myself tell me that looking back at your younger self almost always bring warmth—either because of what you looked like or what the life of that version of yourself was at the time.

Similarly to those naked photos I took, these mirror selfies are pieces of another time capsule. One which, I’m fairly sure, in the near future won’t share the pains of loneliness or the self-criticism. Rather, a capsule that will share the story of a time in which I was able to work on my body, I was able to run whenever I want to, I was able to spend hours of the day pondering and wondering, and was able to do whatever I want within my possibilities.

… and where I looked hot as fuck!

This is a version of an essay that will be featured in…

Out in 2026.

(Cover might change. Don’t know much about meme copyright laws.)

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Original: The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch

I’m going to try to be careful with my language here, because last time I wrote about my body online I got in trouble at work. NO ONE SEND THIS TO MY EMPLOYER, JEEZ!

One day, when I was 21, I was taking a shower when I noticed something strange inside my scrotum.

At the time I was living by myself in Mexico City while attending university. I lived in this big house in a neighborhood called “El Huizachal”. This used to be where high-ranking people from the Mexican military would build their homes, being so close to the main Mexico City barracks, back in the 50s and 60s. Coincidentally, this was also the neighborhood where I, much like my father in his youth, spent a lot of the first years of my life, because my grandparents lived there. (Now that I think of it, I’m not sure exactly why. My grandpa was a high-ranking POLICE officer, not military. Maybe this was just the IT area to be during the 60s.) Because this whole area is located in a sort of valley, the neighborhood slopes down into a forest-ey area where a little river runs during rainy seasons. The streets follow that natural incline in parallel––laid down like raked seats on a theatre. So, the houses in the neighborhood are large and have big windows to take advantage of the views down the other homes and the valley below them. The house belonged to an aunt that spent most of the year living in China with her daughter and grandchildren. For the couple of years I lived there, I spent it mostly alone.

So, when I noticed a bump inside my scrotum, no one could hear me scream: “I FUCKING GOT TESTICULAR CANCER!”

A bit of an anatomy lesson for those who don’t have much experience with male genitalia. The testicles connect to the rest of the male reproductive system via a pair of “tubes”. These tubes are, in turn, connected to the testicles via a… thing called the epididymis—a chewed-up bubble gum-looking mass glued to the testicle. When in a hot shower, a male (or anyone in there, really) can feel this weird thing throughout the skin of the scrotum.

“Is it my epididymis or cancer?” I asked myself.

To quell my fears, I booked an appointment with a doctor for the next day because that’s how healthcare works in Mexico. The doctor was a male who touched my penis (a first at the time), and sent me to get an echography—what I assume to be an ultrasound for men who aren’t pregnant.

When I got there, a petite woman laid me down on a table, grabbed some blue, NERLY FROZEN goo with her hand, and proceeded to rub my scrotum (also a first at the time). After that moral and physical torture, she placed a remote thing that blasts whoknowswhat—probably radiation and cancer—into you and creates an image of your entrails.

“Hmm. No cancer,” she said. “It looks like your veins are inflamed. Everyone make way! Big vein boi in tha house!” Everyone started laughing. I ran out of there, still naked and gooed up from the waist down.

Back at the general doctor, he declared I had varicose veins in my scrotum. He asked me if I’d ever felt a “heaviness” around the area of my testicles. I had and I had been wondering why that was, because, on the scrotum size scale, I lean less towards a rooster’s wattles and more to Greek statue. It’s a strange feeling I get after sitting too long with my legs pressed together or after leg day at the gym. Turns out, it wasn’t cancer—it was engorged veins inside my sack! I just LOVE life!

In terms of aesthetics, you can’t really tell that there is something wrong with my beautiful scrotum. This type of varicose veins do not show up like the ones at the back of your grandma’s knees. I feel very lucky about it. There is another version of our universe where varicose veins make your sack look like the aliens from the movie ‘Mars Attack!” *shudders*.

I asked the doctor for a cure and he had two options for me. The first, was avoiding lifting heavy things, or doing strenuous exercise to avoid triggering my veins into engorgement. The second, was surgery… and then also avoiding lifting heavy things, or doing strenuous exercise.

“So, let me get this straight. No exercise ever?”

“Yes.”

“Riiiiiight.”

I went with the second option—surgery—because it lined up with another procedure I had to go through at the time that I will NEVER disclose. A 2x1, two birds with one stone kinda situation. I was under my father’s work insurance so, might as well, no? A procedure only felt in my body, not my wallet. I felt like a Kardashian.

So they cut me open, zapped shut my testicular veins like when someone gets their limbs cut off by a lightsaber in Star Wars, and sewed me back shut. To this day, for the lucky people that get to see me naked, if they inspect closely through my manly-thick grove, they can still find a 5cm (Ugh—tWo iNcH!) scar just above my peen.

… The problem ended up coming back because apparently I value the outside more than the inside and kept on lifting weights. Oh - what? I should become the Goblin King from ‘The Hobbit’ just to have a healthy scrotum? Pfft! Cut that isht off and put some Kinder eggs in, for all I care. Having children is for the bourgeoisie nowadays anyways.

In a similar vein (Ha!), and also during my early 20s, something else came into the mix. Life truly is suffering. These vessels we call bodies are not equipped to service further than 20 years, it seems. Release my self from this frail meat-prison!

I don’t exactly remember when I started with these, so I’m going to fictionalize the event.

One day, when I was 21, I was taking a shower when I noticed something strange inside my scrotum around my butt.

While lathering my young, sexy, full-of-potential body, my soapy hand went down to clean my nether and found a cute little pebble glued to my anus.“Wow. I might have fucking anal cancer,” I softly whispered to myself. “OR IS IT AN ENGORGED TICK SUCKING ME DRY THROUGH THE ASS?!”

I placed a mirror on the floor and squatted over it to get a clear view. (By the way, have you folks ever done that? I don’t know if this is just a hairy-man thing but it is truly a horrid experience… Kinda empowering too? Would recommend.) It was not a fat tick but a part of my skin—just hanging out there out of place, out of time.

It was—yes—a hemorrhoid.

Hemorrhoids, or “Piles” as they are known in Britain I guess, are when a type of vein in our rectums swoll… swell.. get big, causing the inflammation to present itself as some sort of loose skin, just hanging out your butt. There’s two types of piles I know of: internal and external. They are pretty self-explanatory. I’ve mostly gotten the external variety.

So, when I started getting them, I had to quickly learn about this fascinating and delicious topic to be able to cope—which I did. I’m a strong man. You see?

Because apparently we are still living in the Gilded Age when it comes to our butts, the source of these pesky anal creatures is not yet known and their treatment is of the “just wait until they go away unless you start shitting blood” kind. At least they had prayers and leech treatment back in the day! Now I gotta wait until I’m one foot inside the grave to get some actionable items in place.

When it comes to the bloody type of cases, you can go—you guessed it—get them surgically removed! Doesn't that sound fun? Butt surgery? But, as is the case with the aforementioned varicose veins, the procedure really isn't a once and done deal. Like some sort of rectal weed, even when pulled out, they come back.

Anyway, there are also a couple types of ointments that you can put on to quell their might. Because they NOT ONLY are uncomfortable and even hurtful, but they also—because of their prime location—itch.

At the beginning, because I was young and beautiful, my piles would just go away on their own in a couple of days—4 day MAX. I would just try to ignore them as much as possible, which was fairly easy, and try to avoid other people interacting with that region, which was the easiest. But then something else happened in my life:

I turned 30…

… and I’ve since been going through a second puberty—one that ends up not in the physical and sexual climax of your body, but rather, in the progressive rotting of it. Joints squeak like a beat-up shopping cart, acid reflux flows like lava through my esophagus, hair migrates from my head to my nose, ears, and shoulders. Oh what fun! Don’t you love life?

This process also affected my beloved piles. These ones became quite resistant to my ignoring techniques, so I had to transition into a magic ointment called Preparation H.

No, this is not what a Powerpuff Girl is made out of, but rather a transparent yellow-looking cream that you swab over your butthole in hopes of reigning in that wild stallion of a pile you got going for. (Apparently, it’s made out of yeast? Wth?) If the image of a hairy hole spread with yellowish goo doesn’t still bring a chill down your spine let me tell you that this product also comes with an applicator.

This medieval device is an elongated protrusion with holes throughout that you twist over the tube of the cream. When on, if you press the tube the lovely goo oozes out from the top and sides in fun squiggly lines. Who knew the Play-Doh company was preparing us for our hemorrhoid-brought demise? And they say all corporations are evil. Bah! Anyways, the idea is to put it up your bum, press the tube, and fill your insides with the Preparation like the foulest Boston Cream doughnut. Did it a couple of times, found it unnecessary—AT THE TIME.

Up you go!

I gotta say, though, I was a fan of this yeast cream! Popped a pile, drowned it with spreadable yeast, and when I woke up the next day my butt was as God intended… still quite ugly but healthy, I guess. This was my life for the past 3 years.

… Until 3 weeks ago.

(Before I continue, It’s not that I get hemorrhoids every freaking day! I might get them, like, twice or thrice per year, when I’m at my happiest. It’s like the universe’s way of humbling me. Fingers crossed my 40’s don’t double those stats.)

The following section might be quite graphic, depending on your level of imagination. Viewer discretion is advised. Again, DO NOT SEND THIS TO MY EMPLOYER.

Three weeks ago, mid-March 2025, I woke up in the middle of the night with a weird feeling around my nether regions. “I got the cancer,” I immediately thought in a Southern-American accent. But when I stood up and went to the bathroom, I noticed that my good ole’ friend was back—a cutesy lil’ pile. Aww! Look at you there!

I drowned that shit in Preparation H and went to bed again. See you never again, bitch.

When I woke up—surprise, it was still hanging out, literally. So I cleaned up the area, put on more cream and went on with my day. This happened for the next 3-4 days.

