Archive for Awkward
wherever you go, there you are…
I’m looking at my shoulders, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Between getting thrown on the ground several times a night for the past three weeks as a part of my role of hostage to Iranian terrorists (I was acting. Maybe you’ve heard of it), general clumsiness and residual bacne scars, I’ve come to the concise decision that tank-tops are not going to be an option for me this summer.
I’m poking at each of my wounds and scars right now trying to decide if they give off the air of rugged physicality, or if they’re giving off a more literal “air” of infected flesh. I’m hoping not the latter, because I’m having enough trouble getting a guy to look at me, the last thing I need is the stench of an infected rug burn to start cock-blocking me too. Goodness.
So, as you can tell, Summer is starting off just great for me. Let’s hope I get the call, and California beckons.
But then again, a summer in Cali with no tank-top privileges just doesn’t sound like that much fun at all…
Many the miles.
I find myself oddly nostalgic about London right now. I knew it would hit me later than the rest, but I think I’m only just now starting to feel the pangs of desire to just sit on the underground and watch London pass by from several feet under.
This is strange for me only because I find myself fairly content with the present.
No- that’s a lie.
I never find myself content with the present. In fact, like most people, I trudge through most of my days looking ahead towards the next hour. And after that you’re just forced to keep trudging until the hours finally give way to the next day. Where you can resume trudging.
I hate trudging. I hate the word, the feeling it gives me, but it’s also the perfect image for what I’m feeling right now. I feel like each step is a little too mucky, a little to difficult to even bother. With every step the reality of the present gets a little bit closer, and suddenly you’re just stuck, in the now, and you’ve forgotten whichever way you were going in the first place. It’s at these moments, I’m forced to ask myself: “What the fuck?”
How do I get out this?
I don’t think London felt like trudging. At least with perspective filtered through fond memories, it’s hard to see it that way. I was having a lot of sex in London, and now I haven’t had sex in more than four months.
Sex never feels like trudging. God.
fear breeds you
I’ve been thinking a lot about fear lately. Mostly because I am full of it. I’m bursting with it really.
If I were any more fragile right now I’d be made of meringue.
There are moments in your life when reality hits you so hard in the face, you have to take a step back and wonder why it would do something as awful as that. One of those moments where you ask yourself, “did that really happen? Did life really just bitchslap me in front of all of our friends at Kelly’s birthday party, and then just walk out of the room like everything is normal, and then pretend the next day like it doesn’t have anything to apologize for, and say that it isn’t even worth talking about?” I just had one of these moments.
It turns out, through a series of events that would not be interesting enough to outline here, that I am completely and unequivably fucked. I, at the tender of age of 21 have had a complete mid life crisis and suffered a startling loss of direction. I used to have a pretty firm grasp of my goals, my desires, what I wanted to get out of life, and how I was going to get there. Things seemed pretty clear, because I planned for them to happen, and I’d be damned if I’d let anything get me down.
Well, consider me damned. You can also consider me fucked up the ass, fisted and verbally abused while you’re at it.
This of course all comes back to that wonderful thing we call money. It’s no secret that my finances have always been in a sorry state. I never factored in being rich anywhere in my grand life plans before, because being comfortably poor has been the one constant in my life. In fact I can say that it’s definitely been one of the few facts of life that hasn’t let me down at some point. Well, not to deviate from the norm, money has once again stuck it’s big, fat fist up my ass.
(I apologize for the graphic gay talk. I just finished season one of Queer as Folk, and I now dream of a world where queer terminology just becomes something second nature and colloquial)
I’ve been sitting here for the past couple of minutes trying to come up with a more eloquent way of saying thing, but really the best image I can come up with that will adequately illustrate not only my emotional state right now, but also the situation as it stands now… I’m fucked.
I’ve been backed into a corner. A corner that includes taking a management position at family video and indefinitely putting off my dreams of being that kick ass twenty-something living it up in the city trying to make it as an artist. While the idiom “starving artist” has its charms, in my case the starving part may become a bit too literal to be healthy. I always had these big aspirations about struggling for a couple of years to pay the rent , then being discovered for my intense amount of talent and being able to live a comfortable life of noteriety and financial stability.
