Thursday, March 30, 2006 | by nathan

Freedom - a postscript.

Part of the reason I have this blog is so I can practice pieces that are going to show up somewhere else. As some of you know I am currently working on a nonfiction book tentatively titled Your Mom Already Knows: Reflections on Life as a Gay Christian. For those of you who don’t know, I am currently working on a nonfiction book tentatively titled Your Mom Already Knows: Reflections on Life as a Gay Christian.

Just so we have that out of the way.

But also, I wrote a post last week that was all about anger, which was fueled by the presence in town of the Soulforce Equality Ride, which was integral in stirring up all this latent need to talk about these issues I have around my spirituality and being gay. Also, it made me miss Bryon Chambers more than I knew how to deal with, and it made me realize that there are people in my life - important people - who have never heard the full story of how I came to be okay with being gay and being a follower of Jesus. This is partly because, when I am asked for this story, I do a horrible job of telling it, because I have never been as much an oral communicator as a writer. When I try to tell the story, I have problems because I get peppered with questions, which are fine, but which trip me up a bit, interrupting my thought processes and - to be polite - fucking with the narrative.

I started telling myself the story the other day in the car, because, as I have said before, "Left to its own devices, my mind spends a lot of time having conversations with people who are not there." And it was coming out fine, because I was telling it to no one. And as I am able to write this blog in the belief that no one really reads it (except you, Chambers - I found you out), I thought I would do what I promised and tell the story as best I know how - by writing it.

[Keep in mind that this is the story, abridged. Some details are not present, as they are not appropriate for a public forum. I don’t want y’all picturing me knocking boots is what I’m trying to say]. 

I remember being seven years old and staring for hours - no exaggeration - at the drawing of the guys from the video game "Double Dragon" in my Nintendo Power magazine. 

In elementary school I had an experience about which I won’t go into detail, but that I will note because there are people who read this blog who have heard about it. I thought that this was what had screwed me up; after some counseling, a lot of reading, and a great, great, great deal of prayer, I have come to see that it was not nearly as significant as I once thought, because as it turns out, it is something that happens to a large percentage of kids. And no, I was not molested or abused in any way, and definitely happened after the experience with the Double Dragon guys.

By thirteen I was buying comic books regularly and thinking almost endlessly about the male superheroes, in their spandex. I still think about them from time to time; I think that anyone not attuned to somewhat of a gay sensibility has some trouble understanding the appeal of the X-Men. Also, I used to steal workout magazines from the grocery store I walked past on my way home from school; I was a short, squat little kid who was clearly not athletic. I told myself at the time that if I bought them, the store manager would probably call my mom just to let her know that her kid was a big ol’ fag.

Also, I was public about the fact that I wrote poetry and listened to Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin avidly. Who was I kidding? (You people who knew me then, please refrain from answering; Shelley Pope enlightened me to the conversations that were had, once upon a time, when I ran into her at Angles several years ago). 

When I was in high school I hooked up with a guy on a school trip, and we took to meeting clandestinely after school. To this day he is still not out, and as such I am adamant about not giving further details as to his identity. Suffice it to say, the subject had been on my mind for some time. And having been raised in a vaguely Christian home, I had some vague guilt about the tryst, and as such, I told no one. I wrote pages and pages about it in my journal.

At school I never would have told anyone, not even the friends I had who I thought would be cool with it. (Turns out, my mom was asking these people behind my back if they thought I was gay. Moms know. I’m telling you. Moms always know.) But I would be outraged when people called someone "fag," or said something horrible about gay people. It was always the big Jesus people who did this, too. One guy in particular, Marshall, would just bring the subject up out of nowhere - "The Evils of The Gay." Also, he laughed when our 10th grade history teacher read a passage from The Autobiography of Olaudah Equaino, which described a slave being whipped.

These people were what Christians were to me all through high school, and I was really not interested in being around them. But also, Jesus was nipping along at my heels all the time, and I took the occasional lurch of faith here and there. I got baptized in my church one week, which seemed to please my extended family. I started writing more and more about God, trying to figure him out in my own way through my words; I figured me and God were buddies. But also, the people who seemed to be on a "daily telephone call" basis with God seemed to me to be as fake and shallow as anyone else around me.

Of course the Holy Spirit won. My actual conversion story is one for another post, but there you have it; at some point I gave up fighting, and was leapt - maybe dragged - into faith.  

And so I became a believer, the summer after I graduated high school. If this had not happened, I am positive that Bryon would have dragged me out of the closet along with him and I would have gone straight to Wake and joined GSSA. But, I became a believer, and immediately my guilt factor began to lurch upward. I stopped meeting the guy; I actually wrote him a letter telling him that we could not get together anymore.

So I went to Wake, and found a church with which I fell madly in love. The people in it were college students, and thinkers, and givers. They took me in like I was their own, fed me wonderful meals and fantastic theology and warm music that, okay, more often than not lapsed into the realm of the cheesy. But I knew from the first moment I walked into Redeemer that I would be cared for, and I felt the need - the deep call - to stay. And I did. They took me to Ireland for the first time, and helped me to go back again.

My college pastor, Greg, was the second person I told I was gay. See, here I was living this life as a believer, with this amazing community around me. Anyone would pray with me at any time. And yet I was also going crazy, because I was getting to the point where I would kill someone just to spend two seconds standing uncomfortably close to another guy (well, uncomfortable for him). One Thursday night I got on the internet and found a guy to hook up with. I came home afterward and cried and cried; partially out of relief, and partially out of guilt. I felt like my heart was being twisted in a vice; it became difficult to breathe.

That weekend I was set to go away with Redeemer’s youth group, with whom I was volunteering, on a camping trip to Boone. I went, and spent a whole lot of the time praying my head off to not be gay anymore. I had prayed this many, many times before, of course, but this was the point at which I got with it. And I thought that, at some point, God began to give me an answer: you need to talk about this with someone.

So I grabbed Tish, and we talked, and sang, and prayed. Maybe in that order. In the basement piano room of my dorm. She suggested I talked to Greg, which I did, and both of them reminded me that, despite the guilt in which I was drowning, the Gospel was bigger; my feelings about myself did not define who I was.

Also, Greg hooked me up with a counselor named Mike, who I started seeing in the spring. I was meeting with this counselor, who was a nice guy, and taking my first philosophy course in a slew of several more (I ended up getting a minor).

Mike taught me a lot. The most important thing I think he taught me was to stop making excuses for myself. For instance, I was late to our meeting several times. I would come in babbling excuses and half-assed apologies, and he would calmly just say that I needed to say honestly that I did not leave on time, and that excuses were a way of disowning blame, which was mine. I think that the Gospel - and a lot of your better philosophy - tells us the same: own everything about who you are, even the stuff that is not good.

Mike didn’t know it, but he had set me down a road. But not to get ahead of myself. See, Mike was also guiding me in talking about a lot of things. I had been reading all these books about homosexuality and its supposed root causes. I came to believe that my parents’ divorce, being bullied in school, "not having a father figure" (which I did, actually, even though we did not always see eye to eye, or get to spend loads of time together), had forced me to sexualize my need for male closeness.

And I went and told my mom this. She, I found out, was more or less murdered by this, because she could see how much I was suffering, and how much worse it was getting, and here I had gone and told her it was all her fault. Our relationship was not the same for a long, long time after that, and this bothered me more than I what I was comfortable with. And yet I was still committed to the idea of it all. I did not want to have these feelings anymore.

