Drop dead gorgeous

   Fur and different types of fabrics covered the floor of the warehouse. At the center, a man with tight clothes threw everything around, apparently looking for something in particular. He stopped for a moment, having a bright yellow patterned fabric on one hand and a bright pink vest in the other, covered in glitter and feathers of many colors. He gave them those to an assistant and then stepped out of the mound of clothes as if nothing had happened. He walked elegantly and steadily towards the warehouse’s exit.

 The rest of the people had to stay there and get everything in order. They had to put everything into the proper bags and boxes and those bags and boxes into very tall shelves where everything was kept in order and very clean. When the last worker left the warehouse, they realized their boss was still there and he seemed to be drawing something on a notebook, against the hood of his car. He didn’t seem to be conscious of his surroundings, only focusing on  the movement of his hand and the trace of the pencil.

 His personal assistant, the young man who had grabbed the selected pieces of clothing, touched his shoulder and whispered in his ear something about a meeting he was late to. The man seemed a bit startled at the beginning, but then he just closed the notebook and entered the car. Later that day, he attended several meetings, having to do with his next collection and with everything that had to do with the financial results achieved by the company. However, he wasn’t really there in any of them.

 Colors flew all over his brain, as well as textures and different kinds of fabrics and so on. He kept drawing in some of those meetings and people knew he had to be left alone while he was being creative. The only thing he had to say in meetings was about the clothes and the line that was about to come out was already in production, so he had not much to say in those last few meetings. They just invited him because they knew he was essential to the success of the company but not because he was actually needed.

 The truth was that some of the people on the board felt that he was losing his touch. People didn’t seem to like his most recent creations, with many critics chiming in saying that it all seemed a little bit too boring and that “it had been seen before”. He was very aware of these criticisms but the had already said, several times, that he thought creativity could not be judged by anyone and that people saying whatever they wanted without context was just an insult to his imagination and his skill as a designer. He thought he should have all the freedoms needed to create and that was it.

 However, the company was secretly against this. They didn’t tell him any of it, but it was clear that if he didn’t deliver results, he would be kicked out without any consideration to his talent of his past results. At the end of the day, the only thing those people considered was money and if he wasn’t the one bringing it into their lives, they would find some other person that could have his vision and theirs, at the same time. It was clearly a possibility and they had in their minds at all times, even if he didn’t realize it.

 In his creative studio, everything was about lights and colors and all the beautiful fabrics that could be brought from every corner in the world. Everyone there was as beautiful as what they used to make dresses and other fashion products and everyone also seemed to be young and always happy, smiling and showing their teeth every step of the way. For an outsider, it was a very strange place to be in, even intimidating because of the attitudes of the people working there, some for years.

 The biggest office there was for him, the top designer, the one that had been the head of the whole creative area for the last two years. And he was a young man but he was already tormented by everything he had done in the past and his present ideas. He felt he was being left behind by his surroundings and that his past work was the result of some silly ideas that had come up from the mind of a naïve young man. And he always felt like that, never really feeling great about any of his work.

 He would spent his days drawing and coloring and checking new products and fabrics, talking to other creative like him and with people creating new things to be used in fashion. His whole life was about being creative and imaginative and sometimes he felt he just didn’t have enough of it. He even felt he had landed his job because of some astronomical mistake, because it was often that he felt like a failure, unable to make what people expected from him. He felt he was not what he was supposed to be.

 As a designer, he was very aware that he had to bring in results in order to have the chance to have such a group working for him, so he had recently visited some stores to check out his success with his own eyes. However, he noticed the latest collection was not working as well as he intended. He had worked so had and his team had put everything on it, all at once if that was possible. But apparently people were not nearly as excited about as they were while making it. That made him feel something he had not experienced before in his very short career filled with success.

 He realized that success could have really disastrous effects in a young man. After all, he had been forced to grow up very fast in order to be the person that was needed in such a competitive world. He remembered the days when he drew several drawings every single day, the days when he would be happy just coloring some nice drawing and then buying his own fabrics to make his creations a reality. He had to make the effort and it was hard and that felt good when he had a final product in his hands.

