Friday, August 1, 2003
It’s been a strange three months.
There was a guy. Now there’s not.
It’s been interesting. And educational. Likely the lessons will just seep into me and I’ll find myself unconsciously applying them in the future. But if I had to enumerate some of them, I’d say — Be less tolerant; be less willing to put up with certain things. Be less blind; learn to recognize the portents sooner — or, learn to act on them sooner, and once you’ve acted, stick to your guns. Listen to your gut when it’s telling you something’s wrong. There are too many guys out there for you to do otherwise.
The fact is, every situation is different, and life’s too murky to make concrete rules for yourself. But I can remember what happened. And I can hope I’ve become wiser. And I can hope I’m not so blind next time.
I don’t regret that any of it happened, though. Things happen and you move on. We are accumulations of experience.
The upshot is that I’m totally on the market again.
3:56 PM | 5 drops of oil Sunday, August 3, 2003
I took the day off from work on Wednesday. It was partly a mental health day, and partly a there’s-no-way-in-hell-I’m-dragging-myself-into-the-office-today-because-I-couldn’t-fall-asleep-until-3:30-in-the-morning-last-night day.
I wound up going to the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. All week I’d been obsessed with the Oxford English Dictionary, and I just desperately wanted to peruse it. I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars for my own 20-volume edition, or a little less for the compact one-volume version with tiny print and an ineffective magnifying glass or the CD-ROM or a $550 yearly subscription, and my local library didn’t have the latest OED in any form (although it did have the Oxford Latin Dictionary, which I perused and which seems just as drool-worthy, or would if I knew Latin). So I went to the main branch of the New York Public Library in midtown, sat down at a computer terminal in the enormous, ornate, high-ceilinged Rose Reading Room, and accessed the OED online.
I’ve been really interested in the foundations of the English language lately, so I looked up really basic words. I looked up the, I, be, have, do, the letter W (one of the most recent additions to our alphabet), and the diphthong th, because English used to contain separate characters (thorn and eth) for that sound.
Each of the definitions was really long, going into the origins of each word. (For instance, the various permutations of “be” — am, are, is, was, were, be, been — originally come from three separate verbs.) The OED online has an e-mail function, so I e-mailed each of the definitions to myself for printing out and perusing later. It was a pretty neat afternoon. Also I got to look at hot guys.
On a completely unrelated note, I’m trying to figure out why my social life sucks lately.
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12:51 PM | Comments Off Monday, August 4, 2003
This is a story about anniversaries and the strangeness of August 4th.
It was four years ago today that I moved back home to the New York/New Jersey area.
It’s been an interesting four years. I can’t believe it’s been that long, but at the same time I can’t tell whether it’s gone by slowly or quickly.
On August 4, 1999, after one final summer of hanging around the University of Virginia and studying for the New York Bar Exam — and one week after a short trip up to Albany to take the exam — I packed up my car, accidentally dropped and splattered a bottle of shoe polish in the street, hit Interstate 64, came back up north, and ended an eight-year chapter of my life.
The next few months would be rough. Living at my parents’ house in northern New Jersey while looking for a job. Being confronted by my mom about my sexuality, and dealing with my parents’ anger and sadness while still having to live with them. Eventually getting a totally random non-law-related job near Princeton, 90 minutes south, and then inexplicably moving down to that utterly lifeless town, where I lived with an asshole roommate for four months. Subsequently moving into a good friend’s guest bedroom in a town near New Brunswick for six months. Finally, in May 2000, I was offered a law clerkship up in Newark, and several months later I moved up to Jersey City, right across the river from Manhattan. It had been a weird detour of a year.
But back to August 4, 1999. That evening, I came back home. That night, I went online, and I wound up meeting Biosphere Boy — perhaps the first gay man I ever really and truly fell for, head over heels. I eventually realized it wasn’t mutual.
Exactly two years later, on the night of August 4, 2001, I met Wes. Ahh, Wes. That didn’t work out, either. That was okay, though; since coming out, there are only three guys for whom I’ve really and truly fallen, and Wes wasn’t one of them.
I wonder if I’ll meet anyone exciting tonight. I guess it’s possible, but things like that don’t usually happen on Mondays.
1:29 PM | 1 drop of oil Tuesday, August 5, 2003
Here’s an update on my moving plans.
In the spring, I decided I was going to move to Manhattan.
In early summer, I decided I was going to move to Brooklyn.
Now I’ve decided it’s going to be Manhattan after all.
I made this decision a couple of weeks ago. I was really big on Brooklyn for a while. Park Slope is pretty, there’s a nice park there. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d still be far from Manhattan. Having taken the F train out to Brooklyn several times in the last few weeks, I’ve realized how long a trip it is. And Brooklyn still isn’t Manhattan. Better than Jersey City, yes, but… well, I really want to give Manhattan a shot. And I’m tired of being scared of it.
Why are the things we most want the things we most fear? Living in Manhattan is one of those goals I’ve never quite been able to achieve. When I finished law school, I assumed I’d find a job in Manhattan and then move there. Things didn’t quite work out that way, as I discussed yesterday. But now it’s doable. I don’t know why I’ve always been so scared of living there. I was born there, for chrissakes.
It’s just something I need to do.
My lease ends November 1. I need to give my landlord two months’ notice, so lately I’ve been thinking of asking him if I can get out on October 1 instead. Something’s holding me back. I guess it would just be easier to ride the lease out. One month doesn’t make much of a difference, anyway.
So. Here’s what I want. A studio or one-bedroom. $1100 or less. Somewhere in Manhattan below 100th Street. In the spring I saw a cute little $1100 studio on 9th and 24th in Chelsea, but lately the only apartments on Craigslist that remotely fit my criteria are on the Upper East Side. I could live with that. I’d prefer elsewhere, but I could live with it. It would still be better than Jersey City. The Lexington Avenue line can’t suck more than the PATH train. Plus I’d be close to at least two Barnes & Nobles.
So I will move to Manhattan by November 1. Almost two months later, I will turn 30. Therefore, for about two months, I’ll be able to say that I’m living in Manhattan in my 20s. I told this to my mom, and she said, “So after that, you’ll be living in Manhattan in your 30s. What’s the big deal?” The big deal is the fear of the impending three-oh, the fear that I’ll have to totally grow up, the fear that I will move to Manhattan just in time to not be allowed to have fun anymore. Which is totally ridiculous, because of course you can enjoy your 30s. I hear they’re wonderful — I hear most people think their 30s are a better decade than their 20s, in fact. But psychologically, it’s still a little scary.
I’m going to try to stop letting my fear squelch my desires.
Cages or wings,
Which do you prefer?
Ask the birds
Fear or love, baby
Don’t say the answer
Actions speak louder than words
That’s from a song from the musical “tick, tick…BOOM!”
Which, come to think of it, is about a guy on the verge of turning 30.
1:12 PM | 1 drop of oil Wednesday, August 6, 2003
I slept poorly last night. Well, no — I slept fine until morning came. I went to bed just after midnight, and I woke up several hours later to the VERY loud pitter-patter of raindrops on my air conditioner. My clock said 4:57. I tossed and turned for the next two hours, then finally fell asleep again, then woke up to my alarm at 7:50, then pressed my snooze bar a couple of times.
When I next looked at my clock it said 11:11.
Uh-oh.
I must have accidentally turned off my alarm instead of pressing the snooze bar. I started to worry, because I hadn’t called in to say I’d be late, like I did one morning last week. I thought to myself that it had to be a dream. No such luck — if you’re conscious enough to think you’re dreaming, you’re not dreaming. Then I saw that my shaving cream and my razor were on my window sill, and I got out of bed and I couldn’t turn my fan off, which I have on when I sleep in order to drown out noise (that was some loud rain). Then I went into my bathroom and began flossing my teeth.
Then my alarm went off.
