POV: You’re The “i” In The Pixar Logo

The house of double 0 double 0

my actual response to the question: "may you stay forever young?"

see: booker t. washington, sigmund freud

Hope gave birth to three children.

            The first of these children, a boy, loved his mother very much. As an infant, he eagerly drank from his mother’s teat, and grew to be very strong and determined, with a virtuous compassion and understanding for others. He observed many injustices in the world and was optimistic in his power and the ability of others to address them, and so, while it was painful, he left home, having had his fill of his mother’s milk. He went out into the world, observed the inequalities suffered by minority populations at the hands of the majority, and worked hard to educate the minority so that one day, they might achieve full representation and equality with the majority. In his efforts, the son faced many trials at the hands of the discriminatory majority that tested him greatly, but ultimately helped him to grow. In spite of his struggles, he remained optimistic that the minority and majority populations would one day live in harmony. He failed often, but brought himself up from these failures with a steadfast determination to move forward in his fight for equality. He saw challenges as opportunities, rather than roadblocks. And every so often, he would return to his mother and be nurtured by her love and care. Hope herself felt very enlivened and invigorated by the accomplishments of her first-born son, whether they were small or large. Finally, years after he had left home, the son died in his weeping mother’s arms, satisfied with his life’s work and believing in the possibility for progress to his final breath.

            Hope then gave birth to a second child, a daughter. As an infant, this child hated the taste of her mother’s milk. Once she was old enough, the poorly nourished daughter fled her home and also went out into the world. Hope was devastated by this abandonment. Now free from her home, this child lacked the sort of faith that her elder brother had had in his struggle to obtain full equality. Instead, the child only saw people suffering from deeply institutionalized oppression that pervaded nearly every aspect of society. She saw people embroiled in miserable struggles to repress, sublimate, and project their unconscious desires while being crushed by the foot of societal rules and the pressures of mass conformity. Achieving equality, economically or politically, appeared to be a futile form of appeasement to the daughter. Thus, she scoffed at her brother’s work, seeing his achievements as short-term remedies that attempted to address or rationalize the symptoms of discontent and ultimately ignored the underlying cause: widespread, abject repression of desire. Hope’s heart grew very heavy with sadness and disillusionment when she learned of her daughter’s pessimism. Many years later, the estranged daughter died far away from home, having never seen her mother again and embittered about the future of human existence to her last breath.

            Hope gave birth to one more child, another son. This child greedily suckled for many years from his mother’s breast. Always filled with his mother’s milk, he was optimistic that all would be right in the world, and that all of the evils faced by people—inequality, discrimination, violence, repression, mindless conformity—would eventually resolve themselves. Thus, he never went out into the world. Out of his brimming optimism in the capabilities of others, or perhaps out of fear, he never bothered or cared to leave home, and so he remained a child in his mother’s home. While he never encountered the dark oppression that burdened his older sister, he also never felt the joy or the pride his brother experienced out of triumph over hardships. While Hope nurtured and loved the hungry child, she herself became very weak, lacking the nourishment she had received from the fruit of her firstborn’s accomplishments and exhausted from having to continually feed her younger son. Eventually, the child could sense his mother’s debilitation, and decided that he had had his fill of his mother’s milk. He left his home and pursued greater equality for all, just like his brother had once done. He began to age, lived a long life full of challenges, failures, and successes, and died in his weeping mother’s arms.

            Hope gave birth to many more children. Some turned away from her, never believing in the possibility for progress. Some loved her greatly and worked tirelessly to stem the evils that they perceived in the world. And others tried to hold onto her for as long as they could without ever trying to do something about the injustices they observed, but eventually she had to let them go, because Hope alone could not sustain them forever.

i dunno...i guess it got me a good grade

who wants to see the awful thing i just made

One Friday night...

...I will challenge myself (and any other crazies that wanna join me) to accomplish everything in Katy Perry's hit song, "Last Friday Night." This means that I will have to accomplish several things in various time frames:

Friday night:

Dance on table tops

Take too many shots

Kiss someone and think that I forgot

Max my credit card (:[ :[ :[)

Get kicked out of a bar

Hit the boulevard (I'm thinking Las Vegas Boulevard)

Streak in the park

Skinny dip in the dark

Have a menage a trois (woo)

Be unsure about the legality of an action

Say that I'm gonna stop

The following Saturday morning:

Host a stranger in my bed

Suffer from pounding in my head

Find glitter all over my room...

