TetRefine

This is actually a good idea Carlos. Although if I did, there are much more immediate concerns that the money could be spent on, like basic school supplies and curriculum. It's absolutely ridiculous that despite being one of the top performing schools in the entire city, we can't even afford to hire enough staff and buy updated curriculums. America, gotta love it...

Today, on the last day of school, we had several special visitors taking a tour of the building. The school I teach at specializes in non-native English speakers, recently arrived immigrants, refugees from war zones, and other historically under-served minorities. The amount of racial, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity is staggering. This coming year, we are expanding to include a classroom strictly for kids who have just recently arrive in the US and don't have enough language and cultural knowledge to be in a mainstream classroom. Included in this group are several Syrian refugee children who had arrived in the United States several months ago and will be starting school with us in the fall in this program. They got to see the whole building and watch a few minutes of classes to see what school in like in America. When they came up to my room where I was teaching a small group, I noticed that one of the Syrian boys (maybe about 9 years old or so) couldn't stop smiling while he was looking around. He was giggling to himself and soaking in everything around him; the posters on the wall, the displayed artwork of students, the computers, everything. I heard him whisper something to the interpreter, and the interpreter translated it to the teacher leading the group as "he says, everything is so nice and pretty here". When I heard that I had to stop for a second. Our school is far from what I would consider nice. It's in a converted factory building in a industrial neighborhood with a lot of decay and blight. The inside is all unpolished concrete floors with walls that desperately need a new paint job. But to this kid, who came from hell on Earth, it was probably what he dreamed of always having. It was an opportunity he is probably overjoyed to have in a strange new country after being forced from everything he has ever known. Here we are, in our tiny little corner of this big city, about to hopefully give him, and other like him, a new opportunity in life. It's little moments like this that make all the stresses of this job worth it. I think it also sends an important message to refugees and immigrants like them that they are wanted here. Despite what our con man president and his hicks in the sticks supporters say, America will still welcome you and give you a chance to succeed. You can find peace and stability and your kids will have the opportunity to become even greater then you. We all need to take up that mantle as Americans. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

This song is so addicting!

Yes it is. The sheer amount of people (and sexy ones at that) alone make it an amazing experience. I think one of these days I want to try San Francisco or LA for Pride.

If you remember my blog entry from January, you'll know young and Latino is my specialty. 😏 And jeans and a tank are actually a pretty accurate description of what I wear out during the summer haha!

If you need details for this, let me know. I have pics and stuff...😏

Last year I went with a few friends up to New York for Pride and it was a ton of fun. The parties at night were great, and the parade was lined with 2.5 million people. This year I'll stay home in Philadelphia, and probably just hit the bars and stuff on Friday and Saturday nights. I don't really have much of an appetite to go to the festival and parade on Sunday. I guess my biggest celebration will be starting my "short" story that I've been planning now for a little bit.

I fully intended to write about the entire night, but a whole lot of paragraphs and over an hour later, I decided it was best to leave it at that for the moment. That was the most interesting aspect of the night and captured best the feeling I wanted to convey. The rest of the night was mostly just drinking, dancing, and random sex. I am pondering though whether I should take this and expand on it as a piece of fiction. I'm throwing around some notes as we speak to see what comes of it.

I honestly felt pity for the guy, and to be honest, some annoyance at his inability to live his life on his terms. I'm around people who mostly live life for the moment, and actively flaunt a lot of the societal rules their parents followed or straight peers follow now. I couldn't imagine starting life at 40-something when I'm too old and saddled with baggage to really enjoy it to the fullest extent. But maybe sometimes I (and others my age) forget that this period of "freedom without fear" is a very recent phenomenon and a privilege we should respect.

This song is a perfect theme for this entry! I haven't heard it in a while, but man does it describe that night to a T. And I'm considering a part II. 😏

