Hi, I'm Andy, and I'm gay.

I was really worried about how long it would take before I would be able to say that in my journal. Now I don't have to worry any more. Today was a wondrous day and truly the beginning of the rest of my life.

I came out to my friend John today. That he did not react badly was one of the most relieving things in the whole world. I really fooled myself into believing that because he is very conservative he might suddenly hate me because of it. I'm so thankful that was not the case, and I'm actually quite mad at myself for even thinking for a moment to lump him with ignorant hateful people out there. All the signs were evident for me to know that he is a true friend, but fear really paralyzed me for a long time. I eventually asked him if he was surprised, and he answered that I am not the only gay person he's ever known. Maybe I'm just being weird, but I truly don't think that I could have come up with a more comforting answer than that.

For me, the big life changing implication of this is that I can be "out" on campus. With this behind me, and especially being a positive experience, I now feel free to get involved with the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Alliance (GLBA) at school. Before, I would have been afraid of being connected to the GLBA in a campus news article or something, but now that's not really a concern.

I guess this is a testament to the importance I place on my friendship with John, that I was so afraid. John was in my mind the most difficult person at school for me to come out to. I guess that's also the reason I am so set against many of the conservative pundits and politicians today. That their rhetoric could inspire such a fear in me that hate could overcome friendship is scary. People in the public eye need to avoid that kind of rhetoric...being a public figure carries too great a responsibility. To me it's really shameful that so many public figures can be so foolish, thoughtless, and self-serving. The harm that can be done by one person and a blindly following public is too great. To steal a phrase from Spiderman, I think, "with great power comes great responsibility."

OK, I'm done ranting now...sorry about that.

This is truly a new stage in my life. Just as actually communicating with other journalers was a big step, so this is another monumental step forward in my personal growth. I'm thankful that I could share this with all of you. And do not fear; I will share plenty of insights and thoughts related to this, just as I have shared my other thoughts in past entries. For now it is time for me to sleep and dream the dreams of someone who is at peace with himself and the world.

Hmm....I'm sortof peeved at Robb because his psychic powers *g* spoke to him and alerted him to my state of mind, thus ruining a truly inspired title for today's entry. So because of him you all get this crummy title instead....hehe

Yes, I'm still on the topic of how I feel about Robb. I'm sorry if there is anyone out there who is getting tired of hearing about this, but it's a serious matter for me. It also happens that this is the most inactive week I have had in months so I have had lots of time to think and nothing else to think about.

Am I being obsessive? I don't know, tho I am inclined to say yes. I guess this is a nice safe obsessive for me. It's easy to deal with because of the distance...I can just walk away from the computer if I need to step back. There's no immediate issues of physicality for me to deal with...everything is in the hypothetical. Plus, I trust Robb. I know that he's not going to hurt me intentionally, even if I'm being a little weird.

Still, I have to try and be fair to him. He made what I would consider his strongest declaration in a long time that he wants to try hard to make things work with Chad. I respect that a lot...it's what I would want if I were in Chad's place. That's why I was so excited about Robb's last journal entry and being mentioned. For the first time, I really felt comfortable with how Robb was dealing with his relationship. For the first time I felt like he recognized that "community property" is a vow to always be there for friends, and not an excuse to slut yourself out to the world. For the first time I felt like Robb was someone that I could both *like* and *love* without any regrets whatsoever.

"Isn't it ironic, don't you think?"

So for me in a way it's a lose-lose situation right now. If Robb makes things work with Chad then I don't get to find out. I don't get the answers to my what-ifs. But if he doesn't, that's another shot to my entire view of whether gay relationships can last. I build my world on the premise that I might find someone to spend my life with...to love and be happy with. Otherwise, I truly can't justify any relationship to myself. And every time I see a relationship that doesn't work out, every time I see someone who can't deal with a committed relationship, it erodes my life paradigm a little bit. So, I have a personal interest in seeing relationships start and continue to work. It gives me hope...it inspires me.

Robb inspires me.

