Gay Fighter

Goodbye

2011-02-20T22:16:00.000-08:00

This is my last post.

Don't worry. Nothing bad happened. I'm fine. I simply don't have the drive to continue posting. I don't really have a reason to do so anymore. I was actually about to quit way back last spring, when I had only made a few posts. The way I got into this blogging community was by discovering Mikey's blog. When I was coming out, I found my strength to do so by reading stories by men who had done the same. I looked up to them and wanted to be like them. I believed Mikey was doing the same thing for a new generation of gay teens out there. I continued to follow him and began interacting with the forum's community. I decided to give blogging a try myself; partially to experiment with it, and also because I was going through some issues that I wasn't comfortable talking to my family and friends about back then and wanted to vent. I was losing interest in it pretty quickly.

Then the scandal happened. Those of you who where there remember how heartbroken a lot of people were. I realized how devastating this was going to be to all of the closeted gay people out there who he inspired. I was worried that they might lose hope. I decided I'd tell my own coming out story in hopes that it would help everyone understand that even though Mikey wasn't real, there are lots of gltb people out there who are. I realize writing with a pseudonym defeats the purpose a little, but I figured if I was at least honest about that fact might make up for it. I also encouraged everyone else to write their own coming out stories if they had one because a) I'm not the only one with a story, and not everyone grew up with the same circumstances I did. People might find other stories more relatable, and b) I suck at writing. I really do. I might not have done a great job at writing my own story (I'll leave that for you all to decide). If better writers told their stories too, they would probably do a better job connecting to people than I could.

I got a lot of positive response from my "Coming Out:" posts. To everyone who emailed me/left comments, thank you, I really mean it. I'm glad that my story connected with you all.

I was planning to stop blogging after I finished my story. However, a few people were really curious about my life after I came out; what was my first boyfriend like, etc, so I kept posting. After that, blogging was simply my way of keeping in touch with the friends I've made. However, like I said at the beginning of this post, I've lost my drive to continue posting. Not that I've lost interest in keeping in touch with everyone. I will still comment on others blogs, and you are all still free to email or formspring me if you'd like.

The last thing I want to say is this. If you have a coming out story, please share it. Maybe you think it's boring, maybe it's too sad, maybe you think no one will relate to it, maybe you think someone can do a better job, but somewhere out there, there might be a kid who finds your story, and it will mean the world to them.

Stuff going on, Superbowl and Glee

2011-02-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

It's been a really long time, hasn't it? Guess a lot of stuff's been going on.

Tae Kwon Do's been taking off. Had some new students join. A few new guys, which we're really excited about, including the girls. It used to be that the club would alternate every semester being dominated by guys and girls, but the past few semesters have seen the girls continue to dominate and few/no new guys joining. Seeing all of these guys join (and clearly wanting to stay) has been a change welcomed by all.

Other TKD news: We've started a demo team and are currently putting something together. Technically, the demo team existed last semester, but the student we put in charge of organizing it didn't start things up until recently. The club had put together a demo at the last minute for a campus event last year. We had so much fun putting it together, that we decided to do it more in the future. Since we have a lot more time to prepare this year (and a lot more participants), it's gonna be a lot more elaborate. We're pretty excited. Since we teach a mixture of ITF and WTF, we're trying to incorporate elements of each.

Outside of TKD.

There's this guy I like. "Like" is probably a strong word, since I don't really know him that well, but I know that I really like what little I do know, and that I want to get to know him better. I met him over a year ago, and I liked him immediately. I didn't bother getting to know him back then because I was having some relationship issues back then, and I thought getting to know a guy I might like could've made things more complicated. I don't think I'm very good at handling romantic feelings, so I try to keep things as simple as I can, even if that means denying myself opportunities. Anyway, I've barely seen this guy since then, but recently, I keep bumping into him. He remembers my name and who I am, which I find pretty impressive considering a) I've only actually met him once or twice, and that was a long time ago and b) I had long hair when we met, and most people have trouble recognizing me now that I have it short again. I'd like to think that this is a good sign. I'm going to try to get to know him better next time I get the chance to. Hopefully it turns out well. We'll see.

Sidenote:
How did you all enjoy the Superbowl? Personally, I was a little bored. Granted, I don't watch football all that much, but I will from time to time. For some reason, I just couldn't keep paying attention to the game. Maybe I just wasn't watching during the good parts. It was kindof cool how the Steelers almost came back for the win. At least some of the commercials were decent. I learned that fireworks were first created when a dragon drank a Coke.

I was pretty excited to see the return of Glee. I really am gay, aren't I? Being more excited for a campy, musical tv show than the biggest American sporting event of the year? It was actually a decent episode (and football themed as well). For those who didn't watch it, the episode more or less centered on the character Dave Karofsky, a bully character that I mentioned in an earlier post. In this episode, David is struggling with feelings he has that he won't admit to anyone, including himself, because he's afraid that doing so will cost him his friends and his tough guy reputation at school. However, the few times in this episode that we see him express these feelings are the only times he's ever looked happy during this show. As the character Artie puts it, Dave's in the first stage of acceptance: denial. Towards the end of the episode, Dave continues to deny his feelings because he doesn't want to accept the stigma. Finn points out to him that if he chooses to express himself, he could help change how their world thinks to make it more accepting. Dave says that'll never happen.

To viewers new to the show that came in from the Superbowl, this was an episode about a football player who is denying the fact that he loves to perform in glee club, because being in glee is social suicide. To those of us who have been watching the show and are well aware that this character is a closeted, self-hating homophobe, this episode suddenly becomes a giant metaphor for his struggle to accept his sexuality. I can't express enough praise for Max Adler, who plays Dave, for being such an amazing after. It's amazing how good he is at portraying this role. A lot of people have been complaining that his development as a character seemed a little rushed. I have to agree that it did feel that way while watching the episode, but when I stopped to think about it, his character didn't really "evolve" (as in change) much, we just saw a lot of different sides to him that we haven't seen before. I think his development just seemed rushed since there has never been an episode that's focused on him so much. All that screentime gave the illusion of sppedy development

-Robbie

it's been 1 week.

2011-01-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

Not 1 week since my last post, but 1 week since school started back up for me. It took so little time to get back into the swing of things, it feels like I've been back for months. So far, TKD is going on without a hitch. We lost 1 instructor though. He decided it wasn't fun any more, so he quit. This guy is also one of my roommates. I don't really care that much, so I don't there will be any drama between us. As for the other instructor, I'm not so sure. I could be wrong, but I get the impression that she's a little bitter about it.

What else is new? Not much, really. I got another job. I'm now a DJ for this local radio station. It's a little crazy right now. I've already made a number of mistakes. Most of them had to do with me not completely understanding how the equipment works yet. Oh well. I'll get it eventually. I've only had 2 shifts so far.

Anyway, hopefully everyone's enjoying the new semester!

-Robbie

Compliments

2011-01-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure why I thought of this, but I thought it'd be a fun post to make.

I want to hear from you guys:
A. What are some compliments that you often hear from people?
B. What's the nicest compliment that you've ever been given that you can remember?
C. What are some strange compliments that you've been given?

Here are my answers to my own questions:
A. You give amazing hugs, you have nice hair, you're smart, you're really flexible (only my non-tkd friends tell me this lol. different standards). This isn't a verbal compliment, but my friends frequently confide their problems to me. I consider it a compliment that they trust me that much.
B. I wish I was a strong as you (some context: she was referring to my coming out in high school)
C. You have a very masculine walk (what made this an even stranger compliment, is that it was given to me by a guy who had admitted to stalking me before he actually met me), you breathe very properly (this compliment came out of the blue from a friend who was sitting on me while watching a movie), you have good posture (same friend....)

Anyway, I'm done talking about myself. I want to hear from you!

-Robbie

Drawing disturbing parallels

2011-01-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

Like I said in an earlier post, I got the Sims 3 for Christmas, and I've been playing it a lot lately. A series of events happened, and it made me have to sit and think about what I had just done.
Here's what happened, and see if you can draw any parallels to real life from it.

I created a couple with a child. As the child got older, the kids at his school started hating him and picking on him, causing him to be unhappy a lot of the time. Eventually, it became clear that there was something seriously wrong with this child. He was glitched. He wouldn't/couldn't do the things I wanted him to (and often froze my game). Nothing I tried was able to fix him. Eventually, I gave up and had one of his parents kick him out of the house.

I know this is just a video game, but does anyone besides me find this a little messed up? (if anyone's confused about what actually happened in this game, I'll be happy to explain in the comments)

Happy National Whipped Cream Day!

2011-01-05T12:17:00.000-08:00

Like the title suggests, the U.S. is apparently celebrating National Whipped Cream Day. May all your dreams involving whipped cream come true today..... Does anyone else feel proud to be an American? I know I do. I'm not gonna lie, I think it's a little ridiculous to make a holiday for a dessert topping. Then again, we have all kinds of crazy holidays. Plus, it gives me a good excuse to listen to this song all day lol

Dawn of the New Decade

2011-01-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile, hasn't it? Last time I posted was before Christmas.

I hope everyone's holidays turned out well. Did everyone get what they wanted for Christmas? I know I did. I got a space heater and a dehumidifier for my house at school. You have no idea how badly I needed those. The half of my house that I live in doesn't get any heat. I don't really need the dehumidifier for this time of year, but I know I'm going to need it this summer.

I want to take the time to congratulate Masculine Gay Guy. For those of you who don't read his blog, he came out to his parents a while ago. If you're reading this, I'm very proud of you man!

I hope everyone had a wonderful new years as well. Me? well, my plans fell through at the last minute, so I spent New Years by myself at home. Oh well. I spent it catching up on some long overdue video game time. I got the Sims 3 for Wii for Christmas, and I've been pretty addicted to it since. Haven't figured out how to adopt kids yet. I don't know if it's even possible in this game or not. I've looked around online, and lots of people seem to have the same problem and no one knows the answer.

Anyway, sorry for such a short post after a long absence. I'll post again when I have something more significant to report

What's everyone's New Year's Resolution? Comment below!

Came out again..... sortof.....

2010-12-20T10:13:00.000-08:00

We recently had a Christmas party for my step-mom's side of the family. As far as I know, not many people on my step-mom's side of the family know I'm gay. A big part of that reason is that I'm really not that close to them, so I don't have any real desire to keep them informed about my life. Another reason is that, because this branch is fairly religion and conservative, my coming out might make them criticize my step-mom, who so far has been very accepting of me, for not taking a strong stance against my sinful ways, or something stupid like that.

I think there are at least a couple members of this branch that have found out, but they haven't brought it up.

Anyway, at this Christmas party, I was in the basement with my younger cousins. Their ages ran about 6-13, I think. I can never keep track. Anyway, they were playing the question game with me and the other high school/college aged cousins, where they ask us a lot of really obscure and sometimes ridiculous questions to see if they can get a funny response out of us. They don't have very high standards for comedy. They laughed for about 10 minutes when one of my cousins said his school's mascot is a bulldog.

It came to my turn to be interrogated. They started asking me questions about my Wii. They asked me when I got it, and I said "I got it when I first came out." They started laughing, and I asked why. They pointed out that I said when "I" first came out, instead of when "it" first came out. I laughed and said that I didn't first come out until a little while after I bought my Wii. I was being completely serious, but I don't think any of them picked up on it. My little sister, who knows I'm gay and was in the room, looked at me and started laughing.

Yeah. That's my holiday story. Later

-Robbie

Gay Pirates

2010-12-07T19:49:00.000-08:00

So I just found this (sortof) new song called Gay Pirates. It's by this guy called Cosmo Jarvis.
Don't let the title give you the wrong idea. This song is actually really serious content wise. It just might be the greatest gay love song ever made. Don't believe me?

I'm impressed by the music video too. For being one giant take, it's pretty well done.