So that summer I went off to Ireland, which kicked the shit out of all of this, because for the first time in my spiritual life, my sexuality was not at the forefront of anything I was dealing with prayer-wise; it was not the first thing I thought about every day, and the last thing I thought about every night. I was slowly growing used to having it there, I felt, and in Ireland, there were much bigger fish to fry, spiritually. I realized, for instance, that I idolize ministry, that I think that people who are involved in ministry are automatically better than the rest of us; I realized that my desire for people to like me and think I am cool was taking over everything about me. I did Sonship, and witnessed so many tiny miracles that I tend to lose track of them all.

For the second time in my life I felt Jesus tailing along at my heels. I needed Ireland to remind me that my existence was not about the "Christian life." It is about my faith, and learning to walk in my faith with actual faith, and not relying on my image of what I think a good believer looks like but on who I know to be the Holy Spirit in me: Jesus.

That’s the short version of Ireland. None of us have the time for me to tell you the long version.

When I got home, both of my parents were waiting for me at the airport in Dallas. And yet there was still so much strained between them and me, because I was still nursing this grudge against them for making me gay, and mom was still throbbing with ache because she believed it was her fault.

Three weeks later I left for Italy, which was almost the exact opposite of Ireland. Here I was mostly alone, as the only believer I had to talk to, really, was Jack Lynch. I love Jack to death, but for those of you who know him - I mean, c’mon. Not the kind of thing he’s keen to talk about.

Also, I was poor and resentful of the rich people I lived with. They thought me strange and to be feared because I did not want to binge drink with them. Also, we grew to like each other. That was the last week of November that that happened.

Anyway, I found out that there were gays in Venice, and I met several, and felt horrible about it. I would spend literally entire days on the steps of the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute, praying. Asking not to feel this way anymore. Asking for anything else to think about. What I did not understand at the time - hindsight is 20/20 - is that God was there, like, "Um, hello? You’re in Venice! There’s tons else to think about!" But all of this thinking, and wanting to be different, and believing that I had to be changed - it was making me horribly, horribly narcissistic. More than usual, I mean.

By the time I got home I was absolutely worn to the bone. I was so shit-faced drunk with it all, because I had spent the last three years just mind-fucking it absolutely to death, that I got back to Wake and seemed, to me anyway, almost unrecognizable. All squinty and paranoid.

Some stuff happened. A friend recommended that I sign up for this support group that was supposedly "proven" to change people. I was so washed-out that I figured, hey - what the hell? Why not? So I signed up, and they immediately sent me an email saying that they had no spots left. I would be immediately added to the list for the August, 2001 session.  

I took to my journal, and wrote copiously about this. Was this a sign? I felt like someone was knocking hard on a door I was terrified to open. Again, I was ignoring Jesus as he followed along beside me, waiting for me to look up and see where he was pointing.

I put up an online profile on planetout.com saying that I was confused, and needed to talk to someone who was not going to tell me immediately to go back to counseling or more support groups. A Wake student named Jay sent me an email and we talked a few times. He had nothing especially useful for me, except that he was someone who seemed comfortable in his own skin, more or less.

I prayed and prayed. I told a few more friends what I was going through. They prayed with me. One of my friends and I took a long, long drive to the beach one day and talked extensively about this. That semester, no fewer than five of the men in the faith communities of which I was a part came out to me. Some of them I was like, "Okay, well. Duh." Others were a complete shock. Some of them I am fairly certain have told almost no one in the five years since then.

Also, I clandestinely ordered videotapes of "Queer As Folk" through eBay and watched them when my roommate was out. I knew very little, but I was fairly certain that no matter what road I took, I needed to know what I would be walking away from. As it was, I had no idea what gay people were like, except for Chambers, whom I loved (and still love) very, very deeply.

I am not sure I can convey how much I prayed about this. Entire quiet times, afternoons, nights, many sleepless. And I was mad, too, that I was praying so much about this that I seemed to be praying about nothing else. I felt on the edge of a breakdown. Also, I was getting very, very sick.

I had been battling an infection since the previous winter, when I went to stay in Cincinnati with my friend Eric Ankenman, who is very cold-natured and liked to sleep with his windows open in his dorm room, which was atop a hill. I had been to doctors in Ireland and Italy - the guy in Venice diagnosed me with the mumps - and had never got to feeling very well. I spent almost one entire week in Ireland in bed with a severe cough. And now, back in the States, I was getting really sick. And losing weight too quickly.

I went to Student Health. They diagnosed me with high blood pressure brought on by stress and referred me to a University counselor. We started talking.

I laid out everything. Everything I had been through, and was going through. Everything in my childhood in gory detail, and adolescence, which was just no fun whatsoever. He listened - I think he probably said three words as I spilled the whole story over two sessions - and when I was done, I felt completely empty, but in a good way, like after you have a good, long cry. Burdenless. He gaped at me and almost had tears in his eyes himself.

What I got to as I talked to him was that, looking over the course of my life, I could see that I was being brought to this moment all along, that it was time for me to stop talking so much about how good God is and just sitting around waiting for him to change me, as a testament to that goodness. I asked myself questions aloud, in those sessions. Was I willing to believe that God was good even if He had made me gay and wanted me that way? Would my life still be good? Would I still have fellowship? Would anyone at all love me? God had promised to prosper me and not to harm; would I take Him at His word when, deep down, I felt I had always known that He wanted me to accept this and go on with my life?

I felt completely washed out, clean. I wasn’t sure I wanted the life I was seeing on "Queer As Folk," but I did want something other than what I had had for so long - self-loathing, spiritual obsession, constant hysteria, high blood pressure, compulsive sexual acting out and then immediate tearful prayer sessions.

I went to Dr. Boyd, who was a professor in the Religion Department specializing in men’s studies. I laid a short version of the story out for him and asked for recommendations. He piled me up with books, and I began to read. We met for an hour once a week every week after that. I devoured everything he gave me. Some titles he recommended were out of print; I found them on eBay; one was autographed. I took this as another small sign.

One I loved was Mel White’s Stranger at the Gate, which, okay, not my cup of tea theologically. But it was at its core a touching, sad story of someone struggling with self-acceptance after years of things like electro-shock therapy. What his story - and mine - came down to was believing that God is good. I was beginning to be resentful and angry because I felt ignored by God, like He was just playing with me. What I realized, that semester, was that God was not answering my prayer because I was praying for the wrong thing.

I wrote an essay about all this on one of the many legal pads I carried around at the time. I accidentally left it in the Green Room after Intervarsity one week. The guy who found it came and talked to me; he was struggling with this, too, and we got to talk. I was hearing all of these horror stories of people struggling in the closet. Suicide attempts. Monstrous self-hatred. People seemed to be coming out to me left and right. In my church, and Intervarsity, in my close-knit circle of friends, people were coming to me to talk about this; some of them having no clue that I was struggling as well. They just needed to talk to someone and chose me. I mean - I ask you.

I felt beseiged. I kept reading, and kept praying, and kept talking about this with people. I read government health studies that said that gay teens are three to seven times more likely to attempt suicide than straight teens, then turned around and read how scholars are not sure Paul even had a concept of homosexuality as we imagine it today. I talked to Dr. Boyd about this, and he referred me to another scholar who studied Scriptural defenses of slavery from the 19th century. I began to wonder what the big deal was; even the most literalist of Christians seemed to agree that slavery was a "cultural context" issue, and that the problem passages in the Bible that explicitly condone it should be seen in light of first-century culture. Here and there are all of these passages that people take to be about "homosexuality," when that word did not even exist until the 19th century, and they are murky at best, and Jesus said nothing on the subject, and some kid, somewhere, was likely holding a knife to his own wrist right then because he thought God hated him based on that?

