Tony Thompson

When You're Better Than the Guy Who Dumped You

2009-11-30T12:20:00.000-08:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

"Rejection is the greatest aphrodisiac." I'd like to pretend that I'm wildly smart and that I learned this from having studied one of the world's greatest philosophers. But I'd be lying. I know this because it's a line from a Madonna song. I have not studied Socrates, but I know my Madge.

I don't know why human beings are so drawn to things that reject them. Animals don't even bother obsessing over stuff that they can't have. It's basic human instinct to want things you aren't supposed to want. And the guaranteed way to make someone want something is to deny them that. If you've ever experienced a preacher's kid's Freshman year away at college, exposed freely and suddenly to things like booze and sex, then you know exactly what I mean.

Rejection is a vicious thing that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I often think that the reason I never got into politics wasn't my seedy past or lack of ambition, but my overwhelming disdain of rejection. I avoid it all costs and always have. A guy in a bar has to practically be reciting a poem about me and giving me access to his credit cards before I'll safely assume that he's looking at me. I don't like rejection, and if I even slightly detect its possibility, I turn and walk away.

But rejection, like most horrible things in life, is unavoidable, no matter how masterfully you try to avoid it. Stand-alone rejection is bad, but a drop of lemon juice on the paper cut that is rejection is being rejected by someone that you never in a million years expect to be rejected by. Once, when I was about 23, I asked a less than attractive guy in a bar if I could borrow his lighter. His response? "Not interested." I was dumbfounded as he walked away, having been sucker-punched by rejection. This happened to me again very recently when I was dumped by someone that, by all definition, wasn't playing at my level.

How I got myself into a situation where I was dating someone considerably a league or two beneath me is similar to a conversation I recently had with my friend Annemarie about pink eye.

"Maybe you have pink eye," she said when I told her about my right eye being red and swollen for a few days.

"How do you get pink eye?" I asked.

"Fecal matter."

"Yours or someone else's?"

"Does it matter?!?!"

It doesn't matter how I wound up there, but I was. I was totally into a guy who, in my normal universe, I would've been the one handing out the walking papers. Granted, I'm no prize goose. But I know enough about myself, my life, and the things that I can offer someone to know what's marketable and what's not. I've been rejected before, but normally when that happens the issue is more of an understanding than a sadness. "Yea. You're right. You probably can do better."

I spent a longer amount of time trying to bounce back from this having had happened than my normal pace, and I couldn't figure out why. I had dumped (and been dumped by) cuter, funnier, richer, and smarter men and was always fully recovered in time for the next big party. I'd convinced myself that I'd fallen in love. But my friends convinced me otherwise.

"You got rejected by someone you're better than," was their consensus. But just because something happened that wasn't supposed to happen, like George Bush being president, it didn't make it any easier. Along with it came the normal self-doubt, self-hate, and pure grain misery that comes with being dumped by someone that by all definition is entitled to do so. I guess it boils down to another basic human reaction. Simply put, no one likes being told "no."

You can't dodge rejection. You can't bob and weave through life hoping to miss that punch. So I took one on the nose this time? I'll survive. I'll live to date someone else. And even though it's impossible to know whether I'll get dumped again or if he'll dump me, you can guarantee that either way, he'll be a higher quality ex-boyfriend than this last one.

Goodbye to my Grandma.

2009-11-16T20:51:00.000-08:00

I'm endlessly fascinated by the concept of family. Those or you who are kind enough to follow my writing know that I think a lot about the people from which we come and how they shape us into the people that we are. Given that I think very highly of myself (another thing that my "fans" would know), it's obvious that I have no regrets about the batch of humans I sprung from. They not only made me who I am, but they also implanted in me a belief that has served me very well in my complicated life: that if you associate yourself with good people, then you in return, whether you like it or not, will wind up a good person. I've written before about how I've spent my adult life duplicating that feeling of familial closeness with those I'd consider to be friends. This can specifically be found in the November 2008 archives of my blog in a piece entitled "We are Family!"

I wrote that piece after my grandmother threw herself what my family jokingly referred to as her "fake wake." She paid for a family reunion, gathering her loved ones from all over the country, and we spent three days together in a Mississippi hotel. When the weekend was over, we gathered outside of a restaurant and she gave a speech with her oxygen tank in tow. I remember her saying something that was hard for this man who doesn't feel like he'll ever grow up to hear. She thanked us all for coming and told us from behind her tears to love each other, that we were family, and even though that moment might be the last time that some of us ever saw each other alive, to always appreciate where we came from.

My mother called me today and, as it turns out, that indeed was the last time that I would see my grandmother alive. After having fought for eight months in a hospital, she decided to check herself out and let go. Her mind, miraculously still in tact up until the very end, was made up. 82 years, two husbands, five kids, nine grandchildren, and thirteen great grandkids later, she felt it was time to move on. She told her children that she didn't want a funeral because, as I mentioned earlier, she already had one.

In the Spring of 2003, I woke up one Saturday morning at the age of 26 after having cried myself to sleep the night before. I was miserable, living with my mother, working a dead-end job, in a dead-end relationship, and feeling, well, dead. Something had snapped in me between falling asleep the night before and that very moment, and I could no longer foresee living another day knowing that that particular present was my eternal fate. So I decided to move. Those first few waking moments of that morning are ones I can't clearly recall. Basically, I was being pulled by something else, whether it was fate or severe depression. I scrambled about my room to find a pen and a piece of paper. Then I put the names of a dozen cities into a hat and randomly pulled out the name of one. I marched downstairs and announced to my confused mother nursing a Virginia Slim and a cup of coffee that in six months (and despite having never even been there to visit) I was moving to Chicago.

Those next six months were rough. I took a second job, equally as crappy as my other one, to finance the move. And although I was trying not to, I desperately still wanted the guy I felt I was running away from to beg me to stay. Something else occurred over the course of that time too. For the first time in my entire life, no one, not my friends or family, had any confidence in me whatsoever. They thought that what I was doing was reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous. And although they could all tell that my staying in Memphis would equate to a world of personal troubles for me, they found it impossible to support me. That is, everyone except my grandmother.

About two weeks before my set arrival date into Chicago, I began to panic. I was moving to a city where no one knew me, where I had no job or family, and I almost changed my mind. I was desperate to leave, but I was terrified that I'd fail. I was talking about this to my grandmother who lived a few doors down from my mom and this fear manifested itself into concerns over money. Although I'd saved up a bunch, what if it wasn't enough? What if I fell flat on my face financially before I ever even found a job? And my grandmother casually mentioned to me that I should ask my grandpa, a retired successful businessman, not for a handout, but a loan.

So I did. But he made me go back and write up a loan proposal, highlighting my monthly bills. Then he made me go back and revise that written loan proposal when I'd blindly failed to factor in the cost of unforeseen yet unavoidable expenses, like groceries. We decided on an amount and a payment plan. It was then that I had all of the resources that I needed to leave. All that was left was the courage to do so.

In 2006, my grandfather died a few days after I'd flown home to say goodbye. He could no longer talk and was almost unrecognizable from having been sick for so long, but his eyes lit up when he saw me standing over his bed. He squeezed my hand but I said very little because I didn't want to cry in front of him. I foolishly thought that him seeing me cry would scare him, as if he didn't know he was dying up until my tears let the cat out of the bag. When I left the room I was overwhelmed with gratitude. Had he and my grandmother never given me that money, where would I have been? I had found such happiness in Chicago. I became the type of person that for one reason or another Memphis hadn't allowed me to be. I was a good person. I was a happy person. And I wanted him to be proud of me.

My grandmother pulled me aside that day and I tried, while sobbing, to express that gratitude. She told me that his lending me that last bit of money for my move was a decision that they'd both agreed upon long before I wrote up that silly proposal. She said that they knew I was good for it. After my grandpa died, I kept making payments to my grandmother and eventually paid off that debt. It was one of the brightest moments of my life when all of those checks cleared. That's when my grandmother told me how proud of me they both were.

We are who we are because of where we came from. I'm goofy and selfish because of my father. I'm likeable and scatter-brained because of my mother. I'm kind but defensive because of my sister. And I'd like to think, considering that we've now lost them both, that I'm trusting and strong because of my grandparents.

But sometimes "strong" isn't even a powerful enough word to describe my grandmother. Once at Thanksgiving when I was a teenager, I overheard her snap back to her first husband during an argument after he told her to go to hell, "I'll see you there!" Up until just a few years ago, she often wrapped up her day with a strong scotch. She was educated during a time when most women weren't, and had a lifelong thirst for knowledge that led her to being more computer literate and internet savvy than I was. She had a unique take on the world, leaning more towards a belief that almost everyone goes to heaven because, based on her observations, weren't most of us already in hell? She didn't care that I was gay, but she cared that I was a Democrat. I spent just as much time fighting with her about Hillary Clinton as I did my Obama-supporting pals during the 2008 Election.

When you come from good people, you duplicate good people. You build a support system no matter what your lot in life that replicates the one that reared you. Your passions are the same, as are your hopes and your fights. And that all starts to click more as you get older. You catch yourself doing or saying something and you freeze in your tracks because you're acting like an authority figure from your own childhood. Tonight as I write this, sad for my mother that she's taken the biggest hit of grief in her life, sad for my aunts and uncles and cousins and sister and all of those great grandchildren, I somehow still find some admiration underneath all this hurt. Strong up until the very end, my grandmother called the shots and went out her way. She's definately one authority figure from my own childhood that I hope to find myself mimicking in later years.

Maybe I was never able to fully explain how grateful I am to my grandparents for not only believing that I'd succeed in Chicago, but also for helping plant in me the things to look out for in others when you're trying to build your own family. Without their values, their commitment, their efforts, I wouldn't be who I am today.

Hopefully someday I'll get to where they're going. And over a nice, strong scotch, I can thank them then.

Lost in Space.

2009-11-03T20:50:00.000-08:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

I grew up during the peak of the Star Wars fad and had I not been genetically predisposed to favor my He-Man toys over my Chewbacca action figure, I might've paid more attention to space. I only knew of it what they said about it at the beginning of Star Trek, that it was "the final frontier." Space was something confusing, big, and daunting. Who needed it? Well, as it turns out, most of us do.

Actual Space, the space above us where the sun burns and galaxies collide, is a complicated mass of mathematics and physics. I have spent most of this year studying a microcosm of space, the space that exists between humans. Although not quite as overwhelming and endlessly possible as actual space, the space that human beings require can be just as complicated and is equally affected by numbers and science.

They say that actual space is relative, like time, and so indeed is human space. People need space, although at varying degrees. I spent two months living out of a suitcase in two of my friends' living room. One of them needed little space at all and the sight of my unemployed ass sitting idly on the sofa when he got home from work was a welcome one. The other friend required much more space, actually the specific space in which I'd been sleeping, and he jumped for joy when I finally moved on and he was able to reclaim the couch as his.

Human space can be trickier than even the most confusing Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking book. Unlike deciphering the distance between planets, you never know exactly how much space a human needs. New relationships are a doctorate level study in space. You spend half of your time trying to figure out when it's appropriate to call, to text, or to ask to see that person again. You don't know if your perception of space is the same as theirs. What if they require more distance than you do? And if they do, then what does that mean? Do they just simply like to take things slower than you do? Or are they orbitting around someone else's sun and you're just some loser supernova dying in the distance?

Trying to describe how much space you require in a relationship is a lot like trying to describe your own genitalia. You know exactly what yours looks like. You know it inside and out. However, words will inevitably fail you should you have to describe them. And like your own genitalia, space is just something that is always there. But you never really feel the need to discuss it with anyone unless it is immediately threatened.

Space is a science. And like all sciences, there is an underlying element of math. Human space is no different. The space that we need is our own unique algebraic equation where X equals the numbers of times you think you were in love divided by half the times you let somebody down multiplied by the number of times your best friend banged your boyfriend. And like the formulas that make up actual space, at first glance the numbers in human space look random, jumbled, and meaningless to the point that you'd rather give up than try to solve it.

Just as that geeky junior high school science teacher we all had tried to do, we try to make ourselves understand space. It's not easy. And many of us will fail. But at some point we have to grasp the beauty, and the power, of space.

Live long and prosper.

Pillow Talk is the New First Date

2009-07-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

I’ve never been big on romance in the traditional sense. I find the notion of a candlelit dinner or a romantic stroll on the beach to be trite and too structured. My idea of romance has always been along the lines of someone buying me a beer, letting me eat the last piece of pizza, or keeping their mouth shut during my favorite television show.

Contrary to normal consensus, my distaste for romance has little to do with my elevated levels of jadedness. Even when I was younger and much more naïve than I am now, someone buying me flowers or writing me a poem seemed awkward, forced, and cheesy. But now, at 33 and still single, people assume that I hate romance because I’ve been dating for 15 years and I’m simply exhausted. This mis-perception often pops up when discussing my views with less experienced friends, friends who still think that the odds of them meeting someone casually at a coffee shop aren’t actually less than the odds of them getting mauled by a pack of wild dogs.

The topic of romance is often discussed between myself and a particular friend of mine. He came out later in life than I did and has been dating but a blip in time compared to me. When he shows up at a dinner party starry-eyed after having swapped pleasantries with someone at the gym, I am the first one to knock him down a few pegs. I tend to balk at his fantasy of meeting that perfect guy, someone in his mid-30s with a decent job, with no overbearing psychological scars, and who holds a respectable record on the actual number of sexual partners that he’s had. To me, that’s like finding a hundred dollar bill in a swimming pool full of pennies. It could happen, but is it worth the work and patience?

The thing that I’m always trying to relate to my Pollyanna friend is that boyfriends don’t always come from a series of romantic dinners and bonding over things that you’re both passionate about. In my opinion, the majority of relationships begin with the most unromantic thing that two adults can do together: having a one night stand. One night stands that lead to a meaningful relationship aren’t that uncommon. And things that may or may not occur during a one night stand can be either positives or negatives, things that you probably wouldn’t discover about someone until well into the 6th or 7th date. You’ve already seen them naked. And better yet, they’ve already seen you naked and were still interested! You can gauge how successful they are (if that’s important to you) based on their living arrangements. And if the one night stand occurs after several inhibition-loosening cocktails, by morning you’ll know whether or not you’re sexually compatible with each other. It’s easier to gauge total compatibility based on the level of awkwardness come daylight. If you’re both still at ease and talkative in the morning, move forward from there.

Pillow talk is the new first date. In this day and age, where you can get to New York from Thailand quicker than you can get someone’s phone number, why not skip the middle, less significant steps? It’s kind of like skipping the entire dance and just jumping to the part where you take a bow. Romance is all fine and good, but why does it have to come first? Take that car for a spin before you sink all of those romantic dinners and serenades into it. And hopefully, you’ll like it enough to buy it.

So you're dating someone. Now what?

2009-06-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

Why do bad things happen to good people? What is my purpose in life? Why is “The View” still on the air? Most of these types of questions are best left unanswered, yet they bob in and out of our minds on a daily basis.

Being single can be a bottomless well of unanswerable questions, triggering confusion and frustration rarely seen outside of a Physics class. While in the midst of a dating dry spell, one finds themselves consumed with thoughts as to why no one wants to go out with them. Is it because of what you do for a living, where you hang out, who you know, or because you look like an Ewok? These concerns turn out to be as insignificant as a Mosque in Alabama once you actually start dating someone. That’s when the real trouble begins.

Anyone with a lick of sense will tell you that the keys to a happy relationship are simple: trust and communication. But in a way, that’s like trying to breakdown the complexities of something as confusing as organic chemistry into a sound bite. The notion of both trust and communication as being “simple” is ridiculous. In the long run (if you’re lucky to actually experience the long run), they become second nature. But on the path towards commitment they make about as much sense as Sarah Palin.

Trust is something that both attracts and disgusts us when we find ourselves at the start of a new relationship. We are drawn to the idea of having met someone that we trust, yet there’s no fun in dating someone that no one else wants. A little jealousy and confusion can be a good thing, assuming that it doesn’t turn into a situation where you find yourself camped outside of their house dressed in Army fatigues and holding a pair of binoculars. In my experience, trust seems to be something that just suddenly shows up in its true form unexpected, like Shrek’s girlfriend. You really don’t know where exactly that it came from (and it startles you), but you wind up falling in love with it.

Communication is a painful necessity in the family of body waxing and paying your taxes. You hate doing it, it’s painful and expensive, but you really have no choice. These days, what exactly constitutes communication is as abstract as a Picasso. If you don’t hear from someone for a week, yet they commented on a photo of you on Facebook, does that meet communication requirements? Are emails and text messages considered communicating? The wonderful thing about communication in 2009 is that there are dozens of avenues towards staying in touch with people that you already know and care about, but finding that perfect forum to get to know someone better can be a real pain in the ass. Plus, communication in itself can be something that you thought you wanted with an individual that you’re just getting to know, but that granted wish can turn on you like a pit bull. While communicating, they can inform you that they’re an ex-convict, a Mormon, or that they have no interest in monogamy.

Not a blessing in disguise, but a curse in disguise, dating is tough. For most single people, life is divided between wondering why you’re not dating anyone and then trying to decipher the code of that person that you just started dating. With a little luck and patience, trust and communication might suddenly appear like the Publishing Clearing House people. Hang in there. Be honest about what you want. And don’t get caught outside of his place wearing night vision goggles.

This just in: Other states besides Caifornia have banned gay marriage!

2009-05-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

I logged onto Facebook today and was bombarded with invitations by friends to hit the streets in protest of California’s not overturning Proposition 8, their law that bans same-sex marriage. Noble protests, in my opinion, but misdirected, considering that neither myself nor anyone inviting me actually lives in California. This sort of logic escapes me, like storming a McDonald’s demanding a refund because Burger King got your order wrong.

I am pro-gay marriage. I don’t think it runs the risk of devaluing marriage in American society. Straight people have devalued it enough (Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, for example). I think gay marriage would be an enormous boost to a struggling economy, extremely benefiting the entertainment, real estate, and legal communities. More importantly, I think gay marriage would dramatically improve the lives of thousands of overlooked children trapped inside the broken foster care system in this country.

That being said, why aren’t gay rights activists focusing more on states where the struggle is far more complicated and unfair than it is in California? In the most populated areas of California, gay people can congregate safely and reap the benefits of basic equality granted by living in a forward-thinking state. The majority of Californians can be out at work without fear of losing their jobs. They can purchase property with no fear of discrimination. They can report hate crimes and harassment to their local police departments with full confidence that the law is on their side.

I live in what is strongly considered to be the gayest neighborhood in America. Per capita, there are supposedly more gay people in my neighborhood than even in any neighborhoods of New York City or San Francisco. We even have our own Wikipedia page outlining just how gay we are here! So every time this California gay marriage ban news hits the airwaves, the protests here in Boystown, Chicago begin. In a neighborhood where a heterosexual couple holding hands in the street catches your eye quicker than an 8 foot tall drag queen in a bedazzled onesie, is a gay rights protest really necessary? My pro-protest friends tell me that it’s merely to give the issue visibility.

There are 29 other states in the Union where gay marriage bans are written into their constitutions. That’s more than half! And the majority of these are states that arguably not even heterosexual African Americans are yet given full equality. I wonder every time I get these protest invitations not only why I’m being asked to protest a law in California when I live in Illinois, but also where the protesters were when the GLBT communities of states like Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Oregon needed them? When a law was passed in Arkansas in 2008 to ban gay adoption, which to me is a far worse crime than banning gay marriage, I didn’t receive a single email asking me for money from the Human Rights Campaign. No one in my neighborhood, for “visibility” purposes, marched from the gay bar past the gay gym, rallying together outside of the gay coffee shop.

During the Civil Rights Movement, it was decided that the fight for equality would begin at ground zero, even though most states still had laws restricting the rights of African Americans (yes, even the northern states!). The south would be where the battle would be more visible and more effective. Why aren’t gay rights activists using that proven method? It turned out to be quite effective, in case you hadn’t heard, because not even fifty years later we have an African American President.

California will come around. Californians are quite progressive. It’s a state that tolerates 60 year old women with pulled back faces and the store-bought boobs of a teenager. The gay community in San Francisco alone has more political pull than John McCain. How long do you think they’ll actually stand for prejudice? Why not focus more on rallying around the gay people of Utah, Oklahoma, or Mississippi, for example? Those are some protests that I’d get up off of the couch for.

Am I an alcoholic or am I just single?

2009-05-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

Gay men by nature are more judgmental than Christian Fundamentalists and the Taliban combined. Having spent over half of my life immersed within the culture, like an abused spouse with no real intentions of walking away, I’ve simply gotten used to it. You quickly adapt to what is acceptable dress and music choices. But the one aspect of gay life that still eludes me, leaving me as mesmerized as Jane Goodall observing a pack of wild monkeys, is the appropriateness of how often one goes to the gay bar.

It would appear that a line has been drawn in the sand. On one side are the gays that would rather vacation in liberal, free-thinking West Virginia before they’d step foot into a gay bar. On the other side are the gays that can tell you the drink specials at any bar on any night and which drag queen is hosting what and where. The two rarely cross paths, obviously, but when they do, who exactly has the upper hand in judging the other?

Recently a friend of mine went out on a date with someone whom he’d met at the gym. Being that he is a friend of mine, he happens to be one of the gays that goes out, like a lot. During the unavoidable round of questions and answers, his date asked him how often he goes to the gay bars. Not knowing what sort of response was in order, he stumbled. He didn’t want to come across as a drunk, but he also didn’t want to withhold critical information that would inevitably resurface if the relationship moved forward.

I’ve had similar experiences. I’ve met up for drinks with guys I met online, at “this little place I know of,” only to have them recoil in horror when they realize that I’m on a first-name basis with the door guy and that my paycheck is directly deposited there. I’ve chatted up guys in bars who “hate going out, but my friends drug me here,” only to watch their interest vanish when they overhear the bartender invite me to the staff Christmas party.

I think that most of the judgment comes from the assumption that going out equates to sleeping around, which is an extremely weak argument. Stepping foot into a gay bar doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re open and ready for a one-night stand. Some of the most sexually adventurous of my friends never go out. You shouldn’t judge someone as being a slut for going to the gay bar. But if you haven’t logged off of Manhunt since 2006 and get frequent-customer discounts at the local bath house, that’s another story.

Given, I have been known to enjoy a cocktail or ten on occasion, but going out to me is more than getting tanked and getting laid. Not only is it something that my friends and I enjoy doing, but it’s also a very handy avenue for meeting single men. I’m a horrible online dater. I have the attention span of a gnat and photograph worse than Britney Spear’s crotch, so I rarely have success meeting guys through that medium. I participate in very few extra-curricular activities that might expose me to a mate (read: zero), so I don’t have many options for meeting someone. I actually prefer to meet men the old fashioned way: drunk in a bar.

Going out should be looked upon with the same type of respect that we use in judging any behavior that doesn’t mirror our own. It may not be for you, but live and let live.

Let’s drink!

Monster.com and Match.com. 1 in the same.

