there's nothing like being broken-hearted to remind you that you're alive. 

ask miss friendster

friendster, which has started imposing horoscope readings on all of its users, shows you a symbol at the bottom of a person's picture that tells you whether or not the stars have decided you'll get along with them today.

apparently i'm having a bad day with myself. stupid friendster.

discrimination's fun!

apparently, ehrlich doesn't want me to get hated crimed, but also doesn't think that i should be able to visit my partner on his deathbed. thanks, bob!

with release

this weekend i had my first massage. that is, my first massage outside of church choir, since my director insists on starting each rehearsal with "backrubs." if i'm not sitting next to friends, "backrubs" always ends up an uncomfortable situation--like giving a massage to some old black lady named sheila. i look anywhere but at her or her shoulders: out the window, at a friend, at the ground. i don't want to know if she's enjoying the backrub. throw in a fireplace, some champagne, and some essential oils and this backrub becomes a romantic getaway to the adirondacks. with sheila.

anyway, i had my first non-uncomfortable-choir-backrub massage on saturday afternoon and it was magical. not surprisingly, it was also a strange experience. i say not surprisingly, because strange experiences seem to be following me around like flies on shit. i think i just called myself shit, so never mind that last metaphor.

"do you have any problem areas, any areas you want me to work on specifically?" purred sherri, my massage therapist. i had to look twice at her because she looked strikingly like my moron apartment office manager. they could be sisters, what with their lucrative careers: kate the apartment office leasing agent and sherri the massage therapist/contractor/singer.

"well, no," i stammered, "this is actually my first, uh, massage. so wherever's fine. i mean like all over, you know, whatever you usually do." for some reason, i felt completely powerless in the situation. it could be because i knew that in a matter of minutes i'd be face-down on a table in my underwear with a stranger standing over me. not that i'm not used to that sort of thing.

"ok, i'm going to leave the room. get as undressed as you feel comfortable with, then lie face-down with your shins resting on this foam pillow." i followed her instructions and got as naked as i'm comfortable with. truth be told, i could've gotten completely naked and not been uncomfortable. i'm no porn star (yet) but i've gotten naked in front of enough people to stop being self-conscious. for sherri's sake, however, i left on my underwear and hoisted myself onto the massage table, face-down into what looked like a mini-hemorrhoid ring that smelled like lavender.

sherri knocked on the door. "come in," i yelped.

"you're too hyper," she told me. too hyper? clearly, sherri didn't know who she was dealing with. this was me being extremely calm.

i won't bore you with the details of the massage. of course it was heavenly and relaxing. of course i left the massage parlor (doesn't that make it sound like a whorehouse?) smiling, after sherri told me on my way out, "you look fantastic." apparently having a massage makes your eyebags go away and magically adds 20 pounds of muscle to your frame. i should get them more often.

memorial day: poolside. 

girls gone wild: the waterloo edition. 

here's to andrea, the tannest bitch i know.

mr. blackwell

finally, the style advice i've been needing!

"Sadly, the popping of the collar expired four seasons ago and I’ve officially retired that trend. But polos have never been hotter. Tucked in, hanging out, whichever way you wear them, they scream young professional. In bright colors like Benjamin Franklin green, Flamingo pink and Gulf of Mexico blue, there’s no wrong way to wear them. Pair it with an oversized belt buckle and an airbrushed trucker hat and you’re on your way to the glossy pages of your favorite magazine. Call me a snob, but Ralph will always be the standard in piqued prettiness. Lacoste and Le Tigre are in that realm as well. The rule is, if your polo doesn’t have a high-end animal covering your left nipple, it’s simply not suitable."

i can finally dress like ashton kutcher--and so can everyone else. everyone who can afford a high-end animal covering their left nipple, at least.

it's no leaves of grass, but...

once again, i've duped the folks over at baltimore gay life into thinking i can write...check it out!

life choices, part the second

i was up until nearly 3 last night. it's now 9am and i'm sitting at my desk, having rushed in to the office for a clinic visit that i just found out has been cancelled. it's too late to go back to bed. it's just as well that i don't have to do it, because i'm still a little drunk from last night. i don't think that you could accidentally kill someone by having them blow into a pulmonary function test wrong, but it's best not to take chances.l

terry and i had another grand fight last night. the specifics of the fight aren't important; it was just another drunken word-brawl. what's important is that terry finally lost his temper. seeing terry yell is like catching a glimpse of bigfoot--you're not sure it even exists until you see it with your own eyes. i've known terry for nearly two years now, and it's probably the third time i've ever seen him really lose it. when andrew bird sings "damn you for being so easy-going," i always think that the song could've been written for terry. we're polar opposites in this way. i lose my temper if i have trouble getting a frozen pizza out of the oven.

terry was honest-to-god yelling last night; he's finally just had enough. i stood there watching it happen, for once calm or drunk enough not to get worked up, thinking, yes. you need this. scream. let it out while you can. unlike me, who vents about everything to a myriad of sources, terry keeps everything bottled up and it makes me worry.

i can't pretend like terry being that pissed off is a good thing, though. as i drunkenly got in bed, it hit me: something between us has finally died. the words that have passed between us, whether we were drunk or not, can never be taken back, and they've put us just outside the realm of reconciliation.

i need to drink less.

my boys are growing up...happy graduation to tom, george (http://noiler.blogspot.com), and peter. make mommy proud. 

the fool on the hill

i saw my crohn's doctor this morning, the venerable post-doc fellow jonathan buscaglia, and got some good news. after hearing that i'd been pretty much symptom-free for the last few months, he and his supervisor, an indian man whose name i can't remember, decided to cut my dose of pentasa in half. this means that instead of taking 16 pills a day i'll be taking eight--four in the morning and four at night. though it's become second nature to me, taking four pills when i wake up, then again at lunch, dinner, and bedtime, it's exciting to think that i won't have as much medicine coursing through my system.

at the same time, it's scary.

