Babies

I'm friends with X, have been since high school. He was with me in the movie club, was a nice guy, was our (and the school's, pretty much) token black guy. Thought of him today, went to look him up, his Facebook tells me he's doing more than the normal nonsense. He's an intelligent guy still, posts stories from Time and smart shtuffs. Scrolling down. He's in a relationship. Click her name. No picture, no info, but her address is "NamesMama." Oh. Strange. Is X shacking up with a girl with a kid? Back to his profile. Scroll down. How did I miss all the messages congratulating him on his new baby daughter?

I remember when I came back from Antioch and I complained about people from high school treating me like I was still in high school. Moved past that, but somehow I still have in my head that other people haven't changed a lot since then. I would stand by this hypothesis: Since high school, the majority of the people I knew will not have dramatically shifted their worldviews. Fair? But somehow I equate ideology solely with change, and I forget about babies and marriage and all those things. Is my refusal to conceptualize such things a function of my gaiety? Are they just not on my radar because I'm excluded from them? When something like this happens, I feel a galaxy apart from the person. See, beforehand, I was going to send X a message asking how he was doing, etc etc etc. Now I'm not. Why not? Because my assumption is that his having a child and a girlfriend will comprise most of his lifesummary, and I don't really care because I can't have either of those things and I don't want to hear about them as I've been forced to sit through their knowledge of their existence, and my exclusions from such, for 22 years. Fair?

To summarize:
(1) Facebook ruins lives.
(2) Straight people, stop having babies.

My Gay Story 8

I was happy to be home for Christmas, or so I thought, just before my body rebelled and opened me up for a nasty week of flu and strep throat. My parents wanted to spend New Years in Mexico, and so I came, but I didn't talk to any of them, partly because I couldn't and partly because I was still sorting things out. At the same time, I was reeling with a term's worth of pent-up sexual frustration, and I turned again to the Internet. When we drove home, I stayed in the city with my car and went looking for the nicest guy I talked to.

He had a great house and a nice car. He had a friendly dog and a four-foot television. He had two stories and was going to install a jacuzzi on his balcony. He was twenty-two. I didn't know what the hell to think, and then he started massaging my crotch through my pants while we watched The Royal Tenenbaums.

(Aside: Yes, this was all as upper middle class twit as it sounds. Just roll with it.)

The disc skipped halfway through, and we retired to his bedroom. His bed, which I haven't mentioned yet, looked like, well, like I was afraid to touch it. Not only was it beautiful, it looked like he'd had a maid (or my grandmother) make it. He jumped in, and I followed, almost hesitantly. He was happy to do all of the work, and I remember just kind of laying there, not really knowing what to do back to him because I was too busy learning what it felt like when you did things right. This, then, was my first orgasm, and even though I was only 19 it was absolutely the same as when "Aquarius (Let the Sunshine In)" starts to play at the end of The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

But then I was quickly introduced to another new concept: Love 'em and leave 'em. He didn't throw me out, exactly, but we'd done what we came to do, and he said he had to get ready for that night, when he had a bunch of friends coming over. I was welcome to come back, of course. I didn't take him up on it, though, mainly because I felt ashamed. Again, don't ask me where the feeling comes from, but as I drove across the city, I kept thinking about how I could have spent those hours more productively, how I could've spent those hours writing, working on my "career," such as it was. I'd wasted time in having sex. It didn't matter how it felt; it was a just a bodily weakness.

I began at the state university a couple of weeks later. The university may have called our "suite" a "three-person," but I called them "liars" and our "suite" a "cupboard." Yeah, that's probably more quote pairs than you're every going to see in one sentence.... I had the top bunk and Michael had the bottom, while his current roommate, Adam, had the un-bunked twin at the foot of our beds. Add a desk into that bedroom, and a cockroach couldn't have moved about in there (although they certainly tried).

I was pretty depressed for the entire term. I tried going twice to the university's gay advocacy club, but I figured out quickly that it was nothing more than a lesbian hook-up organization, and I stopped going. Living with Michael was fine, but the only other friends I had that term were people I'd known in high school. They, in turn, had known me as chubby, quiet, and confused and, to my mind, they still treated me as such. It was infuriating, after my liberating experience at Antioch, to suddenly have to live like I was back in college. I tried going out a few times, looking for new friends and new people, but I'd transferred at the wrong time; this university was in a very snowy city, and the entire place was frozen between December and May. No one transferred in, and certainly not at semester; I would have to wait until the next fall to start over.

