Shane

Last weekend I decided to let loose and have a little fun, so I went to a gay bar with a group of my friends for the first time ever. I had a ton of fun, even thought the experience wasn't anything too notable, it was pretty much like any other club, except it was a little more laid-back and less pretentious (than some of the straight clubs I've been to anyway). The guys there were alright, no-one really notable either...except maybe for one...

Nate's cousin Shane didn't really stand out to me at first, other than the fact that he's a total hottie and he seemed like a lot of fun on the dance floor. It wasn't till the end of the night that he really caught my attention. In the car on the way home, he was really friendly, chatting all of us up trying to get to know each and every person. He was also just genuinely sweet and cheerful, never sarcastic or condescending, which is a major plus in my book. But there was one incident in particular that caught my interest. Earlier in the night, the two of us and a couple others were dancing up on one of the dance podiums when some guy motioned Shane off the platform and towards this cute strawberry-blond in the middle of the dance floor. I was a little disappointed as he hopped off the podium to go chat the guy up; though to my surprise, Shane returned to the podium within a whole minute of this guy's buddy pulling him off the stage. As we were walking back to the car, a few of us were giving him a hard time about what had happened. Shane explained that the dude had said he was totally into him, only they would have to keep it on the down-low since he had another boyfriend. Shane's response to the guy? You should stay faithful to your boyfriend. I was impressed, since while I'm not against hookups (I find there's a lot of hot guys out there and totally want to hook-up with a few of them), I'm sort of a hopeless romantic in that I find the idea of being in love with one person and having each other all to ourselves equally (if not more) hot. So to find someone that feels the same way and has that sort of character, especially in the gay community, is a real turn-on for me.

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but this week I've been kicking myself for not making some sort of move on Shane. I'd love to use the excuse that I was tired from working all day and that I wasn't feeling all that sociable that night, but it's just a lie, another excuse. I was shy and I didn't open up and do myself justice that night. I cared way too much about Shane being Nate's cousin, and what that would have meant for our relationship or theirs had I made a move or what could go wrong if we got together. I thought maybe I wasn't his type or outgoing enough to be with him. I even caught myself thinking I wasn't good enough for him.

But I'm not writing this post from a pool of self-pity. I've come to realize that I can't just turn down every friend or family member of a mutual acquaintance that I'm interested in just because I'm afraid of messing up some sort of social dynamic...otherwise I'm never going to meet anyone that way. And I don't know for sure if I'm Shane's type, or if we'll have anything in common or not, but I won't know if I don't try. I'm tired of waiting around for a guy to come to me or cutting myself off before I even try to make a move. And now that there's a sweet, personable, cute and admirable guy at easy access, I'm not going to let my worries get in the way of things. So fuck it, I'm going to let Nate know that I'm interested in Shane and ask him to invite him along to a few more get togethers so I can actually loosen up, be myself and get a better feel for this guy. I'm giving myself no later than the end of the Labour Day long weekend when I'll be road tripping down to Seattle with Nate, no exceptions.

We'll see where this goes from here. Wish me luck.

Where Are All the Dudes??

Hey Guys,

First off, thanks for all the advice regarding the Lindsay situation. It means a lot to hear such thoughtful responses from you all of you, so thanks again. I ended up following your guys' advice and have kept my mouth shut on the whole issue, and instead just focused on enjoying our time together as friends until Lindsay left on Tuesday. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be; it was still hard to come to terms with not having her around so readily available to hang out with, but I didn't really feel any sort of need to profess my feelings to her after I wrote that post. And now that she's away and we've been in communication every day since she's left, I don't have lingering thoughts of whether we'll ever talk again and how things are going to be...they're all happening now and it's going pretty good. We're going to try and Skype each other sometime this week and completely fill each other in on what's going on in our lives.

Advice Needed

I’m looking for some advice guys, as I’m sort of at a loss of what to do. Lindsay’s just graduated university, and she’s going to be moving back home overseas in July for an indefinite amount of time to be with her parents. I had a feeling for a few years now that this was coming, and it’s going to be hard to deal with, not being able to just go out and grab a coffee and talking the night away.

