44. Don't take your parents for granted.

coming out.

43. trying not to make situations awkward makes situations even more awkward.

i'm going to take a brief break from my usual anti-romance writing and present to you things i do to make awkward situations all the more awkward.

but if you read the title, you probably already figured that out.

anyway.

1.  walking in the rain back up to my internship office, i turned the corner and found myself face to face with a middle-aged man who was mid-swing in what looked like an umbrella-rain-dance-a-la-Gene-Kelly.

and instead of joining in [as i should've done, in retrospect], i stared for a few seconds before finally offering a friendly smile.

too late.

he took off without another word, ashamed.

2.  i was eating breakfast in an elevator when i noticed yet another middle-aged man was watching me.  mouth full of food, i tried to strain a smile.

it felt like a Grinch smile.

he looked away.

3.  "I'm yoh mommy, I'm not gonna like any boys you girls bring home."

"Well, that's lucky for me!"

"GIRLS, TOO."

[this one wasn't actually entirely my fault, but it's fun to share.]

4.  "You know, relationships and, uh, all that, that stuff that go with them, they're tough."

"...Yeah.  I dunno, Daddy, I just don't know...what...to do...with girls."

"Me neither!  I had no idea til the wedding night."

"...Gross."

5.  [shortly after #4]

"I don't know how to go about being affectionate either."

"Okay."

"You know, haha, one day, I told your mom -- I was kidding around -- 'Wanna go upstairs, to our room?'"

"Um."

"And she said, haha, 'You gonna hap to seduce me first.'  Hahahaha  Of course, I didn't know how."

"Gross."

6.  I drunkenly ran into a cute girl at a party.  Didn't know how to carry on a conversation, as usual.

So, instead, I said, "Put your arms up like this!"

She did.

And I went in for a Sneak Hug.

7.  I was 5, talking to my best friend.

"I'm not saying I LIKE girls, I'm just saying that if I was a boy I'd like Kate."

"Um..."

"So if YOU were a boy, which girl would YOU like?"

"...I don't know..."

"C'mon...you've never...thought about it?"

"No."

"C'mon!  I won't tell anyone.  This is just make-believe."

"...Vickie, I don't know."

"GAH!  You're lame!"

8.  playing Life with my sisters and my younger cousins, to whom I wasn't Out yet.  it was my turn.

"'Stop.  It's your wedding day!'"

"Okay, so you get to put someone else in your car."

"...Make it a pink one."

"...Why?"

"I dunno.  My husband could like pink.  Or maybe I don't want to get married.  Maybe I just want to go through life with my best friend."

::silence::

"...Okay.  Here's your pink piece."

[later, my turn again.]

"Yay!  My...best friend...and I are adopting twins!"

9.  [Someone tells a bad joke.]

Me:  Bwahahahahahaha!

Cousin Angelina:  You laugh too much.

Me: ...[internal suffering]...Bwahahahahaha...!

10.  someone in my 12th grade English class told a bad joke about the book we were discussing.

having only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before, delirious, i replied, when the laughing stopped, "That was nerdy.  We are nerds."

11.  in my 10th grade English class, discussion turned to the topic of bullying.

i raised my hand.

and proceeded to go into a 10 minute tirade about the evils of bullying.

and started to cry.

a lot.

everyone was stunned and silent.

"I-I-I don't know hahaha  why I'm crying  hahahaha  boohoohoooooooo!  Hahaha!  Boohoo!  Haha!  PMS!  Boohoo!"

--

if there're more, you'll be the first to know.

