Ladies and gentlemen, I am sick.
Thanks for your sympathy (no, I am not projecting; yes, I know you care--call it intuition) but I suspect I feel worse about it than you. It took all of one day home from work to exhaust the supply of DVDs I actually wanted to watch, but I do owe myself a pat on the back for purchasing both Ratatouille and Clueless. I have ingested a phenomenal amount of carbohydrates in the past 24 hours; knowing this was a flu-type shutdown and nothing involving gastro-nastiness, I went on a fuck-it-all snack shopping spree Tuesday night before I retired to seclusion. I suggest white cheddar Cheez-It crackers to guide you through your next malaise. Oh yeah, I feel weak and everything from my elbows up just aches. My head seems to weigh more than the entire rest of my body.
All told though, I am pretty self-contained when I fall ill. I usually shy away from others doing too much for me and just hibernate until I am back on solid footing (but I do need to thank the roommate who has generously offered various food items and trips to the grocery store to assist me and two other roommates who are all sick; side note, I reside in a hotbed of influenza that has seemingly laid bare a case for living alone). In a remarkable twist, I actually become less irritable and snarky than I am normally. Some things just require too much energy.
If I end up at home another day--odds are 50/50 at this point--let the blogging begin. Daytime TV is atrocious and I have also spent as much time organizing my iTunes as I realistically can for now. I'm not at a clever enough level right now to begin the masterpiece that will be my debut novel, but I will probably have just enough energy to recount a few tales of recent vintage that may be worth sharing. Until then, it's time to let the phlegm take over and have its way with my sinuses. See you on the flipside.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
It's Cold Outside.
I've been floating the past few weeks in a loose cloud of thought, as you may have gathered from previous missives about my life and social well-being and whatnot. Happily, there have been some signs of progress. I am still working on a better formula, but I have made strides in terms of realigning my activities, balancing my time among differing friends and interests, and also easing up on the intensity with which I can often steamroll into such episodes, leaving little behind in the aftermath except an empty wallet and a dire need for sleep and re-hydration. There is still a lot to work on but I am encouraged, not least of all by some of what has surfaced independently (or at most with a sideways glance) since the beginning of the year.
This general haze of ideas--at times no more than fragments and phrases, as opposed to clearly defined ruminations--has been difficult to capture and record, both in general and for the purposes of my share-with-the-world exercise. However, real ingredients are beginning to filter out of a thicker sediment, and the other day something hit after a dedicated session of pondering.
I have never felt like I really belonged anywhere.
There it was: a life explained in a mere nine words. Not until I really considered the length and breadth of what that meant, however--and found it shockingly easy to confirm--did I really understand how much it meant.
Perhaps the proof is in the variety of scenarios in which this sense of being the square peg to the world's proverbial round hole has manifested itself over the course of 28 years. Second grade was probably the grand kickoff of the phenomenon, for it was the time when a whole host of against-the-grain trademarks introduced themselves into my collective psyche. My (now happy) parents had split up a couple years ago, which at the time was still relatively uncommon among the peers at the new school I attended that year. They were also young and working-class; we rented instead of owned, another rarity among Mrs. Quay's class at Whitemarsh Elementary School. The neighborhood I lived in was predominantly (I mean seriously) Jewish. Me? Catholic, of course. Did any of these differences fundamentally impede my ability to get a good education and make friends? Not at all, and I had both. But kids are acutely able to classify differences, and I was smart for my age. I began to downplay as much as possible and keep myself in the pack--which may ultimately be harder to grapple with. The secret is all yours to let fester. (Apparently, I wouldn't admit to a number of people until well after the fact that my parents were no longer together.)
I was off and running from there. Cub Scouts was a treat--not particularly athletic or outdoorsy, mom taking me to meetings, and so on, minus THE BIG BAD SECRET that was unknown to me at age eight but which was undoubtedly lurking a few layers deeper. Nothing says "different" more than not liking who society tells you that you should, courtesy of God. And as these secrets ate away at me, my solution was apparently to do some eating myself, which led to low-level fatness, which is an even better look when you're a smart kid who wears glasses. Having braces may have done me in for good, so I'm glad I never needed them.
