Author Archives: Raul Felix

3 Signs A Woman Is A Dependopotamus

Posted on by Standard 4

The Dependopotamus is a vile creature that can be spotted throughout all branches of the US military. She is the dependent of a military man and lacks any form of self-awareness and cognitive capacity to realize what an utterly worthless sack of shit she is. Since most women who marry a military man are upstanding people and citizens, the Dependopotamus is able to disguise herself as a person of character like an insurgent among the local populace. It takes a skilled eye to spot a Dependopotamus in the wild, but if you pay attention to these tips, then you, too, will be able to spot these wretched parasites in their natural habitat.

1. She has an unearned sense of entitlement.

The Dependopotamus has no real-world accomplishments to call her own other than dropping out of the cosmetology program of her local technical college because it just wasn’t her “thing.” Though she is a lazy bitch, she is also a prideful one who boasts to the world that she is a somebody. To sustain her masquerade that she is a contributing member of society, she’ll take her military man’s professional accomplishments and hardships as her own.

She holds on firmly to the belief that just because her husband is a Sergeant First Class, she automatically earns his prestige by proxy. She’ll look down on other women who are married to men who are of a lesser rank, even attempting to boss them around and implying that if they don’t do what she says, it could negatively affect their husband’s career. She shamelessly wears her husband’s rank, not realizing that just because a man sticks his dick inside her body, it doesn’t mean she gains ranks through whore-smosis.

You’ll see her in the comment section of military articles, talking about how her husband has been deployed three times and how hard that’s been to her on the home front, even though all she did was get fat as fuck, spend all his money, and have a half-dozen other cocks inside of her while her husband was in Iraq hoping not to get his legs blown off by an IED.

Yet she will insist on wearing her XXXL T-shirt with yellow pit stains on them that boldly proclaim to the world, “Army Wife: Hardest Job In The Army”—as if sitting on the couch while eating bonbons, fucking around on her iPhone, and watching Netflix as she lets the house get progressively dirtier can compare to being a real soldier. She’ll bitch about how lonely she is because her hubby is always working and deployed, and she’ll use that as her justification to fuck other men—despite the fact the she has no real career or even semi-respectable means of employment. She leeches off the trusting nature of her man in uniform. Poor sucker doesn’t even realize that his homely wife is the incarnation of what is wrong with modern society.

2. She spurts out one baby after another.

While dimwitted, the Dependopotamus is a shrewd beast who knows that there is one surefire way to trap a man: Bear as many of his offspring as possible. Since having a baby in the military is free thanks to the dependency benefits, she’ll be in a constant state of hosting and developing new fetuses that she isn’t certain are from her husband or one of her many lovers.

Though she has three or four offspring, she has little to no motherly qualities or skills. She will allow them to roam wild through the base’s housing tracts like feral critters as she sits in front of her computer Skyping her sister, a fellow Dependopotamus, bitching about how she feels military wives aren’t appreciated enough. She doesn’t see her offspring as children who need love, attention, and care; rather, they are pawns in her scheme to secure a permanent position in the life of her military husband—or, more importantly, a cut of his paycheck and benefits.

The Dependopotamus knows that she has no shot of surviving in the real world without someone else footing the bill. In a different life, she would be one of those women who lives off welfare and has seven kids by four different men, then expects the government to pay for her dumb cunt mistakes. Luckily for her, she grew up near a military base with plenty of young, desperate soldiers who don’t know any better. Like a predator on the hunt, she sought out the weakest of the pack and sank her claws and teeth into them. Poor Private Snuffy never stood a chance.

3. She is a fat fuck.

Not all fat chicks are Dependopotami, but nearly all Dependopotami are fat chicks. A hallmark trait of a Dependopotamus is her gluttony and sloth. Unlike a self-respecting woman who will take advantage of her free time to improve herself, educate herself, and at least keep some token form of physical fitness, the Dependopotamus is content with feasting on junk food, booze, and her husband’s soul.

When she does leave her den, the poorly bathed Dependopotamus will waddle very slowly to her car. She will then drive to the Dependopotamus social ground, the Post Exchange (PX). As she and other Dependopotami sit there eating their third Big Mac and gossiping away, they will scoff with jealousy at the younger, skinnier wives who aren’t complete pieces of shit like themselves. They will stare them down in an effort to shame them for giving their husbands a reminder of what a woman who actually takes care of herself looks like. God help the poor, pretty lady if her husband happens to be in the same chain of command as these green-eyed monsters. For surely they will make her existence miserable until she falls in line and agrees to take measures to become a blubber-bag herself.

The Dependopotamus is a paradox. She is an utterly useless woman with a high sense of entitlement and self-importance. She is completely repulsive, fat, and poorly hygienic but is able to secure a new dick willing to lift up her floopa and smash her guts easily. She is extremely fertile but should be on a list of human beings who aren’t allowed to reproduce because her genes are toxic and will only perpetuate more parasites throughout society. She’s poorly educated yet cunning enough to know all the benefits, regulations, and loopholes to keep her dependent status, secure child support, and extort alimony after divorcing her husband because he had the audacity to accidentally catch her doing a gang bang in their bedroom.

Armed with this useful information, you are now ready to go to your local military base and see if you can spot one of these creatures, but be warned—it will cause you to lose what little faith you may have left in humanity.

~Raul Felix

You can read more of my articles at Thought Catalog.

A Day In The Life Of A Debauched Traveler

Posted on by Standard 1

While I don’t consider myself a globetrotter yet, I’ve done my share of traveling and have established a daily pattern while on the road. While some travelers take tour packages, stay at resorts, eat local delicacies, and buy knick-knacks, I tend to stay at cheap hostels, don’t buy any souvenirs, and eat at the cheapest place I can find. I opt to invest my money in more pleasing activities such as heavily boozing and paying the local strippers to rub their tits in my face. A typical day for me goes something like this:

11:12AM:Wake up with a vicious hangover, not quite knowing where I am, with random scratches and bruises all over my body. My muscles ache and are in desperate need of potable water. My bladder is full of piss, but I am unable to gather up the motivation to move my body out of bed. I decide to sleep some more.

12:30PM: Get a rude awakening with a bladder that is ready is to explode. Run to the bathroom and release a stream that gives me pleasure equivalent to an orgasm. Enter the shower and wash the smell of disgrace from my body.

1:04PM: Decide it’s time go see some touristy shit. If it’s a travel day, I decide it’s time to ride my motorcycle 250-300 miles to my next destination.

7:00PM: Finish either traveling or seeing touristy shit. Go to hostel to shit, shower, and eat chow.

8:00PM: Begin drinking either while socializing with people at the hostel or surfing the Internet while sitting in a dark corner by myself as I brood about my loneliness and how I wish I had a beautiful chick with whom to share this magical adventure.

10:07PM: Have a good buzz going and decide it’s time to go get some pussy. Either do a solo mission or go out with people in the hostel who aren’t lame.

10:48PM: Arrive at a bar and talk to people and hit on women. Get rejected by 90-95% of them. One eventually likes me enough, but I misinterpret her kindness as her wanting my cock in or around the general vicinity of her mouth. Make bold move; get slapped.

11:42PM: Go to a different bar because that one is full of total bitches that don’t realize how much of a catch I am. Lose the people from the hostel and join a new group.

