Thursday, June 30, 2011

6/30/2011 - to last. . .

About two weeks ago, I thought I had reached the midpoint of this blog.  I somehow committed myself to the idea that June 15th, the middle of the month at the middle of the year, equaled the middle of the year itself.  Turns out, not so, as a few people dutifully informed me.  One guy helpfully (?) said, "Well, at least you don't have a bigger readership."  Great, so I'm stupid and unpopular.  Great.

But today, since it actually is the official midway point of this year (and I'm certain of it this time), I am tempted to celebrate by just referring to that post I had written back then and be done with it.  After all, its sentiments still hold true.

Instead, though, I took myself out to frozen yogurt.  Sounds random, I know, and it is, especially since I never do things like that.  I eat Frosted Mini-Wheats every morning with skim milk, bring a sandwich for lunch (tuna or assorted lunch meats), and eat a banana in the afternoon.  No more or less.

So shortly after lunch, I walked a few blocks down Market Street to the same frozen yogurt place my boss took my department to for my birthday.  As I filled my cup with cubed kiwi pieces and mandarin oranges atop the Hawaiian Punch-flavored "fro-yo," as the cool kids call it, I thought to myself, "How odd.  It's not my birthday anymore, and I'm not celebrating anything.  Why am I having frozen yogurt?"

By the time I got back to my office, I had walked the streets of the Financial District for 20 minutes, broke a slight sweat under the warm sun, even managed to lift my head a few times and notice the clearest blue sky, no doubt turning invisibly above all the windows and rooftops of the city.

In those 20 minutes, I thought of how half a year has gone by and I have since stopped trying to remember all that I've written here; I practically forget the contents of each day's post as soon as I publish it.  I wondered what I would feel when January 1, 2012 comes and goes and I no longer have to write, no longer have to think of things to write, to feel nervous as the day rolls on and I have yet to develop even an idea.

Oscar Wilde once said, "The anxiety is unbearable.  I only hope it lasts forever."

The frozen yogurt was pretty tasty, more than I had expected it to, more because it was unexpected.  I wanted it to last, too, a little while longer.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

6/29/2011 - when we talk about love. . .

This post will be about love.

I'm not sure if that is supposed to be a disclaimer, a selling point, or a warning, but I thought I should put it out there.  I should probably also say that I have no idea where this is going (in contract to, you know, my other posts which are all so masterfully planned).  Oh, and that I am not good at writing about love, and really, it's all been said before anyway (and let me count the ways. . .).

Of course, I am grateful for all the love in my life--the love of family, friends, partner and pet.  But I've been compelled to think heavily on love in its romantic sense after a conversation I had with a 'sometimes-acquaintance.'

Jack and I met a long time ago at the gym (which seems to be one of the only places I meet new people).  We get along fine, but I would never think to seek him out for conversation, and I haven't seen him in person for over a year, ever since we stopped going to the same gym.  We probably chat through Gmail once or twice a month, usually when he initiates a conversation, and usually when he is caught in the throes of relationship turbulence.

Yesterday, his little orange chat window popped up on my Gmail screen late in the afternoon, and sparing any greeting, he launched right into the meat of his thoughts: "OK, Mr. Psych Major, I have a hypothetical question for you, just something I'm wondering."

Already, my mental red flag started waving; my bullshit radar beeped.

"Do you think it's possible to be in love with two people at the same time?"  I didn't have to be a psychology major to deduce that this question was not hypothetical at all.  "His name is Brian, and we met at a party," he explained after I pressed for details.

And I don't think I have to go into any more detail to really describe the situation at hand.  Again, it's all been said before.

He wanted advice.  I think.  What he didn't know was that I hate giving advice on relationships.  Who am I to even entertain the possibility that I might have an answer to love's constantly evolving questions?  We talked around and around.  Jack and his partner love each other, but neither are happy.  They have trouble communicating, so neither wants to broach any sensitive subject for fear of chaos.  They have an "open" relationship, where they are free to sleep with whomever they choose (within set parameters), and while it has been problematic, neither are willing to sacrifice this freedom in order to possibly fix those problems.

I "listened," toggled between my Gmail window and the in-progress business requirements document I had due by the end of the day.  What I heard was a lot of talk about love: Jack's love for his partner, his blossoming love for the new guy, a love for himself, even, and the responsibility he feels to pursue his own happiness.  He quantified love at various points of their relationship, how it measured less now than a year ago, which was less than when they first met.  He described love as a desire to make the other person happy, but only to the extent that he would be mutually satisfied.  To love, he said, is to make sacrifices.

I read through the transcript of our chat before I started writing this post, and it would seem that one of us knew a lot about love.  The other did not.

I don't know what love means.  The more I think about it, the less I can say with certainty that I ever had any idea.  I don't remember the last time I told Sam that I love him, even though I do.  I can't even think back to a time when I thought of myself as being in love with Sam;.what does that even mean?  We live our lives together, come home to each other, care for a dog together, but is that love?  We have sex; is that love?  Fight, laugh, plan; love?

Raymond Carver wrote a short story called "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," and when I read it in college, I remember thinking that it disclosed nothing to me about love that I either could use to define love or didn't already know.  Now, I wonder if that is all there is to love: unknown, and to define it, capture it in words is to slowly choke the life out of it.

Jack and I ended our conversation with no real resolution, and I had not expected to reach one.  I asked him if he really loved his partner.  He said yes.  I then asked if he would consider leaving his partner for the new guy, and he replied, "Yes, if I thought it could be beneficial to the both of us."

Is that love?

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

6/28/2011 - take the car and drive myself. . .

Last night, Sam let me borrow his car so I could go to my Rapid Transit rehearsal in Oakland.  As a snooty seasoned resident of the City, I hate going across the bridge, even more so when I don't have a car, made worse on Monday nights with rehearsals in the evening.  Rehearsals as a whole can be tiring--completely, unequivocally rewarding, but tiring all the same, especially when it happens across the bay.

Sam and Grr have been driving me to these Oakland rehearsals, and though they never seem to mind (I'm fairly certain Grr even enjoys it), I feel guilty singing my 'doon doon-bah-doons' while they're sitting in the car in the parking lot for two and a half hours.  So when Sam said that I could take the car and drive myself, I held back the excitement when I accepted.  Though he acted all nonchalant about the whole thing, I imagine he offered up his vehicle with some degree of hesitation and more than a few prayers to the patron saint of driving.

I am a good driver in theory, just not so much on paper.  In the 10 years of my life as a driver, I have collected a handful of moving violations, including one that got my license suspended for 30 days, as well as a separate handful of accidents, mostly minor in their collective impact but disheartening in their quantity.  And after I dented Sam's rim and almost backed into a tree on the two separate occasions I've driven his car, I don't blame him for his trepidation.

Rehearsal was fun; we held mics.  I stayed mostly in tune for most of the songs.  I think.  Really, though, the triumph came when I pulled into the garage with the car in the same condition as when I pulled out of the garage, and though I needed Sam to help me park it (he has this complicated way of doing it, which probably isn't all that complicated if I were to explain it, so I won't and spare myself further embarrassment), I still went upstairs feeling like a big boy who didn't need to be driven to school.

Monday, June 27, 2011

6/27/2011 - my first gay bar. . .

On slate.com this morning, I read an article about "first gay bar" experiences written by prominent members of the LGBT community.  It got me thinking of mine.

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Though I came out early, I was something of a dormant homosexual until I got to college.  I had danced with a boy at a high school dance, had briefly dated someone in the months before I left for UC Davis, but I would say that it took college to really jump start my life as a gay man.  And it possibly began on the night I went to the Powerhouse.

Weeks into my freshman year, I met Everett at a "kiss-in" event in the main quad of campus.  I don't remember if we kissed or not (probably did), just that we became fast friends.  And less than a month later, a few of his friends drove up from the Central Valley to visit him, and we all decided to go to San Francisco for the night.

Everett's friends knew San Francisco like a map, but only if that map consisted of nothing but gay bars.  They laid out a simple agenda: drive to the City, go to the Powerhouse, come home. 

The Powerhouse was described to me as a leather bar, and without further knowledge, I had no expectations, nor did I have a valid ID, which they all assured would be no problem.  I sat in the back seat of a stranger's car with a friend I had only begun to know and wondered to myself, "What am I doing here?" all the way down I-80 and across the Bay Bridge.

By the time we found parking under an orange streetlight in an alley littered with trash and shopping carts, I wanted to go home.  The neighborhood was miles away from the suburban cul-de-sacs I was used to, and I kept thinking that tomorrow would be Wednesday, and I had an 8:00 class in the morning, and this was not the kind of place I would like my body to be discovered.

(Ironically, Sam and I now live within blocks of this location.)

We walked a few minutes before reaching the Powerhouse.  On the drive down, Everett had tutored me to act like I belonged there and to avoid all eye contact until we were away from the front door.  But all we had to do was push through two heavy curtains, and we found ourselves inside.  No security, no questions, just a sparsely populated bar, sticky floors, and porn playing on every TV in sight.  We walked past the bartop and into a larger room near the back with a larger screen.  A dimly lit doorway leading further back stood conspicuously in the corner.