I was suffering, my friends were suffering, my family was suffering, families all over the place were suffering and kids were dying and because of what?

I told God, "I trust You. I do not believe that you would bring me to this place of error after all the times I told You what I would do, that I would follow You to celibacy, or through as many counselors as You would take me, if that is what You wanted. But I feel that you are steering me in a direction here, and I am going to take this next step, so please bless it, and guide me."

And I am not going to lie. It was a bitch. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and I would not relive it for anything.

It was hard as fuck coming out, especially when conversations were hard, and tears were shed. I spent a great deal of my senior year of college feeling very alone and funky - a lot of this had to do with being in a bad relationship, granted. That was a mistake; I think we all know that now.

But also, I do not regret doing it. In a lot of personal instances I regret how it happened; because I was scared I handled it badly. I do not like conflict, despite what my previous post said. I do not like having hard conversations, or letting people know how pissed off I am. And I know a lot of people spent that year feeling hurt by me, and for that I cannot apologize enough. But this was something I had to do. I was at the end of my rope, blind, flailing, and I prayed for some kind of lead, a little bit of light to see by, and I got it.

If you want to know about specific interpretation of Biblical passages, I can recommend you book after book. But I do not believe that you will get there only in that one car. What it came down to, in a lot of ways, is something like this: I could not keep suffering the way I was. Denying this part of me, praying for it to go away, living in this constant cycle of guilt was eating me alive, and had I stayed on that road, it would not have ended well.

I can look back and see that the road I took was the road I had to take, with all its bumps and thorns, and I am sorry for those of you who got hurt along with me. My biggest desire in all of that was that no one else would even be slightly inconvenienced, much less hurt, by my coming out. But when people love you, and when you love other people, hurt happens. And I am sorry.

What I am not sorry about is that I did it. I took the next leap of faith that was before me in my journey at the time; it was all I could do in order to keep my sanity. In the interim I have seen some people who were living as I did, in that cycle of guilt and fear, do some seriously twisted things to themselves and others.

What I want to convey here is that this is more than an issue of Scriptural interpretation. When I talk about those issues with people who disagree vehemently with me, some of them tend to come right into the conversation as if the Bible is on their side and I am just swatting blindly, as if at a pinata. The people who do not know me at all (which is most of the people who want to have this conversation with me) tend to dismiss my story. I have had a lot of people say to me explicitly, "You’re just saying what you want to hear so that you can gratify your own desires."

To which I say, "Seriously, if it was just about that, I would have done this long, long ago. My desires are really beside the point here." Believe me, compulsive acting out was meeting my desires just fine, and no one ever had to know about it. In some ways, it was the best of both worlds. It was my emotional needs that were going unmet, the ones God placed in me. My refusal to admit my own need in this way was putting up a roadblock in literally every area of my life - I mean, high blood pressure? At twenty? Pardon me for saying so, but - Fuck that!

From that time to this is another story. Bad relationship, two years of depression and borderline alcoholism, erratic behavior, a large pane of glass at a Wendy’s, some minor drug use peppered in here and there. Those days are over for me, I feel, though I feel as if my journey begins anew every day. There is always sin, and redemption, spring and autumn, love and disappointment, new food and old garbage. I would be lying if I said I had all my shit together; anyone would be lying who said that. What I can say is that the older I get, the more I become certain that coming out was the road I was supposed to get on.

And that, more or less, is my story. A main spiritual truth by which I live is that I am healed by sharing my story, and that others may be healed by this too. I do believe that gay-affirming theology is the most compassionate and responsible thing the church can do, but on my own I am incapable of affecting this change; nor do I consider it my mission to do so. I consider it my mission to live as authentically as I can, and, if I am very lucky, get paid to write and talk about it, and in the meantime to watch the light, and share all the soup I can, and somewhere in there find the tiny little steps of sanctification.

Amen, y’all. I’m ten minutes late closing the lab because I wanted to finish this. I’m going home to my very tired Brian. 

Thursday, March 30, 2006 | by nathan

My Soul-Sucking Job (A Rant)

So I have three jobs. Two of them pay, and two of them I enjoy with some regularity.

1) Graduate Teaching Assistant for Video Productions Classes - pays well, I enjoy.

2) Editorial Department Intern for the Oklahoma Gazette - pays nothing, I really enjoy.

3) Computer Lab Assistant in Gaylord Hall Convergence Lab - pay is shitty and has dropped since I started, I hate.

I was super excited when I started grad school and got a job in the computer lab. It is a beautiful lab, with twenty some-odd of the latest Macs to hit the market (they are always changing -we just got a bunch of new iMacs with Intel processers in here). There are five wonderful plasma screen TVs (I call them Scholarships 1-5, as that money really should have been allocated toward a scholarship fund and not toward TVs that are not allowed to be un-muted and which stay on ridiculous cable news channels at all hours). There are tall windows which let in the light. You can see a picture of it here. My seat is at the small table to the left of the picture.

As I have continued in my employment here at Gaylord I have taken a $.50/hour pay cut, which wouldn’t be that big a deal except that they also cut our hours; when I started, I was working a solid 20 hours a week. Now, I am working 9. Some days the pay only just covers the gas it takes to get down here.

Also, I have to put up with the kind of shit that I long, long ago quit putting up with. I have detailed these adventures in some detail here before, but trust me when I say you have only seen the snowflake at the tip of the iceberg. Here is a common example.

Skinny Sorority Bitch: [throws her driver’s license down - not sets, throws - on the table next to me, and in a snotty voice says] I need a computer. 

Me: Ooookay. Well the thing is that you have to have a student ID. They’re really coming down on me for taking other stuff.

SSB: [snorts haughtily through her nose] Wull, the guy who was here before took it.

Me: [shrugs the "I just work here" shrug that we have all used at one time or another] We’re really not supposed to. I’m always the guy who gets in trouble for that.

SSB: [voice getting loud] So you really can’t take it? ‘Cause I don’t have my student ID.

Me: [only slightly sympathetic] Yeah, sorry.

SSB: [voice loud now] This is bullshit.

Me: Your voice just got loud.

SSB: Whatever. [Turns and walks away.]

Here’s a favorite example:

Silly Crazy Person: [comes in carrying a huge Big Gulp full of Diet Coke]. I need a computer.

Me: Okay, but I need you to leave the drink outside. [We have a place outside the door where everyone sets their drinks. Any given day there are 5-10 bottles of water, Big Gulps, etc. out there]. 

Silly Crazy Person: [snorts unbelievingly]. I can’t have this in here?

Me: It’s just that these are $12,000 computers. If you spill that on one…

SCP: But I paid two bucks for this!

Me: You don’t have to throw it out. Just put it out there and if you need a drink, stand outside for a second.

SCP: Eww! I don’t want to leave this out there! 

Me: Your voice just got loud.

SCP: Can’t I just leave it back here with you? 

Me: No, sorry. It’s got to go outside. 

SCP: Just right here, behind your desk? What’s the harm in that? Then I can stand up here and drink it.

Me: [getting irritated beyond what I can reasonably manage] Outside. Gotta go outside. 

SCP:  So I have to leave it outside? I can’t leave it up here with you?

Me: No! 

