Suicide Blonde Was The Color Of Her Hair

We lived for years in an apartment. 

When we moved to our own house, somedays, after classes, mom used to go to therapy with one of my brothers. My brother had some troubles with his cruel classmates, as he had a severe dermatitis and everyone was joking about his appearance. 

He's younger than me and he's always been a strong boy, but then he needed to understand kids were stupid. Girls were his only friends and boys thought he was a fragile kid and were jealous about him.  

The therapist's office was at the other extreme of the city, and mom and he spent all the afternoon away from home. 

Dad was at his job –he's a chemist and then he worked at a company located at the boundaries of the city– and later he picked them up at the therapist's office and the three of them arrived home late at night.

In that occasions, my smaller brother and I stayed at home.
Even when this visit to the therapist's office occurred twice per month and it lasted just a few hours, it was an important issue to me. I felt I was an adult taking care of his smaller brother. 

Although I was in Junior high school –I was a teenager– and I just thought about women and music, I considered my parents trusted me and I didn't want to deceive them. 

My smaller brother was at kindergarden. 
As the kids of his age, he was a playful boy. I was a typical eleven-year old-teenager and I hadn't enough patience to play with him. I no longer liked toys neither jumping and running nor play 'seek and hide'. 

To deal with my smaller brother's energy and playfulness I had to turn on the TV, give him a bunch of candys, and leave him there watching cartoons, but he got bored so soon. 

All I wanted was to be alone –dunno remember what exactly I used to do to enjoy myself, but, maybe, I used to listen music or something like that–, so, when he got bored, I started to ask him what he would liked to do. 

He had a strange bound to a Goofy's movie. Didn't understand why he enjoyed to watch the same movie once and again –psychologists argue that it reinforces knowledge at early stages of life–, but I pleased him. 

We had a couple of TVs, one in the kitchen and another in the living room, but just one Betamax. I put the movie in the VCR and I left him there, in the living room, watching the adventures of Goofy.   

Eventually, in one of those days of therapy, I discovered that my dad had some Playboy magazines. From that day, each time mom brought my brother to his therapy and then my smaller brother and I were left alone at home, all I wanted to do was take a look at those magazines. 

As soon as mom left the house, I asked to my smaller brother if he wanted to watch the Goofy's movie again. Fortunately, he agreed always and then I put the movie in the VCR.

At some point of those therapy days, while I was looking for the Goofy's movie, I found a movie I hadn't ever seen amongst the personal collection of my dad.

Immediately, I got excited and freezed. It was called Basic Instinct. Still don't know how he got it. We were in the autumn of 1992 and I guess the movie was still on cinemas, but he had a personal copy. I'd heard about Basic Instinct. It was difficult to ignored all the fuzz around it. Supposedly it was an intense thriller with explicit sex. Supposedly it had been censored in some countries. 

News said it was an acclaimed Paul Verhoeven's movie, entirely filmed in 1991, with Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas as the leading roles. 

De Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9055138

I thought it was, essentially, as a sex movie. Eventually, I knew I was so wrong.

Catherine Tramell was a stone-cold writer and she was dating Johnny Boz, a retired rockstar. The movie begins when the police finds Boz dead. 

Nick Curran was a detective and he had to find out who had murdered the retired rockstar. He and one of his colleagues found that all the beloved ones and the recent lovers of Catherine Tramell had died in mysterious ways.

As the investigation moves on, Nick Curran gets attracted to Catherine Trammell.
She was a successful, smart, enigmatic and beautiful blonde. 
He suspected that she was involved in the death of Boz, but started to having sex with her.
He became a sex-addict and he lost the objectivity of the criminal case.  

When I found out Basic Instinct in the movies' collection of my dad, I convinced my smaller brother that Goofy's movie was boring and predictable, and made up a false story about the relationship between cartoons and intelligence so that he would be interested in cartoons and I could use the only VCR we had in the living room.

He believed me. I guess he trusted his older brother and that he never thought that I was a jerk-off. 

I turned on the TV in the kitchen and left him there watching silly cartoons. Then I ran to the living room and put Paul Verhoeven's movie in the VCR. 

I was very excited and shaky, feeling that my heart was about to explode. I sat in the floor of the living room, a few millimeters away from the television and the VCR, to remain hidden from my brother's eyesight in case he walked away from the kitchen and then I could turn off the television immediately.

It was the excitement of the movie and the excitement of the situation. 
It was an extreme situation. I didn't want to be discovered by my brother watching an adult film and I also couldn't miss the opportunity to see an adult film. 

The first scene was violent and impressive. 
It was a blurry image in movement, reflected in a mirror.
There were soft and  murmuring sounds, which made me think of a couple having sex. 
It was so cryptic and poetic, attractive and ambiguous. 

When, apparently, both of them were about to have an orgasm, the blonde woman on top of her lover took out an ice pick and stabbed him, nailing him fiercely everywhere. 

