Original.Content.Distributed.

Tattoo Inspiration

2012-08-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve wanted a tattoo for quite some time, most people my age (22) have already gotten their first tattoo and are looking for more. I on the other hand have always wanted one but never found something that represented who I was. One day it just jumped out at me and I finally figured out what I want and where I want to get it.

“Je suis ma vie” translates to “I am my life” and it jumped out at me one night while I was in bed thinking in french (something I do from time to time to keep my french sharp). I came up with this idea while thinking about all the experiences life has afforded me. I came to the realization that life is made of our unique individual experiences. For example, two people can share an experience but each person experiences that experience in his or her own way. I felt like “I am my life” is the most direct and simplest statement to represent that principle. The fifth picture shows the exact spot where I’ll be getting my tattoo, on my left shoulder. Getting the tattoo in french will always remind me of the time I spent in Paris, a city I fell in LOVE with. The culture, lifestyle, and people were reflections of all that was beautiful in the city and also within me. As soon as the funds permit “Je suis ma vie” is going to the first tattoo to ink this virgin body.

An idea for a second tattoo lies in the second photo where “love” is inked on the inside of a person’s finger. The placement is witty and has a “youthful” sense to it. I’m inspired to get an infinity symbol with the word “love” interlaced in it. It would state that, “Love is eternal”.

I really like the tattoo that the woman has on ribcage with a quote written on top of a feather. I love the “airy” feel that the feather gives to it. I also really like the location. A tattoo on the ribcage is something that appeals to me. When wearing a tank-top it peeks through and I think it’s visually appealing. I still don’t know exactly what I would get their but, as I said previously it would have to mean something very special for it to even be considered.

Dealing With An Alcoholic Parent

2012-08-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

Low and behold I’m walking to the kitchen to get a late night snack because my tummy is rumbling and I run into my mother stumbling not over her feet but her words. I know this may come as a surprise but I, “Jayquan” have an alcoholic parent. Now seeing my mom fumbling over her words isn’t something new to me but it’s something I haven’t had to go through in a long time. Let me set the record straight, as long as I can remember my mother has always had had a little too much to drink. Growing up I thought this was normal behavior and dismissed it as normal adult activity. When I saw her it shocked me. I hadn’t seen her in this state for quite some time. I was on vacation for two months, relaxing and enjoying my life away from home. I hadn’t had to think about my mother and her alcoholism for almost three months. Mind you when I came back home she seemed to be doing well for herself and still seated on the sober train.

When I saw her, the way she talked and moved, instantaneously unpleasant memories flooded back to me. Without a seconds notice I was enraged at her behavior but also hurt that she would put me through this again. I know alcoholism is a sickness, a disease of the mind and I’m sympathetic to what she has to go through but I’ve gone through this whirlwind of emotions and disappointments countless times before. I get exhausted at her empty apologies and her crocodile tears. What angers me the most is the nerve she has to expect me to be emotionally available to her after everything goes down. I feel its completely selfish in every regard.

After confronting her and calling her out on her shi* for lack of a better word, she asks me if I can give her a hug. How do you think I responded? Of course I told her no (Its not that I didn’t want to but It’s my way of showing her tough love) but, I emphasized how much I loved her for fear that she would direct her guilt and pain on herself. I could’t bring myself to her aid. I couldn’t do that favor for her. How was I supposed to comfort her when I was hurting. I’ve always been a person who has been quick to forgive but when It comes to my mother It’s another story. When a person hurts you time and time again it’s all you can ever expect them to do and you become closed off, protecting yourself the only way you know how.

As I lay in my bed typing this, relieving myself of the hurt and pain through these words, I can hear her emotional tirade/escapade in the living room. She’s crying and moaning; something similar to a scene straight out of a movie. Lets just say my mom has a flare for the dramatics (I mean, where did you think I got it from). She knocks on my door and peeps her head through, tears staining her cheeks and asks me to give her a hug again. She says to me “you have no idea”. I can’t bring myself to hug her, not yet, it’s too soon and I’m still wading through my emotions to be of any comfort to her. I can only respond by saying that if she’s going through some sort of emotional torment that she should call someone, particularly her wife. “She can’t solve my problems” my mother says, and herein lies her issue. She realizes that others can’t solve her problems but, my question to her is why doesn’t she take action to solve them herself? In my mind I’m thinking "Hmmm. You’ve been alive for forty-three years and you still expect other people to baby you and your issues to make you feel better. Who is who’s child here. I thought I was the child and you the parent yet I’m supposed to take care of you. “NO!”, I can’t do it anymore. Im too old (twenty-two by the way) to still be taking care of my you”.