(Interruption: I kept a journal, and here's a rather representative paragraph [notice how I don't capitalize?]: "I walked out of my classes feeling completely apathetic. again. I don't know what I can do about that, either. everything just seems so pointless. granted, I wasn't doing a lot that had to do with writing at antioch, either, but I was learning new things, it was challenging, and I was enjoying myself. here...no. I'm sick of going to lectures and staring blankly at a power point presentation that I can download for myself after the class. I'm sick of being spoon-fed information at a rate so slow it makes CSPAN seem gladiatorial. more than anything, I'm sick of complaining. I'm sick of complaining because there's nothing else I can do. I'm sick of being depressed about it, too.")

But, in the midst of it all, my first relationship! Adam wasn't exactly the knockout that Michael had promised, but he was attractive; he was blond, which I liked; and he was eminently available, as we lived together. As excerpted again from my journal (LONG):
"last night, at about midnight... leigh [a friend from high school] had just left (we'd been playing n64). adam and I got on our respective computers and michael got on his. adam had gotten back on aim, and he was saying that by playing, he'd missed a call from his asian [a guy he liked]. well, I got this weird reckless daring thing, and I decided to fake message him. I got his aim name from facebook and started up with things like 'I'm stalking you' and 'I can see you'. he started to freak out (kind of), but michael came out and ruined it. well, not really ruined...I was about to tell him, anyway...but it really was quite amusing.
"the point: we started talking online and in person, having three different conversations: I was talking to adam, typing to adam, and typing to michael; adam was typing and talking to me and typing to michael; michael was typing to both of us and we were yelling random things at him.
"well, somewhere along the line I decide that this is the night that something is going to bloody well happen. michael decides to make it so, and starts typing back and forth to both of us. unbeknownst to us, he's also copying and pasting what we say into each other's chats.
"by this time, it's like two in the morning. michael decides that he's going to bed, leaving me and adam sitting there. neither of us are typing anymore ... we're just sitting there. I'm on the couch, and he's at his desk, which is perpendicular to the couch.
"so, we just sit there without saying anything for twenty minutes, avoiding looking at each other. as you might guess, that gets old fast, but I'm not sure what to do. finally, I just say (mentally) 'fuck it,' and look into his eyes, and he finally does the same. next step: I'm already leaning towards him on the back of the couch, but he leans onto the couch now too. next comes the slow touching: we gradually get closer, until I brush his arm with mine. I make some kind of hand gesture, meaning that I can put my hand down on his arm. he rests his hand on my arm. I make some other gesture, and my hand lands on the back of his neck. he starts stroking my arm; I start playing with his hair. we move closer, still half-lying down, until our faces are almost touching. I say something about 'no more awkwardness'; he agrees. when I lift up my head again, he starts to kiss me. we make out on and off for a while, until about four.
"we're both unsure at this point if we want to bother getting up for morning classes, but we're also so tired we can barely see straight. we decide it's time for bed, and he tells me that I don't have to sleep alone. I get ready for bed whilst he gets in bed, and then I join him. verrrrrrry nice. no, I didn't sleep with him...I just slept with him. got it?
"the best thing he did: I was lying on his chest, and he bent over and kissed the top of my head.
"I don't want to be premature, but I think we're together. we kept hugging really tightly, as in 'I'll never let go, rose' tightly. he likes me, I like him. we held hands this morning while he was typing, before he went to class.
"...more as it happens. but at least we fucking got around to it."

...Yes, yes, I totally put a Titanic reference in there. I was an awesome kid, what other explanation is there?

Adam was a beginning. It was nice to have someone to sleep against for a few months, even though his twin bed got really small really fast; it was nice to kiss someone goodbye before class; it was nice to have a living situation that, granted, was tiny, but was with my best friend and my boyfriend. Too bad it was too good to last.

This is the last journal post, and it's near the end of the relationship:

"so, this relationship thing is kinda old. I'm tired of it. not in an 'end it' kind of way, but in an 'isn't there more?' kind of way. no, we haven't had sex yet. no, I don't really want to. we do everything up to (but not including) sex, but I don't want to go any further ... and I don't really want to continue the physicality that's going on now. this is not really my thing, see. I've been trying to figure this out...
"I realized I was never attracted to him physically. well, not *never* ... I was a bit at first, but only a bit. and now that that's worn off, I don't really even want to kiss him anymore, much less do anything sexual. it's almost a chore.
"I was attracted to him mentally. *was*. am not really anymore. it was cool that we liked a lot of the same things, but that's not really enough anymore, and I'm not really sure it was much to begin with.
"here's the other thing...
"I think it was a kind of challenge I set myself. I knew about him before I moved in, thanks to michael (and michael's facebook), so I knew he was bi. I wanted to see, if by living with someone who I knew I could get to like me, he would. well, it worked, and I proved my point, but now the newness has worn off. I hate to say that, because it sounds like a maturity thing, and maybe it is. ...it also sounds like I used him for my own ends, and I don't like to think that I did. after all, I *did* like him for a while, but it's coming to an end now. that's part of the reason I don't want to have sex with him, especially not now - that *would* be using him."

