Lowlifes & Highlights

• Pre-diabetes reversal achieved.
• Self-care and mental health leveled up.
• Academically affirmed and invigorated.
• New friends, future colleagues.
• Old friends reaffirming their ride-or-die statuses.
• Driver's license attained — LOLOLOL!!

Basically, I am happy because for the first time in very a long time, I am making myself the priority. Weird how that makes complete sense. 2017 is gonna be lit AF.

The Six Month Turnaround

If I sit somewhere in Summerlin long enough,
I'll recognize someone from my past life
of a domestic fantasy involving casseroles, 3.5 kids,
the Celestial Kingdom, and a crossover vehicle.
Top knots, yoga pants, puffer vests, and Ugg boots
stroll past me and my eyes are locked onto
the Lululemon icon that sits atop the rump
of an upper-middle class bottom.
But these days, my chauvinistic gaze
is steadily fixed upon a woman unlike any other
woman I've had the pleasure
of pleasuring and being pleasured by.
She is the antithesis of the Summerlin housewife
and so help me God, Mithra, Jah, Buddha, and
everyone else before I say something stupid
like, "This Christmas I'm asking Santa for
a girlfriend who is specifically you."
She feeds my ego and soothes my ego
like a magician causing my anxieties
to disappear with the yank of a sheet
that is comprised of her laugh,
her bizarre Midwestern-East Coast hybrid accent,
fueled by the strength of her hands, arms, and legs,
and rooted in the shape of the smirk
that forms on her beautiful face
when we are engaged in banter that lasts
deep into the early hours of the morning.
I am sleepy, I am on fire, and I am happy.

The Long Answer

I really like the way your mouth
feels against mine and I don't care
that you're a wet kisser
because I'm the same.
Judging by how your tongue moves,
I'm confident that feeling it
on any other part of my body
is going to set me on fire.

Insert Annoyed Sigh Here

The novelty of the dating app was quickly lost on me about ten seconds after signing up. I know this. I have gone through this before. I even joined a lesbian dating app. That proved to be more entertainment (I would have to tell you the story in person), rather than functional, but I digress. I am more of a Wooderson than......not.

Reclamation Proclamation

Just when I thought that a broken heart would kill me, my blood sugar and liver levels almost did. Who knew that a sugar and carb-heavy diet along with short alcoholic stints throughout your twenties could do such a thing? Modern science. I did not want to go to the doctor for this very reason —i.e. empirical evidence that your body is in a state of protest, but I cannot die without seeing Tennis live, or going to WWC next summer. Plus, I want to see Kylie live at least one more time. Priorities, man. Anyway, I changed my diet, started drinking more water, and started going to the gym. This is going to be the blandest Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve ever. Diabetes and liver aside, my body and my mind are returning to normalcy. In conjunction with taking advantage of Medicare, I think the haircut set off a chain of events. I do not know why I tried so hard to comply with the respectability politics of square presentation. Actually, I do know why: because I was defining myself by my significant other. However, I am woman, I am non-white, and I am heavily-tattooed. Regardless of "radical hairstyles," I will always be a magnet for judgement. Life is too short not to own my douchebag queerness in its entirety.

I finally got my period after not having it for 5 months. Everyone thought I was pregnant.

One of the required texts in my research methods class is Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality by the late Gloria Anzaldúa. Parts of it are in Spanish and it does take me longer to read since I have to refer to Google Translate often, but it is incredibly inspiring and therapeutic. I actually do not mind taking the extra time to understand the Spanish. Junot Díaz has a quote about wypipo willing to read books in made up languages like Elvish, but freak out when they see Spanish. But this is America! America that was once Mexico? I digress. At times, I chastise myself for relating too much to the mystical aspects of the text and I become embarrassed. But thems the "intellectual imperialism" breaks, right? Decolonization is exhausting.

I crash my car into a bridge; I don't care.

My personal (de)evolution of caring has ranged from caring way too much, to caring as a means of understanding, to not caring at all, to now caring in the spirit of academia. I was sensitive to what others thought about me to the point of going out of my way to put others on blast and consequently, showed my own whole ass. I took up the mantle of "The Personal Is Political" and fought with anyone who was a heteropatriarchal and classist holy roller. Then I attempted to shift my reactionary outbursts into understanding why people do the terrible things that they do, and why their actions do not align with what they say they embody: Christ's love. It was exhausting and when I hit my thirties, I stopped wanting to understand because excusing garbage behavior with daddy issues, personal insecurities, or willful ignorance under the guise of religious supremacy is total bullshit. I am not here for self-identified grown folks who have toddler tantrums and navigate their lives as mean girls. Maybe y'all need to work out your sociopathy with the assistance of a shrink and perhaps integrate the concept of the apology into your lexicon and personal philosophy. I digress, I am not a psych major.