It was was Saturday night, and I was going to meet up with a few friends later that night. We didn't plan on meeting till around 11, but by 9:00 I was getting restless so I decided to head out early and start on my own. My first stop was at The Bike Stop, which is a VERY dimly lit leather/cruising bar hidden away in a back alley. It's one of those places where all kinds of stuff goes on in the dark corners. I have a drink and chit chat with the bartender, who I sort of know from the gym. He's a gorgeous little muscle boy and all he wears when he bartends is a jockstrap. His tip jar is always full at the end of the night, haha. Myself and the bartender are probably the youngest people in there by about 10 years, but I honestly like that. Older guys are often easier and more interesting to talk to. I talk a little bit with this guy I know from the gym, but then his boyfriend shows up and clearly gets jealous he's talking to me and pulls him away. Okay, time to move on. Its still early, not even 10 o'clock yet, so I have plenty of time to kill. I walk back out onto the street and think. It's early and I'm still sober, so maybe we can all drive up to New York and spend the night there. It's less then two hours drive, and could be up there before midnight. That's pregame hour there. We could have the whole night to enjoy it all. I throw that idea to a friend via text, but he's gotta meet with a client the next day, so he can't show up a hot mess. Okay, guess we're all staying here. No biggie, it'll still be fun. All of a sudden I hear someone calling my name. I look up, and there is this guy coming at me from across the street. He's kind of a stereotypical city gay; impeccably dressed, muscled, good face, white collar with a lot of money. The perfect outside image hides the ridiculous mess he is on the inside. I wouldn't really call him a friend. He (and the crowd he runs with) are really nothing more then party buddies to me. We drink and party and stuff together, but I don't know if I could take them while sober. I wonder if they feel the same about me? He invites me back to his place, says he's got some people over and a lot of stuff waiting. The two drinks I had in the bar are starting to hit me a bit and I still have almost an hour till my friends come. Sure why not, I tell him. His place is just a few blocks away, and the whole walk there he just blathers on and on about nothing, talking so fast and so much I can barely get more then a 'yeah' or 'umhmm' in. I must admit his place is stunning. A 16th floor loft with expensive furniture, funky artworks from god knows where, and floor to ceiling windows that look out to the Ben Franklin Bridge and the river into South Jersey. As promised, there's about 7-8 other guys there, most of whom I know (although strictly on a surface level), and stuff on the table. The whole scene makes it excruciatingly obvious that this is trying to compensate for some deficienty, and I wonder if I'm the only one to notice. But hell, maybe I'm just as guilty because here I am, partaking in it. We all get lit in the living room as the "Circuit Party 2017" Spotify playlist thumps in the background. The Grindr scrolling is constant, and the conversation is very much centered on sex and the upcoming shore season. Rehoboth or Fire Island? New York or Miami? This annoyed me at first, but the more intoxicated I got, the more I seemed to enjoy it all and partake as well. It's close to 11, so I excuse myself with promises I'll meet up with them later in the night, maybe after hours at Voyuer. I feel pretty good, and make my way back out of the building and onto the street. The warm weather and Gayborhood's promise of sin has brought out the crowds, and the street is noticably more crowded then when I last left it. Everyone seems to be flowing right into the heart of it all at 13th and Locust. The energy is palpable, and it stimulates my already invigorated brain. What a hell of a time and a place to be alive! I reach the bar where I'm meeting my friends, and the bouncer doesn't even bother checking my ID. I guess he recognizes me now, wow. At this point though, it doesn't even register. The bar is busy, but not yet packed. Still too early for that. I look around and my