 The massive appeal of his designs had been his downfall; a crazy idea that had grown inside his head but that was only a lie. They had made him believe he was the only one doing fashion that young and that he was a special little flower growing in some kind of dark moat. But that sure wasn’t the case, and he noticed that from the beginning, with his first fashion show, where he was able to see how talented people was. They were better than what he was lead to believe, beautiful and creative people.

 And it was a mosh pit between them, a storm of talented souls that clashed one against the other. It was horrible for them and for the people that worked with them but they mostly never realized how vicious their world could be. They only thought about the imaginative process, about how beautiful it was to combine one thing with the other. They felt it was the best job in the world, the most glamorous and beautiful in all of existence, and that it couldn’t be topped by anything on the world.

 So he just decided to stay in his office for a whole day, working and working, not caring about anything else. He tried to create something that could really make him someone different, that could really tell others that he was a very unique soul and that his creations were much more than just clothes and accessories, more like works of art being carried around by beautiful people that knew how much effort and imagination had gone into their creation. He didn’t stop until his hands hurt.

 They found him the following day, dead on his working area. According to the doctors that examined him afterwards, he had died of a heart attack. It was very uncommon for such a young man to die like that, but his body had been under severe pressure and it was a very obvious conclusion to his story.

 However, others took his drawing and everything he had created that whole day in order to make one last collection. They said it was in his honor but it was only to make money out of his talents and his death. And people did fall into that trap, buying it in large numbers, save the company from its own demise.

To vanquish fear

   Trying clothes was one of those things that Rebecca had never really liked about going out to a mall, whether it was with her friends or her family. She would always see something cute that she would love to wear herself, but wouldn’t be able to bring herself to try it on and least of all buy it. Something just prevented her from actually trying to change, even when she really wanted to make something for her that would maker her at least a little bit more interesting, not only for men but also for everyone in general.

 She had never been the kind to talk to strangers or just initiate a conversation in the line of the grocery store. It was very difficult to find the right moment and the right words and apparently the right person to that with. And when she finally decided to do it, people would have moved on and she would already be out, walking home or something. Rebecca would always blame it on her being slow and not as smart as other people, but the reality of it was, and she knew it very well, that she was just too shy and insecure.

 Her parents had tried for years to get her out of her shell, almost pushing her to do different extracurricular activities in order to discover things she could be good at or that could help her relate better with people. She tried cooking and playing various sports, as well as knitting and dancing and also horseback riding and even volunteering to help those in need. She did all of them for some time and then quit when she realize she wasn’t really getting anything out of any of those activities, only frustration.

 After every single failure, she would go back home and stay in her room for hours and days, sometimes crying for being such a weird kid but then realizing she didn’t really care about other people and then taking on hobbies that could work with her being alone like drawing and writing. The only things she would ask her parents to buy for her would be pencils in every single color in existence, as well as notebooks and, once, a better laptop to keep a copy of everything she did just in case she needed it.

 For a while, she was able to just to that and come to school almost running in order to keep drawing and writing. Her parents were busy most of the time so, even if they had been worried at first because of her lack of skills with others, they soon realized that they had to be grateful their daughter was having such safe and creative hobbies, rather than causing problems for others or for herself. So they were happy buying her whatever she said she needed for her arts and they never doubted her skills again. However, it would soon be all for nothing because of the big changes that happened afterwards.

 As everyone knows, the Plague started its expansion about a year ago and in a matter of days, several millions had died suddenly and others had been severely deformed and turned into creatures without a proper mind. They had no thoughts of their own, nothing that could relate them to the people that had been before. They just lived, if that could be called living, to wander the world and attack those that the Plague had not killed in the first wave. The survivors moved around often, avoiding their former families and friends.

 Rebecca had been one of the few survivors of that cataclysm. It was very strange but, for a long while, she had been completely oblivious about the whole thing. Not only because she spent her days in her room, drawing and writing about all the things that came into her mind, but also because the Plague had expanded at the beginning of summer, meaning she had less reasons to be outside or wander around town. Rebecca enjoyed the sun more when she could be as away from it as she possibly could.

 She was already seventeen when everything happened. The day she heard shots outside and people screaming was the first one when she realized something was going on. She had been in her room for at least a week. Rebecca had learned to cook for herself a long time ago, as her parents would often be at work, so she had not missed them or needed them for anything. But the day the shots were fired, was the same day she ran out of pages on her favorite notebook, which had a beautiful Japanese design on the cover.