I was still in bed. I looked over at my clock, and it said 8:17.
Ugh.
Stupid sleeping brain.
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9:37 AM | Comments Off Thursday, August 7, 2003
Oh, this reminds me.
See, I’m one of the few people who actually got to see one of the 21 performances of “Carrie” on Broadway.
And I still have the Playbill.
And it’s in excellent condition.
Oh, and it’s signed by Betty Buckley, Linzi Hateley, and Gene Anthony Ray, because I was a 14-year-old starfucker and I really wanted their autographs and I made my parents wait with me at the stage door after the show until they came outside.
How much do you suppose it’s worth?
12:15 AM | 2 drops of oil Friday, August 8, 2003
There seems to be a discrepancy in my media consumption.
Books I’ve read in the last two and a half months, in chronological order:
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, by Andrew Solomon
(might be missing one here)
Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. The Supreme Court, by Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn
The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800, by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick
Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, by Andrew Sullivan
On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
Inferno, by Dante, translated by Robert Pinsky
The Odyssey, by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles
And I’ve just started The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann.
Movies I’ve rented in the last two and a half months, in chronological order:
Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Small Time Crooks (2000)
Liberty Heights (1999)
Waiting for Guffman (1996)
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
Nurse Betty (2000)
Pillow Talk (1959)
That Touch of Mink (1962)
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
X-Men (2000)
Legally Blonde (2001)
American Pie 2 (2001)
Damage (1992)
New York: Episode 1: The Country and the City (1999)
Meet the Parents (2000)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
Amelie (2001)
Two Weeks Notice (2002) (that’s bad grammar!)
Indiscreet (1958)
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Notorious (1946)
And last night I watched Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
I’m not sure what conclusion to draw from all of this, other than lately I seem to enjoy heavy books and funny movies. But it takes longer to read a book than to watch a movie, so one would think I’d be into lighter books and heavier movies.
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12:41 PM | Comments Off Millions of Americans got the impression that George W. Bush wanted to be a “healer, not a divider”, a president devoted first and foremost to “honor and integrity.” Yet far from uniting the people, the president’s ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America. His most partisan supporters have launched a kind of ‘civil cold war’ against those with whom they disagree.
And as for honor and integrity, let me say this: we know what that was all about, but hear me well, not as a candidate for any office, but as an American citizen who loves my country:
For eight years, the Clinton-Gore Administration gave this nation honest budget numbers; an economic plan with integrity that rescued the nation from debt and stagnation; honest advocacy for the environment; real compassion for the poor; a strengthening of our military — as recently proven — and a foreign policy whose purposes were elevated, candidly presented and courageously pursued, in the face of scorched-earth tactics by the opposition. That is also a form of honor and integrity, and not every administration in recent memory has displayed it.
From Al Gore’s speech at NYU yesterday.
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2:54 PM | Comments Off So I’m entering my screenplay in a contest. It’s the One-in-Ten Screenplay Competition. “A requirement of the competition is that at least one of the primary characters in the screenplay be gay or lesbian, and that gay and lesbian characters must be portrayed positively.” Seems a little dogmatic to me, not to mention P.C., but what the hell.
Anyway, the working title of my first draft was “Creation Myth,” but by the time I finished, that title seemed too obscure. So I changed the name to “Dreaming of Rainbows.” It’s a name that sort of makes me want to throw up, but it was apt and it worked.
Except then I noticed that among the winners from years past are screenplays entitled “Over the Rainbow” and “Rainbow Haven.”
My screenplay is now called “Dreaming of Nick.”
I hope I win something.
4:33 PM | 3 drops of oil Sunday, August 10, 2003
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Also a lot of feeling. And I’ve decided I want to write more openly and honestly about my life here again. Perhaps not all the time. But I’ve had a lot going on with me lately, and I need to write about it. Besides, one of the best things about blogging has been the opportunity to connect with other people, and sharing intimate aspects of my life has always helped make those connections a little bit stronger. I’ve been hesitant to be completely open here these last few months, but I’ve been told that I shouldn’t have to censor myself. So I won’t.
I’ve had my heart broken recently. It hurts, and it sucks. I fell for him hard, and despite three months of his vacillation and mixed messages, my feelings didn’t go away. I wish they had. It probably wasn’t all about him; I’m sure it had something to do with my own psychology as well. Who knows why we fall for the people we do?
I’m trying to move on. I met someone last night, in fact. With the amount of online flirtation beforehand, it could probably be classified as a date, although I find the “date” concept to be murky these days. He was intelligent, much cuter than I’d expected, funny, and — an added bonus — Jewish, which, although not necessarily a requirement for me, is a really big plus. We talked over drinks for two hours, and I wound up going home with him. I don’t necessarily think it’s great to have sex with a guy on the first date, but my horniness often gets the better of me, unless there’s an internal or external countervailing force. There being no countervailing force, I went home with him and stayed overnight. We do want to see each other again. In fact, this was originally going to be a blog entry about whether it’s a dealbreaker if you have sex with a guy on the first date, but as you can see, there was more that I wanted to write about.
I’m still trying to figure out if I can be friends with the guy who broke my heart. I was just discussing it with a friend of mine, and the friend pointed out that even if we weren’t technically dating, it really is like a breakup from my point of view. There are feelings, there are wounds that need to heal, and that is not something that happens instantly. I can’t necessarily just pick up and start over with him, lickety-split. Also — and I hope he understands this — part of me is still angry at him for not returning my feelings. I know it’s not rational to simultaneously miss someone and be angry at him, but by definition emotions aren’t rational, and I think it’s normal to feel this way, particularly when the feelings were so strong.
I know (and I should remind myself) that I have lots of great qualities. I’m thoughtful, I’m emotionally perceptive, I’m caring, I’m intelligent, I’m cute (and have been described by several people as “adorable”), I have a 29-inch waist, I’m an excellent kisser, and I’m quite good in bed. With all of that going for me, I’m going to make someone really happy someday.
I’ve had my heart broken before, and I’ve always moved on eventually, even if it’s always taken some time.
So it’s not necessarily going to be easy, or quick.
But eventually, I will feel better.
7:53 PM | 4 drops of oil Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Last night was a good night.
I bought new pillows for my bed. I bought them at Sears. I’m a five-minute walk from a shopping mall. I bought two Extra Firm pillows, because I’m a side sleeper, and according to the packaging, side sleepers need Extra Firm pillows. After picking out my pillows, I got on line. There were four people ahead of me and three people behind me. There was only one cashier and she was slow as hell. A couple of managers walked past but of course they didn’t do anything. Finally I said, loudly, “You’d think that in this economy where people are trying find work, they’d be able to hire more people.” The other customers agreed. So did the cashier, and she said that someone had called in sick. Anyway, I have two nice new pillows.
After buying my pillows I went to Mrs. Fields and bought an Elmo cookie. Also a chocolate chip cookie.
Then I went home and had a nice phone call. During the call, a recipe for 72 cookies was discussed.
Then I finished watching a bizarre Alfred Hitchcock movie, during which “coffee and blueberry muffins” kept coming up.
There seemed to be a sweets motif last night, but that’s not a surprise. After all, I’m a guy who can be distracted from a conversation by the sight of delicious-looking cupcakes in a store window. I have a very sweet tooth.
Conversation, cookies, movies, and pillows. Talking, eating, vegging, and sleeping.
What more can you ask for, really?
10:23 AM | 2 drops of oil Wednesday, August 13, 2003
A Gay Archbishop Responds to the Vatican. Well written.
The first mainstream newspaper piece I’ve seen that discusses blogs without first defining them.
Cool.
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10:13 AM | Comments Off Thursday, August 14, 2003
One of the stupidest things about my current living arrangement is that any time I want to call one of my friends, it’s a long-distance call. I’m a 15-minute walk from the Hudson River, but it costs more for me to call someone in Manhattan than it would if I lived in the furthest reaches of Queens.
