Cute chimneys

Josh and Ben -- about whom I have blogged before -- and I work in the same building. Sheer coincidence. Their office is on the 14th floor; I'm on the 7th. We actually rarely ever see each other during the course of a work day, but when we manage to get together to talk, it's one of the things we can chat about.

It's kind of nice having someone who doesn't work in the same office as you working in the same building. We can talk about commonalities about the building while avoiding the details about the actual work.

At any given point in the day, there are people outside the building taking a smoke break. Normally this would not be a big deal at all, except -- and just thinking this makes me sound so pathetic -- the guys out there smoking are unusually attractive. And if I ever find myself in an elevator with them, I find out that they usually work on the 14th floor.

I mentioned to Josh last night: "I gotta say there are some cuuuuute boys in your office!" (I was kinda queening out just because it was the night of the high-heeled race, after all.) He agreed that there are a lot of good looking guys in his office, some of whom are gay and some of whom are not (and some who profess to be straight even though no one believes them). Two things keep me from telling him to hook me up with one of them: My immense lack of confidence, and the fact that kissing a smoker is like licking an ash tray.*

* I mentioned this ash tray thing to Josh too, and he responded, "So that's why you haven't kissed me all this time!" What a flirt. (Ben's his boyfriend. I know them both). He really has to just let those sleeping dogs lie.

The Return of USM

So I IM'd with my buddy Mark about the dream with him and USM and his OOI in it. Here's part of the ensuing conversation:

Mark: In yours, I think I symbolize something you wish you could be or some kind of person you perceive me to be.
Mark: Envy or desire to emulate or something.
Dennis!: really? strange. i just put you down as some random guy who happened to be you.
Mark: And you try, but it's awkward, and clearly you fear and expect the rejection that occurs.
Mark: Ah, but if it were truly random, it would be Random Guy making out with Random guy.
Mark: The fact it's me says something about how you perceive me.
Dennis!: the "you" character was almost completely pointless in my dream. well, except to rub in the fact that USM wanted to make out with every other identifable person in my dream except me.
Dennis!: USM was, more or less, anderson cooper.
Mark: Anyway, that's my dimestore interpretation.
Dennis!: the only other dreams i ever remember are exam anxiety dreams.
Dennis!: i've been out of school for seven years and i still sometimes dream about an algebra or history exam which i know i have not studied for, or even attended the classes for
Dennis!: once i had a dream where i was a mutant, like in x-men. even lived in a xavier academy-type place with other freaks.
Dennis!: my power was kinda like drew barrymore's in "firestarter"
Mark: I won't begin to discuss what the ramifications of THAT dream are.
Mark: flame. flaming. flamer. flame on.
Dennis!: and i got hit on by a really cute boy... then my frigging alarm clock went off.
Mark: lol
Mark: don't u hate that.
Mark: I'm not often so caught up in a dream I don't realize it's a dream.
Dennis!: how sad would that be if i could switch to that in my dream? i'd be saying "wow, you're cute. wanna come back to my place?" and he would respond, "of course. i'd love to go back to your place. it's your dream, after all."

Reunion

So Homecoming was perfectly decent. Except the fact that I really didn't do anything very homecoming-y.

I met up with Chad for brunch. Literally, I had not seen him in years. I always feel bad when I lose contact with close friends like that. Chad's been in my life for so long it's really just not right to let stuff lapse, no matter how busy we are. We've known each other since the eighth grade. That's close to 20 years. It's well over 3/4 of my life. I'm impressed that I actually managed to keep in touch with someone from that far back in my past.

After brunch, we wandered around campus just to look at the superficial changes to it. Given the passage of time, it was impossible for me to tell if everything just looked different because substantial construction had taken place over the last eleven years, or because I had simply forgotten much of the way things looked before. The Bookstore had moved; it was replaced by a funky new student lounge for the business school. Two of the campus apartment buildings had been renovated (at least externally) and now featured floor to ceiling windows (I'm actually quite jealous of that). The new bookstore was basically a Barnes & Noble. The mini-strip malls along the outskirts of campus -- where we used to have to make do for meals on the weekends -- were updated and upgraded as well. There was even a "new" grocery store close to campus, eliminating the need for a six block hike into a sketchy area of town to get to the only decent grocery store around.

Chad, who has visited the city much more than I, was able to point out to me various changes, as well as stuff I had merely forgotten about. We stopped into a new swanky tea shoppe and had a few pots of tea with a peanut buttery desert. Things would have been so different had I attended this school when they had all this cool stuff around. That means I would have flunked out with a year. It was just such a cool campus.

We attended a few alumni mixing events. All the minority alumni groups co-hosted an event: the Asian group, the Hispanic group, the African-American group, the gay group. We hung out, scoping out the free food and (more importantly) free booze. Try as we might, Chad and I couldn't strike up a decent conversation with anyone for the life of us. Seriously now, what's the purpose of attending an alumni gathering if you aren't going even show the slightest interest in meeting fellow alumni? If you're only going to talk to the friends whom you usually would have talked to anyway, can't you just do that, say, in a bar, or at someone's apartment?

Chad and I eventually bailed on the thing completely and went back downtown for dinner. It was a great dinner, may I just add.

The day with Chad was nice. Oh, the dinner and the tea and the meandering around campus were nice, but the point here was the company. You can't buy friends like that. Memories like what we shared don't grow on trees. Our friends help shape our lives.

And our friends are also the ones who will be there for our future. We're no longer the high school kids whose biggest fear was an algebra exam or a date to some stupid dance. We're dealing with issues like how to balance insane hours at work with a decent social life. Our concerns include how to live life with HIV and whether we should execute plans for massive career shifts.

In the end, it wasn't about meeting fellow alumni. It wasn't so much about seeing the city and the campus again. Really, it was all about reconnecting with Chad.

