Chapter eight: behind the music ( lyrics)

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Relat-(ion)-sinking-ships

"the past is the past
or so they say
but i cant help bringing it up
in these social outings
and my oh my, isnt it astounding
how people never change
your still the same
and hes the lucky one
so why do you keep
dialing my number all the time
just to feed me the same old tired lines"

i cut my hair and dyed my bangs
change my earrings and my name
and somehow i still fall for your type
and after everyone of them is gone
i still see your face
oh isnt he the lucky one
but does he know the secrets your hiding
and how you just cant
keep my name out of your mouth
maybe its time you figure this out

" the past is the past
or so they say
but i just cant help
brining it up in these social outings
and my oh my isnt it astounding
how people never change
your still the same
isnt he the lucky one
so why do you keep dialing
my number all the time
just to feed me
the same old tired lines"

i gave you my time for free
and kept your sullied memory
you didnt want to keep me
good to know im only worth fucking
and they wonder why im low on self esteem

"the past is the past or so they say
but i cant help bringing it up
in these social outings
and my oh my isnt it astounding
how people never change
your still the same
and hes the lucky one
so why do you keep dialing
my number all the time
just to feed me
the same tired lines"

arent these the places
and the faces
we still treasure mutually
you seem distressed
but your the one thats haunting me
and lately ive been thinking

"the past is the past or so they say
but i just cant help bringing it up
in these social outings
and my oh my isnt it astounding
how people never change
your still the same
and hes the lucky one
so why do you keep dialing
my number all the time
just to give me
the same tired lines"

well maybe im too good for you
but why are we both still longing
your friends could never mean anything
but yet you choose pretty faces and accuainting
over love and extacy

"the past is the past or so they say
but i cant help bringing it up
in these social outings
and my oh my isnt it astounding
how people never change
your still the same
and hes the lucky one
so why do you keep dialing
my number all the time
to give me the same tired lines"

well when you get back to your
charades and poker
remember that for a moment you let
your guard recede for me
pardon me for being upset
when i thought that meant something
keep trying to forget
and crawl back to your closet

The past is the past or so they say
but i cant help bringing it up
in these social outings
i express what you try to repress
but why are you so ashamed and why are you hiding
tag your it because im done with counting
if you want me again well good luck finding
love once lost cant be reclaimed
yet i still fall for your type
the same pretty faces to whom i am nothing
more than just a fling

i wrote this song because i was looking through my yearbook and couldnt help noticing the face of the first true love, again, and then it reminded me of how all my relationships kind fo ended the same way , the only difference is that , they actually had more of a degree of honesty considering that my other ....suitors.. had come out of their closets at least to some degree and it was openly discussed and not a beat around the bush kind of code like thing to them , and unlike those other relationships , i was deeply attatched because up until 11th grade i had been hanging on to the hope that maybe in some sense of some way he ould eventually be in my life in some facett even as a friend because i really would rather have had to endure the pain of watching him living a lie , dating girls and cutting holes in my heart every day than to have to go on life without him in it at all , i would rather be in agony over him but with a tiny ray of hope if it meant that he even noticed me and could recall my name and even play along as if i existd to him as more than just some random face in our highschool population. i was looking through the year book because were doing senior superlatives and i had to figure out who ( a male and a female ) to put for best looking and best hair because they were as of yet unclaimed on my list which is due today. It got me thinking why is it that all my relationships have the same routine crash course. is there some kind of meeting house all these guys go to and meet with the first guy i had sex with and converse and go amongst themselves asking how do i emotionally break this kind trusting person, but get some sexual favors out of it in the process. and then come up with the blueprint of . Introduce yourself. Like everything i like and be very interesting , Particularly the ones that arent so hot. And say all the right things. play around a little bit to keep me thinking they actually might be right for me in some sense by "contemplating via some me time" how to work out the distance thing for those that live out of the county or city which is a great percentage. And for the coupe de gras either string me along for a month and set up date after date that they break or actually meet me and get their fill. and then completely cut me out of their life as if i dont matter whatsoever move on to the guy theyve had waiting on side the entire time. But then after a while work their way so that they are like a ghost that i have to somehow encounter everytime i go online or everytime i walk through the hallway at school silently driving me mad. Even after i remove them from my friends list i somehow still have to see their name pop up on my news feed. Its gotten to the point that i have no idea where im going in my relationships why cant i meet someone who is both gay and an honest to god real person.  it seems as though im either going through this tragic series of events to fuel my creative passions and make me a better writer or to give me something to talk about amongst my friends or the worst of all the possibilities, and i shudder to think this because i enjoy being an optimist , Maybe im destined to be alone or to be a perpetual slut that is continualy duped by guy after guy after guy into giving up the key to the goody jar and not making them leave a deposit as collateral. what is going to become of me later on in life will i grow up to be one of those cat ladys that only has stories wisdom and other things of that nature that amount to nothing but memories and advice for the younger gay generation that seek guidance from their elders, maybe i will end up being the male fag hag, thats far too past their prime to get any action at the clubs in the underground scene btu that everyone still likes to take out buy drinks and listen to the soapbox rants and watch get inebriated and act like a fool. Maybe thats my future, i hope not but one has to wonder. Pray for me that it isnt so and that i meet at least a few guys that think of me as more than just a hard to get one night stand that they will write off later after conquering , like the wild animals that once bagged tagged , turned into a rug is just throw down on the floor of the back room to grace the dust. i dont know what the future holds but hopefully things will improve for me soon because i dont think i have the strength to live that kind of life

