10/25/05

Whip-Smart: The College Years, Summer Session, Part 1

An Independence Day Fairy Tale
Prelude-Once Upon a Time . . .
Once upon a time in the state of sexual confusion, there lived a young man who was trying to figure out whether his loyalties lied with King Heterosexuality or Queen Elton John. In the midst of his quest, he ran into another young man, a man that was a representive of the Queen and who was dashing and foreign and seemingly a Prince Charming.

And just when the young man leaned in to give his Prince Charming a kiss and live happily ever after, he realized that his Prince Charming was nothing but a Scottish toad. Without the aid of Disney mice or a fairy godmother, the young man felt stranded but even more determined to conquer the Scottish toad and turn him into the Prince Charming of his dreams.


A Bar Tale, Part 1-Your Carriage Awaits
Sunday night. Yours truly was home from the weekend, sitting in front of my laptop computer and talking to friends on AIM and Gay.com. My friend "Gavin" was ecstatic, talking with lots of smiley faces because he had found his own Prince Charming, Prince Chaddy Chaddy Bang Bang. Feeling like an ugly stepsister, I nevertheless congratulated him on his storybook romance before he set his messenger window to away and galloped off into the Wisconsin sunset.


As I was listening to some Ciara, I noticed someone had come online. It was the Hot Scot. My intellectual side said that I should just ignore him but my fingers were cast under a spell of boredom/masochism and were suddenly typing him a friendyly hello. Uncharacteristically, he replied with a friendly greeting and asked me if I wanted to go downtown with him and share a fishbowl. Part of me wanted to say no. I felt like Snow White being offered the poisoned apple yet I decided to say yes because just like Snow White, I was retarded.


"Where are you going?" my father asked me as I scurried past him.


"I'm apparently going out to the bars with The Scot," I said.


"I thought you hated him," he replied.


"Oh, I do," I said as I headed out the door.


I stood outside, smoking my ten millionth cigarette of the day and wondered to myself if I was strong enough to handle this. Could I really make friends with the Hot Scot? Or would I end up like I always had, in an emotional coffin with my group of friend trying desperately to revive me? And just when I was about to go back in and put on my pajamas and call the whole thing off, he showed up. I got into the car, slammed the door, and prayed for this, my fairy tale, to not end up grim.


Fantasy
"Hey, you interested in a threeway?" a guy asked me.


He was one of those guys that looked like just a clump of testosterone than an actual human being. Needless to say, I flatly refused him.


"Are you into threeways?" another guy asked me, a cute one with an unfortunate sense of taste since he was wearing a puka shell necklace and dating the aforementioned clump.


"Your boyfriend already asked me," I sighed.


"And?" he said.


"I told him no," I replied. "He's not really my type."


He paused for a moment. "Are you interested in just a one-on-one? It's always been my fantasy to be with a Black guy."


"Ahh," I replied. "You know, I have a fantasy as well."


"What's that?" he asked excitedly.


"Not to be hit on by guys with Negro fetishes," I glared before walking off.


A Bar Tale, Part 2-Gone Fishin'
The Hot Scot, his cousin, and myself had gotten a table at Who's On Third, one of those college/townie bars that was always packed with girls in tube tops and the boys that buy them their mixed drinks in the faint hopes of hitting a home run.


"Here we go," Hot Scot said, setting down a 64 ounce fishbowl of blue raspberry vodka lemonade at our table that was perched too high.


His cousin decided to make a longer straw. She did it and then The Russian yet my motor skills, a thing I've still yet to master, failed me once again.


"Do you need help?" he giggled.

"I do," I sighed. "I'm stupid."


"Just a little," he said as he fixed my straws.


I searched his face for the meanness, the cruelty that usually accompanied such remarks but instead he just looked at me and smiled and handed me my new straw.


Half an hour later, The Scot's cousin had left him and I by ourselves. The Scot was anxious and decided it was time for us to go over to the gay bar Players. He looked around, the skuzzy bouncer working the door having his back turned and gabbing on a cellphone. With the half-full fishbowl, The Scot motioned for me to follow behind him and we ran out onto the sidewalk.


