That’s a thought I have at least two-hundred and sixty-three times a day. It’s a thought I had riding on the 4 line today. Every metro-line is special in some way. The 6 line takes you over the Seine. The 4 line takes you to some of the train stations that have trains that will take you to other countries. The 1 line will take you to the Louvre and Tuilleries. The RER C will take you to Versailles. And the 9 line will take you to my front door. Almost. Please, do call first.

As I stood on the 4 going I cannot remember where I realized that I no longer have any excuses for not writing. I have a home in arguably the most storied city in history. I have a modest income coming in. I have all the tools - a brain, a laptop, and an imagination. I have time.

I began writing a draft of stories to compile into a book, maybe. So far I have written what, in my mind, amount to two potential prologues or prefaces. As the 4 line went past my intended stop and I got off to walk to the opposite side of the track and go back I realized I had been in my head telling myself a story.

I’m 53 now. I survived - you survived. You started unwanted; you found an army of people who love and accept you. You spent so much of your life living in your head; you found a home in a city that is more magical than even your imagination. You lost so much. And still, you kept swinging even when your arms were noodles that weighed a metric shit ton. You buried so many of the people who made you the man that you are; here you are, a man they would all be so proud of.

You learned to navigate between worlds you were never truly allowed to be a part of. It was hard, kid, but the payoff has been a life illustrative of something Kiplingesque. You have friends from so many different walks of life that your actual life makes those Bennetton commercials seem quaint.

I wish I could sit on that porch with you and tell you how it all turns out. But if I did that you’d miss the ride. And while the ride is bumpy and at times you were sure you were going to fly off one these times it goes upside down, in the end you get the girl and the happily ever after. So far.

It’s an epilogue of sorts; a post script to stories that still live mostly in my head and pieces and parts of drafts. A draft of an epilogue to a draft of stories I have carried for the sum of my life.

If you’re here you’ll get the stories - and likely the drafts, revisions, re-revisions. Along the way you will get to see the inner workings of my mind. Lucky you.

I got to my exit and walked. I do that a lot. I will start on the 9 line, get off at some station with some other line, get onto some other line, pick a stop, get off, and just walk.

Today’s walk took me to the back of Sacre Couer - a place usually buzzing ass-to-elbow with people. The back was a ghost town and the front was a fraction of the usual. Sundays in August are truly my favorite walking days in Paris.

I walked through Montmartre. I have this way of walking the city that my wife taught me a long time ago. She calls it “the little green man.” When we first got together she realized I really love to wander. Having a cohort along for my wanderings took some getting used to - we don’t all wander the same, you know? So, she suggested that instead of one of us picking a direction to go we let the little green man decide. You know, the green “walk” you see in the US? Well, in a lot of the world, instead of a word, there is a little green man. So, we walk and when we get to an intersection we let the little green man decide our next move and cross whichever street is green. Rinse, lather, repeat for as long as we are out wandering.

Three years of doing that in Paris means I am never truly lost anywhere in this beautiful city. I pick a line I have never taken and get off at a stop I have never taken and walk. And before I even realize it I am someplace I know.

You should try the little green man next time you travel.

Write one true sentence. - Ernest Hemingway

My wife is the best human that I know. At my worst she challenged me to be better; at my lowest she stopped her world to pick me up; at my best she celebrates the loudest.

The morning after the French election and my relief at the far right not taking control of the government is abating and being replaced with the reality that the far left and center have to find a way to govern together. If they don’t, this win will be a moot point come 2027.

It’s not surprising to me that so many people would vote against their own interests to vote for someone like Trump; it’s just disappointing that I have to be related to so many of them.

Yesterday, on this very balcony where I am writing this, my wife let out an ‘awwww’ and I looked up at her, followed her eyes, and there it was. A toddler running - stumbling really - from his momma and into the arms of his father. It was adorable. I could sit here and write about tiny little scenes like that for the rest of my life. Paris, j’adore.

The women of Paris are different. A lot of them are beautiful, sure, but it is much more than that. They own their space in a way that I don’t recognize in a lot of the world. They seem to exist with minimal effort. There is a grace and nonchalance that would fool you into thinking they didn’t work hard to get this good. I love it.

Men in suits on bicycles always make me smile.

You should come to Paris. Especially if you’re young. Come and stay awhile. Do the touristy stuff, the museums, the ride on the Seine, Notre Dame. But then, you should leave your Paris Guide in your hotel and just allow yourself to get lost in this city. Go away from the Seine and into the places with the words you don’t understand. Find a jarden and sit with your thoughts and watch people just living their lives. Don’t google map a place, ask a stranger for directions and fumble through the conversation with your broken French and their broken English. You’ll be glad you did. A few days of this and, I promise, this City will begin to bore herself into your heart.

Be intrepid.

I don’t want to write today. I want to take my wife into our room and make love all day. But then the dog will remind me that he needs to go out so I will have to get dressed again and go back out into this magical city.

This one comes with a trigger warning. I talk about sexual molestation. Funny thing about that (strange funny, not haha funny) is that it took me decades to acknowledge it that way. So, hat tip to my amazing therapist for getting me there.

One more things before I start, I think I am going to skip to the last page of the book so you know this story does end in a happy-ish sort of way. Mom and I are in each other’s lives now. We’re mostly okay. More okay than I ever expected us to be. Okay enough that I can say I love her in a fashion and I think she loves me in her own way. For this lifetime, that is enough.

I don’t remember the first time I felt the hand on my ass wandering down the outside of my pants, down the crack of my ass. I don’t remember the first time I heard, let me see it… tug on the front of my pants… I can, I made it… I just remember it happened enough times in front of enough people that I hoped someone would say something. I was more embarrassed than anything. And sometimes people would tell her to stop it. Whether she would listen or not depended on how much she’d had to drink.

Apparently, she needed to make sure I was growing into a real man. A real man, I would come to learn, was a man with a large cock.

It was humiliating and enraging. And so fucking confusing.

I was way too smart and far too old to not understand on some level what was happening and I knew it was wrong. I was far too young and scared to have the courage to stop it. Every time she would say, I can I wanted to grab her the way she was grabbing me just to prove the point it was fucking wrong, but I was too much of a pussy to do anything more than stand there a child. The worst part of it all - the fucking humiliating part - was that sometimes I would find myself being aroused. That will fuck with your head for decades. A child doesn’t understand biology or physiology. To a kid - to this kid - there must be something wrong with me, something that enjoys this. That, my friends, is a mindfuck that took tons of therapy to unfuck.

The in-between times of not seeing her, of waiting for her to pick me up on a Friday night and having her no show; not wanting to come back inside because she’s gonna be here! is the sort of thing that breaks a kid. The noise inside an unwanted child’s head is a special kind of torture.

Mom’s love their kids more than anything in this world. Obviously, yours doesn’t. What’s that tell you? I’m trash. I must be.

On one of those nights I had spent way too long waiting for her to never show up I had a nightmare. I called for her and my dad came to my room. I was screaming for my mom. When he got close enough I hit him and told him I didn’t want him, I wanted her.

I know, mijo, I’m sorry. He scooped me into his arms. I hit him again and again and again, I want my mom. I think I even screamed that I don’t love him, I love her. He never let me go. He just held on as I wailed and hit him with my curled up fists until I was so exhausted I fell asleep on him.

Years later my dad visited me in Ohio and we talked about that night. He was surprised I remembered. I tried to apologize but he cut me off. Mijo, you were so little and you were scared and hurt. You were so, so angry and you had every right to be angry. You’re not the one who needs to apologize.