My first term at the state university ended at the same time my first relationship did. I went home again.

Oh, man, I'm thwarted

That title's courtesy of my chemistry professor. I haven't mentioned him yet, have I? How can I best describe him.... Ah, yes: Michael Gambon, playing Dumbledore. You know that little beard ring that Gambon wears when he's playing Dumbly? Well, cut off the beard there, make him bald-ish, and that's my chemistry professor. I mean, right down to the way he wears his half-moon glasses, and the bags under his eyes. He even has the same intonations, and moves about the room with the same energy. Incidentally, he's a nice guy but extremely intimidating, and there's really no choice but to call him "Professor."

My friend Emma pointed out that Snape taught Potions, not Dumbledore, but as far as the dispositions are concerned, I'd much rather have Dumbly.

So this is something like the beginning of week five (I've already lost track). The big deal is that the first exams in all my classes are this week. Now, it's been years since I've had science exams and, as I mostly took non-testable classes, years since I've had an actual sit-down comprehensive exam. I'm a little nervous, but I also have a whiteboard in front of me upon which I drew, earlier this evening, glucose, maltose, alpha 1,4 linkages, amylose, amylopectin, alpha 1,6 linkages, fatty acid, triglycerides (saturated and unsaturated), a phospolipid, a steroid, a theoretical and a natural amino acid, a description of peptide bonds, a ribose nucleotide with a purine, and a 2 prime deoxyribose with a pyrimidine. From memory. BE IMPRESSED. I'm not too nervous, but we haven't had any quizzes or exams yet in that biology class and so I have no idea what the testing style will be like. In Dumbledore's chemistry, we've had three quizzes already, so I'm not as concerned. Still, why does it always seem that tests fall in the same week, and sometimes even on the same day? Well, probably for the same reason that TV shows have ads at relatively the same times: Most shows are structured in the same teaser-act 1-act 2-act 3-etc model, so they take their breaks at roughly the same times. Classes, too, especially science and math classes, probably operate under similar structures, and so have major exams (if they're over about the same number of chapters, as these are) at relatively the same times.

Whew. A lot of qualifiers. And it doesn't really make me feel better, but there it is.

Apparently H1N1 was reported at my school. Since this is months after the big panic when everyone and their grandmother was reporting it in their backyards, I'm inclined to believe it. Sucks, though. I don't want to get sick, especially since I've been fighting some hybrid allergy-cold thing since Friday morning, and as much as I'd rather not even have this over the next couple of days, I'd like to fall to influenza even less.

I think I mentioned I'm doing some kind of weird tutor-teaching on the side? I met with the deans of the math and English departments last week, so that they could "assess my suitability" (my phrase). The math guy was nice; he ate sunflowers all through the interview, which basically boiled down to "Can you teach basic addition? Can you teach pre-calculus? Can you use a graphing calculator? Cool. Nice to meet you." The English dean, on the other hand, was a lot more verbose, and we actually got to talking for a while. I found out that she was 38 before she went back and got her Master's, and now she's a department head. Coming out of that meeting, I had a major, major ideological crisis that basically consisted of "Jesus, I just gave up a Master's, WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING." But then the more me parts of me came in and said, yeah, it's cool, but what did she do until she was 38? What did she do between the age of 38 and when she took her current position? See, I wanted to be a professional writer, no holds barred, for the payoff; but I want to be a doctor for the journey. Too Hallmarky? Maybe. Still, I like writing along this path a lot more than I did when I was an English major. I'm still proud of my degree, by the way.

I hung out with the group of gays last weekend, but ... ah, more of that later.

My Gay Story 7

Antioch. Where to start?

My parents cried, in the airport. I wouldn't let them fly with me; I insisted on doing it alone. Not the best idea, as it turned out, because at the end of the day of flying I was not happy with even a small amount of ineptitude, and the supposedly free shuttle service line was disconnected. I considered not staying, just buying a ticket back to the west, which seems strange now that I think about it - I wasn't even going to give it a chance - but I was panicked. I mean, really, panicked, a couple of neurons from hyperventilating, just thinking, why did I do this, why did I do this, why did I do this? I think the only way I slept, that first night, was because my body was just so exhausted that it didn't care what my mind was thinking.

