Love: A Personal History

You grow up thinking it's perfectly normal that your parents love each other and hate each other at the same time. So it's also normal that they love you and hate you. You believe that every kiss should be paired with a slap and every "I Love You" is waiting for a retraction.

And then you are watching Step By Step and Full House and learn that real, anglo-saxon, American love is unconditional. You wonder why the people that say they love you can also hate you and ultimately hurt you. [It is because they are Asian.] So you force yourself to stop forgiving them for the way they make you feel and you decide to resent them instead. And when they say, "I love you," you stop believing. And where you used to respond, "I love you too," you don't say anything anymore.

But as you grow older you realize that this is not their fault. They cannot love you because they cannot understand you. They will continue to see what they want to see: the archetypal version of a son that will one day marry an Asian girl who will bear them three grandsons. And they will love that archetype with all of their hearts and they will love the real you the only way they know how. And though you still can't bring yourself to say you love them, you can appreciate their gestures.

And when you are all grown you think you don't need your parents' love. You know what real love is and you can find it in the form of a boyfriend or a naked French rugby player or through the unrequited adoration of Kim Yu-Na.

But the people you love can never love you back in the idealized manner you've always imagined. And when you are with your boy, all the little things bother you because they seem to tell you that, just like your parents, he loves you and he hates you.

And though you've convinced yourself you would be capable of loving somebody that truly understood you, you find that you are not so different from your parents. Like them, you are incapable of love. Because you don't know how to feel loved without feeling hurt.

Panda Hat(er)

To commemorate Tai Shan's last day in DC, I wear my cute fuzzy panda hat to work. It was a doubly good day to wear it because it was very cold outside and my cute fuzzy panda hat keeps my head and ears quite warm.

The receptionist sees my hat and smiles.
______, the bitch, says, "I like your hat."
My supervisor sees it and laughs for the first time since 2003.
Visitor A says, "Can I try it on?!"

The day is a success. Not only am I paying tribute to Tai Shan, I have made countless people on the metro and at work smile. I have brought joy to the world.

The next day I receive a call from my supervisor, who is working remotely.

Her: Did anybody talk to you about your hat?
Me: _____ said it was cute.
Her: Oh, I probably shoudn't say anything then.

She continues.

Her: Somebody came to me saying the hat was not appropriate for the workplace and it conflicts with the image we are trying to portray.
Me: Who said this.
Her: I cannot tell you who said it.
Me: It was ____ from marketing wasn't it.
Her: I cannot tell you who said it.
Me: My life is over.
Her: I would not worry about this.
Me: If you need to reach me, I will have run myself through the paper shredder.

I was not trying to make a statement. All I wanted to do was pay homage to Tai Shan and wear something that was cute and fuzzy and warm. And now ____ from marketing has turned me into this frivolous sociopath trying to dismantle the company's meticulously polished brand image. Even worse, he has turned my cute fuzzy panda hat into a symbol of anarchy.

And before you wag your finger at me, take a moment to consider that I am not the one taking two hour lunch breaks to go to Georgetown Cupcake and renting a zipcar with the company card to take day trips to Philadelphia and New York City. But I am sorry. I am sorry for wanting to have fun and for being cute.

I never meant for my cute fuzzy panda hat to become an emblem of sweeping social change, but my cute fuzzy panda hat and I will show the world that cute fuzzy panda hats and professionalism belong side by side. When I show up next week, cute fuzzy panda hat and all, I will show the world that my cute fuzzy panda hat is the embodiment of corporate commitment to quality and integrity.

And ____ from marketing is just jealous that he isn't as cute as I am, anyway.

The Gay Couple

The gay relationship is a mysterious beast. Unlike the straight relationship, gay relatioships can't annouce themselves to the world, show their affection in public, or end in marriage. Well, maybe we can in West Hollywood [not the marriage thing] and most parts of Canada. But if you live anywhere else you're probably going to get clubbed to death like a poor baby seal.

With both of us still in the closet, and the background to our bad romance being a somewhat conservative city, it's difficult for me and Tall Blonde Alcoholic to do coupley things. Whenever we're out together I have this strange sense of unease. To calm my paranoia, we walk with our backs to each other so we have a 360 degree view of approaching lynch mobs. It's more romantic than it sounds.

When we go to the movies, we watch things like 2012 in its tenth week of release or Nine in its first week of release to make sure nobody is in the theater. When we go to dinner together we're not exactly snuggling it up in the booth and spoon feeding each other. And when we're in a big group, I tend to overcompensate by staying as far away from him as possible. Usually this is easy, though sometimes he mistakes this to mean I am mad at him. But this can prove difficult when he gets drunk and takes off his shirt and charges at me.

