17 January 2000
Happy Anniversary!

I guess that in a lot of ways, the last year has marked a continuance of my journey as a member of the "online community". Amazingly to me, it was July 1997 when I first e-mailed a guy named Aaron who wrote about all kinds of stuff I couldn't have dreamed of writing about. It was July 1998 when I first e-mailed this guy named Robb who wrote about all kinds of stuff I couldn't have dreamed of writing about. Strangely enough, it was July 1999, right around my birthday, when I first read and introduced myself to Rob and Bryan. And besides these, I've met so many other people who I could never have dreamed of meeting until I entered the online world in force, so to speak.

I was thinking about journallers appearing and disappearing recently, and I realized that although a few people have ended their journals since I started, none that I read are actually newer than mine. I'm still very much the new kid on the block as far as my journal goes. In fact, in so many ways, I am the new kid as far as living life goes, still....

Looking all the way back to my first entries, there were so many things that I was wrong about. I questioned whether I would keep this up for more than a few weeks. I guess that this entry answers that question. I have, in fact, done fairly well despite my lapses of attention at keeping this going. I wonder what motivates me sometimes...I suspect that I've developed some feeling of responsibility to the invisible reader out there. I certainly don't write to get my thoughts out for myself...that's never been enough motivation for me.

When I first started, I was so critical of calling this a "journal" and of the concept of a "journal community". I don't know whether my opinions have changed or not. I think that some of the personalities have changed. When I first arrived, there were a lot of masks and alter-egos. You had a hard time picking out the real faces. Now there seems to be a lot less hiding.

At the same time, I question whether there is much more community today. People, including myself, have gotten involved in their own lives. Today, people communicate mainly outside the journal medium in some cases, and not at all in others. There isn't the frenzied activity and constant presence of journalers updating and communicating. It's not really like a world unto itself anymore, a little soap opera or comic book. It was that quality of operatic tension that both attracted me and repulsed me once upon a time. These days, when I do have online time I look out across the tapestry of journals, and mostly see an unchanging landscape. I'm not sure whether I like that, even though it bodes well for us as people living their own lives.

This journal has also shown many of the steps in my personal journey of growth and coming to terms with being gay. Even though it was probably obvious that I'm gay from the start, I hesitated to actually say it. It wasn't until over a month into my journal that I actually came out and said so. At the time, I had just come out to my friend John, my most personally difficult one to date.

Part of the reason I've stuck around online so long is that I find I can be myself when interacting with other journalers. I can talk about stuff that I can't even talk to most of my friends about. It's nice to have people in my life that understand where I'm coming from. There are some amazing people out here, considering that I was able to trust them with my everyday life.

I guess that I got really involved emotionally with Robb around that time (March 99). Robb was going through a bit of relationship difficulties with Chad at the time. At least on my end, I got carried away with the newness of actually being open and frank about feelings. To me, that was really a first realization of some kind. I'm not sure what, but Robb made me realize that I can actually be attractive to other guys. It was one of those internal breakthroughs that broaden your perspective on life. I'm not doing justice to what was going through my mind.

Since early 1999, I've basically come out directly or indirectly to my group of friends here at school, including all of my roommates. The openness and lack of paranoia and fear is so refreshing. It truly is like I am leading a new life here. I can mostly be myself, which is too wonderful. I think that eventually I will be ready to come out to my family...I'm slowly moving in that direction.

Beyond all that, you've gotten to see me take probably the biggest step in my personal growth to date, being in a relationship. I admit fully that I haven't written down every little thing about my relationship with Allen and my feelings on that. There are some things that are too personal and too sensitive to put into words, though I have shared a lot. Meeting and getting to know Allen was one of the most thrilling and amazing experiences I've ever had. It was so spontaneous and unexpected that it took me off guard. I think that that also contributed to things ending as well....the spontenaity left me unprepared for the responsibility and commitment that needed to be put into a relationship. With the distance and both of our commitments, there just was not the lattitude to allow our relationship to grow or even maintain itself. I admit that I learned a lot about myself and my faults and flaws as well. It was so revealing to see parts of me respond to the emotions and pressures of being in a relationship. I also need to thank Allen for being as respectful and caring as I could have ever asked for from a first relationship. I somehow doubt that there could have been another person who would have engendered the same trust that Allen allowed me to have in him.