That’s not going to happen for a long time. Because dreams like that, dreams that big take time. They take focus and dedication, and more importantly they take people. Meeting lots of interesting people who can help facilitate your rise to the top. Working 60 hours a week in Kansas City for Family Video so I can pay off my staggering, dear I say paralyzing amount of debt won’t leave a lot of time. It won’t leave a lot of room for a life either. At least not the life that I ever thought I’d be living.
And without all that, I feel hopeless. I feel like for the first time in my life the luck has run out. I don’t think I can talk my way out of this, nor can I wait around for some kind of miracle to happen that’ll get me through. I’ve been a fool, and now life’s little lessons have finally caught up to me. And it ain’t pretty.
It took me a long time to be able to sit down and right about this. It took me a long time to sort out my feelings about the whole thing. I’m scared. I’m scared that I won’t be able to hack it. That everyone who’s ever thought I’d fail will be right, and I’m afraid more than anything that I’ll lose something about myself in the process. This is all, of course, fairly dramatic, and like a lot of things I’ve ever blogged about will serve as a milestone in my own self-absorption and will only be looked back on with scorn and a maybe a slight laugh on my part.
That’s what I’m hoping at least. I’m hoping that the mix of my defeatist attitude, and my alarmist nature have finally met cute and are looking at have one big life-sized baby called a stress related ulcer.
Let’s hope that at least doesn’t happen.
save money, learn to couplet.
A few things have interested me as of late.
One of those things has been how quickly the word “maverick” has spread into popular culture, and how the definition has grossly expanded thanks to Governor Palin, Senator McCain, and SNL. No longer does it hold the singular meaning of an unorthodox or free thinking individual, but the word now brings along with it a host of grey shaded (mostly dubious) meanings. I can’t count the number of times today that I uttered, or heard someone else utter things like “let’s do this maverick style,” “it’s probably because he’s a maverick,” “that’s a little too maverick for me,” “fucking mavericks need to shut the fuck up,” “those mavericks think they own the place,” or more simply, “let’s do this mavericks.”
Perhaps this hasn’t spread all throughout popular culture as much as it has infected the microcosm of life that I have found myself in these past few weeks, but I have a feeling maverick is something that will either stay with me for a long time (“fierce”) or find it’s away into my mental waste basket along with words like “jiggy,” and “dealio.”
The other thing that has come to my attention to today is my aversion to human cruelty of any sort. I suppose aversion isn’t the right word. Aversion would imply that I avoid it, and unfortunately the opposite is most often the case. I somehow found my way onto youtube tonight researching something else I’m writing, and instead found videos of people like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore and pundits like that. I don’t care whatever political views they may espouse, i don’t care what political views you stand by, there’s no excuse for the filth that these people spew in front of television cameras, microphones and the shocking amount of followers that somehow find reason to justify their just plain meanness. Maybe I’m just in a particularly sensitive mood lately, but I find it really hard to understand why people find it necessary to be so evil. I’m probably sounding in large parts both naive and whimsical in my diatribe against mean people, but I just don’t think any degree of cruelty is necessary in situations like that. Meanness should be reserved for fictional characters and people who wear crocs.
But as much as I find it loathsome and despicable, I find myself more and more drawn to just keep clicking on “related videos” and watching more and more of it, and making myself feel really depressed about the state of the human condition. I mean honestly. Think what you like about anyone’s politics, since when has calling someone a “rag head” or imitating their parkinson’s symptoms on your podcast been even close to classy? It’s not. And dagnabit, I think people should just try to be nice if they’re going to disagree with people. Is it really that entertaining to see someone be so mean? I don’t get it. I just don’t get it folks.
I always find interesting breakthroughs in my writing when I realize the characters I’m creating have large bits of myself ingrained in their ugliest qualities. Once I realize that I’m really kind of emotionally purging all over my macbook, things just seem to go much easier. Whoop whoop!
