This is a long, long entry. With a quiz!
Abstract
Nudged AGAIN but this time I was prepared. Too bad my computer wasn’t. Let’s all mourn what we don’t know. I have a brief instance of ADD. I got a new computer! It is awesome, except that the firewire port is effed so it’s getting a new motherboard. It is male? Is it female? Help me decide. My high school girlfriend was in town and it was awesome and I miss her. I am the best tourguide ever. Happy birthday, birthday havers! ANGSTY STUPID SANDWICH BOY STUFF. A lot of it. Seriously. Do everyone a favor and skip it. EXCEPT THE QUIZ TAKE THE QUIZ. Could you be my boyfriend? The upside to all of this is that now I know for certain I’m HIV negative. Woo. Passat commercials suck. Cars in Miami are awesome! MIAMI was awesome! There was a bachelor party and drinking and a beach and a tan line and a gutless convertible and more drinking and DRAMA (because duh) and MORE drinking and OH YEAH THE WEDDING and then MORE drinking and then dancing and then YET MORE drinking and eating and chilling and hanging out and it was all pretty much amazing. So yay to that!! There was also that awful game show Card Sharks, which sucked, but I make up a story about it anyway. And I wrote something for Wikipedia!! It was an 8. No, seriously. And then I get cranky about things because, well I don’t know why but get off my goddamn lawn.
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So, the irony is that I had intended to start this post long before I even got the nudge. I had even started the entry! I was like on page 4! And hadn’t even talked about anything yet because you know how I am about not talking about anything much. But it was all deeply hilarious and endlessly witty and you all would have killed yourself like you all normally do, but then okay I had to go to Miami and then I actually did have to restore my new computer to its original factory settings which wipes the hard drive down to how it was when it came from the factory (and the bitch of it is that it didn’t even accomplish what it was supposed to!) So I totally lost the previous four pages of WITTY BRILLIANCE. THEY WERE WITTY. THEY WERE BRILLIANT. And of course I don’t remember a thing about them except that I name-checked myself, which I couldn’t decide if that was SUPER-AWESOME or SUPER-EGOTISTICAL. Both? But let us all take a minute to weep for the brilliance that was the wittiness of the lost pages.
Right so but then I got a nudge and not from the person I normally (by which I mean, twice) get nudges from, but someone else! And so because Pavlov was a master behaviorist you are all subjected the slightly less witty marginal intelligence of whatever the hell it is that leaks out of my head this time. Aren’t you all becited? I know you are all becited.
OH MY GOD IT IS A GAY NEXT. I love this show. It is awful. Actually in the fifteen seconds it took me to type that I have already gotten over it. Ooh, look! A castle. Now I’m going to watch Discovery Health, AKA the medical freaks channel.
So right. New computer, at home. See, I had this old (like, four years, I think) laptop which was fine for doing things like surfing the internet or updating my iPod or playing games, but only one of these things at a time, and even then not very good at the last thing because it is old and slow and you know. So clearly the solution was to buy a new computer! I decided on a desktop because the only thing I really did with my laptop was sit in bed and check my email, and why bother to pay for the portability if I’m not going to use it? It’s awesome. It has I sweat to total God seven USB ports. I have no idea what I could possibly even use seven USB ports for. And the keyboard is wireless! So I can still sit in my bed and check my email, even though from that distance I can’t actually see what I’m typing. (Let me know if this affects comprehensibility at all.) But so okay yeah yesterday I spent like three hours on the phone with tech support in the form of three people named “William,” “Jessica” and “Richard,” all of whom had thick Indian accents because whenever I would plug in the iPod to the (integrated) firewire port, it would go all BSOD on me. So we tried all the usual fixes and the none of them worked, including the aforementioned total system restore. So, I’m getting a new motherboard! Some time in the next week, I’m told. I should, like, clean my room in preparing for the technician to come over.
My room, by the way, complete pig sty. Anyone who has ever met me ever should be completely astounded by this piece of information.
Anyway I’m still looking for a name for my computer. littlegreenworm suggests that it is a female, although I tend to think of everything I own as male. I dunno. I still love it despite the damage. In a way, it reminds me of my love life! Hahaha more on that later. Maybe.
So as some of you know but most of you don’t my high school girlfriend Kendra was in town like one hundred years ago. We took her to all of the low spots around town, including Cobalt and Freddie’s. She was a trooper and pretended to like it all! I even got “sick” one day and took her into Georgetown to go shopping, although disturbingly for like the second time in a row I went into the Puma store and didn’t walk out with anything. I came close, but. I mean, WHO AM I? I also gave her a tour of campus, which was not one of the better ones I’ve ever given. They’ve done a lot of development since I was there, so there was a lot of “This is new,” and “well, this used to be like this,” and “I have no idea what this is.” I think the highlight was “Huh. Well, this is where the dumpsters used to be.” I’m surprised they haven’t made that a part of the official tours. Former Hoyas: I can’t remember the name of the building that used to hold the Riggs bank, and is now the new performing arts center. It had a silly name. I kind of want to go to an M&B show and wave my walker at the kids and say things like “back in my day” and tell them horror stories about Poulton Hall. But only kind of.
For some reason it is driving me batty now that I can’t remember the name of that building, and Google isn’t helping. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FUTURE.
Anyway it was awesome to have Kendra in town. We don’t see each other very often, even when I’m in town in California because, well, I’m terrible at keeping in touch with people. But when we do it’s like old times. Actually, it’s better than old times, now that we have this whole “I am gay so now the whole relationship makes a lot more sense” thing. (She was very frustrated for sixteen months, apparently, while I was “saving myself for marriage.” Yeah, that’s seriously what I said. But apparently I was/am a very good kisser! Go me.) There’s a certain intimacy that I have with friends from home that I don’t have with my friends here, simply because they didn’t know me way back when. And of course we got to reminisce about old times and I got to get caught up on some of the gossip from the people back at home. So. It was great to have her here and I hope she can come back soon. And I’m certain, this time, that I’ll make time to see her when next I’m in California.