Chapter seven: the light that turned the world black

its midnight , and im sitting under s tree in my yard belting at the top of my lungs the lyrics to the song coming out of my mp3 player. And life is good. Even though im unemployed and therefore broke. even though my life has taken a turn for the difficult im breathing. im surviving. and tomorrow im going to get another pack of cigarettes which is gonna help me cope with the situations in my life that are both , impossible to handle by myself, and out of my control completely. i wont stop the sun from rising, i wont stop the clock from running out, all i can do is continue through and try to find a way to brace myself. The best way of which i know how is to focus on the positive, and find new reasons not to pull the proverbial trigger.
Im sure your wondering what does all this have to do with anything and where is the pizazz. Well rest assured there are plenty of details that lead to this state of mind where i am neither euphoric nor depressed nor even apathetic because i care tremendously. It might have something to do with the fact that i finally finished that last little bit of my two year old cough syrup that i got when i had bronchitis , it just so happens to contain hydrocodene which is to be honest amazing. or maybe its because even as the pieces of what has passed before have fallen away , im okay with it because im noticing the parts of me and my life that were most important, although some may see least practical, have remained i have a ton of new ideas for scripts but i cant really start writing them because i have nowhere to put them that i can be satisfied with that its preserved. It relates because last night i was looking through my old works and noticing how i really have grown as a writer since i first started out with writing scripts and song lyrics , back in sixth grade. I noticed that even in my early works ,while repulsive and unrefined to my now evolved sensibilities, i had a quality to it that was both entertaining and cool because i always have said what i felt needed to be said . i masterfully crafted metaphores that explained everything in a relation. and i learned as i wrote. thats all i could ask of myself, and im so glad that back when i was suicidal little preteen me in sixth grade, that i found what i needed to cope and what i needed most which was a reason for living. and as i got older and entered into theatre i found my calling and my compliment. I have found reasons . i have formed families , i have watched friends come and go each of them having enriched me in some way and in return i enriched them. and i learned that religion and foolish things we are indoctrinated into when we are infants dont define us when we grow up. In a few months ill be looking for a new job and a new place to live. i will be struggling to find a way to produce my haunted house that will produce my show that i wrote and find a new way to make my big dreams bigger than life reality. Alll the while creating and exploring the possibilities and growing both emotionally and in wisdom. All the while becoming a new version of that sweet blue eyed child that was oh so charming , that had to hide who e was and somehow found the strength through art and writing to establish himself and say without using any words that " i am who i am and i am unafraid and i wont be changed ". Although change has occurred my appearance is different that secret ingredient is still there and i still wake up every morning feeling like myself. And no hater , no lover , no teacher , no economic situation , drug, job, occupation , or even dream is going to take that away. Im just a new batch of the same original recipee that was born into this world on march 4 of 93 , and i dont think it will ever change, and i pray that it doesnt because i couldnt be happier even as the world around me becomes more and more foreign.

