School daze

I was just watching some of the "It Gets Better" videos on YouTube. It made me reflect a bit. As hard of a time as I've had figuring out my sexuality, there are a couple things I feel I should really be thankful for. First of all, unlike a lot of people, I was not going through this during high school. I did notice in high school that I lacked the interest in sex and porn that some of my friends had, but I just attributed that to being a prude (there might be some truth to that). I didn't begin to question my sexual orientation until college.

I'm also thankful that I didn't suffer very much bullying during my school years. Sure, I got picked on occasionally throughout elementary, middle, and high school, and I could probably name every perpetrator. But I never got beat up, never feared for my own safety, and it never got to the point of me being afraid to go to school or anything. This may be because I never really stood out that much. In any case, I have generally positive memories from high school, or at least the last two years.

Freshman year, I'm sure, is tough for everybody, since you're adjusting to your new surroundings. For the most part it was okay. I mostly hung out with a group of friends from middle school. I was one of four guys in the group, and there were also four girls. By the end of the year, each guy left the group to join a different clique. One joined the baseball team, one began hanging out with the skateboarders, and one found another group of friends. Thus by sophomore year, I was left to find a new group of people to hang out with. The girls all pretty much still hung out together. Occasionally I would hang out with them, but it was weird being the only guy. I started to become friends with some guys from my classes, but they were friends with the two guys who bullied me . . . making it a little hard to hang out with them at lunchtime. I pretty much spent the year bouncing between various groups, all of which I got along with but none of which I felt I really belonged to.

Finally, in my junior year, I made some good friends and became part of a new group. The new group included the same group of girls as before, but three new guys took over the vacant spots (weird, huh?) These three were the aforementioned friends of the bullies, but thankfully the bullies hung out elsewhere. By senior year the new group splintered as well, but this time I remained close with two of the other guys. The three of us hung out fairly often that year. It was the first time since middle school that I had really good friends from school. The two of them were best friends, which sometimes made me feel a bit like a "third wheel." Around that time I decided I wanted what they had. I wanted a "best friend." More next time.

There is no try

I went back and visited my old workplace today. It was the first time I had visited in quite some time, so I told everyone about my big decision to defer at the PhD program. There was a reason I waited so long . . . I had been scared to tell my former boss. He was one of the people who wrote me a letter of recommendation. As is always the case when I talk to him, he was extremely nice and understanding about it. He still thinks I should go, though. He stressed that there are a lot of other things you can do with a PhD besides academia. I talked with a couple of other former coworkers for a while, and many of them had opinions similar to what people told me during my decision process: why not give it a try, it'll be good for you, you can always leave with a masters degree. I was beginning to have flashbacks to March-June. My conversation with one person in particular mirrored my thought process during that three-month period. As much as I enjoy hearing other people's perspectives on the matter, I was not much enjoying that trip down memory lane. But what can you expect from talking to academics about academia, haha.

As far as the "give it a try" argument . . . the reason why that wasn't enough to get me to go through with the program was because what "it" refers to is graduate school. But graduate school is not what I was afraid of. It's the career path afterward, and there's no way to "give it a try" before the 5-6 years of grad school.

I've also had trouble with "give it a try" advice when it comes to the sexuality issue. Partially because I don't even know where to begin. Go to a gay bar? Use a website? Plus there's the knowledge that if I finally did "try" something, there's no "un-trying" it. I need to get over that and learn to accept that it's okay to test the water. That just because you stick your foot in the shallow end doesn't mean you're committed to swimming laps.

At least I've gotten a lot of practice telling people a difficult truth about myself and overcoming fear of disappointing them in order to do it. Every time I've told someone about my decision to defer, it was like "coming out" in a way. To a lesser degree, of course. If my other issue comes to that, at least I'll be somewhat prepared.

