A Note to Self @egodeltoro-blog - Tumblr Blog

NO ONE WILL REMEMBER YOU WHEN YOU DIE

There are times when I see it all clearly.

His black lighter explodes and a cloud of smoke circulates. Gradually growing thicker, the smoke takes on the form of the idle car’s interior as well as the four people sitting inside of it.

For the most part, all I see is noise.

What are they even talking about? Music, money, sex, gentrification, police brutality, and love are the ingredients, but it’s hard to map out a recipe you can take home with you and replicate. These topics take form, disperse, and circulate in a similar fashion to the smoke trapped inside with not a crack of window to escape from.

There are times when I see it all clearly, but for the most part it’s overwhelming.

It’s in my nature to take it all in; everything around me. There are times when I can speak it all to you clearly, but for the most part I’m tongue tied. I absorb my city completely unfiltered and consequently suffer from my generation’s trendiest affliction: overthinking.

Sitting in the driver’s seat, he puts his lighter to the side and doesn’t say much thereafter. Will’s a lot like me in that he prefers to take in a lot of information before putting it all out. Death is the topic now. After a couple of long drags, he exhales smoke and drops in his two cents. Riding shotgun is my closest friend, Monday, who is in a way the opposite. Conducting the conversation, he likes to throw out thoughts at random and see what they become; seamlessly changing topics as these thoughts grow and fade away. He takes a drag as id, who is in the backseat diagonal to him, takes hold of the conversation. He’s the type to pop in his gold fronts and talk to you about horoscopes and veganism. He takes whatever topic is thrown at him and translates it into something either comical or heavy; something he has a knack for.

And I’m one of the four, by the way.

Or am I?

Is that even me anymore?

This should all be in past tense, right? Replace all of those is’s with was’s real quick.

Yee.

Was that me then, or am I me now? I really don’t know.

Most of my over-thoughts tend to deal with is’s becoming was’s. And there are a lot of them these days.

But lemme go on a tangent real quick.

First dates are funny.

She’s uncomfortable with the fact that she’s turning 25; another trendy affliction among kids in their 20’s.

The recipe to this flavor of affliction has a very specific set of ingredients, one of them being a fear of change; or rather a fear of is’s becoming was’s.

Ahem.

My biggest fear is repeating a word too many times. My favorite word specifically.

Gorgeous.

If I say it enough, it starts to break apart. It loses meaning.

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

It becomes gibberish. The qualities of it I loved begin to fade and it morphs into some shapeless blob.

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

Ugh.

I hadn’t figured her out at that point. I knew things about her, yes. She’s in graduate school, she’s an Africana Studies major, she just moved to Oakland, she likes poetry, she’s not yet sure what she wants to be, and so on. I knew a good handful of things she used to describe herself, but I didn’t know her. In all actuality, she too is shapeless.

Gorgeous.

First dates are funny because the two people involved are supposed to effectively represent themselves and from there determine if it all meshes. But how does one properly lock down who they are? I’ve always been uncomfortable with that concept. We love to think of ourselves as static and finite but we are all, by nature, in a constant state of flux; quickly shuffling from is’s to was’s and perpetually changing shape. Everything does this.

That smoke circulating inside of Will’s car is a great example. When exhaled, the cloud that emerges is identified as just that. It then immediately begins to morph, change shape, and break apart. At no one moment in time does it appear the same as it did in a previous moment, yet we still refer to it as the same cloud. It isn’t until this cloud breaks apart beyond visibility that we consider it nonexistent. We have no urge to define it by any one shape it takes on and simply accept that a cloud of smoke will do what a cloud of smoke does; remain shapeless.

People are shapeless too.

We love labels because they give us that shape we identify ourselves by. It was id’s turn in the rotation. He flicked the ashes and took a drag. How would you label someone like him? He talks about eating healthy and horoscopes, is he just a hippy? He has dreadlocks and gold fronts, is he just some nigga from Oakland? Monday is just as likely to talk about sex and money as he is about love and the community, so what does that make him? Will has an ear and a love for Hip Hop just the same as he has for virtually any other genre he encounters, so what does that make him? I don’t think that should be the point.