Chapter six: stairway to heaven

For the past few years its seemed as if my world was at odds with itself. Although then again i guess it always kind of will be otherwise it would never be progressing. Ive reevaluated a lot of things in my life lately , particularly my love life, and ive figured out that maybe im just better off living out fantasies and fettishes than i am waiting on mr. right , and just make do with mr. right now. Maybe its just not meant to be that i will find the perfect guy without transitioning. And plus it seems like every guy i find that has at least most of the qualities that im looking for in a partner has no intentions of being with me. But at the same time what am i doing with my life thats going to hold me through the dreaded waiting period. You know what i mean, the time where your sitting by yourself , alone , with noone else , on saturday nights all your friends occupied with their signifigant other, and all your eternally single friends inexplicably are unreachable. it seems as though whenever i get pummelled into pieces , figuratively of course, it intensifies by the pain of knowing that my friends are always too busy for me. I used to channel that energy into focusing my attention on my job. Unfortunately thats no longer possible considering i got fired on friday. yes fired as in the dreaded donald trump statement you never want to hear. i managed to go from being happy and content and double employed in november, to being unemployed broken hearted disenchanted and lonely in january. let me tell you how it started.
It started when i got suspended after missing a meeting with my boss and performing rather poorly in an inservice staff meeting. My swimming skills were never good when it came to doing laps simply because i never learned the flipturn and my sides always hurt doing laps of anykind, like the time i vommited in gym class after doing 7 suicides , but i ran the quickest mile in my class the same week. Anyway , during my hiatus , i began to feel the strain of financial deficiency. And began the routine of filling out job applications and waiting , and waiting, and waiting. One day miraculously my insomnia payed off for me however. In the form off i went into a body relapse that put me in a deep sleep after about a full month of physical exhaustion and running on an hour of sleep or less a night. I didnt wake for school and got up at around ten thirty , at ten thirty five the phone rang. The number was restricted and i knew it wouldnt be a redialable number if i didnt answer it then. I answered and spoke with the HR person for target one of the many places i had applied , they asked me down for an interview at one o clock . I went to the interview and recieved a seasonal job offer. After a few months of working and being happy and grateful for a job the time came to an end. I went down to my first job which i was then still employed yet and asked when i could go back on the schedule. SHe told me i could go back on when i proved that i was still fit to go back on a lifeguard stand. so i made an appointment to do so and then finally that day came. I went in and began with a warm up 100 meter , i chose to do with brast stroke. i breezed through it fairly simply. Immediatley after i was told i had to do a 300 meter freestyle without stopping. I struggled to breath and i felt my lungs grow sore and every muscle hurt to move i struggled and struggled through it as my sides ached and i felt my lunch come up into my throat. Finally i had completed my task , i then had to swim another 100 meter breast stroke. it hurt to do it the entire way . but at least i could breath although, my muscles were fatigued and i knew the whole way through i was going to vomit. I was dehydrated and out of shape i had miraculously finished my 500 meters of hell and then sat there waiting while holly my boss retrieved the diving brick for my next and final task. The brick swim, a relieving thing considering i was actually good at it, i excelled at doing things in deep water, the only thing i struggled with ever was swimming in laps, my deep water backboarding even something most had trouble with was top notch. the brick was thrown and i had a minute and fourty seconds to retrieve it , i swam to it as fast as i could i dove down like a champ and retrieved it now was the hard part. I had to keep the brick and myself above water by kicking my legs. normally it wasnt a challenge but today it inexplicably was , i couldnt keep my balance and i could not keep my ears from the water , in my failed attempts to correct it , i slipped under and had to kick off of the bottom. I finally got to the edge and got myself and the brick out of the water in one minute and fifteen seconds, but it was not a success. i had touched the bottom twice. I was flailing in the water and couldnt keep my ears above the water. As i listened to holly tell me about how horrible i did i began to trail off, and could barely hold my head up to answer questions, i crawled to the drain beside me and all the conents of my stomach ( which was mainly acid) began a mass exodus out of my mouth. I felt my sides clench up and my throat felt like it was on fire. and i could not seize control of my body as i heaved. I finished throwing up my insides, and i got my towel got water and went inside where i once again vomited but this time in a trash can. Holly told me that i would be eligable for rehire but could no longer be on payroll because i was unfit to go back in the stand, my employment as of yet had officially been terminated.
I drove home and was once again unable to piece together what i was going to do , and what the first step to getting back on track was going to be. Perhaps ill never know

Chapter five : village of the lost

once again i found myself at the beginning of a new end. first semester is over, and creative writing is done, but so has my block, blocker. It sems having the most bizzarre and sometimes just outrageous work today was perfect distractions for me to become a more cathartic and more focused writer in everything but my creative writing writings. and i started to thinking to myself. amidst all of the ending of classes, this is my senior year, and i havent hooked up with a single guy that goes to school with me, ive survived highschool, without any relationship drama i had to live down later. but its kind of sad in a way because there are so many people i had feelings for that i went to school with, and im wondering will i ever look back with regret. Should i have given obvious signs and just throw my already damaged self at people, it sems to work perfectly for my friend kaitlyn and she has had no regrets in her highschool experience, but then again shes not a minority. im not really sure whts been plaguing me about this. Maybe its that i feel like i havent inspired anyone, i have friends that are like littel high school celebrities. friends that are in bands, friends that are actually looked up to and i keep thinking why isnt that me. im talented. i write poetry everyday, in the form of song lyrics, a lot of them are good. i never was able to form a band even though i sing quite well. and i act but yet all three of the high years, i ended up with a supporting lead, but not the star role. and i have a story to tell i have messages to spread and i believe that i could inspire people. Im one of two brave brave guys in my senior class to be out of the closet, i feel as though i should have inspired someone i know at my schoo to come out, there are quite a few i know that are standing there with the door of the proverbial closet wide open styling their party dresses and yet wont take the steps out there into the light. there are many things on my mind at the moment, but the one that rings clear is , this town is too small, and everyone knows my name, but they either fear me ir dont want to give me a chance because i know if given the opportunity i have so much to offer and would be even better if only someone would give me the break i need to make something of myself, something i can respect my reflection for, be it as a symbol of hope to closet cases or a muscial hero that people would praise as the next kurt cobain or gerrard way. or just as the leading man i always should have been . but for now i formulate my entry into the big bad world from which ive tasted more of the bitter parts, and are therefore more prepared than anyone i know. i play the supporting leads, and stand out among the idiots given a spotlight even thought they end up messing it up, and making me feel more and more annoyed with my lack of appreciation, by spurning my wisdom and advice acting as if they have been around for eons even though they know nothing and wind up missing ques , and forcing me to carry the sceneeither way they are going to get the praise becasue i wont let the show be bad, and i wont look like an idiot for letting it all go to shit by not picking up the slack, and the audience is none the wiser. hopefully when i get out into a more mature place, or a new surrounding where they dont know me or my brother whos shadow i cant live in because im far too individual and have different stories to tell characters to portray and never enough ways to express my unique brand of bliss and pain daquiri. so i write my lyrics and poetry , and all the scripts and storys and i hope one day i will find love, i will inspire someone and one day someone will listen and find value, in what i have to say and make the music with me, and i can have my moment of hometown fame that i have been craving ever since i was small and my siblings shadowed and steifelled my acclaim, thank god i still have frineds to help me meet these goals , or at least i hope that illusion is really so

