Well, I’m entering the world of blogging. I first read about blogging in the New York Times’ Circuits section a few weeks ago, and it was intriguing. An easy way to publish mental diarrhea! Several weeks later, I was reading an article in the New Yorker by Rebecca Mead. The “About the Authors” section contained a link to her website, which I decided to check out. Her site is a compendium of various articles she’s written for the magazine, and the article at the top of the site was about blogging. I decided I’d finally look into this blogging phenomenon, and — as the chef says before he serves you a plate of frog’s legs — voila. Here it is.

This blog is actually just one part of my rather low-tech website [link removed], which has more information about me. Have fun.

One of my ideas for a future career is to become a psychotherapist. It’s a field that I’ve always found fascinating. I can think of only one major drawback: suppose one of your patients has just seen that really amazing movie that everyone’s talking about, and the movie just happens to have unleashed a torrent of emotions and revelations in that person, and they feel a need to emote effusively about it? And you haven’t seen the movie? And it’s one of those movies with a killer plot twist, like “Citizen Kane” or “The Usual Suspects” or “The Crying Game”? What do you do? I don’t know.

But it’s something to think about.

The Declaration is a great weekly student publication at the University of Virginia. It’s one of those smart/hip/deep/funny newspapers, often with some great writing.

To quote James Stockdale: Why am I here? Why have I created a blog? I can’t quite figure out why. I keep a journal, on good old-fashioned paper; do I want to turn this into my journal? No. I don’t need all my innermost thoughts to be sent out into the world (or at least to the ten people who read this). Anyway, as writing guru Natalie Goldberg says, you can only write well if you’re willing to write crap, and you can only write crap if you’re not worried about what other people will think.

Besides, one reason I have a website is so that people can find out about me, and maybe want to meet me, and divulging all my innermost troubling thoughts (we all have them, don’t even pretend you don’t) isn’t really the best way to be appealing, is it? Would you do that at a party? No. So why do it here? I don’t know. Lots of other people have weblogs, too. I guess it’s the exhibitionist Internet culture. Sort of makes you wonder why we were born with skin. I mean, I see the appeal, or else I wouldn’t have made a blog, but I don’t quite get it.

How straight acting are you? I found this quiz that can measure your level of straight acting-ness. On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being “the ultimate in straight acting” and 10 being “queen status,” I scored a 3, “mostly straight acting,” described as follows:

You lead a normal everyday life and it’s ‘no questions asked’ as people just assume you are straight. Every once and awhile a very aware person might notice something that causes them to think ‘fem’ but it’s a fleeting thought because you turn around and surprise them with more masculine traits before they even have time to fully analyze the last one.

That’s about what I would have expected.

But to be honest, I don’t like the phrase straight acting. If you suck dick, you’re not exactly acting straight, unless a) you’re trying to collect DNA evidence and you just happened to lose your eyedropper or b) you’re female. (I’m not really sure who’s reading this, but if you’re someone who already knows me and you’re shocked that I would use the imagery of fellatio — so shocked, in fact, that your pristine image of me has been shattered — then I apologize. Please try to make my next image out of Pyrex.)

In the chat rooms, you often see guys who call themselves straight acting. They also usually refer to themselves as “college dude” or “hot dude” or “[adjective] dude.” Dude! You’d think they were all trying to be Keanu Reeves. (And you know the rumors about him. Ironic, huh.)

I knew a guy in college who was incredibly effeminate. Yet he had a really beautiful girlfriend/fiancee. So, either we all knew something she didn’t, or she knew something we didn’t. Anyway, he was probably sleeping with her. So, was he straight acting?

I’m probably philosophizing too much. After all, given the choice between meeting a masculine guy and meeting an effeminate guy, I’d choose the masculine guy. Why? It’s probably some remaining internalized homophobia* combined with the sheer weight of physical attraction. I’m drawn to guys who pretty much pass for straight. (Um, who pass for straight in most instances, anyway.)