Everett knew what was back there.  His friends knew.  I, however, did not, and naively followed them through the doorway, down a handful of steps, and into a narrow hall that reeked of smoke and echoed with the sounds of men.

I may have been naive, and possibly even a tiny bit stupid, but I wasn't clueless.  When my eyes adjusted, I saw the rabbit hole for what it was: a space that bent all expectations I ever could have had on what happens in public and what does not.  In my sheltered existence, I knew that what I saw should not be happening, could not be happening, yet there they were, and there I was.

I did not turn back, nor did I want to.  I stumbled further, past men who leaned with their backs to the wall.  I felt hands on me as I brushed past the bodies to which they were attached, but I still forged ahead.  I did not know where I was going, and I had already lost Everett to a shirtless man near the entrance.

At this point, I probably stood no more than five or 10 steps deep, but I had clearly left all traces of myself far behind.  Only when I felt someone firmly grab my arm did I turn around. 

I don't remember much about him but two things: his breath, which smelled not unpleasantly like cigarette smoke, and the firmness of his chest when I put my hand on it.

But he knocked me out of this dream and made it real.  No longer was it a pantomime of intimacy that played itself out before me; this man was real, rough, ready, and I was not.

I nodded at him, pried my arm out of his grip and walked back up the stairs, back to reality, or a reasonable facsimile of it given the circumstances, and stood in the larger back room as I processed what just happened, what could have happened, what did not.

In the other corner stood a man, probably in his 30s, wearing nothing but a neon-green jockstrap with a body that begged to be touched.  And people did.  Men, leery-eyed and far less attractive, molested him in unseemly ways, and I felt unseemly watching, even if he didn't seem to mind, me or them.

By the time Everett and company appeared out of the back alley, I had debated backwards and forwards, held caucuses with myself to try and muster up the courage to say something to this Adonis that stood before me, the likes of which I had never seen before, and never to such a degree of openness.

Everett asked if I was ready to go home, and though I was, tired and overwhelmed, I told him that I needed just one more second.  Nothing would be lost if I made a fool out of myself, but how it would have haunted me had I not taken the chance.  So I waited for an opening, walked up to this man in all his (more or less) naked glory with a list of things I'd say, from how I just wanted to say hello, didn't want to seem rude by staring, to how I hoped he was having a good time.  All to what end, I still couldn't say.

I put my hand on his shoulder.  It was warm to the touch, and taut, like palming a basketball.  He turned to me, but he didn't really see me.  I completely forgot my script, opened my mouth, and said, "You are really beautiful."  Those were my exact words, I still remember, and I'd like to think that right then, he did see me, really looked at me when he smiled and said, "Thanks."

On the drive home, Everett's friend pulled onto Treasure Island so I could pee.  I stood on the rocks against the water; it must have been two in the morning by then. I peed off the edge and looked out across the bay toward the City, home to my first gay bar.  I could still smell the smoke on the man's breath in the back alley, hear his voice when he said, "Hey," gutteral and resonant.  And memories of that lime green jockstrap took me all the way home and into my bed deep in the morning, where I proceeded to lay there, exhausted but unable to rest, until the sun seeped through my window.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

6/26/2011 - a flurry of stuff. . .

This weekend, Sam and I have been extremely busy, beginning with a poetry reading on Friday night for a friend who just published a collection of poems, to brunch on Saturday with our neighbor that lasted over two hours, to a dog play party to dinner with my family, all the way to this afternoon, standing under a hot sun (by San Francisco's standards) with Kevin and Gordon at the 41st annual San Francisco Pride event, listening to some retro disco band that I had never heard of, nor would I ever want to again.

This is unusual for us, as we both have a natural instinct to be anti-social, sequester ourselves away from everyone and hibernate.  My friend Steve used to call me "Julie," as in the cruise director from Love Boat, though I never really understand how he saw that in me.  Yet when I took inventory of all that we accomplished this weekend while waiting for the band that Gordon had wanted to see this afternoon, I surprised myself with the quantity.

Afterwards, Gordon said he grew up on this band, described how his sister introduced him to it when they drove to clubs and he would listen and think that this was "adult" music.  I overheard a group of bearish gay guys talk about how the crowd in San Francisco's pride event seemed much more friendly than the event they attended in LA.  Teenaged girls with their gay friends surrounded us and cheered and laughed and reminded me of the girl-friends I had in high school, the ones who took me to proms, talked to me about boys, hung out with me at lunch when I didn't know who else to sit with.  

And now, Sam and I are home, sunburnt and tired.  An evening spreads out before us with no other company but each other and Grr.  And I'm simultaneously glad that we have no other plans or people to see, and that we had so many earlier, plans and people that took us outside of our house, our sometimes isolated lives, and into a world of activity, a flurry of stuff.  It was good to be a part of it, and now, good to be home.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

6/25/2011 - now. . .

The first gay movie I ever watched was in this little independent theater, steps away from the BART station in downtown Berkeley.  I was 16 that year, taking a summer course in psychology at UC Berkeley and experiencing what college life could be like.

I first saw the purple-tinged poster in the window one morning as I walked to class, and I slowed down for several mornings after as I approached the window so I could get a good look at the three drag queens staring garishly into the camera and the two muscle boys dancing on a bartop right above the word Stonewall.  Knowing nothing more, and needing no more details, I was interested. 

So I cut class one morning and saw the first showing of it in an otherwise empty theater.  Afterwards, I thought of nothing else for weeks.  I found the poster and put it up in my room.  I bought the soundtrack--a mish-mash of Judy Garland, 60's girl-pop, and a handful of contemporary songs.  I read the book on which the movie was based and officially learned about the Stonewall bar, drag queens, and the "official" start of the modern gay rights movement.

And because of what I read, I thought for a long time that the '60s and '70s were the best time to be gay.  Love was free and in the air.  The movement had just begun, and with its humble inception, I imagined a tighter knit community and more opportunities to actually play a critical role in the fight.  I wished that I lived in those times, sat in that bar on the night police raided its patrons, was one in the crowd who refused to budge when society came to stifle our collective voice.

I really thought I could have made a difference, if only I was in the right place at the right time.

Now, outside of voting and reading about all the rampant inequality that still exists for the gay community, I doubt I would have done anything worthwhile on that night in June some 40 years ago, even if I were sitting in the Stonewall bar and they had come to take me away.  I just don't think I have it in me.

But I'm grateful that others have it in them, to tirelessly campaign and selflessly donate money so that our needs (and they are needs, are they not?) can be met.

I used to think that marriage was an ancillary concern, that civil unions satisfied this need, that I, personally, would never want to get married anyway.  Turns out, I was wrong on all counts, and I think it is cosmically fitting that New York became the sixth, but by far the largest, state to legalize gay marriage on the 42nd  anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, almost to the day.

And it turns out I was wrong about something else as well: there has never been a better time to be gay than now.  Or when I was 16, discovering gay cinema for myself.  Or at 14, finally connecting dots and naming all the feelings I had inside.  Or in 1969, when, in spite of all the adversity and conditions that encouraged criminalization of sexual minorities, a select few found their voices and stamped it all over our history.

There has never been a better time to be gay than "now," all the nows that came before and all the ones to come.

Friday, June 24, 2011

6/24/2011 - Sex and the City. . .

Shortly after I graduated college, while I indulged in a life of leisure, living in my own apartment with a boyfriend down the street and a restaurant job that allowed me to go home every night with cash in my pocket, I quickly established routines for myself that gave my otherwise static life some direction.  I set a strict(ish) gym routine, took singing lessons, made myself a regular at a downtown piano bar, all to offet the lack of momentum I felt at the time.

I also discovered Sex and the City on DVD.  Every Tuesday, my day off from work and classes, I would go to the gym late in the morning, pick up takeout from Chili's on my way home, and then binge on chicken tacos and vicarious trysts for the rest of the afternoon.  Often, in order to pace myself so I don't blow through an entire season in one day, I would rewatch certain episodes, relaugh at my favorite scenes, and reconsider my identity: Am I Charlotte, the starry-eyed optimist?  Miranda, the hard-shelled realist?  Or Samantha??

But of course, no matter how I shuffled the characters, how I viewed their traits, I would always have the same answer.  I was Carrie.  Of course I was Carrie.  I've dated the same men, asked the same questions of myself, cried over the same relationships.

Only later did I fully realize that everyone thinks they are Carrie simply because she is the embodiment of all the characters, designed to be that way and thus the most relatable.  Nobody is always optimistic, always emotionally distant, always sleeping with the hottest and most eligible bachelors within a certain zip code, but we all can be at some point (with any luck).  Carrie is the most well-rounded, the closest thing to a mirror that the show has to hold up to us; she is our sherpa, guiding us through what can be an uphill climb on our way to relationship bliss.

The show worked best when it was a love letter to singlehood, to all the people in the world searching for love.  And though I grew further apart from the girls of Sex and the City as time went on (didn't even bother to watch the second movie, and I wasn't a fan of the first), and I stopped thinking of myself in terms of "which one am I?" (even though I am clearly Miranda), I still felt a faint pang of nostalgia when I stumble upon it on TV, as Sam and I did last night. 

