What I'm Feeling Now

What has {Popcorn} been up to / breaking my silence...

The song Norman Rockwell used to wreck me. Driving past Franklin Village was my road of sacrifice. Because of the meet-cute of life at the old record store.

Sunny days reflecting off resplendent tress send me into moody reflection. Poetry and art saved my sense of life, but it never brought me any company.

Five years gone by. All the old wounds closed and now my heart lies in Koreatown. I feel my country disintegrating around me, while so many eyes look towards the screen and not the sinking ground.

Hello Love by Jessie Ware used to melt me. I would think of my first time at the Wiltern where I heard that song live, hyped up on my edible, hoping the entire night to catch Stan by the corner of my eye and rekindle our dating. Did he lose interest or was he busy thinking of moving to New York? I’ll never know.

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I’m sorry my dear readers. I’ve been a cruel mistress, depriving you of my thoughts and my wicked words for what feels like a year. My mind has been a vortex and sadly I had to declare writing the least important of my trinity of arts, having already dedicated seven years to writing secret poetry on my phone.

My drag nights have been too fun and my fierce designs too impatient to be made for me to sit down and contemplate on my lonesome.

I’ve had a plethora of essay ideas but inspiration was lacking or I didn’t have the energy to think thru my arguments to present them confidently. Some of the embryos are

• On the taboo of suicide and why I think it has a place in society

• Follow up on my sex essay: a handful of new sexual partners and my newfound experience with monogamy

• The sexual appeal of Robin Shou in 1995’s Mortal Kombat and how it informed the development of my sexual attraction as a child

• My years-long paranoia of crumbling American society and the inertia of everyone I know

• What it’s like to do drag

• Album/movie reviews

• My favorite coffee spots

• Interviewing local colorful characters, such as my favorite stripper, my drag queen ex-Mormon substance abuse disorder-having bestie, a gen X painter/DJ/bar back/underground party host drag queen, a 90s club kid that’s still around and had me model in one of his nightclub runway shows

• Why I love LA

• Why I hate LA

• An honest portrait of every single recurring thought in my mind

As you might realize, I’ve chosen the latter (if you’d particularly like to read about any of the other topics, do let a girl know).

I haven’t been the same person since 2024. Namely, that’s when I met my current partner, and my first real relationship began, at the age of 26. Though he didn’t ask me to, I changed my lifestyle and stopped hooking up, stopped traveling as far, and began to exchange my friends for his. I dedicated myself to my goals far less, enraptured with the first person I ever felt was worthy of my love, time, and potential, and who seemed to love me when I was authentically myself.

Because of my values, and my past, I don’t feel terrible about abandoning myself to romance. When some people do it it’s pathetic, and I look down upon them. Namely because some people appear quite shallow to me, and so does their love. Delusional or not, I fashion myself as full of substance and self-consciousness, and so is my boyfriend. We’re not NPCs. There’s light in our eyes (and we both have huge eyes, something I love). We’ve actively broken out of life’s patterns and seek change. He’s a politician and I’m a provocateur. We aim to lead in different ways.

His love helped erase, over two years, the trauma of neglect from everyone I tried to date. His presence made me get over every deep memory of ghosting. Every accomplishment I’ve had, eventually, becomes as gratifying as the medals I won in kindergarten. But the dopamine rush of brushing against him is achieved every time we meet, usually several times a week, but at least once every single week since we started dating.

I used to feel this sense of complete satiation too when I fucked strangers. I’d be railing some receptionist’s ass for hours and laugh in my mind thinking, ya, this is the best I could do with my free time on a weeknight, the best anyone could do, my coworkers are boring AF, it’s so nice I’m spending my life having fun and feeling hot. To have a long body count full of disgustingly hot people plucked from one of the prettiest cities in the world would be a lifetime achievement award the same way as a Tony or Oscar, in my eyes. Few things as socially gratifying, and particularly satisfying for the kid made to feel like the ugly duckling in his classroom.

I love bringing up the times I’ve sobbed in front of my boyfriend. Namely 3: when I told him I started to care for him about 3 months after knowing each other, and confessing my romantic feelings face to face for the first time as an adult made me break apart and lose my voice. When I read the letter that was his first Xmas gift to me, and he wrote I love you for the first time. Unbeknownst to him, I had written him a letter where I said I love you too. When we met up to talk it out after our first major discussion, and I confessed how hard it was to be alone for a whole weekend with only my thoughts and my anger.