2009-04-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

Like way too many people in this ravished economy, I have recently found myself unemployed and looking for a job. My resume sits patiently on dozens of online job boards, waiting for any part of it to catch someone’s eye. Daily I scour employment sites, trying to find the perfect marriage of a job and my skill level. The entire process seems oddly familiar to me, the constant hope that with the click of a mouse I’ll stumble upon a suitable match. I check my email dozens of times a day, hoping to have heard back from a company I’ve contacted. Empty mailboxes are sober reminders of rejection. I’m openly advertising that I want something, with very little promise of reward. It occurred to me recently after reviewing my employment profile for the seventh time in one day, trying to see my work history through the eyes of a stranger, that I’m not only looking for a job, I’m online dating.

It’s rough putting yourself out there. Gone are the days when to avoid rejection we simply didn’t strike up a conversation with the gorgeous underwear model standing next to us in a bar. Now we willfully put up pictures of ourselves, slave over our online bios, and launch our dignity off into cyberspace for all the world to see. With the internet, even the most timid of us becomes a titan of ego. With what basically breaks down to be a billboard of ourselves, we submit our dating profiles to a cruel and judgmental public. We become marketing geniuses. We find just the right picture from just the right angle with just the right lighting. Then we sit back and wait for the customers to come to us. And just like with any failed business plan, if the strategy doesn’t generate any foot traffic, we rework our efforts.

As if combing over our products with a fine tooth comb wasn’t trouble enough, along came Facebook. Facebook has a feature to which your friends can tag you in photos, meaning that if someone snaps a picture of you drunk out of your mind, topless, moments before you vomit all over the coffee table, without your consent that Kodak moment can wind up on your online profile. In one instant, Facebook can destroy your brand. You are able to remove the unwanted photo, but you have to be logged in to do so. You can be innocently away from your computer, grocery shopping, giving the dog a bath, and return to discover that your life’s work has been destroyed by a bad picture. Suddenly your Match.com boyfriend whom you’ve yet to meet and have befriended on Facebook falls off the map.

Another striking comparison between the online job search and the online dating scene is that of the half-hearted attempt at contact. When you first begin either of the two, you shoot for the stars! No one is out of your league! The Italian plastic surgeon millionaire with a full head of gorgeous hair? Sure! I’ll send him a wink! CEO for a Fortune 500 company? Sure I only have a Journalism degree and manage money worse than Enron, but why not? But as your email inbox sits barren, over time you change course. Divorced, overweight, and unemployed BUT he also likes music? I’ll give it a shot! The local bathhouse is hiring guys to hose down the spooge on the floor? Why not? It’ll get me out the house.

Obama has promised to fix the current employment crisis, but what exactly does he have planned to fix the dating crisis?

Married Marys.

2009-04-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

Despite having been out and proud for almost fifteen years, I am at constant odds with my fellow gays and bleeding-heart liberals over holy homo matrimony. I understand that gay couples are denied the financial and legal perks that come with the legalized sanctity of marriage. However, these perks come at a cost. I’m still not convinced that most gay people actually get what gay marriage would mean not only to our community, but to their relationships. I’ve compiled a short list of activities that will no longer be acceptable once the gays are able to start filing joint tax returns.

A. No more three ways. Ever! Not even when you’re both really drunk, out of town, and the hot bartender asks where your hotel is. Remember growing up, how your parents never came back after a night out with some random person? Exactly.

B. No more moving at the speed of light. If you connect with someone that you’ve met at a softball game or sex party, you cannot make copies of your house keys for them within the week. Think about all of the straight weddings you’ve been to, how the couples knew each other since high school or college. Just because someone swallowed on the first date or can make your ex jealous does not necessarily make them marriage material. Clearly, when the Iowa Supreme Court deliberated on gay marriage, they did not take that into account.

C. No more of this open relationship crap. Sure, you and your partner may have a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but once gay marriage is legal, that policy will be known by two new names: “adultery” and “goodbye, half of my shit.” Even if you two have an understanding, that agreement won’t mean squat when they start planning to divorce you and hire a private investigator to follow you around. Judges in divorce cases don’t care about open relationships. They care about granting people alimony.

D. No more internet trolling. I was once working on a Saturday when the cops came in and confiscated a straight male co-worker’s computer. Apparently, he’d been using his work computer to meet women on Match.com. Needless to say, his wife, the mother of his children, did not approve and procured herself a court order proving that her husband was cheating. This means no more faceless body shots splattered all over Manhunt. Actually, if gay marriage is legalized, Manhunt should remove the “Open Relationship” option from their profiles for liability purposes.

I realize that many heterosexual couples also have less than traditional relationships (Hollywood actors, polygamist cult members, the Clintons). But I’d venture to say that in a random sampling of gay couples and straight couples the gay couples will outshine the straight ones in dysfunction 2 to 1. We homosexuals should think long and hard about what we are willing to sacrifice for marriage equality. Monogamy is not easy. And failure at monogamy, within the boundaries of marriage, is punishable by law!

(The author must disclose that he hasn’t had a boyfriend in over a year and is admittedly jealous of gay couples)

'Tis the season.

2009-04-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

Growing up we always had dachshunds. My mother was partial to the females because they wouldn’t hike their legs and mark all the furniture. They were such cute, fun, caring animals, playful and dedicated to us. Until they went into heat.

Overnight, our dogs would lose interest in playing fetch or chasing us around the yard. They had one thing on their minds as they walked around in a daze. They wanted to get laid. And they wanted it bad.

Everything made them horny. There was no avoiding it. Even pats on their backs would send them into a frenzy, whining and grinding their butts against your leg. No stuffed toy was safe in our house when the dogs were “in season.” Any unattended dolls or teddy bears would be violated like Jodie Foster in “The Accused.” Care Bears, ALF dolls, and Cabbage Patch Kids were used up and thrown out like street whores. Our adorable and loving pets transformed from Mother Theresas into man-eating Paris Hiltons right before our eyes.

That always stuck with me, how at just the thought of sex some creatures will completely change. Knowing this better prepared me for life as a man, particularly for life as a gay man.
I am famous for thinking up ridiculous pick-up lines and using them on men in bars, anticipating nothing from the effort except big laughs from my friends. For example:

- “Congratulations,” you tell a guy. “For what?” he asks. “Because,” you coolly respond, “I am attracted to you.”

- “Hey, handsome. I recorded tonight’s all-new ‘Ghost Whisperer.’ What do you say you and I get out of here and go watch it?”

Recently, on a random Sunday afternoon, a champagne brunch turned into a pub crawl and by 4:30 in the afternoon I was drunker than the time I fell into the Christmas tree at a holiday party. I was in the throws of a long sex drought and found myself behaving like my randy pets from yesteryear. Given my fondness for awkward pick-up lines, to every guy that I’d rub against I’d say, “Pardon me. I’m in heat. Don’t mind me. I’m just in season.”

I went home alone that day.

Men can also be in relationship heat. This is when a guy craves a boyfriend more than he craves banging hot bartenders, his trainer at the gym, booty calls, etc… Here in Chicago, many gays go into relationship season just as summer starts to fade. As the temperature drops, so does attendance at the boy bars. Packing on winter weight and wanting to stay inside when the wind chill falls below zero, wild nights out hitting on out-of-towners become romantic evenings curled up with that special someone watching movies under warm blankets. As the seasons change in weather, so do the seasons of men. No longer in relationship heat, they move on. Always be cautious when entering into a relationship that starts on the outskirts of summer. You could merely be an avoidance from their trying to look cute while cruising for guys in ill-fitting winter sweaters. A man who loves you in a crowd of 500,000 half-naked gay guys during a summer Pride Parade is a man who will love you forever.

Everyone’s at nature’s mercy. Whether it’s wild monkey sex or a boyfriend, when we need it, we need it. We can only hope to stay one step ahead of our instincts. Do you like them because you like them? Or do you just want to hibernate for the winter? Or do you just need to get laid really, really bad? You know, like my dachshunds.

I don't recall.

2009-03-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

I’ve heard that the city in which I live, Chicago, has the most gay people per capita than any other city in America. Then why, I often wonder, despite my living in this vast gay wonderland, do I seemingly run into the same douche bag ex-boyfriend everywhere that I go?

I have never experienced a “good” break up. I have friends who are on speaking terms with their ex’s, and I observe these situations with the same curiosity I’d exhibit were I to stumble upon two aliens having sex. What the hell is going on? How do you do that? Generally, a break up is caused by someone wanting to rid their everyday lives of someone else. Break ups are rarely mutual decisions. What I have never understood is the level of maturity required to forgive someone who has decided that they would rather risk dying alone than contend with you on a daily basis.

I hope for a world that when a person wrongs you, they cease to exist. I don’t want to see their names pop up in my phone. I don’t want to read their Facebook updates. I don’t want to see them walking down the street. I want them to vanish into thin air, destroying all evidence of their having ever existed. This clearly has not happened to my aforementioned ex. I ran into him the day after Valentine’s Day and, in an experience that I can only assume was as comfortable as water boarding, listened to him talk about him and his new boyfriend’s romantic evening together. What did I do for Valentine’s Day? I got blind drunk at a lesbian bar.

Chicago may be big, but it clearly isn’t big enough.

Scientists in Amsterdam have begun experimenting with a common blood pressure medication that has exhibited signs of helping individuals forget trauma and fear, similar to the storyline in the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Put me in a cage, feed me cheese, and call me a lab rat. I want in on this research.

Joy washes over me at the thought of living in a world where I have no recollections of this ex or how he ripped out my heart and self-esteem and fed them both to wild dogs. Gone would be the nights when, despite looking and feeling great, I suddenly find myself trying to escape through a bathroom window because he and his new boyfriend were spotted coming into the bar. I could face the world free from this constant fear of seeing him and going from confident and funny to beaten and broken in the blink of an eye.

“Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” I disagree with that. If I want to learn from my mistakes and grow as a person, I don’t need to be dumped. I can simply revisit some of my fashion choices from the mid 90s. When you’re able to look back on a relationship and realize that you didn’t do anything wrong except openly and honestly love someone, then there’s really not much else to be learned from the experience besides the fact that life is cruel, random, and out to destroy you. That’s not really the type of life lesson I care to learn.

So Chicago’s gay population either needs to get even bigger or I need to jet off to Amsterdam and get in on that study. I’m getting just about as sick of looking at this ex everywhere that I go as, well, he got sick of looking at me.

Why are you single?

2009-03-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

(First published at mikealvear.com)

There are some questions that you just don’t ask people, questions beyond the obvious ones like “How old are you?” or “How much money do you make?” When asked, some questions trigger responses that can linger in the air like a bad fart. I once innocently asked a cute guy I’d been flirting with at a bar why he was drinking bottled water. Expecting to hear something generic - he was in training or had to get an early start in the morning - I was subjected to a twenty-minute diatribe describing not only his struggles with addiction, but also the origins of said addiction. And believe me, when you’re trying to pick someone up in a bar, nothing turns you off faster than the topic of childhood incest.

Dating makes you highly vulnerable to questions that you just can’t seem to answer, no matter how long you ramble. Like fumbling during a job interview, a simple question such as “Why did you move to Chicago?” can trigger an endless monologue on running away from a dysfunctional relationship revolving solely around alcohol, infidelity, and weed (trust me). Given that my lot in life seems to be eternal solitude, I, as the constant dater, have learned to dodge such open-ended questions. Question: Why did I move to Chicago? Answer: Work.

However, I was recently stumped by a rather crafty question while having drinks with someone I’d met online. Well trained in what is acceptable to say and what is completely off limits, I was stunned that I hadn’t considered this question in all of my preparation. In all my years of experience in dating, no one had ever asked me this: “Why are you single?”

I knew better than to take the easy route and blame my appearance. Even the most novice of daters know that a lack of self-esteem is not attractive. I also knew not to fault myself. Dating is all about the upsell, and nothing knocks down your sticker price like exposing your insanity and trust issues to a potential buyer. The question merited a response focused on blame. So not knowing who exactly to blame for my being single, I did what any over-educated American liberal would do. I blamed society:

• Every sane guy worth dating within my age bracket (25 – 35) is already in the throes of their first serious relationship.• When those guys hit the market again after that first serious relationship ends, they will need a few years to resow their wild oats, which would then leave them pushing 40.

• 40 year olds have too much baggage. Their baggage mixed with my baggage will be way too heavy for any two people to carry.

• Catching younger guys before they get into their first serious relationship with someone their own age is not an option for me. Younger guys who like older guys do so because they have issues with their fathers or they like to spend someone else’s money. I’m too young to be anyone’s father and I’m poor, deeming me useless with the younger guys.

The tirade ended, and shortly afterwards, so did the date. I’d taken the long way around one of those questions best left unanswered. Now, moving forward, I know exactly what to say:

“Why are you single?”

“My boyfriend died.”

Age actually IS more than a number.

2009-03-24T15:58:00.001-07:00

(First pulished on mikealvear.com)

There is no bigger cosmic joke on humanity than aging. It’s a universally non-biased experience laden with irony. One moment it’s congratulating you on your successes (a promotion at work), then the next moment it’s reminding you that you’ll die someday (you find your first gray pubic hair).

It’s proof not only that there is a God, but that he has a wicked sense of humor. For example, by the time you can actually afford to drink in martini bars, your body can no longer tolerate alcohol like it could when you were young and poor. Or by the time you actually start to see the world as a beautiful place full of grace and understanding, you’re old and no one cares how you see anything.

Gay men struggle more with age than any other pocket of the population. While most straight people resign themselves to physical collapse at age 30, gay men on this birthday MUST begin working out regularly, otherwise they are no longer allowed to attend Gay Pride parades or watch “Project Runway.” I was at a 30th birthday party once for someone whose friends purchased him a gym membership. How’s that for unconditional love?

Although we gays fight aging with more purpose and drive than the Allied had when defeating the Germans, we are all still fully aware that it’ll happen. We use three gauges to measure our marches from Twink to Sugar Daddy:

• By when different Madonna albums were released. I was enrolled in a school run by Southern Baptists during the Like a Prayer era. I was a junior in high school during the Erotica and Sex book era. I moved to Chicago during the American Life era. Every gay man, no matter how masculine they may appear to be, can tell you exactly where and how old he was the first time he heard “Ray of Light.”

• By how many Republican presidents have screwed us. Maybe you remember Richard Nixon ignoring the Stonewall Riots. Or you might recall Gerald Ford not acknowledging gay Americans despite having been saved from assassination by one, Oliver Sipple, in 1975. Maybe you remember Ronald Reagan’s Communications Director calling AIDS “nature’s revenge on gay men.” Or maybe you’re only young enough to recall George W. Bush’s attempts to write social discrimination into the pages of the Constitution with his proposed marriage amendment. The GOP! Progress defined!

• By which bars and social scenes you tend to gravitate towards. Since most cities only have a handful of gay bars, there is little wiggle room surrounding the types of clientele they tend to attract. The dance bars tend to attract younger people. The quieter, more civil bars tend to attract an older crowd. Recently, along with two other thirty-something friends of mine, we went to a bar that would more likely have a place for us to sit down and hear each other talk, bypassing the late night disco packed with half naked drunk boys. “Did that just happen?” my friend Matt asked worriedly. “Did we really pick this place over the dance bar? Wow. We just got old.”

And it does happen that fast. One second you’re jumping up and down shirtless to Madonna’s “Music.” Then, in the blink of an eye, you’re asking the DJ if he can turn down his extended mix of “4 Minutes” because you can‘t hear yourself think. Gay men have a very dysfunctional relationship with aging. We hate it, but without it, we wouldn’t be alive. Much like the relationship most of us have with our parents.

Might as well face it, you're addicted to love.

2009-03-09T15:50:00.001-07:00

I consider myself to be an expert on a wide variety of subjects. None of the topics on which I claim to hold a credible opinion were taught to me by traditional means. For example, I consider myself to be an expert on folk music, not because I have read anything about (or even own any albums by) Bob Dylan or Nancy Griffin, but because I know all of the words to every song off of the Indigo Girls' "Rites of Passage" album. I am your go-to guy regarding the great city of New Orleans, not because I am from there or have even studied there, but because I've gotten very drunk there many, many times. I consider myself to be an expert on how Western civilization has corrupted and oppressed the nations of Africa over the past four hundred years, not because I know anyone from Africa (nor do I have even the slightest desire to ever go to Africa), but because I have read Barbara Kingsolver's African-staged epic "The Poisonwood Bible" more than once.

Most of my self-proclaimed knowledge comes from television though, but not sophisticated television like PBS of CSPAN. I know the effects that electro-magnetic energy can have on air travel thanks to "Lost." I know what it's like to run a late night comedy sketch show because of "30 Rock." And I also feel that I'm quite the historian when it comes to Hip Hop because I watched all three seasons of "Flavor of Love." And now, thanks to A&E's brilliant show "Intervention," I am now an expert on the subject of addiction.

"Intervention" is an hour-long documentary that each week follows around an addict who will soon be confronted by their friends and family about undergoing treatment. The show highlights every type of addiction, from gambling to drugs to booze. It sucks the viewer in by showing how the person got from Point A to Point B, how they went from studying medicine to huffing glue or from being a world champion cyclist to panhandling for crack money. It's a very heartwarming show. You find yourself rooting for the addict, wanting them to get better and to turn their lives around. And, if you have a sick sense of humor like I do, the show is often hilarious. Watching someone on crystal meth attempt to do algebra is always good for a chuckle. Or seeing the mother of the bride get so drunk that she starts making threats during the wedding toast is pure comedy gold.

We all have addictions, and sometimes the worst addictions are ones that move under the radar. Those are the things that we can't stop doing, things that might be damaging to us but are highly unlikely to completely destroy our lives. Chocolate, for example, might expand your wasteline and rot your teeth, but it's doubtful that you'll ever have to steal from your friends and family or prostitute yourself to pay for it. Outside of nicotine and the binge drinking (which I blame entirely on the influence of others), I only have one real addiction. And this only occurred to me recently when I was challenged by a friend of mine to stop doing it. It turns out that I couldn't stop. My name is Tony, and I'm addicted to dating.

"Intervention" has taught me many things about addiction, primarily about how it sneaks up on people and without them even realizing that it's happened, their lives have started to revolve around it. The guy who used to only do cocaine on the weekends doesn't know at exactly what moment he began needing it first thing in the morning, but he does. The girl hooked on heroine can't remember how smoking weed occasionally with her friends led to her living underneath an interstate overpass, but it has. The path to addiction is complicated and consists of many variables. It's not all about the physical need you develop for it. Your past plays a huge part, as do your fears. Addiction is like a cute baby tiger. Overnight, it can go from being something small and fun and controllable to something big and powerful and capable of killing you.

Simply put, when an addict gets their fix, they feel good. These feelings of bliss eventually pass, leading them desperate to return to that level of comfort. My history with dating addiction is the classic story of the small town boy gone wild in the big city. I grew up in the suburbs and went to college in the sticks. I lived in the very conservative mid-sized city of Memphis throughout most of my twenties, and dating for gay men was about as frequent as live vocals at a Britney Spears concert. Fast forward to my moving to the big gay city of Chicago (into the gayest neighborhood to boot!), and needless to say I lost control. I became obsessed with it. It was easy and accessible and an amazing deterrence from reality. I was hooked!

There were a few periods where I was able to stop dating, to stop scouring dating sites or hitting on strangers in bars, because I was in what I considered to be at the time a "relationship." But addiction latches on to people's insecurities, and you begin to tie that need into other shortcomings in your life. There was a string of disappoints in my dating life from the Fall of 2006 until the Summer of 2008 (six to be exact), and very soon into that cycle I began working from the angle that in order to stay ahead of the game (translated: in order to keep from feeling hurt again), I had to always have one or two guys "on deck." This way, when things inevitably failed with whomever I was officially seeing, I had someone available immediately to distract me from the most recent disaster. And just like with every type of addiction, this behavior was fun at first. I was young and wild. I could quit anytime I wanted to.

One key aspect of addiction is that at some point every addict realizes that what they crave is doing them more harm than good. But due to the mappings of basic human behavior, they don't know how to quit. At the encouragement of my friend Hector, I first tried to stop a few months ago when I began spending quite a bit of time with someone. Hector suggested that perhaps all of my relationships were doomed to fail because there was no way I could focus on developing any sort of intimacy with someone when I had too many burners going on the stove. So I quit, putting all my money into one pot. That particular pot ended up making an *ss out of me on the dance floor of a gay disco and for the first time in a long time I didn't have anyone else in queue to help with the damage. And I remembered that without that extra netting getting screwed over by someone you're dating really sucks.

This past weekend, I spent a lot of time with another friend of mine going through his first break-up. Despite his being my age, he is a relatively new gay, meaning that he has not been out all that long. Considering that I've got fifteen years of gay dating stacked up against his four, he's pretty much a baby. He laid out all the gory details to myself and another friend of ours over a bottle of wine. I felt so bad for him, then I felt guilty, for the only solid advice I had for him was to hurry up and start dating someone else. I was laying out a mound of cocaine on the coffee table, handing him a rolled up dollar bill. I was trying to push my addiction onto someone else.

I often consider what it would be like to be the target of an intervention. Would I be leaving a coffee house after a first date with someone, heading to a bar for a drink with another date, texting the guy I had plans with the night before, when my family and friends suddenly spring on me and plead that I get help? Would months of therapy and twelve-step programs teach me patience and faith and how to use the internet for purposes other than updating my various online profiles? What would I do with all the time and energy that I typically waste on dating? What would I do when the next relationship comes to a close and I have no one else to immediately turn to? And is it even possible for me, a dating addict, to ever be "normal?"

I'm enough of an expert on addiction now thanks to A&E to know exactly what circumstances led me here. I'm insecure. I have trust issues. I have absolutely no faith in my own gut instincts. I have fears of abandonment. These shortcomings certainly aren't unique to me, but the way they cultivate themselves into my daily life seem to be. I seem to have completely lost the ability to spend a few weeks buried under the covers feeling sorry for myself when a relationship ends. But there's still a large part of me that thinks if or when I meet the right guy, that I'll be able to quit dating cold turkey. And I guess I won't actually know if I indeed have that strength until that moment comes, if it ever does.

I wonder if there is a rehabilitation clinic somewhere where I could spend ninety days detoxing from dating. If so, I wonder if I could meet someone there...

Break it down.

2009-01-29T18:42:00.001-08:00

I am endlessly fascinated by the most random of things. Like a baby hypnotized by a set of dangling car keys, I seem to be mesmerized by odd and often overlooked occurrences. Last summer, when visiting the Berlin Wall, I spent most of my time watching a brown shaggy dog sit at the foot of his owner on a park bench. I am known to do such things. I have eaten at five star restaurants and my only opinion walking away is not one of the food or the service, but of the lighting in the restroom. Once, while at a party packed full of beautiful gay men, me and a friend of mine with a similar take on life were spotted in the corner under the spell of a particularly interesting aluminum garbage can.

Maybe it's the writer in me that draws me to the details. Maybe, as a therapist once told me, it's the self-conscious feeling that I belong on the side lines, so I can't help but notice the smaller things off in the distance. Maybe (and this is the more probable reason) I am simply not as smart as I think I am and as a simpleton I gravitate towards the miniscule things that no one else sees, like empty cardboard boxes, matches, or a particularly overweight cat.

