Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.

- Titus Maccius Plautus

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Yesterday I turned 19. I felt exactly the same as when I turned 18, which is also how I felt when I turned 17. I had a quiet birthday at home, a drastic change from my parties when I was younger, drowning in the ball pool of the sticky, kid-infested gymnasium that is Chuck-E-Cheese.

I scrolled through the many birthday greetings on Facebook, and I found it incredible. All of these people I’ve met in my life took the time to wish me a Happy Birthday. Sure it doesn’t take much to say it, and maybe some did it without a second thought, just another monotonous chore of Facebook, like poking or ignoring creepers. But even though I know this I can’t help but feel somewhat appreciated.

Going through the names reminds me just how much has changed. I had friends whom I did everything with, and now we barely talk online. People who before going to college were just a profile picture to me, are now people I can honestly say I love with all of my heart. People are always coming in and out of my life, recycled almost, and its always been like this since as long as I can remember. I guess it just hit me now seeing all those names on my wall.

But as I continue to move forward in my life and my best friends of today become my acquaintances of tomorrow I wanted to say something before it’s too late. Before no one cares if I have a happy birthday or not. Before people forget where they even knew me from.

No matter how much you think I don’t remember, how busy I may seem, how different i’ve become, or how distant I will become, just please know one thing. If you were ever my friend, I care about you, and I will always care about you.

The setting sun, and music at the close, As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, Writ in remembrance more than things long past.

- William Shakespeare

The setting sun, and music at the close, As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, Writ in remembrance more than things long past.

---

I am alive. I am happy.

My days seem a bit brighter, my smiles a bit bigger.

And why shouldn’t they, summer is so near I can almost taste it, and I have great friends to spend it with.

I reminisce.

Driving through Chino Hills, it seems like every block holds a memory.

I ate pizza there with my soccer team.

I cried waiting to get picked up on that curb.

I held hands going down that sidewalk.

This is my whole life right here, nestled between a few major streets.

Nostalgia is inevitable walking across campus. From open classroom doors I hear my old teachers still lecturing the same crap, still cracking the same lame jokes.

I remember so much.

I remember walking into a junior science class freshman year thinking it was IPS.

I remember watching a fight break out at the lunch tables.

I remember all the people getting asked to every dance,

and getting rejected.

The sun called high school is beginning to set. It’s no longer something beating down on me, nothing to sweat over. Now it’s beautiful, that perfect glow behind the horizon, something you wish everyone could see. Something you want to cherish until the very end.

People are already getting choked up, especially with yearbooks going around, but there’s still so much more left to do.

So let’s put off the tears, there will be plenty of time for that later. For now let’s just enjoy it. Let’s just make a few more good memories. After all,

how often do you get to see a sunset this beautiful?

We do not remember days; we remember moments.

- Cesare Pavese

---

My hands on her hips, she fit me so perfectly, my missing puzzle piece.

She tilts her head back; a warm hand walks up my neck to my face.

She pulls me closer. My eyelash brushes her face, breath tickles her neck.

Flesh upon flesh. Our movements so natural, so intimate. She ran my hands along her dress down to her thighs. She looked back at me, eyes full of lust, lips dripping with temptation.

The most amazing

unforgettable

boner.

Good prom.

Be black, shine, aim high.

- Leontyne Price

---

Lately I’ve been getting comments to the effect of “Wow nick you got blacker”. First of all there are two ways I can take a comment like this. On one hand I can be offended by the way that it generalizes and oversimplifies black people, or on the other hand I can take this as a compliment. Here is why I take it as the later. All my life, my identity, my so called “blackness” has been an enigma, and if you look at my environment it’s easy to see why. I am a product of the suburbs, attending schools where the majority was either white or asian, and as a result, so were my friends. So I grew up doing the things they did, watching anime, playing video games and even joined band. Sure I had black friends, but choosing band over sports was the fork in the road for me and my black peers.

However, it wasn’t until junior high when someone first accused me of being “whitewashed” or even “asianwashed”. When people found out I was in band they would tell me “you’re not black.” And as stupid as something like that may sound it really got to me. When did I stop being black? Why can’t I like what I like and still be black? It was frustrating to me.

