A new beginning

Guys! Guess what? I got a job in Cisco. Im moving to San Francisco. Dream job, Dream city. I have a month to move. I really really hope to meet lot of Desi gay folks there. I cant wait to eat in the south indian restaurants. I hope to live downtown within walking distance of the gay neighbourhood and am looking for places to stay around that area. It feels right.

One of my best friends, LordOfHearts, came out. His wife EternalGirlfriend is devastated. Strangely his in laws living in chennai took it well and were comforting her explaining how difficult it was to be gay in india. But her friends in the US are saying the worst things about him.

I sat with her in a coffee shop holding both her hands in mine and all she could say with tears in her eyes was, "I am so understanding of gays, why is this happening to me? This is not fair". "All gay people are evil, I tell you", she says with a teary eyed smile taunting me to react as we both burst out laughing.

Her friends apparently suggested that me, the great duncehappy had somehow infected her husband. I told her that she knew better than that. She said she did, but made me promise that I would never sleep with her husband. I did so.

I dont know weather my move has come at a good or a bad time. I feel like a few more months here and I could have comforted them more. But on the other hand I feel that even my good friends now could not help thinking if somehow I had something to do with him, "becoming" gay. I know no one will say such things to my face. But what if they were thinking it. I cant quite help them.

He seems to be doing okay. We hung out at the mall "not talking" about his impending divorce. I figured he might need a break from all the explaining he has had to do. A five year marriage. Over.

I have arranged for movers, for the car to be shipped etc. I am in the process of packing my stuff. Just over five years. Feels like a chapter is ending. A chapter of what? I dont know exactly, but I am excited thinking about the new people I am going to meet. Who will become close to me? Will I die alone? What if I need help im my old age.

Oh! f*** that. I'm moving to the Gay capital city. San Francisco!!! Where's the nightlife? :)

But seriously, I will find a guy, I will have two kids and I will send them over to my parents house for the summer to get rid of them.

I'm high on SF , right now.

Anger

I was born that way.I have had those feelings...those longings... all my life.

She takes a breath, desperately hoping to communicate to her countrymen.

It is not unnatural. I am not sick because I feel this way. I do not need to be helped, and I do not need to be cured. What I do need -- what all of those like me need -- is your understanding and your compassion.

She walks along the line of her accusers.

We do not injure you in any way. And yet we are scorned, andattacked. And all because we are different.

A hush has fallen over the room as everyone listens to her impassioned speech.

What we do is no different from what you do. We talk and laugh...we complain about work and we wonder about growing old... we talk about our families, and we worry about the future...
We cry with each other when things seem hopeless.
All the loving things that you do with each other... that's what we do. And for that, we are called misfits, and deviants...and criminals.

She looks around at her countrymen, head high,unafraid, angry.

What right do you have to punish us? What right do you have to change us? What makes you think you can dictate how people love each other?

My trip to India

The last four weeks went like a dream. I sit here and wonder if it even happened. It went like a dream not because it was exactly like I had fantasized it would be but because it felt like some unconnected set of events that just transpired without much rhyme or reason.

The flight to India was not very unpleasant thought it was a long night in the Mumbai airport waiting for the morning flight out to Chennai. I had bought some tulips for my mom at Amsterdam and was eager to put them in water soon. Mumbai was odd in that the international terminal was sucky while the domestic terminal was so nice. I made a call to Chennai from the airport and made my way to the domestic terminal. I sat there outside the international terminal looking at people. Just looking.

After I had reached Chennai everybody at home kept saying how cold it was and I was looking at them oddly since I thought that the temperature was rather perfect. The first thing I noticed on the way home was the traffic in front of my house. Too many people. At night the traffic was so noisy that I slept in the inner bedroom after that.