A very recent fascination of mine is one that exists all around us, but only those with an eye for things happening under the radar will notice it. It's that of the breakdown, the mental collapse of a perfectly sane individual right out in the open. It's happening all around us, but unless you've got the eye to spot one, the odds are stacked against you that you won't even notice it. Like a skilled hunter who can spot a quail a hundred yards away, I see them all around me. They happen in the cars next to us in traffic, in airport bathrooms, and in elevators. People momentarily lose their sh*t in public all the time.

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine over instant messaging. We were both at work, unproductively chatting the morning away as we often do, when he confessed to me that he had cried that morning on the train. Dealing with a lot in his personal life, I wasn't surprised that everything had finally come to fruition. But I was fascinated that it happened when it did, in front of God and everybody, during rush hour on the Red Line heading downtown. And last week, another friend of mine and I were also instant messaging during work hours, when she broke down. We had been analyzing a very distant crush of hers, your atypical aloof twenty something single straight guy, when she compared him to her habit of cigarette smoking. "I know he's bad for me," she typed, "but I don't know how to stop." After I drew further comparisons from the analogy, that the guy was something she does out of boredom and that he was something she knew she did now but would not be doing her entire life, she let me know that she was now sitting at work in tears. And again, I was drawn to that moment when otherwise normal adults allow their emotions to collapse on top of them, leaving them a crumpled pathetic heap in the fetal position on the floor.

I am the master of the breakdown. Once in college, I had to get up and leave a class because, as the teacher rambled on about Literary Theory, my thoughts roamed far off towards something apparently upsetting, and the next thing I knew tears were running down my face. What felt like the end of the world to me went unnoticed. I returned to class with no one the wiser that I had just openly wept in front of a room full of strangers. Breakdowns were part of my daily routine when I first moved to Chicago. I didn't know a soul, was dirt poor, and I perpetually entertained the idea that the boy who had broken my heart back home in Memphis, the one I had moved to Chicago to get away from, would show up outside my door begging me to come back. Needless to say, that didn't happen, and the breakdowns were sneaky and quick, like a cobra, and I'd find myself in line at the grocery store, or in a bar, when the overpowering need to cry would wash over me.

When one sweeps down on top of you, it may feel as if the entire world is watching you. But the public breakdown is not often noticed in the shadow of bigger things going on around it. As one sweeps down on top of you, it may feel as if the entire world is judging you, but odds are that something else is going on around you that is holding everyone's attention, like the Berlin Wall. But someone like me will notice, partly because I pay unnecessary attention to even the slightest points of interest, but probably mostly because I am certifiably crazy. When I see people in public fighting back their tears (and believe me, they are everywhere), I find myself pulled into what I think might be their situation. Is it that their heart is broken? Are they scared? Or did they wake up that morning to the cold reality that life for them would never be more than it was that day, or the day before?

The devil's in the details. And the reasons why we are who we are lie in the fine print. Nothing is what it seems to be. There's always more underneath the surface. So don't feel ashamed or weak if the weight of your problems finally knocks you down and you just so happen to be in public. Trust me. You won't be the first person to do it, and you certainly won't be the last. And the odds are that no one will even notice. Except maybe me...

Stipe, Soup, and Manolos

2009-01-05T21:55:00.000-08:00

Michael Stipe, the ambiguously gay lead singer of REM, spent almost twenty years refusing to identify his sexuality to curious fans and reporters. In 1994, Stipe said in an interview that he didn't believe in labeling humans, that "labels are for soup cans." He eventually came out of the closet, and much like the news reports when Clay Aiken and Lance Bass came out, the revelation was about as shocking as learning that Christmas is in December.

It's ironic to me to consider that such an observation concerning human sexuality came from a gay guy. Gay guys love and adore labels and very rarely do we refuse to acknowledge them. Aside from our obvious affection towards designer fashion labels, gay men can label one another within millions of classifications and sub-categories. We can be twinks, bears, daddies, jocks, art house gays, retail queens, bar trash, bottoms, tops, self-hating, on the down low, activist gays, queeny, or butch. We can be a Garland Gay (aged 60+), a Streisand Gay (aged 40 - 59), a Madonna / Cher Gay (aged 25 - 39), or a Britney Gay (aged 25 and under). We can be the type of gay guy that likes to go camping (the lesbian gay) or we can be the type of gay guy that likes to vacation in urban cities with large gay populations (the normal gay). So, in my opinion, when Michael Stipe made his famous soup can label comment, he must've been in the throws of a full-on debilitating case of denial towards his own homosexuality. No gay man in his right mind would ever suggest that we as a group NOT label one another. Like being self-centered and witty, labeling things just comes naturally to us.

A particular labeling fondness of the gay guy is to relate themselves and their friends to the characters of very gay friendly shows like "The Golden Girls," "Will and Grace," or "Sex and the City." Both shows were mainstream successes, enjoyed by straight women everywhere and even a few ashamed heterosexual men. But given that all three shows were written primarily by gay men, the themes throughout each and the basic qualities of their main characters are things that gay guys often directly identify with. Not once since "The Golden Girls" began airing in 1985 has a group of gay guy friends NOT sat around and debated on which one among them was the Blanche (the self-centered slut), or the Dorothy (the cynical intellectual), or the Rose (the naive but kind idiot), or the Sophia (the caregiver). You can take quizzes online to determine if you're the Will or the Grace or the Jack or the Karen. And every group of gay friends on EARTH has had a conversation over Cosmopolitans as to who among them is the Samantha, the Charlotte, the Miranda, or the Carrie.

Two weeks ago I set out on the drive from Chicago to Memphis, heading home for the holidays. Thanks to a craptastic winter storm, what was supposed to be an eight hour drive turned into a two day journey, meaning that I had A LOT of time to think about my life and further dissect the typical thoughts and observations that we all experience around Christmas and the New Year. I have found myself recently in a romantic situation that is foreign to me. As anyone who spares the ten minutes to read this blog every few weeks clearly knows, I have been through just about every relationship quandary you can think of. I have dated people out of boredom. I have been pity f*cked. I've been dumped via a Facebook Relationship Status Change. I have dated more than one guy at a time. I've been mad, sad, elated, selfish, hopeful. You name it and I've been there, on either side of the coin. But lately I've been treading new territory. I am spending a great deal of time with someone who makes me feel like wearing a ballerina outfit as a bus drives by with my picture on it and splashes water all over me. I am starting to hear myself speak in a voiceover, saying things like, "Meanwhile, across town," and, "It suddenly occurred to me." Well, it suddenly occurred to me, sitting in my car somewhere between Chicago and St. Louis (after having crept slowly down an icy interstate for almost six hours), that I was Carrie Bradshaw, enamored and confused by my own Mr. Big. Da da da da. Da da. Da da da da da! Let's do brunch with the girls!

I could trump a room full of a million gay guys who would label themselves as a Carrie with my current situation. All of the key elements are present. I am hanging out with an older successful gentleman (after almost three months, we are not yet allowed to call it dating). I'm artistic, care-free, in my early thirties. He's established, handsome, driven, in his early forties, the target of many boys younger and cuter than me. He's comfortable moving at a snail's pace, in no hurry to jump into another relationship that will more likely than not end with someone getting very hurt. Although slightly jaded, I am still a relationship idealist. I believe that there's still a chance for me with someone. He doesn't care if I date anyone else. Our time together is generally spent with us alone, so my friends know very little about him. And what slight information I give them consists mostly of my confused ramblings about what he wants, what I want, and our inconsistency with how we treat one another leaves my friends with a less than favorable opinion of a man they barely know. When I try to explain to my friends what I'm doing with him (which is basically impossible because I don't know), they stare at me with concerned looks on their faces. All that is missing from this "Sex and the City" playbook is shopping for shoes, the New York skyline, and cute (although ridiculous) puns.

Like Carrie towards her Mr. Big, I find myself uber-emotional around my Mr. Big. I think I want him to want me, but when something happens that gets us closer to that point I start drifting away. Would it be easier with someone else? Is there a furniture designer or a writer out there that I should be dating instead? Will he dump me and marry someone prettier and younger than me? Will I meet an older Russian artist and move to Paris? Or, like what happens to Carrie in the movie, will he leave me at the alter? Will he come back? Could I ever be happy with him? Will asking myself all these f*cking questions eventually drive me crazy?

Before I moved to Chicago, I studied "Sex and the City" with intensity. Sure, those ladies never seemed to get it right until the very end of the series, but didn't they look great? And didn't it seem like they were having fun despite all of their relationship shortcomings? My friend John who lives in New York is working on a book about how the popularity of shows like "Sex and the City" were inspiring people, particularly gay guys and single women, to haul ass to large cities like New York and Chicago. I guess I was like that. I wanted so badly to walk amongst the crowds in a busy city street, to have party invitations coming out of my ass, to date constantly, to f*ck everything that walked, to meet up with my stylish, fun, smart friends once a week and wax philosophically on our sophisticated lives in the big city. And I guess that happened, that I got what I wanted in regards to that, but that life, that lack of something solid beyond your friendships to lean on, got old for Carrie and the girls after six seasons. 2009 marks my sixth year in Chicago.

I love Michael Stipe. He was, in all honesty, the first male celebrity I was ever attracted to. He was by no means nothing to look at, but when I was sixteen years old I was so impressed and moved by his brilliance with words and the way he flaunted being misunderstood by society as opposed to being ashamed of it. That really turned me on at a point in my life when I felt like everyone in the world could see right through me. I remember looking at the picture of him shirtless, in water, in the lyrics insert of REM's "Automatic for the People" CD. He moved me to the point that I had re-occurring dreams of him throughout college, dreams that generally consisted of he and I being married. I used to touch myself inappropriately if I was alone when the video for "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" came on MTV. My point is that I took his soup can observation to heart. I took all of his observations and actions to heart. Stipe made me proud to be a liberal Democrat in Mississippi. Stipe made me proud of my own opinions and proud to express them. It wasn't until my late twenties, well after REM had fallen out of fashion, that I realized that labels are not, as he'd proposed, meant solely for soup cans. Labels CAN be applied to people. And sometimes they should. Because once you're able to solidly identify someone as something, it helps you in maneuvering your behavior around them.

So what if I am a Carrie Bradshaw? I think that's a label I'm comfortable with. Carrie never once strayed from the idea of what she wanted out of a relationship. She wanted safety and comfort and humor and honesty and friendship and sexual compatability. Although it took Mr. Big six years to figure out that he wanted the same things, Carrie never stopped moving. She kept her eye on the prize, so to speak. And the prize was not a man. The prize was her being happy.

My apologies to Mr. Stipe. I still love him (although he's aged so horribly). But I'm fine with being tagged yet another label at 33 years old. I'm a Carrie. And that's quite the badge of honor. Carrie never waited on a Mr. Big to make her happy, and I won't either. It wasn't until Carrie fully believed in her own ability to fulfill herself that Mr. Big finally came around. When you come to terms with yourself, your own skin, your own shortcomings and your own talents, good things and good peole have a way of gravitating towards you.

Meanwhile, across town...

Give and Take (the Universe is Still in Charge).

2008-12-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

There's an undeniable ebb and flow to life. It's inevitable that for every morsel of good fortune that's bestowed upon you that the universe will sacrifice something else without your permission. You get a promotion at work but you gain twenty pounds. You and your parents are getting along swimmingly but your best friend isn't talking to you. Britney is making a comeback but Madonna's getting a divorce. It's the circle of life.

The holidays have a way of reminding us all of our blessings. But they also serve as a powerful kick in the teeth to everything in life that we've lost. Thanksgiving this year for me was a double-edged sword. I spent the day with my closest friends in Chicago and had warm and fuzzy conversations on the telephone with family and friends back home. Yet the mental stock I took regarding the wonderful people I am fortunate enough to have in my life got swept back when naturally I considered the flip side to keeping such great company. I couldn't stop wondering about one person in particular that was around for a few short months and now is as much of a presence in my life as a full head of hair or the ability to responsibly manage my money (read: not present whatsoever).

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I don't know what smart scientist guy said that or what exactly he was referencing. But I do know that in a cosmic sense nothing is more true than the fact that for everything in life that makes us feel great there is going to be something else that makes us feel like sh*t. The sh*t factor (as I like to call it) is the equal and opposite reaction of all things comforting and wonderful. Lately, my sh*t factor has been an overwhelming urge to dissect the circumstances behind this person's no longer being in my life and a nagging and irresolvable interest to know where the hell he is and what the hell he's doing.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I date. A lot. If you happen to be a friend of mine who I only speak to a few times a year, the safe assumption is that whomever I was dating the last time we spoke will not be around the next time we meet up for cocktails. It's a total issue of quantity over quality, a numbers game, a hope that if I continually keep myself out there that this exhausting effort called dating will finally pay off. I can generally pin point the breaking point as to why each brief relationship ends. Since January, I have the following causes:

- I didn't really like the guy and when he broke up with me via text I put forth absolutely no effort in pleading my case.
- I saddled up to someone who eventually confessed that he enjoys the chase more than the catch and that he was bored with me.
- I had to break up with a guy because he talked so much that he sucked the air out of every room he went into.
- I broke up with a guy in recovery for a meth addiction because I grew tired of playing second fiddle to his meetings schedule.
- One guy called our time short by announcing via his Facebook profile that he was now "in a relationship," obviously not with me.
- And most recently, a casual potential relationship ended when the guy took an overwhelming liking to an acquaintance of mine at 2AM in a bar. In front of me.

But with him, the push to my pull, I don't know when exactly things went to the zone of broken beyond repair. I'm sure all the fault was mine. My behavior towards him was sporadic and could've easily been translated into shady. I was scared as hell. I felt such a draw towards him and the comfort level I felt around him had me running at levels normally reserved for couples well into their twentieth year together. I cheated on him. I lied to him. I avoided the conversation he tried to have with me about dating exclusively. I know that there's no way he could've known what all I felt for him because, simply put, I didn't show him. One day he was texting me that he had made me some CDs. The very next day he was dodging my calls. He was gone. And the situation that is my current sh*t factor was born.

The tide rushes in and the tide rushes out. I have spent the better part of the last four months getting pulled down from various highs by the ever-present thought of him. I had such a heavy longing for him in July while standing on the deck of a cruise ship sailing across the Baltic Sea that the first thing I did when I got back to Chicago was to track him down. But he had moved on. So I wasn't able to tell him how hindsight had changed me and that he was now that one thing in my life that snatches me back to surface when anything elates me. Late last summer, on a random, wild, vodka-fueled limousine ride with friends and a shirtless transsexual (undoubtedly one of the most hilarious and fun nights of my life), my thoughts of him managed to bring me to tears. The sh*t factor strikes again.

Sh*t factors keep us in check. Their purpose is to remind us all how fleeting happiness can be. I don't think that's a pessimistic outlook to have on life. I think it's a tangible approach to the reality that life is one giant scale. On one side we have the sky high moments of belonging and pride and happiness, and on the other we have the situations we regret. And when that scale's perfectly balanced, that's when we have gratitude.

I don't know how many more moments or situations in my future are going to get beaten down by the thought of him. It's a miracle that I've carried his memory as long as I have given that I'm generally the type of guy that can eradicate most of life's problems with either a good nap or a stiff drink (or both!). But it's making me not only aware of but respectful towards the ebb and flow of it all. Sh*t factors keep us from getting ahead of ourselves. They keep us from ever forgetting the true value that accompanies our moments of happiness.

It's the circle of life (que Simba).

For reasons unknown.

2008-11-06T20:14:00.000-08:00

I've dated them all. And I'm famous for it. I've dated the emotionally unavailable guy with anger issues, the married man, the unemployed artistic type, the recovering alcoholic, and the guy fourteen years younger than me (as well as the guy twenty years older). I've dated the pothead, the shoplifter, the closet case, the guy obsessed with comic books, the Jesus freak, and the guy who stole my Xanax. I have spent the past fourteen years of my life playing Mad Libs with my relationships.

Pick a verb: kick.
Pick a noun: puppy.
Now, form the sentence "Tony has dated the guy who BLANKS BLANKS." And, as it turns out, I have dated a guy who kicks puppies.

No stone has been left unturned in my dating repertoire. I have seen, heard, and (let's be honest here) done it all. When you've been around the block as many times as I have, it takes a lot to rattle you up. And the more I keep going, the less and less shocked by people I am.

But occasionally I come across someone that manages to say or do something that is somewhat pioneering. Recently, that honor of actually stumping me was bestowed upon a guy that I met out a few weeks ago. We met in a bar, clearly hit it off, and had a few laughs. I gave him my number and never heard from him again. Well, I ran into him for a second time a few weeks later and again, we had a lot of fun. Except this time he actually called afterwards. The conversation was easy. We seemed to have an effortless connection. So as the phone call wrapped up after an hour, I naturally asked him to dinner.

"Oh," he said, "I'm not really in a dating place right now."

Somehow, coming from him, that kind of honesty was surprisingly refreshing. I knew enough about his most recent relationship to respect his pause on dating. But naturally, I had a question.

"Well, why did you call me then?"

I wasn't expecting the "three little words" from him right then and there, but I got them. He began to explain to me that although he wasn't ready to date immediately, he felt that it wouldn't be long before he turned that corner and he hoped that when he got there that I would still be interested. And that's when he said those three earth-stopping, life-altering words. "I think you're really cool and funny and I'm really attracted to you, FOR SOME REASON."

My immediate reaction was to throw a million questions his way in hopes of clarifying just what the hell that meant. But, rather uncharacteristically, I chose to play it cool. Instead, we left it with the good old "I'll see you around" and we hung up. I laid in bed that night with that conversation knocking around in my head. Just what was that supposed to mean? Was he claiming to see my inner beauty or some other type of bullsh*t? Well, I for one do not want to be known for my inner beauty. I am not the ugly girl who plays tuba in the marching band who somehow while tutoring the hot quarterback in Spanish makes him fall in love with her. I don't want to identify with the lead in a crappy Freddie Prinze Jr. movie from the 90's. I don't want my value as a person riding solely on my wit and intelligence. While people with inner beauty are best known for their understanding, their passion for things, and their goodness, they are mostly known for their being grotesque and unattractive.

I came into vanity very late in life. I hated the way I looked up until I was about 29 years old. So I spent the better part of three decades cringing when I looked in a mirror, despising having to take my shirt off in public, and having s*x in complete and absolute darkness. It wasn't until I took realistic stock of my body as I approached 30 that I began to slowly start appreciating it. Sure, I has losing hair where I needed it and growing hair where I shouldn't be, but the rest of me wasn't all that bad. I was tight in pretty much all the right places. I have decent skin. My genes have assured me that I'll absolutely never be overweight. Judging myself against most of the world, I could've been much worse off in the looks department. I am by no means Zac Efron or a 1950s era Liz Taylor, but I can still turn a head or two on occassion. People are fairly consistently attracted to me way before they catch a whiff of any inner beauty. Even recently I had to fake having a boyfriend to fend off the aggressive advances of a guy in a bar. That's not something someone with inner beauty would do!

Well, FOR SOME REASON, this guy has texted me fairly consistently since this conversation. And, as I sat last night having several martinis with my friends Hector and Elias, the texting continued. As my phone blew up in my pocket and the vodka lubricated my thoughts, I took a swig of my fourth cherry cola-tini and asked my friends for advice. Once the laughter subsided, we got down to business.

"It's the Je-ne-sais-quoi!" my friend Hector exclaimed. "There's just something about you that he can't put his finger on that is attracting him to you."

"Not good enough," I responded. "I'd rather him put his finger on my hot body and then figure out later that I'm smart and interesting."

"Well," Hector continued, "I've been talking to this guy online for awhile. I can kinda tell by his pictures that maybe he's not the cutest guy in the world, but I think I'm gonna meet him anway. Because he just seems so nice and smart!"

"We've all been attracted to someone for reasons that we can't explain," Elias added. "I once slept with this guy who was kinda fat. But I thought he had the je-ne-sais-quoi so I slept with him. But it turns out that I was just kinda drunk. And then he ended up losing all of that weight and looked really good!"

The waiter dropped off our fifth martinis. "You two are not helping," I said.

The je-ne-sais-quoi. That part of someone that you just can't describe, yet you can't walk away from. As the fog from last night's martini-thon clears, I've remembered that I too have been attracted to people that wouldn't necessarily fit my normal bill. In all of the chaos I'd forgotten that the only person I feel as if I've ever loved was a broke out-of-shape Republican. He had je-ne-sais-quoi for days! Or maybe it was the fact that he had really good weed that kept me around for three years...

But whatever. Instead of approaching this situation with the attitude that this guy basically thinks I'm hideous, I'm going to take the enlightened road. He thinks I'm generally a nice and interesting person. And there's nothing wrong with that! Beauty's only skin deep after all. And no matter how hot someone is that hotness gets old really fast if they're a jerk or a moron. I find a bit of solace in that. But mostly I find solace in knowing that he would've never started talking to me in the first place if he didn't think I was hot. Come on! We're gay guys! We're shallow as f*ck!

We are family!

2008-11-06T20:12:00.001-08:00

(Originally published 6/23/2008)

I flew home a few weeks ago to attend what my family had dubbed my grandmother’s "Fake Wake." 2007 was a rough year for her. My freshly widowed grandma faced quite a few health scares last year, one which left her with an oxygen tank permanently in tow. She has always said that she wanted her funeral to consist of us throwing her ashes from a riverboat into the Mississippi River while a jazz band played. So, when she organized a family reunion where the main event involved a jazz band floating down the Mississippi, we all knew what she was doing.

Families have to be the most complex, yet somehow primitive, structures in society. How archaic, and borderline Neanderthal, is it that by the mere happenstance of sharing a gene pool that families are locked together for life? Family is your first lifeline. They feed you. They shelter and clothe you. They keep you from killing yourself as a toddler (or in my case, well into your early thirties). So it’s no wonder that you develop a need for them. It’s as basic as needing food and water. You simply need your family.

But it’s really not that simple. In a way families are an experiment doomed to failure. As people get older they change. And their values change. It’s inevitable that the people you started this journey of life with will not be the same people you remember them to be when you look at them through adult eyes. With each individual experience we all go through, from schools to jobs to marriages, wedges are placed between you and the ones you call family. Suddenly, you look up and twenty-five years have gone by, and the kid you remember playing GI Joe with wants to dog cuss you for voting Democrat.

I saw so many members of my family on this trip that I have not seen in a very long time. I saw some that I will sadly never lay eyes on again. People are getting older. Time’s marching on. And scattered about this big country we are each living our own lives and forming separate identities and experiencing different aspects of life that can push people further apart. Most of their Saturdays consist of shuttling children to various activities. Most of my Saturdays consist of violent hangovers and swearing off alcohol (again). But the one thing that not even the longest period of absence can shake is that sense of need I feel from those people.

I have 14 cousins total on both sides of my family. There are only 3 of us left without any kids. I’m the only one without kids in my thirties and I’m the only gay one. I think a lot of people feel the need to pity me because of that. I think because that parenthood path has defined them and molded them all in such a positive way that they don’t realize that there are many different paths to happiness. Happiness, in my opinion, is simply replicating the concept of family that you knew as a child. You can replicate it through procreation. But, as in my case, if that’s not an option, you can replicate it through the people you choose to associate yourself with outside of your bloodline.

