This morning, I overheard an interesting conversation so provocative that I pretended to keep browsing.
I was at Walgreens looking for severe allergy medicine — more on that later — and these two women come down the aisle in furtive voices that I could nevertheless make out.
“And you know what she told me?” said the first girl.
The second girl said intently: “What?”
“She says thinks that she might be gay.”
As they approached a display of varying incarnations of Claritin, a scandalized hush fell between them. Finally the second girl replied: “Well.”
She took a breath.
I was crouched on the ground next to them and pretending to scrutinize two kinds of Benedryl while thinking, Why does this conversation sound like something from a soap opera?! I reached for a box of pills and feigned interest in the listing of drug facts. Marked drowsiness may occur…
“I guess it’s a good thing that she didn’t come to Bible study,” the second girl said at last. My eyes widened and I was filled with the sensation of wanting to laugh. Luckily, I was so intrigued that I held it together enough to remain surreptitiously nosy.
Alas, after another pregnant pause between them, the revelation about this friend or acquaintance or church congregant possibly being gay was so shocking that they moved on to actually talking about allergy medicine. Meanwhile, I kept up my ruse for at least another hopeful minute or two before I accepted that they were now firmly ensconced in the vagaries of shopping.
I have been awake since 5 in the morning, Linc. This was after going to sleep at midnight. I am neither a maniac nor am I attempting to relive my youth. Because I don’t have work until 3 in the afternoon today, I decided to squeeze in some quality time with Spencer and Ray last night. We caught a 9pm advanced showing of Iron Man 3 which, by the way, was rather amazing. Have you seen the first two?
That is an example of how crazy my life has been this week, although the last couple of weeks were already leading up to this. Theoretically, this morning I could have slept in, but I really wanted to catch up on some work. Now, what kind of work could I already possibly have to work on when school only started this week and my sole job is a part-time retail position at a bookstore? Yesterday, while I was on campus, I checked in with a career counselor about what kinds of jobs that I could get that might more closely relate to what I am going back to school for — and, yes, will necessarily earn me more money, so that I am not living on such a tight budget but also so that I don’t have to borrow so much money for school. But instead of jumping into available opportunities, the career counselor took one look at my resume and instantly came up with idea after idea for a massive revision. I was crushed, Linc. Just like a little kid. I had worked so hard on this thing and I felt like a little kid whose dreams were being crushed by the teacher he admires, the parent he looks up to. On the other hand, as I was sitting there, calmly and professionally, at least on the outside, listening to her criticism, I was lecturing myself about taking it constructively. And finally I also thought this: it’s business, not personal. Sure, it’s a cliché, but I have to keep telling myself that, especially now that that is the world into which I am willingly journeying.
It’s probably a little bit pointless to do job hunting on a Friday anyway since it’s the end of the workweek, and I figure that most hiring managers won’t do much looking until Monday. Or maybe they will. Either way, when I got home late last night, I already knew that I was going to get up early and work on the revision first thing. I’m crazy! And now I’m exhausted. But I have what I think is a good draft going. It took all morning, and it’s not even finished yet! But I don’t regret robbing myself of sleep, nor do I even mind so much that right now, as I am on the verge of clocking into work, I feel like collapsing into a deep slumber.
For some reason my allergies have been more intense this year than they have ever been. The generic Claritin that I always used to rely on has lost its effect, so that’s why I was at Walgreens this morning hunting for severe allergy medicine — on top of a constantly runny nose, I have all the usual itchiness in my eyes, constant sneezing, and this morning my head was pounding. So right now not only am I ready to go to sleep, I am drowsy from medicine and almost everything makes me want to sneeze. I’m probably not even going to get home until ten, and I’m getting even more tired just thinking about it.
I am hopeful, though, that this early exhaustion is only a minor side effect of a larger effort that is sustainable, and that I will have accomplished a lot by at least the end of summer. I’m not just saying that, Linc. I don’t know where it’s coming from — naivety? Big dreaming? God? For some strange reason, I’m hopeful.
