Delayed and Distracted

I Love Strasbourg

2009-01-19T20:37:00.000-04:00

My sister and I traveled around France, England, and Italy (Rome only) over the break. We had a ball, but at the end of it all, boy was I ever glad to get back here. I LOVE this city. And plus it was nice to get back to a place where I can speak the language. I didn’t like not knowing Italian in Rome, it was awkward. French is such a beautiful language, I’m so glad I can speak it as well as I do. Aside from that, it was great to get back to my friends, my social life, and my apartment. I’m picking up my plant from a friend tomorrow.

Seems the blog’s been dominate by G and my relationship problems with him. I’ll avoid him in this entry, aside from this part. After he continued to message me for November and most of December, with messages that switched from I miss you and love you, to how could you do this to us, to really angry ones, I sent him something terse back that said I didn’t want to hear from him till the summer because he was only making things worse for both of us. Since then I’ve deleted, without reading them, any messages he’s sent (two or three). I still hope that one day we’ll be friends, but for now, I try not to think about him.

And I have so much else to occupy my thoughts! Good and bad, though the good is usually fantastic and the bad is only ever a mild stressor. Last Thursday I went to the LGBT student association meeting – which is basically just a bunch of us go to a bar and sit and talk and maybe have a drink. Low key, but always a good time. I started going to the meetings last semester in November, made one really good friend (C) and started making more. This was my first time back after Christmas. Afterwards I left with C and his boyfriend to another bar where I did drink and played some pool. I also learned that the two guys at the LGBT club who I was sort of interested in are dating each other lol. Perfect. Oh well, I’ll still be flirting with them, at least a little. Besides, new people come to the meetings all the time, so maybe someone else who I’ll be interested in will come along. One of those guys, though, is showing a serious interest in whether I’m a top or a bottom. Truthfully, I don’t ascribe to either label, it’s limiting, but he’s convinced I’m preferentially, at least, a bottom. I’m not disclosing to him, but I said if I was drunk maybe I’d tell him. And now he’s planning on buying me a few beer at the next meeting to get me to open up. He’s a cutie, I’ll probably tell him the truth, hopefully he won’t be disappointed lol.

I went skating the next night, had SO much fun. I hadn’t skated since I was maybe 16, so it took a while to come back to me, but it was awesome when it did. The friends I was with were of similar level, except the one who’s a roller blader, but still, he wasn’t light years ahead of us. The rink had a dj and funky coloured lights and pounding music. Exactly what I like.

Saturday night I watched the new episode of Battlestar with Beth and C, who also loves the show. We watched it at Beth’s apartment, which has an unbelievable view on the Cathedral’s spire, i never tire of looking out her window. Anyway, the show was so good! Shocking really. Left us with more questions than answers. Can’t wait till next week. C then got sick and vomited because of his migraine – but then he was fine. And it always happens like that for him. I’m very glad I don’t get migraines.

Sunday night I watched a movie with sister and friends after all cooking supper together – potatoes, carrots, beans, and eggs. So good.

Courses of course are a torture to get in order over here, registering, finding out information, etc. I know it’ll all get sorted eventually.

Ciao :)

Aftermath

2008-12-06T09:16:00.003-04:00

So, the deed is done! I ended it on November third. G took it horribly and we spent a frustrating stressful week trying to come to some sort of understanding. I expected it to go poorly, but not that poorly. If I hadn’t acted quickly and alerted his two best friends, he would’ve been IN Strasbourg by the next day. One took his passport. I eventually convinced him, with a friend’s help, to unbook the flight. He was begging me to reconsider the break-up, to try to work on this, to not give up on us, etc etc. I knew I was making the right decision. He cried so much. Eventually I realized Skype videos were counterproductive. He ended up taking the end of the week off, going home, talking to his family, getting taken to the hospital because he couldn’t eat, and then going to a psychologist. By the end of the week, after he’d continued to write on my wall, put how “i’d always have a piece of his heart” in his status, put something similar on msn, and sent me numerous emails, fb msgs, and texts on my cell, I stopped responding to even the few I’d been responding to. My tone had gone from apologetic, to semi-sympathetic, to tolerant, to curt, to frustrated, to angry. I told him that this wasn’t helping anything.

The week had been extremely difficult on me. Of course it was more difficult on him, but I just don’t experience lows like that, I never have. So what I was experiencing was a low, for me. I never want to have to go through that, it was awful. He eventually sent me an email saying how he was sorry, how he would try to get over me, how he hoped we could be friends, etc. I cried so much over this email! I think then, for me, it was really the end. He’d finally accepted it. It was what I wanted, but it was still hard. I loved this guy. And now we were over. I cried in the caf with a friend that day, M. I don’t cry in public like that, unless I’m at a movie or something. I msged Shannon later, because she’s cried in the cafeteria at home over stressful situations, and we had a little laugh over it.

After a week of not communicating, I msged with a tiny, how are you doing, msg. He replied first with an angry message, then an apologetic one, then many more professing his true undying love for me, then depressed ones, and more pleading ones. Then he just completely regressed and kept begging me to take him back, but I was moving on, and plus, when he was lucid we’d agreed that space was better for us right now, so we said we wouldn’t communicate with each other. I was sticking to it. It was still a hard time, but I was not hesitating in my decision to end our relationship. Just how he had reacted to the break up was reinforcing for me that it was the right decision. Eventually, maybe three weeks ago, after I hadn’t replied to a number of messages, I sent him one that said that until he got it in his head that there was no chance of us getting back together, then we shouldn’t talk, because it would be counterproductive.

And then I just didn’t reply to anything else. Two weeks ago, he got drunk on a Friday night and wrote “asshole” on my wall. I was shocked, and put up crazy privacy settings towards him so he can’t see anything i’m tagged in, plus none of my pics or vids. He can’t see my status, and he can’t see or write on my wall. He wrote me an i’m sorry i was drunk msg, but whatever, i still wasn’t interacting with him.

There’s this thing on fb profiles, it’s just a little text box underneath your profile pic, where you can write anything and everything, usually something small. I’d never used it, but this week when I got the WORST cold of my entire life, definitely a flu or something (i lost my voice for three days! I missed a week of school!) I commented on my illness in this box. I didn’t know, but it was one of the few things that G could still see on my profile. So, a couple of days ago, he wrote me this tiny msg saying, hope you’re feeling better. So i waited a day, and wrote back, thanks, me2. And so we’re going from there. A tiny thread of conversation.

I really want to get to the point where we can be friends, because he’s an awesome awesome guy! And I know friendship could work. He’ll have to work on it a lot, because he can’t seem to let go of me, but it would be nice if we could be friends. We’ll see.

I went out for 4 days in a row prior to getting sick, and the Christmas market which just started and which is incredible, tempted me to stay out in the cold (without a winter jacket) for far too long. And vin chaud doesn’t warm you up quite enough to compensate lol. I love this city! My one and only exam is on Tuesday, so better get studying.

ciao :)

Endings

2008-10-29T00:35:00.004-03:00

I’m sitting on a single bed, in a small apartment on the south coast of France. It’s 11:16pm on the night of Oct 29th, 2008. I’m wearing only a pair of those cut-off sweat pants shorts, they’re grey. I’m in the dark, though I can see the lights of other apartment buildings out past the balcony. It’s warm, and the thunder and lightning only stopped about an hour ago. My laptop is in front of me, and I’m listening to some music with my ear-buds. I’m drafting a break-up letter to my boyfriend.

I’m living in France for a year and everything is going smoothly except for my long distance relationship with G. It’s hard to figure out how everything went down the tubes like it has. It’s so strange how you can feel so perfectly one with a person, and then watch as things slowly morph and fall apart until you don’t really know why you’re in this relationship anymore. Sure you have social pressures, and concern for the other party’s feelings even, but you’re not getting anything out of it anymore. No fulfillment or satisfaction or joy. It sucks.

G and I had the most wonderful whirlwind summer romance. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life, and I am not exaggerating. I’d wanted to experience something like that for as long as I’ve identified as gay, and then, starting in June, it happened. I fell in love. It was more than I ever could have dreamed of. Every sappy love song suddenly had meaning. All of the stereotypes and clichés about love were suddenly real to me. I was in love and it was bliss.

Having a boyfriend was something new to both of us. We’d both fooled around with guys before, and he’d been in a semi-relationship that hadn’t lasted 8 days, but neither of us had ever gone steady with someone. We were feeling our way along, but we were doing it together, surrounded by very supportive friends who were overjoyed to see us find someone. His friends loved me, and my friends loved him. We made so much progress together! He took me to a party at the shore, with strangers present, as his date. We kissed on the beach by moonlight and held hands walking back through the crowd. He introduced me to his family, and I introduced him to mine. We ate meals at each other’s houses, with each other’s parents. We watched movies curled up on the sofas at both of our houses, with parents home. We spent nights together in each other’s bedrooms. I kissed him goodbye in my driveway at noon. We went on a five day long road trip. We camped outside a friend’s cottage. We had sex all the time. We called each other boyfriend. We said I love you to one another. IT WAS AMAZING. Exhilaration does not approach how I was feeling. It was the best experience of my life.

But we knew from the start that I was going away for a year, and as much as i loved him, I was not sacrificing this year in France in order to stay with him. Both myself and my parents had put too much effort and money into planning for it, aside from the fact that it was something I’d wanted to do for years and years. To live away, in a city, independently, to travel, to speak French every day, to immerse myself in a foreign culture, to meet people, to do things I would never do otherwise, to learn, to grow, to find myself. All of that. Of course, G was supportive, and of course we decided to have a long distance relationship. We loved each other beyond anything we thought possible, so of course we were going to make this work until such time that I would come back, the end of May. Of course, Sept. 2009 I was starting law school in a province where G would not be, because he was in a program in our home province that wouldn’t finish until June 2010. But of course, through love tinted glasses, anything, absolutely anything, is possible. All you need is love.

Or so we thought, doubtless repeating the mistake of countless young couples in the past, who thought that the love they had for each other would somehow carry the day over huge obstacles. And perhaps if G and I were actually a better match, it would have. But we weren’t, and it didn’t. The problems started almost immediately in September.

I arrived in Strasbourg, France, on September first. It was to be my home for the next 9 months. My apartment got set up quickly, internet taking a bit longer. My younger sister, Beth, also in Strasbourg but in a different quarter, had internet, so I was able to use hers for the first few weeks. The first hurdle G and I had to try to clear was simply communication. There are so many facets to why G and I are breaking up it’s hard to isolate them all. Of course, each of us has flaws, and one of mine is sheer laziness. I’m also very easy-going, which might be related to that, but I’m not sure. G wanted us to communicate every day via Skype (so talking, with video) at a set time. He also wanted regular emails. He also used my facebook wall to say I love you all the time. I’ve also been featured 100% of the time since I left as the subject of his facebook status. A lot of the facebook stuff struck me as overkill, and something about it being in such a public forum turned me off, too. Something else we’d done over the summer was put our relationship on facebook, ex “Robert is in a relationship with ” on my page. A public proclamation of our relationship. Seemed reasonable at the time, and I in fact still think it is, though I could’ve lived without it. For G, it was important. In effect it outed me on facebook, too, which I thought of as further progress made due to our relationship. A positive. Anyway, so G wanted all that communication. I knew that my schedule was variable, and frankly, I didn’t want to be tied down to a specific Skype time every day. I could stand not talking to him for a day if it didn’t work out. We’d be emailing every day anyway. My counter proposal was yes, every day communication, but not a scheduled talking time everyday – that, in my mind, restricted both of us in terms of our social lives. He also wanted me to let him know if I couldn’t talk to him at that prearranged time some time through the day via internet. This also presented a problem for me, just in terms of logistics. What if i only learned I couldn’t make it when i was eating an evening meal with friends because we spontaneously decided to go out somewhere. You just meet these three girls from Germany, they’re awesome and they want to keep the conversation going at a nearby pub, everyone’s going. But I have to miss it to go home and talk to my boyfriend on Skype. Or go home to tell him that I’m going out to a bar, but my apartment is 40 minutes away there and back. It’s just impractical.

So let’s look at this issue deeper. One might say that I was being lazy, and that I should’ve realized that if I wanted to be in a long distance relationship, if i was serious about it, and if i respected G, I would of course agree to his proposal re communication arrangements. What was really going through my mind when I protested against this? Talking to him on Skype was nice, of course, but as much as it was nice, I knew I didn’t want to do it every night. In addition to the fact that I didn’t want to be tied down like that. I t was such a restriction on my freedom. Is that what it means to be in a long distance relationship, or a relationship at all? Yes? Then maybe I just wasn’t mature enough for either, or well suited, or whatever. But you see, i had no frame of reference. I didn’t even have anyone to talk to at the moment about whether this was normal or not, what I should compromise on, and what I shouldn’t. What was reasonable? I think that I’m a reasonable person with reasonable wants/needs. But I assumed the same about G. And when he reacts in a non-reasonable way to something I think is reasonable, like how he felt hurt by the fact that i didn’t want to talk to him as much as he seemed to want to talk to me, then who is actually being reasonable? Who knows! If you’re confident in yourself, it’s you. If not, it’s him, and you compromise. But a lot of this relationship has felt like it’s proceeded in a bubble where neither of us really seems to know what we should or should not take a stand on, or compromise over.

He compromised first, and we didn’t adopt the regular talking time. But gradually, he became more and more stressed out. And I think it basically came down to him wanting to talk to me every day, and me not caring one way or the other, thus making no extra effort to make it happen. I assumed he would want what i wanted, and he assumed i would want what he wanted. He rearranged his entire life around being at his laptop, at home in the evenings, hoping I would call. I structured, or non structured or whatever, my life around school, friends, whatever, but always leaving space to talk to G now and then, if he happened to be home, and sending him random emails. This was too much for him (or rather, not enough). The only reason it seemed to be working out so well to me, because i was just popping online randomly when i was home and in the mood to talk, and he was usually there, was because he was doing everything possible to be at his computer at home whenever i might come online to talk. We had a fight, and then I compromised, because it seemed that he simply couldn’t stand it any other way. So we then adopted the, what I felt was, restrictive calling every night at the same time, and trying to let him know whenever it wouldn’t work. This basically meant having to tell him my schedule every day, and every day it changed. I wasn’t happy, and he wished I would just want this to be the arrangement.

As we were negotiating that issue, I started to make more and more friends in Strasbourg, wonderful people, who i of course wanted to spend time with, and do things with. Some of them were French, some Canadian, some American, and then more from lots of other countries. I was exploring the city, I was getting into routines of buying food and cooking, and eating at cafeterias, and joining the gym and judo and shopping and etc etc. All of this taking me farther away from G. A guy in a few of my classes at the university is gay. We’ll call him M. We both came out to each other, it was awesome. He’s really nice, kind of cute, short, Mexican, very sweet and sincere, a bit demanding as a friend. He wants you to be his best friend right off the bat. I don’t warm to people quite that fast, so it took a while for me. But it was nice to have made a gay friend over here. G was not happy, and automatically disliked him. He thought I was spending too much time with him. One time I had M over to study with me at my place. G thought this was inappropriate. I couldn’t understand why he felt the way he did about this. To me, M was just another friend, though one who was gay, so we could talk about certain things more openly, G being one of them, M’s relationships another. G could’ve gone and made friends with who ever he wanted, I didn’t care, the more friends the better - maybe it’d give him something else to do rather than always waiting for me by the phone (laptop).

