Alberto Castillo's Blog

Original: King Philip II of Spain banqueting with his family and courtiers (The Royal feast) by Alonso Sánchez Coello

It feels like a cliché to say that one does not particularly care a lot about our own birthday. The sentiment is trite, boring, and overused. For example:

“I’ve never been a big fan of celebrating my birthdays. Firstly, I don’t like being the center of attention, […] secondly, every new birthday reminds me of all of the things I still haven’t managed to accomplish in my life, and also effectively points out the new centimeter of forehead that I’ve grown these past 365 days of not-dying-but-getting-closer-to.”

That’s a wonkily-written excerpt from the essay “TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY AND ALSO THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE LAST TIME I SAW MY FRIEND ALIVE” written by yours truly and collected in my first book Today I Turn 30… and I’m Terrified. If writing about how repetitive it is to acknowledge one’s disdain for the holiday, I fear I’m guilty of double-homicide. Straight to the chair.

However, while I’ve been hawking for years across platforms about how disinterested I am of my own birthdays, the last one I had just over a month ago reminded me that there have been some that were actually quite great—quite remarkable.

Now, I’d be reaching if I said that the following five birthdays were life-changing; that each day marked a before and an after in my behaviour, thoughts, and customs. Honestly, it would feel a bit reductive and sorta dismissive to the rest of the efforts I’ve put each day to form the man I am today. But, just as a reflective exercise, let’s entertain the idea that these five birthdays made me or at least, in retrospection, symbolize the elements that constructed my past selves, and made my current one.

(In full transparency, at least for the first three, I’ll be taking a lot of creative liberty while recalling the events which transpired. I am, after all, just a dude with bad or even false memory.)

This is a version of an essay from my new upcoming book…

… Out when I finish writing it.

90s

I don’t exactly know the year. It might’ve been 1995. This is one of the earliest memories I have, and I’m not even sure if I actually remember the day or just watching the VHS recording of the day.

This birthday happened inside a McDonalds in the city of Torreón, Coahuila, in Mexico, where we were either living at the time or visiting, since my mother’s family resides there. My mom organized the event and it was Power Rangers-themed. In the VHS recording, you can see me wearing a 90s-kid bowl cut behind a big cake topped with little plastic figurines of the five Power Rangers. I remember playing the game of musical chairs with the help of the McDonald’s staff to the sound of “Ilarie” by Xuxa— a massive BOP at the time in northern Mexico, I assume. I don’t recall winning it but I think I do remember my cousin Moy getting upset after getting cut from the game (he would often get upset).

At some point the VHS recording cuts from the party to back inside my grandmother’s house at night, where you can see me excitedly opening presents while my mother records behind the camera.

“Who’s this one from, I wonder,” she asks coyly.

“It’s from dad!” I yell in a high-pitch after reading the label. My dad was out of town, probably in Sonora, probably killing drug-dealers (or that’s what I picture what his life at the time was).

I rip the wrapping paper, I’m sure, my mother worked hard on.

“Well, what is it?” she asks.

“THE RED POWER RANGER!” I yell.

“What do we say?”

“Thanks, dad!” I say to the camera.

It was my mother who, probably, also got the toy.

2009

It’s the weekend and we are gathered at my friend Antonio’s house to celebrate my 18th birthday: the day that I legally become an adult by Mexican government standards.

The celebration was more symbolic than factual. I had been (illegally) drinking for a couple of years by then, I’d gotten my ID card a few months back on account of being an election year, and my actual birthday had landed on a Monday. Even so, it felt quite official.

There is a 600 x 800 pixel photo on Facebook around the date which shows a Bieber-cut version of me, wearing an incredibly-2000s, slim fit, green, print, deep v-neck t-shirt under a brown zip-up. I’m sat on a white, plastic chair—a Mexican icon—surounded by friends, a something more than a friend, and a cousin. In front of us, a table with a massive bowl of chips in the middle. Foam cups, a 2 litre Fresca, a Valentina sauce bottle, a Jumex 1 litre pineapple juice box and some Indio caguamas surround the chips.

“Hey, how handsome, Beto!” Someone commented under the photo.

I remember it being just a hangout with most, if not all, of my high-school friends. Antonio’s house was located on the outskirts of the city of Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico, where I spent my middle-school and high-school. The house had a very Mexican provincial rustic aesthetic, and it sat in the front corner of a somewhat large piece of land. The backyard was filled with different kinds of fruit trees which gave it a maze-like vibe. We were hanging out in a large roofed portico, surrounded by red brick—maybe even adobe—walls and pillars.

The memory feels particularly important since, I’m assuming, most of us were mentally preparing to break up with the familiarity of the past 3 years of high-school. June 2009 was around the time of our graduation, and most of us were going to move to different states or, in my case, different countries. In reflection, that was probably the last night my big group of 12-15 friends were all together. I had broken into it after a first couple of rough high-school months where I couldn’t find my place. One night during that first semester, while hanging out with a cousin at a party, I ran into a guy I knew from school whom I wanted to befriend. I ended up giving him a ride downtown where he was going to meet his (and my future) friends.

“You owe me a hangout,” I yelled out from the window of my car.

“You betcha,” he replied.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Back to my birthday, he, my cousin, most of my friends, and I were just hanging out, shooting the shit, drinking, and laughing. I remember picking up a pack of cigarettes someone had brought in and smoking throughout the night. That was the first night I had ever smoked in my life, and also the last one. The other highlight of the event was one of my friends slicing his finger bad while fucking around with a beer bottle that shattered on the floor. Another friend took him to the hospital and he ended up getting a couple of stitches while drunkenly flirting with the nurse. She didn’t reciprocate.

2015

There’s a photo on my Instagram dated June 1st, 2015: my 24th birthday. Its caption reads, “The family I chose. # beyoncevevo“

At the time, I was heading into the last year of my musical theatre phase. A couple years prior, in early 2011, my friend Neri and I had bumped into an ad posted on our college bulletin board calling people to audition to be part of this theatre group called 19th Productions, which was mounting the play Chicago. I was opposed to the idea, it made me nervous, but Neri convinced me. From that day up until late 2016 my life would almost entirely be devoted to making theatre. Most of my time, energy, connections, thoughts, plans, and friends revolved around acting, dancing, and singing. I’d go to college in the morning, have a quick lunch, go to the theatre academy until nine or ten pm, then have dinner or partying with my theatre friends, depending on what day of the week it was. Not a lot of worries, the future felt bright and exciting. Those were some of the best years of my life up to that point.

The night of Sunday, May 31st, 2015, we had finished rehearsals for Footloose, the play we were mounting at the time. As was customary, I started going around asking (more like riling up) my friends to head over to our usual chicken-wings spot to have dinner. Everyone was giving me weird excuses as to why they actually couldn’t do it that night. It seemed odd to me, but the fact that I was secretly wanting to go hang out with my friends that night as a sorta low-key, unannounced birthday celebration muddled any other critical thought. I was bummed out!

After cursing everyone of my traitorous friends in my head, I said goodbye and went to my car.

“Hey! Can I hitch a ride with you? I’m meeting a date near your place,” my friend Sonia yelled out in the parking lot.

My friend Sonia NEVER had dates. But, again, I was not really thinking critically. We drove together to near my place, which was way out of the way for my friend to go on a date at 9pm on a Sunday.

“Is this guy my neighbor or what?”

“Actually, can I use your bathroom before going to my date?”

We headed inside my home and I was jumped by my friends, parents, and brother yelling “Surprise!”