So maybe it's actually a win-win situation...if things work out with Chad, then I have a close friend who is happy and in a real committed relationship that I can look to for inspiration. And if things don't work out, then perhaps I'll get a chance to see if this friendship was meant to be something even greater.

Hrm...wasn't it easy to turn that around...too bad it's not working for me.

It's so hard when someone can read your feelings so well. Last night Robb and I only exchanged a half dozen or so ICQs, but by the third one he knew that something was wrong....something was troubling me. All these thoughts have sort of been a veil over me for over a week now. That along with it being late, and with the fact that I was frustrated with trying to finish my journal entry, combined to place me in an oppressive mood. And Robb knew it...and it pissed me off that he did because I didn't want to let my issues intrude any more than necessary. I had already pretty much written a whole journal entry that dealt with my issues, so why whine about them in other ways too? It sucks to feel like you're imposing on someone else's life. I feel like Robb when he's being anal about not imposing on people monetarily. I want to be emotionally independent right now so I don't drag him down. I know that he'll tell me not to worry and that it's alright....I would do the same thing...but it will still bother me. Maybe we can make a deal: I'll let him assuage my guilt about being a leech right now if he will let me splurge some money on him whenever he gets out this way to visit.

I think I'm feeling how Robb and Mickey and so many others probably did when they really fell for someone and spouted about it in their journals. Except for me it's not just writing for myself, or just writing for an audience....I'm writing for myself and for my general audience and for Robb too. I think there's something in the Bible about how you can't serve two masters, so how about three? It's not a comfortable thing in a way, because I'm constantly in fear that I'm just playing off emotions by lying to myself and everyone else too.

This is one of those times where I really wish Robb and I were in the same room so I could hug him. This week is difficult in general because I don't even have my friends from school around to talk to and hug and just be there for me. I have some friends who are really good to me. Maybe I'll write more about them sometime, cause I'm really lucky to have them.

To close on a potentially brighter note, I took two rolls of film to be developed today. If all goes well, by Saturday I should have at least a couple of good pictures of me and some of my friends that are less than a year old. I'm not sure how long it will take for me to get them scanned, but I may be able to have some new images up by Monday night if I am very lucky.

I had a dream last night....er, actually, I just awoke from said dream a few minutes ago. Usually dreams are fairly ephemeral, but there are some specific details of this one that stand out. Most particularly, it was basically about RobbTD. Not to drag this out, in the dream, Robb was flying out to visit me for a weekend, but for some strange reason I had absolutely no information on when or where to pick him up from the airport. I absolutely couldn't figure out why we neglected to plan that part out....it was scary. I knew he was to be arriving in the evening, but for some reason I didn't go out to pick him up. I'm not sure why, but it was all very disturbing. For some reason I figured that he could take care of himself until he bothered to contact me and tell me where he was. So, eventually, the next day I thought to check on his journal, and sure enough, there was a new entry with info, including a phone number to call. I was frustrated because the phone number was separated differently than numbers usually are, and I couldn't even grasp the order of the numbers for some odd reason. Of course everything of this was frustrating to me in a way that I can't even explain. At that point I woke up.

I don't read into dreams for the most part, because mine are usually too bizarre and haphazard for me to glean anything from. If anyone wants to make a try at this I'd love to hear any interpretations of the significance....There are parts that I left out of the middle between the evening and checking the journal, mostly because I can't really remember them. Hrm....I'm suddenly reminded of a couple other dreams I had a while ago. One had to do with me traveling by plane, forgetting stuff and driving back and forth between home and the airport, my first co-op, and Lake Erie. The other had to do with a bunch of weird stuff at school and a few of my friends from home. This is such a totally weird flashback, because I'm getting some vivid visions and feelings. Sometimes this happens with dreams, that when I'm thinking of one I will remember others.

OK....enough of that....time to get back to reality....more or less anyways....chuckle.