My rideshare the next morning knew how to help. Oh, I didn't tell her I was panicking or anything, but she knew what to say and what to show - look, Ohio highway construction is just as bad as Arizona - and her radio was playing Supertramp's "The Logical Song." Somewhere between the hotel's soggy muffins and the first misty morning at Antioch, I decided I was going to try.

I went to the gym. I met the people I'd talked to on the phone. I received my key, my orientation pocket, and my Antioch muffin, which was slightly less damp. I had my picture taken in front of a shower curtain (yellow with blue flowers) for my school ID. I set off across campus, wheeling my thumping trunk behind me.

The next few days were even better, because I met people - people who, in those few days, would set the groundwork for lifelong friendships. And, inevitably, I met a cute boy. It must've been my second or third day there, because my dorm, the transfer dorm, was having a meet and greet in our common room, and I ended up standing next to him.

He doesn't need a code name, because he already has one: Blueberry. Four reasons: First, my friend Veronica (who was also my RA) had a crush on Blueberry's (straight) roommate, and decided that he should be called Grape for no reason at all. The "nickname cute boys after fruits!" idea stuck, and thus, Blueberry. But I picked Blueberry for other reasons, too: He had startlingly blue eyes; he wore this wonderful sky blue shirt with regularity; and I loved to eat blueberries. ...Don't look at me like that.

Antioch's writing professor was on leave that fall term, so I decided that I was going to take the kinds of classes I always said I wanted to take, but never did. I signed up for a dance class, which was both movement (on Mondays and Wednesdays) and history (on Fridays). There was a visiting professor from NYU's drama school, and I signed up for her theater class, not knowing if I was any good but figuring, well, now was the time to figure it out; I tried out for performance and ended up writing part of it, too. I signed up for the choir because I liked to sing in my car. I signed up for a Queer Theory class that had a lot of reading. I signed up for a self defense class and a martial arts class. I was the epitome of those things you think about late at night before you fall asleep and the things you see on TV and say, geez, I wish they had that here. I wish I could do that. Maybe I didn't go on to win an Academy Award, exactly, but I had fun.

During my first dance class, we were sorted into groups for an ongoing exercise that was supposed to teach us how to move across a room. I somehow got chosen to lead one of the groups (I'd discovered Dance Dance Revolution that summer, and I can only think that that had something to do with it). Just as we're about to start waltzing across the studio, who should come wandering in but Blueberry? Where would he sit? Well, right in front of my line, of course. I caught up with him in the bathroom that night, and stumble-apologized for looking like such an idiot (Blueberry, of course, was in the advanced dance class that met after mine). "I thought you looked great," he said. I went back to my room and pounded my head into the wall for fifteen minutes.

See, I had no idea how to act around a cute gay guy. You've already read about my stumbling half-effort with Rachel, and the pseduo-sex with the Cowboy. I had no high school relationship sandbox in which to experiment. I had no idea what I was supposed to do to impress a guy like Blueberry, who was a kickass dancer, a smart guy all around, and who had grown up in the city. As I asked Veronica, what am I supposed to do, invite him down to the Caf? Antioch was in a small town, and yes, they had restaurants, but I hadn't even been on a proper date by that point and I was absolutely out to sea.

I only had a roommate for about a month. Karen (Antioch believed in co-ed rooming) decided around that time that she needed to be closer to her business and her family - she lived a day's car drive away - and so she withdrew. However, before she could go, she left me a little present. She was tired of hearing me talk about Blueberry, tired of seeing me crush on him without doing anything about it. Both Karen and Blueberry had joined my intro dance class by that point, and one day after class Karen held back and told Blueberry in no uncertain terms that I was pretty much in love with him.

Sounds like high school, doesn't it? That's certainly the emotional-readiness level I was at, but I don't know what her excuse was.... I was devastated, anyway. I couldn't talk to Blueberry for a week, and even then it was horribly awkward, especially since he didn't like me back. All those weeks of coy looks! The nights spent chatting up while we brushed our teeth! All those dance classes of dancing myself hoarse for him! I would've gotten to asking him, in my own time. But now, no chance.

Antioch, for all its gay-friendliness, didn't attract many gay men. In the three floors of my dorm building, Blueberry and I were the only gay guys. Lesbians, on the other hand, were out in full force. Of course, the joke (read: the motto) at Antioch was "Hi, I go to Antioch, and it takes fifteen minutes to explain my sexuality." I was impatient with that. I was a gay man! I knew what I was, I knew that I liked men, and that was that. But with Blueberry unavailable, I didn't have much else to turn to. There were a few girls who "identified as men," and more power to them, but I wasn't about to go out with them.

