Core memory unlocked!

Before seeing Daniel at Rich's funeral I would've confidently stated my first sexual experience was getting head from Jessica Sophomore year in HS. But the second I saw him, it was like walking through a door I'd passed so often I forgot it ever existed. The last time I saw him I was 13 yrs old and we were in Baja with my grandfather and Daniel's mom. Rich had met her a few years earlier in Vegas. She was either a showgirl or a prostitute or maybe both (PC or not I've always lived life don't ask don't tell)... Either way Rich ended up seeing her for almost 8 years and even had a kid with her that my mom ended up raising. But this isn't about my 22 yr old aunt. It's about her big brother...

At this point I'd known Daniel for almost 6 years. He was this slightly older super kind, not-so-smart, very handsome goofball (think Keanu Reeves but half Native American instead of half Asian) that loved getting into trouble with me. Daniel and I would ride dirt bikes in the oil fields while my grandfather would pretend to know what the roughnecks were talking about. Then we'd strip down to our underwear for the car ride because our clothes would be peppered with crude oil and Rich didn't want us to ruin his upholstery. There's this pretentious restaurant/club atrocity in Signal Hill called the Petroleum Club (you wouldn't know it existed unless you were a member and in order to be a member I think you need to own an oil company) where we kept new clothes. We'd always stop there for steaks and then Rich would disappear for hours and I think we'd go swimming and have italian sodas by the pool.

WOW sorry I just fell down a rabbit hole of crazy memories more than a quarter century old and went on a little tangent there... Almost all those millionaire oil kids I grew up with are bankrupted lost causes these days. With life, you never know how it's going to unfold...

Anyway, Daniel and I were friendly and I was super glad to see him on this trip because verbal sparring with my snobby cousins always left me feeling lonely. It started the first night we got there. I was laying in bed scratching my nuts when he ripped the blanket off of me and was crestfallen to see I wasn't jerking off. Then he asked me if I wanted to jerk off with him and me being a horny closeted boy at the mercy of my dick, OF COURSE I SAID YES! And that's when things got weird. 

I pulled my dick out and started only to realize he was only watching me and not joining in. At first I felt extremely self-conscious but the way he was watching me... GOD DAMN it made me sooo fucking horny! After a couple minutes he asked of he could touch me. My first instinct was to say no, but then I said yes and his hands were all over me. By the end of the week he was sucking my dick every time we were alone. I can't remember ever touching him, and I only ever saw his penis a few times. I think he was embarrassed about his size, but this was definitely the origin story of my small dick fetish. 

We never really talked about what we were doing or what it meant, it was purely about my orgasms and how many I could have in a day. Rich found out his girlfriend was pregnant during this trip and he broke up with her and I never saw Daniel again. Once his daughter was born and the DNA test confirmed it, Rich bought her a house in Vegas. 4 years later she died of an overdose, and Rich's daughter moved in with my mother. This was the 90's and there was no such thing as social media, and he didn't even own a computer so we never saw each other again.

Fast forward a couple decades and a few more years and he's standing in front of me with his wife and 2 sons looking just as handsome as he did the day I met him. I wanted to knock down the plexiglass partition to give him a giant hug. I wanted take him to the dried up oil fields to ride dirt bikes. I wanted to show him how much I've improved as a lover. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry, I wanted to bask in all of my forgotten memories and I wanted them all to stop and go back into the vault they were locked in for all these years. 

Instead I just smiled and I shed a couple of involuntary tears because in that moment I genuinely missed my grandfather. That time in my life was the last time I could ever delude myself into thinking Rich was a good person. The way he threw people away like they didn't even matter was never more obvious than in the way he treated this family he'd created and nurtured. I wonder if it was as painful for Daniel to look at me as it was for me to look at him. 

Asante sana squash banana!

Back in December I decided that I really needed to go somewhere far and do something crazy because I had a shitty 2020 that ended in lawsuits, a funeral, and a couple of death threats from some family members. A friend of mine, Minho from South Korea that I met back in my pro athlete days, casually mentioned he and a group of friends would be hiking Mt Kilimanjaro. Then they'd be spending 3 weeks caravanning through Africa to check out the wildlife. So I did what any guy desperate for an escape would do and I invited myself on the adventure. 

First and foremost I need to say beyond vaccinations I did zero research on what this trip would entail. Minho told me that it was supposed to be extremely cold, so I at least packed my winter hiking gear. BUT NOBODY FUCKING TOLD ME THAT IT SNOWS IN AFRICA! LIKE A LOT! Our entire hike to the top of the mountain was in snow up to our knees AND I WAS FUCKING FREEZING! Also I've done Everest basecamp, Machu Pichu, Whitney, and Fujiyama; these were all pleasant strolls compared to how painfully difficult this hike was. 

Minho and his buddies all work in the entertainment industry so they are all tall fit model/actors and basically floated to the top of the mountain. I feel like I was the fat short old man slowing down the entire party. But they were all good sports about it especially because I was the only one in the group that speaks fluent english to interact with our guides. They hired guides that were supposed to be fluent in French, but the guide's French was as broken and incomprehensible as everyone else's broken english. 