Some of those situations resolved themselves over time--my parents remarried each other, ironically around the time my friends started increasingly becoming children of divorce, I hit a growth spurt in high school that evened out my waistline more, we bought a house in a less polarized neighborhood, the contact lens was introduced into my life. But once you're on the outside looking in, you very rarely forget it even when you begin to exist on the other side of the glass, especially when many of the differences that alienated you from your peers (and ultimately yourself) were never going to be in your control to change. Oddly enough, after being gay ceased to be a social issue among straight friends, it become one with other gays, as my self-image--forever the fat kid among a population more specifically tuned in than the average American man to 30-inch waistlines and mountainous bumps of muscle--rendered me irrelevant in that game. Or at least I thought.
So I did what I had learned to do early on--hide, or at least hide just enough to be out of harm's reach, "harm" in this case being emotional vulnerability. Make things look and sound good, despite whatever is going on behind the scenes, and when all else fails, turn up the charm. Buoyed by a few actually positive developments--a nascent writing career, more friends in college, the beginning of my dancefloor love affair--it was easy to turn up the charm and wave away the notion of sub-par happenings on other levels. At least outwardly; the funny thing is, when you start to view yourself as outside the expected, you start acting in ways that are completely contrary to established best practices, and not even consciously.
Which goes a long way toward explaining how college went so abysmally off-track. Self-sabotage is a brutal thing--and it only served to compound woes. I somehow managed to be the smart kid who matched As with Fs (for purely attendance/completion reasons, not intellectual capacity--I never got less than a B in a class I busted my ass in). By my last full-time year in College Park found me, bizarrely, among a group of friends all defined by their membership in an honors fraternity. Oh, to be the odd man out once again! Fast-forward a half-decade, and all of my close friends are not only college graduates, a fuckload of them have pushed through graduate or law school, and have, if nothing else, expanded their professional options. They are the haves (and rightfully so; they've worked for it) and for the moment, I am still the have-not.
Always on the outside, always looking in.
And no number of well-planned and -promoted events, no scores of friends who demonstrably care, no life-rescuing job, no interest from young, attractive and bright guys will ever make certain things about my life go away. For I will always be the fat, poor, gay, underachieving kid in my head.
Unless I change that myself, and that time has come.
As if I needed more to work on, but this time change gets to the core of the problem, not just the everyday situations in orbit. Those will continue to be revised as part of an overall better-living plan, but starting from the center and working my way outward could have the best overall benefit and really shatter the cycle that has gone on far too long. And once that process reaches a sustained velocity (I'm actively working to see that it happens on the sooner side of things) it will be time to resume the life that, in many ways, I paused sometime shortly after the dawn of the millennium. I won't be looking back to do it--for this requires a sense of forward-thinking and reliance on concepts I never knew I had the power to embrace, such as my differences (or anyone's, really) don't actually matter much at this time in one's adulthood, or that I am a good enough person to do what I actually want with my life and be a success on my own terms, not anyone else's (although the bonus is that I would be on theirs as well by achieving what I'll set out to do). It will be a combination of revisiting old, unfinished goals and building on the very real accomplishments of the recent past. It's all about momentum right now.
After years on the outside--even when I magically appeared to be just the opposite--I am finally coming in. Into my own, anyway. Hopefully you'll enjoy the new me as much as I plan to.
(And thanks to everyone who, regardless of the differences I discussed, always treated me as anything but an outsider. Those friendships only serve as a reminder of how dumb I was being much of the time anyway.)
This general haze of ideas--at times no more than fragments and phrases, as opposed to clearly defined ruminations--has been difficult to capture and record, both in general and for the purposes of my share-with-the-world exercise. However, real ingredients are beginning to filter out of a thicker sediment, and the other day something hit after a dedicated session of pondering.
I have never felt like I really belonged anywhere.
There it was: a life explained in a mere nine words. Not until I really considered the length and breadth of what that meant, however--and found it shockingly easy to confirm--did I really understand how much it meant.