On the fifth day, God created creatures of the water. Similarly, I also created a creature of the depths—the depths of my rectum, because when I went to poop It felt like I had swallowed knives for dinner. Never had I felt such excruciating pain emanating from my butt. I thought I was going to die right there and then just like Elvis. Chills went down everywhere, waves of pain all over my southern region, toes scratching the bathroom tiles, hands shaking the towel-rack loose. I live in a house with old bones, I can literally hear my landlord sneeze. Luckily, him and his wife and young son were out on vacation at the time because If they hadn’t they would’ve called 911 thinking I was either being brutally murdered, or brutally FUCKED inside my bathroom like an A24 version of ‘Psycho’.

I have one of those Amazon-Basics bidets installed on my toilet. You turn the crank and water shoots directly at your hole. On the best of days, when you activate it, your ass gets sniped with the coldest shot of water seemingly straight down the highest peak in British Columbia. I’ve had it for two years, use it every day, and still my butt gains a millisecond of fly-time every time I turn on the crank. So, on that horrid day, when I thought I had finished, the frozen shot of water nearly made me pass out.

It was difficult to know that I was done shitting because I could still feel like I wasn’t. I don’t know how else to describe the feeling, it felt like I still had to pass something out. But the fear of being in that sitting, cheeks spread position, which contributes to hemorrhoids, and also the pain, made me want to hurry up and get over this demonic experience.

Speaking of demonic, let me share the following. (If you don’t want the perception you have of me, of this beautiful, ethereal beam of light worthy of the highest respect, to change, please skip this paragraph. I beg of you.) My health anxiety has made me a bit of a closetted scientist—an amateur doctor, if you will. What I mean by it is that, with Google and Quora under my toolbelt, I go and seek my own answers to every itch, every hair out of place I discover upon me. So, for this excruciating experience I just HAD TO know what was the reason, what was the genesis of this unwarranted pain. So, I took my Iphone 15 Pro, opened its 12 megapixel camera—flash ON—and pointed it straight at my hole. Shoot-shut! My head started to spin when I looked at the image. I had peeked inside the devil’s lair and could see past, present, and future calamities. All the light, joy, and love went out the window when I saw what once was my definitely-not-so-beautiful-but-normal-looking butt replaced with what I can only describe as the mouth from that guy in ‘Monsters Inc.’ when he gets unstuck out of the screaming machine. I thought I was coming undone through my ass. I’m going to poop myself out—creating a worm-hole. Panic set in.

No further comment.

What had been beset upon me was a beast that I’ve never faced before: internal hemorrhoids.

Internal piles happen—yup, yup—in the inside of your butt. So, imagine trying to pass a Snickers bar through your clenched fist that you also just burned at the stove while you were trying to check if the pan was hot. It’s kinda like that. That was me on that horrible morning.

Immediately after going through that hell, I crawled my way back to my laptop to seek a doctor’s appointment. By some miracle (because this is Canada) I found an open call-appointment for the next morning.

The next day during the call, after hastily telling my story to the doctor lest I’d spend my government-allotted 4 minutes of appointment, she basically prescribed me some thoughts and prayers. But after pressing a little bit and hearing my wails of supplication, she gave in, and sent me a different cream from the one I was using and a box of suppositories.

I’ve talked about this before, but I have some experience when it comes to suppositories. One single experience, to be completely transparent. So, because of that artificial bravado and my desperation, I was happy to put stuff up my bum if it meant it was going to be fixed.

The medicine wasn’t available right away at my pharmacy, so I had to wait until the next day and go through my third agonizing pooping session by that point, to go pick it up. And then it was showtime!

By now, you, reader, might believe nothing else could surprise me in regards to this experience; but let me tell you that, when I opened the box of suppositories, I almost jumped out of my busted-circulatory-system body. Each of the 14 suppositories was the size of a middle-grader’s thumb. Not only that but my lovely local pharmacist, in an effort to save me some money, had ordered the generic version of the medicine. So, the suppositories had a roughness to it—some spice, as we will learn more about later. I assume on account of cost-cutting measures down at the suppository factory—Suppository Inc., Suppository Brothers—, the bottom of the thing had some thin remnants of the mold from where it was begotten. And at the top, the suppository ended in a SHARP SPIKE that could cut diamonds.

Maybe because of the shock of the size, my desperation to get rid of this evil, or my expertise of putting suppositories up my ass, I didn’t think more of the shape of it and went on my mission.

I grabbed a tiny mirror, a camping lamp I bought last year for my first and only camping trip, the cream, and the suppository. I got completely naked for reasons I can’t explain in brief, and laid in the middle of my living room—one leg straight out and the other one up and grabbed by my arm like this was the most erotic yoga class. I took a bit of the cream and put it on my beaten-up butt and put some on the tip of the suppository as lubricant (Did someone say, expert?), and, assisted by my poor middle-finger, I proceeded to slowly insert it. THIS IS SO FUN, YOU GUYS! I LOVE LIFE!

Unfortunately, because the state of my internal piles was rather apocalyptic, the suppository just wasn’t slipping in like in the porno moves (I assume). I’m a proud man, though, I was NOT going to be beat by my own hole, so I painfully pushed even harder, breathing like a crowning woman in labor, until the last of the whiteness of the suppository disappeared—just like in the sand-worm scene from ‘Dune Part 1’. Victory!

… or fucking was it?!

As I laid there drenched in sweat and hemorrhoid cream, I felt like I could have a moment of respite to gather my failing strength and dignity. I was wrong, though. The evil wasn’t done with me. Like a quick anal burp (A fart, Alberto?) I felt something being regurgitated out of my butt. And before I could use my finger as plug, my hole shot out the suppository like those dogs who just wont swallow their fucking pills!

Oh. My. God.

And back to square one. I dusted off the failed suppository and pressed it again to my bum, making sure this time to press until I could no longer see my nail and stayed there waiting for the feeling of “swallowing” to happen. And let me tell you, that feeling was divine—like what I assume you get when you cross the gates to Heaven. Especially because what happened next felt like the exact opposite.

A second after reaching this Nirvana, I was pulled back down at the speed of light by the most excruciating internal pain I’ve felt. I thought I had broken something up inside my rectum. Maybe I pressed too hard and this bullet-shaped suppository pierced through my walls and it’s making its way to my brain via every other organ. The demon was fighting back, scratching my insides. I started squirming right there and then—naked on my living room floor. Belcebub’s talons were piercing the walls of my rectum and I could only wait until my hot entrails finally heated up the suppository enough for it to melt. SOMEONE CALL THE VATICAN! I froze. I should not move a single cell until the medicine melts.

Five minutes passed. Me lying naked on the floor all twisted like a human pretzel. I finally was able to reincorporate. I grabbed my clothes and walk-of-shame-ed to my bedroom. Where I laid in bed for the rest of the evening.

13 days later I was at the same spot in my living room where I started putting the demonic suppositories. This time around, I was on my hands and knees,—doggy style, if you will—arched back and everything, and sans mirror. I had truly become an expert. Turns out, the sharp bottom and the pointy top of those Dollarama suppositories were what made the first five minutes of their journey inside my rectum agonizing that first time. Their sharpness, combined with my inflamed and sensitive inside walls, felt like pouring salt on a wound—a wound inside your ass, mind you. I’d started to shave off a bit of the tip and bottom of the medicine to make them rounder. I feel ashamed to say that this discovery took me 3 days to make, but after that, and because the internal medicine was starting to work, the inserting process was quite easy. Not sure if that is a thing to be proud of—me potentially having a loose hole—but, whatever, I’ll take it.

I was on my last suppository. Ever since four days ago, my pooping experience had gone back to normal—back to being delightful, that is. I was feeling a mix of emotions. I was proud of my journey. I felt like I had exited the other side (AYO!) as a better man. I was also a bit nostalgic—nostalgic of these little friends that had supported me for the past two weeks, and I was down to the last one.

I took a photo as a memento:

My suppository next to a Chapstick for reference (Both went inside my butt!).

Back on my knees, it only took a gentle push for my body to happily accept this last offering. I felt it deliciously slip in, like a warm kiss. No pain this time—hadn’t had pain for days. I stood up, pulled up my shorts and left the house to go for a run.

It was a lovely spring day. My skin warmed by the sun, hair stroked by the crisp wind. By me doing this simple physical activity, I might’ve been contributing to yet another hemorrhoid—another flared varicose vein inside my scrotum, but as of that moment in time, all was well.

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Jobless behaviour: There is a distinction between being jobless and being unemployed. Jobless is a mindset; unemployment is a state of being. So, you can be unemployed and not be jobless just as you can be employed and exhibit jobless behaviours. Joblessness and fuckassery exist in the same sphere.

Michael Messineo - 2024

There’s this YouTube channel I love called Mike’s Mike run by Australian Michael Messineo where he recaps and comments on pop culture media, specially movies and television. Apart from his specific smart and funny insights, his content is on par with other “comment” channels where an individual talks about a piece of media they’ve recently consumed and share their thoughts on. As with most “content creators” I follow, his particular sense of humor, personality, and his knack for coming up with amazing phrases resonates with me—I just love the guy.

Screenshot from the video. (Bob not his own.)

Last year, on 2024, he uploaded a video titled “Is Scooby-Doo 2 the Pinnacle of Cinema? (Yes)” where he recaps the plot beats of said movie while sharing his comments and quips on the story, characters, and some behind-the-scenes stuff. The video is chock-full of funny lines, but what has made it stay in my mind for the better part of a year by now is that quote above.

When talking about the crimes committed by the character Dr. Johnathan Jacobo, evil scientist who dressed up as a pterodactyl to stole millions of dollars in an unsuccessful attempt to create his own monsters, Michael describes the individual’s actions as “jobless behaviour.” Cue the quote again:

“Jobless behaviour: There is a distinction between being jobless and being unemployed. Jobless is a mindset; unemployment is a state of being. So, you can be unemployed and not be jobless just as you can be employed and exhibit jobless behaviours. Joblessness and fuckassery exist in the same sphere.” - Mike’s Mic - 2024

The line stuck with me because it described perfectly a vibe or, as Michael expertly puts it, a mindset that I’ve been witnessing for so very long without a proper name for it. Having been cursed with growing up as the same time as humanity’s relationship with the internet and social media, I’ve witnessed these individuals on a daily basis. Individuals whose actions, thought processes, or opinions differ quite vastly from the ones a person who values and spends their time better would not partake in. Emphasis on the “better” there, since “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasting time” and whatnot.

