My Presence Is A Present, Kiss My Ass

Over the years I've developed this strange sense of humor where I insult myself viciously and then wait nervously for others to laugh. Some of my go-to comments are telling people I got a 600 on the SATs and that I have the upper body strength of Suri Cruise. I do this because, ONE: it makes people more comfortable than being obnoxiously pretentious and TWO: when people's expectations are sufficiently lowered, you can only impress them. This is also probably some deep rooted response to my parents' insulting. I definitely feel the need to put myself down before anybody else has the opportunity to.

This post is going to be different because I feel like I've adequately trashed your views of me so now I am going to impress you with an accurate and honest and true description of myself.

1. I have an incredible body.

I talk shit about my body a lot. I usually do this in real life to fish for comments like, "If you lost 20 pounds you would die," or "No your head definitely does not look like an egg." Last week I was driving in my car, singing along to the Glee version of Total Eclipse of the Heart when the thought hit me: my blog readers have never actually seen me so they really do believe that I am the fattest person in the entire world. Let me tell you that I'm not fat. I am six feet tall and have a 32 inch waist. Ok, I am fat. But I'm not Khloe Kardashian fat. I am Matt Damon in Ocean's 13 fat.This is more than you ever needed to know.

2. I am not faggy.

The only reason I was listening to Glee songs was because I was alone in the car and all the heavy metal / grunge rock radio stations were on commercial breaks.

3. I am athletic.

I play tennis very well. Sometimes my boyfriend, who's never really played before, beats me. But that's because he is tall and has that weird white-person natural athletic ability. But seriously, I am good. No, tennis is not a gay sport.

4. I have a boyfriend.

I had this phase a while back where every single post was about my debilitating loneliness. I wrote once about how I refused to believe that the world could end in 2012 before I ever had a boyfriend. Somebody commented, "If the world can't end before you have a boyfriend, I think we're all safe. Indefinitely."

Well the joke is on all of you because I have a boyfriend AND he is white AND he is masculine AND he is cute AND he has a huge dick AND he doesn't think I am mentally insane. Well, he probably does, but he hasn't brought up any concerns yet.

5. I am smart.

I got a 2330 on my SATs. 

So yeah, my life is perfect and you should absolutely envy me. I should be the example showing everyone that gays can make it in this world. I should have my O.W.N. show. I would call it, "Beautiful Dinosaur" and I would cast Alex Pettyfer as myself because we are basically twins with the same body type.

One of These Days I'll Write Something Inspirational

I used to be scared of revealing too much on here because I was worried that a random internet passerby would recognize the details of my life and discover that I am gay. I realize now that this is retarded. First of all, what are the odds that one of the 70 (I am being generous) out of 7 billion people that read this blog would know me? Unlike my waist: slim. Also, everyone knows I am gay anyway. I've pretty much made a name for myself as the boy who looks at gay porn during class. (See previous post).

The only thing holding me back now is that fact that I don't like the way I sound when I write honestly. Though I've written off the "closeted-frat-jock-blogs" of beautiful white boys for their lack of complexity and the very real possibility that they are just a facade for middle-aged, overweight pedophiles, I cannot deny that that I secretly wish I could write a "closeted-frat-jock-blog" of my own. I don't want people to sympathize over my imperfections. I want somebody to admire and lust after me the way I admire and lust after them. Him.

Though I am stubborn, I am a realist. And since plastic surgery is expensive and my bicep muscles are not materializing, I might as well spill my guts and beg you all afterwords to love me the way I am.

An obligatory post of a typical "closeted-frat-jock-blog" is the one where he comes out to his family and they have a meltdown for 15 minutes and then go back to loving him and showering him with words like "you will always be my son" and "we will love you no matter what." Then one of the parents goes, "You know, I always kind of knew!" Everyone laughs. A sigh of relief is breathed and the next day everyone eats pancakes for breakfast.

Recently I've been encouraged, and at times pushed, to come out by blog readers who have never met me but swear they have a unique insight into my life. I mean, seriously, I'm twenty-two, it is time to step up and live life honestly. If 15 minutes of pain is all it takes for a lifetime of clear conscience, why not?

One of my earliest memories was getting my first B in second grade reading. When I told my mother she got this grave look on her face. She told me how disappointed this made her and how scared she was to tell our father. I pleaded with her to keep it our secret but she insisted that she had to tell him. This logic was lost on me. When my father found out he pulled out a plastic hanger from the closet, beat me with it until it broke and locked me in a dark room.

The next day, a Saturday, I woke up to find a stack of reading comprehension books ranging from second grade to fifth grade levels. I was to get through all the books and become the best reader in my entire class if I ever wanted to see the outside world again. It took me one week, sitting alone in the dining room to get through it. To be fair, I did become the best in the class and I'm pretty sure the existence of this blog is owed to my deep understanding of parallel sentence structure and dangling modifiers.