I had already decided not to come out to my parents before my trip and so it wasn’t that much pressure but I did come out to three of my friends back home. The first one was my best friend though school and he didn’t bat an eyelid and right after I had told him very matter of factly asked me if I would come shopping with him the next day. He simply didn’t seem to care. The second one was more interesting since I had spent 4 years of college with him and we knew a lot of about each other. We looked sort of alike, dark skinned, short, round face. We even had the same marks in our boards and hence the same subject. We shared a lot of commonalities. After I had told him, I changed the topic and he kept bringing the conversation back to it. After two hours of going on and on about my gay life in the US, he finally came out to me. I wasn’t too surprised. I guess somewhere I knew. He was one of my friends who had never ever talked about girls. So indirectly I had had my doubts. Anyways, he was glad to have told me this since he was being pestered by his parents to get married and talking to me made him feel somehow that it was all OK. The third one, was a girl who is an ex classmate from 9th and 10th. I told her over the phone and the conversation sort of died after that. I said bye and didn’t really talk to her after that. It was somehow polite and yet awkward and off after that.

I hung out a lot with my first friend for the rest of my time at Chennai. I went to the beaches but I mostly shopped. The malls in Chennai are truly impressive. Almost like JC Penny or any other departmental store. Good quality home décor stuff. I bought so much stuff for my parent’s house.

I did miss my own bed though. Especially the one week I was completely bed ridden and was puking my guts out. I couldn’t even digest idlis of all things. I was convinced I had caught some sort of stomach flu and had thoughts of never coming to India again. I went to the Doc who assured me that I had no such virus and merely needed some enzyme tablets to help my digest foods I was unused to eating. Man, I felt embarrassed. Anyways, I took the pills and ate everything I saw after that. All was well. Unfortunately due to my stomachs inability we had to cancel the trip to beautiful Kerala. I was very disappointed and took out some of my frustrations on my mom.

I saw, Don, Casino Royale and Krissh. Entertaining in general.

My trip back home was easier this time due to my green card. But thanks to two Punjabi twins sitting next to me on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit I was completely exhausted when I reached home. It might have been jetlag but I prefer to blame those kids who were pinching and biting me each time I tried to sleep. I slept for a marathon 18 hours in my dear bed before I woke up the next morning and felt alive again.

Whether your bed is in India or the US or the remotest corner of the earth, there is a certain warmth in sleeping in your own bed. Also I definitely had a new appreciation for the peace and quiet here. So serene, and calm.

San Diego Trip

I’ve been traveling a lot and have a lot to tell.

Hm…lets start. I was in St Louis for a week and the week was so boring. I was unable to see anything there since I did not have a rental car with me and all I did was stay in the hotel room and read up on reference manuals and questions that might be asked by the customer. It gave a chance to now my boss really well though. He appears so put together at work, but I had a chance to see how he drives and he seem like a very bumbling kind of person. He forgot the washer liquid for his contacts; he forgot his laptop power cord. He left his prescription medicines in the room when he checked out. And then in the airport he was sitting at the wrong gate and the plane would have left unless we had called him and told him that he was the only on missing at the gate. I don’t know if this was a bad week or just him.

The next week I had to go to San Diego for some IBM training in AIX Unix. It was a very good week. Almost a vacation since the instructor would leave us by early afternoon and we always had a lot of time to seethe city. I had a rental car this time and since I had no co-workers with me I could pretty much do whatever I wanted to do. I took one of those dining guides and went around trying the best restaurants in a different cuisine each night. They had in fact sent me over a day in advance since the flight tickets were about a third of the cost as opposed to sending me out on Sunday so I got to stay the weekend on company expense with nothing to do but see the city. So seeing how we were on the border with Mexico I explored some of my options. I drove right up to the last exit and then parked there for 6 bucks and followed the crowd of sort of Mexican people and American teenagers crossing the border. I realized that getting into Mexico was just walking down the street. As I kept going I crossed two revolving chain doors and I was in Mexico. The whole downtown part of the city of Tijuana is build right across from the crossing within a mile. So I was able to find my gay club really easy after walking through some of the streets and looking thru them for trinkets. It was late at night but still lot of hawkers on the streets. The streets themselves were pretty shady. There were guys who kept asking me if I wanted to see boobs and when I didn’t respond they repeated with “titties” like I didn’t understand them. There was disgust on my face, I’m not sure from the way he said it or the word he used. The smells were reminding me of Indian railway stations about 20 years ago. It was strangely amusing to me to be in such a place less than a mile from the US border. Such contrast. Interesting this in itself did not disgust me. It was very nostalgic. I felt familiarity.