*(Homophobia is another word that makes me a little uneasy; the word implies “fear,” and while fear is probably a big reason why lots of people are anti-gay, I don’t think anti-gay attitudes are always based on fear. Homophobia is a loaded word, almost as much as lifestyle is.)

“The same rocket technology that delivers nuclear warheads has also taken us peacefully into space… From that perspective, we see our earth as it really is � a small and fragile and beautiful blue globe, the only home we have.”

— President Jimmy Carter, January 14, 1981 (six days before leaving office)

(Quoted in Past Farewells: Presidents’ Words Have Run From Poignant to Prophetic), from today’s New York Times)

Wow.

(Note: As I write this, we’re 28 hours and 20 minutes into the Bush II era. How is everything so far? Planet Earth: check. United States: check. Me: check. Charismatic presidential speechifying: well, I guess we can’t have everything. Still, maybe this won’t be so bad after all. Oh, the soft bigotry of low expectations.)

Today I decided to separate my blog from my website and move it onto its own site. I did this because I’m getting more and more tempted by bloggery, and I’d like to get into more details of my life, but I’m afraid I’m going to write things that I won’t want to be read by people who know me well. I don’t think I’ve created a completely solid firewall yet, but it will do for now.

I didn’t want a Blogspot account, because I wanted to be able to upload jpegs. I wanted a Yahoo! Geocities account, but it was sort of a pain trying to find a name that was free. I wanted the name Tin Man, and I was born in 1973, although I wanted to avoid using numerals if at all possible, and I really hoped to avoid underscores. Yet all of the following names were taken:

tinman
tinman73
tinman1973
tin_man
tin_man73
thetinman
thetinman73
manoftin
tinmanofoz
oztinman

I was getting more and more frustrated, and then it hit me: tinmanblog. What do you know? It was free! So, here we are.

As for the name Tin Man: I’ve used this name, or permutations of it, for various accounts and aliases. Why? First of all, it has a gay reference (he’s a “friend of Dorothy”). Second, the Tin Man was way too hard on himself. He thought he had no heart — he thought he was too cold and uncaring — only to find out in the end that he’d had quite a big heart all along. I used to feel the same way about myself: I used to think I was too logical, too unemotional, with an impaired ability to feel. I eventually came to realize, however, that there is nothing wrong with being guided by my emotions, with following my heart. (Though ideally, there’s a left-brain/right-brain balance.) I know that deep down, I’ve always been creative, with a keen sense of emotions; but deep down, I also resort to logic when the emotions get too confusing. I still could do a better job of toning down my logical side, but I’ve come a long way.

Thanks to Dean for linking to me. He writes: “…like your humble host, TinMan lives across the puddle from Big Gay Metropolis…” At first, I thought he was saying that he lived near New York (BGM-East), like I do, but then I realized that he lives near San Francisco (BGM-West). I’ve only been to San Francisco once, and I was still pre-gay then: I was 14 years old, and I was with my family, and although I knew that I was attracted to males, (1) I never ever would have called myself gay, and (2) I was so naive that I didn’t even associate San Francisco with being gay; I associated it with trolley cars and Riceroni. What did I know?

I wasn’t completely ready to call myself gay until about 2 1/2 years ago, when I was 24. It took me a long time to get there, probably because I was overthinking everything (see below). At some point I should post my coming-out story here. As it stands, I’ve managed to stay up way too late, and I really should get to bed.

One final thing: I watched The X-Files tonight for the first time since the two-part season opener, and I’ve decided that although I really miss David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson still makes the show worth watching. Gillian Anderson: one of the few women who makes me question my sexual orientation.

I decided not to go to bed. I’ve decided instead to discuss Steve.

I’ve been getting into the online personal ads lately, through various websites. (I need to meet people.) A month or two ago, Steve responded to an ad of mine, as did a few other guys. Steve and I exchanged a few messages, perhaps once a week or so, but never got around to anything substantial; he didn’t really seem my type. The correspondence faded away until two or three weeks ago, when I got another message from him. We finally decided to exchange phone numbers, and we wound up leaving a few phone messages for each other but never actually managed to get a hold of each other.