Billy Joel was playing last night in Cincinnati, and unfortunately I didn't find out until a couple of days ago, so I wasn't able to make the plans I needed to go down there. Mostly, there's no one around to go with, which is unfortunate because it happens to me often for a variety of reasons. I really need a concert buddy that I can just call up and get to go to concerts with me and have a rocking time.

Anyways, I had one of his songs on my mind the past couple days, and I didn't have it on any of my CDs, so I went out and bought a CD. It's called "Cold Spring Harbor", and it's his first album from 1971. So now you all get a free CD review from me. Personally I love it a lot. There are a lot of songs that seem to speak to me....they have a lot of feeling. In comparison to his other music it is most similar to his next album, "Piano Man". Like much of his early music it depends a lot on the piano and keyboard for its distinctive style....definitely a piano bar feel to it(this coming from someone who's never been to a piano bar). Another thing I noted was that at times the music reminds me both of the Beatles/John Lennon and of Simon and Garfunkle. But the best thing about it(besides the simple fact that it's Billy Joel) is that there are no less than four songs that are prime picks for journal quotations. A veritable plethora of lyrical inspiration! Quite satisfying.

Oh, and I almost forgot to congratulate Robb The Desidonian on his first journaling anniversary.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY ROBBYBOI!!!

You kick MondoDesiBootie!!! Heh....that was fun. And in honor of the holiday, ZupTD is finally placing the most awesome RobbTD seal of approval on his page. No more procrastination on this one folks!

I have the whole day ahead of me and I need to be moving along. I was having some thoughts about American cultural values vs. multicultural values just now. I think I might expound on that for my next thoughtful journal entry in a few days. It's the first inspiration I've had on a topic in a few days, so I think I'll run with it for a while. Laters all.

Sorry for not writing in a while. Life had been rather bland this week. After my Desi-frenzy last week I didn't have much to say. Despite intentions of writing something deep, I have had no inspiration whatsoever.....thinker's block I guess. However, the weekend has been somewhat eventful in a fun sort of way.

Seems like the first day of spring is arriving with much good weather all around. Many people seem to have mentioned blue skies in the past few days. The weather has been fairly nice here in Cleveland....it was actually warm enough to go out jacket-less on Wednesday. At work a few people grilled hot dogs out on the patio. It was fun to actually do something like that for the first time in months.

Yesterday, the youth group at the church down the street was having a car wash, so I got mine washed for the first time in many moons. I cleaned out the inside a bit afterwards. It's nice to have a reasonably clean car again...escape from all the NE Ohio winter messiness.

Well, it's been another week since I wrote last. I'm not sure what's with me that I am so unimaginative of recent. I guess I've settled into a sort of pastel colored contentment. Nothing much in life is getting shaken up, not much in the journal realm has struck me as requiring my in-depth analysis.... I guess a few things have been going on in the past week tho.

On Friday, we approved a new constitution for the Model UN club. It was a fairly large undertaking because we made some major changes. One thing is that we instituted dues for the first time. We had to do this as part of a deal with the Deans. We are working out an ongoing funding system for the club, where the deans of the different colleges at the University each contribute some to our budget. In order to secure this agreement from them though, we need to start showing financial commitment from members, thus the institution of the dues.

The constitution also introduces our presidential cabinet concept that I mentioned in my last journal entry. It should be interesting to see how things work out. I've been nominated for President, but I'm probably going to decline the nomination. Not that I don't think I could do as good a job as anyone else, cause I could, but the club really needs to pass the leadership torch on to a new generation. That's where a lot of groups make their mistake. The really motivated, "founding fathers" try to take the lead for as long as possible, sometimes simply because they see a leadership void coming after them. They are afraid to pass the torch on to someone who might make a few mistakes. This ends up backfiring badly when they have to leave, because there is no one there who is prepared to do the job at that point. Usually the result is that the group will fall apart, or at least it will languish in obscurity for years until someone ambitious seeks to raise it up.