 Normally, the girl would ask her mother or father to go to the shopping mall and buy a new one but she wasn’t able to find them at all that they. She waited at home all day but they never came in. So she looked for their offices phone numbers and then things got even stranger because the phone wasn’t working. It was obvious that something very bad had happened because when night came, the lights suddenly went out and they never came back again. She was very scared and decided to stay in her room.

 She did so for a whole day until she heard shots again and then more screams and then silence. Rebecca was terrified and in need of her parents. It was true that she had never been really that good with people but she realized that her parents had been essential in her becoming at least a functional human being. She didn’t love being with them and she felt bad for that because she knew children were supposed to love their parents and she had never felt that. Until, she was alone. Until she had been forced to realize how dire her situation was without them. She cried herself to sleep that second night.

 By the third day, she came down to the kitchen and decided to pack every single piece of food she could find on a bag. She would carry that bag to her room and then survive whatever was happening in there. As she put everything on a suitcase that her father would often use for business trips, she realized she had never thought on turning on the television or the radio in order to know what was happening. She was about to do so but then she felt stupid because the electricity had stopped working two days ago and she knew that.

 Rebecca felt very stupid and realized filling a suitcase with crappy food was not going to save anyone from anything. If she wanted to know what was happening, and it was probably best that she did, it was imperative for her to step out of the house and confront the world, once again. She climbed the stairs fast and looked out the window, something she rarely did. There was no one on the street and no sounds could be heard. If there was a perfect time to come out of her house, that was it.

 She emptied the backpack she used to go to school and packed in some clothes and things she would need outside like a flashlight and batteries, some of the crappy food from the kitchen, a Swiss army knife her father kept in a drawer and a tiny bottle of pepper spray that her mother had indicated her on how to use, in the eventuality that a man would try to do something inappropriate to her or someone mugged her on the street. Of course, she had never found use for any of those things, until now.

 When ready, she slowly walked towards the front door of the house and opened the door with doubt. She was not as scared of what might have happened in the world, as she was from the exterior in general. She took a deep breath and slowly but surely walked beyond the front side of her house. Rebecca stopped for a moment and looked behind, wondering if she would ever go back there but she knew it was better not to ask too many questions, at least when she was so insecure about everything in the world.

 Rebecca started walking again and, in minutes, she was deep inside her neighborhood. Contrary to a normal day of summer, the streets were very empty and the sun was only heating up the cars that had been left outside. There were no corpses to see, so she was optimistic.

 She stopped being that when she got to the supermarket her family visited. A group of people was gathered in front of the door. She doubted for a minute but then, knowing she had to be brave, she yelled at them. She had vanquished part of her fears, just as a bunch of zombies looked at her, licking their dry lips.

A story of nudes

   I wanted to make myself visible. I had to do it in order not to feel imprisoned in the shadows, away from all that happened in the world. I needed to feel alive and wanted. So I started taking pictures using the few notions I knew of photography. At first, they were only pictures I had taken for assignments. They could be qualified as casual but also as artistic. I didn’t wanted them to be just pictures but also proof of what my life was like. So everywhere I went, I carried the camera. My father had bought me one and the moment I got it in my hands I started shooting. Every interesting plant, every nice sunset, every park or animal. I would take pictures of everyone of those and more.

 But at one moment I needed to do something else, something others were not doing and by others I meant the people around me. And the answer was obvious: nude pictures. No one was daring to do them. Was it maybe because I was twenty years old? Or was it that people are generally afraid of their own body? Who knows? But what I did know was that I needed a way out, a way to feel like myself, even if I had to do it all alone. I had tried dying my hair blue, changing my clothes, just being different from who I had been the past years, the last ones of school and first ones of college. I needed something to be only mine.

 So the first picture I took naked was of my legs. I wasn’t actually naked but it was the beginning of that time for me. I tried different tricks with lights and editing in various ways. I also took some shirtless pictures, never revealing my face. After all, everything that goes into the Internet may never be truly erased. People were going to see me and, even as much as I wanted to be out there, I wasn’t ready to show my face.