Why did/do i feel the way i did/do about this? In our arguments, I always frame it in terms of trust. I trust that G won’t cheat on me, so he can do whatever he wants with his time and life and energy, I won’t mind because I know he’ll be faithful. And he seeks to control my behaviour because he doesn’t trust me not to cheat on him. Simple and logical. But why am I not concerned that he won’t cheat on me? Shouldn’t I be? As he always says in our arguments and which I always parry with a trust reply, everyone makes mistakes, humans are fallible creatures. G told me 2 or 3 times that if i ever cheated on him he’d end the relationship right away. He said he could never forgive me. That he could never look me in the eye again, never trust me again. I, frankly, had never even thought about him cheating on me until he brought it up. Hadn’t even crossed my mind. So, in an effort to try to see his perspective, I gave it some thought. How would I feel if he fooled around with another guy while I was in France? It was hard to say. I guess I would be angry. Right? That’s what people feel when they get cheated on. Angry. Betrayed. But seriously, I couldn’t summon up any of those feelings. Does him having sex with someone else make him not love me? I don’t think so. I’ve had meaningless sex plenty of times. It has nothing to do with who or how i love someone. So I guess in my mind, him having sex with someone else is not in and of itself a betrayal, or at least, it’s not an emotional one. It might be a technical one, in the case that we both agreed to be monogamous and then he wasn’t. But would I feel wounded? Scarred? No, I don’t think so. Of course, this assumes that he still loves me, which I couldn’t imagine him not. Of course he’ll always love me, this was never in doubt. Maybe I’d feel differently if it wasn’t G, in whom I have the utmost confidence that he is trustworthy. If he had sex with someone else and told me that he didn’t love them, that he loved me, and if everything still worked, then I wouldn’t be hurt. But would I want an apology? Yes? Why? I don’t know? I get quite unsure of myself here. Of course, then all these practicalities come up, like I don’t want to catch something from him that he caught from some other guy. Why would he be having sex with other people? I suppose just for the fun of it. Sex is fun. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? Maybe not. I don’t know. See, the farther I go down this path the less sure of anything I am. Sex and love are not linked in my mind, or at least, not necessarily. So why then is sex with another person a betrayal? I’ve had meaningless sex. Lots of people have. And if you think that sex is really meaningless, then if your partner has meaningless sex with someone else when they’re in a relationship with you, what does it mean? Nothing? Because it should mean nothing, because it was meaningless, and if they say it was meaningless then you have to believe it was because you have to trust them because you’re in a relationship with them. And if you can’t trust them then you can’t be in the relationship. Now I’m just using logic that might have no grounding in reality. Relationships are about people’s feelings and emotions and all of that isn’t rational at all. So basically “I don’t know” is the answer to a lot of these questions that I pose to myself. But at the start of this whole thing is the fact that I didn’t feel threatened, or potentially betrayed, by any hypothetical cheating on the part of G on me. This was aside from that fact that I trusted him not to fool around with anyone else, simply because he said he wouldn’t, and I trust him. But he might as well be promising he wouldn’t wear some shirt i didn’t like for the year i was gone for the amount of emotional good it did me. Him cheating was a non issue for me, both because i didn’t think it would happen, and because if it did i couldn’t imagine it hurting me that much. Maybe it would hurt me if it happened, because I would then think it meant he didn’t love me, or because of the particular circumstance of that situation, or something... I don’t know.

Anyway! So G was paranoid of M and i cheating. He said, it’s not that i don’t trust you, it’s that i don’t trust other people. Which was a ridiculous statement to me, it takes two people to cheat. He didn’t want me going to gay bars. Let alone a gay bar with M. I thought this was stupid as well. I love to dance, and I love dance music, and gay bars often have amazing music. Plus my friends here are gay-friendly, they want to go to gay bars! But this was a huge issue for G. So I compromised one night and didn’t go with the crowd because they might’ve been going to a gay bar. This left a bitter taste in my mouth. I told G I was giving in only because i knew it would bug him / hurt him / worry him if i went, and not because i agreed with any of his rationales.

The pools in Strasbourg require you to wear speedos or some other similar tight fitting swim suit, not the shorts like ones that I own. M swims every day and would love for me to come with him sometime. I see this as an opportunity to exercise with someone, and so of course i should take him up on it. Plus he’s my friend, i think it’d be fun. G was completely against me going swimming with him. Let alone the locker room! He was aghast that M would see me in such an exposed state. I was mystified about this, and it took me a while to clue in to how jealous G really was. Of a completely innocent activity with a completely innocent person. I drew the line, and said i’ve had it with curtailing my behaviour to satisfy his paranoid delusions. Huge fight ensued and we almost broke up. This issue simmered for part of Sept and then into Oct. G flew over to London, England, to see me, and I flew there to see him. We spent 5 days together. At the end, this issue exploded – we had a huge fight, and the relationship almost ended. I wasn’t compromising on this issue. I refused to not do things that he thought were inappropriate because they were in actuality completely reasonable. The fight was massive, but in the end he gave in and said he was being an idiot and that he didn’t want to lose me over this.

G doesn’t know the concept of money. He spent that enormous sum to come and see me in mid October. He was already planning on coming to see me in February for a week or so during his spring break. Last week he decided to come and see me in Strasbourg in the days leading up to Christmas right after his exams are done. This strikes me as spending too much money. He says that he would spend anything to come and spend one day with me. It’s hard to argue against this, because protesting makes it seem like I don’t love him as much as he loves me, and it doesn’t really get across my concerns about the money. G is doing all of his university career on student loans, and his family is not wealthy at all. He’s got an apartment in the city. He’s leasing a car. He goes out to eat fairly frequently to me, and he goes out drinking now and then too. Normal activities and purchases all, but when taken together, he’s spending a lot of money. And THEN he decides to take at least three mini trips to Europe in one school year. I wasn’t even planning on going home for Christmas because of the cost! But like I said, when i argue this, he tells me to put it from my mind. His program, dentistry, will lead to a lucrative career. He says he’s spending money now that he’ll have in a few years, when all his debts will be paid off quickly. He says I should be thrilled that he’s coming to see me. And of course, I know I should feel thrilled, but i don’t.

Why don’t I feel thrilled? I don’t even feel a little bit thrilled when he mentions these trips! Why not? Is it all about the money? Does the cost really erase all of the joy i should feel about seeing my boyfriend again, even for a few days? Why, when i finally give in to his plans of coming to see me, do i not feel any happiness? In a way, i think i feel like he’s intruding. Intruding on my European adventure. How horrible. He’s my boyfriend. Does this mean I don’t love him anymore? Because it’s true, when I’m with him, i can curl up in his arms and feel safer than anywhere else, and go to sleep with him easily, and of course the sex can still be great, mostly. And we can laugh and joke around. But I honestly don’t want him to come see me. Why?? Maybe this is just a definite you need to break up with him sign. I can’t answer these questions. ..maybe it’s because of all the other stress he’s causing me, that occlude any of the potential joy.

So in addition to raising worrying doubts in my minds about how I really feel about him, these trips he plans make me doubt his ability to responsibly spend and manage his money. Not a good trait in a potential life partner.

Cyber sex. I can’t stand it, and he loves it. This makes him feel unattractive in my eyes, and makes me feel like I need to fake being turned on so that I can smooth over any awkwardness. But it’s hard to stay hard when you’re not turned on. I have to fantasize about other things and that’s not what i should be doing when my boyfriend’s stripping for the camera. The truth is i don’t find him that attractive on that little screen. I’d much rather look at any of the porn on my laptop. It’s something about his physical presence that turns me on, not him on the screen. After trying to cyber a lot, i had to eventually tell him that it was really awkward for me and that I didn’t like it. But I stressed the cyber sex thing, and not the i don’t find you attractive on the screen thing. He was hurt, but we moved on.

G is really sensitive. There were so many times during the London trip when things came up that stressed me to no end because he got so offended. For example, it was near the end of the trip, and he wanted to shower together like we did the other mornings. I knew that showering together slows us down, and I wanted to get on to whatever it was we were doing that day. So I got in first, finished, he got in, i spent about thirty seconds in there with him, and then got out. Very friendly, but just, we’re in a rush, let’s hurry. He got super offended and passive aggressive for the next few hours. So annoying. That night, our last night, we were going to have to be at the airport for 9am the next morning. So of course i wanted to pack the night before. After I apparently spent too much time packing, he got really mad/hurt that I wasn’t just spending time with him in bed rather than packing, seeing as this was our last night together for a month and a half or whatever. I was like, so you want us to miss our flights tomorrow? This led to the huge argument about M eventually, but it included a lot of other things. There was this other time, where we had sex, i came twice and he came once. Then we got in some little fight about something. Maybe about the shower thing, i don’t know. But it was one of those fights, which were worryingly frequent, where he would just suddenly stop talking to me, and roll away from me in bed facing the wall. And then he just wouldn’t talk. And I would wait. And wait. And eventually he would come out with some sarcastic remark about how he was so hurt by something i’d done, or not done, or whatever. Anyway, so this time i was like, whatever, and i just rolled over and tried to go to sleep. I was completely turned off. He eventually started talking, and we argued, and then made up, but i was super tired and had already almost gone to sleep, so then i proceeded to curl up and try to get to sleep. G, still horny, started jacking off and tried to get me to join in, but i was half asleep. He just continued to jack off for a while. And then he stopped. And then a bit later, i realized he was super mad, and he whispered something like, “I don’t know how you can just lie there and do nothing when your boyfriend is jacking off beside you.” Or it might have been “...when your boyfriend who you aren’t going to see again for months is jacking off beside you.” This made me feel at once furious, frustrated, and guilty. Should I have been turned on? More awake? But should he have realized that i was practically asleep? Should he have just gone to sleep himself? Whatever, i wasn’t in the mood for more sex, and he couldn’t understand how i wasn’t, seeing as he was jacking off beside me, and we only had 5 days together. It was basically just a big, frustrating few days.

The sex itself has issues on its own. If I could just fuck him, which he does love, then we’d be fine. But G can only get off in a very particular way. He has to be lying flat on his back and he has to jerk off with his right hand and he has to tense his legs and then eventually he can cum. This is the only way. Me, I can cum lying down, sitting, standing up, jerking with my left or right hand, in the shower, on the bed, i can cum from him giving me a blowjob, and i can cum when i’m fucking him, whatever. I’m just versatile. And he isn’t. Which, admittedly, gets annoying. Also, he loves it when i blow him, but i don’t like the taste of his cum. It’s gross. I’ve drank other guys’ come and it’s been much better. Much better. His is just gross, i can’t help it. So then i avoid giving him blowjobs. And then i feel guilty because it’s like i don’t reciprocate enough in bed. Which makes me try to get him off that way, but i don’t enjoy it. It’s gotten to the point where i just love kissing, groping, getting blown by him, and fucking him. That’s it. Not a healthy pattern for our sex life.

Greg also has Generalized Anxiety Disorder, for which he takes medication. The anxiety definitely contributes to a lot of the problems in our relationship, and it also, as a side effect, makes it harder for him to cum. The “contributes to a lot of the problems in our relationship” is much more important to me, and much more destructive. He told me about it to help me understand him, and why he is like he is, but i refuse to make allowances for delusional or irrational behaviour just because he’s been diagnosed with something. If someone’s being controlling, whether they have a disorder or not is irrelevant to me. The fact is, they’re being controlling and we have to deal with it, otherwise this can’t continue. So i feel like his anxiety is a problem, and what is caused by the anxiety is a problem, not the fact that he has a disorder.

These are most of the problems with this relationship, and why i’ve drafted this other message here for him. I think I’m going to tell him i’m breaking up with him on skype video, and then send him the message to read, and then talk with him more if he wants to. I feel like he’s going to completely break down. He’s already broken down at school at least twice that he’s told me about. Started crying in class because we were fighting or he was feeling depressed and I wasn’t communicating enough for him, or whatever. I don’t really know how it’ll go. I’m really stressed out about it. But this trip to the south with my sister and cousin have given me a chance, away from G, and Skype, to think about things. I hope I’m making the right decision.

A shot of Monaco to finish.

June's End

2008-08-21T14:07:00.001-03:00

I’m home! Spent a month in Ontario doing a French course, and then a few days in Halifax where I got my wisdom teeth removed, blah. Since then I’ve been recovering, then getting ready for France, and spending a lot of time with Greg. I have a LOT to write about lol, so i think i might go in portions. First entry will be about the end of June.

After I started dating Greg, it was the perfect opportunity to tell my co-workers about him, and thus that I was gay. And it went so well! It felt SO good to tell them, and then to have them be so supportive! They were super interested in him, in our relationship, in our dates, everything. They’re all girls, and were all jealous of everything we were doing, and how in love i seemed to be :) I’m glad they were so interested, because I did want to talk about him an awful lot. It was (and still is) exhilarating to be in a relationship like this.

Tuesday June 24th we went to the mall where we met up with Shannon and her boyfriend. Shannon’s been one of my closest friends for years, and Greg’s the first guy I’ve ever dated who I’ve introduced to her, so it was another nice milestone. They got along great, Greg thought she was hilarious, just like i do :) We got subway and ate together and talked for a while. I said my goodbyes to here then, since I wasn’t going to see her again until August.

My parents, meanwhile, were becoming increasingly stressed out and angry with me because of all the time I was spending with Greg, and all the time I wasn’t spending on my VISA app for France, and all the other paperwork and such necessary for the university over there, and accommodation issues, etc etc. Like, really angry. And I was feeling torn, because I wanted to spend as much time with Greg as possible, knowing that we wouldn’t be able to see each other for a month, but at the same time I knew preparing for France was of course necessary, there are deadlines for a lot of these things, and my parents have done SO much work helping me get ready for it, I was feeling guilty that I wasn’t doing my share. Plus I was working full time at the university. So, after I talked to Greg about it, we decided to take Wednesday off. I got a lot done, and my parents seemed happier, and I felt less torn. Even though that was one more day i didn’t get to spend with Greg.

Thursday, June 26th, Greg and I were spending our last day together. I worked, and then he picked me up that evening. We got icecream, walked along the boardwalk, it was nice. I actually almost spilled the sundae in his car, but managed to only get some on my sweater and jeans lol. But it was funny. Anyway, we’d parked near a hotel, which I hadn’t really thought anything of. When we walked back to the car, he said, “You know, I parked here for a reason.” And then he started leading me toward the hotel. He’d gotten us a hotel room!! I was feeling pretty overwhelmed. Up the elevator, down the hallway to the room. He let me go in first. As I entered the room, this song was playing. When You Look Me In The Eyes, by the Jonas Brothers. We love the lyrics, and we’ve always thought of it as “our song” so it was pretty special that it was playing. There were rose petals (rose petals!) leading from the door into the room. I followed them. The lights were dimmed. The petals went all up onto the bed. On the bed was a huge bouquet of roses, a teddy bear, AND a heart made of individually wrapped hearts of chocolate (!!!). Oh, and there were candles everywhere. I almost cried. We stood by the bed and just stared into each other’s eyes for a while. I kept thanking him. He was stressing how this didn’t have to be anything sexual, but he was just being polite, because we both knew we wanted this to be sexual. Never having a room, or a bed, to go to, can put constraints on a relationship, so this was pretty amazing, to have a room, for the whole night. It was the first time we went all the way, and it was incredible. One of the best nights of my life, I must say. We ended up cuddling and sleeping by about 3-something. He drove me home by 5 something, because I had to work that morning, and I had no change of clothes, and I still had my contacts in lol. Saying goodbye in my driveway by the first light of dawn was emotional... I was leaving for Halifax that afternoon, where I’d catch my flight a couple of days later. We promised to stay in touch regularly... goodbyes are hard.