DADT

Apparently a judge in California stopped "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" today. That's great news . . . it's such a ridiculously stupid law. All of these perfectly able soldiers being tossed out of the military because they can't bare to live a lie and pretend to be something they're not. Then there's the counterarguments about how this will damage unit cohesion by making some straight soldiers uncomfortably. Hmm, an uncomfortable homophobe vs. a miserable, closeted gay soldier. I wonder whose morale would be affected the most?

I didn't shave over the weekend, and now I'm letting my facial hair get longer than I've ever had it. I'm pretty fickle when it comes to facial hair, so I may just shave it off any day now when I get sick of it, but for now I kind of like it. I've only ever had a goatee and a soul patch before, so experimenting with a beard is definitely new. I was never much of a fan of beards, but certain individuals lately have started to sway me . . .

Two fronts

Let's see . . . what's in the news of my life . . .

On the career front: I have shadowed at the dentist's office twice now. I hate to say it . . . I'm not really feeling it. I fear I may not be able to get this teaching thing out of my head unless I give it a try. The two sticking points: 1) Working with teenagers could either be really fun, or really stressful (or both). I need to find out more about people's experiences teaching I guess, to get an idea of if I could handle it. 2) The pay. I'm not very materialistic, but I do want to be able to afford to live in California, and be able to live reasonably comfortably without having to worry too much about how I'm going to pay the bills. Plus I do want to travel periodically. It seems teachers figure it out somehow, I guess.

To address these issues, I have contacted 1) a teacher I found on an internet teaching site, 2) one of my old high school teachers, and 3) my friend from college who is now teaching high school science. Hopefully what I learn from them will be elucidating.

On the sexuality front: Well, nothing much to report. It seems my progress on this front comes in spurts. I started this blog around the same time as I first talked to my mom about my issues and starting seeing the psychologist. Then, a few weeks ago, I talked to my cousin and met a fellow blogger in the same week. But since then . . . well I've been continuing the introspection game. I just found a blog, http://cashyguy.blogspot.com, that I can relate to quite well. He hasn't posted in a while, though.

I messaged a guy who I met at one of the grad school recruitment weekends on Facebook. He's gay, and I got along with him quite well at the time (I didn't know he was gay until after). I figured he might be a good one to talk to since he's outside of my social circle. He hasn't responded though. Argh, I hate it when people don't respond to FB messages. If you wouldn't answer a message from me, then take me off your friend's list!

I have seen a couple guys that I thought were really attractive recently. One of them was a guy who came to my work to take a tour of our facility. A lady who works in another part of the building was showing him around, but when she got to one of the rooms that my group does work in she didn't really know what to say. So, she came to me and asked if I wouldn't mind explaining it to him. I gladly did, and frankly didn't want the conversation to end, haha. He was pretty tall and seemed fairly built, and was quite masculine, but he was also rather soft-spoken. I found that very attractive for some reason.

Also, today I found a YouTube user who seems to be quite a talented musician. http://www.youtube.com/user/apples33ds He's also gay, and Australian. My favorite accent in the world. Until next time, g'day mates.

Memory Lane

I JUST posted an entry, but some other stuff that I've been thinking about just occurred to me so here's another one, haha. Hey, it's my blog, I'll do what I want!

I'm sure many people who realize they have other-than-normal attractions think back to try to figure out where they began. Well, I can definitely remember a couple of examples.

Going way back to elementary school, there weren't too many individuals that "did it" for me. But I do remember a couple of celebrity crushes. Not that I thought of them as crushes then, but in retrospect they kinda were. They're kind of embarrassing, hehe . . .

Number one: Jonathan Taylor Thomas from Home Improvement. He was around my age. I remember really wishing he lived next door to me so we could be best friends. An innocent enough crush, I suppose.

Number two: Tommy the Green Ranger.

I looked up a "Where Are They Now?" type website about the Power Rangers, and Jason David Frank still looks really good. Jason the Red Ranger was good looking too, but he really let himself go (and no, the rumors of him doing gay porn are not true, sorry).

