Sticks and Stones

One of my biggest pet peeves is hearing people use the word 'gay' as a negative. I'm sure you've heard people say how 'gay' something is when they hate it or when it inconveniences them. It was used that way so often at AMC when I worked there years ago that I started to give written warnings (harassment) to people. Was I overacting? I don't think so.

People are equating the word 'gay' with something negative, and it's very hurtful to be associated with negativity. It means that people think gay men and women are inferior and aren't worthy to be regarded as highly as people who are not gay. It's no different than the various racist terms that people use to associate someones race with something negative.

It's even worse when a gay person uses the word 'gay' as a negative and says that it's okay to say it because he's gay himself. One of the boys who worked at AMC at the time, a big flaming gay boy whose name rhymed with "Shaybraham," kept saying that working long hours was gay. He did it so he could fit in with his friends because he thought that downplaying the obvious jab at homosexuals while being a homosexual himself would make his heterosexual friends feel more comfortable. It's not fair to call yourself a homosexual while allowing people to make fun of other homosexuals.

What he didn't realize that he was actually interfering with all of the progress that gay people have made, and allowing small-minded people to think that it's okay for all the other gay people to be the butt of every gay joke.

I can't stop being gay, the same way a person of color can't take the pigment out of his or her skin. Being ridiculed or denigrated for the parts of ourselves that make us unique is completely wrong, and people should start recognizing that. Fuck you, Shaybraham!

A Young Author's Agitation

My sixth grade teacher always made us write stories, and it was always difficult for me to come up with good topics. One day, a new kid showed up in class and everyone made fun of her because she had a really long last name. This gave me the inspiration to write a little story about the stupid kids in my class and how the new kid would eventually fit in after a certain amount of time. The story was set during the night time hours at a museum. All of the the exhibits came to life after the museum closed, and I got that idea from that show "Today's Special."

The T-Rex and the medieval weapons led the tirade against the newest exhibit in the museum, a recently discovered fossil with a very long name, and eventually grew to accept the fossil as a fellow museum exhibit. My story didn't impress my teacher because it had no climax. He didn't understand that I was trying to demonstrate how difficult it is to be the new person, and he gave me a check minus.

Fifteen years later, I am sitting on my sofa and a commercial for the new holiday movie "A Night at the Museum" comes on. You can imagine how intrigued I was to see various museum exhibits coming to life after the museum closed. I really can't be that upset because it's not like someone copied every detail of my story. I didn't have any human exhibits in my story, for example. I'm just saying that the similarities are uncanny!

If you see any movies with the following topics, please let me know so I can figure out who's been selling my elementary school stories to Hollywood producers:

• A rabbit eats too many carrots and gets a stomach ache because his mother told him not to eat so many.

• A kid who accidentally summons the spirit of the headless horseman on Halloween is forced to ask his creepy teacher for help in banishing it before his mother gets home from work.

• A surly elderly woman gets her comeuppance when she pisses off the entire town. They hang her from a tree with her knitting.

Single all the way

This is a follow-up to my October 2 post, entitled "Single Bells."

When I was a kid, all of my classmates had the popular British Knights shoes. It was all about the British Knights back then. Mama was raising five kids at the time, and we couldn't afford to make me popular by buying the latest fad. All of the kids who had BKs went on and on about how happy they were with them and they'd all get together and whisper things about people who didn't have them. They'd interact with people who didn't have BKs with such haughty and condescending attitudes. I always felt like I was a piece of shit because I didn't have those damned shoes. I even remember a day during PE when one of the kickball team captains only picked people who had BKs. Kids can be so cruel!

I was so desperate to fit in that I sent a ton of postcards to Nickelodeon's hit game show, Double Dare, in hopes of getting on the show. All contestants on Double Dare were given complimentary pairs of British Knights. My friend Tamara would be my partner and we'd use a combination of my smarts and her physical abilities to win it big. We were never chosen.