Perhaps the proof is in the variety of scenarios in which this sense of being the square peg to the world's proverbial round hole has manifested itself over the course of 28 years. Second grade was probably the grand kickoff of the phenomenon, for it was the time when a whole host of against-the-grain trademarks introduced themselves into my collective psyche. My (now happy) parents had split up a couple years ago, which at the time was still relatively uncommon among the peers at the new school I attended that year. They were also young and working-class; we rented instead of owned, another rarity among Mrs. Quay's class at Whitemarsh Elementary School. The neighborhood I lived in was predominantly (I mean seriously) Jewish. Me? Catholic, of course. Did any of these differences fundamentally impede my ability to get a good education and make friends? Not at all, and I had both. But kids are acutely able to classify differences, and I was smart for my age. I began to downplay as much as possible and keep myself in the pack--which may ultimately be harder to grapple with. The secret is all yours to let fester. (Apparently, I wouldn't admit to a number of people until well after the fact that my parents were no longer together.)
I was off and running from there. Cub Scouts was a treat--not particularly athletic or outdoorsy, mom taking me to meetings, and so on, minus THE BIG BAD SECRET that was unknown to me at age eight but which was undoubtedly lurking a few layers deeper. Nothing says "different" more than not liking who society tells you that you should, courtesy of God. And as these secrets ate away at me, my solution was apparently to do some eating myself, which led to low-level fatness, which is an even better look when you're a smart kid who wears glasses. Having braces may have done me in for good, so I'm glad I never needed them.
Some of those situations resolved themselves over time--my parents remarried each other, ironically around the time my friends started increasingly becoming children of divorce, I hit a growth spurt in high school that evened out my waistline more, we bought a house in a less polarized neighborhood, the contact lens was introduced into my life. But once you're on the outside looking in, you very rarely forget it even when you begin to exist on the other side of the glass, especially when many of the differences that alienated you from your peers (and ultimately yourself) were never going to be in your control to change. Oddly enough, after being gay ceased to be a social issue among straight friends, it become one with other gays, as my self-image--forever the fat kid among a population more specifically tuned in than the average American man to 30-inch waistlines and mountainous bumps of muscle--rendered me irrelevant in that game. Or at least I thought.
So I did what I had learned to do early on--hide, or at least hide just enough to be out of harm's reach, "harm" in this case being emotional vulnerability. Make things look and sound good, despite whatever is going on behind the scenes, and when all else fails, turn up the charm. Buoyed by a few actually positive developments--a nascent writing career, more friends in college, the beginning of my dancefloor love affair--it was easy to turn up the charm and wave away the notion of sub-par happenings on other levels. At least outwardly; the funny thing is, when you start to view yourself as outside the expected, you start acting in ways that are completely contrary to established best practices, and not even consciously.
Which goes a long way toward explaining how college went so abysmally off-track. Self-sabotage is a brutal thing--and it only served to compound woes. I somehow managed to be the smart kid who matched As with Fs (for purely attendance/completion reasons, not intellectual capacity--I never got less than a B in a class I busted my ass in). By my last full-time year in College Park found me, bizarrely, among a group of friends all defined by their membership in an honors fraternity. Oh, to be the odd man out once again! Fast-forward a half-decade, and all of my close friends are not only college graduates, a fuckload of them have pushed through graduate or law school, and have, if nothing else, expanded their professional options. They are the haves (and rightfully so; they've worked for it) and for the moment, I am still the have-not.
Always on the outside, always looking in.
And no number of well-planned and -promoted events, no scores of friends who demonstrably care, no life-rescuing job, no interest from young, attractive and bright guys will ever make certain things about my life go away. For I will always be the fat, poor, gay, underachieving kid in my head.
Unless I change that myself, and that time has come.
As if I needed more to work on, but this time change gets to the core of the problem, not just the everyday situations in orbit. Those will continue to be revised as part of an overall better-living plan, but starting from the center and working my way outward could have the best overall benefit and really shatter the cycle that has gone on far too long. And once that process reaches a sustained velocity (I'm actively working to see that it happens on the sooner side of things) it will be time to resume the life that, in many ways, I paused sometime shortly after the dawn of the millennium. I won't be looking back to do it--for this requires a sense of forward-thinking and reliance on concepts I never knew I had the power to embrace, such as my differences (or anyone's, really) don't actually matter much at this time in one's adulthood, or that I am a good enough person to do what I actually want with my life and be a success on my own terms, not anyone else's (although the bonus is that I would be on theirs as well by achieving what I'll set out to do). It will be a combination of revisiting old, unfinished goals and building on the very real accomplishments of the recent past. It's all about momentum right now.