There would be months, sometimes years when I wouldn’t see her. Then something really… strange is not the word, but I don’t know what other word to use. I was weeks away from turning ten when I got caught playing a game I invented. I would pretend to be someone and write letters to someone else and I would write the responses pretending to be the recipient of the original correspondence.

This time I was Ronald Reagan writing to Adolf Hitler to tell him to quit with all the war nonsense. I didn’t quite realize I should have been writing as FDR, I was nine for fuck’s sake. Anyway, I wrote back-and-forth between the two and it got really fucking dark. Like, I will bomb and burn you into hell kind of dark. My dad saw the letters and freaked the fuck out. I suspect he wondered if he didn’t have a future serial killer on his hands.

So he called the family shrink - my Uncle Charlie - and set up an emergency family meeting.

It was my dad, my Uncle Charlie, my grandma, and me all at my Uncle Charlie’s West Hollywood apartment. A place that smelled like home and was the safest place in my world. I don’t remember most of the conversation, but I know that at some point my mom was called in and the absences - almost two years straight at this point - and all the touching were laid on the table and discussed openly. I don’t remember if it was uncomfortable, but I suspect my dad and Uncle Charlie did everything they could to mitigate my unease.

What I do remember is that I got my mom back and the next week she was hosting my tenth birthday party with her new husband. Someone took what would become my favorite photo of my mother at that birthday party. I still have it. In it, she is flipping her head so that her gorgeous head of black hair is flying and almost obscuring her face. You can see that it’s her and even recognize her sort of, but she isn’t really visible enough to say for certain. She can be anyone I want her to be in that photo. For that brief moment she was my beautiful mother.

I want to tell you, dear reader, that my tenth birthday party was the beginning of a wonderful relationship with my mom and that everything that came before was left in the memories of time while we built an amazing relationship. But that would make me a big fat liar and you deserve more than that from me.

There were amazing moments. A trip to Yosemite, drive-in movie trips, and… well, a lot of alone time while they did whatever it is two young horny people do in the next room. For two or maybe three brief weeks I even lived with my mother whilst I was in middle school. My second of three middle schools somewhere in Alhambra while my dad got on his feet and found us a new place to live after his divorce from my stepmom.

It was strange to see mom sober. In some ways she was worse than when she was drunk. Drunk she was handsy. Sober she was just mean. Drunk or sober, I was ready to live on the streets after a few days. Then one day my dad was sitting at the bus stop across the street along my path from school right there on Valley Blvd. I was walking home with a buxom 8th grader that I was pretty sure was going to be the mother of my children one day when I saw him. I don’t think I even bothered saying goodbye to the future Mrs. Li’l Rudy, I just took off across the several lanes of traffic. There were screaming horns, screeching tires, metal-on-metal crashing probably, but I couldn’t hear any of it because he was there. He came back for me like he said he would.

Let’s go get your stuff and go home.

We have a place?

We do. We can’t move in til next week, but we can stay with grandma until then.

A week later I was in what would be my last middle school. I honestly do not remember the next time I saw mom. But I also don’t remember missing her.

—

Post script

I want to say a few things about what it did to me growing up to be touched that way, to be told explicitly that the value of a man is the size of his cock.

I became hyper sexual. No surprise, I’m sure. I lost my virginity way too young and slept with enough people that I ended up feeling very much like a piece of meat. I quite literally grossed myself out. I am not writing that for sympathy; I am writing it for the man or boy reading this going through it. It took me years of therapy and sobriety to finally get to a place where I realized that I am not defined by anyone else’s definition of a man. I determine my value, not someone who couldn’t keep their hands off of me when I was a boy. I am worth so much more than the shit that happened to me; the shit that happened to me is not who I am, it’s just shit that happened to me, you feel me? And if you are reading this and this happened to you I want you to know that you are so much more than what that fucking voice in your head says.

I want to tell you about my cousins Jesse and Joey and why they’re both dead now and how my dad saved me from ending up like them. I want to tell you about my cousin Becky and how she was my best friend and why she’s dead now and how my dad saved me from ending up like her. I want to tell you about my tío JoJo and how he lost an eye when he got caught cheating at cards in Texas and how he gave me my first sip of Schlitz Malt Liquor.

I want to tell you all about them, but at fifty-one the memories dance together like a mass of sweaty drunkards tripping balls on X at a rave in a warehouse somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. I have flashing moments of smoking fake weed with Jesse before we got Joey to give us the real shit. There’s that time Jesse landed on his face trying to jump farther than anyone else on the shitty bike ramp we three built. There he was screaming down the hill and onto the 101 on-ramp riding a shitty go cart we slapped together with plywood and wheels we broke off of an abandoned grocery cart.

I don’t want to remember the night Jesse and I walked home from Los Felix to Boyle Heights at one in the morning because his mother refused to come and get us, but also demanded he be home. I don’t really mind remembering the train hopping, or even the homeless guy chasing us with a knife along the L.A. River. But I really would love to have the memory of his mother beating the shit out of him for doing something as stupid as walking the streets of L.A. in the middle of the night erased from my memory bank. But I will always remember that being the first time in my life I felt pure, unmitigated hatred for another human being. I was too young to save my cousin from his personal beast, but I never forgot and never forgave. When his mother dies there is a very good possibility I may actually piss on her grave.

I do want to remember Jesse getting clean and sober and having a family in spite of the drugs and the prison and the fucking bullet holes that ravaged his body. I want to hold onto that moment he got up on stage and absolutely killed it in a play. I want to remember that decades apart had not diminished our joy at being together. I will always remember and cherish our last conversations as grown men about trying to do better for his kids than was done for him; about him forgiving his mother because holding onto that shit is like a cancer, you know?

Yeah, I know, but Imma hold onto it for you because fuck that puta.

Laughing, that’s fucked up, Rudy, but thank you.

Of course. I fucking love you, man.

I know fool, cuz we’re both the same.

We’re both the same.

I want to hold onto those moments of Jesse being happy and sober and whole. So I won’t tell you how his story ends.

I want to tell you about how badly Jesse and I just wanted to be Joey; that everything I could do, Joey could do better and with more panache. But then Joey disappeared into the streets and one day he never made it back.

I want to tell you about the nights Becky spent laying awake with me all night talking about the stars and the shitty people who hurt us; how we swore we would always have each other’s back and look out for one another because we both had moms that were complete shit; how we talked about wishing they had each just aborted us, but if I have to be here I am so glad you are too; how Becky showed up at my second of three middle schools because some eighth grader was threatening me so she let him know she would be waiting for him if he ever touched me; how she survived juvie and smack and got her life together and raised a family and asked me to be the godfather of her first born. I want to tell you all of that except, that last bit isn’t true.

She didn’t survive.

I want to tell you their stories, but I don’t want to get them wrong. They deserve better and I love them too much to fuck it up, so I will leave you with those little snippets. I also don’t like remembering the world around them. The mothers - my aunts - that brought them into this world just to, at best, ignore them, and at worst do horrible things to them.

The world around them was the world that made my mother and my aunts. It was a bad world, made worse because the thing a world of neglect and abuse begets is a surfeit of misery and pain.

And if I don’t tell you at least a little of their stories I would be doing them a disservice. They are a part of me and what I am. More than that, though, they are what I would have become had I not been so fucking lucky enough to have had the father I did. We’ll talk about Big Rudy later, I promise.