42. i think too much.

but i'm not really drunk right now.

at least, that's what i keep telling myself.

in all honesty, sometimes i prefer being drunk.  not in an AAA kind of way, where i douse my daddy issues with copious amounts of liquid courage, make admissions to total strangers about things i could never tell my friends.

just in the sense that Drunk Vickie gets [at least some] shit done.

she picks the right background music -- for secretly emotional lesbians -- and makes moves on people her sober foil would normally be too scared to talk to.

that being said, booze plus attachment don't necessarily always meet good ends.

it's all well and good when i recognize the fact that i'd never have a future with the target of conversation, but when i'm into someone and not around them, i find myself making the mistake of succumbing to the lure of my phone's keypad and undoubtedly making a clingy fool of myself.

and when i am around them, and suspect at least a small amount of mutual attraction, the clinginess is all the more obvious.

is this a bad thing?  in a lot of ways i wish i could be as forthcoming as Drunk Vickie.  i wish i could say the things on my mind rather than think into the silence all of the words that never find a way out.

she wanted to talk about buildings.  about how bare hands built them so big, made something so withstanding and beautiful.

all Sober Vickie managed to reply was, "Yeah, buildings are great."

and the part of me that only comes out when coaxed by sufficiently lubed chords revolted, was revolted, by the silence: the strain that choked the passage out, suffocated any chance of connection.

when i said, "Yeah, buildings are great," i hoped she heard something else.

that all i think about are buildings.  how big they are, how little their parts are.  how, of all the  pieces of all the universe, these somehow found their way to this one place.  to me.  for me to see.  and how, in a second, bad luck, it can all be destroyed.  pull out a piece, strike it, touch it wrong, and the whole thing comes crashing down.  and we can do that.  he builds it, he takes it apart.

but i'm over that now, just like i get over so many lost sober conversations.

it probably isn't healthy to assume that my only meaningful conversations come about when i'm loud and obnoxious and careless, but try as i might to navigate those waters between what's too much and what isn't enough -- being close and not too close or not close enough -- i mess up.  and any disconnect i blame on my over-conscious sobriety.

i wish i could shut my brain off, live in the moment, be myself.  but when i really like someone, or convince myself that that affection is a distinct possibility, i become everything but myself; or, in a way, too much of myself.  overwhelming.

how can i trust myself in these situations when so many past chances went astray and negated all of those "Love yourself!" infomercials?

being the narcissist that i am, i think about myself constantly.  so much so i'm sure this is one of the many reasons my last relationship, last potential relationships, didn't work.  they aren't always positive thoughts, but they're enough to keep me so occupied i'm sure i wasn't built for romance.

any contact, any inkling of a connection, makes me weary; i want it so badly sometimes i get wrapped up in possibilities rather than actual goings-on.

granted, all of these things pave the way for hilarious anecdotes i share with you for laughs, and i love making you laugh, but, just for once, i wouldn't mind having a boring, normal, for realsies relationship.

40. parents know you better than you know yourself.

Can you pick out the lesbian?

i recently came across a blog, "Born This Way," which features user-submitted photos and essays about their early days as either closeted or unaware gays and lesbians.  sometimes shocking, mostly hilarious and sweet, the posts inspired me to take a look at my own past and find out just how early on i started to show signs, if i did at all.


unsurprisingly, i found a couple of telling photos and subsequently decided to share with you some of my lezzie background.


at the time of the photo above, my cousin Jack was my very best friend.  he couldn't speak just yet, so already we had a connection that transcended words.

Different outfits, positions.  So you know it's a different day.

mostly we just followed each other around and quietly sat in the armchair.  [once, though, i convinced him to climb a bookshelf with me so we could get our hands on the Elmo doll that was out of reach.  the entire shelf fell with a deafening crash and somehow, miraculously, Jack and i fit right in the gaps and walked away without a scratch.]


he was the only boy in our family, really, apart from another cousin i never really got close to.  i was jealous of him in a lot of ways, and insisted on dressing like him: t-shirt and undies, that's all.


my aunt even cut my hair super short, as my mother complained that my curls were unmanageable and often looked like a fro.  i can't even begin to describe how happy i was [about as happy as when my mom, after years of my begging, let me swim topless like a boy for a little while.  i was 8.].


moreover, my toy collection was pretty androgynous [following a Christmas where my aunt gifted me a toy purse and i immediately tossed it to Annie, my girliest sister, and turned back to my fire truck.  this was all caught on tape.  everyone grew accustomed to my tomboyish preferences.] so Jack and i had a lot of fun.


to this day we bond over our mutual love for Tina Fey and have discovered that we have eerily similar tastes in women.

this was the closest i got to being a Disney Princess.

i remember how, on the day we bought it, my mom first tried to convince me to wear a number of different girl/princess costumes.