11:48PM: Order a beer and take a shot. I’m a fucking beast. Look around the bar and see a chick across the room who isn’t totally disgusting.

11:50PM: Get mediocre chick interested in me by casually dropping the “former Army Ranger” card and mentioning that I’m traveling on a motorcycle. Her panties get wet, and I’m pretty sure she wants my cock.

12:01AM: Take a shot with mediocre chick.

12:17AM: She and I form a deep emotional connection. She becomes progressively prettier as I get to know her better, and I start imagining how life would be if I were to make her my woman.

12:36AM: Make out with mediocre chick.

12:54AM: Decide to take another shot. Vomit.

1:10AM: Mediocre chick runs away because I become overly aggressive with the ass-grabbing and biting.

1:12AM: Get kicked out of the bar because I start slurring, cursing, and spilling beer all over myself.

1:21AM: Stumble into another bar while attempting to seem as sober as possible. Make small talk with fellow patron that evolves into a deep philosophical conversation.

1:40AM: Say “goodbye” to my new friend who has altered my worldview forever. Leave the bar and immediately forget everything we’ve discussed.

1:54AM: ?

4:13AM: End up making it back to my hostel room somehow. Immediately get on Facebook and try to get whatever girls are online to send me nude pics. Fail.

4:34AM: Fall asleep while jacking off to pictures of chicks that have sent me nude pictures in the past because the Internet at the hostel is fucking slow and won’t load porn quickly.

11:12AM: Wake up with a vicious hangover, not quite knowing where I am. Decide I’m still too tired and go back to sleep.

Read more of my writing on Thought Catalog.

6 Things I Learned About Israel While Living and Working There

Posted on by Standard 1

Living abroad seems to be on the bucket list of nearly every twenty-something who is on the road to self-discovery. There is this urge to get away from the safety, familiarity, and security of our homeland and go to another place with a different culture and language. I got the opportunity to live and work in Israel a couple of years ago. I went there not knowing much about the country other than that Muslim extremists hate them, but they hate everything, so their opinion is worthless to me. During my time in Israel, I learned a lot about that wonderful land’s customs and quirks.

1. Shawarmas Stuffed With French Fries Are Delicious

I’m not a foodie of any sort. I don’t know shit about spices, herbs, textures, nor about any of those adjectives food connoisseurs use when describing fine delicacies. But my taste buds are refined enough to taste the difference between good, OK, and totally disgusting. One of the staples of my diet was the shawarmas stuffed with French fries that I told the street vendors to make extra-spicy. They were delicious and were one of the few items that could fill me up with only one serving. Before I got there, I had no idea what hummus was, but once I tried it I was in love with it. My girlfriend and I would often go to eat at her parents’ house for Shabbat dinner. The whole family and their friends would gather together. There were the world-famous Israeli salads, but I’m a man and I like dead animals, so all of my attention to went to foods such as Cholent, St. Peter’s fish, lamb kebab, shish taouk, and shashlik. There was also a wide variety of chicken-based foods with carrots and peas that had a flavor I never have tasted anywhere else.

Israeli versions of other cultures’ food were hit-and-miss. They had “Mexicani” food, which was supposed to be authentic Mexican burritos but never tasted like real burritos although they were delicious nonetheless. Sushi and Italian dishes were as popular there as they are anywhere else. In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem there was a restaurant called Mike’s Place that specialized in American-style food and was a popular hangout for Americans aching to get some food that reminded us of home.

2. Jerusalem Doesn’t Have Strip Clubs

I lived in a medium-sized city in the Negev Desert called Be’er Sheva. Thanks to Ben-Gurion University providing an influx of students, there was a vibrant nightlife considering how small and remote the city is. Bars were the main gathering place for my coworkers and me. From my impression, Israelis aren’t big drinkers like Americans, or at least they don’t get drunk, wild, and out of control like we do. We would go to a bar at 10PM and be the only patrons there as we drank Gold Star, Tuborg, and Carlsberg. They have a hard alcohol known as Arak, which I avoided after my first taste of it. Israelis operate on something known as “Israeli Time” and are ridiculously late to everything. All of a sudden at 11:30PM there would be a huge crowd of people at the bar. Then at 1AM, everyone would be gone with us Americans still drinking ourselves into oblivion.

Jerusalem had a better and more intimate nightlife than Tel Aviv, but Tel Aviv had strip clubs while they were nonexistent in Jerusalem. If you wanted to go to bars where you could actually hang out, talk, and get drunk with your friends and everything was within walking distance, Jerusalem was the spot. If you wanted to go out to the beach, get drunk, get some titties in your face (the strippers actually let you grab their tits), go to clubs with loud music and dancing, and maybe score some drugs or a prostitute, Tel Aviv was the spot. The drawback there was that everything was spread out, so you would have to take taxis to go bar-hopping.

3. Attacks From The Gaza Strip Are Part Of Life

One night I was out for a run when I heard a siren go off. I wasn’t sure what I was hearing and thought to myself, “Did my iPod just change to an N.W.A song?” I stopped and looked around, searching for an ambulance or a police car. All I saw was one car pulling over and a person running toward a building. I took off my headphones and noticed the sirens were coming from everywhere. Then I heard a missile launch and looked up to see the trail. A couple of seconds later, I heard an explosion. That’s when I realized the Iron Dome had shot down a rocket coming from the Gaza Strip. I posted on my Facebook a status along the lines of, “I guess Gaza sent a harassment rocket.” One of my Israeli friends commented, “Welcome to Be’er Sheva.” That’s when I learned that random rocket attacks were a fact of life in the southern cities. They would never make the international news because they would only send a couple every month or two.

Rocket attacks became a spectacle for us. My roommate and I would hear the siren and run to the rooftop so we could see the Iron Dome intercept it. After the siren stopped, people would go back to their routine.

In November 2012 the Israeli Defense Force launched operation Pillar of Defense, which kicked off with the killing of Ahmed Jabari, a chief of the Gaza military wing of Hamas. After that, the rockets started and didn’t stop. Every thirty minutes, the siren would go off, and you would hear the explosions as they landed in the streets or the Iron Dome intercepted them. At first it seemed pretty fucking cool. Rocket attacks had been seen as a nuisance rather than a legitimate threat, since either the Iron Dome intercepted them or they landed in the middle of the desert. Then three people got killed by one while they were on their balcony. That’s when my girlfriend put her foot down and wouldn’t allow me to go up and see the action anymore.

4. It’s Expensive As Fuck

One of my Israeli friends told me a joke: “In Israel, the Jews Jew the Jews.” Here in California I could spend $200 in groceries and be set for a month; over there, that would last me a week, maybe two. I was told that people there work 12 hours a day, six days a week merely to get by. The government loves to tax everything so they can fund the IDF. You’re never quite sure how much you’re being taxed because the taxes are already worked into the price.

5. People Don’t Wait In Line

Whenever you would board a bus or a train, it would become a shoving match. After a while I learned how to out-shove everyone. Tiny women are tricky, though; they’ll squeeze beneath you and go ahead of you. They’d do it so quickly that you wouldn’t even realize it until they were ahead of you.