My stay in Halifax was short. Visited Alex, who I told all about Greg in even greater detail than I had on the phone. He told me all about his bf, some of the issues they were having, but what a great guy he is. My family was there to see me off at the airport. And then I was flying to Ontario, where I’d be for the next month.

Love

2008-06-23T16:09:00.005-03:00

I’m in love! I’ve never ever been in love. I’ve had crushes, but never this. This intense, mutual, all consuming adoration lol. His name is G. He’s smart, he’s friendly, he’s funny, he’s cute, he’s everything I could’ve wanted in a guy. This is the guy who I went out with for the first time this past Tuesday. He’s in dentistry, going into third year. He’s 22 like me, but he’ll be 23 next month. First date: drove around, got coffee, talked, got to know one another, realized how easy we could talk with each other. By the end of the date, you could feel the spark. Wednesday, second date: Went to the mall, then DQ for sundaes, then more driving, more coffee. Eventually we went to this big walking track near my house and walked for a while. When we got back into the car, we chatted for ever, and eventually ended up cuddling a bit. He didn’t want to give me the cold he had so he didn’t want to kiss me, but it was ok… just cuddling was amazing. I could feel myself falling for him. Thursday, third date: (first time I picked him up) drove around again, got coffee, later on got a salad from McDonald’s and split it in the car when we got to the park. We even fed each other some of it. …it was romantic. It was hot. I could feel myself falling harder. Walked the track a bit. Cuddled back in the car. I kissed him first- I no longer cared about the cold. Kissing led to a bit more… we didn’t get home till about 5am. We were hooked. I had to go away for the weekend to my great uncle’s 95th in NB. I think we exchanged more than 100 text msgs over the weekend… my bill is going to be huge lol. He told me he wanted to be my boyfriend. He picked me up Sunday evening after I got home… my heart was beating out of my chest I was so excited to see him again. We hold hands in the car now. He took me to a bonfire with some of his friends. We both want to make this a legitimate relationship… though neither of us has ever been in one. It was the first time I was in a social setting as someone’s boyfriend. A nice milestone. We walked on the beach and kissed by moonlight. We drove around. Parked at our park. Cuddled, kissed. I told him I loved him. He told me he loved me. Cuddling led to more lol. We got scared by a police car which may have seen us but continued driving slowly by. Scared us to death, but it was fun lol. Got some apple juice lol. We’re going to movies tonight- I’ve never done that with a guy either. Going out to eat tomorrow night for our “one week.” God this is intense. I know I’m feeling swept away, head over heels, but so is he… I never thought this would ever happen to me, in a million billion years… but here I am! Luckiest guy in the world. I’m still going away for July, but we’ll have August together. I don’t want to lose him, ever. I’m so in love.

Coming out, here and there

2008-06-11T20:44:00.002-03:00

When people talk to me about coming out, I tend to mention something like, “Coming out’s more of a journey than a destination, anyway.” When I’ve blogged about coming out, here and in my old blog, I’m usually referring to either “the first one” or “the big one.” The first one took place half way through my last year in high school, early 2004, when I told my family. Mom, Dad, and my sister, Beth. The big one took place last year and sort of this year- it got a bit stretched out. I told basically all of my friends, and made sure they knew that it wasn’t a secret and that they could tell anyone they wanted to. Telling my friends, the people who are most important to me socially, was the goal.

I was hoping they’d spread the word. After I’d told them, I would’ve rathered if almost everyone else I knew just suddenly knew that I was gay. Coming out’s often a pretty big deal, especially when you’re voicing it for the first time with friends you’ve known for years and years, who of course have already come to the conclusion that you’re gay, but who won’t bring it up because they’re waiting for you to be ready, and for you to come out at your own pace. To many of the other people in my life, they just assume I’m straight, or have subtle suspicions. Coming out to all these people would be annoying. I can see why some people just change their facebook “interested in:” and then everyone knows. It’s just so much quicker. At this point, I just want people to either not assume I’m straight, or know I’m gay. And since everyone assumes you’re straight, I’d rather they knew I was gay. For some reason I don’t really feel comfortable going the facebook route, so I’m left with telling everyone. Or, of course, letting the grape vine play its part and hoping the news spreads. Unfortunately, a lot of my friends really don’t gossip much, and I hang out with a few separate crowds of people which don’t really interact. So I’m almost fully out in one of these groups, but in the next no one seems to know. Like I said, it’s annoying.

One of my co-workers is in the second group. She’s hilarious, and smart, and talkative, and generally fun to work with. Seeing as we’re both going off to bigger and better, we tend to talk about the future. Now and then she’ll make a passing reference about my future wife. Or some random joke that implies I’m straight. Or how I’ll meet a hot French girl next year. Etc etc. It’s nothing major, and I know she has no issue with gay people, but she just assumes I’m straight. Or she thinks I might be gay but pretends I’m straight out of politeness. Or something. Anyway, she’s one of those people I would’ve rathered had just found out some how. It would save me the stress of having to verbally tell her that I’m gay lol. It’s still stressful, I’m not sure when it won’t be. I don’t even fear rejection – I just fear awkwardness. I don’t want to come out awkwardly. I don’t want to create an awkward work situation by talking about something personal- even tho we already talk about somewhat personal things now and then, just in reference to our futures or whatever. Truthfully though, I’m sure she’d take it fine, I know she would. But it’s just telling her. I almost did yesterday on the drive home (we carpool), but she blasts her tunes as soon as we get in, so talking about something like that would require purposely turning down the music in an “I have something to tell you” kind of way, which I don’t want. I want it to be casual. I want to preserve the feel of our relationship. Cool, comfortable, light, funny. I want this to be something that we could talk about, if she wanted. It’d be nice.

So here’s my plan. A guy recently messaged me on PlentyOfFish, the personals site. He seems really nice, smart, communicative, whatever. He goes to school away, but he’s home here for the summer. We’ve msged back and forth a bit, we’re ready to move to IM, and he’s suggested maybe meeting up next week. I’m totally up for that, I’d like to meet him. It could be termed a date, if I wanted to read into it lol. Which I don’t usually do, but for the purposes of this plan, I think I’ll pretend to. So next week, after I hang out with him, then I can casually bring up to my co-worker that I went on a date last night. And she’ll be all interested, because she loves talk about relationships, or any light gossip. And when she asks, “What’s her name?” That’ll be my opening! I’ll be like, “His name’s Paul.” And then we can talk about it lol. A perfect segue-way. I get to let her know I’m gay without the “I’ve got an announcement” feel, and then we’ve got something to talk about, in Paul. Which could then lead off into any number of other gay and me related topics. Good plan? I don’t even care if we talk about it for long. I’m confident in the strength of our relationship, I know she’s not homophobic, and then she’ll know! Which makes all the difference.

I guess I’ll have situations like this all through my life. Never again “the first one,” and probably not “the big one.” But instead, a series of little ones. It’s often nice to not wear my sexuality on my sleeve – I’m a fairly private person if you can believe it. But at the same time, sometimes you do want people to know you’re gay. Pretending to be straight is useful when you feel unsafe, or when you know that you might face immediate negative consequences that you’d rather not by being out. And sometimes it’s useful to not exhibit stereotypical signs of homosexuality when you’re casually dealing with people who may or may not be judgemental about it. But I rarely if ever feel that way in my normal social life. I want to let people in. I want to be myself. I want to challenge assumptions. Ya know?

So I’ll tell my co-worker this week, or after my “date” with Paul, whenever it is, and update you. And I’ll update you about the date, too lol.

Gym-phobia

2008-05-30T20:10:00.007-03:00

I’m on one of those fitness phases. Where I somehow find this strong initiative to exercise. I don’t know where this motivation came from, but I’m going to go with it as long as it lasts. I love it. It’s like riding a wave.

I used to be an active person. When I was little I played every sport out there, but I guess most kids did (most middle class, suburban, first world kids, anyway). Through Jr. High I was on the basketball team (not because I’m that great; just because I’m tall. I was active, that’s why I stuck with it). In high school I was on the running team (my height could no longer make up for my lack of aggression on the basketball court). First and second year at university I went to the gym now and then. I’d only gone maybe five times total during high school. I have this thing with gyms where they intimidate me, and it’s seriously become an impediment to a healthy, active lifestyle, and to the body I’d love to have one day. It’s not really the gyms themselves that intimidate me… it’s kind of complex.

I guess it’s partially rooted in my prejudicially negative attitude toward macho, athletic, straight guys. Read homophobic. I'm presuming they'd be homophobic, I know… it’s an issue I have, but I’ve had few positive experiences with guys like that. I’m trying to work on this, I don’t like prejudice, but anyway, that’s part of the issue. Doesn’t help that a lot of them are hot, either.

Also, since I don’t go to the gym, and never have in a really consistent way, I feel really inexperienced when I go. I don’t know what a lot of the machines do really, or how to use some of them correctly. Plus I’m really skinny, so I know that my appearance would automatically give away that I don’t work out and don’t know what I’m doing. I could even live with the fact that I couldn’t lift that much weight at first, if only I was confident with the equipment, or a routine or something. Which machines to use, how often, for how long, how many reps.. .etc. I figure I need to buy a book, or do some research online, or find a friend who goes to the gym (I don’t have any close ones – well, I had one but he’s away for the summer).

Plus at heart I’m lazy. But that doesn’t fit with my current fit of athleticism lol. The one thing that I’ve been consistently good at since I was little was running. I’ve been running off and on my whole life. So when I want to be active, when I really, really, want to be active, and it doesn’t involve a gym, I go running. For me this requires good weather, and it’s only just gotten nice here. Canada is cold. So for the past few weeks I’ve been running. All over the neighbourhood, and it feels awesome. Of course, my ideal body would be more muscular than my current one, and running isn’t going to bulk me up any, but it is fun, and I can do it, and it’s good for me, so I do it. I’ve also started to do crunches and push ups and things like that, which don’t require a gym either.

I realize, of course, that I need to just get over this whole gym-phobia. I need to just go, and maybe even get a trainer for a few times, to get me started on a routine. A grocery store nearby has a nutritionist you can talk to for free, so maybe I’ll go chat to them about the best food to eat for bulking up.

I can’t see me starting this right away though… partially because of all the reasons I’ve just mentioned, but also ‘cause I’ll be going away for July to French camp (“Explore”: http://www.jexplore.ca/english/index.html), then getting my wisdom teeth out (ugh), and then going to France in September. So is this just a big excuse to not go to the gym? Probably yes lol. I’m sure I’d go if I had a group to go with. But I don’t.

Anyway, time to eat. Chicken and salad I think I’ll have. Later.

Attestations

2008-05-26T20:31:00.006-03:00

I got accepted! To a wonderful French university to study French for the year. I'm excited! And "Attestation" is the title of the document, as in "Le Directeur atteste que.." I got accepted. So I understand now lol.

Next step; get a law school deferment for a year. I'll probably need even more luck for this one :)

May

2008-05-25T00:44:00.001-03:00

After exams and thesis were all done, I enjoyed a resurgent social life for the next two weeks – making up for April. Graduation was on the 10th. So surreal to be graduated. Feels good. Work started on the 19th. I’ve been working on the publication a bit, though mostly when I haven’t been out in the field with P and/or other lab workers, I’ve been lazing around doing nothing lol. Online, or reading, or sleeping, or watching tv, or hanging out with friends. Staying up late, sleeping in. Today was a completely nothing day. Doing nothing all day is somewhat depressing, so I won’t be able to do it again tomorrow- I like being busy far too much.

I emailed the university in France the other day, wondering when I’d find out if I got accepted or not. They said they’d sent my “attestations” on the 20th. I was like, “attestations” ? What? Translated from French to English, attestations means… attestations. Big help. Dictionary.com gave me, like, testimony or evidence or something. Evidence I got accepted? Hopefully. How long does it take something to get from France to eastern Canada?

I got accepted into the Explore program, so I’m off to study French for 5-weeks for most of July and some of August. I’m really looking forward to it. And once I get there, if asked, I’m going to be gay from the start. Last time I never brought it up, so everyone assumed I was straight. I don’t want a repeat of that. One of the many reasons having a steady boyfriend would be nice is just that I could refer to him casually, thereby coming out in a non-confrontational, response-requiring way. I might even make him up to use him as a conversation insert. No… that’s a bit desperate… but I could refer to dates I’ve gone on… or something. I don’t know. Meh.

The lawn will be mowed for the second time tomorrow (by me). Leaves still haven’t appeared on trees yet. It actually snowed on the 11th. Hopefully we’re rid of snow now. It kind of feels like it’s been raining/overcast for two weeks. I think we’ve had two days of sun. Blah.

I still haven’t gone running. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow, too. I’ve been reading the Twilight series, by Stephanie Meyer, for a few days. Rachel is obsessed with them, and lent them to me before she left for BC for a few weeks. I’ll be done the last one by tomorrow. Twilight was better than New Moon. They’re good books, for teen lit. A bit mushy in parts, but I enjoy a good romance now and then.

Watched the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy the other day. It was good. Beth’s in love with the show – and it is good, but I don’t mind if I miss it, type thing. I’d rather watch Ugly Betty. But anyway, it was a good episode. I cried surprisingly hard at the part where the young terminally ill couple were talking before he got wheeled away for the experimental surgery. So sad!

Anyway, bed time. :)

Thesis' finale

2008-05-03T20:22:00.001-03:00

I’m in one of those I-love-my-life moods. Everything’s been going so well; my thesis, my marks; my social life. J’suis content.

Of all of my procrastinations over the past four years, my thesis ranks among the most stress inducing. I suppose that’s a fitting way for me to end my degree; leave the biggest thing the longest and then deal with it while juggling exams at the same time. Fitting because this is how I’ve most consistently operated at university. And somehow I end up pulling through. If doing this degree has taught me anything it’s how to cram, and how to do enormous amounts of work in incredibly small lengths of time. This is definitely a useful skill, though I really won’t be putting it to its best use until I couple it with doing things ahead of time as well. THEN I’ll be able to accomplish so much more, so much better. That’ll come. I think it’ll arrive when I attain some higher level of maturity in my work-ethic. Hopefully during law school.

A&P ended up going surprisingly well – it pays to have copies of old exams. That’s definitely a plus to being in fourth year, for me anyway. My social network has grown exponentially, where I’ve made the most new friends this year, and first year I only really made a few. And now that I know so many people, information about courses, and old tests, and tonnes of useful stuff that helps you do better academically is at my finger tips. Anyway, after A&P was through on that Saturday, I had one more exam, invertebrate zoology, on Tuesday, and then my defence on Wednesday. P set a deadline of Monday at 9am of having my whole thesis done, and turned into my committee. I was insanely productive that weekend, stayed up all night Sunday night, and emailed the whole thing that morning at 8:59am or something like that, might’ve even been 5 minutes late, but I wasn’t stressing. Through the night everything had just.. come together. It was partly the Intro that needed work, but mostly the Discussion. I’d been jotting down so many ideas, putting post-it notes on so many articles, scribbling outlines of how I wanted to get across particular ideas, re-arranging and re-writing bits from my proposal from the fall. That night it was all assembled. It was definitely not as polished as I’d wanted it to be – all the other sections had gone through multiple drafts and edits. The Discussion didn’t. But I had such a feeling of relief that morning! I finally had a completed thesis in my hands. No, it wasn’t the final draft, that wouldn’t be turned in till after the defence. But it was something substantial.