Speaking of awesome things in California: Miss sowilo, who was in California this past weekend (and may still be) celebrated her birthday recently. She is awesome and I love her and happy birthday!
In that same vein, my dear friend darthfox who is TOO FAR AWAY across an ocean, hi, and who is also awesome and whom I also love also had her birthday-well, technically it was a week ago, now, but. Happy Birthday!
Sandwich Boy also had a birthday this weekend. I think this makes him 24. I was thinking I wanted to avoid talking about this whole drama, but all mental roads are presently leading to Sandwich Boy. Whom Kendra met! And was unimpressed by. Which makes now 100% of everyone I know who has ever met him.
THIS ANNOYING PART ALL ABOUT SANDWICH BOY AND I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE. I will understand a billion if you all skip right to the part about the wedding. Or the end.
I don’t even remember where last I had left off with him, although do remember thinking that I had referred to him only mildly, but that everyone was reading between the lines expertly that things were not well. I kind of want to use a different phrase than that but I don’t know what. Anyway, either you are all experts at reading me from context, or else my interlinear writing is not quite so subtle as I might think.
I knew from the start, deep down in my heart, that me and Sandwich Boys were worlds apart. I don’t want to go into anything about him, really, because anything I say about him or could say about the way he’s acted would only be my perception and that’s not fair to him. That he isn’t right for who I am now (and probably ever will be) is apparent even to people who haven’t met him, and that I also wasn’t getting from him what I wanted was obvious even to me. (Although, seriously, how could I not have known?
Poll CAN YOU PASS THIS TEST??
Because Sandwich Boy would have failed this quiz.)
But, so, fine, he’s not the smartest person ever to have walked the Earth. So what. The fact of the matter is that I liked him, for whatever stupid reason that I’m never able to articulate well and which usually ends up leaving us feeling like idiots. But I knew that things were not going as well as they had been, and last month it came to a head. See, I had this doctor’s appointment
(As an aside: I am now officially old, as I know my cholesterol numbers! When I had them tested last August or whenever, the were 231 total and 134 “bad” cholesterol which are both a little high-they should ideally be below 200 and 100, respectively, but they’re not to the point where it’s dangerous yet, it’s just something to keep an eye on-and it had been a while so I also had them do some STD tests [which as it turns out aren’t covered by my insurance! WTF?!?! Because keeping track of one’s sexual health has absolutely no redeeming social value whatsoever. OH WAIT I MEANT PROFIT] and oh, hell, why not also re-do the cholesterol test and if there was anything bad I would hear back in a week, and if there was nothing bad I would hear back in two weeks, and that was three weeks ago so I think I’m good, but holy mother of God on the physical they did way back when the doctor noted that I had some elevated liver enzymes! And I was like, what can cause that? And she said HEPATITIS!!!! Or also maybe there is a medication you are on or sometimes Tylenol can trigger it or maybe you were breathing funny that day or also maybe you had been drinking but also maybe HEPATITIS!!!! But in any event that was three weeks ago so I’m thinking it was probably the drinking thing. I have a follow-up appointment this week and then I will actually hear the full results, but so yeah that is my exciting I went to the doctor aside.)
and it was kind of nerve-wracking because of (see above) and so I got home and called in to work (it was a Thursday) and said I am having a FREAKOUT day!!! (Not literally, but yeah.) And am not coming in. And then I called Sandwich Boy and was all, OMG!!! Freakout. And he was like, well, come over. So I went over. And when I walked in and was all, I need a hug, he was all, um, I am TRYING to sell my CAR. Hello! Anyway, blah blah, long story short, there was one test I didn’t get at the doctor’s office, and that is HIV, because 1) they do it for free at Whitman-Walker, and 2) they do it anonymously at Whitman-Walker, so if it comes back positive you’re not automatically reported to the health board and then you are still able to get health insurance later in life. I don’t know. There was some kind of good reason for this. Oh, also, 3) they give you the results in 20 minutes, rather than in two weeks. I didn’t mention it at the time (although I hinted at it), but some of you may remember White Shirt, whom I dated last summer. He was HIV+. We didn’t do anything crazy or terribly risky, but almost anything’s a slight risk, so it was with no small amount of trepidation that I was facing this test. I asked Sandwich Boy if he would come along, and after initially agreeing he decided that no, he didn’t want to. He’d already done it the week before (mind you, when Kendra was in town) and really if I wanted him there for it then that would have been the time to do it.
gape
He seemed to think this was needy on my part. I told him that if this was the kind of support he was going to give me then I didn’t know what we were doing, he said he didn’t know either. I said I really liked him, but if this is how it was going to be then it’s not what I want. He said let’s go to lunch. I said, I’m not going to go to lunch with you, I’m going home to calm down. And I did. And I took it that we had broken up.
WHY I AM A TOTAL SCHMUCK:
Which hasn’t kept him from calling me. Usually at work, for whatever reason, and every time he does I get a little short of breath and I feel the pit of my stomach fall out. And every time he tells me about things he’s doing without me I am a little disappointed and even, stupidly, a little wounded and twice he’s actually ended up inviting me over and like a complete fucking moron I’ve gone. So obviously I’m still hung up on him. This is why I think it’s usually best, at least for me, to get some separation when I stop seeing someone, so I can get distance and perspective. It doesn’t always work (I still get this way, to some extent, about ex-Jay and biquet [who, God willing, hasn’t read this far, doesn’t search for his name, or if he does won’t actually look for context], too), but it helps me to at least separate the person from the emotion. But for whatever reason this time I can’t seem to force myself to make the final break. I mean, we all know I’m an approval junkie, but this is ridiculous (especially since “toleration of my physical presence” is a pretty meager standard of approval), and so I’m kind of hoping that what actually happens is that I meet someone fabulous who will sweep me off my feet and take me someplace fabulous. Because as we all know, trying to escape from your past is a perfectly stable basis for a lasting relationship.