On top of that, I really and truly scrutinzed my phone bill this morning.
It turns out I’m often paying 30 cents a minute for long-distance calls.
That’s ridiculous.
So I did some online research (you mean that’s not what I get paid to do?), and made a phone call, and I’m happy to say that from now on, I’ll be paying 5 cents a minute for long-distance calls. Also, my local and long-distance service will now come from the same company, so I’ll be getting one bill.
It’s funny how today, they tout the convenience of getting your local and long-distance services on one bill. Twenty years ago, the same thing was considered a monopoly.
Anyway, when everything is added up, I’ll be saving about 30-40 bucks a month.
Drinks are on me.
12:00 PM | 4 drops of oil The Speech Accent Archive (via Metafilter). I’m loving this.
1:41 PM | 1 drop of oil Well, today’s been fun.
It’s interesting when you don’t know what the hell’s going on, when you don’t have a God’s-eye view of things, when you’re just an insignificant, powerless, non-omniscient little human being, limited to gathering information from your immediate surroundings.
First you think it’s just your floor.
Then you think it’s just your building.
Then you think it’s just your local area. Maybe, maybe your entire city.
And then you learn it spans two countries.
Holy shit.
So, I was sitting at my desk in the state office building in Newark, New Jersey, around 4:15 p.m. I’d just logged onto Instant Messenger, and Jon said hi; he said he’d found a cool web site and had just linked to it on his blog. I was about to open a browser window to check out his site. And then –
My computer flicked off and then back on, rebooting. I stepped out into the hallway and saw a sea of secretaries’ computer screens booting up. The word COMPAQ all over the place. Hee hee. That was cute. I walked back into my office.
And then –
POOF.
My computer was off. My lights were off. I turned around — all the lights were off.
Okay… this is interesting.
We walked out of our offices and milled about the main area of the floor, sun shining in through some of the office windows. One of my colleagues was on the phone with his wife, who also works in Newark; apparently her building was out, too. Wow, so it’s not just our building then.
Then another colleague stepped out of his office. “My wife just called. She works at CBS News in the city and they don’t have power either.”
What? Not just Newark, but Manhattan, too?
Holy fuck.
Then I heard someone say she’d been on the phone with someone and that power was out in Toronto.
No, that can’t be right. Holy holy fuck.
One of the secretaries wondered if it was terrorism. I doubted it. I figured it was the heat.
Another colleague and I both commute home to Jersey City by PATH train from Newark Penn Station. We figured the trains wouldn’t be running, but maybe there were buses. So we walked down four flights of stairs (I feel bad for all those people who had to evacuate skyscrapers) and out into the street, and then we walked the 10-minute walk to Penn Station.
We hung out in the lobby of the train station. Rumors were spreading — power was out in Detroit; power was out in California. An announcement came over the loudspeaker. “Your attention please. This is a national power failure. We repeat, this is a national power failure.” Then something about no trains running.
One sassy black woman said, “I know what this means. I know what this means. The terrorists are back.”
It started to seem very possible. I had this sinking feeling. Oh, god. They’ve got us again. We thought we were prepared, but no. They’ve knocked out power all over the country, cutting our information sources, so nobody knows what’s happening, and they’re going to launch missiles at us. This is payback for Iraq. Everything seemed so surreal — it didn’t seem so far-fetched. I wondered if this were possibly my last day on earth.
We walked over to the bus area to catch a bus to Jersey City.
Crowds of people waiting for buses to Jersey City. Very few buses. Near-empty buses, stopping, but picking up nobody, because they were stupidly going other places — infuriating, when there were all these people standing around trying to get home. It was hot and stuffy and sweaty and I was starting to feel light-headed.
We went back into the station and ran into one of the employees of our client state agency. I bought water. Then the three of us went to the lobby of the Hilton, connected to the train station, possibly to get drinks at the bar. The bar was too crowded, but there was a small radio in the lobby. We listened to the news. Bloomberg was saying there was no evidence that this was terrorism. Thank fucking god. I felt myself relax. Yay! Just an incredibly massive power failure. I love the post-9/11 era.
My cell phone rang. I’d been trying to make calls, mostly without success, so it was good to hear the phone ring. It was my mom. She was stuck at work on the Upper East Side. She had no idea where my dad was, because although he works in Manhattan, he’d left the office early, and she wondered if he was stuck on a train. My brother works on Long Island, but he’s in Montreal on vacation right now.
I said goodbye to my mom. The three of us went back to the bus area. It was now 6:10. They’d organized everyone into a line by this point.
The line was huge.
And there were barely any buses showing up.
We walked a block away and found a taxi. Twenty bucks to Jersey City. Great! We can split twenty bucks. No, he said — twenty bucks each.
We turned him down on principle. Goddamn price gouging taxicab opportunist.
There was a van nearby. One of those shuttle vans. I heard someone say Hoboken. Hey! I could walk home from Hoboken. I ran over to it. There was only room for one more person, and that was me. As for my colleagues — well — I hope they found a way home. As the door closed, I looked at them with a pained look on my face, as if to say, “I sincerely wish there was room for you two and I feel like crap that there’s not.” I’m sure they understood. Um, maybe. I guess I’ll find out eventually.
So I was on a van with six other passengers, sitting between two blond women (too bad I’m gay). The woman on my right had just landed at Newark Airport after coming home from a vacation in the Dominican Republic. She’d taken a cab to Newark Penn Station, and, whoops. She was going to Jersey City too; fortunately the driver was nice, and she was willing to go to Jersey City first.
I tried calling my dad — he’d just gotten home. He’d been stuck on a train, but then it started again, but he got stuck somewhere, so he called a friend, who picked him up and took him home.
Finally, just after 7:15, after winding our way through random Jersey City streets, we arrived near the Holland Tunnel. I could see the powerless sunny skyline across the Hudson.
She stopped to let us two Jersey Cityites out. She wanted twenty bucks each. Great. I had two bucks in my wallet. I’d said this, but her English was much worse than her Spanish. So I explained again. She gave me her card. My fellow Jersey Cityite and I left and started walking.
And she told me her whole story. She was returning from the Dominican Republic early because her friend’s 31-year-old daughter had been murdered yesterday. What??? Oh my god. So she’d traveled the six hours from wherever she was in the Dominican Republic, to the airport, crying along the way, then flown to Newark, then gotten stuck at Penn Station in an enormous power failure. Ugh.
As we walked along the streets, I saw lights on in some brownstones. Awesome! And sure enough — after my new friend and I parted ways, and once I’d walked down my block and stepped into my building — I realized we had power.
Nice!
I changed out of my sweaty office clothes. I turned on my air conditioner, my television, and my computer. (Priorities.) I looked at my clock — it was blinking, but the time was correct, so the power must have only flickered out for a second here.
After gorging myself on TV news for a while, I saw that the sun was going down. So I put on my sneakers and walked down to the Hudson River.
As I walked, I saw that the area near the waterfront had no power. Okay. New York to the east, and the Jersey City waterfront to the east, and Newark to the west — no power. My neighborhood — power.
Odd.
I stood on the Hudson River promenade. I listened and looked at the water lapping against the rocks. I leaned against the railing and stared east at the Manhattan skyline. Most of it was dark, but much of Lower Manhattan had power. It was an eerie reversal from two years ago.
It was like Lower Manhattan had suffered enough and was finally getting a respite.
Boats and ferries coursed along the water, also casting off light.
I watched as the sky darkened and the Empire State Building began to fade from view. The lamps along the promenade were off, so it was even darker than normal, but there were lots of people milling about, sitting, talking on cell phones. I looked up and I could see the stars.