I will tell you that my tío Jojo was born in 1900 and wore a patch like a pirate (I know you just went ARRRRGGGGG and I don’t judge). The story I remember is that he was my maternal grandfather’s brother and he lost the eye after getting caught cheating at cards in the state of Texas. Then he was tossed out of Texas and told never to return. I don’t know how much of that is true, I just know he was an old man by the time I arrived on the scene. His wrinkled, leathery skin always smelled like Pall Malls which always hung off the end of his fingertips, the ash ever growing but never daring to fall. Or maybe it was Lucky Strikes. He spent the days playing solitaire, drinking Schlitz, and smoking. He shared his Schlitz with me, but never his cigarettes. Apparently, five is only too young to smoke. He taught me how to play solitaire.

He was a fixture. A tacky piece of decor from a bygone era that always come back around and into fashion again if you wait long enough. I thought he would always be there.

He made it to 93.

He won the race.

This article is from the original Chicano in Paris recently moved here to its new home.

The other day I posted something I sort of regret. I say sort of because there is always noise in my head shouting me down and it’s embarrassing. But I shared it anyway because I thought, I know this is a thing that does happen and I know there are people of every color and exoticism with cool-funky names that feel they were rejected before they were even let in the door.

The noise in my head that kept me awake: we didn’t get the apartment even though we make more than enough $$, exceed every single qualification, and offered to pay the first year upfront.

My head: did the owner see my name (Rudolfo Martinez) and decide, ‘too ethnic, hell no’?

Me: No way. It’s a sellers market and they’re just going a differenr route.

My head: right.

Me: right.

My head: right?

Me: fucking hell if I know.

It turns out it was just noise. The owner is away in India living the joie de vivre that Parisians are famous for (and one of the most appealing things about the entire Parisian experience) and has not gotten back to our agency. The rejection came from the property manager as a proxy so our agent went above them because they have a soft spot for (TGB) because she is such a sweetheart and a badass. True story.

So, the world is not always a bad place and I just let the stupid shit in my head win a minor battle for a short time. I figured, if nothing else, by sharing this with you you might feel a sense of relief that you’re not the only one who sometimes spins in a mindfuck of your own creating.

Yesterday we spent the day looking at apartments. The first one was in the 3rd arrondissement - which is my first choice of arrondissements. So we walked from our airbnb in the 11th down to the third through all of the wonder that is Paris Fashion Week. It was drizzling and overcast so when I saw a woman in big sunglasses walking towards me it struck me as a bit odd. Then it hit me. I looked at her lips to be sure I wasn’t crazy. Those gorgeous, full lips confirmed it just as I walked past on the narrow sidewalk, brushing arms. I just brushed arms with Anne Hathaway. Whatever happened the rest of the day, this day was already a win.

We made it to the apartment and waited for Melissa, our Mila Kunis clone of a relocation manager.

Anne Hathaway is on my list, you know.

Yeah. She’s on MY list too.

Melissa arrived. The apartment was modern, quiet, and tucked away. It was perfect to me. To me. Boys and girls, I don’t make it a habit of dispensing relationship advice, but here is one thing I will tell you: when you move to a new city with the person you love, make sure the place you pick to live feels like home to the twos of yous. If you love it and your partner doesn’t, you won’t love it for very long. It has to feel like home for both of you.

After some time looking at this place I loved, we went and had lunch with a cat.

The first hour at lunch this little girl came and sat at my feet and ignored literally everyone else. Then I send a couple photos to the insta and she’s all, deuces, dis my new person. So, yeah, that was a self-esteem crusher.

At lunch our relocation team sent us two more apartments so we hopped on the tube and headed to the 16th. That line from The Police song comes to mind when I think about that ride on the tube: packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes...

Anyway, we made it to the 16th. The apartment is across the street from a bistro and a massive hospital. It’s a block away from a massive square, but far enough back to be so very quiet. It is not far from where they’ll be doing a lot of Olympic activities. It’s modern and swanky overlooking a street that is old timey and very Parisian. I wish this was in the 3rd, I thought but did not say.

TGB loved it. I liked it a lot.

We walked the neighborhood and I realized I have already become very familiar with this arrondissement. In fact, my tendency to just walk with no real destination in mind has made me really learn a lot of layout of Paris already. And then it hit me, I can be in the 3rd in 20 minutes on the tube.I can be in the 7th in 20 minutes by foot. This town is all so close.

That apartment was pretty fucking cool, I thought.

Our relocation team wanted to know if we wanted to submit our dossier.

You don’t love it.

I didn’t say that.

I don’t want you to just accept it because I love it.

I would never do that. I can hop on the tube and be anywhere in this city in minutes. It’s quiet. Dexter has a nice size deck and cannot see or fall onto the street. We have everything we need walking distance from home.

Should we?

So we did.

And now we wait.

This article is from the original Chicano in Paris recently moved here to its new home.

As I was about to begin this letter I noticed that I had not capitalized a word in the title. I keep all these letters on my MacBook in a binder and use a simple naming convention along with the date that I change once I post. One word was not capitalized and that stopped me from beginning until I fixed it.

Is that a quirk I get from you or from my mom? Or am I just weird?

Funny as that is, I will likely be thinking about it for the next few days. I still think about that weekend in Palm Springs. You dragged us to a timeshare sales weekend and we were forced to sit in a room and listen to a sale pitch from some dude in a cheap suit. I was completely tuned out and, apparently, so were you. Sales Dude interrupted himself to make an observation about us.

Do you know you both tilt your heads exactly the same at the same time?

As soon as he said it I think we both knew exactly what he meant. We were busted. I still do it whenever I lose interest in a thing, or just zone out. My head tilts to the left, I take a deep breath, and my eyes go wide. Grandma used to do it, too. Bless that poor little Sales Dude’s heart, he was able to take the hint and we were free to enjoy the rest of our weekend.

My wife has Resting Bitch Face (RBF), I have You Bore Me (YBM) face. Together we are the life of any party that sucks and needs someone to say so without actually saying so.

When I sat down to type this letter I was planning on telling you about her. I was going to talk about the life that lead me to her and the kind of husband I have been vs. the husband I want to be.

But now all I can think about is the two of us out in public giving each other that look that says, can we go, please? And how much more fun it is when it’s just the two of us on our terrace judging people for having the audacity to jog as we pour coffee and cigarettes into our face holes.

The way, if one of us is on the terrace alone, we’ll come get the other if our trumpet player is out there on a Sunday. The way I am obsessed with the woman in pink; she’s a septuagenerian who drives a green Mini and always wears pink. Stylish AF with a gorgeous shock of white hair, usually pulled back into a ponytail.

Your girl is here, my wife will say.

I’ll tell you about Sam, The Gorgeous Blonde, soon. But I got distracted almost 500 words ago and now I can’t put the right words together.

Also, I really miss The Gorgeous Blonde.

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From the hill of Montmartre, watch a sleeping city wake. Empty fields transform into the busiest commercial markets in Christendom. Marshland becomes the intellectual center of Europe. Churches rise in stone. And a young king marries a woman who will gift half his kingdom to his enemy.

Join us as Paris explodes from a fortified island into a medieval metropolis. Meet the Water Merchants who control the Seine, the brilliant—and dangerous—philosopher Peter Abelard whose debates drew thousands of students, and the Capetian kings who understood the power of staying put. Explore the birth of Les Halles, the Parisian university before it had a name, and the Romanesque architecture that still stands today.

And discover how one royal marriage—meant to strengthen France—changed the course of history forever. This is the golden age arriving.

In 845, a Viking raid on Easter Sunday forces Paris to pay its first ransom in gold. It won’t be the last. As Charlemagne’s empire collapses into civil war, West Francia fragments into chaos—and the Vikings come.