Now that her moving away is real, I’ve had to address some unresolved issues I have with her. There are still some unanswered questions about the night I came out to her, particularly why she was crying when I told her. I still think it might have to do with her letter...which, eight months later, we still haven’t talked about. I’m ready to talk about it now and I feel as if I need some closure.

The truth is, I really would have dated her if I had been physically attracted to her, hell, I even considered dating her even without the physical attraction. Looking back on it, I'm glad I didn't because it probably wouldn't have ended well and we would have never gotten to where we are today. In a way, I think she’s probably part of the reason why I was so confused for so long. It’s hard to explain without you guys knowing us, or giving a ton of personal examples, but we just click. We open up to each other and trust each other with everything, we have our inside jokes, we can recognize each other’s needs and have our routines together, and we understand each other. I know what I want out of a relationship thanks to Lindsay, and now it’s just a matter of finding that in a guy I’m attracted to.

I’d love to tell her all of this, but I don’t want to risk our relationship. What do I really have to gain out of telling her all this? We have a great friendship, and I know now that I’m not attracted to her, it's not going to go any further than that (pretty sure, anyway). I also know she already has her share of boy problems and moving related things to worry about, and I don’t want to torture her with this. Her being halfway across the world is probably going to test our relationship enough, and I don’t want to test it anymore and leave things where we get hurt or angry at each other.

I’m writing this post in the hopes that expressing this will be enough to let things go and be able to keep our friendship going business as usual, but I'm not sure. I really thought this part was behind me, that I had gotten through everything with her and our future as friends was going to be perfect. But I just have this annoying itch to let her know how I feel and desire to know what she was feeling that night. So, do I open up to her and let her know how I felt, or do I keep this to myself (and probably my closest buddies) and keep going about our friendship as we have the last few months?

Awkward Giraffe

I’ve been at this blogging for just over a year now, and 47 posts later, I’m happy to say things are a lot better than they were a year ago, and even now things are better than they were six or even three months ago. Coming out has been a huge part of that, since it’s sort of made me realize that most people aren’t nearly as judgmental or non-receptive as I thought they would be. And that doesn’t just go for my sexuality either, it spans to my interests, my personality, who I am really. It just makes it a hell of a lot easier to open up and trust people knowing that they're not as much of a dick you thought they'd be, and most tend to reciprocate that. That being said, I still have my moments of self-doubt and bouts of downward spiraling over thinking. It tends to start with some sort of trigger where the day just isn’t going my way, and then things just seem to snowball where I start to over think and make the little stressors along the day seem that much bigger...and then my day(s) just go to shit from there. Thankfully, it’s been happening less frequently and I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at controlling it. 

It’s a little funny that Kevin happened to ask about the guy from the LGBT centre and what I’d do if I randomly saw him on the street in his comment on my last post, because that’s what totally happened a few weeks ago. Now, if only that had been a week where I wasn’t stressed out and over thinking everything, I might have had my mind in the right place and not been an awkward giraffe (giraffes are awkward animals, right?). Anyway, I had just stepped on the Skytrain, being all cool with my sunglasses on, headphones in, when I noticed him sitting amongst a full row of people...with another guy. Ugh. Now, I don't know for sure if the guy was THAT sort of friend or not, but it definitely threw me off my game since my thought at the time was that I wasn't about to go and try to chat up some dude in front of his (possible) boyfriend. Secondly, and I don't know why I was thinking it, but I didn't want to come across as desperate by whipping off my sunglasses and music to talk to this guy either. Looking back on it now, I know I would have been pretty impressed if a guy took the actually made the effort to turn off his music and took off his sunglasses to look me in the eye and make conversation, so I’m not sure why I thought better of it. And as if I wasn’t being awkward enough, as people slowly started to get off the train, my brilliant ass decided to take a seat right in front of him, hoping equal parts that he would and wouldn't notice me. He didn't, as far as I know, since he got off the train without as much a look, which is why I am still kicking my ass for not saying hello.

So, yes, getting better at controlling the over thinking, but it’s definitely not gone and I still have my moments (although I wish they would come at more opportune times). This certainly wasn’t one of my finer moments, so I’m just let this go, take a mulligan on it and let it be a rather embarrassing motivator to chill out and actually say hi next time.