There's this feeling I get when I reach the top of a mountain. I am not entirely sure if I can describe it. I am exhilarated, happy, exhausted and feel completely content all at once. We hiked all night so we could make it to the top for sunrise. All the tripping, and sleep deprivation were completely worth it. We saw the sunrise and the moonset and had a 360 degree view of Tanzania. This was the moment I was waiting for to finally exhale and unload all the bullshit that had been weighing me down for the last few months. I shed a couple tears, then pulled my flask out and took a couple of long drinks of whiskey. Then I spent the next 6 hours regretting all my life choices that put me on that mountain navigating my way down. My knees hurt, my back hurt, my head hurt, I was tired, and I slipped and fell so many times that the last half dozen times I contemplated not ever getting up again. 

The next three weeks were wild. I think we were hostages (had a spirited debate with the guys over what constitutes a hostage situation. Honestly I have no idea what the correct terminology is) for an afternoon until I gave these teenagers with semi-automatic weapons $1000. A cheetah jumped onto the hood of our open roof vehicle and just stared at us for a couple minutes. And we snuck out of a village in the middle of the night after a bunch of people with torches started gathering and shouting about the "China Virus" while talking about us. 

Other than that the trip was fun. I got so close to a Cheetah I could actually smell it! I got to work on my Korean and got to the point where I was making dirty jokes and the guys could even understand me DRUNK! We saw lions and zebras and walked through villages where they were making shea butter and weaving baskets. And everywhere we went people wanted to take pictures with us because it was their first time ever seeing Asian people. 

The best part of the whole trip was making new friends. I was invited to Jeju Island in June for a more relaxed guys trip with some light camping and hiking. It's been so long since I was able to be social with more than a couple of people or explore new places that I have never been. I had no idea how much I really needed this experience. Arriving home I was both exhausted and completely rejuvenated. I've been home almost 2 weeks and I'm still in an amazing mood. But also my first trip to the African wilds will most definitely be my last because it was super scary and I'm way too old to be fearing for my life on vacation.

Rich

Rich, my mom's dad, was an interesting character. My first memory of him was when I was 7 and he showed up at 6am on a Sunday to take my grandmother out to breakfast. I just remember opening the door and seeing this gorgeous 6ft blond haired green eyed movie star staring down at me with the biggest smile on his face. He picked me up and hugged me, then set me down and said, "Soy tu abuelo, pero call me Rich." 

Rich was an irresponsible bastard who let down everyone in his life every single time it mattered, but he was also charismatic and exciting and it was impossible to outright hate him. Rich was part of an extremely wealthy family in Mexico. He moved to the US to handle their business on this side of the border, but I honestly feel like his family wanted him out of the way because he was a lazy fuck up that continuously caused problems.   

Anyway, he died on my birthday back in November. Due to his bullshit antiquated sexist and conservative catholic views on inheritance, the entire pile of shit that was his estate was my problem. It's stupid because my mom has an older half sister with 4 kids but they don't matter because my grandfather never married my aunt's mom. Then there's me, the only male in his direct line to be born in a traditional catholic marriage. Lucky fucking me. 

Which bring us to my trip home for the holidays and the multiple lawsuits filed against me by my aunts and cousins challenging a nonexistent estate they all felt there were entitled to. Everyone thought there was millions of dollars and properties up for grabs when in reality there was nothing at all. If everyone had given me time to explain they could've saved themselves thousands of dollars. It took me a couple weeks to figure out things were even worse than him being cash broke. He'd also taken out a reverse mortgage on my aunt's home. The best part of all this bullshit was being able to turn over the financials and letting their lawyers explain they were broke and soon to be homeless. I honestly didn't know how I was going to do it!

Rich's funeral was extremely unsettling as half remembered and aged faces scurried through my vision and memories all day long. I was surprised by how many people decided to show up and pay their respects to Rich during a pandemic. I stayed behind a very large clear plastic barrier and must have greeted and received condolences from over 100 people. My mom kept trying to talk to me but I used covid precautions and my bodyguards as a decent excuse for her to stay away. My brother and sisters didn't even bother coming to the funeral because they'd only met Rich a handful of times. Rich was definitely much closer to my aunts and all their children.

Now that it's all said and done and I've had a little while to process this whole fucked up situation, I've come to the conclusion that Rich was a terrible human being and a sorry excuse for a man. Generational wealth really fucks with a person's morals and self-worth in strangely insidious ways that you never see coming. To me Rich has always been a raging narcissist I was anchored to against my will through blood. But to my aunts and cousins he was a deeply caring family member and a financial safety net for all of them when times got rough. He lied to them and made promises that he had no intentions of keeping all so they'd look at him like a benevolent saint. And then he left me to shatter their dreams and expectations with a super depressing reality. 

Rich, you were my grandfather and I never liked you. I'm pretty sure you never liked me either. I never looked at you the way my cousins did. I never saw you as my savior, because I'd already spent my whole life dealing with snakes just as bad as you were. I'm not going to miss you, but I will respect and remember all the things you did for me and how different my life would be if you weren't in it. You taught me that everything had a price and you made sure that I understood what it meant to pay that price. It's super unfortunate you never learned this lesson yourself, but I will always be grateful that I did. Let's all hope hell isn't real because if it is, that's for sure where you ended up.