As for the future, I'm hoping that the coming months might hold for me the possibility of a new relationship. I don't intend to focus my life around searching for someone, but I think I've prepared myself to take advantage of opportunities to get to know people as they come my way.

I'm looking towards my soon to be legendary cross-country road trip this summer. This is my chance to take the big roadtrip and see the country like I will probably not have the opportunity to again until I am old and retired. If all goes well, I'll be able to meet up with five more journalers in my travels to the Pacific Coast and back. I expect this will only happen through a lot of planning and luck, but I seem to have decent experiences with both those things, so I'm confident at this point.

Before I get to my trip, there is the matter of graduating and finding a job. The graduating part does not have me worried. After last semseter I have the confidence that I can excell in classes. The job part is still scary, but I am motivated for that as well. Recent insights have led me to believe that if things don't work out for Northeast or Central Ohio, then I will look to Washington DC as my next preferred spot. There seem to be a lot of experiences and opportunities to be had there, and I'm interested in living life.

Coincidentally, this day seems to have various other significances besides being my journal anniversary. Some are other anniversaries, some are just personal beginnings and endings.

First, it is Martin Luther King Day. I admit that I don't do a whole lot of celebrating on MLK Day, as it holds less significance for me than for a lot of people. Being that it is a celebration of freedom and the desire to better our society, I did take the time to finish the new book I got in Washington last weekend (Gays, Lesbians, and Family Values for those who forgot.) I highly suggest that everyone, regardless of your sexuality, read this book. To me, the concepts and angle that the book takes are very visionary in that it looks at problems in our relationships and society from a different normative basis than that of the classic nuclear family. Go out and find this book and read it, because I think that you may find it interesting if not completely compelling.

Additionally, today happens to be the ninth anniversary of the Persian Gulf War. I don't really know the significance I can attach to that, except that it is hard to believe that it has been that long and things are still not resolved with Iraq. Admittedly, change in world affairs can take many decades, but it seems that this situation is particularly stagnant. We shall see what the new century brings, no doubt.

Today also brings some personal beginnings and endings. First, this will be the last entry that I type from my old Pentium 100 computer. This evening, to head off any further havok, I purchased a new Pentium III 450 Megahertz computer with a bigger hard drive and much more wonderful stuff. It is up and running mere feet from me, and as soon as I install some more pieces of software, it will become my primary computer. I thought it would be fitting to end my first year of journaling with the same computer I started it on.

Secondly, today marks the last day before my final semester of undergraduate classes begins. After four and a half years, I now stand on the brink of finality on my initial college career. These years have been such a struggle for me, coming to terms with the effort that I need to put into college (something that high school never truly prepared me for). Thankfully, last semester finally saw things come together for me for the first time since I began my college career. I intend to carry that momentum forward through these last months, and leave this university on a bright note.

On a wonderfully happy note, as this day ends, I would like to wish a happy birthday to our journaling friend Bryan, who is turning 20 tomorrow. Only one more year before you never have to fear the dreaded ID check ever again! Hope your big day is the best one yet!

Aside from this lovely new retrospective entry, I have some other niftiness planned for the rest of the week, in celebration of this Anniversary Event. First, many of you may have noticed that I have also updated my other non-journal pages a bit. Time constraints have kept me from doing all that I wanted, but I plan to continue the job in the next few days. A big thing will be the update to my picture pages that I have planned to go up tomorrow evening. Hopefully you will stop by and see the new visual excitement I have posted. I'm also hoping to put up some type of guestbook so people have a quick way to leave a footprint on my pages. Finally, I am planning a live chat with the help of RobbTD and his DesiCam chat room for the end of the week or the beginning of next week. Because of classes starting I am not sure of the exact date and time yet, but keep checking in for that. Hopefully bunches of you will be able to stop in and chat and meet each other for a couple of hours then.

Thank you all for taking the time to visit my journal. It has been a long journey to this point, often filled with joy and sometimes with troubled thoughts, but the companionship I've had from everyone out there has really made it worthwhile. I look forward to doing this for another year!

