Mixed Nuts

There’s an article I read a while back that I can’t seem to locate again. It was an absolutely gorgeous and off-the-hook rant by a gay guy who was sick to death of all the flaming faggots on Grindr, Craigslist, and OKCupid who can’t stop talking about how masculine they are. I’ve addressed this topic before. The term “straight-acting” needs to be hit on the head with a shovel and thrown into an unmarked grave. Please stop defining yourself in terms of what you aren’t. Just stop. And anyway, why is that all that unique? I probably know more straight musical theater queens than gay musical theater queens, and believe me, I know a lot of musical theater queens. If you were really straight-acting, you wouldn’t be hyper-masculine, but somewhat masculine with a few feminine traits thrown in. Because that’s how straight guys are.

Hate the show, but I will concede that some of the cast members were/are quite talented.

I think what really drives me nuts about the whole thing is how selective supposedly “straight-acting” gay guys are. They might wear stylish underwear, use product on their hair, and hang out almost exclusively with other gay guys (with a couple of token straight men thrown in for balance) and still talk about how they’re “not like those other gays”. Because as long as there is one stereotype that you don’t conform to, you can’t be stereotypical, right? Honestly, I don’t get it. If people don’t know you’re gay until you tell them, does that make you less gay than all those other gays? It’s gotten so prevalent that any day now, I expect to hear somebody say, “I love fashion and Glee. I’m totally not like all those other gays!”

In case it’s not obvious, online dating is getting to me. Really, really, really getting to me. On the plus side, it has provided me with some killer masturbatory fodder.

I try to resist the urge to be a troll, believe it or not, but sometimes, my mouth gets the better of me. People tell me they admire me for speaking my mind, but the thing nobody tells you about that is that speaking your mind, admirable or not, can really get you in trouble sometimes. And sometimes, it’s not even that admirable. I don’t know what I’m accomplishing by messaging random guys on online dating sites to let them know I find their profiles obnoxious. Seriously, why would anyone do that except to be an asshole? It’s not like they’re going to stop being an asshole just because I told them they’re being an asshole. (Who am I to judge other people’s assholery, you ask? Why, I’m the Robot King, the biggest asshole of them all.)

There was a time when I might have gotten a little thrill out of people telling me, “Wow, you’re gay? I had no idea!” But I grew out of that a long, long time ago, and even then, it wasn’t really the core of my identity. I do generally prefer the conventionally masculine men to femme ones, but that’s a preference, not a hard and fast rule, and trust me, there are a LOT of exceptions. Essentially, people want to have it both ways. They want to believe that there is something different and special about them, but they still want to feel like they’re just one of the guys. But you aren’t straight, dude. You may act straight, but some straight guys aren’t straight-acting, which is part of the reason that word is so poisonous. It feeds into an ideal that the reality can never possibly match. You can always be just a little more masculine, can’t you? And really, what is gayer than a man working overtime to affirm his masculinity?

Ian McKellen was right when he said that there are good gays and bad gays. Of course, he wasn’t the first person to say that, but the whole “We’re not so different” thing doesn’t ever get old, does it? The one thing that online dating has caused me to contemplate is just how many of these people I know in real life. Being the introverted misanthrope that I am, I don’t generally go out of my way to learn about the lives of my coworkers, colleagues, friends, family members, sex partners, or anyone who isn’t me. So it’s possible that I knew a lot of people like the morons I run into on the internet when I was in college or high school. Then again, it’s possible that I didn’t. I didn’t hang out in a lot of the popular hangout spots when I was in college. I didn’t join any fraternities. So maybe I actually did manage to avoid a lot of the douchebags. (Not that all frat boys are dbags, just a lot of them. The ones I knew were generally okay.)

I don’t understand this obsession with coming out. You do it once, and then you move on. Yes, Harvey Milk did say that the most important thing any queer person could do was come out, but it’s really the context that matters, isn’t it? You’re not doing it so you can admire everyone’s surprised faces and you aren’t doing it so that you can keep declaring your sexuality over and over again every day of your life, but so that people can see you as a normal individual and not some alien freak. Don’t play it up, don’t play it down, just play it. And with that out of the way, I think I’ll take a few days off of blogging. Enjoy this funny video. If you’re a D&D geek like me, it should be right up your alley. Just don’t get me started on bottom shame.

