I feel that at times I'm a little in love with everyone.

It's an odd state we're in, the two of us. Something new, but comfortable. Or perhaps, in fairness to accuracy, comforting. Ramblings about arriving at this junction despite different backgrounds seems trite as everyone is from different backgrounds. Otherwise, there would be no need for backgrounds. No, we're much more interesting in this moment. I think loneliness brought us together. One who gave something up and one who never had it to begin with. Lonely, perhaps, but certainly not regretful of our choices. And we have respect for the others choice, though I think it's largely due to ignorance. I have no clue what it's like to put aside something that was once grand when it's time - and bravo; many people cannot. You have no idea what it's like to have gone your entire life without someone to care for and vice versa. You know about deals, compromise, satisfaction. I know of independence, cynicism and observation. I mean really, what purpose have I served so far other than oracle to the love lives of others? Still, I wasn't to yours. It would have been impossible as our bonding point was its petit mort. We fill gaps, you and I. Gaps in conversation, in laughter. Not in bed. God, no. That would be slightly odd, if mostly against my nature. Still, if I turned, we'd be well-suited. At least, I like to think so. The lack of judgment is startling, as well. I find most often when there is little judgment, it is due to little interest; polite nods and mmm-hmmms for something I don't really care about hearing and they don't really care about sharing, at least not with me personally. They are mostly conversations of convenience, like one between a zebra and a house cat forced to share the same living quarters. I'm so glad it's not that between us. We are a lesson in evolution, how to build something without blueprints, just letting it be what it will be. It's so simple, isn't it? The enjoyment of someone's company. This world's inhabitants have a way of fucking it up though. So we lose. Not always, but enough. And we do foolish things. There are no necessarily dire consequences, just small silliness in the choices we make. Last night I decorated a cheesecake with a heart, opened a bottle of Shiraz and spent the night with someone. It would have been a romantically perfect evening if I could imagine, in a thousand years, ever being in love with him. You'll hear about this soon in a conversation I know we'll have and you'll understand. Perhaps not every detail, but why should you have to? You'll tap into a memory, an emotion, for which you may have done the same thing. And you'll nod. Sincerely. Nodding sincerely should be considered a lost art. Also including that list should be the ability to call at the exact moment I need it. It's rather uncanny. Perhaps they can put you on the tenure track for teaching that one. Anyway, I don't need to use a public forum to express my gratitude, but here's something just for you.

On Saturday night, I was hanging out with Seventeen Year Old, talking about a lot of troubling societal issues and cuddling. At one point he went to the bathroom, leaving me to my thoughts - a dangerous idea at the best of times. When he came back, I was staring at my hardwood floor and before he could say a word and without my eyes moving from the ground, this spewed forth from my mouth:

"You know what I just realized? I struggle a lot with this notion that I must curb any femininity in my nature, but the fact is I gain so much strength from it. I catch myself in these moments where I know I'm invoking the Feminine and I feel powerful because of it. We need to draw on both the Masculine and the Feminine to fully realize our full potential. Just think of the jock in the locker room who strives so hard to maintain a solely masculine output of energy and how much more he could be were he to actually let the Feminine work within him. This isn't simply an issue of gender or sexuality. I have straight male friends who are very much in touch with their Feminine and I've conversely known gay men who abhor any sign of femininity. I just think that's so wrong. The powers of Gender are not contingent on what sex organs we have. I mean, when I'm interacting with someone, it's not with my penis. I mean, it can be, but even that is only a fraction of what's really mingling in the situation. There are a million factors that make up each person and yet with all these potentially opposing qualities, everyone is just fundamentally looking for someone to complete them. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true. It's like this million-piece puzzle that's near impossible to complete and then when we do, we get treated with such hate because our parts don't match the way theirs do. It's such a small part and it doesn't effect them at all. I don't think they understand that we're all just feeling the same thing. They can't get past the biology. And what are they so afraid of? That we'll rise up like some faggy nation of Israel against Pharaoh so they have to enslave us first? Don't they see that they should be gracious because they get to have something we don't in family, rather than to loathe our existence with every fiber of their beings? We each have entire universes contained in our souls and they hate us for what we don't have!"

