Aajki Taaja Khabar (Today's Fresh News)

I managed to catch a little bit of the GLAAD media awards (Gay and Lesbian Alliance against defamation). It was awesome. It was on logo. Truly inspirational. It was like the Oscars only that each and everything directly appealed to me as a gay person. Truly glamorous. There were awards for little episodes that showed gays in good light and awards for entire shows dedicated to gays. Awards that were related to gays and awards for gays. They lamented the fact that broke back mountain didn’t win at the Oscars but went on the say that it simply meant that GLAAD had more work to do and took the whole thing in a very positive light. Ok, now I feel like I am promoting the GLAAD to you guys.

Did anyone read in the news that they have discovered a link between having older brothers and guys being gay. Apparently they found that this link exists only if the older brother is biological and not if it is a step brother or older guys living in the same house. I found the explanation proposed interesting. Apparently they now hypothesise that the mothers womb must make guys gay if the womb had already conceived a male foetus. If there is such a link, I would find it interesting in an evolutionary sense and not just the gay sense. What could animals possibly gain by such an occurrence, I wonder.

I’m glad. Now I have my elder brother to point a finger at. Any reason to fault him is any day most welcome to me. This seems to be all the buzz in the gay world ever since this came out though. I pity the gay guys with no brothers. They just lost their claim to gaiety

And since I have become a newscaster today, on other news there is the Indian price who just got publicly disowned by his family apparently. I found the news very sobering. I hope the LGBT family rallies up to support him. Click here for more on this news on yahoo I read the news on gay dot com news but yahoo does a good job of copying it every 24 hours.

Happy Pride!

Happy Pride Month people!

I went out with my friends from the Volunteer department on Friday evening. It was a nice evening to start out with. We went to see a play downtown which was actually a compilation of 12 short plays. Before the play I and this Nepalese lesbian Pavitra who actually works for the organisation, went on to have dinner with some of her friends. I recognised one of the group as one of my co-workers. We said brief hellos and after being introduced, we had dinner. Everyone was nice and pleasant. My co-worker commented to me that there was another lesbian at work who had a big poster in her room of two women kissing.

I thought to myself that I would have found that strange even if it had been one man and one woman. But I also thought to myself that I guess gay people have been feeling suppression so long that they feel like they have display that they are openly and that quenches for them the thirst they have felt so long.

There are parades in most cities this time of the year to celebrate pride and each weekend seems to be a celebration in a different city. I was reading about this in a magazine just yesterday, that this year some people had in fact suggested that the pride parades that normally always start off with the leather clad folks and all the freaky folks right after was to be changed to let the families with kids walk in front to give the impression that gay people in fact are normal in wanting families and that this as a starting front would appeal to people who were likely to accept the gay folks when presented in this format. The article then went on to explain that this idea was in fact voted down. The rationale being that this would then appease a lot of people but we would in fact be selling out in the fact that the freakier of folks would still be considered abnormal. While gaining acceptance for 80% of our folks we would in fact we letting 20% of our folks down. So they decided to keep the leather folks. They decided to keep the more colourful characters and said that it might take longer but we will have full acceptance and nothing less. I guess aiming for the sky will at least lead us to the tree top.

Anyways, after dinner on Friday we went onto see the short plays, which were hilarious. The thing about gay themed shows that bugs me is that a lot of the movies are very depressing indeed and I hate depressing stories. I want more inspirational and more funnier shows to be made. The plays were enjoyable in this respect. There was only love, joy and celebration and no pretence of depicting anything related to reality. I love that!

After the plays I saw Mark and Erica who are friends of mine from the Tango showcase. They had been to another play in the same complex. Of late I keep running into them esp since two days later I ran into them again in a grocery store and as I was ralking in the rain carrying my groceries Erica came running and bumped into me with a scream. Shocked as I was, I accused her of stalking me. Both of them grinned from ear to ear and that was that.

