Friday, June 29, 2007 | by nathan

Meh.

I forgot to talk about Pride. Wanna know why? Because I remember so very little of it. See, I woke up this past Sunday morning, missing Brian, who’d had to leave the day before to go to Atlanta for a business thing. I cleaned the house and bought some booze, sent a text message to about ten people to join me at the house for drinks before the parade, and forgot to eat a thing.

So when four people showed up at my house - apparently I’d accidentally clashed with another pre-Pride party - I was operating on an empty stomach and a bit of excitement, and I promptly drank two vodka and club sodas, three glasses of white wine, and two beers. Chambers drove me to the parade, where we met up with some friends, and he also bought me a very large Park Long Island Iced Tea, and by the time the Parade started I was a goner.

Once the whole thing was over I was tired and cranky, and it looked like it was going to rain. I’d been standing on the bleachers with my neighbor, Steve, who was so kind as to drive me home almost immediately after the street was clear. I got like 10 pictures, and stayed for probably 2 hours, and I realize now that things just aren’t as much fun when my man isn’t around. 

Thursday, June 21, 2007 | by nathan

You’re Taking One Down

This hasn’t been an easy week. The first week back after vacation never really is, but this one has been especially trying. Brian’s been sick since Saturday, so we spent the last day of our vacation mostly just chilling in the hotel room, hoping he’d get better. Instead, he got worse. We had different flights back Sunday, and I didn’t arrive in Dallas until 8 p.m., and we didn’t make it back to Oklahoma City until around midnight. We still haven’t unpacked.

Monday I went to the gym by myself, as Brian was still too sick to go, and I rammed his car into a pole, leaving a serious dent in the front bumper, which will now have to be replaced. Yes, it was stupid, and I felt horrible, but it’s a testament to how wonderful our relationship is that I knew when I told him that he wouldn’t be mad at me, that he’d realize it’s just a car, and no big deal, and that he’d reassure me that, no, I won’t be sleeping under a bridge with the dog tonight, drinking gin out of some stranger’s shoe. So there’s that. 

Tuesday night it rained heavily in the city, as it had been doing all last week while we were gone. Brian managed to mow the front lawn before the rain started, but not the back, which is now ankle-high. I can’t really mow because as I get older, my allergies get worse and the last several times I’ve done it I’ve spent the next week feeling horribly ill.

So when I got home from work yesterday the house reeked. I opened the door and my gag reflex went bing! I realized that as we’d been cleaning the house the night before we’d forgotten to take the giant trash bag outside. So I took it out, but the smell lingered. Brian got home and we went searching for the smell. Culprit One was the trashcan full of grass clippings, which was sitting right next to the dryer intake, shooting the smell of rotting grass into the house. So we moved that, but there was still something more. 

We went to the den downstairs and immediately realized that the carpet down there was soaked. The rain had come into our downstairs den - possibly via the fireplace in there, or its proximity to the garage - and soaked about half the carpet. This has happened twice before, but this time the smell was worse than ever, and because I’m deeply allergic to mold, I began getting a severe headache, and my mood went south really fast. So we moved everything out of the den, rolled up the carpet, took it out to the front yard, and cut away the wet part. Most of it was still dry, so we unrolled that in the sun room - much to the dog’s chagrin - to get the smell out.

Also, as I mentioned before, getting the vacation photos onto Flickr was a feat of computering akin to hacking into the mainframe at Microsoft, and it ate a lot of my time yesterday.

This is pride week in Oklahoma City, so that should be kind of redeeming everything, except Brian’s company is having a huge event in Atlanta this weekend, and he’s going to miss everything. I’m still wanting to enjoy Pride, but without him it won’t be any fun. I’m probably going to invite a select group of gay boys over for drinks sometime in the weekend, and of course I’ll go to the parade and Angles afterward, but I need people to step up and help me have fun. This means YOU, gay people. This means YOU.

Thursday, May 10, 2007 | by nathan

Vin Diagram of Love

Have you been reading Indexed? It’s - like - the best blog ever. This is one of today’s entries:

Isn’t that fantastic? Thanks a million to the site’s author for putting that up. I highly recommend you add a live bookmark to that site, because it’s really, always good.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007 | by nathan

some big ol’ Bertha waiting to show her some affection

My friend Jelisa made this:

and this:

I’m totally wearing the second one to gay Pride this year. Click on the links and you can order your very own! 

Saturday, November 18, 2006 | by nathan

Also, long walks on the beach, foreign films and quiet nights by the fire.