After staring out romantically into the darkness, I turned around and walked home. I talked to my dad around 10:00. The last he heard from my mom, she’d gotten down to Penn Station in Manhattan, and she’d managed to get on a train, and she was waiting for it to leave so she could go home. That was a couple of hours ago. Her cell phone battery is low, so my dad told her not to call until the train gets to New Jersey so he can pick her up. I hope she’s okay.
Anyway, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner, because I was too tired to make anything else. My TV is on, my computer works, I have air conditioning. Life’s not bad. But I kind of feel like I’m missing out on the fun across the river. Dammit, I want to be a real New Yorker already.
Okay, so today wasn’t as exciting as September 11. That’s a good thing. It was only the biggest power failure in 38 years. Didn’t this happen in a movie once? Sneakers, right?
Here are some photos. And here’s the entertaining Metafilter thread. Oh, Metafilter, I love you.
Good night.
10:52 PM | 4 drops of oil Sunday, August 17, 2003
I looked at my referral stats and noticed that I have a link from this page.
Um, interesting.
1:53 AM | 2 drops of oil Monday, August 18, 2003
(from Nanowrimo 2001)
Evan thought about the craziness of his recent gay social life. If anybody, anybody at all, had told him it was going to be like this, he never would have done it. It wasn’t worth it, not even the free toaster.
Threes. He hated the number three. The number three could go to hell.
He always did the worst in groups of three guys. One May — during Beach Week at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, during the week after final exams and before graduation — he and two of his friends, Tom Carter and Jonathan Press, had been driving home from a movie. It had been a big summer action movie, complete with tsunamis of water, Hollywood-style, and intense speechifying from actors playing military officers. Complete cotton candy, ripe with summer, and worth every delicious bite.
Evan, Tom, and Jonathan were in the same singing group at the University of Virginia. It was a sixteen-man a cappella group, something popular at colleges at that time. Guys would get together (and sometimes girls would, too, and sometimes guys and girls would get together) and sing pop tunes, a cappella, no instruments — voices performing the words, the harmony, the percussion, anything extra. A bunch of guys could pour themselves out of a van in the middle of nowhere, say the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and assemble themselves into a sixteen-member orchestra, fully complete.
Evan had wanted to be in one of these groups for the longest time. He’d done lots of singing in high school, in the chorus — the usual route, staid, 400-year-old music, even if it was beautiful — but when he got to college, he saw the Virginia Gentlemen perform.
It changed him.
He was mesmerized by them. Not only were they attractive — though that was in fact the first thing he noticed, a fresh arrival at UVa, still bowled over by the just plain old gorgeousness he saw everywhere on Grounds (the campus was not called a campus but the Grounds, because Thomas Jefferson, the school’s founder, had wanted it that way) in both men and women — confounding his already confounding sexual orientational conundrum — but besides being attractive, they were well-dressed, in button-down Oxfords of beautiful bold shades of color and/or pinstripes, and khakis too — and charismatic, with bright shiny smiles on their well-complexioned tan faces (tanned, he didn’t realize, from a recent one-week late-August rehearsal vacation at the beach) — the charisma evident because of the throngs of undergraduate women (and even some men) standing and even sitting in front of the group, captivated.
Evan wanted to be one of the Virginia Gentlemen. He wanted to be a VG.
Except he didn’t know it.
Part of him knew it. But this part, the part of him that knew it, lacked something that the more conscious part of him had. The conscious part of him was cuddled up in that other part of him: a nice warm cozy blanket of doubt, which had nurtured him his whole life. Like Linus’s security blanket, he couldn’t live without the doubt. He wrapped himself up in it as soon as he rolled out of bed in the morning, throwing off the cotton quilt and wrapping himself up in something even more necessary and protecting. Doubt was his mother and father and guardian. Doubt was a treacherous parent. Treacherous doubt withheld certain pieces of information from him. It was all out of a desire to protect him from the scary things, the shoes two sizes too big, the painful things that would yank him limb from limb if he got too enmeshed or enamored or enthralled.
Mother Doubt withheld from Evan the news that he wanted to be a VG.
Instead, Evan told himself that these guys were amazing, that they were so talented and attractive and cocksure. They were miles and miles above him.
He tripped over his shoelaces and fell into a mesmerized girl.
“Sorry,” he said to her, getting up. She and two of her friends glared. He hoped to God that the VG imitating Sting’s voice hadn’t noticed. But of course he hadn’t noticed. Nobody ever noticed Evan.
The glaring girls turned back to watch the Sting-impersonating Virginia Gentleman continue his magic.
Evan didn’t even clear his throat as he swiftly walked away. He stifled the impulse.
He never thought about the VGs again. Instead, he tried out for the men’s Glee Club, 50 men strong, and continued to sing 400-year-old choral music. It wasn’t staid, though — the Glee Club was a brotherhood. A fraternity of song. In fact, the group had a house, and keg parties, and the guys talked about girls and had mixers with sororities. Except for the fact that they sang beautiful music and sometimes got tears in their eyes — and the fact that they had rehearsal two nights a week, for two hours each — and the fact that there were no Greek letters in their names (though they sometimes sang in Latin) — they could have been a fraternity. Also, there were no hazing rituals, and there was no pledge status. It was fraternity lite.
A year and a half went by, and the a cappella urge resurfaced. He wasn’t sure how it happened. But one day in the warm delirious spring, at the end of his second year of college, he wanted to be in an a cappella group again. Spring always did weird things to Evan. It made him feel romantic inside, it made him want to turn into a bird and float among the clouds and sing a birdy whistling song. Springtime, like no other time, told Evan that he was a prisoner to biology. He could almost feel the hormones coursing through him.
This was a vague desire, unfocused. He didn’t fixate on any particular person — or even any particular gender — so much as have a strong desire to “suck the marrow out of life.” To throw on a pair of mesh athletic shorts and play soccer (he hated soccer) and roll around in the mud and neglect his studies. Get dirty. Be bad.
On the first warm day of the year Evan was walking back to his dorm from his Psych 101 class when he saw a student running past. The guy wore a white t-shirt and a red pair of mesh shorts. As he ran, his legs kicked up dust behind them, or they would have had there been any; the legs went so high in the air behind him. Legs dotted with hair, from the thighs all the way down to the ankles, where short white socks were covered with dirty sneakers that had formerly been white.
The guy ran past and Evan felt woozy and alive. Suddenly his bookbag was weighing him down unbearably, sweat forming between the bag’s strap and his back and chest, across which the strap was slung, sweat getting trapped in the warm pockets of his jacket. He tore off his jacket and tied it around his waist, and continued walking. He felt the breeze blowing against the shirt — the first direct outdoor breeze blowing against his shirt in months.
And as he walked, he smiled. This was life. It was April and he was in college and he was truly alive.
That evening there was an a cappella performance at his dorm. It was the VGs. This time — a year and a half after his first experience watching them — he actually knew some of them. Several of them were in the Glee Club: there was tall Harris Breaux, and short, cute Steven Sims, and hunky blond Dexter Avalon. He was proud to say that he sang with these guys, even if it wasn’t in the VGs that they sang together.
“Evan, how ya doing?”
Evan turned around. It was Randy, Randy Cohen, another Glee Club guy. They lived in the same dorm. Randy was coming down stairs with his own bookbag. He didn’t have a jacket.
“Oh, not bad.”
“The VGs are singing here tonight, eh?”
There was something in Randy’s voice that Evan couldn’t quite place. Something that wouldn’t even have registered on a seismograph. But Evan noticed these things.
“Yeah, hey, aren’t they?” Evan said.
“Will I see you there?”
“Probably… I think so.”
“Cool.” Randy smiled. “See you later.”
Randy had very white teeth.
That night the VGs came to Evan’s dorm during a 10:00 study break and performed a few songs. There was pizza and Coke. A crowd had gathered — mostly females, but also a few guys. Evan wondered about the guys; Evan always wondered about the guys. Evan noticed these things, because he was looking for them.