6. I Only Learned A Few Phrases Of Hebrew, But I Wish I’d Learned More

I never learned more than a few phrases of Hebrew. It’s an irrelevant language anywhere else in the world, but I had an opportunity to learn it and never cared enough to do all the work needed to learn more. I think it would have been a cool little skill to have in my pocket, because knowing random little things like that is always a good thing.

I also didn’t study much of the region’s history while I was there. I researched more about it after I moved back to the US. Instead of just going to museums and cities looking at pretty things, I would have understood what exactly those pretty things were and what they meant in historical context. I would have had a firmer understanding of the complex relationship between Israel and the Arab League instead of the oversimplified version the American media conveys.

I hold my time in Israel close and dear to my heart. I lived in debauchery a lot during my time there. I found a woman I truly loved and lost her. I made some good American and Israeli friends. I traveled and saw nearly everything there is to see. I made some good money and came back to the US in a better position. It may the Jews’ homeland, but it will always be a second home to this American.

~Raul Felix

Read more of my writing at Thought Catalog.

How To Find The Greatness Within You

Posted on by Standard 2

You will never become anything great or do anything in your life worth a damn if you seek permission from external forces. It is up to you to search deeply within yourself, to find what you truly want from this short life you’ve been given, and to take the appropriate steps to achieve it. The world has nothing planned for you other than to be a cog in already established channels. Your fulfillment and development are none of its concern as long as it gets to squeeze you for every drop of human capital it can.

What is your purpose? You don’t have one predestined for you. You have inclinations and perhaps even talents, but that doesn’t mean they are your purpose. Your purpose is not selected at random by some mystical force and given to you to discover at some point in your life. Your purpose is something for which you consciously decide to make emotional and physical sacrifices. If you’re not willing do that, it’s not your purpose.

You must harbor an intense disgust for those who tell you’re not capable of being what you wish to be. Who the fuck are they to tell you no? Do they have what you want out of life? Do they live a life worth mimicking? Or are they cold, bitter, and distraught souls who take pleasure in seeing others fail because it validates their own shortcomings? If they are close to you, purge them from your life.

Instead, keep and allow those in your life who are supportive and believe in you. Those who allow you to discover, experiment, and fail until you get it right. Those who challenge you to be better rather than berating you for trying. Those who give you solutions to problems instead of focusing on the problem. Those who notice when you’re beaten and battered, reach down, help you up, dust you off, give you a slap in the butt, and tell you get back at it. They are the ones who matter and whose loyalty, friendship, and camaraderie you must not only preserve, but cultivate.

What are your obstacles? Financial? Physical? Emotional? Societal? Each one can be overcome if you are willing do whatever is necessary. Not everything can be solved with a simple head-on approach. Some things take cunning and shrewdness, others require you to take risks, and some only require you win the war of attrition by stubbornly chipping away at it. If it was easy, anybody could do it. If anybody could do it, there is no greatness in it. Greatness is not reserved for the few who are destined for it, but rather for those who are willing to work for it.

Only you can bring out the best in you. Only you can decide whether you’re willing to deal with the emotionally rattling and jarring journey required to reach the top. Only you can motivate yourself to keep fighting and slugging away as you face one crushing defeat and failure after another. The pain and turmoil you will encounter once you decide to go on a path of greatness will test what you’re made of. It makes you go into the dark sections of your soul and heart and makes you question your ability. It will make you cry and hurt. It will make you doubt yourself. Each time you confront those parts of yourself, you’ll become stronger. You’ll remember the failures you had before and how you overcame them. You’ll remember those feelings of doubt and hopelessness that once consumed you and how you crawled out of it bloodied and wounded, but alive. You’ll remember that exhausting yet glorious moment of triumph you had when you made it out of the seemingly hopeless abyss.

Greatness will not be in your life if you wait for her to find you. Greatness knows her value and rarity and will not be won at a bargain price. She’s elusive, tricky, and hard to tame. Greatness does not go to those who seek approval, but to those who are bold, audacious, and decide for themselves they are worthy of possessing her. Greatness doesn’t believe in those who don’t have the confidence to believe in themselves. There are too many cowards in the world, and greatness feels no sorrow for them. Greatness is a stuck-up bitch with high standards. As with any bitch, only those with a strong force of will are able to wrangle her and put in her place.

~Raul Felix

Read more of my work on Thought Catalog.

The Woman Who Taught Me I Was Good For Everything But Loving

Posted on by Standard 1

She kissed the back of my neck as we rode the Ortega Highway on my motorcycle. She had asked me to take my jacket off. The reason why was unclear to me, but as we rode, it made perfect sense. She wanted to caress my chest, arms, and stomach. She wanted to rub my shoulder blades and feel the bulge of my biceps as I shifted gears. Her breasts would press against my back, and when I didn’t need to have my left hand on the clutch, I would reach behind, place my hand on her calf, and slide it up to give her ass a firm squeeze. Happiness is very simple for me: I just need a beautiful woman, my motorcycle, and an open highway.

I would always catch her looking out the window of the bar next to the one where I was a bouncer. Our eyes would briefly meet, then I would smirk and continue walking to work since I never had a moment to spare; I have the bad habit of getting to work two or three minutes late. I would do my beginning of shift duties: stand at the door, check IDs, and stare off into the beach. Occasionally, I would walk over next door to see if I could catch another glimpse of her. She seemed to have a sixth sense, because she would always turn in my direction as I did this. We would lock eyes and exchange smiles, but nothing more.

One night I went to have an after-work drink at that bar because I knew she would be there. I spotted her sitting at a booth with her friends. I couldn’t be as aggressive as I normally would have been, since I work around there and a lot of these people were regulars who knew my face if not my name. I needed to be coy and suave. After her friends left, she spotted me and called me over.

“You have a thing for me, don’t you?” she asked. I looked into her green eyes, her pink lips, and took a quick glance at her fake breasts.

“No,” I lied as I shook my head. She was what society would label a cougar, MILF, or mature woman. But I didn’t give a fuck; I wanted her.

“Yes, you do. I always catch you looking at me through the window.”

“I do.” I’m pretty bad at playing coy and suave.

“Well, I don’t really go for young men…”

“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me,” I said and headed toward the door. Once outside, I looked through the window, locked eyes with her, gave a smirk, and headed home. Maybe I’m not that bad at playing coy and suave.

Monday night, save for a couple of regulars, the bar was dead. She appeared through the door and walked up the steps.

“Can I see your ID, please?” I asked her.

“Really? Oh come on.” she tapped my thigh as she passed me, then headed toward the bar. She sat right in front of me. I bit my lip as I looked at the top part of her ass crack that rose above her jeans as she sat on the barstool. She stole glances at me but acted coquettish.

“I’m going outside for a smoke,” she said to the bartender as she walked down the small flight of stairs. I walked down also and stood in front of the entrance.

“There is something about you,” she told me. “You seem way more confident in yourself than a lot of men I run into.”

“Don’t let the fact that I’m a bouncer fool you. This is just a job. I have more life experience than a lot of guys who are ten years older than me.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

We talked. Flirted. Stole a touch here and there. Had short pauses where we stared at each other, resisting our primal desire to rip each other’s clothes off. She would go upstairs, drink a bit more, talk to other patrons to seem inconspicuous, and then come down to smoke another cigarette. She’d repeat the charade several times.

