Grindr and Priorities for Writers

As an aspiring novelist who's trying to get published, I love this guy's pitch and hope to be able to use it soon on my own Grindr profile. Abs like his would be nice too.

From Tumblr:

This grindr guy clearly has his assets in order: muscles THEN the fact that he’s a published author.

therussross

John Boehner and Barack Obama

I’m posting this entire post from Paul Krugman’s blog over at the New York Times website. Thanks to Scott for the heads up.

My Obama Problem

John Boehner, March 2009:

          It’s time for government to tighten their belts and show the American people that we ‘get’ it

Barack Obama, yesterday:

          “At a time when so many families are tightening their belts, he’s going to make sure that the government continues to tighten its own,” Obama said. “

We’ll never know how differently the politics would have played if Obama, instead of systematically echoing and giving credibility to all the arguments of the people who want to destroy him, had actually stood up for a different economic philosophy. But we do know how his actual strategy has worked, and it hasn’t been a success.

The Conscience of a Liberal: My Obama Problem

I Write Like...

I saw an ad for a website called I Write Like, which is supposed to analyze any sample of writing you give it and tell you what famous author has the closest writing style to yours. I was curious so I put in the text from my last post, here's the result I got:

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Seriously?? In my fiction I tend to think my style is influenced by something between Ernest Hemingway and James Baldwin, with a little Virginia Woolf thrown in every once in a while. But for this blog I pretty much just ramble and don't make things as professional. I'm not really much of a Joyce fan, I think he's sort of interesting when it comes to style but I think his content is boring compared to his peers who were doing similar things like Woolf, Stein, Proust, Faulkner. Or maybe I'm just rebelling against my Irish Catholic side.

Anyway, It's also possible that this site spits out a random author to try to flatter people into clicking links. I can't say I'm flattered, I just think it's weird.

Five Years

So it just occurred to me that today is a strange kind of anniversary for me. Five years ago today, I met up with a guy off the internet. He was six years older than me, completely closeted (like I was), 6’2 and 185 lbs, perfect body, military, black Irish – just my type. We met up at a diner and I was nervous as fuck because I’d never messed around with a guy before. He was nervous too. We talked for a little while, didn’t know what we should do, where we should go from there. I brought up a park near my house, so we did it, drove over in separate cars, met up, and started walking up some trails into the woods, and then he pulled me close to him and he started to kiss me and from then on I was sure about the kind of person I was and the kind of things I wanted.

It’s funny that the reason I remember that this is the date is because today is the birthday of a girl I knew from high school. When it was all over, when we had thrown our clothes back on wiped away the dirt and the sweat from our skin, emerged from those woods, we parted ways and I started walking to the house of a girl I was friends with from high school. I’d been getting calls all afternoon. My straight friends were all there and they didn’t know what happened. Someone handed me a piece of cake and I asked what the occasion was, and someone said, “It’s her birthday,” so I shut up and didn’t say anything and just stood there and I was glowing. I was euphoric. It was the kind of feeling I’d only had before when I had smoked a lot of weed or drank a lot of alcohol. Except it wasn't like that. It was better.

Things didn’t work out between me and the guy, of course. But I think I was completely in love with him. It’s pathetic now that I think about it. Nowadays I’m mostly a top but back then with him I did everything he wanted and I sucked his dick for hours and he once fucked me on the floor of a vacant apartment in a bad part of town where he’d been sent for contracting work. I was happy just to be doing that. But he would disappear, have no contact, then reappear weeks later. Later on, he had a boyfriend who he treated the same way, and the boyfriend began to stalk me because the boyfriend assumed that all the time he was out somewhere with me when really he wasn't.

It’s funny to think about the places I’ve been, the things I’ve done, in those years since I first started with men. It’s strange to think about it as a set period of time. Things I’ve felt since then, like lust or love or the desire to just fuck someone out of anger or frustration or just to feel like a man – they’ve all happened since then.

I don’t know where the marine is now, it’s been so long since he’s contacted me. But what I do know is that if right now, or tomorrow, he were to send me a text or an IM or make a phone call, I would be right over there, immediately. It’s fucking pathetic, but that’s how I feel and I’m wired to be like that and I guess everyone is with the first guy who they get with and who fucks them and who fucks them over. Maybe I’m just wired not to love anyone else the same way, it’s just the way my mind has been set. It’s just the way I am. And five years from now, I wonder if I’ll still be set the same exact way.

Rachel Maddow

This high school photo of my media crush Rachel Maddow just proves how drastic an impact college tends to have on us queer kids. I too went into my first year of college with long blond hair and pearls, and came out of it looking like an underage boy. (No offense Rachel, I love you ::heart::)

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