When my friend Paul Fahey approached me about writing a piece for The Other Man, a story immediately came to mind. Anxiety also came, starting with tightness in my chest, and it permeated throughout my limbs, my veins, my pores. Could I tell the story? Should I? What would people think of me?

Not something I’m proud of, but something I learned from, something that made me a better person, and a new perspective from which I can continue to gauge myself as a partner. My dogs sit beside me as I write and I envy their simplicity, their lack of consciousness. They just do without thinking. They know what they like and they know when they’ve crossed the boundaries of others because they get snapped at by another, hissed at by the cat, or reprimanded by your truly. Simple. How is it that we humans being so “intelligent” tend to muck things up so proficiently?

Paul wanted real. He wanted non-fiction. He said it would be more authentic. That’s what he got–the whole bloody story, literally–the same story that has replayed itself in my mind a hundred times, along with the images of physical pain and emotional suffering. Sadly, not just my own. The lessons of life aren’t always pretty, and they’re nothing like the neat five step lesson plans I design for my middle school students. But as with my middle school students, the point of the lesson may not always be clear, and the actual learning may be marginal at best.

I haven’t read the other stories in the anthology. I have to apologize. I haven’t even kept up on my blog, due mostly in part to the job I alluded to. Most of my writing these days has been dedicated to the design of those lesson plans that are nearing perfection. Ha ha…that was a joke.

I have managed to eke out a new manuscript called Barbacoa. The inspiration came from traveling to ruins in Mexico and thinking about gay relationships in the Aztec times. What would it have been like in an ancient, regimented culture? Surely there were homosexuals. How might two men have loved and suffered? What lesson would they learn? And how might we interpret it nowadays? See it through the eyes of an archaeologist who stumbles upon a strange burial. I’m hoping to finish it up and get it to you some time in 2014. Until then, happy reading!

When I was a kid, we used to go to the aptly named Little Brown Church in Pacifica, California, a small coastal town about 15 miles south of San Francisco. I wore my Sunday best, sometimes brought a Bible, sang along to the hymns, behaved sufficiently well during the children’s Bible classes, and did my best to stay awake during the sermon. I dreaded it. Even back then, I was skeptical about the entire notion of God, Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, and turning water to wine. Say, why couldn’t they have just drank the water anyway?
Seriously, though, I could never swallow the idea of heaven–some perfect place lined with gold roads where everyone was perfectly happy for the rest of eternity. Why would they need gold roads? Do people walk around there? Do they drive around? Is gold better than asphalt? Besides, it didn’t seem to jive with what I was learning in school about the troposphere and the stratosphere, or even gravity. So then where was this place called heaven? I won’t get into hell and the terrible gas bills the poor devil would incur for all that heating.

I was taught about heaven and hell at a pretty literal level. Add to the whole pot the big guy, God, sitting on a throne, I guessed, prepared to judge me and my life as soon as I entered the antechamber, to decide whether or not I’d go through the French door behind him or take the express elevator down. Of course, he was all-knowing–he’d decided everything long ago and knew what would become of me–yet somehow, they said, I still had choices to make, though he knew what I would decide anyway. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get that or a whole lot of other contradictions I’d been told and tried to piece together and sort out, all the while trying not to balk. Children were to be seen and not heard, at least not their oppositional opinions.

By the time I got to college, I was a cynical atheist. I detested all things religious, and deeper studies of both history and sociology only threw logs on the fire, hold the brimstone. This also happens to be the times when I came out. My mother’s instant reaction was to send me to a therapist–a Christian therapist–and I conceded, more as a challenge than anything else. After a few sessions, they figured out that conversion was hopeless, so why waste the money? I was damned. (At least they kept paying my Cal State tuition…thanks Mom. Oh, she’s changed a lot since then. I want to give her some credit.)

So, I was a confident, intelligent, logical, fairly rational, homosexual atheist. In truth, disbelieving in God was pretty easy because, to me, all the contradictions of the Bible were blatantly obvious. Enter the real dilemma: how was it that so many educated, respectable, even likeable people couldn’t see the same falseness that I was seeing. It all seemed like such a sham, yet I knew believers  who were scientists, teachers, doctors–all intelligent and honest–oh, and there were some lawyers, too.

No, I am not about to tell you that I have returned to Christianity. Don’t worry.