 With those first pictures, friends and other acquaintances praised my attempts for a more personal photography. They liked the way I edited my pictures and how I posed in them. After all, they were very personal and did tell tales about me to people. I was very happy to see that they were liked. Not universally but, after all, I was just learning. I didn’t wanted to be a photographer and did not pretended to be one. But I was learning so much about it that I immediately felt fascinated for an art that I had never truly reflected about.

 Back then; I liked it because it was something I could do alone. I love cinema but that needs a team to become a reality. I’ve never cared about the making of music so that wasn’t really an option and my hands are not made for the subtle and gentle work of a painter or a sculptor. No, it had to be photography. How the camera felt, the various shots to get the one I loved, the experiments I did based on what I was learning. It was all so attractive to me and, to some extent, it still is.

 I took the following step almost a year after opening a public Internet account to show my pictures. I had put on flowers, landscapes, sites, and my headless body. So the next step was showing more. I decided to show my face but not my penis. I didn’t want it to be the center of attention, not that it is anything special. But human nature is always governed by the animal feelings and it is obvious that people looking at a naked picture will always stare first at the genitals and then see the whole picture. We all do it and there’s nothing wrong with it but I wanted that distraction out so I took all pictures covering it or cropping the picture just right or even just turning around and showing my butt instead.

 Comments started pouring on the website. They were all very kind and many even racy, which I appreciated too. Friends and others were not as enthusiastic, rather focusing on the fact that I was naked and not so much on the pictures as such. They asked me if I wasn’t afraid of showing my face naked in public but I answered that there was nothing people could do with those pictures to me. They couldn’t threaten me because I had taken the first step. I’m not ashamed of my decision and I stood by it. And if someone sent one of them to my parents, as improbable as that would be, I would acknowledge my art and leave it at that.

 I have to clarify myself, though. The pictures were also an experiment for something else. They were not just about experimenting photography and having an artistic outlet that I had lacked for a long time. It was also, nudity to be more specific, a way to make people see me and judge me. I wanted to put myself out there and be bombarded with comments, good or bad. For a long time, a very long time, I had dealt with insecurity issues and I felt nudity would help me with those problems. And it did.

 With those pictures, and seeing so many more taken by a variety of men, I realized I wasn’t hideous or awful. I understood that the wide range of body types is what makes the human body beautiful. Of course, being gay, there is a beauty standard as there is one for straight men too. But homosexuality is more focused on how you look and any gay man who says they had never had an issue with that is lying. We judge each other harder. Maybe it’s because of the stereotypes that had been imposed for years but there is a certain idea of how a homosexual man has to look like and just be. And that was why I needed those pictures. I needed to prove myself and others that I could be who I am and people would like that.

 Yes, I did to receive approval. And that was the rotten seed that I never really paid attention to. It slowly grew for all those years, more than six to be exact, in silence. Meanwhile, I was successful with my experiment. People liked the way I got naked. At one point, I decided to post one picture fully naked and it was clearly one of the more successful ones in the account. After that, I just kept experimenting: shadows, lights, colors, places… It was all about the body. I still uploaded some other types of pictures that I liked but people seemed to be not very interested in them. Back then, I started to notice mostly men were adding me as their friend and the number grew a lot during the years. I have no idea how many contacts I had in there but I know they were thousands. Yes, thousands.

 Then, people got bold and started to ask for types of pictures, even more revealing ones. I said no to all of that. I was going to make a porno picture just because people wanted it. It wasn’t what I was looking for, to arouse anyone. My goal of helping myself with the pictures was, I believed, successful. Oddly enough, it was a time I had no one to share my new securities with. That was when I realized there was something wrong. Why were they thousands of man complimenting me online but in real life not even one dared to say anything to me? I tried giving the first step and that was always a failure. I cannot remember how many failed dates I’ve had. All of the crumbling fast after just a few words have been exchanged.

 Then came the people that denounced my pictures on the site where I had them. Each time I uploaded a picture, I left it without any safety advice on in order for more people to see it. After all, it was a picture of the human body, not from a corpse, or sexual or a violent act. But no. People started pouring saying my pictures were not adequate for the website. A website that had thousands of users pouring in only to check out naked men and women. If there’s something that I hate is hypocrisy and that was just the best example of it I had ever seen.