“All right, its time for me to go bed,” she said. “I don’t usually stay out this late.”

“Yeah? Hold on a second.” I grabbed her hand and led her outside to a blind spot out of the bar security camera’s range. I passionately kissed her lips and neck. I gave her sweet and tender goodnight kiss.

I would see her after my afternoon shifts. We would go into alleyways, make out, I’d finger her pussy, slap her ass, and do every form of heavy petting short of oral and actually fucking. She became the highlight of my week.

We arrived at a bar on Pacific Coast Highway and hopped off my motorcycle. I took out some weed we’d been smoking from my saddlebags and took a toke. Then we headed inside, holding hands. She ordered a drink and I just got water. As she stood I sat on the barstool, analyzing her beauty. I pulled her close, wrapped my arms around her, and rested my head on her chest. Heaven. I exhaled every ounce of oxygen in my lungs.

“Why do I feel all this tension released in you?” she asked.

I looked up at her. “I don’t know…”

“You haven’t been loved in a long time, have you?” I didn’t answer. I pulled her close again.

Later we’re in her bedroom. “Eat that fucking pussy!” she moaned. Her legs were on my shoulders as I was tongue-raping her cunt. I was determined to make her cum with my tongue, using every bit of force I could muster to ravage it as her juices and my spit dripped all over the bed sheets. Her body began to spasm, her legs squeezed in on my head, and her hands grasped what little they could of my short hair. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she was getting closer. “Oh Fuck! Oh Fuck!” her body thrashed wildly, but I kept her under control. Then she came. She breathed heavily, trying to catch her breath. It was time for me to fuck her.

We were lying in bed together a couple of weeks later. I was cuddling up and kissing her all over. “You’re starving for love and affection, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Why do you say that?” I kissed her neck.

“Because you’re so passionate. You give so much. You work so hard at pleasuring me. A person doesn’t do that unless they want to be loved.”

“I do.”

“You know you can’t get that from me. I’ve already done that marriage and family stuff. You need find a girl your age to experience that with.”

“I know.”

“You have other girls, don’t you?”

“Yes. Just none have tried to get close to me. I’m just a fling, a rebound, and an adventure fuck. Something to keep them entertained while they’re bored, nothing more.” I kissed her shoulders and back. I never told her, but this was the closest I’d had to love in a long time. I wrapped my arms around her and buried my nose in her hair. Heaven.

I would walk to work and wouldn’t see her anymore as I looked through that bar’s window. I would text her and wouldn’t get a response. Then she paid me one last visit and told me she was seeing someone. She, too, would fade away from my life. It was to be expected, after all. That’s what men like me are only good for: a fling, a rebound, and an adventure fuck.

~Raul Felix

Read more of my work on Thought Catalog

Four Things Only Mexican-Americans Will Understand

Posted on by Standard 2

Aside from the fact that Tea-Baggers and conservatives want to deport half of your relatives, being a Mexican-American is pretty damn great. You have at least one Jesus in the family, so you know you’re protected from the wrath of God come judgment day. Also, your family knows how to make the greatest food ever created—Mexican food. You have a huge, supportive family firmly held together by Catholic fear and guilt. Like any culture, we have our little quirks that only those who grew up in a Mexican-American household will understand.

1. Come 7PM On A Weekday, It’s Time For Novelas

“Es tiempo para mis novelas,” your mom will say as she changes the channel to Univision.

The Mexican household is full of workers, and when a person works all day, they need some sort of method to wind down. The men have their nights of drinking themselves to oblivion, while the women have their novelas. Novelas are Mexican soap operas that air each weekday from 7PM to 10PM.

While it isn’t too bad these days with the Internet and cheap televisions, it was pure hell for a young Mexican kid growing up in the 90s when the house only had one television set. Grandmother, mom, and aunts would be glued to the TV as they watched the dashing middle-aged Erik Estrada juggle the complications of having a young girlfriend while dealing with his kids and ex-wife. Or watching the drama unfold as a lowly india marries a big-city lawyer and struggles to be accepted into upscale Mexican society.

Mexicans are a passionate, fiery people, but the reality of the hustle and bustle of everyday life working long hours for low pay leaves them bored. The Mexican psyche needs its daily dose of drama, scandals, and gossip to function properly.

2. You Have At Least Two Family Members Who Are Here Illegally

Here’s a dose of reality for you gringos: Even the most patriotic of us Mexican-Americans has a couple of members in our family who are here illegally. We also think there is nothing wrong with them being here illegally because we know they’re just trying to build a better life for themselves. We’re not going to single them out or tell anyone who doesn’t need to know. It’s tough enough making it in this country without having any documentation, let alone when la migra is coming after your ass.

For Mexican-Americans, immigration is always a touchy issue. Candidates who go on Mexican television get drilled and called out for what they said to appeal to the FOX News-consuming demographic. We’re not as far removed from our roots as those of European descent who aren’t even sure what country their family is from originally.

For us, an illegal immigrant isn’t some random statistic that conservative pundits always seem to bitch about stealing lucrative ’merican jobs like picking strawberries and working as dishwasher at Denny’s. No, he’s our cousin Pepe who works two full-time jobs for minimum wage as he struggles to raise a family of four. Or they’re our uncle Poncho who snuck into the US 25 years ago, worked his ass off, saved his money, got his citizenship, and now owns his own business. Or it’s me, who came here illegally at age five, grew up as an American, got his citizenship, served in the military, and proved he was as much of a fucking American as any of you.

3. Every Little Thing You Do Will Be Gossiped About To The Point That Even Your Relatives In Mexico Will Know

This probably isn’t unique to Mexican-Americans, but it sure is true. The Mexican-American family thrives on gossip. Whatever happens to you or any other family member, no matter how insignificant, will be talked about repeatedly via telephone with each other member of the family. When they’re not discussing what happened in their novelas, you can best bet they’ll be discussing you.

As a kid, I would see this occur: My mom would be talking to her sister Lupe for 30 minutes. At the same time, her two other sisters—Pulga and Debra—would be talking to each other. My mom would finish her call with Lupe. Then she would call Pulga, who’s just finished her phone call with Debra. Lupe would then call Debra. My mom would have the same exact conversation, except Pulga would add details. They’d finish their conversation 30 minutes later. Then my mom would call Debra and begin to gossip with her while Lupe and Pulga called one another. This happened nightly.

That’s only the beginning. If the gossip is extra juicy, they’re going to each be calling their cousins. The gossip network is vicious and has many branches and offshoots. Word will get around, and one day you’ll be hanging out with a second cousin of yours you hadn’t seen in seven years and he’ll say, “Hey wey, I heard you got arrested a while back…”

4. Your Old Clothes Go To Mexico

If there is one thing you’re aren’t allowed to do in a Mexican household, it is throw away your old clothes or shoes. No fucking way. If your old clothes are somewhat serviceable and you don’t want them, they’re going into a box. That box isn’t just a cardboard square used for storage; it’s a lifeline of new goods for your more downtrodden relatives to wear.

