Sharing a story or two about being gay-bashed

Maybe it's the leg warmers. I was wearing them both times.

But fuck that! It's a tired and ugly cliché, "What were you wearing?" they asked the rape victim. The onus of the victim is immediately shifted toward the victim, and the crime falls to the wayside. I won't have it. I wear what I choose.

The first time was, in the most optimistic spin, a compliment. I was at Alder and Park around 11:30 pm walking. The drive by has plenty of time to evaluate my look and, passing by, yells, "Princess, you're looking good!" (Relevant caveot, I had survived Walla Walla hate-bash free until I was called faggot at the same intersection in 2005. I wished I'd had a bat at that moment, I still see that truck driving around.) This was uninvited, but banal. I gave it little thought.

This time, I was threatened.

If you did no know, I go to Golden Horse for karaoke, 1-3 times a week. I've gotten to know a few of the people there. Relevant to this story is Keith, a fuck-up living with (mooching off) his dad gay dude who'd taken a fancy to me. He took his dad there often. Anyway, Keith introduces me to his brother Mark, who shakes my hand genially. Flash forward to March of '10. Keith has moved to Seattle. I'm taking a fresh breath of air by myself, outside the GoHo. Mark is there with his wife calling Keith a faggot, and it's faggot this, faggot that, and I don't bat an eye. I'm saying nothing, pretending not to be interested, just the guy in the corner not engaging.

He says, "that faggot over there."

My heart starts racing. I'm here, dumbass. Say it to my face.

Still having said nothing, he comes over to me. I believe in eye contact when people speak to me. It could have been my first mistake. My only mistake.

(Only the best transcription I have)

"Hey. Hey! I'm talking to you. You have a lot to know. I'm talking to you. Hey. We're just talking. Yeah. You know? Just talking. You're a faggot, right? I can say it 'cause my brother Keith is a faggot, too."

(Just then, a Man named R•••••• walks by, and he yells out, "R••••••, you're a faggot, right?")

"I seen you with Keith. You're friends. He's a motherfucker. I can't stand the way he's fucked with us. Fuck him. Do you know that the bible says about people like you?"

(no answer)

"Well, do you?"

(start looking in the eyes)

So, I know I have no choice at this point, I either have to engage and try to avoid violence, or certainly invite violence by not engaging. So I took my chances with a defensive move.

"I didn't talk to you. I never talked to you. Why are you starting a conversation?"

He was angry. To my MF saving grace, some people showed up.

He says, "I don't want to start shit, no. I am asking you a question. Do you know what the bible says about you?"

(having slept with his brother, I have inside information about Mark and some latin chick he'd rather keep quiet, and I think God has a similar trajectory for the two of us)

I kept my cool. As best as I could. All the time I'm looking in this man's eyes. I keep saying, "You don't talk to me, I never talk to you."

And still he persists. "You are a no good faggot brother!"

"I'm not your brother. Talk to him."

"Fuck you, faggot, you talked to him!"

This is where it gets unreasonable. He wanted to gay-bash his brother, but all there was was me. His friends tried to persuade him, but he kept right on, faggot this, faggot that. They finally persuaded him to go in, but he was promptly kicked out. I stayed in, was respectful, and was escorted to where I had to be.

No punches. I sang a song, shortly after, and dropped a lot of F bombs. It was well-received. I mentioned over the mic that "if you want to call me a faggot, say it to my face."

So don't call me a Faggot. Unless you mean it in the loving way.

This post is dedicated to Kaj-anne Pepper, and all men serving it to the legendary children and the legends upcoming.

Sharing about going places

Writing is a refuge. I come here whenever I need some time away to process and decompress. I come here when there's a problem I need to solve.

My life alarm clock is about to go off, but I'm already awake, dreading the baleful sound of the buzzer. Anticipating the sound, I can already hear it, but there doesn't seem to be an effective snooze. I'll go make coffee and try to get ready. Ready for what, however, is unknown.

I'm approaching six months of perpetual four-day weekends with one goal: marathon season. I need a few more goals and one big goal. I could fail at a new pursuit or feel sorry for myself. I could do some research, or read a lot, or find out new ways to be cheap. I am coming to terms with not knowing, freeing and scary at the same time, coming to terms with the inescapable pressures of my own responsibility. For the time being, though, a list will suffice:

Save money

Run, run, run

Keep it clean

Plan for five years

Get rid of car

Be more loving than ever

Catch up on reading

So far, it's a scratch at the surface, but it's a start. I've already proven that I can do anything. It's time to hit the ground running.