A Pain That I’m Used To

I’m having pretty mixed feelings right now. On one hand, the agency that I just applied to for housing rejected me, which means I’m back on the market. Oh, joy. And yeah, I suppose there is shit happening right now that isn’t 100% horrible, but since this blog is not for me to bask in things that are going well, I think it’s time for me to talk about the shit. And man, is there a lot of it.

My mother just moved back in. I’m not going to detail all of my grievances with my parents. If you’re not aware of that yet, browse the archives, because I’m just not interested in talking about it anymore. No, they don’t beat me or emotionally terrorize me. I just don’t like being around them. The whole atmosphere is stifling. I need my own goddamn place. I’m tired of having dinner with them just because you’re supposed to have dinner with your family, and are you really going to say no to this nice meal Mommy cooked for you? At this point in my life, I almost can. Up until recently, I thought I could be out within a few weeks. But not anymore.

I don’t like apartment hunting. I don’t like responding to Craigslist ads, commuting to the place, shaking hands with people you met on the internet and then trying to convince them that you’re better than the other people who are looking. Guys, I am what I am. If you don’t feel like giving me the place, there’s just nothing I can do about that. And I really am an awesome roommate. Hell, even Psycho Queens Guy told me that, and he’s a psycho! (That same night, he threatened to kill me. Long story.) I’m pretty sure the reason I got rejected for this last place is that I don’t make enough money. See, they want somebody who is respectable and hard-working, not some lowly barista. It wasn’t even my prospective roommate’s decision, but the landlord’s. Fuck him.

I’ve had shitty roommates. I’ve had more shitty roommates than most people have had sex partners. And I’m getting really tired of it. I’m getting tired of getting passed up for people who are less responsible and less tidy than I am just because, I don’t know, maybe they’re better than talking the talk. I’m trying not to let this get me down, trying not to hold onto my anger. But I really had high hopes for this place. And I’ve been looking for a while. At one point, I even tried responding to the same ad twice from two different email addresses because the place looked like such a perfect fit. Guess how that turned out?

Maybe housing is a seller’s market right now. Maybe maybe maybe. I don’t care. Some people want to be in a relationship just to escape the dating scene. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. It sucks, but it doesn’t. All I know is that I feel like I’m getting sandwiched. I have freedoms I never asked for (now we have a second car!) and don’t have freedoms that I would very much like, such as the ability to use the kitchen whenever I want. It’s frustrating, and don’t pretend you can’t figure out why. It’s amazing how oblivious people can be to something that is staring them right in the face, and no, I’m not just talking about my parents there.

I started reading The God Delusion recently but had to put it aside because I find Dawkins’ tone insufferable. He’s one of those people I find myself agreeing with and wanting to smack at the same time. At one point, he says, “Pantheism is sexed-up atheism.” Fuck you. Einstein was a pantheist, more or less. He did not believe in an interventionist god, an immortal soul or the power of prayer, but considered order and beauty of creation to be, in a sense, godlike. If you believe that, you’re not an atheist. It really is that simple. If there is anything that you believe in that you consider divine or that invokes spiritual feelings, you are not an atheist. Because that’s not what atheism means. I am not an atheist. If the only two boxes are “Believer” and “Non-Believer”, I check the latter, but if there is one thing I want people to understand here, it’s that “Do you believe in God?” is not a yes-or-no question. I find religion in any conventional sense to be unconvincing, which is why I spend more time listening to Tim Minchin than The Newsboys (although I will admit that “Entertaining Angels” is a damn catchy little tune). It’s not that I hate religion, just that I think that most of what passes for spiritual belief these days is a vast oversimplification. So I don’t think I’ll be reading the rest of The God Delusion.

(Tangentially, I would like to say that while there are many who would say about Hitchens exactly what I just said about Dawkins, I don’t agree. Hitchens was a funny motherfucker, and he always threw in just enough self-awareness or even self-deprecation to keep me on his side. So I will probably read god is Not Great at some point. Also, did you know that Hitchens was good friends with Francis Collins? Fucking crazy.)

It’s a dangerous thing to say, but I think there is such a thing as atheist posturing. I say “dangerous” because I know there are folks who will take that to mean that non-believers don’t really not believe and that we are all just lost and confused. Bullshit. But since “atheist” is a dirty word to so many people, I think that there are some folks who say that the Bible is a load of fairy tales just to piss people off. (I do think it’s a load of fairy tales, but I also don’t see why I should care if somebody believes it’s not.) It’s not all random, you know. Just mostly.