Even the most industrious and Americanized of Mexican families has those members who stayed behind in Mexico. Since Mexico doesn’t always offer the best opportunities for advancement, it’s sometimes hard for a man to secure a decent-paying job. Or just like any other family, we have members who suffer from their own demons and vices that prevent them from keeping a job. La Dona of the family always feels it’s her duty that even the lowliest and most undeserving member of the family have the bare essentials: clothing and food.

It’s common practice for the Mexican-American family to go to Costco and stock up on food and other assorted goods to fill the truck up with before visiting Mexico. As much as there is a cliché that everything is cheaper is Mexico, it isn’t true. There are a lot of products that are significantly less costly in the US than they are down there. Food bought in bulk and old clothes are given to our family members who are not living quite as large as we do here. While we know it’s not much in the grand scheme of things, we help out in whatever little way we can. Porque la familia es lo más importante.

~Raul Felix

Follow me on Thought Catalog.

28 Things I’ve Learned By Age 28

Posted on by Standard 3

It’s my 28th birthday today and as a writer, I’m obligated to pass on the insightful and not-so-insightful lessons I’ve learned during my short stint on this Earth. While I’m not the epitome of enlightenment whatsoever, I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes, so a few life lessons have made their way through my thick skull. So take heed, young reader, as this late-20-something who knows nothing about life tells you something about life.

1.

Women are not special from men in any way. Some are sweet; some are sour. Some are warm and some are cold. Some are intelligent and some are complete idiots. They can be as kind as saints or as cruel as devils. The right one can bring out the best in you, and the wrong one can destroy you. Figuring out the ones who are genuine and the ones who are completely full of shit is the tricky part.

2.

It’s way better to look broke and have good amount of money in your bank account than to look like a baller and have a negative net worth.

3.

Being all muscle with no mind makes you a slightly smarter and much weaker gorilla. Being all brain and no muscle makes you a weak sack of shit who can’t protect himself from the physical world.

4.

Waking up next to a woman you love deeply is way more fulfilling than fucking a different chick every night of the week.

5.

Sometimes you will give something every last bit of effort and will power you have but will still face a crushing defeat. It’ll hurt you deeply, but you can take pride in the fact you tried when others would have been too afraid.

6.

You don’t have to be your father if he’s a piece of shit. The best thing about him being a piece of shit is that you don’t have to respect him. You don’t have to live up to his expectations or seek his approval. You can be a force of change and end the cycle of shitty fatherhood.

7.

Don’t read books because they’ll make you look like some sort of intellectual. Read them because it’s on a subject matter that interests you and will add to your life in whatever small way.

8.

If you don’t trust your girlfriend to have a girls’ night out and not suck another dude’s cock, then why the fuck are you with her? If she doesn’t respect you, fuck that bitch and move on.

9.

If you live in a First World country, you can truly make something out of yourself if you put in the honest effort. If you look for external forces to blame such as “the man,” your parents, or your surroundings, it’s a sign of your weakness. You can always find a way out. It may not be quick, easy, or pleasant, but there is always a way to put yourself in a better position.

10.

Your coworkers aren’t always your friends. In the Army, you could hang out, talk shit, and be yourself around your coworkers. It’s not like that in the real world.

11.

If you have to get drunk, just drinking beer will keep you out of more trouble than taking shot after shot of hard alcohol.

12.

Your emotions don’t matter. What matters is whether you do your job regardless.

13.

If a chick doesn’t text you back after two attempts, delete her number and move on.

14.

If you’re traveling across the US, pizza with all the toppings on it is the most bang-for-your-buck food you can eat. It’ll keep you full and energized all day long.

15.

Want motivation to be a writer? Look at the first blog post of your current favorite writer. Chances are, they were fucking terrible when they started. The only difference is that they started, put in the effort, and gave themselves time to evolve.

16.

It’s easy to get caught up in the extremes of liberalism and conservatism. It’s easy to think the world is black and white, that things are strictly right or wrong. That’s why it’s simple for the media to manipulate the masses with hysterical headlines and emotionally triggered stories. It takes a lot more to learn the grey side, the enemy’s side, and to realize not everything is so straightforward.

17.

I’ve never smoked cigarettes, but I know two things about them: Everyone who smokes them wants to quit, and a lot of hot chicks smoke them. So hanging out at the smoking section even though you’re not smoking isn’t too bad of an idea.

18.

If you have a fragile ego and can’t take criticism, you’re going to get crushed by real world when you’re starting out as an artist. The world is full of self-important critics and cowards who never had the balls to go after what they want. These types love to dig their teeth and nails into you and tear you apart. They see your failure as their success. Fuck them. Keep your head up, your scrappy attitude on point, and keep moving.

19.

There is more pride working a job that pays you minimum wage than staying at home and being a burden on your family.

20.

It’s better to keep your mouth shut than tell a lie.

21.

Take pictures. You don’t have to post them all up on Instagram or Facebook, but take a picture or two of special events in your life. Chances are they’ll remind you of things you’ve long forgotten about five or ten years down the line.

22.

If you do have to lie, keep your lie as close to the truth as possible. It’s easier to remember that way.

23.

You don’t have to like everyone and everyone doesn’t have to like you. You have to respect their right to exist, but that’s pretty much it.

24.

No woman is worth sacrificing a male best friend over. Chicks come and go; your best friends will be there for you as long as you remain loyal to them.

25.

Not everyone is so quick-witted that they learn on their first fuck-up. I’ve made the same mistakes two, three, twelve times before I actually learned the lesson I needed to learn.

26.

When you say most people do X, most people will think you’re not talking about them.

27.

There is a lot of power in positive male role models. I was lucky that I had this throughout my life, from my stepfather to my football coaches to the noncommissioned officers and officers who mentored me in the Army. They each had their flaws, but I took from each something that I could apply to myself.

28.

Sometimes the person with the biggest balls in the room is a woman.

~Raul Felix
Read more of my writings a Thought Catalog.

6 Ways Women Have Rejected Me

Posted on by Standard 1

Like all you readers who click through articles that speak to the current trend in millennial dating—or sorta-dating—I, too, am on a constant and maybe hopeless quest for love and/or pussy to feed my insatiable lust. In addition to jacking off every night while crying, I go out and attempt to catch the attention of a pretty lady or two.

Most guys go to the bar and content themselves with boozing, and maybe if things go right and she gives him enough signals, they’ll go out and talk to a chick. I go in, scan the scene, designate possible targets, and decide how I am going to go about hitting on them. Contrary to my excellent writing skills, I’m not a smooth talker whatsoever. To compensate for this and my many other shortcomings as a human being, I’ve developed a dead-reckoning philosophy for hitting on chicks.

It’s a simple two-step process:

1.

See cute chick and check for possible indicators that’s she single.

2.

Go talk to her and hope I say the right thing that leads to me ripping off her panties with my teeth in the near future.

What happens next is what separates the men from the boys. You get rejected a whole fucking lot—so much that you start to notice patterns in the ways you get rejected.

1. The One-Word Answer

This is a staple among girls who are too shy or nice to tell you they’re not interested directly. You’re trying to strike up a conversation about something—anything—in order to get the natural flow of human interaction going, but you keep hitting dead ends.

“So, what do you do for a living?”

“Secretary.”

“Uh…that’s cool. That’s a very dashing red dress you have on.”

“Thanks.”

“Have any idea of what you want to do in the future?”