From my 4 years of experience with the club, I could do well in any of the officer positions, so I expect that I'll end up doing whatever job we don't have another qualified candidate for. Next year will be interesting because of our leadership transitioning and also because we will be setting a lot of new precedents for the people who follow us. Not that everything we do hasn't been precedent setting, but, like every year so far, we will be embarking on a new set of challenges and higher goals. As it stands, things will definitely be more of a team effort, and I will probably serve in an advisory capacity on a lot of things.

Also on a related note, I will probably not be making the trip to Chicago in 2 weeks. Plane ticket prices have been outrageous recently, and it's not worth it for me to spend that type of money for basically one Saturday. I will probably run the Club's booth at the Saturday Sampler program for prospective students instead. We weren't going to have anyone there because of the conference, but since I'm not expecting to be out there, I can sit there and brag about the club to prospective CWRU students.

Anyways, after UN I hung out on campus for a while and got a pizza. Since there wasn't much going on, I opted to pass out on a couch around 11:00 PM. The sleep was definitely a good thing.

Saturday morning I stopped home for a few hours to pick up some stuff. I needed to get my short sleeved dress shirts since the weather is starting to perk up. I also picked up some miscellaneous food related items; a cookbook, my mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe, and some grape jelly and potatoes from the garden. We started to fall into a dinner rut in the past couple weeks, where it's like, "ground beef again?" So, I'm trying to come up with some new ideas for dinner....I saw all this stuff in the coupons in the newspaper; green bean casserole, cheesecake, and sparkling orange Jell-O among others. So now I'm in an experimental cooking mood. I made some cookies for the cook-out at work today.

So, anyway, on the way back from home I stopped at a sporting goods store and picked up a set of weights and those spin-lock bars. They were on sale, so I figured I should get them. I always have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I should be working out, but it's really easy to ignore even when it's only a short walk over to the little exercise room in my apartment complex. It should be a lot harder to ignore with the weights sitting in the middle of my room. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to make my schedule fit in more workout time. I have the time, but it's not in regular intervals seemingly. I may try to adjust my sleeping so that I can wake up long before work and do stuff then.

Saturday evening I went to see one of my favorite local music groups, Shades of Grey, at the Arabica coffeehouse on campus. As always, it was a pleasurable experience. Unfortunately I got there a bit on the late side and I didn't get a seat in the main room, so I got to listen, but not really see anything most of the time.

I have a feeling that this is going to degenerate into meaningless babble shortly, so I think I'll cut myself off now. With any luck, something will come up for me to talk on.

Thank goodness for RobbTD! Just when I thought I was going to be reduced to commenting on the mundanities of my life for a third week straight, he provided me with a much needed diversion. It couldn't have happened at a better time either, because I am home sick with the flu today. I spent most of last night paying homage to the porcelain goddess, managing to not sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time the entire night. As I am finally coherent enough to actually type, this is a perfect moment for me to write my journal without distractions. Before I get to comments on the state of the world tho, I have a few random things to mention.

First, Arti managed to wander her journal over to a new neighborhood at Geocities. I discovered this over the weekend, but I forgot to mention it until now. Secondly, Robb had been playing around with some fine details of his journal's look prior to his move over the weekend. I'm not sure if he's settled on anything yet, but there are a lot of nice little improvements floating around in there. With Desi doing the moving thing and me just having a random pass out early in the evening thing going on, we really haven't touched bases in a while. Suffice it to say that I *have* noticed various changes, including those in the DesiDictionary...evol grin.

Ok, I'm finally finishing this entry.....the rest of this has been written over about a week of time because things seem to keep coming up that take priority. I'm backdating it a few days because it was more or less outlined in detail in my head for a while now.

Mostly I want to talk about Kosovo, but I did have some comments to make about Robb's economic assessment. First, on a general basis I am very much for free trade. Elimination of protectionism based restrictions is a positive in my book. One of the reasons I'm not into Ross Perot at all was his basic premise of running for President on opposition to NAFTA. Ross Perot played on the fears of the American people on the issue of jobs with his "giant sucking sound" campaign. While there may have been a certain loss of jobs to Mexico, US unemployment has still remained relatively low, and Perot's boogeyman never materialized.