I walked into the gay club which was slowly starting to fill up. I walked around the club. It was somewhat shady and dark like most clubs but somewhat different. I saw that the dance floor was surrounded by glass. It is unusual because I think most clubs avoid glass since it’s easily broken. I think. But here it was surrounded by glass. After a while I realized how it was. I was sitting by myself at a comfy corner when I spied people going into this dark room that I couldn’t really see in even after all the craning of my neck. A guy came back out all excited and was telling his buddies all about what he saw. Obviously my curiously now piqued I finally got up and walked over. It was dark but I soon came to realize that around the dance floor it wasn’t glass but really rooms build all around with see through glass from one side such that u can sit in one of these rooms and watch the dance floor. Sort of a private room with seating on two sides of about 4 people. I didn’t go in too far but since I didn’t see anyone in one of the rooms I just sat down there. I was watching the people dance when after about 5 minutes a guy looking very Mexican with completely hair full of hair product came in to the room. He was looking in and since I was alone I guess decided to come in. that’s when it hit me that this was a place where people could really play around. I was curiously excited. Maybe it was the fear that I might be doing something illegal in a country I am not so familiar with. It really excited me.

Its been a while since I have given hooking up with strange people after a Norwegian flight attendant I had hooked up with had made me swear off all hook ups when he tried to force me to do drugs with him. He was a very extremely good looking and polite guy who was doing some sort of drug, and after I had refused and we were doing it in his hotel room in downtown Chicago, when I suddenly realized that he had closed one of my nostrils and I smelt something chemical in my other nostril. The moment I had realized that I had stopped breathing and had started breathing with my mouth. I was out of that room in the next five minutes. It always takes a slightly scary experience for me to think about it. I kept repeating it in my head and was wondering why such a good looking person and seemingly successful person needed to do drugs. I kept asking myself why and all I knew was that I didn’t want to turn out like him. Its hard to keep your innocence when you are exploring by yourself but from that moment I wanted to hold on to whatever innocence I had left. I am not sure if innocence is the right word to use but that’s as close as I can think of it.

Anyways, coming back to this Mexican guy. As I was saying, it was somewhat exciting to me that I had my passport in my back pocket on the right and my green card in my wallet in the right. But I saw that he was way more unsure of this that me and so as I sat back coolly and saw what he was up to he was actually trembling. He reached out and touched me and I was at high altitude there. Normally people who do this sort of thing are always very creepy looking but this guy looked pretty well dressed. So I was assuring myself that he wasn’t there to pick my pocket and Mexicans were too homophobic to come to a gay club to pick someone’s pocket. I know it sounds like stupid logic now but it seemed perfectly sane then. He reached over and touched me and would withdraw as soon as we saw shadows coming closer to this room. After a few minutes he took my hand and tugged on it. I sat there not moving. I tugged again with a pleading look in his eyes. Note that he hadn’t said a word so far which isn’t the most surprising thing though in such a situation. I followed and he led me to another room where there was a door on the room and he simply shut the door and we made out like no tomorrow. I think I was gaining confidence in this tryst and didn’t find him all that shady anymore. Hands were everywhere. And then someone knocked and pushed the door in and just stood there and stared at us making out. He just stood there while we made out. We stopped. He stood for a minutes waiting for us to resume and then left. Then this guy takes my hand and takes me to another room. I am thinking now that this guy knows this place really well. Anyways, this room does not have a glass side to the dance floor and is really dark. It seems to also have a latch. He latches it and out pants come down. My brain is still mentally tracking the passport and wallet in my jeans. They are still there. We both jack off really quick and there is stuff he wipes on the walls. I wonder what this place might look like in the light. Must be filled with stuff. He starts to pull up his pants and I check to see if my passport and wallet are still in place. They are. So then he kisses me on the cheeks and then leaves. I leave a minute after. I make sure everything in my wallet is still in place after I get out and then dance for a few minutes before leaving.

I walk back to the border and hawkers are still on the roadside and the border crossing is still back up with cars in the dead of night. People keep talking to me in Spanish. I realize that I know enough Spanish to understand what most of them say but I just can’t form the words fast as them. I was asking for directions to the border to one some boy and he had no idea what I was saying but them I translated into Spanish and asked and he pointed me in the right direction. The border was quite easy to cross with a green card when u are walking. You just keep walking and wave the card and they vaguely look at it and they don’t even swipe it or keep a record. Its more lax than airport security to go within US cities. I walked back to my car and drove back to my hotel room.