“School.”

“What’s your opinion on the ISIS taking over Iraq?”

“Sad.”

“I’ve traveled quite a bit; what’s your favorite place to travel to?”

“Paris.”

You then stand there, hoping she will elaborate or maybe ask you a question, but she just sits there, looking in any direction but yours.

“OK, I can see I have failed here…I’m out.”

“Bye.”

2. The Overly Aggressive Bitch Block

The shock and awe of this tactic surprises even the most experienced of men. The usual condition: A highly attractive woman, rating an 8-plus on a scale of 10, is standing around with one or two of her chick friends. Her friends may even be attractive in their own right. You go to the group with hopeful vigor and enthusiasm at maybe hitting it off with such a beauty. You attempt to make your presence known:

“Hey ladies…how are….”

“She’s not interested!” One of the wenches interrupts you mid-sentence as she puts her arms in front of you.

You pause, not sure whether you should be a dick because fuck that rude bitch or attempt to reason with the callous creature. Whatever path you choose, it’s going to lead you through Strike-Out Junction en route to Rejectionville.

3. The New Age Hippie Rejection

You’ve been talking to this girl for a while. She’s pretty, cool, laid back, and seems to have a decent sense of humor. It’s not the deepest immediate connection you’ve had, but there may be something there. When it’s time to part ways, you ask for her number.

“Not this time. If fate has us crossing paths again, I’ll give it you.”

“How about we don’t count on fate and you give me your number now?”

“If it’s meant to be, we’ll cross paths again. You should trust in that.”

“I don’t believe in that hippie shit.”

The New Age Hippie Rejection is passive-aggressive rejection disguised as mystical false hope in order to make the girl who just shot you down seem like a compassionate human being who believes in karma, destiny, and goodwill. The truth is that if she was truly interested in your cock, she’d give you her number instead of making you seem like a gullible idiot who hopefully awaits the day when true love and fate will align and bring you two back into each other’s lives.

4. The Bait and Switch

You’re talking to a table of girls and are being quite charming for once in your life. The booze is flowing through your veins at the perfect ratio that enables you to be witty, sarcastic, and a bit debonair. They’re really receptive to you, and the one you have your eyes on is giggling to her friends. You take a seat next to her and attempt to begin a one-on-one conversation, which she humors for a little bit.

“Have you met Becky?” She then proceeds to point out her homely friend that you barely noticed before. You attempt to be as cordial as possible and ask Becky canned questions.

“You two should talk. She’s single!” The two switch places, and the glorious example of womanhood is replaced by the dud. You grudgingly talk to Becky a bit more and realize you’re not going to get anywhere with the woman you actually want. You pleasantly bid them adieu and go on your way. Your days of jumping on grenades are over, dammit!

5. The Best Friend Forever Barrier

I’ve written about the Best Friend Forever (BFF) Barrier before. It’s a simple yet highly effective method of rejecting would-be ass-grinders while dancing. Chicks have employed this technique since their first middle-school dance, so by the time they’re old enough to hit the bars, they have internalized it to the point that they might not even realize they’re doing it.

Should you be so bold as to attempt to infiltrate a group of chicks during their body-spasm ritual and go for the prettiest of them all, you may meet with the treacherous BFF Barrier. The BFF will take a disliking to you because either you’re not a dreamy heartthrob or because you dare impose on their “girls’ night out.” For committing such heinous sins, it’s of the utmost importance that they exile you swiftly.

Like clockwork, one of the BFFs will strut up to the woman of your dreams and provocatively dance with her. This is but a ruse to enable her to shrewdly snatch her friend away. While this occurs, the rest of the BFFs form a perimeter of jealousy; it’s creeper-protection to box you out. You have two choices: either stand there looking like a fool or abort.

6. The Disappearing Act

You’re in a good mood today. The previous night, you met an awesome chick and really clicked with her. Your conversation flowed effortlessly. She was educated, quick-witted, and uniquely beautiful. She gave you every signal in the book to indicate that she was as into you as you were into her. While you only got a simple kiss out of her, it was enough. Hell, she even had you call her cell number so she could have your number. And she told you to text her the next day. You know better than to get excited about getting just a number, but fuck it; you’re going to let yourself get excited.

It’s late afternoon and you decided it’s an appropriate time to text.

“Hey, it’s Raul.”

You don’t hear back from her within the hour…or day…or the next couple of days. You know that girls always have their phones glued to their hands, but you also know better than to pester them with texts. Hoping that she was just absentminded, you text her again a few days later. You hear nothing. You look at your two unacknowledged texts and shake your head. “Oh well,” you think to yourself as you delete her number, “that’s what you get for letting yourself get excited.”

~Raul Felix

You can read more of my writing at Thought Catalog.

Four Years Of Hell: College V. The Army

Posted on by Standard 2

Co-created with Lance Pauker & Ella Ceron

Which path should you choose: going to college or joining the military? Young people who’ve asked themselves this question have received a plethora of different answers. Both options are viable in helping you set yourself up for success in adulthood. Just like anything else in life, it’s what you make of it, and no two experiences are exactly the same. To help you understand the lifestyle differences between the two paths, two college graduates and one veteran will share with you a year-by-year breakdown of their experiences through those very special four years.

Freshman Year:

Lance Pauker: 

There was a lot of pressure to meet people, but at first you didn’t really know how. So you just stuck to the same three questions, consisting of things like, “Where are you from?,” “What’s your major?,” and, “Are you secretly the son of an oil tycoon?”

Overall, I think I was a little too overwhelmed to really process what was going on—there’s so much coming at you at once. You’ve got the sudden freedom, you’ve got these new people in your life that you’re suddenly good friends with, and you’ve got professors constantly asking you if you did the reading. If there’s anything you figure out quickly, it’s that nobody really does the reading.

Ella Ceron:
I went to college 3,000 miles away from my hometown and was only really able to do so on a full-ride academic scholarship. It was terrifying being in a new city—though I’m from a large city, moving to New York was still a huge change. It was weird living with so many other people my age in one building all of a sudden, and I had five roommates in a very small three-bedroom/one-communal-area dorm. There was a lot of pressure on keeping my grades up, especially when what I thought I wanted my major to be proved much more difficult to maintain, and I had to take a good, hard look at whether I wanted to pursue that dream without my scholarship or change my course. I went home for the summer after that year and very desperately didn’t want to go back. I was homesick, miserable, hadn’t found a group of friends I felt very intrinsically close to, and felt all-around awkward.

Raul Felix:
Your first year in the Army is basically where you get your teeth kicked in. Everything you were, did, and knew no longer seems relevant. You’re going to do shit the way the Army wants you to do it. From your drill sergeants in Basic Training all the way to your team leaders and squad leaders in your first unit, you’re expected to be a sponge for knowledge and to shut your fucking mouth.

