Travelin Monkey

This is probably the first year in maybe half a decade that I am sad to see the year end. It’s been a wonderful and amazing year, with a lot of everything, especially travel and new friends.

We took off to Punta Del Este, the best beach area this side of the equator. It is where all the brazilian and argentinean hotties go for their summer break. The weather here is a little off, hot during the day and windy/cold at night. There aren’t a lot of people there yet, and the weather hasn’t hit the peak of summer, but this is also the first year that I am here for January, which I was always told was the hottest and best month for vacationing in South Amerca.

The food is still great and the entertainment is always fun. We are thinking about heading out to Buenos Aires for a couple of days, but from what I remember Argentina to be in the summer, you are talking about 100 degrees with 100% humidity.

In about an hour we head out to Mercado Del Puerto for the annual festivities of the end of the year. It will be somewhat similar to the partying and riots of Rome after the World Cup, but with nothing more than the end of the year to celebrate!!

The flight was OK at best. I think I ruined a ton of people’s vacations. I had gone partying in Hollywood and got really sick, fever, sniffles, you name it. Flying while sick is horrible, but, I had bulk head the entire way. The connection from IAD to EZE was horrid too. I have no idea why they made me get off the plane at gate 2, walk all the way around to gate 10, go through a security check point, then go all the way back to gate 2, do a personal pat down and had all my carry-ons thoroughly searched through. It’s funny how they take things more seriously than the US.

A 45 minute flight later, I landed in Uruguay, Carrasco International, and had my family friends waiting for me. I must admit, I was a tad scared. Tradition in Uruguay calls for the egging, flouring, and destroying of a person who finished post-grad. This trip was mainly to visit my family and celebrate with them, and I was hoping, knowing how they are, that I wouldn’t eat a couple of eggs in the middle of the airport.

I walk out and there they were. Good, no eggs! But, as we walked towards the car, the woman took out a liter of crappy alcoholic cider and bathed me in it! I went to their house to wait for my sister and mother before going to visit other family members, and like an idiot, fell into their trap. The husband told me not to use the door inside the house to get to the garage, and that it was so hot that I should come out without a shirt on, and like a moron I listened. I walked outside and ate about half a dozen eggs. They emptied a full bag of flour and a couple of cartons of tomato juice all over me.

And that was how I landed in Uruguay.

I came home from Europe and found something I had not expected to find. There, in the pile of bills and garbage mail was a letter from a friend I hadn’t communicated with for about 6 years now. He was staying in Calipatria, about to celebrate his 9th birthday December 2, 2006, this year in a maximum security jail.

I can’t believe it’s been 9 years since then, but time does fly. I had visited him 4 times prior, the last time he said “I know what is going to happen, you are going to continue on with your life and so will everyone else while I stay here frozen in time in jail and soon everyone will forget about me.” Those words echoed in my head for the next 5 years. I had lost contact with him. His parents sold their house and moved to pay for the lawyer bills, he got transfered to a different jail, and there I sat with no way of writing him. I had since moved from my undergrad apartment, I had a stint in Washington DC for 3 months, then I moved to San Francisco for 4 years! So, it was a very nice surprise to see the letter. It took me a while to write back, mainly because I still had all my crap from SF in boxes and I had just come back from Europe, so I had some massive organization to do.

I wrote back and told him I would visit him for his birthday. He sent me a letter with his parents phone number and I coordinated. It turns out that Calipatria is about 230 miles west from Pheonix and about 100 miles north of Mexico. I went to sleep Friday night at 11 pm, but didn’t really get much rest because the guys were getting wasted at the house, laughing about how I was going to go for a conjugal visit in the morning. At about 3 am I got out of bed, found all of my breakfast food eaten, and aggravated, I hit the shower. I got in the car, filled up the tank, got a nasty cheese burger from AM/PM (it sucks to look for food that early in the morning), and made my way out to Calipatria.

KROQ had a concert in Indio and another one in Cochella. People told me that these places where in BFE, but let me tell you, when the place you need to go to is about 40 miles PAST that, wow wow wee wow wow! 102 miles on the 10 to the 86 Spur South was interesting. But then I drove past the ENTIRE FREAKIN LENGTH of the Salton Sea. At first I thought it might be interesting to check it out, but it sucks. I have no idea why anyone would ever EVER want to visit the Salton Sea, but hey, who am I to judge?

