Saturday, November 24, 2007

Thanksgiving / the Family Mess

My mom's family is from Long Island so I went there for Thanksgiving. Despite a lot of mediocre, store-bought food (ugh, her side of the family is so plebian...) it was nice to see all the family and generally it was a very nice time.

The problem is really the football on TV. They just watch so much of it and it's just so lame! I mean, I can understand that there's a lot of strategy there, and there's drama of rivalries and bragging rights and whatnot, but still: they freakin' obsess over it. They put the TV on and watch it and it basically turns them into automatons, unable to interact with each other whatsoever unless it is a comment about football. Basically, pro football has ruined the social skills of a huge percentage of straight guys and it's really sad. It's almost like they're afraid to interact with each other on a level other than talking about football. And the funny thing is, I've been out to them for three years now and they still except me to watch football with them. They treat me exactly like one of them, even though the only thing I care about in football is that some of the players look hot in their tight pants. Maybe, I guess, it's a good thing that they treat me exactly like they would if I were straight - that's what gay rights is all about, right? This would be great, if by doing so, they weren't forcing me to engage in such a lame activity. It's like, by expecting me to watch football with them, by expecting me to be just like them, they're ignoring that I'm gay, they're ignoring the fact that I really am different, that I really am interesting, and that I can interact with people on so many more levels than just about football!!!

Move me to Europe, where straight men have real conversations and dress much cuter.

Pardon the generalizations.

Love always,
Bryan

Welcome to Occupied Ruin / the blog of Bryan

Dear friend,

Have you ever read "the perks of being a wallflower" by stephen chbosky? It was really influential to me back in middle school, but that's beside the point. The point is really, that the structure of the book is comprised of a boy, during his freshman year of high school, writing letters to someone anonymous. He tells his life through these letters and works everything in his tumultuous life out through these letters and it ends up being a very meaningful record is his existence at an important transitional point in his life.

That was supposed to take place in 1991. Now, at the end of 2007, I think it's time to revisit that concept. Maybe I can use this blog as a place to write letters about my life. To help myself work out all of the crazy stuff that's going on in my mind and in my family and social life. Now the internet will make it public. Maybe you can learn something about my world and maybe it will put your world in perspective. Or maybe no one will ever read this but it will help me work out my world for myself.

So a little about me. I'm not going to use my real name because I don't want you to know exactly who I am, I don't want you to be able to find me on myspace or facebook, and most of all I don't want my friends finding this blog. I need some anonymity to be able to freely post the innermost churnings of my brain. But I also need it to be public so maybe I can get a little feedback from you.

So, my name is Bryan and I'm a freshman at Princeton but I'm from California. I live in a quad in an old gothic building with 3 pretty boring roommates. More on them and life at school in another post. It's getting really cold out. This is going to be my first real winter and I am not looking forward to enduring the long cold.

I named this blog 'Occupied Ruin' because I am interested in architecture. My dad is an architect and so is by boyfriend. Well, he's still a student. He's a second-year grad student in architecture at Yale. I'll call him Greg here - I don't want to use his real name either because he's 75% closeted and I don't think he would appreciate being outed here. None of his friends at Yale know he's gay. That's so lame (and what am I doing dating a 25 year old???) but we're so good together that I'm going to deal with it, at least for now. I met him in July at Tigerheat, this 18+ gay club in Hollywood. Tigerheat is so not my scene (it's pretty trashy) but there's a decent number of cute boys there and it's really the center of the U21 gay scene in LA, so it's where you could find me every Thursday night since I turned 18. I like Princeton a lot but I've been going up to Yale every other weekend or so to see Greg - I hope I'm not missing out too much on life here. Oh, back to the name of the blog. So there's this really ugly (but neat) building at Yale that the school of architecture was in before but now it's being renovated and they're somewhere else. It's this really amazingly strange brutal concrete thing that was in terrible condition. One time Greg described it to me as it was an "occupied ruin" and I've been fascinated by that phrase ever since. I've heard so much about architecture because of Greg and because of my dad that I kind of want to major in it too. Although then I'd be lame for following in the footsteps of my dad...

Okay, that's enough for tonight. Bye!


Love always,
Bryan