In the heavily-filtered photo you can see me, my friends, and my brother all squeezed together over a couch, under some sort of party garland, wearing party hats. We are all still wearing our casual, comfy rehearsal clothes, and big smiles. When looking at it as a whole (and if you skip my brother who, at 15, looked like a child), the scene doesn’t seem so different, so old, like time hasn’t passed that much. It’s when I start looking closer when the details confess another story. One married and then divorced, one has a kid, one is a rising theatre star, one sadly passed away, another nearly as much. All of us look quite similar on the surface but we are now so different in deeper ways. Separated by interests, priorities, geography, and death. Time and experience weigh heavier on us than our photographed version. At the time, a lot of us were already growing out of the group, the night had way less members than what a gathering like this would’ve looked like a year or two prior, but—looking at all those embracing arms—that’s another secret the photo doesn’t tell.

I don’t remember the cake, or the food, the conversation we had, or even who actually organized this surprise party. I only remember the feeling of being turned down, coldly dismissed, and then shot back up way above. Feeling the warmth of being appreciated—feeling loved.

2021

It’s been a year since the pandemic started and me working from home. It’s Tuesday, June 1st, around 8 P.M. and I’ve been working in front of my computer since 7 A.M.

“How’s it going? Nearly done?” My dad asks after walking into my bedroom. “I just moved up our reservation to 9.”

“I don’t know, dad,” I nearly spat. “I’ll let you guys know in a bit.”

“Okay.” He walks out.

I remember feeling annoyed at him. I am working! Can’t he tell? But the thought of experiencing that interaction as an out-of-body scene, seeing my face as I rudely answered his question, seeing his as he walked back downstairs to where my mom and brother were sitting—all dressed up— waiting for me in the living room haunts me.

That period of my life was one of my busiest. I had been juggling practically three jobs in an effort to make as much money as possible before moving to Canada early next year. And I had also been working hard to self-publish my first book which I released that very day, since it was a “Turning 30” kind of thing. (And because I wanted to ride the increased algorithmic traffic one gets on their birthday to promote it.)

Because my mother is immunocompromised, we had taken the shutdown quite seriously. But some of my more insistent friends had managed to come by to pick up copies of my book in the previous couple of days. Selfies in my Photos app show me, at the forefront, separated by a gate or by a long table from friends posing with my book.

Looking back, the extra pressure I had on that day was a tad silly. I had just started being responsible for bigger things in one of my jobs, so I wanted to make a good first-ish impression. I was working on—what I assumed to be—a hard deadline and was waiting for confirmation by my boss about something.

In the end, I finally said “Fuck it”, turned off my computer, and joined my family downstairs. We went to a fancy restaurant nearby to have late dinner. I remember having a nice night in the end. I eventually found out that my boss didn’t even care that much about the deadline of the specific project I was trying to complete that night.

An archived Instagram story from the day shows me taking a selfie in front of my computer, with a caption saying “Been working since 7 AM. Is this what being in your 30s is about?”

My 30’s have not—actively—been about that at all.

2026

My journal has the following entry which I’ve slightly “cut for time” and added or removed context:

June 2nd, 2025 - Monday ———— Home

Yesterday was my 34th birthday, and it was a bit weird.

Biggest thing is that it was, I think, the first time I’ve ever spent a birthday truly alone. So, even though I had a nice time, it felt a bit bittersweet.

All throughout the morning I kept getting waves of sadness and nostalgia. I had a call with my family in the morning and then biked to Kits Beach to go to a beach cleanup event, which was nice. The day was lovely – sunny, clear skies and fresh air. I didn’t really think of anything big during the time I was on the beach, but then when [the event] finished, I ended up winning a couple of ferry tickets to Nanaimo, which made me feel like it was a birthday present from the universe. But as soon as the shock of winning ended, I started thinking “But I have no one to go with”, which made me feel sad. My eyes watered a bit even.

At the end of my day, I went to Ignite Pizza to have dinner by myself. [They randomly gave me a free extra pizza slice.] I sat on a bench at the bar next to the windows to avoid sitting on a table that is supposed to be for two people. Even though it was 8:30 PM, because this is Canada, it was the golden hour, and the sun was hitting my face in a lovely way.

This whole scene made me nostalgic again. Made me look back at the time I spent with [REDACTED] and [ALSO REDACTED], and it made me question if I’ll ever find something similar again here. (I will.)

Looking back, though, winning the ferry tickets and getting a free slice of pizza was like the universe making sure I had a nice birthday.

It was definitely nice. Talked to my family, rode my bike, got a book and a message from [REDACTED], went to the beach, walked around, had two ice creams, went for pizza – all under a lovely blue sky.

Quite a few pages further, my journal also has the following entry:

June 1st, 2026 - Monday ———— Home

Today was my birthday—I’m 35 now—and I think I had one of the best days of my life.

I guess it was more of a birthday long-weekend, since it started on Friday. Here’s a list of all the things that happened: […]

A two-page list ensues.

Starting the previous Friday and throughout the weekend, I had lovely Teams calls with coworkers, met friends for dinner and a boardgame night, ran into an amicable past flame, a not so amicable celebrity, tried a couple new restaurants, finally sold one of my cursed items on Marketplace, hiked up Grouse Mountain, ran into some run-group peeps, had coffee with a friend, ran into and chatted with a local writer I’m a big fan of—all under a beautiful Vancouver almost-summer weather.

On Monday, June 1st—my actual birthday—I took the day off from work to walk around downtown and have lunch. My aunt Maricruz video-called me (she usually does on my birthday) and we had a lovely chat. When I got back home, the new book from my favorite author I’d ordered a week prior had arrived. I then met my Canadian bestie for coffee, and she gave me a great book. I then went to a beach cleanup event, just like last year, at Kitsilano Beach; where I scored BIG when I found a pair of broken, fancy sandals someone had abandoned on the sand. After the event ended, one of the organizers saw an Instagram story I posted tagging the event and sent me a couple of (what I imagined were) flirty messages. By then it was 7 PM and I decided to, instead of going home, just sit down on a bench next to the beach to watch the sunset over the mountains. My journal reads:

The sunset and overall vibe while at the bench were amazing. It’s one of the most beautiful days I’ve experienced in my life. There was a bunch of people enjoying the beach, a guy was playing relaxing music on a guitar, people were happy, there were dogs playing, old people dancing, boats on the horizon, the mountains looking so pretty, a cool breeze blowing, the waves smoothly crashing, the sun just the right amount of warm – So. Beautiful. Multiple times I choked up. It was one of the most beautiful times of my life.

When the sun finally set, I walked to a Korean restaurant to have dinner by myself, where I randomly ran into another person I kinda know.

This 2026 one is kinda long-winded—I mean, it’s the one that I recall the most—but I wanted to list out most of the things that ensued because I kinda don’t believe they happened otherwise. Not to be more corny about it but it really felt like a magical weekend.

But even though it was truly magical in some ways (I can’t really control the weather or the routes my acquaintances take on their day-to-days, for example), my rational—and perhaps prideful—brain knows that it was the result of a year and a half of constantly putting myself out there and starting building connections with my community and with the people I surround myself with. I now re-read that 2025 journal entry and it breaks my heart looking at the version of me who was still—I can now recognize—going to the process of rebuilding his life after a curb-ball and finally working up the courage to get out there, to make luck and magic find him. I can see, too, that even then I believed it could happen “(I will.)” and, indeed, it finally started to.

While sitting on that bench I typed the following, which I then posted on a photo carousel on my instagram that very June 1st:

35 today!🎂😱 Fueled by that and perhaps by having had one of the best years of my life to date, I’ll let myself be both sentimental (on main) and a bit less humble just for today.

Last week I was sitting in my house, doing nothing, and looked around. Initially I glanced at my stuff—my books, my clothes, my trinkets; then I looked at my furniture and the walls; then I thought of my job, the people I know, my activities, the lessons I’ve learned, my history, and the systems that build my day-to-days; and thought: Wow - I’ve done all that.