However, I will say this: aside from a certainly rationality that I believe I possess, or perhaps because of it, I do not immediately poo poo any individual’s personal reality. I hear and accept the power that “God” has had over the lives of many, or that someone has been healed “miraculously.” I don’t even deny the possibility that some things many consider parapsychology may in fact exist. Who am I to say they don’t? After my stepfather died, my mother was awoken on several instances at precisely the same moment in the deep of the night by noises or an alarm clock that hadn’t been set. Did she have a technical failure? Was her bladder full? Or was she visited by my stepdad (one of those intelligent believers I was talking about)? I can’t say for sure. I guess I’m not a cynical atheist anymore.

I might have thought it a weakness at one point to back down from my atheist convictions. On the other hand, maybe as I get older I’m getting a little wiser? Or perhaps I have come to a point in life that I have a need that hadn’t existed before. As some of you know, I hit an obstacle at the school I worked in as a teacher, all related to an e-mail mistakenly sent to the wrong person. Enough said. Three years of litigation later, it’s still not over. I don’t think I had known despair or fear like I had that first year. Getting fired from a school has lifelong implications; you don’t just go and get another job. It was my comfort, my livelihood, my health insurance, my retirement. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t write. I needed a higher power (or at least somewhere to channel all the fear and negative energy I was harboring). I began to pray. Some of the issues have worked themselves out, others are still pending. The prayer helped.

I’m not saying that God saved me. I’m not saying there is a god. I am all too conscious of a term we called in psychology “superstitious conditioning”–the impulse to attribute cause to correlation connected to a personal action, in this case prayer. It might have been knocking on wood or throwing salt over my shoulder, for that matter.  Still, I’m not poo pooing anything, either. I won’t deny the (perhaps self-deceptive) comfort that I felt in handing over my issues to a higher power, an energy out there, or just the universe.

Despite my confessions here (I still cringe when I write or say the word “prayer”), I am nowhere near religious. Indeed, although I do respect the way that religious groups often take care of each other–providing meals and rides for those who need them, counseling,  social events, and other means of practical support–I continue to loathe religion in the big picture for the way it incites hatred, self-righteousness, and other forms of social control. Why can’t groups of people provide those practical necessities without having to attribute it all to a god? (Thank goodness for gay community centers–that’s what I’m talking about.)

Why am I bringing up this entire topic? To plug my new book, of course! True, I am writing because my new book, Day of the Dead–A Romance, which is coming out next week from Dreamspinner Press. However, I did want to share some of the inspiration and life changes that led to a story contemplating the afterlife. As do all of my books, I have brought in aspects of the Mexican culture–specifically, notions about death, sexuality, coming out, and migration–as well as the inclusion of place (Guanajuato and the border area this time), as is common in my style. A major difference between this story and my others is that this one is also based in San Francisco, the fabulous city where I was born. Most importantly, I’ve infused as a major theme a character who talks to us (or his mourning lover anyway) from beyond and brings us to the place of his upbringing in central Mexico. Let’s get back to spirituality and religion: What do you think? What is your experience with a higher power? Are we nothing more than chance beings on a floating rock? Is there some greater being or even meaning to life? What about the afterlife? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Please take a minute to share.

Driving west on the two-lane freeway misnamed La Internacional, I see a couple of guys climbing up the rusty, corrugated metal fence that marks the line–La Línea–separating Mexico and the United States. Unemployment likely compels them north, where they hope to find a job mowing lawns, harvesting cucumbers, or washing dishes–anything that will put some money in their pockets. On my side of the fence, the Tijuana side, beat up cars swerve around potholes on the road mere feet from a long row of dilapidated houses, businesses, and a dirt baseball field. On the other side stands a taller, more ominous fence, a controversial multibillion-dollar project composed of thousands and thousands of concrete posts that guard the north like teasing sentries placed six inches apart, just enough space to squeeze an arm through. The new fence stretches as far as Texas. Border-crossers used to jump the rusty fence and make a mad dash for cover from the Border Patrol. Now they’re stopped cold by the second barrier, and by lingering unemployment in California, too.

As the youngest of three boys, I often whined at the inequities between my siblings and me. I was too young for a pocketknife, too little for judo, and one more person–me–wouldn’t fit in the backyard camping tent. “No one ever said that life was fair,” my mother would say. As a lesson, this was one I never internally adopted. Well, yes, I realize too often that life can be cruelly unfair, yet it is not an idea that I have ever come to believe as acceptable. I still root for the underdog.