Anyway, just found this today and thought I'd show and tell

If you guys have any other cool Gay-themed songs you'd like to show, please post them in the comments below.
Also, If you have any questions or comments for me, you can email me at gayfighterrobbie@gmail.com, or ask me a question on formspring using the box on the upper right-hand side of the blog

Kung Fu Fighting!

2010-12-02T22:04:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if I've mentinned this before, but I've started learning my second martial art: Wushu!
Wushu is basically a modernized version of Kung Fu. I'd say more, but since I've only just started learning it, I'm not that comfortable with my knowledge of it. Anyway, one of my TKD students has been practicing Wushu for years, since before learning TKD. The other black belts and I had talked to him to see if he would be allowed/interested to teach some Wushu to the class (since we lost our home school awhile back and are therefore an "unofficial" TKD school, we decided we might as well take advantage of our situation and teach things that you wouldn't normally teach in a formal TKD school). Anyway, he talked to his Sifu (teacher; see-foo), who gave him permission to teach us. It was a lot of fun. It moves very differently than TKD, and it's been a little awkward to learn so far, but I'd like to think I'm picking it up pretty well.

Here's the first form I'm learning. My student (or teacher in this case lol) taught it a little different. I looked through a few videos of it on youtube, and this one is the closest I could find to the way he teaches it.

Anyway, that resting stance she does? Where she's basically sitting? Yeah, that was a bitch to learn it's really awkward and hurts your knees at first. Now that I can do it pretty well, it's kindof fun. I like to impress people by randomly falling into it lol.
That sweeping arm movement towards the end was also really awkward to learn. I'm learning my second form now, which I can't find a video of, mostly because my student/teacher doesn't really bother telling us the names of these forms. He has such little confidence in his pronunciation skills with these Chinese names, that he's afraid he'll accidentally say them completely wrong.

When he teaches, I've tried calling him Sifu, but he hates it when I call him that. He says that it's not inappropriate to call him that, he just feels weird being called that name since all of his Sifus are much older and way more experienced than him.

I really want to go to a real Wushu school. My teacher tells me that there's a lot of stuff that he's not allowed to teach, and that you have to go to an actual school in order to learn it

I love you, Dad

2010-11-24T21:14:00.000-08:00

I'm home for Thanksgiving Break. My dad and I went out to dinner the other night, just the two of us. He started talking to me about how he's recently taken an open stance at his workplace against discriminating against LGBT people. I personally don't know too much about the environment that he works in, but he claims that many of his co-workers show a lot of discomfort when it comes to hiring an openly LGBT person. He makes it sound like his workplace is overall not very welcoming. He wants to change this and sounds pretty passionate about it. I'm not sure what exactly he plans to do, but I have faith in him. He's good at getting what he wants lol.

We got to talking about homosexuality and homophobia in general. I made the comment that sometimes it seems like most straight people don't care much about LGBT issues unless they are close to someone who is LGBT. My dad quickly defended himself by saying that he's always been supportive of LGBT people.

I'm sure my dad has never had anything against gay people. At the same time, I don't think he really cared or thought about gay rights much until I came out. Before I came out, my dad never said anything about the issue. I remember because that made it really hard for me to figure out whether or not he'd be supportive of me if I came out. Now that I'm out, he's been going to these diversity seminars and has taken this stance at work. I don't think he would be doing these things if he didn't know that these issues affected one of his kids.

I didn't want to bring this up with him. Usually, when I do stuff like that, he denies it and becomes incredibly defensive. He tries too hard to be perfect sometimes. I think he's afraid that I might think less of him if he admitted that he hadn't really cared until I came out. I wouldn't. I wouldn't hold it against him at all. I guess he thinks that he shouldn't have needed me as a reason to care; that he should've been a good enough person to care anyway. None of that matters to me. He's done his best to be there for me, and that's all I can ask for. I'm proud of him, no matter what. I hope he understands that. I'm not really good at expressing my feelings towards him.

I love you, Dad.

-Robbie

Do masculine bi guys exist?

2010-11-19T02:01:00.000-08:00

It's late. I have a paper to write, but I don't want to.

I know this is a really stupid question to ask, but it was actually brought up to me a couple weeks ago.
Do masculine bisexual guys exist?
I was talking to this girl, and she was convinced that masculine bi guys do not exist.
Feminine bi guys exist
Feminine gay guys exist
Masculine gay guys exist
All girls are bisexual to some extent (masculine or feminine)
But masculine bi guys don't exist. 'If you're masculine and you like to put your dick there, you have to be pretty gay."

I didn't know how to respond to this. Thoughts? (BDNY, Joey, I hope you're reading this post. I'd love to hear what you have to say lol)

2 Girls, 1 Robbie.

2010-11-15T09:59:00.000-08:00

Long story short.
I went to a party sponsored by my school's GSA. Wound up getting drunk. Woke up the next morning with two girls in my bed.

Funny how omitting certain details in a story can drastically alter its meaning.
Here's what really happened. Like I said, my school's GSA was hosting one of its parties. Every year at my school, these parties are probably the biggest and most popular parties of the year. We top just about every frat party. No one knows how to party like the gays I guess. Hosting a drag show during these dances probably doesn't hurt either. Anyway, I volunteered to be sober driver for my friend and her roommate, both of whom were now 21 and wanted to get the full experience of these dances. Anyway, after the dance, we went back to my place. They felt bad that I wasn't able to be drunk with them at the dance, so they treated me to the rest of what they had in order to get me to catch up. At this point, I was in no condition to drive them home. I was also uncomfortable with them walking home. I told them they needed to crash at my place and go back in the morning. They agreed, and chose to sleep in my queen-sized bed with me, rather than sleeping on the couch or chairs in my living room. Can't say I blame them. My bed is pretty fucking comfy. Besides, how many times do you get the chance to say "I got a gay guy drunk and would up sleeping with him?" lol.
Needless to say, I 'slept' with two girls that night, though nothing ever happened. (I'm shuddering at the thought)
The next day, I texted on of my straight friends this message "Went to the dance last night. got drunk. woke up with 2 girls in my bed this morning..........score?" He got a kick out of it after I explained what really happened.
He said I probably would've preferred the opposite. Haha maybe. I was pretty drunk after the dance. Don't know how I would've felt actually walking up the next day though.

I actually could've gotten a hook-up if I really wanted to. There was this one guy I know who was there who's got a bit of a reputation. He was hitting on me a lot. It was getting on my nerves. He shares a class with me and he gets on my nerves there as well. Not planning on hooking up with him anytime soon.

On an unrelated note, within 2 days, my previous post received more views than any of my previous posts have ever received. This Dave Karofsky story must really be big news for people. I heard that Max Adler is in the process of making a video for the It Gets Better Project Here is Mr. Max Adler's video

-Robbie

Glee "Never Been Kissed"

2010-11-10T17:26:00.000-08:00

As some of you may already know, I'm a big fan of Glee. Yes, I'm aware that it's probably gayer than Queer as Folk, and that I'm very stereotypical for liking it. fuck off.

Anyway, this week's episode was a very significant one for a number of reasons. It seems like it was written in response to all of the suicides that have been happening recently and came off as a bit of an afterschool special.
Still, it was overall a good episode that touched on some important issues.

SPOILER ALERT

Some backstory: one of the show's main characters is Kurt Hummel. Kurt is a gay highschool student who came out early on in the series. While Kurt was initially portrayed as little more than a one-dimentional stereotype, he quickly became the most interesting character on the show. The scenes revolving around Kurt's sexuality are probably the best moments in the show. Much of this is due to the incredible acting of Chris Colfer, who plays Kurt, and Mike O'Mally, who plays his father, Burt. The great quality of these scenes is also due to how well written and grounded they are. The scene where Kurt comes out to his father was positive yet realistic, with Burt being immediately supportive but admittedly not 100% comfortable with the idea.

What happened on this episode:
Kurt's been dealing with bullying like he has for the past season and a half. As the only out kid at his school, he is targeted quite a bit for his sexuality. However, he seems to be experiencing more than usual lately, mostly from a football player named Dave Karofsky. Because of this, along with the suggestion by his fellow glee-clubbers to spy on their competition, Kurt decides to visit Dalton Academy, an all-boys boarding school. While there, he meets an opening gay character named Blaine. Blaine is somewhat of an idealized character, being openly gay, completely accepted by his friends and lacking any apparent character flaw. Blaine explains that he transferred to Dalton because he couldn't take the bullying at his own school. Kurt considers transferring to Dalton himself, but Blaine recommends that Kurt face his homophobia head on, rather than run away from it like he did.

Kurt follows this advice. After coming back to his own high school, Kurt is shoved into some lockers by Dave. Kurt chases after him into the boy's locker room. Kurt confronts Dave, and the more Kurt tells Dave off, the more anxious and upset Dave gets. The scene climaxes when Dave pulls Kurt in for a long, hard kiss. Kurt is so shocked that he doesn't move. When Dave tries to kiss him again, Kurt pushes him back, and Dave storms off in a tantrum.

Later in the episode, Kurt tries to confront Dave again, this time with the help of Blaine. Blaine tries to empathize with Dave, but Dave denies the kiss ever happened and storms off.

First of all, I have to give props to Max Adler, the actor who plays Dave Karofsky, for delivering an amazing performance last night. His acting was incredibly believable, I was also very impressed that the show decided to give a previously very minor character a very interesting storyline. I know, a closeted gay male who tries to deny/hide his own sexuality by beating up other gay kids is nothing new, but a storyline like this one has a lot of potential. I think there are a lot of guys out there who are like Dave. So far, Kurt's done a good job representing a lot of problems that gay teen males face, particularly effeminate ones. However, a single character can't encompass every problem faced. That's why Dave can be a great addition to the show. As a big, masculine football player, he can represent the problems that masculine gay teens face. It would be even better if Dave's parents were introduced, and they turn out to not be supportive of their son's sexuality. While that's a horrible thing to happen, it is a reality for many gay kids and I think it would be good to represent that.

I was a little disappointed that Dave was the only homophobic football player shown in this episode. Personally, I think it would've been good if Azimio, another football player who is frequently seen bullying with Dave, was included and seen bullying Kurt. I think that would show that while some homophobic people are trying to hide their own sexuality, some are simply homophobic. It would also shed more light on Dave's personal problems. Not only does he have to hear gay jokes and other homophobic remarks, but he has to hear them come from his closest friends. He also has to say them himself in order to maintain his image. I supposed the show has time to do this in the future, but I don't think it would've hurt to show a little bit of it now.

anyway, that's my rant on glee. And yes, I do want to see Kurt and Dave (eventually) get together. Eventually

If you want to see the episode, click here

If you want to see the big confrontation, click here

If Dave really does become more fleshed out, and I really hope he does, he'll probably sing eventually. I've heard that Max Adler did musical theater in high school, so he probably has at least some skill.
Some songs I could picture Dave singing:
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen (just replace the feminine pronouns with masculine ones)
Mr. Brightside by the Killers
Shadow Stabbing by Cake
Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen
and maybe Here's Where I Stand by Tiffany Taylor

Halloween!

2010-11-01T15:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been a while since I last posted. What happened was I was typing one for a while, decided it was stupid, and couldn't figure out what else to talk about.

Anyway, late happy halloween! This weekend was actually pretty interesting. I dressed up as lt. Jim Dangle. Friday night, I went to this frat's costume party when I got my ass squeezed by some girl who I didn't know that was walking behind me. I turned around to look at her and she said "Sorry," in a really sassy way. I use the word "sassy" because that really is the best word to describe how she said it. I guess I deserved the ass squeeze since I was wearing short-shorts and all. It still caught me off guard though. I also ran into a friend of mine who is also gay. The second he saw me, he yelled "Save me!" and literally fell into my arms. He's a lot taller than me, so I lost my balance for a second while catching him lol. I wasn't sure what he wanted me to save him from, but I figured he wanted me to pull him away from the people he was with. I tried pulling him away, but he went back to them so I just left him.

Next day I asked him what was up, he apologized, explains he gets really affectionate when he's drunk and was very embarrassed. I told him I was the same and not to worry about it.