Is there any emotion I can’t over-intellectualize? I doubt it.
Anyway, so he called today. I’d called to wish him a happy birthday, which I mentioned was yesterday (the 21st, so actually two days ago by the time any of you read this), and he called me back to say thanks. He’d been playing golf. And drinking. And he went to Remington’s (That’s MY BAR!). And each little thing hurt a little more and really the it’s mostly fucking embarrassing. (Does anyone out there find romantic emotions as remotely as embarrassing as I do? I doubt it.)
So anyway. I’m not going to take any advice about what to do about Sandwich Boy because I already know the right thing to do, even if I’m not able to, and I’m not going to accept any sympathy because frankly I don’t deserve it. As much as I want this to be over, I don’t want it to be actually over. What I will accept is the names and numbers of any fabulous single gay boys any of you happen to know.
indicating comments link
Oh, right, and the HIV test came out negative. I should mention that. Also, indydc is a saint for coming with me to the clinic on short notice and for no other reason than because I asked him to.
DONE WITH THE SANDWICH ANGST
Have any of you seen those commercials for the Passat that they’re showing on TV on occasion, where you have this couple driving around town in their white Passat and all around them people are shouting through megaphones things like “It makes me feel better when people notice me” and “I make more money than you” and “I’m compensating for how small my dick is” and blah blah and the voice-over at the end is all, Passat! The lowest ego emissions of any German sedan. Which, okay, 1) I don’t even know that you would want a car that you can’t be a little bit egotistical about (Hi! My car says nothing about me at all! I am basically driving a scoop of vanilla ice cream! Handles like crap but great A/C!), but 2) of the two other cars in the commercial that I can identify, one is Japanese, one is American, and both are coupes. HELLO. Okay then.
Speaking of cars, OMG Miami. Everyone there drives like shit. Seriously. Half of the people are doing 90 in the right lane, but that’s only to avoid the other half, who are doing 40 in the left lane. Following distances are measured in inches, and as far as I can tell the lines on the roads don’t signify anything in particular, except some sort of lofty ideal that no one could ever hope to achieve so fuck it. BUT what they lack in ability they make up for in style. Over the course of the weekend I saw one Aston Martin, one Maserati, five Ferraris, two Lambos, one Rolls, and I actually lost count of the number of Bentleys I saw (it was somewhere north of twelve).I also heard reports of a Panoz Experante, although I did not actually see it myself. I never even bothered trying to count Posrches, and I’m pretty sure that they just give you a new A4 when you move to South Florida. All this, and I was driving a Chrysler Sebring, which looks like a barge, drives like a yacht, and has all the guts of an eviscerated mule. BUT it was a drop-top, so it was worth it. (It seriously must be the official rental car of South Florida, as there were four in our section of the hotel parking lot alone.)
Speaking of Miami, OMG Miami. I went to Miami this weekend! And by weekend, I mean I left Wednesday. My good friend kronemab, whom I’ve known since college, got married on Friday. His wife K has family there, and Miami was a much more appealing option for everyone involved than either DC or Wisconsin (where kronemab’s family is from). And what an awesome choice it was.
I think my superpower is that wherever I go, I bring great weather with me. Miami this May, Chicago two Mays ago, Burlington three Septembers ago-sunny, clear and warm. This power apparently does not appear to work during curling season, however, as Schenectady was pretty crap every time I went this year, and let’s not even talk about the time I got snowed in Maine (well, technically New Hampshire, but it was effectively Maine). I guess the secret of my super power is to go during warm months. Yes, you all should be in awe of my ability to read a calendar. ANYWAY. Miami and environs (we bounced around between Miami proper, Doral, Coconut Grove, and Coral Gables) had awesome weather while I was there, making the drop-top totally worth it. MINOR DRAWBACK: I was always driving, so the part of me that got the most sun was the inside of my elbow. Which is of course right where a short sleeve ends. So I have a really obvious farmer tan. I tend to forget that even though I may be going to someplace for a reason other than soaking up sun, that doesn't mean that the sun doesn't work.
Wednesday night was the bachelor party! It’s the first one I’ve ever been a part of, since in the previous three weddings I’ve been to where I knew the people getting married (I went to one as the date of esti626) I was a friend (or relative) of the bride. (I guess when you know only gay men this tends to be the case) We started out bowling, which was delightfully midwestern. It was fun to watch, since esti626 and I did not actually partake in the bowling. It was way more fun to cat-call. Drinks were had by all, including freebies for esti626 and I for standing still and listening to the pitch of this guy telling us about a new cell service that was launching. HELIO it’s called, and it was sold to us as the first phone that’s 100% compatible with MySpace! Afterwards I asked, this is a selling point? I don’t even have a MySpace page. But apparently this is like a bigger thing in Miami than it is in DC and also MySpace will eat your babies and turn them into murderers and rape victims, if you are to believe the news stories. So watch out! Anyway, it was worth a free drink, so what did I care? After bowling we went to Lincoln Road, which is this pedestrian mall (I mean, an open area for people who are walking, not an uninteresting shopping center) with bars along it and we went to bars! And drank some! And then more bars and more drinking and then a tittie bar! Which was ironically called Madonna and which charged $20 to get in and didn’t even serve alcohol, so what were a bunch (of 9 guys in the party, 7 are) gay guys to do? Answer: Stand around and look uncomfortable.(although the total number of boobies I’ve seen jumped from 7 to 17 that night [none of which are Kendra’s, poor girl]). Which we did before moving on to another bar and then another bar and for some reason in South Florida they don’t believe in internally organizing the spaces of bars in any logical way, so that in a two story building there are no less than 3094850983745908 spaces, all connected by secret passages and hidden stairs and once you go through the door you can never come back again. And then we went and got food and then we went home! The groom was very very drunk oh and also it was 6:00 AM. I’d call that a success.