I get more hits a day on this thing because I wrote about a creepy crush I had on Jeremy Roloff. Seriously. You’d be shocked by the amount of people google “Jeremy Roloff shirtless” on a daily basis.
(it’s like fourteen).
… and we exhale and roll our eyes in unison.
It’s interesting that when I think back on my childhood, there is one figure I consistently feel this kind of odd kind of displacement towards. At some point in my gradual maturation into adulthood my relationship with dear old dad stopped being as black and white as “he’s daddy, so i love him.” It never really stopped being that simple I guess. He is daddy, and I will always love him. But the more I grew up the more I realized that I was nothing like my father. And now, having come full circle I guess, the older I get the more I realize I’m more like my father than I would have previously liked to admit.
There was always something detached about my father. there still is. He is the person I have the hardest time trying to find a gift for- resulting, unfortunately for him, in a multitude of fishing ties and “world’s best dad” mugs. I never know what to write in his cards, and I have never been able to say goodbye to him in the hallmarky, father/son dynamic that I’ve always seen reenacted before me since I was a kid. He’s always been this complete mystery to me. The nut I’ll never be able to crack and all that.
But the more I grow into myself, the more I’m realizing I’m growing into him.
Not surprisingly I’ve always related better to my mother. She’s who I inherited my outgoing personality, my effortless ability to talk to whomever I’m around, and my neurotic need to bring a book with me anywhere I go (even if I never actually intend on reading it). All these traits, and many more like them are things my father has never claimed to possess. He’s anything but a people person, and needs little stimulation of any kind to keep himself occupied. My dad is the dad you see at graduation either delegated to hold the video camera, or who is quietly trying to disassociate himself with the screaming bunch of family members sitting to his left. I don’t remember my dad at my graduation. I don’t remember my dad at my last string of theatrical projects, and I don’t remember my dad as being much of a contributing factor to anything in my lifetime. His brand of parenting was conservatism in it’s simplest form, and liberally hands off.
Traveling all over Europe this year, my mind always seems to drift back to my parents. How unhappy I’ve always seen them. How loveless I’ve always viewed their relationship, and how miserable they must be back in the states together, while I’m sitting on a cliff staring off into the Mediterranean. But the more I think about it, and the more I find myself sitting quietly by a window contemplating a complicated set of issues in my mind, a book lying lifelessly on my lap, and my iPod stored safely in my pocket, I realize that the picture I have now become, is the same picture of my father, sitting by my grandparents lake staring out for what seemed like a lifetime while I sat back and wondered how he could be so content with a life like that.
I’m not a carbon copy of my father by any means. I still can’t quite imagine how he stumbled upon the mess of a life he ended up with, but the mistakes he must have made were probably made with the right intentions that always drove my father to do what he thought was best for someone else. Whenever I find myself at home these days, I’m always reminded of the seemingly endless amount of work my dad does when he’s home. One of the things I’ll always remember about my dad is the planner he’s had since he was in college. One of those refillable planners that you can replace the pages with. I know I probably inherited my insane need for organization from fixating on my dad fixating on his planner day after day. The list has never been empty, and for reasons unknown to me now my dad will always take whatever work one of my family members puts on him. He taught me not to complain. He taught me that all this work, wasn’t “unfair,” but it was just easier to get it done. He taught me to stop using “unfair” as a scapegoat to a life that wasn’t going my way. He taught me a lot of things that I probably won’t appreciate for a much longer time.
I wish I could tell him all of this, but my dad and I don’t communicate that way. We never have, and probably never will. But just as he’s never been able to say “I love you” in so many words, but I’ve always understood, I hope he understands how much i’ve grown to look up to him. I hope he understands all that even if I never find the words to tell him.
I can’t spell, but I’m real good at getting it close enough for spell check to figure it out for me.
After a severely pleasant week experiencing a self-inflicted solitary confinement here in Decatur, I can honestly say that I enjoy living alone. And here I am getting ready to move out of my apartment. Seeing as the direction that my life has a habit of turning is never anything but ironic, I think this is especially apropos.