In closing this entry, I want to do the same thing that I basically did in my first entry and dedicate my journal to RobbTD. He gave me a very special gift for my journal anniversary the other day, and even if he hadn't done that, this would still be a tribute to him. So much of the credit for my being here goes to Robb. He'd be the first to tell you that he's not perfect, but I'd be the first to tell you that he has a special way of giving. He has a lot of good things inside of him that gleam past the sometimes rough edges. He's certainly been a help and an inspiration to me in my growth over the past year. Thanks Robb.

And with that, I'm out of here!

21 January 2000
Looking Outside Looking In

After a long unintentional hiatus from communication, I finally had icq conversations with both Mickey and Rob earlier this week. Both of them were very encouraging to me about keeping up the frequent journal writing.

I talked to Mickey for a long while about my renewed misgivings about journalers as a community. In some sense the current atmosphere reminds me of my living conditions when I was living in Columbus. I was there for 7 months, and in that time I don't believe I ever talked to another person in my apartment building. There was absolutely no sense of community there even though there was nothing but a single wall separating me from other people.

I'm sort of feeling the same way about the journals right now. It seems like we are all here in our journals living right next to each other but not interacting at all.

Sometimes I feel that the grouping of journalers that I associate myself with doesn't do a whole lot of interacting with each other. Maybe that's a misperception, I don't know.

I know I've mentioned both recently and long ago that I was attracted to journals becouse of their soap operaticness. I have this great fascination with episodic narratives from what I'd term the semi-omnicient perspective. Whether it's soap operas or comic books or Babylon 5 or a journal community, it just draws me in. I mean, yuo get the story in little episodes that are easy to swollow and give you time between them to digest everything. The whole time you are seeing what is going on in a variety of places at the same time, thus giving you the ability to reconstruct the interrelations between all the events in your mind. Yet, even though you see a bigger picture than any of the characters, you still have the suspense factor coming in at critical points , which just sends your mind into overdrive.

Who can ask for anything more....it's like building a puzzle. The dream of anyone like myself who loves to unravel twisted plotlines. In fact, I tend to be like that universally....I'm the kind of person who will sit for an hour and straighten out a knotted ball of string.

So,I guess that somewhere along this journey the journal community lost some of the magic it once held for me. I doesn't seem surreal anymore.I don't know if we've changed that radically or if our style has changed, or if maybe I've just gotten used to the online world. Maybe everyone has just gotten a real life to the point where we don't need the journals all the time and they are slowly hibernating, if not actually dying.

Then again, perhaps this has more to do with me than anything else. The fact is that I don't write for myself, I write for other people. Unless I'm getting constant interaction, I feel like I'm more or less freefloating on a little homemade raft on a big ocean

In that sense, this journal is very much a mirror of my real life. I tend not to live for myself as much as I live in relation to others. I'm constantly looking for outside approval for everything I do.

For classes, I tend to accomplish more when I'm assigned to a group with other people because I feel an obligation to the rest of the group to make that particular task a priority. It's very much the same in regards to my lifting weights now. This is something that I've been trying to make myself do for years, but I could never motivate myself for just myself. But now that I have workout partners to go with, I've been keeping up with it for months because I feel some obligation to not skip out even when things got busy.

I get some sense that most people aren't like this to the extent that I am. I mean, everyone has trouble motivating themselves sometimes, but why do my actions and motivations hinge so thoroughly on other people? What is it about me that keeps me from doing things purely for my own self-satisfaction independant of the approval of others?

That is enough of self analysis for now. I have a few other matters to mention and discuss before I finish this entry. First, I apologise for the interminable slowness with which I am implementing changes to this site. I promised more for my journal anniversary than I could deliver I guess.

I actually changed my mind some as far as the pictures go. I've made some changes to the picture page, but mostly to remove some stuff. Instead, I am transforming my People Page by adding pictures of some of the people in my life. It still needs a bit of work, but I think that the pictures and layout have already made it more interesting than the simple bulleted list that I had before. I have not, unfortunately, placed any pictures of other journalers up as of now. If any of you would like to get me a picture of yourselves to put into place, I would be more than interested and appreciative....if not, that's your perogative too.

The thing that has most impacted on me timewise has been the start of classes for the semester. I have been spending a lot of time acclimating myself to the busy class schedule again. I need to rediscover how to make use of all those spare minutes in between everything.