It's kind of hard carrying on like this. I feel like I have an obligation to pretend he's not important to me because I don't want to accidentally out him. I guess he feels the same way about me. But playing things cool all the time can really wear a couple down. At some point this brilliant deception is going to become a reality. Are we fooling the world or just fooling ourselves?


Our two month anniversary is in EIGHT days and I'm so excited!

Well, That Was Fun

It's always hard to know beforehand which posts are going to get a lot of attention and which ones aren't. Sometimes I poor my icy heart out into a post and the only person that comments is mother disguised as a fat middle-aged man disguised as a cute teenage boy.

I didn't expect people to get so excited about my little study on Jason Carwin. It's kind of thrilling. Apparently, the only thing I've learned from all of this is that if I want my blog to be any sort of success, I should just attack teenagers until they are all floating, lifeless in the blogging sea.

I try not to care about what people say in the comments. When people tell me I'm a good writer, I smile to myself and blush a little. But I don't really think of myself that way and I haven't exactly gotten any Pulitzers in the mail so that's that. When people disagree with me, I tend to think they've got their little minds backwards. But everyone has their opinion and I can tolerate that as much as I can tolerate heterosexuals. So that's that.

But when people are mean, I get kind of taken aback. Well, clearly I've done myself in because I'm the one that dedicated an entire post to writing off a poor innocent boy. But at least I had the decency to channel my aggression onto my own blog. For example, don't comment on my post calling me a seething, jealous bitch and then ask me how things are going with my boyfriend. Things are going fine, by the way.

I didn't think Jason was going to read the post. Some fucker probably tipped him off. Probably that bitch, Anon #5. But he left a nice comment which I respect as much as I can respect heterosexuals. So I suppose in this exchange he is the bigger man and the better person. Who knows, maybe even smarter fag (well, depending on who you ask).

I don't really regret what I've said but I regret where I'm coming from. I don't want anybody to be happy until I've found happiness for myself. I want to go to Yale and I want to Julie Powell-esque blog success and I want to attend the Golden Globes with Neil Patrick Harris. When I encounter people that have these things, I try to rationalize why I deserve it more. I need to get over that.

All things considered, I certainly don't think Jason should take my post to heart. As much as I have the right to be a bitch, he has the right to be happy about his acceptance. If I'd gotten in somewhere great, I probably would've jumped for joy and told Stavros Niarchos to suck my dick. And though I am hard-pressed to say so, in Jason's own way, he deserves it. Meanwhile, I still grasp desperately to the hope that one day I will achieve my own sort of success and acceptance. Because I think I deserve it too.

--edit--

It really bothers me that somebody with absolutely no readers and no comments has called my blog under-read. How would he even know? My sitemeter is password protected...

This person thinks he's Mother Willow because he's too mature to care about money and where he goes to school and "any of that shit." Please. That is just so naive. Hand me that $2 trashcan from Ikea so I can vomit in it.

Your parents paid for your private school (seriously doubt they were snipping school vouchers from the local newspaper) and probably paid for your college and will probably continue giving you whatever you want for the rest of your life no matter what you do / how unsuccessful your blog is.

And though this person finds me "absolutely disgusting," I have a feeling he will continue reading my blog and will probably have some sort of response in the form of a short witty comment. But I really hope he doesn't. This is the last thing I want to say about all of this.

But if he decides to write a follow up on his own blog about how horrible and tragic I am, I couldn't care less. Because if a tree falls and nobody is there to hear it, then your blog is a piece of shit.

Carwin's Theory

I don't usually read new blogs because people are idiots and reading their stupid thoughts and stupid prose makes me all sweaty and upset.

I recently started reading a blog by an 18-something: Carwin's Closet.

I was intrigued by the post "Hope-o-Meter Plummets," which discusses the unfairness of college admissions and his general mistrust of the process. Nevermind the title, this post made me feel good on the inside for once in my life because I was fucked by college admissions and will jump on any wagon that points out its flaws. I've had to watch people miles and miles dumber than me get into my dream schools while I fester in my current situation. It's turned me into one of those bitter, bitchy fags and not one of those happy, fun fags.

But his next post is, "YALE CLASS OF 2014."

Which, I feel like, sends a mixed message. There is something bothersome about a guy who only complains about a system until he gets what he wants out of it. I'm still festering here. What happened to THE CAUSE?

