On Second Thought...

I have received a lot of emails on my previous post. You guys have some strong opinions on what I did, some of them in support of my actions, but most not so much. Now that I have had some time to further reflect on my actions I would like to revise my previous statements. I don’t really want to fight every single ignorant person I encounter. If I were to do that I would very possibly spend the rest of my life fighting. Even thinking about this possibility makes me tired, but there’s still a huge issue left to tackle. And that’s my anger and why it gets so out of control when I hear insults over my sexuality.

I am a minority, so I have lived my entire life dealing with bigots and racism. Some of it was very subtle and could be brushed off as oversensitivity, but some of it was outright and could not be confused for anything else. Still, I never felt that violent urge building in me after somebody made a joke about my slanted eyes. The closest I have ever gotten to a confrontation having to do with a racist was this guy who wouldn’t shut up about how Asian guys have really small penises and he wouldn’t stop talking about how small I probably was. So one day I just whipped out my penis and I asked him if he thought he could one up me. He never mentioned it again.

Gay insults are all about making the other guy feel smaller, weaker, and less masculine. They are about calling out a guy and telling him he is less of a man because he happens to like other men. Guys feel like they can do this to us because in their minds we have already emasculated ourselves by being with another guy. Manliness, Machismo, Masculinity, these aren’t words that would be considered synonymous with homosexual. This is why they call us fairies, fags and queers. They don’t think twice about it because they feel like they possess those qualities and we don’t, so they hold all the power. If I am truly honest with myself, I think this is the crux of my problem. How do I show another guy that I am still a man even if I happen to be gay? It’s not like I can whip out my masculinity so they can see mine is bigger.

I hate the idea of some random guy thinking he has got the best of me, because no matter how much I try to deny it, I still care about what other people think. I guess the worst part of my problem is the realization that the only reason I need to try and convince other people I am just as manly as any other guy is because I am still trying to convince myself of this. I KNOW being a man has absolutely nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the kind of person you are, the decisions you make and the way you choose to live your life. However at the same time my whole life I was brought up with this picture of how a person who made all those right decisions would look like. I just don’t see myself in that picture.

I guess I still have a lot to work on in terms of my personal development. However I am going to do my best to count to 10 and walk away the next time I hear somebody insulting my sexuality. Because even if I hate the feeling of letting them think they have won, I would hate myself more for becoming the kind of monster that is even worse than they are.

NYC Trip

I wrote a post a few days ago about my Easter and how I had an awesome time but I never got around to publishing it. Bradley and I met up with his family in NYC because his older brother was performing at this recital for his school. His brother is just as handsome as Bradley is, plus he can play the guitar like no other, I think there may have even been a few times when I contemplated throwing my underwear at him as he performed! Easter Sunday itself was also pretty awesome. I guess I made a decent impression on the boyfriend’s fam in Mexico, because they treated me like I had always been a part of their Easter traditions.

I had an awesome weekend, but it did little to appease this beast in me that has been growing for quite awhile. I think I may be one of those angry gays that freaks the fuck out when confronted with a narrow mind. There was a time when I could let ANYTHING roll off my back. A guy could say anything or do anything to me, and I could walk away and feel like I achieved some kind of moral victory. I can’t really do that anymore. All it takes is for somebody to look at me wrong and I am in their face ready to snap them in half!

On Monday Bradley and I went to go visit a friend of mine, Kyle, on Long Island in this place called Babylon. We were all walking down the street and I was absentmindedly holding Brad’s hand and leaning my head on his shoulder as we went. It was a good afternoon following an amazing weekend. But it all had to be ruined when this loser with is two friends decided to call us fags as we walked by them. It stopped me dead in my tracks, and I only had one thought, “I am going to make this fucker bleed!”

I walked up to the guys and I asked them which on of them called me a fag. The douche on the left took the credit, so after a quick jab to his face I kicked him as hard as I could right in the chest! He fell on his ass gasping for air that took more than a couple of seconds to come back to him. Once he’d fully recovered I asked him to say it again. He kind of just sat their on the floor looking at his friends and then back at me and all of a sudden I was angry all over again. I jumped on his chest and started punching him repeatedly. The second I drew blood from his country bumpkin ugly ass face, I felt better.