At long last, we had a phone conversation on Saturday morning. There was something slightly odd about him; in fact, a friend of mine had also exchanged messages with him, and he said that Steve seemed a bit too persistent. I picked up on this. Still, we decided we’d meet up on Sunday evening for coffee, and he asked if I wanted to see a modern dance show with him beforehand. I didn’t really feel like it, but it was only going to be 45 minutes, so I decided, why not. He said he’d call up and reserve the tickets. Okay.

A weird thing about the conversation was that it was technically long distance, because he’s in Brooklyn and I’m in New Jersey, and under his long distance plan, he can only make long distance calls of up to two minutes, and then the phone automatically hangs up. We couldn’t get into a real conversation, because we’d talk for two minutes and then it would hang up. He had to call me back about five times. This got kind of old.

He also said something that, given the fact that I’d heard he was too persistent, came off as kinda creepy. He said that if we wound up hitting it off, he’d look into getting another long distance service. I know that sounds too mundane to be creepy, but his expectations seemed to be too high, at the same time that mine were getting lower and lower. (I suppose I could have volunteered to call him, but I just didn’t feel like spending the money on him. Does that sound selfish?)

We settled on meeting up on Sunday afternoon. Fine. I assumed that would be it, until Sunday afternoon. But on Sunday morning, he called again, and although it was after 11 in the morning, I’d been asleep. The conversation didn’t seem to go anywhere; apparently he just wanted to chat. Perhaps that would have been fine, if I hadn’t been quickly losing interest in him. I managed to extricate myself from the conversation.

About an hour later I decided that I really didn’t feel like seeing a show, or meeting up with him, and I did something I rarely do: I called him up to cancel, and I lied; I gave a fake reason. The phone was busy, though, and I had to leave a voicemail message for him. I told him I really wasn’t feeling well and that I wasn’t going to be able to make it, and that I’d call him next weekend.

Then I was online for a while, and when I got offline, there was a voicemail message waiting from him. He sounded annoyed. He’d already paid for the tickets, and he was on his way out the door and didn’t have time to find someone else to go with him. Also, he said that I’d sounded kind of “disgusted” (his word) when he’d called me earlier in the morning, and he repeated the fact that he was kinda screwed now that I wasn’t going. He leaves long messages.

I felt bad. So I left him *another* voicemail message, apologizing for bailing on him and offering to send him the $8.50 for the ticket. I also told him that I hadn’t been totally honest — that yes, I really didn’t feel well, but that I also didn’t think that we were too compatible. “These things happen,” I said. I apologized again. That was that.

Tonight, I got another voicemail message from him. He said that he’d lately become kind of jaded about the dating scene, and that that might have come through in his messages. He also said that he preferred to get the money in person rather than through the mail, because it could get lost or someone could open the envelope and take it. He offered to meet me at “any subway station” on Thursday or Friday evening, and that if I didn’t want to hang out, if I just wanted to give him the money and say goodbye, that would be fine.

So now it seems that I have to meet him anyway. Oh, this isn’t going to be awkward in the least, is it?

This is cute — a page based on that Billy Joel song, We Didn’t Start the Fire. Take a look and you’ll realize that Billy really anticipated the World Wide Web when he released the song back in 1989. I used to listen to it all the time…

Hello, Newman

Argh. I feel like I’m living in an episode of “Seinfeld.”

I took someone’s advice and decided to hold my ground with Steve. I e-mailed him the following message today:

Hi Steve,

Thanks for calling. I prefer to send you the money. I think that will be less of a hassle all around. I send checks through the mail all the time, and they always reach their destination. I’ll send you a money order, though I might need your last name (unless I can make it out to cash). Or I’ll send cash, secured wrapped in an envelope so that nobody will see what’s inside. Whatever you prefer. I can send it to your work address or even to a P.O. box if you want. Just let me know.