Cramming for invert wasn’t pleasant. There were a couple of major phyla I had to skim, but I was pretty solid on most of it. A 2h nap in the afternoon helped a bit. Got almost 7h of sleep. The exam on Tuesday went alright, not as bad as I’d feared anyway. That day I had to make the powerpoint presentation for the defence itself. Sara, the second of my supervisor’s three honours students, was so much better prepared than me. She’s very studious. Very much an ahead-of-time person. Anyway, I bumped into Shannon briefly on my way home from the lab that night- I haven’t really mentioned her lately, she was enormously stressed out. She had two theses to do, one of which was an extra course she took on in order to graduate with a particular degree. She procrastinates worse than I do, and that’s saying something. She had a bit of break down the moment I saw her, and then sort of recovered and told me all about where she is with the thesis and everything else that’s been stressing her out lately. I have a far less stressful life than she does. Her family’s insane. Anyway, after almost two hours of catch-up with Shannon, I went home, ate, and then stayed up till 4am ish doing the powerpoint. I have a thing with powerpoints where they have to be awesome. I have an artistic side that doesn’t get out much, and I love it when I get to do anything with design or whatever. So this powerpoint was damn good by 4am. My defence was at 11am. I slept till 8 or 8:30, arrived by 10:30, and delivered the presentation. I felt it was kind of shaky, like, flow-wise, but everyone said it was great, even P, my supervisor. I enjoy public speaking in general, and I think that being an ok speaker made up for the fact that I hadn’t really had time to practice the presentation. There were lots of questions, but they went well too. Immediately afterwards was the defence itself, where I go into a conference room with my committee and they grill me and see if I really know my stuff, and comment and suggest changes to the penultimate draft of the thesis. I was almost too over-tired to be nervous lol. I spoke a lot, I spoke my mind, I wasn’t afraid to semi-ramble when I was confident in what I was saying, because I knew that the defence is where they gage how much you know, and how well you understand and can actually defend the thesis. One of the committee was on speaker phone, which I didn’t mind. I have a good student-teacher relationship with each of my committee members. I’ve done well in classes with each of them, and I feel comfortable going up to any one of them and talking about biology stuff one on one. So that definitely contributed to a comfort level during the defence. Anyway, at the end, they put me out in the hall, had a short discussion, and then emerged to congratulate me on a job well done. I’d passed lol. That’s all you know at that point- you don’t get an actual mark till you make the suggested revisions, and then submit it.

So my exams were over the defence was, too. It was almost a weird, anti-climactic end to the whole thing. The revisions were supposed to be done by the following day, but my stress level was way down. That night there was a get together at a pub in town for honours students, like me, and faculty. It was really nice.

I ended up finishing the final draft of the thesis by Friday morning. P sent me an email back simply saying: “enjoy your weekend!” It only dawned on my gradually that the whole thing was over. *sigh* -still feels good :)

Cramming

2008-04-18T22:45:00.005-03:00

I'm cramming for A&P, so of course this is the perfect time to blog lol.

Thesis still not done. I'm at the stage I should've been at a month ago. Writing, sending in a draft, P looks it over, sends it back to me, I re-write, send it back to her, etc till it's perfected. So far, only my results section is basically done. Methods is almost there. Intro still needs a lot of work, and the discussion needs even more. The defence itself was changed to the 23rd because P thought I deserved more time. Don't really know how it's going to get finished - I'm predicting I'll still be doing the bouncing drafts back and forth by the time the defence comes around... or else I'll completely skip studying sufficiently for my last exam on the 22nd. Invertebrate. It's my hardest. Gah!

Had a mix up with a law school - somehow I missed an important deadline with the Ontario Law School Application Service, but after an alarmed email and a phone call from me to the law school, it's all been straightened out, and I've settled and accepted to what had been my 2nd choice school, but which has really evolved into my first choice. I think I'm going to love it there. I won't feel like I'm seriously going there, though, until they reply back and say they've received my deposit, and then they grant my one year deferral so I can go to France. THEN I'll breathe my sigh of relief.

Still have a lot on my to-do list, mostly thesis stuff, but so much else too. Big plans with all my friends to celebrate when all this is through. There's a grad pub crawl I'm looking forward to. I can almost see the finish line - my thesis will be due either two or three days after my defence. Though then I've agreed to keep writing more stuff up so we can maybe get my work, plus P's, published- which would be nice, but I wouldn't really be getting anything out of it, aside from a publication in a discipline I'm now leaving lol. Oh well, should be fun (or whatever).

I've been wait-listed to do a 5-wk French Immersion program in mid-summer. Crossing my fingers for it.

I didn't shave for three weeks. It was interesting. Last week I played around with a goatee and side burns... then let it all grow in. Beth said today that it was making my face into a different shape lol. So I shaved it off tonight. I liked it most of the time, and got some compliments. I'm glad I can grow facial hair well; it gives me options- from the way the hair on my head is going, I think I'll probably be bald by the time I'm 30 if not sooner. Damn genes lol. I'm glad my self image is ok- hair is not necessary to look good lol. I always get my hair cut really short anyway. I've seen other guys in my situation shave all the hair off their heads... I'm not sure if I'd want to go that far... but I guess I'll have to see lol.

Mom's laptop died while they were in Florida, and she just got it fixed. She's quite excited. Most of her memory was retrieved successfully. I'm a bit scared that mine's going to croak one of these days - I always get that blue screen of death. I would like to get a new laptop before I go away, but then I also want a new camera, and a bunch of new clothes, and spending a year in Europe isn't cheap... so I can see something getting cut. Though maybe Mom and Dad will be extra generous somehow.. lol. I think Beth said she'll sell me her old camera, which I think would be awesome, because it's small and easy to use, and it would be cheap. She's looking for something that'll take better photos- like, artsy photos or something.

Speaking of Beth, she's still dogsitting. Tonight she'll be watching BSG with her dog, which she hilariously finds annoying, while I'm here cramming (or blogging).

...but yeah, should get back to cramming. Wish me luck!

Odd

2008-04-12T22:06:00.000-03:00

I was at work at the library the other day, and part of my job is to take this annoyingly loud trolley piled with paper and coin boxes around to a few photocopiers on campus, to fill the paper and get the money out of them or whatever. It was during an exam period, so there was no one in the hallway, and I was just rolling my trolley along, on my way back to the library, minding my own business. I look ahead of me and suddenly I think I see a person on the floor. I get a bit closer, and I see that yes, there is, in fact, a person lying on their stomach on the floor at the end of the hallway. For some reason I kind of look around, but there's no one around. I'm thinking this is weird. Is this person dead? Anyway, so i get closer, and I see it's a girl, and i get a bit closer again, and I start to think I recognize this girl. She's another library worker, but we're never on the same shift and I've only met her once. She's got her arm kind of out in front of her with her head on it, the other arm's bent. Her bag's behind her. I was like, this is so weird lol. Anyway, so the elevator entrance is maybe 20 feet from her. I'm like, I should do something. She hears my trolley, so she opens her eyes, and, for some reason, I wave at her! lol. Just a little wave. Don't ask me why. And she lifts her arm and slowly waves back. Looks like she was sleeping or something. But she doesn't say, help me! or I'm dying! or something, so I just smile back at her. And then i get in the elevator and leave! I probably should've been like, are you ok? But I didn't want her to think I thought she was weird, by lying on the floor... so I suppose a wave is rather less judgmental? Even though it definitely is weird, ..and unsanitary.

Memories

2008-04-07T20:48:00.008-03:00

Oh my, April 7th already. Thesis still not done, though it's going to have to be within the next two weeks. Defence on the 18th. Exams on the 14th, 19th, and 22nd. And then I'm FREE. Today was the last day of classes. Last day of classes of my degree. Hard to believe! No, the time hasn't flown, though the last four years have been awesome, but you don't expect the last day of classes to be here. It's always just been something out there in the future somewhere. Just like everything else in the future lol.

Mom and Dad have returned from Florida. Beth's gone dogsitting, though I see her every day. I went up to her "new house" on Friday night and stayed over. We watched the second Elizabeth movie, The Golden Age (good, but we were both a bit lost through most of it), and then watched the season premier of Battlestar Galactica. We LOVE this show. Though we've been quite spoiled with a lack of commercial breaks, since up till now I'd downloaded the whole series through BitTorrent, sans ads.

Alex is coming down for a couple of days this week, he wants to go out to eat with me and Six and Vince. I think it'll be nice to get together, and even to see Six, since he can be so antisocial.

Chatting to a number of new guys online lately. One seems particularly promising, though he goes to school a 5-ish hour drive away (Megan's school). Beth and I might go visit Megan and others later this month, so I might actually get to meet this guy. We'll see.

Sad story. A guy at my school just died the other day. A rare form of cancer. HUGE tragedy, he was loved by everyone he knew, at the top of his class mark-wise, friendly, outgoing, energetic, attractive even. He was also gay. And that's how I made a connection with him. One year ago next week. He had a profile on a site, I added him as a "Favourite" or something, he msged me, we moved to msn, and then chatted. He was super nice, confident, but I was still pretty in the closet at that point, and I wasn't willing to meet up any time soon. Maybe after a few weeks of chatting, I’d thought. To my insular view, he seemed to want to move too fast. It would've been the first time I'd met up with anyone from my school. Anyway, we chatted for a while, but then drifted apart after a few attempts to meet up didn't work out for a variety of reasons. Sometime afterwards he dated Six for a few months, but after they broke up I didn’t really hear much about him over the past year. A few overheard things about how he was doing, health-wise, these past few months. He was a great guy, from what I knew from chatting to him, and what everyone’s been saying about him since he died.

Alex had been the one to call and tell me about his death. Chris and I have talked about it a bit; Chris had fooled around with him way back when. I’ve tried to talk to Six about it, but he can be so non-communicative, I haven’t really gotten him to open up about it. He’d always felt some lingering guilt about breaking up with him, mainly because he’d had this terminal illness. It was the best thing to do, to break up, because the relationship was obviously not meant to be, personalities-wise, but still, Six never really felt good about it.

Everyone that knew him was pretty sad on Friday, and again today. In one of my classes, the prof made this little speech like thing about him, saying where he sat (right where I sit apparently), just saying how much he contributed to the class, through his questions, and his presence, and how terrible it is to lose one of “our family,” which I thought was touching. He asked if we’d take a moment to reflect, and remember him. Then (this prof is kind of old fashioned and only uses an overhead projector; no computer aids) he put a transparency on the projector, and, as silence descended, turned out the lights in the classroom. The transparency had the guy's name typed on it, with the degree he’d just earned after his name, and then the dates, 1985-2008. And that’s it. Just those words in black on a white background in silence. So we sat. The night before I’d gone back to my msn and re-read all the conversations we’d had. We’d talked about some pretty heavy stuff. His coming out to his parents, how it hadn’t been that great. His supportive friends. The few relationships he’d had with guys over the years, the good and the bad. At that point he’d hoped we'd get to hang out over the summer, maybe go scuba diving. He said he’d teach me. He was so sweet. He told me about the cancer. How he didn’t like telling people because he didn’t want them to treat him any differently. He had dreams for the future. Big dreams. He wanted to become a doctor some day. He just had such a great attitude. Something he said stuck with me for some reason:

“You only have one chance in life, and if you do your best to improve the lives of others then your time has meant something.”

And as I sat there in the dark, looking up at that transparency, I thought of what he’d said and I started to cry. It’s weird how you can get to know someone online. I’ve never held his gaze, never heard his voice, never shaken his hand. I’ve only ever read things that he typed to me. And only for a few weeks, at that. I let emotions sweep me away sometimes, I guess.
Then the prof flicked the lights back on and started class. I wasn’t the only one with tears in my eyes, that’s for sure.

Anyway, this was a depressing entry lol. Wanted to write about it.
Later.

Trips

2008-03-15T23:49:00.004-03:00

Lots to blog about.

First, the pre-law/pre-med trip on Feb. 24-25.

- - -

Instead of renting a bus or something, the group decided to go in a few cars. Somehow I ended up in a car with these two really hot straight guys. Who for some reason seemed to like me. One of them has been in the pre-law group since last year, Jason. He’s a year or two younger than me. Dresses well. Dark brown hair. Tall-ish. I could see him being rich some day. Seems to know how to have fun with the boys watching the football game, but at the same time can give a great impression in the classroom. And he’s friendly. I think he’s in arts, but he looks like a business person. Actually, I remember now, he’s in poli-sci. Shannon knows him. Calls him her hot friend lol. The other guy is a bit shorter than Jason, same age. Slightly more adorable and less intimidating than Jason. Darker hair, darker eyes, tends not to smile as much, but when he does it’s really cute. Name’s Luke. Gives off an impression he’s more macho than he is. He’s in bio, like me, but he’s in the pre-med group, not the pre-law. And he’s in the military, or the militia, or something. We were in programming together last semester, and he totally saved me in the lab. He could actually program, whereas I’m not that great. He was an awesome help. Anyway, so I end up in the same car as them. Thought it would be pretty fun. They’re both pretty nice guys, it seems. Then this other guy got shoved into the car, too; Ray. He seemed quiet. He wasn’t attractive, and he ended up being a douche, which only added to his unattractiveness.

So off we go. The car ride was about 4.5h long. The guys spent most of the time quoting from comedy routines and Family Guy and South Park and SNL and lots of other things I never watch. I totally could not participate in these convos, but I did laugh sometimes. We ended up listening to this random song about a zombie talking to his friend in a mall… actually a good tune, became like the theme song of the trip. Ray was kind of homophobic, in a weird way. Like, at one point he’d be saying how outrageous it was that the Westboro Church people (you know, they protest at everything, super anti-gay) were protesting outside Heath Ledger’s funeral, and then later on he’d make these awful gay jokes, and he always used “gay” derogatorily. Almost like at heart he might not be homophobic, but that most of the time it didn’t matter because he gave off a homophobic vibe because of the casual things he’d say. Luke, on the other hand, was very vocally pro-gay rights, surprisingly, and made a point of saying how it didn’t matter to him if someone was gay, and how he thought discrimination based on sexual orientation was stupid, etc. Like, even just if something he was saying could potentially be interpreted, indirectly, as being homophobic, he’d make a point of saying that that’s not what he meant. I REALLY appreciated this. Made me like him even more. Jason wasn’t homophobic, aside from occasionally calling something gay, like, the rain or something (at which point Luke would be like, “I didn’t know rain had a sexual orientation.” lol), though he wasn’t as vocally pro-gay as Luke. It’s funny how often topics about gay people or sexual orientation or whatever come up in a group of straight guys.

After stopping at a restaurant and a liquor store on the way up, we arrived at the hotel, and lounged around for a while. We drank a bit, went out to eat with the whole group (20-ish), came back, kept drinking, went to a bar, back to the room, and to bed by 3-something. A very fun night. But we, everyone (well, almost everyone), stayed up far too late really. The organizer of the whole trip, E, had scheduled a tour of a courthouse for 8:30am the next morning, which most of us, including myself, thought was optional. A few people ended up going, but most of us decided to sleep through it and go on the law-school tour at 10am. Apparently E was pretty upset about it. We seriously thought she’d said it was optional, but anyway, nothing we could do about it but feel bad, and apologize (which I did when we got back, via email). Anyway, the law-school tour was awesome. Two students and an associate dean talked to us for a while, and then the two students led us through the whole law building. It would be pretty nice to go there (it’s my third choice school, the one I’ve already “accepted” to), but I still think my second choice is preferable.