friends aren't there yet, so I text one of them. He says he's running a bit late, but I'm not surprised. I've learned through the course of our friendship that Chileans are never on time. Why I keep bothering to show up on time with him is a mystery to me. I look around, but I don't recognize anybody. The bar is starting to transition as the mostly older, calmer, early crowd give way to the younger, livlier, late nighters who constitute the public face of this 'hood. I sit down and order a gin and tonic, which has become my drink of choice this summer. I probably shouldn't be drinking anything more after the impromptu loft party, but what is Saturday night for if not bad choices? I stand there for several minutes, sipping on my drink and taking in the crowd. Talk about an interesting cross section of people. Someone taps me on the shoulder, and it's one of the DJs who I know (he used to sleep with my roommate sometimes). We shoot the shit for a minute, and he throws me a couple comp passes to the after hours club across the street. They make it so easy to keep going that it's hard to say no. I go back to being alone, and I'm rather enjoying the good feeling that is overtaking my entire body. I realize this is a happy place for me, both mentally and physically. It's something I thought I'd never be a part of, or could have been a part of. I've worked hard to find a solid place in this life, and now here I am living what I only thought existed on some alien world. My life has become a duality of weekday me and weekend me, and I love the contrast. One does not touch or bleed into the other. I bet that is true for a lot of the guys, young and old, in this place right now. The guy next to me, who has been glancing to the side at me non stop since I ordered my drink, finally gives up and vacates the space to my right. Immediately an older gentlemen fills it and orders a drink. I see him out of the corner of my eye glance at me, look away, and then glance again. He gets his drink and then asks me 'how's your night going buddy?' I get slightly annoyed at being interrupted in enjoying the scene around me, and I hate when people who don't know me call me 'buddy'. Especially older people. It just seems patronizing. 'Just waitin' to meet a friend'. My voice betrays my annoyance, even though I didn't mean to let it. He instantly recognizes this, and looks away to try and make a retreat. I kind of feel bad, and why not have a conversation with a stranger while I wait? We make small talk, and he asks me about my job, where I live, yada yada. He downs his drink in about two minutes and quickly orders another one. He starts telling me about his life, how he got married, suburbs, kids, the whole typical 'closeted married guy' thing. He explains how he had just come out two years ago and still lived in the suburbs and this was only his second time to a gay bar. Ugh, his story is painful and everything I actively work to avoid in my life. I think he picks up on this fact as I lay out for him the life I live where my freedom of self is my utmost value. 'So what's it mean to be young and free?' The question catches me totally off guard and I'm a bit taken aback by it. I ponder, and I honestly could have answered a million things, but the thing that came out of my cocked up brain was 'the consequences of society don't apply to me like they did to you. Nobody set upon me the burden of expectation so I can make of it what I want.' Now it's his turn to be taken aback, and all he can say is 'wow', and looks away from me and down at the bar. I can't quite tell what he feels, and to be honest I'm not really sure why I should care. I gave him a raw (albeit inebriated) answer to his question, so whatever. My phone buzzes and it's my friend asking me where I am. I look up across the bar and there he is on the other side by the door, late as always but waiting impatiently for me. 'I gotta go, my friend is here. It was fun talking to ya' I say to him. 'You too' he smiles and asks if we could meet up later. 'Sure, maybe after hours at Voyuer' I say. He has no clue what Voyuer is, and I don't really feel like explaining it to him. I shake his hand, awkwardly, and push my way through the ever growing crowd toward my friend.