Speaking of classes, it looks like I have a fairly busy schedule this time around. I have five classes, bnone of which seem to be slack off classes. My Senior Chemical Engineering Design class should be interesting but involved. We are basically working on a single project, from start to finish, in groups for the entire semester. I have Physics III, which is all relativity and the like. Physical Chemistry looks like it will focus mostly on electrochemistry, so it should be less than fun at times. I'm taking a course called Engineering Optimization, which will basically revolve around setting up complicated problems to find an optimal solution mathematically and then solving them with a computer. Finally, I am taking Ethics and Public Policy to round out the semester and finish my Political Science minor. It looks like fun, applying ethics theories and whatnot to different ethical questions.

I guess that's all I want to talk about today. I'm planning to try getting a journal entry out more often than once a week for at least the next couple weeks. I have a few ideas that I should be able to expand upon. Until then, thanks for stopping by, and drop me a line. I like getting e-mail.

23 January 2000
Blind Ambition (Forward Progress)

Well, if no one is going to read my journal or write in theirs it's fine with me. I'll keep writing away in mine and propel myself forward by sheer force of will. I'll just assume that I may or may not have an imaginary audience out there reading. And just to test this, I'll add my guestbook signing page and guestbook viewing page.

All this talk about journals seems to be coalescing around me of recent. I stopped by Graydon's site only to find that there was a little entry from Aaron himself explaining that he was letting Graydon repost his journal archives on his site. I would hesitate to mention this fact to save Aaron from countless crazed fans rushing to bow down before him yet again, but I'm assuming that people may or may not actually be reading this, so it doesn't really matter does it?

This was only one reminder of how things were once upon a time.

I got to have a big long icq chat with Robb yesterday. of course we talked about the journal thing. I was explaining about how the book I got in DC Gays, Lesbians, and Family Values discussed family. One of the big things they noted is how families tend tolook inward once they are formed. Rather than enhancing the greater society there has been a tendancy in recent years in America for families to isolate themselves from the greater community, shunning outside interference and looking for all social interaction within the family unit. They also noted the similar trend in gay couples of reducing interaction with and abandoning the greater community.

I think I've decided that I need to find a relationship just so I can be insular and introverted. Wouldn't that be convenient.

I actually read through Allen's journal for the first time a bit over a week ago. I had been holding off for a long time because for whatever reason I just didn't want to find out what he was writing. Maybe I was scared. Actually, I most certainly was scared. Of what, I'm not at all certain, but the dread was enough to keep me away for months. Perhaps, more than fear it was just that I needed time to not have to read the type of stuff that we place in a journal.

So, what can I really say now? Allen's journal pretty much expresses who he is. It was amazing how it felt like reading some of our e-mails or listening to some of our phone conversations. It's all there, the various facets of his personality are as easy to see as if he were standing right before me.

It was hard for me to read through the entries, especially the older ones. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't painful.....there were a lot of things that hurt to read. A lot of things that change with relationships are hard to accept....but I got through it.

It's also true that Allen said a lot of very special things. I think that we will both always value what we shared. Even when things have not worked out, we still have a friendship, which is something that a lot of people don't have after a relationship. It's different, I think, because we have other things in common beyond the attraction. We have things that we can talk about and relate with. The same kinds of things that I share with my other friends. This is good.

On a final topic, I have pretty much given up the artistry of quoting songs in my journal after realizing that I just can't think up enough appropriate quotes to cite every entry. I always felt that song quotes tended to be so personal that no one else would understand what I was getting at or they would give a wrong impression to someone with a different experience of the song. In any case, despite this fact, I should have quoted a song when I dedicated my anniversary journal entry to Robb. In a way this is for all the journalers who've influenced my life.....but mostly for Robb.

25 January 2000
Zup Live in Concert

Robb the Desidonian has been very kind and helpful in volunteering the use of his DesiCam chat room for the live Zupchat. This should be very helpful because I won't have to set up anything special for this. For those of you who have never been to the chat room, you just need to have a java active browser and click on this link and it will pop up the Desicam page. Click on the Gay.com chat button to open up a chat window. After that you just need to enter a name for yourself and hit the "enter room" button. I should be there waiting......hehe.