Life was simple in a way: You trained hard and worked long hours during the week and got drunk as fuck in the barracks with your buddies on the weekends watching movies, playing video games, and bitching about your miserable existence and how you should have gone to college. Even if you started off as a cavalier, gleaming-eyed young man full of glee and hope, the aura of massive amounts of testosterone, cynicism, and sexual frustration was prevalent. Back then MySpace was the main social network and you’d see your friends posting pictures of themselves at college parties surrounded by hot chicks, while all you had was Internet porn and a bottle of Jack to keep you company. Since most of us were under 21 and none of us were locals, meeting chicks was very rare indeed. Luckily, a few months in, I met a great girl through MySpace that went to a local university and we developed a long-term fuck-buddy relationship that gave me something to look forward to other than drinking myself into oblivion. My cousin and I were in the same battalion but different companies. He had already been the in Army for a little over two years at that point. We spent Christmas and New Year’s together drinking heavily in the barracks watching movies as we waited to deploy.

Sophomore Year:

Screen Shot 2014-06-25 at 9.31.22 AM

Spc Tiffany Fudge, US ARMY

Lance Pauker:
An article I once read on this pretty great website called Thought Catalog (def check it out if you get the chance) referred to sophomore year as “The Year Of The Wise Fools.” I think this summation is spot-on. You’re slowly gaining a sense of who you are and how you fit within the general landscape, but you’re still, relatively, an idiot. On a personal level, the majority of cool college stories I have occurred during sophomore year.

I feel like sophomore year represents the time in which you begin to move toward that thing you really want to pursue—you’ve finally figured out which people to acknowledge and which people to slowly start ignoring, so you’re finally ready to learn on your terms. Think of it as making your way through a crowded and cramped bar and then finally reaching the cool outside area. You light up a cig, talk about how you really shouldn’t be lighting up a cig, and finally get a chance to think.

Ella Ceron:
I had a summer job in Los Angeles during the summer break and was lucky enough to transfer to a New York outpost of the same company, so I was juggling four and five courses a semester with 30-to-40-hour work weeks. Though my classes were being paid for by the school, I had to take out loans for my housing and had to fund my own food, clothes, and anything else I wanted. It was a lot, but I was able to interact with people who were already living and working in the “real world” and I realized that there was so much beyond the papers and assignments that I had been so stressed about during the previous year. I still didn’t have as many friends as college is always portrayed in the movies, but I let myself completely fill up my schedule so that I was either working or studying seven days a week. In retrospect, that was the stupidest idea ever, but it helped me cope with the loneliness.

Raul Felix:
To my bitter disappointment, that deployment I spent doing a support role for the line guys. We pushed out supplies from the main base to all of the platoons scattered throughout the country. When we did leave the base, it was doing detainee escorts where we would take captured Hajis from one prison to another throughout the country on Chinooks and Blackhawk helicopters. I saw the vastness of Iraq by the air—from our remote outpost in Al Qa’im to the major cities of Baghdad, Mosul, and Tikrit. I also fucked up a lot that deployment and made nearly every single stupid mistake a cherry private could make to the frustration and wrath of my leadership. That deployment I was hit by how real this war was—my cousin’s team leader and squad leader both got killed in action.

We deployed in three-months-there and six-months-back cycles. We came back stateside and I began to take all the lessons learned from that deployment into the next training cycle, determined to be less of a fuck-up. The lifestyle of training hard, drinking hard, and fucking hard took firm hold again. Before one knew it, it was time to go to Afghanistan. Arriving at the beginning of the blistering Afghan winter, me and a dozen other Batt Boys were tasked to man a secret prison that contained high-value targets that were freshly captured off of objectives by the line guys. It pissed me off because I didn’t join the Army to stay on the base; I joined to go on fucking missions. We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas there, and I spent New Year’s Eve 2007 on an airplane ride back to the US. Luckily we didn’t lose anyone on that deployment.

Junior Year

Screen Shot 2014-06-25 at 10.15.55 AM

KT King

Lance Pauker:
I went abroad the first semester of my junior year. Like everyone else who went abroad, I had such an incredible time that I spent the following semester acting superior to everyone who didn’t share the same new life experience as me.

Returning to college after spending a semester traveling all over Europe felt like going from an Elton John concert to an Austin Mahone concert. No disrespect to my man Austin; he just fits the reference.

Ella Ceron:
When everyone else went abroad, I moved out of the dorms and into my first apartment—a really crappy walkup that was about a 20-minute walk away from the campus. I still filled my schedule with work and school and tried to romanticize how utterly threadbare my life was. My roommate bought our couch with a bottle of Belvedere, I slept on a yoga mat before I managed to get a bed, and I wrote my papers on a busted laptop with an old radiator whistling nearby. This all sounds like something out of the New York warehouse episodes of Glee, and I deeply wish I wasn’t as proud of the bohemian bullshit I let myself dive into. I still worked 40 hours a week, and I really liked my job, but that began to happen at the expense of shirking off a lot of my papers and assignments, only to make up excuses to get extensions and not fail out of my classes. It was a wakeup call that being an adult is a lot more about work than it is about the aesthetic, and sometimes you have to decide which is more important to you in the moment and which is more important to you in the long run.

Raul Felix:
By that time, I was comfortable in the Army. I wasn’t a big fuck-up anymore, so my leaders usually stayed off my ass. I knew exactly what I needed to do, what my job was, and what I could and couldn’t get away with. I turned 21 that year, went to my first bar in Seattle, and subsequently got kicked out of my first bar.

We were set to deploy again that summer, and a few days before deployment I found my grandmother had died. My cousin and I went to her funeral and missed out on the deployment. We stayed on Rear Detachment, which meant we pretty much had half-days all the time and spent much of that time drinking heavily and attempting to find some tail, mostly unsuccessfully. One morning, news came that one of the men in our company had been killed in action. A few weeks later, another one had been killed.

Senior Year

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Spc Justin Young, US ARMY

Lance Pauker:
Senior year was the crossroads between living in an apartment that should probably be condemned and being “adult” enough to drink something other than watered-down Keystone Light. I found that I probably made the most friends in college senior year—just like senior year of high school, nobody really cares about the social distinctions they spent the past three years maintaining. People are finishing up sports, slightly embarrassed to have been a part of their Greek organization, and overall too consumed with the postgrad unknown to care about how sick Freddy’s party was. You also realize how much of an unrealistic bubble the American college experience is. While I definitely got a ton out of my four years, you certainly realize how alarming the disconnect is. If college prepares you for the working world, then playing baseball prepares you for running a marathon. They’re both sports, but that’s pretty much it.

Ella Ceron:
By senior year, I was totally immersed in my job, and a big chunk of me didn’t think I really NEEDED my degree anymore—but then I realized that the job trajectory I was on wasn’t the right fit after all. I was working 60 hours a week, could afford a lot of really nice things, made friends with my coworkers, and was acting the part of the adult—but I just wasn’t happy. I had to force myself to put any effort into my classes, because I’d saved a lot of the easy, fun classes for senior year, knowing full well I’d have senioritis. The caveat in that, however, was that I was constantly reminding myself that if I could do okay by coasting along, imagine how much better I could do by working hard. Ultimately, I realized that the degree I eventually chose meant more to me than the job I’d had all through college and that I not only wanted to actually pursue using my degree, but that I’d be disappointed if I didn’t.

Working through college was a very important part of my experience, because it gave me a crash course in the wild world of money and having an apartment and adulthood and adult friends, but I was worn really thin throughout those four years and wouldn’t necessarily suggest you try to do everything all at once if you don’t absolutely need to. If I could do it all over again, and if I had the means, I would definitely have not worked as much as I did, even though I don’t regret how hard I worked. College is a time for discovery, and sometimes I wonder if I was too burdened with bills and being a grown-up to do that then—but now I’m making up for it by discovering myself along the way now.