I'm not grilling, but my Vietnamese neighbors are in the alley between my building and theirs cooking something that smells amazing. I have no idea what it is but the smell has been wafting up into my apartment for the better part of an hour now and torturing me.

Right now I'm reading Tom Wolfe's 1980s classic, The Bonfire Of The Vanities. I've been on such a old school New York reading trip recently (Dancer From The Dance, City On Fire, Cristodora, Bright Lights Big City, etc). The New York that existed before I was born is absolutely fascinating to me. So what books are you reading now that aren't here on GA?

What is your favorite book and why? My personal favorite is Andrew Holleran's Dancer From The Dance. It is the only book that has ever truly helped me reflect and understand my own life as a gay man, and I've never felt such an emotional connection to a character as much as I did with Malone. The ending was so fittingly tragic for the story and times.

Get a Mac. I had my MacBook Pro for over 6 years before it died. I love them.

Good to see another old timer still around on here.

When I first got my current job teaching, I decided this was going to be an ultimatum year. I had decided that if I didn't like teaching at this new school within the first couple months, I was going to leave education for good and sell my soul to corporate America for a bigger paycheck. My college background isn't formally in education, but my work experience at various teaching/mentoring jobs before was enough to get me in the door to teach temporarily. I liked doing it, but wasn't really sure if I could see myself doing it long term. To make a long story kinda short, my first job teaching was in first grade in a very rough part of West Philadelphia. I taught both the school day and extended school day (7:30am-6pm), which was exhausting but paid really well. My entire life during the work week was nothing but going to work, going to the gym, and sleeping. As a 22 year old with all that responsibility and stress, I turned to partying and sex to relieve the pressure. Despite the sub-par working conditions, long days, and general craziness of working in an inner-city school, I loved what I did, loved my kids, and loved the people I worked with. A month before the end of the school year, I was notified my position was being reduced to hourly, part time. I felt stabbed in the back, and lost a lot of my motivation. That school year ended, and I went unemployed for the whole summer. I got really depressed, lonely, and again turned to partying and sex to give me some sense of being useful for something. I hit rock bottom when, on August 15th, 2015, my bank account was near zero. I was too prideful to ask my parents for money, and had only a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and jelly in the fridge. Instead of using my last $30 to go grocery shopping, I decided it would be better spent on a night at the club and bathhouse forgetting about the fact I felt totally useless. I woke up that next morning brutally hung over with somebody in my bed who I had no recollection of. I lived on PB&J sandwiches until I scrapped enough money together to buy real food again. I found a Teaching Assistant job, but we were basically nothing more then glorified babysitters to high-needs, mentally disturbed children. It was a huge pay cut and I wasn't much of a teacher at all. It was a long year where I basically just worked for a paycheck. I hated it and decided to give myself one more year to figure out what I wanted to do. The only job I was really qualified for that didn't pay entry level, crap wages, was still education. I came upon a teaching opening at one of the top schools in the city, and almost didn't apply because I thought I had no chance. It is one of those schools where it is very rare to even have an opening, and when they do, they get flooded with applications from qualified people. I decided to give it a shot. To my surprise, I got the interview, and in an event that shocked me beyond words, they offered me the position. It was like a miracle. I was just happy to get a good paying job again, and planned to use it as a year where I could figure out what I wanted to going forward. I was ready to sell my soul to an office cubicle for a fat paycheck. But things started to change. As I began to actually teach again, I started to remember why I loved teaching in the first place, and why I love working with kids on a daily basis. I remembered why teaching was such an important role, and how much of a difference one could make for kids who desperately needed it in the city. In just a matter of months, I had gone from being completely ready to jump ship to corporate America, to starting to look at Masters in Education programs so I could make teaching my career. I decided to apply to a lot of programs I knew I could get into, and a few that I had little chance of getting into. My grades in undergrad weren't bad, but they certainly weren't stellar either, and I thought that would hurt me a lot. But luckily for me, I have solid work experience in education, and got a letter of recommendation from one of the most respected principals in the city. To my surprise, I ended up getting into my reach school, and will be starting my Master's in the fall. I won't lie, I'm nervous as hell about all of this. I'll be working full time still, and going to grad school at night. My life is basically going to be consumed by those two things. It's also nerve-wracking because by doing a masters in this, I am basically committing myself to this as a career for the next 25-30 years. I wrote about this previously, but I fiercely value my independence, my lack of firm roots in anything, and my somewhat libertine/hedonistic lifestyle. A lot of that is going to be sacrificed on the Alter of Adulthood, but it is basically now or never. I can't be the person I am now forever, so it's time to begin that metamorphosis (or whatever you want to call it). I intend to live it up for the next 5 months as sort of a 'last hurrah'. Since I have summers off, I'm going to go spend a few months traveling through East Asia. Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Bangkok, and Pattya. In my head, I'm sort of billing it as the last trip of my care-free twenties. We shall see what the coming years bring.

I just started watching it on Hulu. It's interesting and visually pleasing, but seems very sanitized and toned down to appeal to a straight, suburban family audience. Sigh...

Aerosmith at Fenway Park circa 2010. Steven Tyler sang 'Dream On' from atop the Green Monster. My best friend's sister worked at Fenway Park at the time and was able to get us insanely good tickets for dirt cheap. My friend and I at 18 were the youngest people in our section, by decades lol. Never seen so many grown, functioning adults stoned out of their mind as I did that night!

The drive for five! Sorry, but even without Gronkowski, Brady and the Patriots are unstoppable.

Thanks everyone, and to Carlos for starting this! I had a fun birthday. My boyfriend took me to my favorite Brazilian steak house for dinner, and my roommate baked me a huge cake (chocolate with peanut butter layers). Also two of my buddies are taking me to New York for a weekend of partying and god only knows what else haha.