After years on the outside--even when I magically appeared to be just the opposite--I am finally coming in. Into my own, anyway. Hopefully you'll enjoy the new me as much as I plan to.
(And thanks to everyone who, regardless of the differences I discussed, always treated me as anything but an outsider. Those friendships only serve as a reminder of how dumb I was being much of the time anyway.)
Monday, February 4, 2008
Monday Isn't All Bad.
In an effort to not hate the beginning of the week, or life in general, I present to you a few good things that came of Monday, February 4:
- I sent my RSVP to the wedding of Kurt K. and Eric W. Next up: tux shopping!
- The greatly underrated and generally hilarious How I Met Your Mother is on.
- Mother Nature has embraced my cry, at least temporarily, to forget this whole winter business.
- I'm pretty sure I have candy stashed somewhere in my bedroom; I just need to find it.
- It wasn't until around 6 p.m., but I was reminded of a very good reason to get up every morning.
Tuesday doesn't stand a chance.
- I sent my RSVP to the wedding of Kurt K. and Eric W. Next up: tux shopping!
- The greatly underrated and generally hilarious How I Met Your Mother is on.
- Mother Nature has embraced my cry, at least temporarily, to forget this whole winter business.
- I'm pretty sure I have candy stashed somewhere in my bedroom; I just need to find it.
- It wasn't until around 6 p.m., but I was reminded of a very good reason to get up every morning.
Tuesday doesn't stand a chance.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Eventuality.
Almost everyone loses at some point...even those on the brink of being perfect.
Congratulations to Eli Manning and the New York Giants (truly words I never thought I'd think, type, or say) on a hard-earned Super Bowl victory.
On the plus side...still hot:
Congratulations to Eli Manning and the New York Giants (truly words I never thought I'd think, type, or say) on a hard-earned Super Bowl victory.
On the plus side...still hot:
Robama '08.
Happy birthday, Rob F! I hope the rest of the celebration was as dreamy as the love above.
Happy birthday to this week's other birthday kids: Meg Z., Neal M. and Christopher K. There must have been some spring love in the air in 1979-80.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Progress Report, Vol. 1.
Sad to say, I feel a retreat from progress this week in some ways. The gym may as well be across an ocean for all my indifference, although it hasn't been all bad:
PRO: I haven't been drinking much at all lately--three drinks Friday, none since then.
CON: I've become a non-happy-hour-going hermit on weeknights, yet haven't accomplished much because of it.
PRO: I tried some delightful new Oreo snack cake things.
CON: They are sold in boxes of 12. My fat ass does not need to be buying junk food, especially when it hasn't seen the inside of a gym in a troubling amount of time.
PRO: I am trying to get into work early Thursday.
CON: If I could motivate myself to get more work done at normally scheduled hours, I wouldn't need to go in early.
PRO: Not drinking, etc. has been a blessing for my budget.
CON: I still don't seem to have nearly enough money to dig myself out of dangerous territory.
PRO: I am glad to be growing a bit, even with some missteps along the way.
CON: I miss the anything-goes spirit I once possessed, and not long ago.
PRO: It's almost bedtime.
CON: I am going to be sleeping alone.
And so it goes...
PRO: I haven't been drinking much at all lately--three drinks Friday, none since then.
CON: I've become a non-happy-hour-going hermit on weeknights, yet haven't accomplished much because of it.
PRO: I tried some delightful new Oreo snack cake things.
CON: They are sold in boxes of 12. My fat ass does not need to be buying junk food, especially when it hasn't seen the inside of a gym in a troubling amount of time.
PRO: I am trying to get into work early Thursday.
CON: If I could motivate myself to get more work done at normally scheduled hours, I wouldn't need to go in early.
PRO: Not drinking, etc. has been a blessing for my budget.
CON: I still don't seem to have nearly enough money to dig myself out of dangerous territory.