Later that night, I was at my house hosting my own party when he sends me a text saying that he wanted to get drunk again.

....

>:)

I invite him to my place, telling him that I was having a small party, and that people would be getting drunk. When I'm sober, I don't go for hook-ups or anything like that, but I was already drinking at that point............. and I'm affectionate when I'm drunk.......... and................ moving on.

He sends me a reply saying that he still feels sick from the night before and probably shouldn't drink.

.....

>:(

I tell him that he could still come over if he wanted to and not drink since not everyone would, but he never shows up. Damn it........ oh well. probably for the best in the long run, although I'm still a little upset that it sounded like he wanted to get drunk with me then backed out after I offered.

Anyway, how was everyone's halloween? what did you dress up as? also, if you'll notice on the right side of the page, I now have a formspring account. "Ask Me Anything." I'll answer anything I feel comfortable answering. I won't answer anything along the lines of who am I, where do I live, etc, but I'll probably answer most other quetions

Non-romantic things

2010-10-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

Second to last post ago, I shared my most romantic moment I've had, and asked for yours. For this post, I'll do the same with non-romantic things.

I went on a date with a guy who was 2-3 times larger than me, and that is no exaggeration. He wasn't even fat; he was just a really big/tall guy. Anyway, on this first date, we were going to watch a horror movie at his house. To start the evening off, he was about an hour late picking me up. We get to his place and first thing he does is offer me wine. I refused because I figured going to some guy's house on a first date when I don't even know him that well was probably not the smartest idea to begin with, let alone accepting drinks from him. Anyway, we start watching the movie. We watched the Strangers. If you haven't seen it, it's a horror movie that has little gore and tries to be very suspenseful. I don't know about anyone else, but suspense movies don't bother me at all. The guy who I was with, however, was shitting his pants. That, or he was using the movie as an excuse to grab me tightly (which might've been the case, lol). At one point in the movie, he was so scared, he leaped in the air and landed on my lap. Let me remind you that this guy was 2-3 times my size. He practically knocked the wind out of me. What made it worse, was that he wouldn't get off, so I had trouble breathing for the rest of the movie. After the movie he pulled me, literally by the collar, in for a kiss. I kindof put up with the kissing because after having to put up with so much crap, I might as well enjoy something out of this date. Then he tried to go for second base, and I had everything stop there. Call me a prude all you want, I won't go past kissing on a first date. Needless to say, I didn't go on a second date with the guy.

What're some of your non-romantic things that've happened to you?

Happy Belated Coming Out Day!

2010-10-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to make a post yesterday, however i had issues with my computer. I got a virus, and it made my computer too slow to do anything. I also didn't feel comfortable making a blog post on someone else's computer.

I have 2 interesting NCOD stories though. My school's Homecoming.....celebration.....thing..... was yesterday, and I was unaware. I went to the quad because the GSA had a table there to petition for the school to give benefits to same-sex partners. When I got there, I found a giant rainbow bounce house, a large stage, and 90's music blaring. I vote that next year, every school's GSA should rent a rainbow bounce house to NCOD, otherwise we might be outdone by greek life.

Story #2- I'm not the only LGBT student who does TKD at my school. In fact, I've had a handful of LGBT students the past couple years, not all of them 100% out. There have been a couple students who have come out to me, while still being in the closet to others. There's this one student in class, who idk for sure is LGBT, but I see this student at a lot of LGBT functions. In class on NCOD, one of the other instructors made a joke about how this student should show off their skills to their opposite-sex significant other. This student started laughing uncomfortably. Now, this instructor didn't mean any harm and is in fact very supportive of LGBT issues. Part of me wanted to pull the other instructor aside and inform them of the issue, but I knew that would violate the student's personal privacy. It sucks that you can't come out for someone, even if you're trying to help. Plus since idk if this student is LGBT, I could've outed them when they really didn't need to out them.

Anyway, that's what happened to me on NCOD. As a present for putting up with my absense, here's an awesome video enjoy

Romantic things

2010-10-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

In my psych class, we have daily attendance, where we sign our names and answer a question of the day. Since we were talking about romantic relationships, today's question was "What's the most romantic thing you've done/ had done to you?"

The most romantic date I've ever been on was a little over a year ago. It was my second date with this one guy (Our first had been a dinner double date with friends of his). He and I both loved looking at the stars, so we decided to drive out to the middle of nowhere one night in his truck. He had brought a lot of blankets with him, which he laid out on the bed of the truck. We climbed in,and laid next to each other. I showed off by pointing out all of the constellations I knew. I then came to one that he didn't know, and he couldn't see exactly where I was pointing at. I then took his hand, pointed it towards the constellation, and used his finger to connect the stars. After he was able to see the shape, I brought his hand down, but I kept holding on (am I smooth, or what? lol). I turned to him and asked "How'd you like my trick to get you to hold my hand?" He got a little upset at first; he thought that when I said "trick," I meant that the constellation I pointed out was fake. I laughed and said it was real, and that I just took advantage of an opportunity to hold his hand for the first time. We both laughed then looked at each other in the eye. We then shared our first kiss. We spent the rest of the night cuddling/kissing, until he took me home.

To anyone who'd like to share, what's the most romantic thing you've done/had done to you?

Office Elections

2010-10-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

We had office elections in TKD for the past couple weeks. As it stood before, I was President, with two other black belt instructors being my "assistants," though really we divided the power evenly. The only difference was that I have the connection to the gym which we practice in and to our school's student organization funding committee. I was never elected to the job, the previous instructor chose me because at the time, I was the only other black belt attending class regularly (the two who help me now had issues with the previous instructor).

Anyway, the other two black belts and I decided that we want to be less dictator-like and have the students involved. We did make a note that a black belt had to be president, because A)it was part of our constitution and B)it looks much better to the university if a black belt is in charge.

Our plan didn't go over so well though. Very few people were nominated. The black belts were more or less the only ones that received votes for pres, vp and treasurer. There were tons of students who were nominated for public relations chair lol (pr chairs get to plan our social events).

So I ended up being elected treasurer, while the other two black belts were elected pres and vp. I have mixed feelings about being treasurer. On one hand, treasurer has the most responsibility in the class, and all of the students know this, so it's flattering to be the most trusted. On the other hand, I really dislike the job. I was stuck doing it last year, and handling all of the business bullshit sucks. Still, I'm kindof glad I got the job because frankly, I don't know if I can trust the other 2 black belts to handle the job very well, and I have no problem saying that because they've said it themselves.

On a different note, I learned something interesting about myself yesterday: I get really irritated whenever people give me good advice, but for completely irrelevant reasons. I was in organic chemistry lab, and the experiment required me to add a pinch of table salt. I was being a bad chemist (I openly admit it) and chose not to put on gloves for this. Not wearing gloves is usually a bad idea for different reasons. Which reason depends on the situation. In this situation, my hands may have been dirty and I risked contaminating my sample. I was aware of this, but I was already having a bit of a bad day, so I just didn't care. Plus, it was only salt, so I didn't have to worry about it being corrosive to my skin. Before I took some salt, I carefully checked the label of the container, making sure it was really salt. I also asked the lab assistant if it really was just table salt, and she confirmed. My professor caught me handling the salt with my bare hands and started lecturing me about why that's bad. Here's where the irrelevant part comes in. He was going on and on about how while this time it was salt, next time it could be something that will burn a hole in my hand.

While this is really good advice, it was completely irrelevant to this particular situation. I was fully aware that salt was safe to touch; if I was handling something that wasn't, I would've definitely worn gloves. I also checked both the label and the assistant, making absolutely sure it was salt and not something else. If my professor argued that my hands weren't clean, I'd be okay with getting lectured.

I know I'm being immature about getting mad at this. I also get mad whenever people's explanations for things are completely wrong (or at least in tkd I do).

Question(s) of the day: What are some things that really get on your nerves?
If you'll notice on the right, I now have a formspring! Ask me anything!

Settling in

2010-09-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

So I finally feel like I've settled into the school year. I've gotten into routine with my classes, I've gotten used to living with roommates again, etc.

On the TKD front, we're been making lots of progress. There was a lot of stuff that needed to get done. Since we lost our old homeschool, we basically had to sit down and make up our own system for the time being until we find someone else. That means we had to come up with ranks (how many and what belt system to use), come up with the requirements to promote to each rank, come up with the rules for sparring in class, etc.

On another note, my school is doing The Coming Out Monologues again this year. This year, I'll be helping out with organizing it. It won't be put on until next semester, but we'll be working on reading through story submissions this semester. The guy who currently runs it is graduating at the end of the semester, so I'm helping out as much as I can. It's my job to make sure that the show doesn't fall through after he leaves. This means that I'll be in charge during auditions, rehearsals, and getting things reading on the actual night. I'm glad the current guy will still be around for all the space reservations and such. I'd hate to have to decide when the rehearsals and the actual show should be all by myself.

Well, that's about it.
Later

Are you a sports fan, or a team fan?

2010-09-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

This one's for all of the team sports fans out there.

So recently I've been comparing and contrasting one of my current roommates to one of my previous roommates. They have the same name, and both are self-proclaimed hardcore fans of American Football. During Football season, I could count on both of them to watch every game religiously, and be cheering very loudly at the tv.

Here are where the differences lie.

My current roommate has never been on a football team. He's always wanted to, but he doesn't have the build for it. He does, however, have a great build for tkd. I'm extremely jealous of his extremely long legs relative to his height. Anyway, like a lot of (probably most of) football fans, he's extremely loyal to certain teams, and hates teams that he has no loyalty to, especially the teams that are "rivals" to the teams he supports. He even has this deep hatred towards this one college team, even though he doesn't actually care for college football in general. I took this class freshman year where we briefly studied sports culture. This one author that we read explained that people tend to be loyal to teams that have some sort of connection to them. Usually, people pick teams that are from the area they live in. I asked my roommate, and he confirmed that the reason he picked the teams he's loyal to is because his dad is loyal to them. Anyway, the author explained that the reason people do this is because it allows them to view the team as a part of them. That way, when the team wins, they win. I explained all of this to my roommate, he seemed to agree with the points of the author but thought that supporting teams simply added to the experience and culture.

On the other hand, there's my previous roommate. He played football throughout high school. He is against the form of team supporting mentioned in the last paragraph. He believes that when you do that, you aren't able to appreciate the game as much. You're too busy hating one team that you ignore the great plays that they make and also fail to criticize the faults of the team you support. I should point out: he does like certain teams more than others, but he tries his best to base his opinions on how they play, and not where they're from or anything like that.

Personally, I lean more towards my previous roommate. Then again, I don't really follow team sports, so my opinion probably doesn't hold much weight. I'm curious. What's everyone's thoughts on this?

Stats

2010-09-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

So I've been looking through my Stats application on my blog page, which lets me see how many hits each post gets, what countries view my blog and how many hits I've gotten from them, how many hits I've got from different browsers, and what methods people use to get to my site (such as using google, linking from another blog, etc). This app really isn't that accurate; according to it, I have more comments than page views on certain posts. I do get some interesting stats though. For example, approximately 1% of my audience views my blog using Nintendo Wii, which I approve of. I have a surprisingly large number of people from other continents reading my blog. Naturally, most of my audience finds me through Maddie's, BDNY's and Green and Purple's blogs (thanks guys!) One person found my blog when he seached for "gay tai kwon do top." I'm not sure if he was looking for my site or someone else's, but I thought it was pretty funny.

To any of my fellow blogger's out there: are there any amusing stats that you've been given?
To anyone reading this: How did you find my blog?

My first boyfriend

2010-09-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

I was asked a long time ago about my first boyfriend. I thought I'd share a few things. I first met him through facebook. He and I were incoming freshmen to the same school, and the summer before our first semester started, the freshman class used facebook to contact future roommates, suitemates, hallmates, residential advisors, kids taking the same classes as them, etc. It was actually kind of cool to talk to these kids, knowing that I'll get to meet them in person in the near future. My first boyfriend was one of these kids. He and I were going to live on the same floor in the same dorm. When we first started talking to each other, there wasn't any intention of dating; he was dating someone at the time, and I was dealing with my first stalker.

