But... he's gay?!

As I mentioned before, I do 'contracting-like' work for a regional movie theatre company in my off-time. We have been doing some work for one of the theatres, so I've spent a lot of time there over the last two weeks. For some reason this theatre is like a magnet for really cute, probably gay, high school and college guys. There is this 'star employee' there who is a senior in high school, who we will call 'Derek'. Derek is super hot-- he is a runner, tan, short buzzed hair, smiles all the time, and is totally cute.



(This pic is obviously not him, but this is how cute and built he is. Just think this with short brown buzzed hair)

Derek is very effeminate to me. Well... not like flamboyantly gay effeminate... more like suppressed-high-schooler-in-a-conservative-suburb effeminate. I mentioned something to the district manager just joking around- (he and I are really close friends) telling him that I suspect he bats for my team. He said that he thought he was dating one of the girls at the theatre, but that they wouldn't 'make it official'. I said: "but....he's gay!?" and we argued about how effeminate mannerisms don't mean you are gay.

My argument was that I believe effeminate mannerisms are an indicator of homosexuality. I know there is a correlation from some stats I saw a few years ago, and this really shouldn't be surprising. It makes sense: the physiological properties that encourage homosexuality also encourage effeminate mannerisms-- i.e. they are both emergent properties of our physiology.

I, personally, am not effeminate at all....well I don't think so, but maybe a little. I know that when I hear recordings of my voice, I always think I sound gayer than I expect. But I could just be hyper-sensitive to it. I actually wish I were more effeminate, then maybe it would telegraph my 'interests' better :-)

None the less-- I'm looking forward to the day when 'Derek' comes back from his first year of college with a boyfriend named Jefferey or something. I can high-five myself, and hope that he has some strange interest in boring, out of shape, 20-something computer nerds.... hey there's got to be a niche out there somewhere, right? :-)

Oh, and I love you all.

P.S. I took Friday off from my real job, and decided I wasn't going to check my email. Well, I looked Saturday night, and realized that my whole team has to be in Dallas this week, and that I had been nominated to drive two of our servers there (8 hour drive). FML.

Much Love,
Steve

Lesbians, oh my

I'm not going to talk about how crappy my birthday was--literally the highlight was Tyler's happy birthday wish and the hot guy on his blog. I'm 100% serious-- the rest of the day I worked, or was at the hospital. I picked up Chili's on the way home and watched my roommate play halo for a while...that was it. Pretty terrible. But ENOUGH ALREADY...jeez

So my mom and one of her friends told me that one of my childhood friends growing up (a girl) told her mom to stop looking for boyfriends for her, because she was a lesbian. I had heard this from her brother before, but it was always a 'bicurious' label. I guess she decided to come out completely. And good for her. What is frustrating is my mom and her friend talked about how 'weird' it was and they were frustrated 'how' she said it. They expected her to say 'I think I am gay'. Apparently, her certainty about her sexuality was strange to them.

I didn't say anything, because my mom in a hospital bed is not the place to pick a fight, but WTF!! I just read a post from James talking about an awkward conversation that his parents had with him, but that seemed to indicate that they were encouraging him to be open with them. This must be nice, because regardless of what my mom thinks (she must suspect something, she's asked me before), she has to be aware of the fact that these offhand remarks are 'closing' the door to our communication. Very frustrating!!



Oh, and Tyler asked about Brent Corrigan: in 2006, I went to Las Vegas for the first time with my parents. We happened to go on the weekend of the gayVN awards. This was right after the whole 'age' controversy erupted for Brent. So he was there trying to kind of put himself out there. I had been reading his blog, because I thought he was hot and interesting...in fact he's the first blog I ever followed. Anyways I was walking to the bathroom in the Venetian casino, and I saw him walking down the aisle. I just looked shocked, and he could tell I recognized him. He said 'whats up', and I just said I was a big fan. He hugged me and said that was sweet. He was very nice, and very cute. He seemed shorter than I expected. I, being a person with low self-esteem, have a hard time getting words out when I am nervous about being around people. So I'm sure I looked very awkward, but he was really nice, and I definitely appreciate the hug! :-) So that was that... I haven't been following his blog for the last year or so, but you can see many old comments from 'MemphisSteve' - that's me :-)

