Feminine Energy

He hires sex workers to massage him everywhere. He says it is close to the real thing, only without love, and sometimes cheaper.

My partner sends me a video of her rolling a suitcase around the block on New Year's to attract a year of traveling. She thanks me for my love. I don't tell her we will break up or that she won't travel for the next 12 months because I don't know it yet. Good times don't last forever, most say. 

15-year-olds hold hands in the gym, and we all know they will break up and that their lives will end, and they won't. Why tell them? Their parents don't. Monks who don't believe in concepts like right or wrong might, but I'm not one.

I visit Medellín’s Comuna 13. Bullet holes, colorful murals, escalators, and 8-year-olds grabbing their balls. Everyone is there except for my tour guide's uncle. In the 1990s, the gang from the lower side of the Comuna recruited him to fight the one from the upper side, where my tour guide and the rest of his family lived. Ten years later, someone announced the war was over. His uncle rushed past the imaginary line dividing both sides and got shot by a Beretta 92 FS. It is now over. Millions of blonde visitors prove it. I share a bench with Mark from SF, who won't shut up about how cheap the rent is.

My mom dies from cancer. I try to accept her passing. Am I better off imagining an alternate reality in which my mom is alive and fighting with my current reality? Or am I better off letting go of this imaginary reality and surrendering to the forces that created the universe around me? I like the latter, but it takes going through a near-death experience months later before I can embody it. For now, I submerge and come afloat my pool many times, and then I don't. Missing my 2 p.m. Zoom call would not affect humanity. I still come out. The lifeguard exhales and waves at me; we are equally bad at surrendering. 

I yearn for feminine energy. I gaze at her red curly hair and how her right goes forward at the first beat of the conga and backward at the fifth. We smile at each other. We plan to do the same the next day, but she flies 9,074 kilometers in search of what she needs, and I could not give her. I stay and search for what I needed that she could never give me. 

Friends don't know what to make of me. I wear linen. I have a clean cut and beard. I smile and listen more than I speak. I swim on islands. 

There is an unspoken rule about how often and where you can go out while mourning someone. Between zero and one. Unless it's for work, in which case, people ask why you aren't working more.

When my mom passed away, I thought I must be my family's pillar. My family doesn't ask me how I am doing, so I visit a friend in Amsterdam who does. I am the only brown person under 6ft on the plane. I am amazed by Bukowski's prose and repulsed by him throwing beer bottles at his girlfriend. My mom's phone rings, but I don't get a response because there isn't anyone to pick it up.

Drinking port wine on a park bench, a friend passes by with a longboard. She lives with a chihuahua named Lola. Lola maintains a constant four-beat, lateral ambling gait. She slipped from the couch earlier, and my friend dropped her laptop, catching Lola. My friend sits on the right side of the park's rotunda, about 100 meters from me. Why aren't she and I kissing right now? Turns out I do like her. My female friends knew all along—we guys know less than we think about women. The girl I am on a date with on the park bench says she's having a great time. So am I, but I can't see her now that I will marry.

There is always something new in Lisbon. The tech bros are here, the hippies are here, the backpackers are here. The racists never left, and the Greeks can't afford it. I dance salsa thrice with a woman I call Pigtail Buns and 60 other women over four hours like I did last Sunday and the one before.

A friend's relationship ends two weeks after arriving in Lisbon. He hires sex workers to massage him everywhere. He says it is close to the real thing, only without love, and sometimes cheaper. It makes sense. We talk about how men would do anything to sleep with a "regular" girl they do not want a relationship with but not with a sex worker. I haven't figured it out. The sex workers eventually only sit down on a stool and talk to him. They don't reveal he'll get through it, just like I don't to the 15-year-olds.

Sometimes, when life doesn't go my way, I also think the end is near. I'm part of the problem.

I read The Surrender Experiment and decide the concepts of right or wrong won't affect me. I ignore my inner voice and relax regardless of what it is saying. Daily, I ask, what will the universe decide for me today? In Marrakesh, it decides I must go through an earthquake that kills 2,960 people and injures 5,674. Someone's French grandpa is in boxers asking for a phone next to a collapsed building. My dad texts, saying he can't answer. My sister sends a sticker of a Capuchin monkey with droopy eyes. I save the sticker.

The holidays, people say, are a time for rest, relaxation, and catching up. Family drama from ten years ago ignites. I go for brunch, to islands, and partying within the same 24 hours. She says I hope your life is going well. I say I hope yours is too. We remain separated. I won't let the loop open and decide to close missing ones. I cut ties with a long-time friend with whom I no longer vibe and propose a short-term relationship to another. 

I don't do hookups or short-term relationships, but Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza show me that repressed love follows you until death. I do not argue with literature. There is one month left on my mini-sabbatical. It's not enough.

A new year is about to begin. I run a Wheel of Life exercise. I score between nine and ten on spirituality, self-image, and body but less than a five on work, friendships, and family. I set goals across these and other categories. It's an ongoing project. Somehow, I call this the best year of my life. I don't interfere with the universe and leave my suitcase at home.