What I should do moving forward? Should I go to counseling? Should I move out? Am I the reason she drinks and resorts to pills? Is there something I can do to make the situation better? Is it me? Am I the reason? These are all questions I ask myself. They burn in my mind. Yet, I know that it isn’t me and it’s my mind reverting to that of a helpless child watching his mother in pain and wondering if it’s something I did. I’m thankful for this keyboard and this platform where I can escape to, for without them I might thoroughly be lost.

Are You Really A “Friend”?

2012-07-27T07:52:00.001-07:00

So this post is going to address the tides of friendship, the push and pull that embodies the thing everyone has or wants.

The definition of friendship according to wikipedia is as follows: Friendship is a relationship between two people who hold mutual affection for each other.

The value of friendship is often the result of friends consistently demonstrating the following:

The tendency to desire what is best for the other

Sympathy and empathy

Honesty, even in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth

Mutual understanding and compassion; ability to go to each other for emotional support

Enjoyment of each other's company

Trust in one another

Positive reciprocity — equal give-and-take between the two parties

The ability to be oneself, express one's feelings and make mistakes without fear of judgement.

I wholeheartedly believe that the value of friendship as stated by wikipedia is an accurate definition of what constitutes a friend. Someone who can show sympathy and empathy towards your situation, is 100% honest with you at all times, someone you can trust, and most importantly RECIPROCITY in the relationship. For someone to be a “true” friend there has to be genuine reciprocity when it comes to all aspects of friendship whether it be emotional, physical, or mental.

So with the definition cleared up for us I wanted to introduce you to the story of how I came to know someone who I considered a friend.
It all started off when I was forced to move from Harlem to Queens right after fourth grade. I started fifth grade in a new town with new surroundings in a whole different culture. I went from the hard streets of Harlem where all I knew was defending myself to the multicultural hub of Queens where difference was embraced. Jackson Heights is a melting pot of cultures, flavors, smells and sights. I embraced this new change but for any young adult there is always that uncertainty when entering a new school with no one you know.

The school year commenced and I found myself quite popular (probably due to the fact that I was the class clown) surrounded by people who I considered to be friends. This one girl in particular who is the main person I’m discussing in this post shall remain nameless for the moment but, for the most part her and I journeyed through the grades together up until eighth grade where we parted ways because of high school.

Fast forward through the four years of high school where I found myself entering college. At this point in my life my friend and I had still managed to keep in touch and see each other through the course of our high school careers. When we did hangout it was always unplanned but we always had fun. With college on my horizon I found it necessary to get a job so I could support myself and become more independent. I was a growing man. Searching for a job however wasn’t a cakewalk. It was hard! We were in a recession and my resume was lacking. So at that point I would take almost anything. I utilized every outlet to try and acquire an interview. Facebook/Twitter/Text messages were my new best friends; anything I could do to to inquire through friends about jobs I would do so I could hear those words “You’ve got the job”. So unbeknownst to me my friend one day while we were having one of our sporadic hangout moments informed me that her job was hiring. I was delighted, excited, and nervous all at once. She said she would “put in a good word for me” and that she would let me know. I forwarded my resume to her and less than a week later I was called in for an interview. I aced both interviews and started training the following week.

It was so funny to me how my friend and I had come full circle even after all the years we had spent apart. I hadn’t seen her consistently since grade school and now we would be working five days a week together. During this time we became extremely close, sharing even our most intimate secrets with each other. Lunching with each other everyday, helping each other out with our boy problems, and making fun of people at work like the “mean girls” we were. It was delightful, we were a super duo in a sense. We would party together, drink together, and just rock out. You could even say that we were almost even best friends at that point. I mean we’d known each other almost 10 years and we’d spent almost everyday together for the last 2 years.

So one drunken night, my friend and I decided on a whim that we wanted to go to Paris. We both had talked about traveling and we always knew that if we did do it Paris would be the place to go. After a few more sips our “four loco” we had gone ahead and taken the leap and booked two one-way tickets to Paris for the month of June. At that time it was the beginning of January so we’d figure that we’d have enough time to plan. We were overjoyed after we'd hit the "confirm" button on Vayama.com which is the company we used to book our flights. We couldn't stop yelling “WE’RE GOING TO PARIS” while we embraced each other. We were like two little girls jumping up and down when one of the two had gotten their first boyfriend.

