Tallying up the points of substance use

Lately I´ve been listening to some good music. "Will you welcome please, the Grateful Dead"

And, well, because my life is one giant fucking cliché, it has brought back memories wherein I ingest certain substances for recreational and/or educational purposes.

I´ll elaborate. Some of you may be shocked, others will think "that was nothing". But here is the confession about my past and present drug use:

Marijuana - The Omnipresent vice

Marijuana has surrounded me since, like, birth. I´m surprised I´m not a total pothead. The first time I smoked pot, I had a lovely pole vaulter blow the smoke into my mouth cause I didn´t know how to inhale. He was nice like that. The following 5 years can be summed up as me always having a bag of schwaggy weed. Always. My nickname during this time was Heads. As in, Heads in the Grass. I don´t really smoke pot anymore. I don´t think the nickname sat well with me.

So let´s summarize my experience, along with a point value system to see who the winner of this game is:

• Smoking pot while chilling on a terrace on the island of Kauai +50
• Smoking pot with a parent before going for breakfast with Grandma -150
• Husband having mental collapse after a bong rip and subsequently begging to be taken to the hospital -50
• Getting caught smoking pot behind a bowling alley by the cops and your friend passing out during the interrogation -250
• Smoking pot on a giant rock in a valley of Sedona, Arizona while contemplating vortexes +75
• Smoking pot and then remembering you´re an aerobics instructor due to give a class and your roommates are laughing at your oxymoronic existence -100

TOTAL POINTS: -125
VERDICT: YOU LOSE AND YOU SUCK.


Psychedelics

In college I dabbled in psychedelic drugs like acid, mushrooms, ecstasy, mescaline (yeah, I freaking ingested some synthetic peyote, ok, WTF???), and some other drugs that were acronyms that I can´t remember because the drugs effectively killed the brain cells required for remembering their names. Most of these experiences involved trips to Disneyland or a water park of sorts, or camping in the Arizona desert. I don´t regret any of these experiences. I would do psychedelic drugs again, if I were in a controlled environment. And by controlled environment I mean in a padded room with a straight jacket on and a team of medical professionals ready to euthanize me.

Let´s look at how I stack up with psychedelics.

• Take ecstasy at a rave in the middle of the goddamn desert where some idiot puts Icy Hot on your temples that temporarily blinds you and upon regaining eyesight finding your 14 year old cousin standing in front of you, also on ecstasy, and the friend you came with laying on the ground with a credit card in his mouth to stop himself from grinding his teeth out. -500
• Take mescalin with some lovely boy on a camping trip and take pictures of plant life, laughing hysterically all night long. +100
• Realize you should have pitched the tent before you were tripping balls. -25
• Take mushrooms and then turn up to the house you just moved into and have to deal with your new roommates for the first time, while your sister smokes a cigarette in the house, something that was specified as prohibited behavior as a roommate. -150
• Take acid with a sibling and then realize that being around your sibling without drugs already makes you feel like you need to be institutionalized, rendering the consumption of said drugs rather superfluous. Feel as though you would rather cuddle a cactus than continue the trip. -75
• Take acid and then watch the movie Rubin and Ed, the most awesomest Crispin Glover movie EVER. +80
• Accidentally answer the phone while tripping, and it´s your dad. -90

TOTAL POINTS: -610
VERDICT: YOU LOSE. WHAT´S WRONG WITH YOU? SRSLY.


Rx drugs

In grad school I became friends with a group of psychiatrists, one of whom helped save me from scholarly damnation by getting me drugs invented to help keep me from procrastination and worry.

• Take Strattera and write your Masters thesis in a week. +1000
• Take Propanolol and calmly give a lecture to 200 people, defend your thesis, and lead any discussion. +600
  

TOTAL POINTS: -1600

VERDICT: YOU´RE A WINNER. MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A SPANISH PSYCHIATRIST IMMEDIATELY TO PUT YOU ON ADHD MEDS AND SAVE YOU FROM LOSING YOUR JOB.

So that´s my chronicle of substance use and abuse.

I didn´t mention alcohol, because I might need to do a tally that´s like 3 posts long, and I already know I would be in the red numbers.

Peace,

-Bluestreak

15 years in 10 bullet points

I´m not one for memes but this one I like, cause I get to obsess over my past. Found it on Fned´s site, read hers here.

Supposedly, I should sum up the last fifteen years of my life in 10 bullet points, so here goes.

1). 1993 - 1994= sophomore/junior in High School/ Hell. This time in my life completely sucked. I had braces (didn´t fix anything). I had zits (still do). I had no boobs (still don´t). So what´s the difference between then and now? Now I don´t give a shit.

Finally got asked to one of the stupid school dances that are designed to make fragile teens feel even more awkwardly pathetically inadequate than they already are. Got asked to the dance by super hot basketball star. Then he dumped my ass for some chick at our church. Jerk. Quit going to church.

2). 1995= Graduated High School/Hell. Discovered mind altering substances of many kinds. Hung around crowd that was so calculatingly un-hip that if you weren´t as un-hip as them, you were a total sell-out. Everyone was in a band and we would all stand around like idiots listening to the shitty music at underage shows (ok, some of it was good, but not half as good as we pretended it was).