Aren’t you all glad I’m not going into the level of detail I did with the Chicago posts? I could seriously be here until the END of TIME.
Thursday, after slowly getting together, jgesteve and I met the Rs (see, there are these two guys who are dating and who share the same name, which is easy to remember, even for me) at the beach and we went for a swim! It was magnificent. The water was warm and calm. It was opaque, and it looked like teal satin. The beach was pretty empty, it being a Thursday, but there was this one insanely hot guy there who was probably only just 18, if even that, and who was clearly there with an older gentleman, by which I clearly mean “sugar daddy.” There was also this leathery old woman who did not believe in bikini tops, thus pushing the total number of boobies I’ve seen to 19. This is where it leveled off, which is kind of a disappointment because how cool would it be to have the number of boobs I’ve seen triple in one weekend. At the same time it is hardly worth keeping track of the number of boobies I’ve seen now. Seven boobies is interesting-there’s a story there, it makes you want to know more! Why seven? That’s such a lucky number, seven! Nineteen is just early pubescence. Then lunch, then changing, then going out to Fort Lauderdale, where there are also gay people! Dinner was fun, and then there was a bar where they serve drinks the size of your head for $3, which was fun, and then this other bar! Where thyesc and I actually had an interesting conversation which I’m surprised he remembers to the extent he does and there was dancing and it was awesome until the end where I don’t know what happened but suddenly there was drama and for the love of God everyone just became incredibly stupid. Someone random complimented me on my mouth, though. That was kind of interesting. Anyway. Stupid drama. The less said about that the better.
Friday was the wedding! It was scheduled for 4:30, but the bride’s family being Cuban it didn’t start until 5:00. The service was very nice, actually and very much about family and friends. It did contain a call and response part that I didn’t participate in, though (except for the part where we promised to support and love them, because duh). The bride, of course, looked beautiful. And there were these ADORABLE little ring bearers! Who were SO CUTE!!! And who couldn’t stay in LINE!!! And who walked up the aisle REALLY SLOWLY OMG IT WAS SO ADORABLE!!! But you really just wanted them all to hurry the hell up. And then we went off to the reception, which was a bit away. They handed cigars to us as we walked in. I got mine, got a drink, and then went out to the bathroom to change. I hate hate hate being dressed up, so I didn’t. I was the least dressed person there for a little bit, but more and more people changed (or simply took off their clothing) as the evening progressed so it was no big deal. The toasts were very nice, and it was awesome when kronemab made basically everyone on his side of the wedding party cry. His mom was so cute. There was singing and dancing and laughter and fun had by all. It was a great time. Then at the end the male Hoyas (me, esti626, kronemab, Y and B) broke into the fight song (which esti626 didn’t actually know the middle of, but there you go) which was, in a deeply geeky way, really awesome for me.
Saturday I chilled out while the other people who were staying in the condo place I was went off to South Beach. Eventually I went off to meet with indydc and we went to lunch and then wandered around and then went to dinner and then wandered around and then changed and then picked up some friends, and then went back out to South Beach, where we met up with more friends on Lincoln Road again, so the weekend, for me, ended just as it began. And it was an awesome time and I’m so glad I went and I’m so glad I could be a part of the whole wedding experience and on top of which it was all an incredibly necessary vacation. So huzzah.
And did I mention that my sister got married? That was pretty awesome, too.
They changed the colors of the buttons in my elevator at work. I don’t know if there was maybe some other maintenance, or something? But they did. They’re blueish now, and they were orangeish before. I like them better now. Yay!
You know what was the stupidest TV game show ever? Card Sharks. OMG THERE WERE TWO VERSIONS. I only remember the second version. I can’t for the life of me imagine why they thought this show was good enough for a retread. We watched like half an episode while in Miami and there was this one girl who was like 13 inches high, and they kept paring her against people who were 13 feet tall. Whenever she would get something right she would emit this descending shriek like a small firecracker or a bomb with a very short ballistic arc. She was a communications major at UCLA! But she didn’t want to be a game show host. Later in life she took her thousands in winnings and founded her own PR agency, which now manages Lindsay Lohan and Mandy Moore. Sure, her successful business has fulfilled her and her husband and two (adopted) children love and adore her, but still the most important part of her life was knowing that the number of women per hundred who prefer to eat rice with their low-cal meals taken in leisurely luncheons along Rodeo Drive on sunny Tuesdays in May was higher than the number of women who preferred risotto.
And what the FUCK is with that goddamn GEICO Gecko Mark II with the British accent and the insufferableness? I WANT TO CRUSH YOU LIKE THE BUGS YOU SHOULD BE EATING except then you wouldn’t be eating bugs and they are gross, so.
Oh, Jesus, Rolling Thunder is this weekend. Well, hey, at least I get a holiday. Celebrate.
I edited a Wikipedia entry today. Someone had the date of the second Defenestration of Prague wrong. I am now published! But uncredited. Oh, well.
I feel like this should be two posts-the happy Miami stuff in one and the angsty lame crap in another. But extricating the one post from the other would be impossible, even if I felt motivated to do it. Which I don’t. Feh.
I should re-park my car. Feh.
Feh.
(Brief addenduim while posting: There's now a field for "Current Location"?! Oh, man, how awesomely amd I going to misuse this?!?!?!)