I tried to make myself feel better and I assumed he was from Montana or Winnipeg or some other dumb locale where getting into a good college isn't that difficult. I've always hated the fact that living in DC meant I had to compete with the kids of stupid politicians and the bitches at NIH and NIST. Also, it was a mistake to go to a magnet school because everyone there was like, obsessed with being smart and it was annoying. But it turns out he's from SoCal, where there are a serious number of Asians.

I suppose his real advantage was going to a private school and being a self-proclaimed privileged kid. I feel better and worse at the same time. Maybe this proves that I am smarter than him but it also means that regardless, he's going to get more out of life than I will. I don't blame him. I'm just jealous. Side note: I thought it was somewhat comical that he contended he had "seen the real world" by living in Switzerland for four months and India for two. The Swiss aren't exactly rife with poverty and I have my doubts he was slumming it in the Bombay ghetto.

The sad fact is that it's not really survival of the fittest in this world. He got a leg up because of his money, and working hard matters less for him than it does for the rest of us [me]. A lot of us [me] worked just as hard, if not harder than he did but we [I] got nothing out of it because nobody really cares about the son of two poor immigrants. [Read: his best doesn't have to be as good as my best.] Well it's sad for me. I'm sure he is still clicking his heels with joy right now. But the real point here is that the system is broken, even if one privileged kid from SoCal gets some good news.

Insult to injury, I'm not on is blog roll and he doesn't even know who I am / how great I am. I feel like Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, "So you don't read Runway... and before today you've never heard of me..."

I'm frustrated that somebody I feel better than is getting the things I couldn't. His blog isn't particularly insightful or well written. But then again, I'm the one who quotes The Devil Wears Prada and listens to Bad Romance on repeat for two months. I mean, I'm pretty sure that still makes me better than him. But he does get more comments and has more followers than I do...

I don't actually think I'm better than him - smarter maybe, but not better. In the end, it's just disheartening to have all these problems, and have no money, AND be gay, AND be ugly, AND be fat. And this is probably the real reason why it's hard for me to read other people's blogs and listen to their problems. Because compared to me, these kids have it easy.

It Is My Birthday.

I am one year older.

Too old, if you ask me.

Architect of My Destruction

As the semester draws to a close and I see all the studio kids leave the architecture building, I am disgusted by their camaraderie and sense of accomplishment. Mostly because I used to be one of them, wide-eyed and hopeful for my future in the hallowed profession. But sadly, I left a year into the program and just one month into studio. And naturally, I am bitter now.

I miss studio. The sense of closeness among the fifty or so students. (Well, everyone else was close. I was somewhat of a leper). I miss falling asleep on my studio desk, wrapping myself in sheets upon sheets of trace paper, and scowling at anybody who dared to come near me. I miss the lofty arrogance I used to possess over my friends in other majors because I was studying to create something tangible and beautiful and they were studying rat brains or something. I miss my studio critic, who was sweet and looked a little bit like Taylor Swift.

But more than I miss what was, I miss what could have been. Right before I left, Taylor Swift said to me, "I don't want you to leave something I think you would be really good at." It kind of pissed me off that she said that instead of, "You are out, auf wiedersehen," because now I can't help but imagine what would have been if I stayed. Would I have survived the first semester and done well for myself? Would I have become the next great architect? Perhaps design a Real World house or bathrooms for Oprah.

At the time that I left, I found the studio environment to be somewhat toxic. I thought that everyone was strange, the girls in my section were all lesbians in club rugby, and it was ridiculous that people enjoyed staying in the building overnight and skipping meals just to get their projects done. Maybe through time I would've seen my peers as interesting and eclectic. And maybe through time I would have recognized studio as a semester long slumber party / extremely effective diet. And maybe, just maybe, after a long time I would grow to like lesbians. But I didn't feel like I had that time, so I left.

But mostly, it was about the work, and I can't help but wonder if I left just because things got hard. I am now majoring in finance and accounting, which is easy. While I find it somewhat intellectually stimulating and I am definitely having more fun in college, I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything worthwhile. I feel soulless, and the spreadsheets don't help. At the same time, maybe the only reason I want to go back is to have that close group of friends, feel better than everyone else, and be around gay and trendy people all the time. All bad reasons.

I guess I'm just at a place where I still can't tell if I've made the right decision. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten involved with architecture in the first place. Now I am stuck with all this knowledge about line weights, circulation, and rococo, but not enough experience for it to be useful in any way except for having a little more insight than others when watching HGTV.

And I suppose this all goes back to the common theme in my life of not knowing who I am or what I want to be. Other than not gay and not jobless.