I’m so lucky and grateful for my upbringing and for the support of all of the people that have made me capable of building a life that I love. I thank the stars everyday that I have a healthy body and a healthy mind, which are invaluable and sometimes a bit of a gamble and out of our control.

Even though there’s some days that it’s kinda harder to see, I’m so happy and proud of the man I’ve become and excited to better myself every day. I think if I showed my teenage self the current life we live (after telling me I’m ancient), he’d think I’m so cool—and he’d be correct.

And, while knowing that there’s plenty of ups and downs to come, because I know myself better than ever, I’m—for the first time since I was probably 17–very excited to grow even older. 🫶🏼

There’s a selfie on my phone, dated June 1st, 8:49 PM at Kitsilano Beach Park, that shows me, sitting at that bench, facing the upcoming sunset. I’m wearing a pink, short-sleeved linen shirt over a white tank; the Ray-Bans my brother gifted me a couple of Christmases ago hang near my neck. I’m looking directly at the lens. The golden hour light is making wonders on my skin, but I can start seeing my expression lines getting a little deeper, a little wiser—signs of a life filled with smiles and laughter. Speaking of smiles, I’m wearing one. Not a forced one or an exaggerated one, but a soft, subtle one. A smile from someone who feels like he’s played his cards right so far; who’s not afraid of experiencing life; who is content of both being with others or by himself; who knows who he is and is so proud of this version and the previous versions of him; who knows the future—now more than ever—is uncertain, but welcomes it with confidence and eagerness; who is excited about a 36th birthday, a 40th, 60th, 90th.

He is someone who—guesses—secretly actually likes birthdays, not for the cake or presents, but because they really act as a life-checkpoint, a reminder of all the things he’s built so far and the ones he wants to achieve; and, perhaps most importantly, a special observance to all the human connections that light up his life, far and near, even brighter than the most beautiful sunset over the beach.

The journal entry ends with:

Such a beautiful weekend and birthday. I feel so happy, so grateful, so full.

So happy to be 35!

Thanks for reading!

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Original - An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby (1768)

So, the cat’s out of the bag and unless some crazy Dune-like catastrophic event happens (which it WILL) soon, “AI” tools are here to stay and to deplete our natural resources and also the brain capacity of the most vulnerable: the lazy and/or the dumb. Surprise - YOUR A DUMB!

First, a disclaimer: These tools we all by now know and use such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or––eye twitches––GrokAI are certainly NOT “Artificial Intelligence”. I think we can all agree, right? They are all generative models that predict results based on an immense amount of data. They lack reasoning, consciousness, and creativeness. So, even though we refer to them as AI (and I do and will in this rant) they are NOT intelligent. No Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina, unfortunately… or fortunately? They are kinda an overpowered and overmarketed Akinator. Ok, let’s move on.

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If you know me, you know that I’m the first one to jump into any sort of new tech I can get my hands on. (I was one of the first kids with an iPod Color in my rural Mexican province back in the day, so you KNOW I’m fucking legit, motherfucker.) I just love technology and thinking about the future (anxiety). So, back in late 2022, when I heard about this thing called “the ChatGPT” I immediately got up on that thang.

It kinda landed right on my turf because I am a professional writer (exclusively in the sense that I do get paid to write, as you can prolly tell from this piece). I quickly found out ways that I could use the tool and take advantage of the perks and benefits it provided. It helped me find out ways of rephrasing sentences, quickly looking up synonyms or alternate words, proofreading big chunks of text for contextual mistakes that would not necessarily pop up on a regular spelling and grammar check, and helped me overcome the “Blank page syndrome” by providing skeletons for blogs or articles I was writing. And by doing all these experiments, I also started noticing the quirks and limitations the tool had, which made total sense—I wouldn’t ask a power-drill to carve out The David.

It was still a very exciting time and, honestly, a little bit scary too. I kept reading everywhere that these tools would do EVERYTHING and would replace a bunch of jobs within the next 18 months. CEOs all over the world got hard-ons thinking about how they would be able to lay 30,000 people off to get $15 dollars extra on their end-of-year bonuses. I’m a Marketing Copywriter; I was basically front of the line at the head-chopping queue.

But, as the months and now years went by, it seems that promise of an anthropological revolution leans less into fact and more into smoke, mirrors, and a way to distract the masses from realizing the way we’ve been conducting our global socio-economic models is just imploding on us. The “Intelligence” part of the “Artificial Intelligence” equation has not come to fruition, these tools have not brought the promised exceptional boost of efficiency for most scenarios since a human still needs to fix and rewrite the slop, entire countries are divesting massive amounts of resources into this dream, and entities have spent billions of dollars in infrastructure without any means of getting a realistic ROI in sight. Some experts even theorize the entire United States economy is being propped—toothpicks, chewing gum, and band-aids—by investment in AI.

Still, as of today I basically use these tools in the same way as I did day one because, well, nothing much has changed since.

… only that the dumbs have gotten their hands on them too.

Let’s talk about ART for a min, k? K.

Someone brought up the argument—which I truly believe—that these generative tools were made by people who lack the ability to create art. Writing an essay, painting a landscape, designing an image, editing a video, animating a character are tasks that involve time, talent, experience, and—not to be cheugy—love. Why would I go out of my way to spend time and effort honing a set of skills when I can just tell the computer to do it for me. Done. I’m an artiste too! No one could ever know. But, oh boy, we know. Just look at Elon Musk, one of the top world losers, creating horny anime on his hellsite. That is not someone creating art, that is a sociopath trying and miserably failing to masquerade as a creative, funny, normal human person via algorithm.

“He’s kind of creative, though. He had to write the prompt.” No. That is not how art works. Giving a set of instructions to the robot for it to reference a bunch of examples and mishmash them into slop does not make you an artist. Prolific fantasy author Brandon Sanderson says that prompting does not give you ownership of the piece, you are barely an art director… and that’s even pushing it in my opinion, because the robot is not making art. Slop director, more likely—AYOOO! BUUURN!!

Now that we’ve talked about the background and about the “Art? More like FART” angle, let’s pivot from the accelerated path towards armageddon a group of—like—four sociopathic losers from Silicon Valley have brought upon us to something more silly, more lower-stakes: the dumb, lazy idiots.

(I’m being a bit harsh with my adjectives here but it’s just because I love you, guys, and I want the best for you. You dumbs.)

“Whatever. I’m not trying to be an artist, I just want to work less and work faster.”

Fair, fair. I’m all for optimizing work time so I can have more play time too. But are you also trying to be A DUMB? Quick - pull your pants up! Your slop is showing.

I’m now going to focus entirely on writing, because that’s my lane (which I seldom stay at, as you can tell), that is what I—arguably—know. Okay?

What you are writing reads like it came straight from the robot! Which it did. AND THAT’S OKAY I fucking guess in the year of our lord 2026. But, please, can we just give it a cent of brain? Can we, as humans, try to at least keep a morsel of dignity? It’s embarrassing, annoying, and it pisses me off!!

Okay—why am I all hot and bothered and jumping all over in this rant?

I am, unfortunately, fond of the Youtube video-essay genre. These videos where some incorporeal voice spews a—fucking previously—curated script over some stock footage of whatever the topic is. My topic tastes vary from “Big Infrastructure Projects” to “The Rarest Pokemon Plush Ever Produced”, and from an hour and a half “Retrospective on the Movie Speed Racer” to “Full History of the East India Trading Company.” I loveit. I loveit. I loveit. I loveit!!

Alas, BIG robot has infiltrated my safe space, and big dumbs have fallen FAT-ASS up into its maw.

In recent months, I’ve started to notice more and more AI constructs in the script of these videos to the point that I’ve started to question not only if the content I’m consuming was actually mostly written by a human, but also its veracity.