— [me]

This evening he called me, saying that he really preferred not to give out his address. I guess I can understand that, although I wasn’t planning to stalk him. He didn’t want to give out his work address, either… and I didn’t want to give in. I was being stubborn. It’s hard to figure out how you’re supposed to act when your father has raised you to believe that you’re both too stubborn and too much of a pushover. I felt like whatever I would have decided, it would have been the wrong choice. Anyway, I kept holding my ground. (Note: this happened over the course of two or three short phone conversations, because the line kept shutting down — the long distance thing again.) To be honest, I think the situation had gotten so absurdly unpleasant by this point that I was just too embarrassed to meet him in person. Then I started to get annoyed, and my tone got brusque. But then, he said to me:

“You’re a despicable person… you’re just a despicable person.”

Excuse me?

I responded — calmly, I hope — “You don’t even know me.”

“You’re just a despicable person.”

“How can you say that if you barely know me… we’ve interacted for a total of like five minutes.”

Then the phone cut out again. Comical? Maybe.

And then I started to feel bad. Was I being too stubborn? Was I being a jerk? Or was he? Was he just manipulating me? I know I’m not a despicable person, but it still stung. I’m way too thin-skinned. Anyway, I thought it over for a few minutes, and then I called him back, and the line was busy. So I called his voicemail, and in a very no-frills tone I asked him to meet me tomorrow evening at 6:30 at a particular street corner (since I have to be somewhere right afterwards, I’ll have an excuse not to linger), and that if this was fine with him, he didn’t have to call back. Instead he sent me an e-mail, just as no-frills, agreeing.

So tomorrow this ridiculous situation will be over. How did this happen? In trying to get out of an unappealing date, I’ve wound up in a hostile interaction. It’s like Clinton — if he had just settled the Paula Jones suit in the first place, he never would have been impeached.

OK, it’s not a great analogy, but it works.

Anyway, this still feels like something George Costanza would have gotten himself into.

OK, this is totally spineless of me, but I’m going to take an informal poll on the Steve issue. (If you’re just joining the story, read yesterday’s entry.)

First: someone wrote me last night:

i have to give you shit… this guy called you a despicable person and still managed to extract $8.50 from you?

Second: here’s another thing I found out last night. I was talking on the phone with a friend of mine, telling him the whole story. At one point I imitated Steve’s voice — Steve has this breathy, singsongy voice that modulates a bit too much — and my friend said, “No WAY.” He asked me some more information about Steve, and it turns out that he has talked with Steve before, too. They came in contact through the Village Voice personals a couple of years ago. It never went past the telephone, because at a completely inappropriate part of the conversation, Steve asked him, “So are you smooth or hairy?” My friend is sure it’s the same guy.

So this is the second friend who’s interacted with him — the first friend was the one who’d told me that Steve came across to him as too persistent.

The friend I spoke with last night has volunteered to come with me to pass over the money. This is partly out of altruism and I’m sure it’s partly out of curiosity as well. I’m sure it would rattle Steve too — he’d expect me to be alone, and the presence of another person could silence him.

I don’t know what to do, though. This is becoming an issue of pride. Should I show up (with my friend)? Should I leave Steve a voicemail (he’s only accessible by voicemail today) and say, “If you think I’m such a despicable person, you don’t need my $8.50?” But don’t I owe him the money because I cancelled after he’d reserved the tickets? (Technically, though, the ticket was free, and the $8.50 was just the service charge per ticket.) Should I give him the money in dimes? Nickels? On the one hand, I just want this to end. On the other hand, perhaps I should take this as an opportunity to finally stand up for myself. On the other hand, I don’t want to be an asshole. On the other hand, he’s being an asshole himself. On yet another hand, what if he’s a psycho and I only make him angrier? God, I’m a pentadextrous wimp.

This is so Clintonian of me, but I want to know what you think. E-mail me your thoughts. Steve is checking his voicemail at 4:30 pm Eastern Standard Time, so if I inform him I’m not showing up, it has to be by then.