Where does that leave me currently? Having to care enough about a topic to spend almost a year researching it and then presenting my results in order to complete my degree. Do I side with a topic that I researched last semester that resonates with who I am, but I am kind of burnt out on? Or do I jump into a topic that I am unfamiliar with, but excited about — especially with an ethnographic goldmine rolling into town in the spring?

So what?! Who cares?!

After Midnight We Could Feel It All

I saw Beach House live for the second time. They were louder than I remembered and I left the venue with a face fully melted and my liver in need of replacing. Teen Dream will always be my favorite album and it was kind of a bummer that they didn't play more of it. Minor complaint aside, I can only describe Beach House live as a spiritual experience. There is no other band that gives me the ghost. Coupled with the company of someone that I have missed immensely over the years, this was a nice summer send off — especially considering how hilariously tragic it began. I'm sure there could be some poignant way to end this post, but not without sounding too eat, pray, and love-esque. And that ain't me.

Mayonnaise Be Merry and White

My cousin and I had a brief conversation about our shared attraction to the caucasian persuasion and its roots in a white supremacist and hetero-patriarchal society that upholds Eurocentric beauty ideals as the epitome of hotness. I have a bad habit of overanalyzing. For example: is my tendency to open doors for others or step out of the way connected to the subservient Asian stereotype? Maybe. I consider myself an equal opportunist, however, my track record has been overwhelmingly white. Trust, in high school no Filipino guys were checking for me — maybe because I looked like a junior lesbian instead of a car model. As an adult, the same can be said about any person of color. Or perhaps my brain has been colonized to the point that it created a POC blind spot causing me to gravitate towards wypipo with yellow fever. That's not entirely true:

When I was nineteen or twenty, the Filipino fitting room attendant at the Ralph Lauren outlet store told me I had cute dimples. I bought two polo shirts and continually drove 45 minutes outside of town in order to bump into this guy because I didn't have the nerve to ask him for his number. The thirst was very real and very embarrassing. Also embarrassing is the seemingly decade-long crush on a non-white guy that I cannot shake. I am always doing something stupid in front of him in addition to transforming into a giggly teenage girl at every interaction. In summation, my boner is not as racist as John Mayer's.

In an attempt to decolonize other parts of my body, AKA my ears, I have been seeking out music made by POC. I gave Emily King a break to overload on Yuna. Interestingly, or not, I found King by going through Yuna's Instagram account. Her duet with Jhené Aiko is at the top of my Body Roll Summer 2016 playlist.

The live performance gives me goosebumps. I can't YASSSSS it enough. So much Asian slayage. I hope Yuna releases a video for it involving an '80s themed mall with glamour shots and eye rolling at exes at the food court. Also of particular interest is Yuna's duet with Usher titled Crush. Yuna has been making music for some time, so I do not have a good excuse for slacking. I would like to see her a) live in Las Vegas and b) do a buddy cop film with Esther Quek. Slay, Asian ladies, S-L-A-Y.

Take my soul to where it wants to go.

Radio is easily my second favorite Emily King song. At times I am salty about the fact that I possess no musical ability besides decent scores on the ol' Magic Mic. Most of my cousins on my mom's side are musicians because their parents are musicians. Perhaps what I have inherited from my mom is a real affinity for hoarding.

Hey love, time to get up.

When I heard Distance, I thought I was going to combust. Shame on me for not being in the loop earlier because Emily King was in Las Vegas weeks ago. The last time I experienced music on a religious level was when I was introduced to Beach House. It has been years since I have been excited about music. Distance gives me the (gay) ghost. It makes my heart explode and fills me with optimism amidst the hilarity of my own love life in tandem with the horrors of police brutality, domestic terrorism and presidential campaigns. Its video is as visually pleasing as it is ear delicious (shout out, Neil Sedaka). And hello, BYIMM is EV. REE. THING.

30 Views in One Sitting? I'm Chuffed.

In my past life as a devout Mormon, I became friends with another single woman and she was the older sister I wished I had: the kind that would sit next to me at church, the kind that would take me to Sephora and urge me to buy things that I did not need, the kind that let me talk incessantly about the bands I liked, the kind that had a filthy car and did not flinch when that I told her that she was gross, the kind that met the dudes I was into and gave me real talk. Some Sundays, she would lean forward as a signal for me to scratch her back and I hated doing it because I knew it made me look really gay, but I did it anyway because I loved this woman like she was my sister. This memory of scratching her back during Sacrament Meeting and subsequently, my mom shooting daggers at us, made me laugh out loud because of the absurdity of same-sex back-scratching equating to lesbianism. Whether or not I wanted to admit it at the time, I was already on the queer-er end of the sexuality spectrum stemming from an intense crush I developed on a brunette I met my third or fourth year at Girl's Camp. Scratching another woman's back was not my sapphic catalyst into lezbroism. That's all Tegan Quin...and maybe a dude that burned me so bad that it caused me turn my back on men entirely. But that's all water under the fluidity bridge because not all men, am I right, ladies? You live, you learn, and you invest in pharmaceuticals.