Billy the Blue Ranger recently came out as gay, and says that he left the show due to harassment about his sexuality. I actually watched an interview with him, it was really interesting. I guess he actually went into a "Pray the Gay Away" ministry and ended up having a nervous breakdown. Poor guy. Society can really screw people up. He seems to be doing much better now.

Those are the only celebrity crushes I can think of from back then, but there were some others in my life. One guy in middle school I can remember being attracted to. In high school there were two upperclassmen and one substitute teacher that I thought were hot (though only realized this in retrospect . . . at the time I thought it was just admiration or jealousy). The sub was the son of one of the coaches, and now he teaches full time at the school. I saw his picture on the school website. Still hot. Of course, there were several girls that I had crushes on during middle school and high school too (but not usually due to looks, more personality), so I didn't quite catch that something was up.

Hindsight is in 20/20, or so they say.

Meetup, Teaching, and Religion

I finally worked up the nerve to meet up with one of the other bloggers that I've been corresponding with since I started: Mike from Random Thoughts in My Life. Due to my sporadic use of this blog and limited visits to other blogs I don't really have much of a following, so I appreciate that Mike (and Aek as well) has stuck around. It was cool, and I'm glad I did it.

We talked a bit about his student teaching. Today the idea of teaching high school biology was pretty strongly on my mind. I had never been interested in it before because I figured I would want to teach students that actually want to be there. Now that the university level has soured in my eyes, I'm giving it another look. There are advantages to teaching high school age students too. They aren't as set in their personalities and life goals as a lot of college students might be, so you have the opportunity to affect their lives in a much more substantial way it seems (the smaller class sizes would help too). The disciplining might get old, but I suppose it depends on the class you have. I guess the number one thing that gives me pause is the job prospects . . . especially in this economy I know that high school teachers are having a rough time finding work. My area being science would no doubt be beneficial, but still . . .

I had another conversation with my cousin, mostly about our favorite subjects of current events and philosophy. But I did refer briefly to our previous conversation (basically that I was still reeling from it, haha). It was fine, no awkwardness. We are officially still cool, haha.

One aspect of my personality that I dealt with during my sophomore year of college is my spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof). At the time I lived with three Christians, so it was a good opportunity to evaluate where I stood on such issues. In the end I decided to identify as agnostic. I took it to mean that while I do not believe in God, I do not claim that there is no God either. Basically, I lack enough evidence to make a claim either way. If evidence were to be presented to me, I might change my position. I read something the other day (I forget where), that said that outspoken atheists are actually less likely to be elected than men who are openly homosexual. It's quite remarkable how religious the U.S. is, especially compared to other Western nations. The conflicts that arise between religion and modern society are something I find very interesting. In fact, it's been coloring my recent chosen reading material. I'm almost done reading Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, which forced him to go into hiding after religious extremists in the Middle East condemned him to death for writing it. Next up is Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. In it, he supposedly makes an argument for why agnosticism is not a viable alternative to atheism, so I'm looking forward to seeing what points he makes.

Wow, I'm believing that election statistic more now. I feel more hesitant admitting my agnosticism/atheism than I do about my same-sex attractions, haha. What a crazy country we live in.

Confidant

I've always been very close with my three cousins from Nor Cal. They are like the brothers that I never had. We grew up together, though since they always lived about 8 hours away I usually only see them a couple times a year. It used to be hard to keep in touch with them since long-distance phone calls were so expensive. When we did talk on the phone, I would talk with them for a really long time but my parents would always come and tell me to wrap it up. Understandable, since it was pricey. That's why I love technology, it solves so many problems! These days with cell phones, Facebook, Google Chat, Skype, and Xbox Live, it's easy and cheap to keep in touch.