I spent the remainder of that week with friends from back home, friends from grade school, high school, college and beyond. These are people I’ve known for as long as I can remember, people that have stood by me and without question will always stand by me. Then I flew back to Chicago and jumped right back into the circle of amazing friends that I have here. These are all people that I can fight with, people that I can cry with, people that will carry me when I need to be carried, and people that know that I’m always there to carry them. I remember while on the plane heading back thinking of having seen my family, particularly my sister and my cousins and the way they interact with their kids, that I saw that in their lives they had replicated that basic need of family. And I fully realized that even though I had not replicated that need in the same way, by having children and being married and living that type of life, there was still as much love and comfort in my life as theirs. I get all the laughter and tears, all the anger and worry, all the loyalty and acceptance, from what Bridget Jones would consider to be my "urban family," the family that you make outside of your original one.

As a single person living in a city like Chicago, a city that moves so fast that if you’re not strapped in you could fall to your death, I need family. There’s never been a question that I have an unnatural fondness for trouble, and like my cousins needing to know that their children are healthy and happy, I need my friends. And with that need comes the blessing of feeling needed in return. I have friends who have recently lost parents, friends who are going through wretched break-ups, friends who struggle daily with heartbreaking things that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But all the friends that I have are family. And just like my "real" family taking me in despite all the differences, I love all of these people unconditionally.

Everyone knows that old saying that you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. Family is something so powerful that you can never walk away from it. It’s so much a part of you that you’ll never shake it and no matter how far you go or what kind of deals you make it’s there until the end. It didn’t take a cheesy Oprah-esque gratitude journal for me to realize that even though my path was definitively atypical, I have also replicated family in my own life.

So when the time comes to spread my ashes, I know that most of those in attendance will be of no blood relation to me. The children that I’ll never have obviously won’t be there, much less their children or my great-grandchildren. But hopefully whoever’s left can look around and feel the warmth and the history and the love, knowing that because my life started off with an amazing family, that I was able to replicate a family of my own.

Dead dreams today. Bigger dreams tomorrow.

2008-11-06T20:08:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 6/4/2008)

When I was ten years old my sister snuck into my room while I was singing "On My Own" by Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald (of course I was singing the Patti parts). I had never seen my sister laugh that hard and, honestly, to this day, have not seen her laugh that hard since. The dream of my becoming a famous singer died right then and there. When I was in the 8th grade and passed out from nervousness while standing up at the front of the room of my Drafting class, I realized upon waking that I didn’t have the nerves to be a public speaker. So my dreams of being either a politician or an actor died on the spot.

Recently, I finally struck up the courage to speak with a guy whom I’ve had a severe crush on since moving to Chicago. After spending years asking around about him and building up in my mind everything from where we’d live upon getting married to the kind of parties we’d attend, I let several Vodka Tonics be my guide and walked right up to him at a bar. The conversation was awkward at best. How do you strike up a casual conversation with someone who in a parallel fantasy world is your soulmate? Our brief chat did not end with us exchanging phone numbers, much less taking the Red Eye to California for a hurried wedding. I walked away, my tail between my legs, and kicked the corpse of that dead dream under the closest bar stool.

It’s important to know when a dream has died, whether it’s one you’ve chased with blind ambition your entire life or one you’ve entertained privately while standing in front of the bathroom mirror. When those realizations occur, when you solidly know that you’ll never win the lottery, or play in the Super Bowl, or brush Cher’s hair, you have to step back and take a deep breath. A dream is a dream because a part of you believed in it. It’s important that you acknowledge when a dream comes and goes.

That being said, I am quietly closing the door on a dream I’ve harbored since January 2007, a dream that sent electricty through my bones, one that made me feel safe and secure and proud. It was a dream about hope and optimism and opportunity. It was my dream that someday Hillary Clinton would be my president. She told me via an internet video back on that cold winter day that she was "in it to win it." I danced around my apartment to the disgust of my roommate at the time, a devout Republican. Hillary was coming. Hillary would save us all!
In my short life as an American voter (I’ve only been eligable to vote since 1994), I’ve always gravitated towards candidates that I felt represented not only my views, but also myself. By that I mean candidates who, between the soundbites and opinions of pundits, were able to relay the message to me that they were like me, and in return would represent me and the ones that I love. Hillary Clinton’s biography seemed to better mirror mine and it spoke to me. She’s from a middle class family, raised in the suburbs, went to church most Sundays and played football and baseball with the neighbor kids. Like me, as she got older she began to question the world around her, asking the authority figures in her life why things like segregation and sexism existed. Hillary had the subtle sense of rebellion growing up that I had. Not to mention she spent the better part of her young adulthood in the state next door to the one I grew up in, that she was born in a hospital not far from where I currently reside, and she was rasied in the Chicago suburb just a few miles west of the one I work in now.

But unlike me, Hillary had a burning ambition that lit a fire underneath her, an ambition that led her far beyond the good fortune of simply marrying well. Hillary was the first student to ever give the graduation address at Wellsley college. She was twice named one of the Top 40 Lawyers Under the Age of 40 while First Lady of Arkansas. She was the first First Lady to hold a graduate degree. She was the first former First Lady to run for office. She was the first woman every elected statewide in New York. She has gotten closer to a major political party’s nomination for the presidency than any other woman in American history. More people have cast a vote for Hillary Clinton than for any other candidate in the history of American Presidential Primaries. More federal money and time were spent investigating Hillary Clinton over the years than was spent on investigating 9/11. Love her or hate her, the history books will never let you take those things away from her. A person that came from a background that I felt reflected mine and my values, someone who spent her whole life busting down doors that pulled people outside the status quo closer towards equality was within reach of the Presidency!
But alas, for lack of a better term (and I apologize, Senator Clinton), she was so close but no cigar.

And I don’t think all the Hillary-praising in the world can save her now. This dream is dead. It’s in my dead dream box wedged between being Courtney Love’s best friend and being able to sh*t money.

Symbolically, her candidacy made in itself an undeniable point. Because of her, my sister and my cousins and all of my friends can nudge their daughters and say, "See. Don’t let being a girl stop you from doing ANYTHING. See. You can be smart and strong and no matter how many people tell you that you’re not those things, that you’re only who you are because you saddled up to a good man, that you can keep walking proud and let that fire in your belly push you through ANYTHING. See. You can chose to speak your mind over giving in to your critics. You can face half the world calling you a hag, a shrew, a menopausal opportunistic talentless power-hungry b*tch, but, if you know that you’re not those things, you can stand tall and you can do ANYTHING."

Let’s face it. Little girls in this world have just about the roughest road. As soon as their eyes open every image in the world is telling them they’re not good enough. They’re fat. Their clothes aren’t as nice as everyone else’s. They’re worthless until the cutest boy in school or the more popular girls give them worth. There’s predators on every corner and on every website trying to kill them. Madonna said it best. "Strong inside, but you don’t know it. Good little girls, they never show it. When you’re trying hard to be your best, could you be a little less? Do you know what it feels like for a girl?"

Growing up gay in the south was no treat either, especially back in the days where the AIDS crisis made the evening news every night, way before "Will and Grace" or the LOGO channel, way before openly gay people could run for and win office. Feeling confused and lost and not knowing exactly what the hell you’re gravitating towards is a fate I wouldn’t wish on any kid. So remembering a bit about what that’s like, being a child and looking under every rock for a hero, I think about my niece. I think about her standing in the check-out line at the grocery store, Britney flashing her panties on one magazine, Lindsey doing drugs on another, Jessica Simpson showing off her new boobs on the next. I think about her listening to the radio or watching videos, where girls show them no other ways to get a boy’s attention than to be cheap and easy. And I pray to God that it’s not these messages her little forming heart latches on to.

I hope it’s the cover of Newsweek with Hillary Clinton on the cover that settles in her mind. I hope that it’s hearing the male pundits on television degrating someone that obviously scares the hell out of them, and that someone just so happens to be a woman. I want her to know that her mind and her courage, not just her body or her husband, can lift her to a similar place where men respect her enough to fear her. I hope that somewhere between Miley Cyrus posing with her shirt off and Jamie Lynn Spears giving birth at 16 that my niece noticed that for the first time (and hopefully not the last time) that a woman almost ruled the world.

So my dream of President Hillary is dead and gone. But the dreams I have for my niece are stronger and clearer now. And I proudly thank Hillary Clinton for that.

RIP Hillary Clinton for President 2008.

Who am I?

2008-11-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 1/31/2008)

A boy I had just begun seeing decided to join me back home in Memphis for New Year’s Eve. My mother, of course, wanted to meet the latest in my long line of husbands, so she cooked dinner and invited other relatives over to visit. The dinner was rather uneventful, thankfully, and at some point afterwards Kevin and I decided that we were going to sneak away to meet up with some old friends of mine for a few drinks.

As I left the room to refresh myself before heading out, I announced that I was going to get ready, to which Kevin quipped, "See you in a few hours." To my utter confusion, his response got a huge laugh out of the room full of my relatives. I turned from the bottom stair, asking no one in particular just what that was supposed to mean. "I don’t take long to get ready," I said defensively, to which they all laughed even harder. "Whatever," I huffed, leaving the room. A few hours later, we left the house.

This hadn’t sat well with me. And I brought it up later that night over cocktails with friends of mine whom I’ve known for at least fifteen years, to which they all agreed that, yes, I take forever to get ready. My frustration didn’t lie in the fact that I may or may not need more time prepping myself than an Oscar nominee on an award night. I couldn’t care less that it has taken me upwards of an hour and a half before to prepare myself for the grocery store. What bothered me was the subtle realization that came along with having others point this out to me.

Something that was openly flawed about me had never even occurred to me. And how many other terrible things about myself that I’d never dreamt to consider were out there? Besides the laundry list of things wrong with myself that typically mull over and dissect like a scientist, what else was there?

The next morning I was discussing with my mother how I believed that Kevin and I were a good match, trying to relate his low-key, no-frills demeanor to my own personality. "We’re both just very laid back and low maintenance," I said. My mother stared alarmingly into my eyes and asked me to repeat myself. When I did, she reached out for my hand and, staring with elevated concern into my eyes, told me, "No, son, you are not. There is nothing low key or low maintenance about you. Whatsoever. At all!"

And with that, I was in crisis mode. How could someone as so self-identified as myself, so certain of their own lot in life and the things that they can and cannot do, be so blatantly wrong about any aspect of their own personality? There are things that I cannot do, things of which I’ve been comfortably aware all of my adult life. I cannot tolerate Gloria Estefan. I cannot save money. I cannot say no to a cute boy. Such things are core to who I am as a person. And the things that I can do I’ve always been certain of as well, like make people laugh, or find traces of reason within confusion, or drink eight pitchers of beer and still know where I parked the car. Being self-aware had always been my thing. I knew myself inside and out. I was never the one to apologize for who I was, what I believed in, or what I wanted. I was a woman coming of age in a Lifetime movie even as a teenager.

And with that self-awareness had always been the assumption that I was as cool as a cucumber, as chill and relaxed as the guy I bought my weed from in college. Am I not the guy that just tosses on a ball cap and heads to Starbucks? Aren’t I the dude that lounges in the background, never causing a fuss? I’m the guy who’s cool leaving the house without a belt, the guy who doesn’t floss his teeth everyday, the guy who wears tee-shirts he got for free at the car wash. Aren’t I?

I was reminded of my friend Katie who, all through high school and college, described herself as an "outdoorsy" girl. Despite having never been in any tent but a beer tent at a music festival, Katie truly believed that at her core, she was Jane Goodall. This attracted all sorts of men to her, such as athletes, granola boys, and the rocker-types, all of which were turned on by her ability to "rough it," to lay back and be "one of the guys." It was bound to eventually happen. And one day one of Katie’s suitors took her up on one such camping trip, outdoors. They slept under the stars and went mountain biking. Katie even urinated in the bushes. But when the weekend came to a sweaty, non-tooth-brushed end, Katie booked five days at the spa and now won’t even agree to attend an outdoor barbeque.

So, just as Katie was forced to reevaluate who she thought she was, that day staring into a mirror at the image of her unshowered self, her hair matted to the side of her greasy face, I too needed to come to terms with who I actually was versus who I had always claimed to be. And after a dozen or so last-minute opinions from other friends, all of whom agreed with my mother that I was anything but low-key and low-maintenance, I began to adjust to my changing self-image. Big deal if I’d let slip past me aspects of my personality that were less than appealing. Weren’t there enough parts I adored about myself to more than make up for these newly discovered personal flaws. I thought so.

And since I had to be somewhere in four hours and needed to get ready, I quickly adapted to the new high-strung impossibly spoiled brat that I’d always been and went about my aware, self-examined day.

Shop and compare!

2008-11-06T20:02:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 8/30/2007)

I had a long and lustrous career as a food server before stumbling into Recruitment. I waited tables off and on for almost 10 years before settling into this profession. Waiting tables was something I was good at due to my bizarre talent of remembering tedious information. My brain nurtures facts that most of society would deem meaningless, like knowing the name of every Real World cast member, and rejects things that might someday come in useful, like my mother’s birthday or where I parked my car.

I worked for most of the major restaurant chains during this period in my life. I’ve served hot wings at Applebee’s to starving hillbillies in sweat-stained wife-beaters. I’ve delivered Chili’s Top Shelf Margaritas to countless tables of feisty mean-spirited ghetto princesses. Due to my god-given nature of not really giving a f*ck about anything, in dangerous combination with a temper that at times can make Bobby Knight look like he’s on Valium, I was fired from most of these places, managers citing various incidences of my having thrown money or swore at people. Once I even put a cigarette out in someone’s desert. But I digress. C’est la vie.

Once while working at a Spaghetti Warehouse in Memphis, I was summonsed to the manager’s office to discuss my behavior towards a "Secret Shopper" table. A Secret Shopper, apparently, was someone planted in the restaurant by management to critique my every move and decide based on my performance as to whether or not they would return to the restaurant or suggest us to their friends. Needless to say, I let my employers down. But what struck me as odd was this whole concept of secretly shopping, this idea of physically coming in to the restaurant to eat only to sit there and form commentary as opposed to enjoying yourself. What an intriguing yet deceitful maneuver! As the waiter, they had me convinced that they had already made up their minds about where they wanted to eat, yet in their heads swam doubt and judgment about everything from the drink order to dropping off the check. Would I have performed better had I known all along that they were fully distracted by the other choices of restaurants that they had? You bet! That whole experience left me feeling as if someone had been spying on me. Being measured against someone else is absolutely no fun when you have no idea that there is even a competition going on.

I revisited this subtle feeling of betrayal recently when talking to my friend Hector about a guy who took an entire 5 days to respond to an email I had sent. Already having written the guy off, Hector sympathized with him, telling me that maybe he was busy or simply playing by the "rules" that you never respond with any efficiency in the beginning stages of a potential relationship. Bullsh*t, I decided. Skeptical and still a bit angry over my very recent dating history, seemingly ill-fated to saddle up only with guys that like to keep their options open (unbeknownst to me), I decided that Mr. 5 Day Email Response was a Secret Shopper!

Now, the concept of the Secret Shopper is like the agenda of the Republican party. It’s subtle, basically invisible, and doesn’t make its presence known until it’s absolutely impossible to right that wrong. Just because someone has bellied up to the bar beside you, or invited you to dinner, or even having done something as simple as picked up the phone to call you, this doesn’t mean that this person’s mind is made up. They are constantly keeping score on mental ratings cards. They are placing values between 1 and 5 (1 being absolutely disgusting and 5 being above exception) on everything you do. In what you say, what you wear, who you know, where you live, tallies are being kept. Values are being placed on everything about you so that that person can go home and stack your performance against those of your competitors.

What makes this such an outrage to me is the simple fact that I, based on someone merely agreeing to hang out with me, forget that the whole world of dating is a capitalistic, competitive fight to the death. I forget that there are MANY people out there who do actually eat at the Spaghetti Warehouse for the roundabout assurance that they would definitely rather be eating at Applebee’s. I don’t quite understand this. When I want something, I go get it. If I’m craving Starbucks I don’t go to Jamba Juice just to prove to myself how much I did actually want Starbucks. And I certainly wouldn’t waste the good people at Jamba Juice’s time because of my retarded logic behind ever making up my mind.

I realize that the paranoia surrounding everyone out there in the dating world being Secret Shoppers is the last stop on the train to being a card-carrying spinster, but I don’t care. I rather like the idea of being guarded, of planning every new relationship to last only until the guy hops back on Myspace. Because I know what I’m worth. And they’re not going to get anything like this anywhere else in town. So happy shopping, jerks.

You don't know me!

2008-11-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 3/3/2007)

Recently I received an email from a friend of mine inviting me over to play board games. Being single, I immediately scrolled through the addresses of the other recipients scrounging for either the names of other single people or the names of people that I don’t know (who may very well turn out to be single). However, I was the only person listed without a significant other. I wasn’t sure what I was expected to do if any of the games involved teams. Was I supposed to take them all on like Bruce Lee would a pack of wild ninjas? Perhaps he had only invited me to make sure the salsa stayed fresh or in case someone needed to go out for more ice.

When I asked him about it, why he would invite only a slew of couples and me, pouring You’ll-Never-Get-Married brand salt in my wounds of eternal bachelorhood, he laughed. "You have a different boyfriend every week," he said, "I knew you’d have a date."

What on earth could that have meant? I was dumbfounded. Was he referring to me, the guy who thinks that every lonely country song was written just for him? The guy who wants to take his own life in the cereal aisle at the grocery store when he sees married people bickering over how many boxies of Wheaties to buy? How could such a reputation have been bestowed upon me when no one has bought me anything for Valentine’s Day since Bill Clinton was in office?

"Think about it," he asked of me, "how many guys have you dated just this year?"

Well, this would be easy, I thought. We were barely into the third month of 2007. There was the diabetic, the 22 year old, the flight attendant, the architect, the older guy who lived two blocks over from me… Now even I was confused.

Then my friend Rebecca repeated his sentiment the next day in a phone conversation, telling me that I had dated more people in the past few months than some of her single straight friends had in ten years. Just because you’re going to Tiffany’s everyday, I told her, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re buying anything.

But I wondered how this could’ve happened, how one version of myself could exist so solidly in my own mind but another completely opposite version of myself was bumping around Chicago mixing and mingling with every cute boy in a pair of Diesels. Obviously a case of volume over quality, but at what point had I taken on the gambler’s philosophy, that all I had to do was keep playing, no matter how deep in the hole I had become, and eventually I was bound to strike it rich? Statistically I was bound to meet someone with which I shared a mutual, healthy connection. And this could happen with the very next roll of the dice! Right?

I remembered a pact I had made with myself when I turned 30. I did what most people do when they reach a milestone, I took stock. What exactly, I had asked myself, do I want out of life? I had admitted to myself then and there that one of the things I seriously wanted was to someday be married and the best way to achieve such a goal without too drastically altering my behavior was to be more assertive when it came to finding dates, meaning that if I’m in a bar, which I often am, and someone looks at me long enough to catch my attention, I will talk to them. If we talk long enough, I will call them. If I call them and they call me back, I will go out on a date with them. If they don’t have a collection of severed heads in their refrigerator and they think I’m funny, I will go out with them twice.

And apparently twice is the magic number that defines "dating," and so my friends’ observations of me began to make sense. I honestly never felt as if I was dating anyone. I was just putting myself out there, feeling like a circle that ran from square to square hoping that we’d fit. Keeping your dance card full is no easy task for a guy like me. I am not your typical gay man. I am not graceful or mysterious or exotic. I am not wealthy or charming or well-connected. I wouldn’t know a work of art if it fell out of the sky and landed on my bald head, but I can tell you where in a Wal-Mart store you would find the Drano. So the idea of me being the type of guy that has every cute boy within earshot wanting to date me is both flattering and offensive. Flattering to me, offensive to them.

There’s a feeling of solitude that comes over you when people in your life reveal to you an alternate version of yourself. It’s like having a conversation with a Republican about September 11th in relationship to The War in Iraq. Although both sides have seen the exact same things, two completely different versions of the truth exist. Despite the facts, despite this having been an overactive year for me, despite me having at least a hundred names programmed into my cell phone who I can no longer identify, I don’t feel like what the kids would call a "player." I still feel like the lead in some single female empowering television series along the lines of "Sex and the City" or "Ally McBeal." Aren’t I the smart and quiet and lonely person who goes home to a quiet house and watches old black and white movies in my pajamas? Or am I what my friends all see me as, the wild non-committal sex maniac who has issues being by himself?

Am I Mary Tyler Moore or Susan Lucci?

It could be possible that I’m both. And I suppose that would be OK. A lesson I was fortunate enough to learn at an early age is that it doesn’t really matter how contradictory your opinion of yourself is versus the opinions of others, as long as you like yourself. And either way, whether I’m at home reading a book alone in bed or trying to make the moves on some smoking hot dude in a bar, I’m just fine with myself, whatever version of myself is out there. It’s a win - win situation. Because I like me.

And so does the hairdresser, and the attorney, and the cartoonist, and the guy in Accounting…

Birds do it. Bees do it.

2008-11-06T19:57:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 1/16/2007)

When I was growing up my uncle had a big bird dog named Bo. I’m not sure how Bo came to live with my uncle’s family, Bo having been raised and trained as a bird dog, and my uncle, who didn’t even hunt, living on half an acre in the suburbs. Needless to say, Bo was wild and not meant for a life confined in a tiny backyard. Bo was not the type of dog any of us kids wanted to play with. He was strong, hyper, dominating, constantly in motion. A visit into the backyard would certainly end with Bo tackling you to the ground. He escaped from their fenced-in backyard on many occassions, having seen a bird or a squirl on the other side, and was strong enough to barrel through the wooden fence like the Kool-Aid man. Bo was a force of nature not to be reckoned with.

Until one day my uncle came home with an electronic shock device that he placed around Bo’s neck. The thing on Bo’s neck would send shocks through him everytime he got too close to the fence. I had the misfortune of seeeing how Bo adapted to that shock collar. He stood still long enough for my uncle to strap it on his neck, then made his usual dash towards the fence. With a yelp that was heard all through the neighborhood, Bo’s life as a hunter ended. He spent the remainder of his days calm, subdued, one solid lesson learned and adapted to. Bo never got near that fence again.

Despite animals being of a lesser intellect, despite the fact that most animal species have been known to eat their own sh*t, they are something to be admired for their instant understanding of danger and harm. If a bird sees another bird eat a berry and then that bird drops dead, the other bird makes a mental note to itself, "don’t ever eat those berries." If a mouse knows that there is a certain area of the woods where being eaten up by an owl is a real threat, the mouse avoids that area. You don’t have to tell an animal twice. This may kill you. This may hurt like hell.

But not human beings. I’ve woken up almost every Sunday morning for the past fifteen years with a vicious hangover. Yet every Saturday night I’m right back on that track towards harm, ordering round after round of drinks with about a dozen cigarettes sprinkled in between. I know that I’m going to feel like I was run over by a tractor the next morning, but I don’t stop. And we all do that to some degree. We eat food that we know will make us fat or sick. We buy things that we probably can’t afford. And the biggest thing we do that no self-respecting animal would ever do, we walk willingly into situations where we know our hearts will break.