After the play Pavitra and I with the rest of the folks went to some bars to pick up a friend of hers who was completely drunk and needed help. We stayed and pavitra got drunk too while I stayed sober to help drive them all back home. We went bar hopping in some of downtown’s finest bars. There was this hunk of a guy who was there with some girl who came up as we sat looking for a friend of ours. He asked if we were looking for him and we replied that that was probably not the case unless he was a flaming gay man. To which he asked me directly as why then I was looking him up and down. I trying not to be embarrassed simply replied, “Oh Really? You’re simply flattering yourself if you think that”. He kept looking me up and down as he passed me the rest of the evening. There was this other absolutely cute frat boy who passed me on the way to the bathroom and came close and whispered, “You’re cute” so charmingly that I could have kissed him right there, but I simply smiled as he walked away. But he had made my day! I think I am going to hang out only in straight bars from now on. :)

Anyways, after a lot of drinking we went and got some pizza at about 2 in the night and then went to some karaoke place. It sucked. Finally I dropped pavitra off at her house at about 3 in the night and got home after that. Exhaustingly long night but truly fun.

Skeletons in the closet

First day of summer came and went past on the 21st of this month without more than a whisper. But yours truly had taken it upon himself to clean out the skeletons/memories in the closet. I had been planning to do this when spring started but I've been rather tardy with all the cleaning up stuff these days.

This was all triggered by the fact that I lost my swim shorts in the gym - again (Yeah, I do realise how that sounds but you're wrong.) and after much searching in the almost empty lost and found bin, I gave up. You see anything you leave in the gym seems to automatically become the property of some unknown ghost that likes to steal the shorts. Any ghost that haunts a gym has to be a gay ghost! This is the third time I am losing shorts that I left behind and which disappeared when I came back for it. Anyways, I decided that this was the perfect time to buy new ones.

I went to buy swim shorts, which I ended up buying two of, and also bought two shirts and a t-shirt which I totally don’t need. Yes. I know I have a problem. I have in fact started tracking the clothes I buy to make myself realise that I am buying way too many. God knows I could save a lot of money by not buying any more clothes. It’s not like I need them. Now shoes, you need! All 15 of them. :)

I came home after my brief shopping and found that I didn’t have any space in my closet to hang them! Here is a before and after picture of my lovely closet.

Before:





















After:




















And now tada, I have space! See all those empty hangers. All hangers where I can hang my future clothes!

Each time I go through my closet looking for stuff to throw out I always end up reading a lot of stuff that I really should not be holding on to. I found cards from my parents for my birthday when in college. I found the little pieces of paper that had the handwriting of guys I had had crushes on in college. One was a note left for me when he didn’t find me in my room. One was a timetable that this other guy had drawn out for me after I had helped him select classes. Then I found a diary. I think 90 percent of my skeletons are in that diary.

It’s actually a tattered old, dirty looking diary at the bottom of one of those cardboard boxes in my closet. It used to have company with a red, lively looking diary where in fact I had written down 4 years of pining in code. The code was simply the usage of animal names instead of people. I had assigned one animal for each person I knew so most people could not have guessed directly who I was writing about. But eventually when I left college I felt that it was a very dangerous one since if somebody who knew me read it, they would know who I was writing about. Personally I guess I didn’t really care, but somehow it was a bond that we both had taken and we had decided to destroy every piece of evidence of our love. So while he had in fact burnt off the stuff he had, I couldn’t bring myself to burn it but I did go out to the dump near my house and personally place it gently on the top and never looked back. That was the last I saw of it. But that red diary had a friend and I did write some of the rough drafts of some of the cards I sent to this guy in this other diary. So this diary has some stuff that I had sent in my cards to him.

As I read it I couldn’t help think that I was really bold back then. The amount of outpouring of feelings is something that I would never do even today. There was a certain dignity in those hidden feelings expressed as they were. Hoping that they would never find their way into the wrong hands but never fearing.

I do love my ex-soul mate very much and think highly of him but I can’t help wonder if I can deny that I resent him just a little bit today. I think he dragged me deeper into the closet than I would probably have been otherwise. He taught me fear. But for better or for worse, if I had a chance I would still do it all over again. Love is simply worth all the pain. Fear Vs being careful. It’s a thin line.

I found this poem that I wrote to this other guy in which I pretty much declared that I love him. It was a little cheesy but very daring. I had worded it in such a way that I had complete deniability but really I was professing to him that what I felt for him was a stronger feeling that was beyond friendship. But luckily when I wrote it, he was already in a different city and I knew I would never really see him again in my life. I was lamenting that fact that I didn’t have a picture of him. I never did see him again but I remember that he had replied to that with a photo is his. I still have it. This was a brief love in my first year. I met my guy the next year.