After that we all met up at Pizza Hut (took forever to find, and it was super windy and rainy) where we all decided to buy E a big gift ( ...not from Pizza Hut tho lol) and get her a thank you card. I’m the money collector, and I’m still trying to track one last person down now, and it’s 3 weeks later. Drive home was fine, a girl came with us, I talked to her for most of the trip back. It was nice to have someone who could carry on an actual conversation and not just endlessly quote from comedy sketches or whatever.

About three days after we got back I worked up the nerve to msg Luke and tell him how much I appreciated how open-minded and non-prejudicial he was of gay people. Naturally this meant I came out to him, too. He wrote back this awesome reply, was glad I told him, and agreed that Ray was an ass lol. I would NEVER have done this, say, last year at this point. Being out is so wonderful. But seriously, I think it's important that straight people who bother standing up for gay people get positive feedback about it. Like, I really liked that he said the things he said, and the only way he's going to know how awesome that is is if someone tells him. And I love it that I'm ok enough with myself, and open enough about my sexuality, to be able to give him that feeback.

- - -

After the trip was through, break was great (see last entry), but my thesis was beginning to catch up with me. The big biology conference was coming up (March 7-9) and it was Feb 22 and I hadn’t even finished all my data input. P, my supervisor, had gone abroad for the break, and so wasn’t around to make me feel like I had to rush. Or be productive at all. So I spent that weekend at the lab, and after contending with a midterm and other business, finished it all by Tues. Another midterm on Wed and then I had a meeting with P on Thursday. I was SUPER stressed that day- I thought that P would be terribly disappointed and possibly angry that I hadn’t gotten as much accomplished as she’d wanted (I’d told her I was almost through with the data input before she went away). But she was so positive! She can intimidate me a lot, but I really do love her. So we made a plan for all that I had to do between that day, Feb 28, and March 4th or 5th. I was putting all my project onto a poster, which is one of the ways scientists convey their findings to their peers at conferences (either posters or oral presentations). P had wanted me to do an oral at first, but the two other students presenting at the conference from our school had also wanted to do an oral, so we drew from a hat, and they won (which I’m now very happy about). Anyway, so the poster had to be given to the printer’s at least 24h before I could pick it up. I was leaving at 4am on Friday, so I had to pick up the poster by Thursday, which meant I had to have it done by Wednesday. And when we were having this conversation it was Thursday. I basically had to do all of my data analysis, write a conclusion, revise my intro, objectives, and materials and methods, and then design and put together the poster in 6 days. Plus contend with two more midterms.

Those six days were the busiest, most intense, and most productive of my entire life. I spent almost every free hour at the lab, usually staying till 1am or so. I skipped every class except labs and midterms. P stayed with me for quite a few hours for a number of the days I was there, she was a HUGE help with the stats. My stats background is pretty weak – for some reason our school doesn’t offer an upper level biology stats course. First year stats is almost useless, and plus I forget most of it. And anymore stats than first year’s isn’t mandatory, so I took other things. Anyway, I was really overtired through that period, and I didn’t end up finishing the poster till about 6pm on Wednesday, after the printer’s had closed. I had been talking to the printer guy the week before, however, and he’d said that really, while they recommend 24h before-hand, or even 48h to avoid technical difficulties, it was possibly for him to do it in one 8h shift. So early the next morning I brought in the file, and we set about trying to get it to print. The printer guy is maybe a few years older than me, like, 25 or 26, really nice, so it was a pretty good morning, even though it took over 3h to just get the file to transfer correctly to the right format. We were dealing with both PC and Mac formats for things, and just moving the file around seemed to mess it up. Anyway, the laminator guy was sick, so I couldn’t get it laminated, but P had said it wasn’t necessary if I couldn’t get it done. Beth agreed to pick it up because I had lab that afternoon. She was so good to me that week, even sat around at school waiting for me that Wed. when classes got cancelled but P and I stayed in the lab to keep working. Anyway, the poster looked fantastic, I was so happy.

I still wasn’t happy with my grasp of the stats however, so I took a bunch of books and papers with me to read before I had to present. 5 of us were going on the trip, all bio students naturally; myself, Shawn (super smart, super nice, cute, popular, all around wonderful person, thin, dark hair), Dana (enthusiastic, nice, she loves me, recent convert from psych, I work with her at school, curly brown hair, not overweight, but a few extra pounds), Taylor (reminds me of a petite version of Angelina Jolie, smart, hilarious, stylish, straight brown hair), and Nicole (gorgeous, blond, smart, stylish, got to know her last year in fish class). I’ve known all except Nicole since high school, Dana since elementary school. Nicole and Taylor are already really good friends. I know them, but I’m closer to Shawn and Dana. We left at 4:30am to drive to the nearest big airport. Dana drove. We could’ve taken a flight from the local one, but it was way cheaper to drive for almost 4h to catch our 11am flight to the conference city. The drive there was pretty fun. Dana got to know Taylor and Nicole and bit. The flight was fun, too. I sat by Nicole and Taylor. And I got the window seat.

Friday afternoon was good, too. Hotel was fine, me and Shawn in one room, the girls in another on another floor. I spent most of the afternoon with Dana and Shawn buying sticky things at Staples to put up my poster, and trying to figure out bus routes, finding food, and walking back to the hotel on my own, where I fell asleep for an hour. Woke up and reviewed stats for a while, then went to the university to register at the conference. Wandered around the campus with Taylor and Nicole (the other two were visiting friends). It was fun just exploring. Anyway, I stayed up till 2am –ish reviewing stats.

Conference really began the next morning. The building we were in was super modern, lots of glass and steal and tile, I loved it. I presented my poster at lunch time. I thought it went well, though the judges had way more questions/criticisms of my experimental design than they had about my statistical analyses. But whatever, I was just glad to have it over with. SUCH a relief. All of that work, all of that time, finally I had presented. Really, the effort was more for P than for the conference, and while presenting for the judges had been stressful, the deadline of the conference for the poster’s completion was more stressful, and the stress I felt for the judges is more representative of the stress I still am feeling for my thesis defence in April. Anyway, at that point I could then enjoy the conference and not have to worry about remembering what the parametric equivalent of a Wilcoxon Sign rank test was or whatever. The presentations were mostly interesting, although, as with past conferences, most of the molecular ones went over my head. Taylor and Nicole both presented around 3pm. Both of theirs went well. Shawn probably understood and retained more than any of us. Dana, while not understanding as much, was definitely enthusiastic and into it all – I was impressed. Last year she wasn’t much of a student. This year, however, she switched her major to bio, and she’s studying way more, and getting better grades. I’m impressed. The third and last presentation session was the worst, just because we were all pretty tired, especially me, and the presentations weren’t as interesting. We were back at the hotel by 5-ish. I’d wanted to take a nap, but that never happened, and before I knew it, we’d started drinking.

I had three beer in the hotel room with Shawn and Dana. Then we all went to the banquet at the university. And who ended up sitting next to me but the chair of the biology dept! (from my university) I was like, this is going to be a disaster – but it was actually really fun! It’s nice to interact with professors in a non-classroom, non-hierarchical environment. He was super pumped I got into law school. He and one other prof sat with us, B. They were cool. And drinking a bit, though not as much as we were. It was Nicole’s birthday, too, so we all sang to her lol. Big 22 lol. I was on my 4th through 6th drinks at the banquet, and I never thought I’d interact with faculty while that intoxicated. But it went well. Immediately after the banquet was, for some reason, a lecture. Another academic lecture. About half the people skipped it to go downtown, but we decided to take it in. And it was absolutely hilarious. Everyone was loaded. And the prof giving the talk totally knew it and totally made the whole thing really funny. I really enjoyed it. Then that other prof who came to the conference, B, he’s great, drove us downtown in his rental!

Anyway, the rest of the night consisted of many bars (maybe 5) and the walking outside required to get from bar to bar, which was in itself pretty fun, lots more drinking, a hilarious girl from Alex’s school, dancing, a rapping Englishman, a karaoke bar (I didn’t sing, but Nicole did), pizza, and finally back to the hotel where I barfed and then went to bed, where Dana and Shawn leapt on me when they got back about 2h later (I was in a surprisingly good mood and just laughed).

The next day was a slow recovery. We missed the whole morning session of the conference and made it to the lunch banquet. B let us hang out in his hotel room all afternoon (Me, Nicole, and Taylor all slept in his bed) while Dana and Shawn went on a drive with him to see things in the area (it was freezing raining and cold and I was hung over so I opted not to go). Anyway, we ate a nice supper when my appetite came back, and then got on our flight at 8pm. Dana had slept from when she, Shawn and B had gotten back to when we left for the flight, so she was ok to drive home when we landed. B was staying an extra day. I left one of my bags in his room but he brought it back on Tues. Everyone stayed awake for the drive home, it was hilarious. I was in bed by 4am. And up for class the next day! Having skipped so many the previous week I was intent on making it – and I did.

So then there was this week. Pretty low key, communications assignments/tests/speeches dominated. Easy stuff. I’m feeling scared again for my thesis, but today I basically just slept and lounged around. Nice to do nothing, but I’m totally on borrowed time.

Mom and Dad are still in Florida. They call now and then, still always laughing and happy. I’m glad they’re having a good time. Snow is still on the ground here, but it’s getting milder.

When I read this in the distant future, I’m going to wonder what was going on in the world. The US presidential election is in the news a lot, or at least, in a lot of the news I read. Hillary and Obama are still battling for the Democratic nomination, while McCain’s got the Republican nomination wrapped up. The Conservatives under Harper just passed a motion in Parliament extending the Afghanistan mission to 2011 at least. The space shuttle’s just brought the Japanese built module up to the ISS. The governor of NY, Eliot Spitzer, just resigned over a prostitution scandal, making way for the first black, and first blind man to become governor of NY, David Patterson. I think today’s the anniversary of the Iraq war. The Latimer guy from out west who killed his disabled daughter a few years back just got parole. The Russian election was a few days ago; Putin’s successor was “voted” in, of course. Pakistan had their election, too, in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. …I think that’s an adequate snapshot of what’s going on in the world at the moment.

Rachel’s brother. I haven’t really blogged about him ever. I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known Rachel, since, like, grade 7, but he was always an extra person, you know, younger sibling of a friend. Anyway, his girlfriend is very sketchy. It’s led to numerous iffy situations for Rachel’s family so far, and now, quite suddenly although Shannon predicted this would happen, his girlfriend is pregnant. I thought that this wouldn’t happen because it’s so easily preventable… but I guess I was wrong. I thought he was smarter than this! He’s only, like, 19 I think. Anyway, apparently she’s going to get an abortion. But she’s very mentally unstable, and if she thinks that he’s going to leave her if she gets the abortion, then she might end up keeping the baby. Which, of course, Rachel’s family is completely against. Rachel’s brother’s always kind of been the golden child, destined for great things and all that. And he is smart, if a bit full of himself, though he’s gotten better over the years and I do like him. I hope things work out for him now.

Just over at my grandparent’s place. They have me $1000! To go toward law school. I’m still in shock over it. SO nice of them. I love them so much… and really, they never give huge gifts like this. Well, I shouldn’t say never, but usually they give random gifts, like, knick-knacks that they’ve picked up in Maine at these super cheap stores or something. Hilarious, random things. I love listening to my grandfather’s stories. While he can go on for quite a while, they’re always interesting. And my grandmother’ll chime in, and they’ll bicker, and it’s always funny. They’ve done so many things in their lives, and now they’re super old and they’ve still got each other. I think it’d be nice to end up like that.

Okay, enough blogging for one night. Today was a completely wasted day. Up super late chatting to Chris last night, mostly about sex, till 3:30am, slept till noon-ish, then did nothing today except cook, and read (l’Actualité), and nap, and blog, and visit my grandparents, and now I just drove Beth to a friend’s place. No productivity at all. Oh well, guess I haven’t had a nothing day in a while. But I bumped into P at the grocery store yesterday and said I’d be in to the lab on the weekend! I’m getting up early and going tomorrow. I have to lol.

Night!

A Date

2008-02-23T01:54:00.003-04:00

About two weeks ago, around Feb 8th, I was offered a place at my second choice law school. I was so happy! It’s one of the more competitive schools in the country, I don’t really know how I got in there. And they sent me the letter JUST after I accepted the offer from my third choice school. But oh well, the only reason I “accepted” to my third choice was because no other school had offered me anything at that point, and in order to keep my third choice as a viable option, I had to “accept,” or, in other words, pay them the non-refundable deposit. So I haven’t really decided where I want to go yet. My first, second, and third choices are all good, reputable schools. The main difference is that my third choice is much closer to home than the other two, and is somewhat less competitive. And it would be cheaper to go there. I think I’ll still choose my second over my third choice… but I’m not committing for a while. I have until May to decide on this new offer.

School’s been busy but good. Last week was definitely the busiest week of the semester so far. Not insane busy like other weeks I’ve experienced, like, no all-nighters, but still busy. A few 3am nights. And for some crazy reason I decided that I’d message a few different guys on a few gay profiles sites. And then started chatting to the se few guys. I always choose the moments when I have the least spare time.

The first guy was a cute, 30 year-old hair dresser. I considered meeting up for coffee or something. He seemed nice. Had just gotten out of a serious long term relationship. Truthfully he didn’t really seem like my type, but I was like, ..whatever, meeting up can’t hurt. The age difference didn’t really bother me (30 – 22 = 8y). Age is just a number anyway, it’s really all about how compatible our personalities are. On Friday last week, quite randomly, Shannon goes to get her hair done at his hair salon, and somehow I come up in conversation lol. So then that evening I tell Shannon all about him (I love that this can happen and it’s not awkward). She tells me that he’s nice, cute, and that I’d probably get along with him, but that he is a huge gossip. Stereotypically? I suppose so, but that’s not a turn on anyway. As the days passed, he and I continued chatting, but he seemed to lose interest a bit, so at this point in the week I’m really thinking that I’m not going to push the meeting up thing, I’ll just leave it up to him.

The second guy (and the last one I kept around from the few I msged and started to chat with from last week) was a university student like me, also 22, but he goes to school away and was home for the break. Name’s Chris. He seemed nice. Very closeted unfortunately. But I’m always happy to help someone along, offer advice and support, especially if they’re good people. Gradually I was able to discover that he had gone to my school last year, also taken biology, and that we’d actually sat next to one another in a class! Pretty random. I’d always had a feeling that he was gay, though apparently he’d never pegged me as gay. But then he says his gaydar sucks. Anyway, we kept chatting, he seemed nice, if a bit too excited to meet up. I generally like to be kind of low-key, low-expectations on the internet prior to meeting up with someone, if only to quash potential disappointment. But we decided to meet up.

