2+0+0+7=9

I wish I looked like Johnny Depp, not because I think I’m hideous or because I think he’s extraordinarily good-looking (which I do) but because it would just be Easier. I would meet people in everyday situations and they’d look at me, thinking, “That boy looks just like Johnny Depp.” This would be useful in social situations that required ice breaking. Picture this. Nervous person sees me, wants to make conversation, opens with: “You must have heard this a thousand times but…”

If that’s all I got out of it though, I might as well look like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Ron Pearlman. No, it Has to be Johnny Depp (or Wentworth Miller) because there’s the added bonus of never ever worrying about how I look. I’ll hear boys and girls praise the actor’s physical attributes up and down, all over: on the internet, on TV, in respectable magazines and daily rags. “Johnny Depp: World’s Sexiest Man!” His popular press would be mine to borrow every time I heard, “You look just like that cute pirate.” Mine but never completely because the praise would be his, you see? And I just look like him, his decoy, the second-rate doppelganger devoid of celebrity. And that, to me, sounds ideal: security in my appearance without an ego bloated on doubtful praise.

There’s an anonymity that would go with that. Sure, I’d be That-guy-who-looks-like-Johnny-Depp but I’d also be a secret self under the label, my own private person under the mask, unknown to everyone but the friends who broke through that initial test and finally got to know me, a sometimes-great guy who just happened to look like someone famous.

That’s what I was thinking about on the bus ride home, eyes still wet with tears over the deaths of several fictional people. Odd how I almost never cried at my own Lola’s funeral but reading about Dolores Price losing her family and friends in "She’s Come Undone" jerked tears out of me (Johnny Depp weeping, of all places:) in Starbucks!

Just then, Matt’s roommate Peter knocked on the café window from outside. A smile in synthetics blurred past. I smiled back dumbly, almost too broadly, and waved as though I hadn’t been shocked and offended by his grabbing my crotch from behind at the New Year’s Eve party. “Hi!” (Johnny Depp mutely greeting the back of a yellow jacket, going back to his book, missing his bus…)

When I finally got home and took off my toe socks, I was shocked at how pale the freezing weather had made my feet. Those weren’t my toes I was staring at, those were my Dad’s, white as teeth, flecked with dark brown follicles, nails gone purple for want of rushing blood. When the place you’re living in makes your body parts appear alien, you’re on a blind ride. You’re the fish swimming in the sky, wondering if your fins will hold the breeze beneath you much longer.

It’s been over two months since I left Germany, around ten since I left Cebu. The degrees of change are difficult to gauge but I – I think I’m okay… I mean – I don’t know how else to look at myself in the mirror (not looking like Johnny Depp at all) and judge the reflection, judge my feeling about trying to judge myself, or just judge judging in general during this season of 'Best of's and resolutions.

I’m okay because I must be. I’m still here aren’t I? And there’s so much goodness, some of it actually tangible, held in my arms, my sight, and in this cold, cold heart at one point or another. I shattered it, melted it, forged a new one and smashed it against a stone until the fragments grew fine and sparkled like glitter. I moved away from nearly everything I had, everything I knew, jumped into voids, totally lost, and continue to wander them still. I ache, and I miss, and I’m terrified of all the monsters in the dark but I’m Okay, Here, Now (so help me God, amen) and I'll be damned if I don't look back on last year and scream from the gut with primal ecstacy: "I lived 2006! AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHH!!!!! FUCK YOU, MOTHER EARTH! MUCHOS GRACIAS! AND HELLOOOO!!!"

That would be fun.

Oh brother. All that drama and I almost forgot.. :] Happy New Year.

New photos in my phlog.