Because, you see, the robot we all love and enjoy is A DUMB JUST LIKE YOU! And by that I mean it constantly repeats structures and it constantly makes mistakes—IT EVEN SAYS SO ON THE BOTTOM OF THE CHAT WINDOW, WHY AREN’T WE DOUBLE CHECKING OUR SLOP?!

And you know, I get it. We are all busy trying to survive in this pre-postapocalyptic timeline. But, motherfucker, if you ain’t got time for it then DON’T DO IT. Go watch Love is Blind or whatever you do and spare us. Sheesh!

Okay, anyway. The whole point of this weird rant was really to help you DUMBS to be able to recognize, locate, and fucking eliminate the construcs all these fucking robots absolutely ADORE to overuse when you are “optimizing your workflow”; lest you show everyone your dumb. By the way, I recognize that by doing this I may be ruining your experience consuming SLOP in a “once you see it, you’ll see it everywhere” kinda way. (Like how I now get zapped every time I find AI-looking constructs in fucking 1800’s literature; I may need help.) I’m not sorry, though. I’m helping the human race. I’m plugging you out of the Matrix kicking and screaming, Cypher—idc.

Here’s a list of the dumb-ass motherfucking things the Artificial “Intelligence” loves to do and I’m always clocking:

Parallelisms — “It’s not just this—it’s THAT.”

I put this on top because it’s the one that pisses me the most OFF! FUCK! SHIT! I HATE THIS! I’m constantly whipping my proverbial lash on top of my also proverbial Egyptian chariot yelling (typing) at the robot “Absolutely NO ‘It’s not X, it’s Y’ constructs!! I’ve already told you this before.”

“I apologize for the misstep. You are right—”

“Stop apologizing and do the job you were meant to do. Fuck!” (Real interaction I’ve had on Gemini and Copilot, btw. I may never be employed by their companies.)

Pisses me TF off. It sends me over to the wall like Toni Colette in Hereditary. These are the clearer signs this piece of dookie-text was probably made by slopotron 3000 and it’s not just stupid—it’s annoying! ACK!! *flips off both middle fingers*

No hard opinions — “May, might, typically, often, some…”

Hey - can we, like, have an opinion, maybe? Let’s everybody pull down our briefs, grip our genitals with both hands and with our third one write what we actually think. We’ve gone through the—fucking apparently—hard job of picking up a keyboard to write some shit—show me the shit! I know not everything is black or white and nuancenuancenuance but, cooooome oooon! When all I see is this soft-core bull, it turns on my SLOP ALERT. Whee-whoo-whee-whoo! If we are afraid to say what we really mean then SHUT IT. Why post at all? Bring back dying on stupid hills! It seems to be working for a lot of world leaders—AYOOOO!

Lists up the wazoo! — “What’s a bed? Here are 3 types of beds: 1 - …”

So - I didn’t ask for this? I know our brains are deep fried and the thought of seeing three unbroken paragraphs sends a chill down our spines. I’m all for readability—it might not be apparent by now, but, again, I am a Marketing Copywriter, I know what tickles readers’ fancy—but when everything is a list it erodes the actual meat and potatoes of the fucking content. I guess people don’t have 60 seconds to read a paragraph and rather a list but I propose slowing the fuck down. Let’s add some friction into our reading habits so that maybe the info actually fucking grips to our brains. What are you running to? Consuming more slop? Shit!

No depth/originality — “WW1 started because of the assasination of Duque Franz Ferdinand” or whatever.

Sure, yes. That was ONE of the reasons it started, but there’s fucking more. Also, if I’m reading/listening to something you created, I’d like to see some depth and opinion sprinkled in. Dumb motherfuckers are out here creating circle-jerk LinkedIn posts dressed as op-eds and hitting “Post”. Why would I spend time watching your video or reading your piece if I could’ve just Googled “nick cannon kids” and moved on with my day? DUMB. YOUR DUMB.

No typos and/or “fancy” writing — “The traveler sought more than just a destination—she sought a transformation of the soul. Sincerely, your friend who failed 4th grade twice.”

This one requires you to know the person behind the content, but it’s the easiest one to clock. You are telling me that my drunk uncle who spends his time on Facebook Dating and watching Instagram Reels of big, busty latinas is suddenly throwing em dashes and “rigid and unyielding” at me? Fuck off, unc. I know this isn’t you. This is especially embarrassing in this day and age when everyone wants to be an influencer. I’m not shaming people for using tools to elevate their grift and sell more 13-page eBooks, but when you throw shit around that you don’t even understand it sounds disingenuous, vapid, probably filled with mistakes, and—worst of all—generic. DUUUMBBBBBB. YOUR DUMB again.

Anyway, those are the biggies for me. If you like a more thorough breakdown read this and this.

Before I leave you, you dumbs, let me be very clear: I’m not against or even above people using these tools. I myself use Gemini every day. I used it in this post*, FFS. I think they are useful, fun, interesting, and a great way to sorta “level the field” in the sense that knowledge and tools are now even less gatekept than ever (until these AI companies run out of money and start charging for the quality of the robot’s responses). Specifically in regards to writing, these tools are also great for people with, say, dislexia or people that otherwise wouldn’t have access to a proofreader or an editor—I mean, the real thing would always be the better option, but it is a solid alternative. I have a “Gemini Gem” that acts as a proofreader. But building that took effort and a lot of trial and error. And even now, I rarely ever follow its advice because I find that, even though grammatically correct, I guess, it removes the things that make what I write sounds like me. THE ROBOT IS SILLENCING MY VOICE - HELP!

And I think those are the things that I despise the most about these tools. Because they are so quick, so available, and—at surface level—so effective, it leads people to believe that they can easily make do with what they get. “Everyone can do it, and it’s easy.” Yes, I believe everyone can do it and that it is easy. It’s easy to create shit—poop from a butt. Generative models are stripping away the value and the essence of what we create and consume because creating something of worth takes time, it takes friction. And they are also taking away the style, flow, and voice of what we create since they are NOT concious and unable to bend the rules of their algorithm or database.

A lot of people don’t care about the artistry behind creation and are fine with whatever slop they get and I guess it is fine—there’s definitely bigger problems in the world than sounding authentic on your Instagram post or LinkedIn profile. But even if you land on that group I would invite you to double check your sentence, maybe add a little personality, maybe even a fun typo, and definitely remove those fucking “It’s not just X—it’s Y” constructs because THEY ARE SENDING ME TO THE BIG HOUSE.

Thanks for reading.

*I prompted it “Give me a short sentence that would show awesome grammar and use of the English language.” for that 5th bullet, and—wouldn’t you know it—it features a lovely “It’s not X—it’s Y” construct. I love this timeline.

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CHEESY ALERT! This is your warning that you’re about to read something CHEESY. You’ve been warned. Most of the following is a transcript from something I recently wrote in my journal.

(Original: Portrait of a Young Man with a Book by Agnolo Bronzino.)

Today’s been a good day so far. So, might as well draft out the elements I’m missing in my life that would help me become the man I’d like to be.

I’m almost 35, and even though I plan to live past 120, I remember a time when, in Mexico, life expectancy was in the 70s. Also, all of my grandparents died before 80. So, you know… just in case my plans eventually fail, I think 35 is a good place to stop and think about what I need to tweak to become, what I consider to be, a great man.

As much as we all want to be carefree souls who do not spend a second of their lives thinking about how we are perceived by the world, almost all of us eventually do spend at least a grain of sand on it. I know I go through seasons where my level of care fluctuates, but it’s honestly ever-present. I think it’s normal. If we didn’t have at least a pinch of care, we would be out naked on the street, stabbing people and shit, I guess.

I don’t think caring about how you are perceived is a bad thing. Like most things in life, everything becomes bad without moderation. One could lean too much into caring what others think of you that starts to shape a life or a reality that one might not be too comfortable, or even feel authentic. If that’s your case, I’d invite you to think deeply about it. Or talk to someone about it.