The VGs came, they sang, they conquered. They sang Simon and Garfunkel’s “Cecilia,” something by Pearl Jam that Evan didn’t know, and in the middle there was a ballad, sung by hunky Dexter Avalon. All the women swooned. Evan wished he could swoon as well. Dexter’s blue eyes focused on a few women in the front row.
Why couldn’t Dexter look at the guys, too? There were tons of closeted VG fans. But that would have hurt their image. And anyway, they probably didn’t know. They lived in a fantasy world where all the biggest fans were women. They didn’t know about the closeted gay guys who lay in bed at night, sweating and naked underneath their bedsheets, stroking themselves as they thought about Dexter Avalon or Harris Breaux or even Steven Sims.
It was that night that Evan realized, finally, that he wanted to be a VG. And if not a VG, then he wanted to be a member of another a cappella group. He was fascinated by the combination of musical components, all created unbelievably by the human voice, as he was with the idea of being part of another brotherhood and possibly being admired by legions of fans. He wanted the admiration, needed it.
Eventually he got into a group, after a total of eight auditions for four different groups (two each). After not evening making callbacks once, finally, at the beginning of his last year of college, he made it into a group.
And there he met Tom Carter and Jonathan Press.
So now here they were, Evan and Tom and Jonathan, cruising along Ocean Boulevard in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, coming back from the summer blockbuster of a film. Film was too strong a word — it was just a movie. A confection.
Evan was sitting in the back seat. He wasn’t sure how that had happened. It had just seemed to be his natural place. Tom was driving, and as they walked back, Evan deferred to Jonathan and let him take the front seat.
The truth is, Evan sometimes preferred the back seat. If you sat in the front passenger seat, you always had to be conscious of including the back-seated person in the conversation. Words wound up getting away from that rear person, as the driver and passenger faced forward, spouting their words into the front windshield. And Evan was the type of guy that always wanted to make sure he included the back-seat guy in the conversation. He was hyperconscious of leaving other people out. Once he had been so hyperconscious of this that he’d strained his neck muscles, whipping his head front and back, his brain churning overtime to think up questions he could ask the back-seat guy, then switching back to the driver and making sure the driver wasn’t left out, either.
It sure was lots of work, being nice.
But this case was almost as bad. In this case, he was the one stuck in the back seat. At least he wasn’t in the position of responsibility — and the front passenger guy really was in that responsible position, because the driver had to concentrate on driving, leaving the front passenger guy to act as social director.
And in this case, the social director was Jonathan.
Jonathan was very tall, 6 foot 3, with wavy blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He was sort of an artistic type, although straight, and Evan was in love with him in a platonic way. In fact, they’d driven down to Myrtle Beach together this year. They’d left Charlottesville at 6:00 in the evening, driving down I-95 and then along South Carolina’s mysterious bayou-like Highway 9 in the darkness, before arriving at 2 in the morning. They’d thrown their bags in one of the unclaimed rooms and had run down to the beach, tracing Latin phrases into the sand with their bare feet as the waves crashed in from the dark horizon. Standing there, in their shorts and bare feet, the wind rushing through Jonathan’s wavy blond hair, Evan knew he was in love. He wanted it to be 2 a.m. forever; he wanted to be at Myrtle Beach forever. He wanted Beach Week to last forever. He didn’t want to graduate.
But now, three nights later, they were driving back from the movies. It was 10:00 at night, and therefore the night at Myrtle Beach had not yet begun. Beach Week existed in another time zone; everything was several hours off. The day didn’t really begin until about 4 in the afternoon, when the shadows began to lengthen on the crowded beach, the shadows of the volleyball net and the volleyball and the frisbees and the guys and the girls, and people began to think about dinner and the upcoming night’s events. The revellers at Beach Week were like vampires, waiting for the sun to go down. Except that they were also happy in the sun. They were happy in the sun, happy underneath the moon and stars, happy underneath the flashing strobe lights of the Spanish Galleon, happy underneath the fluorescent lights of a kitchen mixing drinks, happy. There was only happy at Myrtle Beach.
Unless you were Evan, riding in the back of a car while Tom and Jonathan traded jokes up front. He couldn’t hear anything. It didn’t help that the windows were rolled down, the rushing air pulling the words out of Tom and Jonathan’s mouths and scattering the letters along Route 17. They drove past neon-lit seafood restaurants and amusement parks and miniature golf parks.
They were talking and laughing.
“What do you think, Evan?” Jonathan finally said, turning around, smiling.
“I can’t hear you guys at all,” Evan said.
Jonathan turned back and exchanged a glance with Tom. They were both smiling. Jonathan said something to Tom that Evan couldn’t hear, and they both laughed.
Evan felt his face turn red and his teeth start to grit. Jonathan was being a traitor. They were laughing at him.
Evan seethed the entire rest of the ride back to the condos. He was angry, he was sad, he was upset. Everything from his childhood was coming back to haunt him: the humiliations, the people making fun of his glasses and his brains and his greasy hair (before he’d learned to use a particular shampoo and conditioner that would make the greasiness go away, somewhere around ninth grade, when everyone began desperately trying to improve themselves). He’d thought that he’d made so much progress since middle school. He’d gained independence, he’d picked a major (finally), he’d gained confidence, he’d even made it into an a cappella group. And now it was all crumbling to dust like a hollow house, a house of cards. The bricks were strong but the foundation was still pretty weak. He was the foundation and he was crumbling. All because Jonathan and Tom were laughing.
There were times when Evan could see around his thoughts. He could live outside of them, step outside of himself and see things objectively. He was a guy who thought about things too much, and this was sometimes a blessing and sometimes a big screaming albatross around his neck, strangling him. You know how a really bad form of torture is to make sure that someone is wide awake but can’t move? Then you stick needles into them. They can feel everything, every little pinprick, but they’re completely paralyzed. Fully aware of something but unable to change it.
That’s how Evan felt. He knew there was no need to feel this way. But he couldn’t do anything to change it. That’s just the way he was feeling. He knew that Tom and Jonathan were just joking around. He knew that they liked him. He pretty much knew. After all, he’d known Tom for three years and Jonathan for two and they’d always been close. They’d always gotten along very well. Just the other night, when he and Jonathan were driving down to Myrtle Beach in the darkness, Evan suggested going out to Colorado to visit Jonathan during the upcoming summer. Jonathan had thought this was a great idea. So Evan thought they were close.
Hadn’t they stood on the beach barefoot at 2 in the morning and written words in the sand with their toes?
And now he was a traitor. How could people do that? What did they have in them that they could become a completely different person in a matter of minutes?
The other side of the coin, as Evan’s overthinking mind well knew, was that Jonathan wasn’t changing. Evan was just being a dork. Jonathan and Tom and Evan were all guys, after all, and guys joked around. It was their way of being emotionally intimate with each other. A way of expressing affection. Well, if that was affection, Evan didn’t need it or want it.
They pulled into the parking lot of the Tilghman, the condos where the Glee Club was staying. They all got out of the car. Evan was still grimacing. Jonathan said:
“What are you up to tonight, Evan?”
Evan grimaced and mumbled, “Not sure.”
Hearing his tone, Jonathan looked at him. Yet another change came over him. A hint of tenderness came into his eyes. A hint of warmth. It was like his eyelids were relaxing. He smiled.
“Are you okay?” he said to Evan.
“Yeah,” Evan said, turning away like an ashamed puppy.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He heard Jonathan laugh.
“Come on, Evan, we were kidding around with you,” he said.
“Yeah, whatever.”
“No, really. Come on, Evan, you know we like ya.”
His back was still to Jonathan, but now Evan smiled. He felt like the kid in the commercial after he gives the football star a Coke and Mean Joe Greene gets down to him on one knee.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said.
“So come on, let’s go up and see what’s going on upstairs.”