Chapter four: Soul searching

lately ive been looking for answers to these questions i cant possibly answer and doing a lot of soul searching. In a second im going to tell you stories that have seemingly absolutely nothing to deal with this statement , and hopefully by the end of this reading you will get it. So Final exams are this week and we had to haul our asses out of the comfort of our beds to take second block exams on a saturday. Second block my friends and i all have Discrete math , which with our teacher is like being in purgatory for 90 minutes a day, only on exam day it was longer. What made it worse was there was still tension in the air from where i had cussed out my teacher the previous friday and this had been the first day back. The exam was easy but the waiting was terrible. Two hours later the bell rang and we exited the room , my friends and i decided to go out to a celebratory lunch , and my friend had asked me to pick her up a pack of smokes while i was getting a pack for myself, so i did, and i couldnt help but shake the wondering of why such an out of character request. She never did tell me the reasons why but did endulge the secret she had been keeping, that her ex boyfriend had been back in her life in some sense , and meanwhile two other guys had been toying with her emotions, and i thought to myself that is the exact situation i have been in for the entirity of my life since about sixth grade.

Ever since sixth grade i have been in love with a guy, well, not in love at first, in fact at first i found him completely fucking annoying and could not believe he was part of the popular crowd. It just goes to show you how sports can lead to instant acceptance by the shallowest of people. He played soccer and had the most beautiful eyes i had ever seen. I tried my best to keep my distance from him but we had every class together for all three years of junior high. I didnt realize how rapidly i descended into the mad world of love until 8th grade where we would have movies every other day in one class or another. And of course when there were movies playing we would always ( as a class i mean) lay down in the floor and pretty much do everything other than watch the movie. About the second time we watched a movie in class i had found myself lying next to him, and over the course of the period slowly gravitated closer and closer. By the end of the class when the lights were turned on i was lying with my head on his chest his hands were running through my hair. it continued this way for a while in fact all the way up until the last day of school, i knew about the fifth time that i was hooked. I also knew pretty early on that i wasnt the only one of us to be attracted to the other. I knew this because of two reasons one was the early sing of i made the mistake of showing him my magic hands ( im very good at massage) when he had a head ache and i spent the class period massaging his temples. From that moment on , until the end of the year he never stopped asking me to massage him, often in the stragest places, one of which was his hands, which of course i did and soon enough , when we were watching movies he began holding my hand, while i massaged them, eventually the massaging part stopped but we continued to hold hands. i also knew that the attraction was mutual because one day i looked down during one of our movie days and noticed that , well lets just say there were no rabbits in his pocket but something was jumping. I almost kissed him once. But unfortunately the bell had to ring , the lights came on and there was no way to do it discretely , and although he never said it out loud and neither did i, in the dark we were content with just each other. when the lights came on however he was all about appearances.