Nudged AGAIN but this time I was prepared. Too bad my computer wasn’t. Let’s all mourn what we don’t know. I have a brief instance of ADD. I got a new computer! It is awesome, except that the firewire port is effed so it’s getting a new motherboard. It is male? Is it female? Help me decide. My high school girlfriend was in town and it was awesome and I miss her. I am the best tourguide ever. Happy birthday, birthday havers! ANGSTY STUPID SANDWICH BOY STUFF. A lot of it. Seriously. Do everyone a favor and skip it. EXCEPT THE QUIZ TAKE THE QUIZ. Could you be my boyfriend? The upside to all of this is that now I know for certain I’m HIV negative. Woo. Passat commercials suck. Cars in Miami are awesome! MIAMI was awesome! There was a bachelor party and drinking and a beach and a tan line and a gutless convertible and more drinking and DRAMA (because duh) and MORE drinking and OH YEAH THE WEDDING and then MORE drinking and then dancing and then YET MORE drinking and eating and chilling and hanging out and it was all pretty much amazing. So yay to that!! There was also that awful game show Card Sharks, which sucked, but I make up a story about it anyway. And I wrote something for Wikipedia!! It was an 8. No, seriously. And then I get cranky about things because, well I don’t know why but get off my goddamn lawn.
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So, the irony is that I had intended to start this post long before I even got the nudge. I had even started the entry! I was like on page 4! And hadn’t even talked about anything yet because you know how I am about not talking about anything much. But it was all deeply hilarious and endlessly witty and you all would have killed yourself like you all normally do, but then okay I had to go to Miami and then I actually did have to restore my new computer to its original factory settings which wipes the hard drive down to how it was when it came from the factory (and the bitch of it is that it didn’t even accomplish what it was supposed to!) So I totally lost the previous four pages of WITTY BRILLIANCE. THEY WERE WITTY. THEY WERE BRILLIANT. And of course I don’t remember a thing about them except that I name-checked myself, which I couldn’t decide if that was SUPER-AWESOME or SUPER-EGOTISTICAL. Both? But let us all take a minute to weep for the brilliance that was the wittiness of the lost pages.
Right so but then I got a nudge and not from the person I normally (by which I mean, twice) get nudges from, but someone else! And so because Pavlov was a master behaviorist you are all subjected the slightly less witty marginal intelligence of whatever the hell it is that leaks out of my head this time. Aren’t you all becited? I know you are all becited.
OH MY GOD IT IS A GAY NEXT. I love this show. It is awful. Actually in the fifteen seconds it took me to type that I have already gotten over it. Ooh, look! A castle. Now I’m going to watch Discovery Health, AKA the medical freaks channel.
So right. New computer, at home. See, I had this old (like, four years, I think) laptop which was fine for doing things like surfing the internet or updating my iPod or playing games, but only one of these things at a time, and even then not very good at the last thing because it is old and slow and you know. So clearly the solution was to buy a new computer! I decided on a desktop because the only thing I really did with my laptop was sit in bed and check my email, and why bother to pay for the portability if I’m not going to use it? It’s awesome. It has I sweat to total God seven USB ports. I have no idea what I could possibly even use seven USB ports for. And the keyboard is wireless! So I can still sit in my bed and check my email, even though from that distance I can’t actually see what I’m typing. (Let me know if this affects comprehensibility at all.) But so okay yeah yesterday I spent like three hours on the phone with tech support in the form of three people named “William,” “Jessica” and “Richard,” all of whom had thick Indian accents because whenever I would plug in the iPod to the (integrated) firewire port, it would go all BSOD on me. So we tried all the usual fixes and the none of them worked, including the aforementioned total system restore. So, I’m getting a new motherboard! Some time in the next week, I’m told. I should, like, clean my room in preparing for the technician to come over.
My room, by the way, complete pig sty. Anyone who has ever met me ever should be completely astounded by this piece of information.
Anyway I’m still looking for a name for my computer. littlegreenworm suggests that it is a female, although I tend to think of everything I own as male. I dunno. I still love it despite the damage. In a way, it reminds me of my love life! Hahaha more on that later. Maybe.
So as some of you know but most of you don’t my high school girlfriend Kendra was in town like one hundred years ago. We took her to all of the low spots around town, including Cobalt and Freddie’s. She was a trooper and pretended to like it all! I even got “sick” one day and took her into Georgetown to go shopping, although disturbingly for like the second time in a row I went into the Puma store and didn’t walk out with anything. I came close, but. I mean, WHO AM I? I also gave her a tour of campus, which was not one of the better ones I’ve ever given. They’ve done a lot of development since I was there, so there was a lot of “This is new,” and “well, this used to be like this,” and “I have no idea what this is.” I think the highlight was “Huh. Well, this is where the dumpsters used to be.” I’m surprised they haven’t made that a part of the official tours. Former Hoyas: I can’t remember the name of the building that used to hold the Riggs bank, and is now the new performing arts center. It had a silly name. I kind of want to go to an M&B show and wave my walker at the kids and say things like “back in my day” and tell them horror stories about Poulton Hall. But only kind of.
For some reason it is driving me batty now that I can’t remember the name of that building, and Google isn’t helping. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FUTURE.
Anyway it was awesome to have Kendra in town. We don’t see each other very often, even when I’m in town in California because, well, I’m terrible at keeping in touch with people. But when we do it’s like old times. Actually, it’s better than old times, now that we have this whole “I am gay so now the whole relationship makes a lot more sense” thing. (She was very frustrated for sixteen months, apparently, while I was “saving myself for marriage.” Yeah, that’s seriously what I said. But apparently I was/am a very good kisser! Go me.) There’s a certain intimacy that I have with friends from home that I don’t have with my friends here, simply because they didn’t know me way back when. And of course we got to reminisce about old times and I got to get caught up on some of the gossip from the people back at home. So. It was great to have her here and I hope she can come back soon. And I’m certain, this time, that I’ll make time to see her when next I’m in California.
