I Almost Forgot The Password To This Thing

It took about seven days for optimism to give way to realism. Embarrassingly soon after I declared that it was going to work, I decided the "relationship" (although I hesitate to designate what we had as *that*) was not going to work. 

Fundamentally, we didn't get along. With just a little bit of retrospect, I can see that now. So many parts of our personalities were at odds that we were constantly fighting. I think he mistook our emotional flare-ups as passion. It mostly reminded me of my parents and how much they hated each other between 1989 and 2007. True, we both cared about each other, but two cares one love does not make.

I broke it off with him in early July, reasoning that although there was not an issue per se, it would be better to end it before we got more invested. I only half-believed the words coming out of my mouth. What was really happening was he was wading deeper into the tar-pit that is a relationship with me and I was slowly backing out. I wanted to shut it down before we were on completely different pages. It felt selfish but it also felt necessary. 

Breaking up with a guy that didn't see it coming and wasn't ready to let go left me with a sense of survivor's guilt, like somehow it was an end for him and a beginning for me. I felt bad that I was feeling relief while he was feeling sadness. I also felt ridiculous for having feelings about a feeling. I was having tertiary feelings, God help me.

I still don't know if I made the right decision. I am in a new "relationship" now (though once again, I hesitate to make that designation). It feels like a better fit in all the topical senses, we like the same music, food, don't scream at each other in public, etc. But Chipmunk's loyalty and selflessness turned out to be two traits that I haven't encountered since.

Lord knows I have no idea what a healthy relationship feels like so I probably wouldn't be able to recognize the fact that I'm in one based on previous experience. I'm just wondering if those ah-ha moments where you realize you're not only in love but in love with the right guy have all been used up by Carrie Bradshaw, leaving the rest of us with debilitating unsureness.

Abusing This Metaphor to Death

I'm sitting on the 7th floor of my office building. You should be impressed because DC has a strict building height limit and oftentimes 7 floors is as high any building around here gets. I'm thinking about the guy I'm dating currently. We've been going out for about 3 months now and I am almost certain he feels more strongly for me than I for him.

For somebody who was so deeply unhappy about being a "have-not", it seems hypocritical that I would be unhappy as a "have" as well. He cares about me and he always puts me first. I have this terrifying suspicion he scrapped a plan to move to the west coast just to stay in DC with me. In normal situtations, I would be ecstatic, and probably on photoshop right now trying to merge our two faces and see what our children will look like. Instead, I feel impotent and out of control, which I really hate.

I think he fell for me because he has no expectations when it comes to dating and I was in the right place at the right time. Meanwhile, I have enough expectations to circumscribe Jupiter's fat ass. It's not that he's not great, but I have this, perhaps artificial, preference for guys that are masculine and aggressive but also calm and gentlemanly. My baby is none of those things. I mean, his nickname is "Chipmunk," if you can imagine.

This isn't the first time I've compromised to be with somebody. In the past, I've lowered my expectations to the 4th floor, only to be subjected to the ironic humiliation that I am a 2nd floor in their building. Usually I'd have to lower my standards to basement level 3 to find a guy that was genuinely interested in me as boyfriend material.  Chipmunk is definitely above grade. And each time I think about how lonely I would be without his company, it sends me a little deeper into his arms. So maybe the only thing that matters right now is that in his building, I'm on the 7th floor.

I Deserve More Karmic Compensation Than This

I dated a guy briefly in February. What was interesting about him was that he had an identical twin whose name was only one letter different from his own. Even more interesting was the fact that his identical twin was not gay. I didn't end up dating him for long because his twin brother's heterosexual existence was an affront to everything I learned in AP Biology. I want to believe that homosexuality is purely genetic and the way I am isn't because of some egregious mistake occuring druring my formative years (no doubt, my parents' fault). Or maybe it was something I ate.

Actually, the real reason why we stopped dating was because he wanted me to commit and I didn't want to. It was strangely ironic and perhaps poetic justice to have the tables turned on me in that way. Here I am, complaining about how I'm all alone and nobody loves me. The second somebody tries to, I'm all, "I'd rather not." I guess it was my turn to be a bitch / I can see from the perspective of the guys that never call me back now. When it's not right for one person, it's not right for either of them.