Gorgeous.

Death became the topic. Monday came up with the title of this piece, by the way. One of the many thoughts he threw out at random that night was his fear of death. He’s most afraid of dying and losing his sense of self. A fear of not remember himself when he dies. We’ve landed on this topic several times before and the idea that death is an everyday occurrence always comes up. Not in the sense that people die every day, but in the sense that your self dies every day. Your ideas, your values, your beliefs, your perspective, what you like, what you don’t like, and all of the things that add to the pool that you call self is regularly being destroyed and rebuilt.

At the end of the day, you are just you and it’s hard to simplify and shape what that actually is. It’s an insult to your self to try and conform that to a label; to deny your shapelessness and ability to grow as a human being. No matter how you cut it, there will come a time when who you are crashes into the borders your labels constructed, and you’ll be forced to change.

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

The cloud of smoke took on the form of the idle car’s interior as well as the four people sitting inside of it. Colliding with every corner of the car, the cloud found shape. But what was once a swisher became a roach, prompting Will to twist the keys in the ignition and finally roll the windows down. And so the smoke escaped, taking on whatever shape it was prompted to take; doing what smoke does. I see it all clearly now, but back then it was just noise.

She’s uncomfortable with the fact that she’s turning 25; a trendy affliction among kids in their 20’s. The recipe to this flavor of affliction has a very specific set of ingredients, one of them being a fear of change. The second ingredient is unmet expectation. Age is another label we try to conform to and I suppose we get uncomfortable when we don’t match its shape; when we feel we haven’t accomplished anything. Our generation seems fixated on accomplishment; on making our mark. I guess as we get older, the idea that no one will remember us when we die becomes more apparent.

At one point she asked me what the {ego} logo on my hat meant. Ego is everything that you think you are in regards to your ideas, your values, your beliefs, your perspective, what you like, what you don’t like, and so on. The brackets on either end signify that the ego is present but not acknowledged. Because all of those things listed are temporary and none of them are you. You are something else entirely.

She doesn’t yet know what she wants to be.

She doesn’t even know what she is.

Gorgeous.

-T

egoisthebrand

As a kid I was terrified of feeling the way I feel at this exact moment.

His gold grills sunbathed under the streetlights. I wonder if they make his words sound different. They were encased in a grin visible from over a block away and he spoke in a dialect that, after 15 years spent in this city, my ears now recognize as home. I’m not the new kid anymore. I didn’t use to understand the appeal of gold grills. It’s interesting how things change; how when you’re around something for long enough, it becomes you. It becomes home. It becomes everything you identify with. He was an OG from Fillmore who went on to tell me stories about how the neighborhood used to be. But that was just a digression from his main point.

This isn’t about a girl, by the way. By now I usually mention someone that has my mind occupied and how it ties into the bigger picture, but nah. I need to move to another city is how my mom responded to the latest story I had to tell. The one I chose not to type. But we only stayed on that subject for so long before it gravitated toward more important things. We were at the Westin, something like 30 floors up, sipping something I can’t recall, with the city as our backdrop.

It really is stunning.

Death came up. I made sure it did this time.

My mom tends to focus on the small things, which frustrated me when I went to visit her in D.C. earlier in the year. She can go on for hours about shit like…spices or gardening or whatever the fuck. But when it comes to subjects that run deep, conversations tend to be shorter and end sooner than I’d intended. So I had her here in San Francisco when we talked about my heart palpitations, anxiety attacks, and perpetual thoughts of my best friend’s passing. She’d go on to describe the perspective she gained as a refugee no older than me with a gun to her head.

But I digress.

I don’t remember the exact words the OG stitched together to make me stop, take my headphones off, and wait at the bus stop with him. But I remember his main point. For those that are unaware of this phenomenon, black males habitually acknowledge each other when crossing paths in areas where our color is found few and far between; it’s a really beautiful thing, actually. This specific area was his neighborhood, a place where such an act would’ve been pointless some odd years ago. But times have changed and I suppose he felt some type of way when I passed by the stop without so much as a glance.

