The Official Homo Thread

Bored and got some time to spare? Then check out this thread from the offtopic section of one of the car forums I frequent:

"The Official Homo Thread"

It's a pretty candid 110+ page discussion covering everything from coming out, relationships, dating, sex...lots and lots of sex (you've been forewarned). It's a long read (it took me a few solid days to get caught up), but it's definitely interesting. The best part of it is that there's such a wide range of participants, straight and gay, from all different walks of life and experiences, and everyone's got an opinion about everything. But be the judge for yourself, and check it out.

-Matt

Busy Bee

I’ve been meaning to post about counselling last week, but there was a lot to digest and a lot of writing and re-writing going on as a result, so that’s still a work in progress. I’ve been keeping myself distracted with other things this week though.

I’ll start off with some slightly frivolous stuff. Over the weekend, I picked up my first video game in a while, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I haven’t played it too much yet, but I loved the first two, quirky storylines and all. Plus, there’s something rewarding about platformers (and falling from heights and failing!). Speaking of platformers, I’m also stoked for wall-climbing this weekend with Nate and a couple of the girls we met. I might be afraid of heights, but I actually enjoy wall-climbing a lot. It’s rewarding to struggle and push yourself to keep climbing and climbing till you FINALLY manage to tap the top of the wall. Unlike Uncharted though, it’s not quite so much fun to fall and fail...

Also, I enrolled for courses for January this week, and I’m going back to school FOR REAL this time. It’s been an enlightening break, living in the “real”, working world for a few months, but I need to get back and finish my degree. For what it’s worth, I’m a sociology major, and I’ll be taking 2 courses, one of which is a sociology of info tech course (sociology of facebook, anyone?) which I’m kinda stoked for. I’m a little nervous though, because I’ll have been out of school for 7 months by the time I get back into the lecture hall and I’m hoping I haven’t lost all my study habits (like riding a bike, right?), but I’m taking it slow with 2 courses and easing myself back into things. I’m going to be filling the rest of my time volunteering and getting ready to do another work semester during the summer, so I won’t be completely bored/lazy anyway.

Lately I’ve also been looking into some of the local LGBTQ resources, just for shits and giggles. Being back on campus, I’m sort of tempted to go check out our LGBTQ centre, just to see what it’s like and how it works, and maybe meet some people face to face going through the same thing. I also found Qmunity here in Vancouver that offers, amongst other resources, a couple workshops like the coming-out group and bi support group, which sounded interesting.  Maybe in time though, I’d like to be out to a few more people before I go about attending meetings and support groups; being all deceptive about counselling is hard enough and it’d be great to talk to friends and family about what I’d actually get out of these things. But I’m glad organizations and resources like these exist though so they’re there when I’m ready. Eventually, I think it’d be really rewarding to volunteer or something with something like Qmunity and get more involved with the LGBTQ community. Maybe it’ll even help me figure myself out a bit? One step at a time though, one step at a time... 

All for now...

-Matt

"Great having a chance to talk, dude"

This week I’ve spent some time mending relationships by hanging out with The Guys and chatting with them on Skype during the week. It’s not that I’ve really had any bad blood between any of them, but I’ve pulled back from them in recent years. Part of it is because I’m sort of intimidated by them, they’re all pretty masculine guys who are into sports and other stereotypical “guy” things that I’m not really into, so I hold back since I don’t want to sound wimpy or stupid. Maybe I’m slowly getting better, but I realized that there’s more to them than just talking about sports and video games and put my thoughts aside and took the effort to reconnect with them.

Part of the reason I’ve been brought back together with The Guys is because of this group of girls we met a few weeks back through Danny and his girlfriend. They’re really awesome, down to earth girls who aren’t really the partying, hard drinking type, but would rather go explore the city and go on an adventure, just like us. Out of this group, there is a set of twins that our other friends are trying to set Nate and myself up with. I appreciate the gesture from my friends, but I just feel like I’m being put in that awkward position of lying and telling half-truths to pretend I’m interested in them. Well, not to say I’m not into them, but I’m just not into them in THAT way. They make really cool friends, which is great, but I’m not sure if they want me in that group as something more. Nate’s been seeing his twin, and I’m not sure if the two of them keep inviting me out with them to set me up with the other twin/as a double date or whether they just like me as a friend whose personality and values match theirs. I mean, the four of us did go out Saturday night with a bunch of our friends to a bar, but then today it was just the twins, Nate and I going kayaking (??). It’s just a little unsettling for me because I don’t want to lead anybody on, but I really don’t know what to do to figure out my role in the group, other than to come out to them, which isn’t going to happen just yet.