All this time alone, cleaning incessantly, experimenting in the kitchen, and making up new life stories to tell the poor people who have the privilege of hearing them on my daily campus tours has given me a lot of time to think. About what you ask? Why, none other than the state of the current political climate.
Now you come right back to the computer and start reading this again this instant. This isn’t going to turn into one of those masturbatory posts on all of my obnoxious political views or how I’m so sick of Obama, or how I’m so over McCain or something equally avoidable like that. In fact, it’s the complete opposite.
All I can think about these days is how unfortunate it is that no matter who becomes the president this fall, somewhere around half the country will be completely bitter and heinously irate about it for the next four (to eight) years. And all I can say is that I am so glad I will be out of the country to experience the aftermath.
Don’t get me wrong, I have very strong political leanings and thoughts and ideas and musings and blah, blah, blah along with the rest of the ardent bloggers out there. I don’t spend all day watching gay porn and musing about the state of Britney’s health. I do spend a great deal of time at my desk, flipping between Fox, CNN, and MSNBC to gather all the stimulating campaign news I can devour. Yum. But one thing I have noticed as of late, is everyone’s obsessions to vomit these ideas all over you in any way they can. Whether it be a genial debate on some youtube video comment section, or the various “I <3 Obama” or “NObama” facebook groups that I get daily invites for.
Free speech is a beautiful thing. I think it’s great that people like me can write mindlessly for as long as they please on blogs like these all over the nation. Props to the constitution. We geddit. But don’t we all have better things to do with our time than banter back and forth with those who stand on the opposite side of the partisan line? I hate to break it to everyone who dreams of someday astounding a Liberal with their brilliant Conservative ideas, but it’s never going to happen. And the same goes for you tree hugger- you’re never going to get that guy to trade in his Ford F1-50 for an environmentally aware electric dealy.
I think the one thing that I’ve learned is that every strong political ideal I’ve ever held in my life has never once been swayed by someone else arguing with me on a message board. Any changes (and there have been many) have come from living my own life, and gradually growing into my own ideas of what is right and what is wrong. And I guess my overall point here is something akin to “give peace a chance” or something equally laughable, but can’t we all just agree to disagree and realize that calling each other the scum of the earth for sitting somewhere a little too far left or right of the political spectrum isn’t all that bad? In fact it’s what makes this country so great.
But then I suppose what would be the point of free speech if there weren’t a bunch of irate college students arguing for hours back and forth on some message board? I guess I just can’t make myself care all that much about what other people are thinking, because I’ve come to accept that they’re going to think what they’re going to think no matter how ridiculous it is. You can post all the links you want to reputable news sources, proving whatever candidate you oppose is in fact a factious, communist who is hell bent on destroying whatever ideals you believe this country was built on. Inevitably they’ll just conclude that there is some kind of liberal/conservative bias behind it, and write it off immediately. It’s all just so frustrating. Too frustrating, which is why at the ripe old age of twenty I immediately pull out like a drunken frat guy at toga party whenever someone pushes me to “debate” with them on whatever issue it is that is just bugging them at that moment. I’ve finally learned that the word “debate” really means arguing ruthlessly until everyone involved walks away with hurt feelings, bruised egos, and feeling like they somehow proved their point.
Don’t get started with me on the importance of “intelligent dialogue on important issues that are facing this country” either. Because I can have plenty of that with people who are equally as unwilling to get so invested that they’re willing to debase themselves to a level of what should be just sheer embarrassment. I won’t ever call one of my friends an idiot for believing whatever the hell they want to believe. At least not to their face.
Oh, and don’t worry- I’ve already got my absentee ballot, so I’m still voting. Even if it is all a little bit hopeless to argue about it, I’m going to put my energy in a place where it really matters in the long run: Googling “absentee ballot” until I found out how someone actually gets one of those. Hopefully all that work won’t go to waste in November.
