BEDID - Day 2 - "Dude, you're grinding up against my stomach."

Got something you want to see blogged in the month of December? Email me, or ask it here.

Question from Kevin: 

Ever thought something sexual about one of 'the guys'? 

Unless you consider daring Danny to wax his pubes for $50 a sexual thought, the answer is no. It’s cliché, but these guys really are the closest thing I have to brothers. And just like siblings, I can appreciate why girls might find them physically attractive, but I have no desire to fuck any of them. The thought of it just feels really wrong and gross. It's kind of the same feeling you might get when somebody tells you "Dude, your sister is hot." Just...no. It also helps, as one of the guys, that they try their damndest to do the most repulsive things around you.

That being said, since I’ve come out to them, I think we’ve all become a lot more relaxed and secure in our sexualities. I’m sure a lot of you have experienced it, but between buddies, it's like there’s a penalty for acting or doing something that might be misconstrued as gay and it kind of rules the dynamic between you guys. Don’t you love masculinity? (Hopefully during the break, there’s a book I’ve been meaning to read about this…stay tuned) Now that I’ve come out, I think we’ve broken down that barrier and all realized? Accepted? that there’s nothing to lose being a homo/homoerotic around each other, since…well, I am one. And now we just do it to be ridiculous and tease each other. Quote in the title? From 5'7' Brian the last time we went clubbing (and before you ask, HE CAME ON TO ME.). Randomly slapping each other in ass? A more frequent occurrence...unfortunately. Hell, Nate gets into fake arguments with Cara over me…after Nate bailed on some of plans a few weeks ago, the conversation ended something like this:

Cara, grabbing my arm: “It’s okay if you can't make it, you know Matt’s my replacement boyfriend.”

Nate, jokingly: “What? Bitch, please…he’s mine. You know I’ve got way more game than you do."

Me, reveling in the attention: “Uh…guys, you know there’s more than enough of me to go around. No need to ‘fight’.”

God, I have weird friends.

-Matt

Still Kicking!

A lot can happen in three and a half weeks, so I’m going to try and condense this down the best I can, but I can tell you now that it’s still going to be a novel.

I’ll start with an explanation of what happened at that fateful counselling session. Liz and I came to the conclusion that I lead my life by following what people want or expect from me (or at least what I assume those things are). Where a lot of my stress originated from was forcing myself to do things I don’t necessarily enjoy, but since it’s what people expected me to, I did it anyway. So the solution we discussed was to find something that genuinely made me happy, not anybody else, as to boost my confidence and focus on something other than worrying about pleasing other people. I ended up misinterpreting that to mean that I was on my own to find what made me happy and that no one else could be around me since they could potentially influence what I decide to do, and the ruminating snowballed from there. And that’s what brought me to my last post.

What's up, buttercup?

Nothing too crazy going on in my life right now, but in the interest of opening myself up more, I thought I’d try and mention some of the small, random going-ons with me.

1) The parental units...are on vacation for a week, without me and my sister naturally. It’s going to be really weird, since my dad normally works from home and my mom is “semi-retired”, so there’s always someone around the house. I’m sort of “excited” having to fend for myself...I’ve lived with my parents all my life and I guess I’m spoiled in the sense that my mom feels obligated to do the cooking and cleaning being at home all the time, so I don’t ever have to worry about that. I just want to prove to myself that I’m perfectly capable on my own and not completely reliant on my parents for everything. Probably sounds crazy to any of you living on your own, but I guess the grass is always greener.

2) Brian and Nate know 5 gays amongst the two of them – No, wait...scratch that. One is a mutual friend between all of us. So technically 4, excluding myself of course. It doesn’t really surprise me, but hearing that was sort of a reality check for me...it’s not going to be easy for them, or for me dealing with this whole bi thing. There’s going to be a lot of questions, a lot of things they probably won’t understand, at least I think. It’s just another one of those things that’s freaking me out a little and I’d rather not have to deal with it, but we’ll see about that. In the end though, they’re still my buddies, so I think everything will be alright, but not without some little bumps along the way.

3) Old crushes – It’s kind of funny, I start blogging about how I like guys and how that’s played with my head, and then I see two old (female) crushes I haven’t seen since high school within a week. I saw one on the bus, but was too shy (and frankly, embarrassed) to say anything. I’m pretty sure my feelings were known to her, and well, things didn’t work out, whatever the situation was. C’est la vie. The other is actually good friends with Danny, and I said a quick hi to her at Danny’s birthday party that she was hosting. She’s a little bit different than I last remember her (a little more party-girl), but still cool to see her nonetheless. Both are still pretty cute, though...bloody “straight-ish” guy mind.