PRO: I am glad to be growing a bit, even with some missteps along the way.
CON: I miss the anything-goes spirit I once possessed, and not long ago.
PRO: It's almost bedtime.
CON: I am going to be sleeping alone.
And so it goes...
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
True Text Message Tales, Vol. 1.
Part of the reason I love Chris G. is because receiving communication from him is often like hearing from a 16-year-old girl. Witness the following text message I received last night whilst he was at dinner:
Ok: U totally should date Jay* or Jason* the waiter at Merkado*, he's hot
*names have been changed to protect the innocent. Actually, none of this is innocent at all, but nobody wants their business spread all over the intersphere.
That brought up several things. First, hypothetically speaking, what the hell am I supposed to do with that? March into Merkado* and demand a table in Jay* or Jason's* section and plot my conquest? Become friends with another waiter and have him pass a note? OK, I admit, I chuckled at Chris' exuberance.
Second, and more importantly, unbeknownst to Christopher, not only do I already know Jay* or Jason*, we've shared a past intimate moment or two. The good news is all's well that ends well: we're currently friends, a status that usually outlasts most dating scenarios. Nice try though, Chris--I'll await further alerts on my behalf.
Ok: U totally should date Jay* or Jason* the waiter at Merkado*, he's hot
*names have been changed to protect the innocent. Actually, none of this is innocent at all, but nobody wants their business spread all over the intersphere.
That brought up several things. First, hypothetically speaking, what the hell am I supposed to do with that? March into Merkado* and demand a table in Jay* or Jason's* section and plot my conquest? Become friends with another waiter and have him pass a note? OK, I admit, I chuckled at Chris' exuberance.
Second, and more importantly, unbeknownst to Christopher, not only do I already know Jay* or Jason*, we've shared a past intimate moment or two. The good news is all's well that ends well: we're currently friends, a status that usually outlasts most dating scenarios. Nice try though, Chris--I'll await further alerts on my behalf.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Imperfect Strangers
Today was supposed to be a day to myself, a space to relax and clear my head and catch up on sleep and get a few things done and just generally enjoy being alone. Yet I spent much of my Sunday in the company of people I barely knew, but who I knew more about by day's end than some of my friends.
Here's to a good book.
After several months of stops and starts, I finally finished Atonement, the Ian McEwan novel that has been turned into an equally lauded film that I am now able to see. From what I hear, the visualization of the story between two almost-lovers torn from each other by the misguided lie of one's younger sister is worthy of the book. That said, McEwan is a dazzling writer with an authoritative command of the English language. His sense of detail--of both scene and thought--is so precise, so lyrical and so astute in making connections that are astonishingly inapparent yet undoubtedly concrete. McEwan's narration of the story almost seems like a character in itself (which befits the ending twist that only firms up his genius if it was written with that very purpose in mind). Even if you've seen the film, read the book; it is a towering epic on a startlingly intimate level, a story whose necessary sentimentality is tempered by characters who are each equipped with enough faults to keep the reader from idealizing any one of them.
I was so gripped by what was unfolding that I shot through the last three-fourths of the novel today, and in the process, I remembered what a joy storytelling can bring, both for the writer and the reader. Whatever amount of cleverness I imagined I have as a scribe seems to be a mere fraction of what McEwan has achieved in Atonement, although I was more taken in the minutes leading up to bedtime--my immediate post-blog activity--with how lovely it is to retreat the world and let the lives of others take center stage for a bit. I don't do it as often as I should. That the story is one of unassailable love was also not lost on me at a point in my life when the first real cracks in my own veneer on the issue have revealed themselves. Despite (or because of) occasional bouts of dating, I often think of love--of the soul-stirring, pulse-pounding, headrush variety--as distant from my everyday existence in terms of both time and space. For a few hundred pages, McEwan made the case for me that anything is indeed possible.
Here's to a good book.
