Louis Armstrong said this once. I didn’t know this until this past Sunday where I spent the entire lazy day in bed(YES THE ENTIRE DAY IN BED! NO. I wasn’t sick. No. I wasn’t depressed and wallowing in my sheets. It was raining. I haven’t had a REAL day off since, um, never and when it is raining and wet and gloomy and the Netflix decided to be all M.I.A. for the weekend and I didn’t really (SHOCK!) want to watch another episode of Sex and the City, I opted for bed all day).
Anyway, I did make it out to grab a newspaper and a coffee with the hopes that I was totally going to be one of those productive Sunday people who window shop or have brunch with friends. But instead I slid back in to my white sheets pulled out the Travel Section of the Trib and listened to this Jazz station online. It’s this station I tend to pull up when I just need that casual background music while writing or reading a magazine.
Paging through the cover story about sailing, a documentary started playing on the radio about Louis Armstrong and his impact on Jazz. Now, I’m not Jazz. Not even close. I don’t like it. I mean, I can appreciate it. I know it’s out there. But I’m only selfish when it comes to listening to it and use it as noise. But this guy with a British accent starts chatting about how Armstrong defined the evolution of music and all this really sharp smart stuff that I’ve totally already forgot. But then this antique choppy sounding clip of Armstrong said:
“What we play is life.”

The documentary went on to discuss Armstrong’s background. His mom was a clothes washer and a prostitute. His life seemed destined to failure. But he discovered his passion and learned that there were more notes out there that he had to play other than the ones he was handed and clearly we all know where he went with that.
Lately I can identify with that. You know, not the whole “My mom was a prostitute.” She wasn’t that. She was a homemaker. I had a good life. But being given the solid “do, re, and mi’s” by my parents. Those lessons of life we all learn before we go out in to the world and either decide to stick close to what we were taught or jump off that giant music scale and try to harmonize with the things that scare us to death.
I’m scared to death.
Lying in bed with a stack of news in my lap, I couldn’t help but think about how the choices we make either end up sounding like a beautiful note or a crunchy and flat melody. Like Jazz, you can’t predict anything that’s going to happen. I might flop at being a freelancer. I might fail at being a travel show host or a teacher or a father or a friend, but knowing that I tried my best at finding my range… well, that’s music to my ears.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN UR CHICAGO, SEPTEMBER 2008 ISSUE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN NEW CITY MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER ISSUE
When Donatella Versace dedicated her 2009 Spring/Summer collection to Barack Obama at her Milan show, it was an seamless melding of fashion and politics. Similarly, finding the perfect accessory to proudly announce your chosen political candidate shouldn’t seem like a tacky add-on to your otherwise stylish wardrobe. With the election just around the corner, there’s time to pick up some tasteful gems that say: “I’m an American. I have an opinion. And I have a chic way of supporting it.”
BUTTONS
You’re seeing your candidate all over the place, so why not put him where you can always see him–pinned to your lapel? If you want variety, Politcalshop.com is your button go-to. Regardless of your chosen candidate these buttons have it all. The looks range from luxe-looking to simple-yet-sophisticated fonts on adorable circular pins. Go ahead–pair your Prada bag with one of these buttons. The quality aesthetic of the pins makes it a politically correct pairing.
For Obama lovers, MoveOn.org offers three design-friendly styles of mini-buttons for you to sport. The best part? The initial order of buttons is free. If you distribute them all over town, you pay just a little for another batch and the proceeds go to benefit the awareness of Obama’s campaign for 2008–as if there are those who haven’t heard of him.
T-SHIRTS
If you’re digging for a political t-shirt that doesn’t conflict with your Diesel jeans, Zazzle.com offers a variety of styles and designs to suit your personal aesthetic. Like many popular “design your own t-shirt” sites, you’re able to determine your own fit, color and size. Plus, the tees sport graphics that look like they fell off a limited-edition run from a local boutique.
Want to keep your support on the down low, but still support the cause? Voteapparel.com is totally with you. The four-color-option American Apparel t-shirt comes with a fun–yet dapper–logo that reminds your apparel gazer to “vote” in bold white attractive letters. The shirt comes in a of variety of sizes and styles. Plus, you won’t risk coming under fire from your opposing political party just for encouraging people to vote.

