RIP Milo

Comments

  1. jennifer roseFebruary 18, 2023 at 8:18 AM

    Milo was the fastidious one, no? He definitely was one strikingly handsome boy. May his memory be a blessing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No Way Back To Eden

Image
It has been a year since Lorena, my love, my partner, my hopes and my dreams, died. It seems like yesterday and an eternity. I have grieved. My sadness, punctuated by hopelessness and anger, has been unrelenting. Friends ask whether anything has changed in the year since leukemia ended her life and our future together. Nothing really, except that I have gotten used to being alone, really alone. I cry daily, often in public, and am no longer ashamed. Tears and regrets have become somehow normal, another example of man’s inexorable ability to habituate to any circumstance, no matter how wonderful or terrible it may be. I spend most of my time at home, the one I bought to live in with Lorena for the rest of our lives, a home filled with photographs, shadow boxes, her things, our memories. She is my first thought every morning and my last thought every night. I do not will my circumstance, but accept it without self-pity. It is simply the way it is. A wise friend, who also...
Read more

I Fell In Love With A Gas Station Chiquita

Image
The gas gauge was flirting with empty between Celaya and San Miguel, a deep-night high-speed run on a particularly dangerous highway, when I noticed the lighted PEMEX sign on my right side near a drug dealer holding a cardboard sign, “METH.” PEMEX is Mexico’s government-owned oil company, their gas stations littering the countryside, places where there are no fewer than a dozen ways to be ripped off, most of them involving diversion by the attendant. I noticed three tall, young girls with long legs and short skirts. As I pulled into one of the lanes, the prettiest of them knocked on my window. As I rolled it down, she reached in, touched my face, and said, “Hi, young man. We are the chiquitas,” motioning to her scantily-clad girlfriends. “Aren’t you cute?” Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was my perpetual emotional vulnerability, but I thought to myself, “Fuck it. If this is this week’s diversion, they can rip my ass a new one now.” “What’s your name?” she asked. She had wond...
Read more

So, What Was So Special About Her?

Image
I’ve written a lot, perhaps too much, about the grief that has devastated me since the death of my love, Lorena. This will be the last on this topic for a while. But before I finish, I need to answer a question that many of you have asked, “What was so special about her?” She was simple, straightforward, and honest. Her ego was always muted, under control, if it existed at all. She didn’t want to compete with me or anyone else. She enjoyed just sitting together. She didn’t need to be entertained. Her life wasn’t a running travelogue. If we went someplace, fine. If we didn’t, also fine. She thought my habit of bringing coffee to her in bed every morning was the kindest thing ever. She spoke well of others. She was beautiful and liked to be pretty but when I told her I thought she was just as beautiful without makeup, she seemed relieved and stopped wearing it except when we went out. She didn’t discuss politics or religion. She was self-motivated. She got up and went ...
Read more

Fifteen Months, Fifteen Days

Image
Fifteen months and fifteen days ago my life ended. Or, I thought it had. The woman I loved, Lorena Alcala, died of leukemia. It was only then that I understood Camus’ admonition: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering that fundamental question of philosophy.” I pondered that problem for months. I read innumerable books and articles on grief, all of which assured me that I was not insane to think about such things, but rather, normal, that grief is a “process” and that while I would never “move on,” I would, one day, learn to live again, that I would decide life is, indeed, worth living. Today is that day. Just as Lorena taught me what mature love means, the pain that has tracked me like a wounded animal since her death has taught me that life is worth living, that there are people who care that seem to come out of nowhere, people who have helped me selflessly along this mo...
Read more

On The Myth Of “One True Love”

Image
There is one true love out there. Just for you. If you look hard, you can find him, or her. Your “soulmate.” That thought is romantic, beautiful, exclusive . . . And, it is ridiculous. In a world of almost 8 billion people, the odds of finding “the one,” if, indeed, there were only one, would be the same as winning the Powerball lottery - twelve times. In a row. Yet, when we find someone we are attracted to and compatible with, many of us take our good fortune to its logical absurdity: “I found my one and only.” Proving that love is, indeed, blind. The problem with the “one and only” mythology, besides its mathematical impossibility, is that the belief puts too much pressure on a relationship when conflict and disappointment arise, as they certainly will. But, on another level, maybe there is “one true love,” or loves, that are experienced serially over a lifetime. Anthropologist Helen Fisher identified three different romantic relationships that some experience in a ...
Read more