The day after this conversation happened, I got an email from my boss saying that someone had complained that I was rude to them in the lab, and that I had better watch it. I did not respond to the email. It bears mentioning here that the week before, we were threatened with our jobs if one of the bosses came in and found someone with a drink at their computer.

I have similar conversations when people want computers that aren’t facing the windows when the sun is coming through them, but as this usually happens when every single computer is taken, I tend to ask them politely which computer they would like. "Just point to an empty computer that’s not facing the sun, and I’m glad to move you there." I could handle this better, but here and we have arrived at my point: This job is slowly sucking the soul out of me.

One of my students just came in a few minutes ago, and while she was here a guy who I’ve never seen (one of the perks of this job is that you get to be on a first name basis with all the journalism students) comes in and starts punching the keys on a computer. I decide that, rather than shout where he will hear me, which would embarass him, I will let him struggle for a minute until he looks up and sees that I am sitting at a computer with the words "Computer Lab Assistant" emblazoned on the side. He doesn’t, and finally I decide to say something.

"Hey, Dude!"

He looks up.

"You need to sign in, and I need your ID."

"Oh, I’ve never been here before."

"Are you a journalism student?"

"No."

"Well, if you’re not a journalism student you won’t even be able to log in."

My student, Caroline, looked at me and said, "Don’t you hate having to say that to people?"

I shrug. I just work here. "No. When I come in here, all human empathy tends to leave my body."

I wasn’t rude to the guy; I just wasn’t overly friendly. I didn’t go out of my way to make him feel better about not being allowed to use the computers, and  I really didn’t offer him an apology. But occasionally, as I have learned, my way of doing things like this is often misinterpreted as rudeness, when it is not intended as such. I’m just not here to be anybody’s friend. I don’t like it when people talk loud, or act rude, or shoot me the "I’m an OU student and my fraternity/sorority says I am not only special but entitled" look, which I think they are taught is intimidating.

At Wake being Greek was absolutely not a big deal. Rush was in January, and so by the time everyone pledged, you already had friends and there was no pressure. So, I didn’t join. Some of my friends did. Two of my favorite people both joined and then rapidly dropped out; I like that in a person. 

I learned in high school to not put up with a lot of bullshit. When you get weekly threats to have your ass kicked, or some of your friends talk about you behind your back while they are in the same room, within hearing distance, and loudly, you develop - not a thick skin, exactly, but a kind of unwillingness to meet people on a level of fakeness, or entitlement, or ‘I’m-better-than-you’ defense mechanism.

This is why I am not always popular with the gays; I have lost my ability to bullshit. This used to manifest itself by me saying whatever thought sprung into my head. An example from my retail days:

Mean Assistant Manager:  You know, Nathan, you’re really coming along here. Especially considering that your first week working here, I kept telling Becky (the manager) to fire you and find a real keyholder.

Me: Do you even hear yourself talking? How do you think it’s okay to talk to people like this? Do you have parents?

Or this one, when Julian was working in the lab and I was sitting with him:

Silly, Silly Young Woman: [comes in, staring around wide-eyed, looking daffy. Agape for a full thirty seconds before asking] Is this a computer lab?

Julian: [agape, and silent, begins to laugh]

Me: This? No, this is a laundromat.

I still do this from time to time, but am more likely to hold my tongue now. Not because I want to be liked, mind you, but because one day it dawned on me that I have known people in my life who feel an obligation to share their every thought with the world, no matter a) who cared, or b) whose feelings were hurt, and I have never got on well with those people for very long.

See, but when I come in this lab, that tendency immediately comes out in full force, and as much as I want to squelch it, I almost see it as a vital tool for the kind of work I do. People forever try to make me feel mean, or uncool because I won’t bend my actions, or the rules, to their every whim - damn the fact that I want to do my job well so that I can keep it. But like I said, I’m not here to make friends, and I am definitely, definitely not here to be cool. I am here to earn my paltry six bucks an hour, which almost pays for my gas every month, and to make sure that everyone has a computer that works, that hopefully does not stare directly into the sun.

And then people email my boss and complain that I was rude, and I get in trouble, because no one seems interested in my side of the story, as in the case of Silly Crazy Person and the drink.

The point: I am looking forward to May, because after a year and a half, my employment at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Convergence Lab will be over, and I will be happy. Until then, pray that I will put down my defenses a little bit, and give up just a tiny little teaspoon of resentment against this job and any students who will be mean or stupid when they come in. 

Voldemort created Horcruxes by killing people - this was the action required to split his soul into seven parts. He could’ve saved himself a lot of time by working here. That’s all I’m saying. 

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 | by nathan

Being Disrespectful

For the first time in my life I have maintained a four-point GPA for longer than one semester. So I would like to note that I am sitting in a class writing this blog post, just because I can, because Prof. Davis tends to ramble, and so I do not feel the need to listen. Here and I am paying for that.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like Davis. Like him a lot. Great guy. Really. I really enjoy our meetings together, and I relish his writing advice, because he knows his stuff. But when he gets in front of a class - wow. He’s a ramblin’ man. So I am blogging.

Being raised the son of a college professor I consider what I am doing right now highly disrespectful, but I have not had a very good day anyway, and I am feeling a little disrespectful. I was ten minutes late to class because the girl who comes on in the lab after me was late, but I was looking through my Irish cookbook, so… eh.

I just looked over at Leah and asked her if we would end up having to write Star Trek books to survive. We promised each other not to. I am relieved.

Okay, I should be listening, not blogging like an asshole. 

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 | by nathan

From Japan, to Ireland…and Back!

Brian and I were in Borders on Sunday looking to see if there were new magazines out. We do not subscribe to any publications because we enjoy taking some time out of our weekends to go to bookstores to see what has come out that week. We read The Advocate and Out when they come out, and I tend to really enjoy Vanity Fair, although I have not picked it up in awhile. Brian got me hooked on Ready Made and Dwell because he is into modern architecture, and although I love the Economist and Atlantic Monthly, I almost never buy them. I was looking at all the craft magazines while we were there.

When I was a kid I was into, like, every gay thing a little boy can be into; I watched the scene in Cinderella where all the woodland creatures make Cinderella a new dress, and for years after that I wanted to be a fashion designer. Here and I was nine! I learned how to sew, and my Aunt Betty taught me the basics of knitting. I taught myself how to braid, and one Christmas I made hair ribbons for all the girls in my class.

God, I just had no chance at all, did I? HA!

When I was in fifth grade my music teacher, Mrs. Isch, turned me on to origami. She took a few students in and taught us how to make little things out of folded paper - cranes, boxes with lids, ladybugs, flowers. My favorites were the boxes, because they were useful. Mrs. Isch would also sell special origami paper in her room, and almost every morning I took a bunch of change in there and bought things. When we would watch filmstrips in class, or have to stay inside for recess because of rain, or when I was bored - which was a lot in elementary school - I would whip out the paper and start making my little things.

So this weekend I was looking for an origami set in Border’s, as it seemed like the type of thing they might have. I was feeling crafty, and I did not want to take up knitting, as a) it doesn’t interest me, and b) I mean come on - I’m not gay enough? It seems like everyone is knitting now. It’s the cool thing to do, and that’s fine, but I just wanted my own thing.

"I need a hobby," I kept saying. "Even if it’s just for today, I need a hobby."

I hate it when I tell people that I write, and they say something like, "Oh, wow, what a great hobby."

So I was feeling crafty. I wanted to make something simple and beautiful with only my hands a little paper, because I did not have the money to get all the supplies to paint and decorate my office, which is what I should have been doing. But Border’s did not have any origami sets, and so I went to look at the bargain cookbooks, which are a favorite thing of mine.