The retired rockstar had his hands tied to a bar on the bed, so he just yelled desperately, bled profusely and died. 

There was something about Sharon Stone that I couldn't get rid of for weeks. 

I got obsessed about his beauty and ferocity.

Each time I had the opportunity to watch the film, when my smaller brother and I were left alone at home, I just watched one or two scenes. 
It would have been awkward to watch the entire movie, from the beginning to the end, and it would also have increased the risk of being discovered by my brother. Didn't want to deceive my parents, nor wanted to be responsible of exerting a deleterious influence on an innocent mind. 

In fact, I just watched the entire movie a few years ago.
I would sell out my soul for a month to experience Sharon Stone's world.   

Suicide Blonde - INXS

Smelling Dead Roses

I was having a silly conversation with some idiots, when I saw her for the first time. 

These idiots wanted us to go to play pool to a seedy place.
One of them wanted me to give him some money. 
He was such a bully. 
His family had several businesses in the Mercado Sonora and he thought it gave him the right to behave as some sort of cacique.  

We only shared some classes, but these idiots thought we were friends. 
Sometimes we hung out after classes, but it didn't necessarily mean that we were friends. I didn't have real friends. I guess I didn't want to be involved in such a big commitment. I hated to get involved with people.

They were the kind of guys whose only life goal was to get enough money to spend it all on expensive sneakers. They were so crazy about basketball that they wanted so bad to have the sneakers of the most famous basketball players. 

Ivonne walked in front of us. 

Her hair was so blonde that it almost left me blind. 
I was about to collapse. She was so beautiful and she seemed so innocent. She was so perfect. She was the type of girl who had always attracted me.  

Ivonne was chubby and small.

As she walked, her hair floated around her shoulders and distilled some sort of haunting perfume. For a second, she looked at me and smiled. Then I was about to have a heart attack. 

Her eyes seemed green or almond.

For an entire week I was thinking about her. 
I wanted to know her name, but I didn't want to be such a typical guy.
I did not want to chase her like a mad lover and approach her as anyone would have.

One afternoon, we got on the same transport truck...

I couldn't believe it!
Ivonne sat next to me! 
We were so close that our legs touched! 
I was so nervous and about to collapse!  

Dunno remember exactly how, but I started to speak her. 
Contrary to what I had thought, she did not freak out. 
She was so tiny and adorable. 
Her blonde hair was so impressive.
Her eyes were green. 
Her voice was so feminine. 

Dunno remember how it started, but I'm pretty sure I spoke about music. 
Silverchair was one of the bands I listened then. It was a punk band of Australian teenagers. Back in 1994 they won a contest of demos in their country. The contest gave them the chance to record Frogstomp (1995). Their first album was recorded in 9 days...! 

Rolling Stone and Allmusic gave it almost the highest score. 

The members of the band were 15 years old, as me. 

Tomorrow and Israel's Son are the most known tracks of that album.

Someone had lent me a copy of Freak Show (1997). 
Freak Show just had been released. It had really god songs.
The songs were fast and furious. They talked about the rage and the violence provoked by the expectations of Silverchair's album debut. Some of them were more elaborated than the standard track of their previous album. 

The singles Freak, Abuse Me and Cemetery reached the top ten. 

Ivonne got off the truck a few blocks away from Delegación Venustiano Carranza.

We shook hands in a pretty formal way. It seemed that we were closing a business.

I felt so dumbfounded. Her hands were so soft and pink. 

She told me she was a couple years younger than me. It was tender and annoying. 

Thenceforth, we spoke regularly. 

On a day, I told Ivonne that I was crazy about her. She smiled. 
I was so confused–maybe she knew it from the beginning. 
I had thought that she would reject me immediately. 

I regretted having told her. 

I really enjoyed to talk with her, but I wasn't really sure if I wanted to have a girlfriend. 
I hated to get involved with people. 

Suddenly, a bully started to flirt on her. 
This guy was older than me. He even had a beard. 
He was a good-looking idiot. He smoked all the time, behaved as an outlaw and his friends played in the football team of the school.  

He was sort of popular among girls. 

Ivonne became his girlfriend soon. 

On a Valentine's Day, more than twenty years ago, the idiots with whom I shared some classes had bought a few roses. They were pathetic and they tought that they would be appreciated by the girls they liked, if they gave them roses. 

None of them had accepted the roses. 

One of them asked me to hold him one of the roses for a second.
At the same time, the other one pushed me.
Maybe he had seen Ivonne walking by and so he pushed me against her in the precise moment. 

All of a sudden we were face to face.
She smelled like vanilla.  

I felt so stupid with the silly rose on my hand. 
Ivonne stared at me in a very cozy way. 
She asked me if the rose was for her. 

I thought about it, but I told her the truth. 
She pushed me against a wall and walked away.
We never spoke again. 

The guys laughed. 
They just wanted to have fun. 

I wonder what will she do right now. 
Will she remember me?
Did she marry the bully?
Do they have kids?