Dear Girl That Elbowed Me In the Arm Really Hard On the Bus the Other Day to Get Out of Your Way,
Do you know that I bruise, like, really easily? No, seriously? It’s been this thing that happens to me since, well, I could bruise. Usually I understand why I bruise. Oops. Just bumped my clumsy self in to a brick wall. Bruise. Oops. Just hit my knee on the corner of my bed because my bedroom is too small for the size of bed I have. Bruise. Oops. I’m in the way of a twenty-something black haired girl on a crowded city bus during rush hour and instead of taking her ipod out of her really floppy mean-girl ears and saying “Um, excuse me sir, could I squeak around you and step out to my stop?” I get a giant “UMPH” with an elbow in to my side which within a few hours will show a bruise. BRUISE!
But that one I didn’t understand, Girl That Gave Me A Bruise, were you just having a bad day? I imagine you at your house. Your cat sitting on your paisley bedspread watching you get ready for your day at work. The cat’s flipping its cute little calico tail while you put that ugly sweater vest over that uglier white collared shirt deal you were trying to sport. Perhaps you had NPR on the radio in the kitchen–no, you didn’t look smart enough–you had KISS FM on your radio in the kitchen while, perhaps, your low life mooching boyfriend sleeps in because, oh you know, he doesn’t have a job and hasn’t had one for three months and won’t get a job and you’re constantly fighting about it and you hate your hair and you hate your job that you HAVE TO KEEP BECAUSE YOUR MOOCHING BOYFRIEND WON’T GET ONE OF HIS OWN! And maybe you want to get married and he won’t marry you because a) he can’t afford a ring and b) because he just can’t get his act together. You want to move out. You want to give up. You want to start your life over somewhere else with just your cat.
OR you’re just a bitch.
Either way, I bruise easily and for some odd reason I don’ t think I need a visual representation of your mean-y-ness. Living in this city, you will see a lot of visual representations of mean-y-ness. You’ve got cabs honking because they don’t have to time to wait for others. You’ve got business dudes in snug ties yelling in to their cell phones with “just fucking get it done” types of phrases flying out of their mouths. You’ve got angry drunks slurring their arguments on the streets when they get kicked out of bars. HELL! I’ve had my angry moments. We all have.
There are a lot of angry people out there… but they don’t take it out on me.
As you stepped around me and I rubbed my side where you rammed your frustrated elbow, I was tempted to say this to you in person. As I get older I realize the more I speak up, the more things change. But sometimes, whether you live in the city or somewhere in the middle of nowhere, you just have to accept that some people have shit to deal with and will share it with others and all you can do is know at least the bruise you gave me will heal and hopefully that thing you’re dealing with will too.
Because the duration of bruise is a lot like the duration of life: way too short.

that this:

makes me, um, really super happy and makes me really super excited. Super excitedly happy?

Girl 1: So, is this, like, your first semester here?
Girl 2: Yup.
Girl 1: So, then, like, what’s your major?
Girl 2: I’m majoring in Compassion.
Girl 1: Awesome.
Girl 2: Totally.
Me:??????????????!!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?COMPASSION!!!!!!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!(whispered to Josh) What kind of job can you get with a “Compassion” Degree?
Josh: One at the Compassion Factory.

This is… this is… this is just amazing.