After several months of stops and starts, I finally finished Atonement, the Ian McEwan novel that has been turned into an equally lauded film that I am now able to see. From what I hear, the visualization of the story between two almost-lovers torn from each other by the misguided lie of one's younger sister is worthy of the book. That said, McEwan is a dazzling writer with an authoritative command of the English language. His sense of detail--of both scene and thought--is so precise, so lyrical and so astute in making connections that are astonishingly inapparent yet undoubtedly concrete. McEwan's narration of the story almost seems like a character in itself (which befits the ending twist that only firms up his genius if it was written with that very purpose in mind). Even if you've seen the film, read the book; it is a towering epic on a startlingly intimate level, a story whose necessary sentimentality is tempered by characters who are each equipped with enough faults to keep the reader from idealizing any one of them.
I was so gripped by what was unfolding that I shot through the last three-fourths of the novel today, and in the process, I remembered what a joy storytelling can bring, both for the writer and the reader. Whatever amount of cleverness I imagined I have as a scribe seems to be a mere fraction of what McEwan has achieved in Atonement, although I was more taken in the minutes leading up to bedtime--my immediate post-blog activity--with how lovely it is to retreat the world and let the lives of others take center stage for a bit. I don't do it as often as I should. That the story is one of unassailable love was also not lost on me at a point in my life when the first real cracks in my own veneer on the issue have revealed themselves. Despite (or because of) occasional bouts of dating, I often think of love--of the soul-stirring, pulse-pounding, headrush variety--as distant from my everyday existence in terms of both time and space. For a few hundred pages, McEwan made the case for me that anything is indeed possible.
Sweet Revenge.
I had the kind of long, winding Friday that left me lethargic the next day, but a slate of previously planned meetups kept me on the go anyway. The solution was simply to try to be home early, and sure enough, I was snacking on pretzels in my bedroom by midnight, dimming the lights and preparing to devote my attention to my album of the moment before drifting off into a much-needed full night of sleep.
Jacob Golden's Revenge Songs is a spare, efficient 39-minute dissection of a breakup that introduces a powerhouse new voice into the singer-songwriter genre. Rarely armed with more than an acoustic guitar and an aching heart, Golden whirls from angry to nostalgic, often in the course of one 3-minute song. They're really conversations and letters--from the longing guy in "On A Saturday" who has already tried his hand with other women to no avail, or the fatalist coming to terms with his relationship's finality in "Love You." Golden's performance runs the gamut from hushed and confessional to soaring and going for broke not unlike the John Cusack "In Your Eyes" scene in Say Anything. He's a non-self-destructive Elliott Smith crossed with a far less sprawling Beck, a combination that both commands attention but decries it from anyone except the woman of these missives.
Golden's a California boy, but Revenge Songs was released late last year to widespread acclaim in the U.K. The album makes its U.S. debut courtesy of Barnes & Noble, which will sell it exclusively for six months before it moves to the general arena. Even Starbucks now has a record label that has offered successful albums by Paul McCartney and Sia, so why not? Check out some of the tracks and then go get it. You won't wish what Golden's going through on record on anyone, but you'll probably remember a few romantic denouements of your own thanks to his vivid tribulations.
Jacob Golden's Revenge Songs is a spare, efficient 39-minute dissection of a breakup that introduces a powerhouse new voice into the singer-songwriter genre. Rarely armed with more than an acoustic guitar and an aching heart, Golden whirls from angry to nostalgic, often in the course of one 3-minute song. They're really conversations and letters--from the longing guy in "On A Saturday" who has already tried his hand with other women to no avail, or the fatalist coming to terms with his relationship's finality in "Love You." Golden's performance runs the gamut from hushed and confessional to soaring and going for broke not unlike the John Cusack "In Your Eyes" scene in Say Anything. He's a non-self-destructive Elliott Smith crossed with a far less sprawling Beck, a combination that both commands attention but decries it from anyone except the woman of these missives.
Golden's a California boy, but Revenge Songs was released late last year to widespread acclaim in the U.K. The album makes its U.S. debut courtesy of Barnes & Noble, which will sell it exclusively for six months before it moves to the general arena. Even Starbucks now has a record label that has offered successful albums by Paul McCartney and Sia, so why not? Check out some of the tracks and then go get it. You won't wish what Golden's going through on record on anyone, but you'll probably remember a few romantic denouements of your own thanks to his vivid tribulations.
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