This stalker. During summer orientation, I met one of the leaders who happened to be gay. He was really nice and told me that if I had any LGBT related questions about living on campus, that I could friend him on facebook and ask him, which I did. Not long after I did that, I received a friend request by this other guy, my stalker. I figured out from his facebook page that he was a residential advisor for my dorm, so I naturally assumed that he was my advisor and was going around friending his future residents. So, I accepted and he quickly started talking to me. I quickly found out that although he was AN advisor in my dorm, he wasn't mine. I asked him how many other kids in the dorm he had friended, and he said just me. I asked why me, and he said it was because he found me through my orientation leader's friends and thought I was cute. I was really uncomfortable with this, especially since this guy was a senior and I was an incoming freshman. I didn't like the idea of being someone's fresh meat, so I told him I wasn't interested in dating him. The problem was he kept persisting. It was really awkward when I finally met the guy in person and still had to tell him no. He eventually gave up. I found out later that this guy has a reputation for preying on freshmen.

Anyway, back to my first boyfriend. By the time school started, he had broken up with his old boyfriend. We hung out for a few times and got to know each other better. We had similar senses of humor and liked most of the same movies, music and video games. Most Importantly, he had a bit of a hard time growing up. Whereas my coming out story was extremely positive, his was not. I won't go into detail, but he had it rough. In spite of that, he tried as hard as he could to overcome all of that. I admired that kind of strength. I asked him out, and we became a couple. In retrospect, our relationship wasn't that great, but at the time I loved it. After a few months, we started having problems. He was a very moody guy, and I had trouble keeping up with it all. He also had major self-esteem issues, and dating me probably didn't help. People sometimes referred to him as "the bitch" since I had a more masculine personality than him. Also, he was overweight, while I was skinny and in decent shape. I often encouraged him to get out and exercise more, which he may have misunderstood as a sign that I had a problem with his weight. On another hand, he had problems respecting my opinions on things. I couldn't criticize him on anything without it being held against me, even if he asked me to criticize him on something. He'd also hold it against me if I defended myself when he'd accuse me of doing something wrong.

Anyway, we decided to break up. I didn't really want to break up; I wanted to work it out, but he insisted. We decided to still be friends and stay open to the idea of getting back together. The day we broke up, a number of gay guys on campus started talking to me a lot. They acted like they were concerned about how I was feeling emotionally, but I'm pretty sure they were mostly looking for an opprotunity to hit on me. I ended up going out with this one guy who seemed to be the most sincere, but on our first date he tried going for second base, so I decided to call it off right there.

I then started going out with this one guy who was the complete opposite. He was such a gentleman, he asked permission the first couple times he kissed me. After that last jerk, I really appreciated this. Still, as amazing as this guy was, I didn't have particularly strong feelings towards this guy. I thought it was because I still had feelings for my first boyfriend. What made things worse was that my first boyfriend confronted me and told me he wanted to get back together. I decided that since I still had feelings for my first boyfriend and didn't have very strong feelings for this new guy I was dating, I should go back to my first boyfriend. I explained all of this to the guy I was dating and he was very understanding.

In hindsight, this was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done in terms of dating. Maybe not the breaking up with the new guy I was dating, but going back to my first boyfriend. While I was getting attention from lots of other guys, he wasn't getting any (as far as I know). I imagine he was mistaking general feelings of loneliness with feelings of wanting to be with me. I can't really blame him. I've been there. After we got back together, he quickly realized that he didn't want to be with me as much as he thought. A couple weeks after we got back together, he cheated on me. He cheated on me with a guy he just met. This guy liked my boyfriend, and my boyfriend neglected to mention that he was seeing someone. When the guy found out about me the next day, he was furious. My boyfriend immediately told me everything that had happened and we broke up.

I'm not gonna lie. I think the only other time that I was hurt as bad as this was when my mom died. I was so upset that I felt numb for days, both physically and emotionally. I could say more, but I prefer not to.

The happy ending to this story is that I eventually forgave him and now we're friends again. I'm also friends with his new boyfriend

Stuff going on right now

2010-09-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

It's been months since I've made a post about what's going on in my day-to-day life. School started recently. I'm living in this new house off campus with two of my friends from TKD. It's been interesting so far. Out of the 3 of us, I was the only one who was here during the summer (I was taking classes). It was strange when the first moved in and I suddenly had to get used to living with people again. On the plus side, I was getting a little lonely. Between my house mates moving in, and my friends moving back to school, it was nice to have frequent company again.

The first week or so of school was pretty frustrating. I've decided to change my major from chemistry to psychology, and since I made my schedule before this decision, I had to change my classes at the last minute, go a few classes without books, debate with the administration over giving me overrides into certain classes, etc. I think that's finally settled, though, so things should get less hectic.

As far as TKD goes, I am now the head instructor, however I am sharing my power with two other black belts since last year proved to me that I wouldn't be able to handle the responsibility all by myself. I'm slowing discovering how much business is involved in running a campus club that the old head instructor neglected to mention to me, such as filling out a club registration form in order to let the university know that your club still exists. Another change is that we lost our home school, so now our entire club has lost its official status as a school of TKD. This has its ups and downs. On one hand, our students' ranks will probably have absolutely no value outside of our school (which they seem to be ok with). On the other hand, we are now allowed to incorporate anything into our program that we want instead of having to conform to the curriculum of a more traditional school. Hell, we could mix in some Kung Fu if we really want to. I love the freedom we all have, but I really wish we could be official again. In the long run, a rank is just a piece of fabric, but it also represents the student's accomplishments, and it would suck if no one outside of this school respected those accomplishments.

I guess I might as well mention, if I haven't already before, that I'm single again. There wasn't any huge fight or anything. We both agreed that our feelings for each other died down, so it'd be best to call it off before some major fall out would happen. We're still close friends and hang out regularly, so don't worry. There's no hard feelings on either side. There isn't really anyone new I have my eye on. I'm not really looking either. Right now, I've got to get settled back into things here at school

Coming Out Part 7: Friends and Heroes

2010-08-23T10:37:00.000-07:00

It might sound kindof pathetic, but I fell back into depression and suicide for a while. As supportive as my Dad and best friend tried to be, their uneasiness really got to me. If I couldn't count on my Dad to stand by me in case my Mom reacted badly, then it wouldn't really matter if he supported me or not. If my best and relatively liberal friend was uneasy, then how could I trust any of the rest of my other friends?

Luckily, I was quickly brought back out of this depression. Some of you may remember in my "I'm a Mikey, are you?" post, I mentionned a few heroes of mine. This is where they come into play. I discovered Richard Nolan and Robert Pingpank's story during this time (I'm in the spring semester of my junior year in high school at this point). I found a video of them on youtube. They were interviewed for this short documentary called 10 Couples. I won't go into their story here; you can read my earlier post if you want to learn more. Anyway, reading their story really put my life into perspective. I took two big lessons from their story: a) finding someone to love for the rest of you life is possible, even for a gay guy, b) even if situations seem hopeless, you can still pull through. There's no question that the circumstances of their life was hard than mine, so I figured if they can make it, so can I. After reading their story, I was okay where I was in life.

Another hero of mine is Corey Johnson. I forget exactly when I found his story, but I remember it was about half-way through my senior year. Before reading his story, I had absolutely no intention of coming out during high school. I didn't see much of a point. I should clarify, I didn't discover Corey's story on its own. I first found Greg Congdon's story on youtube, which had a link to Corey's. You can read Greg's here http://www.outsports.com/entertainment/20020920jocks2.htm
They had very similar backgrounds, but their coming out experiences were very different. Corey was met by almost complete acceptence, while Greg lost almost everyone. Another big difference was how they came out. Corey came out on his own terms by telling everyone directly, while Greg's family and friends found out after he tried to commit suicide, and one of the nurses told her son, who played football will Greg. I don't know for sure if this difference had any actual effect on their responses, but it made sense to me to think that taking the braver route and telling people directly might make them treat me with more respect than letting them know some other way. If not, at least I'd respect myself more for my own bravery.
Note: I hope no one reads this and thinks I'm trying to insult Greg. I apologize if it reads that way. I think the outcome of his coming out sucks, but people should read it because it shows that things can in fact go wrong.

Anyway, there was something more important that I took from their stories, especially Corey's. I realized how important it would be for me to come out during high school. My high school was this catholic school in this conservative area. I didn't no any other gay students attending. I did find out after I came out that there were a couple selectively out students, but when I was a freshman and sophomore still trying to figure stuff out, I had no one I could talk to. Reading Corey's and Greg's stories, and their responses, made me realize that I might be able to change that for other gay students. Since it was my last semester at my school, I couldn't do much, but I might be able to get the ball rolling, at least.

First thing I had to do was to tell my step mom and little sister. If something bad was going to happen, it'd be better if they knew beforehand. I told my dad that I was going to come out. He seemed uncomfortable with the idea, but he was okay with it. I sat my mom down one day and I told her. She was surprisingly okay with it. I got the impression that she already knew; odds are, my dad told her beforehand. I later told my little sister while we were playing video games. She was okay with it, but I think she was unsure how to respond. I also started going to this local gay youth group. I never really felt like I belonged there, but it was nice to actually meet and talk to other gay kids.

As this was going on, I was slowly building up the courage to come out to my friends. I came out to my next best friend, who I went to grade school with. I called him out to a Best Buy parking lot and told him there. He was really comfortable with it, more that my best friend. I thought that was weird back then, but knowing what I know now, it makes more sense.

As for my high school friends, I wanted to come out to them all at once, rather than individually. A) Individually would take too long. B) I didn't want to pick favorites with them. It was hard to find an opprotunity where they were all together, and when it did happen, I would freeze up and miss my chance. Finally, I took after Corey, and created my own opprotunity. I called them all beforehand and told them that I had something important to talk about before school. Those phone calls were the most terrifying calls I'll probably ever make in my life. After I made my first call, I knew I couldn't turn back. The next day, most of them showed up. Some of them had to leave, so I couldn't wait for the others. I told them. I was extremely quiet. I tried to look them all in the eye, but it was hard. To my surprise, I was met with a giant group hug. They thought I was about to tell them I was dying. It's nice to know my friends would prefer me gay than dead lol. They were shocked though, none of them expected me to be gay. One of the rsponses I got was "But.... you're such a..... guy!" The ones who had to leave left, and some of the ones who were late showed up, so I told again. It was easier this time. Then, more friends showed up. By this third wave, I was so emotionally drained, that I told them so casually, it was like I didn't even care. I told them all to feel free to tell anyone else. I wanted the news to spread so that there'd be a greater chance for other gay students to hear someone came out. What amazes me is that I didn't get a single negative response. In fact, there were a few straight students who later came and told me how inspired they were. I never thought I'd have an impact on them. Even one of the football players (one of the biggest guys on the team) approached me asking me if I really was gay. I thought he was going to try to hurt me, but I looked at him straight in the eye and said yes. He then told me how cool it was that I came out.

The day I came out, there was one friend that seemed like something was bothering him. I thought he was uncomfortable with me being gay. However, he approached me at the end of the day and asked me if it was okay for him to tell his other gay friend about me. I told him of course.

Well, that's it guys. That's my story. Sorry it was so long, and sorry to keep you waiting for these last two parts. I'm not gonna bother telling my college coming out story. There's not much to tell really. I'll be happy to answer any questions regarding my coming out story. Also, if you want to ask me anything else, I'll try to answer those as well. Joey asked me about my first boyfriend, and Swimmerdude asked me about TKD.

Later

Coming out pt 6: My best friend

2010-07-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month since my last coming out post. You guys definately deserve an explanation. I'm currently taking summer classes. I signed up for 9 credit hours worth. 6 of those hours were crammed into a 5 week period (one of those weeks I had to miss and make up for). On top of that, I had to move into my new house and fix all of the problems that came along with that (neither the past tenets nor the landlords cleaned the place after they moved out). Essentially, I've had no life for the past few weeks.