Though Sam swears that all he hears on the show is a bunch of women squawking at each other, he still managed to sit through two and a half episodes, even making insightful commentary along the way.  I have often joked that if Sam were a Sex and the City character, he would be a "single-episode boyfriend," doomed to stand in for an old and familiar archetype of a person we all have met, loved, and lost at some point in our lives.

After all, he does not talk about love, nor does he take the time to really ponder the nature of it in his spare time.  He boils his relationships down until all nuance has evaporated, and all that is left is "Do I like this person?"  "Does he like me?"  "Do I want to spend more time together than I do with anyone else?"  "And does he?"

So truthfully, a TV show from his perspective would probably only last one episode anyway; what more is there, really, after all of his questions are answered?

Who knew he could be so insightful after all?

Thursday, June 23, 2011

6/23/2011 - a day off. . .

This may seem like a cop-out, or a way to weasel out of writing today while still posting something, but I just want to give myself some (well-deserved?) accolades for putting up blog posts on every single day this week in spite of the Vegas-filled fun. 

That deserves a day off, right?

(And I've been busy all day, catching up with work and settling back into life in the real world, both of which are harsh enough without my self-imposed deadline looming over my shoulders.)

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

6/22/2011 - in the family. . .

To save a few bucks on our Vegas vacation, I opted to drive home with my parents instead of hop on a plane with Sam. I figured, since he planned to go straight from the airport to work, I wouldn't have to rush home for anything.

On our 8-plus hour drive, the subject of Chinese zodiac signs came up (I forget how), and we spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what Sam's sign was. Through the process of elimination, we determined that he was born in the year of the boar.

In an offhand comment, my sister said, "Well, now we have a boar in the family."

What a perfect way to close out our long weekend.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

6/21/2011 - a soft spot in my heart for history. . .

My mom once went on a church-sponsored retreat that took place in the Santa Cruz hills, in a campus settled at the base of tall redoods.  During the course of that week, she often escaped into a secluded grove and meditated, though I think the exact word she used was "prayed."

She said that sitting in the company of these towering trees made her feel so small, so centered in her smallness.  There was no trouble, nothing complicated.  What trouble could there be, when she was but one person in a community of life?  When craning her neck up from the ground to see what she could through the branches, she would be dizzy from the heights.

I feel this way when I am embedded in a city, the antithesis of nature.  When I travel for vacation, one of my favorite destinations is an urban city.  Any city, as long as it has tall skyscrapers and narrow streets.  When I walk through the various business districts of various metropoli, I would feel most at one with the very beat of the city when business suits hurry past me from intersection to intersection, like blood pouring through a body's artery.  How could I feel separated from life, when I am surrounded by it?

Yet one of my most favorite destinations in the world, my most familiar, is Vegas.  Makes no sense, as this city has no life of its own, no blood, just neon and money, smoke and mirrors, but in the days preceding a trip, I always find that I can think of nothing else. 

A part of my fascination is the gambling; another, the food.  I marvel at the sheer gawdiness of it all, the ostentation, the complete disrespect for history in exchange for fad.  Buildings go up, come down, and a new one replaces it.  Nothing lasts, and since I hold a soft spot in my heart for history, the other part of my love for this city, the bigger part that took years to develop, is the vast array of memories I have built there, from the first time I karaoke'd in front of a drunken crowd at what was known as the Barbary Coast, to a very simple lunch with Sam, Steve, and Jason, at the MGM within an hour of landing.  When my extended family took a big trip out there with over 15 of us, I remember an amazing rollercoaster simulator ride called "Race to the Obelisk" or something like that at the Luxor, and how I rode it with my dad several times until I started feeling sick.  The Monte Carlo pool where Scott and I lounged in the lazy river.  The Excalibur where Eddie won $1,000.  The three-hour buffet lunch at the Mirage with Jackie and Serene.

And yesterday, we added a few more, from sitting in a lobby at the Cosmopolitan watching some kids play pool and eating a pizza pie from a "secret" restaurant, to drinking cocktails, or mocktails in my case, at the Mandarin Oriental bar overlooking the Strip with a world outside waiting just for us to devour it.

Monday, June 20, 2011

6/20/2011 - away from the main tourist drag. . .

In all the trips I've made to Vegas, I have only ventured outside of a casino's immediate vicinity twice: once when I took Sam to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway for his birthday so he could race around the track a few times in a real Nascar car (is that redundant?), and the other, last December, when my dad suggested we all go out to the Valley of Fire.

I will freely admit now that I was totally bearish on the idea, even though I feigned enthusiasm at the time--why would I come to Vegas, the den of all that is false, and ruin the illusion by communing with nature?  But my dad, an avid photographer, was so excited about the side excursion that I, nor anyone else, could bear to let on that we would rather be indoors, parked at a slot machine, drinking cocktails, and taking in Vegas as the rest of the tourist world does.

Weeks prior to the trip, he looked up various state parks around Las Vegas, settled on the Valley of Fire, researched specific vista points, driving trails, spots of interest.  Before we even touched down in Las Vegas, he was already an expert tour guide.

So we drove northeast one morning after a quick breakfast, watched all the megatowers and the iconic "skyline" shrink smaller and smaller until we were no longer in recognizable Vegas.   Instead, we were in the desert, and within an hour, arrived at the Valley of Fire.

Though the name of the park may sound overly dramatic, the landscape actually lived up to its name.  We had traded oversized casinos for oversized tors of blood red and navel orange rock formations.  From vista to vista, I felt like I could have been on Mars.  My dad wielded his camera like a surgeon with his scalpel, and we left after a few hours with an impressive set of pictures and a voraciously growing appetite for food and gambling.

I look back on this trip as one of my favorite, and one of the few where I absolutely did not want to leave.  As much as I love this city, I can only handle it in moderated doses, and usually after three days, I would long for some semblance of normalcy, where nothing is overlit, silence is valued, and money is money.

I'm not sure if it was the side trip away from the main tourist drag, or if it was because I was there with my parents and my boyfriend for the first time, of if it was because of the leisurely pace we took throughout our time there, but I came back home refreshed and in love with life. And I learned to appreciate and respect the fact that Las Vegas is more than its casinos. So in the spirit of exploration, our first dinner in the city last night was at a spectacular Thai restaurant in a little strip mall several blocks off of the main tourist path, nestled between a karaoke bar, a gay bathhouse, a straight bathhouse (believe it or not, they exist), an LGBT community center, and several bars of ill-looking-repute. All co-existing peacefully.

Who says Vegas is one-dimensional?

Sunday, June 19, 2011

6/19/2011 - necessity breeds innovation. . .

The year I turned 21, I took a solitary road trip to Vegas, thinking I would have as much fun as I did when I went with friends.  Not so.  After a day and a half, I had lost spent my entire budget of $150 dollars with 24 more hours left before I could check out.  Quite the feeling, actually, to be in a city with a seemingly infinite number of things to do, but only to find out that all of it, without exception, operated on the one thing I had none of.  And I had no company to commiserate with.

But necessity breeds innovation, so I got creative.  I woke up on my last full day in the city with nothing in my pocket but keys and an empty wallet, and drove to the Mandalay Bay, the Strip's southernmost hotel.  I slipped past the security guard in the elevator lobby by tailing a boisterous Chinese family, smiling and pretending like I belonged with them. 

I rode up to an arbitrary floor, stepped out, and looked down the halls to find a housekeeping cart.  I walked by, said hello to the worker, and asked for a set of toiletries, explaining that I had ran out and housekeeping hadn't been by.  I remember she smiled, apologized, and filled a plastic bag with handfuls of mini-bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion.  Score.

I then walked to the Luxor right next door, and repeated the process.

By mid-afternoon, I amassed sets of toiletries from nearly every major hotel on the Strip.  Some, I requested from housekeeping like I did at Mandalay Bay.  Some, I flat out stole from unattended carts.  At Bally's, I "stumbled" into the storage room and indiscriminately grabbed as many mini-bottles as I could before cheesing it out of there.  At Caesar's Palace, I called housekeeping from the lobby with an elaborate story of checking out prematurely without a souvenir set to bring home to my wife.  Someone actually ran down and brought me an unopened "gift" package of nice Aveda stuff.

From tower-shaped bottles at the Stratosphere to African-themes ones at the now-defunct Aladdin, I grabbed them all.  By the time I got back to my hotel room, I had probably spent a total of seven dollars all day at the McDonald's in Circus Circus with nothing else to show for my time but sore feet and a 20-pound bag of miscellaneous toiletries. 

That's how you do Vegas as a broke 21-year-old.

10 years later, my budget has grown some, as has my money management skills.  I have left my petty theft phase in the past, along with my frantic gamble-as-much-as-I-can phase.  But because of that trip, I can navigate up and down the Strip and into each casino's parking structure like a native Las Vegan.