Panopticon

I think the biggest problem with customer service is that there are idiots who think that the cashier actually gives a shit when they ask you how your day is going. That’s not always the customer’s fault; there are cashiers out there who have convinced themselves that they give a shit about how your day is going. And they don’t. They’re lying to themselves. But my problem is that I’m not as good at faking it as everyone else is. I don’t have the energy to act as if I give a shit how your day is going. Over the past month, I’ve tried to relax a little bit, to be as casual as possible in my interactions with customers. That seems to have helped. I’ve butted heads with coworkers, customers, and management over the past month or two, and if I had to pinpoint any one thing that is causing our problems, it’s the persistent lie that the customers are the most important part of customer service. They really aren’t. The employees are the heart of it. The customers are just guests.

I have recently begun to dip my toe into the waters of online dating. Unsurprisingly, it’s a lot like real-life dating, in that most people have unrealistically high expectations for their future partner and mostly everyone ignores me. I’m charming, funny, handsome (you’ll have to take my word for that; I’m not posting a picture), and of course, modest, but I haven’t had much luck with it so far, which is to be expected. Nobody likes me in the real world, so why should they like me online? Neil Gaiman once said that in the arts, people tend to keep working because they meet two of three criteria: quality work, punctuality, and likeability. I have shown up to work late exactly once in almost ten months (figures that the one day I count on the bus being late is the one day it actually comes on time), am very precise and thorough in my work, and am disliked by almost everyone. Oh, most people would tell you they like me if you asked them, but those are the same people who ask you how your day is going and act like they give a shit. So there.

I wrote a post a little over a year ago about my personality type. I took the MBTI and it told me I was an INFJ. I’m generally skeptical of anyone claiming that a simple test can tell you who you are (I took the Enneagram once and didn’t quite agree with it), but part of what I like about Myers-Briggs is that it doesn’t claim to do that. It’s a guideline, nothing more, nothing less. If you accept that people generally do fall into one of sixteen basic types, then knowing which one you are might help you understand why you are the way you are and how you can better relate to other people. It’s rare that I get this defensive of something that has nothing to do with Doctor Who, but this article fucking pissed me off. The MBTI is not a fucking horoscope. It’s not a goddamn Buzzfeed quiz. I don’t know how much actual evidence or research there is to back it up, but I don’t need any to see that the aforementioned article is no more than lazy clickbait. The MBTI has helped me feel like I fit better into the world, specifically because what it says about me is not entirely flattering. That gives me a little bit more strength, and it means that my feelings of not fitting in may not be just my imagination after all.

I’m at the age where people I know are starting to get married and settled down. Except what does “settle down” actually mean? It can’t just mean that you buy a house in the suburbs and get a boring office job, 2.5 kids, etc. I’ve said before that I have no interest in that life, but that does not make me inherently more interesting than the people who do. There are infinite ways to be unconventional. And you can’t define yourself simply by being an outsider. There is a line in Elementary (which is itself a paraphrase of a line from one of the stories) where Sherlock tells Watson, “You make an effort to appear conventional, but I know, Watson, that you share my love for all that is bizarre and outside the humdrum routine of ordinary life.” I’m not very good at appearing conventional. I think that’s why I’m not very popular. But there are people who are every bit as weird as I am who are just better at appearing “normal”. And there are folks who pretend to be cool and rebellious but are actually playing it really, really safe.

I’m looking for something to tie all of this together. I’ve just returned after a month off of blogging. I didn’t expect all of my shit to be sorted out when I came back, and it’s not. Who could have predicted that? I still have lots of opinions, though. I recently stopped listening to This American Life for a little while because it’s too white and privileged even for me. (I really did not find their turning that story of an undercover cop who ruins a straight-A student’s life into a musical very amusing. That bitch manipulates him into buying weed for her and somehow he’s the bad guy? God, I could just smack her. And she seems to think that’s somehow the same as catching a meth dealer.) I’m very, very slowly getting back into gaming—not just computer games, but jigsaw puzzles and other such intellectually stimulating things. I have a great many gifts, but I still haven’t found my Watson. And as is often the case, the only way that I can see that happening is if I first get the world to back the fuck off first. So before I say goodbye, let me just say that I have no idea why Hulu Plus has ads. I thought not having ads was the whole point of a premium service? Oh, well.