I do, though, think that caring the right amount can bring good to your life. For example, two things that are quite important in my life right now are exercise and dressing well.

Those two things were born for me out of a worry of how I was being perceived, or how I didn’t want to be perceived. “I don’t want to look skinny” and “I want to dress better” were the catalyzers that pushed me to emphasize exercise and to become more creative when it comes to clothes. Even though one could say that both came out of negative emotions or experiences, nowadays, after working out the underlying issue that brought those ideas in the first place (body dismorphia, lack of self-confidence), they’ve become fun elements that I enjoy partaking in my life. I love moving my body and I have a lot of fun wearing clothes that I like. And even though I’m not winning any Mr Olympia contest or being featured in magazines any time soon, I enjoy caring about exercise and fashion in the same way I like watching movies or reading a book—it’s just fun!

So, that’s one half of it. The other one is the way I perceive myself. Which I think it’s even more important.

On any day, I do think of myself as being a good, well-rounded person. I think I’m interesting, smart, good-looking, and just a nice man. I love myself and I’m proud of what I’ve become with the help of the people that I’ve come across and also a lot of self-work. I have very few regrets and, even though I sometimes worry too much, I am ultimately optimistic about the future. But I can be my worst enemy and my harshest critic. Often I do expect much from myself. And now that I’m nearing an age where “I’m officially a man” (even though I’ve BEEN a man for decades now), I think it’s the perfect time to look out for the areas of opportunities in my life that are stopping me from becoming the man I’d like to perceive myself as.

So, here’s the list!

1 - I want to be a great host.

I want people who come to my house to feel good and welcomed. I want them to have a great time and feel warmth. This one’s easy: I need to always try to have a stocked fridge with things to offer to visitors. Beer, wine, teas, snacks, cheese? I also need to figure out a plan about chairs, so people can lounge comfortably.

2 - (Related) I’d like to live in a cozy, interesting home.

I want to have the home of an interesting, “adult” man. I need to keep it clean, tidy. Put art on walls and shelves, get better furniture, organize my clothes better. Have a place that draws the eyes of visitors.

3 - I’d like to be a man that knows and goes places.

I want to be able to recommend good places to eat, drink, and have fun; and activities that are interesting. Experiences worth living and sharing. I dread the day someone visits me in Vancouver and I just take them to a dusty, old bookshop. I gotta invest time and money in trying new experiences, new places around the city. For this…

4 - I’d like to be a man that drives (again).

I need to have the ability to get a car when an Uber or transit is not an option. I haven’t had the need to drive the past four years and that has made me a little complacent in regards to driving. I don’t even need (or want) to buy a car, I just need to get my license. Rent a car and go out of the city. Go to hikes outside the city. Go camping!

5 - I’d like to be a man who is easy and fun to talk to.

This one’s a biggie. I have to shake the “I’m an introvert” shit out of my system. Shut the fuck up and talk to people. The city (and myself) has curbed the way I go around, avoiding eye contact with strangers to try not make anyone uncomfortable, which has developed into me becoming an unapproachable person. Smile at people. Say hi to people, you idiot. When you are talking to someone, just be yourself and stop trying to “be nice and polite” and just do whatever you do. If they vibe with you, great; if not, that’s okay.

6 - I’d like to be a man who is assertive.

I need to get better at being assertive with non-family people. Be better at saying the things that I’m thinking or feeling. Stop playing “the waiting game” when I get messages and reply asap. If the other side feels off about my quick reply, it is not on me. Be vocal about what I like, what I love, what I appreciate, and what I’m uncomfortable about with friends and acquaintances.

7- I’d like to be a man who is open-minded and optimistic.

I want to say yes more. Say “Fuck it—let’s do it!” more often. Go out, travel, make impromptu plans, laugh if they fall. Just be happy, excited about living. Stop trying to always be white-nuckling the steering wheel and just go with the flow.

8 - I’d like to be a man who is creative, cultured, and informed.

I want to write more—create more. I want to consume more art and culture. And not only consume them but also process them, appreciate them, and think deeply about them. Create a valuable opinion of them to be able to share with others with great insights and not only “I liked it. It was interesting.” Consume less online slop that does not bring me any good. No more letting the algorithm waste my time. I need to be better at learning the causes behind current conflicts to form fact-based opinions that will better shape my ethics and the way I go through life.

9 - I’d like a man who knows how to do shit.

I want to be a man who’s able to cook fun things; a man who is able to fix the fucking toilet; a man who can sew a pocket on. I need to learn more about the basics of homemaking and be able to create a nice meal out of difficult ingredients and also build a bench or make a jacket or something like that.

10 - I’d like to be a man with a dog.

When I look at my life at this moment, there are things that I’d like to eventually have: a partner, a vehicle, a better job, a best friend. But all those holes, while important, do not ache as much as not having a dog. Maybe I’m mentally ill, but all my life I’ve always had a dog and these past 4 years that I haven’t I’ve really felt it. I need to move out to be able to have a dog.

…And that is it. I’m otherwise a perfect, almost 35-year-old man—clearly. Next immediate step is creating a PDF out of this, sell it as daily affirmations to angsty late-bloomers, and crave my own niche within the always-lovely, never-evil manosphere.

Thanks for reading.

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In the gran scheme of things, 2025 was not the greatest year for most people. Regardless, as with every year, there definitely was some solace to be found in MEDIA and THINGS! So, these are the ones that carried me throughout the year.

(Note: This one might be too big for Gmail. So I would suggest jumping to the Browser or the App.)

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New Movie

One Battle After Another

I kept seeing the trailers for this movie and I just couldn’t care less. Then, everyone started raving about it online so I just HAD TO see what was up and, people, it was definitely UP. Someone on Letterboxd wrote “A three-hour-long panic attack starring leonardo dicaprio as the big lebowski and sean penn as satan”, which might be my favorite sentence of 2025. This is such a bullet train of a movie that manages to tell a great, entertaining, engaging, and compelling story while at the same time having the most assertive themes one could choose in 2025. And it was also shot well? Incredible.

Movie I watched this year

Perfect Days (2023)

A movie about an old, lonely, Japanese man who cleans toilets for a living and where “nothing” really happens doesn’t sound so enticing. Well, I’m glad I came about because this is one of the greatest movies I’ve seen in years. This is a story about the all the joys and amazement that one can get if we just stopped a second to pay attention. Reminded me that a life’s worth is not meassured in what one achieves or gets, but in moments being appreciated and the connections we have with other humans. Lovely film.

Book

Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams

Last year this author’s novel Stoner unlocked something in my brain and was the best book I read of that year, so I already had big expectations going into this one. What I found in this story about a young, privileged man who quits Harvard to join a buffalo-hunting party in 1800s Colorado was not only some of Williams’, by now, staples I come to expect, like beautifully written prose and equally beautifully perceived world insights, but an engaging story about nature, human connection, blinding obsession, and finding our purpose in life. This man was just that good—shit!

Podcast

The Weekly Planet Podcast

Didn’t listen to many podcasts this year. I’m blessed with a two-step commute to work and I really only listened to stuff while working out, which has been almost exclusively taken by amazing music this year. That being said, the time that I did listened to one was to this pop-culture podcast from “a couple of blokes down under”. Their expansive knowledge in movies, comics, and tv shows coupled with their banter originating from, what it seems, a great friendship, makes this show a joy to listen to and a great way to keep up with the (non-terrible) news. Their Australian accents and humor is just the cherry on top.