But long story not as long as it could be, all I really meant to say is that Sam, my family, and I have three days of Vegas waiting for us, and I am jittery with excitement to meet them, as much so as the first time, as much as all the times that followed

(And as a disclaimer, I may or may not post while I'm out, and if I do, the blog will likely experience a Vegas-themed stretch until at least Wednesday.  However, in the spirit of a vacation, I am giving myself some leeway by exploring the possibility of disappearing for a few days.)

Saturday, June 18, 2011

6/18/2011 - dear futureme. . .

On my birthday, I received an e-mail from myself that I had written six years ago through this website called futureme.org.  Though I had forgotten that this letter existed before I received it, I now can remember the exact day it was written.  

Dear Futureme,

I am 25 years old right now, wearing a shirt I bought at the Gap a few weeks ago while shopping with Steve, a friend I met at the gym, and pants from Kohl’s that I had originally bought when I was a teacher at Heald, which I quit earlier this year and went unemployed for about a month before I found this current job at United Behavioral Health.  That month did a number on my bank account, though, but I think by next month, I should have my credit card completely paid off.  I get paid $1,444 every two weeks, provided I work five days a week.  I am not an official employee of UBH yet, and I get paid hourly.  For the first time in my life, I have no health insurance, so I am desperately trying not to get sick.

I graduated from St. Mary's with an MFA in creative writing, and I now have stopped writing (barring this e-mail) and have moved to San Leandro with Eddie.  I have practically no ties to St. Mary's other than my fledgling friendship with Karen, who is not speaking to me at the moment.  I’m not exactly sure why, but I think it has something to do with how I don’t hang out with her as much as I used to, and how I’m always unavailable for the readings and open mics that happen at the college.  How do I explain how busy I am now, that I hardly belong to that 'writer's community' and culture, if ever I did at all?

But the truth is, without Karen, I have absolutely nothing left of my time in grad school other than my degree, which I currently don't even use.  My thesis is locked up somewhere, and I am almost scared to go back and read it, afraid that it will taunt me and ridicule me for not going further with my graduate degree, for not actually pursuing the life of a writer.

I still miss my time in Sacramento some.  I wish Scott and I could find some peace.

Coming back to the Bay Area brought about a lot of changes.  I moved back in with my parents to save money, and my grandfather died shortly thereafter.  I am not sure if my mother will feel right again.  I realized that teaching is not what I am meant to do right now, and I found this job at UBH.  It is one that I am less than thrilled about, even though I think I like my job per se.  There is just so little to do.  But coming into San Francisco for work brought me to Liz, who I have not seen after we had imploded from a huge fight outside of my dorm room six years ago.  We bumped into each other on the way out of the gym, and we’ve been hanging out and trying to keep in touch ever since.

She recently broke up with a boyfriend, and I hope she will be alright.  She has always been one to throw herself headlong into relationships; solitude is not her favorite position in life.  We seem to have picked up right where we left off, and being with her now reminds me of being back in high school, when we used to hang out after school and go to work across the way from one another, she at GNC and I at Chili’s.  Those were good times, and it almost seems like I have a better sense of who I was back then.  I don’t know so much anymore.

Things with Eddie are up and down, and we have jointly decided to go see an objective third party for some mediation.  I am trying not to call it the 'T' word, as I am a little scared of what seeing someone will bring.  Liz says that if it's a relationship worth saving, it's worth working for, so I guess I am a lucky guy to be in a relationship worth both.

This will come back to me in six years.  I will be 31 (happy birthday!).  Will I still be at UBH?  Will I still be living in San Leandro?  With Eddie and Robin?  Will I be in a position to buy a house, like I’ve been wanting to do for a while now?  Will I still be friends with Steve?  He is going into surgery on the 6th of December and I hope he is going to be alright.  I enjoy his company, especially when we are having lunch or taking a walk.  He is a nice guy.  

I should note that this was written at work, where I have nothing else to do but twiddle my thumbs and wait for an assignment.  Am I underutilized?  Should I complain?  Can I handle this kind of boredom and inertia for the rest of my working life?

I read other futureme letters (the public ones on the site) before starting this, and many of them are trying to give advice to their future selves. I have none to give but this: if, when you get this e-mail, you are still bored at work, sitting at UBH with nothing else to do and feeling like your life is passing you by, feel free to grab the nearest sharp utensil and jab it somewhere memorable.

Austin

Friday, June 17, 2011

6/17/2011 - non-stop. . .

This has been a whirlwind week.  Starting from last Saturday, when Sam and I took Grr back to my parents' house and stayed there overnight, we've been going non-stop. 

Sunday, we attended Linda's college graduation, and I was surrounded by youth to a degree with which I no longer feel comfortable. 

Monday, I had my Rapid Transit rehearsal, which, as fun as it is, leads to a hectic evening after work to get there and a late night (by my standards) getting home. 

Tuesday, I went to an HOA meeting for our building, and I met a resident who complained about everything from the garage to the garbage, the noise, the hallway, the neighbors, the carpeting.  I know that I have had my moments of dissatisfaction with our place, but I left the meeting glad that I never inflicted those moments on others.

Thursday was my birthday; my parents brought their dog to us, and Grr, in his infinite excitement, peed in the house twice, his first accident in a long time.  By yesterday evening, I found myself exhausted at dinner and just slightly irritable.  When my mom saw a suspicious puddle in the middle of the living room floor, I was flooded with frustration but managed to keep it all inside.  My family and Elliot left shortly after that, and while Sam cleaned off the dishes, I heard that inimitable sound of splashing on the floor behind me.  I turned around and jerked him by the collar and said, "Grr, what the fuck?"  As if he could respond, as if he meant to do it.  He looked up at me with those forlorn eyes and I immediately was a horrible person:


Tomorrow, I have a day-long rehearsal with Rapid Transit in preparation for a concert we are giving in July, and Sunday begins a vacation to Vegas. 

Busy.  A little too much, perhaps, but it wouldn't be right for me to complain.

Besides, I'll be leaving the office in a few minutes with nothing but a park and some leftover cake standing between me and bedtime.  I couldn't want anything else more.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

6/16/2011 - birthdays that come and go. . .

Today is my birthday.  I am 31.  My parents are on their way up to the City so Elliot and Grr can go out to Fort Funston for a nice run through the sand before we all come home to a mom-cooked meal of noodles.

For my birthday last year, I bought my first condo, officially signed papers and went into (good?) debt for what will likely be the rest of my life.  Two years ago, Steve and Jason took me out to dinner at a Brazilian BBQ restaurant, and unbeknownst to any of us at the time, it would be one of the last dinners out together before Steve passes away.

Four years ago, I got drunk, like holding-onto-a-parking-meter-outside-of-a-gay-bar drunk, stayed out till midnight in the Castro and felt more like a 21-year-old than I ever did.  Five years ago, I moved out of Eddie's house and into an efficiency studio overlooking the freeway.  10 years ago, my cousin got married; I served on her wedding party, and she got everyone to sing 'Happy Birthday' to me at the reception.  12 years ago, dormmates and I drove out to the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Sacramento.  13 years ago, I met my first boyfriend.

I woke up this morning thinking about how I had spent all of my previous birthdays; those were the ones I specifically remembered.  It's funny, really, these birthdays that come and go.  My boss took my department out for ice cream earlier this week, and a co-worker asked me if I felt any different now that I will officially be in my 30s.  I said that I actually sometimes forget how old I am, or think that I am still 25, or even simply without age, and I certainly don't feel any different than how I felt last year or throughout the last decade.  I said, without thinking about it too much, that I still feel hip, still cool, still up on what the kids are into these days, even if I wasn't tuned into what the kids were into when I was one.

I don't know why I said that; I know that it isn't true.  I guess in a way, all these birthday just run together, from year to year, decade to decade, only with less presents, less ado, and far less anticipation as the years go by; as I got dressed this morning, I really wanted today to just pass as quietly as possible.  I don't know why. 

Yet when I happened to glance at the phone sitting on my desk this afternoon, seeing the "June 16" datestamp on the little digital screen lit a spark in my brain, like a flash of recognition in the eyes of an old friend: today is my birthday.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

6/15/2011 - define gratitude. . .

Today is officially the midway point of my 'grateful year.'  To say that I am proud of myself is an understatement, that the time flew by effortlessly, a lie.  I've had days where I sat in a stupor of frustration, mounting to something akin to panic: what if I can't think of anything today?  What if nothing good, nothing bad, just nothing worth recounting happened to me?  How can I possibly keep this going for x more months?

Yet, barring the two days I took off from this blog during my vacation to Palm Springs, I have always come up with something.  That said, I hold no illusions that any of this daily work resulted in eloquent pieces of profound prose.  As an English major, I honed a skill through my college years that I never saw listed on any syllabus: the art of bullshitting, and while I may not be the most well-read, and I sometimes need to Google the proper usage of certain words (lay vs. lie being a particularly difficult pair), I am a master of bullshit.  Hell, I remember two (which means there likely were others) analytical essays I wrote on novels I never even bothered reading.  (And to my credit, I did pass those classes. . .)