Actually, one more thing: Weird Al is aging remarkably well, isn’t he? Hasn’t lost his touch, either. He’s really more musically talented than he gets credit for. Oh, and this article reminds me of me. Good night, folks.

Heart of Glass

You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.

—Harlan Ellison

I find that I am deleting stuff more and more often these days. I’m not sure why. Part of it is probably just general fatigue. I have had that feeling lately of being stuck in a rut. I’m a long-term planner by nature; I always have big, lofty goals, and no idea as to how to achieve them. I’m not really sure why I started this blog, besides the need to have a space to vent about shit. It might be nice if we had a little bit more traffic around here, but since I don’t know how much, I’m not sure what I’m really complaining about. Let me put it another way: If you watch The Daily Show, you might remember a recent segment in which Jordan Klepper (who is proving to be a worthy addition to the cast so far) went around talking to conservative upstarts who were trying to unseat a Republican Congressman for not being conservative enough. The problem is that for these people, there is no such thing as “enough”. No matter how much you hate the gays or love guns, there is always somebody who hates the gays and loves guns just a little bit more. So I try not to be like that. I try to have an endpoint in sight. I may never meet it, but at least I have an idea as to when it will be time to move on.

I wonder if other people see me as passive. I’m not really sure what to do about that. I used to go to work with the intention of just giving people what they wanted, but I’m starting to think it’s a little bit more complicated than that. Apparently, you are allowed to be an individual, even when you’re just a damn barista. They used to stick me on register all the time. I would show up to work, somebody else (who often had not been working there as long as I had) would start making drinks, and I would be stuck saying, “Hi, how are you?” over and over again for hours. That needs to stop. So one day, I just jumped on bar. They told me to get back on register, but I think they got the hint anyway. Maybe they just assumed that because I never complained, that must mean that I like being a cashier? Being a cashier is draining. I spent a summer working at KMART, and at the time, I had never hated anything more than that job. I’m not in a hurry to get out of this and move on to the next thing, I just think that no matter where you are, you probably need a little variety to stave off boredom.

If things go this way for much longer, my job at the coffee shop will be the longest-running job I’ve ever had. I hate it when people say, “Oh, those last four years just flew by!” when talking about high school and shit, so instead, I’ll say that there have been a lot of boring passages, but I don’t intend to give it up anytime soon. Perhaps that’s why I’m having second thoughts about the job I interviewed for yesterday. The interviewer was perfectly nice and it seemed like a lovely business, but even though it was part-time and they were flexible about hours, I’m not sure if I’d be able to comfortably work it into my current schedule. My hours change every week at the coffee shop, and my manager has promised me more once I get better at making drinks. Maybe I should wait a little longer before taking on another job.

It’s only now that I’m starting to realize how deeply people are socialized to believe that they are incomplete without a partner. Basically every fucking movie, book, and TV show teaches you that the ultimate joy in life is being coupled. Bullshit. Maybe what has been holding me back all these years is the fear that if I got a boyfriend, I would have to spend all of my fucking time with him and tell him everything about myself. I have no intention of doing that with anyone at any time, ever. It doesn’t matter how wonderful you are; even if we live together and you’ve had your dick in my mouth, the odds that I won’t still sometimes want to go to my room, close the door, and spend six hours not talking to you are exactly zero. Deal with it.

My mother doesn’t seem to understand me. I think it’s because she thinks that because she lives her life a certain way, so should I. There is nothing more dehumanizing than being told that this is just how the world works, and you’ll be so much better off once you accept that. No, I don’t. It’s been over four years since the dam broke in my head. I dream almost every night (everyone does, but I’m talking about the ones you remember) and I still spend way too much time either pining for shit I don’t have or being angry at people who wronged me years ago. Someday, I might reach a point where I don’t do that. But I won’t get there by sharing things with my mother just because she shares similar things with my dad. He often complains about all of the shit she doesn’t tell him, so clearly, she isn’t being perfectly honest here.

I don’t really have a conclusion here. I think part of the reason I’m so afraid to leave Facebook is that I’m worried that if I leave, I’ll never see most of these people again. Of course, I really don’t want to see most of them again, but there is a part of me that wonders why nobody from work has added me yet. From what I hear, young people are moving on to other forms of social media. I think this will be the last I ever want with it.