Middle School ended and we entered into highschool, and we never had classes with each other again, although we saw each other in the hallway and he would always look at me smile and then turn away in shame when he thought people were watching. I had come out of the closet in ninth grade although i find it hard to believe that it was really a shock to anyone who knew me in middle school , it was less taboo and far less dangerous, and i had been in enough fights in middle school without giving people information with which to tease me with. Eventually i had moved on to other prospects but never gave up hope that someday he too would come out of the closet , at least to someone other than himself. And hopefully we might end up together, although i had lost my virginity when i was 8 i had still never managed to have been kissed. And i was saving my lips for him. all the way up to junior year i had still held on to hope and not been with anyone else, or emotionally been attached to anyone i was talking to. Which was hard for me because i had met on myspace a guy that was both sweet interesting , and a smoking hot italian abercrombie and fitch model who i could not believe was interested in me. But i kept myself alone and waited for him, and then an amazing thing happened he got a facebook and i had been one of the first five people he had friended. I of course accepted and was filled with joy because he hadnt forgotten that i existed. which made it okay again that i still pined for him through all of the pain i felt tearing myself apart , it was the worst when i saw him dating a ninth grade girl that same year and i had to hide my jealousy and anger. But we got to talking again, i never pressured him or flirted out right , i did flirt a little but very coyly. Then after a while he stopped talking and i couldnt seem to get a response, at lunch i sat at a table across from the soccer players who he hung out with , ( he had a different lunch period) and every day consistently they would mutter slurs at me under their breath and throw things at me and pretend like they were oblivious to the actions they had just done when i turned around in response to whatever had been thrown at me. I realized that these douchebags opinions mattered more to him than i ever could and i realized that he would be one of tose guys that grows up gets married and has children with some dumb broad and then pulls an elton john and gets caught cheating with a guy and then comes out of the closet. But i still tried every day for three months to talk to him and every day no response but i knew he was online because every so often he would comment someone on my friends list, or post a status, but couldnt talk to me, which meant he was ignoring me , i sent him three different messages so i could know he got it , telling him he had twenty minutes to respond and talk to me or i would delete him , an hour later i begged for him to say something and twenty minutes later , i told him he had hurt me with his silence more than any physical abuse i had ever felt , and i have truely had a hard life. then i told him i never wanted to see or speak to him again, and that i sincerely was not his friend seeing as he couldnt be friends with me without feeling ashamed, i then deleted him. When i did it felt like my heart had exploded within my chest and a bomb had gone off in my brain, it was the most masochistic experience i had ever felt. Later that year, after i had mostly moved on emotionally from the trauma , and had been hurt ( ironicly mostly in the same manner) by a slew of different guys. My friend Jeri and i had gone to watch the fourth of july fireworks at the city park, we had met our friend cody there and decided to chill with him since he had noone there to chill with, and of course eing in a small town when any kind of event happens everyone you know seems to be in the same place. He walked up and of course, being with the group of people he was My friend cody had to invite them all to roll with us, they declined but still asked us to lead them to a good spot to view the fire works from. I dont know the girl he was with that night, nor do i care, but i felt both angry toward her, jealous toward her , and sorry for her, because she didnt know she was dating a guy who was living a lie. The entire way we were leading them, i could hear the two of them whispering about me behind me , and everytime i looked behind they would snicker amongst themselves and look away, and i could feel the dagger like stares piercing my back , every moment since then the brief encounters have been the same. and yet i still for some reason have something inside of me that feels attached to him.

During all this though , i had, had numerous encounters on the side that i had going, during the time after the fight , and yet, now when i see him one on one in class ( mainly theatre class i go in there all the time and he is there because hes actually part of the class, although inmy opinion he shouldnt be but then again i am sort of entitled to have rage towards him and theatre has been since starting high school my area) he smiles at me and acts like nothings wrong, and i think for a second that there might still be hope , and then i remember , and then i am filled with rage again because hes just smiling at me to mess with my emotions, a lot like cohen did. Leading me on with no intentions of ever actually going any further than a few words here and there and then completely driving me insane by not speaking to me for no apparant reason.

I cant help but think how small the world is getting when my friend and i have such similar problems, and how my problems all seem to intertwine with themselves and how all of the men in my life that have fucked me over, find some way to keep themselves in my life, and to top themselves all of them seem to link up after individually screwing up a part of my life and making me regret ever being born with a heart and emotions.
how could my ffiend and i have such similar problems, and both have the presence of mind to turn to nicotene, and keep ourselves from slipping into a total eclipsing depression, and once more, how do the worst intentioned guys seem to find nice people with turbulent pasts like us, and how do they know the ways to get away with hurting us, and why do they want to . this makes me wonder, two things, where is god during all of this, i would ask this question but i already have my answer, i would share it but , im not about to be explaining my religion, or rather spirituality, the second thing i wonder is Is there a decent guy out there for me, and will i ever find him, if so when where and will i survive long enough to see that happy day?