Strangely enough, I ran into some guy named ChadleyTD in one of the gay.com chatrooms today as I was scouting around for a bit....heh. This is the first time that I've ever communicated with him in any form, oddly enough. I can see why he and Robb go together so well.....they are definitely two of a kind.

I was a bit weirded wondering how he would react to me, but he wasn't antisocial (not that one goes to a chatroom to be antisocial anyways) to me, so it must be ok. It seemed odd to me that Chad never sat down with Robb at the computer and had him type messages to people. That's the kind of thing I'd do, but then again I tend to be nosy like that when people are on the phone or computer or whatever.

I've never been in the position of being online with an S.O. around. I guess I get half a dose of that anyways since Allen is doing the journal thing, but it's still not the same I don't think. Somehow I think that we'd hang out and do online chat stuff together sometimes. Perhaps I'm totally offbase tho.

6 February 2000
A February Zupdate

My conversation with Steve also inspired me to look through things to try and remember my favorite comic book artists and writers. I decided to resurrect Zup's Comic Page from my old site so I can include some links and some thoughts. I won't have much chance to improve it yet, but eventually it will get an update.

It seems odd in a way that I'm not collecting comic books anymore. I started collecting in the fall of 1989 or thereabouts. I collected a lot, at one point a number of years back spending over $100 a month for a couple months. I always swore that I would never stop collecting comics, but then in January of 1997 I just stopped. I can't pin it on any one reason....there isn't a good comic store near campus, perhaps. I had started to feel like I was just buying out of habit, reading them once quickly, and storing them away in a box. I started feeling like the some of the stories were not going in the directions I had hoped. So, now that I stopped, I have all the money that I would have spent to spend on other things. I suppose that I'm better off by far this way. I think I might go back to collecting some comic books someday, but I also think that I've separated myself from it for long enough that I won't fall back into my old ways of collecting poor quality stuff just out of habit.

So, besides comics and computer issues, I've been more or less living life as normal. Schoolwork is taking more time than I had anticipated this semester, so I've been living with a bit of stress. I'm hoping to get the work under control soon by finding the right times to study and do homework during my days. Somehow I also have to fit my job search into all this. I've been realizing that I'm just about broke, which will be alleviated by student loans this week, but it makes me anxious about the whole new car and trip across country for the summer. I won't be going anywhere unless I have my job all lined up.

I'm going to take a bit of time tomorrow to finish writing a letter to our school newspaper. There was a letter a couple weeks ago against same-sex marriage (actually it was more against homosexuality in general, but that was poor writing technique on the author's part) that I wanted to respond to until my computer crash wiped out my letter. There was a horde of rebuttals to it anyways, most of which were not much better written than the original IMHO, and one very good response by someone who I know vaguely, whom I now have a lot of respect for. He managed to counter the "Christian" objections to homosexuality made in the original letter without trashing Christianity in general, which most people don't have the written or argumentative elegance to manage. Now, this leaves me a much clearer path for my letter which will in fact be an argument in favor of same-sex marriage. If it turns out well I will see about posting it up here for you all to read.

Hmm, in a random closing note, I made some interesting (to me anyways) observations about myself this evening. I went out and bought a package of colored Fruit of the Loom underwear. It occurred to me that this is the first time that I've ever owned anything other than plain white underwear in my life. It was this completely odd realization until I thought about the fact that it was also the first time I ever bought underwear myself. Clothing is just one of those things that my parents have always bought for me. At least insofar as my mom was the person spending the money. Maybe that's the reason that my thoughts on the price of clothing and clothing fads seems to be heavily influenced by my mom. I rarely have owned a piece of clothing that I haven't had to convince her to buy me (and that's no easy task beyond a basic wardrobe. I actually don't have a whole lot of issues with my wardrobe, so I'm not complaining. It's just odd that this is the first time I've realized how even my unconscious behaviors and ways of looking at things are influenced by my parents.

That's about all I have for this entry. Hopefully I'll have something worthwhile to write before the end of the week. I'm looking at having a new computer back soon, assuming the model I want is in stock now. Thanks for sticking around and checking in on my journal even though this update has been long delayed.