Show

Andor Season 2

In the last decade I’ve developed quite a toxic relationship with Star Wars. Basically, it sucks now and I hate it but I also keep coming back again and again hoping “this time things will be different.” Well, I’ve mostly failed on all fronts except with the show Andor. This story about the different elements that jump-start the rebellion against an empire is just so deliciously cathartic in a (real) world where it seems “the good guys” are never on the winning side. Although any person who’s seen the original Star Wars kinda knows the eventual fate that awaits these characters, their struggles, motivations, phillosofies, and ethics reflect more than ever what I constantly see and would like to have more in my real universe. This is not just great Star Wars, but great storytelling. Love to see it.

Album⠀

EURO-COUNTRY by CMAT

CMAT fills one side of my 2025 music coin (does this metaphor work?). Her music has the ability to be totally approachable from a “let’s vibe and have fun” kind of angle, but also get VERY deep if you’d like to delve into the lyrics. Her Irish upbringing, as with most artists from that island, imbued in her a deep sense of thematic nuance that can get a bit dark, but her self-deprecating Irish humor and playful innuendos peppered throughout songs like “Lord Let that Tesla Crash” or “Take a Sexy Picture of Me” make this album a fun, rich experience. Who would’ve thunk the best recent country is coming from overseas? LOVE her!

Song

“Spit of You” from Seventeen Going Under by Sam Fender (originally released in 2021).

Sam populates the other side of my 2025 music coin (it definitely does not work) since I discovered him through Spotify early in the year. It’s hard to say which of his songs hit the hardest because he has so many certified bangers. And, much like CMAT, in songs like “People Watching”, “Getting Started”, “The Borders”, and many more Sam hits the perfect mix between a fun, lovely, energetic vibe that just gets more nuanced once you read into their complex and quite dark lyrics. In “Spit of You”, Sam talks about his complicated relationship with his father, in a Springsteen-inspired rock song. LOVE him!

Article

Revenge of the Sith At 20: George Lucas’ Magnum Opus Is Remembered For The Wrong Reasons by Liam Gaughan for PASTE Magazine

I’m writing this on the anniversary of The Rise of Skywalker, which only makes me appreciate even more Revenge of the Sith and the Star Wars prequels. In this article, the author argues how this originally maligned movie has evolved into a great piece of political cinema, and I agree. The death of democracy, Anakin’s fall into extremist fascism, and constant war are now more poignant than ever in a world where we constantly see how fear and the pursuit of absolute power turns heroes and nations into the very villains they used to be against.

Publication

The New Yorker

I just love this magazine. I believe it’s the best way for me to keep up updated with the news, politics, and culture while at the same time being an amazing teacher in how to properly write and create compelling stories. It’s no wonder the likes of Ben Taub, David Sedaris, Haruki Murakami, and (obviously) David Remnick roam its halls. Just great journalism and storytelling! And their totes are awesome too!

Clothing

Runhit Compression Shorts Men Underwear Spandex Running Shorts Workout Athletic

While that SEO-optimized name is anything but sexy, these running “shorts” kinda are. They are basically black long boxer-briefs, which is a piece of clothing totally out of charachter for me, since I’m a regular briefs guy. What made them my fave is the fact that they are useful, look good, affordable, and—most importantly—have pockets, so I slip my phone inside and easily take it out to take photos while running.

Shoes

Dr. Martens Made in England Adrian Tassel Loafer Shoes

I’ve been a sneakers guy most of my life, but, since I’ve arrived to my mid-30s this year, I thought I should invest in some “age appropriate” alternatives. (Mostly, it was because I saw Paul Mescal wearing a similar pair, honestly.) I splurged for the “Made in England” version of these shoes under the notion that they need to be my main “smart/nice” shoes for the next 10-15 years. They look great, get a lot of compliments about them, and can be worn casual or not. The only downside is that, while I got them early in the year, I’ve yet to break them in. They still hurt my feet every time I wear them. Pretty hurts, I guess.

Accesory

Casio G-Shock GWM5610-1

Earlier in the year I saw the movie Warfare and all the soldiers in it were wearing this type of watch and I was like, “I want that.” I was wary of getting one because I suffer from thin-wrists syndrome and I was afraid the well-known-chonker G-Shocks were going to look bad on me. Well, I don’t think this one does! I love its rugged nature, high-level simplicity but underlying complexity (It’s solar-powered and also gets sent accurate times via satelite—what?), and the fact that it has the juuuust right amount of understated cool. It goes well with almost everything.

Youtube Channel

Mind Pulp

This video games channel run by two men—a Canadian and a British—ticks the same boxes as my favorite podcast up there (who, btw, ALSO have a yt channel called Mr. Sunday Movies). In Mind Pulp you’ll basically find audio commentary on top of game captured footage from old, usually shitty videogames and also from new releases every now and then. Their editing style, timing, overall humor, and their palpable camaradery make this channel a cozy, safe watch for me.

Youtube Video

“Greed is Destroying the World” by Drew Gooden

If you had told me in 2016 that the “Road work ahead? Uh—yeah. I sure hope it does!” guy from Vine would release a video that perfectly encapsulates and explains why most of us are feeling like shit this decade I would’ve never believed you. In it, Drew explains how the current economic landscape is ruled by extreme wealth innequality and the greedy actors that are perpretraiting the conditions that have allowed this gap to become. From a brief history lesson from the 1940s, through the “big shift” in capitalism in the 1980s, to the extremely fragile economy propped up by AI over-investing in our 2020s, Drew shows why we’ve landed here and why we must be fucking pissed about it.

Website

Youtube Premium

Honestly, Youtube. I don’t think I need to explain why this website can be great (it can also be extremely dangerous, so one’s gotta pay attention and know how to use it) but this year has been my trusty companion. I’ve been mostly by myself this 2025 and Youtube has proven to be a great tool to put on my iPad and just move around while I’m inside my house. If used appropiately, Youtube can be a source of entertainment, education, actualization, and even self-improvement. It clearly does not replace a roomate or a friend, but, in the mean time, it has been there for me when I need it.

Person

[REDACTED] Man from Instagram

I hope this does not read like I’m a creep. I follow this man on Instagram that I found via one of the many running groups I was a part of this 2025. I don’t think he is aware of me, that’s why I’m redacting his name, but since I started following I’ve been greatly inspired by him. While it’s definitely true that comparing yourself with people on social media can be a dangerous game, I believe that appeciating the elements that a person curates on their channels can be very useful to inspire change within you. I don’t think that this is a “Ahh, I wish I had his life/things/looks” kinda vibe, but I see stuff that he does that aligns with what I would like to have in my own version of life. Based on what he shares, it looks like a life filled with drinks with friends, riding bicycles at dawn, being vulnerable about depression, creating lovely photographs and crafts, general optimism, travel to visit family—basically, things that I consider comprise a healthy life. And I’d like to also have that.

That’s about it. Those are the things I came up that were my favorite this year. Did I miss something important? Have you crossed paths with some of these? Let me know.

Thanks for keeping up or joining me this 2025. Even though, generaly, things might not look very great nowadays I am still looking forward for what 2026 will bring. I hope everyone has a happy holiday season and a happy new year. Cheers!

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Original: Music Making Company - Jan Van Bijlert

What is art?

Without looking up the definition, for me, art is any type of human-made creation— based on their skills, talents, and experiences—that evokes a feeling in someone else.

Can art be good/bad?

Yes. I believe that, objectively, art can be qualified as good or bad based on the current rules, parameters, and structures we (as humanity) place on the many forms art can take.

Movies, for example. Every movie ever made is a piece of art in the sense that, one: it is human-made through skill, talent, and experience; and two: it makes people feel something. Like anger, in my case, with The Rise of Skywalker.

But objectively, there are movies whose quality is lesser than others. The plot is filled with holes, the camerawork is subpar, or the lighting is all messed up. That movie is still a piece of art and succeeds in evoking a feeling (“How is that Sith dagger also a map? This sucks, and I’m angry!”)—but it’s bad. It’s a BAD piece of art. Some people may find enjoyment out of that movie, but by the qualifying standards that we, as a whole, agree upon for good movie-making right now, that movie is bad.

