Hey sister, go sister, soul sister...
Yesterday was a rather eventful day. Robbie took the day off and Dustin doesn't feelhis car is reliable enough to feel comfortable driving it to Boardman, so I agreed to drive him to work and pick him up. Now as some of you probably know by you, and as anyone who knows me IRL knows, I am not a navigationally inclined person. Fortunately for me, you basically drive straight down the road, get on the freeway, and follow it straight for a half hour or so, and then take one exit and then take one left, and voila. The AT&T call center, Boardman, Ohio. Which looks like a private school building (maybe that's what it used to be).
After returning home from dropping Dustin off, I had a rather long and boring afternoon and evening of transferring my movie reviews from http://www.angelfire.com/blog/jester_1/ to http://jestersreviews.athost59.com/, the new blog Dustin has set up for me in the hopes that maybe my hundreds of reviews will actually get read by someone.
(Darcy (Robbie's cat, for those readers too infrequent to have my life's cast of characters memorized yet) is sitting on my lap insisting on attention after being ignored by sleeping people for the past few hours, and keeps basically shoving her face into my hand while I'm typing, which makes it a little hard to get this down.)
Robbie and I kept to our own rooms for the most part, and the maintenance man came and installed our new toilets. Robbie got excited because Mr. Fed Ex Man finally came and delivered his anxiously-awaited new phone, and at some point he went to get a case for it.
Things got more interesting, as they usually do, in the evening. First I went and collected Dustin, feeling rather accomplished at not getting lost for once going somewhere unfamiliar, and we found out via a flurry of text messages that Will was getting Greg to bring him over. Now as aforementioned, Will is a desperately emotionally needy individual who sends both Dustin AND myself a steady string of messages saying things like "poke", "hugs you close", etc., and basically tries to treat either or both of us as his pseudo boyfriend. Dustin and I agreed that we were watching a movie in Dustin's room when they came over, to give Will no opportunity to corner and surgically attach himself to either of us.
Now, neither of us wants to hurt Will. Dustin considers he and Greg part of our "family" (also including myself, Robbie, and Alice), and I don't think Will coming on strong to both me and Dustin simultaneously comes so much from being a whore as it does from being emotionally needy and trying to glom onto anyone he thinks can give him a relationship. But I didn't want to get stuck alone with him all night, and I don't think Dustin did either.
Meanwhile, Robbie had a Marine whose name escapes me (Johnny?) over for a few hours, whom he met on Grinder, which for those of you who don't know, is a gay hookup site. Dustin and myself were both a little "wtf is going on here?", considering Robbie's "unofficial lover" Greg was coming over anytime. Apparently Alice asked Robbie about the guy, and Robbie insisted to her that he was just a friend who was new to the gay "scene", and needed someone to talk to. Dustin is skeptical about this, given Robbie's previous problems sticking to one guy at a time and the fact that he met him on Grinder (although Dustin has met people who ended up being platonic friends through Grinder). I don't know, and I also don't know what kind of understanding Robbie and Greg have, and whether they're monogamous. Not really my business anyway, however Robbie runs his romantic/sexual relationships is up to him. In any event, "Johnny" or whatever his name was, went home a while before Greg and Will arrived (coincidentally or not), and I know for a fact all he and Robbie did was sit in Robbie's room and talk. I didn't like the guy, and found something about him kind of off-putting. I'm probably just being thin-skinned, but he had kind of that cocky Marine attitude where he expects everyone to be intimidated by him, which, sorry, I'm not going to be under my own roof where I pay to live.
Anyhoooo....since finding out I'm close to being a gay movie virgin, Dustin has made it his mission to show me as many gay movies as possible. To be clear here, we're not talking about porn movies, we're talking about gay-themed dramas. A few days ago we watched a subtitled German movie called "Sommersturm (Summer Storm)" about the star of a boating team who's in the closet and in love with his straight best friend and finds the confidence to come out when he hangs out with an all-gay team that they're competing against, one of whom he has his first sexual experience with. I liked it okay, although you really notice that Americans and Europeans have different attitudes and different senses of humor, and a little bit gets lost in translation. Romantic that I am (I admit it), I was disappointed that A) his friend really did turn out to be straight, and B) he and the nice curly-haired boy from the other team didn't end up staying together, and just kind of had a little summer fling.
Last night we watched "Get Real", about a British schoolboy who has a lot of random encounters picking up guys from a gay pub out in the woods and fantasizes about being the boyfriend of John Dixon, the handsome, popular, and ostensibly very straight champion athlete of their school. One day, our protagonist Steven passes a "where should we hook up?" kind of note back and forth with an unseen guy in the pub's restroom stalls, and when they finally meet face-to-face, guess who it is? None other than Golden Boy John Dixon. At first John is scared of being found out by someone, but later he and Steven end up having an intimate conversation where John opens up about how he's been confused since he had a sexual encounter with another man he met at competition last year, and they end up sleeping together. After that, they're secret lovers who snatch time together in the woods, or when their parents are away. Steven's parents realize he's hiding something, although Mom is quite a bit more perceptive than homophobic Dad, who thinks Steven's on drugs. Meanwhile, there is an article Steven wrote about how frustrating it is to grow up in a small town that you don't feel offers you anything that he thinks is "rubbish" and throws away, but Dad finds it and turns it in to the contest without his knowledge, where it wins an award. Steven becomes the confidant of a girl named Jessica with an abusive boyfriend and unintentionally gets her falling in love with him. He ends up telling her he's gay, and she in turn becomes one of his confidants. At first, John is so paranoid about anyone knowing he's gay that he avoids even being seen to associate as friends with Steven, but when Steven calls him on it, he starts publicly acknowledging him as his "friend", and even breaks up with the girl he'd been dating to keep up appearances and tells Steven he loves him. Steven gets the boldness to write a new article titled "Get Real", about what it's like to be a gay kid who's scared of coming out and not being accepted, and submits it anonymously, but it gets censored by the homophobic headmaster. But poor closeted John gets wind of this, correctly deduces that Steven wrote it, and gets upset that since everyone now knows they're friends, people would take the next step and figure out the whole story if Steven came out of the closet, especially since Jessica sees them arguing and correctly deduces that John is Steven's boyfriend (if she makes the right guess, how many other people will?).