After this episode, I though I had my share of fun was over. I spent one evening checkout out the harbor area and it was very beautiful. Another night I went out to La Jolla, which is a beautiful beach area where all the rich people live. Lots of art studios and spas and expensive boutiques. But Friday came and my class was over early morning and so I went to check out the gay neighborhood in San Diego. As expected it was pretty toned down during the day. I walked up and down the gay book stores and found some very interesting books. “Finding the boyfriend Within”, “The best little boy in the world”, and “The ultimate guide to anal sex for men” are the books I bought. Each was about 10 bucks and the one was just 50 cents on the sidewalk sale. I browsed through a lot of other interesting books that id like to own but were too expensive for me to own. One of the books I looked at was this book of old gay couples who have been together for a long time and a little bit about each of them. It was very sweet. It made me realize that I was still the romantic that I thought I was too cynical now to be.

Anyways, when I had come to the place, I had booked myself in for a facial at one of the many spas in the area. Gay areas are the best places to make money opening spas. It was still an hour until my facial appointment and so I went to a salon and was trying to decide whether I should get something done to my hair or get a pedicure. I decided that a facial after a hair cut was a bit odd. So I signed up for a manicure and a pedicure. There was this absolutely queeny guy who said he was Vietnamese. I am normally very nice to queeny guys. After the manicure, the pedicure which was supposed to take 15 minutes started. I was the only one getting a pedicure in the middle of a Friday afternoon and so we were alone and my jeans were rolled up till my knees so they wouldn’t get wet when my feet are soaked. He started massaging my feet above my ankles and was doing that for a long time. All the while he was telling me how well build Indians are and how sexy the muscles on my legs were. I was actually very much enjoying the massage being given to my calf muscles and was thinking that this was a great pedicure. That’s when he started massaging higher and higher and his hands slowly went over my knees and he reached in for my inner thighs and I was laying back with my eyes closed and talking to him. I got really quiet at this point and wasn’t sure what was going on since I was almost positive that this isn’t part of any pedicure and then he took his hand and put it on my boy parts and that’s when I opened my eyes and shot him this glance that this was not ok. I cannot imagine how a person would do this within close proximity of his co-workers. The 15 minute pedicure had taken 45 minutes. I have to say that the massage was good and I didn’t have to pay him anything extra and I felt guilty that I might have led him on because I should have known that that wasn’t part of the pedicure. While he was cleaning up he didn’t ask me out to a movie on Sunday and I told him politely that I was not from San Diego and that I wouldn’t be around. He said, on Sunday there wont be anyone around and I have a key to this place and I will give u a free massage and I repeated again that I wouldn’t be here to receive the treatment. I have to say that I walked out of there grinning from ear to ear.

I went to my facial with squeaky clean fingers and toes. The spa was really very relaxing and when I got in the woman asked me to take my clothes off completely if I wanted and I repeated to her that I was only getting a facial and I was suspicious now of everyone. She said that since it is an hour long, some people just like to take their clothes off too so they feel relaxed when lying down. So I got my shirt and jeans off but I kept my under garments on. I covered myself before she came back in. we talked about the most random things in the world and as we did, I noticed that her hands were coming down from the neck area and now she was massaging my shoulders. I was wondering if I should maybe have taken my vest off and then it struck me. Does a facial always come with a shoulder massage. Hm…well, this time it was a woman and that somehow comforted me. She went back to my face soon and the hour was up. It felt so short.

I will try to post some more this week before I head to India on Saturday so u guys are caught up on all my activities till present. I have decided that I am not going to be coming out this time. I had first noticed it last week that I was getting really stressed out about my upcoming vacation. I knew it wasn’t going to go well and so I have talked it over with a friend and have decided that I am going to tell them just enough to put an end to the whole marriage issue. I am telling them that its not for me. Obviously I am going to have to fudge the details a little bit as far as the reasons are concerned and leave it open ended about the reasons. But I think I will have an easier time if I can make them think and come to the conclusion instead of surprising them with the facts. If they ask me if I’m gay I am planning to give a very ambiguous lie, “I don’t know, I will tell when I feel sure that I can answer that question.”. Obviously it’s a lie, but I somehow feel that this way I wont be thrusting it on them but not denying it either. I feel comfortable letting it get to the ambiguous point. So that’s the plan. God knows what will happen to the plan. Things seldom go exactly as planned.