So, yes. We can judge the objective qualities of a piece of art and say that it’s good or it’s bad based on the general “rules” we follow at this current point in time. Nowadays, I can see a Jazz Dance choreography and consider it a masterpiece; but that same piece, shown to a pre 1920s Ballet Dance group might come across as an objectively bad piece of dance art.

Art is ever-changing; its only inherent element is its demand for celebration.

That whole bit was a disclaimer for what I’m about to write.

The other day I was perusing the Web 2.0, as one does, when I found an independent music artist that had just debuted their first new single. I decided to give it a listen, because I like supporting small artists every chance I get to psychologically offset the bad karma that looms over me on account of my massive carbon footprint (I love lamps).

The single in question was an upbeat pop song about how the singer was strong and free and how nobody could stand in their way. Okay - cool! I like feeling those feelings too, I guess.

But by the end of the song, even though the music was energetic and catchy, and the singer sang amazingly, I was left a bit empty. At first, I was confused as to why, but then I came to the conclusion that I was feeling that way because the song SUCKED. It was bad! A bad song!

Maybe because I’m a writer, within the song realm, I gravitate towards the lyrics more than the rest of the production. Like, I kinda know words and letters but not musical notes or production. The song in question might’ve been the bestest, mostest, songest song, I mean, I liked the melody fine enough. But this song’s lyrics, on closer inspection (not that you had to get really close, it was very evident), fucking sucked ass. Poop from a butt.

But why, though? Why did the lyrics suck if they were an upbeat hymn to being strong and free? Shouldn’t they make me feel inspired and filled with energy?

They were missing a key element that, IN MY HUMBLE AND MAYBE ILL-INFORMED OPINION, makes this type of pop-ey, fun, inspirational, energetic songs good.

Here’s my thesis:

Let’s imagine you’re on a date with me. We are both sitting at a cozy café, it’s raining outside, and they have a bunch of cinnamon-scented candles around.

“So, tell me about yourself,” you ask me.

“Oh - well, I’m a writer. I work from home. I live in Vancouver, which is an amazing city. So beautiful. I’ve also lived in Australia and New York before.”

“Wow! So cool!”

“Yeah. I know. I also like to read, go dancing, or pub crawling every now and then. I’ve hiked big mountains and deep forests. I also own a paid-off 2025 Subaru.”

“That sounds great.”

“It is! I’m really happy. I’m also getting promoted at my job. I earn a lot of money and have a bunch of vacation time which I spend traveling all over the world.”

“Nice.”

“I keep super active. I run and go to the gym and have an amazing VO2Max. I have a lot of clothes in my closet and, like, six pairs of New Balance shoes. No one can freaking stop me. They will never bring me down!”

“Oh - great.”

“Yep! What else do you want to know about me?”

“Actually, I think I’m late for something. See you!”

…

Can you tell what was wrong in that corny example? What felt off? Well, it’s the same thing I felt with that indie-artist song. For all intents and purposes, the optimistic lyrics and the upbeat music should’ve inspired me, but they didn’t.

So,

What makes an effective “Upbeat, inspiring” song (or story, really)?

Not all songs require a story (or lyrics, really), but all “inspiring” songs do.

(I know that the term “uplifting/inspiring” song is kinda vague, but I refuse to exemplify the song that catalyzed this post. The artist in question clearly have enough on their plate to add some rando’s substack critique on top.)

A story comprises many elements. Characters, plot, themes, setting, etc. But there is one thing that can make or break a story. Without this element, there is simply no story: Conflict comprised of Vulnerability and/or Relatability.

Let’s break down conflict.

Being vulnerable is what connects us with other humans. I can list out all the amazing things I’ve accomplished or I have in my life, like in that date above, and eventually, if I don’t break it with some vulnerability, it’s going to become BO-RING and DULL and OKAY - WHATEVER, DUDE. GOOD FOR YOU. BYE.

Why? If all of those things are so cool and I like hearing about cool things?

Well, because there is no conflict, no struggle, no resolution.

“I lived in Australia.”

Ok - cool.

“I had to sell my car and every possession I owned to pay for a ticket to move to Australia by myself.”

Oh - wow. Interesting. I haven’t been to Australia but can relate to the struggle in this story, which in turn makes me like the story.

Vulnerability connects us with other humans via relatability. Everyone can, in some shape or form, relate to the struggles of living. We love watching Titanic not because of the cool boat shit happening onscreen but because we can relate to the pains and desires of Jack and Rose. We connect to the feeling of having dreams beyond our means and a passion for living via Jack. We connect to the dread of not having a dull life where we don’t feel like we belong via Rose. Without vulnerability that inspires relatability, Titanic would be that CGI crash animation they show early in the movie: It’s cool but imagine three hours of that?

“Pfft! But what if I don’t want a sad story in my song? I want a happy song!”

I don’t think being vulnerable equals sad. Let’s take the 2010 anthem: “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha. In its chorus, Ke$ha sings:

Don’t stop, make it pop, DJ, blow my speakers up
Tonight, I’ma fight ‘til we see the sunlight
Tick tock on the clock, but the party don’t stop, no
Oh, woah, woah, oh (Oh)
Oh, woah, woah, oh

This excerpt is a perfect example of what I encountered on that indie-artist song. In that second line we read “Tonight, I’ma fight ‘til we see the sunlight”.

“Ok - cool, I guess.” Is what I would say if I hadn’t had the framed conflict from the pre-chorus just before it:

I’m talkin’ ‘bout everybody gettin’ crunk (Crunk)
Boys try to touch my junk (Junk)
Gonna smack him if he gettin’ too drunk, drunk
Now, now we go until they kick us out (Out)
Or the police shut us down, down
Police shut us down, down, po-po shut us (Dow—)

Ah - now I get it. We are at some party. Everyone’s getting rowdy and drunk, some douche is trying to harass Ke$ha, and the police is threatening to destroy the fun.

It’s a somewhat silly situation (potential sexual abuse excluded), but there is vulnerability-induced conflict: Ke$ha is being threatened. So, by the time we get to the chorus and we sing “Don’t stop” and “I’ma fight ‘til we see the sunlight” we understand the problem, we see a bit of ourselves in the events unfolding, we are rooting for Ke$ha, and we are feeling pumped and excited––we are in this together.

So, when it comes to happy, wannabe-inspiring songs like the one that inspired this whole-ass rant, one really needs to have a strong premise as a base to prove your point. One cannot go about screaming how awesome one is without a starting point to contrast the achievement of… being awesome; on account of the risk of your song—your debut song as an indie artist—to come up as arrogant, empty, vague, and, worst of all, boring.

Objectively good lyrics require having a story. I can’t think of an example of where this is not the case. A story needs conflict for it to be effective. A conflict can only occur when at least one member of a party is vulnerable.

Conflict without vulnerability is just noise.

And let me be clear: A vocal song does not necessarily need good lyrics. One of my favorite songs is Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”—where he sings about spooky and cool shit. But, as a debut singer/songwriter who is trying to have an impactful uplifting anthem as their presentation card, the song in question just fell to the ground like a wet rag.

… But, hey, I’m no songwriter. So, who knows?!

Thanks for reading.

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Original: Harley MS 3244 bestiary

While jumping between three big projects and slowly chipping at them in a chaotic, not-very-productive way, I decided that I won’t be sharing any more of the stories/essays I plan on adding into my upcoming (?) book on Substack—at least not before its release (again, ‘?’).

The main reason being that they are getting quite long for Substack or email. The longest story in my first book Today I Turn 30… and I’m Terrified titled “Welcome to New York” is about 10,500 words. One of these chonkers right now sits at 18,500 and it’s not even half-way done (I’ve also been writing it for a year and a half, so there’s that). And I’m considering, for the first time in my very-not-at-all-prolific writing career, to use chapters—ghasp!