"i'd rather take 24 pills a day and know that my intestines aren't eating themselves," i told dr. buscaglia. it'd be a nasty surprise to be taking fewer pills, only to find in three months that my crohn's has rapidly progressed and that i'll have to go in for surgery. it's probably not going to happen, but the fear is always in the back of my mind.

"well, crohn's disease goes up and down. you're going to experience hills and valleys. hopefully, we can keep those valleys from getting very deep."

though i'm encouraged to know i'm doing well, it's disheartening to know that i'm merely on a hill, and that the next valley could come at anytime. i'll just hope for the best, and try to keep the parking brake on.

superstar

gahhhh! i got a shout-out on pink is the new blog!

andrew bird, part the second

i'm still excited for the andrew bird show tonight, but i've just found out that i'll be going by myself. kel can't help the fact that he's been called into work any more than my friends can help the fact that they're all otherwise engaged. not going isn't an option: i've been excited for this show for months, and i'm not about to be out $24 instead of just the $12 for kel's ticket.

the thing that's getting to me, and it's probably just because i'm tired today and sick of my job, is that this situation has kind of articulated for me what life's going to be like after terry moves. when you date someone for a long time, you take for granted that you'll always have someone to drag around with you to movies and rock shows. their plans are yours, yours theirs. my guaranteed activity partner is out of the picture, which means i have to rely more heavily on my friends. i don't know where i'm going with this.

the point is, there are going to be a lot more times in my life when i have to do things by myself. i'll do them without complaint. and like tonight, i'll pretend to be wholly engaged in the performance i'm watching. but i'll be preoccupied, knowing that when the cards are on the table everyone really is alone.

break my himan

i'm going to see andrew bird play at the funk box here in baltimore tonight. i think it's a strange pairing, andrew bird and a venue called the "funk box." he's about as far from funk as the pope is from gay-friendly, but the place is supposed to be intimate. is it so intimate that i can make out with andrew bird after the show? only time will tell.

speaking of making out with little-known musicians, tom and i went to the "voice of pride" final competition at central station on sunday and saw eric himan play. i could've met him, but i would've been red-faced and giggling like a 13-year-old girl, perm and plastic jewelry trembling with excitement. he's from pittsburgh and i've seen him in out magazine. do yourself a favor. google him for some pics. two words: sleeve tattoos.

the only real work i did today was sort through 50 made-in-china am/fm radios, seeing which worked and which didn't. this is how i use my master's degree.

this is nearly too easy, but after blogging about katie holmes and tom cruise, i looked over at a "cosmo girl" magazine that was on my desk--don't ask me why--and saw this picture of the delightful ms. holmes on the cover, begging us to "flip her over." she must be quoting tom. 

relocation

i just got back from dropping off official notice to our leasing office that terry and i won't be renewing our lease in august. i've now taken the first step in leaving an apartment that i've come to see as home. as i wrote the letter, trying to sound very professional, i couldn't shake the feeling that i was putting down onto paper an admission that my first attempt at making a home, my first attempt at marital bliss, had failed.

"i'm so sad," kate, our leasing officer, said when she read the letter.

"so am i," i replied.

the real cruise missile

i don't care what hilary says, this whole tom cruise/katie holmes thing grosses me out! he's totally following the pattern of so many closeted gay men before him: get yourself a hot girlfriend and then trot her out like a show pony. ew. apparently, defamer agrees with me:

"The Cruise-Holmes PR machine really hopes that this leg of the campaign is more effective than the initial one, but they’ve got a contingency plan should this latest round be met with the same skepticism. Should the press not finally buy in, Cruise and Holmes will dive through a thirty-foot vagina labeled “Real Love” at the end of the War of the Worlds red carpet, as fireworks explode overhead and a chorus of choirboys lilt Handel’s Messiah. And if that doesn’t work, well, they’ve already cleverly laid the groundwork for a scuba diving accident."

HA!

nunsense

my father seems to have an endless array of nun jokes...


"A cabbie picks up a Nun. She gets into the cab, and the cab driver won't stop staring at her. She asks him why he is staring. He replies: "I have a question to ask you, but I don't want to offend you."

She answers, "My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive."

"Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me."

She responds, "Well, let's see what we can do about that: #1, you have to be single and #2, you must be Catholic."

The cab driver is very excited and says, "Yes, I'm single and Catholic!"

"OK" the nun says. "Pull into the next alley." The nun fulfills his fantasy with a kiss that would make a hooker blush. But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying. "My dear child," said the nun, why are you crying?"

"Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied. I must confess, I'm married and I'm Jewish."