2016 was really one hell of a good year for me. My life was thrown for a tailspin at the end of 2015, so I really was forced to get myself together in a way I had never really had to in my young adult life. One thing I learned, and now fiercely value and protect, is my independence. I relied way too much on other people, and put all my eggs in a basket I couldn't control. When that basket fell and all the eggs cracked, I was left with nothing I had before and had to rebuild. I've come to realize it was a blessing in disguise, as it allowed me to shape my new life in a way I wanted it to be. I didn't have to take other people into account. Whatever I wanted to do, I could do it now. I vowed to myself that no matter whether I chose to stay single, or chose to date again, I would always fiercely protect my independence and keep the ability to do what I wanted to do. A year later, I've been largely successful at keeping that as a core value. So as I look back on this past year, one small moment from it stands prominently among the many big things that happened in 2016. Rewind back to a cold night in February, not long after I had made the promise to myself to be completely free and independent. At that time, in my mind, being free and independent meant living a very indulgent, vein, hedonistic lifestyle of partying and sex. Living in a big city with a large gay population made this so easy its almost ridiculous. I was going to the clubs every Friday and Saturday till 4am, and Grindr was draining the battery on my phone constantly. It was a period where I had a lot of fun, and I don't regret much of anything about it. Was I making the smartest decisions all the time? No, but damn it the whole thing made me feel so alive and euphoric. I still get excited thinking about it now, and sometimes, in my weaker moments, wonder why I ever gave a lot of it up. Anyway, so this one night started like any other. I went with a couple of friends to a popular dance club here in Philadelphia, and we drank and danced and did all the other stuff for most of the night. I remember I wasn't in the mood to try and get with anyone that night. I just wanted to dance and hang out with friends. That club closed at 2am, and our little group migrated over to the after hours club in the alleyway across the street. My friend wanted to take a break from dancing, so him and I went up to the second floor that overlooks the main dance floor. The scene was amazing. A huge dance floor, packed full of men, pulsated below us with lights and energy that is so infectious. Standing above everyone, looking down at this scene of pure celebration and freedom below, made me truly believe this was everything. It was amazing just watching the whole scene play out and know that you too were a part of it. And then I saw him below me. This absolutely gorgeous, dark-skinned and lean muscled boy dancing shirtless right below me. He was sexy beyond belief, and at that moment I was instantly infatuated in a way I had never been before. He moved so gracefully, and I could tell he was probably a little bit of a queen. Exactly my type. I tapped my friend and said, "Look at him, that cute Brazilian(?) boy down there. I'm going." "How do you know he's Brazilian?" my friend asked. "I don't know, I'm just guessing", I said. "No, you're fantasizing", he said laughing. He knows I have a thing for Brazilians. "Alright you wanna bet?" "Sure. If he is, I buy the next drink. If not, then you buy". "Deal." Off I went, and retreated toward the back and down the stairs. I got down the stairs and started slowly pushing my way through the mobbed dance floor toward the corner where this gorgeous boy resided. I got within about 15 feet of where he was when he looked my way and our eyes locked. He stared intently for about two seconds right at me, gave me a quick smile, and then looked away. The universal gay club way of saying 'You want me, and I know you want me, so come get me'. I knew right then and there, before I even got to him, that he was gonna be mine for the night. It all becomes not someone that is to be treated as a human, but a trophy to be showed off, collected, and discarded when a newer, shinier version comes along. Those of you who have been a part of this world before know exactly what I mean. I make my way the last 10 feet to where he is dancing, grab I'm by the waist, and pull him into me with every ounce of confidence in my body. He flashes that gorgeous smile again, leans his whole body into me, and says, "I want you" in the sexiest accented voice I'd ever heard. I remember thinking how perfect this boy was turning out to be. I simply smiled, let my hands wander down right over his bubble butt, pulled him in close, and kissed him, sticking my tongue deep down his throat. Now granted, I was definitely more then a few drinks in by that point in the night, and my head started to spin a little from the music and lights and everything, but I didn't care. At that moment I was so sure of myself and felt so totally alive that the world could be falling down outside those walls and I couldn't have cared less. That's one thing I have yet to figure out, was whether that feeling was actually real or was it just the substances and sex and selfishness that created this giant illusion. Sometimes I wonder if it was all just a big cover for a life going nowhere. We dance for awhile, and his ability to dance was something only a gay Latino boy could possess. He really knew how to move, and it made him all the much sexier. I still didn't know if he was actually Brazilian, nor did I know his name, and nor did I really care anymore about either of those things. I just wanted him in the way I was making him out to be in my drunken mind. Eventually we get tired and he asks me if we can go back to my place to finish out the night. I cringed a little bit as I really don't like bringing one-night stands to my apartment. I like to keep my work life, normal private life, and gay life as separate from each other as possible. I used my usual excuse of "Oh I live with roommates and they don't know I'm gay" (which is a lie. I live with a roommate but she knows and has no problem with me being gay). "So you're closeted?" he asks? "Something like that," I said. Again, mostly a lie (except at work). So he says we can go to his place, but he lives way up in Frankford, which is about a 25 minute train ride from where we are and not exactly a safe area at night. At this point, I'm considering ditching and just going home, but his sexiness is just too much to give up. I agree and we head to the station. During the overnight hours, the subway only comes every 20 minutes, so we have to wait awhile and take a seat on the bench. I'm dreading this part because now we have to make awkward small talk the whole way up and I'm not used to this. Most of the time the guys I hooked up with I never really talked to much and didn't know much about them other then what they looked like naked and what kinks they liked in bed. Its kind of crazy to think that I had no problem getting