Follow the story of an empire divided at the Treaty of Verdun, the desperate fortification of Paris’s bridges, and the legendary Great Siege of 885-886 that lasts nearly a year. Watch a young count named Odo defend his city against impossible odds, then rise from the ashes to become king. And discover how the threat from the north reshapes medieval politics forever, leading to the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte and the dynasty that would rule France for the next 800 years.

This is the age that made modern Europe. This is Fire and Fury.

I have been writing these letters to you in my head almost from the moment you died. There is no real theme, or end-goal with them; they are just my way of saying the things I would say were you still here. You are the best friend I have ever had so, of course I would want to talk to you about anything and everything happening in my life.

I never bothered writing them down before because I knew some would worry that I was “working through things” and offer unsolicited advice. And you, more than anyone, know how much that makes me want to throat-punch a motherfucker. I’ve learned to rein in that urge. That, coupled with my wife being gone for a long, long time, made me feel that now is the time to get the words in front of my eyes and out of my head.

But too, I wanted to put these words out into the world for people navigating their own shit. Not just grief, but all of the cochinada that throws at us all.

There’s this kid I know and love who got some of my words in my shitty hand-writing tattooed onto their body. The tattoo artist had to make my writing a little more legible (I am so glad you’re not here to give me shit about that), but still — my words. After some imposter syndrome passed, I realized that sometimes my words do matter. If these letters can make anyone feel less crazy, less alone, and closer to centered even for a moment… well dad, I think we will have done a great thing.

You want to know something I didn’t expect when I started this little endeavor last week? I didn’t expect the usual nagging voice in my head — that little fucker that reminds me of every single shortcoming, mistake, and failure in a lifetime full of shortcomings, mistakes, and failures — I didn’t expect that voice to becomes so dimmed. I did not expect that writing to you would bring me your voice in my head.

Your voice is so much better for my soul.

In case I haven’t told you, and just in case you can read this over my shoulder from wherever you are, I want you to know: you were never anything less than everything I needed in a father. I was a hard child and you were a safe place to land. I was too serious so goddamn always and you did everything you could to encourage me to hold onto my childhood. I didn’t know how to tell you that the childhood was the hardest part without making you feel like it was somehow your fault.

That thing that was broken inside of me wasn’t because of you. The misfortune of your vicinity made you the bearer of the brunt of my anger. I will always be sorry for that.

I told you all of this when you visited me in Ohio. I am so fucking glad I got that opportunity.

You told me to stop talking because you knew. You knew when I was four and beating on you to get away from me because I wanted what I didn’t have. You knew all the times I ran away that I was running from the one thing I couldn’t ever get away from - myself. You knew when I chose my step-monster over you because you understood that, even though she was fucking awful to me, she was at least there. And you knew the day I moved out — the day after graduating high school.

You ate a lifetime of shit served by a mini-you.

I know at times it broke you. But you hid those as best you could.

When I tell people that my dad is the strongest person I have ever known it isn’t because you can beat the shit out of their dad (which, let’s be honest, you could totally do), it’s because you had the hardest son in the history of the world to raise. A boy who would have permanently broken any other type of parent. I was not easy. I was rarely kind to you. I wanted so fucking much to make everyone else feel the cavern of empty within me. I wanted to be loved. Then when I was loved I wanted it to come from someone else.

God, I was a bitch of a child.

So when I finally called you that one day not long after moving out to thank you for making me so much stronger than any of my friends seemed to be — needing mommy to help them set up their dorms, send them money, wipe their ass in college — I was mostly fine.

And a bit of a pretentious twat, apparently.

I would say we fought, but let’s be honest: you were letting me think we were fighting when I had already seen you snap a grown man’s let in half with one punch and put another man in the hospital when you beat him with your forearm because you had already broken your hand on his face.

So, thanks for not killing me. There were plenty of times when you should have because, Jesus I was a little shit.

And while you may not have killed me when you probably should have, you did let me fly, fall, and throw myself against any number of hard surfaces. You were there to pick me up, kick me in my ass when I needed it, dust me off and hug me when I needed that, and reel me back in when I needed that, too. I didn’t realize you were letting me try and potentially fail in the safest possible way.

You never did something for me, though. No, that was a solid black line you never crossed and sometimes I hated you for it. But that day I finally called you to thank you… it all made sense.

In a million lifetimes, dad, I would pick you again every single time.

I had been sober a few years and living in Ohio when I got the call the that you were in the hospital, the result of a drunken night and a brawl in a bar. Or outside the bar. Or who cares where it was, really.

I flew home in time to get to you before checkout. You told me that some assholes were picking on some young gay kid, and you intervened. For your efforts, you got jumped.

Honestly, dad, I was not used to seeing you on the receiving end of a beatdown. My entire life was filled with you doling it out to bigger, seemingly stronger dudes. Here you were in a hospital bed broken by other men.

Once grandma’s fear subsided it gave way to that passionate Latina anger. She. Was. Pissed. At the assholes who did this to her son, sure. But mostly, she was angry at you.

So you checked yourself into outpatient rehab and told me to go back to Ohio - you had this. I said no. I said I would stay as long as it took for you to get your feet under you again. I went with you to a few meetings, saw you putting in the work and, after a couple of weeks I started looking at plane tickets.

You told me my sobriety inspired you. That my example was enough for you to stay on the path of sobriety. I thought that was enough.

This is where my regret begins.

I should have stayed. I should have moved back home right then and there. I should have walked through your sobriety with you. If I had done that, you would still be here.

But we all know how the movie ended. I didn’t move back to California like a dutiful son. I went back to my life in Ohio. I stayed in almost constant contact with you and with grandma — just to make sure I was getting the unvarnished truth. And I went on with my life.

I didn’t stay sober. The how and why of my drinking again is unimportant for this letter. All that matters is that I was drinking again. I was drinking when you came out to visit me. I was drinking when you fell in love with my little piece of the midwest. I was drinking when I decided — and made a grand gesture of telling you — that I was going to buy a house big enough for you to come live with me once you retired.

I wanted to repay you for all you did for me. It became something of an obsession for me. To the point where I put down money on a place on a lake the next county over.

Then I got that call.

And I got very, very drunk very, very often in the days leading up to your funeral. I behaved in ways that I am so glad you weren’t alive to see, honestly.

We buried you. I went back to Ohio. I kept drinking. I promised I would quit, but that was a lie. When I was sober I was miserable. I would catch myself thinking about all of the what-ifs. When I drank I was miserable until I was numb. Then I was a monster.

I eventually got sober again. The how and why aren’t really pertinent to this letter. What is important is that getting sober meant dealing with my own guilt, my own regret.

Once I started drinking again, it gave you permission to begin drinking again. At least, that was what the voice in my head had convinced me of. The monologue in my head went something like this:

If you’d just moved back to California to be with your dad when he was getting sober, he might still be here. You could have walked him through his sobriety and, in the process, kept your own. Failing that, you could have simply NOT started drinking again. You were a beacon to your father; an example of sober living. But no, you had to be a selfish prick, and this is the natural end result. It’s as much on you as it is on your dad. You could have saved him. You piece of shit.

Dad, I don’t tell you this to make you feel bad. I tell you this because I need you to see that this is not where my story ends. The guilt, the self-abhorrence, the overwhelming desire to drink again - none of that beat me.

Yeah, maybe if I had moved back to California when you first tried getting sober - MAYBE you would still be here. Maybe if I had never started drinking again you would have held onto my example, or at least you would have called me before ever picking up again yourself. And MAYBE you would still be here.

