"homo hill" | thursday | may 1, 2008 | 8:00 am

DVENTURES ON HOMO HILL. The theme of this year's EDstravaganza! My week-long (sometimes longer) celebration of my birthday. Actually, this year's festivities have been pared down. I mean I am getting older, wiser, and perhaps a bit more reserved (but hopefully not more conservative). My birthday itself falls on next Tuesday, which is just a bad night to do anything, frankly. So, EDstravaganza 2008 will be held over two days. Part One will be at the following Thursday's grad pub. Part Two will be the following Saturday with eating, drinking, and dancing. Here's the flyer (I love taking old pulp novel covers and doctoring them up):

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"boyfriend-shaped hole in the door" | tuesday | may 2, 2008 | 1:36 pm

HIS IS ON MY MIND: RELATIONSHIPS. I cannot claim that I am an expert. Nor can I claim that I have had very many. So, as Greg and I pass the four month mark (pretty darn respectable among "the gays"), I am retrospective about my past relationships. I stress the lower case 'r'.

When I was coming out, I really didn't know very many queer people, much less have any queer friends. So, like many newly decloseted people, I found refuges and sought friends online. Granted, this was back before fancy web-based chatrooms and pretty instant messengers. I never really got into ICQ, which was much like the ham radio of the Internet. Rather, I hung out at a select few social and game MUDs.

My "first relationship" (which does deserve the scare quotes) was with a guy I met on one of these social MUDs friendly to the LGBTQ community. We got to know each other, talked online for hours, and eventually talked by phone. However, like many online connections, he lived clear across the country from me; he was on the west coast and I was on the east. But the net romance blossomed anyway. It was a romance in its most broad and abstract sense because I think I was in love with the idea of being in a relationship more than the actual relationship itself. Now, as a longstanding netizen, I have never been one to poo-poo online connections and relationships. I think there are all sorts of different ways we can form circuits of desire and attraction and sociability. But my relationship with this "proto" boyfriend was better virtual than actual. We did eventually exchange photos and letters and more phone calls (again, this was before everything became easily digital). We even planned for him to fly out to meet me finally face-to-face. But alas the reality of the fantasy caught up with me and I had to acknowledge my own superficiality and idealism. I wasn't really attracted to him, at least not by his pictures. He was pretty nerdy, overweight, nelly -- all things that I wanted to dispel about my own self, my own body, my own behavior. So, when he wanted to close the gap between us, when he wanted to actually hold his body against mine, I panicked and ended the relationship. I used all of the stock excuses (ironic considering I had never been in a relationship before): I said that I just wasn't feeling the relationship anymore, that I wanted to figure stuff out before I could commit, that I had to figure out myself before I could be with someone else, that I was too scared, too shy, too lame. I'm sure he saw right through it. And that was that. I never talked to him again. He never came around the MUD anymore. But, as a testament to the relationship, he was my first "boyfriend" and it has left a lasting impression on me.

My next relationship, my "first" relationship -- also began online -- but did cross the divide into the material, the physical, the actual. I've written briefly about him. He, too, was long distance but at least on the same coast and only five hours away. We had a pretty intense online and phone relationship before we decided that it was time to meet. I remember the weekend he decided to drive up. Unlike my first relationship, I had not seen pictures of him beforehand (though he had seen mine). It was extremely nerve-wracking. But he showed up at my doorstep late one Friday night. I opened the door to find someone who I was attracted to. And the rest is history. We dated for about five months, but only really saw each other once every month or so. He was the first person I had ever slept with. And I can honestly say that I did fall in love with him. Unfortunately, the relationship ended because of the distance and because of my own immaturity. He was the first guy to complain that he did not think that I was invested in the relationship, that I treated him like he was just another friend. It was the classic case of him being more into the relationship than I was at first, and then by the time I was ready to commit, he was on his way out. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. I was newly out. I found someone that liked me. But I kept looking around to see if any of the other pastures were greener. I felt like I needed to play the field when I should have been paying attention to what was already in front of me, in my lap, in my life. I really liked him, a lot, and I miss that relationship. Granted, this could all be nostalgia. But the first relationship, the first real realtionship, will always hold an important place in your memory.

My second, live, face-to-face relationship started off well. I met him at one of my favorite coffee houses in Washington, DC. We chatted each other up. We hung out a couple of times. And then he moved in with me. At the time, it was more of a favor than any kind of true love at first sight. He had just moved to DC and living with a coworker, a much older man who repeatedly tried to seduce him. So, we got him out of there. How stereotypically lesbian of us, right? Well, we ended up dating for only a couple of weeks, one of which I spent sick with the flu. And then he broke up with me but continued to live with me for almost a month and a half. Friendship and nice guy and knight in shining armor aside, I eventually asked him to find his own place, which he did without much fuss, and we parted ways. He was sweet, cute, and artistic -- all things I like -- but we never really got to know one another before having to share space. I should've known early on that things wouldn't have worked out when we talked about the kinds of guys we liked: we didn't seem to share a similar taste in men. I would point out someone who thought I was cute, but he wouldn't think so. He would point out someone who he thought was cute, and I wouldn't think so. It would leave me thinking: is that what he sees in me? I chalk it up to inexperience and a earnestness (desperation) to find, cuddle, nurture, and hold on to a relationship that motivated boyfriend number two. Though we never really reached the "stage" of calling each other "boyfriends," it was definitely sudden, intense, and intimate. The power of the couple is not something easily reckoned with; the social, sexual, political, even economic pressure to "be with" someone is massive, pervasive, naturalised, and covertly and overtly policed. As a newly out gay man (who felt late to the game), I wanted validation and vindication -- both as worthy of and valued in a relationship and as actually, provably, practicingly gay!