completely naked and screwing with a guy I didn't know anything about, but the thought of actually having to talk to someone made me filled with dread. As we sit on the bench, he leans into me and starts telling me all about his life. He was originally from Brazil (I was right!) and had come to the US when he was 20 to live with a cousin. He was a waiter at a restaurant, and a whole bunch of other stuff I won't bother to write here. His accent was so sexy that I didn't care what he was saying as long as he kept talking, and it meant I didn't have to say much. If he wanted to tell me his whole life story, so be it, but he won't ever hear mine. But as he kept talking, there was something about his willingness to tell me so much when he didn't even know me that made me relax a little and let my guard down just a bit. "My name is Thiago (I changed his name) by the way," I remember he said. Now usually when random hookups ask me my name, I usually use some Romanized version of my name, mostly in Italian or French. I never actually tell them my real name, because again, I don't want my different lives to become entangled. "Matt", I said without hesitation. He flashed that beautiful smile again. I was immediately taken aback by the fact that I hadn't lied, because in this situation it had been so automatic in the past. I lied without even thinking twice. Gay men are such good liers, because we mostly grew up having to be. Even though I was surprised with what I had just done, something inside me relaxed and I immediately became more comfortable around this boy. We got on the train and I eventually started opening up more to him as he asked me questions about my life. He asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a early elementary school teacher. This was a fact I usually always avoided telling hookups, because a lot of guys would instantly view this as less manly, and therefor less sexy. A lot of the time I pretended to work in construction, because I figured out that combining pretending to be closeted with pretending to do a macho, blue collar job like construction was a huge turn on for a lot of guys. The whole thing forces you into putting on a charade that, looking back on it now, is pretty much the same thing I had to go through as I grew up deeply in the closet. But this boy didn't react like that at all. He told me how he thought that was such an amazing job and how he really respected people who worked in a job with a real social purpose. I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me feel really good about myself. We got back to his place, and by the end of that train ride I was feeling completely comfortable and at ease around this guy. We got into the shower, and the sex started. I don't necessarily remember how many times we did it, or much of the specifics, but I just remember that it was mind blowingly good. It felt as good as they make it look in porn. It was the best sex I have ever had with a person who I wasn't in a relationship with. In between doing it, we'd talk about our lives and I surprised myself by how much I revealed to him. I told him things that only the people closest to me know. Eventually, after being completely drained, we both fell asleep in his bed. I woke up about 45 minutes later, and turned over to look at him. His leg and one butt-cheek was exposed on my side while the rest of him was covered under the blanket. I could tell he was out cold from exhaustion and the alcohol, and I just laid there for a few minutes thinking. I started to wonder why I had become so quickly comfortable around this guy and why I had to decided to let my guard down and tell him so much. In my mind, I was terrified that maybe I kind of liked this boy. If I liked this boy, then maybe something more then a fun night of sex could ensue, and maybe I'd have to leave my newfound life of individual freedom and self-reliance. I had promised myself that I wouldn't give that up for anything. I remember becoming panicky at the thought of this, and decided at that moment I was going to sneak out and disappear. I gently crawled out of bed, and gathered my clothes that were in a pile in the corner of the room. I put my underwear on, but decided I'd make too much noise trying to put on the rest of my clothes. So, in nothing but my underwear with the rest of my clothes and shoes in a bundle under my arm, I snuck out the back door of the building and into the alley. It was freezing cold, desolate, and the sun was just coming up over the river. I threw my clothes and shoes on as fast I could, and practically ran back towards the train, scared he would realize I was gone and come chasing after me. Thinking back on it now, this was kind of stupid because why would anyone go chasing after a one-night stand the morning after. The whole point of it was now over, so there was nothing left to be had. I hoped a train a mostly empty train and began the long ride back to my part of the city. Looking back on it now, this one moment of many wasn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of everything. It didn't lead to any change in my life, and I continued doing what I had been doing for many more nights after that until I finally ended up with a guy who made me wanna stick around the next morning. I'm happy now with that. But for some reason that night sticks out to me as extraordinarily memorable. Maybe it's because that night is the perfect snapshot that captures the essence and feeling of that period of my life that, at least for now, is mostly over. It's funny, because a few months later, and not long before I started dating my current boyfriend, I ran into Thiago at a bathhouse one Saturday night. I was sitting in the sauna room, which was strangely empty at that moment. Whether he saw me beforehand or just happened to wander in at that time, I don't know. But as I was sitting on the bench, in he walks and sits directly across from me. We look at each other, and we each smile at each other, but say nothing. We just sit and stare at each other, not awkwardly, but neither of us make any kind of move to signal that we want to start something again. I think we both know that we had fun that one night together, but it was just that: fun, for one night and one night only. Some guy came in not too long after and began playing with Thiago, and I watched as he did the same things to this guy and he had done to me that night in his bed. It made me realize that in this world, nothing is special, everything is disposable, and one hot guy is interchangeable with the next. There was nothing special about him, I, or this other random guy. The game gets played and the cycle continues. On a side note, if you haven't read Andrew Holleran's Dancer From The Dance, I highly suggest you do. It is basically set around a pre-AIDS, 1970s version of this lifestyle, and really hammers home how we all cope with being gay and changing. It really helped me realize a lot about myself, despite it being in a completely different era, and it has become one of my all-time favorite books.