Today I was supposed to work a mid-shift but because the closer called out I now have to stay at the store later than I expected. It’s kind of a bummer because when I saw on the schedule that I had a mid-shift I sort of just got my mind ready for it. Closing the store is part of my responsibility as a supervisor but I really do relish the days when I can go home early. (For this reason I like opening the store best.)
On the bright side even though I woke up early this morning the schedule change did give me a chance to dawdle. I took a nap and then when I woke up I fantasized about the following things:
Jane Austen Day at The Ballpark
Hyphenating my name to include yours
Receiving a financial aid award package that includes full funding, even if it is mostly government loans that I have to spend eternity paying back, because I just want to focus on school and doing well in school as soon as possible
Out of those three, of course, there is only one real possibility, and even then I might have to end up finding additional funding — which is a very sobering thought, because I don’t know how to pay for school outside of financial aid. At any rate, the uncertainty is driving me bananas.
Oh.
And I was also fantasizing about this:
Frank Ocean and Esperanza Spalding updating Celine Dion and Clive Griffin’s cover of “When I Fall In Love”
I’m not sure where Katy Perry fits into all of this — “Wide Awake” is just a damned good song.
It’s like this, man. Each Sunday after service, everyone gets together in the dining hall for dinner. This past Sunday, dinner was a potluck and the pastor made this peach cobbler dessert thing. (I didn’t know if it was a cobbler in the traditional sense, because it wasn’t round or even square, but rectangular.) The thing that I lied about is how much of it I ate. I said “about three slices.” This is a lie because I didn’t even cut myself slices, per se. What I did was take a sliver, tasted it, and then once that delicious crust and that peach cream melted onto and warmed my tongue, I went back and hacked this long chunk that may or may not have equaled three slices. It may have been four. I’m a fat ass.
Anyway, it’s almost midnight.
I should have been asleep long ago. My shift tomorrow doesn’t start until eleven, but still: lately my routine has been to be asleep by now, mostly in the vicinity of ten if not earlier. Staying awake up until anywhere close to midnight feels like the worst kind of transgression — the regression, like I’m not acting like the adult I’m supposed to be.
Ma used to tell me that when I couldn’t sleep, it was because someone was thinking about me. I remember that she told me this when I was, I think, like, eight years old… maybe nine? Ten? I was young. Who did she think was possibly thinking of me besides her?
Pop?
It can’t be any coincidence that she was telling me something like this during the height of Pop’s compulsory absence. In her own way, she was telling me to rest easy, that Pop was thinking about me. And that he would be home very soon.
I wonder what my excuse is now. It can’t be that someone is thinking of me. I am no longer a kid, and that means I have legitimate thoughts on my mind to interrupt sleep.
The good news is that I do feel better than I did earlier. I came right home after work and cooked some comfort food. (You might either be impressed or appalled at the non-marathon runner’s meal that I consider comfort food.) And then I took my food, parked in front of the computer and caught up with my General Hospital. And now I’m still awake, though as I draw this never-to-be-sent to a close, I am feeling so much more relieved as to feel a little drowsy — a little closer to, at last, sleep.
I was reading some article that said you had been feeling crucified by the press and even the fans lately because of your performance this season. When I read that part of the article, seeing the word “crucified” made me think of Crucifictorious, this fake band that was on the Friday Night Lights TV show. I used to have a crush on Jesse Plemons, the guy whose character headlines the band. Jesse Plemons himself is a few years younger than me, and he is even younger than you are, but I did tend to go gaga over him the entire time that I watched that show. I know the guy’s got a goofy face, but his character was really sweet and from what I have seen in his interviews and the handful of other roles I have seen him play, there is a lot of himself in the role of Landry.
Anyway.
Had you mentioned to me in real life that you felt like you were being crucified, I would have interjected with a non sequitor response like “Crucifictorious, even.” And then you would have done a double take and asked, “What?” Depending on what kind of personality you have, you may be irritated at me for abruptly changing the subject, or you may be amused at my random nature.