I do not consider "cooking" a hobby as such, because you have to eat. You need food; you do not strictly need little paper cranes or knitted caps. I do enjoy cooking, and though I do not think I would like to do it professionally, I could do it for long, long stretches of time if you give me the time and the money to get all the stuff.

So I was looking through the bargain cookbooks and came across a $5 book of Irish cooking. Now we’re talking.

Brian and I kind of stepped away from the creativity with this last Family Dinner - although it was definitely the most fun we have had at one so far, due in no small part to the presence of the three Soulforce peeps who dined with us. It’s the Flynns’ turn next, and then mom, and John and Crystal. But four weeks from now, you had better believe that I am going to be dishing up some Irish.

Finding that book made me miss Greystones, and Waterford, and the fact that it was almost six years ago that I lived there is very, very weird and creepy. There was a recipe in there for beef and Guinness pie, which we used to always have at Poppy’s in Greystones, with mint cous cous and - duh - a pint of Caffrey’s.

Jaye and Laurie brought me four cans of Caffrey’s from London. It made me want to nominate them for sainthood. Two cans remain, and they are for very, very special occasions ahead. So in the meantime I suppose I will practice with my Irish cooking.

I am looking crazy forward to this, though I still would like to have a few paper boxes scattered around the house.

Then I get to work this morning and listen to my messages. One is from Mrs. Isch, my old elementary music teacher, saying she saw one of my articles in the Gazette and wondered if I was the same kid she used to teach twenty years ago. I need to call her back and ask her if she still has any of that old origami paper.

Also, I updated the Sounds page. Check it out - good stuff. Good stuff.

Monday, March 27, 2006 | by nathan

Why I Live In Oklahoma

I wrote this as a part of Your Mom Already Knows, and I was just reading through it and thought I would share. Also, Brian and I had a discussion last night about what would happen if we found opportunities in another part of the country, and I got to wondering why the hell we don’t start looking.

Then I remembered. This. Enjoy. 

Why I Live In Oklahoma

    By the time I was fifteen I knew that I would leave Oklahoma as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It is, after all, not one of those areas where culture is made, it is not a New York, or Los Angeles. It’s not even one of those lower-teir cool places where Hollywood stars secretly live, like Austin.
    I used to sit and dream of what it would be like to live in Europe, and at twenty, I went to Europe for six months. I was one of only a very few people out of my high school class of 602 who went to an out-of-state college directly after high school; the counselors might have been a little uneasy about this, as it happened so seldom, but I was determined to forge a path for myself that was different than what anyone expected. I thought I was very cool, and very bohemian, for doing this.
    So I spent four years living in North Carolina. I came home for summers, and holidays, but I quickly began to think of Winston-Salem as home. My church was there, and it was close to the mountains, and the beach. By the end of the Christmas holiday my freshman year of college, my mother was asking, “So, when are you going back home?”
    This made me feel grown-up. Independent.
    Then, at twenty-two, I was brokenhearted and injured, and I knew that I needed a serious change of scenery. I was living just an hour and forty minutes by train from New York at the time, but was afraid to actually move there. George Bush had just begun screwing with the economy, and I had spent my entire senior year of college applying for over a hundred jobs who never called me back about my resume. I was working in a supermarket branch of a bank.
    Also, I was tired of not knowing anyone everywhere I went, and if you do not live there, New York can be a city made up of strangers. After several phone calls to old friends from high school, I decided that, for the time being, I would pack the back of my car with everything I owned and drive the 1800 miles home to Oklahoma, unload everything into my upstairs room at my mom’s house, and try to figure out my next move.
    About two months later I got a call from my good friend Jonathan, who had just started law school in Atlanta, and who wanted me to come and be his roommate. He had just started dating the woman who would become his wife, who was also a good friend of mine from college, and who was also moving to Atlanta to live with another close friend of ours who was working in campus ministry at Emory University. The three of them ganged up on me.
    “There are people who love you in Atlanta,” they would say in our frequent phone calls.
    “We’d have so much fun!”
    “I think Jesus wants you to move to Atlanta.”
    It got a little aggressive, and I would have freaked out except for the fact that I really wanted to go. And yet here I was in Oklahoma, with no job, broke, and you want me to move when? Jonathan called one day in March to let me know that he would need me to be there by the beginning of May.
    I redoubled my efforts to find a job, but in a post-9/11 economy (if we have learned nothing from Bush, it’s that you can always blame the terrorists), a religion degree does not carry a lot of weight, no matter where you went to school. I sent out hundreds of applications. I became desperate enough to apply for a job at Wal-Mart, but I could not bring myself to go through with it.
    My savings was quickly running dry, and the more I prayed about it, the more my resolve to leave home once more was beginning to waver. When this happens I usually start to talk big, as if I am going to pack up and go tomorrow. I assured my mom and all of my friends that I was going soon, just as soon as I got some money.
    I continued to pray, because this is what I do when I have no clue where I’m going. The novelist E.L. Doctorow once said that writing a novel is a lot like driving a car at night; you can only see as far in front of you as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. I find that many times when I get into a jam, the only thing I can see in front of me is asking for help.
    So I prayed, and my resolve wavered. And, as is typical of God when you ask Her for help, several things happened in rapid succession, almost like the firing of a gun.
    I picked up the phone to discuss the matter with Jonathan one day, and he mentioned that he and his parents had had a major blowout over the whole deal, because they, while very nice people, just did not want their son living with a gay man. This was a problem for them, and Jonathan, punk rocker that he is, fought back with his considerable passion, and the conversation did not go well. He assured me that we were still on schedule, and despite my insistence that I not be a problem between him and his parents, he said that I should still plan on coming. I said okay, uneasily, as I still had no money.
    A few days later I mentioned to my good friend, Erica, that I was planning on moving to Atlanta soon. She became despondent.
    “But you just got here!” she moaned sadly. I felt like the Grinch.
    I kept praying. It felt like a game of Pong in my brain most of the time. I would decide to move, to risk the rest of my savings and pack up for Atlanta. The next minute I would realize, suddenly, that I was desperately in need of my family, of stability, and that another major change right now would, in all likelihood, result in my shooting up a post office or taking up hustling underneath an overpass.
    As usually happens when I am chewing over an idea, I talked the whole thing to death to anybody who would listen. At parties, I would lay out my lists of pros and cons in deep, deep detail, doing everything but drawing a flow chart. People got sick of hearing it. “Just decide something,” they would say.
    I’m not a decisive person. Perhaps this comes from growing up in a household where evening conversation went something like this:
    “What do you want for dinner?”
    “I don’t know. What do you want?”
    “I don’t care. Whatever you want.”
    “I don’t care.”
    We would dance like this until either someone decided or begged not to decide. I wanted so badly not to let anyone down in my decision, especially not myself. I was already in a fragile place emotionally, and gradually I began to understand that no matter what I decided, it must be the choice that I knew to be best for myself.
    I kept praying.
    Life does not flow neatly from convenient moment to convenient moment, like in a movie. There are moments of intensity, like punctuations at the end of sentences, between spans of mind-numbing boredom and beautiful afternoons and rainy mornings when you have no idea how to keep going. But at some point I realized that a big part of me did not want to go to Atlanta.
    At nineteen I thought of not going to Europe. I had been accepted to the programs that I was interested in, and was all set to go, and doubt overcame me. A campus minister with whom I was meeting at the time saw that I was wrestling with “God’s will.” I could not figure out if God wanted me to go to Europe, or to stay in North Carolina for the next six months. Finally he said something that has stuck with me ever since.
    He said, “Maybe God isn’t worried about what you do here. It’s not like God went and hid his will from you, and now your job is to read the treasure map correctly. If going to Europe makes you feel terrified and anxious, you should listen to that. But if the only reason for this doubt is because you are getting to do something you actually want to do, then you should definitely go.”
    I ruminated on these words. I marinated in them. The thought of going to Atlanta, of uprooting myself and my life in a major way for the fourth time in two years, filled me with a dread akin to skydiving or bungee jumping, both of which I have sworn never to do. It felt like going willingly to my own death. Yes, there were people there who loved me, but I had that where I was, and I did not have to spend money, or make a bunch of new friends, or learn how to drive in a new city, all over again.
    I did not have another fresh start in me just then, and the more I prayed, the more I came to know that this was Okay.
    I called Jonathan.
    “I’m sorry, dude. I’ve been thinking about it, and I just can’t do it. There’s no money, there’s no time to get money…”
    He cut me off. “Hey man, I was just going to call you. The apartment deal fell apart, the other guy who was going to live with us decided he didn’t want to have two roommates.”
    He apologized quickly and began telling me how he could find me a roommate if I still wanted to come, but I was barely listening; relief such as I have rarely known washed over me. I knew that this was what was meant to happen.
    Nobody in Atlanta was disappointed in me; they were sad I was not going to come live near them, but they understood, as friends do. I stayed in Oklahoma, where I have been for over three years.
    And now, when people ask me why I stay here, or when people come to visit from out of town, and they wonder what it is that is so great about my medium-sized midwestern city, my home town, that would make me want to stay when I could be anywhere else, this is what I tell them:
    I have a house here. You think I’m going to just give up all the equity we’ve built up?
    Also – mainly – I stay here because it is home. My family (big F and little f) are here, and it is the relentless love and unflinching tenderness they have shown me over the past three years that has tied my frayed rope into a knot for me and helped me to hold on. My church is here, my lifeboat of community to whom I am learning to cling through the political and spiritual storms, which are many in the Bible Belt.
    I live in Oklahoma because there are more gay people here who do not know how fundamentally Okay they are in God’s eyes than almost anywhere else I have ever been. I stay because in the summer you can drive out into the prairie and smell all that dust, and the sand plums growing by the road, and because in the spring, when the winter wheat comes in, the green of it is so vibrant you think your eyes might pop with it. Because the skies are so big and huge that they feel like an overfilled balloon, like the inside of me when I have my family gathered around me.
    I live in Oklahoma because Oklahoma, my home, is who I am in a way that is so fundamental that you cannot understand it unless it is your home too. I stay for the Indian paintbrush in the summertime, and the football in the autumn.
    I stay because home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in, and my family took me in every single time I ever came wandering home all prodigal and broken. I live in Oklahoma because I choose to, and I choose to live here because it is not Heaven, especially if you are gay, but it is not Hell; it is like my life: flat and rolling and ordinary and everyday, but filled with more love and secrets and surprises than anyplace else I have ever been, or ever will be.

