“(don’t) Cry” by Pedro Klien

To begin this blog post like so many others, with a scene involving my boyfriend in our crappy apartment:

Boyfriend and I, snuggling in bed, watching “Tree of Life”, furrowing our eyebrows and with bated breath, hoping that the dialogue and subsequent actual feature film presentation would begin in the next scene. We were an hour deep in this extreme patience, waiting for the movie to start. (If you’ve never seen “Tree of Life”, this is me telling you not to).

It was all very quiet, raining outside, watching a movie with no noise when a baby started crying in the apartment next to ours. The new neighbors, a young Bostonian couple, had just moved in. I hadn’t seen a baby though, they snuck that one by me. The baby started crying louder and louder, and then started pounding rhythmically on the wall….OH MY GOD.

Inches away from where my boyfriend and I are busy being wholesome and cute, on the other side of the wall that our bed is against, and now obviously the same wall that our new neighbors put their bed against, that 12-year-old looking emaciated little girl I had seen carrying boxes the day before was having NO shame.

I looked over at my boyfriend, who had a huge shit-eating grin on his face.

It sounded like a cat, or an infant, but mixed with over-acted pornography…it was terrible and slamming against the wall I was resting my head on.

Nothing says “low quality of life” in the first world like being subjected to the sounds of bedroom thespians trying to prove something.

I don’t know why it is, but it enrages me that home girl won’t shut her trap. Shit echoes through the courtyard of our apartment complex, bouncing off the walls and oozing down the street where innocent children could hear. And as the only other young couple in the vicinity, I’m scared people will think it’s me.

A few minutes into it, I slam my fist against the wall a few times and instantaneously it stops. That was the first time, and you’d think she was be so mortified that someone could hear her…her…icky noises!! Ew!

Six months, a few hefty handfuls of raging parties (also inches away from my attempting-to-slumber head) until 4 a.m., smoke coming into my bedroom window, cigarettes butts in my lawn, and lots of crying infant porn later, I now hate everyone from Boston and think they are all sexed-up former Marines with no regard for anyone else around them.

Say hello to ya mutha fuh me…

To make things worse, an actual child (and their parents) just moved in across the way, so now every time it starts crying, I think someone is doing it somewhere.

It makes me so angry, and almost offended for some reason, but I have not been able to figure a single way to deal with the situation. It’s been too long to just pound on the wall again—they’ll think that it’s just that one time that I could hear them. I was thinking of leaving on anonymous note, but I feel like leaving someone a note on their door that says something along the lines of “I can hear you doing it” will not only be slightly creepy, but also easily linked to the people who share a wall with them.

And I certainly don’t want to tell her to her face. I’m sure I’d scrunch my nose up and make some disgusted expression (I’m notorious for not being able to hide my emotions), look down at her 12-year-oldesque face and say “Hey, um, we can hear you guys, all the time, every little thing, every thing that you do[while making a judgmental grossed-out face], yeah…”

I’ve yelled a few times during it, because it’s been so absurd and awkward in contrast to me reading “Bossypants” inches away.

“Aaaahhhh! What is that!? What in god’s name is THAT?! It’s so awkward!!” I’ll yell out the window, with no reaction.

Gosh it’s gross. The thumping wouldn’t be so bad, it’s just the prepubescent yelping that gets me.

I was hoping that the new couple with the aforementioned child would step up and do something to protect their innocence of their little treasure, but no dice yet on that one.

I wish I could end this with some punchy conclusion, but fact of the matter is I’m still dealing with it and it sucks. The end.

NOTE: I know some cool people from Boston, alright, one cool person from Boston. Please do not be offended by my anti-Boston remarks. I rooted for the Celtics. 

"I'm tired of playing with dolls." Photo by George Eastman House

“Eric, Eric!” I yell at my boyfriend as I bound into our crappy little apartment. “I met a girl today! I met a girl today!”

“Oh! What’s her name?” he replies, quickly turning off the TV and energetically turning to face me on the couch where I plop down next to him.

“Her name is Lisa, and I met her at school, I complimented her on her Patagonia jacket, and then she complimented me and on Klean Kanteen, and then we talked about philosophy and the ocean and I think I found a keeper!” I say as I’m basically frothing out of the mouth from giddy girl excitement.

Being a tomboy growing up loving surfing, it’s hard to find girls for friends that love surfing just as much as you, as opposed to loving the attention they get for surfing. Damn you “cool factor” for converting the mindsets of hundreds of innocent oceanic little girls!

Most of my life has been lived in the company of boys in the most platonic of ways.  You can tell by the amount of times I’ll say “dude”, “bro”, “sick” or “man” in a given day when I’m not in the office.

But being in a relationship with a very nice man, it’s sort of strange to be hanging out with a bunch of dudes. & seeing how said dudes treat me differently after they find out that I’m a taken lady sort of confirms my suspicions. Perverts, the lot of em, at least in this town.

