E is for

E is for Education.I know that seems like a pretty dull thing for E, but still I have a thing for it.It makes us who we are.Truly.If you don’t educate yourself, then you remain ignorant to so much out there.It opens the eyes and the mind and the heart to the truths and realities of the world.Not just those things that you know, because 9 times out of 10 you don’t really know it anyway.You learn about yourself, you learn about others, you just learn.Again, I know, what a dully entry, but still.And I’m not talking about those halls of learn that we are ever so familiar with, although they are wonderful resources for learning, naturally, but educating yourself about life, by whatever means or fashion, that is important.Some people don’t do the whole school thing.It bores them, which at times can be understandable.Take me and math for instance.I’ve a notion that numbers in general just don’t like me.I don’t know what it is, they just do.I don’t think there is anything that I can learn that will ever make math and all it’s wonderful progressive states, i.e., algebra, trigonometry, etc. any more interesting than the basic mathematics that I forced myself through when I had to.And I have to say, that on occasion, while straighten the reference section at work, I don’t ponder opening a book on those higher mathematic courses, if for the very reason to educate myself to whatever possibilities they might open to me.But the urge, the desire, just isn’t strong enough.
Give me those liberal learning course, psychology, languages, history, writing.Those make me a happy camper.Education makes the musician a better musician, an artist a better artist, a writer a better author.NO matter how great your innate skill, there’s always room for improvement.Psychology, you don’t just learn about yourself, but about the inner workings of the mind which gives you a clue into everyone’s behavior.Languages to communicate, not only better in your own language but with everyone else.Those who think that everyone should just speak English are ignorant to the truth that English is a mutt language.History….that shows us the wrongs of the past so that we don’t repeat it.
I remember when I was in the 2^nd grade, I was allowed to participate in the 6^th grade spelling contest.I didn’t win, which still irritates me to this day, but the idea of it, the notion that I was good enough to take part in it, it just made me feel different, special, better, whether I was or not.
I’ve wanted to be a teacher for the better part of my life.Since about the 6^th grade and I won’t even say how long ago that was.I’ve wanted to do other things, but I’ve always wanted to teach, to make a difference as the case may be.We won’t go into why I’m not teaching.Aside from the whole finding myself, which I didn’t do for the longest time.And I’ve been pondering a great deal recently about psychology and counseling.Lord knows I have plenty of credits in the field as well.I think I have this whole fear of succeeding too , that prevents me from doing anything.I need to get over that.Like soon!
Anyway….I surround myself with books, many of which I haven’t read.I can look to my left and see about a hundred books I’ve bought over the last couple of years that I have yet to read.It’s sad really.But I can’t but get them, hoping that one day, whatever is keeping me from being who I am supposed to be will be gone.I think 2006 is going to be that time.Finally.A bit late, I realize, but I don’t know, it’s never to late to be who you are, who you want to be.It’s easier to stay in that groove, that rut that you let yourself get into.It’s much more harder to strive, to achieve those things that you so wish for.Only because the notion of failure, like the notion of success is a bit more frightening that it should be.As the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, try try try again.So I’ll just take those words to heart.
This entry seems a bit lacking…..I’ve been pondering E for a while and finally though that education was going to be it.It seems to be a bit of everything, but that’s what education is.Everything, acknowledging it, grasping hold of it, living it, learning it.