But maybe is a nothing word; it’s a way to pretend a world into existence that is never going to be real.

What is real is that you drank again. And you died as a result. No maybe can change any of that.

I am sober.

Maybe there were any number of times along the way I should have died. Maybe.

But I didn’t.

I wish I had never picked up again. I wish I had moved back to California to be with you while you got sober. I wish you were still here and you could visit us in Paris and you could fall in love with my wife and my city.

And maybe, in some parallel universe, that is exactly what happens.

Maybe.

I wanted to tell you - I wrote a book. Two so far, actually. For kids because your niece little warrior face inspired me.

Since I cannot draw I have had to utilize AI to create images for me. I would explain AI to you dad, but you’d probably make some lame joke like, “AI can’t draw either!” Then laugh way too hard at your own joke.

As I was gathering some images together this morning I caught myself thinking of some of the old photos I have of you. So I dropped this one into ComfyUI and asked it to clean it up. Suddenly, this faded image of my two heroes in the time before my existence came through a lot clearer. I was not prepared for the tears that would come as I sat here staring at my MacBook.

I never asked what lead to this photo of you two, or even how old you were here. I only know it was before my time because Uncle Charlie was away in the military by the time I came along.

Now you’re both gone.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot since last night’s letter. My two heroes are dead and gone to wherever we go next. I know Uncle Charlie was a believer. I know that it filled him with self-loathing because he was a gay man trying to please his church full of fuck-heads who did not approve. I remember when his ex, R- got married to a woman. I thought it was strange. That’s when I learned about conversion therapy. I met R’s wife once at grandma’s house not long after Uncle Charlie died. She was sweet, demure, just sort of there.

I ended up with his journals after you died. He struggled with his faith and homosexuality big time. I hated reading it. The self-loathing of it all was enough to make me wish god was real so I could kick Him in the fucking teeth for causing this kind of pain in a man I knew to be better than almost every other man gracing this big, blue ball.

When you died, grandma took small solace in believing that you and Uncle Charlie would be reunited again. You weren’t the believer that he was. Your god was less defined, less ecclesiastical. Your god seemed to be the connection with… all of us? Nature?

We never really talked about it except that one time I tossed out the Book of Mormon. You weren’t angry that I chucked in the garbage so much as that I did it to prevent you from reading it. I was heavy into my own religious bullshit at the time and, as young believers often do, I believed my faith was the only faith.

You, on the other hand, were always curious. Always searching, but never really explaining what it was you were looking for. You told me you don’t pray to a god in heaven, but you “do pray, or meditate, or whatever you wanna call it,” when you’re alone. That sometimes you removed yourself from places just to do that very thing. You tried explaining that you didn’t need a god in a book when you can see god reflected in the world around you.

I don’t know if you expected to see Uncle Charlie again. When Jen died you didn’t feed me the usual line of “she’s in a better place,”

just,

“she’s gone and I am so sorry, mijo.”

I know that, save for memories and dreams, I don’t expect to see you again. When I die I expect - hope - that the energy that fills my soul will return to the stars and dance around the universe until the stuff of me is needed somewhere else. Not in some reincarnation way; in an energy never dies, it simply transforms sort of way.

That’s why I spend so much of my time looking up, honestly. I like to imagine that the stuff of you is floating around Orion while Uncle Charlie is lingering near the moon. I don’t know why, I just know that when I look at either I think of each of you and you seem not so far away.

I must have been about four when Grandma Lupe died. What was she? 103? 130? To the four year old mind those numbers are interchangeable. What I remember is that she was old, tiny, in a wheelchair, and her hands were soft and blue. Her skin was loose and cool to the touch.

By the time I was five my best friend in the world died. I didn’t know BeeBee was Jewish when we were playing on Augusta. It wasn’t til he died and I saw him with that funny hat in his casket. I thought I was Jewish, too. He was my best friend so, obviously we were the same. I wanted a hat to match his. I don’t remember when I learned it was actually called a yarmulke. He looked like a beautiful porcelain doll. I was too afraid to touch him because I was convinced I would break him.

And, of course, we shared a brick wall with a cemetery in those days.

Death was so much with us.

So were ghosts.

I had an asthma attack and you rushed me to the hospital. Once the doctors took care of me and sent us on our way I was surprised to see BeeBee on the elevator. I thought it was funny that I could see him and you couldn’t. The elevator still had a seat from the old timey days when it had an operator and I had to stop you from sitting on BeeBee’s lap.

There was a lot of death between Grandma Lupe’s time and yours. Gangs, drugs, old age, suicide, accidents, AIDS, and even malaria.

So much death in one lifetime.

You would think it would make me angry, or cynical.

I was angry for a time. When you died. We both know you didn’t have to go. You should be here to see your gaggle of nieces and nephews. You should be here to meet your son and daughters-in-law. We won’t ever know if you drove your motorcycle into that wall on purpose or because you were drunk. We do know that you got drunk on purpose, so…

The anger of you leaving when and how you did subsided long ago. It was easy to process once I accepted that you have so many of the same demons in your head that I have in mine. You have the same doubts and self-loathing that comes of being unwanted by the person who should love you by default.

In your case it was your father.

Where I chose not to have children in part out of fear of becoming my mother, you had me in spite of having one of the worst fathers in recorded history. And you excelled beyond even the most lofty aspirations. All of your broken bits made you the perfect man to raise me with all of my sharp edges.

But that’s not what this letter is about.

Forgiving you for leaving us the way you did was difficult work, but easier to do than forgiving you for how you left one of my siblings believing it was his fault. ‘If’ is one hell of a burden for someone left behind.

IF I had gone with him to the bar…

IF I had called him back…

IF…

He’d still be here.

Watching my brother, C- carry that around with him for years was a little harder to get over. You did that to him. You put your son in a position to carry an unfair, overwhelming burden.

A good father doesn’t do that to his son. Not on purpose, at least.

So I had to convince myself that there was no way you rode into that wall intentionally, right?

Right?

My brother is okay now. Married to a feisty little thing he’s been in love with most of his life. Seeing him happy is one of the best things I have ever seen.

You really should be here for that.

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. You always called me on that day. Which is funny to me because you served, too. I think it was an excuse to hear my voice.

I remember a call you made to me on September 11th. Yes, THAT September 11th.

I was not prepared for the sound of your voice to be so full of fear. You are the strongest man I have ever known so as I sat in that parking lot talking to you on the phone, hearing you almost broken, pleading with me not to re-enlist I found myself detaching from my own mind. I felt my fingers dig deep into my truck’s steering wheel. I wanted to hurt something, someone for what was done on that day.

I have to do SOMETHING, dad.

Not that, mijo. Not that.

You knew I was an idealist. And reckless. Not a good combination.

Honestly, how the hell did you stay sane raising me?

I didn’t re-enlist. Between you and me, I am not sure they would have even taken me back. Being invited to leave the military- not kicked out - just told, “we want you to stay, but we’re not sad you’re leaving,” is a weird breakup.

When Dick Cheney died last week I wished I could call you. I played the conversation in my head.

Dick Cheney died, dad.

I saw the news.

The world’s a better place.

Not for everyone, mijo. I’m sure his daughter is going to miss her daddy.

Yeah, well-

Yeah well nothing. A little girl is burying her daddy, whatever you think of him.

And I would have said something smartass and you would have reminded me that I was lucky not to be close enough to smack.

Then… well then we would have had the real talk. The hundreds of thousands dead because of him. The love of money guised as love of country. And my belief that, as I observe what has become of my beloved country, the terrorists have finally won.