That’s what I do. I like to diffuse situations. It’s not that I necessarily like to avoid confrontation — even though, in fact, I hate confrontation — but you don’t get to be 30 without learning how to manage not just confrontation, which is so dramatic a word, but on a less dramatic note: simply, conversation. And in conversation, if things become too tense, I like to use humor. Not in an extreme way, the way Chandler Bing did on Friends (wow, I’ve already made two NBC references in one never-to-be-sent), but in a way that I hope makes everyone in the conversation feel a little more relaxed.
Maybe I picked up that habit from Pop and Ma. When I was a kid, they argued a lot. I’d happen to walk into the room during some fight, and because they did not want to argue in front of me, inevitably one of them would break from the argument into a kind of forced laughter. Sometimes Ma would utter a strained chuckle and go, “He’s mad.” And then Pop would chime in with his own hiccuping laughter and say, “No, she’s the one who’s mad!” (It was even funnier — in an awkward way, of course — because their arguments were always in Tagalog, but when they broke for me, they’d speak English.)
Pop and Ma got married young and then began to realize that they didn’t have much in common. If they were ever actually in love, I only know about it from one picture, where they look astonishingly young, and new to the world, their whole lives ahead of them. I can tell they are at a party. Maybe it’s because someone else took the picture, or because Pop is wearing a fitted polo shirt and his slick hair is combed back. Ma is wearing one of those “boyfriend” flannel shirts that were so popular back in the 80s over capris. She used to wear headbands a lot back then, and in that picture she is wearing one. Ma has baby cheeks. When she smiles, she looks like a young teenager, even though in that picture she must have already at least been 21 or so. Pop’s arm is around his beauty pageant queen.
I’ve described all of this from memory, Linc. I don’t know where that picture went. It has been many years since I physically held it in my hands.
Talking to Ma lately has been very exhausting. My whole life, she has always conveyed all of her expectations upon me, whether I was only in the first grade and already expected to get straight A’s on my report card or the furious disappointment that met me when I came dancing to her in high school after I’d gotten accepted into my first choice college. I’m an only child, so there has never been anyone else to whom I could deflect the attention, and in many ways I’ve always felt like I was the salve to some open wound that Pop and Ma each brought into their marriage, into our family. What a terribly enormous expectation to shoulder upon a child. These days, Ma is getting on my case about my new job, insisting that it was a mistake to leave the other one. “I don’t care about my dreams,” she actually told me last night. “I just like that I am making good money.”
But that’s not how I think.
It is going to be very difficult making ends meet. It’s already very difficult now. But I knew what I was getting myself into. I didn’t dive into the dream without first testing the waters.
So, what I’m saying is that it’s not the new financial reality of my new job that’s driving me nuts. That stuff does stress me out — I’m still sore about how dispassionate the food stamps lady was yesterday, even though I know that having that kind of attitude is par for the course of their position — but I can handle it. I can get through it. I’m 30. I’ve gotten through a lot. What I can’t handle is the fact that, at the age that I am, it occurs to me that my own mom doesn’t understand me. I don’t know if Ma has ever bothered trying to understand me. As for Pop, well, I can think of one good example, but I have to reach all the way back to high school.
I came downstairs from my room — because in those days I had a very tight circle of friends that I never much strayed away from, and I was overweight, and I just watched TV or went online most of the time — and I was headed to the kitchen to get some food when Pop presented me with a magazine that was turned to a certain page. The page contained information about a writing contest. Pop said to me with a hopeful smile, “You should enter this, son.”