The way we broke it off was pretty comical in itself. We were both at one of his friend's party. He saw me talking to another guy and pulled me aside to tell me he couldn't stand my flagrant disrespect and didn't want to see me anymore and stormed off. I wondered if I was supposed to cry or keep drinking or stay at the party or what. Mostly I stood around wondering where my sweater was. A few minutes later he texts me, "Please do me a favor and don't sleep with ___." ___ is the guy I was talking to and I would definitely share his name but I don't even remember it. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind and ___ was kind of gross but at that point I wanted to do it just to be spiteful. *Does my best Emily Thorne impression*


Instead I found my sweater and left and never saw any of those people again.

Hopefully My Face Stays Young Too

I have this theory, which I arrived at through a combination of empirical data, personal experience, and watching Mean Girls. 

In middle school, the normal boys and girls went girl/boy crazy respectively. For the next several years, they acted impulsively and naively when it came to "love." Jumping from one partner to the next, they didn't care about each others' feelings because they didn't quite understand their own. But nobody really got hurt because nobody really "got it." Also, nobody in middle school was having sex. (Except that one guy, who I still think was lying. And that one girl, who had no daddy.) It's the same when baby lions play-fight with one another so cutely in preparation for the day when they actually have to slaughter a cape buffalo.

Eventually, this adolescent practice gives way to the real thing. Feelings, maturity, and sexuality coalesce into meaningful relationships. By age 25, everyone is married even though the girls have yet to learn how to clean up their bathrooms and the boys still say "dude."

It's hard not to laugh, and then cry uncontrollably, when I reflect on my own middle school experience. About the same time I started lusting after my guy friends, they started lusting after girls. I felt like Julia Roberts running after that not famous guy running after Cameron Diaz in My Best Friend's Wedding. Of course, I had a string of fake girlfriends to fit in and deflect suspicion, but that wasn't exactly cathartic. My urges were forcibly suppressed, held back by the anti-ejaculative equivalent of the Hoover Dam.

This is where I arrived at my revelation: the reason why gay people are so fucking annoying. We are all emotionally arrested as 13 year-olds. We're boy crazy now because we never got a chance to be cute little sluts in middle school. But since we're at an age where we can act out on our childish feelings via blowjobs, we end up feeling more conflicted and distraught when our impulsive connections don't work out. It's gotten to the point where I can't really ride the metro because every time I see a really hot guy I have this full blown panic attack that can only be calmed by eating an entire french baguette with butter.

I'm not really sad or angry about it. I'm kind of seeing somebody now and he drives and pays so I feel all mature and stuff.

All the Single Men Are Sociopaths

There is a phrase basic people like to put on their Facebook profiles and lower backs, "Live each day as if it were your last." I've adapted it to my situation so that it reads, "Fuck each guy like you'll never see them again."

I say this phrase in my head repeatedly while hooking up with boys (in between silent renditions of Whitney Houston's version of the Star Spangled Banner) to remind myself that we all just want sex, and while I'm being honest, the guy on top of me (not a bottom, just lazy) is not good enough to warrant being done twice. 

Mostly, this has worked out well for me. Like Beyonce empowered me to do via "Independent Women Part I," after it's over I prefer to leave gracefully without the clunky exchange of numbers, job descriptions, and life stories. I've satisfied my needs and for the sake of my conscience would rather pretend our encounter was just a so-so dream somewhere in between the time I dreamed I was in The Help (high) and the time I dreamed we were all lizards (low).

I met a guy several weeks ago that was intent on tampering with my system. He was cute and cordial, inviting me back to his place to "cuddle" and "be innocent." "God this guy is dumb, I can't wait to get him pregnant," is what my drunk-self in-my-head-screamed. 

I sat on his couch waiting for him to get naked while he told me about his job and his British heritage. I was like, "Really? I thought you were Russian. Take off your pants." 

 

But halfway between him telling me how hot I was and seeing his eight inch cock, I found myself wanting to see him beyond this one night. I was excited to tell him that I lived just a few blocks away and I was flattered when he suggested seeing me again soon. I wanted to know his last name. Justin What.