Perpetually Making Things Weird

Occasionally, I am reminded of the time when I kissed someone who I was really into for the first time and we got caught by a mutual friend. I do not know why this memory pops up every now and then. I am not nostalgic for it, but I do not regret that it happened either. This person and I are well past those feelings, and when we do interact, I like to think that the vibes are relatively normal. However, when this memory pops into my head and says, "Remember when this happened?" I become embarrassed to the point that my face flushes red and I am moved to scream into a pillow. Maybe I am embarrassed because I got real handsy real fast. And perhaps what I am nostalgic for is the consequent rush that is felt after a first kiss. Either way, does this mean that my mourning process has reached its end? Let us do the math: 5.5 years / 41 days later = DTF *insert smiling emoji with sunglasses here*

The World Doesn't Stop

Part of me has died and I mourn indefinitely.
Pseudo engagement rings and hypothetical kids be damned.
The love of my life is gone and I am paralyzed by impeding solitude.
I don't want to keep my hopes up because my hopes don't mean a damn thing
and my hopes are a memory of the life that I anticipated and the life that I no longer live.
But I cannot help but dream of a moment when this is vocalized as a big mistake.
Yes, I still love you. Yes, I'll come back to you.
But the desperation for reconciliation is one sided and pointless.
My heart breaks harder than it ever has and I doubt my ability to persevere
without my best friend and favorite person beside me.
I am selfish, I am sad, and I cannot.

Two for Two

I have made a fool of myself and continue to do so as I spill my broken heart onto the internet. For the past five and a half years, I have loved and grown and somehow managed not to be enough. Thirty-four seems too old to feel like this, although I know it happens to everyone. I am embarrassed for believing that 5.5 years was going to lead to marriage even after I reconsidered becoming a parent. You know detrimental me: giving everything I have to those I love without actually investing in myself. I end up with nothing except for heartache and the hard-earned knowledge of what to avoid in the future: single parents, younger people and in general, falling in love.

Kissing My Employee Discount Goodbye Forever

I guess I'm just going to use this blog as a place to post old quickie papers I wrote because I don't have the ability to post in the moment. I am never taking all upper division classes ever again...until I have to. In April, this Gap Kids ad went viral and I don't know why I read the comments section to anything. Because I'm secretly a drama queen? It is incredible to me that people really think that the above photos are the same pose. Let me break it down: little Black girl as arm rest is not standing in a power pose like little white girl as arm rest. No one cried foul about the black and white photo because little girls of color are already perceived as unladylike, they can't be organic bendy yogis. But I digress. People really believe that a two-term Black President equates to a post-racial society. If anything, white supremacy has become more overt and identical to the postbellum South. Anyway, here is a short essay that will possibly cement my inability to return to Gap Inc.:

Fall into the Crap

A week has passed since the Gap issued their “apology” for offending the Twitterverse with their ED by Ellen ad depicting the head of a Black girl’s as an armrest for a white girl. Having dedicated five years of my life to the Gap along with a lumbar strain that has since curbed my amateur bowling career, the viral nature of this story filled me with disbelief. While the Gap likes to pride itself as a progressive company, their non-apology (we’re sorry if you’re offended) speaks to lazy corporate management, lackadaisical public relations and unethical ad tactics. In an attempt to engage my former coworkers via Facebook in a conversation surrounding race representation and the historicity of Black stereotypes, the dominant discourse for defending the image in question as “not a race issue” was rationalized through reverse-racism theories, anecdotes by the vertically challenged, and the fact that the armrest and resting arm happen to be sisters through adoption. I am continually awed by the belief of a contemporarily post-racial society, or that white supremacy is only recognizable in white cone-shaped hoods with eye holes, by white nationalists with YouTube channels, and by observing the attendees of Donald Trump rallies. Upon realization that the dialogue was not going to evolve into focusing on the role that photographers, style directors and ad executives play in constructing body narratives, I stopped contributing to the conversation.

Forty-two pages into Between the World and Me, a specific passage made me mad again at the Gap and mad at the individuals who were unwilling to consider how racist the ad is: “’White America’ is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining).” The disgruntled retail employee in me is finding difficulty in believing that the Gap is clever enough to pose a Black girl in the style of a somber lawn jockey among a trio of organic white yogis-in-training for a collection of clothing intended to empower girls as a sly nod at framing Black girlhood as subservience. This is the same Gap that published an article in the company’s monthly newsletter citing Kanye West’s name-dropping of the retail chain in the song “Spaceship” as a compliment. It is as if no one was available to review the lyrics before sending the final draft to the printer:

“If my manager insults me again, I will be assaulting him

After I fuck the manager up, then I’m gonna shorten the register up

Let’s go back, back to the Gap

Look at my check, wasn’t no scratch

So if I stole, wasn’t my fault

Yeah I stole, never got caught

Take me to the back and pat me

Askin’ me about some khakis

But let some black people walk in

I bet they show off their token blackie.”

