Not much went on today. Got up at 6:30 for a morning tennis squad. Sleeping at 1 am is not indicative of good decision making on my part. Caught the train, slept for an hour, walked to grocery shop to start a work shift. My lunch break was spent in the adjacent cafe where i read an article in Apartamento magazine while eating a 'portugese chicken wrap' for nine bucks. There's a new guy working at the butcher next door. His masculine demeanor mixed with slightly boyish facial features makes him quite attractive. Especially when he says sorry to the woman behind him as he fumbles his coins nervously, thinking to himself that he's taking too long to check out at the counter. After work i visit my cousin and come home for dinner then eventually rest.

Nothing out of the ordinary until now right before I retire for bed. The Sydney Morning Herald brought my attention to a video. A 9 minute video about a guy in highschool who has trouble expressing his love for his male bestfriend. The short film, titled 'The Language of Love', shows Charlie (a cute Sydney Grammar School student named Kim Ho) sitting a French exam and scrutinizing the questions put to him. The exam paper acts as a catharsis to some extent and reveals feelings that most teenage gays would likely feel at one stage of their development.

The film already has over 100, 000 views on youtube in 3 months and has apparently reached the screens of many in Australia and overseas. For me, it was weird seeing this on such a public domain. Just recently there were articles about Sydney's elite private schools (a lot of which are religiously affiliated) defending their right to expel gay students. Gay rights is a becoming a hot topic down under and to see highschool students (especially in Australia) participating in something like this is quite suprising. But i don't mean surprising in the sense that it was unlikely. I came out to my select close friends in my penultimate year of highschool at 16. At that point the common anxiety and fear was still present; it wasn't until late senior year that i had really grown maturally to understand that it really was not much of an issue. Far more internal than external. I have been dealt many good hands in life and so i took that as solid ground for moving on.

In my opinion Kim Ho has done nothing extraordinary. And that's what comforts me about the whole situation. I didn't really care much for the dialogue content but the production of such material and the concept was what made me think. A large number of school students were willing to be a part of the project. These kids are in my generation. Despite the individual differences of each experience, we share a mutual understanding of growing up as teenagers with this seemingly perpetual issue on the back of our minds. We stand in the intermediate steps of development for this once dichotomous questioning of sexuality. It is nothing profound when i say this video exemplifies the coming of "an ordinary". And as a part of growing up, it is quite a feeling to witness this. When one lets go of these surrounding insecurities we can move on to other big problems like flirting, flings and even first dates.

Quite recently my roommate asked why i was hesitant in telling my parents. I said i was worried. He asked why.

You remove all that stuff about religion, all that crap about how others will perceive you, what your close masculine buddies may think of you, even if your parents throw you out

At the crux of it all, it's one of the best questions you can ask yourself.

Why?