When I Need A Pick Me Up, by my friend Ryan King

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Being Human

So, I haven't read Ned's blog since "Food Lion", which was about like two weeks ago. A little more. So I go over there today in consolation of not being able to chat with him at the moment, and I discover that he posted about dreams and the interconnectedness of dreamstate phenomena, etc. and then I stopped reading because his post was on the 26th and my post about my Hetereo Dreams was on the 27th. (Please refer to the fact that I hadn't read his blog for 2 plus weeks.) So I'm hoping that the time stamps are somehow jacked, either on his end or mine, because otherwise, right after he posted about dreams and the other-realm quality of them leading to ESP and stuff--I was moved, 700 miles away, to post about MY dream. And you can check the history of both our blogs. Do we post much about dreams at all?

So how weird is life?

Right. I'll tell you how weird.

So every once in a Wolf Moon a television show or a movie will breeze along and drown me in overidentification. Once it was the movie "Sideways," back when I lived with George, and once (way back) it was the TV series "Family Ties" when I realized I was the ghetto version of Alex P Keaton.

Haha. I'm so punny.

So the newest sensation is a TV show called "Being Human". It's a gritty treatise that starts with the tagline "So this werewolf, vampire, and ghost all live in this house..." What it's REALLY about is how hard it is to fit into society when you're not like them. At all. The vampire (who is a hot hairy little number that I'd think was more suited to be the werewolf) has stopped drinking blood and is running parlay between the vamps who still do. The werewolf (who is a right nerd--not geek though, mind you) infected his girlfriend last season and he's trying to life with the consequences of that--and so is she). And the ghost is trying to forget that she's dead and attempted in the first episode to have a job at a pub, get a boyfriend, and stuff and t'ing.

In great dramatic fashion, it all goes slightly sideways. It's a great show.

So I watched the second episode today, at the break of dawn because that's my sleeping schedule nowadays, and I realized how much I have in common with their theme.

Just two days ago I met up with two of my podcast mancrushes for a dinner of laughs and comicbook chatting goodness. Geeks Afire! We are SO not yer granddad's geeks anymore. Or at least, THEY aren't. And to the one, I had already personal messaged my confession of homoness, but on Friday I "came out" to the other. Which makes now 3 altogether out of this community of maybe 50 comicbook geeks.

And it was funny, but my new confidant, who was as cool with it as I'd hope he would be (having had a gay uncle in a 25yr-long relationship until his death, and being an atheist, and believing its purely biological, and realizing one of his three sons could be gay by sheer dint of the odds, and expressed that he and his wife would be perfectly fine with that) said to me pretty quickly "So are you dating?" This was after the rundown of how I "got here" and how I tried so long to fit in with religion and with girlfriend after girlfriend.

So, already feeling vulnerable and skittish, with the guts laid open like that on our 13 dollar burger plates, which he paid for btw, I told him what I was really thinking at that moment and...well generally feel actually. No I'm not dating. I doubt if I ever want to date. And he said, "Don't tell me something stupid like you're 'going to be celibate for the rest of your life'?"

And I thought, God, why do I have to be the one in this position right now?

And this morning I watched "Being Human" and saw these vampires, werewolves, and ghosts struggle for normalcy, and fail and fail and fail and I think again to myself--"I am so kidding myself. I will never be normal. I have never been normal. It won't ever be easy. I have never had it easy."

And at times like these, I feel the greatest despair. The most hopeless. The most prone to curl up somewhere and just fade away.

And really, that's all I wanted to say about that today.

Oh, and that I've lost 16 lbs since Jan 5th. Trying to get comparatively sexy in order to enter into the homosexual dating life that I'll never really do.

And so it goes.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Hetero Dreams

About three weeks ago, yeah. Very sexy girl with the right kind of expression of her face did one of those come hither giggles and I went hither. We nuzzled a little and then of course I woke up. Blinking in the harsh morning light I had the afterglow of Girl Lust. I remembered what it feels like to be entranced by the female--to be woo'd and to woo. To fit into the Yin as a standing member of the Yang Club.

That's it really. No big revelation there. I still am what I am. I've dug on dudes since then so I didn't dream myself into 100% heterosexuality. I've never been that.

I only wish it had were that easy.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Checking In

Bullet Points;

-Still realizing that Life In The Closet is warm and toasty.

-Got with Former Father Figure a few Saturdays ago and eventually got down to my baseline. He had a lot of advice how to become "normal." I argued staunchly pro-gay. I represented my side of the equation and made many analogies so he could see my side of it. And somewhere in all that I realized that I didn't care anymore what he or my old church people thought about me. If they don't realize that I've done everything...EVERYTHING they taught me in order to be "normal" and NOTHING. WORKED. then they can, to a man, kiss my ass. All them blessed with "normal lives" and sex drives that happen to pull them in the accepted direction. So they can slap each other on the backs, attend each others weddings, make saucy innuendos about each others sex lives, have children, and the whole nine. How very fucking nice for them. But if they want to peer down at me from their lofty "normal" heights of superiority, point fingers at everything I've done wrong to "make myself this way" (yes, the Former Father Figure went there), and now wants me to wire up like Clockwork Orange to "fix this." then it's about time I stop caring about their opinions.

So I took the code of secrecy away from Former Father Figure. I gave him permission to tell anyone in the church that I'm alive, where I live, and what I'm doing. I told him he can give them my phone number if any ask for it.

And they can come get me.

But you know what will most likely happen? Not one God-damned thing. Ain't nobody but my Former Father Figure was checking for me all these years. They don't give a shit about anybody else's life but their own. They only try to convert people to Christ because it's a feather in their Holiness cap.

Now mind you, none of this means that I'm about to jump in the bed with the next dude I see.

In fact, at the gym this AM was a nice guy who I could tell had to leave his comfort zone to chat me up in the locker room, making small talk with me and hoping for the best. He was odd and not my type (unlike the Haagen Daas guy), but I had mad respect for his courage. I spoke back, flattered and responsive, but we were not going to be hooking up today.

I'm not desperate to pop my gay cherry with just any ol' bloke who comes along. And the scorn of the Holy Saints of My Former Church is not going to drive me to it. If the right one comes along, if I have the opportunity, if there's enough there to cross this line of sexual commitment -- I will do it. But if not, I'm committing to living comfortably, with quality and honesty. I'm here to help people, enjoy what I can in my life, and do no harm. If God is still real, surely He understands that. Who I am and what I've done. What I want. The true and honest beat of my heart.

Nothing is stopping Him from loving me. Nothing I can do can MAKE Him love me more. He either does or He doesn't. I've left it up to Him.