I wasn’t really worried that his friends were going to jump in because I had Bradley and Kyle right behind me. While I was positive that neither of them was okay with what I was doing, they wouldn’t let either of those losers touch me. I got up and we walked away. They obviously wanted me to explain what just went down and why, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Mostly because I wasn’t really sure why I reacted the way I did, but also because maybe I was enjoying the feeling of what had gone down.

So here I am 3 days later still trying to figure stuff out. But the longer I have to reflect on what I did, the more I am okay with it. Honestly, a person can have a conversation with me about ANYTHING, and I will have a calm and cogent discussion on whatever it is. But the second somebody thinks they can belittle me with my sexuality, then I am going to show them exactly how small I can make them feel with my fists! I am sick to death of people making me feel like I am less of a man than I actually am. I get that there are people all over the world who have to deal with the same issues, and they are unable to do anything about it. There are a million reasons why they take it, from the fact that they have to because of the society they live in, to the simple fact that they have bullies that are bigger and stronger than they are. But I live in a free country and I am a trained fighter so being bigger and stronger means little to nothing for me, so if somebody has something to say, they are just going to have to deal with the consequences of their words.

Officer Ernie

Every morning I wake up and get ready to go jogging, and then I remember that I have an injured knee and jogging is out of the question. So what’s a boy to do when he’s all dressed up with nowhere to go? Obviously to Starbucks to play on my laptop as I sip my blended ice concoction and procrastinate about doing my homework!

I am a creature of habit, so once I start doing something its practically impossible for me to stop. My morning Starbucks ritual is a direct result of me not being able to stop waking up every morning to get dressed and go running! The first couple of days were driving me crazy because I had all this energy and nowhere for it to be unleashed. But after a few days, I actually started to enjoy my leisure mornings catching up on emails and IM’ing my friends.

I noticed Officer Ernie on the first morning. He walked into the coffee shop with his over stylized spiky faux-hawk, the sexiest pair of thick black framed nerd glasses I have ever seen, and his cop uniform (what kind of boy would I be if I didn’t find a man in uniform sexy!?). Needless to say, I could not stop staring at him! I am not going to lie, I am pretty sure there was some serious drooling going on. So of course he took the table right next to mine and it took all of my will power to not walk up to him and start humping his leg!

I don’t really want to have this post drag on forever, so I am going to seriously truncate what happened next. Basically we became friends after that morning because it was just so easy for us to talk to each other. About three days a week since January, we would sit in front of the coffee shop and just shoot the shit. Then at some point we started to make plans outside of our morning routines. And I guess this is where my problems began.

I just want to make something very clear before I go any further. Though I initially was nothing but raging hormones around Officer Ernie, I never wanted anything from this guy except a friendship. However, at the same time I didn’t exactly treat him like I would any other new friend that I have met, and I wasn’t about to share this new friend with anybody else [read: I wasn’t telling Bradley].

He was tragically straight (or so I thought at the time), but then again so are most of the men in my life! I think it’s what keeps me honest. I guess maybe in the back of my mind I thought there might be a possibility that he was gay or bi-curious or however you want to classify it. All I know for sure is it really did start off as innocently as could be. There is no way that anybody would ever think that either of us could possibly be gay just by looking at us. The same is true that there’s no way we could have looked at each other and assumed that there was a possibility for sex.

In hindsight I can see it clearly; I was flirting with him since day one. It was subtle and could easily have passed as friendly banter, and even to myself I still try and rationalize it that way. Eventually things progressed to the point where we were both being pretty obvious with our desires and it was just a matter of who was going to say something first. He did. So that’s when I told him about Bradley. Of course he was a little surprised because up until that point I had never mentioned I had a boyfriend, much less my sexual preferences.

I set Officer Ernie straight, so to speak. After I was done I felt like a complete asshole. I think the gravity of this entire situation finally hit me. I fucked up. But I still clung to the fact that I hadn’t done anything wrong! Technically I just made a friend that wanted to have sex with me, and if that doesn’t happen on a daily basis in my life, then I am just not having a normal day! Still this was different. Even though I didn’t want to do anything with him, I had every intention to have him want to do all those things with me. How fucked up is that!?

The shit really hit the fan when I got all depressed about it. Bradley picked up on it and wanted to know what was going on. So I told him… All he wanted to hear was me say I was sorry, but for some reason I couldn’t because I was still clinging to this idea that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The more I refused to just apologize for whatever it was that I had done, the more it became apparent to both of us that I was in the wrong.

