Archive for the ‘People I Know’ Category
Friday, July 27th, 2007
[by Helen]
Santos had a different name when I first met him, and I called him by this name in my head until about a year later, when we began conversing for real and he informed me that his name was currently Santos. I met him at freshman orientation in June 2000, and we shared a few honors-type courses before we actually spoke. Santos claims that I was his crazy stalker in the meantime, as I had discovered his then-new website (his satirical anti-drug project inspired my first e-mail to him), but to this day, I still maintain that it was “stalking in a friendly way.†I even kept a webpage of funny things he said for future laughing purposes, and because I knew we would be good friends after he referred to ice cream as “that icy nectar of cows.â€
Santos refuses to let me forget the time I prodded him in the back with a ballpoint pen, even though I’ve bribed him with many Cheez-Its, cherry Pop-Tarts, and homemade snickerdoodles over the years. Our interactions are characterized by him smothering his amusement at something I’ve done, I think, though the time we had a nighttime picnic near the art building and the time I helped him re-attach his rearview mirror to his windshield, it was really too dark to see his expression. I fear now that he may have been scowling at me the entire time.
One of the most noteworthy things about Santos is the way he asks extremely original, thought-provoking questions, based on his keen observations and creative ponderings from his daily life. On more than one occasion, he has caused me to respond, “Hm, I don’t know! I never thought about that,†and left me with a number of unanswerable puzzles to mull over. Santos has given me neat things he created, such as a Cheez-It Valentine written with his best crayons, a deathly skeleton bopping along in pink roller skates, and a wheelchair-bound T-Rex enjoying a swirly lollipop. That makes me think he’s pretty okay. That, and he would often smell his hands and report to me their current odor.
I don’t talk to or see Santos as much as I would like these days because of some dumb thing called “grad school†that seems to consume most of my time. I still think of him quite often and hope that he is getting on all right despite the troubles that have come his way.
Category: People I Know
Thursday, July 26th, 2007
[by Percy]
I met Santos what seems like a very long time ago to me now, during my first semester at UH. I can’t remember exactly when I met him, but my first memory was of him assuming that he could look at a sketchbook I brought to class even though I didn’t know him. Presumptuous from the start.
Santos is a quirky guy like that. He doesn’t follow society’s standards, and I believe that he secretly finds joy in that fact. Among his quirks he doesn’t watch television, makes a point to walk and speak as quietly as possible, and has given up all foods that contain sugar and MSG (last I checked.) There’s a famous incident that I remind him of frequently back before we were as close as we are now, and when he used to eat sugar. I had just baked a large batch of muffins and said to Santos “Help yourself!” Santos ate nearly ALL of the muffins. And there were like, two dozen of them. I no longer offer food to him with such open prerequisites.
Besides being presumptuous and a glutton, Santos has for a long while been the only art friend that I have. Being able to look at someone else’s sketchbooks full of drawings brings me a lot of joy, and he’s really good at what he does. His little books are like treasures and looking inside of them is like you’ve discovered something secret and precious. I hope that he will someday make those creative endeavors known to the rest of the world, in some way.
Category: People I Know
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
[by Clint]
I say “Santos is a coyote”, but that isn’t quite true. The truth is, Santos’ totem animal is a coyote. He and his totem animal are always going on spiritual journeys together. They used to do it all the time when we lived together. When I came home, I would always smile, wave and say “Hey Santos! How’s it going?”. Sometimes he would ignore me completely, and other times he would just stare at me, or rather, past me…through me. At the time, I thought it was rude, but in retrospect, I realize that it’s just a part of his Native American Heritage.
Another part of his Native American Heritage that can be bothersome sometimes is his lack of a sense of ownership. For example, one time I bought a bunch of cookies and said he could have as many as he liked. He didn’t respond (probably on a spiritual journey again), ate most of the cookies, and never said “thank you”. Again, I thought it was rude at the time, but now I understand that he didn’t think they were “my cookies” or “his cookies”, but that they “belonged to the land”.
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe “the land” is the culprit here. It may be that he’s rude to me because the white man (me) took his land away. I guess a few cookies is a fair price to pay for all of America.
Like most Native Americans, Santos is very wise. He has a lot of “creative ideas”. One of my favorite “creative ideas” of his, is the idea that aliens are trying to transmit thoughtwaves into his head. He would protect himself from this by putting foil on his windows and hiding in a corner in the dark.
The truth is, I really like Santos a lot. I like him so much I made a video game about him. Incidentally, he never went through it, but that’s probably for the best, because in the ending, I tear him in half.
