Hi, my name is Adrian. I’m well, lots of things I guess. Some would say a gay Latino. To others, I’m their older brother, their favorite son (Hi mom!), or their brilliant guncle. For others, I’m admittedly an awkward or aloof stranger or acquaintance who defaults to quietly drinking on the fringe waiting for a one-on-one chat over an overwhelming boisterous crowd fighting for attention. For a small group, I’m a good friend. And for an even smaller group, I’m an immensely loyal die-hard better friend.

I was raised by a single mother, who is one of the strongest and funniest people I know and love. I have two amazing and beautiful younger sisters who all keep me honest and proud as they bloom into their own strong and funny women. I also have a young nephew that inspires me to continue to live every time I see him discover, accept, and express more of himself. I often wish I had his style of bravery.

I’ve lived in several cities and states throughout the US. Lived and worked in a couple countries and continents, all by chance, adding to who I am today. Especially by way of the countless people I’ve met, missed, loved, fought with, enjoyed, traveled with, argued with, laughed with, and always hope to see again. I think of you more than you know.

I began as a poet in the 5th grade at the encouragement of my English teacher Mrs. Jaeger. She saw something in my writing and championed me to write my first competitive poem focused on that year’s theme “Where does the Sky End?”. I’m pretty sure my mom still has the poem and any winning ribbons in her room. I don’t recall much about what I actually wrote except that it was free verse and ended with a rhetorical question of my own. Writing poetry, thanks to Mrs. Jaeger, became a personal savior and medium for me amongst all the chronic moving, near-annual change of schools, a highly dysfunctional, manipulative, and estranged father figure, helping to awkwardly raise my much younger sisters, and the periodic uncertainty of home, food, and clothing, that miraculously pulled itself together at the 11th hour, all on top of suppressing my sexuality simply because it was never the right time to embrace it, let alone understand it. Thank the gods for my college years!

Books became my one constant friend during my childhood and much into adulthood because of all the constant moving about. For better or worse, this has changed little over the decades. I collect them and read their pulp secrets as I write my own private reflections in their margins for safe keeping. Like whispers between best friends.

I’d stay competitive in poetry throughout university but living in Africa introduced me to the cathartic world, of the now lost art, of the handwritten letter. A practice I still do today, but with only a select handful of people or when I feel compelled to really let people know my more carefully crafted thoughts by writing them on paper. I also started journal writing, which had a sporadic start in middle school, enhanced in university at the loving behest of my first boyfriend in college, and continued through life sputtering out somewhere over time in Seattle. But all the same, I keep a yellow journal on my desk just in case I feel rallied to write about my current life in San Francisco.

China is where I’d learn to stretch my prosaic abilities into a freelance contributing writer for a few competing lifestyle magazines in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing. I loved it and I was surprisingly good at it. And the chief editors of those magazines enjoyed my distinctive style so much that I was only allowed to write feature and cover stories. That’s the highest paid section, so good for me, but more pressure, so ugh for me as well, but I loved it. And my writing style evolved. I evolved.

Coming back to the US triggered another creative evolution. For some reason fighting to become a contributing writer in the US didn’t have the same raw appeal. But it did enable me to try something else. Fiction writing. And it’s just gone on from there. Making money, of course, became a sordid distraction and my writing has taken the penalty through the years but those nagging voices never stop. Those constant whispers from characters that insist on telling me the stories of their lives until I finally write them down. That’s where I am now. Finally in a place in my life where I can jot down more than a brief synopsis but veritably write out their stories. For, I am no more than a conduit to my characters. I can now listen to the voices, sort them out, write their words, and set them free.