She gon' take everything I own...

Y'know, I'm tired of losing friends.

That's the hardest thing about the coming out process, bar none. Luckily, for me they've been peripheral friends-- kids I'd hang with and whatnot, who were fun but not necessarily people I'd trust. I don't know what I'd do if my mom had disowned me, for example.

We actually had a talk about this over Winter Break, my mother and I, about what I would have done. In the back of my mind I had a few friends whom I'd already come out to who I expected to put me up for a while until I found something more permanent. Then, there was the fact that I was going to college the year after, so I was hoping that would work. If my mom didn't have my back, everybody else in my family would have gotten word of it and it probably would have been a mass disowning. As it is now, I haven't come out to my aunts or any of the older relatives.

Everything turning out great was entirely situational, which I think it took me a while to get used to. If I'd been born to, say, any of my other aunts, for example, I'd have been kicked out, definitely. Or something would have happened, like sending me down South to 'fix' me. For a while, though, I think I had this privileged attitude like "well, if you're not out, you're not worth my time"-- but that's so myopic and immature, I think I've realized. For example, if I knew my mother'd disown me, especially since she's all I have, I never would have even come out at all. Definitely not in school, either, especially since word would get back home at some point. And so I'd definitely be in my 20's or 30's before I eventually took the big step, once I was out of school and had my own stability.

Anyway, for a while, I think I just frowned upon the whole DL thing-- and I think I still do, to some extent. I can't help it-- lying's unfortunate, especially about your sexuality. When it's necessary, it's necessary; but when you're 38 and still 'in the closet', I have trouble accepting that. I mean, I can understand wanting to maintain connections to people who'd throw you out of their lives, if they'd known, but I don't know. I guess I'm simple, but if I'm so replaceable that you could stop talking to me over whom I sleep with and whom I don't, then I wouldn't be able to help coming to the conclusion that I never really meant much to you at all. Y'know? But it could just be me.

I think there's a snobbery that comes with coming out, at least for me, like we're doing the right thing and the liars and deceivers aren't. And, while that may be what I think, I should also try to be humble and remember that we're all just human. So the self-righteousness is probably unnecessary.

This was because of someone else recently finding out I'm gay, which really isn't much of a secret anyway. [S]he and I aren't friends anymore, I guess.

Which reminds me, something that I still haven't gotten over, and still should probably confront my cousins over, is them reading my Myspace, seeing the 'gay' for sexual orientation, and sending it through the entire family chain. That s*it was ridiculous, especially since they act as if it never happened, and we still act normally. I mean, now there's just this tension whenever dating comes up, and I really don't know why they thought that'd even be interesting to do. Especially since they weren't being malicious.

I try not to care about too much, I guess, just keep things simple. Be moral. Live my life, love as much as I can, be as honest as I can.

Definitely hard, though.

I wanna wade in the sonic joy.

Now that I'm sober, not half-asleep and I have a full belly, I think I can write something not completely vapid.

Oh, yeah, I was talking to someone the other day about how important vocabulary is, and how detrimental college has actually been to the amount of vocab I actually remember. The result is that I'm gonna put up a new word every entry that I didn't know the definition of off-hand.

Starting now.

Pusillanimous- poor-spirited, unmanly, lacking in courage and manly strength and resolution; contemptibly fearful

Wow, that's a mouthful. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever encountered it.

Big vocabularies mean stronger writing...or so I used to believe in 10th grade.

Anyway, onto real things. This past Saturday, I had a pow-wow with some of my gal pals after going to some parties over pizza and vodka.[Well, if that's not gay man behavior, I don't know what is.]

The topic of the conversation was that while we may talk about relationship woes and stuff, I usually don't talk about my issues, at all. It's always them and their boyfriends, but as I said, I'm more of a listener, anyway. Well, that and I prefer to think they're not really equipped to handle my problems or will suggest solutions that don't really work for me. But that's also just because I'm weird.

So, they made me give a diatribe about my recent dating history, I guess, and I eventually wound up saying something to effect, "I'm tired of white guys" or something like that, or the gay community at large is a racist institution. And I think I took it for granted that they'd let it slide, but one of my friends made a joke about me not liking white people, which isn't really true it all. I'd like to think I was mainly venting, but I'm also just...tired of white guys.

I've only dated a few, but I think I've been with more white guys than Black or Latino, probably. I guess what I really meant in less offensive terms is that I'm tired of the white guys on the cover of Out/whatever other gay-themed magazines there are, who all seem to share interests in the same garbage. It's like, if I want to date someone in school, the pool is pretty much white-- and to encounter them, I'm going to have to dance to their bad Madonna remixes, or go to some dinner/play/whatever, or buy into some culture that I have nothing in common with. I just feel like I've had my fill, and I'm really uninterested.

For a while, I think I was partially under the impression that dating people from similar backgrounds as me[by which I mean, poor] would be backwards, that it'd be contrary to any sort of upward mobility that I was trying to get. And so I wound up selling myself on this glitter-and-Abercrombie lifestyle that really doesn't work for me at all.

Of course, I don't mean to characterize an entire race of people either, but I'm tired of being careful with my words. Words are weapons, man.

It's like, you've got the white guys who are looking for black guys[and that just grosses me out to hell and back], and then you've got the 'normal' ones, I guess, who range anywhere along the spectrum. And, for me anyway, to get with the normal ones usually meant aligning my interests with them and a trivialization of my own.

So, maybe you can blame a bad dating history.

I still don't think this is satisfactory, either, but maybe someone else will make the point with a much stronger argument and I'll just latch on.

Maybe we can say this was the entry about gayness? But it's about blackness, too.

Whatever. Maybe I'll just ditch the keyword thing.

"Inside out, upside down twisting besides myself."

By the way, the entry title and that quote are lyrics from some Imogen Heap songs-- I was on her album, "Speak for yourself" this entire summer. Definitely give her stuff a listen if you've got the time-- "Hide and Seek" not so much, I think.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Chao, kids.

Edit: I was still thinking about it.

I think the truth of the matter is that I don't necessarily have a negative interest in white males, it's more so that I've got a much greater interest in gay men of color.

It tends to come out as me getting annoyed with white guys, if only because I feel like that has to be an active thing, since that's all I'm confronted with. Maybe.

Sorry, I couldn't resist adding.