He told me that, though there are wild people out there who will flip the positive energy you bring into something negative, it is important to engage others and smile regardless. He told me such things open doors. In all honesty, I was just tired and all up in my thoughts that night, I didn’t mean anything by it when I walked past him. But what he said really resonated with me and went on to play a factor in saving my life, now that I think of it. Not too long after this, I woke up to find that my little brother’s heart gave out.

I have a hunch that my posture wouldn’t be as straight today if I didn’t run into that OG. I feel like I wouldn’t be able to smile the same or engage people the same way. He told me to do so because the outcome could be good even if it could be bad. Just engage people regardless. And maybe he was telling me to step outside of my comfort zone; to engage in life because the outcome could be good even if it could be bad. Just live regardless. I wonder if his gold grills make him sound different.

I was sitting on the front steps of my home at the time with a phone to my ear and tears streaming down my face. Throughout the duration of the conversation I’d take a few seconds, every few seconds, to just lose it. My mom was on the other side. She wasn’t crying at all. She was speaking very calmly and very rationally. Looking back at it, I think I understand why she puts so much focus on the small things.

She lost her comfort zone at a young age. When she was just 6 years old, the family was exiled from their country and on the run from a murderous dictator. She could tell you these stories better than I can. She could tell you stories about friends and family members getting killed or turning up missing, my grandfather being a target, being threatened at gunpoint, the family splitting up, and going long periods of time without seeing some of them. I suppose these experiences and many more are the reason why she is so unaffected by change. She’s a master at keeping her composure, something I greatly admire.

I, however, am terrified of change. I am notorious for being attached to my comfort zone. My mom could tell you the story about how I, at 7 years old, sat in the middle of my empty bedroom in our D.C. apartment for hours the night before we were set to fly out for good. She could tell you about how I refused to leave; how she had to come and sit with me until it finally sunk all the way in that this was the end of an era. She could tell you about how I had a rough time acclimating to life in San Francisco. I was the new kid in a new city with a new dialect and new social norms. She could tell you about how it all came to a head in middle school and how by the time I got to high school I was done with people and began shutting the world out. She could tell you about how my high school was right next to our then apartment of 6 years and how I used it as a literal comfort zone; a space where I had complete control. Lunches, breaks, and any kind of gaps in my schedule were spent by myself at home. My mom was at work, other kids were at the mall or on campus.

Maybe all of that time helped me refine myself as an artist. Maybe I successfully avoided a lot of bullshit that comes with high school. Maybe I successfully avoided everything that I intended to avoid. But I probably missed out on a lot of the great experiences that come with these things. I probably missed out on a lot of growth. And what was I so afraid of?

I believe that when you leave your comfort zone, you allow life to play you like an instrument. You have nothing to hold on to. You have no habits to fall back on. You have no familiar surroundings to affirm your familiar sense of self. You become a vessel. You become a blank canvas. You become an instrument and must allow life to play whatever song it chooses. And as I kid, though I didn’t know how to articulate it, I was terrified of that feeling.

Because the songs that life chooses to play eventually become you.

I’m a bit older now and have set foot outside of my comfort zone on numerous occasions. And life did indeed play the songs that made me so scared to leave my comfort zone in the first place. I’ve made countless mistakes, I’ve been in awkward situations that I couldn’t escape, I’ve pissed people off, I’ve had my heart broken, I’ve received rejection letters, I’ve had to let go of friends, I’ve seen death left and right, I’ve felt alone, I’ve run into brick walls, I’ve disappointed myself, I’ve given my absolute best repeatedly only to absolutely fail repeatedly, and the worst is most definitely still ahead of me.

But then there’s the flipside.

Upon stepping out of my comfort zone, through me, life played some of my favorite songs to date. I’ve had countless successes, I’ve made several new friends who’ve impacted my life in an immensely positive way, I’ve received genuine admiration and reassurance in response to my art, I’ve helped throw successful events, I’ve overcome limitations I put on myself and those that were thrown at me, I’ve found strength and character I didn’t know I had, I’ve graduated, I’ve given my absolute best and seen the fruits of my labor flourish, I’ve gotten jobs and provided for myself, I’ve dated girls who’ve adored me, and I feel like overall I’ve learned a lot of what it takes to be a functional happy human being. And the best is without a doubt still ahead of me.