It all comes to a head when everyone gathers for an awards ceremony that Steven will be included in. Mom gets Dad alone in the car to tell him their son is gay and he needs their support. John and Steven get in an emotional argument about staying in the closet versus coming out, with Steven angrily calling John out on being ashamed of their relationship, and after John walks out of the room, John's homophobic teammates walk in on Steven vindictively ripping John's track shirt. They slam him up against the locker, but John comes back in and tells them to wait outside. They hear sounds of Steven being beat up, and we then see that John is only punching his gym bag to make them think he's beating up Steven. They get playful, and wrestle around, but when his teammates step back in and catch them an inch away from kissing, John panics and kicks Steven to the ground for real to cover his own ass.
Bruised Steven is late to the ceremony, but gets onstage to accept his award for the article he wrote earlier, but while onstage he also publicly takes credit for the "Get Real" article, and comes out as gay. Jessica stands and claps, and a lot of other people join in, including his mother, and Dad seems to be grudgingly coming to terms with it. Afterwards, Steven has a moment alone with John, who says that after he hit him, all he wanted to do was hold him and make it better, and that he knows he's never loved anyone so much, but they end up parting ways. Steven drives off with his fruit fly blaring "Freedom" on the radio, symbolizing Steven's new feeling of liberation as an openly gay man.
Given how much more I wrote about it, it's pretty obvious I found "Get Real" more thought-provoking, although I at least moderately enjoyed both it and "Sommersturm". I liked that, while there were indications throughout "Get Real" that John would put himself, his image, and his fear of being outed ahead of Steven if push came to shove, the movie also brought across a little of what a difficult position he felt he was in. It's harder for a star athlete, held up as an icon of manly virtue by his peers, to risk all that by coming out of the closet, than for someone who's already a relative outcast like Steven. At the same time, I think in a way at the end Steven's freedom is not only freedom from his own fear of being "out", but from his relationship with John that would probably always be compromised by John's unwillingness to be open. John seems like the kind of man who would end up in a sham marriage with a wife and kids, and if Steven was still around by then, he'd only be John's "thing on the side".
Again, the romantic in me got frustrated by Dustin's choice of movies, as I like to see the couples end up together, and we watched two movies in a row where the boys part in the end, and Dustin said we'd watch one with a happy ending next time.
Anyhoo, after totally going off track with my long synopsis of "Get Real", back to last night...Will and Greg came in at the tail end of "Get Real", and then Robbie and Greg wanted to watch Moulin Rouge, and we all ended up watching it in Dustin's room, with me, Dustin, Alice, Greg, Will, and Robbie all piled onto Dustin's bed. Will didn't try to cuddle anyone, which was a relief. I noticed Robbie, who is usually very private being affectionate with a significant other, laying back in Greg's arms for a lot of the movie, until they ended up getting up and going to Robbie's room for "chips" (and considering they never came back, I imagine to have sex). I admit I'd never watched Moulin Rouge all the way from beginning to end before (yes, I know this makes me a terrible gay man), but boy is it one big giant gay acid trip of a movie. It's a hot mess, to be sure, but there's something about its trippy, colorful, garish wildness that attracts me (probably the gay in me). Jim Broadbent and Richard Roxburgh warbling "Like a Virgin" while a bunch of snappily-dressed waiters danced in the background was both kind of creepy, and one of the gayest campiest movie scenes I have ever seen in my life. I thought it was kind of dumb for a while, in a "wtf am I watching" kind of way, but as it went on, it got a little more serious, and I got more into it. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman are both actually very good, and Jim Broadbent really throws himself into his role too. Not for the first or the last time, John Leguizamo is really, really annoying.
The tagline is also a really good line: "The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return".
Very, very gay boy that he is, Will sniffled during Nicole's death (which admittedly is a very sad scene, especially with Ewan bawling his eyes out) but then clapped like a little kid at the end credits, so I guess he liked it (the person who was the most fully conscious and alert by the end, which was about 4 in the morning). Dustin, Mr. Hypoglycemic, was slipping into a diabetic coma (only part hyperbole), so we and Will piled into my Jeep and drove the approximate minute to Circle K, where he got a soda and a couple hot dogs. Good thing Circle K is both open 24 hours and you could walk there if you really had to.
I was scheduled to work 2-6 utilities today, but now I work 4-10 electronics. I picked up two hours, but I don't really like covering electronics like they have me do fairly often, because I don't feel like I know what I'm talking about half the time there.
But I will survive. I will survive. As long as i know how to love, I know I will stay alive
I've got all my life to live. I've got all my love to give, and I'll survive. I will survive.
oh, ohhhhhhh!
Yep. Anyone out there still think I'm not a tooty-fruity?