D is for

D is for. D is the first guy that I fell in love with. Granted I denied it to myself, hell I think I denied it to everyone, who either asked or inferred or implied that I felt anything more for him than friendship. If you had read the blog I kept concerning my overwhelming infatuation, you’d know I really had it bad. I was not myself. Not in the sense that I wasn’t me, but rather, I felt like I was more than who I was when I was with him. He never felt the same way about me but when I was with him I was ecstatic, I was enamoured, I was blinded, I was overwhelmed and incapacitated. I was exhilaratingly alive and in tremendous agony. I couldn’t look at him without feeling all those proverbial emotions, without feeling that sensation, so indescribable, so blissful and scary all at once. I remember the first time I saw him, I had been over at the store and I saw him. He was across the store on the other side of the counter and I was pretty much instantly smitten. It was the first day I worked with him. I had a sudden wash of preconceived notion come over me. And the more I saw him the more notions filled my head. This was before I knew him of course, before I said anything to him. I didn’t know he was gay when I first met him. I remember how much I wanted to be his friend. How much I wanted to know him. It’s scary how much control he took over my thoughts and internal dialogue. I guess I was obsessed, to put it as bluntly as I possibly can. I was enamoured, infatuated, obsessed…what other synonyms are there that I can look back in hindsight and call it. At the time, ….at the time, I was in love. Sometimes I wish I still was. It was better feeling that way towards him, than now, when we don’t talk because he thinks I’ve become something I’m not, that I act like I’m more superior, which I don’t and am not. It’s the saddest thing in the world to regret that you loved someone. Even if they didn’t love you back. Because the way I felt, the way he made me feel, that overwhelming unstoppable incapacitating emotional storm, it was amazing. How his smile made me smile even bigger. I can’t put into words everything…..though if you really really want to know, you can always go here When I Fell and get the proverbial minute by minute, in the moment, my personal experience. It’s a bit long and convoluted and truly illustrates just how neurotic I really was about him. I miss so much how that felt. And the sad thing is, that if the situation presented itself today; which now that I think about it, is something similarly close, I’d much rather just say goodbye and walk away than to go through it again. Someone said something once about relationships, that there’s always one person who feels more for the other. And I guess that’s true. That goes with any relationship really. Be it love or friendship. And I think what it all boils down to is how much you’re willing to let go of yourself, give of yourself. We all put barriers up around us, those who have been hurt, have bigger barriers and walls and push and struggle more to keep people out than let them in. Anyway…It’s hard, I know I struggle with it. Sometimes it’s not worth the struggle, even if your heart tells you. Because the heart wants what it wants, to love and be loved. I don’t want to wax poetic. And I have all these thoughts and emotions going through my head right now. Living in love with someone is….well it feeds the heart, it’s only when they love you back that the body and soul are fed as well. Okay…now that I’ve put myself in such a wonderful frame of mind, I’m hungry. Rhetorically and physically.

C is for

C is for Christian…..I was having some difficulty coming up with a C word that would give a full picture of who I am. And seeing as being a Christian has been something that has been a part of my life longer than almost anything else, Christian seemed a rather apt choice.
 I don’t remember the moment when I came out of the Closet (which is another wonderful C word, seeing as how I was in it for such a long time.) But I do remember when I was saved. And it sounds so corny to put it that way, “saved”, but still back then that was what if was to me. I remember I was at my grandmother’s house and I remember kneeling at the couch, it was this soft white couch, the kind grandmother’s are prone to have, elegant and simple, very tasteful, the kind of couch you didn’t rest your feet on even if you didn’t have shoes on, the whole room was really, lamps that let off just the right amount of light, knick knacks on the end tables, a little crystal jar of butterscotch candies or those soft mints. But when I think about my grandparents, the first thing that comes to mind is their faith, they were hardcore southern Baptists.
…but anyways, where was I, I remember, kneeling there and saying with all earnestness, at least all the earnestness that a 10 year old could have that I wanted to be saved, that I believed in Jesus, you know the whole spiel. I don’t know if I felt different or anything afterwards, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. I said it was funny saying I remember when I was saved as if I was doomed to fire and brimstone at the age of 10.
The truth of the matter is, I’ve lots of questions concerning my faith, questions that I’ve never really thought about until the last couple of years. Questions about being gay and Christian and republican no less. Talk about screwed up. Over the years, it hasn’t been the church that has given me any strength to be who I am, but rather my own personal walk with Him. I don’t know who God is, I can just interpret to myself who I think God is, which essentially is just what everyone is doing. I don’t know what God thinks, I don’t know what God knows. I barely know what I know. Still, I talk to Him constantly. I question a great deal of what I’ve learned, especially since coming out.
I was talking to a friend today and he was telling me how I was going to hell and I told him I wasn’t going to hell and he asked if that was why I haven’t had sex with a guy yet, and I told him no, that that wasn’t why I haven’t had sex with a guy yet. Personally, if God takes offense to having guys having sex with each other, I don’t think he’d make much difference between that and anything else that you do with a guy, i.e. kissing etc. Admittedly, one of the main reasons I hadn’t come out until recently was because I wasn’t comfortable with the idea that I was gay. If I didn’t admit it, that meant it wasn’t true, which also meant that I was a good Christian. But the truth of the matter, I still consider myself a good Christian at least as good as any other Christian that I know.
 I’ve said this before and I’ll more than likely say it again, that when I was saved, I wasn’t saved for everything I did up to the age of ten but rather my whole life was cleansed of any sin that might taint my life. God knew before I was born, what I would do, both the good and the bad and everything in between. Nothing escaped his notice when He saved me from my own humanity. The Bible teaches us that we are ALL condemned to hell and that the only salvation is our acceptance of him as our savior. Nothing else is a prerequisite. Not living a “good” life. Not getting married and having lots of babies and having a house in the ‘burbs. First off, I don’t think being Gay is a sin. Homosexuality, or rather the act of having sex with someone of the same sex may be a sin the same way that sex before marriage is a sin, lying is a sin or any other sin is a sin. God doesn’t weigh sin and tell you that this particular sin will keep you from heaven. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
 I remember my grandparents used to speak of something like a reward system and crowns and jewels and all this other stuff that you get when you get into heaven and at age ten I was thinking wow, that’s got to be the coolest thing. Now I’m thinking, certainly heaven is a little bit more than wearing these crowns and thinking, oh look the Jones’ have three jewels in their crown while I only have two. And what good would worldly wealth and crown do you in heaven. I have issue with those men of the cloth, those Godly men who take “his” word and then use it to their own ends. Okay, I think I’m going a bit farther afield in this topic than I need to be.
 SO I’ll just leave it at this. I am a Christian and as a Christian, I know I have sinned. I know I am a sinner. I know that I am saved. I know that I am not going to hell because I am gay. I know I am not going to hell period. I know that anyone who says I am, is lying. And I know that if I am going to hell, then that liar, in all his self righteousness, will be right there with me and you know that kinda seems right. God doesn’t make mistakes. Because God is perfect, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. And since God is perfect, which infers that when I was saved for whatever sins I may have or will have committed, then I, no matter what any man says about me, it doesn’t matter, because in the end God has claimed me as one of his own or rather more accurately, I have acknowledged Him for who He is and that acknowledgement is my proverbial trump card. Because that earnest ten year old and this slightly older version of him still believe the same thing, who He is and what He did for me and for everyone else. And of all things in this world, that is the key, everything else is superfluous nonsense.

