Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Oscar began his formal education at a Catholic prep school. When he was seven, the nuns scolded him for shouting out the English word, “bitch” in the middle of class after listening incessantly to David Bowie’s “Queen Bitch.”
Right before his 10th birthday, Oscar moved to America. In ten months, he was fully fluent in English, and a year later, he was admitted into a gifted middle school. Still he never really understood what was so dreadful about the word, “bitch.”
A shy guy at heart, Oscar awkwardly walked into his high school with a thick accent and absolutely zero friends. By his senior year, he had qualified to the California State Speech Championships and blossomed into homecoming royalty.
It was during this time that Oscar decided to expand his curious nature into a career. Due to budget cuts, his high school had axed their newspaper program so Oscar called up his local daily paper and offered his services. He began writing for the teen section and produced feature stories on foster children and affirmative action.
Immediately after high school, Oscar enrolled at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He was part of the launch team of NUde magazine, a visionary student publication, and eventually he became the executive editor.
His writing style and one-of-a-kind perspective were showcased in a weekly column for The Daily Northwestern. He received a total of seventeen love letters and zero hate mail.
Oscar landed his first New York internship at CosmoGIRL!, the first member of the opposite sex to ever do so. His daily duties were to provide a healthy dose of testosterone in the office and to go fetch the editor’s gourmet chocolates from across the street.
The following summer, he interned in the arts and entertainment department at Newsweek. His editor thought he was rather “jocular” so he got to do a few celebrity Q&A’s. He asked Pharrell if ringtone rap was a sign of the apocalypse and found out Pete Wentz’s favorite gay bar (Lakeview Broadcasting Company in Chicago).
At one point, Oscar’s only promising post-grad plan was a spot on the 23rd season of The Real World.
Now, his life goal is to write a novel, get an agent, find a publisher, make the bestseller lists, become a literary sensation, move to 24 Bond Street, find an uptown boyfriend and a downtown boy toy, drink champagne for breakfast, and go dancing every night.
Don’t worry. He has a Plan B. His dreams of becoming a spy have intensified ever since he snuck onto a flight at Charles de Gaulle airport without a boarding pass.
In 2009 he anonymously created the semi-autobiographical Confessions of a Boy Toy blog. Later that year, he created the HomoTech column for EDGE Media Networks, which he wrote until 2011. He then went on to write the Easy Target column for SF Weekly, and moderate the Magnet book club at the gay men’s health clinic, a project he started while working as the last event coordinator of A Different Light bookstore.
Currently he serves as editor-at-large of sister sites, Queerty and GayCities and is a West Coast correspondent for Rolling Stone and National Geographic Traveler.
In addition, Oscar has written for The Atlantic, Wired, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, GOOD, Fast Company, SF Bay Guardian, Flavorwire, The Next Web, Latina, Venus Zine, JACKarcher, UR Chicago, The Daily Northwestern, The Modesto Bee, Chicago Unzipped, Planet Out’s GayWired, CollegeOTR, and the official Facebook blog.
His real-life escapades, columns and original commentary have been cited by The New York Times, The Huffington Post, El Pais, SF Examiner, The Hollywood Reporter, PopSugar, MediaBistro, 7x7, SFist, SF Bay Guardian, Flavorpill, Crushable, Oh No They Didn’t, IvyGate, Queerty, GDX, The New Gay, The Castro Courier, Sex with Emily, Lambda Literary, LitSeen, I Live Here: SF, LiveSoMa, Kenneth in the (212), Gay Bachelor Blog, Unicorn Booty, The Everyday Gay, Homo-Centric, Vital Voice, The Ch!cktionary, DanNation, Nick Disco, Frank & Gabe, Typing in Stereo, The Daily Northwestern, and North by Northwestern.
He is at work on a novelization of Confessions of a Boy Toy.