Whither friendship?

I read this in someone else's blog recently and it got me thinking:

I'm lucky to have my friends there too. My real friends, the ones that know me, the ones that let me cry at 3am when they'd rather be sleeping. The ones who would be there through thick and thin. LK, JN, CJ, TB, LT, MP...in no particular order of importance, you make my life possible. I only hope that I've brought to your life what you've brought to mine.

(Source: JPK: You can never have enough water. I stumbled across this blog using the random blog search function from blogspot. I don't know the guy (though he's quite amusing -- when he's not depressed). Heck, you too can go to another randomly-selected blog now by clicking on the "Next Blog >>" icon in the upper right-hand corner. But finish reading this first!)

So as I was saying, Jason's comment kinda struck me, because I suddenly came to realize that my friendships aren't like what Jason describes. I've never cried to someone at 3 a.m. when they'd rather be sleeping -- and trust me, there have been times I've wanted to. (I end up crying at home alone instead.) I've always felt strange imposing upon my friends for almost anything. Even when I was recovering from surgery I felt really bad for having to ask my friends to come stay the night with me. I've promised each of them a dinner in return for putting them out so much.

But there are those who would argue (and I wouldn't disagree) that stuff like crying at 3 a.m., or incredibly inconvenient favors, are the stuff of which friendships are made. If your friendship can't survive late-night "I'm-depressed-and-just-wanted-to-talk" phone calls, then what do you really have?

Of course, there's a flip side to that argument, which I again can't disagree with. The flip side argues that if you can't respect your friendships enough to realize that your friends have lives too -- lives that don't revolve around you -- and reliving your drama isn't their purpose in life, then you're abusing the friendship. Late-night phone calls are the stuff of sappy movies, this theory claims, and friendships suffering from that in real life don't last long. Besides, it should be pointed out, even in the movies, those late-night calls either don't result in anything helpful, or in fact lead to bad decisions on the part of the comfortee.

I wish I could say I have a theory on this, but I don't. I can only take note of the friendships I have. Although I know I could rely on most of my friends for all kinds of things, they tend to small things -- like dragging my carless ass to parties, or even for a Target run. One once offered that if I needed help with a down payment for a real estate purchase, I should ask her. (Thankfully, I didn't take her up on that -- I don't think substantial debt between friends is ever a good idea.) Although I generally feel like I could crash at friends' houses out of town if I had to, I would feel like I'm at an age and success level by now that it just seems stupid not to find a decent and affordable hotel.

But at the same time that my friends are good for that kind of small stuff, I don't know, really, who I would have to rely on if, say, a member of my family were to die tomorrow, or if some other devastating personal catastrophe hit me. Knowing me -- and the relationships I have with my friends -- I'd probably put on a brave face, say that I was okay and everything will be okay... and mourn alone. In the movies, we see this all the time, but those people usually seem to have a spouse into whose arms they eventually collapse in a mess of tears. I think I'd have a teddy bear. It's the same thing that makes me unlikely to engage in the aforementioned 3 a.m. phone calls.

So is there a clear line to be drawn between leaning on your friends and respecting their right not to be burdened by you? I'm sure there must be. I just haven't found it yet.

Still gagging

Some people just can't take a hint. Either that or I'm just too subtle.

Him: after tomorrow I'll not see work for a WHILE
Me: i'm surprised you've seen work at all.....
Me: lol
Him: and God I'm so looking to spending a lot of time in someones arms :)
Him: he gets here in 12 hours and 45 minutes
Me: blah blah blah
Him: dude Ive been missing him so damn much
Me: uh huh.
Him: seriously
Him: the sex will be nice
Him: but I just want him here

To his credit, the first line of the above is actually line number 15 of our conversation. At least he lasted longer than he did last time.

Seriously now, "blah blah blah" is probably as rude as I can get on IM as a way of saying, "I don't really care at all about this conversation." I don't know about you, but when someone "blah blah blah"s me (and believe me, it's happened more times that I care to remember -- particularly with that little invisible-puppet hand motion), I take it as a cue to shut the fuck up. Does he just not get it?

Or am I just being a mean ol' bitter ass Grinch? Again, I have nothing against anyone being happy in a "relationship"... but I don't need to hear about it every time an IM window pops up with your name in it. And I'm by no means required to be enthusiastic about everything in your life. That just gets tiring.

Schmoopiness makes me want to puke

So I had the following IM conversation with a friend of mine recently. Background: my friend ("Him") is in Germany now, stationed there for a few years. Just before he left, he met a guy and fell head over heels or whatever. (Always seems to happen that way, I guess.)

I have nothing against someone being happy in a relationship, but when you can't talk about anything else, I rapidly lose interest.


Him: hey
Me: hey
Him: whasup
Me: not much.... how are you?
Him: chilling out
Him: missing my baby

[N.B.: This was line number six in our conversation.]

Him: talked to him this morning and woke him up
Me: lol
Him: just surfing around looking for a site I can't find
Him: what about you
Me: nada... just getting up. chilling.
Him: late night
Me: fell asleep earlier in the night.... woke up... went back to sleep late ...
Me: so i'm blog-surfing right now....
Him: ROFL
Me: some of these blogs are so incoherent
Me: it's annoying
Him: well someone called me at 3 am my time
Him: and then put me to sleep
Him: happily
Him: and then worked called me at 8am
Him: and then I slept until noon
Me: good to see they're working you hard.

[See how the conversation could have turned to a neutral topic. But instead it veered back again to the boyfriend.]

Him: well when I come back to DC I might let you read Gerry and mine blogs LOL
Him: right now they are private corespondence
Me: i'm pretty sure that's the last thing i want to do is read your blog.
Me: no offense.
Him: ROFL
Him: well Gerry is very coherent

[And yet again, we take a neutral topic and re-direct it to the boyfriend.]