I went through the diary and quickly kept it back at the bottom of my box in my closet to be opened another day yet again. It just evokes and awakens feelings long forgotten of past loves and past hurts, past experiences and past lessons. id rather leave them settled down in my subconscious rather than try to draw them out and let the old brain churn out another round of processing for about a week or so. And yet, I can’t throw this one out. It’s my last link to a past that made me who I am today.

Mood: Pensive.

Some more pictures of my cleaning efforts.

All the junk I threw away. Old shoe boxes, wrappers of martini glasses I recently bought. I always wonder why I keep boxes from stuff I bought, since I hardly ever return any of them.
















I rearranged my mantle.

Latter Days

Language: English

Story: A Mormon boy moves to LA as a missionary and in the process of making a pretty boy realise the shallowness of his life goes on to fall in love with him. They kiss. The other missionaries catch them kissing. They send the boy back to Utah, where daddy and mommy live. Pretty boy calls him but is filtered out by the mom. Mormon boy then slashes his wrist when his mom tells him that pretty boy doesn’t really love him. Then pretty boy is told that monrmon boy is dead and filled with guilt. Then Mormon boy is told that he is crap and sent to a de-gay-fying institute where they make him scrub toilets with a toothbrush to cleanse his soul. He realizes that he doesn’t need cleansing eventually and breaks out and comes to LA and everybody lives happily ever after. Except of course the Mormon parents I suppose.

The pretty boy is HOT. The mormon boy is adorable. Lookers I tell ya.

Ending: Happy. Romantic.

My Other Gay Themed Movie Reviews

Mothers of Gays. Better yet Gay Indians.

I had a tango performance this weekend. I had to drive in the rain for an hour before I got to the banquet hall. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I had to drive sort of out of town, but since I vaguely know the route I didn’t actually take a map or anything but decided to wing it. Bad decision. The route got diverted due to construction and I had to figure out where I was going from the middle of the diversion. It was so unsettling. With the heavy downpour and the fact that I was running a little late for the practice that we had decided on doing just before, made me stop and ask for directions. Running out of time, and heavy downpour and country roads are not the best combination. Uhg! I was just really irritated. Finally I go to the place after driving right across it twice.

But performance was vaguely interesting and vaguely boring. It was interesting in the aspect that the performance went very well and I didn’t make any mistakes and for beginners I think that was a big deal to ask for since the practice was very unimpressive due to space constraints. The rest of the dance was ok. I got to dance a couple dances other than tango and I was struggling to remember whatever I used to know.

Finally driving back, the sun was out and had dried off the waters so quickly. Summer, I thought to myself. The heat was so warm, but I wouldn’t know since I had the windows rolled up and in my overly cooled cool. I felt a little chill as the loud club nights CD played Hindi club mixes in full volume. It was a nice feeling. felt like I was in some Hindi movie. Driving in an awesome car in switzerland with yellow flowers on the grass so neatly cut.

I had too many dinners this weekend. I had Friday night dinner outside in a Thai restaurant. I love the squash curry and will always love it. I took home half the food lest I overeat. Then on Saturday afternoon after dance practice I went to the Gay Indian’s house. His mom was visiting. I had good traditional Sindhi food. The khadi had so much ghee in it that I would have had to live at the gym for days. I gave in and stuffed as much as I could of that food. It wasn’t going to happen to often, so I made full use of it. Then on Saturday night I went to another friends house for dinner. My friend TheRock is back with his new wife, and in their honour this dinner was thrown. I had rotis, pulav, matter panner and daal.