So I’m on an airplane on the way to NYC paging through my GQ when this girl sitting next to me falls asleep with her mouth open and starts to drool.
She’s this cute girl, really. She’s all natural brunette (think Charlotte from Sex and the City meets a bit of Jennifer Gardner and a splash of Christina Applegate in the face) and bumpy in the right places(you know where) and she was reading good magazines: Dwell, Vogue, and Ready Made. I mean, really, she was totally my type.
You know, if I was straight.
See, I think about that. What type of girl would be my kind of girl if she was single and, I was, well, straight. Now we can all agree that’s like asking the Pope to go Buddhist, but it’s fun to pretend. It’s so necessary when things aren’t going where you thought they would in life. And sometimes I truly believe it would be easier… to be straight.
As I try not to stare at the ooze coming out of my possible parallel universe girlfriend, I start to picture what kind of house we’d have. Seeing that she’s reading Dwell, I’d imagine one of those all glass houses. She would totally be an editor of a high-end New York magazine and I would be doing something just as cool to have to be able to pay the mortgage on that all glass house. It would be something like Urban meets vintage decorated in the interiors(even my “parallel universe Byron” is gay) and we would have things from our exotic trips to Bora Bora decorating the walls and bookshelves.
“Mom, (parallel girlfriend’s name, here) and I are spending the weekend in Cairo. She’s doing a shoot for her magazine and I’m going because I can!” I will say when my mom asks if I will coming home for Thanksgiving.
“Oh! That’s fantastic! You’ll have a wonderful time. You’ll be missed. Say hello to (parallel girlfriend’s name, here). You’ll be missed! We just adore her!” Of course mom would just be waiting for the marriage proposal date.
While paging through my magazine I glance back over at the brunette who is now sleeping with her head tilted a little to the left while still drooling.
She looks like she’d be a summer wedding. Late summer. It would be outside. She’d wear this really tight fitting Oscar de la Renta white gown(still gay!) and white Manolo Blahniks(GAYER YET!) and I would wear a tux or something. All our family would be sitting around us in white chairs on the beach off the coast of South America. We, of course, flew everyone in because my parallel girlfriend has family money and are pulling out all the stops. My mom would tear up and hug me after the ceremony and say: “We are just so happy it finally happened!” And my dad would smack me on the back and say something like: “Son, you’ve got yourself a good one there.” and my brother would shake my hand and her parents would hug me and her dad would say something like: “You better watch her. She’s my baby girl.” And I would pat him on the shoulder and nod.
Our first dance would be at the reception where everything is candle lit. She would smile at me while we were close. The big band playing in the background. Most likely Sinatra, ’cause that’s what straight couples dance to when they are in love. Later, the DJ we would so obviously hire to close the night would invite the grandparents and guests to dance the night away while we prepare ourselves for our honeymoon to some private island off of Greece that is so small maps don’t even label it.
We would be in Greece. Sun shining. Wearing our Marc Jacobs glasses and riding on Mopeds and the humid Mediterranean afternoons would be filled with…sex…um, sex… with… um, her…
The plan on the plane is jostled by a sharp bump waking the cute brunette from her nap and at the same time snapping me out of the daydream. I continue to page through GQ turning to a page that has this hot hunky guy (think Mark Feuerstein).
I start to imagine Mark and I living in a house… a modern house… one made out of glass…
See, pretending is only fun until you actually have to, you know, “do-it”. Then it’s back to reality… like marrying models/actors that are in sleek advertisements for Dior ads.

Stylishly political. I love my job!

They say: “Patience is a virtue.”
I think “they” must have had a lot of time on their hands because this weekend will mark the one year anniversary of ending a four year relationship. It was this upcoming weekend where everything in my life completely flipped ranging from changing addresses to which part(usually down the middle) of the bed I slept in. It was also in this upcoming weekend that was a catalyst to where I am at this exact moment: In a new apartment sitting in my bed and listening to my music as loud as I want because there is no one else here to tell to live my life differently.
But while alone, I have noticed that I have been waiting.
See, the old school of thought is that you need that “other” to make it better. So many people in my life have already found that “other” and do all the things that he or she have been dreaming, but now as a pair and without fear of doing it alone.
“We just had to do it.” My co-worker says one afternoon making his french press coffee at the gallery I sometimes work at. He’s in his mid-thirties and reminds me of that teacher that would let you swear in class. “We wanted to go to Africa… so we went…”
“I would love to go to Africa… that’s been a dream.” I say back to him sipping on my cooling latte.
“Then go. What’s stopping you?”
“I don’t want to go it alone.”
At night I still do that thing with the pillows. You know, where you line them up next to you and wrap your leg around them as if there was someone who has always been there is there. I don’t do this to be pathetic. I do it because that’s how I liked to sleep. Dave and I had a full-sized bed. There wasn’t much room, but there was plenty of room to cuddle. And in this past year, I’ve been OK with that. Not having someone there to cuddle. Not having someone there to always eat dinner with. Not having someone there to tell me that the lady on the bus who glared at me because I bumped her exposed knee was just a bitch.
But I’m not OK with not having someone there to do the things I’ve always wanted to do with my life and letting that stop me… like travel.
So as a birthday present to myself/”one year of hell and you’re going to be fine in the second year of being on your own” gift, I purchased a trip to New York. I’ve been before, actually with Dave, but lately I’ve been wanting to go back and just see in a different perspective. A few weeks ago I swallowed the whole “I’ve really never done the whole traveling on my own thing” fear and bought the ticket.
And for the first time I don’t really feel like I have to wait.
When I told my mom this she said something like: “Wow… I just… I just don’t think I could go to a big city on my own. Aren’t you nervous?” I took a sip of my ice water and looked around the patio we were having brunch and really took a second to think about it. Was I nervous? Fuck yeah. But instead I told her something like: “Well, if I wait for someone to go with I might have to wait a long time… because I want a good thing… and you know the saying.
Because, in the end, patience is really a virtue. Not when it comes to stopping your life waiting for someone else, but when it involves being patience in finding someone really good to slow down your life to let them jump aboard.
And unlike us, life doesn’t have the ability to be patient and won’t wait for anyone.