In high school, our empty apartment was a physical representation of the comfort zone I’d constructed internally and had to overcome. Not to say “mission accomplished” necessarily, but I’ve come a long way. My best friend’s death really grabbed me by the collar and dragged me out of the doorway. And had that OG not told me what he told me, that list of bad songs might’ve outweighed the good considerably.

I think I understand why my mom focuses on the small things. First and foremost, I think that while I was over here wiling out about the big things, she understood that this was just a part of the process. I think she knew that my world wasn’t coming to an end like I thought it was and that this was just the beginning of a change that life finally forced me into. Maybe every time she digressed to the small things “like spices or gardening or whatever the fuck”, she was digressing to the actual main point. Maybe those specific things aren’t the main point, but the things that are right here in front of me are; the little beauties that are out in the open going unnoticed. Maybe all these thoughts of death are just a digression from the main point, which is life. And maybe all these thoughts of heartbreak are just a digression from the main point, which is love.

So here we were at the Westin, something like 30 floors up, sipping something I can’t recall, with the city as our backdrop.

Ugh. Stunning.

She began implying that the city became my comfort zone.

Not necessarily what is best for me, but what is most familiar to me.

And the girls out here? Among other things, a lot of them are just afraid of putting themselves out there. She said none of that is my concern. I’ve told her a few stories now of girls who were testing me or waiting for me to slip up and reveal the dog that all men are. I’ve told her stories about girls who’ve literally said “I like you so much it scares me.” I’ve told her stories of girls who’ve been heartbroken and it makes them afraid to step out of their comfort zone. I’m the same way. A lot of people I know are. But that conversation was just a digression from the main point.

Point being, I have a new mantra. I know it’s not like…December 31st or whatever the fuck but fuck you.

Tell her how you feel.

Meaning…put yourself out there. Live regardless of death. Love regardless of heartbreak. Be regardless of opposition.

Tell her how you feel.

Peace.

I can't wait until I get to tell you the full story.

blackfashion

jazminrjones

A still of Temba from the Floral Print Body Bag music video shoot. The video debuts this Halloween on my blog and youtube channel!

egodeltoro-blog

Moi.

Impostor Syndrome

He showed us his gun during recess. We were something like 11 or 12 years old. I forget. The classroom was empty. Everyone was outside playing and like…eating cheese sandwiches or whatever the fuck little kids do. There were about four of us to my memory. Dunno why I was one of the four. He lifted up his shirt and revealed what was tucked in his waistband. I didn’t really think much of it. We were the exact same age as each other and at that moment we were under the same roof. We’re still the exact same age as each other but now we’re under much different roofs. We all knew ugly at a young age.

Ahem. Gather ‘round, children. Story time.

Beauty crash-landed in my room. She had caramel skin, long curly hair, and a thick frame. She came in short shorts, boots, and the same scent she wore the last time we were this close. I told her she looked beautiful. I was in a black V-neck, black denim, and some dress shoes. She told me I looked snazzy. According to the bottle, I smelled like Aspen. According to the packaging, my apartment smelled like Hawaii. She had no plans of going back home that night. I had a newly bought wine-key in my back pocket just in case one was needed. Before we laid down, she sat on my bed and congratulated me on my new place. I played it off like it was no big deal; coyly showing off in an attempt to impress her out of her panties. Something I’d attempted at my old place.

That was on our first date. Somehow when we pulled up in front of the house she said “yes” when I asked her if she wanted to come in. We were coming from the comedy club I work at. I’d hooked us up with a front row table at a sold out show. I guess she had a good time. I don’t know if she’d ever been in a place like mine. I was renting a room in what was essentially a Victorian mansion. It was quiet inside. The other tenants were likely asleep. Shrugging off all of her exclamations about the house, I took her hand and guided her through the kitchen to get to my bedroom. To my memory there was a cat-bowl on the kitchen floor. Dunno why it was still there.