My mind wondered towards that bird dog Bo recently as I laid on the couch in my underwear, recently dumped, mulling over in my mind every blatant indication that I was not going to walk away from that situation as whole as I’d been walking in. I was told repeatedly by not only my friends that I was teetering on the edge of a massive disappointment, but by the main suspect himself. I thought about Bo, how no one ever had to tell him twice, and saw myself in comparison, running towards the proverbial electric fence that is my life. While Bo gave up, tucked his tail between his legs and resigned himself to a life of unfamiliar calm and solitude, I just keep getting back up, ignoring what I know to be true, and shocking the hell out of myself over and over again.

Friends are always quick to tell you after you’re dumped that you’ll do better, that there will be a next time, that eventually it’s all going to fall into place. I wonder if Bo would’ve believed anyone had they said to him that he should keep trying, that eventually he’d bust through that fence like he used to do, that maybe if he tried just one more time then he’d be on the other side tearing a juicy black bird to shreds. But animals seem to know better. They’re not the gambling kind. Why would Bo risk the possible shock when he could just avoid the fence altogether? Certain of only one thing, that trying again will hurt like the devil, Bo knew that nothing beyond that fence was even slightly worth the risk.

Twenty years after watching that dog lose his spirit to that fence, I admire him. As Bo grew older, whatever fascination he’d had with what lay beyond the fence floated away. My uncle awoke one morning years later, a violent thunderstorm having passed the night before. The fence had been blown down by the wind. And despite all that freedom presenting itself to him in a flash of lightning, there was Bo curled up on his blanket on the back porch.

A life spent sleeping on the back porch versus taking my chances at the edge of the yard seems more and more attractive to me as I get older. Knowing that whatever move I make towards a relationship is going to inevitably hurt, leave me burned, possibly embarassed and less than someone else better that came along, the fact that I’d ever even considered such a risk seems backwards, animalistic.

I’m going to start watching more of the Animal Planet and less Dr. Phil.

Non-committal or just a ho-ho-ho?

2008-11-06T19:51:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 12/6/2006)

It’s Christmas time, a time for miracles they used to say. These days you can break your neck looking high and low for a miracle, a little something unexplainable to justify the brief feeling you have once a year that God exists. Although I can’t point to peace in Iraq, a cure for AIDS, or George Bush’s head on a plate to make you believe, I can let you in on a quiet little miracle going on this very instant: I’m dating someone!

We’re well into our 6th week, this guy and I, and although I’m still up to my old ways, hammering away at my insecurities and psychosis that keep popping up like a Whack-a-Mole, he still seems 100% interested and undistracted. Now famous for wanting a boyfriend, getting said boyfriend, then running for my life, I am trying my hardest to focus on only the good in this one. That he’s attractive, nice, hung, has a decent job, and thinks I’m hot. Sure, he’s doing those little things that have in the past irritated me enough to change my phone number and wear disguises (doesn’t watch television, puts too much product in his hair, calls me while walking down a loud, windy Chicago city street), but I’m hanging in there. I’m 30 years old now. It’s time to concentrate on a person’s devotion, their passion, their honesty, and not that you find it annoying how they use the word "lover" when describing an ex. Or that they despise both "The Simpsons" and "South Park." Or that they don’t vote…

OK. So, I’m having a hard time with this. Instead of looking deep within myself for the reasons that I tend to focus only on the boys who have little to no interest in me, then build walls between myself and the boys who actually are interested, rather than examining myself, seeking treatment, exposing my complicated neurosis and, God forbid, actually fixing this problem, I decided rather to simply ask my friends what was wrong with me.

I mentioned to my friend Elias that, in this particular situation, I need to either sh*t or get off the pot. Men tend to lose their patience around me. It’s not that I’m waiting on "the next best thing." At least I don’t feel like the type of *sshole that does that. It’s just that seemingly every time I give in and go for it, those tiny things I was able to look past in the beginning (the beginning not coincidentally being the time when the sex is always the best) seem to amplify themselves and take over my life. Suddenly, for example, their being "chatty" at first becomes a constant barrage of words and noise, an unbearable distraction forever interrupting my television time.

"Sweetie," he told me, "even Hermes only lets you wear the scarf in the store so long before they pull that sh*t off of your neck! The worst thing you could do is wait too long that he moves on and then you’ll regret it!"

Why, I then asked him, does it never feel like it’s enough?

He said, "I think it comes down to the natural male instinct: TO HUNT. Since we gays don’t typically do the hunting of wildlife, we replace it with our own form of wildlife: MEN. What fun is it in catching the deer licking himself next to the stream, not running at all from anything? NONE AT ALL."

Such profound words from a man who carries his dog around in a Coach bag.

I found these words encouraging, whereas they took the blame right off of me. It’s not that I’m sleazy or indecisive or afraid of commitment. I possibly am genetically prone to this type of behavior. Had I been born 1000 years ago and was only allowed to eat what I killed myself, my need to hunt would be well catered to and I’d never look beyond my hairy caveman husband for love and affection. Unless he grunted too much. Or his loin cloth didn’t match his club.

But, in our time, my hunting is restricted to Saturday nights in the gay bars. But even the cavemen, who HAD to hunt out of the necessity to survive, grew tired of the constant chase and began to farm and herd livestock instead. In a word, they evolved.

So, in celebration of the season of the birth of Jesus Christ, perhaps I’ll take a page from Charles Darwin. Maybe it’s time I evolved. I’m thinking of that fish in the evolutionary chain, the one who over time grew legs and learned to breathe outside of the water so that he could eat whatever was just beyond the shoreline. That fish wasn’t as stupid as I tend to be. He evolved to get what he wanted and never thought twice about going back into the ocean. Why would he? What he’d wanted so badly and strived so hard to get was right there in front of him. And even though he might’ve missed life in the ocean or the anticipation of getting his fins on whatever it was he’d been eyeballing for 16 billion years, he moved forward.

He eventually became a dog-loooking thing, then a monkey, I think maybe a bird for a time, then finally a human. But apparently not a gay human, otherwise he would’ve jumped right back in the water to start over.

I'm not as thirsty as I'd thought.

2008-11-06T19:47:00.001-08:00

(Originally published 8/22/2006)

Water, water everywhere. Not a drop to drink.

This is my current philosophy concerning the state of my singlehood. I used to fear what I thought were the odds, as if statistically I was running out of "at-bats." The older I got, the more boys I met, the more dinner dates I crawled out of restaurant bathroom windows to escape, I worried that the well would run dry. I worried that the next big break I got at a relationship, the next chance that strolled over towards me at the gay bar, would be my last. That I would wake up one morning, the barrel of my gun empty. That was my last shot.

But I realize now that by no means are the odds against me. There are boyfriends everywhere! There’s a boyfriend for you at the grocery store! There’s a boyfriend right there next to you on the bus! Heck, there’s even a boyfriend for you at work! All you have to do to make him yours is do what so many of our friends and family members do everyday in regards to relationships. No, I’m not talking about sharing, committing, or devoting yourself to someone else whole-heartedly. That stuff’s way too hard. Put down your self-help relationship books. You don’t have to read to learn how to settle!

I think once some people hit a certain age and they still don’t have steady companionship to accompany them to office Christmas parties and family weddings, that they fear being alone more than they fear a life chained to someone with irreversible psychopathic social traits. The idea of not having someone help them take out the trash takes priority over the fact that your mate doesn’t have a job, talks too much, or is a self-hating, masochistic, gay Republican.

I’ve observed in recent months a series of random couplings, seeing single people I know, single people whom I can recall breaking up with someone because they read "The Bridges of Madison County" or because they thought Condoleezza Rice was something you found next to the Little Ben’s at the grocery store. But now, they’ve pushed aside such traits as irrelevance. I’m focused on the person’s heart, they say. Yes, indeed. I stare right past that uni-brow into their soul. And when they begin explaining to my mother their conspiracy theory that Elvis and Richard Nixon were responsible for the Pet Rock, I only hear trace whispers of comfort floating from their pierced, tattooed lips.

So, at 30, I have had to re-evaluate my place in this world. I stopped looking at couples and thinking, "What’s wrong with me?" I’ve started looking at couples and thinking, "What’s wrong with them?" Truth be told we could all get married tomorrow. I could stroll right up to the guy that stands outside of the train station, the guy who screams enraged proclamations of Jesus’ love to everyone coming in and out, and tell him that I find his words moving, beautiful, and then ask him out on a date. I could tell the guy in Accounting with pictures of Leonard Nimoy in his cubicle that I like his toupee, then see if he’d like to grab some lunch.

Sure, some couples I am still jealous of, the ones with no visible scars, where both partners speak clear English and know how to work their ATM cards. But as Father Time pushes me forward, a couple whom I honestly admire is getting harder to find than food in Nicole Richie’s refrigerator. When the majority of couples you interact with consists of one partner so undesirable that his ex-wife left him in the middle of the night, a mail order bride from Afghanistan with only 4 teeth, it’s hard to be jealous.

Settling is no longer something you only read about in history books about the Old West. It is a real and sneaky phenomenon creeping up on single folks everywhere. It’s a great thing for that guy I work with who always smells like fish, or that woman with the mullet hair cut I saw yesterday on the street. It guarantees them a shot at true love. But for me, it’s not such a good thing. My single friends are dying off, choosing a quiet night at home with their mutant boyfriends over a night out on the town chasing tail with me.

So the grass isn’t always greener. I’d rather be frustrated with the single life than frustrated because my boyfriend’s telling my boss about his scat fetish. Again. Even after I’d begged him never to share that with anyone after the way Grandma reacted.

Who?

2008-11-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 4/10/2006)

I was sitting at home alone recently having quality nose-picking-in-front of-the-television-time when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but muted "The Simpsons" and took the call anyway.

"Hi, Tony," the voice on the other end says, "This is Tom."

My brain is suddenly jerked awake, staggering about in my skull like a drunk person ripped from sleep by a fire alarm. Tom. Tom. Tom? Let’s see. Who the h*ll is Tom? Is Tom that dude who showed me an apartment last weekend? Is this that Tom guy from work? Is Tom that boy from Champaign I mugged down with over the Christmas holidays? Then it hits me. Tom is a guy I met almost three weeks ago. We exchanged numbers. I left a message for him a few days later and never heard back from him.

"Tom from a few weeks ago?" I ask.

He confirmed that he indeed was that Tom. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why someone would wait so long before the initial pre-first-date phone call. Maybe he was calling to tell me that he was recently diagnosed with Syphillis and that I should schedule a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible. Oh, wait. I didn’t sleep with him.

"Sorry I’m just getting around to calling you back," he says, "I’ve been busy."

I’ll say. Just how busy do you have to be to wait three weeks to return someone’s phone call? My imagination runs wild. Perhaps he was camping and suffered from a poisonous snakebite. Or what if he was kidnapped at gunpoint and has been held hostage in the back of a black van by sexy, Russian bank robbers? Or the lottery. Yes, he won the lottery and has spent the last couple of weeks trying to decipher what to do with his newfound millions. And now he’s calling to invite me to Paris for the weekend!

His story couldn’t be further from my exciting "Knots Landing" type story lines. He blames work. Hmph.

This has become a recent trend in my life; meeting a guy, spending a week or so feeling sorry for myself because they never called, spending another week looking over my shoulder for them when I’m out with my friends, then a week forgetting that I’d ever met them in the first place, only to have them then call me out of the blue. I’m left holding the phone, scratching my head in outright confusion. Was this guy the teacher? Was he that Republican who bought me a beer and a shot? Or was this the guy that shagged my friend Eric? Maybe this is the guy who was the FBI agent. Have I ever met an FBI agent? No. That was a porn I rented last weekend.

I’ve been told that I have the attention span of a gerbil with ADD. It is not helpful that these guys follow up with me so long after first meeting me. It is especially difficult when these guys ask me to dinner "sometime next week," as Tom did. Now am I not only expected to remember Tom, but by the time I pull the chair out from under the table and join him for dinner it will have been almost a month since I laid eyes on him. And given the fact that I met him in a bar, the eyes that I laid on him were probably blurred and fuzzy through a haze of Miller Lite and cheap fruity shots.

This level of "busy" astounds me. I doubt that even the Pope or Oprah are so busy that they can’t squeeze in a four-minute conversation with someone. I don’t know anyone who makes plans with someone weeks in advance. He couldn’t have called me while he was waiting at the dry cleaners last Saturday? Couldn’t he have put down that eleven-year-old People magazine and given me a call while waiting at the dentist’s office two weeks ago? Who do these types think they are anyway?

"I’ll be at the Starbucks on Broadway Thursday, March 27th from 11:15 to 11:19 in the morning. Come by. We’ll chat for a bit while I wait on my latte."

There has to be a better excuse than work. My theory when you don’t hear back from someone within a week is that you are not the only person they met that night. The other person got the phone call 2 days later and the dinner date the following weekend. They were instantly drawn to this other person and half way through dinner they were daydreaming about what their best friend would say during their toast at the reception. Unfortunately, the other person turned out to be married with six Mormon children and a mortgage out in the suburbs. And suddenly they’re not too busy to call you back.

But I’m a sucker for a free meal, so I accepted anyway. I’m aware that I’m getting Ishmael’s sloppy seconds, but after the second bottle of wine I doubt I’ll give a sh*t.

Excuse me.

2008-11-06T19:35:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 3/22/2006)

People make excuses for everything. As a collective body, we are resourceful and endlessly creative in the things we can conjure up when we fall short on a task or a commitment. Especially in America, where we love the blame game more than baseball. Our leaders blame one another for wars, terrorism, hurricanes, and blow jobs. Our reality television shows are houses full of wanna-be actors lobbing blame back and forth like hot potatoes. Kelly Clarkson said it best: "Because of You."

As children we adapt quickly to blame. It comes as naturally to us as digesting solid food or being afraid of what’s under the bed. We blame dogs for eating our homework. We blame our older sisters for taking money out of our fathers’ wallets. We blame a society that refuses to accept individual expression and free will when our mothers catch us walking around the living room in her favorite pair of red pumps (Wait. Is that one just me?). This failure to own our responsibilities and actions follows us into adulthood, where it tampers with our every relationship, from how we relate to colleagues, to our friends, to the neighbor next door whose paper we steal, and to the neighbor across the hall who we blame it on.

I’m the king of lame excuses. I have made excuses in an array of circumstances, from dodging work to cancelling dinner plans because I forgot "Will and Grace" was coming on. From avoiding helping someone move to not being able to pay for my own drinks, some of my better excuses are as follows:

"My iron is broken."

"I need to get online and look for sweaters."

"It rained yesterday."

"I have to look for the remote control."

"I’m studying for the MCAT."

Although quite well known for making excuses and delegating blame, I am not a big fan of hearing excuses (or taking blame for that matter). I work in Human Resources and hear excuses and blame on a daily basis.

"My boss hates me."

"I can’t come to work because my hamster ate four of its babies last night."

"I was kindly asked to leave my last job after an elaborate map of the building and a copy of ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’ were found in my desk. I was doing research for my screenplay."

I’m no fan of being handed a turd of an excuse within a social setting either. Recently, someone handed me the King Kong of all excuses, the poke in the eye for all of us single people out there trying to keep our heads above water: The "I don’t wanna date anybody right now" excuse.

This excuse, when standing alone, could be considered legitimate and respectable, understandable, purely honest. However, 99% of the time a single person hears this from someone they have any interest in, it takes on a whole new meaning. Translation: "I don’t wanna date YOU right now (or ever, truth be told)."

In hearing about this particular person who said this to me and his many dates since, I began to contemplate the complexity of that excuse. I decided to ask a good friend of mine famous for handing out this excuse to boys like they were trick-or-treaters at his door on Halloween night. This conversation occurred in a bar, of course.

"Why do you tell people that?" I asked.

"Because I don’t wanna date anyone right now," he replied.

"But you’re lying. You date people all the time."

"Yes," he agreed, "but I don’t wanna boyfriend."

"OK," I concurred, the urge to be defensive rising up from my gut, "but do you think it’s necessarily fair to the people that you go out with that might actually want to date someone?"

"Well, I’m very up front about it."

"So you tell them that before you initially ask them out, that you’d like to spend time getting to know them but under no circumstances will this ever go beyond one or two weeks, even if you fall head over heels in love with them?"

He began to squirm, as if I was one of the boys he’d tried to feed this excuse to.

"Well, no. I don’t say it like that. And I usually say it around the third date."

I considered this. "So, basically it’s just a crappy excuse. When you tell someone this, what you actually mean is that you are looking for a boyfriend, just like the rest of us, and you gave this boy three chances to make you like him and he couldn’t do it. It’s a defense mechanism. You think that by saying this to someone that you have some sort of control over the fact that you haven’t met anyone either. Is that it?"

"I need another drink."

The "I don’t wanna date anybody right now" excuse is nonsensical and I believe it to be true about as much as I believe in OJ’s innocense or Paris Hilton’s IQ. Dating is painful, excrutiatingly so, and nobody in there right mind would bother doing it if they didn’t want the end result to be a relationship. It would be like voluntarily choosing the agony of a root canal when all you really wanted was a haircut. So, to all those out there fond of this excuse, your own little WMD case to launch chaos and havoc on unsuspecting innocents, go f*ck yourselves. You’re all just as confused and frustrated and defensive (and yet still just a little bit hopeful that there’s someone out there) as the rest of us.

"I don’t wanna date anybody right now." Yea? Well, you should’ve told me that before I bothered having my shoulders waxed AND wasted a Saturday night making mindless small talk when I could’ve been hanging out with my friends. You’re paying for dinner, *sshole.

A whore's remorse.

2008-11-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 3/16/2006)

Recently I was celebrating a friend’s birthday at a Mexican restaurant when the birthday boy’s new boyfriend, whom I thought that I’d never met, showed up. Sitting two people down from me, he said, "I think I know you. You slept with a friend of mine."

"Really?" I said. "Could you pass the salsa?"

"His name is Michael," the new boyfriend continued, although unencouraged.

"You’ll need to be more specific," I said between gulps of my margarita.

"It was about a year ago. We all met out and he went home with you."

"That really narrows it down," I thought, then asked, "Where were we?"

He told me the name of the bar, a bar I’m known to frequent with a fairly steady success rate for meeting people. He continued on, describing the way the fellow looked, what he did for a living, how old he was, etc… All I could really determine from the conversation was the guy sounded somewhat hot and interesting and I briefly entertained the thought of being set up on a "blind" date. But given the unique situation I refrained from asking the guy’s current marital status.

"Look," I finally said, the topic exhausted, "We could do this all night. But truth be told your buddy was not the only guy I’ve met out at a bar, took home, then completely forgot existed. I may own more shoes than Ivana Trump, but, the bottom line is, I’m a dude."

My level of disinterest frightened me the next day (at the time my brain was absorbed in tequila and nothing whatsoever really seemed to matter). Have years and years of one-night stands beaten me down to a level where sex no longer matters? How did this happen? And when did this happen?

I remember sitting in a Geology class my sophomore year of college and instead of listening to the teacher drone on and on about how fascinating rocks are, I decided to make a list of the men I’d been with up to that point. Much debate surrounds defining what actually "being with" consists of, but at that time in my life I subscribed to the school of of thought that if by any means someone has an orgasm around someone else, it counted as sex. Since then, for the sake of avoiding astronomical figures and staggering calculations, I have modified my thinking. I don’t even count oral anymore.

But even at that time, at the ripe age of 19, I’d made an impressive dent in my own purity and the number startled me. I vowed to be more chaste.

At 21, I revisited the list and amended my definition of sex. At 22, I modified what sex was yet again in order to avoid the list becoming a weekend project. At 23, I threw the list away. I chose to pretend that the list, as most of the boys whose names appeared on it, never existed.

So I pushed all those names on those sheets of paper right out of my life. What was the point anyway? The list served no other purpose but to validate someone else’s definitions of right and wrong. I think I was born without the guilt gene anyway, so I often leave it up to others to tell me when I should or shouldn’t "feel" guilty. With the list literally and figuratively in the trash, I stopped counting. It must’ve been then that sex became some standard function, a "no big whoop" type of event, like playing cards or doing the laundry. As long as it was safe and we were consenting adults (or a consenting 16 year old who plowed the field behind my mother’s house), then it wasn’t an issue.

But I spent most of the Sunday that followed that party wondering just how many Michaels were out there. My recollection of the ones that I remembered was already enough to make a porn star blush. I’d never even considered having forgotten any of them. I decided, seven years having past, to revisit the list. So I ran downstairs, grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a coffee, and braced myself for the world’s most perverse and dirty research project ever. I decided that I would use the definition of sex that I’d used at 19, just to make it more interesting.

Starting out was a breeze and somewhat encouraging. This wasn’t going to be so hard. I’m not that bad! I ran through numbers one through eight with eeze. I even remembered all of their names! And number eight was in my 20th year, which was also encouraging. But by the time I got around to age 22 the list had started to read like the actors’ credits in a film.

- Guy at park
- Guy with red Toyota
- Guy with dog
- Guy from Boston (oh wait, there’s gonna eventually be at least four more from Boston, so I’ll just make this one Guy from Boston 1)
- Guy from Australia 1
- Guy in New Orleans
- Guy in New Orlean’s friend
- Guy in New Orlean’s father

The number seemed to double between ages 22 and 24, which I found odd considering that I had a boyfriend at the time. They peaked dramatically at 27, when I moved to Chicago. Upon completion, I decided that I’d use a margin of error like they do in newspaper polls to factor in any Michaels I may have forgotten.

And with that, it was all laid out before me. I couldn’t ignore it and pretend that it never existed. There they were. Every penis, every dirty towel, every mom or boyfriend that walked in, every back seat, every dog that seemed to like watching, every time I was too drunk to finish, every time I really didn’t want to but I was just being nice because he paid for dinner, every fake phone number, every photo of Grandma on the nightstand, every pick-up line, every song that might’ve been playing in the background.

There was some that stuck out though, the ones that might’ve been or could’ve turned into love. And there were a few of them. Ones who moved or met someone else or who I was mean to or who simply stopped calling. The entire list could’ve stretched from my tiny apartment on the north side of Chicago all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico (and, believe you me, it was close), and those few, the ones that I allowed myself to pause and think fondly of, were the only ones on there that really even mattered. How could I group "Guy who lived next door to Uncle Scotty" with the last person I ever said "I love you" to?

I couldn’t. And that’s when it made sense. The flip side of casual sex (besides STDs, pregnancies, stained clothing, etc…) is that if you are in love, then sex is no longer something special because you’ve already had it six times this week (and it’s only Tuesday). This, I realized, is why some people see sex as something more than a simple bodily function. It turns out that it’s not just like blowing your nose after all. Sex, I learned from my little experiment, has very little relation to brushing one’s teeth or burping.

I decided that the list, although useful, was better in memory alone. I didn’t need all those ghosts looking up at me from a piece of paper (OK, it was a stack of paper). So I ceremoniously burned it.

I felt enlightened and moral for about an hour. Then I decided to go drink beer and try to pick up guys.

Little table: The next generation.