Him: damn I can't find this site
Him: AARRRGGG
Me: sowwy
Him: I think I might have found it
Him: yeah I did find it
Me: yay
Me: one word: bookmark
Him: yeah yeah

[By this point I'm deliberately not asking what site he's looking for, because I'm certain that his search is centered around one thing, which I really don't need to be privy to. And sure enough....]

Him: I want to buy gerry a gift
Him: cool got it ordered :)
Me: cool. what'd you get?

[A slight moment of weakness on my part. Or just forced politeness. I can't tell which.]

Him: a pair of short (board shorts)
Me: ah.
Him: they are really cool looking
Me: good
Him: yeah they'll match a shirt he had
Him: oops has

[And here's where we get into obsessive idiocy.]

Him: hey got a question to ask
Me: yah
Him: what would you have waiting for your boyfriend when he came home from the airport ???

[He knows I haven't had a boyfriend in years.]

Me: are you on crack?
Him: what are you talking about
Me: why would you think i would have any kind of answer at all to that question?
Him: you are creative
Him: would what you do
Him: or what would you like
Me: yeah, there is no way i'm qualified to answer this question.
Him: oh help me out
Him: what you you think would be really cool
Him: what would leave you breathless when you walked in
Him: come on help me here
Him: flowers aren't enough

You can't tell from the above, but the last few lines were spread out over time. I had by that point refused to answer, and allowed the IM window to just lapse.

There comes a point when your obsessive talking about your boyfriend becomes insanely annoying. It's worse when you're slathering your blissful existence upon someone who can't score a date to save his life. After a while, it just becomes rubbing it in.

***

On a shockingly related note, I received an email from my friend Henry. I hadn't heard from him in years. It started off as one of those emails where you just cut and paste certain questions (and their answers) and forward them to all your friends and stuff... you know, mundane stuff like "What's your fave color?" or "What time do you get up in the morning?" I'm putting excerpts from this email below. I think it's just the world telling me I'm going to die alone.

1. What time do you get up? get up at 830am to get my baby to school by 930am. :)
6. What do you have for breakfast? sharing cereal with my baby.
15. Favorite sandwich? pastrami or any kind that my baby makes for me. :) yummy!
19. What color is your bathroom? yeah, we have the ugly lime green/yellowish tile with faded white walls. ick.
22. Favorite day of the week? monday - date nite with my baby! meow.
23. What did you do for your last birthday? a wonderful thai dinner with my baby, then spent the night working on a project :( thanks baby, for being so supportive!
28. What fabric detergent do you use? whatever is on sale. but that stuff my baby got at costco smells really good! mmmmm

Okay, upon further reflection, either this is a sign that I'm just going to die alone... or I'm just being way oversensitive to this shit.

Gay Beach Weekend

So I finally got a gay weekend in at the beach. My friends Josh and Ben decided to take a weekend up there to attend a fundraiser for a gay Virginia delegate, so I decided to tag along. Yay! After two weekends at Dewey with my straight and no-so-fag-haggy girlfriends, I was ready for a weekend finally with gay people, in gay bars, on the gay beach.

A few things I picked up this weekend:

1. Trying to look "cool" in front of a beach full of gay men is well-nigh impossible when you fall over flat on your ass, and then your back, after failing to catch a football. Bonus stupidity if you're still fully dressed, including shirt and sunglasses, at the time.

2. Flirting with a guy who clearly doesn't ever want to see you naked is a good way of releasing your hostage paddleball without paying a ransom. (That sounds a lot dirtier than it really is.)

3. Being in the company of cute boys is an effective -- if not terribly ideal -- way to get into a conversation with other cute boys. "Hi there, you're cute...... Oh, and so are you, I guess."

4. If you've got body image issues and end up keeping your tank top on at the beach all day, be prepared for some mad tan/burn lines.

5. Telling a random guy that his Asian-character tattoo means "kung pao chicken" is funny. Not a great way to flirt, but funny anyway.

6. Long-term crushes will never work out, so don't even try. Let it go.

Notice that, unfortunately, "a man" is not one of those things I picked up this weekend.

Balancing Act

There's a delicate balancing act to be struck when your friends are visiting from out of town. Do you offer to hang with them whenever you're free, or do you give them some time on their own? I took Monday off to spend the day sightseeing with Mark and Jay all day and through dinner; last night I had dinner with them. Do I give them a night off from me? After all, they did spend all day without me anyway, so it's not like they could overload on me already. But perhaps they want a dinner that doesn't involve me for once on this trip. But then I hardly ever get to see them, so I'd like to maximize our time together.... Now I'm just confusing myself.

I Need Uglier Friends

So my best friend from high school, Mark, is visiting DC for part of this week with his boyfriend, Jay. I took the day off on Monday to hang out with them. We decided to go for a tour of the capitol (among other things) and, having gotten there early and received our tour pass for about an hour later, we decided to go get coffee/breakfast at the Rayburn House Office Building nearby.

After a relatively uneventful meal, Mark got up to attempt to bus his tray, and Jay went off in search of a restroom. When Mark returned and sat with me, a random staffer (apparently from Connecticut, I later found out) randomly said to Mark, "Are you from Cape Cod?" -- a reference to Mark's t-shirt. "No," replied Mark, "I just got the shirt when I visited."

I asked the man if he was working for a Massachusetts delegate, but no, he represented Connecticut. He asked where "we were all" from, so Mark told him he was from Seattle. I eventually 'fessed up that I live in the area.

Apparently this guy had winked at Mark while he was bussing his tray.

How is it that I have friends who can get hit on in such a relatively non-gay setting as the frigging cafeteria of a Congressional staff building? I mean, I've heard that the Hill is teeming with gay staffers and all, but they actually try to pick up random guys in the caf? I can't even get cruised if I were to wear a big sign on my head that said "Big ol' homo, gay men welcome to chat me up".