To put it simply: Something that a person who is busy with better thoughts wouldn’t have the time for. Something that makes you say, “This person needs to seek employment.”

I know from experience that in these cursed times being without a job does not necessarily reflect our lack of effort or talent. I also know that having a job does not necessarily translate into the betterment of the individual. Finally, I ALSO know that having a job does not define us. Basically, I’m just trying to mock and maaaybe (but not necessarily) help the fucking idiots that plague my time spent on God’s internet. We are just vibing here, let’s not get hung up on the specific semantics.

Anywho, let me list some clear examples of people who depict “jobless behaviour”––people who need to seek employment:

“Whataboutme-ers”

Facebook commenters

Most straight cis men podcasters

Haters

People who base their entire personality on a single thing

Cryptobros

Sillicon Valley techbros

Mark, Elon, and Jeff

Gender reveal party organizers

Scalpers

Travel content creators

…”content creators” really

AI enthusiasts

Meaning, people who are fucking annoying—and for what? For NOTHING, that’s what! If you think about it, it probably wouldn’t take you long to add more people who need to seek employment to that list.

So, thanks to Michael and my ever-growing cynicism, I feel inclined to scour the world to locate people who present the signs of the condition; to assess, describe, and — fingers crossed — reach the conclusion that yes, in fact, they are someone who would benefit from finding a job. So - find a job, loser!

That is why I’m creating this column. Take my hand and come along with me as we study these specimens lest we start exhibiting the same symptoms and, if so, quickly be able to curb them.

Welcome to “People Need to Seek Employment” column!

The Whataboutme-ers need to seek employment Original by Rogier van der Weyden

Our maiden voyage takes us to the land of the “Whataboutme-ers.”

The advent of the Web 2.0 that brought us the power to create and upload user-generated content on the internet has changed the world. It has enabled people from all locations and backgrounds to be able to express themselves, communicate, and find belonging digitally—without the need to ever leaving the house.

… Which is most definitely what whataboutme-ers need: to leave the house and go touch grass.

But, what are these creatures? You ask. Well, let me tell you about the bean soup drama on TikTok.

I don’t know why I’m building up so much anticipation for this. It’s very simple: A woman uploaded a recipe on TikTok for bean soup that helps her when she’s on her period or something (literally that - I’m not trying to make a misogynistic non-joke), and then got a bunch of comments from people asking, “What if I don’t like beans?”, “Can I substitute the beans?”

Insane kind of behavior.

Another TikTok user with the handle @sarahthebookfairy chimed into the conversation. In her own TikTok, she posed the theory that this type of behaviour, while easy to “blame it on a lack of common sense or critical thinking,” is more likely the result of a combination of individualism and chronic online-nes. She coined this the “What About Me? Effect.”

(I feel I should also share that while researching this woman for the column, I found out on her Linktree that she sells “Social Media Coaching Sessions”—another thing that screams jobless behaviour. So add that shit to the list and take anything she poses with a grain of salt, I guess.)

“The What About Me effect is when someone sees something that doesn't really pertain to them, or they can't fully relate to, and they find a way to make it about them or try to seek out certain accommodations for their very nuanced personalized situation, instead of recognizing that maybe they are just not the target audience for that thing.”

- @sarahthebookfairy

She goes on to say that this stupidness is a result of the individualistic culture that is “running rampant” across the United States. And, you know what? I feel like this bogus-online course seller is kinda right.

In the single article I researched about individualism in the US (cmon’, this column is supposed to be fun, not fucking homework) its author argues that some neoliberal policies from the 80’s such as deregulation, privatization, austerity, and reduced social spending have fostered a culture that prioritizes individual freedoms at the expense of the common good. This has been further exarcebated in the last couple of decades with the advent of the internet and social media, and events such as the COVID pandemic; which, in turn, got us into a “crisis of loneliness” and fragmentation.

You can clearly see it—and this example is totally anecdotal—when you compare societies in Japan and in the United States. In the first one, there is a clear emphasis of bringing things to the table that will benefit the comunity, some times even at the expense of the individual. Whereas, in the US, it seems like a dog-eat-dog land where achieving individual desires, even at the expense of your neighbor, is encouraged and even celebrated and rewarded.

Nowadays, the ease of access to the internet and social media has in turn made people find their own niches on the internet with no effort, they just need a phone and a signal. And, while amazing that nowadays every person can find and interact (be it online) people that share their ideas and support eachother, it can also create the perception that whatever happens within those walls is the truth and should be the norm outside of them. I mean, that phenomena is kinda what got a bunch of jobless losers in the White House! But let’s not derail.

So anyway, what do we get as a result of all this? Whataboutme-ers. Thanks, Ronald Reagan!

To take it back to the bean soup recipe:

Erosion of Shared Context: a recipe is a collective starting point, not a social demand.

Distrust in Expertise / Community: the main ingredient of a recipe is discarded as non-necessary.

Loneliness and Fragmentation: how can this recipe benefit me, specifically?

Outside of the bean soup, we can find this type of behavior peppered throughout the web and even IRL (in real life). 10 years ago, while being a middle-school Advanced-Level English teacher, I had a student that was not supposed to be in my class. This lil guy did not have the skills to be at an advanced level, but was there because his mother insisted he was placed in that class. When, inevitably, early in the year the student started lacking in his notes, the mom set up a meeting with me to discuss.

I luckily don’t remember the specific arguments the mother made (my subconscious protecting me from cringe, for sure), but I recall her asking me, almost demanding, to go out of my way to help her son improve his notes to stay in my class. Maybe it was the fact that I disliked being a teacher or a mechanic of self-preservation, but I wasn’t going to start giving special treatment to a single student. I did not have the time nor could neglect the rest of my THIRTY-FOUR students in that class. Mom was not happy, as you can imagine. Sometimes young-ish mothers can also be quite jobless. WHERE IS THE LIST?! LET ME SCROLL UP!

Anywho, no need to add further examples, you get the gist. Let’s move on to what can these creatures do to pull their heads out of their own asses and recognize that there are other people around them also trying to go about this SHARED experience called life.

It’s quite simple, really:

Recognize something is not JUST for me / something is not for me.

If it’s not JUST for me, recognize that there might be some compromises that I will have to make. For example, keeping my shoes ON during flights, earbuds IN while riding public transit, or my mouth fucking SHUT at the movies.

If it’s something not for me and not interested in trying it—move on to another thing, scroll up, close the app and go talk to another human.

I really don’t get the opposite. Life’s too hard and we are all too tired already to go out of our way to write a comment or demand accommodation when there is clearly no space for it. Must be some sort of sexual kink, I’ve just realized. I see no other feasible reason.

What I do get is that sometimes we do want to just navigate our days being single, independent, deities of our own empty universes. But now more than ever we can find places where we can get them with little effort, there’s no need to piss in another man’s cereal just because I like drinking fucking piss! (That analogy sounded better in my head, I apologize.)

I feel like I should point out that I think it’s healthy to have some level of individuality, lest we become a society of monochromatic automatons. At the end of the day, we are all diverse and complex individuals. Not everything is going to fit us perfectly and we should seek out what does. Let me repeat those bullets from earlier because that last statement is what makes the difference between being a whataboutme weirdo and a regular person: the ability to recognize that not everything is suited to me, and be okay to try to find out what could be or—expert mode here—be okay to, if desired, explore and experiment if a new thing could actually be potentially for me. AKA: Stop and think for two seconds—jeez!

Alternatives, options, and differencies are what makes life colorful, interesting, and exciting, but they should be sought after, not imposed upon at the expense of the many.

TL;DR: If you don’t like bean soup, type “onion soup recipes” instead, loser! Seek employment!

Thanks for reading!

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Ever since I can remember, I always wanted a bidet. Well, no––that is a lie. I didn't know what they were until the summer of 2001, at the ripe age of 9, when I visited Europe with my mother and my uncle.

This was an amazing trip at a time when flying was still a pleasurable experience, a couple of months before the air industry changed forever and for way worse. But that’s neither here nor there––BIDETS!

On this trip, we visited France and stayed at The Ritz Paris. This hotel is famously known for being the place where Lady Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed left on that awful, awful night of August 31, 1997, never to see the light of sun ever again. But, again, that’s neither here nor there––BIDETS, ALBERTO!

While within the last chambers of the Spencer jewell, I found a quirky little device sitting next to the toilet. It looked like a second toilet, but wider, with no seat, and with a faucet in the middle. I went and turned it. Water splashed all over the expensive bathroom. 

My mom later explained that this wackadoodle device was a bidet. A device that you squat over, eagle-style, to wash your butthole.

Don’t remember trying it. It seemed so inconvenient, hard on my 9-year-old quads, and SCHOOPID! To hell with the bourgeoise! They killed Diana! I’ll clean me butt with paper, thank you very much!

My mom stole a fancy little spoon from that hotel. That I do remember.

Anyway, fast forward to 2015. I’m precariously living in New York City and working at a hipster Japanese restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

This restaurant had an underground section that they only opened for special events which had its own bathroom. The prize feature of it was a top-of-the-line Japanese robot toilet. It had a remote control built next to it that, among many features, let you warm the seat, blow a gentle breeze deep into your anus, and yes, a bidet function.

Since I worked morning shifts, this place was always empty. The bathroom was empty and one day I decided to use it to “empty” myself. 

I do not normally poop outside of my home, but I HAD to try Robotoilet. Bidets were starting to become a very popular concept for us dirty-assed Westerners. A bidet equated to personal cleanliness, and they were better for the environment and your wallet (since you didn't have to buy toilet paper now). They seemed wonderful, that’s what I'm trying to say. So, I waited until everyone had chores upstairs, went inside the bathroom, and placed these sweet cheeks on that warm sanitary hardware.

After I did the deed, which for sure was something scarily poor since I barely ate anything during that era of my life (Get my BOOK to know why), I pressed the bidet button.

GLORY ON MY ANUS.