The nun says, "That's OK, my name is Kevin and I'm going to a Halloween party."


this joke is a rare find because it not only involves nun humor but also a gay twist at the end. i cut out the part where the cab driver spends 3 hours crying in the shower afterward (a la the crying game).

it's mystic

if you're an avid reader of hilary's blog, as you should be, you'll know that we went and got "mystic" tans on saturday. when andrea called to tell us that a) she fucking hates her job (a post-graduate student working as a pee-on at a tanning salon hating her job? what!?); and that b) she was passing out free tans like they were candy and her friends were strange children, hilary and i were in the car in less than twenty minutes.

when we got to the tanning salon, andrea informed us that we'd be using other peoples' accounts. before you become filled with righteous indignation, let me preface that by saying that the peoples' accounts we were using hadn't visited the tan stand for a few years. they'd forgotten that they'd bought packages of spray tanning sessions, so hilary and i merely reaped the benefits. or took advantage of them. whatever. my code name--the woman whose account i used--was alice buffert. we decided to call andrea "jennifer" during the session, because it sounds much more like a tanning salon employee than boring old "andrea." "andrea" is a classical singer. "jennifer" is a 19-year-old in her second semester of beauty school.

after watching the video on the right and wrong way to receive a mystic spray tan, i went into the booth to start my tanning adventure. as soon as the machine kicked on and started spraying me down like i was a 10 year old car at maaco, i promptly forgot everything i'd learned in the instructional video and started to panic. i couldn't breathe; i was certain that the tanning vapors, while turning my body a gorgeous, golden shade, were also giving me lungs to match.

since i forgot, in a matter of three minutes, how to properly position myself in the tanning booth, there's only one thing wrong with my fake tan, something that didn't rear its ugly head until this morning: my fingers and the edges of my hands are an abnormal shade of brown. it looks like i spent the weekend jerking off a giant brown crayola.

ah, the hazards of looking bronze and beautiful.

sexism

lifted from jessica's blog:

"I know alot of girls without any girl friends. Gay guys, while fabulous, caring, and usually with better taste in clothes than most of the straight girls of Baltimore put together, really don't count. I'm sorry to say it. Now, having said this, I know how girls can be...catty, picky, premenstrual, and frequently dramatic. These are the reasons that many young women have chosen to have all males for friends. You can't really blame them."

we don't count because we don't have pussies? i think that depends which gay guy you're talking about.

hilary before a "photo shoot." 

the tan take pity on the pale. 

where all the magic happens. 

kitty mischief. 

thanks, dad. 

how

sometimes, johns hopkins feels charitable and does things for the greater good. one of these things is flying in native americans from all over the country (we can only pray some of them are from oklahoma) and giving them classes in organization, database management, healthcare, etc. my coworker nola is teaching one of these classes, and when mayme found out that nola's teaching native americans, she became dizzy with excitement, her mind flitting back to the time she's apparently spent on reservations. after we told her that nola probably doesn't, in fact, take part in any native american traditions during these classes, mayme was disappointed. she decided to get the facts straight from the horse's mouth:

"so, you go to any of those sweats or pow wows?" mayme asked.

"excuse me?" nola replied, bewildered.

"well, i knew you were teaching those american indian classes, so i was wondering where you do your sweats or pow wows," she explained.

"i don't know what that means."

undeterred, mayme went on, "you know, like sweat lodges and pow wows. american indian things. it's where you sit around and send your prayers up. i've done a few of them; they're really cool. i was just wondering if you got into that at all."

"oh. ah, well, no. i mean they did an opening prayer before class started, but i wasn't even there for that."

somehow, mayme thinks that nola's standing there in a roundhouse or sweat lodge, pointing at a dry erase board while wearing a brown loincloth, as her dedicated pupils weave beaded jewelry or pass a peace pipe or jostle their papooses. i'd walk her down to the continuing education building, so that she could see a room full of women, maybe a little darker-skinned than white people, sitting there taking notes under fluorescent lights--but i don't want to burst her bubble.

the thinker

some days i'm overwhelmed by loneliness. it's cyclic and completely inexplicable. today is one of those days. i don't know what's caused it--it could be terry and i drifting further and further apart as he prepares to move to chicago. i'm trying to invent a life outside our extraordinarily-strange post-breakup relationship, but seem unable to let go of the memories of being so close to someone and feeling, for perhaps the first time, content. it could be the fact that another batch of my friends are graduating next week, all of them being spread like seeds across the country. after the last car has pulled away and the last plane has taken off, what will be left is hilary and i, standing unsteadily on the verge of a very frightening move to new york city.

it's cliched, but true, that the only thing one can count on is change. and i was so happy with the way things were.

groan.

just when you thought that society'd finished with the lorena bobbitt jokes, my father comes through with another forward:


"In a recent Channel 9 news boradcast, it was announced that Lorena Bobbitt's sister Louella was arrested for an allged attempt to perform the same act on her husband as her famous sister had done several years ago. Sources reveal the sister was not as accurate as Lorena.

She allegedly missed the target and stabbed her husband in the upper thigh, causing severe muscle and tendon damage. The husband is reported to be in serious, but stable condition, and louella has been charged with...