It was 10:00 at night. Upstairs there would probably be the usual debauchery, a crowd gathered watching the season finale of some sitcom on TV, drinking beer and liquor, or playing drinking games, assorted open bottles of liquor on the Formica countertop, big red plastic cups stacked up inside clear plastic wrappers, assorted glassware from the cabinets, which had actually belonged to the condo’s owners, owners who had never suspected that their glassware would be used by a bunch of college students to mix exotic and experimental alcoholic concoctions. The people who weren’t around were off visiting other people in other condos or beach houses, where they were doing the same thing. Perhaps some people were off playing mini golf, and others were probably off at the movies like the three of them had been.
But others’ others were waiting on line right now to get into the Spanish Galleon.
The three of them, Evan, Jonathan and Tom, walked up the stairs. When the got to the condo, they saw what they expected. Randy Cohen and a couple of other guys were sitting on the couch, laughing and/or flirting with four women. They were not bimbos, but they were drunk — which meant the same thing, functionally. If Evan’s eyes had been hidden deep inside his body, undetectable by those around him, he would have rolled them.
So now they walked in and there was the crew, just as he knew they’d be, sitting there, drinking, playing spades (oh yeah, there was that too), watching TV.
Evan, it should be noted, felt nothing wrong with any of this. He fully enjoyed it, in fact. It was all part of why he loved Beach Week so much. Who wouldn’t enjoy something like this?
On TV was a sitcom. A haute-couture man was talking with a low-couture more relaxed man. He said something that was apparently funny, because the laugh track exploded.
“Hey!” Randy said to them. The others said hi as well, really enthusiastically, enthusiasm soaked in rum and vodka.
“Hey, y’all!” Tom said. Even though Tom was from Cleveland, he’d appropriated the “y’all” during his four years in Virginia. It was a cool word. The north had no plural for “you,” unless you were in the mafia, in which case you were permitted to say “youse,” which nobody in the mafia really said unless they were basing their interpretations on deeply inaccurate mafia movies or stereoptypes on TV.
Tom was a cheery guy. He had glasses and a big smile with white teeth. He was so friendly. Sometimes it seemed forced, but it wasn’t. It was just the way Tom was. He’d long ago incorporated such hyper-friendliness into his personality, so long ago and so deeply that it had come to seem fully natural in him. It hadn’t always been, Evan assumed; it seemed instead like a defense mechanism Tom had long ago acquired in order to fight off some deep-seated insecurity or insecurities. It was too creepy and unchanging to be natural.
Evan noted Randy. He’d been coming to notice Randy a bit more often during the last few days. Perhaps it was the different setting. He’d never seen Randy shirtless until this week, and a couple of days ago, while lying on a towel, reading some deeply uninteresting thick paperback novel, he’d finally seen it. Was it Randy in particular, or had Randy just become the vessel, the easily accessible focal point for all the shirtless guys on the beach? Randy was a friend. He was low-key and laid-back and slightly nerdish, but not in a geeky way. That is to say, he was intellectual, and he was into science fiction and so forth, but he wasn’t socially awkward. He was either nerdy but not in a geeky way, or geeky but not in a nerdy way. It was hard to say, really.
They’d always gotten along well, but now Evan found himself wanting Randy in a way he hadn’t before.
It had begun to happen that particular day on the beach, two days ago, the first full day at Myrtle. He’d noticed Randy. Randy wasn’t into volleyball, like most of the other Glee Club and music-type people, and so he was lying on dark green towel, bathing suit on, t-shirt on as well, reading a book with a black cover containing a picture of either a nova or a nebula, Evan wasn’t sure which. He’d arrived on the beach twenty minutes earlier and had seen Evan and had put his towel down next to his. He’d taken off his sandals but had left his shirt on, leaving his arms and legs exposed.
His legs were slim, not muscled, with a smattering of light hairs on them. Not many, but enough to show that he wasn’t a kid. His arms, too, were thin. His skin was pale. He wore a pair of aqua-colored shorts, not swim trunks or even mesh athletic shorts but plain old shorts that one might wear while hiking in the woods.
In other words, he was totally unprepared for the beach.
Evan found this appealing. He wasn’t really prepared for the beach, either.
“What have you guys been up to this evening?” Randy said.
Tom explained that they’d just come back from the movies, leaving out the part about the front seat/back seat dichotomy, probably because it hadn’t made much of an impression on him. It’s the ones who get hurt who remember a situation. There’s nothing like negative feelings to engrave a situation into your memory.
“Cool. What are you gonna do tonight?” he said.
That was the great thing about Beach Week — heck, the great thing about being in college. Or being young. But definitely about Beach Week, vacation, no timetable to follow: it could be 10:00 at night and someone could ask, “What are you gonna do tonight?” and be totally serious about it. Nobody went to bed until 5 in the morning. There was almost a whole workday full of hours ahead of them to fill with play.
Evan was pretty sure he knew what he wanted to do. Evan wanted to go to the Spanish Galleon –”Spanish G,” as one of his friends (a guy in the a cappella group who liked to break out into rap on random occasions) called it.
It wasn’t a gay dance club, which was fine, because at this point, Evan wasn’t calling himself gay anymore. It was just a club — and therefore, a straight club. Like most things in the world, if it wasn’t labelled as such, it was assumed to be normal. And, like most things in the world, that wasn’t totally true. Like most things in the world, the subversive element still existed — just underground.
Evan didn’t even know if gay people went there. As far as he knew, it was a straight club. In Evan’s interior world, gay didn’t exist unless it was labelled as such. There was no murkiness. Ironically, Evan didn’t recognize the murkiness of sexuality in the outside world even though he was filled with sexual murkiness himself.
At any rate, because the Spanish Galleon was not a gay club, it was okay to say he wanted to go there.
“I was thinking of going to the Spanish Galleon,” he said.
In fact, they all were. These a cappella people — well, not all of them, but the guys in their group — liked to go to clubs and dance. And presumably pick up women, maybe, although having fun was really the point.
“Wanna come?” Evan asked Randy.
This was the moment of truth. Would Randy come to the club? What did it matter, really? It wasn’t a gay club. Evan wasn’t even gay. He just sort of wanted Randy to say yes.
“Yeah, I think I will,” Randy said.
Hey, why not? Why not be happy that Randy was coming? Randy was a nice guy, a really nice guy. Evan liked him. They seemed kindred spirits in some ways. Neither of them seemed at home on the beach. And Evan could seem himself reading Randy’s astronomy book. Long ago, back when he’d been unafraid to be himself, back before he dad had made him feel bad about pursuing solitary interests, Evan had read books like that. He used to love math and computers and technology.
And now he noticed that Randy liked these things, Randy was a guy who could drink and hang out with both girls and guys and still be a nerd, but be socially smooth enough as well. Not completely lubricated, but socially smooth enough.
Half an hour later they’d changed their clothes and they were ready to go. Tom wasn’t going; he was supposed to meet a girl somewhere. Instead, Evan, Jonathan and Randy went together.
They walked along Ocean Boulevard in the cool air, Evan with two people who gave him great vibes: Jonathan, on whom he had a non-sexual yet incredibly deep crush (if only Jonathan had been shorter), and Randy, who — well, who just gave him great vibes, especially lately.
They saw small groups of people walking past. Some were yelling and shouting. Drunk. Yelling stupid things. Fraternity guys, probably. Or maybe they came from other schools. Wake Forest students were supposedly down here this week, too. It was hard to tell where they came from, because alcohol removed all formerly telltale traces of intelligence from any UVA students, and the Wake Forest students — well, for them, the alcohol couldn’t take away what wasn’t there to begin with.
Then Evan noticed a UVA cap on a guy, yes, one of those ubiquitous white UVA caps. Okay. Wahoowa.