The Clinton White House lives!

Shortly after noon on January 20, the White House web site was turned over to the Bush administration. But the National Archives and Records Administration has preserved all versions of the Clinton White House web site for posterity.

So rest assured that somewhere, it will always be Camelot.

No, wait, that was that other guy.

(Anyway, here is a critique of the Bush White House site.)

Steve IV: The Quest For Peace

Well, you’re probably as sick of reading about this story as I am of writing about it. Anyway, it’s over.

First of all, this afternoon, a friend of mine — the friend who had first told me that Steve seemed too persistent — sent me Steve’s photos. He had dark hair and an unusually large forehead. Knowing what he looked like in advance made me feel better. Knowledge is power.

This evening, the other friend of mine — who had volunteered to accompany me to the exchange — met me 10 minutes beforehand at the designated street corner, which was moderately busy. People walking by, evening traffic bustling. I had the money in hand — a five, three ones, and two quarters. At 6:30, nobody resembling Steve was in the area. At 6:33, I said that if he didn’t show up in two minutes, we’d leave. At 6:35, someone crossed the street and came over to us. Except for the fact that he was wearing a cap, it looked like Steve. There was a pause of two seconds, as each of us decided that the other was the person he was looking for.

“Jeff?” he said.

“Yup,” I said, and handed him the money.

“Do you want the Playbill?” he said.

“Nope,” I said, and my friend and I turned around and walked away.

Twenty seconds later I turned around to see if he was following us, but there was nobody in sight.

My friend and I continued to walk down the street, and I thanked him and told him that I owed him dinner. I had to be somewhere, so we went our separate ways.

And that was that.

When I got home several hours later, I was expecting to find an irate phone message or e-mail from Steve, but there was nothing. To be honest, I was sort of disappointed. But I’m glad it’s over.

In sum, this whole thing has cost me $8.50, a friend’s dinner, and a $1 package of mini-donuts I had to buy in order to break a ten-dollar bill so I’d have exact change.

There are lessons to be learned here. If anything like this ever happens again (and I seriously doubt that anything remotely similar to this will ever happen again), I should stand up for myself, not let myself be manipulated, and tell the guy that if he wants the money, he can give me a mailing address.

I have to work on my confrontations. Why do I always have to act like the good guy? I don’t have to be so passive-aggressive.

Onward and upward.

Oh — thanks to those of you who responded to the poll. In the words of one respondent: “You should pay him for the value of the entertainment he’s provided your readers. $8.50 is a steal.”

Wonder what Steve would do if he knew he was being blogged?

Let’s not even go there.

Pay It Forward

Lately I’ve taken to giving headings to my blog entries. This is an idea I got from Dean, and I wanted to give him credit. What goes around, blogs around.

In the last few days I’ve interacted with a couple of other guys who have blogs. One writer has decided to fill The Poetic Void that exists today (we sure know that W.’s not going to fill it — he didn’t even have a poet at his inauguration). Then there’s Dark Echoes, of Anderson, Indiana (or is it Eerie, Indiana?). I particularly like his onmouseover effect — there’s something unsettling about it.

This morning I was waiting at the subway station, sitting at the end of a row of benches, reading the latest issue of the New Yorker. A woman was sitting next to me. At one point I looked over and noticed that she, too, was reading the New Yorker, and I felt an immediate solidarity with her. I mean, diversity is a great thing, but sometimes it’s nice to run across someone who obviously shares so many qualities with you. What is it about the New Yorker?

Now, if we had been reading the same article… that would have been something.

We Deserve a Break Today

Remember how the Republicans always used to accuse Clinton of co-opting their themes? Well, the Associated Press reports that the Republicans have been doing some co-opting of their own. They’ve been mentioning “the politics of personal destruction” so often lately that the phrase has become a cliche. According to the article, Clinton coined the phrase in 1994, but since the beginning of the 2000 campaign, Republicans have been using it seven times as often as Democrats.