A little whiles away we decided to break the news to our job. We had informed them that we were going on vacation for not 2 weeks but for 2 months. Haha, I’m sure that was unexpected. Anyway our job let is know that extent of our vacation in their eyes signified that we’d given our resignations. We were sad in the moment when we realized that the two years spent at this place would be coming to an end. We had come to make some great friends and even people who felt like family while working there. In the two weeks that followed we had break up goggles the whole time (breakup goggles are a naturally occurring phenomenon where a bad situation doesn’t seem so bad when you finally decide to step away from it. Happens more often than you know. Beware of breakup goggles!!!). Time flew by during those last two weeks and before we knew it we were at the airport terminal waving goodbye to our friends and family while we boarded our flight. 7 long hour later…

We arrived in Paris, France and we were a cocktail of jet lag, happiness, and nervousness. We met up with a friend who was going to stay with us for two weeks during our two month stay and we made it to our apartment in the 18 district where we would be staying for our first month. For the first two weeks we played the tourist card and went to most of the sights, took a hell of a lot of pictures, dined out and clubbed most days. Finally after the first two weeks we actually began to feel like actual Parisians. We would roam the streets alone, shop independently and live like normal. The only odd fact being that people speak french in Paris. For us however we’d both taken french classes in high school or college and managed to get by with what we knew. I mean we’re not experts but we know more than just what you’d learn from a phrasebook.

We moved into our second place in the 15th district in July. The area turned out to be a much more residential area but, It was still significantly close to all of the major stops in Paris. We were actually walking distance to the Eiffel Tower (how cool is that). Now I must say that working with someone everyday for two years is completely different than living with them for two months. You learn things about the other person you would have otherwise never known.

In the weeks that followed I’d discover that my friend was actually quite a ~~slob~~, I take that back lets say messy and the professional exterior I’d come to know when we worked together seemed to fade before my eyes. She would eat and leave her meals out in the open over night if she didn’t finish it. She seemed allergic to dishes. And she wouldn’t so much as lay a finger on a broom. I found myself cleaning up after her most of the time and didn’t mind it because as you may or may not know cleaning is truly relaxing for me not just because of my mild self-diagnosed O.C.D but just because of the routine of it. So I decided to do a sort of experiment to see if my friend was truly this way or maybe I was making assumptions or not seeing things clearly. I promised myself I wouldn’t clean up after her and I wouldn’t take out the garbage like I normally would just to see if she’d even say something or offer to do it. Days had gone by and not a single dish had been moved, flies began to accumulate by the garbage and I realized my friend is used to being spoiled and catered to. She would not do a dish unless there weren’t any left for her to use and generally ~~was a dirty person~~ messy.

We got into a few arguments or heated debates I should say about respecting our house and keeping it clean and comfortable to live in. She seemed not to be too keen on adhering to basic standards of living an acted out by giving me the cold shoulder. Now let me tell you, I am the KING of the “cold shoulder”. Ive actually perfected over the years to use in a different number of situations but that’s another story. We went for about a week of pretending that the other person didn’t exist. I continued to go about my business exploring and wandering around the glorious streets of Paris all the while thinking about her upcoming birthday. She’d buried herself into her phone and hadn’t left the house in weeks. I finally, being the bigger person kindly reminded her that we needed to get back on speaking terms because her birthday was coming and I didn’t want to spoil it for her. (Little did I know what the future would hold) So we began speaking to each other again and she’d decided she wanted to go to a water park near our house. This water park would be comparable to splish-splash. I wasn’t exactly excited by the idea but agreed I would go under the condition that I would wear my swimming trunks and not be forced to wear a speedo. France is weird about pools and hygiene in general and this particular water-park was no exception. The park attendant would not let me in with my 2” swimming trunks and wanted me to either go to their sport shop to get another shorter pair of swimming trunks or a speedo. Now let me say this to you, the trunks that I purchased back home are SHORT, like poom poom SHORTS short. So short in fact that one accidental move might expose a butt cheek or worse a ball or two. So by that time I was already over the idea and I wasn’t about to pay another 20 euro to purchase a speedo I wouldn’t be comfortable in. I told my friend that I was going to go home. Her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed and then she exploded. Tickets were shoved in my face, I was ordered to get our money back while she stormed off.