The mansion once knew two cats. A pale one and a dark one. They’d grown up together. They were inseparable. Neither of them could recall a world without the other. One day the dark cat stumbled on the pale cat lying on the floor motionless. Every day since, it wandered aimlessly around the mansion yelping and crying until, about a year later, it was found lying on the floor motionless itself. At one point in time, this mansion also knew two boys: a pale one and a dark one. They’d grown up together. They were inseparable. Neither of them could recall a world without the other. One day the dark one stumbled on the pale one lying in a box motionless. And, about a year later, the dark one found himself with a beautiful girl in his bedroom.

Every day he wonders when they’ll find him lying on the floor. The ugly thoughts that keep his heartbeat racing…set aside for a beautiful girl that keeps his heartbeat slow. She got under his covers as if to suggest his bed was her final destination for the night. He leaned in to kiss her.

My coworker got on me hard when I told him she stayed the night and I didn’t fuck her. I don’t particularly value his opinion so I paid him no mind. He’s what my feminist homegirls would call a “misogynist”, and what my mom would call an “asshole.” The last thing he said to her and I when we left the club that night was “hey, take care of him tonight, ok!” He’s a good guy at heart. To tell the truth, at times I hate working with him. Not because of the things he says about women, but because we went to the same middle school and he’s always telling me stories about what happened to our old classmates. Terrible stories. Someone got locked up…someone got killed…someone killed somebody…someone killed themselves. This kid who used to pick on me wound up running with a gang out of Hunter’s Point. He got 11 murders attached to him, and at the age of 19 received a life sentence. And that kid who showed us his gun during recess? He was a Sureño to my memory. We’re not sure what he did, but he got life as well. He was a nice dude.

We all knew ugly at a young age. We were all the same age. We used to be under the same roof. Now we’re not. It’s ugly. It’s all ugly and I hate it.

I’ve seen too many tears this past year. Too many trauma symptoms. Too many people around me are mourning. Too many people I love are going through it. This ugliness…it’s a bit too big to ignore. I can almost physically feel it. I carry it around with me every day. And every day I feel like it almost gets the best of me.

So I get excited when in the presence of something uncompromisingly beautiful. Such as the girl I mentioned. That was our first date. When she found her way to my new apartment, we were on our fourth.

She took off her boots and laid down on my bed. I laid down next to her. We watched a movie as I guided my hands along her curves. I hadn’t had any luck on the second or third dates. And she wasn’t really throwing me any rhythm during the movie. Then the movie ended and the rhythm I was throwing was reciprocated. I slowly got on top of her. The look in her eyes was inviting. She kind of tasted like orange juice. An empty cup sat by the TV and an unused wine-key sat on my dresser. She’s not a drinker. I put one hand on her bare thigh and gently moved upward. This was met with a swift grip on my arm.

Halt!

Not too long before this date, I’d fooled around with a friend of a friend. She was a completely different kind of girl. Let’s call the first girl “Boots” and the second girl “Pumps.” Boots’ words tended to be curse-free, she didn’t smoke, and she didn’t really drink. Pumps’ words tended to involve her uncaring parents, her crackhead neighbor, and all of the drugs she’s done…which is basically all of the drugs. Opiates are her favorite, she said. We found ourselves in the backseat of a car. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke out of the crack of her window.

She didn’t taste like cigarettes, strangely enough.

I put one hand on her stocking-covered thigh and gently moved upward. This was met with a smile. Her eyes rolled back a little. She caressed the lit cigarette with her left hand. She never stopped smoking it.

Boots had a solid grip on my arm. My hand was not met with a smile. Her eyes locked with mine. She didn’t say a word. The only thing that was said was the “no?” that slipped out of my mouth coated in my dumb-guy-who-just-got-blueballed-and-caught-off-guard-and-is-quickly-losing-all-ability-to-be-smooth voice. We stayed on the bed but created space between us. I don’t remember what was said next. She caressed the gold cross dangling from her neck with her right hand.