To me this just seems to be more evidence of the lack of creativity in political discourse and the corporatization of just about everything. “Ahh will fahht for yew”; “I’m a uniter, not a divider”; “cross that bridge to the 21st century.” Hey, apparently it works. God, we’re a stupid species.

Hoover Wins!

Since we have a new ex-president, I was curious to know how long ex-presidencies have lasted — that is, the amount of time between leaving office and dying. I consulted the World Almanac (a paper resource!) and compiled the following rankings of ex-presidencies by length, from longest to shortest. Ex-presidents in bold are still alive. Looks like Ford can move up to the #2 spot, and Carter to the #4 spot, if they hang on until at least the spring of 2002. (Do I have nothing better to do with my time?)

Herbert Hoover — 31 years 7 months
John Adams — 25 years 4 months
Gerald Ford — 24 years
Martin Van Buren — 21 years 3 months
Millard Fillmore — 21 years
Jimmy Carter — 20 years
Harry Truman — 19 years 11 months
Richard Nixon — 19 years 8 months
James Madison — 19 years 3 months
John Quincy Adams — 18 years 11 months
Thomas Jefferson — 17 years 4 months
William Howard Taft — 17 years
John Tyler — 16 years 10 months
Franklin Pierce — 12 years 7 months
Ronald Reagan — 12 years
Rutherford B. Hayes — 11 years 10 months
Grover Cleveland — 11 years 3 months (after his 2nd term)
Theodore Roosevelt — 9 years 10 months
Ulysses S. Grant — 8 years 4 months
Andrew Jackson — 8 years 3 months
Dwight Eisenhower — 8 years 2 months
Benjamin Harrison — 8 years
George Bush — 8 years
James Buchanan — 7 years 3 months
James Monroe — 6 years 4 months
Andrew Johnson — 6 years 4 months
Lyndon Johnson — 4 years
Calvin Coolidge — 3 years 10 months
Woodrow Wilson — 2 years 11 months
George Washington — 2 years 9 months
Chester A. Arthur — 1 year 8 months
James K. Polk — 3 months
Bill Clinton — 6 days
William Henry Harrison — 0 days
Zachary Taylor — 0 days
Abraham Lincoln — 0 days
James A. Garfield — 0 days
William McKinley — 0 days
Franklin D. Roosevelt — 0 days
John F. Kennedy — 0 days

1) If you have a link to my blog, you should change the link to http://www.geocities.com/tinmanblog/index.htm. On Geocities pages, the default is supposed to be “index.htm” — for instance, “tinmanblog/index.htm” is supposed to be identical to “tinmanblog/”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always seem to work that way. So it’s just better if you add “/index.htm”. Trust me on this, OK?

2) Ever since I began blogging, I’ve been getting even less work done than I used to. My routine used to be: come into work, read the New York Times on the Web really quickly (it winds up taking over an hour), then Salon.com, then maybe The New Republic, then do some work. Now, in addition to all of that, I’m reading various blogs and adding to my own blog. Despite all this, I’m apparently still getting all my work done and being praised for its quality. I’m not quite sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I can’t believe I agree with Fidel Castro.

Kirk Read is a god. Kirk was the first person I ever came out to — I met him in the spring of our first year of college. I knew who he was, and I knew he was gay, and I basically maneuvered myself into meeting him because I’d never had a gay friend before and I needed to tell someone. He was a mentor to me over the following year. (Unfortunately, it was platonic; I wasn’t his type.) I knew back then that he’d be famous someday, and he’s well on his way; his first book is coming out this spring.

Back then, I wasn’t ready to learn everything he had to teach me. I came out to him in April 1992, when I was 18; over the next year I came out to a handful of other people. In the summer of 1993, I came out to my parents. But my parents didn’t want me to be gay, and I didn’t want to make them unhappy, so I went back into the closet and rarely spoke to Kirk again. It wasn’t until 1998 that I really began once again to come out to people.