And so last night we did! He came and picked me up at 8:30pm and we drove around for a while. It’s amazing how much ground you can cover. Like, we could have covered quite a distance if we’d actually driven in a straight line instead of driving in circles all night. Personally, I don’t like to drive too much on these random hang out things, just because of all the gas you waste. But some people, like Chris, and Six, too, LOVE to just drive and drive. And of course they never let me give them gas money. At least Six lets me buy him coffee. Anyway, so we chatted about lots and lots of different things. School, people we know in common, his future plans, my future plans, what it’s like to live away, working, summers, music, religion, gay issues, coming out to family, friends, how ppl took it, and in his case, how ppl will take it. Eventually we got to guys we know in common, and it turned out he knew Six! Not only that, he also knew S, Six’s ex, and he had also had felt in the middle during their whole break up drama! I couldn’t believe someone else had been through the same experience lol. He also knew of Vince, though hadn’t met him. Hadn’t heard of Alex. We knew a bunch of other guys in common too. It was so cool. We parked and chatted eventually, at this park/track I seem to always go to when I’m talking with anyone. Chatted about a lot more stuff there. Eventually I suggested grabbing some food, because it seemed like everything was going so smoothly. He liked the idea, so off we went to McDonald’s, where I got an oriental chicken salad, the only thing I ever get at McDonald’s. We parked and chatted some more. Got into some really deep topics, like, people who had died who were close to us – he definitely could’ve made me cry if he’d kept talking down a particular path, but then thankfully he made it funny and we were able to laugh, and the laughter was all that more intense because of the intensity of the conversation. But we talked more about the future, about our families, about lots and lots of things. He was very easy to talk to. Much easier to talk to than, say, the last guy I’d hung out with in January, who I’d first met this past summer. Anyway, he ended up dropping me off at 1am – the time had FLOWN. I kind of wanted to give him a hug or something, though I could tell if I’d gone in to kiss him he would’ve been pretty receptive. But I don’t really know how I feel about him, so I opted to kind of touch his arm, and say “..I feel like I should hug you or shake your hand or something,” and so I ended up shaking his hand, but it was a very warm hand shake, not a formal one. Almost a hug, really. Goodbyes can often be awkward, so I was fine with however we ended it. So yeah, definitely a successful meet-up. I refer to is as a date when I’m talking to Shannon or Rachel or Megan lol. I’ll have to call Alex and tell him how it went.

Speaking of Alex, we got to hang out on Saturday. It’s always so nice to see him. We went to the mall, then had Chinese food. I don’t know when I’ll get to see him again in the near future. Within the next few months sometime I’m sure. He was taking a little trip to see a guy-friend he’s made on the internet, I’ll have to see how that went, too.

Saturday night was awesome, I got drunk at a friend’s party, and went out to a bar. So much fun. Shannon even came, and took her boyfriend, who has definitely grown on me. It was a great night.

Sunday I went to tour that #3 law school with the pre-law group at school. Plus the pre-med group, who naturally were touring that school’s med school. It was a great trip, though I’ll blog more about it later.

And this week I’ve done almost NO school work. I’ve been to the lab ONCE, and only for about 2 hours. So awful. Planning on going tomorrow, early. Wednesday night I went to a low-key potluck, and the host gave us all the leftovers because she knows we’re home sans parents. So nice! Good food, too.

This evening I hung out with Megan and Shannon and Rachel. We watched The Notebook. So sappy, yet so sad. Totally hooked me, dragged me in, and then when it dumped the sap all over me I was balling lol. Like, it got seriously cheesy, but I’d been sucked in, and it only made me cry harder. Good movie. It was good to see Megan, too. She’s seeing someone! A crazy girl she’s mentioned before. I’ll call her soon and we can have a good chat about it, because we didn’t have a chance to really talk this break. They were all so excited for my date lol. I love it that we can talk about it so openly! I’m still not used to being out of the closet. I love it :)

Anyway, talk soon!

Friday night

2008-02-01T23:54:00.000-04:00

I accepted my law school offer day before yesterday. :)
The admissions woman was so nice! She makes me feel like I would really enjoy attending this school. That’s irrational, I know, but still, little things like that definitely influence people’s overall perceptions. I’m still going to keep checking my application status to those other schools though. Just in case.

Mom and Dad have gone to Florida. They called us yesterday from Penn. They always have to rush whenever they drive anywhere because my father just has to get where ever they’re going as fast as humanly possible. It’s one of his most infamous traits, at least amongst Beth and I. They’re going to visit my aunt and uncle, and a few friends. They’ll definitely have a great time. I’m jealous. John, another gay friend of mine, a guy with whom I have a somewhat more complicated relationship (for another entry), is going to Florida for spring break. I, however, will stay here, and probably spend spring break in the lab frantically trying to get as much done on my thesis as I can before the conference in March. Gah, I have so much more to do, and I can’t get to the lab tomorrow because we’re going to have a snow storm. Or, ice storm, or something.

My sister bought a gym membership today. It only serves to remind me how long it’s been since I’ve been active. I think the last time I ran was… October. And I haven’t been to the gym since early last year. Blah. Thank god I’m skinny… but I’m definitely not as fit as I want to be. This is one of my qualities that I’m least satisfied with. My lack of physical activity. Or rather, my lack of ambition to do physical activity. I must admit that I am usually satisfied with my body, at least, when I look at myself in the mirror. If you get me to stand next to a bunch of muscular male athletes at school or something, then I’m less happy with my body. But if it’s just me and the mirror, I’m usually happy. I think this is both good and bad. Good because feeling good about your body usually has positive repercussions for how you act, your confidence level, the things you choose to do, and thus how you are perceived. It’s bad, however, because I know that I would rather be more fit, at least slightly more muscular, and if I was more unsatisfied with my current appearance, it might motivate me more strongly to pay a visit to the gym.

Anyway, snack time. Cereal, plus sci-fi short story anthology (when I probably should be reading that article on water economy in avian models, or reviewing gastropods for invert., or the circulatory system for a&p, or etc, etc, etc… but it’s Friday night, and since I dismissed the bar, I’m going to do something at least mildly fun).

Autoanalysis

2008-01-27T23:41:00.000-04:00

I think I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with Vince and Six’s relationship. Well, maybe it’s not an obsession, but it’s a …preoccupation, there’s the word. Maybe it’s how I channel my suppressed jealousy. I’m attracted to both of them, physically. And mentally a little bit, too. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be as attracted to Vince if I was around him all the time… but the only reason I say that is because I’m not around him at all, and haven’t really spent any extended amount of time with him. And I automatically assume I wouldn’t like him as much if I was around him all the time. Reasonable..? So I suppose I might actually like him more in that situation, but who knows. Six I already know how I feel about him. We’ve been friends for years, since 2004. I’m attracted to him physically, and he to me apparently, but he’s got issues that prevent me from liking him as any more than a friend. He’s still got issues about being gay (… don’t we all, but still, his are larger), he’s a bit too negative and cynical, as much as that can be funny sometimes, he’s a drop-out who continues to not go back to school, he smokes, AND he’s paranoid. Now, these only matter in judging him as a potential boyfriend. In terms of being a friend, the only thing I can fault him with is that he’s not the absolute best to go to for comfort, and he’s paranoid. Both of which are get-around-able. Vince I’ve yet to really get to know, aside from our online chats, and that one weekend. But still, they both have occupied far too many of my thoughts lately. Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression – I don’t think I’ve ever thought of them at school, which takes up a lot of my time. Ok that’s a lie, but not very often anyway. But still. I can’t go online without thinking about them. Just, either one or the other, or both, or spending time with both of them again. Alex would have to be around, too, but he’s not part of my preoccupation. And you know, it’s totally idealizing them, and their relationship, and building it up into this wonderful, perfect thing of which I’m envious and for which I’m happy.

I did this exact thing with Thomas and Rebecca, two friends who’ve since moved away. They were much more ideal in reality than Vince and Six, at least in my eyes. Both of them were geniuses, first of all. Awards and scholarships galore, and they won even more upon acceptance to their grad schools. They’re also both extremely friendly, community minded, politically aware intellectuals, but at the same time they’re approachable and funny and weird. In my eyes they're nearly flawless. I loved them then and I still do now. I totally idealized their relationship, and I suppose them as individuals to a certain extent. I wanted to be around them, I enjoyed them, and I just knew they’d be together forever. Of course, this was doomed, and they broke up shortly after leaving for different grad schools. To me, once I heard, it was as if the world had gone mad. I was totally unprepared for the break-up (not as much as Thomas, apparently, but whatever). This event definitely contributed to the somewhat fatalistic attitude that I now hold towards relationships. But this attitude is still buried beneath a romantic, sentimental, sappy layer within me that I think has led to this current thing for Vince and Six. It seems I can’t help but let this happen.

I must admit that I think part of the thing I’ve got for them is due to the absence of gay friends in my day-to-day life. I SO enjoyed having that when I went and hung out with them and Alex that weekend. So, this is a temporary feeling. All I have to do is find some new gay friends lol.

Six and Vince had their first big argument last Sunday, a week ago. I was at work when it happened, but Six had msged me on facebook as soon as the whole thing got going. Which says something about how upset he was, because Six NEVER msgs me. On msn or facebook or just email, or anything. I always have to start the convo. He’ll keep it going, even invite me places and stuff. But he never starts it. It’s odd. And on occasion supremely annoying. Anyway. Apparently, Vince had been drinking in someone else’s dorm room, at some party or something. It took place in Vince’s res. Anyway, Vince’s friend G was in attendance, too. One of Vince’s few gay friends, and also one of the few people he’s out to. So they all got drunk, and then the party ended in the night sometime, at which point Vince learned that G had no way of getting back to his apartment aside from walking. It was an approx. 20min walk. On a windy, frigid winter night. So Vince, the nice guy that he is, said to G that he could just stay in his room for the night, and walk home in the morning. Thought nothing of it. They stayed up for a while talking and YouTubing or whatever, talking a lot about their respective boyfriends apparently, and then went to sleep. Both slept in the same bed, though not under the same covers, or something. PS this is all Vince’s version of events, although I do believe it. Six was aware that G was there, because he chatted to Vince after Vince had gotten back to his room with G after the party, and they’d used a webcam. Six was a kind of upset that the whole G staying over thing was taking place.

Next day, sometime around lunch time, Vince clicked on Six, tried to make some small talk, but Six was upset about the night before, so he wasn’t being very conversational. One word answers and such. Eventually Vince, gently, was like, is something wrong? And then, are you upset about last night? And after a bit of Six being like, I don’t want to argue on msn, and then, I don’t want to argue when we’re far apart, he eventually just let it out, how upset he was about the night before. Anyway, I won’t go into the gory details, even though Six told me absolutely everything. Just sent me the msg history. It was, frankly, depressing to read. I felt a little bit like I was intruding, even just reading the thing, and also pretty upset just because they both got so upset. Like, tears upset. Six was totally the angry one, and Vince was totally the apologetic one… ughh it makes me sad to just think about the whole thing. Anyway, I quickly encouraged a phone call- I would NEVER want a fight of any emotional import to take place over msn. Ever. It’s nice as a casual chatting medium, or information exchange, or something through which you can chat to people you’ve found online. But not for anything too serious. I mean, I’ve done it, argue, talk about big important things, but it’s not my first choice. Alex and I were chatting as I crisis-controlled Six. He’d been doing the same thing for an hour. Apparently Six had also turned to a few other people for advice, some of whom were not the most wholesome, and just reflected Six’s confusion/distress back to him, amplifying it. Both Alex and I tried to calm things down and encourage phone calls. Eventually this happened, and they made up, and all was well. I briefly chatted to Vince a few days later, and tried to be supportive to him, too, just so he would know I was still behind this relationship.

I’m very wary of trying to be a support for both of them, however. I tried to do this with a past relationship of Six’s, with S. I’d started chatting with S summer before last. Six met S that Christmas, and they started dating before December was through. It was Six’s first serious relationship where he really fell for the guy. It was also S’s first serious relationship. Six was 20. S was… 18 I think. I thought that S was a nice person. They appeared to be happy, and in love, and I was happy for them. I never actually met S. (My relationship with Six is weird, it’s only started to become a bit normal this year. But anyway, that’s for another entry). So my judgments of S were based only on online chats. But still. He was young, but he seemed nice. At least fairly mature. Anyway, as you might’ve guessed, this relationship came to a rather untimely end. A very awkward, messy, untimely end. I forget when exactly. The whole thing only lasted for a few months, although in my mind it takes up a larger portion of time because of how strongly they felt for each other, and because of the lasting impact it’s left on Six. I mentioned that I’d started chatting with S that summer. Well, we continued chatting all throughout that fall, and through the winter, during the whole relationship with Six. At first, this was awesome. I felt like I was the confidant of both of them, and I could calm things down between then if there was a fight, I could open communication channels if they were blocked, and I could also be in the know about everything that was going on with them. I liked both of them and they both seemed to appreciate having me to talk to. Now around the mid-way point of the relationship, I started to realized that I was starting to play for both sides, so to speak. Sympathizing with both of them, often in a way that I wouldn’t really want the other guy to know about. Sort of like a… “I’m really on your side” kind of thing, to each of them. I don’t think I realized what a bad situation I was creating for myself. But still, they both seemed to appreciate me, a lot, so I kept doing it. As things started to get weird between them, the whole thing began started to get somewhat stressful for me. I had to really start, not lying, but really crafting how I interacted with both of them so as to keep the appearance that I was just as close with each of them as I’d always been, even though at that point it would have been impossible because they were really not getting along. I was lying to one or the other, but I could never really tell which. Truthfully, if I had to choose who I was being more truthful towards, it would’ve been S, unfortunately, because I often find Six too emotionally unstable, a bit too reactive, a bit too.. paranoid, I’ve mentioned that lol. Not that S wasn’t being unreasonable sometimes, too. But anyway. Six started asking me what S was saying about him. S started asking the same thing. I’d always been open about the fact that I chatted to both of them a lot. This is where everything really got out of control. Unfortunately, even though I hadn’t been completely truthful with either of them about how I felt about what was going on with their relationship, and how I judged the decisions they were making in terms of what they were saying to each other, and how they were treating each other, I’d still developed a sense of loyalty to each of them. As in, I would never really sell one out to the other. If one of them told me something in confidence, I would never share it with the other. I’d only really lie about what I was feeling about things, so as to appear more in line with what either S, or Six, was venting about, depending on which one I was chatting with. This sounds like I’m a terrible person, and maybe I was, but I’ve certainly learned my lesson. Anyway, so they started asking more directly about what the other one was saying about them. And of course, I couldn’t really reveal anything explicit, I’d just try to give vague positive impressions of things. Six especially wanted more information, and when I refused on the grounds that S was my friend too – yikes. He felt so betrayed. He said some pretty hurtful things to me. Fortunately, I’d been in arguments with him before, and I knew he had a tendency towards the melodramatic, if perhaps unintentionally. So I didn’t get very hurt by anything he said, but it certainly put a strain on our relationship. S never really got too upset, he seemed to understand a bit more what my predicament was. Eventually Six and I got past the whole him feeling betrayed by me – he had a lot more anger and sense of betrayal toward S than he ever had toward me. But it continued to come up now and then over the following months. That’s one thing about Six, he doesn’t let things go. He’ll bring it up, use it as a jab, but then quickly say “anyway” or “but whatever” and interject some new topic. I hate this. Either address the issue, and resolve it, or bury it and don’t bring it up ever again. Unfortunately I could never really get angry at him when he’d bring it up because I felt guilty over the whole thing. During the break-up, Six had used the argument that he and I were better friends than S and I, and so I should spill S’s secrets to Six out of loyalty to Six. This of course discounted any loyalty I felt towards S, which I couldn’t do. Even though, and I agreed with Six on this one, I had never met S in real life, and I really did have far less of a friendship with S than with Six. But I still couldn’t bring myself to betray S like that. As much as Six felt betrayed by me withholding information from him, I never saw that as real betrayal. Telling Six everything, however, would have been.