...And pink flamingos in my pool

Smell like a minibar (so, like, alcohol, I guess)

Find a DJ passed out in the yard

Discover Barbie on the barbecue

Have a hickey or a bruise, and be unsure about which of the two it really is

Try to connect the dots

Be unsure of what to tell my boss 

Think that the city towed my car (:[ :[ :[)

Find the chandelier on the floor

Rip my favorite party dress (awww)

Have a warrant out for my arrest (:[[[[[[[[[[)

Need a ginger ale

Have pictures from last night end up online

Be screwed (oh well)

Struggle to remember last night, as it is a blacked-out blur

Assure myself that it ruled (dayum!)

Finally, next Friday night:

Do it all again.

...

TGIF

TGIF

TGIF

(Hopefully, I can work a Kenny G solo up in there somehow)

a staying-in story.

the coming-out was quick. when it happened, there were a few breathless moments that seemed painfully extended, but once the words were said, it was pretty much over. both my friends and family respectfully and graciously acknowledged it, asked a few questions, and then i was free.

it was the staying-in that felt like it lasted forever.

the realization that i was gay came gradually; i didn’t just wake up one day and suddenly have homosexual urges. from perhaps the age of nine or ten, i would see handsome men in films or on the television and feel a little mesmerized, or i would coyly gaze at a cute boy for a little longer than i expected i would. these longing looks were quickly averted before they could be noticed. with time, the frequency and length of these stares would increase, and the intensity of the feelings in my chest would manifest itself in the clenching of my teeth.

i learned to mask these feelings. my parents and older siblings would tease me about my friends who were girls, asking if i were interested in any of them, and i would casually drop names of a few classmates who had pleasant features that i found reasonably, but not heart-thumpingly, attractive. my family’s hopes for my future; my brothers’ machismo; my mother’s religious beliefs—all of these were what i perceived as rational, if unfortunate, reasons for me to stay in the closet.

i came to realize that my family’s hopes were my own. they wished for me to grow up to marry a nice girl, and i desperately hoped and prayed for the same thing. it wasn’t so much that i grew up thinking being gay was wrong, but rather that being straight was right. it’s not that the fairytales and disney cartoons i worshipped show gays being violently punished for their misbehavior, but rather that straight people, the princes and their glowing maidens, are rewarded with happy endings in glorious palaces and castles. i felt powerless to rewrite those stories for myself.

so, to achieve my fairytale ending, it became necessary to lie. saying it that way makes it sound like i was on a mission, and in a way, i was. dating a girl was a goal for me, something to add to my list of to-dos on my road to a life acceptable by my standards and those of the people whom i cared for the most. i regrettably deceived girls into thinking i was interested in them, not out of malice, but because i wanted so badly to actually be interested  in them. eventually, the person  i lied to the most was myself. i consciously and foolishly told myself that these excruciating desires to be with men would cleanly resolve themselves once i found a girl that i could feel truly passionate about; that nothing else would matter once i found my own princess who would gladly inhabit a palace or a castle with me. thankfully, my attempts to build relationships with girls all failed—although back then, i was thoroughly ashamed and disappointed in myself for failing as a man, at least from my limited perspective. to this day, i still feel terrible about the girls to whom i swore such deep commitment, and yet failed to even feign interest in; about the indisputable fact that i lied to them so intimately and for so long.

it’s almost funny how relatively quickly i transitioned from thinking that i would have to hide my sexuality for the rest of my life to looking forward to living with it happily and publicly. within the span of sophomore and junior years of college, i decided that i wanted to come out, actually followed through with it, and went on my first date with a guy. surely, there were lots of cultural factors; the rise of queer eye for the straight guy, the release of brokeback mountain, the proud announcement of lance bass.  the film milk was particularly instrumental; it’s probably the reason why i’m writing this in the first place. admittedly, alcohol also made it a lot easier for me to finally verbalize that i was gay.

perhaps the most rewarding part of coming out—and i can’t really say if it was a cause, or the result—wasn’t that i could finally love men openly, but that i could finally, truly love myself for the person that i really was. when i think of the shame and the guilt or the fear and the sadness, i also reflect on how much happier and more confident and hopeful i feel than i ever did before. for me, peering deep into the closet has been just as valuable as the moment when i finally stepped out of it.

and i guess that’s where the fairytale begins.

Yo wassup t e a c h