In between — from the time I was 19 until I was 24 — I considered myself asexual. I think of all I could have done in that time: the sex I could have had. The boyfriends I could have had. The gay friends I could have made. The community I could have joined. But I wasn’t ready.

In August 1999, I came out to my parents again, and this time, I stayed out.

Thanks, Kirk — you did what you could. You were teaching; I just wasn’t ready to learn.

Lately I’ve been spending lots of time alone, and mostly it’s been by choice. In October I moved into my own apartment. It’s the first time I’ve had my own place since the spring of 1997. The biggest problem with this building is that the walls are too thin — my upstairs neighbor works nights, and often when he comes home he plays videogames and watches TV in his room all night long. His bedroom is directly above my own. I can hear it. It makes me want to scream.

Nevertheless, it’s nice to have my own apartment, with my own phone line, my own bathroom, and my own kitchen. I can cook if I want, I can go to Subway if I want. I can do what I want. Alone. About two weeks ago, I came home from work and made chili. It takes about an hour and a half to make. While cooking and then eating it, I watched lots of TV — a “Seinfeld” rerun, “Dawson’s Creek” (which I rarely watch, and when I do, it’s so I can see the gay guy), and “The West Wing.” I ate and ate and ate and watched and watched and watched. You know what? It was wonderful.

This past fall, I was hung up on one guy for three and a half months until I finally realized that he was never going to be interested in anything more than friendship. So one of my New Year’s resolutions was to meet new people and start dating again. Well, I’ve been on several dates this month, and I’ve come to realize that I don’t think I want a relationship right now after all. Like some other things, a relationship seems so much better in theory than in practice. I’m so much enjoying my solitude. I have friends, and I can get sex; what more do I need right now?

Tonight I went out to dinner with my friend UrbanPlanner and his new Taiwanese boyfriend. UrbanPlanner and I used to date; we met over the Internet when he was in grad school in Atlanta, and it’s sort of my fault that he wound up looking for jobs up here and subsequently moving up to the area. Shortly after he moved up here, I told him I just wanted to be friends. You’re not my type, but welcome to the neighborhood.

Anyway, UrbanPlanner has become one of my best friends, and tonight, I, the guy I used to date, and the guy whom the guy I used to date is now dating had dinner in Chinatown. It felt kind of weird — I kept imagining what was going through UrbanPlanner’s mind; it was probably something like, “Cool, I’ve slept with both of my dinner companions.” But we’re talking about gay men, so it’s not like that’s anything to write home about.

UrbanPlanner’s boyfriend took us to a Malaysian restaurant. We didn’t order pork, because I’m Jewish and I try to keep kosher. (Strangely, I won’t eat pork or ham, but I have no problem eating bacon or sausage. Then again, I fuck guys, so it’s not like I’m getting a gold star anyway.)

Afterward, the boyfriend innocently suggested that next time, I should take them on a cultural experience.

Which means what, exactly? The Second Avenue Deli?

I don’t want to play the role of cultural ambassador, primarily because if I do it, I’m going to have the entire Twelve Tribes of Judea telling me to sit up straight and not bite my nails and blaming me for not being a fount of Judaical knowledge.

And to UrbanPlanner’s boyfriend, I will always be Uberjew.

Dean writes that the Internet is ruining urban nightlife. But I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.

“No more need for small talk, or extricating yourself maturely from a dead-end conversation.” I tend to disagree… I mean, bars aren’t really conducive to small talk in the first place. I can’t remember the last time I actually met someone in a bar. On the Internet, you really can communicate with people, and small talk is required there, too. Many of those people may turn out to be duds, but you can still find a couple of interesting folks.

“And no more chance you’ll meet somebody who hasn’t made it past the parameters of your search for age, body type, race, income, education level, employment status, commitment to fitness and taste in music.” True, but if someone sets up these parameters for himself, aren’t those parameters going to apply in a bar just as much as online? We set up these parameters because they’re based on experience. We know what we want and what we don’t want. If I’m at a bar, I’m not going to pay much attention to those who don’t fit my tastes. At least on the Internet, we can do some filtering. I know… you can say that in person, there’s at least the chance that you’ll be unexpectedly drawn to someone who doesn’t fit your preselected parameters. But online, you can be unexpectedly drawn to someone who can communicate well, which you may not have known if you had just seen the person from across the bar.