But, six months and 164 blog entries later, the real question is this: what have I learned?  And not in the way of writing, but what have I learned about gratitude?  I wish that I could say with certainty (or 'certitude,' if I was a sexting politician) that I have reached a deeper understanding of goodness, that I, in my body, carry with me a more firmly rooted sense of good.  But alas, no certitude here.  I still get angry over trivial matters, still catch myself thinking thoughts that simmer with negativity.  I don't feel any more thankful as a whole than I did last year when gratitude was a fortune-cookie concept.

I used to think that gratitude, in its abstract form (not, for example, thanking someone for a Christmas present or holding the elevator), was like an intangible debt owed to the universe, to 'God,' in whatever incarnation he may exist.  When I used to semi-regularly go to church, I remember members of the congregation expressing how blessed their lives were because of some fortune or other that had been bestowed upon them, whether it be a new job after a bout of unemployment or a seemingly miraculous recovery from sickness.  They acted as if God was in control the whole time, and they were out of control; their gratitude stemmed from a steadfast belief that God gave them their new jobs, healed them, held them in his arms and loved them, so they were thankful.

My idea of gratitude, then, was defined by religion, but skeptic that I am, I saw this angle as nothing more than a reason to abdicate any effect one might have on this world, and any the world might have in return--to, in a sense, leave this world completely but in body.  If all is out of our hands, then what role do we have to fill other than that of marionettes, dangling on strings and acting out the wills of an unseen other?  I just can't believe that my purpose in life is to bend to the unknown wills of an unknown director and then turn around and call the good stuff gratitude. 

To rebel against this notion of gratitude and God being intricately tied, I decided to focus on specificity in this blog, on individual moments of gratitude and positivity that come my way.  I set out this aggressive timetable, and it forced me to constantly think of and take note of the things I am glad to have in my life, the little things that happen to me throughout my day that make me pause, smile, laugh, and be thankful that I was a part of it.  Every day, I seek these things out in order to write about them.  Some days, I find this task easier than on others, but I am always looking, and I always find.

So what have I learned?  That gratitude does not equate to becoming an inert bystander to all that the world has to offer (and strip away), to define gratitude by a set of guidelines laid out in the Bible, in philosophy, in anything actually, because I am beginning to think it means the exact opposite--that gratitude is to actively define your own version of it, to participate and interact with the world, to see yourself clearest when it is reflected in all of the surrounding good, of which there is so much.

(Update: I'm apparently an idiot who can't read calendars and do math, so the timing of this post is off.  Guess it just is what it is now. . .)

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

6/14/2011 - the relationship I have with 24 Hour Fitness. . .

On the mornings I don't make it to the gym, I would spend the rest of the day trying to get there.  I rarely do, but the intention haunts me all day.  The relationship I have with 24 Hour Fitness is dysfunctional, I know it, as I depend on and dread it at the same time.

If I choose to sleep in (which, in itself, is an absurd concept to begin with, thinking I have a choice to leave my warm bed before the sun rises), I would almost immediately begin contingency planning, sometimes while I'm still in bed and floating between waking and non-waking: I could go at lunch instead, but then what about the blog, which I have taken to working on during my lunch hour?  Maybe mid-morning and stay at work later, but I have meetings scheduled.  Late afternoon, but I'll have food coma.  After work and it'd be too crowded.  So when??

I'd work all day with my gym absence looming heavily in my thoughts, go home, and feel lousy, even unmotivated to eat since I didn't work out that day; how will all that food turn me into the muscle-bound jock I've always wanted (and likely doomed to always want) to be if I didn't work out.

Every day, this struggle, and I hate it; how unnecessary it all is.  But I also need it, depend on the gym to make me see myself as someone other than that awkward boy in school, the clumsy kid in P.E. holding the bat at home plate while the opposing team's captain calls out to his players in the outfield, "Come closer!  Austin's up."  Whether the gym provides any physical benefits, I can't say for certain.  I still lift the same amount of weights as I've ever lifted.  I still get winded chasing after Grr up the Bernal hill.  I still can't throw a ball with convincing trajectory, as Sam made me demonstrate this weekend at the dog park. 

But on the days when I do go to the gym, even if I have to fight the call of sleep and struggle through the workout itself, I stand taller, hold my head up higher.  Not that I skulk around slumped over or anything, but with the onus of the gym off my shoulders, I feel more confident in holding them back and attuning the body I want with the one I inhabit.  I focus better and go home confident that I spent every moment more wisely.

Kind of like today.

Monday, June 13, 2011

6/13/2011 - like an out-of-town friend. . .

A summer intern began in my department today.  Stacy was bright-eyed, over-dressed, and full of excitement for all the things I now find rote and mundane.  During a monthly meeting I typically fight to stay awake for, I watched her pen squiggle furiously over three previously blank pages of her notebook.  Such engagement, such effort--I could probably learn a thing or two from her.

Later in the morning, I walked over to her cubicle and introduced myself.  She is a junior at UC Berkeley, living with her parents for the summer in Concord, one of the furthest BART stops from San Francisco.  She said that she walked up the escalator of the Montgomery BART station and couldn't believe that she would be heading to work in one of these buildings that stood before her.

Which had been exactly how I felt when I approached the office building of my first job in the City.  After a year of teaching and dating someone who worked a corporate office job in a skyscraper in the Financial District, I romanticized the idea of commuting by train, corporate meetings, and cubicles.  What could be better than to work in the heart of a city, bustling with energy, with cafés and delis abound on every corner?  And I still remember that first morning, waiting for the elevator in the lobby to take me to the 15th floor for my orientation, dressed in a brand new shirt and tie, dress shoes that cost 30 bucks but made me feel like a million. 

Of course, the luster of it all faded soon enough.  The train commute grew tedious, corporate meetings boring, and I racked up a significant credit card bill from eating out every day.  Though it was everything I had thought it would be, it wasn't everything I had thought I wanted, and I've spent the last six years, and likely the six after those, trying to figure that last part out.

This afternoon, I sat with Stacy and walked her through my day-to-day responsibilities, and again, she scribbled massive amounts of notes and asked questions that made her seem like she genuinely cared.  In return, I found myself genuinely caring and wanting to preserve her enthusiasm.  I told her about the great co-workers here, the shortcuts through the corporate intranet I had learned over the last three years, the good cheap eats around the corner.

She was like an out-of-town friend visiting for the summer.  I may usually find Chinatown congested and tacky, Fisherman's Wharf a tourist trap, and Union Square overpriced, but I remember how proud I felt when Sam and I drove a friend through those landmarks and more, all through the City, pointing out the things we see everyday with a fresh perspective.  What a great time, I had thought when Sam and I got back home, as though we had been on a mini-vacation in our own backyard. 

I spent the rest of my afternoon today feeling better about my job than I have in a long time.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

6/12/2011 - want something. . .

Stephen Sondheim's Company begins its story of Robert, a 35-year-old bachelor in New York City, on his birthday night, celebrating with his married friends who constantly worry about his singlehood, all the while he denies wanting to be married, wanting companionship and the responsibilities of a relationship.  Sam and I watched a local production of it Friday night, and I did not expect to still be thinking about it this morning.

Though I am not single, the very idea of a (young?) guy in his 30s living in a big city and perpetually thinking about the nature of human connection begs me to draw similarities between me and Robert.  I, too, spend a lot of time reflecting on love and relationships, my own and others, real and fiction.  That two people can find each other in an endless stream of other people astounds me, and how these two people manage to stay together for any amount of time, well, that could be nothing short of a miracle.  What about all the other people, all the possibilities that await over a cup of coffee, a cocktail, while standing in line at the ATM?

I used to have this slightly thought-out philosophy that all it took to dismantle a couple was one better person, be it better looking, a better listener, shared interests, more understanding, and so on and so on.  To even entertain the notion that there could be no person better than the one at hand seems recklessly optimistic at best.  Of course, I fostered this theory back when I was a much more cynical of a person.

Ironically, or at least unexpectedly, age has made me more idealistic, more faithful in the existence of miracles.  I turn 31 next week, less a milestone of a birthday than a routine one (most, if not all, birthdays after 21 are, I guess, nothing more than routine; a friend once said that birthdays are like blackjack--anything over 21 is just a bust), but still, birthdays always makes me think a little bit on my life, where I am, what I want.

And that's where Company really caught my attention.  After two hours of surprisingly catchy and memorable numbers (like I said, I was not a fan of Sondheim pre-Friday), one quick line in the middle of the last song shot straight into my ears.  For the finale, Robert stands among friends celebrating yet another birthday, and he ponders what a relationship gets you--from intense love to devastating pain, from pleasant company to ruined sleep--wavering between asking for these things and shunning them.  Toward the end, a friend asks him to blow out his birthday candles and make a wish.  "Want something!" she said.  "Want something!"

Sam and I are in what I would say  a healthy-enough, happy-enough relationship somewhere between domestic bliss and the old married couple who go about their days tolerating each other.  On most days, we skew toward bliss, and of course I want that.  But on some days, every so often, we lean toward tolerance, just like every relationship out there, I imagine.  Or I hope.