PS. Am I the only one who would fight Miley Cyrus to the death to be engaged to Liam Hemsworth? I bet I could take her on.

"So Which Did You Choose?"

"None of them."

"Why? Not hot enough?"

"No."

"Were they dumb?"

"No."

"Too white? Not white enough?"

"No dude...they weren't guys."

It still baffles me that some people really have no clue that I'm gay. I guess it doesn't help that I tell stories like how I met the Twins, and everyone seems to put two and two together, giving me this kind of mischievous grin expecting me to tell this story of how I picked up one of them. Yeah, no.

Anyway, Kenny's my buddy from high school who moved to the middle of nowhere right around the time I first came out, and last weekend was only the second time he had been back in town since he had left 8 months ago. He's one of those people I thought needed to hear it coming from my own mouth, but since I wasn't out to anybody except Lindsay when he was back at Christmas, I hadn't gotten a chance or felt comfortable enough to tell him in person till now. So over breakfast, we were talking about what we were doing for the rest of the day, and I had plans to hang out with Nate and the Twins, and so of course I had to explain to him how we all met and thus the above conversation. I really don't think he believed me at first, since he had to ask me multiple times if I really was gay, but his tone also said he knew I wouldn't bullshit him like that, especially over something as important as my sexuality. He asked me the standard questions like everyone else, how long I knew, who else knew, and then proceeded to sit there and look into space for a good ten or fifteen seconds in silence. Then he looked at me and told me that he legitimately couldn't think of any instance that would have tipped him off, and that he was perfectly cool with it.

Maybe it's just me (and please let me know if it isn't!), but I don't really know if the coming out process will ever be truly seamless and not awkward. I've got a few coming out experiences under my belt now, and I would say this one was the most relaxed and smoothest so far. Yet, I guess since you're exposing such a personal and private part of yourself, I find it's really hard to follow-up in conversation after that. What are you supposed to talk about after that!? Cars, apparently for Kenny and I, but whatever. I suppose it's one of those things that just has to be done, it's awkward for a bit, and you move on, which it did pretty quickly for Kenny and I.

Anyway, that's another one off a now very short list. Really, there's only one more that I REALLY want to tell, and that's my pretty-openly-gay friend Derek.I'm curious to see what his reaction's going to be, because I have a feeling he's either A) going to flip out and be super excited or B) be all "Oh, I kind of figured that already" and just wave it off. Other than that, there's a few distant friends that I haven't seen in a while, but it's sort of a "need-to-know" basis now, when I see them and if it comes into conversation, I'm not going to lie and I'll tell them, very much like I did with Kenny.

I've got a few more stories to tell from the last little while, so I'm going to have to put my ass in gear and get those down too :) Until then guys, be yourselves!

Shine the Machine

Here's a little something different for the car guys who may be reading my blog. It's my last week before I hit the books again, and since it was a nice day and winter's taken a nasty toll on my 2007 Mazda3, I decided to break out the detailing supplies and spruce her up. What do you think?

Here's some before shots:

Just Living the Semi-Out Life

Hey guys...long time, no post. School kinda took up a lot of time, but it’s over and I ended up doing really well in my classes, blah, blah, blah. Now, on to more interesting topics...

Before classes ended, there was a cute guy I was interested in getting to know coming into the LGBT centre at school. I wish there was more to say about it, but it worked out that I was always only in the centre once a week for an about an hour while he was there. In addition to that, a couple times he was chatting with others in the centre, which made it hard for me to break into the group and to try to get to know him one-on-one. He did try to chat me up once, out of politeness or something else I don’t know, but I was a little too self-conscious and nervous to make any sort of real conversation. And I swear I caught him checking me out a couple of times, but that could be my wishful thinking. I feel like such a teenage girl, way too self-conscious and I’m completely out of my element, not having any idea of how to talk and try to pick up this guy. It sucks too, because he seems like a really friendly, personable guy, but I know neither he or I will be on campus during the summer (even though we run on a tri-semester system), so if I ever have another chance to try and get to know him, it won’t be until at least September. Soooo, if out some freak chance that he reads this, is still interested and figures out who he is: Buddy. You. Me. Coffee. Email me. :)

Call me...maybe?