One reason I threw myself into the heart of Mexico was to experience firsthand another culture, in some country not an economic powerhouse, and to understand how the majority of the world really lives. Though I began this adventure studying in Mexico City, I migrated, not unlike others, to the northern city of Tijuana, perhaps hypocritically so, where I could work in the United States and still live in Mexico. Yes, I commute across La Línea every day through the world’s busiest border crossing. And though I don’t choose to live off of five or ten dollars a day, I do observe daily the stark disparities between the two countries and peoples, and often enough, the relentless human spirit that endures in us all. And I write about my observations, hoping to convey both the disparity and the human spirit.

In my travels to the rain forest of Chiapas and the Yucatán, I fell in love with the lush jungle and the ancient history of the Aztecs and the Mayans. You can read some of that in my suspense thriller The Equinox Convergence (Etopia Press, 2011). In Normal Miguel (Cheyenne Publishing, 2010), you feel my fondness for Mexican rural towns, or pueblos. But when I sat down to write another story, I realized that the place that surrounds me every day, my home, deserved its own story.

I could hardly invent a new indigenous tribe like I had in The Equinox Convergence, nor could I relate the quaintness of cobblestone streets and old-fashioned butcher shops like in Normal Miguel. Rather, I noticed the stories of people around me–a day worker who toils away in the U.S. for meager wages, her sister plagued with a debilitating disease, a drag queen struggling at once with her gender identity and poverty, a couple facing the daunting future of AIDS in a place where treatment is third world, and a man pushed by social pressure and expectations into denying his sexuality. This is Taxi Rojo–A Tijuana Tale (Cheyenne Publishing, 2012). Here, in a place fraught with unfairness, street dogs, dive bars, and traffic take the place of jaguars, stick huts, and waterfalls. Yet regardless of place or geographical borders, the will to survive, the instinct to love one another, and the persistence of the human heart remain universal.

When I was younger, much younger, I had been accused on more than one occasion of arrogance. Indeed, my 11th grade English teacher called me glib before I even knew what it meant. In most ways, I was a go-getter, shy in my own way, needing a strong sense of confidence before coming out, so to speak, yet a determined chap nonetheless. Never one to talk much about my own “greatness”–the idea that one’s own greatness speaks for itself has always been obvious to me. Rather, one to simply attempt to excel for excellence’s own reward, always intending to be better than before, though a certain Leo aspect in me can help but be driven by tacit competition with others. I had no purpose for New Year’s Resolution; I already had resolve.

 My dear mentor, Jerry McCullough corrected me, or instructed me, one might say. “New Year’s Resolutions are not gimmicks of procrastinators or the irresolute,” he said, or so I remember, “but an opportunity to focus energy on specific goals.” At 41 years old now, I’m way beyond any youthful arrogance, sometimes feeling as if I’m grasping at the ledge of some precipice at the bottom of which surely lies misery far beyond the sharp pains of the precipice ledge on my fingers.

A few years ago I learned that balance, at least for me, represented an ideal to the extent that I would have it tattooed somewhere on my body, except for the fact that the image of a balance itself has been usurped by an astrological sign and the Chinese symbol for the word is less aesthetic than I care to display.  I mean balance in everything about me–physical, spiritual, financial, hysterical, you name it. I even intend to be imbalanced at times, to even out the constant strive for balance–I mean to let myself go to extremes in a sort of controlled way, or a way controlled enough that keeps me from being a control freak. Balance.

And so I trudge on in another year of life after battling through what I arguably consider to be the two worst years I’ve ever lived. True, I’ve had wonderful times in their midst–Normal Miguel was published and won the Lammy! I took awesome trips. I had a fabulous celebration for my 40th birthday, filled with dear friends and sentiment. I fell more in love with my partner. All with litigation in the background. I won a drawn-out hearing as I fought for my job. I lost the appeal. It’s over. I’m fired.