It would be a number of years before I found myself in another relationship. I was a terrible dater. I never went out on dates. I never got asked out on dates. And though I thought I put myself out there, I never really ever really scored. The long menu of things that went into this serious lack of any game is too long to get into now. Suffice it to say it was a combo pack of insecurity, low self esteem, poor body image, aggressive personality (ironic, eh?), and all of the -isms that mainstream, American, metropolitan gay male culture produced, perpetuated, and packaged as compulsory to be the "it" guy.

It would take me moving to San Francisco before I would find my third relationship. My dating record in SF wasn't much improved. You would think that moving to "gay mecca," to a place bigger, brighter, and more diverse than suburban Maryland would have opened the mangates to sexcapade after sexcapade. Alas, I did not find much gay gold in heeding the Pet Shop Boys' exhortation to "Go West." I did go out on a few scattered dates, usually with men the age of my father. I figured I would at least "try." I even inadvertently got kidnapped for a night. But these adventures didn't amount to much. Eventually, I met my third boyfriend. He was a friend of a friend. And if you asked when we started dating, most people would have answered on the first night we met. He was one of those guys who I clicked with immediately, who clicked with me. The first night we met we hung out and talked well into the night. We became friends. He said that he hadn't really much experience with men. But as they say, when in Sodom do as the Sodomites do. I really liked him. I still do. We dated about a month and a half. And then he broke up with me claiming that he wasn't ready to be in a serious relationship with a man. (He had the added complication of a long-term girlfriend back in his Midwest hometown whom he hadn't really broken up with or something.) It was a terrible loss for me, though we did manage to stay friends. (Though a week later he started dating another guy in our circle because, I think, of drugs or some such.) I would have liked to have explored that relationship a bit longer. It was good, and the end actually surprised me. Years later, and we're talking almost a decade now, he's the only boyfriend that I still stay in contact with and who I'm happy to see when I can.

Then there is the great desert.

A great stretch of time and space, life and distraction, loneliness and a kind of self-imposed abstinence passed. I left San Francisco. I moved back to Maryland. I settled into my thirties. And I kind of gave up on the possibility of romance, of dating, of love. All the while, everyone around me was fulfilling their romantic destinies (sometimes over and over again). Friends hooked up, friends dated, friends married, friends bought houses, friends had children. I was still a graduate student. I was still poor. And I was still single. There were times when everything was fine. I could convince myself that life was all right. That I could be whole and happy and content and fulfilled by myself. And there's a part of me that does believe that -- that's healthy. There were times when I railed against the system, decrying heteronormativity and homonormativity. There were times that struggled, yearned, cried, sighed, hurt, hungered, and wished for a partner, a lover, a best friend. And then there were times I was just angry. I didn't date when I moved back to Maryland. I was too busy. I had other priorities. I wanted to finish my Master's and move on. And my life just wasn't set up, opened up for the possibility of a relationship. Some of that was my fault. Some of that was circumstantial.

In 2005, I moved to Seattle to continue my education. I also moved because I knew living in the suburbs of Maryland wasn't going to get me anywhere in my love life. I needed to be in a city, in a gay neighborhood, and meeting more people. I could've stayed in the Maryland area and would have if I hadn't gotten into the University of Washington's PhD program, but I would have moved into DC, into the city. Like San Francisco, I hoped that Seattle would be a sea change for me. It was a progressive city. It was a queer friendly city (for the most part). And I would be living in the gay district (for once). But, like San Francisco, even being in the gay plunge I couldn't muster a single date. I joked to one of my friends in the English department that if I didn't get laid in Seattle by New Year's, I was going to leave the city. Well, I didn't get laid, nor did I leave the city. The following year the same threat was made but this time I said if I didn't get laid by the end of the year I would jump off the Aurora Bridge. Well, I still didn't get laid, nor did I jump off a bridge. This past year, the threat was once again made. And though by New Year's Eve night I still hadn't gotten laid, I did finally meet someone -- Greg -- and I was "saved" by the skin of my teeth.

Eight years in the desert finally came to an end.

And now I'm thinking about this new relationship -- how it is different from and how it is the same as my past relationships. It's been a long time since I came out of the closet. And I've lived a lot of life, which undoubtedly informs and inflects everything I think and do and feel. I know I am a much more mature person now compared to back then. And I am more integrated, more self-accepting, and more at peace. I'm still trying to suss out my expecations in this relationship. I know the obvious ones: companionship, attraction, honesty, friendship, mutuality, sex, and perhaps eventually, love. I just don't know what the inobvious ones are. But as I have said before, I am learning a lot about myself and what it means to be with someone with Greg. On that level, I am very happy. I know that one thing that is different in this current relationship compared to my past ones is that I am ready for it, I am advocating for myself and my feelings, and I feel like for once I am open to it. One thing that is the same is that I get attached very quickly and wear my heart on my sleeve. But that doesn't necessarily have to be a negative thing.

I think the pace that Greg and I are at is perfect. This isn't a race. And there definitely is not destination or finish line. It's a journey, an exploration, an adventure, albeit shared. I don't mean to wax poetic and cheesy and abstract. But metaphors are powerful for a reason. How I see this relationship, how I understand it, and how I describe it affect it. Affect me. Affect him. I like the words I've spent so far. And I am glad and proud of myself that I can write about it.

More soon.

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"seis de mayo" | tuesday | may 6, 2008 | 9:47 am

APPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday from a lobster. Happy birthday to me. (Just in case you think I've cracked even more than I already am -- that is the song they sing when it's your birthday at Red Lobster. Well, it was many years ago.) Look, I've gotten e-cards! The first one is from my friend Cate, who like god has a sick sense of humor.

The second is a little more wholesome from my friend Nancy, who knows I like kitties. (My roommate Jane and I have been thinking of getting a cat and naming it either Chauncey or Ponzu.) Meow.

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