MISDEWIENER!"

robin is initiated. 

hilary in her natural habitat. 

what makes a family?

today marked the first time that i did a clinic visit completely on my own, flying solo, without another researcher watching or my boss hovering over my shoulder. everything went fine, and i'm now able to say that i've pushed a 450-pound black woman in a wheelchair through johns hopkins hospital. to say i never dreamed i'd be doing that is an understatement.

there was but one snafoo: my coworker told me that this girl's grandmother would be coming in with her instead of her mother. when they got here, i kept referring to the woman as "your grandma" and said, "how nice that her grandmother was able to come with her." this went on until the girl mumbled, "that's my momma."

oops.

how was i supposed to explain that here in east baltimore it's not unusual to meet a 30-year-old grandmother?

nutz

i'm sitting here writing next week's column and eating honey roasted peanuts. i keep rubbing the extra sugar coating off on my jeans, but i've realized that each time i do it, i'm lifting my right leg up, which is crossed over my left, and rubbing my jeans in a way that looks like i'm on a woman's razor commercial. if you didn't know that i was unsanitarily cleaning my hands on my pants, you'd think i was just really enjoying how smooth my legs felt.

oh, mister reznor, when did you start looking so DADDISH!? i fear that "i want to fuck you like an animal" could become "i want to drive you like a golf cart." stay tuned.

onto the pile

in the midst of blogging about my big, juicy fight with terry this weekend, i completely forgot to blog about something else that made my weekend just a hair shittier: after two seasons of singing with baltimore opera chorus, i wasn't offered any contracts for the upcoming season. that's right, ladies and gentlemen, i shall no longer be performing such meaty roles as "third pilgrim on the right" or "trojan warrior with sword." though i'll miss one of the more challenging roles of my career--"young foppish gypsy standing with other gypsies"--i'm trying to see my rejection in a positive light.

then again, being rejected from an organization i've already been a part of feels a little too much like being kicked out of a club. i've gotten dozens (ok, so maybe two dozen) of rejection letters in the last couple of years; unlike chi-chun (or gillian, if you're an american whitey who can't pronounce chinese names), who piles them up as reminders that she needs to practice harder, mine go straight into the trash. sometimes i don't even bring them into the house--i rip them up and put them into the outside garbage, where they can't intermingle with my frozen pizza wrappers and coffeegrinds. being rejected from baltimore opera hurts more, though. because my rejection from the chorus, two years after being accepted, just makes less sense.

failure-in-law

one of the great things about citypaper are its acerbic, often hateful reviews. they're also sometimes hateful just for hateful's sake, but this time (as with the stable review last week) they're right on the money. ew. j-lo. ew.

enjoy such phrases as:

"Viola goes about driving Charlie crazy with the assistance of her hen-pecked Negro womanservant, Ruby (Wanda Sykes), who's always sayin' sassy things 'bout her lady, 'cuz you know how black folks is. Then J-Lo tries to drive Jane crazy. Apply we're-more-alike-than-we-think happy ending to end of Act 3 and fade."

"But back to Lopez. How bad is she? She cannot sleep convincingly."

read the whole review here.

oh, and also: i think that this is a ghost picture. tom doesn't think so, but maybe he just doesn't want to believe that an otherworldly spirit was that close to him. mwa ha ha! 

sometimes baltimore shows its hidden beauty. you just have to look really, really hard. 

dogfight

terry and i had a big, drunken fight last night. it's been a long time; as long as i can remember. i'm sure you won't be surprised: the drama started at (grand) central station.

the initial plan was for terry, tom, and i to go to the bar; kel would meet us later. terry ended up going to happy hour with his coworkers (starting to drink at 5pm is never a good sign), so i ate dinner with tom and planned to meet terry at the bar. tom had to bail because his friend was going through a breakup. so, it was just me. going to meet terry, my ex-boyfriend, at the bar.

i started trying to call terry around 10:30 and got no answer. at 11:15 i decided to go to the bar, having been assured by tom that terry just couldn't hear his cellphone and that he was probably right there in the front room. i packed up my neuroses and walked to the bar, preparing myself to do one of the things i hate most: walk into a crowded bar alone.

terry wasn't, in fact, in the front room; nor was he in the pool room (not like a cabana. a room with pool tables. what's that called?) or upstairs. after i'd stood with ron and scott (my editors from gay life) for two hours, scott asked me, "so, you're getting stood up?" "yeah, i guess i am," i told him.

terry showed up at 1:45, last call, to pay his bar tab. he walked right past me. i went up to him at the bar and he looked surprised. "where have you been?" i asked. "on the dance side. where's tom?" "tom ditched me. and so did kel. check your phone." i'd tried calling him something like 18 times. his face formed a look of surprise and he apologized. when we walked outside, i expected that we'd leave. even if we're ex's, we live together, and i don't walk around baltimore, the city that bleeds, by myself at 2am.

after standing around for 15 minutes, horrified that i was on the sidewalk sale, i told terry's new "friends" that it was nice to meet them and turned to leave. terry didn't follow. i couldn't believe what was happening--not only had i spent the evening wondering where he was, now he was letting me walk home alone. this, i'm sad to say, is where things got ugly. drunkenly ugly.