Of course, Mark is cute. I, on the other hand, am chopped liver.

On the Waterfront

Spent the weekend at Rehoboth/Dewey Beach this weekend. Jen, a friend of mine from when we worked at the courthouse, has a brother who has a house there, so from time to time we go over and crash his pad. This weekend, he was out of town, so Jen had some of us over. In the end, it was Jen, me, Christine, Linda, and Sue at the house. (For some completely inexplicable reason, I frequently end up being the only male among this group of friends.)

Dewey Beach is a fun place to hang out, although sometimes excrutiatingly heterosexual. I mean, frat scene heterosexual. The crowd tends to be composed of college-age people -- or just-out-of-college age people -- who somehow have nothing better to do with their time or money over the summer than hang out at the beach in sweet crash pads, drinking all night, and recovering all day, only to repeat the process the next day. Surprisingly, there are also a decent number of over-25 people hitting the scent too, but they, too, have nothing better to do with their lives than maintain their (usually vain) attempt to recaputure their youths by drinking excessively and seeking their next bed partner at or around last call.

Because all my friends are straight girls, we go to Dewey when we want to take our own misguided tours of recapturing our youth through excessive bar-hopping. (The gay bars are more in the Rehoboth area. Not wanting to drag my straight friends to a gay bar at the beach, I usually just tag along with them to the Land of Uber-Heterosexuality.) This past weekend proved no exception.

We spent our evenings at a bar called the Starboard. It's a fun place. I'm amazed at some of the really hot guys there taking their pick of cute women. Sometimes you hear that the gay community has claimed every goodlooking guy. I'm here to tell you that's not true. There are tons of hot guys looking for women at these hookup joints.

Jen met a cool guy named Mark. They were talking at the bar for a while. I had no idea how drunk Jen was while this was going on, but apparently, she was. Before the night was over Jen would be leaving her lunch in a corner outside the bar and we would be escorting her home in a cab. And by "we," I somehow have to include Mark, for he made his way into the cab with us.

Don't get me wrong, Mark came across as a completely nice guy. I was just a little taken aback by the fact that Jen would actually invite a strang new guy home after meeting him in a bar, especially with four guests also staying in the house. Unfortunately for both of them, however, Jen was not done re-living her dinner when she returned home, and, apparently out of some embarassment, she locked Mark out of the bathroom while she went about her business.

At some point Mark came back downstairs (where I was staying) and started putting on his shoes. Unsure of whether Jen intended for him to leave or not, I asked him what was up. "She has locked me out of the bathroom," he said. "I thought I'd be staying here, but that doesn't look like it's gonna happen."

I genuinely did feel bad for the guy. It's not often that a guy is willing to come home with a chick who's puking up her guts. And who's still quite nice. But, I didn't know if Jen still wanted to see this guy around the house when she woke up in the morning. I was prepared to offer to let him crash on the couch that night, but I was having some trouble deciding what Jen would have thought about that. So, basically, I left the matter in his court. "What do you want to do now?" I asked. Eventually, after much (rambling) "discussion" (I used that term advisedly, since it was rather nonsensical banter), he decided he would catch a cab back to his hotel. I did tell him to leave his cell number, though, so that Jen could get in touch with him. I sensed she liked him.

The next night, Jen did actually call him again, but she failed to leave her number. She had assumed that it would show up on his called ID, until I pointed out that my phone doesn't give the ID if the phone is turned off. However, not wanting to seem desperate, she didn't call him again that night. I told him to call her on Sunday sometime. I hope she does.

***

Sue was referred to -- twice -- as resembling a "librarian" type. While I can see what the guys are getting at, it's so untrue. Every librarian I've ever known has been a short, rotund, dowdy old woman. Sue is a tall, thin, rather hot chick (albeit with a kinda plain face). No accounting for taste. On Saturday night, she managed to spend the night talking to some guy whose name I forget, but who was clearly a player on the scene. At 47, recapturing youth was clearly a top priority for him. I admit he looked good (and I don't just mean "for his age"), but there's gotta be better ways meet women than finding them at bars in a beach town. Thankfully, Sue wasn't planning on hooking up with him.

***

Linda found herself a man, too. His name is Evan and he actually lives in the DC area. He seemed like a nice guy and they danced most of the night and even shared a few kisses. (This was the first time I've ever seen Linda kissing a man. It was interesting, in a kinda jarry way.)

I hope it works out for them. Evan seems like a nice guy. Linda left him her number. We'll see if he calls.

***

And my recap of the weekend would not complete without my recitation of my near-death experience.

We (Linda, Sue, Christine and I -- Jen was still recovering from the night before) were on the beach on Saturday afternoon when we decided we were going to take a walk up the beach for a little bit. So we did, walking perhaps half a mile along the shoreline.

I suppose we should have noticed much earlier that something was amiss when lightning strikes began appearing over the horizon, but we honestly believed that we had a lot of time to make it back to our stuff. Oh, how wrong we were.

When we finally turned around to look at the sky, it was dark. As we started jogging (instead of walking) back to our stuff, the sky opened up and we started getting pelted with large droplets of rain. I mean, these things were large. And combined with the rather strong winds whipping these droplets of rain at us, it was hurting.

At this point I came to once again realize that I am in exceedingly poor physical shape. The rain was blinding me; the cold was taking my breath away (my asthma didn't help matters either); and the incredibly soft sand meant that each step required ten times the effort it would have on a normal sunny beach day. I honestly thought I might die. And it would have been a drowning. In the rain. That's how hard it was raining.