People don’t get that I LOVE being black. I love my culture and I love what we stand for. And by what we stand for I don’t mean anything one dimensional such as sports, rapping, dancing, or any of that other bullshit. No, the beauty of the black culture lies in the struggle and perseverance of its people. It’s about sticking together and lifting one another up, this is what I love most, how universal our brotherhood is. The fact that I can be almost anywhere, see another black person who I’ve never met in my life, and still take the time to say “sup”. So when someone tells me that I’m not black, I take it as a huge insult.

Although I myself knew who I was, even though I have always felt black, I still felt the need to prove it. And admittedly I would try different things, mostly with clothes, in an effort to earn myself some “black points”. And it seems like I’ve finally earned enough because this year I’ve gotten a lot tighter with other black kids on campus. I almost forgot how nice is it to hang out with people like myself. A while back I went with a friend to her church, everyone was asian. Everywhere I went I turned heads, but it was understandable since they don’t see very many black people there. And even though they were some of nicest and welcoming people I have ever met, I could never  be totally comfortable. Ethnicity shouldn’t matter and for the most part it really doesn’t, but I think it’s just human nature to want to be with others that look like you. Sometimes I don’t want to be seen as “the black kid”. I want to be see for who I am, who I’ve always been.

I just want to be seen as Nick Seranio.

Light is good from whatever lamp it shines.

---

The surrounding area is nice. Suburbia. Just the way I like it. Everywhere I look is evidence of the hustle and bustle of Saturday. People on bikes whiz by, joggers stand idle at lamp posts, waiting to continue their run. Shoppers go in with empty carts and come out with them filled to the brim. The city is teeming with life.

My dad makes a left onto Campus, and down the main road. I see the campus for the first time with my own eyes.

Lush emerald green groves encompass me; nature welcomes us with open arms. Tranquility. I instantly feel at ease among the growth. The beds are filled with a plethora of flowers. So many colors, they shine bright like the lights on a stage. Every single petal smiles back at me. You can tell the soil here is rich, a great place to plant your roots, a good foundation.

Even the sky seems just a little bit bluer here.

Welcome to UC Irvine.

We continue the drive, which felt more like an expedition the deeper we went. No matter where the road took us it was the same everywhere. 360 degrees of beautiful. Even the In-N-Out was nestled seamlessly between some trees.

“Fiat Lux” the Vice Chancellor says with a pause. Let there be light.

The most beautiful thing about college is the discovery. No other time in your life are you so free. Free to pursue whatever you feel passionate about, free to let ambition take over and follow your dreams, free to discover who you really are.

I want this school to be my light, I know I can shine here.

The future is so bright, tomorrow can’t come soon enough.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

- Hellen Keller

---

I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen. My mom was on the couch watching Fox news. I pull out some frozen enchiladas to warm up, I was famished. I put them  into the microwave. 5 minutes.

I turned and finally took notice of the story being covered on the news. The reporter’s faces were grim and their tone solemn.

Her name is Sandra Cantu. 8-year old girl. 4 feet tall and only 45 pounds. Missing since March 27.

She’s cute. What happened to her I wonder? Is she even still alive? They show the grieving parents making a public speech. Their words full of pain, tears spilling from their eyes.

“Come home. Please. Come home.”

Sad.

My mother gets up to go into the garage to grab something. Shakes her head.

The reporters move on to the next story. As sad as something like that it is, it’s common, and the news must go on, life must go on.

I go to grab some utensils but I stop.

Her face is still in my head, the parent’s sobbing is still in my ears. Why? Anger and sadness begin to fill me.

She is only 8 years old. She is only 45 pounds but the weight is so heavy. It’s as if she was the last little piece to tip the scale. All the horrible incidents of children gone missing, abducted, raped. They all caught up to me, reality caught up to me.

She’s not coming back. And so the scale tips.

I start to cry. Hard.

I’ve been looking away all my life from things like this, from the world.  How disgusting the world is. I sit down on the couch and try to wipe the tears from my eyes, my mom comes back in, looks at me worried. I tell her I was just really shaken up. She calms me down.

I hope they find her.

Beep!

My food is ready.

I must not have noticed.

To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship.

- Doménico Cieri Estrada

---

I’ve witnessed many relationships in my 4 years at Ayala and they all seem to follow the same trend. While each relationship has its own flavor, unique to that couple, they all are doomed to the  same fate.

