We made the monster

   So do this: stand in front of the mirror, stark naked, and just stare. What is your reaction? What thought are gliding through your brain right now? Are you really looking or not? Well, this is a simple test to check you are a person of the twentieth or twenty-first century. If you are, you will instantly find something that you don’t like, something that feels “off” somehow. Is it your waist, your ass or your genitalia? Is it your chest, your face even? Not really important.

 If you can’t find something to change, if you just love everything you see, sir or lady, you are lying. Or worse, you are lying to yourself so hard you don’t even recognize truth anymore. And why do I say this? Because we all know this world we live in today has made us hate each other and has crossed the border to make us hate ourselves.

 But what is the point of that you say? Well, easy. If we hate how we look, we will spend thousands of dollars trying to look different, to be desirable. And society is kind enough to tell us what to do in each case: maybe the gym, maybe a full makeover, buying new clothes and maybe even change ourselves physically with the help of a doctor or some other “expert”. All those things will help us but, once we achieve what we were looking for, we will realize this new state of being is not good enough.

 Why? Because we can always be taller, skinnier, bigger, softer… Better, in the eyes of the almighty society that is nothing more than a bunch of people that want our money and our minds. Once we concede, once we say, “Yes” at least one time, we have already lost. We lose our ability to see what’s good or bad, what’s true and what’s false. We just don’t even care anymore because we have entered the social convention known, as the “community” where everyone HAS to want the same thing and everyone has to get it exactly the same way.

 Imagination is slowly dying, more and more, each day more and more pale and pathetic. Because we don’t need her anymore. We have decided that copies are better than an original; we have decided that one good way is better than many great ways. Today, being different is only taken into account when it happens to be a fashion statement, a way of saying you’re “crazy” or “unique”, when truly you’re just the simplest one of the whole bunch.

 Real creative people live like rats, hiding in the dark, trying to live by. They just can’t stand the world and sometimes leave it but others decide to stay on as a challenge to everything that exists. They make their own rules and they are left alone, because no one will really hear or see them. They don’t matter anymore and they use that to their advantage. When no one looks at you, you are suddenly free to experiment more and more, even if that new acquired knowledge is only going to be shared with a handful of other “freaks”.

 Still, the world is ruled by those who think that they are making a difference but, deep down, they know their actions are not important enough to matter in the grand scheme of things. Not that they are bad or evil. No, they are just ignorant and many of them are ignorant very willingly. They prefer this life because the less they know; the more comfortable they are with others. Who cares about the grandiosity of the universe when your boyfriend has a big dick or your girlfriend is a submissive person?

 And that’s the truth. That’s what we all think about because, at the end of the day, even the ones that still use their imagination are contaminated with the filth of a world that hates us for who we are but that need us to keep moving, to keep gaining wealth and power. How many times an artist has succumbed to the stronger will of money? It’s a very popular saying: “artists have to eat too”. And it’s true.

 It’s of the monkey act on the streets: you have to dance and clap and act like an idiot to be noticed, to be seen by the world and to be recognized, with money or food. If it was a world made by intellect, that wouldn’t be a problem at all because everyone would share and no one would starve. But we do not live in such a world. We live in one were there has to be someone on top and someone underneath him. Someone powerful and someone powerless. If that balance fails, they know things will go to chaos because we are simply not smart.

 Beauty is not a personal concept anymore and anyone that thinks that is gravely mislead. No, beauty has been modeled by society for a long time and what each individual thinks of it is highly unimportant. If beauty standards say fat is ugly, it will not matter how many fat actresses or fat models parade around the world. The concept of beauty will not change and fat girls will still feel awful looking at the mirror and living as who they are.

 Even if we know that the chubby guy in the bus is kind of cute, that doesn’t change anything. He’s still ugly to the eyes of society, meaning that we can be accepting but only if we decide doing that will be to our advantage. Or way do you think some societies have begun to embrace homosexual people? It’s not because they have realized they are also humans, but because they can be used as a fashion accessory. That was the way the gay man made it into open society: by being a mascot.

 Offensive, you think? Untrue? Just take a look. On every single society the example of a gay man is the man in the salon doing hair. What’s he like? He’s delicate, very effeminate, girly in every aspect and often skinny. That was the first gay man that got into society and, as it performed a role in it, it was welcomed but not with open arms but with hostility. Eventually he became a pet for the women that wanted to be beautiful, so they became tools to achieve what society wanted. They had a use, they could be used.

 And that’s is the truth behind the so-called acceptance of minorities. It’s not acceptance but tolerance, they let us be there with them, but they always point out how different we truly are. That’s society. Not a beautiful place where everyone is equal and we all hold hands singing. Society is just a place, a gathering of people that have roles to perform. It’s not about freedom or rights; it’s about how useful we can be to those that are powerful.

 Of course, that cannot be used to promote anarchy. Why? Because anarchy is the rule of the people and people are ignorant and stupid. If people, “real people” ruled, the world would be in an even worse state. Who rule us are rats, that’s true. But they are people who wait, whose power has taught them to be patient, to play the game slowly and to put everything on its place. In other words, we kind of need the powerful ones, because that power has taught them how to handle things.

 Power for all? Impossible. Give power to someone that has never had it and see what happens: chaos and even less freedom and truth. People cannot be trusted. And when I say that, I mean every single person in the world. Good or bad, that doesn’t exists. People are just that. They are capable of anything and nothing, at the same time and that’s why, when they are being oppressed, their own “communities” fail to act. They just parade around, faking an interest that disappears into the oblivion shortly afterwards.