They got to the Spanish Galleon. They’d hoped they wouldn’t have to pay to get in, because it was free before 10:00. But the closer it got to 11:00, the slower the line began to move. It was all a ploy: the bouncer and the stamper and the ID checker and the cashier would begin to slow to a crawl, so that you’d waited so long to get in free that by the time you got up to the entrance and it was 10:03, you weren’t willing to turn back. It was a trap. You figured you may as well pay your five bucks and go on in since you’d waited so long. Great business sense, these club owners had, catering to the young stupid college crowd. Great bucks, too. What a business.
But of course by the time they actually got to the Galleon, it was 10:45. So much for that idea. Still, it was worth the five bucks. They’d known it wasn’t going to be free, but they didn’t care. Five bucks is nothing when it’s the first club you’ve been to in months. There weren’t any clubs back in Charlottesville; there were fraternity parties and house parties and parties in dorms and people sitting around drinking. To go to a club, a real live club with flashing lights and loud good DJs, you had to go to D.C. Nobody ever did that, though. Who wants to drive two hours away?
So five bucks was worth it. They paid, they got fluorescent ink stamped on their hands that glowed under ultraviolet light, they went in. They walked right into a wall of sound.
The Spanish Galleon had a dance floor in the shape of a square. At each corner was an elevated cage that brave people (or drunk people, not that there was any difference) would stand in and shake their groove thing in, or whatever it was that Evan had heard people call it. The dance floor was recessed into the ground, so that to walk onto the floor you had to walk down two steps. From their vantage point, Evan and Randy and Jonathan could see the crowd bumping and grinding and jumping and dancing away.
Along one wall there was a bar where you could buy cheap beer in little plastic cups for a buck. You could also buy mixed drinks, but they were a little more expensive. It all depended on your tastes.
Jonathan didn’t drink, and a group of women came up to him. He was a girl magnet even though he didn’t think he was. He was soon absorbed into their circle and they carried him off like Amazons with a fur pelt, leaving Evan and Randy by themselves, together amidst the crowd.
“Beer?” Randy said.
“Sure,” Evan said. He gave Randy a dollar. And Randy went off to get beer.
While Randy was gone, Evan looked around the room. Attractive UVA guys everywhere. There were women, too, of course, but he didn’t really notice them; he fixated on the guys. He continually did this, throughout his life at UVA, all the while telling himself that he wasn’t gay — or at least reserving judgment until some deus ex machina, some cosmic event would occur. He wasn’t sure what that might be. In fact, he wasn’t wholly convinced that he hadn’t made the entire idea up in order to avoid the question.
He saw one guy in particular. Black hair, sideburns, short-sleeve t-shirt and jeans. Not your typical college fare, because the t-shirt was tight. Hmmm. He certainly didn’t fit the UVA mold, but he was with a few guys whom Evan recognized from around Grounds, so he had to be a UVA student. Well, as much as everyone looked alike at UVA, not everyone looked alike. There were exceptions. Obviously this guy was one of them.
The guys were dancing together in a group, with a few girls. The guy-to-girl ratio seemed a bit too high. In other words, there were too many guys.
And one of the guys was a gay friend of Evan’s. Interesting. That would explain the good-looking sideburn guy. Gay.
2:26 PM | Comments Off Tuesday, August 19, 2003
A shitty situation can ultimately teach you a lot.
In the last few days, I’ve been fortunate to learn that I have more friends than I’d realized. I’ve learned that there are lots of people out there who care about me, who know me for the truly wonderful human being that I am — even if I, myself, sometimes forget. I have real friends — people who have given me great advice, people who have listened to my story, and have understood; people who have confirmed that it’s OK for me to feel what I feel, that my feelings are completely justified, that I’m not wrong. There are even some great people who were there for me all along, but whom I didn’t fully notice until recently.
Some things in this world don’t make sense. Some people in this world don’t make sense. Some people’s actions don’t make sense. But I’m learning that it’s not my job to think about those people; they will do what they will do; their chips will fall where they may, and it’s no reflection on me what happens. All I can do is focus on my life, and on all the good things that are in it — first to recognize those things, and then to remember them, and then to build on them.
The only life I have is my own.
And it’s a darn good one.
12:48 AM | 1 drop of oil Wednesday, August 20, 2003
I went to the Gap a couple of weeks ago to buy some new clothes. I left with only a ribbed white t-shirt and a package of briefs, because those were the only things in the entire store that were small enough for me. (Please note that when I’m referring to briefs being small enough for me, I’m referring to waist size.)
On my receipt was a number to call so I could participate in a Gap survey and thereby get 10 percent off my next in-store purchase. I finally called the number yesterday. A nice Valley girl in California read through the questions, and I gave my responses in the form of a number between one and five — the more I agreed with the statement, the higher the number I was to give. I gave fives for courtesy of the sales staff, helpfulness, friendliness, help in finding what I needed, time waiting to check out. But for overall satisfaction of my visit, I gave a three.
I’m 5 foot 6 and weigh 125 pounds, and my size is an inconvenience when I shop for clothes — especially since I’m a gay man and must therefore wear clothes that are a little tight-fitting and not too big on me. The only shirts from the Gap that truly fit me are XS (extra small), but although they sell that size online, they rarely sell it in the stores. They’ve got S, M, L, XL, and XXL (and maybe XXXL, I’m not sure). It pisses me off that such a large percentage of the American population is overweight or obese these days that stores have no problem stocking their shelves with XL or XXL but don’t feel the need to make it convenient for us XS guys to find what we need. In jeans I should probably wear 30×28 or 29×28, but Gap rarely has those in the store either.
After we finished the survey questions, I was allowed to give comments, so I mentioned this. The Valley girl was sympathetic, and she offered to check the Gap database to see if there were other stores near me that carried XS. She checked, and there weren’t. And we’re talking about Manhattan. Now, I can totally buy my size online, but I’m more of an impulse buyer when it comes to clothing. Oh, well.
It’s not just the Gap. On my birthday last year, my dad decided that at some point during the day, he was going to take me to Bloomingdale’s to buy me a new suit. We combed through the racks and couldn’t find a 38 Short anywhere. Next time I go suit-shopping I’ll probably try the Boys’ Department.
I need to expand my wardrobe anyway. I checked out Express (formerly Structure) recently, and they didn’t have much that I like. People keep telling me to check out H&M or Century 21, so I think I’ll do that — if they have anything that fits me.
Or maybe I’ll just open a clothing store for little guys like me.
While I’m on the subject — seriously, can anyone recommend a nice-fitting brand of jeans?
1:27 PM | 10 drops of oil Thursday, August 21, 2003
The Internet connection in our office was out all day today. Totally unfair. What am I supposed to do at work without Internet access?
It turned out there are these papers on my desk, called “work.” So I did them.
Er, it.
Okay, okay. I always get work done. It’s just that I got so much more done without Internet access. (But thank goodness for MP3s.)
I’ve seen two interesting movies lately. Over the weekend I saw Swimming Pool, which was very good, although strange. There were so many unattractive men in the movie that the prize for Most Attractive Actor went to a guy who looked like a 1970s porn star. But then there was Ludivine Savignier. Damn. She’s. Hot.
Sexual spectrum much?
The other movie I saw was The Secret Lives of Dentists. Campbell Scott. Mmm. (Except for the mustache he sported.) Weird movie with some unnecessary plot developments, but great acting, and worth seeing.
This is one of the reasons I love New York: the independent/foreign film scene.
As long as the movie’s not playing at the Angelika.
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9:54 PM | Comments Off Friday, August 22, 2003
My gender has been confirmed. Yay!
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9:57 AM | Comments Off I so want to do this.
Um, I think.