The water jet was anything but. It started gently, as to not scare close your sphincter, and then it got progressively harder––but not too hard!––to remove all that nastiness from your hole. The best sexual experience I've ever had!... ahem.

I left that bathroom a new man. I needed a bidet now.

Sometime later, I Amazon-wishlisted one of those bidets you can attach to your regular, BORING, toilets. But, for some reason or the other, I never pulled the plug. My butt had to endure years of––*ghasp*––paper!

That is until my roommate got one earlier this year.

He bought one for like $32 dollars and told me to install it. Since I am definitely the more handyman of the two (and because I had been waiting eight years for this), I accepted the 10-minute challenge. The bidet got installed.

Our version of a bidet is basically a… protrusion… that comes out of the right side of the toilet seat that you can twist clockwise if you want to clean your butt or counter-clockwise if you want to clean your vagina. (Since, sadly, there are no vaginas in our household, that butt function has been working overtime.) The amount of twisting you do to it relates to the pressure that gets shot into your hole. 

This bidet’s maiden voyage went straight to my face (of course) as I squatted in front of the toilet to test it. Right after, with the benefit of hindsight, I sat down and took a video reaction of me trying it like you’re supposed to and sent it to my roommate, who was out of the house for this eventful occasion. Unlucky.

It definitely worked. A jet of water got sent straight into my fairly clean anus. I was ready for my life to change for the better.

…

Well, I don’t know about “life-changing”. After a couple of months of usage, I have some qualms.

So, to recap, the promises I made in my head about bidets were:

Less or even no-more toilet paper.

Environmentally friendlier.

Cleanliness–improved!

Let’s talk about the toilet paper one. We need some good ‘ole background with good ‘ole TMI.

I’m in the best shape in my life. Rather, my poop is in the best shape of its life. Since I’m over 30 and rapidly decaying, I’ve been taking care of the amount of fiber I put inside me on a daily basis. That has led to me having the greatest, beautiful-est, consistent…est? poops I’ve ever had! “Ghost poops” kids call them. When you go to wipe and the paper comes out clean. It’s an amazing feeling. Theoretically, I could just pull up my pants and walk away (I don’t! Always wash your hands, you swine!).

So, now, I finish up and spray the coldest water the province of British Columbia has to offer straight into one of the most sensitive areas of my body. I have to then wipe dry my rear with even MORE toilet paper than I needed before. That or shake my little butt like the geese from Disney’s ‘The Aristocats’, afraid of an ass-infused droplet to land on the floor and my roommate slipping on it and breaking his neck. I mean… It’s definitely possible!

I also briefly considered having a “butt towel” next to the toilet. But that idea was quickly turned down by both my roommate and my common sense. 

As you can see, this overuse of toilet paper is not very environmentally friendly of the bidet. Another big promise––FAILED. But then again, do the efforts or lack thereof of a group of single individuals really impact the environment when large entities, corporations, and industries pollute and destroy it on a massive scale on the daily––or even hourly? A larger conversation for smarter people than us, to be honest. BIDETS!!

And more toilet paper usage = more money spent. No further comments here.

Lastly, if you’re a fairly clean person who showers once a day, do we really need to power wash our anuses? Unless you’re planning to have some butt play with consenting adults or getting it bleached, it really feels like overkill. Both activities come to my plate very rarely. So, again, overkill.

Anyways, you get what I’m saying, and lest I start sounding redundant here’s the official review:

Unless you have anal play on the regular or if every time you go poop it’s like you sat on a sword, a bidet isn’t really necessary. Even if you fall into one of those two categories I would contact my psychologist or my doctor first, respectively. It does not save you toilet paper or money, in my opinion. And, depending on your sensitivity, it can feel uncomfortable if you crank that knob too much—but that’s definitely on you, not the system. 

Also, our bidet is fairly loud, so everybody in the house can tell that you are washing your butt right now because you just pooped - hehe.

Having said that, something not being necessary doesn’t mean it isn't fun to have (did somebody say gummy vitamins?!). When it’s hot outside, this device provides a fresh stream of water into you; when you made some questionable dietary decisions, you are definitely glad you have it; and when you got an itch, why not just scratch it with hydropower? 

Finally, it gives our home and our personas a bit of a boost. People come and DEFINITELY think: “Wow, these guys really have their shit together. Don’t they?”

All in all, if you have 30-something dollars to burn, I would say get it. Will it change your life forever? Not really… but maybe yes. Glory to our anuses!

I'm sitting on my sofa, like a sick person in a hospital or the child of a lame mother at a Mcdonald's, eating sliced apples. A tragedy that not even sprinkling Tajin chili powder on top can mitigate.

It's fucking depressing.

Quick story, back in January, my roommate and I had to stay at an Airbnb while people changed our carpet after our basement got flooded (long story). It was a 20-minute walk away from our place in a beautiful neighborhood called Fraser.

While there, I had the pleasure of visiting Deans NoFrills for the first time. This is a chain of grocery stores that are usually cheaper than fucking Save-On-Foods, the other grocery chain that nearly robs you every time you place a foot inside. 

In the bakery section of the store, I found a box containing four 2.5x2.5in fudge brownies with chocolate chips on top. With my official mission being to get snacks for our little “staycation”, I thought this was the perfect candidate. I bought the box. 

Back at the Airbnb, I took a bite out of one brownie and thought they were mid, not at all special, and too sweet. That box ended up lasting for over two weeks, with me, little by little, taking bites out of the rest of the brownies.

Well, something has happened from that first box to today, because nowadays the same box will last me 3 to maaaaybe 4 days. That means that some days I am eating more than a single brownie.

Each brownie contains 36 grams of sugar. A can of regular Coke is 39.

That is a problem.

It’s not that I usually eat a lot of sugar throughout the day. I may have some cookies or some gummies on top of regular “normal”-food-related sugars. But since I’m in my 30’s and my family has a STRONG history of diabetes (probably half of it has it), I am afraid.

In my effort to reduce my sugar consumption, I’ve tried cutting all sugary things from my diet, only to fall back again and again. They’re just so good!!

And that takes us back to apples.

Recently, BIG China was listening in via  TikTok and decided to help out. A video came up on my feed of a guy that talks about how sugar in nature always comes packed with fiber. So, fruits, for example, have lots of sugar but also lots of fiber which is good for you. And how candy is TRASH and THE WORST because it’s just sugar—no added benefits.

So, to my chagrin, I bought three Honeycrisp apples the other day instead of my adored brownies. Totaling a WHOPPING $6.45 dollars (two more than the box of brownies), I brought them home and placed them in the fridge.

Excited to try them (and fueled by a sugar withdrawal) I quickly washed and sliced one. I sprinkled some Tajín on top because I’m Mexican and ate the apple.

It was a good apple—a very good apple, I might say. But it wasn’t a brownie. The greatest apple in the world would taste like sawdust when compared to a mid brownie. And comparing it with Dean’s NoFrills ones, It’s like night and fucking day. It’s like the apple is not even food. Not even edible.

And not only are apples less tasty and way more expensive, but after eating one, I get this weird feeling on the roof of my mouth. It’s similar to the feeling of numbness you get when you burn your tongue. What? Am I allergic to apples now? It’s like my body is saying “Stop eating apples and get more brownies, you weak-willed FUCK!”

So that’s the dilemma right now. People are dying out there and I’m sitting here, knowing that this apple is gonna fuck up my mouth (and spirit) for the rest of the day. Life really gives its biggest battles to its strongest warriors.

And I've decided tomorrow I’ll go get me another box of brownies. Everyone’s gotta die of something. Death by brownie seems fine to me.

Just a quick update.

I've changed some things on my website.

Now, this page will strictly be a blog. So I'm hoping to just write short stuff in here. Thoughts, updates, and whathaveyou. Now that I quit Twitter, I need a little space to again vent to the lonely and unresponsive void about film, life, and trivial stuff. This place will have to suffice.

My stories will now be found in "The Stories" page of this website. I think it's easier to navigate trough them that way. More coming soon!

I'm also going to create a new home-page. Right now, the website opens on my Portfolio, which is fine but I want a little "Hello" screen first.

Finally, my website changed URL to https://albertocastillowrites.weebly....

Aaaand that is it

Bye for now.

Buy my book!

The epic tale of how I went to experience the most demonic, terrifying, and dangerous show and survived to tell the aforementioned tale.
​I am a man of many flaws…

…

Back in my theatre-making days, I wanna say 2012-13, I worked part-time as a teacher assistant at a local high school in the State of Mexico. The school had a musical theatre workshop and one of my friends from the theatre company I was part of got hired as a teacher and needed an assistant, apparently.

The job was pretty straightforward: Organize a musical play starring the school kids and present it at the end of the school year. My responsibilities included carrying around a big speaker along with its cables and dongles, having a playlist on my laptop with the songs the kids were rehearsing, and playing the songs on cue when the actors (the children) and the director (my friend) were running the play.

While I’ve never been much friendly to kids (or anyone, really), one would have to go out of their way to avoid becoming chum with at least a kid or two. They were funny and we were there, in that space, making something emotional and creative together: friendship unavoidable.

One of these kids, let's call him Pat, was the main guy from the play we were organizing. He was slim; had a white, pointy face before Timothee Chalamet made it cool; was always wearing Converse, and had a massive messy-afro going on. Rumour was, he was a total ladies' man amongst the teens. And it made sense––he was funny, kind, and charming as hell. 

(Neither here nor there but turns out his family and he were ultra-Christians. Last I heard, he had ring-proposed to his girlfriend he met at one of those high-octane, people-faint kinda church masses. At that time they were probably 17.)

One day we found out Pat was part of a small, children-led theatre company outside school and he invited us to go see him. My friend agreed with the idea of “recruiting” him for a minor role in the play we were organizing at our own theatre company.

I guess the price of the ticket should’ve been my first red flag because it only cost $100 MXN (around $5 USD). Now, I wasn’t expecting fucking Hamilton at Broadway prices from an amateur theatre school play but, in perspective, the tickets for our plays usually ranged between $300 and $350 MXN. We bought two for the Sunday morning show.