Chapter three :Navigating the minefield

Ive had many numerous moments in my life where being in love , or rather being 'in like' with someone meant you had to be a mind reader. The problem is, being able to read people also has its drawbacks too. For instance in some cases knowing when someones up to something thats not in your favor and you call them on it, they become pissed off at you and wonder why you dont trust them. Like Cohen, we had a breif online thing, we never met in person because everytime i would ask he would never seem to set a date for meeting me, which was pathetic because he only lived one county over 15 minutes by highway. We met over facebook after he spent a day hanging out with my friend whitney. Whitney texted me to come hang out with her. I of course could not because i had musical rehearsals, but she told me to look him up on facebook because he was interested in me. It sounded sketch at first but after he accepted my request i began to operate under the assumtion that it was legit. We talked for a little bit ( a little bit here being about two weeks) through text messages. until he asked how fit i was and i replied that i had a six pack and he said he didnt believe it, so i sent him a picture of them and asked if he liked what he saw. ( I know im sounding like a complete whore here but you must remember, im a fool when it comes to love and im not uptight about anything really and i sincerely thought this guy was going to be "husband material"). Too which he replied , " it kind of made me uncomfortable because i have a boyfriend". I felt absolutely godsmacked i was filled with a combination of butane nicotene and rage i had been had again. After two weeks had passed his relationship ended and he resumed texting me, and once again i began buying into the lies again over sharing small talk. When he found someone hed stop texting me the moment that it ended it was back to texting me again until all hours of the night and so it went for a few months, then it kind of got to the point where i thought for once he might be taking me seriously, and aside from him being off and on more than the lights in a motel six i really liked this guy from the conversations we had shared. It finally got to the most serious point it would get to when he texted me one night while jacking off. He asked for me to send him pictures for inspiration, i was very hesitant, and he decided he didnt want a full nude but rather a suggestive pic that left things to his imagination. I felt that that was not beneath my dignity so i sent him one ( in which i must say i looked very nice). After that night , i began to live under the false hope that maybe he was interested in me on a serious level. After a while he quit texting and was once again on to another guy and the back and forth continued. It all culminated to a head when his ex friended me on facebook and then began to immediately hit on me after i accepted his request. At first i wanted nothing to do with this fourteen year old guy who was all about wanting to " treat me how i should be treated" and " be a real man for me". After a while the persistance payed off and i told him i would give him a shot ( primarily because i didnt think he was serious and i thought at the very least he would be less annoying). I actually grew in some ways emotionally attached to this guy who was very sweet and treated me with respect and complimented me , and made me feel as if i actually mattered to him which was something i had never felt before from a guy. After a week or two he was continuing to text me on a daily basis , and then i saw on facebook he was back with our mutual ex cohen to which i had to confront him for, we got in a huge fight. ( we eventually mended our friendship quite recently actually). Cohen on the other hand i could not forgive because during one of our all out textual warfare on each other, he said the worst thing he could have possibly said " i was never really interested in you at all". This moment made me feel the cheapest and the most hurt that ive felt since my first love ( who ill probably tell you about soon). It left my head reeling and me wondering many things two most important , One of which is then why would you lead me on like that and ASK my friend for ME to look YOU up. the second part of the first part being was this just something he said out of spite to hurt me . And lastly  why would someone do something so maliciously , either way it turned out it was a losing situation , each of the two scenarios meant that he was deliberately trying to hurt my feelings. And it made me wonder why is it that i keep finding these guys that want to hurt my feelings, and why is it that i cant seem to find an honest one to save my life , or at least an honest one thats: single , interested, Not completely busted, and of at least consenting age. It made me think that love is like navigating a minefield , your going to get hurt, your going to take missteps but hopefully ,( or so the theory goes) once you navigate through the field if you dont die on the way your perfect one or at least one that you can make it work with will be on the other side.

Chapter two : is that even a question

being a gay man , most of my friends are either female , or gay guys. in fact i have a whole group of friends that i see every day in school and hang out wih on a regular basis. one of which is my friend barb. Barb was different from most of my friends in that she did not entire my life until last year. We shared similar interest the most important one being our love of theatre and in fact we spent a great deal of time bonding during the spring musical. she and i became fast friends and soon we were spending lots of time together. She went to middle college at the start of this school year where she became friends with my friend chris who had been sort of estranged for some time, incidentally she was responsible for bringing us back together after a few years of not talking to each other. Barb left middle college and came back to school with me after a few month. Not long after i got a call from her in the middle of the night asking me to pick her up. Being the good friend i am i did , and listened to her sobingly tell me how she was kicked out once again by her aunts only this time she was not going to go back when they came to their senses. She moved in with my friend blake and soon after got a boyfriend and so the drama begins.
Barb had become estranged from us and spent all her time with her boyfriend and the wedge between all of us widened. soon after there were rumors going around between us and the whole thing became one big exaggeratted mess. last week we all sat down and had an intervention which has seemed to work. Today was the first time in many many months that all of us went to lunch as a group. and i can honestly say i had more fun than i had in a long time.
leaving the lunch i spent a little time at barnes and noble with blake and brittany before going back to my car and leaving for home. on the way home i decided to stop by my work. ( i had to tell you the story above for this story to be relevant you'll see why in a minute just stick with me). on the way down the hill i hit a huge ice patch . i was only going about 15 mph but i still began to slide it wasnt anything dramatic except that i came within inches of a medium from which a gate is positioned, and from that gate is a long pole that sticks out at about head level with me from the perspective of the car. i came about six inches from death. and i sat there thinking , now after all of the drama has finally simmered down ( aside from the men in my life of course but thats nothing new and i doubt drama will ever completely extracate itself from that part of my life) and i was thinking to myself wouldnt it suck if i had died after all that.
After running a few errands and insuring i would survive financially to my 18th birthday (after which i can always sell my dignity for folded singles in the nightclubs to pay the bills). I headed home. On the news i was watching and saw all these stories about kids that had died as a result of the winterry weather and i kept thinking that could have easily been me today. It was after that , that i realized i have goals and ideas of how to achieve them , but nothing in my life is set so far and i dont want to die without having achieved my dreams, god knows i dont want to see the so called golden years, but i want to see my dreams fullfilled. After my underly dramatic near death experience, which after having quite a few they dont seem to shake me up anymore, i thought is it anygood to even make a plan? Or is it better to just float along making ends meet meanwhile hustling your way towards your goals, Do you need to go to college and get a specified degree and try your best to enter whatever field youve set your sights too, and what do you do if you do all that and you cant get your foot in the door after that how do you go about achieiving your dreams and ambitions. And is there a plan for everyone, its things like this that we should be exploring in high school but noone ever seems to take the time because theyre too busy trying to get us to make up our minds about which school to apply to and which sorrorities or frats to pledge and which high interest loans to take or what scolarship to hope for after exhausting yourself doing the projects that merrit the sholarship. I have to wonder is this what were meant for. It seems to me the only safe plan is to not have a plan. But at the same time you cant always rely on guile and a smile while living on mom and dads money. Least of all for me because my mom doesnt have any money to spare between my three siblings and i and my dad cant exactly care for me financially from the grave. And so im stuck questioning, where does it go from here and i know the steps in the middle i need to take but what step needs to be the first step and how do i get to that first step and what do you do if you fall from the path?