Even so, I attempted to leave the next morning with my hopes in check. As I opened the door he stopped me, "Wait, I never got your number." He recited his for me to put into my phone and I candidly said, "I'll save you as Justin Newton Street so I can remember who you are." He laughed, "My last name's ______."

I haven't heard from him since then. Sent him two texts over the course of three days to no response and figured I would give it a rest. Saw him trolling around on Grindr before I decided to give that a rest too. What I don't understand is that when I gave him the perfect opportunity to do what he wanted to do all along, why didn't he take it? Why did he have to pretend to be interested when he wasn't?

I think his behavior bled beyond politeness into pathological. It's one thing to fake-tell somebody they're attractive and reveal a last name, but it's another to make future plans with no intention of following through. It seems as though he wanted what I wanted - to have nothing to do with each other, but he wanted to be the one to say so. 

I'm not entirely sure when all of this became such a game. And if I'm supposedly making the rules, why am I still losing?

Gay For 401k

I wonder if it would be lucrative for me to sell out all the secrets of the world of consulting. House of Lies kind of does this I guess, but I feel like my account would be more visceral and desperate (read: entertaining). I’d write it in the style of Memoirs of a Geisha. John Cho would play me in the cinematic adaptation; I wonder if he’s comfortable playing gay.

In September, the disparity between my expectations for the business world and the reality of it had me reeling. Management was pretty swift and blunt about clarifying that my job was to meet contrived metrics ahead of serving the client. I was legitimately worried that I would go insane before the two year mark when I could leave the position with some sort of credibility. It’s kind of a non-issue now. The metrics are easy to meet and the client is kind of dumb anyway. Days of the week pass faster than ever and it seems seven months have flown by without any effort or drama on my part.

I do worry that I’m getting stupider and slower. I watched Million Dollar Listing last night and the gay real estate agent did arithmetic in his head way faster than I could. Intellectual comparison to Bravo personas is my SAT. I was doing so well when Real Housewives of New Jersey was on. More concerning is the possibility that I get too comfortable here and lose the drive to pursue something better. With each paycheck, I can feel the fire in my belly dwindling further. My evil manager is out for the foreseeable future due to a torn Achilles. I’m happier than ever.

A few weeks ago a headless guy with an unremarkable body messaged me on Grindr. He tried to engage me in some deep philosophical conversation about universal morality and European debt but I was just like, “FACEPIC?” It was the senior recruiter from my office. I’ve only met him once before on my first day of training. I knew he was gay then too.

So I was like, “K THANX” thinking I could walk away from that conversation unscathed.

“You should check your LinkedIn requests more often."

My initial thought was, who the hell uses LinkedIn? And then I was like, oops, he knows who I am. And then I was like, what’s my password?

He indicated that he wanted me to come up to his office sometime and discuss my “career direction.” I assumed “career direction” was consultant jargon for pointing his peepee towards my butt. He told me his office had no windows. I told him I’m on the client site…until July. If staying in this industry means turning into this guy, somebody please kill me. To be fair, he works in HR and everyone in HR is always a fuck-up carrying a ton of emotional baggage.

He messaged me on the office communicator yesterday.

Him: Hey twink
Me: Hey fat ass

So we’re paying this game now, I guess.

I Don't See Skin Color or Eye Shape

Growing up, I never really felt a sense of my Asian-ness. One time, when my sister told my parents she wanted to be a journalist, my mother pulled us aside and started crying and screaming that as long as we live "the white people" will never see us as one of them. My sister ended up studying human biology. I never really made that connection until now.

Society (at least in DC) has never made me feel different for being Asian and I never felt a strong societal pressure telling me that being gay was anything but ok. Ironically, gay society (which I have only recently been immersed in) has made me keenly, and at times painfully, aware of both. To be gay and Asian in DC is to be discriminated against. And this is obnoxious because gays bitch a big game about how they want to be treated as equals and cry to Lady Gaga about acceptance, but gay men are some of the most prejudiced people I've ever met.

In terms of a preference towards Asians, men typically fall into three categories. There are guys that just come out and say it. Per the essential question on OKCupid, "Would you strongly prefer to go out with someone of your own race?" they answer, "Yes" unabashedly or "No, not strongly..." They say things in person like "no offense, but I'm not into Asians." Even so, the honesty can be refreshingly efficient. At least I know not to bother. 