Fear had kept me up many nights. The fear of falling into that precipice. Poverty, joblessness, homelessness, social rejection, utter loss. So far, I have averted those undesirables and found within me enough of that determination from my youth to move on. Many people have been there for me, and have appeared, while some have disappeared. True what they say–you find out who your real friends are. But overwhelmingly, I am reassured that those who ever knew me and believed in me were genuine, as is their continued belief in my integrity. Far from arrogant, I am humbled and grateful. Many have said that there is a reason that all of this happened, that all will be good in the end. Though I don’t always see the light, I must trust it is there, and that I will prevail. I’ve no other option.

In the meantime, and as I continue down the road, I declare my resolutions for 2012. (I’d love to hear what yours are.)

1. To maintain the status quo of those things in my life that are functional and satisfactory–namely my health, my lifestyle, and my relationship. No balking at such maintenance for often, especially with the eroding force of time, positivity diminishes as silver tarnishes. Maintenance takes effort.

2. To publish both Taxi Rojo–A Tijuana Tale and Day of the Dead–A Romance.

3. To choose a [new] career path and take the plunge and/or continue to seek more satisfying employment in line with my skills, beliefs, and long-term goals.

4. To write another novel.

There. I said them. I published them. No more talking, just doing. Happy New Year and the best to you [and the rest of the world] in 2012.

Been a while since I’ve written. Let me excuse myself for such a long absence. More than anything, I’d like to let you know what I’ve been up to and where I hope to go. I also hope I can coax a few of you to read my blog again as I’ve so enjoyed interacting with you. I also hope to visit more frequently those online groups I had become such an active member of…and have missed as of late.

For nearly two years now, I’ve been riding the roller coaster of some unfortunate litigation related to my work. To make a long story short, I had won an initial hearing brought upon by my school district and then lost the appeal. Though it’s made me question our system of justice, I have also accepted mistakes I have made for which I have paid a heavy price. At least I am in a new position which, though it does not pay what I had been earning, it does pay the bills. It has also taken the time which I had liberally expended writing blogs and working on books. Now that I’ve been in the position a few months, I’ll need to find a way to balance whatever may be my new life with my yearning and passion for writing.

Allow me to update my current literary endeavors:

First, I am proud to be a judge for this year’s Lambda Literary Awards. I won’t reveal the category or the books I’m judging, but I will say that it is an honor for me to take on the task. I stand behind Lambda Literary’s decision to include all writers–gay, straight, and in-between–as eligible for an award. I also thank the organization for supporting so many categories of writing and writers. Sign up as a member today!

Second, you may have heard of Taxi Rojo, my soon-to-be released novel about a small group of people in Tijuana whose lives come together as the result of an ill-fated taxi ride. I thank Mark Probst at Cheyenne Publishing, the publisher of Normal Miguel, for having the faith in my work, once again, to take on this project. I can’t say enough positive words about the family of authors under this publisher and their willingness to help one another out as harmonious siblings. Look for Taxi Rojo  in April!

Third, I have completed another manuscript title Day of the Dead–A Romance. This is my first work in which the setting expands into the United States from Mexico. It features a bi-cultural relationship–an American and a Mexican–whose (lives and deaths) straddle the border, and the cultural and legal issues that go with it. I’ve brought the characters to my childhood home, San Francisco, and flash back and forth to my adult home, Mexico. Once I put the finishing touches on it, I hope the book will find its own home in the capable hands of a willing publisher.

Finally, I’m thrilled to share these links with you and indebted to Piet Bach of Wilde Oats who has reviewed both Normal Miguel and The Equinox Convergence in the 9th edition of his publication. As you will see, he must have spent significant amounts of time on these insightful reviews, works of literature in and of themselves. I hope you’ll visit them and see for yourself what I’m talking about!

http://www.wildeoats.com/Normal-Miguel-by-Erik-Orrantia-reviewed-by-Piet-Bach.html

http://www.wildeoats.com/The-Equinox-Convergence-by-Erik-Orrantia-reviewed-by-Piet-Bach.html

Nice to be back and I hope to read from you pretty soon! In the meantime, happy holidays, salud, y suerte! Here’s hoping for a prosperous 2012…

I’ve been absent for awhile–my life’s veered toward a new, hopefully temporary mission. Namely, I’m looking for a new job! In the meantime, I’ve been completing my new manuscript, Day of the Dead–A Romance. I wanted to take a moment though, and thank Indigene, an amazing reader and reviewer, who just published this review of The Equinox Convergence. The review, as for her skill and insight, speak for themselves:

The Equinox Convergence by Erik Orrantia