[Back in character]
Elize, my girfriend, says that if a princess is reading what I'm writing, I have to do a better job of showing I know HOW to write, and I have to lose the foul language. Elize doesn't like me using all the four letter words so much anyway. Her parents both play with the L.A. Philharmonic; so, everybody in the family plays an instrument, and they behave rather proper, in an old fashioned kind of way almost. Elize plays the cello. She can play the piano too. I'm not so musical myself, but I can figure out "Fur Elize" on the piano.

Thus, I shall employ those writing skills that helped me get A's in school, but I have to confess that it feels a little put on.

Elize is like... okay, um, Elize is truly the best thing that has happened to me. She's beautiful, but that is not what most attracts me to her. She's talented, got a sense of humor, oh yeah, she fu... uh, she attends to my needs like a cultured courtesan, and she knows how to keep me engaged in stimulating conversation.

She's mixed race also. Her dad is like the whitest guy you've ever seen. He's originally from somewhere back east, but his ancestors have to have been all from northern Europe. Pale and blond this guy, can't go out in the sun for anything. Elize's mom is totally from everything different. She's Hawaiian, but full blooded Japanese. So, here's Elize and her brother. They look like dolls almost with their complexion. Dark hair and eyes, Asian eyes, but not like you'd be sure they are from Asia, beautiful. I'd be totally into her brother if I wasn't already with Elize. Funny, he has the same name as me, too: Dan.

Anyway, I mentioned troubles, and it seems like some think I've had it too easy to be complaining about troubles. Hey, I've been around long enough to know that there's always someone who has it better than you and someone else who has it worse. In fact, you know, there could be someone who's got it better than you in one way and worse than you in some other. Maybe that's what people should know when they look at me. It seems like I've got it made looking like I do, if you are into guys who are clearly mixed race, dark skin, blue eyes, and all that.

However, let's start with the adoption part. I've been fortunate to have my parents who are weird and embarrassing and all of that sh.. that stuff. Still, they've loved me and given me a good home. I can't complain about that. What's trouble is that we don't know what my actual genetic heritage is. I mean, I could be right on the cusp of getting some horrible disease that strikes members of my blood family. There's some nasty ... stuff out there that people inherit.

Then I am not like them in so many ways. In other families, you can see the way people walk, the facial expressions, the things they do that came from the previous generations. Sure, there's the whole nature (genetics) versus nurture (environment) thing, but there's nothing on the "nature" side that connects me with my family. My parents are open and cool about a lot of stuff, but this business of me having to get nude seems to have come from somewhere else. Dad's got a great surfer body, and he's not that shy about it being seen, but he doesn't seem to have the same need for people to see it naked that I do. Mom doesn't get naked for anyone except her man. Me? I'm wearing the white board shorts that show everything when they get wet... and plenty even when they are dry. If that wasn't enough, I wear them and my pants loose enough that they really do just fall down once in a while, and I just don't always catch them fast enough to stop them.

Sure, people love seeing me naked, and some surely think I'm just being a crowd pleaser. Nevertheless, there's more going on. It's this compulsion to be naked that is almost like an instinctual drive for me. It's trouble because I feel like it is too much of a drive, too without thought, and it just might get me busted for indecent exposure some day.

My parents' lovemaking when I was younger was trouble. Yes, I learned from it, and I was a bit of a voyeur watching them, but truth be told, I'd just as soon never have seen them that way. Okay, no, I'm not going to say "ewww!" but they could have been more discreet. Kids really don't need to see their parents that way. I probably should be in counseling or therapy. I don't feel like I have a disorder, but it's just not healthy probably for parents to be intimate like that in front of their kids.