2008-11-05T20:59:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 3/13/2006)

I was tall for my age. I remember being able to see over everyone’s heads in middle school and I have towered over my mother since the fifth grade. But despite my height and my evident maturity (I was already weary of the Reagan Administration and "St. Elsewhere" was my favorite show), I was still forced to sit at the Kiddie Table during family dinners. I waited years to sit with the adults and pass the cranberry sauce to crazy Great Aunt Margaret. One by one, my older cousins (all of whom I was taller and smarter than) who preceded me to the adult table were slowly bumped out, some due to pregnancy and marriage (usually in that order), prison, or God-willing college.

Surprisingly enough, all those years of eyeballing my older sister’s and cousins’ spots at the table proved futile. What ended up getting me an empty spot was one of my family’s trademarked traditions, the redneck divorce. Aunt Vicky called it quits with Uncle Jerry when he burned her boyfriend’s trailer to the ground. A woman can only take so much.

By the time I got up there the adult table was about as fabulous as Barbara Bush couture. By then my female relatives’ ovaries had taken the call to populate Mississippi. Babies ran amok. No one could sit still long enough to see me passing the cranberry sauce to anyone, much less to Great Aunt Margaret, who’d been dead for years. There suddenly was endless butt-wiping to be done, cooing, picture-taking, and the removal of cat crap from the baby’s mouth. I had waited my whole life for nothing. I felt cheated, having spent years giving my sister and my older cousins a hearty laugh each and every time they’d look over and see all six feet of me sitting at a tiny plastic table with my knees in my armpits.

I never recovered from that, that odd display of myself in a role reserved for the second class. In high school once I volunteered to stand outside of a Wal-Mart and collect money for the Salvation Army. It occurred to me the second I was left alone there with my little red bucket that perhaps some of the customers would mistake me as being the needy recipient of their pocket change. I felt with each clanging of that bell that I was demanding that they look at me, "see what your capitalist society has done to me!" The way their eyes fell on me as they tossed pennies and chewed gum at me was the very stare I’d endured at that cursed Kiddie Table.

Whenever I find myself in a not-so-flattering situation I am instantly taken to that place in time where I sat in the shadow of my sister and older cousins, in a shamed and awkward silence eating my grandmother’s fried chicken.

And here I am, being drug by my ears towards thirty, and low and behold the Kiddie Table has presented itself to me in a sneaky new form: The Singles’ Table.

The Singles’ Table is the denouement in the series of events that make up a couples’ oppression of their fabulous, fashionable, in-shape single friends. The oppression starts with the invitation to whatever event in which you’ll find yourself parked between someone’s crazy neighbor who sobs uncontrollably and the creepy guy with no eyebrows who works with one of your hosts. It could be a wedding, a birthday party, a bar mitzvah, a housewarming, whatever. At some point in my life, and I’m not sure exactly when (perhaps I was out shopping or sleeping off a hangover), I stopped receiving invitations that said, "Tony Thompson and Guest." My couple friends suddenly became aware of a fact to which I’d been blind, that I’d never meet anyone. Thanks for letting me in on this! I’ve spent thousands of dollars on moisturizer and expensive shoes for nothing!

I learned years ago not to call my host and ask, "Well, would it be OK if I brought someone?" A pause for silence arises as my host works through their embarrassment for me, similar to the moment between the time my dad will ask me about his comb-over and the time that I tell him, "Great!" "Of course you can!" they finally blurt out, and I’m picturing them on the other end of the line with their faces twisted up in nervous discomfort.

A baby step towards the Singles’ Table is the dinner party. This is a chance for your couple friends to test your reserve and will, to see if you both deserve and/or could handle the Singles’ Table. At another point in my life in which I wasn’t paying attention (I might’ve been watching "That’s So Raven" or studying the ads in an "InStyle" magazine) my friends stopped trying to set me up at dinner parties. When I was younger, a dinner party was a chance for my couple friends to humiliate me by trying to set me up with the most revolting and backwards homosexual they could dig out of the dirt. I remember the first dinner party where I showed up for, well, just dinner. I kept looking under the table and over my shoulder all night for the set up. "OK, seriously, where is he? Did you hide him out back? Look, I’m about to make my ninth Vodka Tonic and the Valium’s about to kick in. If you want me to meet him and remember that I was even here in the first place you’d better drag him out now."

After successful humiliation at both types of dinner parties, the type where you meet someone horrible and the type where you don’t meet anyone at all, wherer you just sit there listening to people talk about daycare and tax preparations while in the back of your mind you wonder who’s gonna be on Letterman, then your hosts will deem you ready for the Singles’ Table. Basically, the Singles’ Table is the couple’s way of saying to you, "I trust that you can be miserable and feel awkward all on your own, without our supervision. Go forth, single freak, and be with your people."

If you’re lucky, as I was recently at a fabulous birthday party for a friend of mine, the Singles’ Table is actually the place to be. At this particular event we Singles made up about a quarter of the population. After exiting the buffet line and stopping by the bar to top of my wine, I glanced around the room at all the couples. There were couples of all kinds. Older couples, newlyweds, couples that recently had their first child, and even a few gay couples. And then there was the Singles’ Table. Except it wasn’t a doomed wasteland of a Singles’ Table as I’ve experienced before. There was no strange woman there eager to show me pictures of her cats or a man holding a cactus who looks like he came in off the street uninvited, only my partners in status, people strong enough to face this big scary world on their own, we of the "I’d rather pay my credit card bills alone than stumble across someone else’s turd in the toilet" type mentality. So we drank too much, talked about one-night stands and celebrities that we wanna bang. Instead of sitting there on display, a "This could’ve been you" example for all the couples to gawk at, we had the time of our lives. And I like to think that maybe some of the couples were jealous of us, for once. Because for the first time since I was a kid, I didn’t mind being at the Little Table. In fact, that was the only place I wanted to be.

Be nice, f*cker.

2008-11-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 3/9/2006)

I am from the south. And although the south is eat up with belligerent hillbillies who can’t differentiate between Jesus and Dubya, I am grateful for the heritage. I was brought up to understand the fine line between unnecessary honesty and simple politeness, something sadly absent from most other societies in the world. Once, at a Halloween party in Yankee Chicago, I got into an argument with someone who dared to call me Two-faced. I couldn’t make him understand that just because I may smile and tell someone, "What a pleasure to see you!" then turn and say to the nearest listener what a filthy slut that particular someone is doesn’t make me Two-faced. It makes me polite. No good would have come from me saying to the previously mentioned slut, "If you double dip in the salsa we’re all gonna need penicillin." So, I just smile and beam with goodness, just like my parents brought me up to do.

Naturally, I gravitated towards professions where there is no room for honesty, where politeness is 90% of my workload. I waited tables for almost ten years and now I am in Human Resources. Honesty has no place in food service. Consider the following honest remarks flowing as freely as the daily specials:

"You really shouldn’t eat that. You’re huge. I’ll get you some ice cubes and a piece of lettuce. Then maybe your husband will wanna f*ck you again."

"How’s the fish? It is good? Are you sure? Well, I owe Larry five bucks. I told him that you’d gag on that piece of catfish that we found behind the Coke machine. I was gonna give it to my dog, but you know Larry! Always out to save a dollar!"

"Your Chicken Surprise will be out in just a minute, Sir. I’m having Jose the dishwasher sh*t in it because I don’t like the color of your sweater. Surprise!"

Or the following comments coming from the person who conducts your next job interview:

"It says here that you played Rugby in college and that you were the president of your fraternity. I’m not gonna lie to you, Buddy. I think that’s hot and I wanna see you naked."

"You smell like the south end of a northbound mule! Seriously, I don’t think a goat could even bare to sit here without its eyes watering! If that smell is from something you ate, Lord have mercy, you have gotta major lawsuit on your hands!"

"What we’re really looking for, Tammy, is someone to join our team who is in his early to mid-thirties, comfortably gay, attractive, but not so attractive that I have to worry whether or not he’s cheating on me all the time, masculine. Someone who thinks I’m hysterical and the smartest boy he’s ever met. Someone who’ll insist that I quit my job and take up shopping for shoes full time. Dimples are preferred but not mandatory. So basically, Tammy, that PhD must look fabulous on your wall but it’s not gonna get me a husband and therefore ain’t getting you this job."

Television has relentlessy endorsed the demise of being polite. Only the rude characters get the punchlines on most television shows. We would much rather watch someone call someone else a fat cow then punch them in the nose on "The Real World" than watch "The Thank You Note Writing Channel." I often see people on TV, on reality TV in particular, that boast of, "keeping it real!" Does this impress anyone to know that this particular individual would rather cross the street in an unjustified rage to verbally assault a stranger rather than smile and go about his or her own day?

I don’t like people who "keep it real." Their real-keeping usually ends up deflating people like me with fragile egos and soft exteriors. For example, a friend of mine’s mother said to me recently upon meeting me for the first time, "29? Are you kidding me? I would’ve guessed much older! Look at your hairline!" Hector’s Mom was keeping it real. B*tch.

However, sometimes being honest is the polite thing to do. Telling your friend that they have food in their teeth or that their boyfriend just gave you oral sex in the restroom, for example. Or steering someone clear of wearing something unflattering by suggesting that they try on something black, or with vertical stripes, or maybe a veil. I know that I’d rather have my friend Hector tell me to change my shirt before we go out than some stranger who keeps it real telling me how stupid I look later, someone like his mother. But I’m not bitter.

I think as societies swell in volume and shrink in distance from one another, politeness will become a causality of the entire world’s having meshed into one global community. And that behind the shield of "being honest," people will then even more freely spurt their hurtful truths to anyone who accidentally looks them square in the eye. Being polite is more than holding a door open for someone, or letting an old woman have the cab you both hailed down rather than shoving her out of the way (like you did to that old woman the day before). Politeness is a way of life. It’s a philosophy that stems from the Golden Rule. Be polite to me and I’ll be polite to you. Tell me that I look great despite my burn scars and I’ll tell you that your wife’s a lucky woman to have you (even though everybody knows that you’ve been impotent for twenty years).

He texts me. He texts me not.

2008-11-05T20:49:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 2/23/2006)

I recently became acquainted with someone whose main form of communication is the text message. Everyone knows the formalities behind writing a letter, talking on the phone, and even sending an email. H*ll, I even know the manors involved in sending a fax. But what sort of etiquette, if any, applies to text messaging? I couldn’t think of any. As far as being a form of communication, it is the most vague and potentially complicated method to reach out and touch someone, or text someone, as it would be.

Those fond of texting must first feel one another out. Unclear as to if their new acquaintance prefers to type into their cell phone rather than speaking into it, they must send the initial primary contact text, the "What’s up?" If one responds with a "Nothing. U?" then the texting relationship is immediately set in place. However, this is an unfair to the recipient, whereas it will pop up on their phone not identifying the caller, or texter as is the case. It simply has a phone number, which these days, thanks to caller ID, means nothing to anyone. One of my best friends Rebecca’s phone number could be 123-456-7890 for all I know. I just see Rebecca on the caller ID and take the call. So the recipient is somewhat trapped, unclear as to respond or not. What if it’s that really nice guy you met the other night? What if it’s that weird girl from work? What if it’s the free clinic with your Syphilis results? For the sake of my having something to continue rambling about, let’s just say the recipient texts back. And the cycle begins. I have reason to believe that this person I recently became friends with is completely comfortable with maintaining a relationship through this particular service offered by his cell phone provider. I think we’ve spoken on the phone maybe twice in a month.

Before I begin assaulting the act of text messaging, I will allow for some text messaging promotion. You can text your friends while in a class or at a boring seminar. "I wish I was dead." You can text your friends while on a bad date when your date slips off to the bathroom. "I wish I was dead." You can text your friends while waiting in line at the post office. "I wish I was dead." It’s a nice way to communicate without being that annoying *sshole screaming into their cell phone in the middle of Walgreen’s. It’s also an efficient way to keep track of your friends in a crowded bar. "I’ll be there in 10 minutes." "Where are you?" "I’m in line for the bathroom." Or, the ever popular, "I’ve already left and am about to have crazy monkey sex with a stranger." For each of its useful walky talky-like qualities (which I do enjoy), there are a dozen or so negative things about texting, one of which obviously is the physical stress it puts on one’s eyes and thumbs.

But because there are no set measures in regards to what types of behaviors are appropriate when texting, there is no way of telling if someone is being rude to you or not, which leads the door wide open for many emotional quandaries.

For example, perhaps you leave someone a voice message asking them if they’d like to go play darts, grab dinner, go to the bowling alley and steal shoes, etc… Five minutes later, your phone does not ring, yet it alerts you that you’ve received a text message. "Can’t tonight. Have plans. Thanks though." This may mean that the person you were trying to reach was incapacitated at the time of your call and only had time for a quick text message response. Perhaps he or she was cleaning the toilet or downloading pornography then suddenly rushed out the door because a grease fire broke out in their kitchen or office. It’s hard to imagine a circumstance that could prevent someone from neither taking your call nor calling you back, yet they somehow had time to check their voice mail, hear your invitation, then text you their regards.

Another beef I have with text messaging is the assumption that it’s a mini-email or some other means to express yourself through written electronic word. It is not. The display window on a cell phone was not designed for the purposes of reading "War and Peace." It is merely to alert you of who is on the other end of the line, not for you to settle down with a nice cup of tea and to read by a warm fire. My new friend recently confided in me some personal information, all through the text message inbox on my cell phone. Because his message was so long it was chopped up by US Cellular into about 10 separate text messages. A snipet:

"u r a really nice guy but i dont t"

"hink im ok to dati someone else reght n"

"ow. ij my ex callid me tokay id take he"

"m back. 48 96853 662 2e fair ."

I especially enjoyed the numerical scripting, having to correlate the numbers on my phone with their letters, then trying to figure out which letter the number represented. It felt like that scene in "Goonies" when they’re trying to solve that riddle in order to figure out what keys to play on the organ.

Another one of the many issues that can arise with text messaging is the enormous room for error. You could send someone a text message right now and it may not reach the recipient until after Hillary’s third State of the Union address. And this is a huge plus in the eyes of the shady texter, because they can say when they respond to your text message five days late that they got it "just now." An example: "Please come and help. car broke down. they took the baby." The response: "Just now getting this. Your funeral was lovely." This happens a lot to me with my friends who chronically text. I’ll text them an invitation that merits no response until whatever event I’d invited them to is long over. Either my friends are consistently blowing me off or they need new cellular providers.

There are no rules to text messaging, no etiquette, no standards of consideration and respect. Being from the South where my mother would murder me without regret if she’d ever heard me address my grandfather with anything but "Sir," this irritates the f*ck out of me. There is no history in it that you can refer back to and say, "That was tacky, rude, or tasteless." In addition, the technology is so blurred and unreliable, it is a virtual message in a bottle. Did they receive my text? Have they responded to my text and I never got it? Are they only texting me while the other guy they’re dating got up to let the dog out? Too many doubts, too much confusion.

That, and it’s murder on your thumbs. F*ck it.

Date from hell.

2008-11-05T20:44:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 2/19/2006)

Years ago, a friend of mine read a book entitled, "Finding the Boyfriend Within: A Practical Guide for Tapping into your own Source of Love, Happiness, and Respect." The book is centered around a basic theory, that if you are incapable of treating yourself the way that you want to be treated by others, then you are destined to a life of cat-rearing and eating pints of chocolate ice cream in the dark. The book suggests that you even go so far as to date yourself, treat yourself to things that you enjoy and in return you will attract the types of men who will treat you just as kindly. It’s a considerable argument if you think about it. Work-aholics meet work-aholics. Drug addicts meet drug addicts. People who want to marry after the first date meet people who want to marry after the first date (ie Lesbians).

I have not had a boyfriend on Valentine’s Day since 1996. So, in celebration of my first decade as a male spinster and my curiousity to test this "Boyfriend Within" theory, I decided to call myself up and ask myself out. Since I had nothing better to do, I accepted my own invitation.

I immediately encountered an obstacle. I was supposed to treat myself to things that I like to do. However, I don’t like to do much. I enjoy hanging out with my friends, but that would defeat the purpose of having some quality time with myself. Besides, a first date is way too soon to introduce someone to your friends. I don’t really like going to the movies or to coffee shops or to art galleries or to plays. I find strolling along the lake or lazily window shopping on Michigan Avenue torturous and pointless. So where would I want my date, me, to take me? Then it occurred to me. I love alcohol. Bars have alcohol. We could go to a bar and drink some alcohol!

I wasn’t ready when my date showed up. I’d fallen asleep on the couch when I got home from work. Also, I encountered a major fashion crisis upon getting ready whereas my date had already seen me in everything that I own. But by 730PM we were out the door. As we walked towards the bar, things were casual and easy. There was no labored conversation, none of this where-are-you-from and what-do-you-do bullsh*t. I saw someone on the corner of Broadway and Belmont that I shagged about 2 months ago and we exchanged an awkward glance, but my date didn’t seem to care. It was very laid back, relaxed, as if we’d known each other for years. I decided to take notes on this little experiment. Field research to test the "Boyfriend Within" theory.

745PM. Arrive at bar. Plop down in empty stools as near to the bartender as possible. Awkward moment of seeing who will buy the first round of beer. Stare blankly into space until he finally pays.

815PM. Very boring conversation ensues. I feel as if I’ve heard all of these stories before and have had a dramatic loss of interest in this guy. He seems easily distracted and very self-absorbed. That and he looks kinda goofy and has a huge zit on his neck. Who gets zits on their neck? Date is a smoker. Dang it. I’m trying to quit but smoke his cigarettes anyway.

845PM. Date strikes up conversation with cute out-of-town boy at the bar. I don’t really mind, as long as he continues to pay for the drinks. It also keeps me from having to talk to him. I’ve decided that my date looks like a cross between Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons" and a big-headed dead-eyed space alien. He has no shot with the guy he’s talking to anyway. The guy is way too hot.

915PM. Out-of-town boy has began talking to someone else. My date seems distraught. I take a Xanax and switch to vodka. My date asks me for a Xanax and I give him one too. He also switches to vodka.

945PM. This guy is dead weight. Seriously want to ditch him. Begin wondering if I have time to get to Chiptole before they close and make it home in time to watch "The Daily Show." Date leaves his wallet on the bar when he excuses himself to the restroom. I remove a twenty dollar bill from it and slip out the door.

1015PM. Ummmm. Chiptole. Alone on couch.

1030PM. Seancody.com.

1032PM. Asleep. Drunk, full, and happy.

So, what did I learn from this little experiment? That it’s no wonder that I’m single. I’m boring and have adult onset acne. I’m also kinda creepy and have the attention span of a gnat. I think I’m more interested in finding "The Ex-boyfriend Within." I think I’ll call him now and hang up when he answers.

A crutch and a $10 co-pay.

2008-11-05T20:38:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 2/19/2006)

I’ve been through many things in my life. My best friend blew his head off when I was fifteen. I had heart surgery when I was sixteen. I had to drop out of college when I was twenty in the midst of my parents’ bitter divorce. I was crushed when I parted ways with the only man I feel like I ever loved. I walked away carrying my heart in my hands. He walked away carrying nothing but a scotch. To date, I have lived through four Republican administrations and only two Democratic ones. I’ve been so poor that I had to sell all of my CDs in order to eat and I still wake up every day and wonder why they cancelled "My So-Called Life."

I look back on a turbulent first 30 years and I do not cry with regret and sorrow. I pat myself on the back. Many other people have made complete messes of their lives and blamed far less severe circumstances (child stars from the 80’s for example). I am not addicted to drugs or sleeping in the street. I am not in jail or living in a trailer in Missouri arguing with my roommate over whose turn it is to cook the crystal meth. I think, under the circumstances, that I have done quite alright with my life. But many within my circle dare to argue that I’m not leading a survivor’s life, that I have a distinct and disruptive crutch to help me cope with the pains of my past. What makes them think this? A little blessing, a miracle, a good friend of mine, a pill called Xanax.

When in crowded places like bars or on the subway or at Nordstrom Rack during a shoe sale I feel edgy, restricted, confined, and smothered. This happens to me often in Chicago. Places here can be so packed with people that your only shot at moving is to sprout wings and fly above the herd of people who have you pinned in the corner or up against the wall. These feelings first overwhelmed me about a month after I relocated here. I was on a crowded Brown Line train when suddenly I felt as if my heart had stopped beating. I couldn’t move not only from fear but from there being nowhere to move to. There were too many f*cking people in my way.

Obviously, I didn’t die and was not having a heart attack. I was symptomatic of what doctors have assured me to be an actual disorder: anxiety disorder.

Xanax is the pill that my licensed physician has prescribed for me. It is filled lawfuly in a state-accredited pharmacy by a trained and qualified pharmacist. It is used to treat anxiety disorder and is to be taken upon the initial onset of a panic attack to calm my nerves. It is arguably one of the best things that mankind has ever invented, second only to the internet or possibly over-the-counter teeth whitener. I take it as prescribed, "as needed."

So you can imagine my frustration when I’m having cocktails with friends on a Saturday night and the crowd gets so overgrown that I feel as if I might need "my medicine," only to have my friends cluck their tongues in disapproval and cast judging glances my way, as if I’m a pregnant Courtney Love doing heroine. The label clearly warns against the consumption of alcohol and taking Xanax. However, I never need one unless I’m in a crowded room. Bars, as most people know, tend to be crowded. So, as I often do when given directions that just don’t seem to suit me, I persevere and make up my own rules.

"What the h*ll are you doing?" my friend JC recently asked me, having seen me discreetly pull a Xanax from my pocket, place it beautifully on my tongue, and wash it down with a sip from my Vodka Tonic.

"It helps take the edge off," I said in defense, so used to this line of hardened and judgemental questioning from unforgiving friends, friends who refuse to acknowledge my medically diagnosed disorder.

"You’ve drank nearly a bottle of vodka!" he screamed. "Honestly, is there any edge left?"

Victimized, feeling as if no one will ever understand the pain I must endure as a forgotten, cast-aside victim of panic disorder, I look away from him in shame. But, being the survivor that I am, I endure. I move on.

Another friend of mine’s mother is also on Xanax. Notoriously off her rocker (seriously, the woman boasts that she’s "got papers" to prove her nuttiness), she gets her prescription refilled every month despite not needing the pill everyday of the month. She keeps them in a lockbox in her home, like a squirrel hoarding nuts in a tree. Although I am not a saver by nature (see checking account), I took to this concept and now do the same. I do not need the pill everyday, but since it only costs ten dollars a month and I do have a prescription for it, I might as well get it filled and stockpile them for a rainy day. What sort of horrid rainy day would call for a hundred or so Xanax I cannot even imagine. Possibly a nuclear attack or Jeb Bush winning the White House in 2008.

Another issue I have with people who judge me for my relationship with my beloved little pill is that every time I have the slightest lapse in good judgement, a battlcry goes out: Were you on Xanax? If I lose a coat check ticket or get lost in Target, the assumption is always that I was "hopped up" on my little pink friend. I would like to blame most of my stupidity on something beyond my genetic make-up, but I can’t. I’m just dumb sometimes. Well, most times.

If I were a diabetic and injected my insuline in front of others, no one would utter a sigh of disapproval. So leave me the f*ck alone. It’s a disorder, for God’s sake. Seriously, it’s in medical books. Go ahead. Look it up. Jerks.