The second group of guys like to point out "I taught English in North Korea and I built village pumps in East Africa... I'm not racist." In light of their service, it's probably true that they aren't racist. But not being racist and being able to see [love] somebody beyond their race isn't quite the same. In the end, they are colorblind only in principle. In practice, they never go out with ethnic guys and usually fall for that tall, lanky white guy that makes clothes out of hemp and plays in a kickball league.

Lastly, there are the guys that actually are into Asians. But in typical gift/curse fashion with them it doesn't feel natural or organic. They don't see you as just another person that they happen to like and happens to be Asian. They like you because you are Asian. They want to speak to you in Chinese and discuss anime and K-pop. I don't even listen to K-pop. Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is K-pop? Does K stand for Korea?

I sometimes talk to white people about my racial qualms because it's interesting to get their perspective and, because I know it's there, I kind of just want to get them to admit they are the tiniest bit racist. They usually just laugh everything off and tell me that racism in 2012 is unfathomable. "Oh my god shut up, don't say that! You just need more confidence." I don't really know how to dignify a blatant attempt to sweep a legitimate issue under the rug but it's safe to say that white people don't want to discuss race issues because, for them, when nobody talks about it, it doesn't exist. 

I realize these are blanket statements about race that do not necessarily hold true in all cases. Maybe guys don't avoid me because of my race. Maybe it's because I talk too much about Mariah Carey and Desperate Housewives and the lingering racial issues of the 21st century. Maybe I do, in fact, lack confidence. Maybe, just maybe, I say "maybe" too much. I'm also aware that I'm presenting a very limited perspective: scorned Asian challenging the oppressive white man. There are plenty of other ways to look at this, like, why am I so obsessed with white people?

My roommate's parents recently came to visit from New Hampshire, where they've lived all their lives. Their curiosity about my "culture" was kind of endearing but it also spoke to a lack of exposure that is probably the culprit behind all of this unpleasantness. They asked me if I "liked being Asian in America." Not knowing how to answer that without bawling my eyes out and reciting a paragraph from The Joy Luck Club, I told them it's had its ups and downs. 

This is when his mother said, "How could it possibly be bad, you have all that incredible food." And then his father asked me why there isn't a word in Chinese for love.

But Really My Main Issue Is His Mouth

Remember when the Jonas Brothers came out and everyone thought they'd be as unsuccessful as The Mofatts but then they were actually kind of successful but then they faded back into Mofatt-level obscurity? That's the presidential campaign trajectory that I envision for Santorum. 

The first time I saw Santorum, he was last on the left in a long line of circus acts engaging in one of the early republican debates. I only recall two things about him. 1) He looked like my genetics TA, but considerably less confident. 2) His stage presence was so shrinking that he actually made Ron Paul not look like Estelle Getty for once. I wrote him off immediately, like I wrote off Adele when she guest starred on Ugly Betty or when Rihanna had a concert in the ghetto ass shopping mall in my hometown whose anchor stores include Marshalls, Wet Seal, and Ruby Tuesday.

Inexplicably, he's created a viable candidacy since then. Well, it's not completely inexplicable, given how weak the republican field is and the inherent stupidity of Americans. But seriously, do people not see his weird fucking mouth and his smarmy smile. He does this thing where he purses his lips and his chin disappears into his neck. I haven't seen something so disgusting and tight since I took that picture of my asshole with my iPhone. Just kidding, I've never done that and there is no evidence of it anywhere.

There are more substantial reasons why he belongs on a soapbox in a Power Ranger costume on the corner of the Chinatown Metro station instead of in the oval office. Most of it has to do with his religious zeal, which I feel like he thinks is really endearing and cute. But actually, it's like, not.

He touts his obsession with the "ideal" family/society/government like some cracked out whore trying to sell his utopian concept that exists under the freeway bridge. In reality, his ideal is just a rehashing of 1950s values repackaged with a doomsday ultimatum. He would have us all living in Pleasantville before Tobey and Reese show up. He's Kirsten bitch mother from Mona Lisa Smile.