Sunday morning came. We drove to the venue which was located in the northern part of the state called Atizapan. After we parked the car we quickly went inside the place and took our seats to appreciate the sights, sounds, and vibes from minutes before the show.

The theatre was on the frugal side of the spectrum. It was a basic, rectangular room with rows of serviceable seats––no middle aisle––and a stage at the front. The stage had no wings (spaces to each side of the stage hidden from spectator view), in fact, it didn't even have a curtain. What it had was three “screens” made out of black felt fabric: A central one set in the middle of the stage and two other ones on each side of the stage. These last two hid a couple of wooden doors that led to… the outdoors? Maybe?

That was pretty much it. The stage had no other distinctive element to it. No props, no backdrop, no furniture of any kind other than the screens; which was fine, you know, a lot of shows only rely on the actors and it’s completely fine. Great, even.
 
Oh––what was the play we were there to see you ask? 

The Lion King.

The Lion King stage musical, if you didn’t know, is a musical play based on the homonymous 1994 Disney movie. It is one of the most successful theatre shows of all time, thanks in part to its Elton John-composed score and to its amazing props, costumes, and 232 animal puppets. The elephant one, I might add, is originally 13 feet long and 8 feet wide. 

I was feeling… skeptical of this children-led production, as you can imagine.

I am no intellectual or gatekeeper though, I wasn't expecting Disney Corporation levels of production value, nor do I think having it guarantees quality (see ‘Spider-Man: Turn of the Dark’). Quite the opposite, I felt excited to be amazed and my skepticism getting proved wrong by these kids.

Also, and please take note of this specific detail for a nice callback later,  the ticket promised an “interactive twist” to the play. So I was at least mildly engaged by this cryptic message.

I waited expectantly.

First call!

Second call!

Third call. Lights went out. It’s showtime!

…

Naaaaaaaants-ingonyaaaaa ma bagithi baba!
––Sithi-uhmmmmm ingonyama!

The first verse of the number ‘Circle of Life’ started. This is an epic musical number where all the animals of the African savanna gather around a massive rock called Pride Rock (yaas!) to meet the newborn lion cub, heir to the kingdom. In real life, this is where all the puppetry magic goes balls to the wall. Fucking elephants, gazelles, hyenas, boars, monkeys, and giraffes walk onstage––some through the crowd, even––to amaze the eyeballs.

Back to my experience, this is where a bunch of kids wearing full-bodysuits in different shades of brown colored with spray paint to represent their animal, opened the wooden doors and started walking nonchalantly (and non-animal-like) onstage. You could see the bunched-up boxers through some of the less-excited-looking teens' bodysuits. Prudeness, I’m guessing. But, then again, I assume dance belts were out of the budget, so they were saving everyone in the public from seeing teenage genitalia. Which is always a VERY good call in my book. Thank you for that, folks.

Rafiki, the baboon that sings this song was a butchy-looking teen armed with what can only be described as a brown, melted-down and twisted plastic broomstick. She wore red, white, and blue warpaint on her face that made her look less like a Disney character and more like a January 6th insurrectionist. Her vocals were a solid 6/10. It’s a difficult song, though.

There were also a couple of toddlers dressed up in elephant onesies. 10/10: Best Lion King production ever. Would come back to see it again.

The lions were topless teens with orange and red warpaint on their torsos and Hawaiian grass skirts petrified on their heads and waists. They showed up and presented the little lion cub: Simba… which was a plush.

Anyways, the breathtaking opening number finished and there was a little time-jump to show Simba and his friend Nala as kids.

I don’t remember any of this part of the play. I wanna believe that every kid did an amazing job and no notes were given. Good job, you guys!

We are going to jump to the part of the stampede. Here, Simba’s life gets threatened by a stampede of gazelles (in this kid-led version of the story, there was no budget for... bisons?) and Mufasa, his father, sacrifices his life to protect him. In this creative liberty, the stampede was represented as a kind of lyrical, ballet-looking performance where four kids fan-kicked, ballon-ed, and jete-ed around Simba and Mufasa. Let me be clear, Anna Pavlova was twisting in her grave that day. But I can’t ballet shit either, so I should maybe shut the fuck up.

Mufasa dies and Simba has to go to exile in a sort of oasis in the middle of the desert where he meets Timon and Pumba. A meerkat and a boar, respectively.

The comedic pair was interpreted by a chubby-looking kid in a brown bodysuit and a slender dude dressed up in an all-green bodysuit. Why this color, if meerkats are otter-looking mammals with brown-yellowish fur? Well, I can only assume that at some point during the pre-production of this children-led play, there was a promise of puppetry––which turned false. In the original play, you see, the actor wears a green bodysuit to hide as “the grass” and control the meerkat puppet from behind. In this version of the play, I guess, Timon was a bunch of sentient, talking weeds.

Back to the story, Simba meets these guys when he’s starving to death. So this couple of friendly animals teach him to, instead of hunting prey, eat bugs. This will become relevant so don’t forget it. And then proceed to sing perhaps the most recognizable song of the whole Disney empire: Hakuna-Matata.

It means no worries
For the rest of your days

Well in real life I DO worry because this is the point in this version of the play where a bunch of toddlers wearing animal onesies comes on stage by the hand of other actors and, no joke, a couple of casually dressed teachers. I mean, there ARE people in eastern Africa. Although I’m not sure if khaki pants, open-toe sandals, and sweater vests are the common attire there. Not canonical within The Lion King universe, I’m afraid.

The toddlers, teachers, and a bunch of other humans debatably dressed as animals danced and, generally, moved around the stage to loosely follow the beat of this energetic song. When, suddenly, I saw movement through the corner of my eye. 

I was seated at the end of the row, which is usually a good thing in case of fires and/or terrorist attacks. But since a terrorist attack on this 100-seat venue in the middle of Atizapán, State of Mexico, was on the low end of ISIS’ priority targets, I thought my only worry was getting my toes stepped on by chronic urinators.

Well, I was sorely mistaken, because when I turned to inspect what had caught my eye I was surprised to see a 45-inch, red-cheeked little girl dressed as an ape, stretching out her moist, gnarly, dirt-caked-after-crawling-all-over-the-venue-looking paw at my face. Inside her hand, the slimiest, opaque-iest, and flaccid-est looking gummi worms you have ever seen. That was the interactive part the ticket was telling (warning?) us about: the kids were going to hand out bug-shaped candy to the masses during the Hakuna Matata number.

One’s gotta give it up to the children: It made sense within the context of this journey that we were all a part of at that point in time and place.

It means no worries
For the rest of your days

I took the candy. 

We gotta do another time jump all the way to the end because after the sugar-sponsored number there isn’t really anything I can remember from this 12-to-13-year-old, mostly inconsequential event. 

At the end of the Disney movie, you get grown-up Simba battling it out against his murderous, usurper of an uncle, Scar, at the top of Pride Rock. Which, remember, is a big-ass rock in the middle of Disney’s Africa. Simba’s allies duke it out against Scar’s army of hyenas to see who’s going to regain control of the kingdom, which is now in a state of disrepair on account of mismanagement. Classic corporate story.

I’m gonna be honest with you, folks: I have no idea how this part of the epic is represented in the Disney Broadway musical because––PLOT TWIST––I’ve never seen it (too expensive). But I’m going to go on a limb here and bet all my poker chips on assuming that the version I got took major creative liberties from the original.

The version I got (and funnily enough, the only version I know) is basically a bunch of children running from one side of the stage to the other while yelling and sometimes jumping. If you’ve ever been blackmailed into attending a kids soccer game you can probably get the picture.

A bunch of kids running and yelling is a nightmarish experience as it is, but the bad vibes got severely heightened since we, the public, were already on another plane of existence. You see, by that point, the teenager's sweat from an hour and a half of performing had reacted with the spray paint in their bodysuits, releasing surely toxic fumes all over the venue that us spectators inhaled in droves. Add a kick from the spiced-up gummi worms from the Hakuna Matata joint and this whole scene felt like a live version of a Francisco de Goya’s painting. My subconscious knew I was sitting down but I felt like I was running rounds in the seventh circle of hell from Dante’s ‘Inferno’. Never in my life I have experienced something like that. And I’ve seen a woman dressed up as Voldemort pee on a man’s face onstage before. Hellish Lion King was way scarier.

To add insult to injury, in the middle of this apocalyptic haze I can vividly remember seeing a husky-looking girl suddenly pop on stage. She wore an all-black full-bodysuit, with no semblance of animalistic features, which at first made me even more confused because I then started thinking this Disney play really was going to have a demonic twist at the end. She placed herself in the middle of the stage, in front of one of the black felt screens, while the cloudy blob of faux-fighting children traveled around. Then, one of the lions or gazelles (at this point, it could’ve been any entity) broke from the fight-blob and jumped into her arms in a sort-of allongé form. The girl then atempted a 360 turn with the animal on to represent a final kick, a dance metaphor, or I have no idea what. But right at the end, bodysuit girl lost her balance and she and the animal fell back violently into the screen, which almost fell over if it wasn't for a now undisclosed teacher that I guess was just idling behind it all along the one hour and a half of play.

Nothing was harmed (other than brittle teenager confidence) and the play resumed after a massive GHASP from the zooted audience. Myself included.

I guess the good guys won and they locked the devil away for millennia. After an hour and a half of crippling cringe, questionable treats, and demonic-psychedelic trips the deed was done. The evil went away––the play was finally over.

But it wasn't really over, because just like any 80’s slasher film, the evil came back for one last jumpscare: curtain call.

Curtain call, for all you Philistines, happens at the end of every performance. It’s when the performers break character (hopefully) for the first time in the show and come to the front of the stage to take a bow and receive thunderous applause. It’s this moment what makes theatre kids tick. When, for a brief time, they are not the ignored ones, the misanthropes, the weird, the losers. It’s when the social pariahs become the beloved, the inspiring, the influential. It’s the point where all the physical, emotional, and economic efforts behind putting on a play climax in a massive boost of endorphins. Because for a couple of minutes, all the troubles of life disappear while you bathe in people’s approval and love. It was all worth it––I am worthy.