Life is actually not that short provided that you use your time wisely. High school did not fly by, nor did college, nor have these past twenty-plus years. It just feels that way because nostalgia has a way of sugar-coating everything. I choose to believe that there is a middle ground between being pretending that you don’t have a past and trying to live in it. I’m still working to understand my past so that I might finally be able to plan my future. Let’s go exploring.

Ghost Light

I’m in something of an impatient mood as I write this. You see, I’ve been tinkering with this post for some time, and I can’t seem to get it right. I wrote one half, saved it, wrote the second half, then deleted the first. So let’s see if we can get the first part right. You will probably be able to tell where the break came in. Anyway, here goes nothing:

I often find myself in the stressful position of being unable to ground myself. I have hopes and dreams and all that, but since I have no idea how to make all of that shit a reality, I spend far too much time daydreaming. I don’t like daydreaming. Some people can spend all day doing that, but I can’t. On the flip side, I don’t seem very good at establishing lasting connections with people, and it’s probably because I schedule everything arbitrarily in my head. I don’t go out with friends all that often, yet when I do, I have an annoying tendency to fret about all of the supposedly “productive” shit I could be getting done, such as reading or watching movies or applying for jobs and shit. There is a part of my brain that thinks that if it does not culturally enrich me or provide me with income, it’s worthless. And that kind of thinking really has to stop.

(Random thought: I am starting to get really, really tired of Upworthy. A lot of the shit that gets shared on there is legitimately awesome, but something about it is starting to feel like Buzzfeed, in that everything is specifically designed to get as many shares or “likes” on social media as possible. For this, I want to burn all my devices and go live out in the woods. At the same time, I want to better understand how DVDs and mp3 players work so that I can someday be one of those “tech-savvy” people. I…have a complicated relationship with technology.)

I’ve mentioned this before, but I think the best way to get over feeling “different” isn’t to be like everybody else, but to realize that you are different, and that that’s not a bad thing. I was about seven or eight when I started having existential crises. I’m sure I’m not the first person to wonder about the meaning of life, but I’ll wager most people at least make it until their age is in the double digits before they start fretting about death and waiting anxiously for the night to come so they can go to sleep and escape all of the dread and horror before waking up and facing it again. Depression isn’t fun. It takes time to climb out of that slump. I slip sometimes, but I believe that it might be possible, if not to escape the cycle of highs and lows, at least to own them a little better. Life can’t be a nonstop orgasm. But it doesn’t have to be like this all the time either.

I feel the need to turn this one around and talk about something that’s a little less introspective, if not exactly more positive. So let’s talk about Congress. What amazes me about politics in this country is how slowly everything changes. The Republicans are still up in arms in Benghazi and…nobody cares. Seriously, nobody. Cares. At all. We’ve moved on, but this is how it always feels with any problem, isn’t it? You just want to move on and live your life and do shit, and they keep dragging you down. Hell, I was just listening to a recent This American Life episode about death and taxes, and from the sounds of things, that’s how cancer feels, too. Basically, you keep wondering why the hell you should have to deal with this, and all you can hope for is that if you make it through, you won’t have to go down this road again. Strangely enough, the pollsters are still predicting that the Republicans will retain control of the House come midterms. How the fuck is that even possible? Aside from almost destroying the government, they haven’t accomplished jack shit in the last two years. And don’t give me any of this “Democrats are just as bad” shit, because they aren’t, and you know it.

It’s starting to dawn on me that I don’t want to spend my whole life writing. I have every intention of continuing to do this shit for a long, long time, but I’m not sure if it’s what I was put on this Earth to do. It’s fine as a side project. I just don’t know what I want my main pursuit to be. I keep thinking I want to rediscover my practical side, that part of me that gets math and science and can see a problem as a puzzle rather than a theoretical quandary. Maybe it’s not in my nature to see things that way. But I have to challenge myself. So maybe I’ll just walk right up to the divide, then park my ass there and stay where I am. Because I have a lot of work to do. And if I stick to what I already know and understand, I will never get it done.

I’m still young. That can’t last forever, but maybe the feeling of always facing forward can. For me, nostalgia is not so much the feeling of wanting to go back and relive the glory days as wanting to go back and do it all over again, except better. I’m a perfectionist that way. More than that, I’m the kind of guy who always feels as if the good times are passing him by. There are people at my workplace who started there after I did, yet are already hanging out with other people there and talking about the good times they’ve had or people they hung out with who don’t even work there. There is a world beyond the espresso machine. I know that. I’m just trying to find people to share it with. Maybe I should try online dating.