Chapter one : the poker table

The story is never simple, its never dilluted, its never up front, and it never gives you all the pieces at once. Its like a game of poker because your not playing with just your cards, your also betting on the cards of every other player at the table. My table has many seats at it, and in fact many decks of cards in rotation. ive learned over the years that no matter how convincing your poker face is theres no possible way you can cash out while your ahead. in fact once sitting at this proverbial poker table we call love you can abandon all hopes of even breaking even. Love is a game in which we all lose, and i have lost a lot. too many times to count in fact but the ones i remember i remember quite vividly.
Im not gonna start at the beginnig because to be quite honest i dont remember where it all begin. or for that matter a ood place to start. before you take this in you should know ahead of time that its a story that will give you whiplash from flashbacks and even though you probably dont know me or for that matter give a flying fuck who i am or give a damn about my problems, you will feel that organ beneath your sternum fill with empathy. i think ill start with today and see how it fleshes itself out. Its a tuesday at 2 am january 2011. Here i am seventeen years of age and already it feels like ive lived for a thousand years. Im sitting in a recliner watching sex and the city re-runs on the e channel and thinking to myself so this is what my life has become. there is a mixture of ice and snow accumulating outside and im contemplating how im going to get out of the driveway tomorrow, school may have been cancelled but work has not , and i am scheduled at 2:15 pm for my last day at my second job. at this point not going is not an option because ive already exhausted my money from my last paycheck as minute as it was it went faster than i expected it ( it didnt help that last pay day was new years eve and i was forced to get all my check cashed because the only bank open was wachovia which was not my bank) luckily this month im not in the red on my bank account as i have been in months before.
The hardest part of being so bad at finding love is that all of my friends ask me for advice, and consistantly the advice i give works, for them at least, yet in my series of twisted complex and just plain fucked up relationships i cant seem to ever advise myself. this is proably a good time since we havent gotten into talking about my actual relationships yet, to tell you before you get to into this and find it shocking and or confusing, that i am gay. Not like the annoying high school joking , your so gay. i am a homosexual. and have been out of the closet since 9th grade. But my first relationship , which i shall tell you about in due time , unless i have second thoughts later on, happened with a guy when i was only 8 years old. But for now back to the moment. a few moments ago before i had the lapse of decision making skills to write this, i was outside taking a smoke break and texting my friends. both of which are having relationship issues and both of which are asking me for advice. ( see its not all chaotic it gets back to the point eventually i just tell a lot of side stories). My friend Hayley was telling me her most recent relationship predicament. She and her boyfriend are having problems of some type although she didnt elaborate on what they were, and her friend that composed a piece of music for her senior dance spotlight just confessed his attraction to her, and she returned it with her confession of her attraction to him but the problem is she has a committed boyfriend. Im sitting there listening to my straight ( well half straight) friends problems and thinking to myself how can i give advice on this situation when its so similar to a situation i was just in although in a different position just a few weeks ago. Ironicly enough with a guy that Hayley had set me up with. I explained to her i had not a thing to tell her about her about how to handle this situation because i was still discombobulated from the outcome of a similar situation with the guy she had set me up with. She sent a text to me with nothing but a question mark and i began to tell her this story.
Back in december i was sitting at home unwinding after a hard day at school. Suddenly my pocket vibrates and i open the text from the guy who hadnt spoken to me in some time after we initially started talking on facebook. We had only ever talked and i really liked him he seemed to have a vibrant personality and although not my type i found him attractive. But like any guy he had gotten bored talking to me and decided to start talking to another guy stating i was too long distance for him, but apparantly a guy that lived in minnesota wasnt. I was shocked when i recieved the text for him asking if i wanted to hang out, we had never met in person and i was a little bit apprehensive because he had done some stupid things that made me question him as a potential anything in my life at the time. I thought for a minute then said yes and went to meet him at the mall. after a while waiting in the parking lot he finally arrived which made me wonder what was taking so long because i had to drive from another county and he lived in that city. I brushed the doubt aside and we proceeded to hang out in the mall after