But the real lesson learned that weekend was that my parents took my failures personally. Anything I did wrong cast doubts on their parenting ability and they couldn't stand to be perceived as incapable parents. They always say that they sacrificed everything so that I could have a better life. To this day, I am not quite clear what "everything" means: an acclaimed career in ballet. Regardless, not succeeding would represent a complete waste on their part. They could not bear the thought of knowing that they not only failed in their own lives but continued to fail through their children. And if I couldn't make them proud through my actions and abilities, they would bend me by force.

So after taking a failure like getting a B in second grade reading and scaling it up to failure like being gay, I would expect my mother to tell me that my disappointments will cause my grandfather to die. My father will  warn me that nobody in the extended family can ever find out about me. My mother will cry and ask me why I want to ruin the family name and how everyone is going to blame her for giving birth to a bad son. My father will tell me that I should never show my face ever again.

As far as I'm concerned, it would be poor planning to come out now. I mean, I'm still on the family cell phone plan. How awful would it be to declare emotional and sexual independence while still being a child in all other respects. Any sense of relief I get would be offset by the fact that I no longer have a place to call home or a family to speak to... and a phone to speak on.

My current plan is to graduate, get a job, get my own phone plan, adopt a dog, accrue a 500 mile distance from my parents and then come out over the phone (Facetime if I'm feeling particularly brave). I will still be able to witness the mushroom cloud from the explosion of their moods, but at least I will be at a safe distance and I will know that my dog still loves me and my physical world will not collapse around me. And if they don't let me come home for Christmas, I won't care because I was planning on visiting London Preppy anyway.

Needless to say, I'm conflicted by all this. I'm worried about scaring depressed gay middle schoolers, but this is my realistic not-jock-frat-white-liberal view. It is foolish and reckless to think that every parent will react to a gay son the same, positive way. My parents will not console and support me like yours did or most likely will. They will shame me and try to change me.  

Come out if you want, but know that sometimes it doesn't get better. Sometimes you come out and your mother cries for the rest of her life. And when you tell your father, he'll put you right back into that dark room.

Baby Jesus Was Wrapped In A Holborn Trench

I've been home on break and my mother has been unloading all the feelings about me she's been holding in since summer. She tells me I've gotten way too fat, I've failed this family by not having a job offer yet, and that I am a 7. Then she shoves a porkchop down my throat and tells me she loves me.

I got a trench coat for Christmas. I tried it on and my parents both agreed that I looked like an overstuffed sausage. I went to J.Crew to exchange it. Conversation is as follows:

Me: I got this trench in medium as a gift but I think it might be too small and I'd like to exchange it.

Worker: Put it on. Let me see.

Me:  :(

Worker: I think it looks fine. I mean, you are right at the cusp.

Me: Of being fat and skinny? :)

Worker: [no response]

Me: Maybe this will be motivation to lose some weight! :)

Worker: [no response]

Me: :(

Worker: You will have to go to Tysons Corner. That's the only place they have a size large [enough for you].

I wander around J. Crew in Tysons Corner looking for a larger casing for my sausage meat when this gorgeous prepster-chic worker comes up to me. He has beautiful up-swept brown hair and skinny jeans and a polka dotted bow-tie. He looks like a cross between Topher Grace and Pleakley from Lilo & Stitch. 

Me: narm narm narm narm narm.

Topher Grace / Pleakley: What kind of trench was it?

Me: narm?

Topher Grace / Pleakley: Was it this one right here? I believe we have a large.

I repossess my composure after stumbling all over my words and revealing that I am too fat for a medium by making jokes about my body.

Topher Grace / Pleakley: How does it fit?

Me: It's weird because I have absolutely no pecs and a big stomach.

Topher Grace / Pleakley: [backs away slowly]

Now he is convinced that my physical deformities are coupled with mental ones.

Topher Grace / Pleakley: Many of my clients prefer the slimmer silhouette and it looks like it fits your shoulders well. It's really only meant as a shell anyway.

Now it feels like he is Rachel Zoe trying to dress Gabourey Sidibe,

I grab the large, telling him that I am more likely to get fatter than get skinnier and stomp off. He doesn't get my pain. He doesn't sympathize. 

I am a small at Lacoste.

A Gaffe To End All Gaffes

I diagnosed myself with ADHD after it was featured in an issue of Time and I crossed off all the symptoms on the checklist provided. I had considered getting a prescription for adderall but after bringing it up with my parents, they told me that only white people needed drugs to do well in school.