Catching up

Sheesh. I have been absent. I have been going to boystown every weekend since the other weekend. A lot of reading, a lot of dancing and a one night stand later, here I am.

So where do I start? Work has been rather boring. A few projects here and there and a lot of homework reading to be done. I got this huge raise this year that I am completely thrilled. Its almost 4 or 5 years worth of raises together. Apparently they are trying to not lose employees to competitors. So I obviously went on a shopping trip to Chicago. Any reason to spend the night in boystown is most welcome.

I have a week of training coming up in San Diego the second week of October. Look like I am going to be traveling a lot after this month. I will have to go to St Louis for two weeks before heading out to India. Yes, I said. I am finally taking a months vacation to come back to dear ol’ India. I considered taking a break in Amsterdam to do a little bit of gay pilgrimage in the city with it being Europe’s gay Mecca (interesting sequence of words there) and all. But my mom strongly rejected the “ridiculous” idea and promised that she would take me on a vacation within India and not let me sit at home the whole time after I complained that everybody at home was going to be at work while I sat at home. Now, that I have a green card, I don’t have to worry about my visa either.

We are now planning a weeks trip to Kerala. I don’t know how the plans are coming up. I will be India from the 30th of October till the 24th of November. I got the plane itinerary last week and I realized that I had long stopovers in Amsterdam and Bombay. I have to as usual spend about 7 hours in Bombay before I reach Chennai. These hours have previously been rather tiring since its after almost 24 hours of flying and you will have to stay awake for fear of your belongings getting lost or someone slipping stuff into your bags.

So I was talking about my shopping trip to Chicago. During my shopping trips I bought myself 2 shoes and 2 watches, a couple shirts and one jacket before I bought one set of table mats for my brother. I told myself that I have to stop buying myself things. Finally I bought another colourful apron for my brother. I bought a couple India flags which I am not sure what I bought for. I am yet to find anything of interest for my mom. A couple more shopping trips might solve that problem! *wink wink*

One time I went with my desi friend MrSun and his partner MrBear. We stayed at a friend of his called Karishma. She lives less than 5 minutes from boystown and so it was convenient to just stumble in at 6am completely drunk. Karishma is in general a lot of fun. She came to the clubs with us and started making out with the gay guys. MrSun came up with the theory that apparently gay guys normally hang out with a fag hag because, it was less threatening to approach a fag hag and then the fag himself. So if you want to attract guys, then you need to hang out with a fag hag. But somehow I don’t think MrSun needed any fag hags to turn heads. The desi boy was being checked out by everyone who was around. And he was being an absolute pro about the whole thing. Obviously he had done his time in hanging out at gay clubs. He made eye contact at the right time and smiled at the right time. We got to talking to this couple of polish guys who were hanging out and he simply smooth talked his way into getting the guys to ask us both out. His partner was so not happy about it. MrBear stood there a few feet away scowling. After I refused an audition by him since we make too much money, we were finally rid of the guys. I had about 3 martinis over the next 5 hours. By 5am, my knees were refusing to hold me and I was still dancing. MrSun and I were dancing on the speakers while the partner looked on completely bored.

We finally had breakfast in a nearby pancake house and then went to Karishmas place. We did a little bit of shopping and then were off home.

The next weekend there was some Sonu Nigam concert that MrSun wanted to go to which I refused to go to, but I joined him in boystown after that. We had fun again. We talked a lot more this time. MrBear drove back with me. He talked a lot more about how his relationship with MrSun was slowly becoming harder and harder. He was talking about having an open relationship with MrSun. I simply heard a lot of what was being said. But I somehow am not sure how that was gonna help in their case. It’s a really long and sad story but I think MrBear started cheating on MrSun and since then there had always been a kind of an unsaid resentment in the relationship. But since MrSun is unwilling to talk about it, they are somehow stuck in their relationship and they can’t seem to get past it and now they both feel like they are miserable. They won’t even acknowledge that they both are cheating on each other. I thought about it for a moment before deciding that I really had nothing to do here.