14 February 2000
All Stressed Up and No Place to Go

I talked to Brigitte and she'll be looking to get the time off from work so as to make the trip reality. Right now it's looking to be 24 days long, with maybe an extra one or two depending on our route through Texas. As I have it devided out, we'll spend 8 days going from Cleveland to Seattle, 8 more from Seattle to LA, and 8 for the trip back to Ohio. This is still rough, but getting closer. I'm hoping to spend about 3 days in Seattle, which I mentioned to Robb when I talked to him this past weekend. Besides Robb, there is Mickey and Arti and other people to meet and hang with in the area. Our other big stopover will be in San Francisco, which will get probably two days from us. I'm hoping we can plan it in such a way as to have both Seattle and San Francisco coincide with part of a weekend. That would be ideal. That's enough about the trip for now, but I'll try to get more nifty info up here as things progress.

Robb mentioned that I happen to have added a new e-mail address to my collection, which is all his doing really, since it *was* his present to me for my one year anniversary of journal writing. I suppose I've been trying to be subtle about it (ie not saying anything directly) while still showing it off (more like flaunting it about my pages and e-mails). What can I say, I'm really proud that I'm significant enough to merit that much appreciation from him.

On a further note, I had my conversation with a Catholic priest Tuesday about being gay and potentially coming out to my parents at some point. It ended up being very open and valuable to me, as I suspected it would. The result of this is that he suggested that I might want to come out to my parents sooner rather than later....that I seem like I've thought through things pretty well over the past nearly 10 years and that I'm probably ready....that I should do this more for myself than anything, so that I'm not living two lives with them and hurting myself because I can't be myself.

We talked a lot about how being gay is just one of a number of facets of my life that identify who I am, and that as long as I realize that it's one of many I'll be able to keep my life in balance and stay on the life path that I want for myself. This idea came back to me again as I was reading Mickey's updated site and he was talking about the same thing in relation to the Jewish and gay and other aspects of his life. I think he discovered the same thing on his own....I think I have too, but I was never quite able to verbalize it until my conversation last week.

Which reminds me that you should all check out Mickey's new journal....it's all updated and Y2K compliant and stuff! I get to compliment him right now, not even so much on the design, but rather that I liked his first entry a lot and it really showcases what all makes him so special. Welcome back Michael.

I also owe a big welcome back to Rob in Monterey. Last weekend he got back from his nifty weeks long voyage at sea, doing scientific stuff. I still need to catch up with him a bit whenever our schedules coincide.

I had intended to discuss a few more things in relation to Robb's recent entries and to Allen's most recent entries, but I've got to be at my exam in P-Chem really soon (yuk) so I'll have to leave that for a later date.

And BTW, I'm not feeling particularly anything related to Valentine's Day. It hasn't been a big deal since I was in elementary school and we handed out the little cards to everyone. Maybe someday it will take on a greater significance. Oooh, I did just remember however that a few people have birthdays that I'm neglecting. Happy birthday to Jaya whose birthday is a mere couple days from now! I know you're reading this sometime soon sweetie! Also, I need to wish my friend John from home a happy birthday when I get a chance.

23 February 2000
It might as well be spring

So, this brings us up to this week. I'm in the process of handing the reins over to Johan for the University of Chicago Model UN Competition at the end of March. I'm going to be staffing for Kent State's High School Conference the week before, so I decided that I'm not even going to Chicago....I can't afford to miss that amount of classes. I also helped out at the Cleveland Council on World Affairs High School Model UN today. They have two one day sessions about a month apart, so it's not much of a burden on me.

Speaking of Johan, I guess that he proposed to Jeneanne sometime in the past two weeks, although no one bothered to tell me until I was talking to John (in DC) over ICQ. The wedding date is going to be towards the beginning of June, so I'm expecting to have to push the start date for the trip out west back by a week or so. The nice thing is that it will be in Chicago, so I can basically make it the first day our our trip. My new worry is that we may have to cut a couple of days off the trip, but with all luck that won't be the case. As it is, we can still make it 24 days and come into Columbus just in time to catch the "Red, White, and Boom" fireworks on the 4th of July. That would be a fitting end to such an exciting trip, IMHO.

I'm also planning to move forward on my quest for employment soon, so that I can make my future plans a reality. I have an interview and an openhouse coming up in the first week of March. This weekend I'm going to go through a long list of possible employers in the Cleveland, Columbus, and DC areas and select a few dozen to send resumes. Hopefully if my on-campus options don't work out I will find someone else out there who likes me.