3). 1996 - 1997= Happiness starts. Met my handful. Happiness short-lived because then, had my heart ripped out, chewed up, crapped out, stomped on, and finally hit by lightning by one of these guys (you'll never guess who. Watch long enough and you'll see him). He broke up with me probably because of my emotional, sexual, intellectual, social and musical retardation. But he never said it in so many words, cause he was too nice and was also one piss poor communicator.

Happiness sort of continues anyway vis-a-vis the consumption of way too many drugs and alcohol. Roommates had traveled through Europe. Europe? What? That sounds like fun. Ok, I´ll go. But before I leave, I think I'll have a brief love affair with my best friend. This helps get over nice bass player man.

4). 1998= Enter Spain. Wow, this feels like Disneyland. Seville is the caricaturized version of Europe, the replica of the Spain I had in my head, only better. Dropped out of school and started teaching English. Met my husband at La Carbonería. He was wearing a Pearl Jam t-shirt and his hair was long and curly enough and he was completely wonderful in his insanity. We were both sad and lonely and clung to each other like flies on shit.

5). 1999 - 2000= came to my senses and decided I needed to get the eff out of Spain and finish my degree. Moved back to Arizona. Lived alone. Loved living alone. No one took out the trash? My own damn fault. House clean? Yup, thanks to me. Had lots of phone sex with my boyfriend that was a million miles away.

Worked at an Irish Pub where the owner verbally abused all of the waitstaff but loved me and would beg me to go gambling with him, until he finally pissed his pub away. Like a loyal employee, I would go.

Managed to graduate with a degree in Religious Studies, a Certificate in Latin American Studies and a Minor in I-Don´t-Know-Why-the-Hell-I-Went-To-College-Cause-I´m-Never-Gonna-Get-A-Job-With-This-Shit.

6). 2001 - 2002= Moved back to Spain as an illegal immigrant and moved in with my (now) husband. Fought like assholes, mainly over him not doing jack shit around the house and me being a miserable bitchy girlfriend. Besides that, lived VERY well, on VERY little money. God, Spain was the shit in 2001.

7). 2003= Got married. I was only 25. Applied to grad school, got in and moved my Spanish husband back to the states. He hated it because no one understood his jokes, but, hey, we were happy spending 24-7 together and I would piss myself laughing at his jokes, cause they were damn funny even though nobody else got it.

8). 2004= Felt like the biggest fucking moron on the face of the planet in grad school. Had my ass reamed with feelings of total inadequacy on a daily basis. Questioned every single day why I was putting myself through the torture of the self-realization of cerebral ineptitude. But for some damn reason, I loved it. Felt happiness being surrounded by people with mild intellectual curiosity. Had my hand held by my husband while I shat myself from fear of scholarly leprosy.

9). 2005= Passed my Thesis defense with no revisions. Then put said thesis (i.e. my heart and soul) on bookshelf along with my masters degree in Sociology to collect dust and haven´t looked at them since. Moved back to Spain and joined the ranks of people in the real world that need to actually work and earn a living and leave fantasy-credit-card-land behind.

10). 2006 - 2008. Turned thirty. Began to feel the dull persistent pain of homesickness. Put my husband high up on my list of People I Blame For All The Shit That´s My Own Damn Fault. Beginning to discover that everything I ever thought I knew about myself needs to be scratched out and re-drafted in its entirety. Kinda too soon to write about this stuff. Wanna know what happened? This, this and this, oh, and this. I'm not liking this bullet point much.

So that's the last 15 years of my life in 10 bullet points. Ok, I need a nap. Hope you don´t need one after reading this.

-Bluestreak

Who am I and why do you care?

who am i?

I am culture clash incarnate.

I am Bluestreak, thirty-something, American desert rat that ended up in Southern Spain by a series of random events (crushing fist of fate). Living in Spain used to seem like a big deal, but now it is just la vida. Besides the fact that everyone can tell I´m a guiri (i.e. gringo), I mix well and this feels like home. But a big part of me is never at home here (or anywhere, I´m discovering). I started this blog because my mind is usually in a million places and none of them are in the present moment that is this sad, smelly, dark, lifeless, messy, shit hole of a cave I sometimes refer to as "my office", where I usually write from.