My friends, though, there's another story. Many of them fell under the fifteen-minute sexuality banner, and they were all (with the exception of Grape, who did eventually get together with Veronica) women. We were some kind of liberal arts sitcom, really: The East Coast Jewish girl. The kitschy photographer. The redhead with glasses. The never-showers artist. The café-haven indie guitarist. The lesbian writer. And me. I loved 'em all, and I fill up many entries with memories and inside jokes and whatnot, but it'd all have to be contained within that single fall semester.

See, at the same time Antioch was a rousing success, it was also a failure. Notice came down from the governing board that term that they were going to close the college in a year and a half, and while that wasn't solely responsible for my decision to leave, it was pretty sobering to realize that I couldn't get a degree from Antioch, no matter how hard I worked, because it would close down before it was feasible. Then, too, they took away some of my financial aid because of a mistake in which my dad, who had identified himself (rightly) as a student because he was in the process of getting his master's degree, was accused of making up another child in order to get more financial aid for me. Apparently it never occurred to them that he could be both a parent and a student, or that they should clarify such things on their applications, but whatever. I digress. It still rankles, but this isn't what this is about.

I made up my mind too quickly, probably. By October, I was already filling out applications for transferring the next term. Well, "application," actually, as I'd already made up my mind that I was going to head back to an Arizona university. I was talking almost daily with Michael (my high school best friend, remember him?) by this point, and he told me I should just move into his dorm room, which was supposed to fit three, even if they'd never bothered finding him a third roommate. Perfect! He came out to me around that time, too, not as gay, but as transgender. I tried to be supportive, but I was having enough problems just figuring life out for myself.

I can't say it was bittersweet to leave, because it wasn't sweet. Looking back now, and knowing what's coming, I wish I'd stayed at Antioch, if not until it closed, then at least until the summer. Yeah, it was expensive, and yeah, I'd run out of boys to potentially go out with, but that could've changed the next semester! If I hadn't already announced that I intended to leave at the end of semester, the pool party (ahem, naked pool party) we threw the week before school ended should've convinced me otherwise. But I thought about getting my program back on track; I thought about a whole city full of potentially gay men; I thought about Michael's roommate, who he assured me was attractive and bisexual.

I flew home for Christmas and I didn't come back.

Eight feet of DNA in every cell!

I like that. Sounds like a DNA advert, doesn't it? Or an ad for cells, anyway: "Over eight feet of DNA in our cells, compared to our competitor's six!" Okay, so that doesn't sound like an advert at all, but whatever. There's a reason I don't work retail. Actually, funny story about working retail. Well, not so funny....

My first job-job (as in, something other than babysitting or cleaning the houses of relatives) was working as a cashier at Sears. Actually, the official name was "CAC," which stood for "Central Aisle Cashier" but which was, of course, corrupted from "CAC" into "cock" within fifteen minutes by the guys I worked with.

Anyway, I was a sixteen-year-old cock at Sears, working mainly in the tool department. The sex jokes pretty much stopped there, but my friends found it massively amusing that I worked around tools, let me tell you. I also crushed on a few of my coworkers, including one guy I went to high school with who worked in Lawn & Garden and ended up being Gay™ a few years later. I remember getting on the loudspeaker a few times, especially when I was alone at the register with no floor people in sight and an old man would come up and ask me something about god-knows-what kind of wrench. Well, Sears is a joyous corporation determined to preserve its glorious heritage among its minimum-wage employees, and my (paid) training included several days learning about the history of the Sears corporation but no actual useful knowledge regarding, say, how to distinguish a wrench from a hacksaw. So, more often than not, I would send myself onto the store's loudspeaker: "Matt. Chris. Eric. Anyone. Please help, before I fuck something up and sell this old guy a pair of penny loafers instead of a sledgehammer." Hell, the old guy probably never knew any better, either.

The fucked-up part, the reason I never want to work corporation retail again, was the Sears card. Of each and every customer, I was supposed to ask "Would you like to put this on your Sears card?" If they said no, I was then supposed to ask "Do you have a Sears card with us?" If they said no again, then came the "Would you like to apply for one? It only takes about three minutes." I was supposed to ask, mind, but I never actually did unless the head cock was standing around (which she almost never did; she was a relatively cool girl in her mid-twenties, and I got the feeling she didn't like it either). The irritating parts for me were twofold - first, when I had to ask, I very nearly always got turned down, and I don't do well with rejection. Second, the people who said "yes" were also invariably the people who had rifled through their wallets or purses for twenty minutes, searching for the one card they hadn't maxed out, then asked me to swipe it, remembering just in time that they'd actually handed me an expired Fry's VIP card. Plus, the interest rate was sky-high. I worked there for about five months and I think I signed up about a dozen people for Sears cards. May the gods have mercy on my already tattered soul.

