Neon Pink Spray Paint

I ended things with the guy that I was making out with. He popped up in my chat while I was in Texas and he was complaining about how he can’t stop thinking about his ex-boyfriend. I tried my best to be sympathetic, but I just finished a 30 hour drive and ended up being really blunt about the whole situation. I told him nothing more could happened between him and I because he is still in love with his ex, I told him how I knew that it couldn’t go anywhere and how he’s a nice guy but maybe we weren’t made for each other.

He let me know that he was really fond of me and how he was just in a bad state of mind. And then I just said, “If you want to talk about things, I’m going anywhere. But as for us, I can’t keep going over to your house for make outs or anything.” He said ok, and I fell into a deep coma. I ended things. I always do and so I was happy and content with myself, but then the next week he popped up on my chat again.
Things seemed cordial, and after we both said hey, he told me, “Jacob, I think I got my ability to love again.” This came off as shocking because he has always said that love doesn’t exist and that love is a waste of time to try to find. All I could respond was, “What?” Did this mean that he wanted to love me? Turns out no, but from what he said it sounded like he has gotten back together with his ex. But then he pulled the same card that I pulled a week previous. “We can’t see each other anymore.” I said ok and he said thanks for listening.

After our chat, I was just furious and for no reason. How dare he break things off with me? And I broke things off with him first! I had the upper hand and I gave the final word, and then he just decided to pop up, break things off, and then go off happily into the sunset. I guess my big issue is that I seem to be able to inspire people around me to fall in love with anyone but me. I am the Susan Lucci of relationships.

Also, my sister has moved up to Provo, but I have yet to see her. She wants to meet up but only at times when I am busy or asleep. I really just want to tell her, “I don’t respond to texts at 2:30 in the morning, even if they are emergencies… all they do is wake me up and make me grouchy.” Yesterday she started to text me about a guy she wanted me to date… which is weird because she was one of the meanest of my family members after I came out. Now she is showing my picture everywhere and asking what kind of guys do I like. Honestly, I like guys who tell me I’m pretty and don’t hang out with my sister. I think those are the only two requirements I have in a guy.

I have two more months with my sister in town before I actually graduate and I can actually have hopes to leave BYU. Then I actually will have dating issues and stories, that is if I ever get asked out. It scares me to think about being able to date openly and whoever I want, because what if I don’t get asked out? I don’t go to clubs, I don’t believe in nasty gay social sites, and I don’t believe in hookups. So how is it that I find other people like me? Maybe I have a preconceived idea of how gays are from how gays are here: sluts, whores, and lushes. I just don’t see how that is attractive, but that is what most gays are like out here… so maybe that is how they all are out in the real world. I just try to keep those thoughts out of my head because I should probably be focusing on schoolwork or something. Meh.

I find it disconcerting that my blog is being advertized on an amateur porn site, but it is. I went and looked through the sites that reference my blog and one looked rather bizarre, so I clicked on it and I was immersed in so much vagina that I couldn’t see straight. It really makes me wonder how people can actually look at porn and not get overwhelmed: vagina here, penis there, nipples everywhere. But I have been getting a bit of traffic from that site, so I guess all publicity is good publicity.

Besides that, I was looking at the Google searches people use to find my blog, and once again, highly disturbing. People stumble upon my blog by the following searches: Neon pink spray paint, long now pink I can sleep, boiling water ruining pot, can you spraypaintbraces, fluorescent pink spray paint, genital paint, genital warts friends, how to spray when going to have sex, I dislike my bishop, and I want to stab him. I am really concerned that somebody who uses genital paint is actually reading my blog, or better yet, a person looking for fellow genital wart lepers.

I really shouldn’t be critical, especially if these people actually read my blog, because I don’t really have the largest audience. It brings back old memories of when I started to blog and it was a mildly successful blog. I had readers from 15 different countries and 30 different states. Now, I have genital wart inquirers and people painting their genitalia. I will still keep my head up and type, no matter how unread I feel.

I guess it all links back to the fact that I am lonely and how I miss when I knew somebody was thinking about me all of the time. My best friends have moved away, the wave of men interested me has waned, and I feel like I am a little bit stuck (especially with my sister flying up to Utah tomorrow). But really, I want somebody to be thinking of me constantly. Is that weird? I see Tal and she never stops texting this boy she met from LDSsingles, Bonnie would text her ex-boyfriend, Coco has constant communication with her boyfriend, Tierra with her lover, and I look at my phone every few minutes just waiting for something, anything really; a smidge of stimulation to my day… a connection to somebody other than myself.

To remedy this, I find myself going to random chat rooms, like Omegle, and talking with strangers for a while. That became boring after the third Malaysian girl asked me how it felt to live in UT, so instead I opened up a twitter account. That is bizarre for me because I think twitter is one of the stupidest fads to have ever popped up in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good facebook status, but a website devoted to facebook statuses that calls itself a miniblog? I think that if you don’t have enough to say to be classified as a blog, maybe you should stick with statuses. But that is just my bitter-old-man soul, rejecting advances in technology and society.

Two more months, and then I am done with BYU. I pray that I will be done with loneliness too.

I’m in Texas. Now what for? That depends on who you are. To the professors of my classes that I am ditching, I am here for job interviews that were very last minute. To everyone else, I am on vacation with my friend Tal, who just moved back here. To myself, I am here to spend one last week with my best friend before I have to live life without her. Yes I’m sad. Yes I feel all sappy and nostalgic. No I am not going to cry.