I wasn’t really thrilled with the first two installments. They were technically brilliant pieces of filmmaking, yes, but I’ve never gotten over the changes. I’ve read the books a few times. Faramir’s not supposed to be evil. And “The Two Towers” is supposed to end in a cliffhanger, with disgusting Shelob. And Frodo and Sam aren’t supposed to rush out of Hobbiton when Gandalf tells them to; they plan to leave in summer, but Gandalf is nowhere to be seen, so instead they have to leave in the fall, when the world gets darker and creepier, which is not what they’d hoped for. I’d always liked that idea of their plans gone wrong. Instead, Peter Jackson just has them rush out into the world, as if audiences wouldn’t have the patience for anything else… and yet he inserts 15 minutes of snoozeville smack into the middle of “The Two Towers,” with flashbacks to Arwen and Aragorn and Elrond and Galadriel. (Galadriel?) I don’t get it.
Okay. I still think seeing all three movies in a row would be an amazing experience. I’m just not sure I could handle it.
And my butt would hurt.
4:47 PM | 1 drop of oil Monday, August 25, 2003
I took the day off from work today and went to Van Cortlandt Park. I haven’t taken a real vacation this summer, and I decided I needed a day to just relax, to get away from things. I didn’t know what I was going to do today, but then I remembered I’d always wanted to go to Van Cortlandt Park, so that’s what I decided to do. I took the 1 train all the way to the end of the line. The train rolled up through the Upper West Side, then Harlem, then Morningside Heights, then Washington Heights, and then it emerged from underground. We went through Inwood, and then I saw high-rise apartment buildings on the cliffs of the Bronx as we rolled across the Harlem River. The train finally stopped at 242nd Street, and I got off and began walking through the park.
I walked to the Van Cortlandt House, inside the park, but there are no tours on Mondays. So I went behind the house and found myself standing on a dirt path, surrounded by trees. Beautiful, and… natural. Not just natural as in nature, but natural as in — this is humanity’s natural environment. We’re animals, after all. To stand surrounded by trees and branches and green leaves is to feel at one with yourself, to hear the calling of your ancient DNA. I felt like Thoreau.
I left the wooded area and walked along a path on the perimeter of a big field. Tons of open space to my left. And on my right were more woods. Dense woods. I felt this urge to run into them, to be lost in the woods, to run away from civilization. But it didn’t look like I was supposed to go there.
And then through the denseness I saw a man walking. And then I saw a path. So I figured it was OK.
I walked along the path. And then I saw another man.
Why are there men walking around here by themselves?
My instincts told me something. But then I saw two other men walking together, wearing shoulder bags, and I realized I was just imagining things. So I continued walking.
I saw a pond. And ducks. And across the pond I saw a golf course.
I continued walking along the path. Dense brush on both sides. And then I saw the two men with shoulder bags again. I began to walk past them.
One of them held out a little packet for me.
It was condoms.
Oh.
No thank you.
I continued walking along the path, amused. And then I saw a middle-aged man whose paunch was protruding through his untucked rugby shirt, and he was looking at me.
I decided it was time for me to get out of the woods.
So I left, and I went back to the open field — still amused, but a bit spooked.
I don’t think this is what Thoreau had in mind when he wrote about getting back to nature.
8:45 PM | 3 drops of oil Thursday, August 28, 2003
It’s becoming more likely that Gen. Wesley Clark will join the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. This excites the crap out of me. I’d love to see him run.
Sure, Howard Dean’s exciting, but the Democrats would totally lose if Dean got the nomination; he’s a liberal governor of a small New England state who’d have to appeal to a huge swath of the country, including much of the South. Liberal governors of small New England states only win the presidency on TV dramas. And that’s what this is about — winning the presidency.
A friend and I did one of the nerdiest things in the world a few months ago — we watched C-SPAN on a Friday night, because Wesley Clark was giving a talk. He was brilliant, he was thoughtful, he knew was he was talking about, he was charismatic and relaxed, he was dignified. He’s a retired general, so he has the military cred; not only would this make him look great to millions of Americans, but it would also help offset his moderate-to-liberal social views that might otherwise turn some people off. And he’s from the South, which would help him eat into W’s base. (Strangely enough, he’s a Rhodes Scholar from Arkansas, just like Bill Clinton — not that that’s an automatic qualification, but it’s cool nonetheless.)
My friend and I watched his talk, and we just about spooged all over the place.
Dean is a pipe dream. Clark has a better chance of winning than any other Democrat out there.
I can’t wait for him to announce.
11:31 AM | 10 drops of oil Friday, August 29, 2003
The world seems dead today. My office is quiet. My phone is quiet. Even MetaFilter has slim pickings today. I guess that’s what happens on the last official workday of summer.
The end of summer. Is it here already? How did this happen? Where did it go? Summer gets shorter every year. It used to be considerably longer; back in college and law school it ran from the end of finals in mid-May to the return to campus in late August.
When does summer begin? The middle of May? Memorial Day weekend? The summer solstice? Late June, when all the kids are out of school? The Fourth of July? And when does summer end? The end of August, when college students go back to campus? Labor Day weekend? September 11? The autumnal equinox?
I don’t even know what summer means anymore. It’s just a time of year when things are hot. And not always.
Once, when I was a little kid, I asked my dad when the last day of work was. It was a reasonable question. There was a last day of school; why wouldn’t there be a last day of work, too?
I’ve felt a shift in my life lately. The click of a pivot point. I’ve hit something and I’m careening in a new direction. Fall is coming. Change is coming. New things are in the air — to a degree I haven’t felt in a few years:
- I auditioned for a chorus last night. (If I don’t get in, I’m auditioning for another one next week.)
- I mailed off my screenplay to a screenplay competition yesterday.
- In a few days, I have to tell my landlord that I won’t be renewing my lease for another year. I’m terrified, because it will mean I’m officially committing myself to look for an apartment in Manhattan.
- I’ve been having new insights into sex and dating lately. I’m re-evaluating the role of sex in my life, and I might take a short break from dating. These are things I need.
So my life is headed for some changes in the next few months. I hope they’re changes for the better.
The summer ends and we wonder where we are.
—–
2:24 PM | Comments Off I have been chosen as a member of the Gay Gotham Chorus! I’m in!
Rehearsals start in a week and a half.
YAY YAY YAY YAY!!! Hooray for me!
9:39 PM | 2 drops of oil Sunday, August 31, 2003
I’ve been feeling really moody and ponderous this weekend.
I’ve recently decided to give up chat rooms, and as a result, there’s a void. I’m bored. I’m seeing just how much I’ve used chat rooms to relieve the loneliness. And I’m hoping that the short-term pain will result in some long-term gain. At least I’ve joined the chorus — and although we haven’t even had the first rehearsal yet, I’ve already been invited to a party the following weekend.
Last night I stood in a crowded, noisy, dimly-lit place and drank a liquid that dulled my senses. This is what passes for entertainment in the gay community? Why go to bars? What’s the point? I walked down Eighth Avenue and everyone looked the same, and it made me feel mad and scornful and inadequate. I walked into G, but it was so crowded I thought I was going to throw up, so I walked out. I went to Barracuda instead. I bought a Corona and stood/sat in different parts of the bar for an hour and a half. Oh, it was thrilling.
It’s absurd.
As I walked out of Barracuda to head home, I picked up a copy of Next magazine for some fluffy PATH train reading. Rufus Wainwright was on the cover. I read the article, and I simultaneously fell in love with him and desired to be him.
“14th Street” — I love this song because it’s the triumphant return, where I’m coming back home, and the unattained lovers who fucked me over in the first half are forgiven and idealized and then put on a shelf as relics.
I downloaded a bunch of his songs about a year ago, and he’s so brilliant and beautiful and original. He makes me want to cry.
I want to be like that. I want to turn pain into beautiful, original art, and have unknown people admire me for it and think I’m wonderful because I’ve confronted and slain my inner demons and grown into a beautiful human being because of it.
I want to meet a guy who’s not afraid of his emotions.
The problem is, whenever I do, I become afraid of my own.
12:09 PM | 3 drops of oil 