Speaking of awesome things in California: Miss sowilo, who was in California this past weekend (and may still be) celebrated her birthday recently. She is awesome and I love her and happy birthday!
In that same vein, my dear friend darthfox who is TOO FAR AWAY across an ocean, hi, and who is also awesome and whom I also love also had her birthday-well, technically it was a week ago, now, but. Happy Birthday!
Sandwich Boy also had a birthday this weekend. I think this makes him 24. I was thinking I wanted to avoid talking about this whole drama, but all mental roads are presently leading to Sandwich Boy. Whom Kendra met! And was unimpressed by. Which makes now 100% of everyone I know who has ever met him.
THIS ANNOYING PART ALL ABOUT SANDWICH BOY AND I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE. I will understand a billion if you all skip right to the part about the wedding. Or the end.
I don’t even remember where last I had left off with him, although do remember thinking that I had referred to him only mildly, but that everyone was reading between the lines expertly that things were not well. I kind of want to use a different phrase than that but I don’t know what. Anyway, either you are all experts at reading me from context, or else my interlinear writing is not quite so subtle as I might think.
I knew from the start, deep down in my heart, that me and Sandwich Boys were worlds apart. I don’t want to go into anything about him, really, because anything I say about him or could say about the way he’s acted would only be my perception and that’s not fair to him. That he isn’t right for who I am now (and probably ever will be) is apparent even to people who haven’t met him, and that I also wasn’t getting from him what I wanted was obvious even to me. (Although, seriously, how could I not have known?
Poll CAN YOU PASS THIS TEST??
Because Sandwich Boy would have failed this quiz.)
But, so, fine, he’s not the smartest person ever to have walked the Earth. So what. The fact of the matter is that I liked him, for whatever stupid reason that I’m never able to articulate well and which usually ends up leaving us feeling like idiots. But I knew that things were not going as well as they had been, and last month it came to a head. See, I had this doctor’s appointment
(As an aside: I am now officially old, as I know my cholesterol numbers! When I had them tested last August or whenever, the were 231 total and 134 “bad” cholesterol which are both a little high-they should ideally be below 200 and 100, respectively, but they’re not to the point where it’s dangerous yet, it’s just something to keep an eye on-and it had been a while so I also had them do some STD tests [which as it turns out aren’t covered by my insurance! WTF?!?! Because keeping track of one’s sexual health has absolutely no redeeming social value whatsoever. OH WAIT I MEANT PROFIT] and oh, hell, why not also re-do the cholesterol test and if there was anything bad I would hear back in a week, and if there was nothing bad I would hear back in two weeks, and that was three weeks ago so I think I’m good, but holy mother of God on the physical they did way back when the doctor noted that I had some elevated liver enzymes! And I was like, what can cause that? And she said HEPATITIS!!!! Or also maybe there is a medication you are on or sometimes Tylenol can trigger it or maybe you were breathing funny that day or also maybe you had been drinking but also maybe HEPATITIS!!!! But in any event that was three weeks ago so I’m thinking it was probably the drinking thing. I have a follow-up appointment this week and then I will actually hear the full results, but so yeah that is my exciting I went to the doctor aside.)
and it was kind of nerve-wracking because of (see above) and so I got home and called in to work (it was a Thursday) and said I am having a FREAKOUT day!!! (Not literally, but yeah.) And am not coming in. And then I called Sandwich Boy and was all, OMG!!! Freakout. And he was like, well, come over. So I went over. And when I walked in and was all, I need a hug, he was all, um, I am TRYING to sell my CAR. Hello! Anyway, blah blah, long story short, there was one test I didn’t get at the doctor’s office, and that is HIV, because 1) they do it for free at Whitman-Walker, and 2) they do it anonymously at Whitman-Walker, so if it comes back positive you’re not automatically reported to the health board and then you are still able to get health insurance later in life. I don’t know. There was some kind of good reason for this. Oh, also, 3) they give you the results in 20 minutes, rather than in two weeks. I didn’t mention it at the time (although I hinted at it), but some of you may remember White Shirt, whom I dated last summer. He was HIV+. We didn’t do anything crazy or terribly risky, but almost anything’s a slight risk, so it was with no small amount of trepidation that I was facing this test. I asked Sandwich Boy if he would come along, and after initially agreeing he decided that no, he didn’t want to. He’d already done it the week before (mind you, when Kendra was in town) and really if I wanted him there for it then that would have been the time to do it.
gape
He seemed to think this was needy on my part. I told him that if this was the kind of support he was going to give me then I didn’t know what we were doing, he said he didn’t know either. I said I really liked him, but if this is how it was going to be then it’s not what I want. He said let’s go to lunch. I said, I’m not going to go to lunch with you, I’m going home to calm down. And I did. And I took it that we had broken up.
WHY I AM A TOTAL SCHMUCK:
Which hasn’t kept him from calling me. Usually at work, for whatever reason, and every time he does I get a little short of breath and I feel the pit of my stomach fall out. And every time he tells me about things he’s doing without me I am a little disappointed and even, stupidly, a little wounded and twice he’s actually ended up inviting me over and like a complete fucking moron I’ve gone. So obviously I’m still hung up on him. This is why I think it’s usually best, at least for me, to get some separation when I stop seeing someone, so I can get distance and perspective. It doesn’t always work (I still get this way, to some extent, about ex-Jay and biquet [who, God willing, hasn’t read this far, doesn’t search for his name, or if he does won’t actually look for context], too), but it helps me to at least separate the person from the emotion. But for whatever reason this time I can’t seem to force myself to make the final break. I mean, we all know I’m an approval junkie, but this is ridiculous (especially since “toleration of my physical presence” is a pretty meager standard of approval), and so I’m kind of hoping that what actually happens is that I meet someone fabulous who will sweep me off my feet and take me someplace fabulous. Because as we all know, trying to escape from your past is a perfectly stable basis for a lasting relationship.