4) Time and weather – Summer must have forgotten about Vancouver...while the rest of North America is stuck in a proverbial heat wave, I think we’ve been lucky to get MAYBE 2 or 3 actual, bright, sunny days this month. That means not nearly as much hiking and volleyball-playing as I would have liked so far, but what can you do? I also registered for classes last week, just another sign summer’s slowly coming to an end. On the other hand, I always like going back to school in the fall: I’m all refreshed from the summer break, all ready to learn (such a nerd) and it’s a fun atmosphere with all the excited first-year students around and welcoming events going on.

5) I wish I had a Golf R to drift around in :( (Thanks Insideline!)

And yeah, that’s about it. Got another long weekend ahead of me (yay BC Day), so free time to blog, get outside, eat, hang out with friends...it's gonna be sweet.

-Matt

The Guys

FYI, I noticed that anonymous commenting was turned off, so that's been turned on. Don't be afraid to speak it out, I'd love to hear from you, get some new perspectives, etc.

Anyway, I thought I’d write something here more frequently than I have been lately, but I really haven’t felt the need or desire to; I usually only feel the need to write when things bother me or start to suck, which hasn’t happened lately. Things have been going good in life so far: the weather’s actually been decent around here with a good dose of sunshine and warmer temps, rather than being rainy and dreary like it is most of the time, so I’ve been able to do one of my favourite things and drive around with windows and sunroof open, singing and dancing (as much as you can in the driver's seat, anyway) along to the radio. It’s just so liberating to have the wind going through your hair and taking in the fresh air! (I know, my sister thinks I’m a dork too) My martial arts classes started back up too, so I’m also a little more active and energetic than I was before when I was sitting around on my lazy ass. That, and I’ve been hanging out with my friends a lot more and having a ton of fun with them.

Being around them though has stirred up a lot of internal conflict and acting that I want to avoid. This weekend, for instance, a group of us went out to do some karaoke, which turned out to be a setup by my buddy Brian and his friend Iris to try and setup the rest of the guys and girls that went along. At the end of the night when he asked both my buddy Nate and I who we thought was cute, it didn’t feel natural just to shrug it off and say they weren’t my type (sort of true though, my taste in girls didn’t match with anyone there). As stupid as it sounds, I even avoided singing certain songs that I knew pretty well, like the Backstreet Boys (no doubt thanks to being a kid in the late 90s...really!) because I didn’t want to seem stereotypically “gay” or the like. Thinking about it more, just coming out to my friends would make life a whole lot easier and I feel as if I could talk to them honestly a lot more, but I still don’t know how they would react.

Which is why I wanted to start talking about them here; maybe in analyzing my relationships with my friends, I can figure out why I feel so afraid as to hide from them. I’ll start with my closest allies, “the guys”. Some dudes call them bros, homies, buddies, pals. Call them what you want, they’re a guy’s group of closest male friends. I keep it simple and refer to them simply as “the guys”. There’s a group of four of us, myself and my buddies Brian, Danny and Nate. Brian, Danny and I are friends from 2nd grade, but it wasn’t till the 9th grade when Nate came along that all of us really started to hang out together on a regular basis. We do all the regular things buddies do together, play video games, shoot pool, grab a bite to eat together, bowling, generally shoot the shit. We keep each other updated throughout the week when we play video games online together and talk about school/work, relationships, roommates, just what’s going on in life in general. We also make it an effort to see each other once a week, usually on a Friday, to hangout, so we’re pretty close and can confide in each other in a pretty meaningful way. Honestly, these are the guys I can see myself playing golf with when we’re 65, having our kids all play together, etc; that’s the sort of close relationship we all have with each other.

Really, I only have one beef with them as a group. Of course, being a group of masculine guys, we’re always poking fun at each other for being feminine or gay, which of course becomes a problem. I know they don’t mean it, since they have gay friends and relatives, but that’s just how it works with a group of masculine guys; bring the other guys down to make yourself more macho, right?

And that’s just another game I have to play. I don’t want to have to brush off one of them or give them a “fuck you” whenever they teasingly ask if I’m a homo. I know what the answer is, but I’m afraid if they knew it, it’d fuck up the group dynamic. My worst fear would be for things to change if I were to come out; I want to be able to tease them about shit and them to tease me right back, but I’m afraid if I were to come out, they wouldn’t feel comfortable joking around simply because some of that is based in teasingly questioning each other’s sexuality. And that’s not to say we should be calling each other fags and making homophobic remarks or the like, but it’s one of those ways a lot of masculine guys use to joke around and bond with each other, so to kill that dynamic I’m afraid will create a huge lull over the group, which I definitely don’t want.

And if you’re wondering, it’s strictly platonic with these guys. They’re the closest thing I have to brothers, so imagine dating your brother and beyond. Completely grossed out now, right? Same way I feel these guys. Besides, if you’ve seen/heard some of the shit they say and do, you’d be completely unattracted to them too, but that’s another story.

-Matt

PS. I’m ClosetCarGuy for a reason (because I love cars, duh), and this is what I’d love to be rocking out in the sun right now, a Honda S2000.