I’ve been going out a lot with LOH too within town. His wife EG is always busy at work and so we go out most Friday nights. This weekend we were at a desi dance party and I distinctly felt myself grab his fingers in mine as i was struggling to balance myself, like I would have done with any other gay guy while leaning over to say something in his ear and one hand on his other hip. But still away from everybody’s sight. The moment I realized what I’d done, I pulled back a little bit but he sort of put the rest of his fingers in mine and held on. Awkwardness followed as I stammered and hemmed as I was in the middle of what I was saying and forgot what i was saying. He smiled and he let go the moment he realized that I was squirming uncomfortably. He is slowly but surely getting to my best friend status but its moments like these that are really scary where you don’t want everything you have to be thrown away because he interpreted it as a move on him. After the dance we went out to a diner and had a sandwich. The topic of conversation turned towards his sexuality. I commented on the fact that MrSun had commented on his sexuality. LOH smiled and asked me what I had replied. I told him that I had told MrSun that I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know. LOH asked me why I didn’t want to know about his sexuality. I told him that either way there was nothing that I could do. If he did like guys, then it was up to him to tell me and that I would be perfectly fine with it obviously. If he wasn’t, then that was that. He smiled. So I asked him, “So what is your sexuality?”. He didn’t respond to that question as the waitress come up with water. Our topic of conversation then turned to random things as a guy I recognized came up and started talking to me at the restaurant. After he left we talked about random things about how EG wanted to have kids and that he was not ready to be a father yet. So they were having discussions on when to plan to have a kid. Life is so complicated and yet it is only what we make of it.

On another day when EG was with us, she was telling us all about Karan Thapar and his show. I am waiting to get to India to see the show. Did you know he has a masters in French? Irrelevant I know. But is it really? :) Oh! Let me be.

I had dinner with TheRocks sister this past Friday night, after she had joined my company. She also has a green card and had been working as a stock broker in Chicago. She had moved here after quitting her job one fine day. She just got a job at my company. So she was starting as a technical support person. She had commented on the fact that she was making more money here than she was in Chicago. Which I found rather strange. Anyway, she found the fact that I was gay rather surprising, which I find shocking these days, since I let my gayness flow in and out of me very openly these days.

Since we are talking about gayness, I want you all to watch a video. So on logoonline dot com there is a link to new next now music. On that page you will find a link to a video by Matthew Duffy. I think his song is OK, but he is so cute. I have realized that my type is not a very built guy. I tend to go for guys who are somewhat non muscled – read twink – and who like swishing their hands around. And I find matthew duffy to be my perfect guy. Throughout the video he looks so middle eastern manly man but the way he swishes his fingers around is so feminine. I lovit.

The name of the song is little bird (New Now Next) and since we are on the topic of videos, also check out from the main page the videos on the click list instead of new now next, and then view the video by justin timberlake called sexy back (Click List). I absolutely love the song. I heard it at least 5 or 6 times each night in boystown. Oh and not to forget the romantic duet by Jason and De Marco. Both rather Hot. I think the video is very dreamy.

Mood: Oh darn, I didn’t clean the house today either.

Boystown

This weekend I had been thinking of driving down to boystown in Chicago. For the uninitiated, Boystown is the gay neighbourhood in Chicago and I absolutely love going there whenever I can. I have been trying to get people to go there for sometime now but it never worked out. Chicago is a very glamorous city in my opinion. As long as you stay on the northern suburbs that is.

Since I was bored out of my wits and all my friends were doing something or the other, I decided that this was the perfect time for me to go down to Chicago by myself. Friday evening came, and I told LOH of my plans. I told him that I would drive there and then dance till 4am and then drive back home. He laughed. He pretty much told me I was being stupid and I promised him that I wouldn’t have any alcohol. He told me that that wasn’t the problem but that I would be sleepy on my drive back. So he made me promise to book a room in Chicago and stay the night. I have to say that that was some pretty good advice.