Linda and Sue somehow managed to move their way along the sand and eventually got ordered onto the boardwalk by the cops. They then managed to locate our stuff. We had happened to set up camp in a dent in the beach, so there was literally a torrent of water completely flooding our stuff. Not funny. I was not there to witness it, but it was amusing to imagine. Thankfully, nothing in my bag was completely irreplaceable, so hey.

Meanwhile, I was with Christine, having been separated from Linda and Sue by the storm. (Low visibility, you see.) (No pun intended.) I don't know why we were so far from the water, but it was definitely difficult to move in the sand. Eventually I gave up and told Christine it made more sense to head up to the street and walk from there. The rain was continuing to beat down on us and there was no way I was going to be able to make any substantial headway on the sand.

So I basically ordered Christine to follow me as we headed up away from the sand. We hit a bridge and walked up, only to realize that the bridge led not straight to a street, but to a private patio area at a housing complex. While I was somewhat concerned that we were trespassing, I also was relieved to be out of the driving rain. Thankfully, my trespassing fears were allayed when almost immediately after we set foot on the balcony a woman came out to greet us with towels, inviting us in to sit down and get the heck out of that crazy rain. We sat there for about 10 minutes while the rain passed and eventually -- while profusely thanking the random family that had taken us in -- we left, a few new towels in hand, to find Linda and Sue again.

I know this story doesn't sound that bad now, but I seriously felt like I was going to die on that beach. Just a quick reminder about the awesome power and majesty of Mother Nature.

But otherwise, the weekend was a lot of fun! No, seriously.

Friendship evolution

Ever have one of those friends who's been your friend for so long, you just can't imagine not being their friend anymore? This even when you realize you that you really just don't enjoy that friend's company anymore?

My best friend from school and I still keep in touch. He lives across the country from me and we see each other on IM all the time. Every so often we'll have random chats on line. Lately, I've realized that I can't enjoy these conversations anymore. I'm tired of watching what I say for fear of being belittled or condescended to. I'm sick of avoiding certain topics of conversation knowing that I would just get dragged into some stupid-ass argument over nothing.

When you realize that you simply don't enjoy talking about your everyday life with your best friend anymore, what are you supposed to do?

He's coming to visit next weekend with his boyfriend. Thankfully, they're staying in a hotel. I'm taking a day off to hang out with them. I'm not dreading hanging out with them, but I'm not necessarily looking forward to it the way one would expect from a visit from a good friend. If we get into another fight about some stupid, trivial matter, I may just blow a gasket.

Celebration of Love

This weekend I had one of the best vacations I've ever had in the States. (Unfortunately, nothing at all can really compare to the vacations I've taken in Paris and Rome. Man. But I digress.) I spent the weekend in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. My friends Jessica and Jason got married.

Jessica and Jason are really the perfect couple. Their senses of humor totally mesh, and each complements the other's personality. Watching them exchange their vows was wonderful. They were able to affirm their love for one another in front of a slew of friends and family and carry on with their lives together in a public celebration of their love for each other.

I was there. I was celebrating with them. They're good friends of mine. And they're happy together.

And yet, of course, I had to spend the entire weekend taking special care not to make any political statements about their special day. I know other gay people who boycott the nuptials of their heterosexual friends on the theory that it's a heterosexist institution, so celebrating and supporting it -- even for friends -- would be somehow fundamentally wrong. I can't agree with that. It's still an institution worthy of celebration -- so much so that gay people want to be a part of that as well.

Jason and Jessica would have actually understood if I harbored any outrage toward the discriminatory granting of marriage rights. They're good liberals and they believe that gays and lesbians should have the rights they got to enjoy so readily in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We actually exchanged a quick comment about the fact that they were permitted to apply for a marriage license without proof of residency in the state. But I didn't want to rain on their day.

Watching J&J's wedding -- affirmed by both their families and so many of their friends -- was, as most weddings are, a wonderful experience. Two people in love, declaring their love publicly, being happy together. That's what it's all about. An affirmation of their lives together. It's just that simple.

And there's really no logical or sane reason that gays and lesbians can't or shouldn't be permitted to take advantage of this institution too.

Random Acts of Violence

This weekend was a particularly strange one for me. Well, stranger for my best gal-pal Debra, but strange definitely for me as well.

May 1 is my other gal-pal friend Lora's birthday. She was having a party that night at her house, so I spent the day doing, well, nothing in particular, just kinda gearing up to go to the party. Perhaps I considered purchasing a six-pack or something to take with me to the festivities. Never did do that, though.

The phone rings. For some reason, I don't answer it. It's Lora. She leaves me a voicemail that says, in its entirety, "When you get this message, call me." Finding that message strange, and just a bit annoying, I decided not to return the call until later.

The phone rings again a few hours later. The caller ID identifies it as Debra. Again, I choose not to pick up the phone. (I was in a mood, I guess.) No message left. Actually, I don't think it even rang for long enough to get to voicemail.

Immediately after Debra hangs up her phone, Joe calls. He leaves a voicemail too: "Hey, call me when you get this message." Again, no substance. Grrr.

So around 8:30 or 9:00, I finally call both Lora and Joe back. (Debra not having left a message, I decided not to return her call.) Lora wasn't in so I left her a voicemail. (She also has no cell phone, a fact which meets with considerable ire from many of us, because she is such a social butterfly that many times she's next to impossible to pin down.) Left a message with Joe too. Both messages: "Hey, returning your call. What's up?"

So at around 9:45, I speak to a human being for possibly the first time that day. Joe returned my call. "Did you hear about Debra?" he says. "No, what about Debra?" I respond. I'm getting slightly concerned now. Joe's next sentence does very very little to alleviate my nervousness: "First off, just to be clear, she's fine."

"Oh my God," I spit back, "What happened that you have to tell me that she's fine?!?"