Raul Felix:
Another training cycle started. The same dance all over again. I had calmed down my bar-hopping since I had gotten a girlfriend, but it didn’t mean I still didn’t drink to my heart’s content. Working, drinking, and hanging out with my girl was all I contented myself with during that training cycle. It had all become second nature at that point. We took off for the sandbox again. This time I drove Strykers through the streets of Mosul on hundreds of direct action raids. I was happy because at last I was doing the cool guy shit I’ve been training for. In typical poetic fashion, my girlfriend broke up with me. This was costliest and most heart-wrenching deployment during my time in battalion. We lost three great men all within a month of each other.

It’s a strange feeling being in a bar when only 48 hours earlier you were in the middle of the streets of Mosul pulling security. I was more than eager to get out of the Army. I had acquired an annoyed and hate-filled attitude toward my job, but I knew I had one deployment left before I was free at last. I bought a motorcycle and developed a passion for motorcycle travel when my buddies and I took a trip around Washington State.

In my final deployment to Iraq, I was driving Strykers like I did before. Though we did go on quite a few missions, it was way slower than the previous high-operations tempo deployment. The war was winding down. There was a stretch where we went two weeks without a single mission. Books, video games, and TV shows were how you kept your sanity from the boredom. I came back with only a month left on my enlistment. One month later, I hopped on my motorcycle to travel the US, leaving behind the red-fenced compound that took me in during my most formative years and forged me into a man.

~Raul Felix

You can read more of my writing at Thought Catalog.

2 Stupid Pieces of Dating Advice That Women Always Give Me

Posted on by Standard 4

I’m no dating expert, despite the fact that I’ve been on tons of dates and have hooked up with a lot of women who won’t return my texts. I have a competitive edge over most guys in the dating scene because I have cojones grandes. I’m not scared to talk to any girl in any situation, and I probably hit on and get rejected by more chicks in a week than the average American male will in his lifetime.

My balls-to-the-wall attitude regarding women and sex, coupled with the extensive human sexual evolution and psychology literature I’ve read over the years, have led me to the conclusion a lot of the advice you chicks give us men regarding women is bullshit. A lot of their advice operates on the premise on “how it ought to be” rather than “how it is.”

Well, I don’t live the utopian future where all of society’s ills regarding gender inequality and communication issues between the sexes don’t exist anymore. I live in the present, where chicks are flaky and have contradictory notions of what they want. Most girls these days are doing the whole “Eat, Pray, Love” shit while they bitch about not having Dreamy McDreamerson galloping in on a white horse to save them from themselves. They also demand that he respect the fact that she is an independent woman with a past, a heart that loved too much, and herpes she contracted from that one guy she fucked in the bathroom of Baja Sharkeez.

As if my bitter words weren’t enough of an indicator, I often get frustrated dealing with the opposite sex—sometimes enough to want to throw in the towel and swear off the she-devils for a while. During those turbulent times, I reach out to the few female friends I have and ask for their advice, only to be given this sort of useless claptrap:

1. “Just wait: Someone special will come along.”

This sets up the advisor to be right, no matter what. You can “just be waiting” for a week or ten years, but regardless, they’ll be right. When a lovely lady finally comes into your life, your advisor will smugly say, “Told you I was right” as if it was her advice that brought this person into your life in the first place.

It makes sense from the female perspective, because dating for a chick comes down to chance encounter with a charming, dashing gentleman. If he doesn’t meet the aesthetic requirements on her checklist, not to worry—another dashing gentleman will come around in a few minutes.

If you’re an assertive male who grabs life by the balls, this type of advice makes zero sense. Why, if you truly want something, would you sit around with your thumb up your ass waiting for some mystical force in the universe to deliver it to you? Wouldn’t you want to figure out how to meet pretty girls and where they congregate? Wouldn’t you want to figure out how to best increase your chances of meeting one who fits you and your personality? Wouldn’t you want to learn what you can and can’t accept in a partner? Merely waiting won’t accomplish any of that.

It may come as a shocker to you girls, but most of you are cowards. Chicks rarely, if ever, hit on us directly. The closest that most of us guys get to being directly hit on is when a chick looks at us while we’re looking away and then looks away when we look at her. We’re left having to read the fact that she is twirling her hair or playing with the straw in her cup as a subtle clue that she into us. Then, hoping we read the hints correctly, we go up to her and try to avoid saying anything too stupid. We’re the man; we make the first move. It’s part of the game. But that can’t happen if we are “just waiting.”

2. “You’re not going to meet a good girl at a bar.”

This advice is spewed out with zero irony by chicks that just posted Instagram pictures of themselves hosting drinks at the bar. Yeah, every girl at the bar is a fucking wretched whore—except you and your friends, right? While I agree that the women who frequent bars are trashier per capita, there are also a lot of girls who go to bars that aren’t.

Let’s say I was to follow this advice and not try to meet chicks at bars. Where should I meet them, then? What other places have a consistently fresh supply of females that a man can approach?

Coffee shops? It sounds good in theory. Sophisticated chicks love coffee, especially if it’s expensive. You order something at random because you don’t know shit about coffee and sit down at a chair that gives you a good vantage point of the room. After waiting for an hour for a chick to appear who is clearly alone, you sit next to her and strike up a conversation. It all goes well until you ask her what university she goes to, and then she tells you she is 17 and wants to go to UCLA. You realize that it’s best to leave the conversation there, wish her well, and be on your way. I’ve found that females at coffee shops are typically 70% high-schoolers, 20% old bags, 15% chicks who already have boyfriends, and 5% chicks who are talking on their phone the whole fucking time so you can’t even make a move.

Meeting girls at church? I’m a godless, heathen bastard.

Gym? Of course! That has the built-in benefit that the chick is far less likely to be a useless fat sack of shit. You go to the gym and are getting your swole on, trying to scout for potential targets. You notice that those chicks who wear those revealing, skimpy outfits for you to ogle all seem have a big rock on their finger that is worth more than your annual salary, or she’s with her man working out because that’s what healthy couples do. The one chick that is truly alone is wearing a baseball cap, has her headphones in, and is wearing a loose T-shirt. She’s basically stating, “I’m here to work out. Leave me the fuck alone.” If you foolishly attempt to hit on her, you’ll get shut down quickly—not only that, you’ll have to avoid her piercing, judgmental stares every time you go to the gym afterward.

Fuck. I wish there was a place where men and women could casually gather to meet other men and women in an atmosphere that encourages you to meet new people. If only such a place existed.

You ought to be able to be yourself and have a wonderful woman come into your life, but that shit doesn’t happen. You have to be proactive and take the hits of rejection and failure until you meet one that makes all the bullshit you dealt with worth it. You ought to be able to meet girls casually in a non-alcohol-induced daze, but the reality is that if you’re no longer in college or don’t have a work environment that allows fraternization, an alcohol-induced daze is probably how you’re going to meet your next lover. It’s the dirty, filthy reality.

~Raul Felix

You can read more of my work at Thought Catalog.