Feb. 13, 2001 910 am
As I was trying to catch up on e-mail yesterday, a few paragraphs that I read stuck out in particular. In one, a closeted college student from St. Louis wrote:
"..I also didn't want to be limited to interacting with just 10% of the population, and I felt like that would happen if I came out. I see it happen almost every day with visible minorities...Asians hang out together, African-Americans hang out together, and, yes, Caucasians hang out together too. I never want to hang out with exclusively gay people...I know a lot of great people who aren't gay, and I don't want to stop meeting them."
--- Edited For Brevity/Focus ---
And another e-mail I got from a 35 year old preacher's kid in Seattle read:
"It's funny. I always said that I was looking for friends, but I was looking for good-looking guys who would eventually work into "the one". None of the guys I sought out were that person. Most of my real friends I met through shows I was in, or at work. They needed a ride home, so I gave it to them. Then they said, hey let's get together and have dinner after the show tomorrow. The biggest quality that made us such good friends is that they didn't give a rat's ass whether I was gay or straight, rich or poor, neat or somewhat disorganized (I'll let you guess which of those two I am. hint: Keith, my partner, is the neat one). What really made it work is that I suddenly realized that it didn't matter whether they were any of those things either. And, over a long time of neither of us caring about that stuff, we learned a lot of cool things about each other that have made us thicker than thieves. I know that I'm talking about it like it's only one other person, but that's because each friendship started that way. One on one. Then I would meet their friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, kids. Before I knew it I had more friends than I knew what to do with. It takes a lot of time and energy and a lot of being there to maintain these friendships, but I wouldn't trade them for the world."
--- Edited For Brevity/Focus ---
Those both rang so true. Gay guys do tend to hang exclusively with gay guys. In fact, in my case, I'm not sure how I could even meet anyone who isn't gay... and it's been something that's been on my mind for a while now, though not quite as succinctly as written in that first e-mail.
Part of the reason I moved out was to figure out who I am and to make friends, yet I haven't a clue where to make friends other than via the website or personal ads. Each of those routes means that my potential friends are almost exclusively limited to gay men. No longer going to school and not having a 9-5 job, my places for contact with people is limited and my places for contact with people who aren't gay is almost non-existent. What am I going to do: Hang out with the KFC girls?
So, that thought, of finding hobbies, or joining a club, or even getting a part time job at Best Buy, has been going through my mind. I want friends who aren't necessarily gay, but I'm not sure where to find them. My "plan" is to increase my real world interaction and hopefully find those friends in the process. And hey, I do have two straight women who want to meet me in San Diego.
As for the second e-mail, I've thought a lot about that, too. I'm no doubt guilty of "looking for good-looking guys who would eventually work into 'the one'." In hindsight, I think that's why I got so upset the other night with "Bryce". While we dated and it didn't work out, he showed enough potential that I sub-consciously thought I could perhaps work him into "the one" as he grew a little older and more mature. But when he told me about Mr. Booty Call, I realized that I'd overestimated his potential for "working into 'the one'," and so I was disillusioned. Adding that Mr. Booty Call was "undetectable," thereby implying that I was so gay any straight man could tell, only insulted me more and made his potential as "the one" all the lower. In my mind, a friend's a friend, and I would never be ashamed of him... or else he wouldn't be my friend in the first place. So, anyway, e-mail has been quite insightful lately. I've still got nearly a month's worth to catch up on, but I'm looking forward to it. Who knows what insights they'll hold...
*Wow what a treat another entry!*
12:46pm
Although this is more of a brain fart than any real take on life, I can't help but think it merits chronicling. Without fail, The Simpsons makes me laugh. Even the other night when I was in that funk, I turned it on and laughed out loud. The jokes are at such various levels. There's the obvious ones, and then there are the ones you know most people didn't get, but you got. Like the other day, the show was a VH1's "Behind The Music" parody, and Marge was doing a lounge act. When she walked off the stage, she said, "Goodnight, Laughlin." Laughlin is this little gambling town in Nevada, which most people have no doubt never heard of. Yet I got it. Her act was so small, it was playing in Laughlin, not Atlantic City, Reno, or Vegas, but Laughlin, a 5 stop light town that literally wouldn't exist if it weren't for gambling. Even now writing it down now, it's funny. And at the end of the show, where they were previewing next week's "Behind The Laughter," it was Huckleberry Hound saying, "I was so gay... but I couldn't tell anyone." In one thirty minute show, there are so many jokes, cerebral jokes where you can't see the punch line coming... it's downright refreshing in this vast media wasteland of "Meet The Parents" and "What Women Want" to see entertainment where it's assumed the audience actually has a brain.
(Names have been Changed to protect Privacy of others)
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