Category: People I Know
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007
[by Richard]
Once, in a land very far from here, a man crawled from the desert into the wreckage that had once been a town. The only sign of life he found in that town, aside from the amebic dysentery he caught from the well, was an infant wrapped in newspapers, with a strange birthmark on its back.
That infant was in no way related to Santos. But it makes for an interesting hook.
The first thing I noticed about Santos was probably his hair, and it sort of defined how I saw him for a long time. It was the sort of hair in which the combs of lesser men are doomed, and it probably granted him some of his powers. He seems to have calmed it down somewhat in the intervening years, which is probably best for the safety of those around him.
Santos struck me on occasion as being wary when it comes to people, and that’s still the case. Perhaps it’s just around me that he gets that way, or perhaps his eyes just seemed to be hiding behind the power of his hair. I was somewhat startled when he made contact after a couple years’ time to let me know he’d written a thing about me. It was even more surprising to see the impression I’d left.
Santos is the sort of guy who will say a lot of things that are very interesting but are different from what’s on his mind. His manner is both brusque and bashful. His conversation is both piquant and pixilated. He’s better with people than he thinks he is, better with words than most visual artists can ever hope to be, and a better man than many other men and almost all women. He thinks about people a lot because he cares about people a lot, but one gets the feeling that he doesn’t quite know what to do about them. I think I saw a girl hurt him once and this was the first time I realized how scary girls really are.
Santos has been nudging me for several days, somewhat nonchalantly but not very subtly at all, to write a blurb about him for his site. Really, though, the things he says about other people can tell you far more about him than any observations I might have made. If I had to leave you with a single metaphor, it would go like this:
The saber, from an epee point of view, is a weapon that is 90% flash and 10% substance. And Santos is really nothing like a saber.
Category: People I Know
Monday, July 23rd, 2007
[by Chuck]
Santos was in the fencing club before I joined. At the time, the club had an abundance of people named Matt. Rather than designate me “protastant Matt” or “short Matt,” Santos pointed at me and said, “You’re Chuck.” His words had a profound effect on the rest of the team. Everyone else instantly forgot my real name.
He was soft-spoken and rather painful. Every soft punch, gentle poke and sardonic stare had a tendency to hurt more if Santos was doing it. Unlike Greg, who took joy in hitting people and causing them pain, Santos just couldn’t help it. Greg forged his body into a punching machine while Santos was simply born with sharp knuckles and a knack for hitting sensitive areas.
Santos liked to alter his workspace in subtle ways to resemble himself. He drew pictures of angry, toothy faces under innocent things like stress balls and pads of sticky notes. Everything looked normal on the surface, but once you started poking around you would make interesting discoveries. Santos was like that. If you didn’t pay attention and put in some effort, you were going to miss out on the Santos experience.
He took great delight in showing me what he had altered within his office. He probably took even greater delight watching me overturn everything on his desk just to find something else he had altered. I used to visit Santos’s office for just that reason. He was a good sport about it.
Category: People I Know
Saturday, July 21st, 2007
Her hair was once very long, but now it isn’t.
Helen found me. She always said that she knew me from Summer Orientation, though I’ve never been able to recall her. It wasn’t until about a year later that she culled my e-mail address from the roll sheet in an Honors Political Science class and began contacting me. We talked a lot through Messenger programs, but almost never actually saw each other.
I can probably count on my hands the number of times we’ve been around one another, though for a few months at least we were up until 2am every night having completely stream-of-conscious text-based conversations. She even took note of a lot of my more delirious ramblings and collected them on a quotes page on her website.
The first time I visited her apartment she stabbed me in the back every time I turned around. She also became upset with me for perfectly straightening every twist tie I found in the room. It’s a bad habit of mine. We made a midnight trip to Hermann Park and were kicked out by a policeman that told us the unfenced, open-air park was “closed.” Laws confuse me.
She was a psychology major, worked at a bookstore for the longest time, and read a lot. Her mind was always on a dozen million things, causing her to only say very random things. Occasionally she had moments of clarity, but they were always fleeting. She got into grad school and wrote a letter to all her friends saying she didn’t have time for friends anymore. I only hear from her rarely, and she’s usually quite burdened.
Category: People I Know
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
She was tiny and full of venom.
Lucia and Chuck made a cute couple. She and I were roommates for a year and the only thing that we learned is that we should never be roommates. She was from Argentina, an atheist, and vocal about certain political issues. She fenced saber, my weapon. Her accent was pretty heavy and she frequently picked up new expressions and nuances of English.