Santorum has religious blinders on. He wants everything and everyone to be a certain way that would give him, (and the rest of the rich, white, catholic men in society) a sense of power and security. "Put women where they belong and gay people where we can't see them!" Don't let his damage-control backtracking on Fox News fool you, he wants women out of the army and into aprons. He wants black people to stop being so poor and gays to stop being so gross. But all of this conversation is baffling to me because who is the president to tell us how to live our lives? For somebody who so readily vilifies the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khoemeini, he sure is acting like him - even more offensive in a country where church are state are supposedly separate.

All his interviews have done nothing but allow him to flesh out the haughty contradictions in his platform. Like his unwillingness to acknowledge the needs of the poor, even though their tax dollars paid for his lobbyist salary. Like his argument that global warming is concoted by the government to get their hands in our lives, even when he wants a hand in every woman's uterus. Or his readiness to welcome every last baby that is conceived, which is tempered by a lack of  support for a stronger welfare system and universal healthcare for all the little miracles born to poor and neglectful parents. "Uh, it's a bit much," I imagine him saying, right before he flashes his trademark smile.

I Blame All This On Grindr

I don't actually have any groundbreaking new material to talk about but I'm trying to post more often and this is my last chance to squeeze one more January post in. So. 

The dating game is at a complete and utter stalemate. Even still, I can't pry myself away from playing, though I have much more pressing and productive things I could be doing like developing my biceps and studying for my federal tax exam.

Why do I even get into it if every last guy ends up a disappointment? 

Because the beginning is so sweet, when you exchange names and mutual interests. Because he tells you that you are adorable and that you should meet for coffee or drinks. Because it's so exciting to go to his apartment and watch TV in his bed with your socks still on. Because the first kiss is always electrifying to some extent, even if there's no chemistry there. Because if he doesn't call you the next day (or week), maybe he's just busy. Because when he tells you you're "adorable, but..." you can seek some solace in your cuteness. Because even though he's hurt you, you'll get over it soon enough. Ah, because the next one, surely he will be different. 

See, there are a lot of reasons.

My friend and I were on the phone today theorizing reasons why guys never seem to want to keep seeing me after the first or second date. The top three potential reasons were: I look better in pictures that I've meticulously doctored in Photoshop; I smell really, really bad; white guys will only ever respect Asians enough to treat them as casual things on the side that they can dump on a whim and not feel badly about at all.

This habit has become obsessive and it's clearly destructive to my psyche. But I feel like in some ways I've been too overstimulated (by my iPhone, obviously) so that my baseline level of excitement is impossibly high. I just want to feel something so I grasp desperately at anything that presents itself, whether I know inwardly that it's going to damage me or not. There's also a chance that I do this because I'm tired of being alone and feeling unwanted - and that last pesky bit of optimism hasn't been extinguished yet.

See, all old themes.

"I Like Having Too Many Friends"

I have a lot to say; I always do. I just feel so emotionally-exhausted that I dont know if I have the words in me these days. I'm also regular-exhausted. I have this free 3 [consecutive] day pass at the WSC but everytime I go there's a new receptionist who perpetually thinks it's my second day. I've gone 5 days in a row now. I can't feel my arms.

The picture of complete and utter loneliness that I paint around myself is not entirely true. My situation could be worse. I could be a black, lesbian Jew - I could be Aneesa from Real World Chicago. But I've done ok, working with what I've got, in the district of desperation and dismissiveness. I go on a steady stream of dates, (I'd say an average of 3 first dates a week). I went on three last Thursday alone. The problem is these dates almost always end with, "I'd be cool with messing around, but let's just be friends."

Now I don't know about YOU guys, but I don't give handjobs to my friends on the Metro. So my general reaction to these overtures is something biting like, "THIS IS NOT AMERICA'S NEXT TOP BEST FRIEND." It's insulting to be told you aren't qualified for the upper echelon of dateable guys; what about me isn't good enough for them? Since I'm dating exclusively white guys, it kinda puts me right back in San Francisco in the mid 1800s, "You're ugly. Go build me a railroad."

Somebody on OKCupid put it perfectly when he said gay guys no longer form relationships via their daily lives. Everyone's on an online website or on Grindr where the pool is seemingly limitless. They make split-second judgements without making the effort to observe any other personal qualities. In doing so, "the perfect guy" is potentially bypassed for a "total babe" who is a total nightmare. This guy is either a genius or as pathetic as I am. Perhaps both.