On a much lighter, and possibly illegal note…
This weeks installment of Illegal Crush of the Week may have actually opened up avenues to a possible new segment on this blog called Little Person Crush of the Week. If I haven’t given it away already, I’m speaking of course this week of the undeniable hottie, Jeremy Roloff. Oldest son, and star of the TLC reality show Little People, Big World, Jeremy is one of the main reasons I tune in on Sunday afternoons when I have nothing better to do but watch reruns of this mediocre show. At the ripe old age of 17 Jeremy quick starts my loins every time I see him running around after his four-foot tall mom out in their suburban yard… Kicking something around. I think it’s a soccer ball. I don’t care though, because he usually has his shirt off, and it makes me feel in equal parts tingly and gross (for feeling tingly). I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely counting down until this kid’s eighteenth birthday.
Here’s a picture I awkwardly (and possibly illegally) ripped from his myspace (just wrong, I know).
He’s the one on the left, and his arm is wrapped lovingly around what the caption on his myspace reads “BFF.” They both look pretty gay to me. Is all I’m sayin’. They’re sporting the gay buzzcut and frosted tips between them! GAY.
the turtle: nature’s D student.
My feet have been cold all day long, and I just don’t know what to do about it.
Today was the first day I’ve spent all summer recovering from the aftermath of a night of boozing, drugging, and failed attempts to hook-up. All three require at least twelve hours of lounging time in order to either forget, or accept whatever happened the night before.
As I get older I get better and better at not making a fool of myself at functions such as the one last night; an arguably mild soiree made up of former Millikin students, Decatur townies, and the people I usually see in the basements of parties I attend during the school year. I was not one to turn down a party invite though, seeing as how the summers in Decatur tend to be more on the god-awful side of boring. So I slapped on my tightest jeans, and my dirtiest, non-descript t-shirt and headed over to the locale of that night’s festivities.
It was easy to sift through the odd mix of people that inhabited the party to find the ones that I actually wanted to talk to. Somewhere in the foggy mix of marijuana and cigarette smoke that clouded most of the party radius I found a few old friends and some odd acquaintances that I had always found pleasant in the past. Among the latter group was your typical, “atypical” geeky gay guy. Full of intellect and a somewhat patronizing demeanor, he was seemingly the only homosexual that was at the party. He was also the only homosexual that I had seen in Decatur since Chris left back in June. So needless to say, once I imbibed a few drinks, my hormones went wild and as subtly as I found possible at that moment I began the process of “working it.” Atypical gay and I have had several classes together in my four semesters at Millikin, and every other quarter or so I’ll find myself attracted to his slouchy demeanor and mix of mid-nineties-esque grunge clothes. He’s a really smart guy, and that’s something that’s hard to find in the gay community.
I’m not smooth. I’m not really that aggressive either. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and sometimes you just have to go for it. And that’s just what I did. Now Atypical gay isn’t exactly David Beckham, and I figure I have at least a fair chance of getting at least a good makeout session out of this. Perhaps it was the booze, or maybe it was the countless hours I’ve put in at the gym this summer, but I was feeling pretty good and decided that I had to look as good to him, as he (eventually) looked to me.
But as the night wore on, and my quest to garner some kind of physical contact became more important I actually began to talk to Atypical. The problem arises here when I begin to realize that he may be more than just some guy whose tongue I want down my throat. He really was that atypical gay guy that doesn’t necessarily fit into any of my loopy ideas on gay men.
Anyone who has been in even a slightly similar situation as I was in last night can relate to where I was. I had the power. I was the one who thought he could swing this situation in any one direction. But in the course of a few conversations and more than a little mary jane, the ball suddenly shifted over to his court. It happened so fast, I barely noticed it happened.
And then I was stuck. Genuinely intrigued by this guy, and no longer feeling quite as confident as I started out that evening, the plan was gone, and now I wasn’t exactly sure how to handle myself.
Fuck.
It was here that I turned to the one thing I knew could help me through such a rough situation. Beer. Lots, and lots of beer. Even while writing that last sentence, I feel a small twinge of incredulity at the direction I decided to steer the party bus. This was definitely not the best course of action, and only served to make me look like a bigger fool than I probably looked before when I thought I was in control. Looking a fool does not generally impress the Atypical gay. In fact, if last night is any indication, it generally repulses them.