I got on the road at 4 am and arrived at Calipatria Maximum Security prison at 7:30 am. I parked my car behind a long line of cars and took a little nap. At around 8 am the cops opened the gates. They gave me a number, and I went to park at the visitor’s section. All jails look the same, it doesn’t matter what level of security you are at, they all look, smell, and feel the same. The difference is what happens on the inside.

I walked into the room and quit frankly, wasn’t surprised. There were a bunch of single mothers, mostly mexican and black, with their boyfriend/husband’s/gangster’s names tattooed on their necks, breasts, arms, wherever. The kids were not tamed at all, and just observing them the 2 hours that I stood around waiting for #109 to be called, I could tell that already at that young age they showed no respect for authority. Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that kids will be kids and are expected to not sit still, but I’ve seen children all over the world and it is very obvious when a child is being a brat vs when a child has no respect for authority. They just aren’t the same.

Luckily, I had already visited before and was cleared for entry rather quickly. I hoped on the bus the inmate was driving, headed to Building B, walked in through the door, and had it locked behind me. I sat at the table and continued to wait, but I was having a good time just people watching, observing, and attempting to understand. The women were interesting. Most of them were fat, and like I mentioned before, tatted up, but their reactions when they saw the inmates was ridiculous. They were legitimately heart broken, could you claim that they were in love?? I have no idea, but there they were sneaking to corners to make out and have a couple of cheap feels.

My friend finally came. It was interesting to see him. He, obviously, has changed. He explained the rules of the game inside, the different gangs that exist, how they take respect very seriously because the slightest disrespect gets you killed. He explained the initiation system and who gets hit first (rapist and child molesters). Basically, once you are in, you are either part of the mayhem or one of the people they ask to get hit for gang initiation. It makes for an interesting argument. See, jails started to seclude people whom were deemed unfit for our society, in complete solitude. That progressed to a ‘correctional’ institution you have today. People are removed from society, but to be taught how to integrate back into it, or so we think. What really happens is the behavior they are tried for is reinforced, even needed, for the basic animal instinct of survival.

We chatted for about 6 hours, after which I realized that his life froze 9 years ago. What he knows, what he asks about… you could tell that all he does is sit in his cell and think about memories of his past. He is allowed out for 5 minutes a day. 2 minutes to shower, 3 minutes to make a phone call. It’s Max security after all. He has a 2 foot 1.5″ window that faces another building. I asked him what he does all day… he watches TV and reads books. It’s weird talking to someone frozen in time 9 years back, but on the other hand, he was semi versed on world affairs and books. It was the first time I had a semi-intelligent conversation with the guy.

The drive home sucked. I hadn’t slept all day, visiting hours closed at 3 pm, all the women were off to go bang the pimp they probably worked for to make ends meet for their kids, and I got lost on the way home. The shit SoCo drivers mixed with some rain made for a crappy drive home. I got back at 8 pm and passed out.

And so ended my trip out to Calipatria…

I look forward to coming home, turning on the laptop, surfing the internet, enjoying some good music, probably a bottle (or three) of wine, and our projector on whatever. Part of my daily routine after work is surfing through Myspace and Craigslist, mostly for the entertainment value of it. I would have never joined Myspace if it hadn’t been for a friend I wanted to keep in contact with, and Craigslist was introduced to me while I lived in San Francisco.

So I move back from San Francisco to the San Fernando Valley (yeah, I know.. I know) and I realize that life.. is boring. The sidewalks are all cracked, full of weeds, and unkempt because NOBODY WALKS ANYWHERE! The garbage I had in my hand stayed there for a while because the lack of pedestrians yields no need for garbage cans anywhere in the valley!

Three of us moved in together, the three of us single and out of long term relationships. We went through the typical gambit of emotions (despise, hate, rage, self pity, and acceptance) until we came to terms with what had happened in life. That is when we started enjoying life and analyzing everything.

During that time I started to surf Craigslist. The first place I went to was the ‘Woman Seeking Woman’ section, just to see what was going on in the lesbian world. Wow, was I shocked. Women complained about women the same way men complain about women.

It then dawned on me. My female friends kept on telling me that they thought men were too emotional, but I was confused. Weren’t all these love novels written about a female’s desire to be swept away by prince charming on his white horse? Weren’t women waiting for that one guy to sweep them off their feet in their live action fairy tale? What about all this Hollywood garbage love stories that they throw out there (Titanic, anything J’Lo makes, etc etc)? Didn’t women want that emotional guy that listens?