Much Love,
Steve

Happy Birthday to... oh fuck it, we'll do it next year

So as I mentioned in the last post, Sunday is my birthday, and I was looking forward to a nice Saturday evening out, even though I had to travel for business. This week has been a non-stop shit-fest of the worst kind. I'll just give you a run down:

Monday: day was 'ok', but I had to yell at dumb people at work. This is normal, so no worries there. I was planning on taking my mom out to a nice dinner to celebrate her birthday, but she wasn't feeling well so we went to 'lonestar steakhose' because its close by. Lonestar steakhouse a typical American southern chain pseduo-steak house. This is a place that sells steaks like a steak house but they are mass produced and probably frozen. It's tacky, trying to be fancy. Any place that has giant framed belt buckles with cowboy hats on the walls-- is not the kind of place for me. It's like people saying 'olive garden' is their favorite Italian restaurant. I know this is a bit elitist and snobbish, but I really appreciate good chefs, and want to eat real food prepared for me, not steamed in a pre-frozen bag...

Tuesday: my mom called at 6AM crying because she was in tremendous pain. She hadn't used the bathroom properly for days, but that's not really abnormal for her anyways. I went over there and we went to the Emergency Room. A bowel obstruction is nothing to play with-- it can turn serious quickly. The ER was crazy, I witnessed a few people 'coding' a.k.a code blue, meaning they need recussitation. Its scary, because I know that my dad was one of those people when he was airlifted. So the whole ER scene makes me uncomfortable and angry.

One of the nurses showed me her 'code card'- a code pink is an infant abduction, and a code brown is a bomb threat! I asked her: does this happen enough to warrant having specific codes?

They sent my mom home with laxatives...bad move

Wed: her pain went from bad to worse, she couldn't sleep and she said it was worse than childbirth. However, the GI doctor couldn't see her until the NEXT day at 3PM. It was unnacceptable, but he said it was probably just constipation, and that the ER couldn't do anything, but if it got really bad to of course go to the ER. (this was the GI nurse, not the doctor saying this).

Thurs: my mom is now almost unable to walk she is in so much pain, and in retrospect we should've just gone to the ER immediately. But we went to the Drs office at 2PM, and waited for two hours with 30 people that were just there for random, non critical ailments. I was frustrated and pissed that they wouldn't give priority to the crying woman who is screaming in pain. Fucking insane.

GI doctor felt around and noticed that there was pain when he released pressure, and said 'you need to get to the ER immediately. You are having an emergency right now.' I about punched those fucking nurses for making her wait for two hours for this, but we rushed back to the ER. They were concerned that the colon had perforated and become infected. This means that your feces escapes the colon wall and infects your body. This can turn you septic very quickly, and that is very serious. It can happen quickly too, which is even more scary.

Thankfully, it is not perforated, and they admitted her (didn't get a room until about 2am of course) to treat the infection with antibiotics. Today, things started working again, but they haven't gotten rid of the infection completely. She will be in until next Tuesday it looks like... the whole time I'm just thinking- there is no fucking way that I am going to lose two parents before I'm 30.

So I need to reschedule my birthday from Sunday to some other time. Hurray and happy birthday to me.

I've decided I'm not getting older than 25, and I suggest everyone else do the same. So this birthday is NOT my 26th birthday. I am in fact turning...25!

I hope everyone else is having a better time than I.

Much Love,
Steve

Birthday Wishes

Next Sunday is my birthday, and I'm not really excited about it. I will be 26 years old, which seems ancient :-( I don't know what I want to do on my birthday. I really want to go to the club, but I know my other gay friends don't want to go. I don't want to 'drag them along' (wow, thats an unintended pun). A year ago, everyone enjoyed going to the club...now I'm the only one left that wants to go, which sucks. Soooo..... any of you all want to go to the club with me on my birthday? :-)

I am making a resolution to myself to 'fix me' this year. I cannot go another year where I feel like I am letting myself down. I know I am fortunate that I have been given opportunities to do well in school and work, and I feel like I am 'doing well' in those aspects of my life. But my personal life, physical fitness, etc. I know is lacking. I don't want to wake up 40 years old having been complacent all those years and full of regret. I don't want to waste the next 6 years of my personal life as I feel I wasted the last six. I don't want to feel so uncomfortable in my skin that I feel I am not worthy of someone else. I recognize what and how to fix those thing I hate, and I have the means and opportunity to accomplish my goals; I just haven't. This *must* change.