B is for

B is for…..see it was a toss up here between BOYS and Books…..I’ve loved books for a lot longer than I’ve loved boys.A lot longer.Not that I’m this geeky book nerd, though I do have my moments, but still I do love a good book.And unlike a good boy….I won’t even finish that sentence…oh hell why not, unlike a good boy, a good book always has a good ending.I’m a little hard pressed to even think of a good boy.Pretty boys certainly.  Funny, witty, intelligent, self confident boys a plenty, but all that doesn’t necessarily make a good boy, now does it?I’d have to say no.I’m not saying that he’s not out there, he most assuredly is, I just haven’t found him yet.But I shall remain on the lookout.Good books; lots and lots of those.Ask me about a good book and I can make a list in a matter of moment, a list of good boys, now that, I’d have to think on for quite some time.
The first book I ever read, on my own volition would have to be Different Seasons, a collection of four short novellas by Stephen King.The movie Stand By Me was based on the short novella, The Body.I remember watching that movie and thinking I need to read that book.So I head to the local Waldenbooks and find it and the rest as they say is history.From there I wanted to write and craved reading with a passion that goes beyond description.Before that, my notion of reading was the stuff you had to read in high school.I’ve never been a big fan of “literature” and so you can imagine my desire to read from that.But reading that book, it also has the novellas for Apt Pupil and Shawshank Redemption in there as well.Now I read voraciously, and if I’m not reading voraciously, I go through periods where I can’t even pick up a book, but when I do, I can read a book a day.
The first boy I ever….uhm….well the first boy I knew I was attracted to was a friend of mine named Kevin.I didn’t fall for him or anything like that, but there was some major attraction going on.Course at the same time I was in complete denial and saw the attraction as something a lot less than what it was.And I can only say this in hindsight, because as I say, I was in denial.
The first boy I thought I fell in love with, that was, oh my gosh, an eye opening experience.It took at least almost two years before I admitted it to anyone, but still it was there and fairly obvious from what I’ve been told.But still I didn’t admit it for awhile.I had a secret online diary that concerned just that.And reading it now, it’s such a tawdry little thing that almost makes me cringe, it was so, saccharine and ideal in my view of what I was feeling and thinking at the time.I still can’t be in the same room with him without feeling something.He’s charming and charismatic and beautiful, so it’s hard not to look at him and think everything that I thought before.It’s a lot easier to not feel what I felt before, knowing that he didn’t like me in the same way at all.At least knowing it now makes it easier.Knowing it earlier on, not so much easier.I mean he was my best friend and I was in love with him and the two kind of got intermingled into one overpowering, some might say blinding emotion.I’m sure some of you know what that might be like.
The first boy I ever messed around with was this little gymnast who I had a terrible crush on, but as the case was, I was still very insecure as I had pretty much just came out.And I wasn’t willing to go the whole 9 yards on our first “date,” as it were.Not that I didn’t have fun, cuz oh my goodness it was fun, but still he wanted to do a lot more than I felt comfortable doing.After some serious internal debate, I invited him over to watch a movie,I lit some candles, picked out a few movies, probably paced about the apartment until he got there.We started the movie, got very very comfortable on the couch, did a lot of kissing and groping and wrestling and then there was lotion and massaging and more kissing and more wrestling a little bit of biting, lol….I don’t think he was expecting that….and the first part of the movie ended and then he wanted to keep progressing, as it were.I didn’t, well, that’s not completely true, I did, but like I said it was the whole “first date” notion and I wasn’t going to do much more than that.I even told him long before he came over.Alas, he didn’t take it too well and so he was off and away. So for my first “gay experience” other than going out to Village (now known as S4) I pretty much enjoyed myself.I’m just too old fashioned, I guess.
Other B words