Viv's All I Wanted is my all time favorite story on here. It was the the first story I ever read on GA, and it's such a cute, innocent teenage boy story. I go back and read it once every year in October and it brings back a lot of memories. There isn't any sex, the story is pretty simple, and it's only a short story. For whatever reason the story and characters are really indeared to me like no other story I've read.

I guess I'm lucky enough to have been a child of the 90s and 2000s. I came of age right as the country's attitude toward homosexuality was undergoing a massive forward shift. Although I am still old enough to remember when gay men were portrayed as 2-d stereotypical characters with a total lack of depth or humanness. I grew up with a pretty negative image of gay men, and it contributed to a lot of self-hate, depression, and loathing that took a long time to get over. A couple weeks ago, my best friend, boyfriend, and I took a trip back to my hometown for the weekend. My best friend also grew up there, but my boyfriend had never seen the leaves change in fall, and there is no place more beautiful then New England in the fall. It also happened to be homecoming weekend for my high school, and of course that included the football game. We decided to go, and have a little blast from the past. It's amazing how some things never change. The faces of the high school kids are unrecognizable, but almost everything is the same as it was when I played football there years ago. The uniforms, the coaches, the people in the stands, the music the band plays, everything. It was weird, and it almost felt like I had gone back to 2008 or 2009. Years you couldn't pay me enough to relive. I even ran into some old teammates of mine who I hadn't seen since we graduated over 6 years ago. At halftime I went to go take a piss, and after I came out of the bathroom, I saw a little ways off what looked like two boys walking and holding hands. I didn't even think twice and thought there's no way that's what was happening. Back in my days there, that would have been totally unacceptable, looked down upon, and a sure way to social suicide. Especially since it was at a place with several thousand people and most of the kids you went to school with. There were only one or two openly gay kids when I went there, and the rest of us were deeply closeted. I went back to my seat near the student section, and there they were again. The same two kids (maybe 15-16) holding hands still while standing among a couple hundred other high school kids. Talking and laughing and just as much a part of the group as all the others. They actually were out and gay, open about who they were in front of all these people they face on a daily basis. All this had happened in 6-7 years? Had a place that seemed to always stay the same actually been changing... You would think the natural reaction to seeing this would have been for me to be happy for them and proud of what they weren't afraid to hide. But no, absolutely not. In fact, my reaction was one of bitterness, anger, and resentment. I was almost jealous that they were getting something that had been so totally denied to me at that age. I was angry that during my time, the only choice was to be deep in the closet and have two separate faces; one you kept in private, and the fake one you put on for the rest of the world. Most of us know the mental and emotional toll that takes on people. I sometimes wonder how my high school years would have been different if I had more of an idea of what being gay meant past the porn I watched late at night in secret or the two limp-twisted theater queens who were the only out gay guys while I was in school there. There were far more of us in those days as I've learned in the years since then. But we were boxed into the closet by the culture that existed there at the time. We didn't get a choice. As much as I like to think I've moved past that stage in my life, I guess a part of me still holds a grudge toward that place and everyone associated with it. We had to suffer so they don't have to. I guess there's something poetic about that to be proud of.

Isn't it weird how this shit still happens in a place as gay (and old) as Wilton Manors??