I was once so shy stepping on a stage nearly gave me panic attacks. During my college years I made no attempt to make friends, thinking everyone beneath me yet unapproachable. During high school senior year I was such a loner people thought I would turn into a school shooter.

That I’ve embraced being open and vulnerable and completely honest to those most capable of hurting me is basically a miracle. Sometimes I’ve felt it a given I would develop in a way that I slowly open up more year after year, part of the way people mature, since the benefits are such as positive reinforcement in themselves (confidence, emotional clarity, trust-building) but I’ve met enough older people to know that isn’t always the case. Many go about their lives closed-off and bitter, full of secrets and unfulfilled. Or continuously sacrificing a part of themselves on the altars of money, vanity, or their own personal god.

My own god is art. As an unrepentant atheist, practical to the core, I don’t care about my country, the concept of spirit, or even legacy that much.

The poem Ozymandias by Shelley, written over 200 years ago, is etched in my memory.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Namely, if the crowning achievements of ancient empires, of the most illustrious, war-mongering, and grandiose kings and rulers can be reduced to broken monuments sinking in the desert a few thousand years later, why should I care, most of the time, about what I can achieve, if it’ll fade before I’m even done rotting in the ground.

Not that I’m incapable of changing the world, not that I don’t want to leave an even bigger mark than I have or become an icon of sorts in my lifetime, but success is subjective and I’m disgusted by the rat race. And living in LA 7 years has made it glaringly obvious how heavy a hand luck, money, and nepotism play in achieving groundbreaking success.

Some of my favorite people (Sylvia Plath, Nietzche, Nico) became understood and appreciated only after they died.

The Sumerian poem Epic of Gilgamesh, possibly 4000 years old, sometimes considered the first and oldest great piece of literature, could be interpreted as meaning that the search for eternal life (or, for me, a legacy that outlives me) is fruitless, and our days are best lived enjoying the present and the company of our friends and loved ones.

The ancients were able to reach that conclusion, habiting their mystical world without the clarity modern science has provided. So I learned the meaning of life was likely figured out a long time ago, and since then I was relieved of searching for meaning to my existence.

I wasn’t born an heir (just to a modest suburban house in a Puerto Rican town of 30k people). I wasn’t born a savant in any discipline. I haven’t been scouted by a modeling agency, a movie studio, or a record executive yet. No suitable sugar daddy apparated during my years of dating in the early 2020s. My 30s are soon upon me. Not too long ago I had to come to terms that my life so far, and in the near future, will be commonplace. Typical. Only as rare as my middle class status allows.

Which is why I dress as outrageous as I do. Buy vintage fetish magazines as I do. Have all word tattoos and deep dive where my YouTube music algorithms take me.

I look to art, and the joy of creating new things with my bare hands, to elevate my existence. To take me out of the mass and one day have it be known I’ve always been a trendsetter and tastemaker.

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I get worried I won’t see my grandmother’s last days. I worry my parents are aging, my relationship might start going downhill and I’ll be stuck living with a stranger who I resent. That I don’t do enough to protect my Latinos from being kidnapped and tortured by ICE. That I’m not vocal enough about our wasteful society and let people trash items in front that I now could be reused. That maybe knowledge can save us all, but it feels so exhausting to be educating the ignorant. That the doctors where wrong and I wasn’t misdiagnosed after all and I really have a connective tissue disorder that’ll make my aorta explode before I’m 50 while I’m having sex or roller-skating in Venice. That humanity peaked and it’s only getting grimier, more exploitative, surveillance-y, resource-drained, Tiktok-mentally impaired from here on. That the billionaires won and it’s back to Feudalism now and I better be happy with my Samsung phone and my Waymo rides and my Sysco food, Netflix entertainment, Polymarket ads, data center smog, AI-written articles, microplastic lattes, AIPAC-funded politicians, and whatever conspiracy-turned policy my X feed shows me next.

On the other hand I’ve been consistently inspired for months now. I finished my first garment commission ever, you can shop Naughty Popcorn couture in person in LA, one of my first custom drag outfits has been in a downtown gallery for 2 months now, and I’m the most stylish person a lot of people know. I’m the most confident I’ve ever been in my abilities, and my work feels seen, even if it doesn’t pay my bills.

I have job I can be late to, sneak candy and Pokémon cards into company purchases, and two queer assistants to boss around at the office. You won’t really hear me complain.

I could’ve been born under the shadow of a jet bomber, on top of the blood of holy land, beside Round-Up flavored waterways.

But I’m just a transplant in LA.