• Broadway…..I used to think the theatre was for “gay” people.LOL.Who’d have thought I was gay….anyway….Les Miserables, Rent, Chicago, Mamma Mia, Miss Saigon, Wicked, 42^nd Street, Evita,Ragtime, Phatom of the Opera…..hmmm, I know I’ve seen more, but damn I like me some good theatre.Maybe it was the theatre that turned me gay….no, it was the Boys.J
• Brothers….I have three….One older, his name is Benjamin….one younger, his name is Timothy and I even have a twin, his name is James.He’s nothing like me. He joined the military so that he could kill people.True story.Being a good listener, being a pacifist, being an all around good person, I’m each of theirs’ favorite brother.I’m the odd one out, they all have red hair, they all joined the military,
• Bland….I don’t like this word.Aside from the whole negative connotation that it has going with it, it even sounds mundane and boring.I don’t really live an exciting life, to my own regret at times.So some might say I’m a bit bland.Fortunately, with a little spice, bland oftentimes turns out much better.
• Bibliophile….yeah, I like that word much better though some might think it goes hand in hand with bland….because its someone who loves books.And a lot of people, I’ve noticed, don’t like to read.Oh how I hate when people walk by the bookstore and I hear them say something like I don’t read, and you can tell they say it because it’s like the worst thing in the world they’d be caught doing.Which I suppose when I was their age, I didn’t read either.So I understand it, I just want to run up to them and ram a book in their hands.God Bless Harry Potter for making a lot of readers out there.
• Beauty….oh but I do like beauty.Of course I think that can be said for everyone, but I can appreciate it.Because things can be beautiful.Feelings, words, thoughts, guys, girls, the sky, the Alps, the ocean, the glistening frost from a morning dew.I can see why girls are beautiful and understand it.I can see why guys are beautiful and understand it.Words, either written or spoken can be overwhelmingly beautiful, nature is majestically so…I just love beauty.
• Britain….now talk about beautiful.I’ve been twice am going again next year, hopefully around march…(want to go with)They’ve got everything. Beautiful nature, beautiful boys, beautiful words….have you heard them speak….*sighs dreamily.*hehe
• Brain….that’s the name of one of my cats.He’s white and he used to have a little black smudge of furr on his head but it’s gone now.He was named after Pinky & the Brain.We had a pinky too, but she found a home elsewhere.My other cat is named Gris….spanish for gray….I bet you can’t guess what color he is.
• Bitch….a friend….I guess you could call him that, pointed this particular word out to me.  It completely skipped my mind which is kinda shocking, because oh my lord at times I’m completely surrounded by bitches.   And it’s been told that I can be a bitch too.  Though in comparison, it’s not obvious at all.   But yeah gay guys can be such bitches.

 