Jesus, these posts are like riding in the car with my brother. See, he believes that driving should take your breath away ... and, if possible, your life, just to let you know that you've really been enjoying yourself. Somewhere in the past six years, Driver's Education has apparently amended its curriculum so that green no longer means "go" and red means "stop." Instead, green now means "go" and red means "go HARDER. Horns? What horns? They're just cheering you on!" Bumpers are designed to touch, brakes are suggestions, and screamo is God's gift to the world of music. ... Eventually, he does get me (and himself, I guess) home safely, so let's move right along.

Books. They're great. Read them. Don't know what to pick up? Lucky you, I'm here to help.

First off, Alas, Babylon. What if the Cold War had been warmer and more of a war? Specifically, what if the Soviet Union had nuked all the US coastal cities and most of Europe to radioactive hell and back, and then been counter-wiped out itself? It's an interesting proposition, but what I really liked about it is that it didn't jump for the blockbuster ideology of "a group of determined and ethnically-sensitive (but still mostly white) survivors claw their way through the ruins of Great City X." Instead, the main characters are all from a small town in Florida, and the only time they leave is when the main visits his brother before the bombings happen. If you've read The Road, I'd compare it to that, and not necessarily in terms of related subject matter, either. Rather, while you get apocalyptic cataclysms in both books, they're more about the emotions of survival and recovery and what-have-you. And shit blows up, so give it a shot.

A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet. Generally, I'm not a big fan of memoirs, but Beverly Cleary occupies a very special place in my heart. And if one more person asks me who Beverly Cleary is, I'm going to clobber them. Henry Huggins and Ribsy? Ramona and Beezus Quimby? Leigh Botts of Dear Mr. Henshaw? The Mouse and the Motorcycle? If you can honestly tell me none of those ring any sort of bell, then I say right now that you had an incomplete childhood. Go out, right now, and get one Beverly Cleary book, and then read her memoirs.

What I found so interesting about Beverly Cleary's life, especially her college years, is that I could read some parts and say, hey, yeah, this totally happened to me, too! Then, other parts seemed less like she'd grown up in a different time and more like she'd grown up on a different planet. (She was through college before World War II began.) If nothing else, they're absolutely worth the descriptions of her young adult life. But, really, she's a great writer (probably one of the best of the century, if not ever), so check 'em out.

Boy Culture. When I saw this book at the library, I just read the dust jacket - gay male prostitute spills his life - and that was enough to make me put it in my bag. Later, I wasn't so sure; it seemed a bit too much like an edgy gay sitcom: Gay prostitute has wacky gay roommates who get into lots of rowdy adventures! Some of it does come across as a little trite, like the "my roommate's gay, NO REALLY, and I have a crush on him so let's get him out of the closet" (and maybe that's just because I've lived it, natch). On the whole, though, it's a lot like Shortbus (which is awesome. See it.) in that, yeah, the characters are gay, and they're more, ahem, sexually liberated than you're likely to see in the latest Dan Brown or Nora Roberts, but that doesn't mean the book sacrifices any humanity in the telling.

No excuses now, kids. Your library's there for a reason, and it's free. Use it. Go.

My Story (The Gay Years), Part 6

Spring of my freshman year. I was gay; I'd had "sex" with a man. It was time to improve myself.

Improvement had several faces. First, I ignored the nonsense about "getting an associate's degree" and signed up for as many writing classes as I could. Second, I started (well, continued) to look for schools to transfer to. Third, I started riding my dad's old exercise bike.

One of my friends from the Dream Interpretation class, Weshaw, ended up in one of my writing classes. It was nice to have a friend again, let me tell you, especially since Jennie left that January for her new school. The writing classes were, like the Dream Interpretation class, safe spaces, although I mostly wrote silly poetry and science fiction back then. I got the idea, though, that if I were ever to write about gay characters, it would've been okay.

I was reading a book at the time called The Book of Dead Birds. I was quite surprised to find a dedication to my writing teacher inside; apparently, she and the author had gone to grad school together at a place called Antioch. I was researching a lot of small schools back then - small schools that were reportedly gay-friendly, that cared about each of their students, that had good writing programs, that were (hopefully) far from my small town. From that list, I short-listed my three favorites - Sarah Lawrence, in New York; Grinnell, in Iowa; and Antioch, in Ohio.