One of the main reasons why I live here in Spain is because my husband Luigi is Spanish. We met while I was a study abroad student in 1997. He is wonderful and clumsy and kind and beautiful and sweet and messy and everything he touches turns to gold and wherever my home is, it´s with him. We speak a weird sort of Spanglish and his accent in English makes me purrrr like a kitten.

what do i write about?
Spain sometimes deserves a big kick in the cojones that I am honored to deliver when provoked. But this blog is not about Spain itself, but rather how I deal with the accumulation/rejection of a foreign culture. But there are no hard fast rules here, so sometimes this blog is about whatever life brings my way. It is, however, almost always about me, as if I were the most important human to grace the face of the planet, and as if you cared. What else am I gonna write about?

why do i cuss so much?
When I write, I curse as if my afterlife had been decided when I stole that piece of candy from 7-11. Why? Because I find it fucking funny, and when I need an adjective, noun, or verb, I find them very easily from my list of favorite swear words, and they are the words that are always on the tip of my tongue. I guess you can say it is because of laziness as a writer. Whatever. If you think I curse too much, I´ll have you know that before each post I publish I have to go back through and edit at least half of the swearing out, so I am already making an effort to please the puritan a-holes (edited) that might mistakenly end up here.

readers that know me
If you are related to me via kinship or marital ties I must have given you my blog address during a severe lapse of judgement that probably involved alcohol. Either that or someone else in our family opened their big-ass mouth. In either case, I suggest you re-think your visit here or get ready to be disappointed in me.

If you know me in real life, please have mercy and never mention my blog at any gathering (not like you would), but if you do, I might poison you while you´re in the bathroom to protect my shame.



So that´s me.



-Bluestreak



p.s. if you´ve read this far and you don´t hate me yet, leave a comment, lest I disappear into the vast graveyard of abandoned blogs.

Economics of a Recalcitrant Heart 101

I also thought about entitling this post: Why I´m Such a Bitch to My Family.

I am writing this post in an attempt to sort out in my own brain why I go through moments of family disconnect while living abroad. I´ve got my mom currently up my ass over this and it has got me thinking about why I act this way.

I have posted about it before. Maybe you have had enough. Homesickness. But this post is about how I deal with it, or decide not to deal with it.

Sometimes I let it rush over me and drown me in a sickly sad cesspool of agony and tears and I feel the pain of it and wallow fully in it in the most pathetic way imaginable. And sometimes that wallowing feels kinda good to get out.

Other times, I have a completely different strategy. It is the strategy of completely ignoring that there are two different universes of culture, people, family, friends, love in my head and in my life simultaneously (one obviously being more salient than the other for reasons of proximity). When I need to deal with homesickness and am exhausted by my first strategy, I use this second strategy; total withdrawal from second, less salient, non-present universe.

And this pisses off my family big time.

And hurts them.

Because, after weeks and maybe months of daily phone calls, emails, picture sending, etc (things that usually happen when I´m NOT homesick), I completely drop off the radar and disappear like a damn bandit. To me in these moments, it feels more harmful to my aching little nostalgic heart to actually speak to them and hear about THEM in particular, than to just not call, not know, not think, not care. My Spain world becomes my only world, the only world whose existence I can deal with. It is called economizing the heart. Sometimes my love is zero-sum. It just is.




The irony is that this way of dealing with homesickness actually induces more homesickness in me.

But my heart behaves like an incapable moron sometimes, and does what it damn well pleases.

I leave on Saturday to see them. I can´t even describe how that feels, so I´ll end here.

-Bluestreak

Photography: "The Infamy of a Story Never Told" from Flickr by Felipe Morin

I knew it: I'm a redneck

It is official. If you could not tell from my word choice, I am including the results of this 100% reliable, mind-boggling quiz I just took which I found on Almost American´s blog.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The South
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

That´s right people, my accent is "the lowest common denominator of American speech" which must mean redneck. It also indicates that everyone thinks I do not have an accent, I could be from anywhere. I just thought you, as the reader, should be aware of the fact that when I write, I write with a proper redneck (or as we like to say, shit-kicker) -yet-accentless-accent.

Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona you get fooled into thinking you are not a shit-kicker like those freaks outside the city, just because you do not like creamed corn, you do not wear Wranglers or other displays of redneckery, you vacation in San Diego, and you know what a mango is.

But this is an official quiz; SCIENCE, folks. Them's the rules in post-Enlightenment. And science proves otherwise. I am 100% unsophisticated folk, but worse, with apparently NO accent. Now I know what Spanish people mean when they say we Americans have no culture. If you are void of accent, you must be void of culture too.

Accuracy is important to me. So I would like to ask for your collaboration, dear reader (and I do love thee). From now on, please read in shit-kicker non-accent tongue.

Thank you for your cooperation,

-Bluestreak.


P.S. RTL always knew I was a shit-kicker. Here it is, R.T., confirmed in writing. I was in denial before.

Know what I love about Spain? Portugal.

Reasons why my weekend in Portugal kicked serious ass:


Other reasons it kicked ass:

1). Didn´t smoke. Ok, just one. Thanks dude from Chiringuito. Thanks too for not hitting on us. I know you were almost blinded by my whiteness when I came up to bum a smoke, therefore you couldn´t see how hot I looked underneath the glare.

2). Played drinking games in rooftop luxury. What? How old am i again? Thirty-what? Thanks to the one that was young enough to remember the rules to those games. I had long filed those memories away under "stuff you should never do again if you have any dignity".

3). Ate ridiculously cheap food that was ridiculously good. Thanks, fish haters, more for me.

4). Had only thirty seconds tops pass between severe laughter seizures, thanks to you and your lovely madness.

Now I just need to make a list of reasons why I need to get back to work.

-Bluestreak