So by the end of the night I found myself alone in my apartment, wondering why I can’t even get a guy with bad teeth to take me home. Someone should write a song about that.
After spending the majority of my day in bed, recovering from what I perceived to be yet another grossly embarrassing and sexually detrimental night, I realized that maybe that night had not been such a bad night after all. If anything else, I may have discovered something surprising about what really attracts me to a person. And maybe, just maybe, my own creative sensibilities fuel my own self-defecating attitude towards my drunken antics last night. I probably didn’t embarrass myself last night as openly as I now recall, and only on the odd chance that Atypical gay reads this blog will he realize that I was in fact flirting as fervently as I thought I was.
At this point, rejection only makes my life that much more colorful. This is, as many of you may have guessed, something that I have to repeatedly tell myself in order to maintain a healthy attitude about… Basically everything.
On a lighter note, gay friend of the week goes to Glen, on the new VH1 celebreality show Brooke Knows Best. While I find Brooke Hogan to be a vacuous waste of space, her show on the other hand is a fun little romp that should be enjoyed while doing multiple other things. The supporting cast of characters are the only thing about this show that makes it watchable. In the episode that I got through tonight, Glen gives Brooke the customary gay best friend pep talk as she cries in the bathroom.
“Why are you letting a boy ruin your fun?”
Any gay can probably attest to giving a similar speech at least once in their lifetime to a girl friend.
Props to you Glen. Props to you.
bison, the other, other, other white meat.
I recite affirmations to myself every morning, and it still hasn’t done much to quell the onslaught of negative feelings I have about my body. My psyche just will not let me accept myself for the beautiful man that I am. I’ve always been fairly happy being a skinny asian boy, but now that I’m developing into a skinny asian man, something has clicked inside my head, and now i’ve found myself drinking heinous protein shakes and pondering my pecs every time I find myself shirtless around the apartment.
There are too many mirrors in this world.
Not to mention the constant flashing of the world’s idea of the perfect male form on my television screen whenever I flip on the boob tube. If US is so obese, why aren’t they showing more obese men on TV? Kevin James doesn’t count.
I’m not sure when I developed such a complex. I suppose in gay-years I’m hitting adolescence where suddenly I cease to be the logical young scholar that I came into college as, and become on par with your average thirteen year old girl who is still wearing that sports bra she grabbed off the Pennys bargain rack. I still contend that by college I should have pecs.
It seems petty to be so worried about my body when there is so much else going on. Disease, war and the coming presidential election- It distresses me that I’m so concerned whether or not my abs are rock hard, instead of the rising price of gas. Perhaps it will just be another passing obsession. Like when I was really in to europop.
I blame the amount of gay porn that I’ve been watching in the hours of boredom that I find myself intrenched in on a daily basis here in Decatur.
As a sidenote, the movie Teeth has only reaffirmed my aversion to the vagina. While I realize that most women do not possess a set of fangs on their clit, this movie serves as a cautionary tale for all those who have ever considered going near one.
It makes me want to go ew, ew, ew… Gross.
clam sauce with a side of wack
Well, I’m absolutely positive at this point that I am 100% homosexual. There wasn’t a whole lot of debate going on before this past weekend, but in somewhat of a drunken stupor Friday night I realized that I could never again be with a woman in a sexual context.
Hair. It’s all about the hair.
Not the kind that grows above the eyes, or the stuff between your legs. Think a little bit lower.
As I was conspicuously rubbing up against a bisexual that I recently met, I realized that there is nothing more pleasant than hairy legs. This isn’t like some kind of weird fetish that I find sexually arousing, but there is just something undeniably masculine about hairy legs that reinforces my attraction to the manliest of men.
There are a lot of other things I like about being gay, like my good taste in fashion and the skills in interior design, but being able to spoon with sasquatch is quite possibly the best fringe benefit I can think of right now.