Growing up, I was probably closest with the oldest of the 3 brothers. He is a year and a half older than me, while the others are 1 year and 4 1/2 years younger than me. He lives on the east coast now, and I don't really get to talk to him too much because he's really busy with work, his girlfriend, and his social life. Strangely enough, it's the youngest brother that I have become closest with over the past couple years. Not only do I relate more to his place in life (since I wouldn't say that I've really started my "career" yet, unlike the oldest brother), but we also seem to be on the same page intellectually for the most part. Whenever I want to have a deep, philosophical discussion, he's the one I turn to. This is for a couple of reasons. Number one, he's one of my few close friends/family members that I know enjoys such discussions. Number two, he's really intelligent and curious about the world. Number three, he's very open-minded. Number four, we're similar ideologically. Politically he's conservative, but unlike my dad (or his, for that matter), he's willing to consider other arguments and isn't overly dogmatic about his beliefs. Myself I tend towards conservatism as well, though I'm fairly liberal when it comes to certain social issues. Another thing we have in common is that neither of us are religious.

Anyways, I've known for a long time that if there were going to be someone else I was going to reveal my Issue to, it would be him. Up until now I had only talked (in person) with three people about it: 1) my mom, 2) the psychologist, and 3) my roommate at one of the grad school recruitment weekends (random, I know.) The latter two weren't close to me, so they were of limited usefulness, and talking to my mom about it was just awkward (especially after she told me she wasn't comfortable talking about it . . . understandable reaction but that set me back for a while).

Last night I finally decided to talk to my cousin about it. Why now? Well, this week is the week I would have started grad school had I so chosen. Because I am in the same city with the same job instead, I was feeling very antsy. If I wasn't making forward progress on the career issue, I needed to be making progress on the other Issue. Also, since I've been a bit confused lately about what I want out of life, I'm feeling like maybe the career issue can't be resolved fully until I make more progress on this one.

We were chatting over the webcam, first about various topics (specifically the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" . . . which somehow led into a discussion about conservative vs. liberal world views and eventually the meaning of life . . . for some reason lots of my discussions are leading there lately, haha). Then I started to approach the subject very gradually. I asked him about the first girl that he could remember having a crush on, and what had attracted him to her. From there I moved on to asking him whether he distinguishes between physical and sexual attraction. He does, basically saying physical attraction is more of a "That person is really good looking" feeling whereas sexual attraction is more of a "That person is hot and I want to (fill in the blank) her." This was interesting to me. I definitely experience the former a lot more than the latter.

From there I explained to him about my general lack of sexual attraction towards girls. Ever the optimist, he suggested this might actually be an advantage and might make girls more attracted to me since they usually have lower sex drives than guys.

From there I segued into the most painful part of the conversation, which I did with my eyes closed the entire time, and my voice really low so as not to be heard by my housemates (my new place is a lot smaller than my last one and I'm not sure how sound carries . . . hopefully no one heard anything). I admitted that while my sexual attraction levels seem rather low, the direction of my physical attraction is mostly towards guys. Of course the terms I were using were a lot less straight-forward, but he eventually understood.

He took it very well. He didn't show any shock or surprise, and instead merely sought to try to understand. I tried to convey to him how I feel about the issue, which is basically that I don't really feel straight because I lack physical attraction toward girls, but at the same time I don't really feel gay because I don't feel I have romantic feelings or strong sexual desires toward guys. I explained to him my belief that there are really an infinite number of sexual orientations, and that society's need for simplification is the reason for labels such as "gay," "straight," "bisexual," etc. He said he'd never thought of it that way, but he agreed it makes sense.

I wasn't really expecting him to try to advise me, but he tried anyway. He basically suggested the same thing as the psychologist did: go out and try. I'm not sure I'm ready for that, but we'll see. Eventually I'll run out of intermediate steps, and at that point I'll either have to make the leap or remain stagnant.

It ended up being a really long conversation. I went to bed at like 3:30 AM. I was really sleepy today, but it was totally worth it. My cousin suggested that he feels the conversation did nothing but improve our relationship, and he insisted that his opinion of me is unchanged. I feel so fortunate to have someone like him to talk about such things with. It's weird today knowing that I finally did what I've been working up to for years. Time to set a new goal . . .