The other reason is a bit more convoluted, so stay with me.

…

Writing is so hard, y’all. It wasn’t like that for me before. I could sit down and fluidly type away for 6 hours without me noticing until I finally stood up from my chair, my spine screeching in agony out from her slumber. Nowadays, I HAVE TO make myself sit down and type away. Like I’m my own mother trying to get me to eat all my vegetables.

What I do is I sit down at my desk, look at the clock, and say, “Okay, you’re going to write until it’s 6pm. Go!” And then I write and write, mostly shit, until the clock ticks, and then I immediately jump up and grab my phone or do whatever as if I’ve been holding my breath for an hour and I can finally breathe. It’s annoying and embarrassing.

Not to introduce a sub-list so close to the main one, but I have a couple of theories on why this change has happened to me.

The first one is that I’m a professional, salaried Copywriter; which means that my nine to five is me writing marketing and technical copy for the company that I work for. There are, of course, more non-typing tasks that I do every day, but the main thing I do is to write. And even though I like where I work, my bosses, and the content that I create (it’s alright), at five pm, when I clock out, the last thing I want to do is to keep sitting at my desk writing.

This is, of course, very much a “first world problem”, and I can also recognize how lucky I am to be in my particular position. I can work from home, sitting down, relaxed, while a lot of people have to go out into the cold and wet Canadian winter. I wouldn’t want to change it. But it is still a fact of nature that I get tired of doing the same thing over and over for hours on end. So there’s THAT.

The second theory is the one that worries me the most. I feel like, lately, my brain’s reward system is a bit fried. I can see it in the quantity of sweet things I eat, in the way I consume media, in my attention span, and in the time I spend fucking around online on Reddit, Instagram, or TikTok. It’s aggravated by the fact that, paradoxically, I’m also VERY attuned to how these elements affect my brain; kinda like a type 2 diabetic that deliberately still drinks a whole bottle of Coke. Which begs the question: Is it better to know and don’t act, or to know and still not act?

Anyways, I’m working on fixing that. Maybe I’ll write a paper of my results and sell a “How to not fucking ROT” course online in the future when I’m over this slump.

So these two theories are what are messing up my flow, man, my state of mind.

But mainly, what I’ve discovered is that, turns out, writing is hard. It’s just a thing that is hard to do, no other way about it. If it was easy, everyone would be publishing books left and right. It wasn’t hard for me when I was a young pup, but now that I’m an older (sexy) dog it is hard for me too.

If you know me, you know that late last year I started running and this year I’ve been running A LOT. The sport kinda never made sense to me, and then, when it did, I was left wondering why I had managed to adopt it quite “naturally.” The answer came a few months back, when I read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, a book that I would recommend even if you don’t run or write. In the book, the author compares the act of writing to long-distance running.

These activities share a similar timeline. Before I even start running, there are some days that I need to hype myself up or even bully myself to actually put on my shoes, just like I have to tell myself “Put down the phone and go to your computer.” When I actually start, my legs feel cold and rusty, taking steps is a challenge, my body screams “We don’t want to do this! Let’s go back! This is awful!” In the same way, when I start the first sentence in the first paragraph of the day it feels like it’s the first time I use my fingers to type, and as I read what I’m writing my head is like, “This is shit. This is stupid. Do you know how to use words?” Then, as the run progresses and I cross over that first slump I get into a flow, my body is warmed up, running feels easy as if this is the natural state my body should always be in, sometimes at around the 8th or 9th km mark, I enter into this heightened state of being where I feel so good and my legs kick even faster. A similar thing happens when I write, where I’m suddenly thinking about words and sentences even faster than I can type them, and when it feels like my brain is an open sprout of thoughts and consciousness that is rushing to pour into my fingers and into my computer. Finally, when I finish my run and get back home tired, even as exhaustion hits, my brain releases some sort of chemical that makes me feel amazing, both emotionally and physically, in a sort of “That was tough, but I’m so happy and proud I did it” sort of way. The same happens when I’m done writing, even more so when I finish a draft. And in both cases, I can’t wait to do it again, even so far into planning how to and what I’ll be aiming to do next time.

So, because I’m a writer, It made sense that I would also become a runner. (I’m also able and quite fit, so there’s that.) Writing feels the same type of challenge as running, and lately, because of my profession and the state of my brain, it kinda feels like I’m running underwater or with weights tied to my ankles.

I also think writing and publishing my book, while still a very challenging thing I did four or so years ago, set some expectations inside me that are a bit unrealistic. I thought that, because I had “popped my cherry” in terms of writing a book, writing another one was going to be easier, because I already knew how to do it (I don’t).

There’s a thing called “sophomore slump” that sometimes happens for an artist in the music industry. This is when an artist that releases a commercially and critically acclaimed first album, fails to reach the high expectations for their second. There’s many psychological, social, and even mathematical reasons for it, but there’s a specific one that applies to my work: I already had most of it done.

60 or so percent of my first book consists of stories that I had been writing up to 10 years before I actually sat down to write it. These were somewhat carefully curated and then somewhat edited into my book, and I had my work done… by me, in the past. Not even the actual stories, but also the 10 years of life experiences to populate the rest of the book. It was easy (it wasn’t, really… but somewhat). And this happens too for musicians, for example. Their first album is populated by years and years of writing and composing and carefully rewriting and fixing and tweaking. So by the time they release their first album, it is THE THING that they were trying to project for the past however many struggling years. And then, by the time that they need to push out the second one, I imagine it is like, “Shit. Now what do I want to say?”

And that is me, right now. Not that I’m pressured by the high expectations my first book brought me. People I care for liked it, and that is more than enough for me. But, rather, I feel like I haven’t lived enough to populate ANOTHER book. I haven’t created new opinions to pour into pages and pages of work. At least, not in an easy, “this happened, then this happened, then the end” sort of way.

I feel (or I’d like to think) the new pieces I’m working on are deeper, more nuanced, in a way that I actually need to fucking slow down and really turn the inner eye to bring them over to the front of my head and then to paper. It’s not that I suddenly became enlightened or I transcended to Xenu’s palace up in the ether, I’m still writing and enjoying stories about stupidity and farts and poop from a butt. And the things that I’m currently writing are nothing out of the ordinary from my previous body of work. It’s not as if I think that I’m writing the next Infinite Jest, East of Eden (which I disliked, btw) or whatever book is considered to be transcendental. Nothing like that. But I discovered, as I wrote this year, that the stories I’m slogging through in this stage of my life demand of me more, they want me to slow down and to really fucking think about what I’m saying. I don’t know if it’s the stories that demand it, or my subconscious expecting more of me—or a mixture of both.

So, yeah, writing is hard. Breaking news.

This whole spiel leaves me with this formula:

Demanding Job + Rotten Brain + Writing is Hard Actually = Me not posting any more big stories on Substack right now.

…

Re-reading this whole thing got me thinking, Who’s even asking this of you? It’s not like I’ve been super active here. I guess I just wanted to vent, whine, and share a piece of the current state of my process, and an update on my sensibilities.

I tried to use my Substack as I used my personal blog(s) back in the day: as a platform where I showed my bestest, mostest, edited-ested work—like a museum of silly stories. Fueled also by the fact that most of what I consume on this platform is really fucking good and overwhelming in a I-wish-I-wrote-like-this kinda way.

I can’t keep up with that right now. Moving forward, I think I’ll treat my Substack as a means of updating anyone who’s reading the current state of my affairs and to just dump short-ish, non-too-polished thoughts and feelings that the death of Twitter left stuck in my throat (or in the eyes of my poor Close Friends on Instagram).

So… ultimately a blog, I guess.

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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…

Out in 2026.

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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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