If it seems like I’m projecting much is because I am. And I also gotta come clean: Curtain calls break me.

…

I am a man of many flaws, and while I sat there, applauding the histrionic efforts of these children my body started to feel funny. 

The ensemble came out of the doors to the sound of––you guessed it––Hakuna Matata. I could see the dreaded brown bodysuits, now a bit browner in the worst areas possible, march from the back of the stage (upstage) to the front (downstage) in a single line. I quickly recognized the springy gazelle that made shadow girl fall taking the biggest bow, and along with her peers, wearing the biggest smile on her face.

My nose started to itch.

Next came the 6 and 7 year-olds, not so much in line as in a “kinda in the same direction” movement. Some took a bow, one was crying, and a couple of ones were carrying a little paper bag in their paws. At downstage, this last ones put their hands inside the bags and pull them out to throw the last remnants of the nasty gummi worms from before to the audience. We all quickly and savagely threw our hands up, fingers spead abnormally out, to try to catch one. We looked like starved baboons, yelling and jumping, trying to score one final kick from the devil’s tit. I sadly couldnt get any.

My eyes started watering. My nose was getting humid. 

Three teachers that in this canon I now will refer as animal handlers came on. They were holding the two elephant toddlers in their arms and a baby wearing a frog onesie. When they got downstage they took a dangerous low bow that briefly gave me flashbacks to Michael Jackson dangling his son Blanket over a balcony in Berlin back in 2002.

I tried tilting my head up and carefully blinking to pull the tears inside but I couldn't hold it. Water started dripping from my eyes.

Then the lions came, and I could see Pat with the biggest smile in his face. It made me forget the demonic trip I just had gone through for the past hour and a half. He was in his element. I started vicariously feeling his joy of being part of this production. We were all part of this amazing, one in a lifetime experience. He took his deserved bow.

The whole cast joined together downstage. My emotions got the better of me and made me stand up and applaud even harder. The rest of the audience joined in, even (reluctantly) my friend. Tears and mucus ran down my face. You could start to see speckles of moisture on the top of my shirt from them. My palms were bright red. My knees were shaking. I felt lightheaded.

This garbage production of Disney’s The Lion King was the best theatre experience I had ever had.

After what it seemed a second, the cast started waving goodbye, moving towards the wooden doors at the back of the stage. Never to be seen again.

“NOO!” I howled in the same way I will surely do in 100 years, when I get the call that my mom, dad, or dog had passed away. I kept my stance, I kept applauding, and I kept crying.

Great job, Pat. You little zealot, you.

…

“Can’t believe you got emotional from that. It was garbage,” my friend said when the lights came on and he saw my devastated face. “Pat was kinda good, though. We should include him in our play.”

I am a man of many flaws, but getting emotionall on every curtain call I see, regardless of the quality of the production, is not one of them.

The tragic story of how this vanilla Christian boy got knees-deep into the amazingly terrible world of edibles. I’ve never been one to partake in drug-taking. I'm not even much of a drinker if I'm being honest. On account of me being super paranoid of every itsy-bitsy tick, feeling, or itch out of the ordinary on my body, and also because I have a crippling phobia of getting dizzy. More on that later.

This is not to say I’m a substance prude, I usually have two cups of coffee a day and I drink alcohol occasionally. I’ve been flat-out, getting-naked-in-front-of-strangers kind of drunk a couple of times; but I had never, ever, deliberately consumed any type of drugs other than alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco.

The latter of which I only did for precisely one night––the night that I turned 18. 

My friends and I went to somebody’s house to drink beer and chat all night while we waited till the clock turned to midnight and my actual birthday to be. I guess one of my bad-asser friends had brought a pack of cigs, as we cool-cats like to call ‘em, and in between Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and Maroon 5’s “Makes me wonder” blasting out from some iPod Mini speakers, I smoked them out of existence.     

I probably smoked around 10 cigarettes that night, and I guess it was enough smoke for me because after that I never again touched another cigarette. Don’t exactly know the reasoning behind this decision, but it was probably the fact that living with two parents that smoked as their life depended on it already gave my teenage lungs enough second-hand smoke to even leave some for my future grandchildren to enjoy. A very fortunate decision-making from 18-year-old Alberto, because nowadays not only smoking is not considered cool anymore, packs sell for CRA-ZY money.

Also, and let me climb on top of my soapbox for a moment here, smoking is so stupid. Please, let us be honest with ourselves. It has zero health benefits, it bothers everyone around, and I strongly believe people like cigarettes or feel good when they consume them just because of the addiction factor, not because inhaling smoke in your lungs physically gives you pleasure. I see no upside to smoking. It just puts a strain on your finances and also on the way you interact with the world around you. You have to take a break from anything you’re doing to go smoke, involving going fucking outside of every place you are because it's rightly illegal to smoke indoors. Have you tried looking for a place to rent as a smoker? Unremorsefully kissing a non-smoker? Peacefully taking a long flight? Cigarettes just mess with everything, man. They aren't just a thing that you sometimes do or have. They are like those balls and chains to the ankle we saw in cartoons––they take away your liberty.

Anyways, camp counselor Beto OFF, I remember that night not only for being the only night that I actually smoked but because one of my friends (let’s call him Pepe) got so drunk that he sliced his finger with a broken beer bottle. Joe, another friend, offered to drive Pepe to the hospital to get it stitched up. This because he was worried for him, but mostly because he wanted to seize every opportunity he had to use his new car. A couple of hours later they returned, Pepe with a stitched-up finger and Joe with his 2009 Peugeot insides splashed in vomit, beer, and blood.
This gives me the perfect segway to talk about alcohol. 

I started drinking when I was about 15 years old. Some demon-child brought an Absolut Vodka bottle to a party that I was attending to, and mixed with some sweet juice, I drank a bit. This led me to start exploring the wonderful world of alcohol; which around that time (2006-7) was starting to transition from being one of hard, you’re-gonna-go-blind liquors, to being fun, colorful, and pop.

Don’t know if you kids remember a time when alcoholic drinks weren't the sweet and mild drinks that we now have and that might give you diabetes before even brushing your liver. But back in the ol’ days we practically only had fancy and expensive “spirits”, or working-class beers and hard liquor. Then came Absolut-fucking-Vodka.

Absolute Vodka started a revolution. At least in the Mexican provincial town I lived in, every cool kid was obsessed with it. People mixed it with cranberry, orange, and pineapple juices and got totally hammered. Then they started coming up with FLAVORS. Mind. Completely. Blown. You had the citrus one, the raspberry one, the mandarine one, the pear one––YES, GOD FORSAKEN PEAR HAD A FLAVOURED VODKA. And then they started to come out with special edition bottles. I remember seeing an LGBT-rainbow one, a disco-ball one, and a beautiful red-sequin one that looked like Shakira’s skirt or something like that. Shakira, Shakira! They were exciting times and I was there and ready to consume.

So I started slow, drinking one or two glasses when I was at a party or with friends, and slowly searching for the limit on how much I could handle. Limit which I had no trouble finding because a couple of months after I started being “a drinker” I was invited to go to the newest and coolest nightclub in that Mexican provincial town called Oaxaca: Circo.

Circo was a club that had a circus type of theme. It wasn’t fancy or anything, just a warehouse floor and walls, with a medium-sized, red and white tent instead of a roof; but it was for sure the talk of the town that year. 

On the fateful night in question, I took my provincianas cousins that had visited from another (and debatably rural-er) Mexican provincial town called Torreón to the coolest and hippest place around. To have some drinks, dance to “La Gasolina”, and perhaps land a phone number or two. Who knows?

Well, I know, because it happened to me in the past, and let me tell you: only one of those three things happened that night for me.

We went to Circo joined by some friends with the plan of drinking beer like the poor teen-aged peasants we were, because since the club was new––it was expensive. But one of those friends, let’s call her Dana, in I’m guessing an effort to push-boost ourselves to the next socioeconomic step (at least in image) had decided to get an exciting boon: a bottle of Absolut Raspberry and cranberry juice to mix it with.

I was offered to drink some and perhaps hypnotized by the raspberry-red colored bottle, I accepted. And again and again I accepted, because by the minute 61 since arriving at the place I was already seeing a non-existent clown show in the middle of the club. I was feeling the happy high of alcohol, but all was steady. Shortly later, the need to pee arose in my being.

I stood up from our table and immediately felt it. Fuck, I think I’m a little bit tipsy. I took a couple of steps, and when I almost fell on top of some strangers’ table I thought, OK, no––I am drunk.

 In a deep haze I remember walking to the bathroom and the colorful corridor leading to it spinning like crazy, and by the time I finally got inside I knew it: I am fuuuucked. 

I burst through a stall because my need to vomit surpassed the need to pee.

… And I blacked out.

Next thing I know I’m back at the table, sitting down in one of those uncomfortably not-cool bean bags and puking all the precious and expensive Absolut Raspberry on the floor by a little nook between the wall and a sofa. Trying to avoid getting kicked out by Circo’s security. I can see some concerned looks from my posse, which I guess were planning our next move to take me back home; but suddenly a tremendous roar filled up the place––Daddy Yankee’s “La Gasolina” started to play.

Everyone, including my group, yelled.

Black again.

When my consciousness came back, I was outside on the sidewalk and noticed a couple of man-hands fondling my lower abdomen. 

The owner of the pair of said hands was a burly man that I barely knew, and he was dry-humping me from behind. There, basically in the middle of the street, and in the two-thousands. We were not that socially progressive yet for this activity between two men to be acceptable. At least not in Oaxaca. 

When a little bit more of my awareness came through, I saw that the rest of my group was surrounding us and discovered that this over-clothes rapist was actually pushing in my belly, trying to make me vomit all the alcohol I had drank that night. In a futile effort to sober me up a little bit, I guess. (Not quite sure that this is how it works though). And after several pumps and a little bit of vomit out, we went back home.

Next morning, with a scolding from mom on me already, my whole family and I had to go to a christening in a small town outside Oaxaca. And with the sun completely blazing on top, everyone in that church got second-hand drunk from my cousins and I’s Absolut Raspberry fumes.

