Only a superhero

   I could see the city, all of its lights moving beneath me. The avenues looked like serpents, wiggling about in all directions. And people were undistinguishable in the darkness of the night. Street lamps illuminated some of the areas but not all of them, so it was pretty obvious that there were patches of greater darkness within the city. In one of those, I had been caught and brought to that place, to the highest point of a tower that overlooked everything, like the mighty lair of some comic book villain.

 But the person that had brought me there was not exactly that. He was actually one of the people you might call “a good guy”. It was me who was being thought of as a villain. According to him, and to the organization he worked for, what I did could be understood as an act of treason against my own country, for which I could be detained and processed, ultimately landing in some awful prison where my fortune would be sealed. I had already gone through it in my mind, again and again.

 However, I hadn’t predicted him to bring me to that place. True, the building held several offices for his government entity, but ordinary criminals would never go there, least of all to be incarcerated there temporarily. It was obvious that something else was going on and I had no idea what that was about. So I had to pretend I was very certain of everything and the best way to do that was avoiding answering questions that could let them know how much I didn’t know. It was some sort of cat and mouse game.

 Him and his partner, a younger woman, tried to interrogate me for what seemed like hours but I was too good for them. They couldn’t get anything from me, nothing more than what they already knew. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t been the one to hack into many of their offices, but I wasn’t going to tell them anymore than that. After all, I lived in the shadows; I knew how to move among the scum of the Earth. They just thought they knew how, but they had barely seen a glimpse of what the world hides beneath the surface.

 They left me alone after a couple of hours. They held me in a room that overlooked the city. It must have looked like a normal office from the outside but from the inside it was pretty much like any other cell. It had bars and a bunk bed and somewhere to piss if I wanted to. It even had that kind of door that has the little window in order to pass food through. That reminded me I was very hungry, but I didn’t ask for anything because that could be used by them to try to pull things from me. So I decided to take a nap instead, trying to take advantage of the lack of sound around the cell.

 It was the next day when his companion came and brought me something to eat. She was very nice, very cute, obviously with no experience whatsoever in her field. Maybe she had passed the tests and all of the training, but it was obvious she wasn’t exactly the top agent around. As I grabbed the tray with food, she sat on the other side of the bars and told me that some others had been captured. I just ate, pretending I hadn’t heard her. But I did and I wanted to know everything. It was important to know.

 She told me about the raid on the warehouses we operated from and how many of our computers had been seized. Yet, she knew very well no one would get one document from all of those. Of course, we always knew when they were close and our systems would erase themselves in an instant if that were the case. But it was intriguing that she knew so much, for such a rookie agent. I kept on eating; it was toast and scrambled eggs with a small yogurt and a glass of orange juice. Much like a plane meal.

 I drank a bit of juice as she stood up and got closer to the bars, just looking at me. I looked back at her, defiant. I didn’t trust her at all and it was obvious she was posing as this silly little woman, when in reality she could be even more dangerous than the guy that had actually caught up with me. So I finished my meal as soon as I could and then just put the tray on the place in front of the little window. She looked at me for a bit longer and then grabbed the empty tray and left. I could hear her heels walking away.

 Lying on my back, I wondered what she could be up to. Maybe she had been set by her partner to intimidate me in some way, but it didn’t make any sense. He was the one with the experience to do so. Even if he wanted to throw me off, I believe he was the kind of man that wants recognition for getting things done. Besides, it was obvious he had a certain obsession with the whole case. There were men and women killing and raping all over town and he was obsessed with a few hackers trying to make things a bit better.

 When I began hacking computers, I did it for fun of course. In order to help friends get better grades in school or maybe just blackmail someone in order to give me some money. Yes, it was illegal and wrong and stupid. And I will never say those were my best moments. However, I discovered another layer to the whole thing when this chick in college introduce me to several of her friends and got into the real hacking world. Big bank accounts and the most private and so-called safe websites in the world. And we could just enter and take whatever we wanted. Just like that.

 At the start, they only wanted to go in for the money. And yeah, as a kid that had no money to pay for a decent school, I wanted to have my pockets filled with bills and coins. But then, I realized I could do so much more with all my skills. My first move was to get rid of my money problem, and I did that in a semi-legal way. I hacked into several stock market systems and found out the best way to make money in there. So I invested some money and saw it flourish in a few days. I can say I’m rich now, but I don’t.