And you would listen. The silence would hang between us for a moment that feels like an eternity.

You wouldn’t disagree with me. You would simply remind me that I am still here. I still have love and beauty in my life. You would say something like the type of government we all live under doesn’t change any of that. If it ever does change that it will be because I allow it to change me.

Your peace is your responsibility, mijo.

Why do you always have to be right, Viejo?

And you would laugh that big laugh of yours that fills the entirety any and every space you occupy. Then some part of my soul that I wasn’t even aware was lacking would fill to the brim again.

It’s a Sunday in Paris. I have been here a little over two (three) years now. I sometimes remember how surprised and impressed you were that I wanted to move here after Jen died. You, more than anyone, seemed to understand that I was adrift and needed something, anything, to steer by.

And Paris seemed like a good idea. You tried to help, but money was always tight.

So I changed course and joined the Air Force. And honestly, could you really see me sticking with Disney for any length of time? That insufferable little twat mouse and all his annoying friends; and so many children. So I went to Texas for six weeks instead.

But your boy did eventually make it to Paris. With the help - honestly, because of - a beautiful woman who somehow celebrates those parts of me that I have always felt I had to hide away. I’ll tell you all about her in another letter.

Within days of arriving in Paris one of your other sons showed up for a visit. We’d barely had time to put towels in the guest room when A- showed up with his little minion.

Dad, you should see her. Your granddaughter has the beautiful oval face of a Mexica warrior. She is fierce like one, too. Maybe a bit too surly for my brother’s liking, but she reminds me a lot of me. She’s a young girl with an old soul.

Nobody is born with an old soul. ‘Old soul’ is one of those misnomers that hides the reality; she grew up fast because she had to. My niece is being forced to grow up without a mama. A kid needs their mama and when they are forced to go without a part of them breaks and never heals quite right.

You saw that with me and I could see it immediately with her. This amazing little girl was carrying a burden without the ability to really articulate that so someone might help just a little. I tried to be for her what I needed at her age. We had one of the best talks, ironically enough, at Disney. Waiting for A- and my wife to get through one of those horrible rides that drops you so suddenly your stomach is still a few stories above you when you land. We sat - I on a bench and her on the ground - and talked about so many things.

My amazing niece let me in ever so slightly and I saw it.

I saw the broken bits and the beauty.

I wanted to scoop her up and assure her that it will all be better one day, but the more she talked the more I heard my wife remind me that sometimes a woman doesn’t need a man to fix anything, she just needs him to shut up and listen. So I got down on the ground with her and did just that.

Honestly dad, I caught myself hoping the other two would be in line for hours and hours. There is a part of me that is always going to live in that moment. She talked about, well, things that are hers to share so I will only say she gave me a part of herself that I cherish more than a thing that can be bought in any store. Even a Parisian store.

Throughout their time visiting - and especially after that little conversation I started to notice something beautiful.

I noticed that your son and your granddaughter are the best of you.

Don’t come at me with your, “I love all my kids equally,” bullshit. This isn’t that; this isn’t about quantity.

My baby brother is the father you would want any of us to be. He is the man who exceeds the lot of us. I watch him with my niece and think, “my god, he doesn’t even realize how good he is. He just thinks he’s doing what he’s supposed to and nothing more.” So many parents can’t even be bothered to do the minimum and here is your son creating a world for your granddaughter to thrive in.

And in the time since they’ve visited I have watched your granddaughter take flight and find her wings and her voice. You would be so amazed by her. My baby brother - your son - is raising a warrior queen and I wish you could see it.

I wish you could stand on the periphery with me and, from time to time, put a hand on A-’s shoulder and whisper, “I am so proud of you, of the man that you are, of the father you’ve become.”

I don’t really like babies. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with them, it’s just that, as someone who does not possess the parental inclination I find them rather dull. They don’t really do anything. They’re these demanding little human burritos who cry when they need food or their butts wiped.

Until they’re actually old enough to be influenced by their dear, sweet, AMAZING uncle Rudy I prefer them in photos than in person.

Of course, once those babies become kids I tend to be easily influenced myself. My niece, for example, has had a profound influence on me in ways she likely won’t fully comprehend for years.

Her story is ultimately hers to tell, but she is a fierce little thing. Truly an impressive human being. She looks the part, too. I remember thinking, she looks like that princess in that one picture we all saw growing up.

That picture is of the painting Grandeza Azteca by Jesus Helguera and growing up it was everywhere. The image depicts the Legend of Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl.

The story goes something like this: the emperor sent Popocatépetl off to war, promising him Iztaccíhuatl as his wife when he returned. Iztaccíhuatl’s father presumed he would die in battle. Meanwhile, Iztaccíhuatl was told that Popocatépetl had died in battle when in fact he had not, and believing the news, she died of grief. When Popocatépetl returned to find his beloved dead, he took her body to a spot outside Tenochtitlan and kneeled by her grave in grief. The gods covered them with snow and changed them into mountains. Iztaccíhuatl’s mountain is called “Sleeping Woman” because it resembles a woman lying on her back, and it is often covered with snow. Popocatépetl became an active volcano, raining fire on Earth in blind rage at the loss of his beloved.

I wish I could tell you that I remembered that story from my childhood. And it is very likely I was told it at some point, but I still had to look it up. In my memory she was a warrior, not a princess. My niece is both.

I would never have bothered researching that story were it not for her.

It ended up being the beginning of a sort-of obsession for me. I wondered what else I didn’t know about my own ancestors. I know that chocolate, avocados, corn and a whole lot more came from them, but I wanted to learn about the parts erased.

As an atheist who loves religious mythology I started with a simple question: Who were our gods before christians destroyed them?

You guys, I discovered a pantheon that rivals that of ancient Greeks and the Norse Vikings. Creation stories, bickering gods, a robust and multi-layered after life.

I was initially angry that so much of our culture and rich history was all but erased and replaced with some white-washed version of a middle eastern hippy in order to exert control. But that gave way to excitement because I am preternaturally curious and have devoured anything I can find on our lost gods.

I also realized that I could not possibly be the only middle-aged Chicano who was never taught about our ancestors so…

I decided to create something. A book. At first. Then it bloomed into two books - one in English and the other in Spanish. Then it morphed into a series.

A series of kids books.

The First In a Series

So my nieces and nephews never have to wonder where they came from. Frankly, so I can learn more about my own ancestral history. And it won’t be confined to just the gods - although that could take up an entire lifetime. No, there will be ancient stories reimagined, cultural history.

This is just the beginning. If the gods are as kind as my curiosity is relentless, I’ll go further back—to the Olmecs, the Toltecs, and all the stories in between. My nieces and nephews deserve to know. And honestly, so do I.

I had written an entire piece about the events of the last few days, but as I got to the end of it I realized it is not going to change anyone’s mind. If people want to mourn a dead bigot they are going to mourn a dead bigot.

In the end I found myself mad at myself for giving those few fuckheads my energy. I should have focused on the people I knew would become targets because, let’s face it, they are the same people who Charlie Kirk hisownself targeted. Seriously, fuck that guy.

The queer kids, the trans kids, the black and brown kids, the jewish kids, the muslim kids, the kids who simply don’t fit into the neat little gentrified, christian, Charlie Kirk/Stephen Miller/Nick Fuentes/Ben Shapiro/MAGA worldview - those are the ones that deserve my attention.