This is not to say that the free trade agreements do not have some flaws. One of these has been cited by various environmental groups, as well as the green parties. The problem comes from the fact that the agreements have taken a weak stance on the role of environment in trade. An example of this was a case in trade court between the US and Mexico. The US had certain restrictions on import of tuna from Mexico because the fishing methods used netted too many dolphins by accident. These restrictions were ruled as protectionism by the court, and the US was forced to drop the trade restrictions. This type of example illustrates a case where free trade seemingly goes too far, by mandating equal access to markets in defiance of national or community standards for health, safety, or the environment. From that perspective, the free trade agreements can be viewed as working against capitalism and choice by ignoring the role of government as an outlet of choice for the consumer.

That being said, it's time for a long "Zup-schpiel" on international relations

As far as the UN not being involved in Kosovo, that brings up a good point. It is important to note that in Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, explicit recognition is given to regional collective security arrangements as legitimate instruments for maintenance of peace. This would include a group like NATO acting in this capacity. The real question is whether the attacks on Serbia have any actual legal grounding. Unlike what Robb suggests about NATO's mission changing to an offensive one, NATO and it's member states have insisted that the current operation in Kosovo is defensive in that it is designed to prevent a wider war in the region. I'm not all that sure of the legitimacy of this line of justification myself, but I can see justification under preventing ethnic cleansing.

The real difficult thing in all this is that most of us really don't know where to look for the truth. At least for me, there is a certain mistrust all around for what we're hearing. I'm not sure how this happened, but every time I hear anything I wonder whether or not it is propaganda. Sadly, I don't trust the news media much more than I trust the US government or the Yugoslav government to tell the truth. I suppose this is a sad commentary on my level of cynicism anymore, but it happens to be the kinds of things that pop into my head.

Hmmm.....as bad as it may sound, to me what is going on in Kosovo is not nearly as interesting as the reactions to what's going on in Kosovo. This is not to ignore the human tragedy of it all, but I really don't have all that much to say about that. If I thought there was anything groundbreaking about finding ethnic cleansing dispicable I'd talk about it endlessly. I suppose that it must be tho, as most of the dictators of the world don't seem to get it. (BTW, check out Mickey's comments on Kosovo from a few days ago. He made a very interesting point on terminology as far as the use of the terms "genocide" fnord and "ethnic cleansing" fnord go. In thinking about it, it is clear how everyone, from the US government fnord to the Yugoslav Government fnord to the fnord media fnord can really take advantage of even some of us thinking persons just by our emotional response to the stilted words fnord that they use.

The most interesting things for me surround the entire entity of NATO. If we look back a month or so in the past, we were witness to the addition of three new members to the NATO alliance; Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. These are the first of the former eastern bloc nations to be accepted into NATO. There are three things to note in relation to the new additions. The first thing is that, for the first time in recent history, Germany is surrounded by allies. For the Germany psyche, which has been in a constant dichotomy of whether to oppress or be oppressed over the past century, this comes as a welcome relief. In that sense, the NATO expansion is a good thing because it secures a Germany that is much less likely to ever revert to fascism again.

The second thing of note is how these new additions and future additions relate to the Russian Federation. To truly understand that, it really helps to look back at the history of Russia. Being at the intersection of Europe and Asia, it has been attacked and conquered numerous times. From the direction of Europe, one only need remember Napoleon in the last century and Germany during the two world wars. Looking further back the Cossacks, the Mongols, and not a few other warlike tribes conquered various parts of Russia of the centuries. This recurring besiegement led to a Russia that felt it needed padding to ensure its safety. Thus we have the Soviet Union and Communist Eastern Europe. The main reasoning behind their existence is that Russia always assumed it would keep getting attacked, therefore it built up a shield of friends surrounding itself to prevent a repeat of the past.