on my way home i started to try to call terry's cellphone. forgive me. i was drunk. after not answering a few times, he annoyedly picked up the phone. i'd started to walk back toward central; i guess to see what he was doing. again. i was drunk. he'd left with his new "friends," and i got a sick feeling in my stomach. tom told me this morning that terry probably just wanted to hook up. i know that.

we finally both got home--terry, i'm sure, pissed that i'd ex-boyfriend-style cockblocked him--and the fireworks flew. i just couldn't make him understand why i was hurt that he never even bothered checking his phone to see where i was. he had a whole satchel full of excuses, but when it comes down to it, this is what happened, and what i couldn't get him to own up to: if he'd wanted me there, he would've--one time--glanced at his phone and seen that i'd tried to call 18 times.

in the middle of our screaming match, as usual, terry got in bed (er, futon) and passed out. he's much better than i am at escaping a situation. i understand that last night was bound to happen sometime; and that terry's behavior is normal. we're ex-boyfriends. but it doesn't make it any easier.

life imitates art

there's a passage in michael cunningham's the hours where he writes about the main character, clarissa, remembering a specific moment that happened when she was 18. it's a moment that she thinks about a lot. she says something like, "i stood there on that porch, thinking this is the beginning of happiness. what i didn't understand was that it was happiness." she sees that moment as the pinnacle of her young life, and everything after it as a downward slope.

me: only accurate if we're in london.
him: i loved the day you returned from london. in my apartment with long hair. wavy. made my mouth water.

it's statements like these that keep me coming back for more, even after six years of being unrequited. sometimes it's reassuring to know that people live in their heads as much as you do. that certain things are never forgotten.

i'm gonna live forever

once again, my neuroses have been published for all the world to see...

it's still such a heady rush.

gay

after someone reached my blog by googling "ani difranco pro-gay lyrics," i decided to see just how many times i say the word gay in my blog. it's astounding. whether it's being used as a noun or modifier, it's in like every entry.

gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay.

that's what i should change its name to. the reluctant gay. or just gay.

stuart the fleshy redhead

it's really no surprise that i ended up at the gay bar again last night. at this point i should just know myself well enough to know that if i'm hanging out with my friends at someone's house, drinking beer and watching tv, and get the slightest bit tipsy, that i'm going to end up going to the bar. no matter how much i initially protest, when it comes down to parting ways with my friends and getting in bed or walking with them to the bar--especially when my ex-boyfriend-cum-roommate is going too--i choose the latter. and i totally wasn't dressed for it, in a ratty old t-shirt and flip-flops. kel said that i looked cute. i think he was lying.

it was a very good time, though. the only cloud that descended on the evening came in the form of a fleshy, freckled redhead named stuart. i have never in my life met someone more adept at pissing off such a fantastic number of people so quickly. in three minutes he had made enemies of kel, tom, terry, and me, each for a different reason. it was like watching looney toons's tazmanian devil whirl dustily through our group of friends.

what a strange metaphor. i'll leave it like that.

anyway, this stuart character starts out on the wrong foot, rudely introducing himself to our little group by shoving into the middle of our circle of conversation. kel, wearing beer goggles that were an inch thick (i measured), let him stay because he thought he was "hot." stuart the fleshy redhead proceeded to insult terry for having his collar "popped." i'm sorry, collar-up might be over, but terry pulls it off. he then turns to me and says, "so, you must be the queeny one."

YOU MUST BE THE QUEENY ONE!!!

readers of my blog will know that this gets under my skin. it's ironic that this is how he decided to pick on me, because it's the subject of my column in gay life this week. (shameless plug) "yes. i'm the queeny one," i told him. now fuck off.

thank goodness, he fucked off.

Look! It's me getting ready to go to Lab Meeting. What a big lime. 

apparently, sending samples like this is a no-no. to make sure we all knew it, the big wigs in charge sent out this hysterical digital picture of some samples that had been sent incorrectly. wildly incorrectly. my favorite part is the sliced baggie they sent it in, along with the snowflakes of brittle, frozen parafilm at the bottom of the bag. ok, big wigs, we get it! 

sabotage

Robert: i wish i could have ice cream, too. Except that it's may diet time.
Hilary: haha
Robert: :-(
Robert: think slutty bathing suit
Robert: slutty bathing suit
Robert: slutty bathing suit
Hilary: oh i do't want to hear it
Robert: i know but i am the king of eating whatever i want!
Hilary: yes you are
Hilary: so shut it
Robert: that's why it's hard for me!
Hilary: what if wire your jaw shut
Hilary: every night
Robert: and then undo it every morning?
Robert: well i don't eat when i'm sleeping.
Hilary: that's what YOU think
Hilary: i've been feeing you chees burgers
Hilary: at night
Hilary: hahaha
Hilary: feeing?
Hilary: chees?
Robert: chees burgers from the sfactory!
Hilary: cripes!
Robert: i'm trying not to laugh out loud at my desk

confession

someone has brought in a family-size box of cheez-it white cheddar snack crackers. they're like little, flat, cheesy nuggets of crack cocaine, because i CANNOT STOP EATING THEM.

don't i know you?

one of the things i've been bitching about lately (yes, they have been various and sundry) is the east-coast phenomenon of acting like you've never met someone before when you have. i don't mean that you pass by someone on the street who ignores you after you've had one drunken conversation with them at a bar. i'm talking about people who you used to hang out with, maybe through mutual friends. you weren't ever gonna get married to them, but you can remember their names; surely they can remember yours.