I told my brother that I came out to my dad. I also told him that I neglected to mention that my brother and sister already knew. He warned me that I need to tell my dad that as soon as possible. I knew he was right, so I confessed that night. He was a little upset that I didn't "keep it under wraps" like he wanted me to, but we didn't discuss it any more. My dad didn't want to talk about it much. He suggested that I go see a therapist to sort out my feelings. I’m sure some of you are thinking ‘uh-oh’ at this point, but it wasn’t like that. He didn’t want to send me to an ex-gay therapist; he wanted to send me to a normal one. He told me that I still felt unsure, and that I needed to talk my feelings out in order to be sure. In other words, while he still loved me, he still hadn’t entirely accepted the idea and needed an external source to verify it, I guess. I agreed to going to a couple sessions because I actually did want to talk out my feelings with someone who probably had experience with this sort of thing. We hid the real reason for my therapy from my step-mom. Dad and I were still uneasy about her knowing. He told her that I was starting to feel sad about my real mom, whose death was approaching its 10 year anniversary. Looking back, I’m not sure how I feel about him using her death to cover up a lie like that. Then again, I went along with it, so I can’t judge.

I had promised to my dad that I wouldn’t tell anyone else for the time being, but I decided that I still wanted to tell my friends and broke my promise. I decided to tell my best friend first. I mentioned him in one of first posts. He and I have been friends since we were 1-2 year olds when our moms put us together in day-care. When we were little, we used to always play together. We’d build forts, have sleepovers, go sledding, trick-or-treating, everything. We steadily grew apart over the years (most of that had to do with attending different schools). Despite that, we kept decent contact and I’ve always considered him close regardless of how much we grew apart. He is the only non relative that I’m okay saying “I love you” to (well, him and his mom). I guess it’s because I consider them family. This year, we were actually hanging out a lot because we were in Confirmation class together and were in the same group. One night, our class time included going to the confessional. I told the priest that I was keeping secrets from people. He told me my penance and told me that I should trust the people I care about and not keep secrets from them. I wasn’t planning on coming out to my friend that night, but hey, might as well get a jump on that penance. Conveniently, my friend and I were two of the last people to leave, so we had a chance to be alone. Also, the topic homosexuality had been brought up in our group in some way (though I forget why and what was said). I used that to get on the topic and I tried to lead to telling him the truth. I noticed that the more I lead up to it, the more uncomfortable he got and tried to change the subject. I didn’t want to let up, so I eventually blurted it out. His reaction seemed to be a mixture of shock and discomfort. He didn’t know what to say at first. I don’t remember much of the conversation, but I remember that it was short and that at some point he said that he might be a little bi. I didn’t know what to think or say about this. I know that I didn’t believe he was actually bi. I guess I figured that he was just saying it to make me feel more accepted, or maybe he had in fact experience some degree of bisexuality at some point like I did, but wasn’t any more. I remember one of the last things I told him was that lots of straight people experience I bi phase at adolescence (that may be a true statement, but it was probably a jackass thing to say). My friend was overall supportive, but it seemed clear to me that he wasn’t ready for me to come out. I decided that it must be too much to expect a 16 year old from our area to be ready and mature for this kind of thing. I decided that I wouldn’t come out to anyone else for a long time. Still, the fact that my best friend was uncomfortable had me extremely worried. I was afraid that if my best friend wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea (and he was one of my more liberal friends), then maybe there was no chance for my more conservative friends from being supportive.

For those of you who read one of my earliest posts, titled “My best friend is gay,” then you probably have a good idea of what was really going on with my friend when I came out to him. As it turns out, my best friend is also gay. I don’t know what level of self-acceptance he was at when I came out to him, but it was probably way behind mine. He only came out to his family earlier this year. When I was building up to my own coming out, he may have thought that I had figured him out or something. When I came out, it must have been extremely confusing for him. I know that I felt unsure about things when I found out about him. He hasn’t officially come out to me. His mom told me, assuming I already knew. I’m waiting for him to bring up the subject himself, because I don’t want to deny him the experience of coming out to me. As awkward as it was when I came out to him, I’m glad I had that moment.

New Look

2010-06-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

Well guys, how does it look? You like it? Special thanks to Taylor for pointing me in the right direction!

In case any of you are confused, that picture on the right is "Tae Kwon Do" written in Korean.

Btw, I replied with this article in my last post, but I'll go ahead and repost it
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05blow.html?hp

My post will resume my coming out story

Later

Update?

2010-06-05T20:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry, but this isn't the next part of my coming out story. They take a long time to write, I've I've been going through some stuff lately, and haven't been able to write for extended periods of time (hense the long gaps between my posts).

Anyway, this is my 20th post (and my 20th b-day is coming up). I'm also apporaching 15 followers. This feels like a significant enough time to update my page's look. Is anyone else tired of the standard blue and want to see something personalized?

Anyway, I wanna ask you guys for suggestions. How can I make this page better? For those of you with cool looking blog pages, any tips and tricks? For example, where do you guys go for photos that are okay to use? To my fellow martial artists (or fans) out there: anything martial arts specific that you want me to add to my page? (and if so, know how to do it?)

Let me know!

Coming Out pt 5: Car rides

2010-05-29T22:05:00.000-07:00

God it's been really long since my last one of these. I apologize. It takes me a while to write these

So as of Christmas day of my junior year in highschool, my brother now knew I was gay. So far, the world kept spinning.

The next day, my older sister and I left town to drive out to our extended family. They live about 6-7 hours away. My goal was to come out to her sometime during this window. Actually, it only took us till when we were just out of town. We were talking about how fun last night was, so it felt pretty natural for me to start talking about what happened when our brother and I went downstairs to get a soda. She was pretty shocked. Not upset, just surprized. Apparently, she'd been friends with a number of gay guys over the years, but they had all been extremely stereotypical. I was the first guy she knew who didn't act like that. She started asking me questions. A lot of them were about how long have I known and stuff like that, but many of them were checking to see if I just supress my "gay" qualities, such as feminine behavior and personality, etc. Lately, she's been getting better at it, but she still makes the occasional assumption about me. I think she just assumes that I'm the exception to the rule. Maybe I am, but I'd like to think that there are way more masculine gay guys out there than she realizes. Anyway, she didn't disown me, the car didn't swerve, we just talked about it for awhile and then moved on after she asked all of her questions.

I've heard people warn that you should never come out to someone while they're driving. For safety reasons, I can understand the logic. I mean, if they're extremely surprised, then they might jerk the wheel or something. Besides that though, I feel like a car is the most natural place to come out to someone. I think the biggest reason is that there's no risk of someone else barging in on you; for instance, when I came out to my brother, if I had stalled for much longer, my sisters probably would've barged in wondering where we were. Another reason is that you don't have to maintain eye contact. At first, I had a lot of trouble coming out to people and looking at them directly in the eye. In a car, the eyes are on the road.

My sister and I spent a few days with my extended family (none of whom I came out to on that particular trip) then returned home. A couple weeks later, I decided to come out to my dad. In order to prevent myself from chickening out last minute, I told my dad the night before that I had something important to talk to him about. I was planning on talking to him alone at home, but the next morning he offered me a ride to school. My school was a 40 minute drive, so it was going to provide a lot of time for us to talk. Still, I was unprepared to talk about it this early.

We started driving and he immediately asked me what was wrong. It took me a couple minutes to get my thoughts together. Even though I knew I had my brother and sister for support if things went wrong, I was still terrified. I wasn't able to tell my dad "I'm gay." Instead, I said "I think I'm gay." Why did I say it like this? In my nervousness, I stuttered, and adding the word 'think' helped me get through saying it. I wish I hadn't though. He took the fact that I said "think" as a sign that I wasn't entirely sure, that this was a new thing that I was experiencing. I kept trying to explain to him that I was sure, but he wouldn't give me the benefit of the doubt. I think he believed me, he just didn't want to.

He started asking me lots of questions. I remember some of his first questions were "Are you sexually or emotionally attracted to boys?" I answered first sexually, then emotionally. "How long have you been sexually attracted to boys?" I think I stopped him at this point. I asked him to start saying men instead of boys. Asking me about my attraction to "boys" made me feel like a pedophile.

All this time while we were speaking, I cold tell that my dad was breaking on the inside, and that says something. My dad has a decent poker face when it comes to hiding his real emotions, but you'd be able to tell he was breaking even if you didn't know him well enough to see through his mask. It wasn't that he had a problem with homosexuality though. A little bit of background on my dad: he grew up poor and had to work his ass off through life in order to be as successful as he is. He made a promise to himself that he would work as hard as he possibly could to make sure that my siblings and I lived with as little hardship as possible. Finding out that despite all of his efforts, one of his kids had to face some terrible stuff without my dad even knowing about it must have been hard to deal with, especially that he had absolutely no idea how to handle this situation. He desperatetly tried to regain the position of people the "experienced parent who knows what to do."

He asked me to "keep this under wraps" for a while. He told me not to tell my older brother or sister, and he especially not to tell my mom. This told me a number of things: he thought that he was the first guy I came to and therefor my main emotional support, and that he was just as afraid as I was that he wouldn't be able to stand up to my step-mom if she reacted badly.

I never expected that by coming out to my dad, I would be more concerned with his emotional well-being than my own. I didn't have the heart to tell him right then and there that my brother and sister already knew. His self-esteem as a parent was already damaged enough for one car ride. So, I decided that for a while, I would let my dad play the role of protective parent so that he would get some of his security back. I felt guilty about lying to him though, but I would tell him the truth soon.

He let me out of the car at school and reassured me that he still loved me and that everything was going to be okay, and I thanked him. I was glad that I now had his support, but I now especially terrified of how my step-mom would react, since I now knew that my dad wouldn't be strong enough to back me up.

Coming Out pt 4: My first steps out to others

2010-05-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

I was at a very awkward place in my life. I had my suicidal thoughts under control, at least for the time being. I had no idea what would happen if I were to come out and my family and friends would reject me, though. Sure, I had determined that I COULD survive if I tried, but I wasn't sure if I would have the drive to keep going. I mean, the thing that was keeping me going was the idea that killing myself would hurt my family and friends; if they reject me, then I would be as good as dead to them anyway, so how hurt would they be if I actually died? Besides, I wasn't entirely conviced at this point that there could be some personal happiness out there waiting for me, either in the form of a life-long relationship or anything else. No, at this point I had not yet found any stories that I found personally inspiring. I was a junior in highschool at this point.

I didn't have much faith that my family and friend's reactions would be positive. I had next to no trust in my friends, considering the anti-gay stuff they said so often. I had mixed feelings towards my family. Homosexuality was something that we never really talked about. I didn't know how my family was going to feel. What I did know, was what would happen if my step-mom wasn't going to be okay with it. She and I would have a falling out which would end up with me having to move out of the house. Even if my dad were okay with me being gay, it wouldn't matter. He wouldn't be able to stop anything from happenning. I say this all with confidence because something similar happened with my older sister. She's straight, but she and my step-mom never really got along. She had to move out of the house while she was still in highschool.

I decided the first person I should come out to was my older brother. I chose him for a number of reasons. First of all, I'm closer to him than anyone else I know; he's always the first person I go to when I need help with something, and he's the guy who I look up to most in my life. I mean, he's this strong, tough guy, but he's also the kind of guy you can sit down and talk to. On a more practical note, he's grown up and has a place of his own. If things didn't go over well with mom and dad, I could rely on him to give me a place to stay.

I spent a month or so trying to encourage myself to come out to him. There were times when I'd be alone with him, almost tell him, and then back out at the last second. Then there were other times when I'd get close, hesitate and completely miss my opprotunity.