Simultaneously, white supremacy’s pervasiveness in print media is to the extent that the un-woke consumer has grown accustomed to racist aesthetics. Whether it is Lebron James as King Kong to Gisele Bündchen on the cover of Vogue, or the calcification of Kerry Washington on the cover of Adweek: body autonomy for people of color is not a thing.

I also think that Gap Inc's P.A.C.E. program is a farce. Empowering women of the Global South while still utilizing sweat shops to produce mediocre clothing? Ok. Imperialism remixed with white liberal feminism at its finest. Well, there goes my chance to re-break my back for $10-something an hour. Bye, Felicia.

So what? Who cares?

Last semester, I took a course called "Vulnerable Black Masculinities." It was an awesome class taught by one of my favorite professors. Should a degree in being woke existed, VBM would be a required course. When I learn about Black history in the United States, I become inspired to interrogate the historicity of Filipinos in America and worldwide. How the F else does a Filipino-American deal with the Filipino diaspora? Anyway, I had to submit an article to a blog for one of my assignments. The website I submitted my article to is probably never going to publish it because the moment has passed and honestly, who cares about what an undergrad has to say about anything? So here it is:

Pacquiao is WACKiao: The Filiqueerno Navigation of Gay and Pinoy Pride.

by Nicole Espinosa

In preparation for the third Pacquiao vs Bradley match, I will not be making the pilgrimage to Las Vegas, as many Filipinos do, to monetarily and morally support arguably the most visible Filipino in transnational popular culture. This is partly because I already live in Las Vegas and I purposefully avoid The Strip — especially during fight nights. Additionally, I will not order the fight on pay-per-view and will not assemble with relatives or with other Filipinos in someone’s garage-turned-rec room to watch it.

My resignation from Team Pacquiao happened at least four years ago. As a queer Filipino-American, I cannot cheer for someone who has described the entire LGBTQIA community as being “worse than animals.” Let’s revisit the interview that first threatened Pacquiao’s earning capability in 2012: former Examiner.com contributor Granville Ampong fabricated a quote by Pacquiao citing Leviticus 20:13 in response to President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage. Ampong’s non-journalism aside, I was not the least bit surprised by Pacquiao’s alleged homophobia. Pacquiao has always presented himself as a God-fearing man. Having parents who were raised as devout Catholics, who then raised me as devout Mormons, I am more than familiar with the correlation between the Christian majority and anti-gay, anti-equality sentiment. Yet here we are four years later: the same passage from Leviticus posted to, and subsequently deleted from, Pacquiao’s official Instagram account. Pacquiao’s Nike endorsement had just been terminated and he apparently gave zero Fs about it.

“But he said ‘sorry.’” But I don’t care. Pacquiao’s half-apology doesn’t reflect the Christ-like attributes he so vehemently pretends to embody. “But he donates to charities.” But what’s the point of a hand out if you’re not helping people become self-sufficient and critically thinking members of society? I digress.

To throw in my own remix of Beyoncé’s “Formation:” I like my Pinoy nose with Lapu-Lapu nostrils. I love being Filipino and I cannot allow my Pinoy Pride to be defined by the scientifically inaccurate and religiously hypocritical comments made by an individual who embraces anti-intellectualism, has subjected himself to decades of head trauma, and has shown his inability to maintain the “sanctity” of marriage. I would implore other Filipinos who don’t agree with Pac-Man’s politics, but continue to rally for him as an athlete, to reconsider their decision to do so. He’s no José Rizal, but he also can’t be the only Filipino worth rooting for.

I wrote a (crappy) paper — we'll get to how crazy busy my semester was at another time, on the regression of the Filipino Race Man. I am fully aware of the absurdity of a) a race representative and b) a gendered race representative, but for the purpose of submitting an assignment worth a good chunk of my grade, I wrote about it. It boggles my mind that the Philippines just elected a bozo for a president. But when I think about the history of the Philippines — Spanish colonial rule, American colonial rule, World War II, plunder and oppression of the Marcos regime, it comes as no surprise that the #2 Philippine National Hero after José Rizal would be a stupid boxer. He literally has zero grasp on science or sociology. Again, I have to reiterate that Filipinos aren't the only perpetrators of anti-intellectualism: the GOP Presidential front runner is a misogynist, white supremacist and reality television "star."

There are Filipinos in the media and academia worth rooting for. People besides Rob Schneider, Jo Koy and Nicole Scherzinger. Coincidence that they're all mixed? I can't have a conversation about colorism just yet. I have pizza to eat. Later, hoes. Xoxo Gossip Girl.