And I know that on those latter, tolerating days of previous relationships, I would convince myself that I didn't want to be in that couplehood at all (even if I did), didn't know what I want, didn't want to step forward, take a risk and admit that I might know something of what I want, something that would have hurt too much to lose if I admitted I had wanted it at all.

When the woman told Robert to "want something," I heard it as a commandment, to not go through life thinking I am safer if I never express a desire for something, a need.  And now, Sam is sitting in the living room with one foot resting on the pup, one finger on his new iPhone, and every so often one eye on the inane Japanese anime on the Cartoon Network.  And I sit in the kitchen writing this, wanting.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

6/11/2011 - my time in Wonderland. . .

Exactly one year ago, I was a singing actor making my debut in the Studio ACT's production of Working.  I know that I've already written about the experience here, but I just want to stress the following point before going any further: I learned more in those 10 weeks than I ever could have expected to, and not just about music and theater, both of which I learned plenty.  In those 10 weeks, I learned about myself, about challenging the limits of what I can do, and how I can do it.  Most importantly, I learned what it felt like to be a part of a community of people.

Though I have not participated in any theatrical endeavors since, I hold my time in Working very close to my heart, ready at any moment to wax nostalgic about it to anyone who will listen.  Last night, Sam and I attended this year's Studio production of Stephen Sondheim's Company.  As excited as I was to see the show and some of the people I had worked with last year, I had my hesitations--the next few words will be sacrilegious to all musical theater purists out there, but here they are: I don't particularly like Sondheim's body of work, full of too-clever lyrics and circular melodies that zip around and around but never make it to a place in my mind where I would think to hum them.

One disclaimer, though: I have never actually seen a Sondheim show except for Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, which I hated.  Company was my first live presentation of Sondheim, and I now suspect that it won't be my last.

The show was thought-provoking, especially at this point in my life, and the cast was awesome, full of talent and earnest wonderment.  I sat in the audience and remembered having the same feeling of wonder last year when I stood up there, singing with my company, stumbling through dance steps, fighting back tears during the final song of the final show, knowing that my time in Wonderland, a whirlwind of a trip, would be over soon, even though I was ready to stop, was so tired after two weekends of shows.

When the stage went dark last night during the first major scene change and I saw an actor lug out a heavy wooden set piece, I could sense the heft of that block, having lifted that exact piece on and off stage countless times before.  When actors walked off-stage, I could see the darkness that awaited them.  As they took their final bow with beaming smiles and eyes that scanned the audience for family and friends, I felt a faint ache in the pit of my stomach, as though all of their excitement, all the dedication, pride, and exhaustion had been condensed into a ball, a pill that I swallowed and now threatened to expand and burst out of me.

I, like them, was so proud to have been standing by those I did, lowering my head and bowing to an audience I was so proud to have performed for.  I would go home each night after a show and be unable to sleep, lines of songs and monologues weaving in and out of my ears.  I had never been filled with such energy, and never since until last night, laying in bed and singing silently to myself, "You're always sorry, you're always grateful," until other thoughts took over, then nothing.

Friday, June 10, 2011

6/10/2010 - bested by my own pup. . .

I started kindergarten as a shy and scared little boy with a slippery grip on the English language.  Having never spent significant amounts of time with other children, in puppy terms, I had not been properly socialized in order to understand how to interact with kids on the playground.  At home, I was the only child, and my companions were my familiar mom and dad with occasional appearances by older cousins who coddled and indulged me in my whims.

At school, though, I knew none of my classmates, and they weren't about to entertain any whims of mine.  I struggled to understand them, they me, and I had not a familiar face to turn to save one: Cathy, the daughter of a family friend.  She had been a preschooler there, already oriented and comfortable, so I latched on to her like Linus to his blanket.  According to the various tellings of this story, I sought her out during every recess, every moment I was not at my desk, and I gripped her hand with tenacity, refusing to let go for a week.  She obliged lovingly, helped me learn to cope without my mommy and daddy, to adjust on the playground and make friends.

Which I did soon enough.  I took to her tutelage like a star pupil, and within a few weeks, found my own set of friends, spent time away from Cathy, and began my development into the person I would later become.  I owed Cathy much gratitude for her patience and guidance, and I showed my thanks by shunning her, not wanting to play with her anymore, and at least one incident where I called her 'stupid,' as she had dutifully reported to my mom one day after school.

I don't know or remember why I treated her that way, and I certainly hope that this habit of betrayal disappeared as I got older.  All I can say for myself is that I was five and felt a newfound sense of courage I had never felt before, and I had no other way to exhibit this bravery other than through brattiness.

Grr must have also found his missing courage because he has inexplicably developed a wicked bratty streak with a matching wiliness behind his eyes.  When he ignores a command, such as "Sit!," where he used to just saunter off as if he didn't hear me, I now can almost hear the rebellion take shape in his little brain, gel together to become a thought, an impulse, then action. 

After repeating "Sit!" a few times and towering over him in a futile attempt to assert my dominance, I would know that I've lost when he looks me straight in the eye with his mouth panting and tongue hanging askew, hears my command, and then falls flat to the ground.  He does not sit, does not walk away.  Instead, he leaves me to wonder, "How do I chide him for this in a way that he will understand?  That I am not angry he laid down, but that I know he knows he should have sat, yet willfully did something else, something that I normally praise him for?  Has he found a loophole to outsmart me?"  He would then look up at me with his back legs tucked beneath him, his front ones splayed, tail wagging vigorously, taunting me, as if saying, "There.  Your move."

Yes, he found his loophole.

If he were a sassy gay man or a big black woman, I imagine he would likely do that head thing where it glides laterally from shoulder to shoulder.  While it is infuriating to be bested by my own pup, the very one I used to hug when a knock on the door would frighten him, the one who would trail two steps behind me for fear of being left alone, the same one Sam held up to the window, whispered words of encouragement as busses and traffic noise would threaten to send him cowering into the closet, I guess I would rather have a rebel of a dog, a flat-out defiant and teenaged one, than one who lived his life with us in fear.

But in light of Grr's 'betrayal,' I would like to take the opportunity and say this: Cathy, you have been avenged.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

6/9/2011 - to the City. . .

Often, I forget that I live in San Francisco.

On a walk up in Bernal Heights today, at a park with trails that wind high above the City, a couple approached me and asked if I would take their picture.  They were a cute couple, young and photogenic, and the picture turned out beautifully with his arm over her shoulder, hers around his waist, and the skyline painted behind them, a skyline that I barely notice anymore after my move to the City four years ago, almost to the day. Four years ago, the City was a foreign body that terrified and excited me, a network of incomprehensible streets and dark alleys, a hardness of urban life that I had yet to understand.

When we got to the back side of the hill, I saw fog rolling over Twin Peaks on its way downtown, smelled it, in fact, the moisture and the chill, and was reminded of when I moved into my little studio near Union Square three floors down from where Sam lived and knowing, without any arrogance or presumption, that we would someday fall in love, dance in a love affair that would last, if not lifelong, then four years at the very least. Somehow, but I knew that we would make it happen.

I often forget that I now live here, with everything that it has to offer mere footsteps from my house, in a city I used to find so intimidating, so imposing and aggressive, a city I now consider beautiful, frantic and serene in its wildness.

I saw it behind the couple as they smiled at me, waiting for me to count to three and take their picture. Often, I forget that this city is my home, that all I ever want is here within reach, if only I would reach.

Every so often, though, I am reminded.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

6/8/2011 - right up to the edge and past it. . .

I had a dream last night that I was sitting in the driver's seat of my old Toyota 4Runner, a high school graduation present my parents bought for me that I subsequently totaled four months later on the highway one night when I dozed off, veered onto the center divider, and flipped it right onto its head. 

In this dream, though, it was brand new, had barely seen an open road, and I was taking it up a curvaceous path against the side of a mountain with a precipitous cliff to my left.  A passenger sat to my right; it could have been Sam, but just as likely not.  The sun had already set, but lingering light bounced off of the wispy, brush-stroked clouds, the road, my hands that gripped the steering wheel at exactly the '10' and '2' position.  The sky was a palette of rainbow sherbet, and I knew this color would not last.  I knew that the sunset, the drive, the very turning of the planet, would not last. 

But I was happy.

I was deliriously happy as we made our endless way to the top of the mountain, from one bend in the road to the next, but I kept it inside.  It was a peaceful delirium, full of good and purity, as though all the kindness I ever showed, all I had ever loved, all I had to look forward to, had been collected and condensed into one moment, one second just waiting for us to meet it around the next curve, down to this one singular act of driving my reconstituted 4Runner up an unmarked, one-way, narrow and writhing road.  There was nothing else but my passenger and I, the darkening sky, the blackness of the chasm below. 

We eventually reached a turnout, and I pulled into it, heard the tires crunch against the gravel before coming to a stop.  The sky had turned completely grey, full of clouds and heavy with rain, but also brighter than it was before.  I shut off the engine and sat back.  My passenger said nothing, there but not there, and we both looked out over the cliff.  In this new light, I could almost see down into the valley.  Trees.  More precisely, treetops, but there was no telling how tall these tree were, how much higher we sat, perched above it all, and how much farther we'd go beyond those treetops before we'd hit the ground.