it happened twice on sunday when tom and george and i went out to the bar. on our way to the bar, walking down st. paul st. (and obviously walking briskly so as to avoid getting robbed at gunpoint), we passed by two acquaintances. one of them is some dude that i met several years ago. i met him online and when he met me face-to-face he informed me that i didn't look like my picture and that i was unattractive. although i have perpetrated this same brand of atrocity, i'd never experienced the other side of the coin. when we ran into them on the street and this guy started to be introduced to me by our friend i said, "oh, we've met, actually. it's been a few years, though. i'm robert." i refused to play that game. why should i act like he's a stranger when he, just a few years ago, told me i was ugly?

three hours later we were at (grand?) central station. in the bathroom i ran into an old acquaintance named sam, someone with whom i used to hang out when i was dating ed. in the last few months, sam has joined the ranks of people i've met who suddenly have social amnesia. is there some sort of statute of limitations nobody told me about? after a certain number of months or years has my face or personality or name changed so much that you can't recognize me? or you've just drunk away your memory of me? sam surprised me, though. as i was peeing, i saw him try to catch my eye. this is never a good sign when you're in the bathroom at central station, but i know him, so i smiled. he said, "i know you. you were dating ed. how have you been doing?" he went on to explain that he and ed had never really been terribly close, and that after ed and i broke up they'd fallen out of touch. i don't remember the whole story, but it was nice to have someone break protocol.

blame it on my folksy oklahoma goodness (or, more accurately, the fact that i'm a bumpkin), but when i meet people i remember them. then say hello to them. and i'm going to keep doing it until every last bitter, sad, or uncomfortable queen is as bubbly as dolly parton.

life choices

ah, for the sunny days of yore. the days when i could stay out until two in the morning, watching horrifying people dance on a wet, cold stage in their underwear and then lay around in bed the next morning as long as i wanted. sadly, those days are over, and today i'm at work, a shitty, hungover wreck.

i should just know better than to go out on sunday night. we tell each other the same thing every time we go out on a schoolnight: we'll just watch the contest, drink a couple of beers, and then leave. of course it never turns out that way. somehow, before i know it, they're turning on the glaring lights and the bartender who was my best friend (or tried to be) ten minutes ago is screaming at me and kicking me out of the bar.

it's been a long, liver-pickling weekend. it's strange that i actually sleep more during the week.

puppetry

i've just rediscovered the online queer zine blair. check out my ol' favorite article here.

humor, southern style

southerners, my father included, take great joy in jokes like these:

'A very genteel Southern lady was driving across the Savannah River Bridge one day. As she neared the top of the bridge, she noticed a young man ready to jump.

She stopped her car, rolled down the window and said, "Please don't jump, think of your dear mother and father."

He replied, "Mom and Dad are both dead; I'm going to jump."

She said, "Well, think of your wife and children."

He replied, "I'm not married and I don't have any kids."

She said, "Well, think of Robert E. Lee."

He replied, "Who's Robert E. Lee?"

She replied, "Well, just go ahead and jump, you dumb-ass Yankee."'

uhhhh

more fucked-up shit, courtesy of craigslist:


"At wake for your BF, I was the one that closed the lid - m4m - 29

---

I work at the funeral parlor in towson where you held a wake for your boyfriend "rip". I asked you if your were ready to close the casket, you grabbed my hand and said yes, I think we had a connection. You were so cute, even crying, I wanted to hold you and confort you myself. Maybe after his ashes cool down we could go on a date, I think we would make a great pair, give me a call when your ready for that date, or if anyone else should happen to pass."

and...action!

consider this a shameless plug. those of you who are faithful readers of the receptionist will remember that my friend george asked me to direct his new short opera which is being staged at theatre project. well, dear friends and enemies, the show opens tonight, and it looks pretty good if i do say so myself. the singers have (for the most part) learned their roles and tried to make sense of the sometimes-shoddy staging that i've given them. and the lights look good.

so, come one, come all to theatre project tonight (on preston st. between charles st. and maryland ave.) at 8pm to witness a spectacle: my official directorial debut. oh come on, it's only $5.

look...it's proof that i actually directed a show. right after this scene, peter and josh take their tops off. 

i'm not masculine. let's get that out of the way right now. if you're looking for a dominant leather top or a bald-headed, harley davidson-riding heathen, you're looking in the wrong place. then again, i'm not a drag queen (well, full-time anyway). i fall somewhere between those two extremes, like most of my friends. i'm "gay acting" enough for anyone at the mall to know i'm gay. let's put it that way.

it's taken a long time for me to come to terms with this reality. no matter how loudly i shout that labelling someone as butch or femme is bullshit, that discriminating against femme guys is bullshit, there's still that nagging voice in the back of my head that tells me, robert, the reason you're defending them is because they are you. and you hate it. it's true, in a way; something in me early on decided that i was too gay to ever fit into normal society. i could blame it on growing up as the only queer i knew in ponca city, oklahoma, or i could blame it on being called a fag before i even knew what it meant. i've been told that when second graders call each other faggots they're just mimicking what they hear other people say; even so, as an eight year old being prank called by amy, her last words to me before she hung up the phone were "that's ok; you're probably a faggot anyway." i knew enough to know that being a faggot was bad. when my mother asked me what amy had said to me i told her that i couldn't understand her. "so they just could've been speaking russian, for all you know. is that it?" "yes," i told her, even at nine years old knowing that when she heard that her effeminate son's peers were calling him a faggot she'd figure something out. i didn't know what a faggot was, but i had an idea; and i knew that the longer that i kept my being one a secret, the better.