So just before I left home I went online and booked a hotel room about 30 minutes from downtown. I left home at 7pm on Friday evening. I stopped in between at one of those awesome rest areas in Chicago which are almost like tiny food courts. I had some dinner and then went off on my way to the hotel. I reached the hotel at around 10:30pm. Left all my belongings and changed into a nice colourful shirt and was on my way to Boystown. I got lost. Well more like a detour since I missed an exit. But it cost me about 2 bucks more in tolls and about 15 minutes extra. And then I hit the congestion. Chicago had traffic jams at 11:30 at night. Seriously. That’s irritating.

I finally drove down to downtown Chicago and drove up Halstead. All I knew was the you keep driving north for about 15 minutes and you will hit boystown. I’ve been there a couples times but each time I go there i am still not that familiar with the area. But when you enter boystown you always know you are there due to the hundreds of guys walking topless going from bar to bar or standing in queue to get into clubs. There was a guy hanging off the fence and making out with another guy. Yup. I was definitely in boystown. The best way to describe the feeling I get when I go to the boystown is that I feel like a jigsaw piece puzzle that fits right in there.

I drove around till 12:30 and finally found a car leaving. I parked there and walked up to Hydrate. Hydrate is not my most favourite club but it always has a lot of hard bodied, gym going, topless white guys swaying in one sweaty dark dance floor. The music is not the most dancy but had a stead heavy rhythm that you can sway to. I was there dancing and looking around for about 30 hour and then it got too hot on the small dance floor and so I went outside.

I then walked around the few blocks. All the gay guys in boystown are just so well dressed. They don’t care about who sees them dress with such abandon and each one trying to out do the others. In a sort of way I feel that all this is so superficial, but in yet another way, they are so happy being their bitchy selves. I love people watching in boystown because it always makes me wonder that my city may be so progressive in its thinking but the gay people are not so ready to express themselves openly with what they wear. They want to try to fit in. They want to be “normal” except that they are gay. I can’t help wonder if the guys in boystown are not just a tiny bit “free-er” in how they express themselves without inhibition. There are so many pockets in the US where such freedom exists and there are so many other places that are the exact opposites. Such contrasts.

Anyways, at about 2am, I went around boystown trying to find club circuit. I always have a hard time finding it but once I entered, everything was so familiar again. I love the music there because it is very dancy. It is a fag and fag hag type setting. The music is more top 40s and had some meringue and reggaetton. I was surprised to hear so much Spanish music in both the clubs I went to. Are the gay clubs finally accepting their predominant latin minority? Hm… it’s a thought.

I think not every gay person likes clubbing but off late with all the smoking bans, the clubs have really cleaned up and you don’t have to smell like smoke when you come out. I think this has brought out a lot more people and the latinos are really showing up more and more since clubbing and dancing is part of the culture. Somewhat like it is between south India and north India where South Indians politely refuse to dance and say, it’s not our culture.

There was a cute couple who was trying to pick me up. They even bought me a drink of vodka cranberry after finding out that I was finishing mine. I wasn’t sure whether I should drink it or not for fear that it might be drugged. It would have been fine if they had asked me and then taken me out to the bar and bought me the drink. It was shady in the fact that he just showed up with a vodka cranberry and I had no idea if he had mixed anything with it or not. Anyways, after they found out that I wasn’t going to sleep with them their interest in me diminished rather quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I actually did consider it, but I have a simple rule for hookups. If someone approaches you, then they are probably promiscuous and if someone is really shy then they probably are not. So the chanced of getting an STD given all the protection you wear is still lower and so I simply avoid people who are too forward in a bar or a club. I would totally make out with them though. I just love making out. And I have no standards when it comes to making out. I decided not to have any more alcohol so that I would be sober by the time I had to drive back.

After a lot of dancing and a lot of songs, at about 4am or so the club finally kicked us all out. I bid my adieus to the few people I had met. I walked back to where my car was parked. I just didn’t want to leave, but my legs were aching and my shirt was soaked. I turned up the music and drove back to the hotel room which suddenly seemed to be so far away. I was glad that I didn’t have to drive back home. I got to the room and was completely zonked out. I woke up about 10am and then finally had the energy to drive back home. I reached home about 2pm. The rest of the day was uneventful. LOH called me up on Sunday evening to ask about my trip. He and his wife EG were planning a Summer party for some Sunday in the coming weeks and wanted to now if I was going to be in town. I accepted.