I didn't pay attention to the rest of my father's speech but the gist was this: If I couldn't focus in calculus without the aid of amphetamines, I would have to take this personal failure in stride and somehow live with myself for getting a B and shaming the family name.

In college I discovered the miracle of using my laptop during class. This actually did nothing to help me focus but at least I wasn't falling asleep in the middle of a lecture hall with my mouth open.

In fact, using a laptop only worsened my ADHD. I overstimulated my mind with sporcle quizzes and now I am completely dependent on them to stay awake. Without the adrenaline rush from trying to remember all the capitals of Africa in under 6 minutes, I feel impossibly bored and physically stifled, like my brain had become a black hole sucking every powerpoint presentation into a dark dimension and the intense gravitational pull was forcing my eyelids to close.

THE TRUTH IS I could have paid attention in my banking class. The topics are semi-interesting (somewhere between naked male celebs and the Huffington Post) and this is the field where I'm half-heartedly trying to get a job. But I stopped caring about all that after the first day when the cute boy sitting in front of me suddenly started to look like Paul Walker and then I HAD to Google all the films Paul Walker has been in.

Sometimes I will do things on my laptop so I feel like my lack of focus is in the name of productivity. Answer all my emails. Pay all my rent. Clean up ALL THE desktop icons. So last Monday, I was taking pictures from my desktop that I had made for the last post and putting them in my "Super Secret Blog Folder." I was dragging images carefully one at a time to the top of the folder because the pictures at the bottom of the folder are porn. After dragging the last picture, the folder miraculously scrolled down to the bottom, revealing naked pictures of Paul Donahoe and a huge penis next to a bottle of Powerade.

It was only open for a second but I was sitting in the second row (behind Paul Walker) so pretty much everyone in the class (minus Paul Walker) probably saw it. And the issue isn't so much that I am annoyed that everyone in he classroom knows that I am gay, it's the fact that they all know I am obsessed with gay porn. Subtle, I know, yet important.

Two days later I had a presentation in that class about asset-backed securities. Inwardly, I was terrified that somebody would ask me a question at the end like, "Why do you have gay porn on your computer?" or "Are you a top or a bottom?"

They never did.

I'm not going to bring my laptop to class anymore. It would be impossible for me to focus on surfing the internet while thinking about all the people behind me who know about my wrestler/large penis fetish.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is always an emotional apocalypse for me. First, I have to deal with the flurry of media portraying perfect families throwing footballs, roasting perfectly browned turkeys, and sitting around the table being thankful for nothing but each others' company. I don't think I've ever thrown a football with my dad in my entire life. Our turkeys usually come out the color of Snooki's left breast. And my family mostly sits around the Thanksgiving table listing all our resentments silently in our head.

This year, we had company via several people from Taiwan that I barely know. People in Taiwan don't even know what a turkey is, much less Thanksgiving. They only participate because of the prospect of going to the Coach outlets at midnight. One bitch sniffed everything before she put it on her plate. She made it to the top of my silent resentment list this year.



Normal families are on their best behavior when company is around. My family does not understand this concept of keeping bones in the closet, not hanging our dirty laundry, etc., etc. In fact, the ice wine that company brings only serves as an uncorker for the mayhem that ensues.

My adorable mother complains that I have not cooked any Chinese food for our Asian guests so she plots to make a batch of last minute eggrolls. As she is being spattered by hot oil she complains about how she has to do everything around here. She collapses on a pile on the ground, claiming that nobody loves her.



My father, who doesn't really know how to be funny around mixed company without insulting me begins by asking repeatedly, "This is all the food you made despite cooking all day?" Actually, his words were, "Cook day all make only this?" At the dinner table, he interrupts the silence to make sarcastic remarks about how I will never graduate or find a job. Then he gets drunk and starts calling me "Iron Chef" and demands that I list every single ingredient in every dish to our guests.

Then he takes a skeptical look at the food and says that this would have been a good dessert if things like cake did not exist.



I've been spending the day recovering. Here is a breakdown of my hours.



Thanksgiving is also a trying time because it is especially difficult to be a closeted gay son. "No, I don't want to talk about college football." "No, I don't have a girlfriend." "Oh, the untitled 2010 Meryl Streep project? Let's discuss." It's only a matter of time before my quirkiness becomes blatant homosexual tendencies. So I'm not really sure how many more Thanksgivings I will have before the ultimate family meltdown occurs and the only thing I can do to escape is to hide in the cavity of the turkey itself.

Indeed, Thanksgiving always gets me thinking about family. And despite my efforts to lie at every turn and maintain the archetypal perfect son facade, my family is still hanging together by just a thread. So I wonder what would happen if I came out. At which point, I concede that the utter absurdity of Thanksgiving at my family's house is still a little better than Thanksgiving alone.