I’ve got a few ladies in my pal repertoire, but not enough to suffice an entire lifestyle. So thus has begun my search for female companionship. I haven’t really learned how to be graceful about it though; I always kind of feel like I’m hitting on them.

“Let me get your number! We should totally get a beer sometime or something,” always feels funny to say to a female, I kind of feel like a guy. I feel how awkward bros look when they try to hit on girls. But they certainly aren’t going to make the first move, so I swallow my pride and do my best boy-trying-to-get-a-date impression .

Getting a drink is always a good test to see if a girl, or anyone in general, is going to be a good companion candidate. Some people have faces that morph into different personas when they start drinking. What was once solid friend becomes some sort of devil on the prowl for their next chunk of (wo)man meat.

My lady dates fail the test when their eyes shift all over the room, they start acting all hyper-femme, flipping their hair about and laughing really shrill and loud in an almost forced sort of a way when I didn’t say anything at all, let along something funny.

Then they’ll pretend to go to the bathroom but end up talking to some sleaz by the pool table for an hour while I eat the rest of our nachos and get sour cream all over my shirt and finish the pint by myself.

I previously undervalued one’s ability to be able to hold their liquor and not transform into a sex-crazed terrible person. My father always told me not to trust a man who doesn’t drink, and I’m learning maybe I shouldn’t trust some females who do.

It’s always good to mention my boyfriend upfront. Too many times I’ve met up with a girl for a drink and found out through the evening that her ability to not wander towards the next dude wearing a fedora was fueled by her homosexuality and her belief that I was a lesbian and that I had in fact asked her out.

No real problem there, I can’t help it if lesbians are awesome, but its no fun leading people on.

& thus my search continues, trying to find girls in Pacific Beach, San Diego like so many others.

Photo by Roger Robberstad

“You guys know this is a leather bar, right?” his bushy mustache asked.

He sat next to a bare black door and beneath a lonely blue light, with his arms crossed, not in a casual way, but in a bouncer trying to make his muscles look bigger sort of way.

But when he asked my boyfriend and I if we knew what we were about to walk in on, a playful glimmer lit up his eyes and a little smirk tilted his mustache.

“Yep,” we answered in unison, a little too energetically, but the fact of the matter was we were very energetic.

The first thing I noticed was a man wearing leather short shorts and a cowboy hat by the pool table, pacing confidently as he studied the balls for his next shot. Next I saw the big bear type wearing very Republican glasses, but had nixed his shirt for some leather strappy number.

The bears were intimidating at first, their large statures wrapped in leather, but their hard appearance frequently gave way to boyish smiles and laughs. They were just big ol’ burrs.

After my eyes started adjusting to the visual stimulus, my nose tuned on to the man odor (yeah, that’s a euphemism). With all that leather on skin and body heat, it filled the joint. It was strong enough to convince me it was a bad idea to use the restroom, especially the women’s restroom.

The music was how I imagined it would be—strange German sounding metal with heavy bass and sex dungeon rumble with a voice that I couldn’t understand but sounded like the bondage devil giving instructions to his deviants.

We shouldered our way to the bar and discovered it was $1.50 beers. No wonder the place was packed! Where do they make their money, slanging out beers from the price of candy bars? And only blocks away from $16 Beer Land!

The shirtless tender stared at my beau and me as we studied to the taps to make our decision. Bud Light, Coors Light, Natty Light…Between them all was a mysterious rainbow tap with no logo.

Maybe after a few drinks I would have gone for it, but the combination of the smell and men who looked like my middle school principal wearing assless chaps turned on some strange carnal fear inside me that told me to stay away from the rainbow tap.

Resting on one of the black walls was a black cage, and on another a black cross whipping post. A man in leather pants and a cowboy hat walked up to one of the stray lesbians by the pool table, said something to her, they both walked to the whipping post, and she proceeded to whip the holy hell out of his tallowy back as he arched and giggled.

A few people glanced over, but it didn’t attract too much attention. Just another dude getting whipped by another lesbian.

Simultaneously on the other side of the pool table, a bear was getting his nipples sucked by a little Hispanic man. He cradled the little Hispanic man in his arms and looked down on him and his working lips with a warm and joyful smile. Again, no one really looked.

We must have been the archetypical Friday night straight couple that came in to see the sights, stand in the corner and sip our $1.50 beers beneath our humungous eyes. It was awesome.

*Leather bars to do not represent the gay community. To my understanding, leather is like a fetish, straight people have fetishes too. I’m very supportive of the gay community, but leather is an interesting scene regardless of your sexual orientation. I sincerely do not mean to offend anyone with this blog post. I have offended you, please let me know and I’d love to talk to you about it. 

An audio slideshow Patricia completed on the San Diego Canoe Kayak Team for her senior project of reporting on how enhancing someone’s relationship with water enhances their quality of life.

Patricia has become the arts guru at PacificSD Magazine. If you know of any upcoming art openings in San Diego a month ahead of time, please send all press releases to patricia@pacificsandiego.com.