After that time I’ve been hammered more than a couple of times, but most of my alcohol frenzy era was contained within my high school years. When I turned 20 and started working at a nightclub, I kinda got sick of getting sick with alcohol. When, after 6 months of working there, I quit, I dramatically slowed down on my weekly ml of alcoholic consumption. Today I don’t remember when was the last time I got fully, balls to the wall drunk; which is good because, again, in this economy is not as easy to get drunk as it was before the 2008 market crash.

This clearly depends on each person, but for me to be able to get tipsy I need around five to seven beers. So that's like $15-17 dollars from where I’m from, currently; and if we’re talking liquor store-bought. Not very cheap or feasible for my current immigrant lifestyle, to be completely transparent. 

So, what’s left for me to do to get those highly coveted “funnies”? 

Weed.

As I told before, I come from a no-drugs background. My parents, both well into their teen-aged years in the 70s, were the type of kids that preferred listening to Trova music and reading semi-liberal texts instead of doing drugs. And I guess I inherited the lame gene because I never got interested in doing any type of illegal drugs. The “doing something illegal” always turning me down from trying to do so. And, honestly, most of my social circles never really did them either. So there were little to no chances of me falling into drugs. We were good, preppy Catholic boys… back then, at least.

But, history and trends repeat themselves through time. “The wheel turns, and nothing is ever new” because not unlike alcohol in the aughts, marihuana started to get very hip in the latter half of the 2010s. This wasn’t a substance for lowlifes with dirt-caked ankles and funky-smelling hair, now the cool kids are doing it!

At first, I didn't pay a lot of attention to it because I hate the act of smoking, and weed was just a 50-times worse-smelling cigarette. Really, whenever someone smokes weed it becomes a whole neighborhood-block affair. Last October I went to New York City with my family and the whole place reeks of marihuana. So, if you read my essay titled “Welcome to New York” you can add that to the list of foul smells that the city offers. I don’t know how New-yorkers cope, I would fucking vote red and start wearing my Handmaid’s Tale fit just out of spite for making me live in what smells to be the devil’s ass hole.

But, as luck would have it, in came capitalism and it turned that smelly herb into beautiful edibles. Like a substance version of Cinderella.

Just like vodka, marihuana got a makeover in the form of delicious candy and baked goods; and also butter, soda, oils, candles, tea, ice cream, cream, and even soap. The sky’s really the limit for these entrepreneurial stoners. And me, once again, was ready to consume.

… Not really, because in Mexico they were still kinda illegal, so I had to wait until I was in a progressive, first-world country to be able to explore this exciting world without the fear of being labeled as a criminal and being put down behind the shed like a rabid dog.

That puts the story in the present day, in the year of our lord 2022, when I moved to Canada.

Time to get fucking high.

…

It took me a bit of time to start exploring the wonderful world of being drugged because I was getting my immigrant bearings here in this land up north. I did keep seeing a bunch of brick and mortar places with ominously tinted windows where one could go in sad and empty-handed, and come out happy and holding precious drugs in the form of benign candy, but I never got the courage to go in. What if I ingest “a weed” and die from an overdose, all alone in my room?

It wasn't until month 3 in Vancouver when I had already visited most touristy places inside the city and managed to get me a steady place to live and a steady roommate to live with, that I decided that it was time to freaking do this.

One fateful night my roommate, let’s call him Rick, and I went to have dinner at our local White Spot. This is like the Canadian version of Applebees (but not nearly as good––sorry, Canadians). We decided to walk there. On our route through Kingsway Avenue, we found a place called Kiaro. Fogged out windows, a giant 19+ sign, and an LGBT flag on the door: A weed shop, we both collectively thought.

    “Have you ever had an edible?” I asked, subconsciously seeking some validation for my drug-addict cravings.
    “Yeah. One time, a small one. You?”
    “Nope. Never. But I kinda want to try one.”
    “Want to get one?”
    “Really?... Yeah, ok. I guess,” me trying to not look too excited replied. It’s on!

We got in and the place was everything but the dark, dank, rat-infested places I had imagined them being inside my head. This looked kinda like a knock-off version of an Apple Store: White walls with minimum decoration and displayed products on, light wooden furniture, clean floors, a dark grey sofa and comfy chairs kind of area on one side, and two white and wood stations with touch-screen PCs on top in the middle of the store. 

Weed’s gone full Silicon Valley start-up.

We were immediately approached by a husky, blonde, long-haired guy greeting us and asking what we were looking for. After explaining to him that we were a bit new to the apparently bright and sleek world of drugs and we wanted to try edibles, he recommended a pair of acai gummies with a blend of 5mg THC and 25mg CBD per piece.
Let me, a fucking expert, explain the science behind weed.

Most things edible-cannabis fall within two metrics: THC and CBD. In layman’s (and because I don’t know better) these are chemical substances that make you “go high” and most edibles have a mix of both. The difference between them is that THC makes your body “feel high”: laugh a lot, not understanding your own language, hyper-focusing, all that fun stuff; and CBD makes your body “relax”, and that’s why your aunt with myalgia loves to drop that shit under her tongue every night.

Now, depending on what you want from your night you can play with those chemical levels. Some edibles have more CBD mg’s and make you droopy, and some have more THC and make you funnier. So, for example, a cookie that has a mix of 10 mg THC to 1 mg CBD is gonna make you feel more high than slow.

We idiots (Rick and I) obviously didn’t know any of this beforehand, so we bought the 5 mg THC to 25 gm CBD pack of two gummies the husky bro recommended. 

    “This is a good place to start,” the dude said. “Just remember to eat beforehand. Never consume an edible on an empty stomach.”
    “YES! NEVER ON AN EMPTY STOMACH,” a ruby-read haired woman all but screamed from behind a counter. “It could get ugly otherwise.”
     “Oh yeah, we are going for dinner first,” said Rick. “Thank you, bye!”

And we left.

What’s with eating it on an empty stomach? What could happen? Why everyone was so scared of it? I left thinking.

We had a slightly better than mediocre burger from White Spot and while walking back home we decided to pop in a gummie each; which meant that I had 2.5 mg THC and 12.5 mg CBD in me.

I was very excited, and when we got home I sat down on the couch expecting to suddenly start fucking flying through the cosmos. I also was a bit nervous about two things: the ominously given message from the red-haired woman, and much more so, the possibility of getting very dizzy.

…

When I was younger, around middle-school age, I suffered from vertigo. Or at least that’s what my family and I thought.

Every night, when I went to bed, I got dizzy. I’d jump in my bed ready to relax and recharge for next day’s challenges and I could not do any of it because it was as if I’d just came back from drinking my body weight in alcohol. And it took me ages to fall asleep because I would start to panic, then I’d stand up walk a bit to calm down, and then try again. This could go on for hours.

Don’t remember exactly when or how it started. But it was excruciating. Like an inverse vampire, I’d start to dread sundowns because it meant that it was almost time to go to bed and get dizzy. 

My parents took me to get tested for actual vertigo. I remember going to a doctor and her splashing water inside my ear and making me follow an oscillating red light from a machine in an effort to learn the cause of my vertigo. But we never found the answer. The doctors said there was nothing wrong with me, that I was healthy. The issue was all in my head––in my psyche, to be specific. 

That was worse. Because at least if I actually had some type of ailment I could get treatment for it to overcome it and get better. But no, there was nothing wrong. And after hearing that nonchalant answer from the doctors, my parents also started to kinda brush it off as a teenager quirk. 

(You can skip this next paragraph if you are sensitive to self-harm triggers.)

I was left there without answers and being described as healthy. But every night I went to bed and I suffered sometimes for hours because of this mental thing I had. And I felt helpless. Helpless from science and helpless from my parents. I was around 12 or 13 and I remember one night briefly but seriously thinking of ending it. For a minute I thought of an easy way out of it. I can clearly remember thinking about a specific serrated knife we had in our kitchen. But maybe because I wasn’t brave enough, or because of the general lethargy that permeates most of my actions in life, the moment passed. It lasted so little but it was meaningful enough for me to be able to remember it clearly more than 15 years later. Glad it passed, though! Wouldn’t have been able to live through the superhero-obsessed media era, the pandemic, the housing crisis, the overall social unrest, and all the other cool things we got going on right now!

So I was left on my own, to fix it on my own. And 13-year-old Beto decided to take the same approach he would later then take to fix his acne: Fucking fuck it! 

If I was gonna get dizzy every night I was gonna get dizzy every night. Whatever. I still went to bed and started to fly as if I was glued on a frisbee, and it was awful, but I added a bit of self-berating into the mix.

Oh, you’re getting dizzy? Then get fucking dizzy, you idiot! Poor you, alone and spinning in his room. Get fucked you twisted, faux-vertigo-having, weird-body-shaped, non-sport-playing faggot! Hope you get even dizzier!
And weirdly, it kinda worked! I started to be able to go to sleep quicker, and before I knew or realized it, I wasn’t getting dizzy anymore at night.

Nowadays, I sometimes fall in little ruts when I get dizzy again. It usually lasts for a couple of nights and then I’m over it. I have some specific triggers like remembering the swaying Viking ship ride every fair has, picturing me looking outside a ship’s porthole and seeing sea then sky then sea again, and generally imagining oscillating stuff (after writing this, I’m FOR SURE getting dizzy tonight––fun). I can also get dizzy on command. I’m the worst x-men ever.

That is why I have an almost-phobia of getting dizzy, and try savagely to avoid the triggers that make my head go turn-turn.

“Then how come you sometimes deliberately got drunk?”

Because I’m masochistic, I guess. And also because my problem really is when I get dizzy without a cause under my control. Consuming alcohol with friends it’s in my “You’re gonna get dizzy when you get back home, you know” list of activities I got going on. In between going swimming and riding rollercoasters. These are things that I KNOW are going to give me trouble back in bed, so I tolerate them. And do them infrequently enough that they’re not as big of an issue.

Weed, at least right now, does not qualify to be on this list. And I remember hearing someone say that there was a possibility to get “the spins” from consuming the drug.