Finally, I was able to come out to him on Christmas day, my junior year of highschool. Yes I know, Christmas day sounds like a horrible choice, but the opprotunity came up, and that was the day I felt ready. We (my older brother, my older sister and younger sister) were all up in my room playing videogames. It was my sisters' turn, so I told them I was going to go get a soda. I asked my brother if he wanted to come with to get one too. When I said this, my older sister figured out I had something I wanted to talk to my brother about, and decided to tease me about it. "OOOOoh. Brother time, huh? Haha! GAY!" Man, she had no idea....
So my brother and I went downstairs to the basement fridge. The whole way down, I was giving myself a pep talk. When we got to the fridge, he asked me what was up. I froze and was suddenly unable to look him in the eye. I started tearing up. I was able to make a couple glances at him. He just stood there, looking at me patiently. I finally managed to say "I'm gay." I said it so quietly, I'm actually surprised that he was able to hear me the first time.

You know how you hear people say coming out feels like a huge boulder is lifted, and you suddenly feel much lighter? Well, for me, it felt more like I was centerstage, naked, in the spotlight, and I had nothing to hide behind. That means something coming from me. I never get stage fright. I was crying at this point, and I found it even harder to look at my brother in the eye. He came over and gave me a hug. He told me everything was okay, and that he still loved me just as much. He said that he was actually had a feeling I was gay, considering I never mentionned girls to him. He then asked a couple questions such as how long have I known, do I have a boyfriend, have I ever had one, do I like anyone, etc.

We kept talking until I was okay to go back upstairs. At the end of the night, he waited till we were alone again, gave me another hug, and reassured me again that he still loved me.

Coming Out pt 3: Learning to accept myself

2010-05-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna start of mentionning something that happened recently. My dad is one of the higher-ups at a med school. A student at this school committed suicide. My dad had never personally met this kid, put hearing about this brought up some painful memories of my mom, who committed suicide when I was 6. When he found out about it, he spent the rest of the afternoon crying. My dad is usually the kind of person who tries to supress those kinds of emotions. He decided to take it upon himself to talk to the kid's parents and help them through this. For those of you reading this who are religious, please pray for this kid's parents and for my dad. They need them.

Interesting coincidence that this happenned now, cause this next part of my story is about my own experience with suicidal thoughts, among other unhealthy thoughts.

I was a very angry kid through most of highschool. Part of it was my problem accepting that I was gay, and part of it was having to deal with the comments of other students. As I said before, sometimes it seems like every other comment made during school was anti-gay. I would just sit there and listen to them. Occasionally, I'd make one or two myself, just in case someone would find it suspicious that I never made any gay jokes. I was completely miserable at this time. I hated the other kids in school for the shit they said. Sometimes, it would be unbearable. I wanted to hurt them. Whenever they would get on a roll and say one gay joke after another, I'd imagine myself snapping and attacking all of them. I never did though. I think I have Tae Kwon Do to thank for that. It was a great way to vent my anger and learn to control it. Accidents happen a lot in Tae Kwon Do. People do sometimes get hurt. I'm thankful for these accidents, because they helped remind me that a) I hate hurting people and b) I can really hurt people if I tried.
It's funny. Hurting someone during the match feels like a sign of weakness. You're supposed to understand your strength and be able to control it. When you fail and hurt someone, you feel extremely guilty. It sucks because sometimes it's hard to maintain control, especially when facing a tough opponent. Towards the end of a fight you get tired and can't think straight. You forget to control yourself, and let go. Then, someone gets hurt. It takes a high level of maturity to accept that accidents happen and forgive yourself. You can't beat yourself up about it. You have to learn from it and move on. If you dwell on it too much, when the next fight comes around, you'll be too afraid of your own strength, hold back, and end up losing the fight.

It's similar to what I dealt with in highschool. Though I never actually snapped, I increasingly lost control over my thoughts. The fantasies I had of hurting kids at school became more violent, brutal and graphic. If it had kept up, I probably would have become one of those school shooters. One day, I just snapped out of it. I realized that I completely lost control. When that happened, I internalized all the anger I had towards the other kids. I began hating myself for being for being such a bad person for wanting to hurt them so badly. It bothered me more and more everyday.

I had finally accepted that I was gay at this point, but I felt that there was no hope for me to have a happy, openly gay life. I slipped further and further into despair. I started having thoughts of killing myself. I thought about it all the time. You know what's weird, all of these depressed thoughts of hating yourself, feeling hopeless for the future, wanting to kill yourself, the become strangely comforting. You have these feelings so often that you start to get addicted to them. They have physical effects too. You feel drowsy and your entire body slows down. It's like a warm blanket wraps around you. It's so comfy that you don't even realize that it's strangling you. I started to plan how I would go about killing myself. I decided that I wanted something quick and relatively painless. I also wanted a way that would leave little mess for my family to clean up. The first tenet of Tae Kwon Do is "Courtesy." I remembered how my mom killed herself. She hung herself in the garage. That seemed like a good way to go: it was quick, and there was no blood or anything.

Remembering my mom was what made me snap out of everything. I remembered how my mom's death destroyed everyone in my family. I realized that I didn't want to put my family through that again. I found my drive to keep going, at least for a little while. I started thinking about what it was like when my mom died. I thought that my life would never be the same and that I'd never be happy again. What made it worse was that most of my close friends had moved away at that time. I felt incredibly alone. The more I thought about it, the more I noticed the similarities between that time in my life and the things I was afraid of dealing with if I came out. I was afraid that I'd lose my family, my friends would all move away from me, my life would never be the same and that I would never be happy. Once I realized these similarities, I thought, If I was able to get through all of this once, maybe I can get through it again.

They say that God has a plan for everyone. Everything happens for a reason. Well, if God exists, maybe that horrible time in my life happenned to prepare me for all of this. If I wasn't forced to go through all of that, maybe I wouldn't know that I had the strength to get through this. Maybe I wouldn't understand how much suicide destroys people, and that I'd never want to put anyone through that. I started having hope for my situation.

I'm looking at what I'm writing, and it sounds like this all happenned pretty much all at once. It really didn't. It took a long time to get through this depression. Even when I made all of these connections, I still had to tell myself over and over again that everything was going to be okay.

Coming Out pt 2: Starting Highschool

2010-04-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

As I said before, I had a pretty strong Catholic upbringing. I've always believed in God, but I never had a really strong tie to the Catholic church itself. Not that I can remember, anyway. I remember when I was really little that my family would go to church every sunday. We'd go to Christmas and Easter mass, celebrate Advent and Lent, the whole 9 yards. Then, my mom died when I was 6. She committed suicide. After that, my family quit going to church for a long time. I think what happened is that my mom's death caused my dad to lose his faith for a while. This time was particularly hard for me because around this time, most of my close friends had just so happened to move away. I didn't have many people I could talk to. Anyway, my dad met my step-mom, who's a strong catholic, and when they married, we started attending mass regularly again. By we, I mean my dad, step-mom, new little step-sister and me. My older brother was out of the house by this point, so he didn't go, and my older sister refused. I tried to refuse too, but I still had to go.

Anyway, I also started attending Catholic grade school. there wasn't a huge difference between public grade school and Catholic grade school. If it wasn't for the uniforms and the occasional mass, you wouldn't know it was a catholic school at all. Being gay didn't bother me too much there since I was still in denial at that point.

Highschool was a bit different. For one thing, they took religion much more seriously, except they were really bad at it. I don't know what was worse: them severely misrepresenting non-Catholic people and beliefs, or them misrepresenting Catholic beiefs. I won't go into too much detail on this post. The being gay thing was more of a problem here too. I had begun to accept the truth that I was gay, but I was far from being okay with it. The anti-gay stuff was pretty terrible. it wasn't just jokes about stereotypes, sometimes kids would bluntly state how much they hate fags, completely straight-faced. Sometimes it seemed like every other comment was something anti-gay.

You know, the occasional gay joke has never really bothered me. I'm of the mindset that it's okay to make fun of people, as long as it's in moderation and everyone's included/teased. I mean, what would comedy be without making fun of people? What would be left? Puns?
The thing is, when it seems like every other joke is directed at you, it starts to hurt a little. You're not being included, you're being targeted. Sure, you know that a lot of them don't mean what they say, but when you're in the closet, it's impossible to tell who's who. It's really painful not knowing who your real friends are, and who will leave you without second thoughts if they found out you were gay. I don't know if I can even describe the feelings of loneliness. It's like you wake up every morning and think to yourself, "everyone I care about might abandon me if they found out about me." I know that sounds dramatic, but it's the best way I can describe it. What's worse is that I didn't know a single other gay student at my school. I had no one I could talk to about it. I knew I couldn't be the only one, but I might as well have been since I didn't know anyone else. At some schools, you can go talk to a teacher about this stuff. Not at my school. Even the teachers seemed to join in the anti-gay stuff once in a while.

Coming Out pt 1: the Phase

2010-04-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

You know the phrase "bi now, gay later?" Usually when it's said, it implies that people who claim to be bi are simply unable to accept and acknowlege that they are completely gay. However, it's been suggested by psychologists that many people, particularly teenagers, experience some degree of bisexuality as their sexual attraction developes. Many people simply turn out to be bisexual as adults, while for many others, the attraction towards one sex goes away for the most part, if not entirely, while the attraction towards the other sex becomes prominent.

When my sexuality was first developing, I went through one of these stages. My sexual attraction, as best as I can remember, started when I was around 12-13. I remember that back then, pretty much everything aroused me. Like a lot of 12-13 year olds, I started experimenting with porn. I looked at straight porn and some lesbian porn and liked what I saw. This went on for a while. One day, I got curious and looked at some gay porn. I definately liked what I saw, but I didn't acknowlege it, probably out of denial. Even though I didn't acknowlege liking it at the time, I continued to look at it along with straight porn. It began to worry me that I liked looking at the gay porn, especially since I noticed that some days, I did like looking at women, but other days I didn't. I always liked looking at men though. I began researching homosexuality online, and discovered that many kids go through a bisexual phase before their adult orientation settles in. I convinced myself that that must be what I was going through, and that my gay feelings would go away.

It was hard for me to accept the idea that I was gay. I had very little exposure to homosexuality. All I really knew was that everone around me seemed to hate or at least look down on gay people, and that gay guys were really feminine and flamboyant. Back then, I was pretty scrawny and weak, but I wasn't either of those things. I had mostly guy friends, I and my interests were video games, tae kwon do (I began just before turning 11, so I had been doing it for a couple years at this point), paintball, anime and playing Risk. A nerd, definately, but gay? The only stereotypes that I seemed to fit was that I enjoyed acting and theater, and had a soft spot for musicals (make fun of me all you want. I love that stuff! haha). It didn't help that I had a strong Catholic background (I'll go into detail with that later)

Freshman year of highschool, I had PE, which involved showers at the end of class. I rarely braved taking one (thankfully, PE was close to the end of the day for me). Even though I didn't acknowlege that I was gay back then, I knew that bad stuff might happen if I looked at the other guys for too long. I remember thinking to myself 'don't look down, don't look down, don't look down." To my relief, I quickly became comfortable in the locker room, and sexual thoughts were far from my mind (locker rooms are too disgusting to think of sex). Still, I rarely risked taking a shower myself.

Summer after freshman year, I went to this camp. It was my second year attending this camp. If was full of nerds, so I fit right in. I was in this especially close circle of friends. Within this circle of friends was Tall, Blond and Tan, TBT (I won't use real names. a friend requested that I use descriptors instead of fake names). Anyway, I loved being around TBT. He was funny, smart and handsome. Not to mention a voice that was way too deep for a 14-15 year old that was both hysterical to listen to and sexy at the same time. I didn't realize it at the time, but I know understand that TBT was my first crush. Too bad he didn't feel the same way. (Who am I kidding? I wouldn't have been ready to explore with a guy at that age haha)

As time went on, my attraction towards women pretty much disappeared. Imagine how hard it is to accept being gay, when you know that you were once attracted to women. It's difficult. I remember making bargins with God, begging for those feelings to come back. I didn't want to be the gay kid. Please God. Not me. Anything but this. I want a wife and kids. Is that not good enough? Am I not good enough? Why aren't you listening to me? Am I being punished? I swear I won't make gay jokes again! I swear! Please God. Not Me

I'm a Mikey, are you?

