Hey Miss Gurl! Guess Who’s in Town?

I really don’t feel like doing the blog tonight. I know you’ve heard that before but I think it’s more important than one might even think to admit that. It’s important that I’m honest. Something else it demonstrates to me is that I’m willing to do things I don’t want to do as part of this process. After all, On September 1, I didn’t even feel like I wanted to be alive anymore and I’ve felt that way a handful of times since. I committed to blogging daily for this “last year of my life.” I haven’t missed a day yet and I don’t intend to. There’s also some other things that I need to become willing to do (or in some cases not do). “Baby steps,” I guess. Or maybe that’s a cop out. Often in my life, when I’ve been in the midst of doing some major life overhauls and I’ve shared honestly about the process with a confidant, I’ve heard from them, “Take it easy. You’re too hard on yourself!” I get the sentiment and there is likely truth in it. I am very hard on myself at times. But part of that comes from the disastrous consequences of when I’ve been too gentle on myself. I guess I’m just afraid that If I’m not at least part Drill Instructor to my inner recruit, then I’ll end up drunk and destitute again. It wouldn’t even have to be “drunk” per se as I have filled the slot once filled with alcohol with food, sex, spending and codependency often and in ways that threaten to be at least as deadly as the alcohol once was.

Part of why I don’t want to blog tonight is because I have been completely truthful with you all through this process and sometimes I’m embarrassed to tell you honestly what’s going on with me. The truth is, parts of this trip to California have been incredible. I had actually forgotten how much I love LA, maybe that was on purpose. Part of the trip has been difficult as well. To realize “what might have been?” No, it’s something else. Something more etherial. Maybe even existential. I left here with Adam so that he could go to med school with the promise that I did, we would move to the city of my choice for his residency so that I could continue with my career. That’s the reason he’s doing his residency at Mt. Sinai in NYC. The reason that I’m not there is because he walked on his part of the bargain. Against marriage equality for queers? Fuck you and everything you touch. I don’t give a goddamn what god you worship or how as long as you’re not hurting children (and that’s actually a different argument for another time) but you have robbed me of the dignity of having a legal claim to what I worked so hard for. You’ll get yours. So will he. (And obviously I’m not talking to those of you who support my equality— and I actually don’t have any readers who don’t the fuck I’m talking to).

I don’t watch TV. Funny that I should be considering LA as one of the possible next steps. I’d be looking to write for the screen(s) as well. If the set’s on, it’s probably sports which is weird because even though I turned out to be a pretty athletic adult, my organized sports playing ended in Junior High. With the exception, of course, of my rugby playing last season in New York which I loved. Unfortunately, I broke my leg in the first game so that pretty much ended my season (and career. I know I could continue to do it even though I’m at least fifteen years older than the next oldest guy on the team.) But I have plans to stay very active for however long I’m left on the marble and since I don’t do anything half-ass, I know the surefire way to give myself enough debilitating injuries to keep me on the bench is to try to continue playing a sport that I wish I’d found as a teenager. Hell, I wish I’d played any sport as a teenager. It wasn’t that it didn’t interest me. I’d have love to play sports. I started out playing sports: pee wee football, junior high football, little league baseball, even basketball for a while in eighth grade. But the problem was is that the community of guys that made up the teams were also the community of guys who’d been calling me faggot in the hall since I first stepped on the school bus for first grade. I never felt welcome among them. Why in the fuck would I want to be on a team with them? Boy this is one disjointed blog. See why I didn’t want to write it? I need sleep.

Okay, I’ve switched back over to Sports Center. I was trying to watch something different to imagine what it would be like to write for television. I had it on Modern Family. I know a bunch of you are fans because it’s a pretty highly rated show. Actually, I don’t know that a bunch of you are fans because actually the kind of people who read my blog might not like a show like Modern Family. I actually got a couple of chuckles but then the gay couple came in. What the fuck?! I mean I know a lot of people are jumping up and down with glee (no, wait that’s another show) because we’re “represented” on a top rated show. (“We” being LGBTQRSTUVs) I know it’s not the first time. We had Will and Grace after all. Here’s why I couldn’t make it in Hollywood: I don’t think I can hold my tongue (pen, pad or laptop) about things that are important to me and it seems like you have to do a lot of schmoozing and sucking up to get anywhere around here. I probably know people who’ve worked on both those shows and here I am shit talking them— well, not yet, but I’m about to shit talk them. I know I do— know someone that is. Leslie Jordan won an Emmy for his fine work on Will and Grace. I love Leslie. Always have. And yeah, Leslie’s about as gay as a park full of balloons and I’m not one of those self-hating fags that winces every time one of the more “flamboyant” of our brotherhood opens his mouth but… Where am I going with this? I seem to have gotten off track. Oh yeah, Modern Family. Nevermind. I don’t have the energy. I’ll just leave it at this: can we not please have an equal amount of examples of gay people who are not the fucking stereotype? I mean how long would we put up with Aunt Jamima or Slaphappy Sambo representations of black people? The answer is about a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation and negative stereotypes around race still crop up too often.  I reckon I won’t live to see a more fair and varied representation of gay people in the mainstream unless I write them. And I don’t seem to be busy writing anything do I?

See y’all tomorrow.