Copyright 2010

Apparently a quiet war is being raged against me by impostors on the internet.

On Somebody's blog, Somebody writes:

Thank you to Hugo Boss for your present as well... was very sweet of you. Oh... and Happy 17th Birthday to you. Only one more year before you are of legal age in the US... :-P
Love ya so much

I try to be cute and funny and ironic and I write:

are you two doing it. that would be illegal. right?

Somebody writes:

wait... what?
How would it be illegal for me and Donna Karan to sleep together?
Last time I checked straight sex between two consenting adults is still legal in ALL 50 states :-P

(At this point, he misunderstands who I am talking about. Things remain civil.)

Then, Impostor, posing as me, writes:

Straight sex is legal, and a boy and a girl is considered straight sex in all 50 states. It's also considered pedophilia when the girl is only 7! On my investigations Becky is not even in her teens yet. THAT'S WHY ITS ILLEGAL!

(Not really sure why Impostor had the urge to write this. I believe it should say, "a boy doing a girl," and not, "a boy and a girl." Not really sure what "on my investigations" means. Missed an apostrophe. This sounds nothing like me.)

Alas, Somebody says:

wtf?
Dude... where the hell do you get that from? Donna Karan is the same age as me... she is in college...
I cant believe I am even explaining this... I really hope you are joking around... but even so its not a cool thing to joke about.

I am stupified

Not to be pedantic, but stupefied is spelled incorrectly.

If this person wanted to pose a maniacal argument, he/she could have just written an anonymous comment. Clearly there's a personal vendetta there. I'm just not sure what's causing it. It's probably because I think Meryl Streep should have won the Oscar over Sandra Bullock. I've made a lot of enemies because of my stance on this hot button issue.

So all this makes me sound belligerent as well as retarded and a little bit insane. As if I wasn't already good at making people hate me through mean comments, this will certainly put me over the edge. The follow up post to this is called, "People Are Morons," and the comments section is devoted to discussing how weird and dumb I am. I guess the impostor got what they wanted. But just for future reference, a comment is only from me if it is bitchy AND grammatically correct. Not one or the other.

Hello Summer, Nice To Meet You

The night before my advanced accounting exam, I pace back and forth in the study lounge. I am unprepared. As I read about double entry book-keeping, I think about how much more I would prefer some double entry ass-fucking. Tears well up in my eyes and I feel like I am going to throw up. I have hit the bottom. My former roommate who I used to hook up with before we ended things on bad terms walks by outside and sees me through the window. He knocks on the glass and waves. It is 5:00 am and this is a new, unfamiliar low.

At 7:00 am, the anxiety gives way to feelings of calm resignation. I pack my things up and walk upstairs to my room where I plan to crawl under the sheets and suffocate myself on a tube sock. Failure in advanced accounting is inevitable. And then we die. And then we are reborn as impala on the African plains. It is the circle of life.

At 8:00 am, the exam begins and I don't know how to answer the first question. Instead, I daydream about the season finale of Desperate Housewives. I can't believe Paul Young is back. Angie was so smart to put the bomb IN THE DETONATOR.

At 10:00 am, I text my bf, "Yay over."

For the next four days I complain very publicly about how badly I did and how I'm going to get my first B and that my life is over. But grades came out yesterday and I got on A. Yay.

When I come home from school, I want to tell my mother the good news. It feels strange that I want to do this because she has always criticized everything I've ever done and for years I've tried to convince myself that I don't need her approval. I realize I do this because deep down I still want to make her proud and redeem myself for my consummate failure: being a gay son.

Before I can get a word out she looks at me and says, "You look too fat." This would have been fine if she hadn't said "too." Because "too" implies that I am fat in both absolute and relative terms. I lie to her about having eaten lunch already. Today I've had one cup of diet coke and two cough drops. She knows nothing about the A.

I am going to the beach tomorrow with my bf. I don't know what he's said to his parents about the trip but I am lying and telling my parents that I am going with four guys. Four guys in one hotel room with one king size bed doesn't arouse as much suspicion as two guys in the same situation. He will probably make me watch the Lost finale. Maybe after that we can sell beer to teenagers and have gay sex in the sand. We are a couple of renegade summer tourists.

I am probably too fat for the beach. I have a crippling fear of little children mistaking me for a beached whale and trying to haul me off to sea. I am probably going to sit, fully-clothed, under an umbrella and read Laura Bush's autobiography.

