Posts in category "Photos"

29 3/12: The Once Loved

When I look at this pic­ture, I see the flaws. The stretch marks on my back, and espe­cial­ly promi­nent on the side of my ass. Those strange red blem­ish­es on my shoul­der that I don’t remem­ber hav­ing. The lack of junk in the trunk so com­mon in Asian peo­ple. I did­n’t even know I had a mole down there.

I used to have body-image issues. Always think­ing I was too skin­ny, and too ugly.

Self portrait at 29 3/12

 

Then some­one made me feel dif­fer­ent­ly. She treat­ed every part of my body with as much atten­tion and love as I treat­ed hers. She was the first per­son to ever make me believe that I was attrac­tive too. Some days, I felt as hand­some as she was pret­ty.

I turn 30 in nine months, and now that she’s gone, I won­der if any­one will ever see me that way again.

The Turning 30 Series

Super Bowl Sunday

Thumbnail: Aaron pumps gas

We cov­er a lot of ground on the dri­ve, stuff I would­n’t admit to just any­one. It’s good to have a set amount of time for some one on one. We see each oth­er at par­ties, but it’s nev­er time by our­selves.

Thumbnail: Rob's lair

We get there a few hours ear­ly because it isn’t so much about the game as hang­ing out with the two friends I don’t see enough. There’s a cool­er full of snow and beer, and the food is com­ing in pro­tein; pigs-in-blan­kets, ground beef nachos, chick­en fin­gers, crab dip, meat balls.

Thumbnail: Cradle

For a night, I’m with guys who punch arms, exchange ver­bal jabs, and laugh at blue col­lar jokes. Two lit­tle girls run around, and no one ever lets that change them. Now they’re fathers, but they’ll always be real men.

Night Of Black Magic

Bunny

Thumbnail: Lloyd and Felicetta
Thumbnail: Patti and Chris
Thumbnail: Me and Lloyd
Thumbnail: Mike
Thumbnail: Trying on hat

Thumbnail: Dark ritual

I was invit­ed to a night of black mag­ic (as well as some tasty antipas­to), and I did­n’t know what to expect. Part of the instruc­tions were to bring a large piece of con­struc­tion paper, a white pen­cil cray­on, and a piece of paper with some­thing writ­ten on it that I want to be rid of in my life. Turns out the con­struc­tion paper was to make our hats and chains, and the pen­cil cray­on was to fash­ion said hats and chains with our pow­er sym­bols (some­thing with mean­ing to each per­son). I was also giv­en a phrase to mem­o­rize and incant dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.

There were glow sticks, good food1, and great peo­ple. I won’t go into details about the rit­u­al, for reveal­ing too much, as I under­stand it, is akin to telling peo­ple your birth­day wish. Needless to say, I hope to wake up to some growth down south (aka expan­sion to drilling oper­a­tions in the wildlife pre­serve) one of these days, if you catch my drift.

  1. I got to try some kind of home­made peach juice, which was a thick as glyc­erin, but very tasty. [↩]