I don’t know what else to say. I hurt Bradley and I am very sorry for it.

St. Patty's Day Fun

I got peer pressured into going out last night. We ended up at this bar full of bro's. They all knew me from the assorted parties I had hosted throughout the year (of course I had no idea who any of them were), and I proceeded to spend the next 4 hours doing shots and drinking beers with these guys. I don't even know how many times I threw up, but however many times it was, it wasn't enough! I still feel like shit.

What's even worse is how I couldn't sleep last night. I only got about 4 hours and now I am up left to wallow in my miserableness. I guess I should be thrilled that I went to this super expensive bar and never opened my wallet, while still getting wasted and not having to flirt with any guys that I had no desire to sleep with!

I also feel really bad for Bradley. He's even worse off than I am right now. The poor dude partied like it was his first St Patty's day (probably because technically it was because it was the first one away from home!). His friends got me some awesome pictures of him doing solo keg stands and it almost brought a tear in my eye because I was so proud that I was the one who taught him how to do that!

Okay, I have a final in a couple of hours. I am going to go and drink a shit load of water and then try to jog this bitch out. I am pretty sure my knee is going to hate me for it, but none of those stupid hangover remedies ever work for me.

It's all good.

On Thursday I was having a hard time apologizing because I am a bit of a jackass who has issues admitting when he fucks up. But eventually I swallowed my pride and owned up to my mistakes. I am extremely lucky to be with a guy understanding and mature enough to forgive me and not hold any grudges. Then of course we had a few hours of make up sex that was so mind blowingly awesome and completely draining that we spent most of Friday in bed recovering. Who knew that 5 days of fighting could lead to one of the most erotic nights of my life!?

At some point we had to get out of bed and eat, so we grabbed some food and an armful of DVDs from a box full of them I have yet to unpack and headed back to our room. I was a little embarrassed by the selection that he’d grabbed because they weren’t at all indicative of my movie watching tastes! I would rather not list off the movies that Bradley grabbed and just get right to the point. We chose, Can’t Hardly Wait. He’d never heard of it before! It makes sense because the movie came out when he was in the third grade. Sometimes Bradley makes me feel so old! I just keep on having to tell myself we are only 3 (and a half) years apart from each other. And not think about how when I was a freshman in high school, he was in the third grade.

I know that a lot of people will be disappointed about how I spent Pi Day doing nothing but stay in bed watching TV with my boyfriend. What can I say? I like my boyfriend more than math! Okay fine, I freakin LOVE my boyfriend. And it has absolutely nothing to do with his sculpted abs, movie star good looks and huge ass donkey dick! hahaha.... Okay maybe it has a little to do with those thing!

It's My Fault!

Me and Bradley are fighting. It's my fault and for some reason I am having a huge problem saying sorry! I am thinking it in my head! And every time I see him all I want to do is give him a big hug and tell him it was all my fault, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to do it! I must be the most emotionally immature and retarded guy to ever walk the earth!

I don't understand why he can't just know that I am sorry! He can obviously tell that I am sorry by the way I am walking around with my tail between my legs. Is it really necessary that I say the words out loud also!?

FUCK! I really am sorry Bradley. You know I love you and I will do anything for you, I just can't get those words out because I am a fucking bastard. Don't get me wrong, I really will apologize because I love you way more than I do my foolish pride. But it doesn't change the fact that I really have to practically strangle my pride before I will actually be able to say the words.

Me and My Uncle

My uncle that is currently living with me is the guy who taught me how to dance. I remember sitting on the back porch of my grandmother's house as he and his crew spent hours practicing their routines. I was only 4 at the time, but I KNEW that I was witnessing something amazing as they perfected their drops, flares, and pikes. There was something magical in the way they moved, and from the very beginning I wanted to know all there was to possibly know about this art form!

One of the reasons why my uncle and I are so close is because of all the time we used to spend with each other dancing. He was always so patient with me as he taught me everything that he knew. We would stay up all night long making sure we got all the moves down, and then he would take me with him when he performed and I got to see the whole routine and how the crowds reacted to it.