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PS Addendum {stray cat thoughts}

What else can I tell you? I’m a loser and hero sitting at this Silverlake coffeeshop thinking the nonbinary barista I glance across the mirror who made my drink is very unattractive and that’s mean but I think it’s fine if I’m only harsh in my mind.

A few years ago I took a break from drag, aka pursuing all my goals entailed at the time, and it resulted in some of the happiest times of my life. I think about those days every now and then, near past, but I can’t recreate them, though I can still do exactly what I did then. There was something about finally being an adult with disposable income and absolutely no responsibilities on the weekends that allowed me to pounce on the feeling of liberty like never before. Then, I was able to finally let go of the desperate need to find a boyfriend, and when I was alone I was never lonely. But as it happens, I slowly got used to all of it, and started to hunger for something to accomplish. Then opportunities I would’ve been silly to turn down came along, I met someone special at the perfect time, and now I feel bound by duties everywhere I look. I feel good about the choices I’ve made, but I’m extremely aware that it’s going to take even work for me to feel satisfied and become the celebrated figure I dream of.

I want to be on Drag Race but I don’t want to do purely commercial drag. I might hate being in uncomfortable yet sickening outfits full-time and shaving my face 5 times a week might give me an Eczema outbreak from hell. Though everyone calls me Popcorn already.

I used to hate Julia Fox but after being nearly done with her memoir I’ve warmed up to her a million. She fully used to be a near-homeless heroin addict (like Kurt Cobain <3) and somehow managed not to die in a ditch and make something out of herself, her outer beauty intact. I think that’s unbelievably admirable.

Reading her story made me nostalgic for the unstable people that made up my friends my first years in LA. I’ll never have a drug-addict phase or let my money run dry if I can help it. I grew up under the steady (to my knowledge) and loving marriage of my parents. Stability is all I know. And like a quote I once read from Madonna, I value control too much to indulge in drugs too much and too often.

Still, I have a soft spot for those with substance abuse disorder. Thru the mess their lives can often be, I know they have fun in a way I’ve too rarely grasped, and they can inhabit a side of the world, and truly consciousness, that I can only read about or experience in a fictional manner. I have decadence tattooed on my hand to remind me to be outrageous, but it mostly manifests in me getting the two treats at the bakery instead of one. I’m not the substance addict type. There was a chance I would’ve inherited it from my father but luckily I’m easily bored. I can’t smoke weed more than 2 days in a row before I need a break. I got bored of alcohol by the time I was 24 and mushrooms are fun but they keep me up way too long. Porn consumption and masturbation are the only behaviors I’ve had trouble putting down. It’s not helped by the fact I see something beautiful and artsy in the mix of both, like the way Jonh Waters movies are art.

It’s crazy to me I’ve started to look back on my college days with nostalgia. The long days walking thru the palm-lined streets, power walking thru the stoners’ plaza, the expanse of the bustling cafeteria, my worn-echoing English dept halls, past the theater where Popcorn was born. Past the surfers, the snobby engineers, the athletes and majorettes, the hotties, old friends, SJWs and Harry Potter diehards, the occasional sightings of our real-life bulldog mascot, Tarzan.

I was a bud then, a cocoon gay, building up a repertoire of references and slowly piecing together my place in queer history and contextualizing it. During a teenage phase, I told my parents I was pansexual and that was the first time they’d heard of it. I remember the day gay marriage became legalized in the US. I saw the news footage in my conservative grandmother’s living room. I considered bringing up the subject to her briefly, but I kept a stoic face. I still haven’t come out to her. Later I become part of the wave of thousands of young queers trying on drag thanks to the popularization of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Even later I joined all the queer LA couples navigating a non-monogamous lifestyle.

I was seeing Amélie and Y tu mamá también at 4am on my laptop, followed by the kind of harrowing crying that made me wonder if something was deeply wrong with him, and writing poems about how my life wasn’t radiant like their characters, then dragging myself to class on 2 hours of sleep.

I was navigating Grindr and building up the courage to hook up. Most attempts failed since I could barely communicate back then and I didn’t even know what I wanted, or if I was top, bottom, or verse. After a brief romantic fling at 16, not having sex until 21 (except for a random encounter with a foot fetishist) made me feel like a scourge of the earth, a practical incel.

Moving to LA made my looks more of a commodity, and my background a true delicacy. Thankfully I put old notions out of my head and made up for lost time.

For the first time in a long time, I look forward to going back home and facing my past. Who knows how the traces have changed since I’ve been gone, how the faces have aged, how the buildings have browned, who has come out of the closet, and what has been lost forever to the unforgiving grip of the tropical jungle.