"Are you seriously planning on sneaking this into Players?" I asked him as we looked both ways for cops.


"We just cut through the parking ramp and head in the back way," he smiled before sprinting across the street. I stood, frozen a little bit and then he yelled, "Well come on."


I trailed behind in the parking lot and checked to make sure police weren't lurking about in their popo mobiles like they usually are in downtown La Crosse. We casually walked over to Players and walked through the back entrance and found a table of three lesbian friends sitting together.


"Told ya we could do it," he beamed before sailing onto the bar.


A Bar Tale, Part 3-Queen of the Ball
The Scot and I were camped out by the AC, his now sore leg propped up on a bar stool. I stared at his face. In the two years he had gained weight and had partied hard and it showed yet I still saw those exotic yet boy-next-door features that had initially attracted me to him. And as I was staring at him, I saw this one piece of glitter on his face.

Imagine that. Glitter at a gay bar.

Anyway, I reached my hand to his face. He recoiled at first, leaning away from me for a second. I was about to put my hand down when he calmed down and leaned towards me. I moved my finger from the bridge of his nose and to the tip. I leaned back, happy that he had mellowed enough for me to even make the gesture. By the way, the piece of glitter was still on his nose.


At 2, Players closed and The Scot and I made our way to Brothers to find his cousin so I could get a ride home. He bummed a Marb from me and I lit it for him. His leg was acting up so he sat down on the ground in front of the bar as men in too tight t-shirts piled out with bleached blonde girls with spray tans.


"Are you okay?" I asked him.


"I'm fine," he sighed, leaning his head against the window. "I'll be okay."


His cousin eventually came out and told us we were invited to an after bar party. I declined. I lied and said I had to get up early. In reality, I wanted to leave the night, the bars, The Scot with still positive feelings.


We piled into the car with some other party people with the Hot Scot crammed in the middle. We pulled up to my house and I got out. I was about to walk away and stroll back into the house when I looked back and saw this extended hand. I walked back and grabbed hold of the hand and shook it.


"Have a good night," The Scot said to me, firmly shaking my hand.


"You too," I said. "I had fun."


He moved over to where I had been sitting as the car pulled out and went to the after party. It was dark on the corner where my house is, the streetlight out again as usual. I pressed the button down and a green neon light came on. It was 2:17 and it was July Fourth. Then it hit me. It was now the second anniversary of when The Scot and I had first met each other.


Postlude-And He Lived Happily Ever After . . .
The young man eventually packed up his stuff and went back to a distant land to find new magical adventures. He would write the tales of the toads, the minstrels, the revelers, and tell it to everyone. And one day, he hoped that he would find Prince Charming. But for now, he was content on living, looking, and making his own happy ending.


The Rules of Distractions
There is a couple I know that have been dating for about nine months or so now. They're totally enamored with each other, as evidenced by their detailed accounts on their blogs about the great sex they're having. Futons, bathtubs, beds, they've been fucking on any available flat surface. But I had to give them credit for being able to find somebody to be committed too. Or at least I did until I talked to one of them, the older one with a Lord of the Rings obsession and a propensity for liking his men barely legal young undergraduates, and found out that they're devotion had a special clause.


"We can have sex with other people as long as we tell one another and take pictures," he told me, casually as I sat down on the futon that most likely had been the sight of numerous acts of sodomy and he turned on the fan in his tiny white room of a bedroom.


"What's your definition of sex?" I asked, curious to see the specificity of this agreement.


"Anything that involves a penis going into an orafice," he replied. "We don't have to tell everything, though. Jerking off with somebody because that's just masturbation."


"It just happens to not be your own hand," I added. "So have you actually done this fuck-outside-of-the-relationship thing?"


"I haven't but he has with an old friend," he said to me.


"And you're okay with it?"


"Yeah," he replied with a little smile. "We're together and that's all that matters."