With the end of the Cold War, both the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union have collapsed. The expansion of NATO brings the possibility that the enemy may once again be right at the doorstep of Russia. Thus far, none of the new NATO members border Russia for good reason. Russia would view the NATO admission of a nation on its border as almost equivalent to a declaration of war.

Closely connected to the second point is the third: what countries might be the next new NATO members? One nation that would really like NATO membership is Lithuania. This probably will not happen in the near future though, because Lithuania, along with Latvia and Estonia, is much too close to Russia for comfort. Other possibilities are nations like Romania and Bulgaria. Both of these nations have been suggested for membership by NATO members in the area, Greece and Turkey. Interestingly enough, the addition of either of these two nations would continue to close the gap around Yugoslavia. The problem is that there are certain conditions for NATO membership, including the type of military hardware and organization of members, which neither of these nations is probably close to reaching. My prediction for the next round of NATO expansion is that it will include Slovenia (and perhaps only Slovenia). A former republic of Yugoslavia, Slovenia was not really involved in the Bosnia conflict and has shown some of the best economic growth and stability in Eastern Europe. To its credit, it has already taken the initiative and made all the military changes required for NATO membership. In addition, Slovenia has demonstrated its interest in international affairs as one of the current members of the UN Security Council and by contributing troops to UN peacekeeping missions.

Getting back to the Kosovo situation, another dynamic that has been seen is the Greece/Turkey conflict. As in so many other matters, where Turkey takes one stance, Greece takes the opposite. So while both are members of NATO, Turkey has fully supported airstrikes and Greece has shown reluctance. This is not to say that the positions have no other basis; Greece is concerned about the stability of the region with so many refugees pouring into its neighbors, while Turkey shares a kindred spirit with the Islamic Kosovar population. Much of the dynamic also goes back to the Cold War. The US has always been very supportive of Turkey in order to keep it non-communist to act as a buffer against Soviet expansion to the south (the same reason we supported the Shah of Iran and the Afghan rebels during the 70's and into the 80's). Though Greece was never an Eastern Bloc nation, the communist party there has long been strong, and it has kept decent ties with Russia. Just today I read that the President of Cyprus (who is supported by Greece against the Turkish Cypriot rebels in the north) is going to Yugoslavia to negotiate the release of the three American POWs. It happens that he has a good relationship with President Milosevic(and Cyprus is also a major outlet for Russian black market goods).

Also of general note is the support that the Islamic world has shown for the Kosovars. Kuwait, Iran, the UAE and others have all given much aid to the refugees and in many cases offered to take in refugees temporarily. Also, the Organization of the Islamic Conference has called for Yugoslavia to sign the peace agreement and has offered to contribute peacekeeping troops to help resettle refugees.

As I said before, there is a whole host of interesting interactions that relate back to Kosovo in small ways. I certainly have only scratched the surface, but hopefully I've thrown out a few tidbits that you may not have known about before. Maybe this also shows why I find international politics to be so interesting. Feel free to send comments, as this is exactly the sort of thing I would love to discuss further.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program "Zup's Life" starring ZupTD.

Sorry for the figurative commercial break from the past week plus. I'm trying to find a new zone as far a my journaling is concerned. I'm finding that a my life morphs from week to week and month to month my times commitments and activity levels in different areas change. We'll see where it all leads. I wrote the first portion of this right after Easter....just so you are clear on the time frame.

Sigh....there is far too much yumminess out there. I wish it would just knock at my door. Everything would be much easier that way.

Last week Robb pointed me to a homepage with pictures of a very cute young tennis player. I was most impressed. On Saturday I got to view much more yumminess too. The relatives had men's gymnastics on the TV, and what can I say? Gymnasts have to have some of the sexiest bodies out there IMHO. And some of them are damn cute too.

Speaking of bodies and cute tho, I saw another very fine sight on Saturday. My parents managed to get me to put in a few hours helping at the business, and this guy who came to pick up an order was very awesome. He's the son of one of our regular customers, and he has driven the truck for them often in the past couple of years. He's basically the same age as me within a year or so. Anyways, I remember the first time I saw him, probably about four years ago. At the time, I had been working on the concept for a comic book with a friend of mine, and this guy looked exactly how I wanted one of the characters to look. I so wish that I had a camera then, as I did not see him again for two years since I was down in Columbus the following summer on my first co-op.