Yes, I will elaborate on the visit of my friend’s mom in a minute. Anyways, so you guys know that this gay Indian guy is out to his parents and has a partner. He recently bought a new house and moved in and so his parents are visiting. They are less than thrilled about him being gay and all that. His mom was simply the sassiest person I have met so far. She entertained, judged and intimidated everyone. But she was a riot while she did all that. She doesn’t speak much English and so we all had to practice our Hindi. Mine is less than spectacular but managed a 20 minute conversation with her. She ending up telling me how I should respect my parents in the most friendly and casual way. I don’t know why she said that but I am sure I must have said something not so respectful of my parents. Normally I would have pondered on this until heavens came down but somehow I didn’t care this time. I just declared her judgemental in my head and went on about my business. We all sat there around his parents and said good things about him in general. Then we sang some Hindi songs and the whole shebang. Then I made a mistake. I saw partner boy sitting by himself in the other corner on the floor and rolling around. So I called out to him and said she if he wanted to roll around maybe he should come over to where we all were and roll around in the center. He hesitated and then came over. Exactly 2 seconds later auntiji and uncleji decalred that they were very tired and wanted to rest for the afternoon. Bells went off in my head. Clang clang clang! I-think-I-just-did-something-very-wrong feeling was rushing through every part of my body. But then with my calm face I continued smiling and we all continued singing. On after thought I rationalised to myself that I did the right thing by calling him over. If auntiji has a problem then she should be the one to leave. That was that. I feel sorry for the American partner. Being ignored in your own house. Wow! I would so totally not stand for such nonsense. I hope not at least. He was being treated like dirt. I felt my sense of outrage in hyper drive.

Anyways, had she known that I was gay myself, I wonder what she would have done. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten that hug she gave me. Maybe she wouldn’t have bothered to be that nice to me. Oh heck, who cares, I have better things to think about.

There are gay pride events happening all over the place. I hope I get to go to at least one. I have started volunteering at the campaign to fight for gay rights in my state. I go there every Tuesday night and I do some data entry work for them. I think I have broken out of the cocoon where I was waiting to get comfortable with my “gaiety”. I am now comfortable and feel good about it. I am comfortable asserting my gaiety. I understand that it might make some people queasy, but I am simply letting me be me. So volunteering simply seemed like that next step to me. But I also was very unsure about it so I simply decided to do data entry. If I feel I get more exposure and I like doing whatever it is, then I might do something else.

Also, since I have decided that I wanted to volunteer more that just that since there is more to me that just being gay. I have applied for a volunteer opportunity in an old age care home sort of place where they need volunteers. It appealed to the more humanitarian side of me. But the process of application is so strict that it will take a while before I actually get accepted. I have volunteered to work in the kitchen and sort of behind the scenes. I think I was looking for something like manual labour since I have a desk job all week and some activity would be good for my body too.

Oh and last but not the least, my gay tango class was awesome this weekend owing to the fact that Antonio decided it was too hot and took off his shirt. And surprise surprise! he has some really good muscles. He looked awesome. He wasn’t completely topless. He was wearing a muscle shirt kind of thing, but when he was leading me, I had the chance to put my hand on those muscles and run my thumb across the rippled grooves of his shoulders. I know I sound like a teenager but you had to be there. Yeah, I smiled to myself the rest of the evening.

Mood: Just when you think life can't get any better, it gets better!

Moving on.

This last Friday was the last of latino boy and me. I hadn’t been answering his text messages very regularly and when we talked I was more interested in watching TV than answering him. He sent me a text message saying that “We are growing distant”. I replied three hours later that I agreed and that we needed to talk. So he came home on Friday evening. After I sat him down, I just simply went over close him and held his hands in mine and said, “I think we should be just friends”. He said, “oh!”. So I simply, smiled, came closer and hugged him. He hugged me back. It was a very “friendly”hug. I asked him if he was fine with this and he said he was ok. It was odd that he didnt ask why or what? But I wasnt going to tell him if he didnt want to ask.

And then we watched some TV and talked about which restaurant to go to. We chose a Chinese restaurant that we had wanted to go to. We had dinner and we asked for separate checks. We talked for a long time. Mostly about him. He started making some excuses for why he was the way he was. I told him that it wasn’t required and that he didn’t have to impress me anymore. Then we smiled and went our separate ways.

He called me once the next day, but we kept it short and he hasn’t called me since. I have this feeling that I am being very mean to him but I also have this feeling that if I don’t, then he might get mixed signals. So I hope to keep a little distance for a couple months and then maybe call him to go out together or something.