 Because my next step was the one that got me where I am now. It was the step that made me run away from home and live with a bunch of strangers in filthy storage warehouses. I decided it was time to give something back to the community that I had use in my advantage. So I grabbed my keyboard and started going around the dark web, taking jobs as a hacker for hire. I would only do things that I thought were “good” or that they will make things fair and make justice prevail above all.

 I guess you could call it my Batman phase or something. The point is, I did that for at least two years. I helped parents get the men and women that had assaulted their children, I helped children find their parents in the midst of war and I even helped people get out of very difficult situations. I couldn’t be with them the whole time but it was my job as a hacker that saved their lives. I cannot shy away from the truth: I did save lives and made the world a better place. And yet, I end up in a cell.

 Maybe my earlier mistakes are too serious or maybe they just don’t like people being better than them. However, none of that explained why I was in that building or why was it taking them so long to send me to an actual jail. I was getting impatient and that’s not good for a person that expends his days sitting down in front of a computer, playing superhero on the information superhighway. When I heard the heels again, I stood up in a second and waited to see her face, her voice taunting me again.

 But she didn’t. She opened the door and asked me to step outside. Then, she asked that I follow her. I could have overpowered her but there were so many agents around, it would have been impossible to escape. I was free from shackles or handcuffs, but I was still a prisoner walking who knows where.

 She brought me in front of a bunch of people, mostly men, lead by the agent that had caught me. He was looking very pissed. It was the woman who talked. She said they were offering me work, in exchange for not putting me in jail. My reaction surprised more than one person there: I laughed out loud, proud.

Unexpected

   Adam had always been, to the eyes of others, perfect. He had always been taller than others, but not too tall. He was also smart, but not exceedingly intelligent. He was a very sporty guy but also found time to enjoy and participate in so many other activities such as theatre and dancing. Besides, everyone loved his physique, his smile and his nice and gentle way of being. He was perfect, as said before but the only thing people judged him for was the choice of his career. He had envisioned, at first, to become a professional footballer. Then, as he was stopped everywhere he went, he was asked to be a model several times and he enjoyed every experience he had doing that. He even acted on a couple of TV advertisements for products aimed at young people.

 So it was a surprise, to everyone, that he ended up being a porno star. Yes, Adam had found a way to earn his life honestly by taking his clothes of and having sex on camera. As a model, he knew he looked great on camera and as a sports player he knew his body was more than enough to be able to pose naked. The sex part was the most awkward for him but once he got to know the people, it was more comfortable. He had chosen this path, solely because his family was having money issues and he wanted to help them as much as he could so the best way to do it was with porn, as they paid fast and generously. Before he realized, he became one of the favorite actors and he was doing movies in other places, travelling for conventions and getting more and more in the industry.

 Different was the life of David, who was not a perfect guy, or at least he would never be named as such by anyone he knew. He was not good at sports and he didn’t really like any of them. And the concept of going to a gym, a “cage for monkeys” as he put it, was not even in consideration. He was smart but not intelligent and he had no special talents, at least not that he had found in himself. Physically, David was rather short and not fat but not skinny either. He didn’t really like to take his clothes off at the beach but didn’t mind doing it in his house. David and Adam were very different but, somehow, they ended up in the same place.

 But not in the same capacity. David had gone to college and studied to become a film director. He loved movies and wanted to make his own, mainly science fiction and maybe some action ones. He loved everything that had to do with creation and writing and he was ready, at some point, to take over the world with his ideas. But that didn’t happen. Finding a job, specially when you’re young and have no experience. So David sent his curriculum everywhere and only one company responded. He only found it was a porno production company once he went there for an appointment with the head producer. But he saw it was money and he needed experience so he took the job.

 The two guys didn’t meet immediately or anything. Adam was too busy getting famous in his medium and, eventually, he even told his family about what he really did for a living. They were shocked at first and even prone to convince him not to keep working on porn, but then they realized it was that money that had put them through rough times, so they couldn’t really say much. With time, they learned to respect Adam’s decision and they would simply not ask him anything about his job, except maybe when it was him that brought it up, normally something from a trip or a funny story he had lived. He understood those unspoken conditions and was fine with them, as he knew his family would eventually be ok with it.