Robb had some brief thoughts on the presidential elections in his latest entry. I think he nailed things on the head for the most part, as far as how people think. I am going to disagree on one thing tho....I think that McCain can win the Republican nomination. For this reason, I think that I am going to be a Republican this primary season, bucking my past choice. Basically, in looking at McCain, and what I've read and seen, I think he's more straightforward than Bush. I was reading in the Gay People's Chronicle, and what struck me was that he met with the Log Cabin Republicans and basically said, I don't agree with you on most of the points you stress, but I'll give you reasons why, and be honest with you, and I'll ask you to vote for me based on that. When it comes down to it, that's more than Bush can say to a lot of people. I'm honestly not sure whether I want to see Al Gore in the White House....there was a time when I had no doubt, but I have to consider it well these days. When it comes down to it, I would prefer to have a race between Gore and McCain than Gore and Bush, because it would make my choice more difficult, and will hopefully bring about a better outcome in the end.

As I finish this up it has begun a very significant downpour outside. It's nice to get the rain instead of the snow right now. I'm in the process of reading some religious commentary by Rob, which I hope to address in an entry sometime this weekend. I would write on it now, but I need time to filter the thoughts and really don't want any delay in getting this posted any longer.

Just a quick note to Bryan and his boyfriend Matt....just stop looking at Rob Bourke's legs. I saw them first, and I'll fight you for them <evol grin>.

8 March 2000
God and Gays: Coping with Catholicism

Getting back to journal type stuff, I wanted to comment long ago onsome stuff that Rob in Monterey said in his journal a couple weeks back (on February 24) about my conversation with a priest on my being gay. Rob thinks that he needs to save me from some religious institutional hell of Catholicism. I would have thought that he would know me better by now than to believe I was a willing pawn in the subjection of my own individual will by some mind numbing bureaucracy.

Whenever I run into ex-Catholics it seems as if all the churches I don't go to must prescribe some weird inhuman mental torture....I can't say that this has ever been the case for me. I would love to bring people to church here at CWRU, just to see if I'm overlooking all the offensive, subjugating dogma that is apparently being thrust upon me without my knowledge.

Obviously, I wasn't very clear about anything I said in my previous entry on the subject of my conversation. Since this is the case, let me dissect and elaborate on my own journal entry.

“On a further note, I had my conversation with a Catholic priest Tuesday about being gay and potentially coming out to my parents at some point. It ended up being very open and valuable to me, as I suspected it would.”

Ok, some background here....there was a single primary reason for having this conversation at this particular point, and that is the possibility of coming out to my parents. Unlike a lot of people, I still get along with my parents and I still spend fairly significant amounts of time with my family. I don't plan on this necessarily changing anytime soon, nor do I really want it to. However, I am personally tired of living what amounts to a double life in regards to my family and my sexuality. Just like it was when I was not out to my friends, I'm getting tired of the internal paranoia. So, I'm probably going to come out to my parents soon, but I don't want to alienate them in the process, if I can help it. Now, I trust in their ability to accept me and love me all the same, even if it takes some time for them to deal with this. However, initially they are going to be in a bit of shock, so I want to assure them that things are OK. To me there is nothing that will do this better than to have the Church there behind me. So, there are two reasons for talking to the priest. First, so I can tell my parents that I talked to a priest about things, and second, so that I can assure them that the Church wants them to be supportive of me.

“The result of this is that he suggested that I might want to come out to my parents sooner rather than later....that I seem like I've thought through things pretty well over the past nearly 10 years and that I'm probably ready....that I should do this more for myself than anything, so that I'm not living two lives with them and hurting myself because I can't be myself.”

Ok, this is the part where, after I had talked for a long while about my long process of self discovery and self acceptance, the priest basically reaffirmed that it sounds like I had put in a lot of contemplation about my sexuality and that I am probably fairly capable of making sound moral judgments for myself. We talked, not so much about what the church says is right or wrong, but rather, what is right for Andy. I explained that I believe that sublimating my sexuality and avoiding real gay relationships would in fact be unhealthy and harmful to me. He told me that the church can't tell me that homosexual sex is right, and that he can't tell me that homosexual sex is right, but that in living life in the real world everything is not so black and white as it is in Church teaching. Basically I need to make the best moral decisions for myself, based on a well developed conscience that takes into account biblical and church teaching, advice and knowledge from other sources (school, parents, etc), and my own feelings and experiences. To me this really doesn't sound like a bad deal.