I then understood: I could take this car, my passenger, all the hopes and happiness I had felt leading up to this moment, still felt actually, as I put my hand on the ignition--I could slam my foot down on the pedal, feel the car tug and lunge--I could take this car right up to the edge and past it, if I wanted, because right then, I knew that I was in a dream.  I just knew, with unwavering certainty, that nothing would happen to us, that my power was endless, everything permitted, and I could step out of the car, raise a hand up to heaven and call God down himself had I needed him.  I knew that I could plunge down to the trees below, past them, past the ground even, feel the earth push through my skin, and I would be alright.

Everything would be alright in the morning.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

6/7/2011 - Mmm. . .

Last year, or maybe it was this year, I can't remember, I set a goal to read one book a month.  Actually, come to think of it, I made the same goal both years.  Bottom line, though, is that I gave up after three or four books last year, and my current outlook is grim seeing as how I just finished my second book of the year last night.

This morning, I got a mass e-mail from a coworker inviting a bunch of people to a coffee shop "reading" she will be giving on Thursday from her novel-in-progress.

I haven't responded, but I know that I will not attend.  I enjoy reading, don't do it enough, but I like it.  On the contrary, I hate readings, events where authors stand at a podium with glasses perched atop their noses, a bottle of water at the ready, and reads aloud.  In grad school, MFA students were expected to attend all readings given by the various visiting authors and poets to the college.  And why wouldn't we want to?  A serious student would relish the opportunity to hear and learn from a master of the craft.  A less-than-serious student would find any reason not to go, and on the rare occasion when I did, I spent most of the time surveying the crowd and watching heads bob in tempo with the author, nodding in approval or understanding or whatever else writers do to show camaraderie.  I never nodded, felt like an imposter if I did.

Worst of all were the poetry readings.  Half the time, I would not know a poem had ended unless I heard a small cascade of "Mmm"s from the audience, sometimes in conjunction with a head nod, as if the final word touched upon a universal truth, an edict passed down from Erato herself to her faithful and open-eared followers, leaving me behind with my prosaic thoughts and doubts, believing that indeed, this is why I will never be a real writer.  Needless to say, I never "Mmm"ed.

So I would usually skip out of these events whenever possible, using convenient excuses like sickness (in the wintertime) or allergies (in spring) or more creative alibis when needed.  Not that it mattered; nobody, faculty included, cared.  I showed up, didn't show up; either way, no one would have wished their lives were any different.

But now, on hindsight, I wonder if I had gone to more of those readings, fraternized with fellow writers more, participated in their community more, and just flat out read more, might I be in a different place in my life and writing career?

Probably not, as no amount of readings can fix what I think is my biggest problem: my attention span has been whittled down to the length of a baby's.  Prime example is this very post; I started writing about how I finished reading Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius last night (finally, after several attempts throughout the years), a manifesto on grief, tangents, and inappropriate reactions to tragedy.  I started writing about how I nervously turned the last few pages, afraid I would reach the end abruptly and not know how to react other than know that someone better than me would have quietly closed the book, smiled sagely to himself, uttered a soft but audible "Mmm" that would have completed the entire experience, filled in every gap and brought profound enlightenment to the passages I (admittedly) skimmed through.

Instead, I flung the back cover closed, looked at the picture of Eggers and thought, "He's the hottest writer I've read in a long time," then held the book by its spine, felt its weight in my hand and admired the girth of all its collective pages and marvelled at the achievement of reading all of them, at enjoying them along the way.  Nothing more, nothing profound, no revelations save the following question: could there possibly be a place for someone like me, with thoughts like mine, in the literary world?

Monday, June 6, 2011

6/6/2011 - gay men don't get bruises. . .

The first HIV test I ever took was at a community health clinic when I first started college.  There was no way I could have tested positive, if you know what I mean, but still, I spent the next few days waiting for the result and worrying that I would be surprised. 

Even in my teens, feelings like I was fated to be a virgin for life, I convinced myself that HIV would affect me somehow in some profound manner at some point in the future.  One Christmas, I asked for an AIDS bracelet, a $20 sterling silver band with a portion of the proceeds going to the "Until There's a Cure" organization.  I can't even remember how I heard about it, but I know I wore it proudly, thinking that it was my own subversive way of coming out before I actually came out.  I equated it with a rainbow flag or pink triangle on my backpack.

Because I grew up and came to terms with gay sex in the 90's, I found it near impossible not to connect homosexuality with HIV.  Sure, the eye of the scare was behind me by the time I even knew what it was, but the echoes reverberated.  Almost every gay movie I watched dealt with HIV, every gay book I read.  It became subliminal: a character coughs, gets sick, sweats at night, and I knew.

So I began wondering if someday, that would be me.

I was so keenly aware of the disease, yet lacked any substantial education about the matter, that I concocted phantom symptoms for myself.  I'd absent-mindedly bash my knee against a table, and the subsequent bruise would be the onset of Kaposi's sarcoma.  Feeling warm at four in the morning was an episode of night sweats.  Every cold, every flu was a sign of seroconversion.  I lived as though HIV had a personal vendetta against me, was determined to break me down, even if I gave it few opportunities to do so.

But more importantly, I believed that its vendetta was not only with me, but gay men as a whole.  Gay men don't get bruises.  Gay men don't get the flu, don't feel malaise, don't wake up kicking off covers in the summertime.  Gay men get HIV.

HIV played as big of a role in my sexual identity as sex and identity itself, and I eventually found that I could not, and never could, separate the two.  In my head, HIV was nothing but a tragic end reserved for gay guys (again, lacking in any substantial education) to cut short the time they have to spend with the loves of their lives.  Kind of like what happened to Nicole Kidman at the end of Moulin Rouge.  HIV was my consumption, and I was terrified that I would meet my Ewan McGregor and then pass out to my death during a big Bollywood-inspired stage number.

Nowadays, I am more informed about HIV, AIDS, STDs, and all the other acronyms that gay men are flooded with from day to day.  I understand that my body will not immaculately conceive the virus just because I am gay any more than my brain will spontaneously rewire itself with math skills just because I am Chinese.  And HIV is not the death sentence it once was.

I think of all this because yesterday, over 2,000 bike riders took off from the outskirts of San Francisco to begin their 550-mile journey to Los Angeles as part of the 10th annual AIDS LifeCycle event.  These riders raised over $13 million that will go toward HIV research and providing services to those affected by the disease. 

On Twitter this morning, I read an exchange between people who were debating the possibility of ever finding a cure.  The prevailing opinion states that the money is so great for those who develop the treatment options that they would never spend any money or effort toward developing and implementing an actual cure; corporations outweigh individual needs.

I don't know if I believe the conspiracy theory.  Could be true, hopefully false.  Either way, it doesn't change how so many men and women saddled up on their bikes, trained for months, raised an amazing amount of money, and then rode off en masse on a cloudy morning on their way down a good length of California.  I have to believe that therein lies a power than can, and eventually will, triumph over any obstacle: virus, corporation, or otherwise.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

6/5/2011 - lazy. . .

Sundays always feel so lazy.  Why do anything, productive or otherwise, when I will have to spend the next five days doing productive things, or at the very least, whatever it is my company pays me to do?

Even if Sam and I are productive and actually accomplish stuff, like take Grr out to Fort Funston, bathe him, and clean the house, as we did today, Sundays still feel like a day to just lay down, respect it by closing our eyes and letting it pass.


Sam and Grr got a headstart, but I am right behind.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

6/4/2011 - to look like anyone. . .

Without a doubt, X-Men: First Class is the best movie I have seen in a long while.  It captured my imagination from the start and ran with it.  Halfway through, when I realized that we were probably halfway through, I wished that the story would never end, or that I could erase it from my memory when it does, just so I can discover it for myself again later.

Without spoiling anything, I will just say that the movie introduced several mutants and their associated powers.  Some were very cool, from the ability to read minds to power over metal, while others seemed kind of pointless, like emitting unstoppable energy rings that destroy everything in its path or growing wings like a bug.

Most of what I know about the X-Men I learned from the movies.  Well, that and the various friends I had growing up who read the comic books religiously and spent countless conversations debating the various plotlines and the pros and cons of each mutant's power.  Therefore, I know just enough to know that of all the powers available in this superhero universe, there is only one I would want if ever I was given the opportunity to choose: Mystique's ability to look like anyone (or anything?) she wants.

I spent a good portion of my childhood wanting to look like anyone else but me.  I was something of a rotund kid, so I wanted to be skinny like my friend Mark.  When I grew into my body and got skinny, I wanted to be muscular like my classmate Brett.  I wanted to be tanned like the guys I'd see on MTV.  When Matty said that he didn't date Asian guys, I wanted to be white.  When Anthony said I was too young for him, I wanted to be older.

Even now, after growing wiser (a little) and not obsessing as much about my physical appearance, I still catch myself sometimes, when I see a guy at the gym with an impossible body (impossible for me, anyway), wishing I could look more like him and less the ectomorph that I do.  The apparent truth, then, seems to be quite simple: I am vain.  I fight it, try not to think about it, but the urge is often too great.

