Keeper of the Dam

     Finding myself at another crossroads, and I can’t decide if it’s a good thing or not that this isn’t a reference to the 2002 smash hit Britney film. Rather, I’ve finished another week-long stay at the new place I set myself up with in the Bacocho/Rinconada neighborhood. It was the quiet, secluded spot I was looking for, even though the partying aspect of this trip went into full swing as I made the transition. I should have known better that it would take a little bit of time for me to fall in with a group of people who I would win over with my shining, drunken personality. Oh the wonders of liquor and drugs! But alas, my week long binge has come to a painful crash as my 32 year old body grinds through it’s aging gears, finding the mezcal to be an inadequate lubricant. Perhaps the time is overdue for the yoga and surfing portion of this retreat to start. Before that happens though, I am jumping at the invitation to join one of my new friends on a bit of a southerly j...

     Recently I’ve been waking in the morning with the same question in my head: What the fuck are you doing? And of course, the answer is simple: I don’t know. Because I answer as such, with it being the first thing to think in the morning, it trickles into the rest of the choices in my day and I question everything I do. Why that restaurant? Why eat right now? Why leave the apartment? Why go to the beach? Why ride the bicycle? Why try to meet a new partner? Why attempt to better yourself? Why even try? Well… I don’t know.       Now, let’s couple that with my crippling indecisiveness fueled by a need to always make the right choice. I live with a constant fear of “what if” and even if I do manage to pick my head up and take action in the day, I am constantly battling with the idea that the grass may have been greener on the other side. But if I can’t go back and relive that alternate universe where the other decision was made, then what's the point of...

     If there is one thing we can all agree on as humans, it is that life is full of ups and downs, hills and valleys. The first time I visited Mexico was to come to Puerto Escondido with my brother, his girlfriend, and one of my best friends. The timing of New Year’s was coincidental, but provided for quite an exciting addition to a trip with already high expectations. The journey was filled with adventure, excursions, new experiences, and nostalgia of stories past. So I wonder if the high of the trip was naturally going to be met with a low this time around. It’s not too far a stretch to understand that trying to recapture emotions that are still so fresh, in the same setting, but with a different scenario, was destined to fail. An answer to that from most would be the lows are there to make you appreciate the highs. But when you are a person who spends too much time in long stretches of lows, you start to forget what it means to enjoy a high.       ...

     Imagine if you will, you are 32 years old, alone, and surrounded by gaggles of people that are 10 years your junior. And not only that, but it seems like you may be the only gay person for miles. At least, that’s what loneliness will do to you: suddenly you are the only person in the world who is simply you. Somehow everyone was let in on a secret and you missed the memo. Not only did you miss the memo, you were out sick the day they had a meeting about it too. That’s essentially how I have felt every day for the past week, with increasing intensity while on the beach, when out to eat, when drinking alone at a bar, when sleeping in the dark of my room as what sounds like the entire hotel parties in the “shared kitchen”.       Having gotten that out of the way, what I really want for today is to not complain. I try not to look at it as ignoring the massive pull of the emotions that ride my mind like the heavy tides in this surf town, but rather, th...

      More days have gone by than I intended, based off of the work that I have completed. And by work, I do mean on myself, because who hasn’t been unemployed for the past 10 months? Right?       Today I find myself on the palapa of my hotel: Casa Piedra Parada, in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico. This is techinically day 6 since I left my friends room in Los Angeles and jumped onto a flight to Mexico. I know, I know, we should all be staying home and isolating from the masses, I understand and I agree. But here’s the other thing to consider: I don’t have a home. I left mine and gave everything away - including my home of 10 years, spouse of 7 years, and job of 5 years - because something in me had died within that decade, and the smell was rotten. Jump to September of 2020 and I was suddenly homeless, crashing with my friend in California and wondering what the hell I was doing and what the hell I thought the outcome would be. All I knew was th...

      Why, I wonder, do I often find despair when faced with beauty? My second day on the beach of an all-inclusive hotel in a beautiful port of Mexico, and I can’t help but drown in my loneliness and sorrows, instead of getting drunk and drowning in the ocean or the pool. When I first arrived at the hotel (on my birthday, unnoticed by the hotel clerk) the woman checking me in asked what brought me around, and I said - honestly - that I was running away. From what? She asked. I thought: more like whom? So I told her: running from my family, from my responsibilities, from life, but mostly from myself. So you could imagine my surprise upon finding me in this hotel. The joke - perhaps a bad one - went unnoticed by the clerk. Confusion showing in her eyes but hidden behind the well trained customer service smile. And I’m sure lost somewhere in the language barrier, as it has so often been the case for me and ESL people. Well, actually, my humour is usually lost on most. ...