…

Back again on my sofa after eating the acai gummy. I’m nervous because I really don’t know a lot about this process. At this point, I know this about edibles:They can take hours to kick in.They get you “high” (whatever that means).They can give you “the spins”.ABSOLUTELY DO NOT EAT THEM ON AN EMPTY STOMACH. (Why? Don’t know.)
All I could do is to play the waiting game, so I did.

I waited…

… and waited.

    “Do you feel something?” Rick asked from his room.
    “Not really.”

At hour 4 I lost hope. The only thing different in me was that I was feeling a little bit sleepy. And I couldn't even blame it fully on the edible because it was already 11:30 pm and I had been up since 6 am that day.

My first time getting high experience was a bust. Nothing happened.

But I was undeterred, I was going to get high no matter what the cost. So for the next couple of weeks I kept on trying to get high. Bought another acai round and ingested BOTH gummies––nothing. A couple of days later I bought another flavor––also nothing. 

What’s wrong with me? Am I unable to enjoy this pleasure of life? No love, no money, no sex, and now no getting high? Why did I come to this earth for? Just to suffer?

I was ready to abandon the idea of me getting high because it was starting to feel like these fucking stoners were just selling me overpriced candy. But one Friday I decided it was enough.

I went to Kiaro after school and told a lady there, “I’ve been getting gummies but with no success. I need something stronger.”

    “Okay, maybe what you need is to up the THC level of edible,” she answered.
    “What’s that?”

She then proceed to lay out the scientific lesson I gave you a couple of paragraphs ago.

    “Ok. Gimme that one then,” I concluded.

The edible to end all edibles was a 5-pack of blue raspberry gummies, which had a blend of 10 mg THC to less than 1% CBD––so mostly get-high juice. It was perfect because I could ingest gummy by gummy and up my level of drug-ness in levels of 2 mg. 

I decided to “take it slow” and eat two and a half gummies (5 mg THC in me) right outside the store, like a fucking drug-addicted vagrant. I checked the clock to measure the time it was going to take me to get high. That way I could use the same metrics and methodology in future drug-related endeavors. Not to write a second personal analogy in the same paragraph but I felt like a scientist––a ganja scientist.

Went back home and yet again sat on my couch to be ready to get as high as both Petronas towers stacked together. Rick, my roommate, was around busy planning his own mental health Friday, so I really was left alone to have this new experience. It’s the good one now.

An hour went by and again fucking nothing. I decided to eat another gummie and a half (8 mg THC in me).

After 15 minutes and still nothing, I said “Fuck it” and had the last gummie. This put the THC mg in me to a whopping 10. 

I spend around 10 minutes waiting on the sofa as if I was pretending to be the Mexican Akshobhya (one of the Five Wisdom Buddhas, you uncultured swine), and suddenly an itch––a tingling––started to happen deep in me.

But this feeling wasn't a physical one; no, sir, this was an EMOTIONAL one.

What if something wrong happens? What if I get the spins and get very dizzy for hours non-stop? My Medical Services Plan hasn’t yet arrived. What if something goes REALLY wrong and I had to be taken to the hospital? It would break me financially! Would my roommate be able to help me? He barely speaks English and does not have any experience dealing with this! What happens if I ingest marijuana on an empty stomach? DID I EAT ENOUGH?! I DIDN’T EAT ENOUGH HAVE I?!

I jumped out of my padmasana and ran to the fridge. Cold, white rice.

I splashed a little soy sauce on it and stick it in the microwave for one minute. While waiting for this I found a half-eaten bag of Takis Fuego that had exactly six Takis left in it and I all but poured them into my open mouth from above.

When the rice was “ready”, I took it out and started eating it like a hungry Goku from ‘Dragon Ball Z’. I had to put food in me lest I die here and turn into yet another meaningless number in the yearly “Migrant Deaths and Disappearances” pie chart the government puts out for scholar Caucasians to feel a little bit bad about for exactly four seconds till they scroll down to another page.

After finishing my one-minute hearty meal I went back to my sofa to twiddle my thumbs and wait for Armageddon. Oh my god. What the fuck is going to happen to me?

At this point into the experience, I suddenly decided to do more “previous research” about it. So, exactly like that time that I was branding a one-day-old gash wound in my lower abdomen from a surgery, I decided to do probably the worst thing you can do in these sensitive situations––I Googled.

That one time that I Googled pictures of my one-day-old surgery I had almost fainted on the hard floor, but today I was sitting down––It’s okay. I typed “What happens when you eat edibles on an empty stomach” and don’t quite remember what I found. (Probably because I was already stoned.) What I do clearly remember is, after getting this still unknown fact, suddenly recalling that one of the most important things to do when you get high for the first time is relaxing. You gotta keep you cool because if you start to panic the drug can extrapolate your fears and anxieties and now it really is shit town. 

You mustn’t panic.

Next thing I know I'm typing “is 10 mg THC too much for first time getting high?”

A Quora thread popped up. In between all the stoner opinions, in my haze I could conclude the answer: It is.

I had to take this drug out of my system.

I panicked.

…

The air inside the bathroom was cloudy and felt almost oppressively smothering. A fruity smell was present all over. Lights were dim and they had this round colorful aura caused by moisture in the atmosphere. You could barely see the sink, the fogged-up mirror, the needs-to-be-vacuumed pink bath rug. There was this quietness only broken by a light finger drumming by the beautiful woman inside the screen. 

Holding an oval wooden brush, the woman alternated between tapping her fingers on the back of it and going through its rubber bristles. It was one of those ASMR videos on Youtube. Being played inside my roommate’s MacBook, perched on a breakfast table on top of the bathtub.

He himself? Wearing a mint-green face mask and submerged to his lower lip in neon blue water, still fizzing a little from the also neon blue nine-dollar bath bomb he’d dropped in it 30 minutes ago. He was just two cucumber slices over his eyes away from representing the cliched image of a person in a spa. Drowsy, eyes almost closed, fully relaxed––he looked even more zooted than me.

While all this was happening inside our only bathroom, outside I was drunkenly stumbling out of my bedroom, through the living room, and into the kitchen. 

Carrying my trash bin in one hand, I violently emptied the contents onto the floor. Oreo packets, dental floss, and body-fluid-stained tissues all got yeeted around the kitchen. I got on my knees and placed it in front of me as if I was about to pray to it, or to suck his trash-bin cock.

Took in a last big breath and I started fingering my throat.

Never in my life have I gone this far. And I’m not even talking about this drug-taking experiment, I’m talking about the literal distance my finger traveled down my throat. I believe I even touched my throat anus (epiglottis) with my finger. I must've done this very violently because after puking a shot glass’ worth of whatever I had in my stomach into the trash bin, the right side of my throat hurt. It felt roughed up and violated. Which is what I, in my drug-induced hysteria, did.

I stopped the fingering after I heard Rick pausing his ASMR video to––I’m guessing––locate the source of this not at all ASMR noise (at least not a socially accepted one). The embarrassment of him seeing me panic out of an edible beat my actual fear of death by weed gummie. So I pulled my hand out of my esophagus and shot out a couple of loud, fake coughs.

I peeked inside the trash bin and started combing through my own vomit with my fingers to try to find pieces of the gummy that would make me feel like these theatrics were worth it. But alas, that Taki-Fuego-red viscous liquid told no tales of barely-legal substances. 

I heard the bathtub plug come off and quickly got up to clean my violated trash bin in the sink. Then I picked up the trash littered all around the kitchen and jumped out of sight just in time for my roommate to come out of the bathroom and see a serene, untouched kitchen.

    “How was your bath?” I asked, while “walking out of my room.”
    “Oh, it was so goo––”
    “––The Takis made me cough,” I interrupted.
    “Really? They are very spicy!” he unknowingly answered.

After all this episode I was still scared, but not in panic anymore. That’s the sole benefit of social anxiety: it even breaks the fear of dying.

I decided I was going to actually try to relax now. With a sore throat, I got in bed and put ‘Turning Red’ on my iPad. Not even with a gun to my head I could explain to you the plot of that movie, but I had a pleasant experience.

When the movie ended I felt a bit drowsy but my mind was again focused. The high was over and my troubled experiment had concluded with a single thesis: My safe place, as with pretty much everything in my life, is movies.

…

Since that experience, I’ve kept on experimenting with edibles. I’ve taken a semi-scientific approach to this, keeping track of the mg and the time that it takes me to get high depending on the type of edible (a gummy takes an hour to kick in, while a cookie takes almost two). Now that I’m a total expert in the field, I’ve begun to actually enjoy myself while being high.

A couple of weeks ago I put on one of those “galaxy lamps”, which are basically just some cheap LED lights and a green laser pointer stuck inside some melted plastic, got stoned, and put on King Gizzard and the Lizzard Wizard’s ‘Butterfly 3000’ album. I just laid on my couch listening to music while stargazing the Chinese-made personal starfield on the ceiling. I felt inside the third act of ‘2001’. Then went to pee, sat down (it’s cleaner and more comfortable, sue me), and spent what it felt like 45 minutes peeing. Amazing night.

And while movies are definitely my safe space during these experiences, I’m almost ashamed to say that browsing through TikTok while being high is almost as fun as going to Disneyland. I’ve gotten the deepest, girthiest laughs I can remember having from it, and also had my mind completely blown from the most mundane type of videos. The only downside of this is that my poor 4-people contact list on the app gets flooded with notifications from all the “funny” videos I send during. All in all, 10 out of 10––would definitely recommend.

I have yet to do this outside, or in the company of others (on account of me not having any friends here in Vancouver). But I’m excited to try.

The future is bright for this born again stoner, newly baptized into the Ganja church. If there’s anything for you to take away from this piece other than entertainment is this: do your research beforehand, start slow, make sure you’re in a physically and mentally safe space, don’t freak out, and DO NOT DO IT ON AN EMPTY STOMACH BECAUSE YOU WILL MOST CERTAINLY DIE ON THE SPOT (I assume).

This essay is part of Alberto's first book "Today I Turn 30... And I'm Terrified". 

You can get it NOW by searching for it on Amazon or easily by clicking this LINK . Or the button below. Get the book!