So Bri and I went into the local Christian bookstore today, for no other reason than we were curious what new forms of inanity the church community had concocted to sell to its unwitting members. At one point I was so fed up with the books about how to cure homosexuals - shelved, interestingly enough, directly across the aisle from a display shelf of Ted Haggard’s books - that I threw up my hands and bought this shirt:

Now, I want every gay boy in Oklahoma to go and buy one. They’re on sale for $10 at the Mardel on Northwest Expressway. The clerk was a little nervous - though I could’ve sworn there was a look of amusement there. Anyway, it looks great and you just might see me out at the bars sometime very soon wearing this. I’m not sure what any of this accomplished, but I sure do like the shirt.

Monday, November 13, 2006 | by nathan

Definition: Part 2

Brian sent me this. Self-hatred, revisionist history and overly dramatic attempts at heterosexuality were a part of my life for so long that I recognize the signs. I spun my story out so much that by the time I was convicted to tell it honestly, I almost didn’t recognize it.

Luckily, I never got married to a woman; even when I believed being gay was wrong, something in me believed more strongly that it would be worse to date or marry a woman just in some lame attempt to prove I was straight.

Brian showed the story to his brother, who said, "When will that church realize that they hurt more people than they help?"

I want to love the church - the family of believers - but sometimes they’re like a stupid stepchild who doesn’t understand not to touch the hot stove unless you hit him. Or, in this case, relentlessly mock him.

Things like this make me angry because I see signs all over of how it’s psychologically unhealthy. John J. McNeill said that whatever is bad psychology must be bad theology, and I think he’s right; God challenges us and convicts us, yes, but we are never unsafe, never unhealthy in all of this. Whinging, hand-wringing little faggots who marry unfortunate, sympathetic women just so their church will accept them are not safe or healthy, and neither are their wives, their families, or the people who care about them.

Sunday, November 12, 2006 | by nathan

The One Where I Explain Why and How I Use The Word “Faggot”

I found two sites created by people I knew in Wake Forest’s evangelical community, of which I was a part, for a time. These are people I missed and I was really stoked to find them. That community was good to me and produced several friendships which are still strong today. But, in the words of the Dixie Chicks: "I fought with a stranger and I met myself; I opened my mouth and I heard myself." When I got back from Europe it didn’t take me long to realize: I am not an evangelical.

I do not consider myself an evangelical today. As far as affiliations go, I am a Congregationalist , and I quite love it.

This month the evangelical community has been rocked by the scandal around one of their leaders, arguably one of the most powerful religious figures in America today, Ted Haggard. Ted Haggard, if you’ve been living under a rock, admitted to "sexual immorality" after he was outed by a gay male escort with whom, by all accounts, he had been having PAID sexual relations for over three years.

Everyone seems really surprised by this. I wonder if any of those people have seen the documentary Jesus Camp, in which Haggard is featured prominently. Because when I saw that movie, I leaned over to Brian and said, about Haggard, "What.A.Faggot." Also, I thought it seemed that he had meth-face, though I wrote this off as my own nasty habit of judging people too harshly. Turns out, I was right on all counts. I do not count this as a sign of my own intelligence, but rather a sign that Ted Haggard’s faggotry translates seamlessly onto film.

I think the healthiest thing that ever happened to me was coming out as a gay man, because I now officially have nothing to hide. Granted, I can never, ever run for public office just on the strength of things I’ve written on this blog. Still, it is freeing to not feel as if I have to fit into a certain mold that has nothing to do with who I really am. Now, I have wonderful evangelical friends, whom I love and against whom I have nothing, who would say, "You never had to fit into a certain mold!"

But those people aren’t gay.

And Ted Haggard is. Which is fine. What is not fine is that Ted Haggard has told his 14,000-plus congregation - shit, he told PRESIDENT BUSH - that being gay is wrong, that gay people are disordered and sick, and that people like me and Brian are what is wrong with America. He never told them to hate us, but he planted that seed. It’s a seed that tears families apart because parents will not even look their children in the eye upon finding out they are gay. Like several friends of mine whose parents yanked them out of college for this exact reason. Or the thousands of kids who live on the streets because they are not welcome in their homes. Or the ones who take their own lives.

Not that Ted Haggard cares about any of this, or that he cannot explain it away in his own mind. But it infuriates me that he puts his congregation, and all the believers who look up to him, all the ones who struggle and struggle because HE TELLS THEM THEY ARE SICK, through this kind of mental anguish, and all the while he’s getting his from a male escort, all the while playing "best little boy in the world."