I tried chasing after her but failed to no avail because she was literally flying down the street in rage. She had our apartment key and was at least two blocks ahead of me. It felt like a lost battle. I couldn’t keep up. She got to the apartment before I did. I managed to get there 2 mins after her because I got stuck at the street light. When I did arrive to the apartment, guess what was waiting for me? A LOCKED DOOR! Can you believe that, she locked me out of our apartment because she was mad at me. I rang our bell for what felt like 20 mins and no answer. I banged on our door until my hands were numb with pain. I was furious. It takes a lot for me to get mad and she had me up to my boiling point. I was angered to the point where I considered taking a rock and breaking our apartment window so she knew I was serious. Sounds crazy right?! Well, it was and I thank god I didn’t proceed with the fantasy because that would’ve been $700 dollars out of our pockets from our deposit. So after incessant ringing/banging the door opened and I snapped. The gist of what I can remember saying sounded something like “How could you even think of locking me out?", “Are you crazy?”, “Your selfish”, “I would never do anything like that to you”, of course with a slur of curse words thrown in. My tirade didn’t seem to affect her in the slightest, it was almost as if she was immune to it, like she’d built up a tolerance to that sort of thrashing. At the moment we are not on speaking terms again but, the crazy thing is we planned a trip to go the south of France to spend our last day. The trip to Nice is looming over our heads and It’s only 3 days away and we haven’t spoken to each other in about 5 days. Who knows what’ll happen.

What have I learned? Ive realized that friendship can be a tumultuous thing. I can’t say for now if we will or will not be friends after this trip. Ive come to understand that I tend to give people too many chances. I always give people the benefit of the doubt and try to see the good in them. But, after years of reflecting back on things that have happened in the past it seems as though people don’t really change unless they want to change for themselves. It’s a struggle right now being in this situation I’m in.

I always feel like I give 100% in my friendships, granted I might be called out that sometimes I can lose contact or go M.I.A but recently in the last 2/3 years or so I’ve realized this and made a conscious effort to be better at it. Now that I’m the one texting and calling to see how my friends are doing I realized the importance of reciprocity in relationships. One should never feel like they are doing all the work in a relationship. Its exhausting and unfair. If it’s happening to you I would suggest taking a step back and look at your friendship outside of yourself and see it for what its worth. I feel like if that person doesn’t add to your growth as a person maybe they aren’t really a friend and maybe they are just someone you have trouble cutting out of your life and or are used to. Change is a good thing people. Jumping into change and fear is how we extend ourselves and grow as individuals. That includes our friends. Make new ones you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find. And of course save the ones who make the cut.

A Day in The Life Of a Parisian

2012-06-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

So I think after 22 days of living in Paris, I’m able to consider myself a Parisian (don't let a native Parisian here me say that). I drink like a parisian, smoke like a parisian, eat like a Parisian and fuck like a Parisian.

I had never smoked a cigarete a day in my life until I started living in Paris. Everyone here smokes, and they make it look so cool. Ive never been one to follow what other people did and or do but after getting used to the relaxing affects of smoking I began to rather enjoy them. Im probably on my fourth pack so far (Gauloises is the brand I’m currently killing myself with). I love how calming a ciggarete can be. The temporary lack of oxygen feels nice. I won’t be smoking forever though, I told myself before I left for Paris that I would start smoking and that as soon as I left Paris I would stop. I’ve come to the conclusion that this might not be entirely possible, so I came up with a self-compromise. When I do return to NYC, I will allow myself to smoke for one more month and after that only when I’m drunk and somebody offers. Pretty nifty huh?!

So without further ado lets get back to today. My day began with heavy dose of Rosé as well as a petit-croissant for breakfast. After downing a few more glasses I felt the need for a Gauloises. After my morning ritual of obtaining the perfect level of “tipsiness” I showered and got ready for the day or should I say afternoon. I may have forgotten to mention that I don’t wake up until 2/3pm. Right now in this moment as soon as I'm done with this post I’m heading on a night-ride into the center of Paris on our Velib bicycles. These public bicycles I realized are the reason why the French manage to stay so thin, when all they consume are carbs and alcohol. They ride these bicycles EVERYWHERE. I promise to buy myself a bicycle when I get back to New York City. A few hours later…

My friend and I managed to take a 3 hour bike ride all around parts of the city we hadn't seen yet. We rode near the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower. We rode Towards the Champ de Mars and some beautiful shopping districts that mocked our pockets. We are about to do the same tonight, the only difference being is that a bottle of wine is accompanying me on this journey. We are set to make camp near the Eiffel Tower tonight to watch it sparkle in all its brilliance. Hold on to this for now and ill be back to update you with photos and video courtesy of my iPhone. xoxoJ

The Face of True Love

2012-06-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Asli & Jose

Vintage Serena Circa 2007 @ the U.S.Open Championships

2012-06-24T11:17:00.002-07:00