(Relevant aside: I applied and was accepted to the latter two, but I didn't even apply to Sarah Lawrence. Years later [as in, this past spring], I applied and was accepted to their grad program. I declined, to begin my medical studies. But in one of my entrance essays, I wrote about this period: "All of my potential [schools] were small, all of them liberal and easterly, all potentially snowy and definitely far from the west. Sarah Lawrence sent me a book-size pamphlet, and I carried that thing around with me like I was a closet alcoholic and it was my flask. I'd whip it out at school, at work, waiting for a movie to start, look at the treeful pictures and remind myself that there was something more than what I'd seen." It was pretty true. And "treeful" is a cool word.)

I chose Antioch. It was, at last, something to work towards, something I'd chosen, consciously, with my eye wide open, as opposed to the obvious filtration from state high school into state university. I liked what I'd chosen. I packed three months early. I was ready to be fully gay, in a place where it was okay.

But I skip ahead. It's worth mentioning the one way I was fully gay in my town, too: the community college's GLBT club. It was, simply, "the GLBT club," and we met once a week, Friday afternoons, in a secluded classroom. The group was a small one, and included several older women, including the club's sponsor, and Drew, the club president. He was a year older than me, and he was cute in a "I wear glasses to make me look good" kind of way. I've never really cared for that whole show myself, but Harriet the spy did it too, I guess.... But Harriet did it to look smart, not to "fill out her face" (whatever that means). Anyway, digressing, so: He was nice, and he had a boyfriend who lasted just until the end of the term and made him unavailable until I left.

It wasn't a bad club, as far as my one hour per week of being fully gay went. I remember one particular night, before World AIDS Day, when we all met at Drew's apartment to prepare. Specifically, we sat down and watched the pilot episodes of The L Word and Queer as Folk while we stuffed condoms, instructions, and spearmint LifeSavers into little baggies. It was fun. I was jealous, because Drew's boyfriend was there, and they'd kiss whenever Drew got up to go to the kitchen or something. Well, "jealous" doesn't even really cover it, because I was just as fascinated. I had never seen gay people in real life acting as though they were perfectly normal in their affection. I was impressed, and as much as I immediately crushed on both of them (they were gay, they were my age, they were unavailable; it was obvious), I was upset when I heard that they'd broken up. I wanted them to stay together, maybe more for my illusions than for their emotions.

The summer seemed like a last hurrah. I'd dropped from a 38/40 waistline to a 28/30, and lost over thirty pounds. I was happy, for the first time, with how I looked (though I do remember experimenting with self-tanner, to some rather unfortunately orange results). At work, during my last week, I got cards from all my friends, and the biggest surprise of all - from the owner, another card, an $100 bill, and a free going-away party for me and my friends. Obviously I wasn't as much a "weirdo" as I'd assumed! I gave her the only hug of our entire relationship, and looked toward a new beginning.

Step outside the bubble

Every so often, you'll find a nutjob who honestly believes that, I don't know, goldfish are evil. Or, say, homosexuality invading family life through popular music, which is what this entry's about.

(Aside: The name of the site I just linked you to is called "God Hates Fags," so watch yourself.)

Really, though, the site is so laughable that it's hardly worth disclaiming. These are the type of folks who Capitalize Random Words to better drive home their Point. Either that, or they never made it through the third grade.

I want to paraphrase this, but really? How can you get better than this: "Some bands are what we like to call Gateway Bands. They lure children in with Pop Grooves and Salacious Melodies leaving them wanting more. They’ll move on to more dangerous bands and the next thing you know you’ve got a homosexual for a child."

OH NO. A Homosexual for a Child. OF ALL THINGS.

They list "gay" bands for the crazies concerned parents who want to keep their Children from becoming Homosexuals. The list is the major reason why this site is funny as opposed to a 'net hemorrhoid, because they list parenthetical reasons with some of their choices. Major highlights:
*Pink is unacceptable because she evidently has a "gay family."
*Toby Keith is a "cowboy." Seriously. That's the reason. Apparently Brokeback homo'd everyone west of the Mississippi.
*Kate Bush. "Kissed a girl." Apparently they feel they don't need to expand there. Actually, neither do I.
*The Butchies. I didn't even know they were a band, but apparently they're also "lizbians." Not "lesbians." Lizbians.
*Morrissey is "questionable." Personally, I hope he's more than, but whatever.
*George Michael is a "Texan." Evidently Texans are gay. Someone ought to tell our ex-president.
*Britney Spears kissed Madonna. Ergo, gay.
*Elton John is "really gay." I'm just not sure if this is meant as "Elton John is very gay" or "No, really, Elton John is gay." Oh, well, either way, one out of about six thousand isn't bad.

But wait! There's more! There's another list of wholesomely Christian, god-fearing, homo-abating bands! Why not jam with Jesus to Evanescence and Creed? It's Listening God's Way, folks! And, if the last list was laughable, this one is ridiculously cringeworthy simply because it's headlined by Cyndi Lauper.