"Don' you wanna be Belle?"

"Yuck!  No!"

she sighed despairingly and finally surrendered.  it was my first taste of real cross-dressing [which is actually weird to say, being that it's a candlestick] and i was pumped.  in fact, Halloween became my favorite holiday because it was the one time of the year my mother would let me explicitly be boyish [every year, in fact, i was some kind of guy: the Black Ranger, Charlie Chaplin, the Phantom of the Opera, Huckleberry Finn, etc.].

from the time i was 5 to around my sophomore year of high school, my mother refused to let me buy/wear anything remotely masculine, believing, as i later found out, that she was slowing or even preventing the progression of my gayness.

it's weird to think that there are gay kids out there; probably because we're so trained to think of gayness as a sexuality, whereas straightness is just, well, natural.

we don't like to associate children with ideas of sexuality because they're completely innocent, so when a child claims to have a crush on someone of the same sex, no one takes him/her seriously, but if a kid was to have a crush on someone of the opposite sex, nobody would question it.

but my mother picked up on the early signs: the fact that i only wanted to play with LEGOs and action figures; how i begged to swim topless; how i watched Audrey Hepburn movies, over and over again; how i told people i was going to be just like Ellen Degeneres when i grew up.

the weirdest part about this journey, though, is that my mother's worries began, not when the above started, but the day of my birth.

when she was pregnant with me, she noticed how different the pregnancy was compared to those she had with my sisters.

all of the old wives' tales convinced both of my parents that i was going to be a boy: her cravings; the position of her belly; her mood swings; how easy the pregnancy was.

there was no doubt in anyone's mind; they even only picked out boy names.

so when the doctor cried, "It's a girl!" my mother knew that i was going to grow up with gender or sexuality issues; that somehow, even though i was a girl, something in the womb made me more masculine, or partial to a-typical gender behavior.

so began what she later called "The Sabotage."

she and my dad regularly got into fights over it; when i was 7, Olivia overheard them and confronted me.

"Mommy says she thinks you're a lesbian."

"...What's a lesbian?"

"It's when a girl likes girls the way only boys are supposed to like girls."

Uh oh.

and from then on, i was in the closet.

my mother told my dad to stop buying me action figures because they might turn me gay; my dad refused.

"Even if that's the case, I don't want her to grow up confused or hating herself."

so i started to receive mixed messages.

from my dad, that my tomboyishness was okay; we played catch all the time, bonded over Civil and Revolutionary War facts, etc.

my mother subtly tried to press more feminine or "normal" ideas into my head; i wasn't allowed to wear khakis, or cut my hair short, or play the trumpet or drums.

only bell-bottoms, curls, and the violin for me.

as i got older, though, it seemed that they were both more or less aware of how permanent my gayness was.

the only mixed messages i received teetered between hints of them knowing and others of them still wishing otherwise.

"You know, iss uh so saaaaad, about Jodie Fostah.  About how people peel like dey can't come out to dah people dey lobe.  But I HOPE DEY KNOW DAT, NO MATTAH WHAT, DEY WILL ALWAYS BE SOMEONE WHO LOBE DEM NO MATTAH WHAT."

so when i finally did Come Out, the results were a bit anti-climactic.

not that i'm not grateful for that; it's definitely better than the alternative.

but it did make me reexamine my past and reevaluate how much credit i gave my parents over the years.

how, even with their initial misgivings on how to deal with my Difference, the fact that they were able to catch it early on and eventually come to terms with it, almost no questions asked, is something of a miracle.

i kind of can't wait til i have kids of my own and get to pretend to exercise some form of ESP.

or just collect hilarious/embarrassing stories about them throughout their lives.

and tell all of their friends.

threaten their potential significant others.