2010-04-24T13:47:00.001-07:00

Well, As I've mentionned in other posts, I'm a fan of mikey's blog, hockeykidmn, and the associated forum, mikeynation. As I found out last night, It seems as though "Mikey" does not actually exist. yo can read the post here http://www.hockeykidmn.com/
I can't express how bad I feel for Jimmy, or for theother kids who had such a strong emotional investment in Mikey for being their hero.
Mikey was never my personal hero. No, I came out long before the blog began. I did have my own heroes though. If it weren't for Corey Johnson's coming out story, http://www.outsports.com/os/index.php/component/content/article/48-archive/226-corey-johnson-comes-out
or Richard Nolan and Robert Pingpank's http://www.nolan-pingpank.com/
I don't think I would be alive today. their stories gave me so much hope and courage. Dick and Bob's story taught me that it was in fact possible to find gay love that lasts, and that you can be happy, while Corey's gave me hope of acceptance and taught me how much difference one person coming out can make a difference in people's lives. These. stories are what drove me to accept myself, come out in high school and have an inspiring story of my own that I can be proud of.

So when I discovered this blog, I had a great deal of respect for Mikey and his work. I saw him as a hero for his followers just has Corey, Dick and Bob had been for me. I can't imagine how hurt and confused these kids must be to find out that their hero doesn't really exist. What these kids need to understand is that even though "Mikey" might not be real, the difference he's made in their lives is. I hope they realize that the strength they've gained and the steps they've taken to accept themselves from reading the blog are real and that they can never be taken away from them. The following of Mikey's blog has proven that "Mikey" does in fact exist. there are tons of Mikeys out there.

I'm a Mikey, are you?
I've decided that now is the time to share my own coming out story, so that is what my next few posts will be about. I promise you that my story is real, and that only names will be changed for privacy (as a reminder, the name "Robbie" is a pseudonym I use).

If you are also a Mikey, please introduce yourself and share your experiences in the comment box! If you want, please send a link to your blog so people reading this can find even more Mikeys!

Coming Out Monologues pt 2

2010-04-24T00:55:00.000-07:00

So tonight, my school held it's production of the Coming Out Monologues which I participated in. We had an amazing turn out, especially considering that there was a popular band performing at my school at the same time. The audience seemed to really enjoy it. I'm very proud of myself and my castmates. I think we all did a great job.

My monologue had an interesting response. I didn't read my own story; I read someone else's. This person's monologue was about his coming out to his mom as a kinky dominate and her response to it. There was a lot of giggling and laughter in the room as I read the beginning of mine. The laughter was appropriate for the most part, since there was a decent about of humor in the beginning of it. The laughter came to a halt half-way through though. Halfway through, the guy's mom tells him that if any children disappear around the neighborhood, then she'll know who did it. Everyone laughted at first before it registered with them what the mom actually said. I was actually kindof shocked to hear them laugh at the mom's cruel comment; I thought they would understand what the comment ment immediately, rather than take a couple seconds. In hindsight, I'm glad I misunderstood, because hearing the laughter mad me extremely shocked and sad (which was how the character felt after that comment) and it showed on stage. I really wish I would have thought to adlib the line "I just got called a predator.....by my mom." I feel like that line could've brought it home. Oh well. Everyone still understood how painful the mom's comment was eventually.

After the show, I got a lot of funny comments. I have the sneaking suspition that some of my friends now think that I'm into kink (I'm not) haha oh well.

TKD Lesson

2010-04-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

So a while ago, I promised I'd explain Tae Kwon Do a little more. I feel like making a TKD post today, so here you go.

TKD is a martial art that was developed in South Korean. Historically, It has very close ties to the Japanese martial art, Karate, and the two are often confused. They share most of the same moves, however Tae Kwon Do puts slightly more emphasis on kicking.

Within TKD, there are many branches. The two main branches are called World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) and International TKD Federation (ITF). I know, there's not much of a difference between the words "world" and "international" when used to refer to a sport. Originally, I studied under ITF and earned my black belt under ITF, but the program offered at my school is a WTF program. In order to become an instructor there, I had to completely learn the new style. It was actually pretty hard to do, because a lot of the differences are subtle (such as slightly different ways to perform certain techniques), and it was hard fighting muscle memory to do things their way. Besides the subtle differences, there are also some more noticable ones. One big difference is that they teach different sets of forms. If you don't know what forms are, read my post called "New Form." Another big difference is sparring. Sparring is where two fighters put on pads and fight each other for a set period of time. There's some variation between different schools under the same branch, but here are the basic differences:

WTF sparring: If you've ever watched TKD at the olympics, this is the style you saw. It's usually continuous sparring (meaning the match continues without stopping unless there's a foul during the match). Matches are full contact. You are not allowed to kick off of the same leg without setting your leg down, so you see a lot of alternating kicks. You're also not allowed to punch to the head. Fighters are also required to wear a Hogu, or chest protector. Fighters are allowed to kick to the back as long as the area is covered by the protector. Traditionally, every technique is worth one point, so you almost never see a kick to the head. They've changed it recently so that head techniques are worth more. These matches put emphasis mostly on speed and power, and you don't see much strategy or blocking.

ITF sparring: I prefer this style. Most matches are continuous sparring, but some schools still do point sparring (meaning the match stops every time someone scores a point). Matches are medium contact. Unlike WTF, you're allowed to kick with the same leg without putting it down, so you see a lot of single leg combos. Also, you are allowed to punch to the head. Hogus are not required and most fighters on't wear them (they kill your flexability). However, you're not allowed to kick to the back. Different techniques score different points. The point system varies, but generally, more difficult techniques score more points. In these matches focus much more on strategy and technique. You also see a lot more blocking

Anyway, I think that's enough for today's lesson. If you have any questions, let me know!

Thank you for never punching me in the face

2010-04-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

Today was an interesting day.

So I'm still working on this film project. I finally get the files to play (Yes!). Now, this is a group project and there's this one other kid who's in charge of editting (he also happens to be gay). Anyway, I'm waiting for him to show up to help me with the project. He's running very late, so I call him to ask him what's up. This was his explanation:

He and the guy he's seeing had a huge fight this morning. He was so upset by it, that he had to drive home and completely forgot about the project. He ends his explanation with "I think my nose might be broken, but I'm not sure."

I just stand there and think jesus christ. I tell him not to worry about it and to just take things easy. I see my boyfriend later today, and the first thing I say to him is, "thanks for never punching me in the face." He looked at me very confused before I explained haha.

On a sidenote, Another interesting thing that happened today is that a church group came to campus to let us all know we're going to hell. They're basically off-brand Westborough Baptists, and they come to campus once a year. They're kindof insane. I remember last year, there were these girls walking by wearing athletic shorts and the main guy told them "I don't know how the whore houses stay open. You girls are giving it away for free." Yeah.... their visits are fun. Last year, these two gay students just started making out in front of them just to piss them off. Not sure if that did any good, but it was a funny story. This year though, there weren't many interesting stories

Anyway, I hope everyone else had an amusing day!

This damn project

2010-04-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

so in my art class, I have this film assignment. We're supposed to take clips from a movie, record ourselves discussing the clips, then edit them all together. Since I'm one of the only ones in my group who has any experience with film editting (it's one of the only artistic things I'm good at), I'm the one in charge of putting the film together. So here's what's pissing me off about it: I can't convert the film into a format that either windows movie maker or imovie can read. If I can't do that, then I can't trim it into clips.

When I first received the burned copy of the dvd, my pc would play it, but when i tried to save it on my pc, it saved them in a way that wmm could read it. I talked to my brother, who's an IT, and he recommended a program called handbrake. Now, handbrake was able to convert the files into an mpeg4. My copy of wmm can't read that. I figure, itunes can read mpeg4, i bet imovie can too. So I go to my school's mac lab, and it turns out that imovie can't. I still don't understand why. The people there recommend I try to convert it to avi. So, I look online and find a program that converts mpeg4s to avi. It finds the movie file and converts it to avi. I know that wmm reads avi, so I try to use it again. It now recognizes that the movie is there, however it won't import it because it says that the file is corrupted. I'm pretty sure it's because the avi file includes the menus and wmm doesn't know what they are. I'm getting really frustrated with all of this.

Coming Out Monologues

2010-04-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

So my school is putting on a production of the Coming Out Monologues. The way this show works, is that students submit their coming out stories, then they read their monologue in front of an audience. You can also submit your story and have someone else read it or audition to read someone else's if you don't want to share a story of your own. I really wanted to submit one of my coming out stories and read it myself, but I had too much trouble writing it. The problem was that I couldn't keep it short enough without cutting out too much backstory and emotion for it feel like it had any sort of life or meaning in it. You know what I mean? So instead, I auditionned to read some one else's. I auditionned for a few stories, and the one I got was about a guy who is a dominant in the BDSM culture.

NOTE: I'm not into kink at all. I auditionned for this story because the story was interesting and the writer has a very clear personality, so it seemed like it wouldn't be too hard to recreate this guy's character.

Anyway, I went home this weekend so I could celebrate my sister's birthday. I hadn't told my family that I'm participating in this show, but I ended up mentionning it to them at dinner. My step mom kept asking me questions about it, wanting to know when it was so that the family could come up to see it. To be honest, I don't want her to see me perform. My step mom is the kind of person who reads too much into everything. If she saw me perform this piece, she'd start asking me lots of questions regarding why I picked this one. She'll subtly start accusing me of being into kink. Then, I'll tell her no I'm not, then she'll blunty accuse me of being into kink. I'll continue to tell her no, then she'll say "okay," but not believe me. What will make the situation worse is that the writer talks about his strainned relationship with his mom. My step mom will read too much into that too. She and I have never been particularly close, and for the most part, our relationship is all business and we simply put up with each other. She tends to make a lot of assumptions about what's going on in my head and it really pisses me off. The problem is, she and I think on different wavelengths so she has never made a correct assumption about me. It really gets annoying because she usually assumes the worst in me and it gets on my nerves.

Luckily, my brother was there during our conversation about the show. He noticed me get uncomfortable at the idea of her watching me perform, and asked me if I didn't want her to come. I explained why, and he said he understood and that he'd try to keep her from coming. God I love my brother. He said that he'd still try to make the show though. I wonder how weird it will be for him to listen to his little brother talk about tying up and spanking guys lol

My students

2010-04-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

At TKD practice this week, our students have been going through pre-testing. Every once in a while, we hold a promotion test where students can earn their next belt rank. At this test, the head of our TKD home school (the TKD program offered at my college is a branch of this man's program) comes down to run everyone's test. Before any of our students can actually test though, my co-instructor and I have to approve them by making sure they know all of the material by having them run through it. That's what pre-testing is. Testing always makes me think back on how far each of my students have come. They really have no idea how proud I am of them. You see all kinds of kids come into TKD. The ones who I'm most proud of are the ones who find some way of bettering themselves through the program. I see angry people come in and watch them slowly learn how to control their tempers. I watch shy kids slowly become more confident and come out of their boxes.

One student, I'll call her Lisa, started coming to class when her friend dragged her along. She used to be extremely depended on her friends for motivation. Now, she's become very strong, independent, confident and no longer needs anyone as a crutch; she now comes to class on her own, even though her friend is now studying abroad and doesn't come to class with her anymore.

I think the student who I'm most proud of is that guy that I'll call Tommy. TKD is something that just does not come natural to Tommy. When he came in, he was single-handedly the most awkward student I've ever seen. However, his mentality in class is the best I've ever seen. He's kind and respectful to everyone in class, he listens to advice, he's willing to try new things all the time, and he's not afraid to give everything his all. He perseveres more than anyone I've seen. He still struggles whenever he has new techniques to learn, but he's one of the better students when it comes to the techniques that he's already learned.