I honestly don’t know which girl I identify with more. I’ve had so many different influences from so many different walks of life that I don’t really know what to make of myself. My identity is hard to pin-point. I can exude beauty and go on about my ambitions, my life goals, and my philosophies with you for days, but I always have that ugly in me. I always have that cigarette in my left hand to accompany that gold cross in my right.

A few of my homies say I should have tried harder with Boots and that sometimes that’s just the game. I don’t think this was one of those situations though.

Sometimes I wonder if, in my transition into manhood, I’ll become one of the guys my mom calls an “asshole.” I am no longer my mother’s child, that’s for sure. There’s no way I can be anymore. I’m out in the wild and, as someone who was never his father’s child, I have to figure all of this out for myself.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the dark cat. I’m trying damn hard to make things beautiful as life keeps dishing out ugliness. Though I carry around this weight, something in my core keeps me extremely hopeful for some reason.

I don’t know.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll become another one of my coworker’s stories.

I don’t know.

-T

#egoisthebrand #cat #bowl #story #poem #toro

This is one of those thoughts that I feel is going to come out as complete fucking gibberish. But anyway.

There's one thing that I just can't seem to understand about being human.

Our need to copy.

At birth, the moment we are introduced to the world, we begin to copy everything around us. We learn to talk because there are people around us talking. We learn to walk because there are people around us walking. We learn to eat the way we eat because the people around us are eating in that way.

And this process continues well past childhood. It never stops. It only gets more complex. Think about where you got the accent you speak with, the way you laugh, your taste in music, how you react to good news, how you handle bad news, the way you clear your throat, your style of clothing, how you say hello, the way you carry yourself, each and every one of your routines, mannerisms and ticks. All of them are copies. Even the traits you don't want are traits you got from elsewhere. Do you lie? Do you procrastinate? Are you stubborn? Are you a downer? Do you have a short temper? All are traits you copied and could have just as easily not copied. They do not define who you are, they are just things you started doing at one point and kept doing.

All we are is a collection of copied personality traits. Borrowed from people we've encountered on our travels.

So what if god set foot on earth? I think about this every now and then. I'm not religious or anything, but humor me...what if we encountered god? If we could see him, hear him, smell him, and touch him? Would we mimic him? If introduced to god, would we gain the ability to become him ourselves? If he was something we could physically touch, would we see more gods walking among us? And if the devil was something we could stand in front of and see for ourselves, would that create more devils?

Because for some reason we need examples. In order to function properly in life. We can't just get up and do something without something to base it on.

As long as you're walking this earth, and long after, there will be niggas that do what they do because you did what you did. it's inevitable.

So I strive to be something I'd like to see more of.

Ahem.

Yeah, I feel like that was all gibberish.

egoisthebrand

#egoisthebrand

Floral-Print Body Bags.

See: Baby's Face

See: Monday

#egoisthebrand #nino foxtrot #toro #left coast flock #floral print #body bags #rap #poem #song #music #lyrics

#albert einstein #color #photo #science

At the age of 22 I completely figured life out.

Now I'm spending the remaining years trying to put it into words.

Ego del Toro.

Peep the new URL. Understand what I stand for.

www.egoisthebrand.com

#egoisthebrand #left coast flock #toro

blackfashion

Toro, 22, San Francisco Violence snapback by {ego}, Flock Sweater by {ego} Submitted by: egoisthebrand.com Photographed by Ian Davis

@blackfashionbyj | Facebook

egoisthebrand

Much love to BlackFashion for the support.

egodeltoro-blog

Moi.

So I was at the Marriott Marquis at 1 in the morning having a conversation with my dad about anal sex.

Come to think of it, I have no fucking clue how that shit even came up.

And it was less of a conversation and more of a slightly tipsy father informing his son of the ins and outs of engaging in sex (of the butt variety) with a significant female other.

But anyway.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this talk of booty-plunging, I brought up a topic equally as complex.

"...but anyway, Dad, I kinda have this question I've been dying to ask you since I came of age. What exactly does it mean to be a man?"