I'm not sure if she even remembers my name. 

Smelling Dead Roses

El Pelo De Esa Chica No Deja Pasar La Luz

"Narcolepsy includes excessive daytime sleepiness, sleep attacks, cataplexy, hallucinations and poor sleep quality. 

It affects .03 % of worldwide population. 

Cataplexy is an episode of sudden loss of muscle tone, provoked by a strong emotion. 
Narcolepsy with cataplexy has been associated with a selective loss of orexin/hypocretin neurons.

These neurons are located in the lateral hypothalamus and were discovered in the late 90's, by two research groups, both of which were interested in peptides involved in food intake regulation. 

Due to studies carried out between the 40's and 60's, which showed aphagia in animals associated to lesions of the lateral hypothalamus, authors had been suggested that orexins/hypocretins would have an important role in appetite.

Later, following the discovery of these peptides, it became almost a standard approach to employ transgenic mice lacking orexin/hypocretin neurons.

Surprinsingly, instead of being hypophagic, these transgenic mice exhibited a sudden loss of muscle tone.

Orexin/hypocretin knock out mice are the most employed rodent model of narcolepsy with cataplexy. A couple of papers have recently demonstrated that the medial prefrontal cortex is responsible for the profound muscle weakness provoked by stimuli associated to strong emotions, such as palatable foods and wheel activity.

In summary, the proposal is that neurons from this area project to emotional brain regions and that the lack of these peptides from the lateral hypothalamus facilitates the inhibition of motoneurons in the spinal chord."  

In a few hours I'm going to speak about this topic. 

Despite it is of my favorite ones, I couldn't sleep well.

The entire night, I was sort of anxious and tired. 

I guess it was related to my academic career. 
I am on a precarious situation. 
I am able to do so many things for free.
But if I continue to do it, there will come a day in which people think that I am doing well. 

My life has been so depressing, lately.
There are no real job opportunities for me. 

I feel dizzy. 
I woke up from a confussing dream. 

Mona was walking down the street. 

I knew her a couple of years ago.

One of my colleagues asked me if I wanted to learn how to extract DNA from brain tissue and how to measure DNA methylation. 

I agreed. Then, one of his pupils took me to Mona's lab. 

No one introduced me to her.

Obviously, when she suddenly saw me there in her lab, she was so surprised.

But she did not say a word. 

Later, when I saw her on the alleys of the University, she just ignored me. 

Obviously, except if one of my colleagues was present. 

Maybe I wasn't too polite when I appeared out of nowhere in her lab.
I should have introduced myself to her, but I didn't. 
It was also wrong that neither my colleague nor his student, had introduced me to Mona. 

For days I thought I had to apologyze, but time went by and I just forgot about it.

After the September 19th earthquake' left uninhabitable the building on which both Mona's and my colleague's labs' were located, we found again on a temporal office.

The first day it happened, as I walked thru the office, I said "Hi", just for courtesy. 
She was signing up some papers that were stacked on the desk.
She raised her head and saw me, but she just ignored me. 
Her attitude pissed me off.
I was angst a few hours.

What kind of roughness had that been?
What kind of rough woman was she? 

We have been sharing this office for almost three months.

We even sit one behind the other. 

I have even taught one of her postgraduate students how to evaluate the Novel Recognition Object test in rodents. 

She's so selfish, so hypocritical.

She's just kind to people when she needs something from people. 

Wouldn't you believe me if I tell you she's Jewish? 

I had never had the opportunity to personally treat any Jew and I had never considered them as victims or as the greedy people they show us in the movies. 

She has even been rough with my wife, too.

I particularly hate when this happens. 

She's so obvious.

Most of her students are also so selfish and so hypocritical like she. 

Losers.  

Suckers. 

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/09/

However, in my dream Mona was walking down the street.

Apparently, she was looking for someone else. 
I didn't want to see her and I avoided her, but suddenly we stood. 

She opened her mouth and then smiled to me.
She said "Hello", exhibiting her teeth. 
They're as yellowish as those of rodents. 
Maybe she's fifteen years older than me, or so.
Even when she looks younger, I have always thought that her teeth reveal her real age. 

She was looking for me. 
She was about to hold my hand.
Her chestnut-dyed hair warmed like a strange fire in the gloom and simultaneously left some of her real gray hair exposed. 

It was cold and rainy. 

I felt inside of a World War II movie scene.
It was so intense. 
I sensed we were about to kiss... and I woke up. 

I don't really understand why I dreamed about her.

She's attractive, and I guess other colleagues have a crush on her. 
I don't like her. 
I'm sure she will ignore me again, when we stop sharing the office. 

She's a prominent researcher. 

We have a cold relationship. 

On the last week I've been dreaming about her.
I have heard that she likes opera.

When I imagine what kind of teenager she was, I do not know why but I think she liked pop music. 

I think she liked Mecano and that she used to dance in nightclubs.

Las Curvas De Esa Chica