If I had Mystique's power, I know I would never look like myself, or even the same person on any given day.  Why, when I can be anyone to everyone, be exactly who anybody would want?

With these thoughts in my head after the movie, Sam and I drove out to K9-Playtime to pick up our little pup.  While I waited by the car, a woman came out with her dog and met her husband on the sidewalk.  I overheard her telling him that little Roscoe barely recognized her when she picked him up.

When Sam and Grr came out, Grr turned and saw me.  Immediately, he pinned his little ears back to his head and raced toward me like he had spent a lifetime trying to find me again.  There's a bit of "bumper sticker wisdom" that I've seen a long time ago, something along the lines of, "Help me be the kind of person my dog thinks I am."  Maybe I can repurpose it, ask for help in learning how to appreciate looking like the person my dog loves to see.

Friday, June 3, 2011

6/3/2011 - astonish. . .

I was once a poet, you know. 

Not the good kind obviously, or I'd still be one, but the struggling kind, the kind that never quite got the rhythm and timbre of poetry, that never fit in with those who did.  I was more than halfway through my graduate studies when I realized this, that I was actually a more of a writer of prose who happened to get lucky with one poem, win an award, and then never replicate its (minor) success. 

But even so, after giving up the poetry ghost, the reading and writing of it, the 'scene' itself, I think those years of masquerading as a poet left some vestigial artistry, an appreciation for words and a heightened attention to their possibilities, even if I rarely use these skills. 

Years ago, years after I finished my final poem (though I didn't know it at the time), Sam and I began the first iteration of our relationship.  Because we looked for reasons to hang out, was not ready yet to sit idly on the couch watching TV, we would regularly walk from his apartment to the Ferry Building on the San Francisco waterfront on Saturday morning to booth-shop at the artisan fair, teeming over with paintings, photography, jewelry, knittings, and various other homemade tchotchkes that we would later come to know as "lesbian crafts" (or what some friends call "cat art").

Usually, these fairs produced nothing of interest, but one weekend, an artist set up a booth and filled several racks with small canvases of stenciled words or letters spray painted against an industrial, rust-colored background.  One piece stood out: a medium-sized, $375 canvas with the word 'cleave' stenciled across, perfectly aligned and centered and militant in its perfection.

I thought about that word for a long time, musing on its ability to mean two diametrically opposite things at the same time: to separate but also to cling, to pull toward but push away.  'Cleave' inspired a flash of poetry, awakened that instinct I once had tried so hard to hone.  I even thought about writing a poem on it.  A few weeks later, when Sam and I broke up, I actually tried, wrote a few stanzas about 'cleave,' about community and apartheid, union and divorce, about the very conflicts I felt inside at the time, but nothing ultimately came of it.

And then that poetic instinct, fleeting as it was, fell back asleep and has lain dormant ever since.

Yesterday, after work, I waited by the car while Sam ran into K9-Playtime to pick Grr up from his puppy daycare/romp session.  Stuck to a nearby post was this sticker:


And I stared at it for a few moments.  It became less a word and more a command.  As I stood on the sidewalk and read it to myself over and over, impatient cars rumbled past and onto the highway, headed home, and I felt the gentle stirrings of an instinct I had long ago, heard it stretch and wake up after a long and deep slumber.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

6/2/2011 - Pride season is upon us. . .

Today, on a walk in the intermittent sunshine, I saw rainbow flags flapping against lampposts on Market Street and remembered that Pride season is upon us.

In San Francisco, on the first of June every year, rainbow flags are raised on the city's most famous thoroughfare, from the waterfront to the Castro, heralding the arrival of Gay Pride month, a time to celebrate all things gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, questioning, straight (even), and anything else the community has picked up for inclusion along the way.  From film festivals to guest speakers to fundraisers, June is a good time to be a homosexual in the City.

It all culminates in a seemingly endless parade of floats on the last Sunday of the month, with streams of waving walkers holding banners, underwear-clad muscle guys gyrating on platforms, and bike-riding dykes, all of which terminate at City Hall and are greeted by a massive street fair with vendors, food, and entertainment.  I have lived in San Francisco for four years (almost to the day), was always a stone's throw from the City (including the five years I lived in Davis/Sacramento, where you just would have had to throw very hard), yet I have only been to this event three times, have only watched the parade itself once, and only for 20 minutes or so before I got bored.

Though I like the idea of the parade and the after party and all the ancillary events sprouting throughout the City in the coming weeks, I rarely participate.  Just like in high school, when I was struggling with my sexuality and longing to meet other gay people, I never attended a single Rainbow Pride Club meeting, held after school every week or so.  I just took comfort in knowing that it existed.  As an adult, I feel the same way about Pride.

Truth is, I sometimes find the whole thing to be a little overwhelming with the crowds and hoopla, as well as simultaneously a little underwhelming.  I have apparently adopted the attitudes of those I've known who have lived in the City much longer than I and have attended much more of these types of events: same as it was last year, with the same organizations, the same booths, the same people, same same same. 

But when I stopped and thought more about it today, I realized that while I am simply glad that it happens year after year, people from all over the world flock to San Francisco to witness and be a part of it, truly thankful that such an event could exist.  I often fail to consider that for some, gay pride is an act of rebellion, where a display of rainbow flags, or even one rainbow flag, for that matter, would say, "I am putting myself out there because I am proud of who I am, secure and above your reproach."  For those still fighting for the right to just be gay, participation in a pride event is an act of bravery, a risk to their well-being, their families, their lives, not just an occasion to drink outside and walk around shirtless.

From that perspective, Pride doesn't seem so blasé, and I shouldn't take it for granted.  After all, I, too, am proud to be gay, though I rarely, if ever, put it in those words.  I'm proud to be the kind of gay guy I am, however I may be, and I am grateful to live in a place that embraces it.  To actually take the time and see the rainbow flags brazenly flying in the breeze, to remember what it represents and the people who made it possible, as well as the ones waiting for it to be--no, Pride isn't blasé at all.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

6/1/2011 - about nothing. . .

It's hard to write about nothing.

The front desk boy at the gym who remembers my name regularly asks me if I have any big plans for the weekend, or if I had done anything exciting over the weekend past.  Though at the time, while living through those weekends, I was thrilled with it all, going into any detail about the dog park, sleeping in, my latest iPad app obsession (Vegas Towers, and not just because it has the word 'Vegas' in it) would seem to just give a long version of the very simple answer: "No, my life is very boring."

Sam and I had dinner with Jason and his sister in honor of Steve's birthday on Monday, and I not only found myself constantly talking about Grr, but Sam too!  Have we become those "parents" who think they are raising a "Christ-pet," and that everyone is waiting with bated breath to hear more?  Do we have nothing else going on in our lives?

When I sat down at lunch today to begin this post, I ran through how Sam and I spent our previous evening for fodder.  Nothing.  I had biked home shortly after five, opened the door expecting to catch a lunging pup in my arms, but the house was quiet.  No pup, no Sam.  I walked to the kitchen and found ingredients for spaghetti stacked on the countertop and a pot of water on the stove, threatening to boil.  I opened the freezer, grabbed the frozen ground turkey, and popped it in the microwave.  It was all very smooth, as if mapped by a choreographer.

But there was a time a little while back, when Sam was a question mark to me altogether, when we were still stumbling around in the infant stages of our relationship, when we weren't in one at all.  I spent countless hours at the gym with Chad, over coffee with Steve, dinners with Karen, trying to decipher this enigma, read his mind and extrapolate tomes of information from a simple glance, a smile or a scowl.  Had I started this blog then, I would never run out of things to say, about Sam, about love, about dating and insecurities, about hope and discontent.

I can see now how Carrie devoted about seven percent of her on-screen time writing her "Sex and the City" column and the rest shopping for shoes, brunching with the girls, living the extravagant life of a writer--her column practically writes itself!  (Though I do have my doubts that her lifestyle could be supported on a newspaper columnist's salary, however successful she may have been.)  Without turbulent relationships, she would have nothing.  For that matter, there would be no pop music, no rom-coms; arts and entertainment would be a completely different landscape without the oft-comedic struggles of dating.

Contentment, on the other hand, is a different story, one that doesn't always write itself.  Turns out Sam isn't so much an enigma as he is just male, and our life together is fun to live, but less so to tell.  How many posts can I put up of living together, cooking together, raising a pup together, before I alienate what little readership I have? 

When Sam and Grr returned from their walk, I heard a frantic shuffling of paws and an equally frantic dog round the corner and leap at me with a winding tail, ready for take-off.  Sam followed and, with no other form of greeting, said, "He's having some tummy troubles.  It was like two handfuls of pretty explosive stuff."

This is what I'm thankful for.  After struggling through the better part of an hour with various scraps and sentences, opening paragraphs that ultimately went nowhere, outlines that even I got bored with writing, I remembered this little quote from yesterday and ran with it.  The post didn't write itself, and I doubt a TV show could be made out of it, but still--eat your heart out, Carrie Bradshaw.