As I stared at his face, a little sweaty from the humidity but also beaming as he thought of his boyfriend, I didn't know whether they had found the way to be truly committed to each other or just grounds for commitment to an institution.
-----
The Board
A wise man once said, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." I soon found out that I indeed was in no position to make comments about the sanity of my friends' relationships because according to my friends I gone a bit nuts myself.


"You saw the Scot?!" they pretty much all screeched in one form or another.


I tried to explain the evening--the fishbowl, the dancing, the impressions, the handshake--but the way they stared at me with piercing eyes I could have been talking about Paris Hilton really being an alien sent to earth to conquer by rendering everybody stupid. In their eyes, I was certifiably crazy and for the moment I was okay with that because I knew that the Scot had changed and things were going to be different. Each one rolled her eyes and I realized that if they had been a competency board, I would’ve been carted off to a padded cell in no time.


Two days later, I chatted with Ridley the Rugby player over Yahoo! Messenger as I laid on top of my twin bed, trying my hardest to keep the green cover on it. There were several lulls in the conversation, the longest one lasting ten minutes. Paranoia set in and I was sure that I had scared off Ridley with all my talk about the Scot.


“I’m so sorry I started doing dishes in between statements and then I got busy,” he replied. “But that’s good you made peace with him.”


He logged off right after that. It was my shortest therapy session to date.


I’ve always had an obsessive compulsive nature, cleaning at two in the morning when stressed as an example, so I went through my live journal blog to clean out old entries. As I went through each entry, most dating back to the end of first semester, there was an old chat conversation I had posted when I was at a dearth of things to talk about. And as I read it, it was some of the best therapeutic advice I could’ve received then or now:


Moi: do you think i'm attractive? not for you, just in general

The Scot: I will answer with another question
The Scot: Do you think I am cute?


Moi: yes


The Scot: well a lot of people find me ugly
The Scot: another half find me cute


Moi: well count me in the half that finds you cute


The Scot: you need to find the answer inside of you


Moi: i know, i know. sometimes it's just nice to know someone besides yourself thinks you're attractive


The Scot: now, if you really thought so... would you ask me that quesion?


Moi: it's just frustrating having no one interested
Moi: people just usually say I'm funny, not cute. Sometimes you just want to be cute.


The Scot: well I never thought you were funny if that makes you feel better?


Moi: well i was never looking to make you laugh
Moi: i guess i did well at that


The Scot: u have the same problem that I have but with magnitude of 2893423
The Scot: become happy with yourself and then find someone to be happy. HAPPY FOR YOURSELF. You know what you need to do to become happy
The Scot: just afraid of it - it takes some effort
-----
LoveGames
"What you up to?" I typed to the Scot a week after last seeing him.


"Not talking to you," he typed back.


"What?"


"I'm not in the mood to talk to you."


I sat back in my brown plastic chair, rereading his words to me. It was just a small thing, something must people would brush off as him being moody or having a bad day and just being in a funk. But I knew better. I knew that this was just the first sign, the beginning symptoms of the fat comments, the gleeful needling, the other Russian personality returning to form. In my little dorm room with its bare white walls, I finally got it. I had been suffering my own kind of mental disorder when it came to him.

We were in a manic depressive relationship. Our high highs always bottomed out to this intense lows that when I was in the midst of my Hot Scot high, his seeming change ever present in my thoughts, a small part of my sanity kept echoing to me that he would return back to himself. But I silenced that little voice with prescriptions of delusion and hope and desperation. People say that people act crazy when they are in love but at a certain love crazy can cross over to just plain crazy.


Doctors say a lot of mental disorders can be controlled and treated if caught in the earliest stages and I did the same with him. I deleted his pictures and his name off of my messenger list. But just like the real thing, my Hot Scot disorder would never be fully cured. There would always be traces that I would have to medicate with friends and new loves. And I knew I would never make it back to being “normal” but eventually I could, and I would, find some peace of mind.

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