39. bitches be triflin'.

ultra-conservative, hypocritical bitches, that is.


normally i don't let this blog get political; the farthest i've gone, i think, is talking about my gayness, which, while unproblematic to me, seems to garner some kind of ultra-liberal, hippie-dippie weight with its very existence.


but.


recent events in Congress have gotten me thinking.


i won't pretend to be savvy in political matters.  the extent of my knowledge and the reasoning behind my views really only go so far as, "Well, I don't like the idea of other people in pain, period, so I'll support [or refute, as the case may be] these issues."


to me, some things are just that simple.


but whenever i hear the other side of certain issues, i wonder if i'm ignorant or too simplistic in my thoughts.


i mean, who in their right mind would purposely go about causing harm to others without good reason?


i've decided to try to break it down for myself, or at least to try to imagine the trains of thought of those who confuse me:


1.  Guns don't kill people; people kill people.  Just like how foul men don't rape women; lustful, amoral women who willingly get themselves into sticky situations give their violators the opportunity.


2.  We need to keep The Debauchatron at bay.


3.  [While reading the public-option for healthcare]  "'The poor will be provided equal access to healthcare...will have the option...valuable resources for increasing the welfare of general society...TAXES?!'  This is EEEEVILLLL.  Why should I have to spend part of my hard-earned salary to help improve the standard of living of those who haven't EARNED IT?  It's not my fault if they grew up in a poorly budgeted area and system.  They should've been born and raised elsewhere.  I need that money for the yacht I've had my eye on."


4.  Sex education'll start giving kids the wrong idea.  Telling kids about it, making all that crap available, they'll wanna start doing it.


...But not like the gun thing.  Just because guns are easily accessible and constantly shown on TV and in the movies doesn't mean they're gonna start, you know, buying or using guns at school or anything.  Pshaw.  Totally different.  They're not dumb enough for THAT.  Especially if we, you know, hide them in our nightstands.  


Like abstinence for guns.


5.  God gave you that cancer that might make childbirth fatal.  Don't disrupt His plan.  He just loves that fetus more than He loves you.


6.  What's "STI?"  Sounds like some kind of alien code or something.  If it's that bad, don't have sex with aliens.  Or at all.  We don't need anymore alien babies in this country.


7.  Illegal immigrants don't pay the taxes [we don't want to pay, either].


8.  Abortion is murder and the death penalty is...just desserts.


9.  Gay marriage means they'll wanna start marrying, you know, their dogs.


Love is a good thing, as long as the parts fit and it's not for people who like "choice," gun control, and non-elitist education systems.


--


okay, so maybe i failed in understanding the other side.


but if you're on the other side, let me explain my reasoning to you.


i believe in God.  i don't think my pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-welfare views contradict that fact in the slightest.


actually, for the longest time, while i was grappling with my sexuality, part of me was so empty because of how i truly felt that He renounced the very life He gave me and i tried to return the favor.


when i was at the end of my rope, plotting ways to end it all, i finally decided to read the Bible - in hopes of hearing, once and for all, from God's own assumed disembodied voice, that my life was a mistake.


but while those maybe 4 or so lines mentioned the wrongness of sodomy, they said nothing about Love.


Love of self.


Love of others.


Love of life, in general.


when Love occupied just about every other word in the rest of the book.


finally, i found the strength to be myself and Come Out and find happiness and wish the same for everyone i know and everyone i've yet to meet.


even you, People Bent on Stealing My Voice and Rights to Live.


i could never support anything that promised to make uneducated assumptions about the lives of the people i love - and i love everyone.


abortion is one of the most difficult decisions a woman can make, according to my mother who, one pregnancy prior to giving birth to my eldest sister, faced that very same decision when she and my dad just could not financially or emotionally support a baby.


when i see the pain in her eyes in recalling that choice, and hear her explain that it was what was right for them at the time, i know that this decision isn't one that's made lightly, as those men in Congress seem to believe.


more than this, i could never allow a broken system to force women into these situations in the first place.


i advocate proper education, preparedness, awareness, and protection.


like most people, i wish we lived in a world devoid of tough decisions, conflict, poverty, education gaps, and discrimination.


but we don't.


the best we can do is prepare ourselves.  give ourselves a chance.  respect one another.  Love each other.