Wa-mbulence alert: I'm coming to remember/understand/dislike that I was constantly encouraged to be average and succeed at anything un-extraordinary, not to draw attention, to have reasonable dreams. This has been a major impediment, and for as easy as it would be to hide behind it, it will be quite difficult to overcome it. This is a challenge I'm willing to confront.

When in the world did I become the sort of person who goes to Vegas?

No, really. I want to know.

The story goes, my sister asked our parents for a bunch of money so that she could take a trip to Vegas, the same year I went to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. As a result of their refusal to her and their allowance to me, she stayed in Farmville, CO, and I had the first (of many) drunken months of my life.

I stayed in Sta. Ana, Costa Rica with a great family who never questioned my comings and goings. I learned enough Spanish to get me from here or there, as long as the next drink was at its end. Also, it was my first foray out of the country, so it was opening my eyes, left and right. It was, as an aside, also a great place to escape my own escalating faggotry (however there was nothing faggoty about Central America). I remember only parts of my last night there. It was the fourth of July, we were celebrating. I took us home with my great skill for direction. They say I was hitting the bottle and ended up naked in a bath tub. I saw it the next morning. The mirror and toilet seat were busted. And so was I. The only thing I remember is putting a bottle to my mouth, and then I woke up with this tight-bodied straight guy against my face between Dallas and Colorado Springs. Suffice it to say it was a long twelve hours of flying.

But my sister wanted to go to Vegas. She had been before. She likes to think I am the favored one, but I have news for you:

I am!

She will never know.

Also, I will never tell her I went to Vegas. That Is my secret.

It hasn't happened yet, which means it might not! But with God as my witness, I will prevail!

But my fucking sister...

Sharing a narrative about how I will fool my parents this Christmas

The plan is simple, but let's go back a year.

A year ago, I called my mother to tell her I had enough time and money to visit home for Christmas. She was Very excited, but I told her to can it, because I was going to surprise the family. So, to her dismay, she lied to my aunt and uncle, my cousins, and her own father, saying I couldn't make it and that I would be completely alone for Christmas. Well, I did make it, and my parents picked me up on the way to Ft. Collins via DIA. I waited at the bottom of a mountain until all had settled, the walked up to the front door, and, SURPRISE!, was the best Christmas gift anyone had gotten that year. Then this happened:

No, those are not shiny things on her sweatshirt, her tits really are that big. Really!

Anyway, I'm not that fat this year (although I could be by Christmas), but I can still surprise a bitch. My biggest (forgive the pun) regret was not having a white elephant gift. This year, I have the PERFECT one! For my house-warming, I promised a fireplace, but netflix didn't deliver as promised, so I had to PURCHASE a DVD full of nothing but continuous video of fires. As a matter of consequence, it was perfect for the party, but it is nothing I would like to own. RE-GIFT! The funny thing about this particular gift is that I'm pretty sure every member of my family, I being the only exception, has a real fireplace. However, I'm probably the only member who doesn't have a TV in multiple rooms, unless you factor in how I could roll my AV cart into a doorway for the technicality.

I booked a flight today to arrive the morning of Christmas eve, told my sister (and as a consequence, her husband), and plan to be the surprisorist again! I have a perfect funny gift and will even shop around for a bad sweater. I have dropped this bad ensemble:

FOR which, I will add, I won a bad sweater contest. I'll do it again, chest hair and all. I had the very best bad Christmas sweater of all for a couple of years, but never used it in a contest:

It's small, but basically it's mice carrying christmas packages across an ugly red sweatshirt. Embroidered. I should never have given it away! Blast!

Well, anyway, Je and I devised a plan to "spend Christmas together in Levenworth." Levenworth, besides seeming like a nice place to spend a life sentence, is Washington's North Pole, a veritable winter playground that takes Germanic Christmas fables very seriously. Christmas is to Levenworth as Wine is to Walla Walla: street cred. So anyway, we are making "plans" to stay there for Christmas, but "something" will happen which will leave us "mad at each other" or "displaced without a way out" or "stranded." We'll share this tale on Thanksgiving, when we video chat with the family. If we're not contingent on the plan, it will all go down hill. My sister needs to know right away.

Sharing a lack of mystery, also, I hope I don't die.

The lack of mystery is startling. I hosted a party and basically blacked out for the latter portion of the evening, and yet there is a lack of mystery.