And when I said “kids” I don’t just mean those of you that are under the legal age. I mean all of you, even my elders. You deserve to have a country that allows you to live and breathe freely. To exist without fear of being demonized, or threatened by weak men who scapegoat you to make up for their own shortcomings. I guess I use the term “kids” because so many of you are young enough to be my child and I wish so much that you were all protected and safe from the likes of the dead bigot.

I am so sorry that we didn’t create a country worthy of you.

You deserve a world where you’re not othered. Where all of things that make you different on the surface are recognized for what they really are - a beautiful contribution to the delicious and gorgeous mosaic that makes up humanity. You deserve a world where you are never questioned for succeeding, but are celebrated and admired. You deserve a world where you can love freely, openly, and without fear.

Until we can have a country - a world - like that, I promise to have your back. I see you and as long as I exist you have at least one ally. If the bigots come for you, they’ll have to come through me. And when we finally get a world like that, I’ll celebrate so loudly you’ll beg me to stop embarrassing you in front of your friends.

When I was four or five I lived on Fletcher Drive in LA across the street from some park whose name I forgot long ago. I was in that park one day when a film crew was shooting something. I watched from a distance and decided I wanted to do that too. So I marched over to the guy I thought was in charge and asked if I could. He was amused and told me I needed a parent’s permission so I ran my happy ass across the street to our apartment and interrupted my dad’s Dodgers game. A massive no-no; Dodgers games were my dad’s time to himself.

Dad was annoyed and disbelieving. But I was a pain in the ass about it and he knew his son was a relentless little shit, so he acquiesced and walked across the street with me. I don’t remember what was said, or if anything was signed. I do know that two weeks later we were in Hollywood recording a back to school commercial for The May Company.

I wanted to do a thing so I did the fucking thing.

When I was in little league I was always infield. I hated it. Pony League tryouts were coming and I told my dad I wanted to play centerfield. He warned me that it was going to take a lot of hard work. I said okay. He ran my legs off shagging flyballs until I couldn’t walk and carried me home. For days and days. I ended up starting centerfielder on the eventual league champions.

I wanted to do a thing so I did the fucking thing.

My brother suggested I try my hand at stand-up comedy after dad died. “You’re funny and you could do some Christopher Titus type shit about dad.” I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote some more. I went to the San Jose Improv on an open mic night and the place was packed (if you know comedy, this is not typical for open mics) because they brought in a headliner who was a massive draw. The kid gonig up before me was scared when he saw the size of the crowd. It was his first time, too.

“Are you nervous?” he asked me.

“Nope.”

I wasn’t remotely nervous. “I have an army of people who love me and whatever happens tonight, that isn’t gonna change.” I got on stage and killed. Turns out telling stories about my old man was as funny as it was healing. It ended up being my job for a few years.

My point is simple, I decide I want to do a thing and then I fucking do the thing.

And sometimes I fail.

When that happens I get in a dark hole and forget who the fuck I am.

And today I am in that hole because for the last month I have been busting my ass to become something and I failed. It was a job I really, really wanted but did not get. Not for lack of trying. Not because I am not good enough - if I had been hired I would have kicked ass and made the powers that be so fucking glad they chose me.

I tried. I failed.

And that happens. We - you, me, everyone - tries, and gets knocked on our ass from time-to-time.

It suuuuuccccckkkkksssss.

But it happened. I sat with it. I let the emotions wash over me; let the knot in my stomach keep me from a delicious breakfast; let myself feel like absolute ass for an hour.

Now it’s time to get on with it. Now it’s time to remember exactly who I am.

I am the kid who ran his legs off til I couldn’t walk. I am the kid who said, “I can do that,” and then fucking did it. I am the guy who killed at every room in the Comedy Store.

I am my father’s child.

Postscript - I want to apologize for neglecting to write the story I started. I need to work and I allowed that to consume my time over the last several weeks. I promise to get back to it with a fervor.

-R

This article is from the original Chicano in Paris recently moved here to its new home.

It’s not something I keep a secret from people: I am an alcoholic.

I also feel like I have shared my story so many times that it feels like I’m on autopilot anymore when I tell it.

I woke up in the middle of the California desert with no recollection of how I got there in my wife’s car. I was shirtless for some reason. I had so many missed calls and messages on my phone I just deleted them all after listening to the first couple. My wife looking for me. My brother looking for me. My sister looking for me. I started the car and drove home, flashes of my shitty behavior the night before coming back.

My god, I was a shit. To my wife most of all. But to everyone who loved me, really.

I got home and my wife was waiting. Fear giving way to relief, then anger. I had failed and hurt her in ways I would consider unforgivable.

“Fix your shit, or get out.”

And that was day one of my sobriety.

Of course, I am leaving out a lot of the gory details in this re-telling. My wife may read this and she doesn’t need to relive one of the worst nights of our life together. Plus, the shame I still feel is really none of your fucking business. I share those details when it is appropriate at meetings in a church basement in Paris.

—

I had tried sobriety once before. Made it six years and a few months before I duped myself into believing that what was true about me was a lie despite all the evidence.

I can have this glass of wine.

I can have this shot of tequila.

I can have this case of beer in one sitting.

I did rehab the first time I got sober. Against my will, but still, I went and participated. Once I got out I skipped the whole recommended regimen of 90 meetings in 90 days. Fuck the Big Book. Fuck sponsorship. I just need to not drink.

How hard could that really be?

And, being the arrogant prick that I am, I relished my sense of superiority. “Oh my god, *person* is so embarrassing when they drink,” while conveniently forgetting the time I woke up in a mess of myself in my own driveway.

“I don’t do that anymore so, clearly, I am superior to *person*.”

I was what some call a dry drunk.

I did no work on myself. NONE.

My thinking went: if drinking was my problem and I am not drinking, clearly I have eliminated the problem.

But drinking wasn’t the problem. Drinking was a symptom. It took my ass sitting in a psychologist’s office for two years to realize that I was an alcoholic. Of course, by the time I hit the shrink’s chair, I was already drinking again. Can you imagine that?

I was willing to do the work to fix my broken bits, but I also wanted to keep slamming the hammer against my own skull, never thinking that I should stop that.

I can have this glass of wine.

I can have this shot of tequila.

I can have this case of beer in one sitting.

You see, therapy was amazing at forcing me to deal with the damage done to me by outside forces. Nothing could stop the damage done to me by me.

Except for me, of course.

—

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So on that first day of my second sobriety I had to choose.

Fix my shit.

Or get the fuck out.

I was in the guestroom for the foreseeable future. So I wrote the things that were in my head, went to meetings, and got to work on doing the work.

I hated meetings at first. Remember what I said about being an arrogant prick? I sat there with these drunks telling their stories still believing that somehow I was better than them.

Then I would come home, go to my room, and write. I would force myself to take the demons out of their box and poke at them. Remember the game Operation? In my mind’s eye that is exactly what it was like. Only, there was no little buzz for hitting an edge. If I hit an edge I could lose myself again to the self-hate, the belief that I was as worthless as drunk me liked to remind me that I am. If I hit an edge I would be reminded of all the fucking horrible shit I did when I was drunk.

For me, the only way it could really work, was to write it down, look at it, acknowledge that yeah, I did this shitty thing to *fill in the blank*. I told my sponsor - an old fucker who fellated his own shotgun once or twice as drunk him reminded him of his own worthlessness before he decided it was time to fix his shit or get the fuck out.

“This is a good exercise, really. But it can’t be all of it because if you’re not careful, if you only focus on the shitty things you did, you’ll spiral into the self-hate that helped get you into this mess in the first place. You are not ONLY the bad things you do when you drink. You have good in you, too. Maybe when you write you can try to remind yourself of something good about yourself. And if that’s too hard, maybe just write something good about your wife or your favorite sports team - just, write something good to hold onto. Eventually, you’ll find it easier to write good, gentle things about yourself.”