whatever the reason, a post on my friend kel's blog this week set off something of a firestorm among the group of online writers i'm part of. he works on a study of behavior of guys online, specifically their unsafe behavior, and has discovered that one of the deciding factors in whether or not someone will agree to meet you is whether or not you're "masc." it's not even "masculine." it's so prevalent that people don't even have to bother typing the entire word. somehow, peoples' online conversations seem to have been distilled to "sup. r u top or bttm. masc or fem?" it's hard to believe that something as intimate as sex, and the deciding whether or not two people are compatible enough to have it, can be determined so easily. i'm a fem bottom and you're a masc top, so we're a match made in heaven.

unlike a lot of people, kel refused to tell people online what they wanted to hear. since he's just cruising as part of his job, he's got nothing to lose, which i'm sure is liberating. when guys ask him if he's "masc," he asks, "what do you mean?" inevitiably, they reply "you know what i mean. are you masc or fem." kel gives the same answer i would, if i were posed the question: "well, i'm neither, really. i work out five times a week, i can change a tire, but i'm also artistic and creative." this answer drives people away, without fail. i suppose it's better just to say something like "yeah, bro, i'm masc. sup?" sadly, i can't pull this off without sounding too much like kayan from queer eye for the straight guy. so, i'll just have to stick with the truth.

after reading my friends' writings on the subject, i started thinking about myself and my own sticky relationship with my identity, be it straight-acting, gay-acting, whatever. why is it that i'm the first person to jump to the defense of the queerest person in the room, the guy who decides to wear lip gloss to wal mart? because somewhere, not so deeply buried underneath the body that i've worked out within an inch of its life, i am that person. or at least, i grew up thinking, having been surrounded by no other queers, that i was. the problem is--and here's where all my good intentions start to crumble--i find myself drawn sexually to masculine men. nothing pisses me off more than when people tell me "if i wanted to date a woman, i'd date a woman. i want a man who knows how to act like one." yet i lust after the same straight-acting abercrombie model that everyone else does. and it makes me feel like a poseur. here i am, pretending to be a bastion for everyone's right to express their gender or sexuality the way they feel, yet i won't date someone who isn't at least as "masculine" as i am. if i really believed in the things i say--that everyone should be treated equally, whether they build motorcycles for a living or do makeup--wouldn't i put my money where my mouth is, and at least be sexually attracted to all ends of the spectrum?

maybe that's asking too much, of myself and of others. but you'll never find me asking you if you're masc.

fixed

i was in ninth grade when i heard nine inch nails for the first time. i was still in the closet. i wore flannel shirts from awful places like eddie bauer and land's end. i didn't wear my flannel the cool way, the way it was worn by the legions of "alternative rock fans" i'd join in a few years: my shirts, including my yaga shirts, were tucked into my tapered jeans. every morning i put gel in my hair and combed a severe part into it, way over on the left of my head. i was my mother's son and a mixed chorus teacher's dream, and i completely hated myself.

when brandy smith, a girl whom all my other friends and my mother hated, loaned me broken, i shut the door to my room and put it in my sanyo with the volume turned down. i couldn't let my parents hear what i was listening to. i stood there, head close to the speakers, and was introduced to a rage unlike anything i'd ever heard. lyrics like "this is the first day/of my last days/built it up now i'll take it apart/climbed up real high now fall down real far/no need for me to stay/the last thing left/i just threw it away/put my faith in god, put my trust in you/now there's nothing more fucked-up left to do" made perfect sense to me. something was wrong with my life; i was dating a girl named ginger but jerking off thinking about a guy in my math class.

nine inch nails just worked for me. trent reznor was the first singer i'd heard say things like "how'd you get so big/how'd you get so strong/how'd it get so hard/how'd it get so long?" here he was, a man fucking with the accepted norm of gender and sexuality, and it turned me on. i laid in my bed, late at night, listening with headphones to trent sing "i am a big man/yes i am/and i've got a big gun," aroused and confused. maybe the fact that i was (am?) so turned on by this sadistic, hard sexuality should tell me something. maybe i don't want to know.

all of this history is so that i can say this: nine inch nails' new album, with teeth, came out last tuesday and i've been obsessively listening to it since then. i'm a different person now, so where can this album fit into my life the way that broken or the downward spiral did? i don't really want to kill myself anymore; i'm not a nihilist and i don't have blue hair. i drive the speed limit and i've quit smoking. nine inch nails, however, doesn't seem to have changed all that much. with teeth is the album that should've come out about seven years ago, and it sounds like it. trent still sings lyrics like "i can't remember how it started/but i know exactly how it will end." do i still have the angst and rage that drove me to listen to this music ten years ago? it's in there somewhere.

jealousy

"The more you allow yourself to expand, the less you feel the need to hide."

sometimes i'm really jealous of ben's writing.

a scary proposition

thanks, towelroad, for pointing out this column:

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2700977

my ol' stompin' grounds

finally, the mt. vernon stable and saloon gets a review it deserves. sadly, the reviewer didn't mention the overly-friendly(/insulting?) but definitely incompetent wait staff, or the bleeding asshole of an owner.

robin , don't read this.