First the two meet. From acquaintances to friends, from friends to better friends. After a while they notice each other, I mean really notice each other. The subtleties in the way she swings her hips when she walks, the way his dimples are so defined when he smiles.

They crush on one another. They flirt. Some get right to the point, they rush it, while others talk for months. Until finally…

He asks her out.

He’s never been happier. She’s never been happier.

New couple. Fresh amour. No end in sight.

They are inseperable, thoughtful, caring. Some don’t show it in public, but they are.

They spend time together and become even closer. Movies, dinner, amusement parks, and their feelings for one another intensifies. They become fond of each others warmth. Every time they hold hands, every hug, every loving stare, every kiss has such intimacy and meaning behind it.

Love.

“I love you” He says.

“I love you” She says.

And they mean all three syllables from the bottom of their hearts.

For now. Not love, infatuation.

Everything is perfect, they are in love and nothing could be better.

Nothing can be better.  Nothing will be better.

There is nothing more to gain,  only to lose. The only way to go from here is down.

Down.

There is discrepancy in affection. Incongruity in love.

Fights. They make up but it’s just not the same. That tension is still there, that uncertainty. Their eyes wander to other people, and their mouths follow.

Jealousy. More fights. More yelling. More tears.

The cycle continues, each fight unraveling that ball of love that was once so solid, now reduced to a fragile strand of twine.

The big fight. No one wants to make up, no one wants to say sorry, no one cares anymore.

Twine snaps. They break up. Single.

Alone.

It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt.

-Abraham Lincoln

---

Social skills, or my lack of them, have been plaguing me my entire life, but only recently have they had such a profound impact. I’ve always been shy and that’s understandable for a lot people, but it has really gotten out of hand. So much so that talking, even small talk, has become an uphill battle for me. There’s nothing wrong with being quiet, as long as you’re happy.

But what if you’re not?

What if you really want your voice to be heard, what if you want to be more personable?

I do. And I really do try. But I always hit that wall, a wall I feel I’ll never be able to scale. A wall beyond my reach.

My inability to speak is frustrating and even suffocating at times, as if it is keeping me from being the person I want to be.

I know what I need to do. Relax, speak up, say what I mean, and just stop thinking about it.

Stop thinking.

True, the more time I spend thinking is less time spent talking, but I wonder, if I didn’t think so hard about what I was going to say, would I say anything at all? Is it better to say something stupid than nothing at all?

At this point it is.

I make everything so awkward. If only they knew me better, if only I could just be comfortable around them, if only they knew me.

But why can’t they know me? Why can’t I just express myself the way I am right now? Why can’t I?

So many people I will never know.

So many things left unspoken.

So many feelings left to rot.

Sex is emotion in motion.

- Mae West

---

I find it funny how sex is such a huge part of my life and yet I’m still a virgin.  It has always eluded me, and in a way it still does. Just like any other little boy I was curious, and now I just laugh at the lengths I would go to just to get even minimal exposure to sex.

Channel 30. I will never forget. It was an HBO channel that showed playboy when it got late enough. Of course my parents didn’t pay for the channel, so the picture consisted of wavy indecipherable images with its hue changing every few seconds. You could hear everything just fine, the moans and what not, but the picture was too sporadic to make out anything. But like an obedient dog I would wait patiently, my tongue lopped outside my mouth, excited, all for that one moment. That split second when the picture was crystal clear and I saw them, those magnificent creatures. Boobs. Soft, supple, perky boobs. And all that waiting, all the time spent in dreadful fear of getting caught was totally worth it for those few seconds in heaven. Then the picture would return to its chaotic state. What a tease.

Innocence. That’s all it was, a little boy trying to see some hooters and wondering why his pants pitched a tent every time he did.  It was all about peeping between your mother’s hands as she covered your eyes when the naked scene in Titanic came up.

But somewhere between when I was a little boy and now that innocence was lost. I no longer had to look for sex, it came to me. The media is saturated in it and almost uncomfortably so.  It’s almost impossible to avoid it, even if I wanted to. I was watching TV with my dad the other night and I heard something all too familiar. The horrible Jamaican steel drums of the  Girls Gone Wild commercial. I changed the channel lickety split but to no avail. Even after changing it to Home Improvement there was nothing Tim Allen could say or do to improve the awkwardness in my home at that moment.