This is the kind of photo that doesn't need a caption. ...Although I do want to know what the woman to the left is thinking.

My problem is that too many of my favorite bands aren't on either list. What about the penultimate boy bands (IMHO) The Beatles and The Beach Boys? They're boys getting together to make music ... that's gay, right? What about Queens of the Stone Age? They're all guys, but they call themselves queens! Franz Ferdinand? They have a song about lusting after a guy! Perhaps most disappointingly, I still don’t know whether Fleetwood Mac is safe or not. When I listen to them, will they "foster heterosexual desires and stimulate a Christian mode of thought"? Or will they encourage my deviant behavior and eventually result in my eternal damnation?

Only time will tell.

Life's Cycles

I'm cleaning my desk off when I find the tassel from my high school graduation. That's enough to remind me of a world away, but I don't think of high school or graduation when I see it.
I think of a date I had close to a year and a half ago now. The "date" took place mainly in my car, so make of that what you will, but early on he was looking through the glove compartment and he found the wadded-up tassel. I'd hung it around my mirror for a couple of months after high school graduation, but it came down not long afterward when I decided that I didn't want to remember high school anymore. ...Or, maybe I decided it was a driving distraction. One of the two.
Anyway, he unknotted it and hung it back around my mirror. He said something about being proud of what I'd done, the wholeness of life, the present coming from the past, something like that. Or maybe he didn't ask and didn't say anything. Maybe I'm just ascribing good things to him that he doesn't deserve. He was very nice, then, the kind of French-Asian that's a lot more full-faced French and only Asian around the eyes. Not so much later.
I took it down the time after I saw him last because it reminded me of him, not of high school. It's stayed in my backseat for a very long time now.

Explanation McShortypants

If a whole bunch of entries appear at once and the timestamps seem to be all over the place, don't worry about it. I write a lot of drafts during the week, look over them later, and publish them, but I prefer to have the timestamps correspond to when I first wrote the drafts. So, check back all the time, as you never know what you'll find and when you'll find it. (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

What's wrong with expectations?

I pulled a nice book out of the library. When I Knew, ed. Robert Trachtenberg. A very easy read - a bunch of short essays (sometimes just paragraphs) dealing with, well, when folks knew. Self comings-out.

It has something like eighty, eight-five different stories, listed at the front of the book. Along with each contributor's name, the book gives their primary occupation. From those occupations:
-Nine contributors list their sole occupation as "comic." Apparently growing up gay is growing up in a slowly-ripening joke field. ...I don't know whether I'm being sarcastic there or not, but I did find it a little surprising.
-Fourteen contributors identify themselves as writers. Here, though, they're a lot more likely to double- or triple-occupy themselves; there's a "writer / actor / comedian" and "actor / writer / musician," among others.
-Eight identify themselves as "designers" - fashion, interior, production.
-Seventy (as in an order of magnitude greater than seven) contributors, the vast majority, identify themselves as working within the entertainment industry.

There are a few minority positions. Two of the contributors work in education, one in business, one is a former politician, and one is an attorney.

I'm trying to think of a way to sugarcoat it, but it's not coming. So: If I had gone to the gay section of the library, picked this book out, and sat down to read it and get a realistic (not relativistic) picture of gay people, I would have been disappointed. Crisis: Growing Up Gay in America is a much better anthology, I think, and I would recommend that to anyone who really wants to read what a variety of different experiences are like.

But I shouldn't be too hard on this book. I think it's largely a coffee table book (not about coffee tables, though ... reference, anyone?), and is patently and lightly fluffy in a way that will please any casual readers when they see "I knew I was gay when I outgrew my mother's high heels" or "My father was watching the evening news [in 1969]. The announcer said that Judy Garland had died. I fainted. I was nine." Cue reaction: "Oh, those silly homos!" Such would be my expectation.

The essay I enjoyed most was the attorney's. Excerpted: "While Judy and I spoke, Guy looked at me. He pushed the drawings around on the table. He paged through the brochure. At some point, he interrupted and said, 'You like this stuff? The dancing and the music? You'd rather be here at home by yourself instead of at the baseball field?' ... I said 'sure' or nodded my assent. But the look on his face - which I recall to this day - did me in; it was a mixture of bemusement, disapproval, and disgust. ... My mother found me sitting in the living room, curled up in a corner sofa. I told her I must have fallen asleep, though I hadn't. I'd been awake the whole time, thinking as only a child can, 'Why didn't he like me? What's wrong with me?'"

Maybe the truth of the matter is more in the armchair boy than the boy who experimented with high heels and eyeliner? Or maybe it's just my truth.