 He would travel a lot, going from city to city, country to country, visiting all conventions aimed at adult entertainment. The funny thing the first couple of times was the amount of people that recognized him. Both men and women knew who he was from ads online or his movies and that, to him, felt very strange but very good too. He would pose with many fans for pictures and would sign various deals in those places, to put his face on several products sold to adults, toys and so on, but he also signed on for more and more movies, in other countries and with actors and actresses he had never worked with. He had good experiences and bad too but he was always “the perfect guy” and that was even the name of one if his movies.

 David, on the other hand, was working very hard for not so much money. At first the pay was good but then he was transferred to another production company, one that was smaller, and his workload became much larger and his paycheck much smaller. He endured for a bit as others praised him because of his technical ability, something he didn’t even know he had in himself. He did so for several months until he was transferred back to the place where he had a better workload and was surprised to know they wanted him to do the lighting for all the top movies they were releasing. That meant, that all the movies he would do would be the ones the production company was going to push harder on their clientele and that meant also that David’s work would be known.

 The young man was happy to see that people know respected him more, even if they didn’t always knew his name. He had control over a whole section of these movies and, even if they weren’t what he wanted his life to be about, it was a good beginning, as his technical expertise would suffice to make someone important look at him. But at the beginning it was all about porn and filming in these crazy locations such as lavish mansions and fantastic forests and even a rundown train station. It was funny to him how everything got into porn in such an easy way and no one even doubted it would work.

 After returning from a filming in Japan, Adam had several hours on the plane to think about his life. He was as perfect and gorgeous as he would ever be and he had the favor of many people that surrounded him but he had started to wonder if he didn’t need something more in life, maybe something to call his own. He had the idea of starting a pizza business but the idea remained there on his mind because of the amount of responsibilities he had and that he couldn’t ignore. People were also asking why he didn’t have a girlfriend or a boyfriend but he would never answer those questions and he didn’t really know the answer. Maybe it was because, in that line of work, it was best not to combine your personal life and your private one and adult movies are something not every couple would understand fully.

 Meanwhile, David had been contacted by an independent filmmaker, who had asked him to pitch him some ideas for a mystery movie. He had seen David’s work in the adult industry and had also read some of his stories that he published online and had been surprised by his ability to tell stories. So now David had a way to slip away from porn and reroute his life towards what he really wanted. But as he developed the mystery film, he didn’t stop working with the company that had paid him for so long. After all, he had commitments to them and he didn’t wanted to just drop everything and move on to something he didn’t even know if it would work or not. So he opted for patience.

 Eventually the mystery film went into production and David decided it was time to leave the adult film industry. He announced it to his boss and they scheduled together his last film that would star none other than The Perfect guy, in other words, Adam. Curiously, it was Adam’s last film too before he decided to move along and create his pizza business with his family. The filming was very relaxed, despite being quite ambitious for a porno film. They had amazing cameras and lights and costumes. It was a true film being made and it was, for many, the first time porno films were being done in such magnitude, with such grandeur and potential. It was supposed to be a game changer.

 The truth is, Adam and David only spoke once and it wasn’t even a conversation. It was David telling Adam to move a couple of steps backwards for the lights to hit him in the best way and Adam complying. That was it. Adam was of course no interested in David, as he didn’t even acknowledged him at all. David, on his side, did look at Adam extensively as it was stupid not to but he got bored after the first half hour. He was just too “up there” and he was just himself. So after they wrapped up, everyone went home and carried on with their lives.

 Adam’s business was a success, although only in his hometown were the pizzas sold nicely and people would often ask him if he was who they thought it was and also asked for a picture. David’s mystery film was well received in festivals and he went on to win a couple of awards for it. He moved on to be a prolific director, notably adding very intimate scenes in many of his movies, all of them beautifully lit.

Writing Crap

My days are always the same: I wake up ten minutes before 10 AM to watch this tv show I like. As I do that, I eat breakfast. My breakfast is basically anything that lays around the fridge or the cupboard. I don't like breakfast, it annoys me for some reason.

After that, my mom is already up too so we watch more Tv for like an hour and then I shower, get dressed, tidy up my bedroom and by 1 PM I should be writing on my laptop.

And then, things get really easy or really annoying. Sometimes I've had an idea before and it comes back as I seat in front of the screen so it comes right up: every detail, every character, everything there is to say to make it good enough to read.
However, I practically never make corrections. That's because I'm lazy and also because I think that makes me kind of a bad writer, if I'm not capable to see errors as I write them.