I chatted a bit on gay.com’s India room this weekend. I found a nice guy and ended up talking to him on the phone for about 4 hours. I guess I had a lot of time on my hands.

This is my last day in my corner office with two windows. I have to move at the end of the day and share an office with another guy. The guy is someone I do know. He is a very nice guy and he is supposed to help me get set up and tell me what classes to take. I stopped by today at his office and talked to him for a few minutes. He gave me this huge book on Linux to read up and said that a Unix box has already been set up for me to use in my new office.

But even as my new tasks are increasing, my old tasks seem to have suddenly come into full flow again. I was again trying to help my old team figure something out the whole of today. I don’t realistically expect the my old team to stop calling. I am already in a design meeting next week. And I suspect that I will be called at least twice a day for quick questions. Last time I moved teams about 2 years back I was getting calls for a whole 6 months after I had moved.

I have to pack. Its always a good opportunity to go through your stuff and throw out all the things you don’t need and think about all the things you did with them.

Planning for the short and long term

I got locked out of my personal yahoo account and I feel rather silly about the whole thing. There was some sort of a temporary access problem during which I tried too many times to log in and it simply said that I was locked out and that was that. I waited another 12 hours and it was still locked out. So next I plan to try after 24 hours of not trying. This sucks! I want to send so many emails to people but all of them are in my yahoo address book and I have no idea how to mail them.

Lessons learnt from this are two fold. One that I should back up my address book regularly about every 6 months into some excel spreadsheet just in case so that I can contact people. And secondly, that I should keep my personal info updated in the email accounts that I use regularly so that I can answer the secret question to retrieve my password. It seems like my secret question of what my pet is something that confounds the hell out of me. I have tried so many of my pets’ names but I am really not sure what the answer is. Oh by the way, if you want me to send you a yahoo offline message when I blog, please let me know. My yahoo ID is duncehappy. I’ll send you a message each time I blog. I have very few people who have requested this so far but I thought I should let you other folks know as well.

This week has been rather slow. I am going to start training for my new designation next week and I am sort of excited about that. I am trying to read a book on Perl to start me off but after the first 50 pages I haven’t made much progress. Anytime I have something to read my attendance at the gym seems higher. It seems like I would rather go to the gym regularly than read something academic. I think I will have to do some All-nighters before I finish that book. Somehow, reading in the quiet of the night has always had better results for me. Way more productive than anything in the day time for me.

I am still contemplating going to India by the end of the year. I really want to go but I really don’t want to go. I am trying to get my parents to commit to a week off in Kerala or something, but they aren’t so keen. They’d rather have me come and do nothing at home in Chennai where I get really bored and fat at the same time from all the eating. Now, if I knew of clubs in Chennai it would be a different story but I don’t. So I am not sure what I should do. Maybe I should go over to Bombay where I can go clubbing but then I have to make arrangements. So much thinking involved. I have 4 weeks off by the end of the year and I’m afraid that I will not have the opportunity to get 4 weeks off at a time. Maybe Mexico will be cheaper and a better trip. Who knows? Even vacations seem so rather complex. All of this in spite of the fact that I have no other people to plan this and complicate matters. Taking vacations on my own makes me feel really good actually, but I always feel like it gets too expensive for one person.

I have also been thinking recently about moving to New York or Northern California. I looked at some job websites but they all seem like so much work to find a job and then move all your stuff to a new city and set up your bank accounts and everything else. Moreover big cities are so expensive that you have to spend a lot more to get a lot less. Work seems so stressful.

I have recently written down stuff for things that I want done when I become incapacitated or die. I need to convert these into legalese but that can wait. I have been simply meaning to come up with some sort of document so that I can know what I want done to me. So finally I wrote it down after the longest time of thinking about it. I mentioned this to LOH and he was a bit concerned about whether I had gotten suicidal when I gave him a list of contacts if something happens to me. I simply want to get this thing done and put this "unpleasant" task behind me so I wont have to deal with it in the near future.

Mood: I am in a planning mood but not much of a doing mood. Rather somber.