This makes him a faggot. That is what that word means to me.

What is discouraging is that instead of talking openly about how he has struggled and how it has hurt him, Faggard is hemming and hawing, dodging left and right, lying at first, then admitting to nothing specific - just "sexual immorality." How cowardly. How sick. Here and he could get help - real help - and give it.

But, see, it’s not about compassion. It could be, but it’s not. No, no, it’s about scoring a perfect on the God S.A.T. The past few decades it’s become about having Washington’s ear - power. I hope to God that Haggard’s family finds compassion for him. Yes, he’s a despicable, lying, immoral hypocrite, but on some level, who isn’t? Still, it sucks to know that people are suffering the way I used to because of things he said just because he hated himself, because some other douche bag told him he should.

Like I mentioned earlier, I found two websites of people whom I knew when I was hanging out with a bunch of cool evangelical Christians. I don’t regret those times, and I do not think poorly of those people - they were incredibly good to me. But I am not one of them, and the older I get the less I feel a kinship with the evangelical community. This is odd, because I also feel more secure about what I believe and where my life is going. I hope that no matter what happens with Ted Haggard, he gets to experience some of that.

I just hope I don’t run into him in a gay bar, because it might be hard to hold my tongue. Or my camera. 

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 | by nathan

To The Haberdashery!

This weekend I did something I almost never do.

I bought clothes. For myself.

I mean - okay. I’ll order a t-shirt from Threadless now and then, like, say - say this one. But over the last year I’ve been sick, and allergic, and out of shape. And so - I haven’t been buying new clothes.

I used to live in an apartment that was something like gay central for twentysomething queers in the greater Oklahoma City area. I was working clothing retail at the time, and I got a whole lot of free clothes through my job. In fact, my wardrobe was described on many occasions as "the envy of every gay man in Oklahoma."

When I left that apartment, I had a whole lot fewer clothes and shoes and jackets and scarves than when I moved in. I have no ideas where those clothes went, though I’m guessing you’d see a few of them if you were to head out to the Copa tonight. This unfortunate fact absolutely blinds me with anger every time I go into my closet, as does the fact that, even if I hadn’t had some of my best clothes taken away by greedy, stickyfingered fags (I assume), I’m still too out of shape to wear most of them.

I’m taking care of that. I’ve lost probably an inch off my waist so far - more to come. I had three pairs of jeans that were fitting comfortably, and those were getting holes in unseemly places. So I hit the mall. I bought clothes - two pairs of jeans and two new t-shirts that I absolutely love.

Also, as I have been working out to beat the band lately, I decided I need some new shoes. The shoes I work out in now were given to me by my mother, five years ago. Five. Years. Ago. And - they have been wonderful. A bit of duct tape in the sole - yes, I am turning into my father - and wham! Good to go!

But it’s time. It’s time. So, custom-designed myself a pair of Nikes. They look like this.

I’m super-stoked about them, because I never buy these kinds of things for myself. They’re just clothes, but it’s nice.

Thursday, August 17, 2006 | by nathan

Now I Get It.

When I was living in Venice one of the three people I shared a room with was named Tim. Tim and a bunch of the people in our house went out to a bar one night, and for whatever reason, I didn’t go with them. But the next day we were talking about it, and Tim was telling me about some of the interesting people they had met.

"Dude, there was this one guy, and he was gay, right?" Tim said. "But he wasn’t, like, cool gay. He seemed like the kind of gay that would take you home and kill you and store you in his refrigerator."

I remember feeling vaguely miffed at this description; I didn’t know a single gay person who might do such a thing. Nor did I ever recall meeting a gay guy who fit that description. I just figured it was yet another example of the kind of homophobia that was common on my otherwise-cool southern college.

Until today, when this guy’s photo started showing up all over the internet because he killed JonBenet Ramsey. I mean, just looking at the photo is enough. Statistically speaking, he’s probably straight - most men who commit such crimes against children of any gender are - but either way I think I get what Tim was talking about all those years ago.

And what, one wonders, might someone who sexually assaulted and murdered a little girl be doing living in Thailand? I’ll just let you work that out for yourself. 

Thursday, July 27, 2006 | by nathan

Hey, Here’s Another Bomb: I Like Beer.

So Lance Bass is gay.

Yeah, big shock. God, boy bands suck. Who the hell did these guys think they were kidding?