“We talked a lot about how being gay is just one of a number of facets of my life that identify who I am, and that as long as I realize that it's one of many I'll be able to keep my life in balance and stay on the life path that I want for myself. This idea came back to me again as I was readingMickey's updated site and he was talking about the same thing in relation to the Jewish and gay and other aspects of his life. I think he discovered the same thing on his own....I think I have too, but I was never quite able to verbalize it until my conversation last week.

This part of the conversation ran parallel to the rest of the conversation. This I suppose was his cautionary bit. What he suggested was the mistake that many people make that leads them down a path of sin, or whatever we wish to call it, is that rather than identifying myself as student, engineer, member of my family, product of my hometown, Catholic, gay, etc, co-equally, would be that I make my gay identity the center of my life and try to have everything else secondary and revolving around it. The idea being that I just need to take care to make sure my life is in balance. This also related back to talking to my parents, assuring them that just because I'm gay doesn't mean I am going to march down the streets half naked engaging in public sex acts.....that being gay is just one facet of who I am and not the defining element of my personality. Just because they find out I am gay doesn't mean that I am suddenly a different and mysterious person.

In this vein, he suggested that I have a copy of the Pastoral Letter entitled "Always Our Children" when I talk to my parents. For those not familiar with Catholic documents, this is a letter put out by the American bishops a few years ago, addressing homosexuality. The letter is directed at the parents and families of gays and lesbians, stressing the need to love and accept them and remain part of their lives. We talked about how this was a very tricky but important document....it had to balance official Church teaching and the legitimate need to support and care for gay and lesbian Catholics. Like a lot of people, I'm not fully satisfied with the outcome, but I sympathize with the difficult position that the American Church hierarchy is in. They have to stand for a Catholic moral outlook, so they can't just come out in support of some sort of popular culture vision of homosexuality, complete with random sex and cruising public restrooms.

So, anyways, I need to end all this so I can actually post something. I honestly don’t know when I’m going to come out to my parents. I need time to think on the subject some more. I need time to pray and think about it from a personal religious perspective. I also need to find time when I can actually sit down with my parents alone and have a conversation in a relaxed atmosphere with no time constraints. Spring break, starting this weekend, might be that time, but I’m not sure. It just happens that since today is Ash Wednesday, it is the beginning of the season of Lent in the Catholic Church (and some other Christian churches too I suppose) which is supposed to be a time of deep reflection. Not that I can’t reflect deeply at any time, but this is a good excuse to motivate me more in that direction.

And, I guess on a side note, in relation to religion issues, I’m not all that freaked out by Robb and his talk of interest in Magick at the moment. I’ve had enough friends who have pursued Wiccan ideas at one point or another to be somewhat used to the thought, if not 100 percent behind it…. I don’t know that the Catholic Church is condemnational of direction of energy and the like (Magick if you wish to call it that). In fact it is probably the opposite, however, I think that there is a distinct difference in method, namely the involvement of God. That’s what it comes down to, if I’m not too ignorant, is that Wiccan ideas draw much more on a personal energy, whereas a Christian is focused on the power of the community with God (and in him Christ) at the center as the focus of it all. There are obviously also differing conceptions of what exactly “the good” is, upon which I don’t think I have a knowledge to comment.

There are many approaches to Catholicism as long as one tries to stay within the rules. I tend to be much more academic in my view, which isn’t necessarily all good in that I feel a need to deepen my spiritual side, my faith if you will, but that takes a lot of work and effort I think (once again, Lent being a good time for that). My mother is a very different person in regards to her belief. She is very into angels and the various appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and other such things. I don’t begrudge her that, but at this point in my life it doesn’t hold the same thing for me that it does for her. We each have to find our own path in many respects.

Anyway, I said I wasgoing to end this entry, so now I am. I’m sure that you all will be hearing more from me soon as spring break is almost upon me, and I actually have some stuff to bring up from the past week that I forgot to mention in this entry. Interesting stuff for the most part.