Is there any emotion I can’t over-intellectualize? I doubt it.
Anyway, so he called today. I’d called to wish him a happy birthday, which I mentioned was yesterday (the 21st, so actually two days ago by the time any of you read this), and he called me back to say thanks. He’d been playing golf. And drinking. And he went to Remington’s (That’s MY BAR!). And each little thing hurt a little more and really the it’s mostly fucking embarrassing. (Does anyone out there find romantic emotions as remotely as embarrassing as I do? I doubt it.)
So anyway. I’m not going to take any advice about what to do about Sandwich Boy because I already know the right thing to do, even if I’m not able to, and I’m not going to accept any sympathy because frankly I don’t deserve it. As much as I want this to be over, I don’t want it to be actually over. What I will accept is the names and numbers of any fabulous single gay boys any of you happen to know.
indicating comments link
Oh, right, and the HIV test came out negative. I should mention that. Also, indydc is a saint for coming with me to the clinic on short notice and for no other reason than because I asked him to.
DONE WITH THE SANDWICH ANGST
Have any of you seen those commercials for the Passat that they’re showing on TV on occasion, where you have this couple driving around town in their white Passat and all around them people are shouting through megaphones things like “It makes me feel better when people notice me” and “I make more money than you” and “I’m compensating for how small my dick is” and blah blah and the voice-over at the end is all, Passat! The lowest ego emissions of any German sedan. Which, okay, 1) I don’t even know that you would want a car that you can’t be a little bit egotistical about (Hi! My car says nothing about me at all! I am basically driving a scoop of vanilla ice cream! Handles like crap but great A/C!), but 2) of the two other cars in the commercial that I can identify, one is Japanese, one is American, and both are coupes. HELLO. Okay then.
Speaking of cars, OMG Miami. Everyone there drives like shit. Seriously. Half of the people are doing 90 in the right lane, but that’s only to avoid the other half, who are doing 40 in the left lane. Following distances are measured in inches, and as far as I can tell the lines on the roads don’t signify anything in particular, except some sort of lofty ideal that no one could ever hope to achieve so fuck it. BUT what they lack in ability they make up for in style. Over the course of the weekend I saw one Aston Martin, one Maserati, five Ferraris, two Lambos, one Rolls, and I actually lost count of the number of Bentleys I saw (it was somewhere north of twelve).I also heard reports of a Panoz Experante, although I did not actually see it myself. I never even bothered trying to count Posrches, and I’m pretty sure that they just give you a new A4 when you move to South Florida. All this, and I was driving a Chrysler Sebring, which looks like a barge, drives like a yacht, and has all the guts of an eviscerated mule. BUT it was a drop-top, so it was worth it. (It seriously must be the official rental car of South Florida, as there were four in our section of the hotel parking lot alone.)
Speaking of Miami, OMG Miami. I went to Miami this weekend! And by weekend, I mean I left Wednesday. My good friend kronemab, whom I’ve known since college, got married on Friday. His wife K has family there, and Miami was a much more appealing option for everyone involved than either DC or Wisconsin (where kronemab’s family is from). And what an awesome choice it was.
I think my superpower is that wherever I go, I bring great weather with me. Miami this May, Chicago two Mays ago, Burlington three Septembers ago-sunny, clear and warm. This power apparently does not appear to work during curling season, however, as Schenectady was pretty crap every time I went this year, and let’s not even talk about the time I got snowed in Maine (well, technically New Hampshire, but it was effectively Maine). I guess the secret of my super power is to go during warm months. Yes, you all should be in awe of my ability to read a calendar. ANYWAY. Miami and environs (we bounced around between Miami proper, Doral, Coconut Grove, and Coral Gables) had awesome weather while I was there, making the drop-top totally worth it. MINOR DRAWBACK: I was always driving, so the part of me that got the most sun was the inside of my elbow. Which is of course right where a short sleeve ends. So I have a really obvious farmer tan. I tend to forget that even though I may be going to someplace for a reason other than soaking up sun, that doesn't mean that the sun doesn't work.
Wednesday night was the bachelor party! It’s the first one I’ve ever been a part of, since in the previous three weddings I’ve been to where I knew the people getting married (I went to one as the date of esti626) I was a friend (or relative) of the bride. (I guess when you know only gay men this tends to be the case) We started out bowling, which was delightfully midwestern. It was fun to watch, since esti626 and I did not actually partake in the bowling. It was way more fun to cat-call. Drinks were had by all, including freebies for esti626 and I for standing still and listening to the pitch of this guy telling us about a new cell service that was launching. HELIO it’s called, and it was sold to us as the first phone that’s 100% compatible with MySpace! Afterwards I asked, this is a selling point? I don’t even have a MySpace page. But apparently this is like a bigger thing in Miami than it is in DC and also MySpace will eat your babies and turn them into murderers and rape victims, if you are to believe the news stories. So watch out! Anyway, it was worth a free drink, so what did I care? After bowling we went to Lincoln Road, which is this pedestrian mall (I mean, an open area for people who are walking, not an uninteresting shopping center) with bars along it and we went to bars! And drank some! And then more bars and more drinking and then a tittie bar! Which was ironically called Madonna and which charged $20 to get in and didn’t even serve alcohol, so what were a bunch (of 9 guys in the party, 7 are) gay guys to do? Answer: Stand around and look uncomfortable.(although the total number of boobies I’ve seen jumped from 7 to 17 that night [none of which are Kendra’s, poor girl]). Which we did before moving on to another bar and then another bar and for some reason in South Florida they don’t believe in internally organizing the spaces of bars in any logical way, so that in a two story building there are no less than 3094850983745908 spaces, all connected by secret passages and hidden stairs and once you go through the door you can never come back again. And then we went and got food and then we went home! The groom was very very drunk oh and also it was 6:00 AM. I’d call that a success.