I think he was more prepared to talk about the previous topic.

He was silent for a few seconds.

His glass was emptier than mine. Mine was like...a quarter empty. Err. A quarter full. Yeah. Yeah, that feels a little more feng shui.

He'd invited me to have drinks with him at the hotel he was staying in the day before my college graduation. Despite it being late, I said yes. He'd only be in the country for another 36 hours and who the fuck knows when I'd see him next. It'd been three years. And before that, it was seven.

I spent a lot of my teenage years angry at this man.

My mom never understood why. She'd say something to the effect of "He's never been around. It's not like you had him at one point and he up and left."

She always had a weird way of pointing out the fullness of my glass.

But it was mighty hard to try and convince the teenage-me to get over the fact that I didn't have a blueprint.That this contraption called manhood which I was given at birth just happened to be missing an instruction manual.

I made a lot of mistakes. I was awkward. It felt like everyone I knew showed up to some crucial day of class that I, for whatever reason, didn't get the notification to show up to. I've always felt incomplete.

And that became a gnawing frustration.

Would those guys have talked shit if I had a father to teach me how to fight? Would that one girl have said yes if I had a father to teach me how to talk to her? If I had a father to stand up for me when my mom got out of pocket, would I have turned out different? If he was around, would I be more secure? Would I talk more confidently? Would my walk be more sure of itself?

Oh man, my walk. That is the most deliberate thing about me. At some point in my boyhood, I got it in my head that I didn't walk like a man. And to this day that shit stays in the back of my mind. Like...at all times.

There are so many grown-man attributes of mine that I feel are artificial. I look people in the eye when I talk to them even though it makes me dreadfully nervous. I stand straight, even when the world feels unbearably heavy, I speak with confidence even when I feel like putty, and though I walk light, every step of mine is definite and secure of the location in which it lands.

I often get mistaken for a real man..

I've had conversations with men more than twice my age that ended with them noting how grown and well-adjusted I am.

But it's all constructed. It's all the result of years worth of trial and error. A machine built without a manual.

I'm not angry anymore.

Sure, he didn't feel the need to see me for 7 years until he was pushed to.

Sure, I sent my father a dozen emails when I was 15 with no reply back.

Sure, he flew me out to his country only to leave me by myself while he worked the majority of the time.

Sure, he agreed to fly out for my graduation, but wound up only staying for 3 days; half of which I got to spend time with him.

But I've learned a number of invaluable lessons due to his absence that I probably wouldn't have learned otherwise.

One of these lessons is that sometimes I just need to accept people for who they are and nothing more. That I can't expect anyone to ever act out of character.That maybe I need to take note of the fullness of the contents of my emptying glass.

Maybe my dad hasn't given me everything I wanted. Maybe he hasn't given me everything I needed. But the fact of the matter is, he's called me almost every birthday, he's flown me out to his country twice, for the last year he's been pretty good at sending me money every month to help pay bills, and with just three months notice he flew out to see me graduate. People love differently. No one loves perfectly.

I've "grown into a fine young man", people would go on to say the next night at my graduation party. And it finally dawned on me. The diploma. The internships. The job. The living on my own. The making it through my best friend's death. The gorgeous girl I'd taken aside and kissed in the backyard of the mansion I'd been living in for the last couple of years, which was now filled with 50-plus family members and friends that all came to see me that night out of love. The (successful!) photo-shoot I had lined up the next day. My judgement. My morals. My drive. My passion. My work ethic. What I've been applying that ethic to.

I guess I've done alright for myself.

Weird how that happens.

So I didn't really trip off of the fact that the previous night when I asked my dad what it means to be a man, he wound up rambling off topic and drunkenly passing out within minutes.

I suppose that was the universe telling me that I didn't need to hear any other man's answer to that question.

I've already formed my own.

But I did learn quite a bit about anal sex.

And my little sister was in the room the whole time, by the way. I forgot to mention. She heard every word he said.

I was about to say something, but neither of them were tripping. I guess it's a cultural thing or some shit.

Whatevs.