And so it begins…..again

This is my first entry in my “alphabiography” where I take the letters of the alphabet and write a biographical entry. I got the idea from James Howe’s book. Totally Joe. It’s a young adult book about a gay kid who is writing an alphabiography for one of his teachers as an assignment. I thought it was a cool idea, so I though hmmm. I can do that. So I am.
A is for Andrew. Kinda makes sense to start out that way, although it may seem a bit egocentric, but, hey it’s my blog, right? What’s more egocentric than a personal blog. It’s supposed to be all about me. So yeah, A is for Andrew
. I guess what it all boils down to is that I am who I am. Simply an Amalgam of all that I’ve been through, my thoughts, my feelings, my view of the world, my understandings, my shortcomings, my flaws, my childhood, my adulthood, my family, my friends; all of it made me who I am and who I will be. It’s all me and had any of it been different, I would have been different. At least in certain ways. I would be hard pressed to describe me in so many words because each and everyone of us are made up of so many different facets of our own lives. We are all the best that is around us and all the worst, we take something from everything. Okay this went a little far afield of egocentric, all this we stuff. I….yeah that’s better, I have taken something from everything I have encountered. I remember when I was in the 3rd grade, we were living down in Fort Hood and for some reason we still had a baby sitter and she was this big buxomy girl/woman and my brothers, the proverbial guy-guys, if you can be guy-guys in the 3rd grade…although we were Army brats so it’s sorta inbred, that whole guy-guy mentality…anyway we had this babysitter and someone came up with the brilliant idea to, and let me put this is the vernacular of a third grader….squeeze her boob…..oh God, just saying it, I remember it perfectly, because my two brothers…the guy-guys remember, didn’t want to do it, after they came up with the idea. So who decided to do it….Needless to say, I don’t want to say that that was the last time I felt a boob, but I know it was the last time that I disrespected a girl/woman in such a way….she gave me quite the stern talking to as I recall, and I dreaded the notion that she was going to tell my mom or dad when they got home. She didn’t which was nice of her. But still…I remember that and feel a bit ashamed of it even still. And yet, it’s what “guy-guys” do all the time. Now don’t take offense if you’re a guy-guy, because of course this is a stereotypical notion of what a “guy-guy” is. Gay guys know what a guy-guy is. Straight guys and there is a difference between a guy-guy and a straight guy, though it may be a very thin line between the two, but there is a difference. Anyway, I look back and I know that even then I wasn’t a guy-guy. I certainly wasn’t in junior high or high school. I was the nice guy. Everyone liked me, nobody hated me….that I was aware of….but I was just there. I remember in computer class in high school….it was taught by one of the football coaches and all the jocks and cheerleaders took the class…it was an easy class and I didn’t really feel like I fit it. I remember whenever we’d have like a class party, watch films…and when I say films, they were sports reels of bloopers and stuff. …I remember how I would buy all this junk food and crap…just so I would feel like I fit in. Course that was back in my straight days…lol….but to this day, the people in that class seemed to know me better than anyone else that I went to school with…Except perhaps the teachers, who all loved me and the people in my spanish class….you go to Mexico with a bunch of people every year for the course of three years…they stick out in your mind. I look back on that and I think, had I made that much effort to get to know people in that one class, had I don’t that with more people, what and who would I be now? I don’t know…. But I am me….Andrew….A Other A words……

• Amalgam….not just cuz I like the word, but because it describes everybody and not just me
• Asexual….I’ve been called that alot, not recently, but back before I started coming out, because, I guess sex….to me, is something more than just sex. I’d like to think that that isn’t so uncommon, but alas, the more I see the more I observe, that to more than a few people, sex is just that….sex, it’s not something shared, but something to do.
• Antiquated….I have this whole romantic notion about love and relationships and what have you that seems so antiquated, so 1950s. It bothers me, mostly because it’s just this ideal and an ideal is not a reality.
• Aberation..I often feel like I am just that….because I am not like everyone else. Which can be said for anyone truthfully…but since I’m not anyone, but me, I can’t make the comparison to anyone else.
• Alcohol…..need I say more….some would say alcoholic, but they would be wrong. I didn’t even have my first drink till I was like 25. And then it was beer. I didn’t care for it. Still don’t. But I like to drink. It gives me a free spirit. I’m very happy go lucky when I drink but I have a very low alcohol tolerance, so I really can’t drink too much without getting sick.
• Afterthought…it’s easy to look back after living something or enduring something and having that whole 20/20 hindsight of what could have been. It’s alot harder to do it now and to know whether or not your’re doing the right thing or not. It’s good for it’s own purposes, but still, by it’s very definition, it’s only good for thought. It’s too late for action…because whatever it is, is already over and done with. Action….if it’s taken, where you go and what you do and who you become are so often different from where you would have been had you not taken it. I wish now, that I had taken different actions at certain opportunities. I wouldn’t be the me I am, I’ certain, and naturally I can’t say I would be better off or worse off.
• Affinity…another word I like, you might say I have an affinity for the word affinity. It’s a pretentious word but I like pretentious words.

I’m sure there are a great deal more A words that I could come up with, but they’re escaping me attention at the time and I feel it’s high time I get this little sucker posted. Perhaps B will be better.