I didn't need to be sexualized that young, by my parents being sexual with no regard for me being there, but also by that girl taking my virginity at age nine. Perhaps I am sounding persnicketty, but childhood gets over too fast anyway. I was so much still a kid. It sounds like some kind of cool thing to have lost my virginity at nine, but the truth is that it was way too soon. I didn't really understand it, and I didn't really want it. It would have been much more special to have maybe done it when I was sixteen and finally got my pubic hair... or even nineteen when I finally had a girlfriend I liked enough to think of her as someone I like spending time with and not just fu... being intimate with.

Our school didn't go that "abstinence" route when they taught us about sex. I guess it's a good thing because hardly anyone was still virgin by the time they were seriously talking about it. Still, even when they first started telling us about it in real detail at school, I was already not a virgin. The funny thing is that I would support abstinence as a great way to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted teen pregnancies if there was some other way to deal with the hormones. Some people think that sports is a way to distract kids from sex, but it seems like to me that sports just kick the bodies into higher gear. Maybe they do give us something to do that is supervised, and that is good.

Sex is fantastic. I can't deny that, and I am glad I enjoy it so much. It's probably a lot healthier in the long run than getting involved with drugs or other dangerous behaviors... then again STDs and pregnancies aren't exactly not dangerous! Sometimes it seems like life would be a lot simpler if I was still a virgin. I'd probably be masturbating a lot though.

That's the other trouble. I can't put my above, way above, average endowment into proper perspective. Nobody seems to be able to. My dad has warned me that it's always going to complicate my life. I think he wishes he had that complication himself, but he's also smart enough to see that it does superimpose a sexual aspect on my life. I know it being so visible makes that sexual aspect harder to ignore, and I can do more to dress and behave so it is not so visible. Yet, it IS so much part of who I am, what is special about me. Part of me is loving it being there and obvious, and part of me is disgusted when that is all people seem to notice about me.

It seems like people see me as a walking phallic symbol. As such it is okay to laugh at me and not take me seriously, to think I'm only interested in sex and can't contemplate anything cerebral or important. I get sick of it, but then I do go to what I'm so often sucessful at, and thereby reinforce the image of myself as a solely sexual creature. That's frustrating because I seem to contribute to my own marginalization.

So, yes, I have troubles at a personal level. Then there are the troubles that come of being an American at this point in history. My parents were too young to march against the war in Vietnam, but they and I are part of the percentage of people in this country, the growing percentage it sounds like, who are disgusted with this war in Iraq. It seems like we've behaved like puppets on Al Quaida's strings, dancing on a world stage and proving their points for them. I should be marching in the streets, sending letters to Congress, signing petitions to impeach, reading up on the Constitution, and studying to be a lawyer or preparing to do something to curb abuses such as we've experienced. I should be doing more...

That is a trouble, but I am indeed a typical American kid growing into a typical American adult. I don't know many who are serving in the military. I can still buy gas for my car. I can still go to the movies, and I can still buy a milkshake at the fast food places. Every week people my age and older are dying in that mess, Americans like me. Even more Iraqis are, every day. It hurts, it is a real trouble, to think I am smart and talented and to still not feel like there is anything I can do to move my government away from this mistake, this deadly mistake.

They keep saying that we are fighting over there to keep it from coming here. I keep thinking we are doing things there that are bringing it to us here. Elize and some of her musical friends did a free classical concert for some of the wounded at the local veterans hospital. Men and women with expensive prosthetic devices to replace their missing limbs were sitting in a circle. Some hadn't been fitted yet. One guy had an arm left, just one arm, no legs. Still, they were all so appreciative of the concert. I smiled and talked with them, but I cried when we got in the car. Elize hugged me. She is wonderful.

It's not that I want to bi... complain about how expensive it is to fit all of them with prothetic legs, arms, eyes and all, but it hurts to know that as expensive as their replacement parts are, they'd all still want to have what they had originally if they could. We're going to have all these people trying to be normal, but if it was me, I'd be angry, furious about being forced to live the rest of my life that way. How healthy can that be for a society?

Troubles, I've got a pretty soft life, but you can't look at me and think that I have no troubles.