That's my 'call to arms' to myself. Hopefully, it will work. Wish me luck.

Much Love,
Steve

I don't think OkCupid gets me

After seeing the cool quizzes and tools over at OkCupid, I had to sign up. It's free, and I like taking online quizzes. I got a nice ego boost from the "Commonly Confused Words Quiz", scoring "English Genius". I really appreciated that they had a question on the appropriate use of 'hanged' or 'hung' for past tense of 'to hang'. I love the George W. Bush quote where he mixed it up (go figure)-- and anyone educated in the difference would think that he committed murder in the oval office :-)

Anyways-- I got in my email today the "Flowchart to my heart", and I must need to answer more questions or something, because anyone reading this would be VERY confused about 'Steve'.

Here are the questions it chose to include:

1. Would you date an atheist?
   
2. What best represents your opinion on same-sex relationships?
   
3. Is your duty to religion/god more important than your family?
   
4. What most closely describes what you're looking for in a relationship?
   
5. How much can intelligence turn you on?
   
6. To you is an abortion an option in the case of unwanted pregnancy?
   
7. Is contraception morally wrong?
   
8. Would you date a current drug user?
   
9. What is your greatest motivation in life so far?
   
10. How important is religion in your life?
    

Now if you read these as questions to find a date, I think you would infer that I am SUPER RELIGIOUS. I mean honestly, they ask about atheism before they as about same-sex relationships! I don't think atheism even matters if they aren't interested in BEING in a same-sex relationship! And I just can't stop giggling at the "is your duty to religion/god more important than your family"!! hahah lol... I mean its funny for 'me' regardless, but it makes me realize that there may be a lot of people that would actually answer 'yes' to this. As many probably know- I am a bit outspoken about my anti-religious beliefs, but the internet is a little skewed to talk about this more than it really comes up IRL. While I am an atheist, I am not picketing churches or meeting up with 'atheist clubs'-- I spend very little time thinking about religion during my day.

I don't think OkCupid gets me :-( ...otherwise they would be asking things like:

- "are you ok being with boring people for extended periods of time?" or
- "do you look like Mitch Hewer?" or
- "would it bother you if your partner almost spent thousands of dollars to fly to Broadway to see Harry Potter's 'rod and tackle' ?"

Instead I look like a 15 year old bible-thumpin' baptist girl who is scared of contraceptives and atheists :-)



Much Love,
Steve

Making fun of gays

I am sure that everyone can relate to this, but I guess it hasn't happened to me in a while, and thus seemed worthy of blog mention.



I was at a friends house tonight playing Rock Band 2-- *cough* expert drums *cough*. These were work friends-- and I'm not 'out' to my work friends / colleagues. It's not really their business, and I don't really feel the need. However, I don't really care if they know or not. The only person I am actually concerned about is my mom-- she would freak. None the less, somehow a conversation started where one of my friends was describing how his cube-mate was sent a video link that pretended to be a music video to a song, but turned out to be raunchy gay sex. He was describing how 'funny' it was-- because it was so disgusting :-S

And then he said "I can't even stand two guys kissing; it's just disgusting-- it makes me sick". I didn't really know what to say. I suppose I should have reacted in some way, but didn't. I'm not usually always silent in these situations, but I was this time. One of my other friend's wife, who I think suspects I am gay, chimed in to say "I don't have a problem with homosexuality or anything -- but I don't want to see _anyone's_ porn".



Now my friend is a really nice, smart person, who I don't think would ever wish ill-will or inequalities on anyone. But he was a product of a very religious household in the southern U.S. And I would venture to guess that many of these households have the "oh, theres nothing wrong with it as long as I don't ever have to see it, deal with it, or think about it" mentality. They preface everything with "I don't have a problem with gays, but..." and then they spout off something that is ridiculously offensive--- even though they think they have 'made it ok' by claiming their 'tolerance'.

I'm not really offended by what my friend said-- I wish it weren't the case, but in 2009, in the southern U.S. two guys kissing is 'pornography' to many people. I just don't know if I should have reacted in some way. Maybe I should be more aggressive in actually trying to help the situation. Does my silence make me complicit to his discrimination? Maybe coming out and showing my work friends that "gay people are real people too" would help the situation....

What have you guys done in similar situations? Are you always outspoken? Are you always silent?

Much Love,
Steve