38. whoa. that was stupid. [for those i've repelled with awkwardness.]

i don't pick up on signals.

whenever i privately fantasize about pseudo-romantic rendezvouses [haha the plural for rendezvous makes me laugh], i fancy myself the pursuer; but in real-life situations, whenever i decide to take a plunge into the murky depths of Romance and Lesbian Night-Clubs, i'm the wall-flower, praying to Jeebus that someone will pick up on the fact that i'm too terrified to make the first move.

Big Spoon dreams with Little Spoon attitude.

actually, not even Little Spoon attitude.

just Inexcusable Idiocy.

i have that special curse, sometimes gift, where months - years, even - after the fact, i can remember the smallest details of situations gone wrong.

maybe it's because i'm constantly blaming myself for my inability to "connect," and i feel the need to dissect events that haunt me with hopes of improving myself, guarding myself against future failures.

or maybe it's just because i'm well aware of the fact that God seems to have purposely and purposefully armed me with a talent for carrying out almost cinematically ridiculous acts for the entertainment of others, and i'd feel guilty if my hilarious pain wasn't offered up for someone else's joy.

anywho.

after reading a number of drunken journal entries (that are far too embarrassing to put up here, even for me), as well as bitterly looking back through a slightly more socially aware microscope, i've decided to address certain happenstances and apologize to those who have fallen victim to my debilitating social-ineptness.

and to help those of you who find yourselves in similar circumstances.

1. one night, i was in bed with someone i was actually beginning to like.

like, like-like.

meaning that i didn't know what the fuck to do about it. granted, we were, as i said, already in bed together, and, as such, you'd think that any awkward tension was obliterated; however, being that i was just waking up from a drunken stupor and was therefore once again aware of my own inhibitions, we were back at square one.

so when she started to shiver, while on her side, facing away from me, my first thought wasn't, Oh! She wants to cuddle! Thank God! as it should've been, because lord knows i would've jumped at the chance.

instead, i felt guilty that she was so cold even though she was already under the covers.

so as quietly as i could, i went and found another blanket and covered her with it.

genuinely thinking that this was the most thoughtful and correct course of action.

...yeah.

2. not too long after #1, in the same evening, that is [yes, i know, poor whoeversheis], i went to the bathroom, convinced she was still asleep. when i returned, she was almost entirely on my side of the bed.

i figured she just moved in her sleep, so i did my best to un-awkwardly maneuver myself so that i was at least partially on the mattress, still worried i might disturb her.

but she wasn't even completely asleep, and when she stirred a bit i hesitated before asking, as politely as possible, "Um...would you mind, like...moving over a little bit?"

and i discovered just a second later that there was no polite way to ask that.

and i realized several months later that it might have been another one of those signs.

3. the next morning ["Holy shit, Vickie, seriously?!"], when we were in front of her building, there was a brief, tense moment of silence. suddenly, she lunged at me with a kiss. i was so taken aback i only managed to summon enough consciousness to nervously laugh and say, "Okay. See you later!"

walking away, i was already slowly dying inside.

4. moving on to another unlucky lady:

out of the blue, she asked me out.

surprised and sincerely interested - being that this was the first time anyone had been forward enough to do so - i consented.

the date went well. very well.

but when i realized that i might actually really like her, in true Vickie form i retreated to my inner fortress and shut down.

so, at the end of the night, when i was dropping her off and she asked, so directly, if i wanted to kiss her, i was overcome with two thoughts: the first, Oh my God. She already knows me well enough to be this direct. I feel so exposed.; and the second, Uhhhhhhh...

unfortunately, the second thought found its way out, filled the air with unnecessary tension, and i convinced myself that i fucked things up and there was no way in hell she was still into me.

so no, we didn't kiss.

and yes, i do use, "Uhhh..." as a legitimate form of communication.

5. "I like you, Vickie."

"Aww. I like you, too!"

"Oh, man. 'Cos last year, when I told my friends about it, I finally decided to make a move on you at the next USC party, but you had just officially gotten with someone else."

beat.

"Oh! You meant that like!"