Sunday, March 26, 2006 | by nathan

Freedom!

I struggle with anger. It is the biggest struggle in my entire life.

I am angry a lot. A whole lot. I get angry when someone pushes the buttons of my insecurity, which, as it turns out, is pretty easy to do. I get angry when someone offends my sensibilities. I get angry when George W. Bush leans on the podium when he is talking, which is something he does every time there is a podium in front of him. I get angry when I think about how much Brian’s parents have hurt his feelings since he came out to them. I get angry almost any time I see Pat Robertson’s face, smiling smugly. I get a little angry when people trash me in their blogs, but I found that not reading those blogs is a good way to mitigate that anger. This proves easy most of the time, but the little soupçon of anger is still there.

These are things that piss me off, and I have found that I do not know the way to a middle ground between a friendly, "you hurt my feelings" or "I think you are wrong" conversation and, say - say bashing someone’s head on the brick sidewalk outside my house, in full view of all the neighbors. Left to its own devices, my mind spends a lot of time having conversations with people who are not actually there, especially people who have hurt my feelings, or embarassed me, or broken up with me.

Confessing this, I believe, is a way for me to become more authentic, because I believe that God loves that transparency, and that confessing our darkest, most smelly and unpleasant secrets is the most important step to getting well. So I will confess something else, now. But there’s a story behind it, so maybe now is a good time to get a snack or use the restroom.

Good? Okay.

So the Equality Ride was in Oklahoma this week, where they were told by administrators at Oral Roberts University, "We love ya, but don’t come on our campus. But be sure to spend money in Oklahoma." These administrators then had the Riders, some of whom are friends of mine, arrested for misdemeanor trespassing.

Then, the Ride came to Oklahoma City, where, among other injustices, they were given accomodations at the Habana Inn, which is absolutely the second to last place I would ever spend a night. So Gabe and I organized a "clean sheets drive," wherein we got our friends to give the Riders sheets so they would not have to sleep on the gross Habana sheets.

The Ride’s stop in central Oklahoma was Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, who did not have them arrested, and who actually allowed them on campus, with - granted - a laundry list of stipulations, such as that they were not allowed to hand out literature of any kind, and they were not allowed to leave the lounge area on the first floor of the student union. I covered all of this for the Gazette, but the longer I sat listening to the Riders’ testimonies, the harder it became to maintain any semblance of journalistic objectivity.

I think that few things make me angrier than when gay or lesbian people, especially young gay and lesbian people, believe themselves to be displeasing to God on such a deep level that they do harm to themselves, physically or emotionally. I hate it when I hear a story about a kid who was kicked out of his house at the age of fourteen - fourteen! - because he could not hold this huge secret inside anymore. It makes me crazy angry and sad when parents, family members, and the people who are supposed to be taking tender, loving care of these people believe that God wants them to treat their child, or their grandchild, or nephew, or friend, with horrible, awful aggression and violence simply because they are gay.

I had a good talk with Jon and Tish when they were here in January. I said, "I make a distinction between people who just believe that being gay is wrong, and people who are mean about it." Which I do, in part because I believe that no one was ever argued into a belief, and also because I do sincerely believe in letting people find their own way.

But also, I am beginning to wonder at the ethics of this theology, because of how much harm it does just by its simple existence. I have come to believe more strongly every day over the last six or so years of my life that while we must test theology by its merits as regards to Scripture, we must also test it by its actual human implications, its compassion (not to mention its place in historical context).

Because I did almost irreparable harm to my psyche, to my relationship with my family, and to my own heart by trying to change, trying to live a theology that does not hold together for anyone but straight people. For me salvation looked like … well, I would like to tell that story in depth a little later on, in another post.

My father always says that it is not anger which is wrong; it is what we do with that anger. So I will not be bashing Pat Robertson’s head into the brick outside my house (although not only because he will probably never come to visit).

But I just don’t know what to do with my anger. When I hear stories like the ones the Riders told, I feel so overcome with complete bafflement - "How can we let this go on when it absolutely does not have to?" Then come the bricks.

So I am taking step number one: I am confessing I have a problem. A major one.

Also, I am asking for the forgiveness of everyone with whom I am or have been angry. I could do this all by phone calls, but I am a) far too busy, and b) deeply, deeply afraid. So if we have had difficult, angry-making conversations about these things, or if I have made you feel like you cannot talk to me about these things for fear of my wrath (as if I were to be feared). I would like to apologize, and ask you to pray that I will know what to do with these feelings.

