Merry Christmas...

Or whatever holiday you celebrate right around now. Or if you don't celebrate a holiday... well, happy day off.

I got you a present!



Enjoy this holiday season, folks.

It's Better Than Drinking Alone

The holiday season is wearing me out. Not because I'm this big social butterfly with all these "events" to go to or anything. It's because I feel like I need to go out a lot more than usual (just because it's the holiday season) and then I end up drinking more than I should and getting home later than I should (like now!) and fucking up my work situation more than it's already fucked up.

Tonight I actually walked through a particularly bad thought process with my friend at JRs. It went something along the lines of "I've seen that guy here three nights in a row now. Kinda hot... I'd do him... but what a lush. He's been here three nights in a row!... Of course the only way I'd know that is because I've been here three nights in a row...."

Yeah, it's been that kind of holiday season.

I bought several new jeans the other day then realized I need new pants for work too. Why do the crotches always seem to wear out faster than any other part of the pant? While we're at it, how the fuck do I stop my ever-expanding waist size? It's hard to buy pants for short fat people like me. I need an inseam of 28 or 29. No one makes those except for people with, like 26 waists. Take a waist my size, and people assume your inseam is something like 33 or 34. No one seems to make the waist/inseam combination for me. I'm short and fat, and now shopping is becoming a challenge.

I'm not sober. Drunk blogging is fun!

Good night folks! I'm here all week. Maybe not blogging, but I'll still be here.

Giving Up the Ghost

Dear C---,

You probably don't know this -- or if you do, you're deliberately putting it out of your mind -- but I have an immense crush on you. Huge. You're sweet, and smart, and very handsome, and I love the time I've spent with you.

You possibly don't know that every time I hang out with my friends, I ask whether or not you'll be joining us.

You possibly don't know that whenever I see you, my heart skips a beat.

You possibly don't know that when we hug -- whether it's hello, or goodbye, or anything in between -- I wish it would last forever. Your warmth, your scent, your smile, your eyes: I could get lost in that moment for an eternity.

I've teetered on the precipice of falling head over heels for you for a while.

But it seems like you haven't yet gotten over your last relationship, which ended several years ago. You're still apparently quite wounded by its dissolution. You've told me and our friends explicitly that, having had the love of your life once already, you're really not interested in ever finding anyone else. And it seems like you're not going to be ready for another relationship with anyone any time soon.

I'm sorry that you've been hurt. I'm sorry that you're still hurting. But most of all, I'm sorry that everything that I can offer you, everything I want to give to you, everything I could bring myself to feel for you, won't be enough for you. I'm sorry that you're unable to accept what could be a great thing.

And I'm sorry that I find myself deciding that I'm just going to have to move on, and put what I've felt about you for a long time in the past.

Happy birthday, C---. I loved you.

Dennis!

Shop Shop Shop

IM Conversation:

Me: You interested in doing a Target and/or Costco run this weekend?
Friend: HAHAHAHAHA! You're kidding, right? Target the weekend before Christmas?
Me: Uh... I'll take that as a "no."

Symbolism

An open letter to [name redacted]:

Let me get this straight (no pun intended): You are a guy. Your life partner -- whom you call your husband -- is another guy. You are committed to each other as if you were legally married; you own a house together; the whole shebang. You had a commitment ceremony before friends and family and there you exchanged proclamations of love and fidelity with your man.

And you exchanged rings. Specifically, you wear what can only be referred to as a wedding band. On your left ring finger. And your husband wears one too.

I have no problem (obviously) with any of this. Heck, some day I'd love to be able to present a man to my family and friends and say, "This guy's the one. The rest of my life, this is the guy for me."

What strikes me as odd, though, is when you kvetch about people who see your ring -- again, it's on your left ring finger, and it's a wedding band -- and assume that you have a wife somewhere out there. You complain that this is an invasion of privacy. And you claim that it is an unwarranted conclusion to draw. You get upset that such comments, when you have to respond to them, put to you the choice of either (a) retreating to the closet by referring to your man-mate as a "wife", and switching pronouns accordingly, or (b) "outing" yourself by telling a stranger that the band represents a husband, not a wife. Neither option seems very appealing to you.

You claim that the ring is a private reminder, to yourself and your partner and to no one else, of your commitment, and it's no one's place to draw any inferences from your hand.

Honey, with all due respect, you need to face the consequences of your life choices. And by "life choices," I do not mean a choice to be gay, because I don't believe that's a choice. I'm referring to your choice to wear a wedding band, and to wear it on your left ring finger.

Let's face it: You've adopted the universal heterosexual symbol of commitment. The fact that it means something entirely different to you than it does to anyone else is of ZERO consequence here. I mean, none.

Yes, yes, yes, the issue of gay marriage has made headlines for a few years now. But with the exception of Massachusetts, no state has legal marriages. (Vermont, as I'm sure you know, created a civil equivalent to marriage for gay couples.) And every state that has since considered the question has voted to add to their state constitutions provisions that restrict marriages to a male joining with a female. So while gay marriages have, in fact, been making headlines, that doesn't exactly mean that it's been a successful P.R. drive, or that this country happily accepts men-whose-wedding-rings-represent-another-man.