a little bit of boring and awlward small talk we decided to go to a chorus concert where i felt bad for feeling attracted to a few of the guys onstage, but i didnt let it plague me too much because he was inconsiderantly ignoring me and talking to the people around which he knew, and of course i did not. After the concert i was feeling even more awkward and freezing cold because the sun had been down for a couple of hours and i was ready to be taken back to the familiar area of where my car was parked. Suddenly on the way home he began to make me feel more comfortable by showing the personality i was farmiliar with, the conversation became interesting and the atmosphere was charged and i remembered why i had came. He became more flirtatious as the enviroment became increasingly hot and he began to carress my thigh which at first scared me because he was driving and semed to lose track of where he was going when i began to engage in the foreplay he was attempting to initiate. We arrived at the parking deck and parked the car, and the walls came down and the chemistry between bagena to shine. It started with kissing when i lost my better sense to not ruin a decent thing and what i considered a step in the right direction. ( This was the first honest to god date i had been on in my life and long list of random hook ups in strange places). I whispered in his ear to take off his pants, and within moments i was staring at the floorboards going to work. The enjoyment on his face said it all and things were going hot and heavy until a depressing sign loomed across the parking lot. The security van had been spotted and immediately the action ceased much to our mutual dismay. He started the car and took m back to the level on which i was parked. we shared a few farewells and i kissed him once more before departing. Within moments he was blowing up my phone to tell me how amazing it was and how we would have to do it again sometime and how annoying it was that the security van had been spotted before we could finish what we were doing, but the overall feeling was better safe than sorry. I went home feeling recharged and immediately told my friends the god new that i may have an honest to god relationship and how great it felt to once again be back in the saddle considering i hadnt had any sexual encounters in a long time. A few days later i had logged on to facebook to check my messages and just waste some time and there it was looming on my news feed. I felt my stomach drop and felt my face flush with rage and a feeling that i had been stabbed int he back. The dreaded relationship status change. I felt like throwing my computer. Although we never said it meant anything out loud it felt as though it was implied and i couldnt believe my eyes. Not only was he now in a relationship two days after i had given him my time and umm ... affections, but he had the audacity two days after our car encounter to post that he was married . Married sounds great doesnt it , the bad news is it was not my picture and not my name that was listed as his new spouse, but that of someone i had never even heard of. I quickly tried to communicate with him, chat , messages, texts, and all to no avail. I felt absolutely godsmacked, how could i have been so dumb to trust this person. And why would someone want to hurt me like this, it would be different if he had talked to me, it would have been different if some time had passed, but two days after this event, he could commit to someone, someone else, but why not me. Was it not good, was i not looking attractive, did i stumble into bad lighting. I had tried all i could to make the conversation interesting and believe me it was hard considering he was an inssuffering know-it-all, who talked over me when ever i tried to bring up something to talk about. i had forgiven him for all that, i was willing to make this a relationship, i was ready to give up my farmilar world of musical partners and drunken moments of passion that i needed to be reminded of the next day but would forever be burned in my memories. And yet this guy who had been forgiven for a lack of personality and been treated to a night of explosive heated exchanges of what can only be described as bliss, had completely destroyed me with one post and a heartless move that made me feel like a whore and an idiot. And he wouldnt even answer me to tell me somewhat personally that he had found someone and could no longer see me.
After I told Hayley this she felt even worse for me than she did for herself. And i sat there after reliving this still fresh wound, smoking my L&M menthols thinking to myself what a small world we live in. Is this all that im going to have in store for me. Is there a guy for me out there that wont treat me like a disposable instrument for pleasure. And i kept thinking to myself the only thing we can do in life is put on the best poker face we can and no matter how convincing the other person seems with their promises of taking you to the next round , never show them the cards your holding. Or at least until they show you theirs first ad even then be wary of deceit . It just amazes me how we cant trust anyone these days. And so we keep playing past the point of broke as if were going to win it back eventually who knows maybe i will but its a new year what have i got to lose that hasnt already been taken ?