So we eventually moved past it. The larger issue for Six, of course, was the break-up itself, and the betrayal he felt at S. I think he still finds it very difficult to really fully trust a boyfriend again. I’m sure this affects how he behaves in his current relationship. The larger issue for me was that I could never again put myself in a situation like that, where I was on both sides of a relationship. So really, when I’d blocked Vince before he and Six started dating, after they started dating I was glad that I wouldn’t have the opportunity of getting to know Vince, because then I’d never be the middle person again. But then Six asked me to give him another chance, and then I went up to see Vince and Alex with Six. And I really liked Vince! So now my goal is to somehow be friendly with Vince, but remain definitely on Six’s side. Hopefully the situation won’t have to be framed in terms of “sides,” I’d rather just be an observer. But seeing as I am Six’s friend, and we’ve been friends for years, and we share stuff with each other, I will not put myself in a position where I feel loyalty to a guy who is causing him so much pain.

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In other news, my grandmother is completely losing her mind. It’s pretty sad if you think about it too hard, but she is happy, she lives at home with her husband, my grandfather. They have the best of care (hired). Lots of creature comforts. And really, she can be quite funny, if you indulge the repetitive questions and comments, which of course we all do. We went to their place for supper tonight, brought all the food with us. Beth, my sister, and I always really enjoy our grandparents, they always make us laugh hysterically. They’re in their late 80’s now. Hopefully they’ll stick around for a while longer. I think when they go it’ll be the first time death really touches close to me. I’ve lost a gazillion older relatives over the years, been to more wakes and funerals than I can remember, but I was never terribly close to any of them. Sure it was sad, and I may have shed a tear or two here and there, but no one really close to me has ever died. This is definitely a temporary state of affairs.

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I’m going to accept my first, and so far only, offer from a law school this week. Put down my non-refundable deposit. The deadline is the end of the month, and I’ve yet to hear from any of the other schools I’ve applied to. I’ll be more than happy attending this school… but it’s not my first choice. It’s my third. Though first, second and third are all rather close in terms of how glad I’d be to attend there. There’s also a fourth choice, which I already don’t really care about anymore because my third accepted me. My first choice is somewhat more competitive, so I’m trying to be defensively pessimistic about my chance of being accepted. But I can’t help but hope. If I do get accepted there, or my second choice, then I’ll just let my third choice keep my non-refundable, and I’ll accept to the first or second. I might not hear for months, unfortunately.

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I have a crush. I think. My last real crush moved away summer before last. I’d hardly had any time to even learn if he was gay. We’re facebook friends though, so I keep tabs on him lol. Still inconclusive. Anyway, this new guy, Liam, he’s in a class with me. A comm class. I noticed him in the first class, thought he was cute, in a dorky kind of way. He’s kinda short, longish hair, though not really long, not like, shoulder long, just got a lot of it. He had glasses that first day, though he hasn’t since. He’s a first-year. He gave a speech the other day that was really touching. I made an excuse to talk to the prof so I could learn his name. Since then I’ve been trying to find a way to catch up with him in the hall sometime to tell him I liked his speech. Seemed like the best way to start a convo. Unfortunately, there’s this girl he’s always with. Lisa. I’m hoping she’s just a friend and not a girlfriend. Another first year. She also gave a good speech, technically better than Liam’s. Though not as touching. Maybe because Lisa’s was more polished, while Liam’s was more… earnest and unpolished. I like her contributions to class discussions; they’re intelligent, and articulate, in a soft-spoken kind of way. So she does present somewhat of a challenge to talking to him, but I think I could reasonably talk to both of them at once. Anyway, I couldn’t find an opening this week. But then, today, coming home from work at the library, I passed him in the parking lot! I work at the university, and he lives in res. He was just walking by with a guy friend. I looked up, realized it was him, smiled, just as he seemed to do the same thing, I said hi, quietly (I’m generally dissatisfied with my casual hi’s, I don’t think they have enough umph to them, but whatever), and he said hi back! In that shy little way he has. This made me really happy lol. I’d never interacted with him before, so, I’m hoping this is a nice first step. It’ll make it easier to start that initial convo.

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I could probably keep going, but this is a bit of a mammoth entry lol. I’m half watching Twisted with Dad on Bravo… it’s pretty dark. A movie, for those who’ve never heard of it.

ciao

Rocket Man

2008-01-18T00:33:00.000-04:00

I kind of feel like my life is about to launch or something. Like, there’s one of those countdowns on, and as soon as I graduate, I’m going to just blast-off. It’s a wonderful feeling. It’s exciting.

My last email was a bit morose – I rarely, rarely am in a bad mood like that, and naturally by the next day I was super happy. The good parts are what I tend to dwell on if you give me time. Plus on Monday I was thrust back into my normal life, which does make me feel fairly content, if only because it’s so busy and people-filled. And the weekend was SO awesome. I felt literally like I was on a high or something on Tuesday night. I ended up calling Shannon and having an enormous, deep, fun conversation with her. Like, almost three hours long I think. She told me all about this drama at school. She had accidentally blurted to this girl that this girl's boyfriend had been cheating on her (I’d told Shannon about the cheating, in confidence, but we’d both thought that this girl had known the full story, that the boyfriend had confessed – but he actually hadn’t. He and the other cheater had fabricated a story that they were both sticking to. Whoops lol). (Anyway, that’s since been resolved). We talked about the future. We talked about all the crap that Shannon has to do right now. We talked about all the crap I have to do right now. We’re both doing theses. Blah. Then I told her all about my weekend, which she loved. I told her the entire back story. Like, the ENTIRE story. All about me chatting to Vince, and Six, and Alex all separately, and then Alex meeting and dating Vince, and then them breaking up, and then Alex meeting Six online, and then the entire fight I had with Vince online because he lied over something stupid, and then me blocking him, and then Vince coming here to do his practicum, and then he and Six starting to date, and then me unblocking Vince at mostly Six’s request but also a little bit of Alex’s, and then he and I making up, and then all of them inviting me down for the weekend. That took a while, it’s like a soap. And then the whole weekend was recounted, too. Which led to this big conversation about me being in the closet and what she and our other friends had been thinking through different situations over the years. Everyone’s so shocked at my “secret life,” all these guys I’ve met through the internet and developed friendships with, without my straight friends knowing about it. I was so sneaky lol. It’s so nice to be out! You get to deepen your friendships.

After that I chatted to Alex for a bit, and went on a bit too long about how adorable Six and Vince are together. I kind of forget that Alex and Vince dated through September. I ended up being totally insensitive and then apologizing the next day. I so would never want to hurt Alex… I just get swept up in the whole Six and Vince are in love and I’m SO happy for them. It’s so nice when two people who you like find happiness with each other. Sappy, I know, but I can be pretty sentimental. I cried today while rushing to finish a short story before I rushed to anatomy class. The main character died in the end! Quite moving. Anyway.

Six told me last night he’s applying to a journalism program! Now, this must be the sixth time he’s told me he’s applying somewhere, and they’ve all been different places and he’s never actually gone through with it. He started university at my school when I was in second year, but then he dropped out a little over half way through. Dealing with being gay was definitely a contributing factor, in my opinion. He’s come such a long way since I met him. I really, really hope that this program works out. We’ll see. He wants to apply tomorrow. I’ll check in with him.

I finally met up with my supervisor today. She’s so awesome! Yet she intimidates me more than anyone else. I love her, and am scared of her all at once. I jump at the chance to work with her or impress her, but I find I avoid her if I’m at all nervous about something. It’s weird. I’ll be glad when this thesis is behind me. It’s way too stressful.

Six is going back to visit Vince on the weekend of Feb. 8th. I really hope I can go. I’m having a meeting with my sup on Saturday, after which I can really buckle down and get a lot of work done. And as long as I keep staying on top of all my other course work… everything should work out! Two other trips are planned this semester. One to tour a law school in mid Feb., and the other to a biology conference in March. If I go on all of these including the one on the 8th , it might be my most travelled semester yet. I was also invited to go with Shannon to see Megan at her school at the end of the month, but it’s way farther, and I’d have to buy a bus ticket… and I’m too cheap. And frankly, I’d rather use a free weekend to go see Alex and Vince with Six than to see Megan. Even though she’s one of my closest friends and I have never actually been to visit her at her school in the last three years.

I’ve been meaning to call Rachel. Her brother got in a car accident (that I’m not suppose to talk about), and she’s also having people over this weekend. And she wants to hear about my weekend away. I also need to call Jocelyn, who called me, like, two weeks ago! and then I had to let her go because I was going out. I feel really bad. I suck at calling her! She’s going to be in England next year while I’m in France, so we’re definitely hanging out. She wants to go to Prague together. Maybe Rachel will be there too, just for fun for a few days. I’d love it!

Anyway, gotta go snack and send a gazillion emails and eat something.

Weekend Trip

2008-01-14T01:12:00.000-04:00

I just got back from visiting Alex. I had a great time, and I feel the need to verbalize everything. Or rather, put in written form, or whatever. Anyway.

Six picked me up at 1:30pm on Friday. I only had one class on Friday, and it ended at 12:45, so I had just enough time talk to the prof, get home, finish getting ready and jump in his car. The ride there was perfect. We listened to his CD, which only had, like, 14 songs on it, most of which I don’t even really like that much. Fleetwood Mac, and other mostly 80’s tunes. Don’t hate them though, and I have a high tolerance for music that I don’t like, so it was cool. We talked about lots of random things, like the state of the highway, and provincial politics, and random guys we both know at home, and the state of his relationship with Vince, which is bright. I hadn’t met Vince at this point. My opinion of him was framed by what Six had told me, and what Alex had told me, and what I’d gathered from chatting to him myself. Mostly positive.

Ok I wanted to just write all about the weekend, but I want to get this out first.
This is going to be kind of a Free-Write, just typing whatever I’m feeling, but I’ll try to be coherent:

I feel a whole bunch of things all at once tonight. Reminds me of how I felt after visiting Alex the last time, though that was about 2 years ago.
I’m tired, first of all, which probably has a larger influence over how I’m feeling than I think.
I’m sad I don’t have a boyfriend. Sad is a bit of a simplistic way to phrase it though. Sad/frustrated/angry/envious/bitter/drained is a better combo of words to describe the feeling.
I’m angry at myself for not choosing a path years back that would’ve put me in a different place right now, both in terms of coming out sooner, and dating, and maybe being with someone right now.
I’m jealous of both Six and Vince for being together, and having each other, and being so happy with one another.
I’m happy for them, too.
I’m frustrated because this whole dissatisfaction with my life is pointless right now, because it seems that there’s no one here, in this whole town, at my school, anywhere nearby, who I would want to date, and even if I found someone, I’m going to Europe in seven months and I’m going to be there for a year. So if I found someone now, I’d just have to leave them.
Casual hook-ups don’t cut it.
All of my gay friends are either living somewhere else, or I never see them on a regular basis.
When I think about how I’m so unconfident in coming out, I think about how much fear I have. Fear of what people will think, what that’ll mean for me day to day, and how that’s influenced how I behave in terms of dating (or not-dating, to be specific). There’s also dissatisfaction with my physical appearance, which has to factor in. Lack of confidence. It’s so weird. I love public speaking. I’m popular with my friends. I have awesome grades. I’ve been accepted to law school. I have a supportive, loving family. Big wardrobe, a laptop, the car whenever I want it, whatever. Life is GOOD. But here I am in a big funk.
I know it’s totally momentary, though. I am generally a very sunny, optimistic, happy person. But I think when this aspect of my life gets shoved in my face I am forced to see how much it doesn’t measure up to what I want it to be. A lot of the rest of my life does, but not this. And how do I usually deal? I ignore it. I busy myself with all the other crap in my life, and there’s a lot of it. So much that it can almost completely block out the frustration. Is this a healthy way to cope? I say yes, and rationalize it by saying it’s a practical way of coping. I am going to Europe after all, and then law school, away. No need to get tied down now. Wouldn’t be practical. And I have a very busy life. Relationships take energy and commitment and time. I’m never sure whether these are rationalizations or actual good reasons.

Anyway. (I have a feeling that a lot of the rest of this is going to be just a report of what I did). So Six and I drove up, he drove. It was fun. Alex unfortunately had to drive his brother to the airport so couldn’t meet up with us when we arrived. The arrangement was for me to stay with Alex, and Six to stay with Vince, in his room in res. So I got to meet Vince when we arrived just after dark. He was shorter than I’d expected. Cuter, somehow. I’d seen pics of him, but still. More talkative than I’d expected. Nice, funny, smart. He’s in education, going to be a teacher. He seems tolerant. Which is good if he’s with Six. We went out to eat. It was a really nice meal. I was liking Vince way more than I’d expected to. Stopped at the liquor store to stock up for Saturday night, bumped into an old friend. Then back to res. Me and V went up to visit a mutual friend of ours upstairs. Played guitar hero – mutual friend was amazing, and you’d never expect her to be. I don’t know if V’s told her he’s gay, though she doubtless knows anyway. Back to V’s room because Alex had called and said he was on his way. Both Alex and Six had expressed some anxiety about meeting each other. Mostly because V and Alex used to date, if only for a month. But it was fine, they met, it went well. Six had gotten a bit drunk, but not too much. Alex and I left them to their fun (I’d stepped out of the bathroom one time to find them making out on the bed – I thought it was cute – they stopped right away), and we said we’d all see each other the next day.

Back to Alex’s. He had his brothers van which is old and stinky and hilarious because everything tends to break. Or has already broken. Met people at Alex’s place, some of whom I’d met the last time I was down. Alex had insisted on giving me his bed. He’s a sweety. Definitely the most selfless person I know, in so many ways. He introduced me to World of Warcraft. It seemed pretty fun. I used to play video games and computer games a lot more, but haven’t much the last few years. It was nice to just lose myself in the game for a bit. Bed by 2-something.

Next day started off lazily. Slept in till 10-something. Most of the day was spent either playing WoW, or writing a speech for Comm class, figuring out that I couldn’t do anything with the thesis data I had because I needed more data that I hadn’t brought with me, emailing my sister asking her to send it to me, facebooking with Alex, talking to his roommates (only a little though), and msging V and Six to see when they wanted to hang out. Oh, and Alex showed me a few cartoons that he liked (he’s recently gotten into Anime… I’m not a huge fan, but I’m not bored by it, so it was cool).

Alex decided to join V and Six and I for food at a restaurant, after some convincing, but not to eat. Which was different. I think it’s because of money issues, but also just that Alex was feeling more anxiety about hanging out with Six and V together. I had a nice time, still enjoying V (he and I did almost all of the talking during the meal). Six and Alex almost didn’t talk at all, it was awkward. Alex and I went back to his place, and he said he felt SO bad about the meal, that it was his fault it was awkward, that he didn’t know how to interact with Six, that them being together was just too much for him right now (he did have a pretty big thing for V, but I thought he was mostly over it at that point). I tried to tell him that sometimes awkwardness just happens and that he shouldn’t read into it that much. He’d hardly had a chance to get to know Six really. But he was almost ready to decide to back off on his friendships with both of them. Anyway, then we went and picked them up and drove them back to Alex’s, where everyone was gathering to drink. There were maybe… 15-20 people there that night. Anyway, once we all started drinking, as I’d thought would happen, stress sort of just went away. We’re all generally nice, funny, friendly people, so naturally everyone would get along, once you just get that social lubricant in there, alcohol. All was well. One thing that also helped, oddly enough, was that Six smokes. Really my only close friend who does. He would occasionally go out onto the back step to have a cigarette, and since V hates that he smokes, he would never join him. So, the first time this happened, I went out and talked to Six, cuz I hadn’t really had a chance to talk to him one on one since the car ride. Just wanted to check to see how things were going with V. They were going great. I was(am) SO happy for him. Six has been hurt by guys in the past, and it’s nice to see him with a guy like V. Six also said a week or two ago that my approval of the guy he was dating meant a lot to him, and I certainly liked V. It was nice. Anyway, so the fact that he was out smoking on the patio meant that Alex then also had a chance to interact with him without V being there, which I think contributed to the anxiety. So it was great! It was me and Six, then me and Six and Alex, V stepped out once to be mad at Six that he was smoking, and then I decided to leave Alex and Six alone out there because they were getting along so well! It was nice. The rest of the night consisted of MarioCart64, painting a beer logo on the wall, taking lots of awesome random pictures, laying around in Alex’s bedroom talking and laughing and pushing, listening to music, alternately what Alex liked and Six hated (Feist), and then vice versa (Fleetwood Mac), plus lots of other stuff. Also, searching for Six’s camera once we lost it, talking more to Six whenever he went outside to smoke, watching Little Britain (which I’m still not a huge fan of, though parts of it are funny.. “Computer says no...” lol) on YouTube, and finally finding Six’s camera. We never did get a group shot unfortunately. V and Six decided to leave around 11-something. I stopped drinking then, and talked to Alex for a while, and then played WoW till 3am. Couldn’t sleep because the party didn’t end till 4-something, when Alex went upstairs and made those still up turn off the music.