You Again

In my first post ever, I briefly talked about my best friend in middle school who unknowingly helped me realize I was gay when I found myself staring at his crotch with more than just competitive inquisition.

Once he started becoming the subject of my pubescent fantasies, I began to act differently around him. I would casually insult his clothes or make fun of the things he said because the only way I knew how to show love was how my parents did it, through intense and unfiltered criticism.

I never really considered telling him how I felt because I was afraid of his reaction and how news might spread among our group of friends. Eventually, I just pushed him away, using a small incident involving a relay race, a baton, and the word "penis" as a reason to end the friendship. I began telling everyone how much I disliked him because I found it much easier to channel my emotions through hatred than unreciprocated love. Deep down I had hoped that he would chase after me to try and reconcile everything, but he didn't. And even after we went on to different high schools, I wondered for a long time if he thought about me and what happened between us. Eventually I realized we would probably never see each other ever again so I just let it go.

Anyway, eight years later, turns out we are not only at the same university, we are in the same major. And wouldn't you know, he is randomly assigned to a semester-long group project with me. In cases like these, I like to ask myself, "What are the odds?" But this has nothing to do with chance. This is the work of God and his sick sense of humor.

And this is extra fun because there are only three people in this group. So when the third member invariably ditches meetings because of some stupid grandmother on life-support, I am stuck with him in quite possibly the most awkward situation on the entire planet.

Me: Can we meet at _:__ in _____ to work on the _____?
Him: You sure you don't want to just do it at my place?
Me: ...
Him: All my roommates are gone and it'll be more comfortable

...More comfortable than what.

When I get to his apartment it is indeed, empty. And he still has the careless hair and big brown eyes of the first boy I ever fell in love with. Could this be what I've waited eight years for? Am I finally going to get to see what is under his basketball shorts? He starts talking about the project, and then his girlfriend. I try to act normal. He laughs at my stupid jokes and mannerisms, which apparently he still finds funny. I consider standing up and shouting, "Why didn't you chase after me?! Couldn't you tell I was going through something?! Couldn't you tell I was drowning?!"

Maybe all this time he was blithely unaware of the teenage psychodrama that I had convinced myself ruined the relationship. Maybe he is aware but is just as happy to pick up right where we left off. Does it really matter after all this time? When I look at him now, all I can do is laugh about how strangely life unfolds. I'm not in love with him anymore. Perhaps we can finally just be friends now.

It's getting late and I tell him my head hurts. He brings me an Advil with a cup of cold water.

Pride and Prejudice

At a recent party that I attended because somebody tipped me off that there was an 18 year-old boy there that looked like Taye Diggs, I overheard a conversation between LeeLee Sobieski and a foreign exchange student from Austria.

Austria: I do not think gay people should have children.
LeeLee: What? Why not?
Austria: Parents should be man and woman. It is not natural.

He failed to notice that the real deviation from nature in the room was his hair, obviously, a European import.

Anyway, this is where I chime in and try to be cute and say, "I thought most Europeans were supposed to be more liberal than Americans. [giggle]."

Austria: No you guys are much more liberal than we are.

I found this to be shocking. I thought Americans were the champions of bigotry and discrimination. And we kind of like to breed the idea here that all of Europe is pretty much like Berlin or Paris, (run by gay people), and that Eastern Europe is a nether-land that exists only to produce great gymnasts.

But that must be an incorrect generalization. Kind of like the time I wrongly convinced myself that all black people were like my black roommate: selfish, messy, and like to cut all their friends' hair in the common room every Thursday afternoon. (But then I met Taye Diggs. Who was cuter than a little black button. [giggle].)

Europe was supposed to be the homosexual promised land that I could always run away to if I ever became dissatisfied with the unalienable freedoms being taken away from me at home. And Europeans were supposed to be fun, skinny people that were either gay or wished they were gay. But the fat, ugly Austrian proved all this wrong.

For every LeeLee that generously takes the gay agenda into her own hands, there is an Austrian steadfastly climbing the Alps to spread the word that all gay boys should be childless lest we teach the next generation to be as gay as we are. I had hoped that the only people who truly hated gays were 40+ and when they died we would be free at last. But sadly, gay haters are being born every day, everywhere. And if they are so unwilling to change their minds, I wonder how long it will take for the world to just accept us and let us have babies.


At the very least, we'll always have Paris.