Yes, but only if he was their gay friend or the ’sweet’ guy they would never hook up with. Women call men dogs, but in reality, there is a vicious cycle that begins with a woman and ends with the guy. Take, for example, your first experience with a person from the opposite gender (junior high times that is). Girls at the time watch these soap operas, read these stupid Seventeen magazines, and eat up the stupid Hollywood bullshit. They, unfortunately, are stuck with little boys. Yes, I’ll admit it, women do mature earlier than men. How could they not? They start developing before us, they have a hormonal surge WAY before our testicles decide to stray away from the warmth of our loins, they just… click before us.

So, they seek what the magazine tells them they need to look for. They test everything about the relationship to figure out “Is He Right For You” and beware if you get a 5/10!!! Innocence is still there, but it is being manipulated by… wait for it.. wait for it… SOCIETY!! YES PEOPLE! SOCIETY! When you are young, the only thing that matters is acceptance, being popular, and NOT sticking out. As you get older, those who understand life seek their uniqueness and go on life journeys to find themselves.

Now, imagine being this boy dating a girl who is on a different level than he is. Suddenly, he is thrown into argument after argument because of, quite frankly, nothing! His innocence towards relationships after a while turns into life experience. Suddenly, society (and I blame everyone, even myself in this) ruined another boy and another girl. The boy grows up to be the asshole all women despise but can’t seem to keep their knickers on for… and the girl grows up to be the “sexually liberated Sex and the City” whore (I don’t buy the stupid sexual liberation movement, sorry. If you are promiscuous, it is because of some deep underlying reason that you hate yourself and need to hurt yourself by humping anything and everything. Psychology owns you.)

Of course, these are the extremes of the Bell Curve that our society inevitably creates. Most of us will lie in the middle, somewhere along the lines of asshole and whore. We probably have made our mistakes, maybe even some regrets. There might have been a period of time of promiscuity, there might have been a ‘born-again’ virgin syndrome, but never the less, here we are… looking for the “hot, athletic, intelligent, mature, and can hold a conversation” person we never met.

All of this boils down to the ladder theory of relationships. I’m not sure if I read this somewhere or if someone mentioned it to me once, so I might not be on top of the entire theory, but let’s just call this the Webmaster Version of it.

There is no true friendship between a man and a woman. Under every friendship there is some attraction. It just makes sense. At some point during the friendship one will think of the other in a sexual way, it is the way we are programed, it is our animal instincts kicking in. Once a woman meets a guy, she almost instantly knows if she will or will not sleep with the guy. Maybe this isn’t a conscious decision at the time, but she knows. The guy, on the other hand, is a caveman. If she doesn’t have big boobs (not that there is anything against women with small breasts, but nature programs us to desire women with big boobs to better feed our kids, it’s a survival of our genes type of thing), a drop dead body, or a gorgeous face, we probably won’t think about sleeping with her until we think about it one day masturbating, or discuss it with the guys.

At this point, the woman has set up two ladders. One ladder is the friendship ladder, the other is the relationship ladder. If she decides that she will NOT visit on Hump Day, sorry buddy, you are stuck on the friendship ladder. The higher you find yourself on the ladder, the closer a friend you are OR the more likely it is she will sleep with/date you.

Here is where the confusion comes in, but only for the man. Men may misinterpret signs of friendship and compassion as “she wants to sleep with me.” Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong, but only the woman knows. So, we do what gorillas spend their free time doing, throw shit at trees until we find one where it sticks. And here comes the bottomless abyss. Once a guy tries to hop from the friendship ladder to the date/sex ladder, he falls into the abyss and is never heard from again.

Why? Because women are emotionally cold. Because when it comes down to it, they have better control over their emotions, they can expel desires better than men can, they can erase someone from their lives better than men can. Why is this? Because any woman anywhere in the world can find 15 idiots willing to talk to her and the rest of the world willing to sleep with her, and for us, it is a never-ending battle for the next piece of Pooty-Tang. Plus, who the hell can compete with a hormonal rage every month since the age of 13? The are just trained to be that way, nature forces it upon them!
And that is the ladder theory. I’ve heard rumors that the topmost rung on the friendship ladder could be the bottom-most rung on the date/sex ladder, but really, if that is where you find yourself, go get some self-respect and find someone worth your time.