My uncle is a teacher, so he doesn’t really make much money. The sad thing is he works 4 times as hard as I do and he has twice as much education as I do and I make so much more money than he does it’s a fucking crime! His divorce has just been finalized and he’s being asked to pay out in child support more than what he can actually afford, so he’s had to take a second job. Lucky for him he still has a lot of contacts in the dance world and he now makes a decent second wage working at one of his friend’s dance studios teaching the more complicated stuff.

As I have said a million times before, I love to dance! But it's more than just me enjoying the music, it’s the attention that dancing gives me. I love walking onto a dance floor and knowing that everybody has their eyes on me and they are all in awe of what I can do. If you do it right, when you dance people think about sex and how good you are at it. Most people know that a bad dancer is going to be a lousy lay; but the guy that hits the floor and starts a ripple at the tips of his fingers and follows it through the heels of his feet, like his whole body had just turned to liquid, will know how to pleasure you all night long!

Lately I have been spending more time in the dance studio than I have in the ring punching people. I know! I am just as shocked as you guys are that there’s more than one way for me to calm my nerves. I feel like a kid again with all the time we spend with my uncle. It’s the same dynamic that we have always had. I sit there as he freestyles with my jaw on the floor knowing I am witnessing innovation and creativity that very few people in this world are capable of.

Anyway, that's me, and that’s called a pike. And yeah, it’s definitely one of the things that makes me cooler than you!

Dear Dad,

I know you think I am a pretty courageous guy. I know this, because you have said as much to me. I can jump out of an airplane and not give it a second thought. I can walk into a room and KNOW that, one on one, I can kick everybody’s ass in the room. I can travel to third world countries, not knowing the language or anybody there, but still have an awesome time! I can look you right in the eyes and tell you that you are no longer welcome in my home, even though we both know you are the most intimidating man to ever walk the planet. And I can send this letter to you, even though I know you won’t believe a word of it.

But I do have fears. And they are so big and scary that even thinking about them now causes me anxiety so bad, that right at this very moment, my hands is shaking and my ears are burning red. At night when I am in bed and I feel like I have to urinate, I will do my best to fall asleep and hold it until morning. I am not scared that there are monsters under my bed and if I get up they are going to pull me under and eat me alive. I am afraid I am going to forget to put the toilet seat down.

The first time I forgot to put the seat down, I was 6 and you were away on a business trip. I remember her grabbing me by my hair while I was still sleeping and dragging me to the bathroom. She was screaming at me, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying because I was still half asleep. Then she opened a drawer and pulled out a neon yellow brush with black plastic bristles. By this time I was awake enough to fully understand what was about to happen to me. She cursed at me and told me how stupid I was for not being able to remember something as trivial as putting the toilet seat down. Then as she was still gripping me by my hair, she began to hit me with that yellow brush. She hit me so hard the brush snapped in two, so she pulled out her curling iron and started hitting me with that. I don’t know how long it went on, but what I can tell you is it was only the beginning.

Do you ever wonder about my strange disdain for potatoes? How I basically run out of a room full speed whenever someone even pulls one out to peel it. I think I was 8, I could have been 7. She always liked to make those scalloped potatoes, because in the beginning she wasn’t a very good cook and that was one of the only things she could make. One night, when you were away on another business trip she made those potatoes. I had just eaten at a friend’s house and I wasn’t in the mood for those nasty potatoes. She asked me to finish them, and I told her I was full. The next thing I remember she had grabbed me by my hair was slamming my face into the plate. Then she grabbed a hand full of those potatoes and she smashed them into my face. They got into my eyes and they stung so bad I couldn’t think straight. They went up my nose, and they filled my mouth and there were a few very long moments there when I thought I was going to die.

I could go on and on and tell you why to this day I refuse to let my hair grow out more than 2 inches. Or even if I am starving, I will never have a snack at your house. Or why I would never leave my room until I heard somebody else walking around the house in the morning. Or why I didn’t want to go on that camping trip with my friends in the 5^th grade. Or a million other things, where there was a particularly rough beating attached with a very important life lesson for me to learn. But there’s no point, because you won’t believe it.