Now I'm 27 and I find the same thing happening to me, but this time it's not hideous shoes that people are flaunting. It's the boyfriend. Now all my friends have boyfriends and I'm the single guy that they feel sorry for. Have you ever been the only single by choice person in a group of couples? To them, everything you say is a sad cry for help resulting from months of solitude. There's no way for a single guy to explain it to anyone.

I also find that couples only like to spend time with other couples, and that's probably because it's hard to find a table that seats an odd number of people. It's just like in elementary school where all the BK kids hung out together, making everyone else feel stupid. They all mass together at parties they planned for couples to attend and they hold hands and think to themselves how fortunate they are to have reached a higher level of spiritual growth by finding their soul mate while others like me are fated to walk the earth alone and miserable.

Then I noticed a sudden rise in the number of couples appearing (seemingly out of nowhere) and realized that a lot of these pairings could be due to the Winter Boyfriend Scramble. It's when the media uses holiday advertisements to make people want to find boyfriends. Jewelry commercials, Gap ads, and even antiperspirant commercials target the single consumer to make him or her feel like being single means being pathetic.

Forget the Playstation 3 and the new elmo doll, because the boyfriend is the new must-have this year. Commercials that target singles show the magical moment when two lovers meet for the first time. They don't show every other morning in the couples' relationship where the dude is so tired of waking up next to the same man or woman for ten years, wishing he or she was ten pounds thinner and blond with a tighter ass.

And one final thought: Flirting with other people's boyfriends doesn't make you a whore. Having sex with your friend's father does. Being single and having casual sex with multiple hot dudes in rapid succession doesn't make someone a whore. Waking up at a gas station the next morning with one shoe and a mouth full of semen does. Any questions?!?!?

Gamer's Fury

Last night I was playing Final Fantasy 12. In case you don't already know, I'm one of those gay nerds. Not a hot gay nerd, mind you! I'm at the end of the game, but I decided to track down an especially tough side quest monster known as Fafnir. Can I get a w00t from my fellow nerds out there? Anyway, I got my ass handed to me by this tough monster who can kill with about two hits. My party died because I wasn't prepared. I was so mad that I yelled "FUCK" really loudly and threw the controller at the playstation. Then I turned off the tv and sulked for the rest of the evening.

This rather interesting display of childish behavior is known as "Game Fury." It's like road rage, but for gamers. A frustrated gamer will often curse at the screen and throw objects like I did, but I've also seen a fist fight break out between two brothers playing Street Fighter.

One of the best incidents I've seen happened after a winterguard rehearsal. We all went back to the team captain's house and he started to play Super Mario 64. During the part where you have to maneuver Mario through rings in the sky, Captain couldn't quite get the hang of using Mario's flying cap. He fell into the water so many times that he got up and yanked the controller out of the system, but not before yelling at it: "You're such a cheater! I HATE YOU!" Then he stormed into his room and slammed the door.

The bubbly young girl in our group took it upon herself to comment on Captain's strange behavior by saying the four most dangerous words in the gaming world, "it's just a game." As if on cue, Captain swung his door open (gamers have supersonic hearing) and yelled at the girl to get out of his apartment. The rest of us knew better than to piss off a gay gamer. They'll scratch your eyes out without ruining their manicure.

If there was ever a group of people in society that you had to choose to be nice to, you should always consider the video gamer. If the news headlines about PS3 waiting line shootouts won't sway you, consider the fact that pretty much ever nerd has played Quake and knows how to use a nail gun. Don't give attitude to your waiter because he's probably played Microsoft Flight Simulator and will ultimately shoot at you from a crop duster as you walk back to your car. You'd be looking at it and thinking 'there ain't no crops here!' Ever see North By Northwest?

The Holiday Eyesore

Everyone is so in love with the phrase "anything is possible," but have they ever truly thought it through? Is it possible to go on a plane ride without some bebe kid kicking your seat? Nope. Is it possible to look away when a really large man bends over to pick up a quarter and he shows his hairy coin slot? Nope! Can you drive through a neighborhood before Christmas and see a tastefully decorated yard? I don't think so!