I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I felt the need to express how much I care about these kids. (I call them kids, but really they're all around my age)

need to give my wrist a rest.

2010-04-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

my wrist is really sore from all of it's.... "activity" tonight. It hurts to move it. It really sucks. Hopefully it will feel better tomorrow. I don't know how long I can wait for more..... "activity."

I hurt my wrist by thowing a bad block (how many of you actually thought I was talking about masturbating?) I was hanging out with my friends tonight, and a couple of them were pushing and hitting each other. Not actually hurting each other, just sparring. Anyway, I decided to join in. I blocked one of my friend's attacks wrong, and I hurt my wrist in the process. Ouch. Really hope it feels better in the morning. hurt wrists are terrible. Thank god for tiger balm lol

The Vow of Silence

2010-04-17T00:08:00.000-07:00

So yesterday (4/16) was the Day of Silence. For the first time, I decided to participate. I wasn't entirely sure how effective a form of protest it was, but I decided what the hell. Right before leaving for class, I put a piece of ducktape over my mouth. I'm sure a lot of people thought I did it just to be more visible, but really, it was just so that I wouldn't accidently speak. After today, I don't think it's a very effective way of protesting the "silence" that closeted lgbt people have to go through. The people who were already very supportive of lgbt people thought what I was doing was very brave and strong, but everyone else's response was "I don't get it," or "whatever."

To be honest, none of those responses really mattered much to me. It didn't take me long to realize that taking a vow of silence for a day was a very unsettling reminder of what I went through in high school. I'll explain my day, and hopefully everyone reading this will pick up on the parallels.

I spent most of the day walking quickly and looking down and away from other people. I was terrified of looking people in the eye because I didn't want to be noticed or draw any attention to myself. The duck tape added an extra degree of humiliation. I felt ridiculous and awkward wearing it. No one else seemed to be wearing tape of any kind, so I felt really alone and isolated. I felt ashamed for being so different from everyone, and I was really paranoid that everyone was giving me funny looks and talking about me.

Being with friends was really awkward as well. It was so hard trying to communicate with them without actually speaking. At lunch, one of my friends teased me by saying "We get to make fun of Chicago all we want, and Robbie can't do anything about it!" Chicago is my favorite city and a lot of my family lives there. It's kindof like a second home for me. Making fun of Chicago is like making fun of part of me. It really sucked not being able to defend it.

I also had to deal with not being able to defend myself during class. This one girl asked me about the tape, so I showed her my pre-written card explaining what the day of silence is. She said, "I don't know If I agree with this. I mean, I don't think gay people are forced to endure silence. They choose to." She's definately right in a literal sense. I mean, lgbt people are fully capable of ending the silence by coming out, but I really wanted to tell her that for a lot of people, including me, choosing to come out means risking the love of every single person you care about, and in high school, it also means risking your entire financial support. No kid deserves to be forced to make that choice. It's so cruel. I'm glad that our country is better than it used to be, but there are still stories out there of kids losing everything. I wanted to argue all of this to her, but I couldn't.

Later that night, my friends and I went to this show that my school was putting on. Outside, there was this religious group protesting. They're a lot like the westborough baptist church, but not quite as bad. Still, they have no problem telling everyone, especially gay people, are going to hell. Meanwhile, I just stood there taking it.

At any point, I could've ripped off my tape and yelled back. But I didn't. I just stood there silently. Being silent wasn't quite the same as it was when I was in the closet. There was no fear of people's responses when I finally said something. Still, it was a similar enough experience to remind me of all the shit I used to put myself through. It reminded me of how awkward, painful and shameful it feels to be in the closet. Next time anyone argues that the day of silence is stupid cause it's not a very effective way to protest, I'll probably agree, but I'll argue that it means so much if you look at it more as a reminder of what closet life was like.

Changing

2010-04-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

Last night, my school's GSA had it's biannual dance. I know, how popular could an LGBT dance be on a college campus be? Well, actually, this dance is maybe one of the biggest and most popular parties every semester. Tons of people come, and not just the LGBT kids on campus. We get lots of straight students, we get some high school students (you have to be 16 or older to get in) and older people as well. It's actually a lot of fun. It's held in this giant warehouse off campus. There's a giant dance stage in the middle, and tables off to the side. At the beginning, there are condoms spread over the tables. Those get taken pretty quickly lol (one will inevitably get blown up like a balloon and thrown around like a beach ball). Anyway, after the dance is half over, a drag show begins. There are these 2 professionals who always come down. They're pretty amazing. Amateurs also come up to perform at this time. My friends and I were right up next to one side of the stage, and they kept trying to get me to give ther a dollar, but I was a little afraid of what she'd do. One time, my ex gay them a dollar, and she shoved his head under her skirt. That'd be a little much for me.

Anyway, main point of this post: I bumped into my old lab partner there. When we were partners, he identified as straight. He was overall a really angry and impatient kid, but other than that he showed no reason to believe that he was gay. He talked about girls, had no problem with me talking about guys, showed no signs of being homophobic or even uncomfortable around me or anything. He was also a pretty masculine guy in both voice and mannerisms. At the dance, however, I saw him and this other guy and they were basically all over each other. At first, I thought, wow didn't see that coming but good for him for coming out! That's great! However, I noticed something that really bothered me. His personality and mannerisms seemed completely different. He didn't seem angry anymore, but he also seemed to act really flamboyant. It could've just been that he was drinking, lol.

I don't know how I feel about people changing who they are once they come out. I can understand not being angry all the time anymore, but the flamboyant part seemed to come out of nowhere. I guess I shouldn't complain though. I know I changed a lot before I came out. When I was in the closet, I was a very timid and reserved kid. I was really awkward and unsure of myself. But anfter I came out, I got a huge confidence boost, and I becaome more outgoing, confident and outspoken. But that wasn't really a "change," that was just me showing more of who I really was. Maybe it's the same with my lab partner. Maybe he really was this flamboyant guy all along, and now he's showing it now that he's out.

If anyone's reading this, do you guys have any experience with people changing after coming out?

Brothers

2010-04-06T17:10:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of "A gay hockey kid's life," a blog by a kid named mikey who writes some pretty insightful posts about being a closeted athlete in highschool. Here's a link to his blog http://www.hockeykidmn.com/

Anyway, today, he wrote about coming out to his little brother. I thought I'd talk about my older brother, I'll call him Alan (doesn't really fit him, imo, but the name is stuck in my head. Alan and I have always been really close. Whenever neither of us had our friends over, we usually hung out together. I have him to blame for my love of video games lol. Thanks to him, I got into all of the classics from NES and the SNES. I cry a little inside when I hear that kids my age who call themselves gamers have never played games like contra or double dragon.

I really look up to Alan. He's 10 years older than me, so he's always seemed like a mature adult to me. He was definately my primary male role model. He was strong, a hard worker, a great handyman, but he's also mellow, down to earth, kind and caring. He was also usually the first person I came to when I needed to talk about stuff, especially when it came to stuff that I needed a guy to talk to. My dad was usually busy with work, and he's pretty closed off emotionally. Alan, though, has always felt like someone I could go to. That's why Alan was the very first person I came out to.

I don't know if he realizes this, but Alan was probably more of a father figure for me growing up than my actual father was. Don't get me wrong, my dad's alright, he just doesn't really know how to connect with people. Alan got married recently, and they've been trying to have a kid. I remember awhile ago I was in the car with my brother, and he confessed that he was afraid that he was going to be a terrible parent. Back then, I hadn't realized how much of a dad Alan was to me growing up. I wish I had, cause then I could've told him how great of a job I thought he did raising me.

New Form

2010-03-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

So in Tae Kwon Do, there are these things called "forms," or "patterns." These forms are basically a choreographed set of moves used to demonstrate different techniques. I decided recently that it would be fun to make up a form using bits and pieces of forms I already know. Here are the ones that I'm gonna use:

Choong Moo: this is a form learned by people who learn TKD from the International TaeKwonDo Federation (ITF). It's the form I learned as a red-belt/black-stripe (the rank right before black belt) This form is maybe my favorite one to perform
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivdVFnOXu3A

Kwang Gae: This is the first black belt form in ITF. It's actually really hard to do properly since those slow movements require a lot of control. (also, those low-high double side kicks are a bitch!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QcmRQWUxao&feature=related

Koryo: This is the first black belt form for students who are trained by the World TaeKwonDo Federation (WTF). This one isn't as hard as Kwang Gae, but again, those double side kicks are really hard to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTU0jnGs4G0

If you guys are confused by the whole ITF vs. WTF thing, don't worry, I'll explain what they are in greater detail in a later post

My best friend is gay

2010-03-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

I've felt kindof lost this last couple weeks. A couple weeks ago, I was at home. Why my family and I were at church, my best friend's mom approached me and wanted to talk in private. She told me that her son, my friend, recently came out her as gay.

To give some backstory, her son has always been my best friend. I'm going to name him John. John and I have been friends ever since we were babies and our moms put us together during day care. He and I have been best friends ever since and we consider each other family. We've grown apart over the years (going to different schools most of your life will do that) but we've done our best to stay close and keep contact with each other. John was the very first friend I came out to. I came out to him a full year before I came out to any of my other friends.

So when his mom told me he came out, I was a little hurt. I got the impression that he came out to her a couple months ago. He never told me anything. I've always prided myself on being someone that people can approach to talk about stuff going on with them, so it was a little painful to learn that my best friend would hide something he's going through that I've had plenty of experience with. I don't know. maybe he's afraid that our friendship will become weird if he comes out.

When his mom told me, I had to bottle up what I was feeling and focus my attention on her. She was terrified that she wasn't giving her son enough support and acceptance to help him through this, or that she wasn't able to show him that she still loves him just as much as she did before. Basically, she was terrified that she wasn't being a good enough mom and she needed advice and reassurance from me. I gave her the best support I could.

Looking back, I wonder if I could've done a better job helping him earlier. When I first came out to him, he told me that he had recently been wondering if he was bi. At the time, I was so focused on my own coming out, I wasn't mentally capable to process what that really meant for him to tell me that or the idea that my best friend might also be attracted to men; I just wasn't ready for any of that. Also, he sounded so unsure when he said it, that I thought it was only recent thing and he didn't really know what his feelings were. On top of all of that, while I was discovering my own sexuality, I think I went throught that bi phase that a lot of people go through before my attraction shifted to just men. All these things put together, the only way I was able to respond was something along the lines of "Well, it's okay. It might not mean anything. Lots of people go through a bi phase for a while."

I hope what I said isn't the real reason he hasn't come out to me yet. Looking back, I could've made his coming out experience way more difficult than it would've been. I don't blame myself for not being mature enough to handle the situation when it happened. We were only 16, and I had never known anyone else personally who was openly gay. Still, my own experience was hard enough. I hope I didn't make his harder.

Attempt # 3

2010-03-26T23:05:00.001-07:00

As the title says, this is my 3rd attempt at starting a blog.

First time: revealed too much info about myself and deleted the post.

Second time: Made shortly after deleting my first attempt. I made a few posts, but it seemed like no one read it, so i deleted it (i also didn't like how whiney my posts were). My apologies to steevo. i checked my email a week or so after i deleted my posts. apparently, he had been reading them and left a comment. I also apologize to anyone else who may had been reading them.

anyway, attempt #3:

Hey there. call me Robbie. That's not my real name, but i feel more comfortable using pseudonyms. Anyway, a little bit of info on myself. I'm a 19 year old college sophomore. I'm currently a Tae Kwon Do instructor at my school. I'm also openly gay. I came out in high school and had an extremely positive response, but I'll talk about that later.

If anyone reading this takes Tae Kwon Do, I earned my black belt in ITF prior to coming to college, however the curriculum taught at my school is WTF, so i've learned that material as well. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry. I'll explain in a future post.

anyway, that's all I have to say for now.

later