I finished and looked up at him for a response. He paused, looked me in the eye and said, "You got all that from the floor?"

So a little preface for this one.

1. Despite the humour that will hopefully follow, let's remember that I really am the least offensive person ever. Well, perhaps that's just a slight misnomer, but all the same, despite the seeming intolerance for, well, everyone, I really don't care enough to be truly prejudice, never mind towards the mentally challenged, so just stfu. I love everyone equally, if not at all.

2. Bear in mind that I'm a big ol' Jew, so i can say all this shiz. You can't. And if you don't think it's as funny as half of my office (the bulk of this has been adapted from a work e-mail), then, again, stfu.


Ok, so there is a woman at my place of jubilant employment, henceforth known as K, who works in the mail room and has Downs syndrome. Ok, I know. Red flags are already going off like crazy, but hear me out first.

(Actually, before you hear me out, allow me to go slightly blue for a second. Clothing choices: is there no parental or guardianental supervision here? I really think that it is a sign of how little respect we have for the mentally challenged that we assume that they are not worth looking as appropriately presentable as others. Granted, personal expression should be encouraged, but I feel guidance is needed as well. There's just way too much lyrca and Disney-inspired back packs going around. Yes, I'm an asshole, but I'm right and you know it.)

So, I went over two years acting as the perfect model of acceptance and diversity with this lovely girl, going out of my way to make sure that my garbage and recyclables were clearly separated as to not gain her ire, before some very odd behaviour began. Anytime she saw me, she would run in the other direction. I'm not kidding. This 35 year old woman with an English choir boy haircut would literally turn heel and fly away from me. I realize I go through the occasional unseemly fat phase, but this is just uncalled for. Kindness did not help the situation as any salutation would be met with the covering of eyes with her hand while power-walking away; the holding open of a door earned me a look like I had just run over her puppy with a military-issued roadster. Being a friend to all (I'm practically Thumper), this was very disconcerting to me and proved puzzling (though hilarious) to my supervisor and fellow students. Look, we're not mean. None of us would ever dream of making fun of her, it was simply a very odd and, yes, humourous situation.

To make matters even more confusing, there was this totally random moment a few months back where she snapped out of it and seemed to really like me, to the point that we were trading mutual Eastern European heritage stories and even singing Edelweis in the middle of the mail room (She thinks Captain Von Trapp is dreamy).

So about a month ago, one of my fellow students, henceforth known as L, was working with K and my name came up, as I had just walked by and K had put her hand up as a shield to block her vision and uttered a very filter-free "Ugghh!"

"Why, K," my coworker posited, "Whatever is the matter?"

"I don't like him."

"Why not?"

"Well, he's Jewish and he knows that I'm Christian so he probably doesn't like me."

Ah. There we have it. A year of mystery boils down to good ol' antisemitism.

"Well, K, I'm Christian, and David and I are still friends. I'm sure he likes you."

And I do. From that point on, appreciating that this was probably a very stressful situation, I did my best just to avoid her as to not add any undue stress. I realized that this wasn't really bigotry so much as misguided ignorance that, let's face it, could not be curbed.

Then, today, I snapped.

Frequently, when arriving in the morning I will get to work, or rather the Graham/Main intersection, at the same time as a certain other employee who may be deduced by her love of Julie Andrews and racial intolerance.

As I am not one to cause undue anxiety in others, I try to stay behind her, out of sight, in the hopes that my Jew-y presence won’t ruin her morning. This often means walking at an excruciatingly slow pace, which coming from me really does say something.

However, this morning I was in no mood for Fraulein Heil and her fourth reich and decided to make my presence known by walking very clearly in front of her at my own reasonably leisurely pace.

The recoil effect was instantaneous.

Paying no heed, I strode confidently into my God-given place of employment and pressed the button for the elevator (I would have taken the stairs but my messenger bag was weighed down from 5,000 years of oppression.) However, I decided, just for kicks to see just how long it would take Ms. Eva Braun to enter the building after me (I mean, really, I’m already going to hell for killing her lord; what other shenanigans could I get up to?).