I've blacked out and found more cash than I started with, blacked out and woken up naked in a Costa Rican hotel room, a little wet and bruised, woken up with some person whose name I had to find out, but this has never happened. First of all, I somehow knew this guy's name, like I had been repeating it over and over. Also, I knew how the cheap furniture had been broken (I fell on it). I asked around and I had recollected the whole night. Perhaps it wasn't the best party ever.

Also, I hope I don't die. I drank some meed which (as all meed these days is) had been homemade. Hopefully, as all things alcoholic tend to do, the death in it had been killed, although it doesn't taste alcoholic to me, which make me wonder if it isn't a cesspool of germs and bacteria that are waiting for some unsuspecting host to deliver their spawn unto the world. I could be patient zero for the apocalypse. I had hoped very much that I would be one of the last survivors, eeking out a meager existence on found fall-out shelters, vending machines and dog flesh. If I act like a zombie by next week, please remove my head from my body. It isn't going to turn out well if you don't.

Sharing some thoughts on the eve of the first annual party I've held for two years

We have a lot to celebrate. Of course there is our health, the fact that we are alive, the love that we share, the great wines we enjoy a little too much, also we have the beauty of our youth, too. We can make up any reason to celebrate. It helps us justify the wine and the whiskey and the beers and the what-have-you. "Cheers to not having to make up an excuse to drink on a Monday morning! Cheers to this crumby yet abundant cup of coffee! Cheers to this floppy burger with shredded, bagged, pre-washed lettuce!"

But that's not what I'm getting at. That is guilt finger-scratching at the corner of my vision. It's my mom's gentle disapproval. Perhaps when we doubt the seriousness of the process of living we would be better off dead. Even the frivolous is sustenance, such as this glass of wine, my body gets just as many calories from three glasses as it would get from an average meal. It fuels my brain just as well, and I dare say is filled with fewer frightening chemicals than most manufactured foods.

Celebration is a necessary practice similar, I think, to laughter. I'm not proposing a theory as to exactly how it is necessary (you know I'm cooking one up), but we don't want to imagine a life without laughter, its ability to cut through nervous, awkward, obscene, terrible, fantastic or profound experience. I propose that celebration is a vacation from sorrow. Christmases have taken place as they would any other year in the face of deaths and diseases, like the year I was four and my grandmother had just died from ovarian cancer. It was a celebration with her, knowing we had to act as she would, with a supreme love for family and an abundant warmth.

Then again, there is this party I am to host in a few hours.

My major concern is the flow of drink and presence of food. I baked a pie but have nothing really to offer other than some cornichons, olives, and a dwindling pile of pumpkin seeds. In the beverage department, I have no intention of offering more than two bottles of wine and a little beer and gin. The rest is up to these crazy people who have agreed for some reason to attend this party. I'm not concerned yet with celebration. I guess we either will or we won't. I'll write a speech just in case:

"Beloved guests and other guests: Welcome to my home. If you have not already poured yourself a glass of something, please do, because I will offer a toast after this unnecessarily long-winded speech. As such, pour a fuller cup than you might be accustomed. Hell, grab the bottle. Also, there is at least a pound of butter in the pie. I thought it would be a good way to guarantee that Jessica would arrive. The topic of this party is Thanks But No Thanks Giving, which is just a clever arrangement of words, but I really to have an intention here, or at least I have made one up in time for this party. Next week we will probably all get together with family and friends to give thanks, mostly as a sort of abstraction, for as much as we give thanks for Grandma, it's hard not to yell at her when she makes racist remarks. We give thanks for the food, too, but the turkey is always dry and your brother's girlfriend doesn't eat anything, and you might want to throw something by the end of it all, if you weren't too drunk to stand. We give thanks.

"It's nothing against Grandma, but I'd rather be here. I'd rather choose the company I keep and keep it well as a practice of living rather than as an ablution. I'd rather care for my pie than have it from a can because that is what everyone expects. I'll say no to dry turkey and gloopy cranberry jell from a can. I will no longer pretend to be interested in cousin Alisa's second baby with that dirt bag she's married to. We are pioneers, making new friends in old lands, making family with strangers. We appreciate finer common denominators. We'll enjoy a pound of butter in our pie, thank you very much, and we're not apologizing for it. Thanksgiving? Thanks, but no thanks.

"Please remember to behave yourself this holiday season. Also, don't spend beyond your means. Also, I have love in my heart for each and every one of you with no more than two or three exceptions. My toast this evening is to you, my friends."

Sharing an apology...