For awhile I was worried that I was being called, somehow, to give up my life and fight religious oppression along side the Riders, but this is exactly why I do not use words like "calling" almost ever.

I spent yesterday driving Jonathan Awtrey around Oklahoma City, showing him our sights, because this city can suck like no other if you are having to spend nights at the Habana Inn. We saw the Memorial, cool arts places, my favorite spots. He came with Brian and me to Home Depot to buy a grill, which we have been needing, and for which we had a gift card. Family Dinner was our duty last night, and we decided to make hot dogs and burgers, and to invite a few of the riders, including Jacob, with whom Jon has been talking, and Richard Lindsay, who, in a weird coincidence, was the closest thing I had to a friend when I was at Yale.

Mom came, John and Crystal, Laurie and Jaye, me and Brian, Jon Awtrey, Jacob, Richard. Lots of beer, burgers, hot dogs, veggie kabobs. They told my family all about the Ride, and we watched Best In Show. 

This morning in church the reading was The First Amendment, which was interesting, and the sermon was about the separation of church and state and why it is the most ethical option we have. Very delicious food for thought.

But there was still this vague sense of panic as I sat there, and I found myself clinging tightly to Brian through it all. Being this angry makes me panic.

I think forgiveness is something about no longer needing to hit back. I want that very, very badly. I want to not hit back. So from now on I’m really going to try. What I’m going to do instead is go for long walks, and try to remember to breathe.

I keep flashing on that time Woody and I were at his farm in Kentucky, and we were wading in the creek and came upon a pool of water that had been cut off from the rest of the stream and become stagnant. So we worked and worked, reintroducing the pool to the rest of the stream, to all that light and fresh air, and eventually the stagnant, dead, smelly pool was rushing and breathing again, coming back to life.

That is how I feel where I am. It is horrible, and it is hopeful. Growing is a bitch.

Saturday, March 18, 2006 | by nathan

Mouth-Breather

So Spring Break.

Tuesday I went to the allergy doctor, who almost made me cry. See I’ve been feeling lousy and completely unable to breathe for weeks, especially at night when I get into bed. I have been getting horrible sleep because of it and made an appointment with the allergist about a month and a half ago. So at 8 a.m. on Tuesday I went in to the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma Allergy and Asthma Clinic and basically begged them: "Give me my life back."

I have always had horrible, horrible allergies. It has negatively affected my quality of life since I was a small child. For six months when I lived in Europe I was sick a lot because I had all kinds of new things to be allergic to. The doctor in Venice took about a quart of my blood and then diagnosed me with the mumps, of all things, the goddamn mumps. 

Dr. Hatch, the guy I saw on Tuesday, listened to me talk about my problems and said, "Yes, I definitely think allergies are a big factor for you."

I wanted to scream, "Well duh!" But instead I listened. He showed me a video about dust mites, which it turns out are a) my worst problem, and b) the most disgusting and horrible little creatures that God ever created. They live in your bed, they feast on your dead skin cells, and they lay eggs and poo in your nasal passages. I am trying to avoid a rant here, but I effing hate these little buggers, who on average number in the millions in any given American bed. They are in your bed. 

Anyway, so they showed me this video about the dust mites, and it was like, "You should not have furniture that is upholstered with fabric, or throw pillows, and you should wear a dust mask as often as possible, especially if you are doing simple little things like cleaning your house." I wanted to cry. Here I’d come to the allergist to get my life back, and it was being taken away from me even more. But then the doctor gave me four prescriptions, and said they were going to put me on allergy shots, which I used to get when I was a kid. It will probably take months for me to feel better, but at least someday I will. On allergy shot days I have to carry an EpiPen around with me, which is a shot of adrenaline that will stop me from going into anaphylactic shock, just in case that happens to me. When I get the shot I have to stay in the doctor’s office for at least 20 minutes, because most cases of shock happen in the first 20 minutes after receiving the shot.

So there’s that. But I absolutely cannot deal with a life of sleep apnea (caused by the not being able to breathe), people constantly asking me if I have a cold, and not being able to eat, hug, run, work out, or do any kind of mouth-covering activity for more than  few seconds. I do not want to be a mouth-breather anymore.

Besides that I feel incredibly lucky about my life lately. Thursday night Erica and I dragged our respective men, Brian and Alex, out to Cheeseburger in Paradise to eat and sing karaoke, which we have not done in forever - here and they didn’t even have "Love Shack!" Can you believe that bull shit?

Last night mom took Brian and me to Pearl’s. Good, delicious times.

Sarah Keates is in town this weekend because she missed Oklahoma City, and us, and so she drove from Cincinnati to here all in one shot, and got here at 2 a.m. Still needing to finish another 15-20 pages for the novel, but not too worried about it.

There is hope, and it is enough. 

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 | by nathan

Thirty Seven and One

This weekend was the kind of time you learn to live for.

Brian and I got up and around nine thirty on Saturday, when the weather was absolutely perfect. The sun was out, there was not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature was hovering somewhere just below 80. When it gets like this I think that Oklahoma may be the most perfect place in the world.

"Can I pick where we drive today?" Brian asked me. We had decided just to go for a drive, and the thought of him taking me along on some adventure to I-knew-not-where sounded perfect. I grabbed my iPod, we stopped for fruity sodas (nothing like grape soda on a spring day), and we headed south down I-35 past Norman.

Brian wanted to show me where he grew up, in Ninnekah and Chickasha. He showed me the house where he grew up, and his grandparents’ house, his elementary school. We listened to Carole King, Bebo Norman, David Wilcox, Matisyahu, Dave Matthews. If you read his blog you get a much better description of the day than what I am writing here, as well as a map of everywhere we traveled.  

After we were done in Chickasha, Brian steered the car north, back toward the city. We were both looking for a certain turnoff to get on State Highway 37, which is absolutely one of the most beautiful, scenic, and peaceful drives you can take in the world. The winter wheat is coming out and turning everything the shade of green that Rich Mullins was writing about. There are high hills that are a blast to take at speed, little towns whose inhabitants stare at you as you zoom past, beautiful views of the prairies all around. The air fills your lungs and invigorates you; it wakes you up.

What amazed me was that Brian and I had discovered this drive each on our own, years ago. He used to drive an oil truck for his dad’s company from time to time. I just hop in the car and get lost, occasionally. I first did Highway 37 when I was sixteen, and I try to do it at least twice a year.

37 takes you just south of Hinton, Oklahoma, which not only has the distinction of being the first place I ever had an extended conversation with Summer, but also is only twenty miles from the town where I grew up, Weatherford. 

"Why don’t we just go over to Weatherford and I can show you all of my childhood stuff?" I said.

Brian was all about it, so we met up with I-40 and took the twenty miles over to Weatherford, me telling all kinds of stories about how much I love the plains and what it was like to grow up where I did. Weatherford and Chickasha are similar towns in that they are both in western Oklahoma, and are both pretty much the biggest towns around them. Both are college towns; everybody knows your business, and if you don’t play sports, well…

I showed Brian the YMCA where, every Friday night from third grade on, all of us kids would pay a dollar to go rollerskating. I showed him my house, and the park where I used to run with my dad when I lived out there with him in the fall of 2004. I drove him around the University, which was really as much my home as anywhere and probably will always be, to some extent.