An Obituary For The Only Woman I Ever Truly Loved

Image
I have never written an obituary. I have never wanted to. Especially not for my lover, my partner, and the only woman I ever really loved. I met Lorena about two years ago. She told me on our first date that she was a “house woman,” meaning she liked to spend time at home, knit, crochet, and wasn’t much of a traveler except to the beach now and then. She was refreshingly honest saying she was not looking to date or party but to find “my life partner.” She had been divorced 10 years after what sounded to be a tough 27 year marriage. . We continued dating and over a year or so I felt something for her like no other woman I had ever met. She filled a hole in my heart I didn’t even know existed. We didn’t have a lot to talk about or many common interests, but we became inseparable. A few months ago we decided to move in together and began looking at homes. None were quite right until we walked Into a French contemporary in the countryside outside San Miguel de Allende and ...
Read more

Rules For White Boys Dating Latinas

Image
Written by another divorced and damaged expat living in Mexico. He asked it be published anonymously if only because he desires to live a little longer. There are not many rules when it comes to dating Latinas but here are three of the Big Ones: No machismo bullshit. Latin women, especially Mexican women, have seen, and felt, all the aggression, manly moves and heard all the bragdocio they can tolderate. That’s why they are going out with you, gringo. Acting like Billy Bad Ass will do nothing but insure you go home with the same hard-on you showed up with. If you can’t quite grasp this concept, pretend your mama is in the backseat or at the table watching it all. Act like that. 
And don’t talk so much. Listen. In many, if not most, cases you will learn what a tough life really looks like, feels like, and you will humbled. Humility is attractive. “Te quero” and “Te amo.” Know the difference. They both technically mean “I love you,” but you get no credit for mincing or confusi...
Read more

Advice to 20 from 70

Image
What I would tell my 20 year old self if I could pass along what I know now. Make friends. Real friends. No more than a handful of people you would feel comfortable playing poker with over the phone. These are the people who will get on a plane in the middle of the night to come and bail you out of jail. If you are lucky, you might find three of these in your life. These are your real friends. If you ever get good at anything, make it reading people. It should take you no more than 30 seconds to know if someone is real or a pretender. Actually, you never really know, but if you stop thinking you will feel it. Learn to trust your feelings. Going out so you won’t be alone is waste of valuable time. It may keep you from being bored or it may make you feel important. But you are not important, so if you hang around with people who kiss your ass but don’t really mean anything to you, ask yourself “why?” Being alone is a fact. Being lonely is a decision. Stay debt free. Don’t owe anyone an...
Read more

I Will Never Say “Goodbye”

Image
“Life changes in an instant. The ordinary instant.” - Joan Didion I talk to my deceased lover, Lorena, everyday. Usually as I look at a photo of her beautiful face or a picture of us in an embrace or holding hands. I ask her to come back. I plead. “Please, baby. I need you.” I know that is my only chance for happiness. Then I wonder if I am going crazy. Joan Didion, in her memoir about grief after her husband’s sudden death, confirmed that if I am going insane, I am in good company. In her book, “The Year Of Magical Thinking,” she reflects, “I needed to be alone so that he could come back . . . I was thinking as small children think, as if thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome.” And so, I have photos of Lorena all over my home, not as a shrine, but as a call to return. I have also discovered first hand that grief takes its toll not only on the emotions, but also on one’s basic cognitive abilities. And again, I am not alone...
Read more

On Being A Loner

Image
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900 ) The term pack animal is used to describe a beast of burden used to carry heavy loads over long distances such as donkeys and mules. The term also refers to animals that live and hunt in packs such as wolves and hyenas, The best example of both types of pack animals is the human. Like mules, most of us put on blinders each morning and carry the load, doomed to spend a large majority of our lives compulsively working at jobs we despise and where success only breeds more work. Ironically, most work so that one day they don’t have to work anymore. When not laboring, the pack gathers at designated times and places, e.g., parties, meetings, to recite long worn out aphorisms, nod, agree, and seek approval and validation in t...
Read more