 And still, when we take off our clothes, we still look exactly the same in front of the mirror. Even with all those minor biological differences, we are all the same. Even the most powerful is as likely to die as the weakest of the human beings. Even the richest woman can still be capable of carrying a child and even the weakest man can still infuse life into the world.

 Yes, we are equal but only in nature. There, we are all truly a group, a family. But we are not nature anymore, except for our birth and our death. Everything between those two moments has been created by the society, which is sadly made of people like us that have had a glimpse of power and that have decided that that fat woman is ugly, that guy with a small penis is worthless and that child that has dark skin will be a danger just because.

 We have created the monster that haunts us every day and now we are incapable to handle it. And that is, partly, because we don’t really want to handle it, we don’t want it to calm down or to be more forgiving. We want him to be what we are afraid to be openly: brutal and utterly human.

If I couldn't write, I would go insane

I used to like being naked a lot, taking pictures. I was rather popular for it. People would ask me why I did it. Well, here's why:

First, and I think I just realized this, I loved the attention. I had tons of pictures, good quality, up on Flickr. And people would mark them as favorites and even comment and I will important somehow. People would like me and that felt nice. At least at first.

With time that attention wears out. You just stop needing it or maybe you want more or different. I have no idea. The thing is I just stopped liking the attention. I had that account for five or six years. It was an important thing in my life, as funny as that may be.

I have to clarify: not all the pictures were nudes. I would upload "urban" shots too or maybe just portraits or whatever I found was nice to look at. I guess I wanted to make others see I had talent for something. Of course, I didn't. I'm a professional photographer and my "work" on Flickr lacked any real quality. I knew that all along and never really cared about it. It wasn't the point.

I would love to post one picture per week, normally I would post at the first second of a new day so the statistics would more accurately show how much a picture was liked. When I uploaded an urban view, a building or trees or whatever, the picture was not that well received. Maybe a couple of people would say "yay, it's great". And that was it.

But me, naked, showing maybe my ass or my penis (never an erection, mind you), was always received by what I can only call "critical acclaim". Of course this acclaim came from people I had never met, mostly men. All men to be honest. And they were all horny. I mean, I should be an idiot not to see it.

I used to be more naive, more innocent if you will. When I remember those times, I don't know if it was a good way to be back then or if I should've been more intelligent, more perceptive.

Like, when I was nineteen I think, I went out with this guy. Just cute, not really a beauty or anything but you know. We went to a gay café and chatted and kissed and I felt awesome. It wasn't muy first time kissing but it felt right and beautiful and all that shit. Any way, it ended soon after and I never really understood why. Why he behaved like he did, always distant and weird.

He was fucking (or being fucked, who knows) others, kissing others while dating me. He actually kissed another guy that same night I was in the café with him. Somebody would later tell me all of this and I just understood it all. I also understood men were not to be fully trusted as, it is true, a man always acts commanded by his dick first, then his brain. And it's even more real in gay men and they know this is true.

Many people judge me saying "Hey, why haven't you been to a gay parade? Have you really never been in one?". And my answer is simply because I don't believe in it. It's not a casual walk to just show how proud we are to be who we are. That's what is SHOULD be about. But it isn't. That parade has mutated to be many people's chance to just rub in the faces of everyone what they do with their lives. Well, good news: no one gives a flying fuck.

There are homophobes. Of course there are. But there are others that just don't care. They don't think twice if someone is sleeping with a man, a woman or a horse. They don't care. And I don't think that is a reason to be pushy and annoying. I am fucking gay and the only person I need accepting me is myself. If the world doesn't, believe me, I don't care.

There's no gay marriage, that does not exists. The only thing that does exist is two people who get together to sign a paper that says they must share everything and live together. That's it. It's nothing more than that. You're not selling yourself there, in any sense, and it shouldn't matter who does it. Who cares?

But I digress. I made those pictures, the naked ones. And all that attention and it felt nice for years, yeah. I don't like discos or whatever they all them now. I just don't, I feel like an octopus in Japanese restaurant. Just like that. I've gone to a couple and that was enough for me. So I was happy to have some guys attention.

But that faded away. I got bored. To be honest I'm bored and fed up with people every second of my life now but that made me even more bored. All those empty comments and no one coming to me in real life to say "hey, you cute". And before you give me shit, I say "coming to me" because I deserve that. I won't crawl to a guy simply because I won't give an inch of myself to someone who would just expect everything.

The thing with gay guys, and all guys I guess, is that you must test them. And no, that doesn't mean annoying them and being jealous 24/7. I mean asking them things, getting to know them for real. Just being interested to get to know the person, take time.

But no. Most people fuck after 24 hours of meeting, if not before. I'm not saying people should be nuns and monks but, come one, love yourself.

And then I started having problems with the Flickr people and they ended up closing my account. You know why? Because it happens I didn't only do those pictures for the attention. I also did them because they were like therapy for me. I have hated myself for too long and that outlet made me feel good about myself. I almost fully stopped having crazy crisis every month.

And, besides that, I personally think the human body is beautiful. I don't believe in a god so I say nature is pretty smart and resourceful. Just get naked in front of a mirror and stare at yourself. Take a good look at the details, not the superficial shit of society but your actual biologic body. It's a work of art, inside and out.

So, that ended for me. It stopped existing, that outlet, that I needed so bad for so many years. To be honest, when it ended, I said "Fuck it, I have something new now: writing". So around that time I started working on some small things and it all came down to this blog with which I have a really hard relationship.

Today, for example, I had more than five ideas. I couldn't write more that ten lines for each. I felt awful, like an idiot, because this is my thing, my only thing. And if I couldn't write, I would go insane. Simple as that.