Growing up in my neighborhood, there was a house on the corner street that always had tacky decorations for Christmas. I remember one year when they put a white flannel sheet all over their grass to simulate snow and Snoopy and Woodstock sitting in a power wheels jeep that circled the lawn while "Jingle Bell Rock" played on a nearby boombox. It hurt my eyes to see all of the tacky decorations, and I blame that for my current astigmatism.

This year I took a stroll through the Lakewood Balmoral neighborhood, and was shocked to see things like the nativity scene made out of twigs, a giant wooden snow man with half burned-out lights attached to it, and icicle lights. Ugh, icicle lights. You know that half of the people who put the freakin lights up won't take them down until July.

It's even worse in Rosemont. The village of Rosemont can support life on Mars for a decade with all the power they use to light their yards and houses during the holidays. You can see it from space.

People tell me: "Richie, you're just being a grinch! Holiday decorations are festive!" Oooh, wee! Don't you think it's ridiculous to have to install backup hooks on your door in order to support the weight of your enormous wreath? That's a little over-the-top. I went to someone's house and I could have sworn that there was a community of squirrels living in the gigantic wreath on that door. I was expecting them to pop out and forage the surrounding area for provisions.

There's a fine line between holiday festive and unholy monstrosity. If people would spend half as much time going to the gym or volunteering as they would decorating their houses (tastelessly, I might add), then the world would be a much nicer place. There'd also be more men who could keep up with me in the sack. See? It all comes back to me.

Queer Blood

Today the world commemorates World AIDS Day, and I'm wearing my little red ribbon. Remember back in elementary school when you had to wear the red ribbon for a week to show the world that you thought drugs were bad? Then a few months later you wore more red ribbons to support Mothers Against Drunk Driving? Then when you won second place at the science fair, they gave you another red ribbon? Sheesh!

No one ever told us why we had to wear the ribbons. It was more of a "yours is not to reason why..." kind of deal whenever the kiddies asked why they had to do anything. I bet that if the faculty had communicated and educated us more, we would have been better equipped to avoid terrible situations like drugs, driving under the influence, and papier mache/baking soda and vinegar volcanoes.

It's probably completely off the subject of AIDS awareness, but I'm still a little peeved that I can't donate blood. For those of you who don't know, I'm gay. Men who have had sex with other men since 1977 can't donate blood because the world thinks all of us are dirty and full of diseases.

About twenty seven years ago, my mother was on her way home when her car was hit by another driver. She was rushed to the hospital and needed an emergency blood transfusion. If you haven't already guessed, she was pregnant with me at the time. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the people who were nice enough to donate blood.

Feeling a sense of obligation one year when the mobile blood bank made its way to my place of employment, I thought I'd be able to do my part to save the life of another. Boy, was I wrong! They turned me away after they learned that I was a pole smoker.

I wonder why the issue of the blood ban isn't discussed as much here as it is in other countries like South Africa or the countries in the UK. The students in other countries go fuckin crazy for a cause, like those students in France who protested their new labor laws earlier this year.

All the blood that's received by the American Red Cross is screened for HIV, so it's not like they're having to play Russian roulette when the time comes to give blood to people who need it. The FDA's reasoning behind banning gay people from donating is that they have to weed out any potential tainting of the national blood supply. Yet a heterosexual man who's had unprotected sex with thousands of strange women can donate all the blood he wants while a non-promiscuous gay man with a rare blood type that could potentially save dozens of lives has to sit at home and watch reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore show. Is that fair?

They don't hook everyone up to a machine that detects whether or not a person is gay, so a gay man can actually lie on the questionnaire to circumvent the discriminatory screening. But we shouldn't have to go back into the closet just to donate blood!

I'll probably get a lot of moans about this entry from people who will tell me that I don't know enough about the issue to whine about it. This is the same problem I had back years ago in elementary school with the lack of useful information. If anyone can help me out, that would be great.