Now, coming to the reason I broke up with him. I just think that he was a little too much in the closet for my comfort. I went out with him and all my gay friends for dinner when I got my green card about two weeks back (YES!). He seemed rather uneasy being around gay guys. This coming from a very “straight-acting” guy would have been fine, but coming from a person who is very much in touch with his feminine side it was a little strange to me. In fact he started wondering aloud to me as to why my friends were so “gay” and that they should not be that way. That statement simply did not compute in my head. I went over and over it during the night, but then I decided that the guy had never even been to a gay pride parade. He’d never had had a chance to get used to being gay. So the only thing I could conclude really is that I didn’t want to be around him. Either that or I would spend the rest of the better part of a year trying to get him to feel comfortable with being gay. I just decided that I didn’t have the energy to do that. Now, if I really cared for the guy, it might have been different but I really didn’t see him with me in the long term. So two months it was. I think I agree that two months is a perfect time to break thing of where you haven’t invested too much time to worry too much.

Anyways, as always I took the opportunity to really get to know another human being. Very fascinating it is when you can really taste a person’s life and have a small peek from a window on how their life is. This guy had created an entire personality as an alternate identity. His name is J which is very non Latino. So he changed his middle name to give it a more Latino twang and insisted that I call him by that name. He learnt all his Spanish from Spanish camp since no one in his house speaks Spanish. So here is a person who is culturally American but wants very badly to be Latino that he changes his name to be Latino. This I found perfectly normal. But when I started realising that he didn’t in fact reconcile his real life with this person that he had created I started worrying. I was not really part of his life. I felt like I was part of this bubble in his life and would never really be a part of his life. But then isn’t that what all gay Indians do too. We have a gay life and then we have a “normal” life. Intersection very minimal indeed. Hm….

How many bubbles do I really have? A south Indian cultural bubble, a non south Indian bubble, and then maybe an American bubble. I have a dancing/clubbing bubble. But I don’t have a gay and non gay bubble. Except for my parents of course who have no idea about this gay part of my life. All my Indian friends pretty much know I’m gay and they hang out with my gay friends all the time. So my real life is the gay part of my life and I keep my parents in my bubble in a non gay existence. In fact I am kind of shutting them out of my real life. I have created this nice non gay life that they are part of. They cant hear any of stories of the guys I date. They can’t hear any of my clubbing exploits. They can’t hear any of my pride parade visits. Actually I did tell them that I went to SF pride last year and sent them pics. My mom’s only comment was that I had no business being there. She probably just wanted to get on with the other pics and to not even consider it much longer in case she might realise that I was gay. who knows. I do try to reconcile my real life and my bubbles every now and then but when it doesn’t happen, I step back and wait for more time to pass until I try again.

Is this what we all do?

I’ve been chatting a lot on gay.com this week. I’ve found two others from BITS, pilani who are also gay. Darn! And I thought I was going to the first bitsian to come out. Darn those guys for coming out! Just goes on to say how much in-the-closet I was in college. One of the guys is from the same school as I am, from Chennai. I feel so un-original now.

I installed a satellite dish about two weeks back. Its been a good few weeks. I wanted to get the Indian channels so I can re-connect with the hindi pop scene. Unfortunately it was way too expensive and I didn’t get the channels I wanted anyways. But I did get LOGO which is an awesome LGBT channel. I enjoy the talk shows – darn funny, the music videos, the gay themed movies, gay soaps, gay comedies, etc etc. Almost feels like the channel was targeted at all my interest. Oh wait a minute. It kind of is! I normally leave my TV on LOGO normally whenever I am home these days.

Did I tell you guys about a gay tango class I have joined? It’s fantastic! Really cool. the instructor keeps using me as the model to show everybody else how things are done and while others are practicing the new steps, he dances with me. I am totally loving every minute of it. And argentine tango unlike ballroom is less about performance and looking good and more about flirting with the person you dance with and doing what the other person is telling you to, using the slightest indications as possible.

Maybe I should elaborate on him. Antonio. About 35 to 40 years old. Don’t know if he is coupled. Sorta cute with a nice kind smile. Not a big build. Wears glasses. Very intense when he is dancing. Oh! To be in this arms again on Sunday! lol.

Life always is happy as long as you have something to look forward to.

I do apologise that it took about a week for me to figure out that my blog was not working very well. Seems like some script error that went away when I published a new entry.

Mood: Good. :)