Last year I was back working for my parents again, and he drove out to pick up orders regularly. He had changed noticably since the previous time I saw him. I have to assume he had been doing some serious weight training, most likely for football or something like that at school, but perhaps not. I could not tell much about his lower body, because he always wore work pants, but he had a very nice upper body; you could probably call it massive. His arms were particularly noticable.

So, back to the present, all I can say is wow! It's hard to believe that someone who already had that much muscle could be any bigger, but he was. I'm such a bad judge of size, but I really have to swear that he must have arms somewhere around 18 inches. And before someone says it, no I don't think the muscle is "chemically induced". The size seemed freaky, but not really unnatural if you understand what I mean. And I have seen guys much bigger than that, but this was really not a scary big, but a very attractive big. But anyways, besides that, he has a cute face, and a nice smile, and from the few times we've talked briefly he seems really nice, if somewhat quiet. Of course, all of my drooling is probably for nothing, but sometimes you just can't help yourself, you know?

All this talk does have me thinking about what it is that I'm looking for in a man. That's such a hard thing to nail down because there really are different things I like in different people, both physically and otherwise. I think I'm sort of going to go down the list and look at my "ideal" but also what I think are most important things to me. A lot of things in my "ideal" are far from mandatory, but just happen to be the image that first comes to mind when I think about what I like.

I guess I'll start with the physical stuff, as it's less critical, so to speak. Not that I'm discounting physical attraction, but I'm much more flexible, I assume, with that than I am with personality issues. Starting from the top and moving down for the sake of some type of order, let me first say that I'm all about blond hair....and also about long hair. Let me say right now that for all of my friends, male and female, I have never once given my approval to either chopping off long hair or to dying blond hair a different color. To my credit, I have found that uniformly they have eventually realized the error of their ways and repented to both long and blond. In any case, the dark-haired guys need not worry tho, because I know plenty of guys with dark hair who are extremely attractive. In any case, I am very happy when my own hair bleaches out when I'm outside a lot over the summer.

Moving down from there, I'm not too particular about faces. There are so many elements that make up the face, such complexity, and for the most part I can't even express what makes some faces so beautiful. And it's more than what is physically there....so much is in a person's modes of expression, in subtle body language type stuff. In general I suppose I like more delicate features, not exactly feminine, but somewhat on the thin side I guess. I guess there is a certain type of nose that I find interesting.... The best description I can give would be medium-rounded. If anyone is not sure what I mean, feel free to ask me, and maybe I can explain better or give examples. Oh, and of course there are eyes. That piercing steel blue is very nice, but once again, I can't pin things down with eyes.....the whole of the face is much more important than any one specific feature.

As far as body in general, I can go for anything from fairly thin to pretty freakily muscular in theory. I really should say "in theory" for everything tho, because knowing what looks nice and knowing what you enjoy being physical with are two different things, and I don't have much experience with the latter. Most likely something in between is where my mind really lies.

Some people make a big deal about height....to me it doesn't matter a whole lot. I've mulled this over in the past, and it's really the shape more than size that is interesting. I really don't even notice peoples' heights that much....I tend to adjust my gaze naturally to whomever I'm speaking to so that I don't register specifics a lot of times.

I'm not all that into body hair. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don't think it is especially attractive on me and I would just as soon be rid of it. I will admit that there are occasional guys who have just the right amount of the right type of hair in the right places, but I think that's pretty rare.