FOUR MINUTES!

Four minutes it took before she poked her head around the corner! And was really cold out today!

On the plus side, she was wearing some killer brown pinstripe trousers that go stunningly with the hot pink Barbie backpack.

Because of the hope I had in that night. Because of the magic that comes with a first time experience with no expectations and complete honesty, where there is nothing to live up to nor to prove. Because there's a tragic elegance in realizing that you'll never have either again. Because of prophecies long thought dead being fulfilled. Because sickness makes you seem so much more important for a month than most people have for a lifetime. Because although I never truly believed it was about me, if I let myself forget that for a moment, I felt important. Because you're the only person I've ever known that's been both my whole world and meaningless at the same time. Because of how unique I realized we were when I just typed that. Because I also realized at the same time how fucked up beyond repair it was, too. Because you held a great beauty in your potential and even greater beauty in your failure. Because you showed me how to live while completely ignoring the laws of reality and because that forced me to see that your world isn't for me. Because sometimes it's good for all of us to feel simultaneously needed neglected, just for a while. Because although it was difficult to feel so awful so much of the time, it's still better than feeling nothing...

Happy anniversary, Max.

Affection.

I've been learning a lot about this word recently. From what I've seen thus far, it's far too neglected in among the lexicon beside love, lust, horny, just-as-a-friend, etc. Yet, I think it's the most gracious, perhaps even pure, of all these qualifications of emotion.

Some back story:

This began on new year's eve. Unexpectedly, I wound up raving at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre. I went alone, but I knew that I would run into a certain individual that I knew from a few months previous. We had met last summer at a party and had wound up talking, cuddling, kissing, all those great things. The problem - not really 'problem' but more like extenuating circumstance- ? his boyfriend of five years. They're both nice guys, as am I, with a few rules that provide some leeway at these parties to allow for some PG adventures with others. This was a lovely suprise the first couple times, but on this night instead of going and dancing and enjoying the feelings I used to justify my partying ways at the beginning (newfound sense of sociability, freedom within a slightly crippled body), I spent the entire night in a corner with someone else's boyfriend, cuddling and essentially transferring onto him what I have wanted for myself. There was nothing revelatory about this; I went home feeling base and immoral, not because of his boyfriend, but because of who I was at that party. This did not work for me. The entire thing was, well, icky. Not at the time, but in the days after I just felt unclean. At first I was confused as to why it bothered me so much and then, about five days later, I realized that on that night I had reverted to my 17 year old self, the one to whom the very notion of holding hands without commitment is abhorrent. Since then I've been drug-, alcohol- and sex-free, save for the odd glass of wine and I've been, shockingly, happy. Not hills-are-alive happy, but definitely more at peace than I was this fall. I'm trying not to analyze it too much. Since I've put vice for the most part I've been freed to get to know people rather than try to squeeze them into the mold of what I hope they could be. That too has been lovely and I've made a couple of potentially great friends in the past month, which brings us back to affection.

Whenever we meet someone new, there's a tendency to try to place them into a box which corresponds to what we're missing in life. A lot of times this is a committed romantic partner. This is even further magnetized in the queer community where our odds are further decreased 9:!. We make grocery lists of the qualities we want in The One and upon meeting this new person immediately cross check whether or not they have the minimum required characteristics to begin down the road to romantic bliss. The first check point is always attraction, which has been generally been my curse (though occasional gift as well) as I'm pretty much not attracted to anyone, ergo it's pretty easy to rule people out right away for that kind of relationship.

Being in this new state of chastity, though, I've essentially thrown out the check list and have started to really take people on for who they are, and what I've come up with is a lot of affection. Affection for those that have been around for years, as well as for new people I just met a couple of weeks ago. But I worry sometimes if that's enough for them. I don't think people really understand this word. When I say or act in a way that says, "I am really very fond of you," I'm getting these, "Great! Let's date!" reactions, and there's nothing that I can say to assure them that my saying no is not a rejection of them.

I'm fond of you, motherfucker, isn't that enough?!