I think that Dean’s point does make sense from two perspectives.

One, it makes sense if you’re going to a bar just to look for sex. Like sexual attraction, bars are primarily about the visual. And anyway, if it’s all about sex, then the downsizing of urban nightlife isn’t much of a loss. Sex can be found anywhere, anytime. But if the goal is to meet interesting people, I don’t know if loud, crowded bars have ever been good for that. At least online, you can communicate with people. Of course, the problem online is that for many people, chatrooms cease to be a means and instead become an end in themselves. They go there to chat, to while away their time — not to meet up with someone. I think there’s a third option: besides bars and the Internet, there are the friendlier ways of meeting people — social groups, friends of friends, and parties (where, because you already know several people, the social interactions become easier).

Dean’s point also makes sense from the “joy of life” perspective. It can be so damn fun to go to a bar, see the tight-shirted guys, be overwhelmed by the sounds and the sights and the smells. In that case, maybe it is a loss. But then you can always just go to the circus.

Two interesting articles in The New Republic on Generation X and the end of the dot-com boom:

Fall to Grace: Gen X Versus the New Economy by Benjamin Soskis

Where Do Gen-Xers Want to Go Today? by Michelle Goldberg

* * * *

Also, Survivor is back, and that means Salon’s weekly witty synopsis is back, too. I’ll be watching… if I can manage to pick up CBS on my non-cable-connected TV.

I’ve been out for less than three years, so I can’t really attest to what the gay bars and clubs used to be like… but I hear what you’re saying, Dean. (Anyway, you have big pecs and I don’t, so I’m not gonna argue!)

My blog is slowly becoming a walking advertisement for website paraphernalia (see left). I’ve added commenting capability via BlogVoices and a guestbook via Bravenet. Here at The Tin Man, we want you to speak. So please speak.

Oh, come on. Please?

I like this blog.

Oh, and congrats to Ruthie on getting your blog all set up. Glad I could help!

“It’s about past 7 in the evening here so we’re actually in different time lines.”

— President Bush, speaking on the phone with the new president of the Philippines

Tonight was my weekly therapy session. It was a good one.

I wound up talking about how I have so many interests and how I never know if I’m actually going to settle on one. I’m a law clerk, which means that I went to law school, and I’ve never really been sure if getting that degree was the right decision. It’s left me thousands of dollars in debt and I don’t even feel temperamentally suited to being a lawyer. I’m not adversarial by nature and I don’t like screwing people over. Great career choice. Well, I went to law school for the wrong reasons. I thought it would bring me stability, financial and otherwise, and a greater sense of self-worth. Plus my parents thought it was a good idea; that had to be a factor, at least subconsciously.

What do I really want to do? My first love is writing; it would be great to do something with that. And lately — ever since I started this blog — I’ve become interested in computer languages and computer technology again. It would be fun to have a computer career. At other times in the last few years, I’ve wanted to be a psychotherapist, a history teacher, a biographer, a classical music critic, a musicologist, a choral conductor, a newspaper columnist, a soap opera writer, an author, a lawyer for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund…

I love devouring information. I love to learn for the sake of learning. I’m easily distracted, which means that the Web is a blessing and a curse for me. Some days I get so little work done because I can’t stop surfing the Web, moving from one interesting site to the next. Sites like Metafilter, which I recently found, certainly don’t help matters.

One helpful source in this whole journey for a satisfying career is Barbara Sher’s website. Her books are wonderful for people who can’t quite figure out what they want to do in life, as well as for those who know what they want to do but can’t figure out how to get there. And her site’s discussion boards can be very helpful and enlightening. There’s a great community of people there. Read her books — especially Wishcraft and I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What it Was.

Can two men make a baby?