Fight the power, weirdos.

2008-11-05T20:29:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 2/3/2006)

"Jesus, Buddha, Allah, I love you all!" Homer Simpson

I am a tree-hugging, bed-wetting, what-the-h*ll-is-Michael-Dukakis-up-to-these-days, card-carrying Liberal. I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we‘ve ever had and that Socialists make very good points. I think children should be told what homosexuality is at an early age and that Michael Moore loves this country more than Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove put together. I would gladly give half of my paycheck to the government if it insured free health care for every American and Art and Music programs in every school. My eyes get misty when I watch documentaries on PBS about the struggles of Native Americans and when I read about cute fluffy animals on the verge of extinction I wanna take to the streets in protest. I am proud to be the type of American that Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coultier despise.

Recently, there was a lot of news about a situation that I guess falls under the category of Religous Insensitivity. My first reaction, because I’m an educated person who would never pretend to know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes was to think, "Oh, they’ve been offended. People should be more considerate." This was my Liberal training, my God-given gift of reasonable judgment. And nine times out of ten when you hear about Religous Insensitivity that is just the case. Some idiot thought out loud and hurt someone else’s feelings, someone who they have no idea what it is to be like (for example, Sean Hannity or that b*tch from "The View" Elisabeth Hasselbeck).

But the reaction stirred by Religous Insensitivity occurring in the Middle East right now over a Danish cartoon is giving every gun-toting redneck in America another reason to hate "them Iraqi terrorists over thar." The more I thought about the way that these people are behaving in response to a drawing, a doodle by some yodeling goofball, my Liberal sense of understanding morphed into Bill O’Reilly’s take on the world. I felt like Charlton Heston. "Shoot ‘em now. Ask questions later."

What the h*ll is wrong with these people? In almost every episode of "South Park" a cartoon Jesus takes God’s name in vain. It doesn’t make the news. Why? Because the only people that show offense to such things in our culture are the crazy "Christian" types. And all they ever do in protest are make brief appearances on talk shows, form letter writing campaigns, or put Bush/Cheney bumper stickers on their cars. No "Christian" in their having been offended by "South Park" has taken to the streets with machine guns and taken hostages. (I am putting the term Christians in quotation marks to differentiate between cool Christians like me and crazy "Christians," the ones who’d protest outside of an AIDS victim’s funeral and give money to Pat Robertson, people who, in my opinion, are no way Christian.)

When the radical types get rowdy in our country and shoot up abortion clinics, even Conservatives think they’re loony. I realize that it’s blasphemous in Islam to create an image of Muhammad, but people, please. Hostages? Aren’t you being a bit dramatic over a cartoon? Trust me, just like that time I wore a dog collar out, you’re gonna feel really stupid about this in a few years.

We overreact in America too. Right now people in America are overreacting about lots of things: the Joel Stein article in the LA Times that said people who are against the war cannot honestly be for the troops, the show "The Book of Daniel" on NBC, and whatever Hillary Clinton might be up to these days. We love to overreact! We did it when Ellen Degeneres came out of the closet. And when we found out that the kids from Columbine liked Marilyn Manson. Or when a certain sitting President got his swerve on in the Oval Office. Sure, we holler and argue and forward emails of outrage back and forth. We vow to never watch certain networks or buy certain albums or see certain movies or vote for certain candidates. But none of us, no matter how offended we get, kidnap someone at gunpoint.

All cultural differences aside, I am dying to know whether or not these men have jobs. I have wet dreams about not having to work but if it means having so much time on my hands that suddenly it makes sense to buy a gun and take people hostage every time someone on Fox News p*sses me off then no thanks. I don’t think these guys have jobs. A job would keep them too busy to carry on like their dogs just died over a cartoon (an idled mind is a troubled mind). And why are they masked? Maybe they‘re supposed to be at work and don’t want their bosses to recognize them. Maybe they called out sick to go kidnappin’. And why are these terrorist types so quick to group everyone together? They hate America, so they destroy the Twin Towers filled to the brim with Americans. They are mad at Europe, so they take Europeans hostage. How stupid is this? That’s like getting mad at the dog for p*ssing on the floor and then beating the cat just because they have the misfortune of sharing the same space.

I’ve often envisioned myself in a hostage situation. "Look, Buddy," I’d tell the gunman, "I hate most Americans probably just as much as you do. But killing me is just gonna waste a bullet. If you wanna get a reaction out of the American government, have your government stop investing in American corporations and selling your oil to our country. If you looked closely at it, Kiddo, it’s not really Americans you hate. It’s your leaders who cater to our government’s every whim that you should be riding around on airplanes with."

I know that my refusal to understand their anger may seem to be a refusal to understand their culture, which would make me a Grade-A certified ignorant close-minded American. And maybe that’s so. Because a culture that caters to such extremism and violence over cartoons is not a culture I care to understand. And if it seems that I’m grouping all the people who were offended by the cartoon with terrorists, I’m not. I am, however, grouping the people who were offended by the cartoon and started kidnapping people over it with terrorists. Because they are terrorists.

I know that Islam is a religion that teaches peace and tolerance. Most religions do. My confusion, my criticism, is towards the behavior of Middle-Eastern societies in general. I guess I’ll never understand a society where no one makes a peep when a woman who was raped is stoned in the streets, but fury over a cartoon unites the country. And honestly, I wouldn’t want to understand it.

Forget me lots!

2008-11-05T20:23:00.001-08:00

(Originally published 2/1/2006)

As human beings, it is only natural for us to forget things. Our minds are bogged down with work and family obligations, worries about the state of the world, and all of the time we spend wondering what it would be like to set Emmanuel Lewis up on a blind date with one of the Bush twins (maybe that last one’s just me). It has recently occurred to me just how forgetful I am.

Lately I’ve been doing things like forgetting to do my laundry until I have to wear swimming trunks under my dress pants to work. Or forgetting where I put my glasses or the keys to my apartment. Or looking frantically in my messenger bag for my transit pass (which ends up being in my pocket). There are so many things that we need to remember but cannot, things like birthdays, anniversaries, or to plug in the iron before we iron. I don’t think that there’s a lack of space in our brains. I think that some of the things that we need to remember just can’t fit in there next to having to remember a deadline or to go to the video store or to feed the baby. The problem is all the things in there that we just don’t need anymore. Most of the space in our heads is being taken up by the things that we just can’t seem to forget.

For example: How old is my father? I don’t know. When was the last time I had s*x with the guy who I thought was the love of my life? September 2004. What color are my friend Katie’s eyes? Beats me. What was the guy’s name who Mitch Bright broke up with me for in the Spring of 2000? Andrew.

Why do I remember these types of things but I don’t know how to spell my niece’s middle name? How is it possible to remember what I was wearing the last time I saw this British guy I have a huge crush on (a green zippy sweater that I looked awful in) but I don’t know my sister’s married name?

Emotional scars and obsessions aside, our brains are also filled with bizarre trivia that we could live for a million years and never find useful. For example, I know every lyric to every Indigo Girls song (go on, test me). Who but a handful of lesbians gives a hoot about that? I know how many children Karen Mackenzie had on "Knots Landing" (3 biological, 1 step, and 1 adopted). I know who shot JR and who killed Laura Palmer (Kristen and "Bob," respectively). I even know what character on "Days of Our Lives" became possessed by Satan and reeked havoc on the quiet town of Salem (Dr. Marlena Evans). But ask me if I’ve paid my electric bill this month and I couldn’t tell you.

There must be a reason why our memories can be so selective, so lazy. My brain behaves the way I do when I help a friend move. Why pick up the television or computer monitor when I can carry the ice trays? As far as our brains are concerned, it would rather carry something light like the chronological order of every Madonna album than bother lugging around Grandma’s birthday or the name of your boss’ children. I think it’s a survival mechanism. Our brain needs distractions from all that boring or bothersome cr*p we’re forgetting. It’s more fun for our brains to recall the dance steps from Pat Benatar’s "Love Is a Battlefield" video than it is to know how to repair our own computers.

Also, society has made it easy on the lazy brain. Recently, a friend of mine was arrested. Her one phone call at the police station was pointless whereas they’d confiscated her cell phone. She had no one’s phone number memorized to call and come get her. TiVo makes it easy for us to even forget what television shows we enjoy. If you forget that "Nanny 911" is on, it will remember to record it for you to watch at a later time.

So what have we learned today? Well, the next time you forget to remove the tags from a new pair of jeans before stepping out for a night on the town, the reason is that there is something clogging a part of your brain. What’s blocking that ability? Maybe it’s either the lyrics to the "Facts of Life" theme song or an ex-boyfriend’s phone number. If we could only clear our minds of the trivial and pointless facts and memories that we can’t seem to forget, then we would no longer forget things like calling our moms on Mother’s Day or closing the door to our apartments when we leave for work (not that I’ve ever forgotten to do either).

Sick!

2008-11-05T20:16:00.001-08:00

(Originally published 1/18/2006)

Oprah Winfrey is highly credited for bringing the issue of sexual molestation into the national dialogue. Some would argue that had she not been so up front and open about a topic that had for generations plagued millions of families then not as many people would have have had the courage to come out and ask for help. Well, brace yourself. I’m about to bring a new conversation to the dinner table. It’s called Relationship Anorexia. And I have it. I have it bad.

I’d been thinking a great deal about negative body image and eating disorders, how many experts blame such conditions on the way society and the mass media depict beauty to the public. It’s almost as if the zillions of people who either don’t eat or puke up what little they do eat have finally given into the powerful marketing campaign staged against them. It would be like I lived somewhere like West Virginia, bombarded by whatever images those poor souls are bombarded with, and finally my subconscious gave in and I registered to vote as a Republican. I wouldn’t know why I did, but suddenly I would hate myself for having ever logged on to Moveon.org. I think this is similar to what happens to the millions of people suffering from anorexia and bullemia. It just takes one more glimpse of Nicole Kidman’s collarbone on the cover of US Weekly and the next thing you know you haven’t eaten anything except a piece of ice since Thursday.

Luckily, I do not suffer from negative body image. If anything, I suffer from positive body image, meaning that I think I’m cuter than I actually am (which can lead to frequent confusion as to why no one talks to me at bars except the friends I came in with). However, I recently realized that I have become a victim to one of society’s other message bombardments designed to make people who otherwise would not feel like complete sh*t: Relationship Anorexia.

Relationship Anorexia, I have decided, is the condition to which one feels self-concious, anxious, and isolated in regards to their single status. This condition is brought on by the overwhelming presence of couples and families in our society. Every song we sing along to, every television show we watch, every magazine article we read is either hyping a relationship, telling someone how to improve a relationship, or centered around someone obsessed with being in a relationship. Relationship Anorexia is the end result of a culture obsessed with happy endings and the fear of living alone.

And what’s so terrifying about being alone? I find the idea of coming home from work and having to explain to someone else why you took your pants off at the door to be terrifying. I also find it terrifying to think that I may never see but just 2 penises for the rest of my life, mine and the guy’s who I kick in my sleep. But recently I was overwhelmed with the idea that I may never meet anyone and my comfort level with my over-the-top selfishness completely disappeared. I felt freakish, like a slimy monster in the street, simply because everyone appeared to be dating someone, everyone but me!

Maybe I’d seen one too many Drew Barrymore movies. Or maybe all the press finally made me jealous of Tom and Katie. But for whatever reason I allowed myself to be freaked out. Instead of looking at my life with gratitude and saying, "I don’t have to share my bucket of delicious fried chicken with anyone," I began seeing my life with sorrow, saying, "I have no one to share this delicious bucket of fried chicken with."

So recently, I met someone, a perfect someone, a someone who knew me and found amusing (or at the very least tolerable) every weird and crazy thing about me. This someone is funny, smart, ambitious, cute, and didn’t make me feel stupid the first time he saw me naked. However, after spending three days together I found myself resenting him for being in my space, for talking to me, for even holding the elevator for me.

Perhaps I am not destined to be married, to vacation and grocery shop with someone, to attend boring office Christmas parties with someone, to watch someone get old and fat and leave me for some twenty year old floozy when I’m 55. Maybe it’s just not in my nature to share with and listen to someone, to support someone, or to rub someone’s shoulders when they’re sick. Maybe that homeless woman who spit on me last winter was right. I am an a**hole.

But a**hole status aside (this is a trait I’d suspected that I’d carried for years), there was something inside me that wanted to be nice to him and wanted him to pay attention to me. Where did this come from? Why would someone such as myself who holds their time alone in such high regard feel like I was incapable and missing out on something? Simple: Relationship Anorexia. I am a conflicted product of a society that tells me that I am not much of anything without someone else standing in as half of me, that I am incapable of being whole on my own. This is not only irritating to me, but more so to people such as this really great guy who I was nice to at first when I thought I wanted a boyfriend then ended up treating like sh*t when I realized that I didn’t.

Just as regular anorexia destroys people’s comfort zones and threatens their ways of life, so does Relationship Anorexia. It turns perfectly functioning, reasonable humans into soft, lonely piles of fluff who, when they inevitably crash, will pull down any sucker standing in their way grinning and asking them to dinner. Had society never thrust Relationship Anorexia on me, I would never have thought that I needed a boyfriend, tried to get one, then made some innocent, caring guy feel like crap.

I encourage everyone to bring the topic of Relationship Anorexia to the surface, because a society in silence is a society that breeds more victims. So bring the conversation to work, to church, to the neighborhood block party. End the violence. Bring it to the dinner table like Oprah brought incest and time will bring all of its sufferers out into the open and heal their pain.
I would love to have someone to discuss this with at dinner, but I am single and eat most of my meals alone. Hopefully I will never choke while eating because there will not be anyone there to try and save me or call 911. Because I am ugly and gross and weird and single. And nobody loves me. And I’m ugly.

God, I’m so lonely! Crap! I caught it again!

Near death. Again.

2008-11-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 1/13/2006)

I was due for some bad luck.

My life has generally been an enemy to me, a nemisis I’m in constant battle with, fighting over love, luck, money, poorly timed acne breakouts, and male pattern baldness. However, I was having quite the good run of it last month. I had somehow managed to save some money and was able to take off of work for four weeks. I went home for the holidays, miraculously got along with my family, found some Diesel sneakers for under $70, and had an amazing time with old friends. I even met someone who I was able to entertain thoughts of actually dating. All of these things in addition to the fact that the new Madonna CD is simply brilliant made life seem pretty dang sweet.

But, alas, the proverbial poop was destined to hit the fan. I was sitting at my desk at work last week when I was suddenly hit with a vicious migraine. Yes, most people who suffer from migraines at my age are women and, yes, I do get the irony that I am merely a single chromosome away from actually being a woman. Anyway, the headache was hands-down the worst I’d ever had in my life. Factor in that I’ve been getting migraines for most of my 30, er, 22 years, and you’ll see that this headache was no ordinary headache!

After vomitting several times (I felt like Lindsey Lohan), I decided to leave work. Long story short, my day ended with me in an ambulance with 2 hot EMTs. Now, if you watch as much porn as I do then this sounds like a much better deal than it turned out to be. There was no awkward silence followed by one of them looking me in the eye and saying, "I know exactly what you need to feel better," followed by some "sexy" 1970’s disco music and some good old-fashioned man-love. Life had gone and gotten in a nice clean kick to my groin. I was actually and seriously having a stroke!

Although life has been consistent in its cruelty towards me, it has never fully restricted me from still living as an independently functioning person. It’s as if Life is my abusive beer-guzzling redneck husband and I am its black-eyed waitress wife in desperate need of having her roots done. It just likes to remind me every so often who’s in charge then lets me on my way, crippled by the fear that any day now he’s going to come home drunk again and knock another one of my teeth out. But in the meantime, I’m fine. I can still walk, speak, drink beer, and watch VH1, so my life was only slightly affected by the stroke. However, the reality that if there is a next time it could be much worse is looming in the background like a poorly placed velvet painting of Elvis.

So what does one do after cheating death and walking away without a scratch? What does one, specifically me, do after cheating death and walking away without a scratch for about the 17th time? I have not felt compelled to race off to church, or form a movement, or even vacuum my apartment for that matter. I don’t feel any more grateful for the life that I have than I did before the stroke, nor did I feel an obligation to express my appreciation for those around me when I realized what had happened.

I have done many things wrong in my life and will continue to do so (I bet you $50 I’m doing something wrong right now). However, I have only done one thing right in my life and to me it’s the only thing that needs to be done right. Having this happen to me and not really "learning" from it hasn’t been proof that I’m an empty, heartless, shell of a human. It has proved to me that I am living my life right. Because had that been it, me dead in the back of an ambulance with 2 hot strangers, I wouldn’t have taken a bit of remorse or regret with me. I look at the quality of people I have in my life, people that are much more kind, considerate, and caring than me. These are people that despite my being a Lucifer to their Gabriel have aligned themselves to me for life, whether as a friend, a son, or a brother. Knowing that no matter what happens to me that my legacy will be left in the hearts and memories of such great people is the only thing I’ll ever need to know.

So the next time I get lost and wind up in Cabrini Green or absent-mindedly plug in my electric razor while standing in the shower, I feel that my life has been fully appreciated and I can take my love for those people who made me appreciate it with me wherever my soul goes. Which I’m hoping to be some floating mall-like place where every other store is an Urban Outfitters, every meal is Taco Bell, and I’ll be the youngest and cutest boy at every party.

Friends and/or family.

2008-11-05T20:00:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 12/20/2005)

I don’t send out Christmas cards. What’s the point? Perhaps I could have a photograph taken of me in my underwear picking lint out of my belly button whereas I don’t have a decorated fireplace or Christmas tree to stand in front of, no boyfriend to pose with, not even a small dog with a stupid name that I can fit into my shaving kit. So the following thoughts are sort of my virtual Christmas card for my friends, my "urban family." This is the term that Bridget Jones used when describing those outside of her bloodline who she loved just as much as dear old mom and dad.

I have been abnormally blessed in my life when it comes to the friendly company I’ve kept. Most of the people in my life I’ve had standing beside me for more than half of my existence. I have never lived anywhere where I didn’t feel support from someone, whether in Memphis, at college, in Florida, or now Chicago. I am confident that if for some odd reason I had to pack up and move to Hoover, Alabama that even there I’d find someone to drink beer with, make fun of Republicans with, or cry like little babies with when they unplug Julia Roberts in "Steel Magnolias."

I consider myself an expert at finding friends and think it’s a shame that society puts so much pressure on people to find someone to marry before they can find someone to window shop and eat cookie dough with. If people put half as much effort into trying to make solid friendships as they do their efforts at finding "the one" the world would be a much better place. I will probably never marry. If I bought into what society projects onto someone with my kind of luck in the dating department then I would be a sad, poorly dressed mess. But because I fully value the other relationships that I have in my life I am not crashing down to the ground having leapt out the window of my apartment on the 18th floor.

I meet people all the time who only seem to have one friend at a time, a reality that baffles me whereas every time something social comes up in my life I have the good fortune of calling on many different people to join me. Whether or not just one or all of them accompany me, I know that I will have a ton of fun. The trick to having and maintaining great friendships is to become friends with someone whose company will breed other friendships. If you meet someone and everyone you meet through them is an a**hole, then odds are that at some point in time they will reveal themselves to be an a**hole of a similar nature.

But having friends as good as mine comes at a price. What is that price? The b*stards have turned out to be as close to my heart as my crazy family is, and we all know how much those family f*ckers can wear you down. And just as families grow, so has my list of close friends. I find myself fighting with some of my friends like I would with my father or my sister, the types of arguments where you’ll say anything that comes to mind with absolutely no filter because you know that no matter what, that person ain’t going anywhere. But that fact is a small sacrifice to be made. The world is a big and scary place and you need as many people in your corner as possible, whether you came from the same gene pool or not.

Here are some other tips I have for making friends. If you want dating advice, watch Dr. Phil. Also, watch how creepy his wife looks when she stares at him so lovingly. I think he has her on medication. Anyway…

1. Don’t confuse friendships with love! This is a rookie mistake. Just because you have tons of things in common with someone and you two know each other inside out DOES NOT mean that you want to jump their bones. My Uncle Ronnie loves me but this does not mean that I have misinterpreted his love for wanting to have sex with me. Now, if I had an Uncle Brad Pitt, that would be a different story. I have made this mistake twice in my life (not sleeping with a relative, that mistake I only made once and I was REALLY drunk, but mistaking a friend for a crush). It comes with serious consequences that potentially may never resolve themselves.

2. If you’re just getting to know someone and while out in public they don’t introduce you to anyone that they know socially do not return any of their phone calls from that point forward. This type of behavior is the opposite of the point I made previously. You can’t fully judge someone if you are unable to judge who else they consider worthy of their friendship. I believe such actions to be those of a highly disturbed individual. Especially if you’re both single. Single people who do not introduce their other single friends to one another are typically jealous and homicidal maniacs afraid of someone "taking over their turf." I call this the "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" complex.

3. As you should do in dating, do not pursue a friendship with anyone who makes you throw up a "red flag." Red Flag behavior can vary from them saying something like "Your exboyfriend is hot. Is he single?" Or "You look really f*cking stupid in that outfit. You can’t wear that if you expect me to be seen with you tonight." This sort of commentary is reserved only for individuals with whom you’ve invested some considerable amount of time, not someone who you met at work and thought that it might be nice to go out and have a friendly Margarita with. Just as in dating, when a Red Flag presents itself (they make you pay after inviting you out to dinner at the most expensive restaurant in town for example) walk away. Walk quickly away.

4. Friends who you would describe as the complete opposite of yourself are the best friends to have. Since they harbor characteristics that you can’t seem to uphold, they help you to become a complete person. For example, a common trait within most of my friends is their level-headedness. I am not level-headed. I have been fired from more jobs than most people have ever been asked whether or not they want paper or plastic. My appeal to them is my carefree, go-with-the-flow attitude. Well, that, my verbal diarrehea, and my ability to make a cocktail seem necessary under any circumstance (a wedding, a promotion, a shoe sale, not getting hit by a bus that day, etc…)

People should put work into finding friends. And when you find a good fit, you should put faith into that friendship and be grateful that you met one more soul that makes life a little warmer. You can never have too many good friends. If you’re lucky, the same people that were around when you turned 21 will be the same ones around when you turn 41, or 51, and so forth. I don’t think I tell my friends enough how much I love and need them, but it’s Christmas so I’m doing it now.

Maybe I should tell my family how much they mean to me while I’m at it. Well, right after The Simpsons. Then I’ll get right on that.

I'll be homo for Christmas.

2008-11-05T19:56:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 12/16/2005)

I will be throwing myself to the lions via Northwest Airlines next week. I am going home for Christmas. Being the only grandchild on my father’s side who does not have children I am constantly subjected to questioning in regards to why I am still single and have not spawned at the rate of my cousins and my sister (there are nine kids under the age of 8 between the five of them). My grandmother cannot even work a microwave so the concept of me being a homosexual has probably never crossed her mind. My aunts and uncles must know but more than likely feel some sort of pity for my parents for having raised such an outcast. Although I’ve never discussed it with them, my cousins are on to me.