In those days I was a typically resentful teenager and, on top of that, Pop and I were repairing our relationship from all the years he had to be away in the military. When he gave me that magazine page to look at, I read it quickly enough to immediately realize that the contest wasn’t for me. First of all, the magazine was Redbook and so, naturally, the contest was soliciting entries from women and, specifically, the women’s experience. But despite whatever my resentful mind and hormones were telling me to do, I ignored it all and managed to strain out a thank you to Pop because my heart was soaring with gratitude that he understood me as a writer. I did not tell him that I could not enter the contest. Instead, after thanking him — and I think I even uttered what I hope was a convincing “Cool” — I took the magazine, got my food and retreated to my room.
I know that I keep saying that I’m 30, but the reason why I’m being so repetitive about it is because this is a turning point in my life. It’s not just the number that is making me think (and perhaps overthink). It’s the fact that I have been alive long enough to know that there are things that I want to do for myself, things that I need to do for myself and, yet, maddeningly, I don’t really know who I am. In fact, I was on my run this morning and I had to come to a halt so suddenly that I hunched over and only by clutching onto my knees did I manage to avoid a complete fall. What had happened was one of those bizarre sparks in the brain that fires an existential crisis. For a fleeting but intense burst of several seconds, I was wide awake with the horrifyingly hyperaware realization that I don’t know who I am.
When I have to get the riot act from Ma about how I should do this because she wants to do that, it’s hard. At this age, I have to figure out who I am because if I don’t, I’ll spend my whole life not knowing and therefore not living what I would consider to be a meaningful life. I can’t worry about Ma’s expectations, and yet, if I don’t have her approval, if I have to walk around with her expectations and knowing that my life isn’t good enough for her, it hurts, Linc. There’s nothing I can do to walk it off. I can’t help but take it personally.
The good news is that there are some things that I do know about myself. The bad news is that it is not always easy to reconcile that with Ma or the rest of the world. So, here is what I know:
I am a bookseller. I do not make much money. But I love what I do. In addition to being a bookseller, I am an events coordinator. I mingle with emerging stars and sometimes super stars. I am professional. But I am also very approachable. I love my job.
Because I do not make much money, I have to make adjustments. Living my dream also means that I have to live responsibly to support that dream. I applied for food stamps. I am considering getting a small part time job. I’ve slashed my budget. I am trying to make this dream work.
I need a husband. I am sorry if this goes against feminism and whatever the feminism equivalent is for the gay community. But I can’t do all of this alone — I mean, I can, but at the end of the day I feel so alone. And I’m tired of it. I need a partner. I want someone to tell me that I can do it, and I want someone to whom I can listen in return and to whom I can be a good husband, as well. And I want intimacy: yes, I want sex! Lots and lots of sex with my husband. As Michelle Pfeiffer’s character said in Up Close and Personal when she wanted to get married to Robert Redford’s character, “I want to know that you’re legally required to be here in the morning.” And I want to make you so exhausted in the morning that you will take after Ryan Gosling in The Notebook and demand nourishment and accuse me of sending you to an early grave.
I want kids. I want two kids and I’m going to raise them to be partners. I want them to be best friends but I’m going to try and hold off on placing my expectations upon them. They might not always like each other but they will have each other’s back. When they reach adulthood, I will not tolerate either of them saying any variant of “We haven’t spoken in years.”
I’m a nomad with a modestly packed backpack. Those are my tools through the journey of life. They are the keepsakes that remind me of what I have left behind, and the hope of reaching a fine destination.
Speaking of journeys, you’ve got a start coming up in a few minutes. Duck the Fodgers!
Written in the format of unsent (“never-to-be-sent”) letters to San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Tim Lincecum, Baseball 2.0 discusses baseball, the world and life — though baseball could be considered to be all of the above. In particular, there is special emphasis on baseball and life through the author’s background as a gay Filipino.
All that introspection is time consuming, so there’s not a lot of opportunity to hope that Tim (variously and vaguely referred to as either “the Avatar” or “Linc,” not really because of movies or video games but due to the author’s personal superstition/belief about the power of names) actually writes back — which he likely wouldn’t, anyway.
“I knew my husband for only four months before we got married. But I heard from others how protective, tender, and devoted he was to her. Because of...”