She had some amusing quirks. One was that she absolutely hated all females. I asked for the cause of her enmity and her best response was, “I don’t hate girls. I…once had acquaintances that were female.” She also had a bit of trouble properly phrasing responses to certain things. Such as the time some fencers pointed out that they had seen her drunk around noon one day, which she tried to deny by saying, “It wasn’t noon!”
Her hobbies included reclining, fencing, nursing her bad back, shouting “kitties!” while raising her arms in the air, smoking fine cigars, studying, watching Spanish soap operas, and getting frustrated with me. She also liked to cook pasta.
During a fencing trip my parents went out of their way to provide food for the club and generally help out. Lucia was flabbergasted and kept asking why they were doing that, not accepting any answer I could provide. When we asked Chuck why he simply said, “Lucia believes that everyone is self-serving.” She graduated from UH as valedictorian with a degree in Political Science and is presently in New York working on becoming–of all things–a lawyer.
Category: People I Know
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
She dressed up for the Ren Fair.
Sandra was just Sandy. She was someone who had been in the fencing club longer than I. She had a very lithe figure and was allergic to cameras. Her attitude was overall positive about most things, though her eyes always seemed to be hiding some manner of secret tribulation. I was never quite privy to the exact nature of her ills.
She had a wide, comforting grin and smile. She exaggerated her responses to some things, making a fake sniffle and sob if something was disappointing, or cheering if something was good. The club took a trip to a cabin owned by a relative of hers out in the hill country, and while I was cooking dinner for everyone she shooed people away by shouting “get outta my kishen!” and attacking them with a roll of paper towels. She also mastered the use of puppy dog eyes to inflict grievous guilt on the offending parties.
She worked at a bead store for a while and had stories about terrible old ladies. She attended the Renaissance Festival frequently, sometimes going elaborately dressed. I was invited a few times but never went. After the bead store thing she ended up at a job that she really didn’t like. She helped me bake cookies for a party Nic threw. The one with the glog. I only saw her a couple of times following that, though I know she’s still out there somewhere.
Category: People I Know
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
I made two pictures, but preferred this one.
Amanda was another person that I knew through Photography. She wore clothes that looked kind of torn up, as well as shoes that had endured the worst. She was a chain smoker that for a while had hair, and then for another while didn’t have hair. She scanned everything she found in her wallet and made a huge poster out of it. She then did the same for everything she found in her car. Which was a lot of junk. Revealing junk.
She expressed everything that she thought. Her photo projects involved spreading out everything in her pockets, and I felt like her conversations similarly laid out a vast amount of information about her. She had plenty to say about a lot of things, and got very excited when talking at length. This both made her move around a lot while talking, as well as use the word “like” frequently.
She was very honest about her emotional states. When she was mad, she showed anger. When she was upset about something, she creased her brow, shook her head and talked softly. When she laughed about something she liked she swung her whole body. Her smile was very wide and open-mouthed, revealing deep dimples on her cheeks. Overall she was playful, aggressive, and curious.
We all eventually finished our photo degrees and found whatever came next. The last time I saw her in person was at a tea house, where she revealed that she was leaving the country for some time. As I understand it, she was going to look for something that she couldn’t necessarily find here. Something important. I don’t know if she’s found it yet, but if I ever see her again I’ll be sure to ask.
Category: People I Know
Monday, July 16th, 2007
He tended to not know what was going on.
Faraz was in fencing. His name was misspelled in the newspaper once, and I kind of went with it. He was Pakistani in descent, but acted more like one of those bleach-headed trendy types that one finds at The Gap. His attire reflected as much, normally a combination of an overpriced shirt and pre-torn blue jeans.
He talked really loud and was a very energetic person. An energetic speaker, at least. He used the above illustrated expression in response to a lot of things with which he had a professed lack of understanding. He was Rod’s perennial company, easily swayed into doing whatever ludicrous scheme Rod could devise. One of the few projects I actually heard of was a film that involved Faraz playing a boy that had fallen in love with his pinata and sought acceptance for as much. They made it into a DVD, with a printed cover and everything.
He worked at a Dairy Queen while in college. He was the one that Greg almost killed. Twice. He had a special way of antagonizing Greg that always resulted in terrible violence. And yet never learned to stop. I didn’t pay attention to what Faraz majored in, though it seemed as though he’d been in college some time. I think he finished up and left the country for a while.
Category: People I Know