Debra got stabbed on Saturday night. It was quite the act of randomness and, in fact, was quite hideously violent. Apparently, Debra had just left her apartment, having changed and freshened up after a long day of shopping, and was heading out to meet someone for dinner when, less than a block from her house on Irving Street NW in Mt. Pleasant, she was grabbed by the arm and stabbed in the neck. Yes, that's right, the neck.

Debra began screaming (we find out later that, luckily, the stabber has managed to miss every last important thing in her neck) and running literally into the street to summon assistance. Bear in mind that this is occurring at approximately 7:00 pm -- it's still plenty bright out, and there are still people around. For some reason no one is responding to her entreaties, though, so she literally throws her purse at him and says, "Here, just take it!"

Odd thoughts of a strange man wielding a bloody knife cavorting off with a bright pink purse notwithstanding, the man didn't take the purse. Instead, he followed her into the street and stabbed her again, in the back, before he finally retreated.

Finally, people emerge to help Debra. One woman is sitting with her trying to keep her coherent. A Metro bus driver has stopped his bus and is holding a cloth to Debra's throat to help stem the bleeding. (Unfortunately, someone soon pointed out that she had been stabbed in the back as well. So when that someone lifted up her jacket, the nice woman who was with her promptly passed out at the sight of the second stab wound. Debra found herself sitting there, bleeding from two knife wounds, thinking, "Great. It must be pretty damn bad if this chick is passing out on me. And I'm the one that's bleeding!".)

Well, putting aside all the other details that follow, Debra was taken to the Washington Hospital Center, where she was found to have a collapsed lung. A most hideous tube was inserted into her (somewhere -- I didn't lift up her blanket to try to figure out where exactly the tube was connected to her) to drain her lungs, which, presumably, would help revive the fallen lung. She was treated there for a few days.

So I spent much of my weekend at a hospital. I hate hospitals. The super-sanitary smell alone is enough to make me want to vomit. But I sat there next to Debra, and with my friend Lora, for quite a while just keeping her company.

As an added irony, Lora herself was born in the Washington Hospital Center. So, twenty-nine years to the day, Lora finds her back there. Not the most fun way to celebrate a birthday, but hey.

Debra's a trooper. To the extent that she could talk (she was pretty drugged up, and that drainage tube was pretty painful), she was her usual sarcastic self ("So they gave me these painkillers, but since I hadn't eaten before the stabbing, I got all sick and started throwing up. Not fun when you have a knife wound in your neck."), which I found to be excellent. I give her snaps for still having that kind of spirit when she's been the victim of a violent crime.

Her mom came down from New York to be with her, and Debra was discharged by Monday afternoon. A bunch of us went over to her place last night and had an impromptu "get better/welcome home" party. I brought a bunch of cheesy videos from my personal collection with me, since Debra doesn't have cable and would likely be bored out of her skull.

They caught the guy who did it. He's been arraigned on a charge of Assault With Intent to Kill. Despite the best efforts of my attorney friends and me (none of whom practice criminal law), we can't see the difference between that and Attempted Murder. But we'll take what we can, long as the bastard sees plenty of time behind bars, where he will hopefully be met with the long end of a big, thick penis finding its way to places he doesn't want one to go.

Man, I got punked.

Yesterday I was sucked into probably the best April Fool's joke ever. Not because it was exceedingly embarassing for me -- I didn't end up crying, or wetting myself in public or anything -- but just because it was so close to reality that I believed the big lie, hook, line and sinker.

The setup: My girlfriend Lora has had a HUGE crush on a boy named Rob for years. She's told me so. And the more she claims that she's over this "silly little crush," the less I believe her, because, well, she's simply not over it.

Well, on Wednesday night, Lora and Rob, as well as a few other people, went out for dinner at some big party-type thingee (which I declined to attend, for a variety of reasons). At this party, I was told, Lora got a bit drunk and was out alone with Rob when she impulsively planted a wet one right on the lips.

Reportedly, there was much fallout, including the disappointment of a gay guy who also has a huge crush on (presumably) straight Rob.

Of course, this was all a lie. No kiss ever took place. I fell for this entire story simply because, well, I wouldn't put any of it past Lora at all. I mean, it's not like some April Fool's joke where I was successfully led to believe that I was being sent to Hollywood to star in a movie or something. I didn't fall for a completely outlandish prank. I fell for a prank that hews completely to actual objective facts. You can't call me too terribly gullible for that, now can you?

Here's the kicker: she managed to get all kinds of people in on this joke. Debra (who also went to the party event) emailed me to ask me if I had heard the "drama" from that night. Joe, Lora's roommate who did not attend the party, emailed me to ask if anything was "up" with Lora, because she just didn't seem like herself lately. Even Rob emailed me to ask me for "advice" about Lora's not-so-subtle romantic advance. Oy.

Of course, if Lora wants to make her schoolgirl crush the center of an April Fool's joke -- even to where she's involving the object of that crush in that joke -- there's really no telling how I'll react to it. I mean, I could very well tell Rob A LOT about Lora's neverending pining process. There's no end to what mischief this could result in....

Yes, I took the bait. Luckily for Lora, I didn't run with it. However, I do think a practical joke that's based so tightly upon actual facts (which have immense embarassment potential) is ill-advised.

Speaking of practical jokes, I find this web site immensely entertaining. If I had had the time, I would have tried some of the pranks here on my officemates yesterday. And check out the series of essays on "Bob the Anal Fissure." I busted a gut laughing my ass off.

She's a Man, Baby!

I hereby take back my post of March 3, 2004, in which I proclaimed myself a "big ol' girl." I don't know how to link back to that post directly, so I'll just leave it to the reader to find it. It was only 21 days ago, so it can't be that difficult.

I am NOT a big ol' girl.

At least, not all the time.

