A Me By Any Other Name Would Smell Just As Funky

I just realized this when I was shaving and looking at my abs in the mirror – I actually don’t have abs, but I like to poorly draw abs on the mirror and sync them up with my tummy to boost my physical self-esteem – but I sometimes refer to myself as Quentin on this blog, like “Quentin you’re such an idiot,” or “Quentin you stupid douche nozzle,” or “Quentin you’re such a poor excuse of a human being, you suck so bad and you’re so dumb and lazy and…” (that’s enough, I think they get it), but on my WordPress blog it has my name as Danniel, so unless you know me personally you may not know I’m referring to myself when I say Quentin, but instead you might just think I’m really holding onto a grudge with a guy named Quentin who stole my girlfriend on prom night and took her back to my place and made sweet, sweet love to her on my speed racer themed race car bed and recorded it and sold copies to every single student and 75% of the faculty staff for $5.99. But no, that’s not the case. I’d say at least 90% of the time I say Quentin I’m referring to myself. I figured I should explain this to anyone who hasn’t heard the story behind my names. Mind you, some of this story is factual, but some of it I wasn’t around for, so I’m basing it off what I’ve been told and possibly adding less true things for comical effect, so if I say anything outrageously offensive please don’t sew me mom and dad.

So about 24 years ago my mom and dad were involved in a 16 person cult orgy, and instead of the mandatory jizzing on the tits policy my father accidentally inseminated my mother. Okay, probably all of that is a lie except for the accidentally inseminating my mother part. I’m about 100% sure I was an accident, and I don’t mind at all. So yadda yadda yadda my mother got pregnant, my dad was too drunk to put together a decent abortion proposal (probably another lie) and nine months later a little boy burst forth from my mother’s vaginal cavity. And that little boy grew up to be none other than Boutros Boutros-Ghali…or me, I forget which.

So there I was, a little bloody baby boy, but what is a little bloody baby boy with no name? The answer of course is just a little bloody nameless baby boy. My parents had to quickly choose a name for me otherwise the nurse would be forced to randomly select my name out of a hat, as I believe the legal procedure calls for (not true). My father of course wanted to name me George Daniel Trujillo the third. I thank God every single day for this not happening. For one George is a horrible name. No offense any one named George. But look at the George’s that have been around during my lifetime. There’s George Bush Sr. who created George W. Bush, who I don’t want to be associated with in any way at all. And then there’s Curious George. The only thing I’m curious about is what that man in the yellow hat is doing to him at night. Curious George isn’t getting lost all over town because he’s exploring things, he’s trying to fucking escape. But the man in the yellow hat always tracks him down. So if you read Curious George to your kids in the future make sure to include that part, for it’s a cautionary tale, and your kids need to know that they shouldn’t be curious monkeys. And then there’s George Foreman and his ten George children. George is not the route I would have liked to take growing up, so thank God that didn’t happen.

My mother and my father compromised, so I assume, and decided to name me Danniel Quentin Trujillo. You may have noticed that Danniel is spelled with two n’s. Well the nurse was a little tipsy when she wrote it down and I don’t harbor any anger towards her, expect for the fact that every time substitute teachers say my name they pronounce it Danielle, which is ridiculous. If they’re going to mispronounce it, which I don’t mind, they should at least mispronounce it correctly, which would be by saying Danny-el. That’s not the correct pronunciation, but to me that’s how it looks like it would be pronounced. It’s really just pronounced the same as Daniel, but never has any substitute teacher ever said that. The thing about the nurse being tipsy was a joke (I think they knew that). Really my mother had some weird thing about having double letters in names. Her maiden name is Lloyd and my older brother’s middle name is Aaron and so she put two n’s in Danniel not thinking about there being two l’s in Trujillo, although I would argue those aren’t two l’s because it’s a Spanish name and we all know that ll is one letter in the Spanish language, although to be truthful I don’t know if that’s actually the letter ll or really just two l’s. I should probably try and find out, but I won’t of course.

My mother picked the name Quentin because it was the name of some supernatural being on a short lived soap opera back in the sixties and seventies called Dark Shadows. Since then the only Quentin’s I’ve ever heard of have been black athletes. Maybe that’s why I always wanted to be black? Even before I was aware of the big penis thing I wanted to be black, but I’m not sure when I first knew a Quentin athlete. Despite being unathletic, having no rhythm, not caring much for rap music, and having a small penis, I’m still convinced I should have been black, and I’m not prepared to give up hope on that dream.

I’m not entirely sure when I started going by Quentin instead of Danniel. Apparently according to my mother she originally referred to me mostly by Danny-Q, although I don’t have reliable sources to back her statement up. If I had to guess when I started going by Quentin instead of Danniel it would be around when I was two, and my father, who has since then been known solely as ‘the guy who inseminated my mother’, decided to leave, never to be seen by me again. I’m currently ‘friends’ with him on facebook, and we’ve talked a little, mostly about what I can only classify as ramblings of nothingness, but I’m perfectly content to never actually meet him in person. I didn’t grow up wondering about my father, and wishing he would come back to see me. In fact I grew up constantly making fun of him, and in my mind knowing that he was worthless, and it was better not having him in my life. You better not be reading this guy who inseminated my mother. I posted a link to this on my facebook –obviously not yet, but I will, as I do with most of the things I write – and I don’t know if my father reads my blogs, but I don’t really want him to feel bad, even though the few times I have talked to him on facebook all I wanted to do was cuss him out and tell him he’s a worthless piece of crap and that he doesn’t deserve to be let back into my life and that I don’t care what his excuses are, and when he dies I won’t come to his funeral, but I will care, I’ll care because that will be one less horrible person for this world to deal with. That is exactly why I don’t want my father back in my life. I grew up not caring about him, poking fun at the fact that I grew up not knowing my father. But now whenever I think about him I get angry. I was never angry about it before. But ever since he wrote me on facebook, with nothing as much as a simple ‘sorry for not being there’, all I’ve wanted to do is just rip him a new asshole. I don’t like the way it makes me feel. I don’t want to make people feel bad. So hopefully he’s not reading this right now and knowing I don’t give a fuck about him. I don’t want him to feel bad. Because all those years when I didn’t even receive a birthday card from him I couldn’t have been happier without him in my life.

Well, now that that’s out of the way. I think my mother was mad at my father so she didn’t want him to get any kind of win, and possibly to her if I went by Danniel that would have been a win for him. So pretty much my entire life I’ve gone by Quentin. In the sixth grade for the first quarter of the year I went by Danniel, because I was so shy and I hate having to tell new teachers at the beginning of the year that I go by Quentin. That’s the same reason I went by Danniel in about half my college classes. If I had a class where I felt there would be little to no interaction with the teacher or students I didn’t feel it necessarily to go by Quentin. Unfortunately the teacher I had the most, six terms of History, knows me by Danniel, so that backfired on me.

So now it’s pretty much that in my personal life I go by Quentin and with everything else I go by Danniel because for the most part it’s easier that way. My mother on the other hand goes out of her way to let every single person we ever see, even the DMV lady, know that I go by Quentin. I like to think that deep down this is still part of her way of saying fuck you to my father.