Plans for Summer

I have an interview today, and I have the opportunity to work with an awesome theatre group in the city. To say that I'm not a little nervous would be a lie, and I'm not really sure what to expect. I've spent the last two days studying the organization and finding out what to say during an interview, but in every YouTube video, in every article, they are basing their knowledge on a business interview, and this place isn't really business. It's called NY Artists Unlimited, and if you search that on YouTube you'll find some awesome plays that were recorded and put up by the director, Melba LaRose. It's those videos that really made me nervous because now I want this. When I want something I act terribly. I once had a crush on this guy and in my mind he was perfect, and he liked me at the beginning too, but I fucked the whole thing up after a couple of days because I was way to clingy and weird. What if I end up acting too clingy and weird today? What if they stop answering my texts and leaving me in a state of emotional turmoil for days while I wait for them to respond? That's why I'm worried, because I want this really badly. I rarely get what I want, I get what I need. I needed for that boy to dump me because now I know not to be weird around other boys, but I just hope that I don't need the rejection from this group, I won't really know until after, and I'm not a romantic when it comes to things like fate and destiny, but everything in my life has a sense of working itself out in the end.
I'm taking French classes this summer. The organization is called FIAF I think, and the classes are everyday in the mornings. I've wanted to speak French for years now, and I'm finally doing something about it. I speak Spanish almost fluently, and if I can learn French then I know that a career in international affairs is much more plausible. People forget how large French actually is as a language. The big three are English, Chinese, and Spanish, but you could make a strong argument for French being fourth. It is a UN language, and the language of the EU. It's spoken in a handful of countries across the world and people don't realize how useful it is. Learning Italian isn't as handy, but on Long Island I know that my statement would offend people, so I won't go into more detail about that.
Lastly I'm taking an SAT class at night. I've come to accept that I would have to take it eventually, and now is a good time. There are a ton of cute boys there. I always had the fantasy that one would talk to me and we'd just hit it off. That's never happened. It's always been some weird reference I get from a mutual friend where we are both stalking each other's Facebook pages until we decide whether or not we find the other person attractive. I feel that in the future it might be different, but when you have apps like grinder and that disturbing match.com commercial saying that a fifth of all relationships start on the Internet.
Those are my plans for the summer, they're not too stressful, but I hope to be busy because I'm tired of sitting around and doing nothing.

Chapter One- Julian with the Dolls and Dresses

            I was always an odd child. There was little normal about me and I can only realize that now because I’m old enough to review old home videos, and recall the memories that stuck with me. I once bit another child’s nose because I felt like it. I was never violent though; I just wanted to know what biting a nose would feel like.

I didn’t start out feminine. My sister is probably to blame for this. Viviana is three years older than I am, and I grew up alongside her. The relationship between my sister and I was probably the most normal thing about my childhood. I am grateful for that.

Viviana was always a typical girl. She grew up with a pretty predictable childhood and I envied that. Not to be a predictable boy, but to be a predictable girl. I never wanted to be a girl, but I always wanted to be treated like one. I never liked what was expected of me as a boy. Ever since I can first remember, my mother had been saying I would one day make some girl “so happy”. I never liked being treated that way. I was taught to hold open doors and always to be respectful. My mother was trying to make me into the husband that she wished she had married.

The incident of the dolls came before the time of the dresses. As feminine as I was I was still a normal little boy. I like action figures and superheroes more than anything. I love to play with Legos and toys and even now you might still find me tinkering with some Spiderman thing. Anyway, the point that I am trying to make is that I wasn’t trying to be girly when I did it.

My sister had big box of dolls, dolls of all types, not just the typical Barbie and Ken, but little dolls from companies that no longer exist. And her dollhouse, that was something to see. My parents didn’t believe in plastic much, so they got my sister a huge, wooden dollhouse. It stood the same size at me at the time and it was incredible. Three whole floors of house. It was bigger than our own house. I think that any boy would have done it though. It’s not like it was so outlandish to play with dolls, I mean they’re basically actions figures with interchangeable clothes.

So I sat there, on the floor of my sister’s room and played with the dolls like there was no tomorrow. It felt good. It was like a high that only a four-year-old boy could feel. Barbie kicked Polly-Pocket’s ass all the way to the kitchen and back. Ken lifted the fucking house like it made of Styrofoam and smashed it on top of the homemade cloth dolls, and then he roared at the top of his lungs with a ferocity that startled people. But unfortunately the people that the roar startled weren’t dolls…

My mother ran up the stairs.

“What was that noise?” She barged into my sister’s room.

“Nothing” I rushed to hide Ken and Barbie under the bed.

“What are you doing?” said Carlota as she made her way further into the room.

“Nothing. I was just playing”

There was silence.

“Ernesto!” My mother shouted for my father.

“What!?” replied my father from his laid down position on the couch directly under us.

“Come upstairs!”

“…” Replied Ernesto.

“ERNESTO!”

Ernesto made his way up the stairs. His footsteps were slow, and the sound of his coming was easy to detect. I shivered in fear as I tried to put back the dolls without Carlota seeing. At the time I didn’t think that I had done anything wrong. I didn’t understand why playing with dolls was wrong but I understood that my mother being mad meant unhappiness for me.  Ernesto made his way to Viviana’s room. Feeling left out my sister joined us from the basement. All four of us existed silently in the room. Me, on the floor hiding a box of dolls behind my back, my sister, laying down on her bed, ready to watch the show, and my mother and father standing at the door, with the face that one gets right before they yell.