There are many times when, in fact, I too like to take control and act to "fix" things. And I get frustrated when the people I'm trying to help don't appear to be listening to me.

My friend Debra quintessentially seems to have drama revolving around her. Sometimes I think she manufactures drama just to have some excitement in her life. Sometimes it's drama that wouldn't even be drama if she would stop making such a big deal of it. In the past, I would have suggested avenues to head off the drama. Unfortunately for Debra (and me), usually my suggestions involve a radical shift in thought patterns which Debra is usually unable or unwilling to entertain. (For example: "The guy isn't calling you back? Oh well. Plenty of other fish in the sea.")

And it frustrates me to pieces when she complains to me about things neither she nor I have control over, then obsess about them.

I have a similar reaction to Lifetime ("Television for Women, and Gay Men"). Here's my do-it-yourself version of a trailer for every Lifetime movie ever made:

"Next on Lifetime. A woman is in trouble. Deep trouble. Watch her suffer and cry and get the shit kicked out of her for two hours before she finally wakes up, decides to take control of her life and get out of her terrible situation."

Whether it's an abusive husband, or -- wait, it's pretty much always an abusive husband, isn't it? -- the women in Lifetime movies need to get a grip. I'm not sure I understand why such movies are supposed to be "empowering" to women. Anyone who doesn't watch the last 10 minutes walks away with the impression of a powerless, snivelling woman who's fine with being treated worse than the family pet.

So yes, there are definitely times when I, like my friend Mark, will feel this overpowering urge to "fix" the problem rather than listening to others bitch about it.

But then, at least when I suggest changes, the changes I suggest are within the power of the individual. Moving may be within my power. but the greater good is served by granting District citizens full voting rights.

Repeat link of the day: www.dcvote.org

Stepping Up to the Plate

I'm too old to be living the way I am.

My friend Jessica is getting married in a few months, so I, of course, had to shop for housewares. The task was made substantially easier by the fact that there exists a registry, and decisions regarding what to buy were pared down to one tiny consideration: price.

So I surfed through the Bloomingdale's web site and selected a few items for purchase, clicked a few times, entered a credit card, and happily completed my duty as a happy wedding celebrant.

Bloomingdale's appears to have (quite stupidly) misinterpreted my request to hold off on delivering the goods for a few months. To wit: Because I didn't want the gifts to arrive too terribly far in advance of the wedding, I asked Bloomie's to hold off on shipping them (two sets of items) for about a month. Bloomingdale's interpretation of my request: Please ship the items whenever you get around to it.

So Jessica got the wedding gifts early. I had to call to verify that she had received them, because, given the conflict between what I requested and what actually occurred, I couldn't be sure there wasn't some big, even stupider mix-up somewhere.

One of the gifts I sent were a set of plates. Very nice, apparently. Jessica's quite pleased with them. And, she reports, "Jason [the fiance] won't let us use them yet. He's not ready to throw out our old sets yet."

At which point it hit me that the plates I use on a routine basis at home are not "sets" of plates. They do not look "nice" by any stretch. In fact, they are literally leftover salad and dinner plates, and cereal bowls... as stolen from my college dining hall. And my alumni association is pestering me about my tenth-year reunion.

So, without a second thought, I asked Jessica if I could have the soon-to-be tossed plate set. I'm excited to get new plates and stuff. Even if they're hand-me-downs. I'm too cheap and poor to go buy new ones myself.

Stop, or You'll Go Blind!

My friends mean well. Really, they do. I think. But sometimes you just gotta take the truth by the horns and accept reality, know what I mean?

One night recently Maria invited a bunch of us to happy hour at Dragonfly. Sounds like fun, and I do so enjoy hanging out with my friends over a cocktail, or two, or five, so I make my way over. Eventually, another one of Maria's friends approaches the table. I can't for the life of me recall his name, so I'll call him "Joe." Anyway, Joe is this Asian guy who, thankfully, is NOT a lawyer and is, instead, an architect, which is kinda cool, because far too many of my friends are lawyers already.

Almost immediately, Bert kicks in. "Joe's gay," he decides. Observing him for a bit longer (and now joined in by Debra and Lora), a concensus is reached: "Yep, he's gay." And so it begins: "You should talk to him," I'm told. Of course, "talk to him," is thinly veiled code for "go down a path that will eventually lead to long-term dating," and in fact doesn't mean "talk."

First of all, I'm a shy guy by nature. Talking to strangers, even if they're friends of friends, can take some effort on my part. Second of all, I'm at a point in my life with my disenchantment with the gay dating prospects in this city have turned me off completely to the prospect of even putting myself out there anymore. Indeed, I voluntarily removed myself from "The Market" a loooong time ago.

But my friends don't stop. Bert starts pointing his observations that the guy has a hairstyle similar to mine (not really -- his is more coiffed and mine is simply messy); that our sleeves are rolled up almost identically (who doesn't roll up the sleeves on their dress shirts? If all the guys in the room hadn't been wearing rugby shirts, I'm sure some of them would have had their sleeves rolled too); that our pants are the same (uh, dress slacks, hello?); and even (Bert's self-anointed coup de grace) the same shoes (I didn't have the wherewithal to double-check this particular assertion). We have apparently come to the conclusion that there is, in fact, a Gay Asian shoe on the market that Joe and I are trendsetters for.

As I say, my friends mean well, but come on. Thankfully, Maria never told Joe that she invited us all to hang out for the purpose of possibly introducing us, so any perceived rudeness on my part was not necessarily viewed as a clear snub on my part. But the bigger problem with well-meaning straight friends who set up their gay friends is that all too often, their mental processes go no further than, "Hey, you're both gay. You guys should date."

This mindset is incredibly simplistic. It evidences a deeply flawed understanding of gay male interaction in Washington, DC. In gay male Washington, DC, the proper analysis is: "Hey, we're both gay. Are you hot enough to get naked in bed with me?"