Next day was today, doesn’t feel like it though. Lounging at Alex’s, playing WoW (for the record, I’m now a level 10 Blood Elf Mage – fun game. Huge.) searching for my hat. Got up at 11-something, left at 2:30pm. Never got to say goodbye to V, so I sent him an email once I got home. Drive home was a little quieter, we talked a bit more seriously about stuff. The future, dating, guys, V in particular but others and also more generally, the complexities of gay relationships, including homophobic families, coming out, but other stuff too like music and skiing and food and how we plan on moving away. Though I think Six would be happier staying here than I would. Music was similar, but way more diverse, V having made Six a mixed CD with, like, 160 songs on it or something. Six loves it.

So overall it was a fun weekend. I had a ball at Alex’s last night. But the whole trip gave me stuff to think about. Or, it gave me a lot of stuff I’m going to probably stop thinking about soon, because I have so much work to do on my thesis, plus everything else. I’ll tell Rachel and Shannon about the trip first chance I get. Maybe even go into some of what I’m feeling? That would be new. Haven’t really discussed this kind of stuff with them before – even though I’ve known them for what seems like forever (jr. high school).

My mood is ‘blah,’ so hopefully this blog doesn’t seem ‘blah.’ Lol

I’ve been invited by all parties (Alex, V, Six) to come along next time Six’s visiting V. I’d like that, if I don’t have too much crap to do in three weeks, or whenever he’s going back. I’ll take more with me to do next time, too, school-work-wise.

Bed time.

Back to School

2008-01-08T20:00:00.000-04:00

I had an awesome break. SO relaxing. So lazy. So lazy it makes me feel guilty actually. I didn’t get into the lab ONCE. And I’d really led my supervisor to believe I’d be in a whole bunch once exams were through… ugh. School’s back on now, since yesterday. Thankfully my guilt has led to extreme productivity since Monday morning, so I’ve spent about 8 or 9 hours in the lab and I’ve gotten a lot done. Hardly makes up for doing NOTHING over the break, but still, it’s a start. My supervisor, P, is delightful. I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for her, partially why I feel so guilty for not getting into the lab over the break. Also, she gives Christmas presents to the students in her lab! There are just two of us this year, me and Sara. Sara is a huge nerd with little personality, though I still like her, most of the time. I’m fairly outgoing, thankfully, otherwise I don’t think I’d know a thing about her and we’d never have spoken. She’s definitely more outgoing than she was in high school (yes, I’ve known her that long), but she’s still an introvert. Seeing as she’s the uber-nerd, I’m pretty sure she spent her break entirely in the lab, though I’ve yet to ask her. Probably got an enormous amount of work done. Ugh. Anyway, I was unprepared for the gift thing from P last year, but this year, I was ready, and got something for her. I haven’t actually seen P at all since I finished correcting exams for her right after I finished writing mine around the 18th. When I went into the lab yesterday, there on stools, were two gift bags with shiny tissue paper coming out the top, with cards perched on each of them labelled “Robert” and “Sara.” I left P’s gift bag on her desk chair. I hope she likes it!

New Years was quite fun. Rachel and me went to a Chinese food place with about 10 friends, then to a house party, and then to a friend’s family party at a rented out community hall. It was so fun! Kind of reminded me of the big family things I used to go to when I was younger, people of all ages in attendance, but mostly early 20-somethings like me. Played drinking games (but not to any extreme), talked, laughed, smoked a cigar, took crazy pictures, and danced. It was great.

The next day (thankfully I hadn’t opted to go to the next house party, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get up in the morning I’m sure) Mom woke me around 9am and said we were going to Halifax. Halifax is the regional urban hub of Eastern Canada and hence has the best shopping. Beth, my sister, had to stay home to do school work, a distance poli-sci course she hates, and Dad decided to stay home with her, so it was just me and Mom leaving. We had a really nice little trip! Left on a Tuesday, got to visit with family that day, the next day we shopped all day, bumped into more family in the mall, had a great time. I love shopping and wish I lived in Halifax. And not just because of the shopping, I’m really more of a city person. Anyway, that night I went to see Enchanted with Alex, a friend of mine. He’s gay, too; we’ve been the best of friends ever since I found him, or vice versa, on some random internet site the summer after high school. That was… 3 and a half years ago. He was the first person I'd ever actually met in real life who I’d first met online. Big step at the time. It’s been purely platonic, he’s a wonderful person, we chat on the phone regularly, I love him to death. Anyway, we went to Chapters, then saw Enchanted, and loved it. It was nice to hang out with him, we don’t get to that often (he goes to another university).

Alex actually just invited me to come and visit him at his school. I could stay in his apartment and everything (he’s got three roommates, but apparently they wouldn’t mind. I’ve met two of them, they’re really nice, so I think it’d be fine). I’d be getting a drive up with Six, another friend of mine, also gay, who’s dating Vince, an ex of Alex’s, but who he’s on good terms with. Vince and Alex go to the same school, so I’d be hitching a ride with Six who’s going to visit Vince. Six lives near me but dropped out of university year before last (he’s supposed to be moving to Ontario to re-start in Sept, but we’ll see if that actually happens. He seems excited, so I hope it does). I don’t often do these weekend away things during the semester, but I think I could afford one now, seeing as school work hasn’t had a chance to get out of control yet, and I am being super productive this week. I work at the library on the weekends, so I’ll have to get my shift changed, but if I can do that then it should be a go. Fun :D

Some Music

2007-12-30T23:33:00.000-04:00

My friend Shane introduced me to this cool music site - see the very bottom of this page for the playlist I made. Some random songs I like at the moment. Thanks, Shane!

At around 10pm Beth tried to convince me to watch Harry Potter (the new one I got her) again (we just watched it two days ago). Frankly, though, I was a bit dissatisfied with the movie, and while there were a few scenes I liked, I'm a much bigger fan of the books than the films. There's this TLC marathon on of women picking out wedding dresses; "Say Yes to the Dress." I watched it for a little while, but then got more interested in making that playlist. Friends in England sent us an email; I read it over a bowl of cereal. Nice to hear from them. Mom was talking to her sister on Skype—she, my aunt, and my uncle are now on their way to Florida (they're in Massachusetts right now overnighting... Haverhill, I think). I'm a little bit jealous, but they have left us all their food, so I'll get over it.

Beth and I have a mutual friend whom we've both known for a few years, Nathan. He's 17, where Beth's 20, and I'm 22. He's quite mature for his age, we could really bring him anywhere. Anyway, seeing as how Beth and I can buy alcohol, and he can't, we've been roped into buying stuff for him and a friend for this big New Year's Eve party Nathan's hosting. His parents are cool with the party, but they'll be at a neighbor's house for the night. I think it's kind of a "at least this way we'll know where you are and we’ll be nearby if you need us" mentality. They know he drinks, thankfully, and they seem to trust him. So, where normally I'm a pretty rule-abiding guy, I think in this case I can stomach picking up some beer and whatever else for him without compromising my self-concept. I seriously think that my group of friends and I were the only kids in high school to not drink underage. And I had a good time!

Lazy Holidays

2007-12-29T18:00:00.000-04:00

This break has totally been the laziest one I can remember having since high school. I was definitely wracking up the sleep-debt through the end of the semester and then exams… I pulled more all-nighters this semester than any other, ever, and I couldn’t rid my schedule of 8:30’s, either, so… I don’t think I’ve ever been that sleep deprived. (Mostly of my own making of course, I’m the worst procrastinator). So naturally, I thought, once my last exam was through, I would have more than enough time to get all the sleep I needed. Thoughts like this comforted me when I was up at 3am trying to finish a lab report or whatever.

Unfortunately, I failed to remember/realize that one of my favourite things to do, when I have few obligations the next morning, is to stay up really late. I don’t really care what I’m doing – it’s usually something fairly useless like reading a novel, or going online, or watching TV, or whatever – but I just stay up way past midnight. I do it almost because I can. Also, since the pressures of school were lifted, I’ve been enjoying my resurgent social life, so if you’re at a bar or a friend’s place till the middle of the night, that doesn’t help your sleeping habits either. Basically, I’ve been staying up way later since school ended than I was during school. The main difference is that now I’ve been sleeping in till noon-2pm (which I’ve never had a habit of doing, even when I was younger). I never used to stay up this late either. Don’t think I really like it, but it’s a hard habit to break. There’s always something that keeps me up. Maybe tonight I’ll get to bed by midnight.

Christmas was really nice. My sister got me the DVD of the Battlestar Galactica mini-series (it’s our favourite show for a few months now, ever since I saw the mini-series on Space and then downloaded the entire series, my first use of BitTorrent). I got her the new Harry Potter movie. Mom and Dad got me a new electric razor, along with shopping money and numerous little things. We all got Mom this new outfit (which I picked out- me, entirely, with Beth’s approval, but it was all me. I refrain from mentioning this to people, but I’m saying it here, for the record). It looks quite sophisticated – she almost never shops for herself, so we love getting her new clothes. Beth and I got Dad two CD’s. Beth also got me this awesome green vest that I wore to my aunt and uncle’s that day for Christmas dinner. My cousins got guitar hero for their Wii – pretty addictive. Then we played Super Mario Galaxy or whatever it’s called. Much more my type of game, I love exploring, and I used to love Mario games when we used to play Nintendo.

Hung out with Tara, Thomas, and Rebecca two nights ago. Old friends of mine. I went to high school with Thomas and Rebecca – they’ve become idols of mine. Graduated two years ago, both now doing their graduate degrees; Thomas at U of T in botany, and Rebecca at McGill in entomology. Tara’s doing social work at Windsor. It was a wonderful night. After driving around with Tara, getting a snack, we picked up Thomas and went to Rebecca’s, where we ate, drank wine, reminisced and caught up until, like, 4am. It was so nice! Hopefully I’ll see them all again before they fly back.

Hung out with Shannon, Rachel, and Megan last night. Rachel, Shannon and I go to the same university, and Megan’s home for Christmas. They’d have to be classified as my core group of friends, and have been part of my social life since junior high. Megan’s coming out is going swimmingly – I knew that the other two would take it fine, but of course, it’s going to be nerve wracking anyway. Megan told Rachel last Saturday, and Shannon last night. I’m really lucky to have them all as friends, they’re so awesome. We had one of our rare semi-serious conversations about the future last night. It almost feels like everything’s out in the open now, and we can go into the future without feeling like we forgot to do something, or say something, or whatever. It’s a good feeling. My coming out, though not a big deal for them, was for me, and it certainly made me feel a lot better this year. And now Megan’s is complete- at least, to us. It’s going to be so interesting to see what happens to all of us in the future. Megan’s going to be done her music degree this year, and then she’s going into education. Rachel’s finishing history, also going into a B.Ed. And Shannon, finishing, poli.sci., has applied to law schools (she’ll definitely be accepted), and as for me, finishing biology this year, I’ve already been accepted to law school. But I’m going to France next year (that’s for another entry). We’ll all probably be at different schools… sort of reminds me of the end of high school, a great dispersion… but you keep in touch with the people you want to keep in touch with I suppose. We talked a lot about marriage and family and stuff, too. Rachel says she definitely wants kids, at least two, and marriage wasn’t a necessity, but she’d do it if her partner wanted it. Megan is open to marriage and kids, but her music and teaching is the most important thing to her, and she’d put that above having a family if she had to choose. She also wants to live in a nice old house that she’d fix up herself. Shannon, on the other hand, doesn’t want kids, and doesn’t really want to get married either. Successful career is more important to her, and she’d be fine having a common law with a guy, in an apartment in a city. Which resembles more closely what I’m into right now, which is moving to a city and having a successful career. In terms of relationships, I really don’t know what I’d ideally want… I’d be open to kids. The thought both delights and terrifies me, but if I found a guy who I really loved and who really wanted kids, I’d definitely do it. Adopt, I would imagine. But, I mean, I’ve never even had a real boyfriend before. All of my non-platonic relationships with guys have been transient and superficial. Fun, usually, but not deep or lasting. Shannon’s the only one in a couple of the four of us. Makes me feel better, really, that I’m not the only one. But I leave a lot of that stuff, future stuff, relationship stuff, up in the air, unplanned. Whatever happens happens, for now, and really, there’s plenty of time for finding a guy, and settling down. I have tonnes of other things to think about and plan for anyway. But the future will be interesting, that’s for sure.

Okay, enough for now :)

Joyeux Noël

2007-12-25T02:10:00.000-04:00

Well, I successfully found gifts for that last person I had to buy for – my friend Rachel – and I was able to settle into Christmas Eve guilt-free. We had my grandparents over for supper, which is becoming a bit of a Christmas Eve tradition. They are absolutely hilarious, if unintentionally so. I’m so glad I like being around them. Both are in their 80’s, and my grandmother’s mind is kind of going, but they’re still a hoot.

Beth (my sister) and I ended up watching X-2 after everyone had gone to bed. Then I had some cereal, and read a bit, and now it’s time for last minute wrapping. I so leave things till the last minute.

Hope everyone has an awesome Christmas, whatever your religion :)

New Beginnings

2007-12-24T03:52:00.000-04:00

Hi all.

I've been blogging in a quiet, little, rarely-visited nook of the internet for about three years now. Unfortunately, I think the site either got hacked, or it just fell apart due to lack of maintenance or something, sometime over the past two weeks, and my account there has become kind of frustrating. And since I've become rather attached to blogging over these past three years, I've decided to venture into blogger so I can continue.

I blog less often now than I used to. At the start it was a few times a week. Now it’s down to once or twice a month. I’m a university student, and I have terrible time-management skills, so blogging has sort of slipped away from me. But I do want to continue, if only to record things that are important to me as they happen. This year especially the blog’s become a bit more of a record of my day-to-day life than a canvass for my thoughts or ideas. I’ve become less creative and more boring, at least, for my readers, however few there are. Hopefully I can change that here. I’m still not completely sure why I write a blog and not just a private journal, but I suppose outside feedback is good, and sometimes it’s just comforting to know that you are, at least in theory, sharing a bit of yourself with the outside world.

Anyway, it’s late, and I might actually do some last minute Christmas shopping tomorrow for one friend who has proven extremely hard to buy for- if I can get to the mall in time.

Night :)