Overall, I'm just looking for someone who is fairly thin and has a moderate amount of muscle. I like all the wonderful things, nice pecs, v-tapered back, defined abs, etc. If I suspected that I had better than average pecs, back, abs or anything else myself, I might be more picky, but I can't really see the point in setting my standards higher than those I set for myself. I suppose the one body part that I probably find most attractive tho, are the legs. For whatever reason the legs are something that I'm always looking for. All muscular legs are beautiful, but I'm more into legs with greater mass than thinner legs. If you have a really nice set of legs, you already have a couple of plusses in my book....<g>

Well, that's all I have to say about my physical attractions. I probably didn't say much, fairly general, but then again, I expect that I'm not that hard to please...it's more a question of what degree of pleased.

Now for the part that's harder to put into words. As far as non-physical attributes go, I actually sat down before falling asleep a couple nights ago and tried to think all this through and distill it down to some basic essences. Once again, I may have something intelligible, but I'm not quite sure.

I'm looking for someone who is intelligent. I like a man that I can have conversations with, whether about science or world affairs or books, or just some silly nerdy stuff. A specific area of knowledge is not really the key, but rather an inquisitive and learning attitude. I don't care if my man would understand chemical engineering necessarily, but if your first reaction to me trying to explain something would be "that's too hard, I don't even want to bother trying to understand," this is something I would be seriously unhappy with. What I'm looking for is an attitude that combines the traits of teacher and student....a love of knowledge and understanding.

I'm attracted to someone with a vision for his life, someone who has both short term and long term goals and ideas. For me, vision and goals are both a personal thing and something that has to do with the greater good. I'm very oriented towards the big picture and the long term...to being a part of things that transcend the limited bounds of "me" and encompass something larger and greater. To me, a person without goals is someone who is aimlessly adrift....it's ok to drift sometimes, but it needs to be for a reason (experience, personal growth, self discovery, stress relief, etc) and should have a planned end to it. In the same sense, a person without vision can get trapped in routine and repetition, never really moving forward, just standing still. I have goals and vision for my life, and I know that I would have to fall in love with someone who also possesses these. Anything else would drag me down....but two people with goals can motivate each other, feed off of the collective enthusiasm.

In a related sense, I'm looking for someone who is an optimist more often than not. Not necessarily someone who is bouncing off the walls with joy 24/7, but someone who can be uplifting when I am down and who is willing to let me support him when he is feeling down. I'm all about being there for the people I love and hopefully having them be there for me in return. I need someone who is sensitive, who understands that sometimes a hug and just a physical presence is what I need. Who is willing to just be there and listen sometimes.

I'm looking for a man who can appreciate the little things in love, both giving and receiving. Someone who doesn't need wild parties and endless strings of events and extravagance to keep him interested, but who is willing to do wild extravagant things occasionally just for the variety. In connection to this, tonight after church on campus we had a program about sex....it was sortof like a dialogue. One of the things that came up was that in general the physical part of relationships is comparatively easy. The difficult part is maintaining intimacy on other levels. Often people forget about all the little things that they did when they were dating; long walks, holding hands, little gifts and thoughtful things like cards. I guess that all that is something important to me, and something that, because it is important to me, I think about a lot as far as what I'm doing in a relationship. Those are exactly the kind of things that help to keep the romance and passion alive in the midst of life's routine.

Well, there you have it, a few of Zup's thoughts on what is important in a man. I think the thing that ties all of this together is that I'm looking for someone with a positive attitude towards life. All the individual traits seem to flow together to me. The commonality, I think, is that they are all traits that are needed to grow as a person. I know that for me, life has been about continuing to grow, and my ideal man is one who will grow along with me, not hold me back or stagnate himself. I talked a few weeks ago about a relationship being a partnership, and this is one of the places where that comes in....mutually supporting each other through our goals and struggles.

This was not meant to be some giant relationship want ad, even though I suppose it sounds like it. I guess I just needed to write out some of my thoughts on what I'm looking for so I could sort through them better. Though, if by chance you think, after reading all this and my other journal entries, that you just might be close to being my ideal friend, confidant, lover, and life partner, please do write me. It would be unfortunate if I was doomed to never fall in love with my perfect partner because you didn't even bother to say hi.

Well, I'll just leave you with that I guess. Good to be writing again.

Last updated 11 March 1999.