Ok, so let's say I get why people wouldn't necessarily want to be with me. The larger problem I'm wrestling with is its effect on me. Why does it matter? Why can't I be like the rest of these bumbling idiots, content with going on an endless string of first dates until Mr. Perfect falls right into my lap? How come I can't stick my toe into the pool without falling in and drowning?

The truth is, I notice problems with every guy I date too. Mr. Thursday was slightly effeminite, mildly arrogant, and a Republican. Mr. Friday was selfish, awkward, and had this really consicupous stain on his front tooth. Red head #1 was immature, transient, and looked like a dinosaur. Thor was Icelandic.

The difference between me and all the other men is that I search inwardly for ways I can make a relationship with an otherwise imperfect person, perfect. They, on the other hand, only look for reasons why it won't work and treat each one as a dealbreaker. Maybe it's only fed by desperation, but I feel for people, imperfections et al. White people only care about themselves - finding somebody to satisfy their needs. And so the real question becomes: is it worse to settle with somebody or grow old with nobody? 

I suppose the verbiage is still in me, I just have to dig a little deeper these days.

Reflections, Regrets, Resolutions

I've been thinking a lot about time lately. The holidays provide the perfect backdrop for my temporal affective disorder. The one, two, three combination of Christmas, New Years, and my birthday are relentless. They simultaneously remind me of how quickly the last year has passed and how slowly the time ahead of me seems to move. They emphasize how desperation can stretch for months onto a year and happiness can only last for a day, and in some cases, just a few seconds.

Christmas as a young adult is always letdown. The traditions I remember from my childhood have all been abandoned and family togetherness is contrived- merely an excuse for my parents to get me in a room with them and warn me against dating anything but an Asian girl. My sister somehow escaped this purgatory. It turns out San Francisco is just out of arm's reach. I should move there.

My parents and I went to Great Falls on the Potomac on Christmas day. Standing on the bridge above the gushing rapids, my father felt the need to unload some philosophical musings about how time is like water: it seems never ending but the water you see right now will be gone in a moment and you will never see it again. This was depressing. Then my mom made a comment about how if I ever abandon or disappoint her, she is going to jump into the falls headfirst. "How about if I jump instead," I bargained in my head.

New Years was less of a downer. I went to New York City this year; its frenetic pace and the masses of unfamiliar faces helped me forget about my "DC problems" for a few days. Also, I imagined myself as Michael Fassbender in Shame. That was fun. 

New Years Eve, at around 11pm, I text a guy that I'm seeing to wish him a happy New Year. He texts back, asking me what I'm up to. Turns out we are both in NYC, both in East Village. He doesn't want to meet up. The ball drops. And then I go home.

Birthdays are especially hard. I spend the entire year building up immense expectations that this is the one day out of the year that the people I care about will want to make me happy, that the universe will somehow allow everything to go my way, that I will feel loved. Not so. I worked all day, went to dinner with my mom (apparently after not receiving a text from this cute guy that wanted to buy me dinner- not sure if I believe him when he says this now), went home, watched Modern Family, went to bed. I don't even like Modern Family. The only thing more disappointing about the actual day is the fact that I have to wait a whole year to experience it again.

At the moment, I don't know how to feel about time. In some respects, it moves too quickly and I feel like every part of my life is out of control. In other respects, it moves too slowly and I feel like there's no passion, no excitement, nothing to live for.

In the new year, and my 23rd year of life, I've made the resolution to let go of everything behind me and strive to be a better, happier person. But aside from waking up earlier, eating less meat (interpret this however you want), and investing more in my 401k, I don't exactly have any fabulous ideas that will make me the cute, upbeat, loveable guy that I want to be. More importantly, I wonder if change really is easier to achieve now, when the "new year" concept is just an overblown celebration of the arbitrarily selected Julian calendar. WHAT DO THE ROMANS KNOW ABOUT MY LOVE LIFE? 

Maybe my dad was right. Perhaps true happiness exists only for a moment in time, and when that time passes, it's gone forever.