So I did.

And all these years later, though I do not journal everyday anymore, it is the first thing I do when I feel myself slipping into those thoughts of self-doubt because those thoughts turn into self-hate really quickly. And like *sponsor* said to, I make it a point to write something good. To remind me.

—

That’s the heart of what this is really about. We don’t stay sober just by not drinking — we stay sober by doing the work, even when it’s messy. Especially when it’s messy.

That’s why I created the 90 Days Strong Journal. It’s not some perfect solution or polished workbook. It’s just a place — a simple structure — for anyone navigating early sobriety to show up every day, face the hard stuff, and still find a way to hold on to something good.

If you’re just starting out, or starting again, or walking with someone who is, this journal might help. That’s all it’s meant to do.

You can check it out here: 90 Days Strong

And soon — very soon — there will be an online web-app to accompany the journal. The web-app will be free, store none of your personal data save for your login.

If you’re trying to get sober I am cheering for you. Give yourself grace. Be patient. If you stumble, get back up, dust yourself off, remember that you are a badass, and get back after it.

If you love someone struggling with getting sober just know you are not alone.

I have been writing, just not here. It’s nothing personal, I just haven’t felt like I have anything to say in the long form that hasn’t already been said better by any number of more talented writers.

Also, I am just tired. The world is such shit right now. It feels so much like the bad guys are winning. It’s even worse when people who tell you they love you are supporting the very bad guys that would demean you for who you love, the color of your skin, your gender, your faith - or absence of it. I know love is not always a simple, or even an easy thing, but I do believe that love is NOT siding with those who make it okay to dehumanize those you profess to love.

So I’ve been stuck. Is this world even worth fighting for?

Then as I was organizing my photos after spending the weekend out and about snapping shots around Paris I stumbled across an old meme I’d saved.

That first sentence carries so much, don’t you think? Seems I have forgotten lately that I don’t have to fix the world. It’s arrogant to think I can. Sure, I can make my small part of it better, but anymore that feels akin to shoveling water off the Titanic with a shot glass.

So I sat there staring at this image. Reading it. Then reading it again. Then hearing that voice in my head remind me that, yes, I have read this in the past countless times and forgot. And I will likely forget again.

But for now it is that gentle reminder that I need. This is my life and, while the world has decided to lose it’s goddamn mind, I still owe it to myself - and to Joan - to live it. My end is much closer than my beginning so I really should get back to it.

The world being a huge blue ball of suck is not an excuse.

It’s late in Paris and today was a hot one. Triple digits according to my Frameo. But now it’s back to the 70s and people are outside at the bistrot across the street enjoying the respite from the ungodly heat. I can hear the laughter from the patrons outside and the music from within.

I kept Dexter inside most of the day except for incredibly short walks to do his business so tonight we’ll be taking a midnight stroll through this magnificent city.

Then… I will sit in front of this MacBook Pro of mine and type up some words for a story I have been working on for quite some time… in my head mostly, but still.

Here’s a few of my favorite photos from this weekend.

Thank you so much for bothering to read my nonsense.

Paris in June

One of my oldest friends is coming to stay in our apartment next month. I’ve known Stephen since I was in seventh grade. By the time I met him I had already attended six different schools in Los Angeles County. When I got to High School I would eventually end up attending three of those before graduating.

I am from LA.

The question that usually follows when I say that is, “oh yeah, what part?”

That question isn’t concerned with what part of LA I am actually from so much as it’s a challenge - “are you really from LA?”

I dunno man, my birth certificate says Los Angeles, the first home I remember was a duplex abutted against the Beth Israel Cemetery in East LA where I used to go play hide and seek as a kid.

In my time I’ve lived everywhere from East LA, to summers in Boyle Heights, to time spent living on Fletcher Drive (twice), to City Terrace, to the San Gabriel Valley, before finally moving out to just the other side of LA County into Upland, CA.

I’ve walked home along the railroad tracks and LA River at 2:00 AM. I’ve interrupted filming of television shows in my front yard so I could ask to be on TV. I’ve stolen change from the fountains in Olvera Street. I’ve snuck into movie theaters on Hollywood Blvd with my cousins. I’ve gone swimming at the pool at Roosevelt and gone fishing at Hollenbeck Park. I’ve cut class to go to Newport Beach. I learned to drive by going up to Mt. Baldy for make out sessions.

What part of LA am I from?

The fucking 10 freeway, how’s that?

What can I say? My dad had a good union job and every time he got a pay raise we moved to a slightly better neighborhood.

I tell you all of this so you can maybe understand what I am about to tell you.

Not long ago - like, maybe a few weeks ago - my wife and I were talking about whether or not the United States is even worth fighting for. Spoiler alert: it’s really not.

But I added a caveat.

I would fight for California. I am, after all, a Californian first. I am an Angelino most especially.

Los Angeles is, to me, the most American City in the world.

Those beautiful brown, Spanish speaking people? They’re not immigrants, they are the descendants of the people who were already here when the first immigrants showed up on their boats from Europe. But nobody remembers that because of cultural erasure.

That’s a topic for a post another day.

LA has our delicious mix of browns, our different flavors of Asian, a smattering of Indian, Albanian, Jewish, Arab, and more. We have our rich history of LGBTQIA+ giving us that dash of flare. And we have an entire fucking history of black culture and resistance to inspire us.

We have a seat for everyone at the party because we know that everyone brings something.

The mistake a lot of people make is thinking LA is just Paris Hilton without realizing Paris Hilton her damn self was just playing a part and that down deep she is a real human being; smart, and to borrow from Tupac, she got a little bit of thug in her.

And that’s LA. Real. Smart. Thug.

People mock LA. People shit on that glorious city because, they say, it lacks substance and culture and blah, blah, pretentious fucking blah. Those people sound a lot like the asshole at the bar who talks shit about the beautiful girl who doesn’t want to fuck him.

Nah, LA is love. She embraces those that may be deemed unlovable and shows them how to shine. Just don’t show up thinking that city owes you something.

She is the city that exemplifies The New Colossus the way the current administration could never comprehend. People from all over the country who can’t find a home in the place that made them come to LA and find an army of people just like them. It’s the City where weirdos and castaways can find a family and acceptance. You can be a freak and at worst the reaction will be, “oh, yeah, you’ll have that.”

So when I started seeing videos and images of ICE showing up in LA the hairs on my neck raised. When I started seeing the people of LA rise up my heart swelled with pride. It also put a knot in my stomach that hasn’t left all weekend.

Two months ago I applied to volunteer to go to Ukraine and fight. The world was shit and I needed to do something. I haven’t heard back and that little voice in my head has started trying to convince me that maybe it’s because I may need to go back to LA for whatever is coming.

Maybe.

All I know is my heart hurts and I have a raging fury inside of me.

I want to show up at immigration court and get as many of the ICE agents to chase me as I can because at least then there are less of them harming actual immigrants. It’s funny and it’s chaotic good. In my head I hear Yakety Sax playing as I run around at double speed and ICE falls down over and over and over again.

I also want to take a Molotov cocktail to every fucking ICE vehicle I see.

What can I say? I am a complex motherfucker.

Mostly, I want the current administration to get the fuck out of my City and State. And I am watching closely for what comes next. There was a time when I once swore an oath and went wherever the United States sent me. All while being a Californian first. If California needs me…

Will I return to LA if need be?

You bet 47’s tiny orange dick.