I'm not very good at this, because I have a sort of stubborn rigidity that keeps me looking forward, sometimes at the expense of those left in my wake. I do however have a lot to be sorry for. I'm sorry that I missed my 17th birthday party because I was secretly making out with some boy from another school. I'm sorry about not blogging. Mostly, though, I have learned to write information with integrity and compassion. Upon publishing one's thoughts in a public format, one is responsible for the content of those thoughts. So I am sorry that I have shared details which could have caused certain pain. It was not my place.

Sharing an open letter to my favorite bar tenders, servers, convenience store clerks and friends:

I'm sorry.

I know you never depended on me, but it was always a pleasure, wasn't it? We had lots of great times, especially after my third or fourth Manhattan and got a little louder, when I tipped 100%, when I stumbled out the door. You were always happy to see me, and you saw me often. You were always good to me. The drinks you poured me were always strong, my wine glass was never empty, and you never looked at me like I was crazy when I ordered the third pitcher. With you, I was always at least okay.

I'm sorry, but we have to separate. It's not you, it's my weak body and poor judgement, it's my bleeding stomach and my having tired of being constantly hungover or working on my next hangover. You'll say I just need to cut back for a while. You'll advise moderation. I have never known moderation. I always lose at the "betcha can't have just one" challenge.

I still love you, but I no longer want to need you. Maybe we can be friends, one day, but you won't see me for a while.

Sharing the street with Kimi, Walla Walla's Next Top Model final showdown

A blog in pictures.

Sharing movies, ideas, and an apartment.

I would like to share some sordid items from the week.

- I'm not exactly pissed at my mom, like I should be, for wanting to see my grandmother peacefully at rest. After some thinking, I realized that the truth is that I agree with her. It isn't that I want her to die, but that she might be better off, and perhaps it was this subtlety that I missed when my mother repeatedly conveyed her opinion. And, after all, my mother is one of the only two people who are constantly at my grandmother's side. It is not for lack of love or care or compassion or anything else. It may be for an abundance.

- I picked up a new roommate, which couldn't be more ideal. I don't see that much of her (which is only ideal in terms of privacy and maintaining the status quo), and she's clean and respectful. Best of all, we've enjoyed living together before. Now we just need to start kicking each others' asses about getting to the gym.

- Speaking of the gym, I was on a two week hiatus when at first I rediscovered my love of running, then became injured, and then briefly sedentary. I left weight training behind but plan to ease back into it. Today I tried cycling, but I wasn't comfortable with the motion at the reps needed to get to my target heart rate. I'll get on the elliptical again tomorrow, and while I think it may be equally lame (go ahead, read into that use), It might be better than the bike while I continue to be injured. My fitness goals are currently simple: I want to drop some pounds, work on my shoulders, chest, arms and abs. I'm not worried about chicken legs: I already have somewhat well-developed below-the-waist musculature (please, read into this, too), and I can become more comprehensive when the upper half is all caught up. Weigh-in today has me down to 176.5lbs, hoping for 169.

- I'm totally absorbed in a work of fiction which I find strange but totally acceptable. I'm reading Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. I became interested in it after I fell asleep through the 2008 film adapted from the book. The movie was immediately intriguing but then got really boring (and it was late), which made me think it might be a beautifully written book, which make the most seriously boring movies (i.e. Brokeback Mountain, The Hours). I'm rediscovering my independent desire to pay attention to and analyze imagery and thematic elements. Also, it is a perfect novel for a queer reading. I'm worried that Waugh has an agenda with which I will soon take exception, but until then, I'm getting ideas for my own work and a renewed desire for more fiction. It is very likely that I will pick up Anna Karenina again.

Brideshead is about the love affair between a young middle class man and a young aristocrat who meet at Oxford during the inter-war period. The novel has taken a turn in the second third to very deftly describe the effects and causes of alcoholism. Waugh would have been very aware of the clinicization of alcohol abuse (i.e. the emergence of the alcoholic, the diagnosis), but seems to be somewhat careful to address the topic in its context, which is very appropriate for the novel - we see into the reasons the character is drawn to drink, and alcohol itself is an important thematic element. It has become very horrifying, and I'm sort of drawn away from drinking for a while.

- Finally, I discovered this weekend that I don't know what to do with time off. I got a little bored this weekend with three days off in a row. I was able to pack a lot in on the 4th, but I only used about half the day on Sunday, and yesterday I did almost nothing at all (but read and watch movies, alone). The next time I anticipate some time off, I'll do meticulous planning. It isn't that enjoying time alone is a waste of time, it's just that I could feel more accomplished and well rested now, on the other side of this lot of time.