***

My friend Jessica tried to set me up once too. Stupidly enough, I let her. Against my better judgment, I agreed to have dinner with the friend of one of her co-workers. What follows is the funny story that I have told no one except Jessica.

First of all, Frank showed up late. Now, seeing as I'm already nervous as it is (even though I'm not sure why, because I have no real high hopes for successful results from this dinner), I'm starting to call Jessica. "Uh, aren't you, like, supposed to be somewhere now?" she asks me. Seeing as I never told her the arrangements of this "date," she clearly has heard of it from Frank. "He's... uh, not here," I tell her.

I think at that point what I feared most was not so much resigning myself to going home and having cold pizza for dinner, but the thought of being dissed sight unseen. More times than I can count, I've been in bars where guys won't look twice once they've made their split-second determination that I'm not worthy of the bedspace next to them, but I think that the prospect of such an evaluation being made before even looking at me was placing me dangerously close to a complete tailspin.

Luckily for my mental health, Frank showed up, and we had a very pleasant dinner. We had talked throughout, and it was, to my shock and utter surprise, quite nice. I was leaving for a work-related conference a few days later, but I promised I would call him upon my return and we would get together again.

Can you see where this is headed?

After I returned to the city, I called him on Monday evening. It was exactly one week since we had met. He answered the phone; appeared to recognize who I was, and did not appear actively hostile toward my call. Well, turns out I caught him on the way out the door, so he said, "I'll call you later tonight, or if it's too late, I'll call you tomorrow."

Neither of those two calls came.

Not being a stickler for "The Rules," I gave him a second call on Wednesday. Left him a message on his voicemail: "Hey, just calling to touch base, see if you wanted to get together again. Call me."

No return call. Ever.

I can't even decide what the right adjective is for this particular circumstance. Annoyed? Upset? Angry? Hurt? Insulted? I think it's odious and horrible that gay men in this city pre-judge people based purely on their looks without ever exchanging a word with them. But this guy I actually talked to for an entire dinner. We got along, and got along well, and we said we wanted to get together again. Did something happen?

About a week later, Jessica emailed me, delicately and politely asking me, "So, uh, how come things didn't work out with Frank?" I had to lay into the fact that I never received any phone call returning mine. "Sorry, he clearly wasn't interested," I told her. "No!" she protested. "She told Doug [her co-worker friend] that you guys hit it off and were seeing each other again!" I can't help thinking that a telephone call -- returning the ones I had made -- would have facilitated that.

But She Was Pregnant!

So a friend of mine told me a story last night that was comical, in an "okay, you know that's really not funny, right?" sort of way that I thought I'd share:

My friend Katie was walking home with a friend of hers from being out with some friends one night. It was late (well past the witching hour), and suddenly she noticed her friend (a tiny little woman; some 5'3 and 109 lbs) was accelerating her pace. Katie keeps up, wondering all the while, "This is odd...."

As they reach the front door of Katie's Foggy Bottom apartment, Katie is literally clubbed. Not hard enough to knock her out or even really give her serious bodily injury mind you, but yes, someone raised a hard object and brought it down with some force at her head. Katie turned, shocked, to find... a short, stocky, very pregnant woman, surrounded by three other vigilantes (presumably the pregnant woman's "crew").

Of course, before Katie can compose herself, Pregnant Vigilante moves again, this time whacking Katie's arm in an attempt to get her to drop her purse. When that didn't work (Katie's purse was looped over her head and across her chest), P.V. simply yanked the purse and walked off with it. I say "walked," of course, because, being very pregnant, this woman was not about to run off with the purse.

Now having had some time to come to grips with what was happening, Katie suddenly decides, "This isn't right," and decides to launch an attempt to get her purse back. She follows P.V. and her crew down the street, keeping a semi-safe distance, but saying, "Hey, give me my purse back! It's my purse! Give it back!" To which P.V.A.H.C. are actually responding, to wit, they are saying "No." Katie alternately is also on a cell phone with another of her friends, Maria, describing this entire situation ("Yeah, I was just robbed outside my apartment. I'm following them now. P.V. is kinda waddling, so it's not that difficult to keep up....")

(I'm not sure what Katie's friend is doing this entire time. I think she's gone into her apartment and started calling the cops, but then again, I can't figure out where Katie's cell phone would have come from.)

In any event, at some later point I guess Katie gets separated from her attackers and meets with the police. Miraculously enough, when given the description of the attackers, the police are actually able to round up a very pregnant woman and her buddies. (Shocking, given the sheer number of pregnant women with posses who roam the streets of Foggy Bottom in the middle of the night.) One would think the story ends there, but it doesn't.

Having now somewhat identified the women as her attackers, the Police don't believe Katie. "You can't prove that they did this to you," they tell her. "Uh," stammers Katie, "I just said they did. What more do you need?" "You're not sure of the ID. This case won't ever get prosecuted," she is told. Despite Katie's protestations that, having walked behind the waddling crew for some 10 minutes, she took good stock of their backsides, and sure enough, these women had the asses she saw (complete with funky pants with a strategic tear in them), it apparently wasn't good enough.

The cops never took the attackers into custody.

Asked why Katie didn't fight back, Katie could only respond with, "I was just thinking, 'But she's pregnant!'" When she told this story, the friends we were with and I were much less sympathetic. We would have kicked P.V.'s pregnant ass. (Or so we said. Who knows what cowardly stripe would have been painted down my back had I actually been faced with that situation.)

Katie eventually found her purse, discarded. "Well, at least I get the purse back," she thought. Missing were some makeup, a cell phone, and a pack of gum. P.V.A.H.C. never thought to unzip the pocket in the lining of the purse, where they would have found about $100 in cash, some credit cards, and an ID.