¿Que Onda, Mundo?

If you’re reading this, chances are you already know who I am.

If you don’t know who I am, you lead a sad, empty life. It’s okay, though. I don't judge. Much.

My name is Kirk. I was born, raised, and currently live in El Chuco. As a Chucoite, no matter how hard you try, it never seems like you can leave. You talk about making it big and how you're going to strike out to L.A. or Washington or New York. And sometimes, a few of us do manage to get away for a while. But even if you make it all the way to Africa like I did, you still somehow find yourself back at Chico's Tacos at 3 p.m. on a Thursday, eating soggy flautas floating in cheese water. Sure, you swore that you'd never go back to Chico's because they kicked those gay guys out that one time, but your friend refuses to eat anywhere else, so you really don't have a choice except to sit back and eat your double order with fries, like it or not.

That's a metaphor.

In a lot of ways, I’m a cliché hipster twenty-something. I’m unemployed. I have a liberal arts degree. I live with my parents. I’m indecisive. My life revolves around writing polemical liberal slogans into my Facebook statuses in hopes that I can goad people into fighting each other. I volunteer for a non-profit that helps immigrants. I use a messenger bag. Irony is my nicotine. In fact, that only proof I have that I’m still partially human and not a complete hipster is the shame I feel when I go to Starbucks and order a “Grahn-day mocha frappachino light.”

I even have a cliché twenty-something dirtbag goatee. To my credit, I wear it well. It makes me look ethnically ambiguous. When people ask what I am, I usually just say Lebanese. No one questions it because they don’t want to seem like racists. I also say that I’m 24. Actually, people usually just assume I’m 24 because I look old. If I tell people the truth – that I’m really just another barely legal Mexican half-breed who barely got his drinking privileges two months ago – they don’t believe me.

I went to college in the Dallas area. It's a long story, but they didn't believe I was Mexican over there, either. That worked to my advantage, though. Some people in my Spanish lit class spent an entire semester thinking that I was a full-blood Spaniard just because I could speak fluid Spanish and I wasn’t brown. If I’d known that little nugget sooner, I would have introduced myself the first day by saying that my favorite hobbies were killing Aztecs and eating tapas.

But it would have been wasted on them. Not because they wouldn’t have caught the cultural references (although they probably wouldn’t have). Rather, I think they would have heard “Yo soy” and thought it was some sort of Japanese company that sells fake milk. I didn’t go to what you would call a “good university.”

That's all you get from me for right now. This awkward introduction is over.