Name: Alex Desales
Age: 19
Hometown: South El Monte, CA
Year and Major: 2nd year Pre-Biology
Relationship Status: single
Who is your celebrity crush? Jennifer Aniston
What is your ideal travel destination? Costa Rica, because it’s tropical, it’s green, it’s near the equator so there are jungles, and you’ll find some of the world’s most biodiversity there.
What is the first thing you notice about girls? Face and hair; I like girls with big, voluminous hair.
What are your hobbies? I enjoy volunteering at the zoo, writing poetry, sitting down and talking with my friends-wasting time, working out, and kickboxing.
What is your favorite food? Barbecue ribs with mashed potatoes, gravy and broccoli.
What is your ideal first date? At this point in my life, I think it would be to go to the zoo with a girl, and then go to dinner after so we can talk-because I love to talk.
What kind of music are you into? I like a little bit of rap, I like Eminem–I’m a huge Eminem fan, I’ve kinda been getting into Logic a little bit, sprinkles of A Tribe Called Quest, some Kendrick Lamar, and a little bit of J. Cole. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I also enjoy some really loud metal, The Black Dahlia Murder, Metallica, Korn, Megadeth, and some Iron Maiden. Finally, I’m into some sadder stuff be it Sam Smith, the Lava You song from the beginning of Inside Out, and lately I’ve been getting into this one song that I’ve had stuck in my head–Mad World by Gary Jules.
How did you get into poetry? I always loved reading as a kid, and I always wanted to write as a kid. I found after a long time that I’m not very good at writing stories, because stories are very detail oriented and it takes a lot of effort to make a story and it’s a very practiced methodical thing. But I remember in my senior year of high school, I had a history teacher named Ms. Quezada. She came to me saying that she wanted to start up a spoken word/poetry club, and she wanted help from me and some of my friends to start it up. From there I started writing poetry and found that it was much more cathartic than writing a story; it was so free-form and it wasn’t bound by any rules or limitations or anything. You can write a poem about nothing and it would still have meaning and value to it; even if nobody else cared it wouldn’t matter because it mattered to you. However, it wasn’t until I came to college and joined the UCSB poets club that I kinda started to find my voice, and it kinda dawned on me that poetry is something that I really enjoy, and performing poetry in front of large groups of people ran this jolt of energy through me. There’s so much nervousness and excitement associated with waiting for my turn to go up and opening myself up to a room full of strangers.
Where can people find you on the weekends? It depends on the weekend. If I’ve got midterms coming up, then you’ll find me at the library. If I don’t have any upcoming responsibilities, you can find me out wandering in IV. You can also find me volunteering at the zoo on Saturday mornings.
What is your favorite thing about poetry? It gives people a way to reveal parts of themselves that nobody sees on a regular basis, and it taught me a lot about myself that I hadn’t known. It also gives me a chance to kind of express things that go on in my head that normally go unheard. Also, poetry can be as weird as you want it to be, and I really appreciate that.
Where can we find you on social media? I’m on Facebook, Twitter @desalesmartin , Instagram @desalesmartin , and Snapchat (don’t make fun of me, I made the account a long time ago!) @modern_adonis (and MySpace, but that was many moons ago).
What do you hope will happen when this article is posted? If I meet people, that’d be really cool. I’m always down to meet new friends.