OH

MY

GOD.

the past comes back to google me

hilary came over to watch queer eye last night, as she always does tuesday evenings at ten o'clock. it was a rerun, but that's fine; queer eye kinda sucks and we know it. it's really just an excuse to sit around for an hour before bed and watch tv, make fun of people, and eat ice cream. i enjoy tuesday nights. hopefully, since hilary and i are moving to new york at the same time (and plan on being roommates), tuesday night ice cream/bitch fest/television night will keep going for the forseeable future.

as we sat there, i told hilary and terry something particularly funny that had happened to me that day:

"so, i was obsessively checking my site meter [the counter at the bottom of this page that tells me how many hits this site has gotten and from which domain the visitors came], and noticed that someone had googled a specific name and gotten to my blog."

"so what?"

"well, someone searched for the name matt s. and came across the entry where i talked about jerking off in 8th grade, thinking about the time in class when he unbuttoned his fly. what's worse is that it was someone in the central time zone, which means they're in oklahoma. so it was possibly him."

-riotous laughter at my expense-

should i be troubled by this? does it matter that someone i went to junior high/high school with knows, eleven years after the fact, that he was fodder for my early-teenage gay fantasies? would he be flattered, or would he send a mail bomb to my parents' house? what happens next time i'm home for christmas and go to the bar in the basement at the veterans of foreign wars lodge--the big hangout for people my age in my home town? the bottom line is i don't really care. it was eleven years ago.

this gives rise to a bigger issue, one that i've been thinking about a lot since i started writing for gay life. just how personal should i get with what i publish? i've been lucky so far that no one has been pissed, because whether it's a column or a 'blog, my writing is pretty confessional--and i usually don't even bother changing names to protect the innocent.

it's just a law suit waiting to happen.

a sick mind

i was in the clinic just now, waiting for mayme to finish her interminable "asthma counseling" session with this afternoon's participant. the waiting room has a tv, which is always turned to either CNN headline news (yay!) or ABC family (boo!). today's ABC family programming was step by step. suzanne somers had taken a break from hocking silicone bakeware on QVC long enough to tape an episode, and her character was addicted to diet pills.

right after playing back in my mind the scene from saved by the bell where jessie spanno is addicted to similar diet pills, i thought to myself, hmm. diet pills. interesting. i wonder what those feel like when you take them. i wonder what they'd do to my body. would i have lots of energy? would anyone notice? i wonder if the diet pills would interact with my crohn's disease. maybe i should get myself an addiction to diet pills since i seem to have kicked every other bad habit.

do normal people feel like they're not really living unless they're working on a healthy addiction? i guess it's just me and suzanne somers.

composers say the darndest things

a conversation with george:

me: kel just told me you're a nut--in response to your blog.
george: ha ha
me: to which i said
me: duh!
george: what kind of a nut?
george: good nut?
george: walnut?
me: more like an unhealthy sad nut who farts a lot.

ready? ok!

i'm drinking green tea right now instead of coffee. not because i'm suddenly a health nut or because, as ellen degeneres said after she went all L.A., "coffee is rotting my stomach." i love coffee, stomach rot and all. no, i'm drinking green tea because i've lost my voice. it's not completely gone, but i sound like the cheerleaders in my high school. you know the ones--the popular girls with blonde ponytails who walk around the halls with their red and blue pantaloons and their raspy voices. that's what i sound like. i was hoping i could at least pull off kathleen turner. sadly, she's more of a man than i.

like most singers, it's a fucking bad situation when my voice goes. i have an audition for baltimore opera (chorus) on saturday, and annapolis opera auditions are the week after that. my voice has been gone for over a week; will i remember my arias? will i have a voice come saturday? who knows.

also like most singers, i jump to the worst possible conclusion when i've lost my voice. it's not just a cold--it's allergies. it's not just allergies--it's nodes. and not soft nodes, either, but hard nodes. the kind that have to be laser-operated; the kind that the surgeon was trying to remove when his hand slipped and he sliced julie andrews' vocal cords, ending her long singing career. or, it's not just hard nodes--it's throat cancer, brought on by years of smoking. i'll be the youngest case of throat cancer ever. i can already hear the electronic noise my voicebox will make.

what did i do to deserve losing my voice? i question. most people just say "ha ha, listen to me! i sound like a frog! it's so funny that my voice is gone! ha ha!" for singers, however, it always holds a deeper meaning. maybe it was that last beer on friday night; maybe ive been oversinging. i used to always think that emily was psychotic, being so paranoid about the treatment of her cords. i'm starting to understand.

just plain mean

this morning my church hit a new low, which is surprising since i thought we were already at rock bottom: they paraded a "sign language choir" (think napoleon dynamite) out in front of the congregation to sign part of "let us break bread together on our knees." worse than that, the congregation applauded their performance.

i nearly stood up and screamed, you all are APPLAUDING DEAF PEOPLE! they can't hear you!! christ almighty, church makes me mean.