6. when a girl invited me over to her place for a night of SNL, i figured she just wanted to be friends.

i had only very recently Come Out, so i was desperate for comrades.

and when she inched so close to me on the couch, to the point where she was practically sitting on one of my arms, i wondered if that was just how lesbians bonded.

7. Text: I'm stuck in traffic - I could really use some entertainment ;P

My reply: Oh...that's unfortunate. I'm sorry. :/ LA traffic sucks.

8. "Oh, man, I really wanna dance right now!"

"Go for it - I can't really dance."

---

and this is just a small sampling, mind you. i have 3 journals worth of bitter introspection and regret.

it always amazes me just how wonderfully and relentlessly i fuck things up.

if you have been on the receiving end of my clueless anti-whims, please know how deeply sorry i am.

talking to people on a one-on-one basis has never been easy for me; that middleground, between acknowledging that i can be too guarded only to discover, in an effort to remedy that flaw, that i'm also susceptible to word vomit, is yet to be charted.

try as i might to prevent myself from putting up my walls, keeping a wary eye on myself more than on the situation at hand, i tend to grasp for any possible thought to keep things going. and more often than not, all i find is that no matter what, being myself around people who interest me is tough; i either don't open up enough, or i try to be so exposed that the words that fly out of my mouth, like shrapnel over a promising conversation, are false.

so, again, i'm sorry to those i may have hurt or deterred.

i can honestly say that it's not you, it's me.

37. don't put the cart before the horse. but here are some things i'm going to teach my kids or nieces and nephews [if they're ever to exist.].

i do a lot of wishful thinking.

like considering having kids someday.

even if i don't, and i commit myself to a life of hermithood, here are some things i might prioritize, based on observations and personal experiences/preferences:

1. the difference between "your" and "you're."

mama didn't [won't] raise no fool.

2. the differences between "their," "there," and "they're."

3. good storytelling, oral and written.

the written part of which will be enhanced by their knowledge of the aforementioned distinctions.

4. puns.

5. to take PepcidAC to avoid Asian Glow when drinking.

6. to not laugh like a monster, as my sister tells me i do.

(i.e. BWA-hahahaha)

7. rudimentary social skills.

the responsibility of which will be placed on their other mother's shoulders.

or, if i'm single, those of their aunts.

...better yet, family friends.

8. to be unafraid of telling bad jokes.

9. though i'd probably still prefer it if they mastered the art of joke-telling.

10. to recover after accidentally blurting out some unflattering detail about themselves.

or doing something stupid.

11. to actually not be afraid of doing something stupid in public, which will be aided by the Recovery Lesson.

12. Black, Yellow, Brown people are okay.

13. the White ones, too.

14. and Europeans.

15. foreigners and immigrants, in general.

16. it's okay to be straight.

and bi, trans, and, obviously, gay/lesbian.

17. eat whatever the hell you want.

there's nothing wrong with having more to love.

18. i'm probably going to be that annoying mother who tells their kids they're beautiful and amazing and that i love them on the daily.

even in front of their friends.

19. don't be afraid of grandma.

20. old school Nickelodeon was way better in my day.

you can watch my DVD collection instead of that new crap.

21. it's okay to cry during sports movies, no matter what Aunts Olivia and Annie say.

and mommy's friends.

22. it's okay to write cringeworthy journal entries.

in a few years you'll probably laugh at them/yourself and wear them as a badge of honor.

23. if you laugh first, no one else has the chance to laugh at you.

24. even your bad ideas are probably good ones if you're willing to laugh at yourself.

25. Harry Potter is a way of life.

26. don't be so afraid of your feelings for other people that Asian Glow comes out while you're un-inebriated.

or you run away.

and avoid them.

27. hugging/human contact can be a good thing.

28. in fact, most people would probably tell you that it IS a good thing.

29. having feelings isn't a bad thing, even if i sometimes make fun of you for it.

i only do it out of love.

30. don't be afraid of wishful thinking.

31. don't be ashamed of your taste in things.

even if no one else really understands why you love The Village so much.

--

and that's all for now.

i'll probably be working on this for the next 50-some-odd years.