Aren’t you all glad I’m not going into the level of detail I did with the Chicago posts? I could seriously be here until the END of TIME.
Thursday, after slowly getting together, jgesteve and I met the Rs (see, there are these two guys who are dating and who share the same name, which is easy to remember, even for me) at the beach and we went for a swim! It was magnificent. The water was warm and calm. It was opaque, and it looked like teal satin. The beach was pretty empty, it being a Thursday, but there was this one insanely hot guy there who was probably only just 18, if even that, and who was clearly there with an older gentleman, by which I clearly mean “sugar daddy.” There was also this leathery old woman who did not believe in bikini tops, thus pushing the total number of boobies I’ve seen to 19. This is where it leveled off, which is kind of a disappointment because how cool would it be to have the number of boobs I’ve seen triple in one weekend. At the same time it is hardly worth keeping track of the number of boobies I’ve seen now. Seven boobies is interesting-there’s a story there, it makes you want to know more! Why seven? That’s such a lucky number, seven! Nineteen is just early pubescence. Then lunch, then changing, then going out to Fort Lauderdale, where there are also gay people! Dinner was fun, and then there was a bar where they serve drinks the size of your head for $3, which was fun, and then this other bar! Where thyesc and I actually had an interesting conversation which I’m surprised he remembers to the extent he does and there was dancing and it was awesome until the end where I don’t know what happened but suddenly there was drama and for the love of God everyone just became incredibly stupid. Someone random complimented me on my mouth, though. That was kind of interesting. Anyway. Stupid drama. The less said about that the better.
Friday was the wedding! It was scheduled for 4:30, but the bride’s family being Cuban it didn’t start until 5:00. The service was very nice, actually and very much about family and friends. It did contain a call and response part that I didn’t participate in, though (except for the part where we promised to support and love them, because duh). The bride, of course, looked beautiful. And there were these ADORABLE little ring bearers! Who were SO CUTE!!! And who couldn’t stay in LINE!!! And who walked up the aisle REALLY SLOWLY OMG IT WAS SO ADORABLE!!! But you really just wanted them all to hurry the hell up. And then we went off to the reception, which was a bit away. They handed cigars to us as we walked in. I got mine, got a drink, and then went out to the bathroom to change. I hate hate hate being dressed up, so I didn’t. I was the least dressed person there for a little bit, but more and more people changed (or simply took off their clothing) as the evening progressed so it was no big deal. The toasts were very nice, and it was awesome when kronemab made basically everyone on his side of the wedding party cry. His mom was so cute. There was singing and dancing and laughter and fun had by all. It was a great time. Then at the end the male Hoyas (me, esti626, kronemab, Y and B) broke into the fight song (which esti626 didn’t actually know the middle of, but there you go) which was, in a deeply geeky way, really awesome for me.
Saturday I chilled out while the other people who were staying in the condo place I was went off to South Beach. Eventually I went off to meet with indydc and we went to lunch and then wandered around and then went to dinner and then wandered around and then changed and then picked up some friends, and then went back out to South Beach, where we met up with more friends on Lincoln Road again, so the weekend, for me, ended just as it began. And it was an awesome time and I’m so glad I went and I’m so glad I could be a part of the whole wedding experience and on top of which it was all an incredibly necessary vacation. So huzzah.
And did I mention that my sister got married? That was pretty awesome, too.
They changed the colors of the buttons in my elevator at work. I don’t know if there was maybe some other maintenance, or something? But they did. They’re blueish now, and they were orangeish before. I like them better now. Yay!
You know what was the stupidest TV game show ever? Card Sharks. OMG THERE WERE TWO VERSIONS. I only remember the second version. I can’t for the life of me imagine why they thought this show was good enough for a retread. We watched like half an episode while in Miami and there was this one girl who was like 13 inches high, and they kept paring her against people who were 13 feet tall. Whenever she would get something right she would emit this descending shriek like a small firecracker or a bomb with a very short ballistic arc. She was a communications major at UCLA! But she didn’t want to be a game show host. Later in life she took her thousands in winnings and founded her own PR agency, which now manages Lindsay Lohan and Mandy Moore. Sure, her successful business has fulfilled her and her husband and two (adopted) children love and adore her, but still the most important part of her life was knowing that the number of women per hundred who prefer to eat rice with their low-cal meals taken in leisurely luncheons along Rodeo Drive on sunny Tuesdays in May was higher than the number of women who preferred risotto.
And what the FUCK is with that goddamn GEICO Gecko Mark II with the British accent and the insufferableness? I WANT TO CRUSH YOU LIKE THE BUGS YOU SHOULD BE EATING except then you wouldn’t be eating bugs and they are gross, so.
Oh, Jesus, Rolling Thunder is this weekend. Well, hey, at least I get a holiday. Celebrate.
I edited a Wikipedia entry today. Someone had the date of the second Defenestration of Prague wrong. I am now published! But uncredited. Oh, well.
I feel like this should be two posts-the happy Miami stuff in one and the angsty lame crap in another. But extricating the one post from the other would be impossible, even if I felt motivated to do it. Which I don’t. Feh.
I should re-park my car. Feh.
Feh.
(Brief addenduim while posting: There's now a field for "Current Location"?! Oh, man, how awesomely amd I going to misuse this?!?!?!)