Well, that's on the good days. On the bad days, it sucks, big time. I normally come up with stories I can write fast and don't make me go crazy. As one day I write in English and the following day in Spanish and so on, it gets easier or harder depending on how ready I am to write in one language or the other. Some things are easier on one or in the other. it just depends on my mood or something.

It happens a lot too that after i began, already with two pages finished, I realized how awful my story of the day is. I read a paragraph and I get pissed, sad and annoyed at the same time. It either doesn't make sense or it sound stupid or childish... It make me angry.
Sometimes, if I spent too much time doing it, I just post it and think "Fuck it". No one appear to be reading these so who to fuck cares.
If I happen to be particularly annoyed by my writing, I just erased it all and start again. Those times, I think how awful it would be if someone read my blog and thought "What is this?". So I write something else, out of the blue.

Writing is the only thing I think I am able to do correctly. I mean, I make cupcakes and I read a lot of wikipedia, but writing is my thing. I'm an idiot with numbers and social issues don't really get to me. Let's just say if I was a president I would very rapidly become a dictator.

And I know it's weird and frowned upon, for a so-called writer, but I don't really love reading. I mean, sure I read but not huge books and 5 in a year. Maybe I read one a year. I mean, for many people I know I suck a lot. But I believe writing and reading are two different things, that have little to do with one another. But that's me and, quite possibly, I'm the only one who thinks that.

So this is what I do. Write a blog and just hope for thing to pick up somehow. I have a career and a masters degree but no company gives a fuck about that. They want people they can mold and I'm past that. Not to say I'm such a creative soul but I'm not an empty canvas either.

After writing, I normally go walking somewhere. my goal every week day (there's no way in hell I'm going to exercise on weekends), is to walk 10 kilometers. I do it through nice little neighborhoods or by avenues or on huge malls. I don't care as long as I have time to make my brain calm down.

To sum it up, here are the reasons why I NEED to walk everyday:

 - Live with parents
 - Never had a job. NONE.
 - Have never been paid to do nothing. For real.
 - I'm 25.
 - I'm gay.
 - Social life in a coma.
 - What the hell. I do need the exercise.

And those are all (probably not) the reasons why I need to breath some fresh air and prevent myself from going crazy, again. I have my "rage episodes" and they can get pretty ugly but I writing has gotten those under control.

See? Writing is not only about doing the one thing that I do good. It's about doing something that makes me calm, that has the incredible capacity of make me think and just concentrate. I left school and college so long ago and I need some structure in some kind of way.

Before you think "the gym is nice" or some shit like that, let me tell you a little something. I hate gyms, I loath them and the people that love them. That's it. I won't apologize for that and won't explain it because, let's face it, how many people will be reading this?

Anyhow, what I like the most about writing is the imagination part. Many people think about techniques or structures or storylines and I don't really care about that. Actually, that doesn't really matter because what really matters is a good story, a real one, kind of original. That's it.

My career was focused on cinema and that made me think about how brilliant minds can be when they put all their energy on something. We are all in awe of people that have come up with awesome tales and characters and dialogue and we worship them like gods but we forget they were once like us.

Ok, maybe not like me but you get my point. They were people just looking to make their dreams real and by that I don't mean "dreams" like in "making your wishes come true". Not that. I mean taking out from you mind what's there and put it in display for others to see. That's the dream that comes true, not if you find a loved one or win the lottery.

Imagination for me is the most attractive thing. Maybe that's way my social life is in a coma. Yes, I have friends and they are a small number, which for me it's great, I know them better because of that. But I fail to make new ones because I get bored fairly fast. I mean, if I'm not interested in you in the first five minutes, believe, were not going to be anything.

Same goes with guys. If they prove to me that they have no imagination whatsoever, there will be no second date. Or second chat, to be accurate. Nowadays, not even that. I have no energy or personality left to have a steady relationship with anyone. And before you say "Someone will come when you least expect it", let's just say I have been waiting for 25 fucking years so kiss that.

Well, I think I digress a bit from my main point. For me writing makes things happen were I need them to happen first: in my mind. Yes, life is about physical things and so on but that hasn't worked for me, so what's bad about creating stuff for people to read and, first and foremost, to make me feel I'm not a failure and that I can do something?

No harm done I think.

To be honest, I prefer writing my crap every single day, that forcing myself into a life I know I will hate and loath every single day of my life. Unemployed and poor? Well, yeah. But hey, there are always fast food chains.