I was ecstatic when you told me that you knew I was gay and you loved me no matter what. I was willing to fool myself into believing deep down there was a little part of you that was finally willing to accept the truth about what happened between me and your wife. But in the end you still chose to believe her over me. This is something that has affected me in more ways than my sexuality ever will, and by telling me that I have never made things easy on your wife, you are hurting me more than my mother telling me I am going to hell ever could. When you tell me I have never made things easy on her you are telling me that I am a liar, and all those nights I spent crying myself to sleep (and make no mistake by thinking those nights are behind me) were all brought on by my overactive imagination.

I can’t move on from this and I can’t forgive you for all those years where you did nothing. I just don’t want to see you anymore. I can’t look at you without thinking about her, and when I think about her, I can’t function.

I love you.

I got an ouchie!

I do a lot of things that most people would call stupid. Most of the time I don’t think about what I am doing until I am in the middle of doing it and then it’s too late to do anything about it! Like the time I decided to ride my unicycle down a hill with heavy traffic, or that time I jumped into a lake with HUGE sheets of ice all over.

I don’t know if I have that little voice inside my head that’s supposed to tell you, “Hey stop being a dumb ass and calm the hell down before you end up in a wheelchair!” when you are about to do something stupid. What you see me doing in this picture isn’t even a quarter as stupid as what I did yesterday. I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me! I swear to god I don’t have a death wish, I am just stupid!

A couple of friends of mine (all pro skaters) went for a little road trip to this abandoned lot about 60 miles east of SD. I basically went along to shoot the video, but after awhile I wanted to join in on the action! We went around for about an hour, then somebody got the bright idea to tie a towline to the back of one of the trucks and go for a ride. The last time I attempted this activity, it didn’t turn out so well…

Needless to say, I wiped out big time! I didn't really learn my lesson the first 3 falls, but on my fourth attempt I definitely learned my lesson! I got a little bit of a scrape on my face (there was so much blood I couldn't see out of my right eye!). My aunt is a plastic surgeon and she was the first person I went to so she could take a look at my face. She freaked the fuck out and spent the next hour lecturing me on how much time and effort was going to have to go into my face so I won't have a scar. She didn't ask me if I was okay, or if I was in any pain, she was just concerned about the way I look! At least I know where I get my shallowness from.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own skin. Life changes, so I do my best to change with it. I am constantly vacillating between happiness, anger, sadness, and bliss so rapidly that I sometimes have to stop and think just to figure out how I am feeling.

There's a lot of shit going on in my life that would definitely send me into an awful depression if I let it, but casual observers of my life would never know it! I mean you definitely get a sense of it when you read my blog because if anything, this is probably the only place where I don't try and censor how I am feeling. But to people out there in the "real world" I kind of come off looking like one of those people that are so sickeningly positive and eternally happy that you would probably want to punch me in the face!

For me, the best way to cope with the stress of life and all the crap that goes along with it, is by forcing myself to have fun. I have been surfing, snowboarding and hanging with friends. The general idea being if I pretend like I am having fun, eventually I will actually start to have fun! It’s worked and things have been going very well for me. The problem comes when I stop and I think about what I am doing and I start to feel like a HUGE poser!

For awhile I was having a lot of personal conflict with being fake. It really seemed to be counter intuitive to what I was trying to accomplish in my life. Then one day after a particularly hard workout with Johnny, we went to meet a third friend for lunch. This dude, who is a very close friend of both of ours, showed up and he put his hand on my shoulder and asked me how I was doing. It was such a genuine question and the way he asked it you could really tell that he wanted to know the real answer. So for a split second I was just about to start pouring my heart out to him, then Johnny interjected!

“Why the fuck are you going to ask a grown man how he’s feeling!? That’s like asking a retard what he's thinking!”

I fell on the floor laughing! It had to be one of the funniest things that I had ever heard in my entire life. I think I have been spending too much time trying to be open and honest with everybody 24/7. At the end of the day I am still a man and certain things just don’t come as easy to me as they would my female counterparts. It doesn’t mean that I am an emotionless bastard that isn’t in touch with his feelings if I don’t cry during, Beaches! It means that I am a man God dammit!

So many rainbows!

A friend of mine had a little get together at his house over the weekend. It was just a few friends drinking some beers and hanging out. As usual, I was "fashionably late" and the last one to arrive because of it. There on the floor before I walked into the house was a fairly large group of rainbows chillin on the deck. For some reason this made me smile. So I took a picture of it with my phone, then threw my rainbows into the mix, and went inside to join the fun.