There is a place at the old science building where you can climb the stairs and go out on this ledge. The University is on top of a hill that overlooks the surrounding area, and when you get out on the ledge, which can be scary if you haven’t been doing it since you were six, like I have, you can see for a million lives. 

Brian wouldn’t go out there with me. "I’ll just watch from here."

I showed him where Bryon Chambers used to live, which was down the street from where my parents first lived after they got married, which I also showed him. I showed Brian the gas station on the corner where Dad used to take us for pints of Blue Bell ice cream, and it always seemed like we were clinging together tightly, waiting for the rain to stop.

Things like this are what make a home, and as much as I do not always like the idea, in some way Weatherford will always be mine. I left there when I was twelve, an incredibly broken, secretive, scared little kid. I returned when I was twenty-four, an incredibly broken, secretive, scared, broke, slightly alcoholic, out-of-shape proto-man, and I experienced a lot of healing and a flood of creativity. As Mitch McVicker said, "If home is where the heart is at, then I forget where all I’ve lived." I found a home here, in Oklahoma City, and one in Winston-Salem. I found a home in Ireland, and tried to find one in Venice. I had an embattled home in New Haven, and made one with Liz in New York when I couldn’t bear being there anymore. And now here I am again, making a real home, a life, you know? And all of those old places, and the people I was in them, live inside me. And it was funny - in Weatherford this weekend, with Brian, I felt like I had the courage to really let myself know and accept the kid I was when I was there.

I told him all kinds of stories I had never told anyone, because I was afraid, and bursting with secrets. I told him about the woman who was nice to everyone we knew but who was very mean to me when no other adults were around, and about my mother’s friend Ruth, who was an old rich lady with huge hair and a foul mouth. I told him about Ruth’s daughter, who was an adult, and who used to call me names. I told him about how my fourth grade teacher said I was going to commit suicide by fifteen, and how John and I used to throw ourselves down the dirt hill behind dad’s house when cars passed to see if we could get one to stop. They almost never did.

For once, all of that was Okay. Brian has been a bigger part of that than even I understand.

We drove back to the city after awhile and went straight to mom’s for family dinner. John and Crystal were in charge this time, and they made - literally - a feast of Mexican food. They made homemade guacamole, empanadas, fajitas. For dessert there was homemade ice cream, but we were all so full by the end that it was ridiculous. I brought Pete’s Wicked Strawberry Blonde Ale, which is my new wonderful beer that I love, and two bottles of wine that we didn’t touch. We had such a wonderful time.

The movie for the night was Crash, which just won Best Picture but which I hadn’t seen. I may be the only gay person in the world who thinks this, but the movie deserved what it got. I saw Brokeback Mountain, which was such a technical masterpiece that it almost felt clinical. It was such a good movie that I took to noticing how good it was and not entirely connecting with the story. Not so with Crash. As John said, "Everyone in America should watch this movie."

It was an absolutely perfect day. Some things are still bitter, and we just have to swallow them. In the meantime I will give thanks for what a perfect day we got on Saturday. We got each other, wonderful music, lots of holding hands, the winter wheat, courage, Jesus, and family. These are the sacraments. Amen. 

Sunday, March 12, 2006 | by nathan

Red Cup

I may have found a new favorite place in Oklahoma City. I have written it up in my paper, I drive by it almost every day on my way to work, I knew it was here, I knew it was cool, and yet I have never been here, until today: Red Cup Coffeehouse. It sounds, at worst, pretentious and bohemian of me, and at best like I am channeling J.K. Rowling, coming to coffeehouses to write novels. But here I am, and this place effing rocks. It’s right off of Classen, nestled behind a dentist’s office and a 7-11. Occasionally there is live music, and there are always artsy types, which I believe - erroneously - makes me artistic by adjacency.

Anyway. Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to my new hangout (for Spring Break, anyway). Went to church with Brian this morning, which was great as always, although I get a little edgy when Dr. Meyers gets the full hate-on for fundamentalist Christianity, partially because while he is able to use his anger in a constructive and reconciling way, so far, I am not, and I am afraid that I will try to really go with what he is saying and end up in the Bad Place instead in my thinking.

So in church I decided that I am going to spend the next week or two thinking and planning about whether I can spend this summer making a living just writing. I can freelance for the Gazette, and for the two new gay rags opening up to replace the Gayly Oklahoman, which was retired recently after over two decades. This means that I must try in the next two weeks to sell some work somewhere and see if I can reasonably expect to pay the bills in this way. It is something I have always dreamed of doing, and with my assistantship getting renewed, it is the perfect time to give it a shot, at least for a few months. 

Also, Carmela at Upward Bound said she would like to have me teach a journalism class or some writing stuff to the UB students in their summer program, and I need to get in touch with her about that. I really did love those kids last summer; I just want to have a whoooole lot more free time this summer than I did last. I could not deal with another summer spent working seven days a week - no, no no no nononononononononono.

Okay, novel time. Happy Sunday, y’all. 

Thursday, March 9, 2006 | by nathan

Procrastination Station, Here Comes Nathan…

I should be working on the novel. It has gone too long neglected, and, oops, the first hundred pages are due now-ish. And yet I just cannot bring myself to work on it. I can work on Your Mom Already Knows from now until doomsday, or rather, from now until I am given a deadline to finish it.

This is how I work, and I absolutely hate it. I put things off until it becomes crucial that they get done, and then, at the 11th hour, I whip out something that, if not good, is something I can live with, and other people generally like it. Notable exceptions to this rule include my 7th grade science fair project, on which I got a 46. Notable example: my 40-page honors thesis for the Religion Department at Wake Forest, which I wrote in 3 days. Another Notable example: my senior oration for Wake, which I wrote in 15 minutes, and which won "Best Senior Oration" from the University for the class of 2002.

I suck. Summer and I were talking the other day and got to wondering what would happen if we actually started applying ourselves, rather than coasting by, playing to our strengths, giving people what we know they want. She and I share in our tendencies to get by academically in this way, and while it drives both of us crazy, I am not sure that either one of us plan to be changing our ways anytime soon.

In related news, my graduate assistantship was renewed for a second year, which seems like some kind of computer error, considering how much I suck at teaching Video Productions. And yet I suppose I am glad, in a way, as this means I get to procraaastinate for one more year about getting a *real* job or graduating early. So there’s that.

The truth is I have started to like my classes, and my job, more and more as time has gone by. We just found out this week that we are finally, finally done with the History Channel project and that it is definitely going to air sometime in early spring, which means soon. Of course, our interview with Robert Warrior already went to air, but this will be much more exciting, as we put our full energies into the Fort Sill stuff. Verhoff and Giacchino, the HC producers, were stoked about the idea of us doing another production like this next year, and I must say, I really hope I get to be a part of it. 

Also, I am looking at leading a couple seminars for the upcoming Oklahoma Interscholastic Press Association meeting here at OU in April. For those of you non-Oklahoma people, OIPA is this thing that journalism nerds all go to in high school. We are derided and disliked for it, as we are for most things (we make band nerds look cool), but we have a great time. Since last summer I have discovered something in myself like a love for high schoolers, despite their surly, moody, hormonal, defiant little ways of looking at things.

So they sent out a request today for us to come up with seminars for this little nerd-fest, and I have been wanting to try my hand at teaching something that does not lead to a career in television. So I’m thinking of doing a brief overview of blogs, or personal columns, or creative writing in general.

We’ll see. Okay, I really have to write this novel. Or, watch the copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that I picked up on DVD earlier. Whichever.