Friday, November 9, 2007 | by nathan

About Nathan

Me, being weird at 2.

When I was a kid my dad was a college professor, and I spent as much time at his office as I did at my own home. Dad’s office was littered with paper, and at some point I picked up a ruled lab notebook and started writing things down in it. Then, when I was 8, he got a little Mac 512K, and I started using Microsoft Word to write stories. I’ve been writing ever since. When I was in the 8th grade I used to walk by this used book store on my way home, and the woman there sold me blank journals at a ridiculous discount, which is probably why she’s not in business anymore.

So, my name is Nathan; hello. I live in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the Sooner State, where I grew up. As a teen I swore I’d get out of Oklahoma and never come back, and at 18 I escaped to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. At Wake I had three jobs and got a major in religion with a minor in philosophy. I was one class short of a politics minor, a sociology minor, an Italian certificate, and an art history minor. Also, I got to take a class with Maya Angelou, I got to spend a semester studying abroad in Venice, Italy and a summer living in  Ireland. The best part, though, was that I learned how to be a good thinker, a good reader and a good writer, and I made some amazing friends who I’m lucky to still have in my life, albeit long-distance.

When I was 22 I started working on a Master of Divinity degree at Yale Univeristy. But instead, I got my heart broken, fell through a plate glass window, spent way too much time drunk in New York City, and dropped out before a semester was up. I moved back to Oklahoma, because I knew there were people here who loved me. I thought my return home would be a temporary fix, an emotional and geographical band-aid to help me though the hard times. That was 5 years ago. I’ve never left, and I might not ever.

In 2004 I got an e-mail from a guy named Brian, who just wanted to say he liked my writing. We traded e-mails and IMs, and became friends. In April 2005 I realized that I was madly in love with him, and all my friends went, "God! Finally!" We’ve been together ever since.

I am a converted Christian. I say "converted" because though my family are amazing people, we were never very religious when I was growing up. We went to church every once in awhile, but it was never a major source of community for us, which is wonderful, because this is how I learned to ask spiritual questions for myself. I became a believer in the summer of 1998, just before leaving for college. In North Carolina I became a member of the Presbyterian Church in America; now I am a member of the United Church of Christ.

As a gay man, and a Christian, and more to the point, an irritating contrarian, I find myself compelled by some otherworldly force to mock these communities of which I am a part. Fair warning.

I love many things, including Apple computers, Boulevard seasonal beers, bourbon, public broadcasting, mid-century and modern architecture, The Simpsons, television shows (especially ones that get canceled after only 13 episodes), Oklahoma history, live acoustic music including bluegrass, country, rock, folk, and new wave, gardening, local agriculture and business, digital photography, Southern Gothic literature, outdoor activities including hiking, camping, fishing and climbing, Asian food, and the plains of Oklahoma. I absolutely love thunderstorms.

Some of the people whose lives and work inspire me, excite me, and make me tingly include Bill Watterson, Garrison Keillor, Joss Whedon, the Beat poets, Matt Groening, Bryan Fuller, Natalie Maines, the Harlem Renaissance, Maya Angelou, Dwight Yoakam, David and Amy Sedaris, Lauryn Hill, Tina Turner, Lane Frost, Anne Lamott, Bono, Jesus, Morrissey, Wayne Coyne, Rich Mullins, Ralph Ellison, S.E. Hinton, Will Rogers, and Woody Guthrie.

That photo up there? That’s me, being a weirdo at the age of 2. As I recall, they’d just brought this struggling little sack of meat into the house, introduced it to me as "baby brother," and I put the light bulb package on my head to distract their attention away from it.