The details to follow aren’t pleasant; to talk about them would actually make me sad and angry with my parents, and continue to further destroy the relationship between us. But what I know is that an injustice took place that day, one that my parents and probably even my sister would forget, but it was an injustice nonetheless. This was one of the earliest memories I can recall, probably because of the impact that it had on me, and because of the impact that it continues to have on me. And because of the events that would follow because of that injustice.

My sister loved dolls. She loved to dress them up and make them look pretty. One day I decided that I wanted to be Viviana’s perfect doll. She dressed me up. I wore the cutest little skirt, and a nice blouse. We had put some lipstick from my mother’s room on me, and I looked adorable.

This was the first act of rebellion that I can remember.  Even back then I could understand what an injustice was. I knew that my actions regarding the dolls wasn’t wrong, not because I thought a boy being a girl was right, but because I just wanted to play with them like I would with action figures.

I rubbed on the makeup and pulled up the skirt with pride that day. Pride that I was teaching my parents a lesson. That they would feel like they had failed in raising me, and that I was in fact the thing that they punished me for being. I was a girl.

The scolding was even worse that time around.  But I felt satisfied afterwards. I had won. I had outsmarted them and they didn’t even know it. My mother and father would cry because their only son was in fact a girl. I manipulated my parents intolerance before I even knew what intolerance meant.

The dolls and the dress are the most important memories I have. Not because they are the most life changing or the most significant, but because they started it. It was those memories, those injustices, that have made me who I am today, and it was that story that starts my journey in this world. And as I was getting spanked that day, I was born. That was the day that Julian Vargas started.

I was working on these little wire things for STAC art. They are supposed to be game board pieces for the game board I'm making, but honestly I am just using that as an excuse to play with the wire. My hands are numb now. I can't feel the tips of my finger and I actually love that. I love working with my hands on fine and detailed things. I love to hand sew and I have worked with the bending metal arts before. My father has a little amateur jewelry shop set up in the basement. He has yet to use it, but he says that he will. My father used to make a living selling little trinkets and jewelry on the streets. His story is inspiring, and but now he has gotten lazy. He is the the type of person that reacts to a situation, and self motivation isn't something that comes easily to him. He made jewelry and art because he had to  because if he didn't then he'd starve. My father and I are alike in so many ways. We both get the system. We understand how things work and the minds of other people. We are able to navigate life so that we can do the least amount of work but yet seem like we geniuses. I'm not supposed to say things like that though. It makes me seem like a bad person, I was talking to Grace last night, and I said that all people boil down to a couple of awful traits, and that no one is truly as good as they seem to be. It isn't their fault though. I am very selfish, and so are so many people. I care about myself before almost everyone else, but I try so hard to not. And it is in that attempt to be good, that makes me a good person.
I am starting a book, writing one not reading one. It's about my life I think. But saying that makes it sound stupid. It's about my attempt to navigate the world and the mistakes and triumphs that I have seen, and how that has shaped my way of thinking and why I do the things that I do. I am young, I hardly have any experience, but at the same time I have a lot of stories. I have stories that I don't tell anyone about, and I am constantly in a new one. For the past nine months I have been in story after story. This has been the most exciting year of my life so far. I have done so much, just personally and mind expanding. I feel that I am starting to experience life. I haven't regretted a moment of this entire year, even all the mistakes I made because now I am smarter for them. I am writing this book for myself, because I organize thoughts when I write, better that I do in my head at least. I used to organize all of my thoughts on my walks home from school, everyday for twenty minutes I'd think to myself, and organize everything in my head, but when I write it down it is all more clear. I come to conclusion about things when I write. I evolve my ideas when I write. I thought this blog post was going to be about that STAC art stuff I was doing, but it isn't anymore. It's going to be hard to get support for this project, I already realize that. Writing this will make me seem like I know more about life than other people, and that gets people upset. I like to explore life and ideas, and it makes me seem like I pretend to know more than other people. If I were to finish the book, I'd all be about me, and I think highly of myself because I have never meet anyone else as interesting as me. That sounds shallow to say, but I love myself so much. I can never talk to anyone the way that I talk to myself. I admit my mistakes, but I love that I have mistakes. I love that I am learning from life and experience rather than how I used to learn. A lot of people I know learn through theory, and I used to as well. We'd think about life and questions, and then come to a conclusion within our heads. People don't learn from mistakes enough nowadays. My book is going to be funny. You are going to laugh because life is pretty funny if you think about it. The book isn't going to be about my sexuality, if I were to say that then I could never be a good book. It will address it, very often, but in the end of the day I want it to be about me. About my head, and everything that goes through it. I want to write down every thought that I would be yelled at for, and every experience that I should be ashamed of and that would embarrass me. This is a book for me, and my goal is for people to read it and actually understand me. Actually be able to see who I actually am because I doubt anyone really knows me to the level that I want them to.
The book will be separated into three parts. I am not sure that this will stay, but having a structure at the beginning will help me. The parts will be about me at different ages. The first will be my earliest memories to the fifth grade. The next will be middle school until the moment that I came out, and the last will be from this past November to now. I am writing this book so that people can understand me better, but I want them to do that though the stories that I tell. So every chapter will be a story, and the goal is so that if someone were to read the all the stories, they'd get a good understanding of who I am. I think I might of just contradicted myself because I think I said that I would be writing this for myself, but my idea changed. I never edit these blog posts. I write as I go, and make sure that nothing I put down is too offensive or rude, but I never read them over. This is my think tank. This is where ideas are born, not presented. To be judged badly for something I write on this blog would be unfair because this place to me, is a place to think. Eventually finished product should  appear, but for now, let's leave it at this.
Thank you for reading.