Are You There Citigroup? It's Me, Margaret.

There's no better time to post when people start having conversations through their comments demanding it. I also have this new rule where I don't post something new until the last post receives at least NINE comments so really this is a perfect storm.

Normally I would be asleep by this hour but I am lying in bed, wide-eyed and worried that my life has not and will continue to not turn out as I expect. I am a senior in the school of business with no job offer. Liken this to being the Last of the Mohicans or a wild, three-headed elephant roaming the streets of Manhattan; if the embarrassment isn't enough it's only a matter of time until I'm shot and killed. I told this to a fat, bald guy who works at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He thought I was pathetic.

There's this girl in my banking class that is pretty and thin but her skin has this weird sheen to it like maybe she rubbed olive oil all over herself or maybe she is made out of wax. She was talking to me today about all the job offers she is entertaining. When I thought she had left the class to go pee, she was actually answering a call to receive another offer. She told me that she has one particular job in mind and plans to move to New York City for it but the $68,000 salary she is being offered sounds too low. I didn't tell her that I'm probably going to move home after school and the $8 an hour wage at Trader Joe's sounds just right.

Obviously, I am miles and miles smarter and more qualified than these people (I got straight A's in the fifth grade). I can't understand why I'm being shunned by every employer like I'm the egg salad in a Ruby Tuesday salad bar. Maybe there is some sort of scarlet letter on my back that I don't know about. Maybe they know I'm gay.

It would be hard to pinpoint the exact mistake that caused the derailment of my hopes and dreams, but I'm going to try anyway. Maybe it was the time I spent three months sunbathing and watching Desperate Housewives reruns instead of getting a summer internship. Maybe it was the time I switched to business because architecture was too hard. Maybe it was the time I switched to architecture because pre-med was too hard. I probably shouldn't have eaten an entire can of sour cream and onion pringles before my office interview with Ernst & Young.

My father, who is deeply invested in preventing me from shaming the family name, would probably say that I lack the confidence to endure the hardships that come along with the things I really want in life. And that this is all my fault because he was the best father in the world. And it's also my fault because I am gay and therefore a complete and utter failure. (This is a hypothetical and absolutely unrealistic world where I have come out to my parents.)

Though I've never really considered that being gay would have an impact on the other areas of my life, I'm beginning to see that it does. Maybe my fear of rejection and the constant swirl of doubt in my mind has prevented me from pushing myself to be something great. Instead, I've settled on just fitting in because deep down, that's all I really want.

He Turned Their Rivers Into Vodka and Hawaiian Punch

I believe in God. Not because I have faith that everything happens for a reason or that there exists a heaven and hell. I believe in God because it is convenient to have somebody to blame when things go wrong in my life. I am aware that this is sacrilegious and I will probably be struck by lightening or herpes. But it's hard to believe that this much shit can be dumped on one person without somebody deriving some sort of enjoyment out of causing it.

Like the time I turned out gay. Or the time my parents hated me (this goes hand in hand with the first one I guess). Or the time I thought I was dying from AIDS. Or the time I had four exams in one day. Or the time Taylor Swift enjoyed continued success. This sounded less melodramatic in my head.

Recently, I've been convinced that God's work has taken the form of drunken bitches. And in a strangely literal turn, he has possessed them to spill shit on me and my things.

First instance, a beer is spilled on my desk in the middle of the night. I find my new ipod floating face down in this alcoholic sea, alone and lifeless. I have no conclusive proof of who did this because I was blacked out on my bed at the moment. The entire situation seems too much like a game of Clue for my liking. Maybe the beer was knocked over by the Russian girl, with her hips, at 3am. Or maybe it was my BF, with his penis, at 4.

Second instance, my laptop is hijacked to provide the music for a party. A skinny girl spills her vodka and hawaiian punch on my keyboard and blames her boyfriend for bumping into her. Bitch please. In the the process of cleaning, irreparable damage is caused to the t, y, g, n, space keys. This girl is not really a close friend so I can't exactly make passive aggressive comments to her face about paying me for the damage. So I resort to making passive aggressive comments behind her back about her speech impediment and english-pea sized head. Actually, there was nothing passive about that.

Third instance, my closest friends keep spilling lies about how much I love to eat cock. I mean, cock is not bad I guess. But honestly, I prefer Chinese food.

And then there's this instance a long time ago where I explicitly told a guy where he should not come. That is all I'm going to say about that.

This is all upsetting because all I can't help but think "why me?" The only way I can get any emotional relief is by blaming God and the fact that He's just not that into me.

This is wrong. I know it. If there really is a God out there, somewhere past the stars and where Mariah Carey's mind now resides, He would not be pleased. And this is yet another unhealthy relationship to work on.