Although it would be highly amusing, I have never considered "coming out" over a festive turkey dinner. Perhaps if I felt some resentment towards my family I would do this in a second. My immediate family knows, however I think that my father would have a stroke and die face-first in the green bean casserole. My sister would simply go catatonic which would ruin Christmas for my neice and nephews. She wouldn’t be very handy assembling the Santa Claus display if she was off in the corner sitting motionless with a puddle of drool in her lap. There was an understanding when I came out at 18 between my parents, my sister, and myself. Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone else.

Of all six grandkids on that side of the family, I am the only one who does not live within ten miles of where I was born. So over time my cousins have all bonded over the fact that they’re all practically neighbors and they meet up frequently to discuss topics such as having gotten married too young and what it’s like to have children before you can even legally rent a car (this is what I assume they talk about). No one would dare come right out and ask me, however I envision them sitting around and talking about me and my bone-smoking ways.

"I asked him if he watched ‘Will and Grace’ the other night. He said that he didn’t. What a liar!"

"I wonder what his drag name is."

"Maybe he could could help me highlight my hair."

What bothers me most about being the only single person within our pack of offspring is that even if I did have a boyfriend my cousins would never know about it. I have loved 2 men in my life and those 2 men loved me back (not like that one-sided relationship a**hole Rob Thomas). So not only do they think I’m a social reject, they also think that I’m a social reject who can’t find a date.

"So, are you dating anyone?" they might ask.

"So, will your husband still f*ck you even though you haven’t lost any of that baby fat?" I reply.

But Christmas is about letting your family know that you’re still up and running. Parents and Grandparents like to take stock on their bloodline. So my sitting on my grandmother’s sofa listening to screaming children, dodging personal questions, and jonesing for a cigarette and a beer is my contribution to the family lineage. It’s all part of the inventory straight people like to take on their heritage. Here is my family. Here is my reason for having been put on this planet. Kind of like how the gays like to count how many pairs of shoes they have (I have sixteen!).

Anyway, I’m sure that in my abscense my neice has at some point outed me. She’s fond of announcing at the most awkward moments that "Uncle Tony likes boys." She’s going to make a terrific fag hag someday. I can’t wait to teach her about Madonna and how to make a Gin and Tonic.

My life. Your hell.

2008-11-05T19:53:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 12/12/2005)

My friend JC walked out of my bathroom yesterday with a startling revelation. "You are not alone," he said. "There is someone else in this apartment with you."

Boo!

Perhaps I should have investigated his supernatural credentials before jumping to conclusions, but it was much easier to assume he had a sixth sense. Maybe he Tivos "Crossing Over with John Edwards" or has seen "Ghost" over twenty times. Regardless, I began to wonder if indeed I was sharing a space with a spirit.

The first question would obviously be why? What horrible thing had this person done when alive to be cursed with watching me for eternity? I’m assuming they were an axe murderer who kicked puppies. Why else would someone be chained to me forever, watching me sit in front of the television with my finger in my nose or breaking down in tears when I can’t find my house keys? I don’t lead the most exciting life. The only thing more boring than actually being me would be having to watch me be me. Even I would consider this to be a version of hell, right up there with an eternity of doing ab exercises or trying to explain how to use a computer to an old person.

I also have to consider what exactly this spirit has seen. Beyond the standard embarassments of privacy violation like unknowingly having an audience when I masturbate or poop, I wonder if it was present during other recent moments. Was it here when I practiced my Oscar speech in front of the mirror, clutching that bag of sugar in leu of my statuette? Has it seen me eating tuna right out of the can or digging through the trash looking for the remote control? Was it watching me when I spent over two hours the other day looking at pictures of James Blunt online? What did it think when I spilled that spaghetti on the kitchen floor but still ate it? Does it know that I watch that Korean channel on cable?

I should consider it comforting. Maybe I have a guardian angel. But mostly what I feel is that I want to be a better person. I don’t want to die and get stuck with someone as disgusting and painfully boring as me. I’m going to try to be nicer and more giving so that if I have to come back to watch over someone then hopefully they’ll be exciting, hot, and not disgusting. Like Prince Harry. Or that guy from "Prison Break."

Pervert!

2008-11-05T19:51:00.001-08:00

(Originally published 12/7/2005)

For some reason, I get alot of Bulk email from porn sites. Maybe because I’m a member of about 30 porn sites. Regardless, the subjects of these emails often strike me as funny. They sound like they’ve been translated into English from Chinese. Some examples:

Teen with glasses facialized (What does that mean? Sounds like this teen has had a procedure done. I hope she’s OK.)

Rosebuds left gaping after filthy attacks with horses (This sounds strikingly similar to a poem I wrote in high school during my Goth faze.)

Classy curly haired blond babe shows upskirt new (I have no idea what an upskirt is but it sounds adorable.)

Vixens nailed and left with gaping holes (Oh, my. That sounds traumatic. Hope they don’t need to be facialized.)

Skinny boy doing mom in kitchen AND Dad is insatiable screwing his daughter (Obviously I was targeted by these sites’ marketers because I’m from Mississippi.)

Cute dolly chick do a very deep throat action (Isn’t this what the prostitute says in Full Metal Jacket?)

Juicy busty redhead sucking and f*cking in her a** (I think Juicy Busty would make a fabulous name for a drag queen.)

Hot eurogirls diddling their holes (I don’t know what diddling means but based on the content I assume it has something to do with gardening.)

Dirty chicks need loving too (Amen, sister.)

It flows away from her openings (Is this a porn ad or an ad for feminene hygiene?)

Sexy amateur girl get banged by an old pervert (Makes you think about your first time, doesn’t it?)

You want to measure your penis but it is afraid of the ruler (Dang, talk about bad luck. If you can’t even get an everyday household item to go near it then you must be eat up with ugly.)

Spreads her friends holes (Isn’t that nice of her? So giving.)

Pink nipple girl playing with her toy in the basin (Pink Nipple Girl sounds like a superhero’s name.)

Although I find these subject headings hilarious I have grown tired of receiving them. I cannot open my email around other people for fear of them seeing "Hairy pu**y japenese in both holes" in my email box. It’s embarrassing enough that I get Belinda Carlisle email alerts. If I knew anything about computers besides how to log onto the internet I would try to fix it. Instead of learning how to do so I think I’ll go watch Oprah.

Gay men with vaginas.

2008-11-05T19:48:00.001-08:00

(Originally published 12/6/2005)

There is a line in Bridget Jones’ Diary linking the comradarie between single women in their thirties and gay men by the fact that both are frequent disappointments to their families and are generally shunned by society for merely being the person they were born to be. I’ve spent a great deal of time pondering this revelation and comparing the behavior of single women that I know to myself, a flaming homo. The similarities are indeed noteworthy.

Both myself and all of my single girlfriends would have a one-night stand in a New York minute, but would hesitate going to dinner with someone whose shoes didn’t match their belt. We all have lapsed priorities. Why put money away for tomorrow when you can buy this amazing pair of jeans that make your a** look amazing today? At least once a week we all wake up with astonishing hangovers and through a series of phone calls to friends reconstruct what was apparently a great night out. We all want to spit in the eye of every family member who asks us, "Are you seeing anyone?" And we all like to watch E!

However, single women refuse to look to their gay male counterparts as examples when it comes to marketing themselves, specifically in regards to the internet. I don’t know any woman who has ever signed up for an internet dating service and not felt complete shame and horror for having done so. They think it’s dangerous and, more importantly, desperate.

But gay men are all over cyberspace. My friends here in Chicago are all on so many different websites I’ve stopped logging on. The odds are stacked against me that if I meet someone then someone else I know has already banged them, knows that they’re crazy, or is currently stalking them.

Why can’t single women try internet dating services without fear of social judgement? It’s not that the men aren’t there. As most of you know, I’m often bored and do things when I’m left alone that I probably shouldn’t talk about. But, yes, I’ve done internet searches on dating sites as a woman seeking a man. I like to look at the pictures of cute straight boys and read their bios. I don’t reply to them, of course. That would be unhealthy.

But here’s the reality, ladies. You’re not going to meet anyone at work. You’re too much of a gay man, remember? You probably hate your job and spent most of your day reading celebrity gossip online. You’re not going to meet them out. You’re too sophisticated to stand around like a chump in the straight bars with all the men oggling over the twenty-one year old girls who make out with one another for attention and free drinks. You’re certainly not going to meet them at church. You’re always too hungover from partying with your gay friends on Saturday night to get out of bed before 2PM.

So get over it! You know you’re curious. Log on. Look around. There’s all kinds of cute boys online looking for girls just like you! Big deal if there’s no way you could ever explain how you met your boyfriend to your grandparents. Who cares? I have gay friends who met their partners in a bath house. You think that’s easy explaining to Grandma?

Work is for suckers.

2008-11-05T19:44:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 12/5/2005)

I would’ve considered myself an ambitious person when I was a teenager. A product of the Bill Clinton still-believing-in-a-place-called-Hope society, I was optimistic and idealistic, feeling fully capable that the world was anything I wanted to make of it. I think I had dreams of overtaking corporate boardrooms, traveling the world, and attending lavish charity balls in a $2K suit.
But not so much anymore. As I got older I realized that living that type of life requires an effort that I’m incapable of putting forth. Why should I bust my balls 70 hours a week making someone else rich when I can walk over to the Jewel and get a box of Little Debbies and sit in front of the TV watching talk shows all day? This is the life I was meant to lead.

I am not working this week. I’m interviewing for jobs I will undoubtedly hate whereas they are all mere distractions, obstacles if you will, preventing me from sleeping late and spending what’s left of my day rearranging the shoe section of my closet. I recently read somewhere that scientist have located an Ambition gene, refering to people with that type of trait like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Vera Wang. I do not have that gene. My idea of achieving a goal is getting over a million points on Bejeweled. Unfortunately, no one pays me for this type of work, which I think is sad.

Within a functioning society, everyone ideally has their own role. Everyone plays their own part to keep the machine moving smoothly. I’ve yet to find my role within this process. Apparently, there’s no room in this machine for someone who likes to stay up late drinking beer, have Taco Bell for breakfast, and gauge what day of the week it is based on what’s on television. Oh, Lost is on. It must be Wednesday.

When I’m between jobs, which I often am, I do not blame myself or a society that perpetuates the message that everyone must work. I merely blame my parents. Thanks to this study, I can blame them for not creating a child with an Ambition gene. Sure, they made certain to pass on the male pattern baldness gene, but Ambition they never considered.

My only shot at living this lifestyle and not having to eventually live in a box under the train tracks is to become a "kept" man. However, I’m not young enough anymore to get away with this and I hate going to the gym. Also, I’d be bad arm candy at fancy cocktail parties because I hate small talk.

"Well, we just got back from Bora Bora last week. It was really pleasant."

"I saw a man on the subway yesterday who’d sh*t his pants."

"Pam in Accounting is having another baby."

"I got really drunk a few nights ago and slept in my bathroom."

"Jim was promoted to Supervisor over in Logistics."

"I once saw Jane Wiedlin from the Go-Gos in a casino."

Not only did my parents fail to pass on this Ambition gene, they also failed in the fact that they are not oil barrons or industry tycoons. If I’d been given the proper trust fund I could do whatever the heck I wanted to do with my day and not have to worry about money. I could spend all day chain smoking and reading People and not have to worry about paying the light bill.

Now that’s life.

I want that!

2008-11-05T19:38:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 12/2/2005)

Recently I’ve had the good fortune of meeting a few different boys while out and about. I’d consider all of them to be viable candidates, considering that they each held jobs, appeared presentable, and most importantly found me attractive. Dating is tricky. Dating turns us into the 3 year olds we’ve seen frantic and screaming at Target. The 3 year old is calmly contending to his or her own thoughts, riding comfortably in the front of the basket making attempts to pick Mommy’s nose, when suddenly it appears before them: some exotic, colorful, beautifully complicated toy that the child has NEVER seen before and therefore NEVER wanted. But by God if you don’t get them out of that f*cking basket and let them have that thing then they will kick and scream and cry and make your life a living h*ll.

That’s how I feel about dating. Most people that know me can contest to the fact that I’m a man of quite simple needs. But dating throws a brick under my wheel of contentment. Most times when I meet a boy out I am standing in the crowd minding my own business when suddenly it’s there. And I have to have it. Although I’ve never seen it before I immediately cannot live without it. I have to hold it and touch it and to see what it looks like sitting in my bedroom. I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it!

Then the dance begins. And although at Charlie’s around 2am on a Saturday night I may appear to enjoy dancing, in all actuality I do not. I do not understand the rules. I do not understand the conversations. I certainly don’t understand the games or what sort of reactions people are expecting from me. Dating is like a job interview. For example, in a job interview you should never blame leaving your last job because "my boss hated me." This makes you appear paranoid, secluded, and bitter. On a date, you cannot tell the truth when the jerk inevitably asks that loaded question (and, by the way, they ALWAYS ask) "Why are you single?" You cannot tell the truth, that "my last boyfriend decided after 2 years that he was tired of having sex with me and sometimes I still sit in the dark and drink Bourbon and wonder what he’s doing right this very second and if he ever really loved me in the first place." This makes you appear paranoid, secluded, and bitter. In a job interview, you should respond with "I am looking for greater opportunities." You could apply this to the "Why are you single" question as well.

But the rules are like little games we’ve all made up in our heads, little versions of Scrabble or Battleship. We want other people to play with us, but we never bothered teaching anyone else OUR rules. So we sit there across the table from our opponents in some trendy sushi bar and start playing, you playing your version, them playing theirs. And again, we resort to being small children.

"So, how many people have you slept with?"

"Foul! You can’t ask that! You lose your turn!"

"No! According to MY rules I get to ask that if you ask about the cold sore on my face. AND, I’m going to sneak away to the bathroom when the bill comes because you took a cell phone call while we waited at the bar!"

"Your rules are wrong! My rules say that I have to take at least one call during our date so that I don’t appear too needy and that I exhibit my own life and individuality because that’s attractive…right?"

"Well, my rules say that that means you are disinterested and bored."

"Oh. Well, what do your rules say about sleeping with someone on the first date?"

"They say that it’s OK whereas I wouldn’t want to continue a relationship with someone I wasn’t compatible with in bed. It’s important to investigate that right off so we don’t waste each other’s time. What do yours say?"

"Um, they say that, too!"

My theory is that most people that are in relationships are in them not because of their sets of rules or how they played the game, but because they were so beaten down after years of what can feel like trying to play tennis by yourself on a basketball court. No one’s on the same page! You’re serving tennis balls while they’re shooting foul shots. Eventually you give up. You put down your racket and ask the person that you’re with to teach you how to play what they’re playing. It could turn out that you either love or hate basketball, but either way you’ve got access to someone else’s checking account.

So, after a decent 3 weeks and a couple of dates with some non-psychotic individuals (what else can you ask for?), I still wind up where I started. Except now while I stand around in a bar with my friends on a Saturday night or eat chips in front of the television by myself on some random Wednesday, 2 acts with which I was 100% content not even a month ago, I sometimes think of that toy at Target. I wished I’d never even seen it. Because I would’ve never known how much I wanted it in the first place.

Lurleen's Diary

2008-11-05T19:35:00.000-08:00

(Originally published 11/30/2005)

Dear Diary:

Uncle Festus came home drunk last night and pounded my vag really hard. I’m just thankful he didn’t go in the backyard for some "fudge" this time. I wrote to Oprah again, a victim of incestuous vag and rear-entry pounding herself, but still no word. I can only watch the mailbox and pray.

- Lurleen

Dear Diary:

Today Aunt Mertyl burnt herself up. Uncle Festus seemed less troubled by his wife being dead than he was about the meth trailer she exploded in. "Now how in the h*ll," he asked, "am I supposed to explain this to Gary?"

- Lurleen

Dear Diary:

They fired me today from the Pack-n-Save. I don’t recall them going over the not-eating-the-Snickers-up-front-by-the-register policy during orientation. Now I’ll never make enough money to move to Hoover.

- Lurleen

Dear Diary:

I walked in on Uncle Festus pounding Gary’s man vag today. Uncle Festus said, "Well, if your Aunt Mertyl hadn’t burnt herself up, I wouldn’t be doing this." And all I could think was, "Aunt Mertyl or Gary, talk about your rock or your hard place." At least it weren’t me that time.

- Lurleen

Dear Diary:

I know I ain’t the sharpest tack in the box, but I know better than to tease Gary’s bird dog Goose with a 99 cent hamburger from the Wendy’s. Uncle Festus learned that the hard way. Gary has him convinced his finger might grow back.

-Lurleen

Dear Diary:

I asked Uncle Festus why we ain’t seen much of Gary these days. He said that Sheriff Dobbs done found Gary with his d*ck in a chicken. Then they sent him on up to the nuthouse in Birmingham. I guess my luck ain’t so bad, considering the cards dealt to that chicken.

- Lurleen

Unsent Letter

2008-11-05T19:29:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted 11/29/2005)

The following is a letter I wrote for therapeutic purposes to the Chicago Transit Authority based on the horrendous 3 hour experience I had with their "services" from 7:40AM until I fell through my front door exhausted from what felt like a week’s worth of effort at 10:40AM.

Dear CTA:

First things first, I appreciate you. I really do. My parents brought me up right. I know before I begin with the negative I should first find cause to praise you. Without you I would have to drive around aimlessly after work trying to park my car whereas I could no way afford a spot in this neighborhood. I know that there’s plenty of street parking further west and north, but I am too much of an alcoholic/sex addict to move out of Boystown. Without you I wouldn’t have the joys of having been harrassed by the city’s finest and most memorable crack addicts and deviants. Where would I be had I never met the black man on the Diversey bus who asked me where I bought my pants, then screamed at me when I ignored him. Or the seemingly harmless woman on the 151 who got up out of her seat, made her way to the back of the bus where I was, then remorsefully informed me that I was going to hell when I died. I thanked her, informed her that I’d grown up Southern Baptist, and hers was not news I hadn’t considered. You are also a main provider for masturbation material, whereas the trains heading into the Loop in the morning are packed tight with gorgeous men with nice hair cuts and expensive suits. For all these things I am eternally grateful.

Now for the sour part, Mister. It’s bad enough that you make me watch 19 Red Line trains and 65 Brown Line trains whiz right past before you let loose the elusive Purple during rush hour, but the stunt that you pulled this morning was inexcusable. It started out nice enough. I walked right out of my building to the waiting arms of the Belmont bus. I felt like a celebrity strolling out of a party to his or her idled limo. I got out at Halsted because, according to your flawed web site, this was the most "convienant" route. When that bus finally showed up it was packed full of people! How? The route starts not even a half a mile from there at Broadway! You mean to tell me that that many people had come out of their homes at that exact time in no more than 5 blocks? I think you were asleep on the job again, and had you been running regularly (every 8-11 minutes, according again to that shameless web site), I wouldn’t have had to sit in the lap of some Polish cleaning woman.

But the joy didn’t end there. Somewhere before Grand and Milwaukee a man got on carrying what I thought was a television or a computer monitor. He had it tucked under his jacket on his right side, but as he got on I realized that he wasn’t carrying a basic home appliance. This machine was attached to him, was somehow inside of him, a part of him, and not in some fun RoboCop kind of way. Now why someone with built-in machinery would get on a crowded bus, with no regards to your stopping short and having him crash to the floor, is part of your mystique. Of course, without fail, he sits by me. Instead of looking away or asking him just what in the fuck that was growing out of his side and whether or not it had TiVo or internet access, I got up as if I was getting out. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I did get off, about 6 blocks from where I needed to.

I finally arrived at the Metra Station around 8:35AM, foolishly thinking that I’d make it onto the 8:40AM train to Geneva. But much to my surprise the Ogilvie Transportation Center has about 20 tracks and zero signs to refer to or employees to ask which train is which. I frantically looked around for uniformed CTA people and when I finally found one enjoying a morning smoke right there on the platform he told me to go to Track 1. I was at Track 15 and the time was 8:39AM. I hauled ass to Track 1 just in time to see the train pulling away. Now, if this was 1942 and some hot sailer was waving farewell to me from the open car door and I was running alongside of the train waving a white scarf like in all of those War World II movies, then that would’ve been fine. But I wasn’t a beautiful blonde with a big rack from Iowa. I’m an out-of-work homo from Chicago who just missed a train that was taking him to a 10 o’clock interview.

I return to where the smoking guy was and he’s nowhere to be found. I finally find a ticket window and wait patiently for Verna, Maurice, and the rest of the crew to wrap up their in-depth discussion of whose turn it was to go on break. "When’s the next train to Geneva?" I ask. "9:40," one of them says. OK, CTA, an oversight on my part. I should’ve planned more time for potential error. I called and pushed back my interview an hour and treated myself to some McDonalds and a Xanax.

Around 9:40AM, I approach Track 1 and only see the rails, no train. I find yet ANOTHER one of your faithful servants and he tells me that the next train to Geneva isn’t until 10:40AM. It takes everything remotely Christian inside of me not to tackle him, so I calmly explain to him that I completely fault the transit authority for my missing a job interview.

"That sucks," he says, not looking me in the eye.

"Yes," I agree, "Sucks bad."

Needless to say, upon my second call postponing my interview, the lady with whom I was meeting suggests to me that she’ll call me when she has another opening. Being a Recruiter myself, this translates to her telling me to go fuck myself with a garden rake.

Now, CTA, I know you’re feeling bitter that despite a war for oil and staggering gas prices the world has not embraced either you or your colleagues in other cities’ services. But this is not my fault. I am a loyal customer. I give up my seat for old people (if I’m not tired). I keep my mouth shut when Latino mothers board the bus with 16 children and hault movement for half an hour. I would even report any suspicious packages if I were to ever see one. And I never vandalize because I know that vandals cost the CTA millions of dollars a year in clean-up costs. But making me miss a job interview! You have a job and with all the recent rate hikes I can bet you and your family are sitting pretty right now. And to do this to me around the holidays is just shameful. Shame on you, CTA. Shame!

I’m buying a car.

- Tony Thompson

Perhaps I'll blog...

2008-11-05T19:26:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted on 11/28/2005)

I feel like a lame duck President. My current contract ends Friday, so I’ve taken it upon myself to do little work, if any. However, constantly searching the internet for things to read about Ryan Reynolds is itself work. Also, I must remind myself every 45 minutes or so to take a stack of papers and walk around the office for a bit. This gives off the illusion that I am actually doing work-related things on my computer and not reading Knots Landing episode summaries I found on Google.

What type of influence would Knots Landing have now in our post-9/11 world? Would Karen Mackenzie’s kindness unite us despite our differences? Would we simply agree to disagree on abortion and gay marriage because our mutual love for Gary Ewing put things into perspective? Would George W., faced with his constant comparisons to the shady and manipulative Abby Ewing (or in the later seasons Anne or Claudia or even sometimes Paige) finally admit to all the lies and beg for the world’s forgiveness?

Man, that show had a lot of villians.

My friend Jill got engaged last week. This means that I now only have two of what I would consider close friends that are still single like me. One of them I’m certain couldn’t give a flip (meaning that he’ll wind up happier and more in love than anyone I know). I’ve begun envisioning living with the other one when we’re senior citizens, fighting over who let the cat out or how many times you can actually reuse coffee grinds. I’m picturing a sad, strung-out, trailer park version of "Will and Grace."