Your ring is in clear public view. If you wanted a private reminder of your commitment to your man, you could have had his name tattooed across your ass. Or you could have discreetly put a ring on a chain and worn it around your neck (tucked inside your shirt). Or you could have worn a cock ring or inserted a butt plug (every time you shift in your chair, you'd think of him and smile). Hell, you could have discreetly stenciled his name on your fingernail. Each of these would have called less public attention to your union and could still have the purpose of affirming to you and your man that you are each other's life mate.

But no: you put on a ring. And by doing so you have made a public proclamation that's no different from wearing a crucifix around one's neck or a yarmulke on one's head. It's an outward manifestation pretty much compelling the viewer to reach one conclusion.

You simply cannot fault anyone for accepting your invitation to reach that conclusion.

Let's put it this way: You see a yarmulke, you're going to assume the wearer is an observant Jew. (Let's face it, yarmulkes aren't terribly fashionable among the non-Chosens.) Anyone sees a wedding ring, they're going to assume you're heterosexually coupled. Heck, if I were to put a wedding band on my left ring finger tomorrow, I'm sure strangers would think I'm hitched to a woman, despite the objective facts that I'm gay and I'm not actually coupled. The objective facts behind your ring matter only to you, but the signal that ring sends out doesn't necessarily track those objective underlying facts.

So get over it, [redacted]. Either be out and happy and prepared to talk about the unusual significance of the ring you wear, or quit bitching about having to hide the gender of your partner from people who draw that conclusion. I suppose the third option is to remove the ring completely, but even I would hate to see that happen.

The Closet

I thought that by this point in my life I'd be done with the closet. Of course, I also thought that my non-heterosexuality was kind of obvious, but I'm told it's not.*

Every Tuesday night I make my way to a local bar for poker night. It's a free night, and it's amusing and entertaining (except when I bow out ridiculously early), and I'm pretty much a regular there now. I recognize faces; I know some names; and I know who I prefer not to play against and who I enjoy playing against.

To these people, I apparently come across as "one of the guys." Which is great. And none of them come across as hatefully homophobic, which is also great. Over the past few months, I have been treated to such comments as "check out pink sweater," referring to a lithe young woman at another table whose breasts were, frankly, unbelievably perky. On another night, the men at the table shared ogling rights to an attractive, thin Asian woman who is becoming quite the regular.

Table talk has included (thankfully brief) discussions of which female celebrities are hot and which ones wouldn't be kicked out of bed. Remember when Keith in Six Feet Under starts that job in private security, and all the guys stand around and talk about chicks, and Keith is so afraid of revealing his sexuality that he even says "Yeah, I'd tap that" about one woman? Yeah, it's kinda strangely like that.

I generally play along with these discussions. No, I don't go so far as to mention which woman I'd love to tap, but I do comment that some women are attractive. Hey, I'm allowed to notice beauty. (Yes, that's a rationalization.)

But the funniest moment was one night when a gay social group decided to hold its happy hour at the bar on the same night as poker night. This made my table-mates quite nervous, from what I could tell. As we played, it was inescapable that there was an unusually large congregation of men at the bar. Not only was their sheer number noteworthy, but the total disproportion in the male-female ratio was stark.

One player at my table commented that "not one single guy playing poker tonight wants to lose early tonight of all nights." Meaning: Unlike other nights, losing early doesn't mean lounging at the bar and talking to attractive women. (Kind of a shame, actually, because the guy who said this was really very attractive. I definitely would not kick him out of bed.)

The straight boys seemed uneasy about the whole situation, though thankfully none of them spewed any hateful rhetoric. Some seemed in denial about the men at the bar, preferring to believe that it was some post-work professional networking scene. (Perhaps my gaydar is more attuned to it, but just by scanning the faces of the men, I could tell it was most decidedly not that.) One seemed unwilling to even use the word:

Me (joking): You could go get a drink with the gay guys up there.
Him: You really think that's what it is?
Me: What what is?
Him: You know... those guys up there.
Me: Do I really think that's a gay mixer going on up there? Yes, I do.

Inexplicably, I stopped myself just short of saying that I would join them when I was done, or that I was going to a different gay bar after the game.

I suppose it just never comes up in conversation, but a part of me does wish that I could "come clean" with the guys at these poker nights. When I first started going, there was this cute lesbian couple who were also regulars. They stopped showing up several months later. They never, oh, made out or anything, but it was pretty clear they were together. There are usually one or two cute guys playing with us, one of whom I think may be gay, but we never talk about it.

At some point I'm sure it'll work its way into conversation, but until then... I'll keep my queens in the pocket. Which is, again, a shame, because some of these boys are really cute.

* Recently, at a gay bar, I realized why it's somewhat unclear: there are men here who are WAY gayer than I could EVER be. I randomly made a comment to a stranger while waiting for my drink and the 23-year-old just oozed homosexuality in his response. I was actually kinda taken aback. Me, straight-acting? Go fig.

Elevator Elevator Up and Down

Random observation: Why is it that some people can't seem to even remotely guess the relative speed of elevators?

Scene: You get on the elevator on the 15th floor. You press the "Lobby" button. Someone else gets on at 12 and also presses the "Lobby" button. Then the elevator stops at 11 -- and the guy from 12 absent-minded starts to make his way off the elevator before he suddenly realizes he's not at his floor yet.

Did he really think he descended twelve floors that quickly?

This is even funnier if the person in question actually lives or works in the building in question. One would think they'd get used to it eventually.