believe me, I know

I had some thoughts I wanted to share with someone and I couldn't think of who I wanted to talk to so I wrote a letter to Mark. I wrote the letter two days ago....

HERE IT IS:
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2:43pm
Friday, January 25, 2002

I’ve only been here at work for a little over one hour and the shift is already dragging. That’s a bad sign. I’m at that stage in my working environment where the newlywed feelings are gone, the initial challenges of learning something new are gone and I want something more. The problem is that EVERY job is like this. I have this fear that teaching might end up being the same thing…. But I talk myself out of that conclusion by saying that each day will be different and new and a challenge—especially with kids today; trying to get them to comprehend life, become self aware, inspire them to seek out something they may never have thought of before, all the while competing with the media, the internet, pop culture generalities. (And in the process learn something myself about all the things that I think I already know.) That’s why I tell myself---the dream. The reality is that even DanceSafe, though inconsistent and challenging , has lost its luster. I’m great at starting things. I have a passion that explodes, but that’s all it does. After the explosion all I do is clean up and move on. There isn’t a whole lot of directed passion...and that kind of sounds like an oxymoron.

5:40pm
I’m back from my lunch. 30 minutes. Not long enough. I get home, throw together something and then am shoving it into my mouth as I walk out the door to come back here. Here. I might have told you once that when I was in second grade I sometimes cried myself to sleep praying to god to make me “normal.” I wanted to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to be smart. I didn’t want to stick out. Here I am, about twenty years later and I’m still wishing for the same thing deep down. I wish I could be normal; satisfied making a decent wage and working for a great company. Perhaps I just need medication. (Said in jest, but the irony is that if I were on meds 24/7 then I’d be that one step closer to being like everyone else in America. Hah.) A look at the clock…I still have over four hours left in my shift.

I look at my hands a lot; not the palms, but the backs of my hands. Over the years I’ve watched how they’ve become older. I measure “older” by the way the “cracks” around the knuckles have become more pronounced when I put my hand flat on a surface. The wrinkles slowly move out away from the knuckle more and more, fine little lines. I always paid attention to my grandmother’s hands and the hands of my great-grandmother. Maybe it’s because of the way they touched me—gentle. I don’t know for sure. Maybe I’ve always been fascinated by hands and have just paid close attention. (I doubt that) When I think of my own aging, I don’t think about the lines around my eyes or my hair, I just look down at my hands. Today they say, “Jeremy, the goddamn finger nails need to be cut soon.” And I listen.

7:35pm
I’ve moved cubicles at work. They’ve put all of us gay people in the same aisle. I wonder if it was purposely or if it just so happened that this is the way it worked. I think it’s kind of funny, but one of the other guys doesn’t think so. Understandably, if we were purposefully put here because of that reason it would be wrong, but I don’t think so. On one level I’m comforted being around family, on another level I’m not. They’re “older” family….probably mid 30’s. (If they’re younger than that, oh well, my bad---and their bad skin.) I feel so disconnected from gay life right now. I’m not sure how much of what I’m about to type will be welcome by you. I ultimately choose to share and I figure you’ll blast me with the M.W. Waters stamina that I’m used to when it comes to opinions


2:50pm
Monday, January 28, 2002

I’m in a post vitamin E mellow lull. Not low, not hyper, simply calm. I went to SPUNDAE on Saturday night. It’s a predominantly straight club in the Circus building behind Arena. The muscles from my jaw, radiating up toward my temples have a slight soreness to them still. I was smart enough to have gum, so I didn’t bite my tongue all that much. I came to a couple of conclusions during this last trip. 1) The fun I’ve experienced in the past 2½ years is about running it’s course. In many ways I feel the same way I did a few years ago when drinking all the time became mundane. 2) I’m a nerd, and I always have been. I’ve become more secure with this over the years, but I’m still not comfortable in straight environments---even though there’s nothing anyone is doing, it’s all a circus in my head that I’m still trying to clown around in.

I just realized that I hadn’t finished my thought from Friday. My thoughts on being “disconnected” from gay life: I feel like I want more of family than a “family.” I think that gay culture, after observing and being part of it for the last 10 years, has shown me that in addition to being a microcosm of the overall society, it’s also a culture that doesn’t want to be defined like the rest of society and lives by somewhat more open-minded definitions of relationships. I’d much rather be Jeremy than gay Jeremy. As I’ve always stated in my college presentations, being gay is a piece of who I am. Honestly though, it’s quite a bigger piece than I let on. My world is pretty much immersed in gay. Gay friends, roommate, dance clubs, organizations that I volunteer for. Save my job, school and DanceSafe, there isn’t much that isn’t gay. In this paragraph I’m not comfortable with “gay” and in the one above I’m not comfortable with “straight.” I think I’m just not comfortable in social situation period. I don’t relate well. I feel outside.

I had my first experience of straight-boy fever. On Saturday night, Nathan’s cousin, Jenny, brought her boyfriend, Chris. Chris was just a dream. I had to purposefully dance away from he & Jenny most of the night because he was so cute. He was totally your type too. He has dark hair, Italian, smart, 25 and very down to earth with no prejudice and no “weirdness” about being around gay guys. When he took his button down shirt off to reveal his tank top and arms of steel, I couldn’t stop stealing glances. The ironic thing is that Jenny has always thought I was cute and constantly makes comments about “getting me alone” or “converting” me. In fact, she was making these comments while we were all waiting in line to get into the club (a 90 minute wait) right in front of Chris. I was feeling a bit uncomfortable for him, but I think that was mainly my own nervousness. When we got into the club, his cuteness magnified exponentially when we went upstairs and he leans over to me and says while pointing, “That’s where I met Jennifer.” You could tell in his voice he was excited. They’ll have been together for one year this Feb 10th. Later in the evening I asked when they moved in together. Without as much of a heartbeat he responded with, “October 4th.” I was taken by how he recalled the information as if it was intimately important. At the end of the night he was going home, but Jenny wanted to continue on to Spike with the rest of us. As he shook my hand and hugged me goodbye, he said, “You’re a good dancer. Take good care of my girl tonight.” You can imagine how bad I felt about five minutes after getting into Spike when Jenny lit up a pipe and took a puff with security watching her. She was kicked out immediately. =(


4:57pm
My lunch starts at 6pm tonight. I’ll print this letter out and take it home. Tomorrow I’ll mail it and you should receive it by Wednesday. This is assuming that all is well with the U.S. Postal Service and that no major anthrax problems have halted delivery. Do you have a book that you could lend me to read? I’m still itching that maybe I’ll read some more. Maybe it will inspire me to write more. Maybe.

Let me know when you have some free time to hang out. Preferably some night rather than a quickie lunch. Until soon.