 I finished college and the rotten seed then activated, still silently. My old worries came back. Every picture I took was mediocre next to the other older ones but I decided to ignore that and do something else with my life. I traveled, I did other stuff and I even did some new things with my pictures and people liked them but less than before. And the opponents were still there, trying to push me off the edge.

 When I came back home one day, I realized they had succeeded. My account had been erased. The details are not important but I then suffered a very great depression. The rotten seed had finally won, all because I had made the wrong decision years ago. I kept failing in life, the future looked pitch black and now, what had been my only creative outlet for years, had been erased permanently. I was angry and outraged but also sad and vulnerable. A failed attempt to have a relationship pushed me to an abyss, from which I barely came out.

 Eventually I found out photography had lost most of its appeal to me. I still like to look at them and appreciate them but I haven’t held my camera in some time. Selfies, sure. Artistic photos, not really. I also found myself another outlet, one you are witnessing right now. And, to be honest, I hope I never have to leave this one, as it keeps me going, as photography never did. It was a stage in my life but that is the past. The present is this and the future… Well, let’s hope it’s there.

Lies

We love to believe them. They are comfortable an easy to accept and to live by. We don't really assume them as the truth but they are easy to come by and, let's face it, the truth is sometimes too much for many.

Let's say love. Many people still think they can change others or that love is eternal and forever. But we know what's real: no one changes for real, they only evolve in their ways of being. And love dies, and is reborn once and again. As we are beings of mutation and evolution, love is not bound to us and sometimes breaks during those transformations. It's unavoidable, unless the two people involved have worked for it.

Now, we have to state something else: the obsession of the human race for working and effort. Our humanity tells us that in order to be accepted and even admired, we have to work our bodies off to get somewhere and then, we will have recognition.

But is that really the way things should be? Some people say they work hard all their lives to have a better life but they realize that they never enjoy the life they have worked for. Is that really the life we should have? Or the one we want to have?

What about a life of going after what you want? About discovering your needs and passions? Many think they only can do that when they're young, in school. That's way many young people do drugs, have sex, crazy parties and trips. They think they have to gather memories for the future as their adult lives may not enable them to enjoy the things they like in the future.

That's no way of living, although is a respectable one. Many people worry about money and, unfortunately, they have to. They have no chance of avoiding the responsibility of work, unless they have no real goals.

And that's another problem nowadays: people who have no passions or goals are ostracized, as if working hard made them better than others. The world today has created levels and ranks, making certain people admirable and others, not. Those who work and show their work, are admired, even if their real effort was to look for the right people and doing something slightly better than the rest.

No goals means no ambition and this world runs on ambition. We are made to think we need more and, no surprise, most people work hard to get things that they already have or that they really don't need. In many countries it's more important to buy a TV or a car, rather than assuring a good education or healthcare.

More listings have being created even to classify us, to separate us in groups, in order to divide us even by the way we look: ugly, good looking, fat, skinny,... Or by our perceived behavior: rebellious, slut, intelligent, dumb, empty, sportive,...

And what about creativity? In our world, creativity is only appreciated if it server the general need for more of the same. The most award "creators" are the ones working for advertising companies. It has being proven that most campaigns in that world are rip offs one of the other and of the other. Less than 10% are actually original and even when they are, they serve only the great capital and no the people.

So, when our capacity to create is put aside, scientific thought is also put aside. Many countries prefer to invest their earnings in weaponry and other defense related items. Science is not really appreciated, even in "first world" countries. If the United States invested less in war and more in science, many needed discoveries would have already taken place.

We have been obliged to comply with physical models, for men and women, that are impossible or unlikely. Companies want people to think that they will be much more desirable if they are seen in the gym or doing some kind of exercise. The fact that exercising is good for your health, is almost not important. Looking good is what's important.

Our world is one of lies that we decide to live by. But what if we just said "Fuck it" and started living by our standards? Not everyone has to go at the same pace to get somewhere. If your friend is a successful actress, good for her. But do not try to be like her, try to discover who you are, good and bad, and go from there.

We are told to be fast and not stop because time is money. But time is also life and life, if science is correct, is not done twice by the same entity so we have to live as we want to and not as we are told to.

Let's always remember no to divide ourselves in tiny groups and ranks. That creates discrimination and discrimination leads to hate and hate is no way to live life. Just go as you want and see how much more fun life is if you just do your thing.