I don’t mean to come off bashing sex or anything, anyone who knows me knows that I’m probably the last person who would. All I’m saying is things are different. Or maybe things have always been like this, I was just too naive to notice. The first time I heard about someone at my highschool having sex, I was shocked. Didn’t they know you weren’t supposed to have sex before marriage? Didn’t they know it’s against the law? Of course they knew.

They just didn’t care.

The more and more I heard about the sexual endeavors of my peers the less surprised I became. I just accepted it. I just accepted that these old fashioned values of mine have no place in today’s society.The world is changing, and even something that has been there since the creation of man and woman is being seen in a different light as well.

So am I going to have sex before marriage? Who knows. I’ve just thrown away the notion that  if you have premarital sex you’re a bad person. Yes there are plenty of reasons why people shouldn’t do it (out-of-wedlock births etc.) and personally,  I have a lot of respect for abstinence. But many of my friends are adults now (well, legally), and if they want to have sex it is perfectly fine by me, I won’t look down on them or think any less of them because of it.

But I think I will stop here. This is a complex subject and this post doesn’t need to be any longer.

It’s too big.

. . .

That’s what she said.

When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.

- William Arthur Ward

---

If not for the advice of a friend, you would be reading something completely different right now. Something full of hate, anguish, and blatant name calling. But I didn’t start writing to rant or make inflammatory statements. I started writing to understand and find the deeper meaning of the events in my life. To organize my thoughts and feelings to make sense of it all. To freely express myself, to be human.

Initially I knew absolutely nothing about Gabby Yates, except that she was popular. Looking back on it now it was impossible. “We” were impossible, it was a miracle really. We just didn’t and probably never will, see eye-to-eye. So how did it even happen in the first place? Simple.

I wanted to be her White Knight.

I wanted to save her. Save her from bad relationships, save her from piece of shit guys, save her from her past, save her from tears. In her I saw a damsel in distress, awaiting her fair prince, her knight in shining armor.

And into her life I rode, and all was well.

For a short while.

Being my first relationship naturally I wanted everything to be perfect and I put forth a great effort to make it so. To be that perfect guy I promised I would be, spontaneous, charming, attentive, all of those things. And yet despite my efforts it wasn’t enough for her, or rather she didn’t care. I mean she did care, but she sure had a funny way of showing it. In exchange for my efforts she showed me she cared by flirting with other guys right in front of me, and eventually cheating on me. True we were never officially together and so in a way all of that should have been perfectly fine. But the way I saw it there was a general understanding, and unspoken rule.

After you share kisses with someone, meet their parents, become one another’s valentine, exchange gifts, talk until the wee hours on the phone, and hold hands in public, call me crazy, but I think you have an obligation to one another.

But this was the fundamental difference between me and her.

Alas her promiscuity never ceased and I drew weary of looking the other way, of pretending this wasn’t happening right in front of me,  of being humiliated in front of my friends. The only thing I could ever trust her to do was to hurt me. At first I thought I was doing something wrong, maybe if I was better to her she wouldn’t be leaving me and my confidence began to erode. Maybe I’m just paranoid, overly jealous, and she would tell me I was too. But it was her, it always was her. I’m not saying she can’t have fun and enjoy herself, she can. I just wanted her to leave me out of it.

So I ended it. Whatever “it” was. The day after graduation.

I don’t know why I stayed with her for as long as I did. She wasn’t the sharpest person in the world and admittedly I was kind of embarrassed of her. Not just for the flirting, but when she would answer things in class and be way off the mark, or just be loud and make a scene with that bombastic personality of hers.  My friends would always ask and they still do:

“What did you ever see in her?”

I always pretended I was ok with it, laughing it off with my fake smile. Now that I think about it she’s probably never even seen my real smile.

Up until now I hated her intensely. I felt so stupid for wasting so much money, time and effort on her. Sometimes I wished I had never met her.

But I was wrong to hate her, I realize that now. True, Gabby and I are two totally different people, but should I really hate her for that? She never intentionally meant to hurt me as much as she did, that’s just who she is. And I’d be lying if I was to say I never had a single good memory with her. I’ve been bitter too long, it’s all in the past now. Time has healed everything and I can see in her eyes how deeply sorry she is, and yet I never gave her the time of day, never gave her the chance. So in return I want to say I am sorry for not manning up and saying this sooner.

Gabby,

I forgive you.