Somebody needed to come with Tal to Texas anyway because she couldn’t do the whole 30 hour thing by herself. So Monday, when she had food poisoning, we took off. Monday evening, we made it to Colorado, where it started to snow. Tal isn’t the best at driving in snow, but because we were going up hills and I don’t know how to really drive stick, she had to be a brave woman. After crossing Summit, and coming down a snowy, ice covered highway, Tal commented how she feels like she is not in the most control of the car, and immediately following that comment, we skid off the road and are headed directly into a metal barrier. I knew I was going to die because the barrier was about to hit directly where I was sitting, and I thought, “Wow. The irony of dying right after I get my B.S.” I guess I am rather apathetic towards death.

Instead of dying, we slid off the road, into the snow and mud, and into a fox filled ravine that had an icy river at the bottom. Tal insisted that we should put it in reverse and just try to make it out, but I knew that we would slide to our frostbitten death if we did, so I say, “Let me just try to push while you put it in reverse,” thinking that if she starts sliding forward, I need to become superman and keep this car out of the river. She was certain the car would just run me over, but I put on my big boy pants and said, “I am a man. Shut up and put it into reverse.” I was able to push the car far enough out of the ravine so that we were no longer dangling over the river, but I was not able to get us all the way out. “Wow, we barely missed that river.” Tal didn’t know that we almost were plunged into a river, and then started to have a panic attack. A Penske truck driver stopped, said he saw out skid marks but had no chain, and then drove off. I managed to call the cops while trying to soothe Tal’s panic, but the cops never came. We just sat on the side of the road, waiting in the cold. Finally some burly Mormons popped out of nowhere and helped me push the car back onto the road.

Colorado came and went, and it became my turn to drive. Tal drove from 1 PM to 3 AM and I had been awake the entire time, but I took my turn to drive. I watched the sunrise in Kansas and was surprised to how flat it was. I actually loved Kansas for most of the time, until that is my sister sent me a text saying that she was moving up to Provo. I instantly threw up in my mouth, which I tried to wash down with some Mountain Dew, which made me throw up once more. Apparently my sister is moving to Provo next week, living with an elderly person, and will be attending UVU. Did she tell my parents any of this? No. But I called them up immediately and told them I was not happy with this situation and that she is dead wrong if she thinks that I will be taking care of her. But while I complained to them, I knew that nothing I said was being heard because they were just euphoric that they would be rid of the plague that is my sister’s shinanagins. I just need to keep telling myself that I will be out of Provo soon enough, where I can reestablish my buffer zone from my family.

Oklahoma… smells like a toilet.

Texas. I am driving once again, while Tal sleeps. I actually have been driving since Oklahoma, and I think that I am finally getting the hang of driving stick, but then traffic occurs and I am stalling out and bouncing around trying to get the damn car in gear every three seconds. Somehow Tal didn’t wake up to my horrible driving and moans of anguish, but I am almost sure that I did horrible things to that car that will kill it in a few months. I pull off to the side of the road to switch before I have to drive through Dallas at rush hour and a UPS man lets us know we will be driving right into a storm where a tornado just touched down. But we can’t stop and wait this thing though because we need to get home, and Tal needs to shower because her deodorant becomes noxious after 20 hours, so we go forward anyway. We make it through the worst rain and wind I have ever encountered, and then I ask why the sky is turning yellow/green behind us. Apparently this means that you will soon be dead from a tornado, so we start driving as fast as our little car can take us (71mph). Lightning is everywhere, and while we drive, transformers explode right off the freeway. Around this time, I believe I developed TMJ, and I began dry heaving.

Somehow we made it through the night and didn’t die, but I can’t help but think that maybe this whole trip was a bit of a mistake. Tal’s last memories of me will be associated with food poisoning, skidding off roads, dangling over ravines, tornados and lighting, and noxious armpits. Not only that, but we’ve been at her home for three days now and she still feels ill. I am just praying that she will remember our good times, and just remember this experience as a funny one.

Warning: I am about to talk about sex. If you do not want to read, that’s fine with me.

So I am a virgin. And sometimes I wish I would have just had sex with Curtis back in the day so I could just get rid of the stigma of being a virgin, but that didn’t happen so here I am. Well now, I have the opportunity to have sex, yet I something keeps me from going all the way.

The guy I am seeing now is more than willing to have sex, yet whenever we get really close to doing anything that hot and heavy, I say, “I don’t think I’m ready yet.” Then he in response says, “Yeah, I need to go to bed.” I am out of his apartment within three minutes of my statement (and you know I was thrown out quickly when I have to hide my erection while walking to my truck). I don’t know why I am so reluctant but whenever I think about having sex, well I get freaked out and a list of things I need to happen before I go all the way pops up into my mind.

If I am going to have sex, I do not want to do anything on a couch… especially when there is a bed two doors away. Also, I don’t necessarily want to have sex during a scary movie that features a bald, toad licking mutilator. I would like to actually know when the last time my sexual partner had sex (which means anything… you achieved orgasm with somebody else, let me know about it), and I would probably like a clean bill of health from a licensed serologist.

I guess the biggest thing is that I am not comfortable with my body. I am so uncomfortable with my body that just having somebody touch me (anywhere) makes me cringe. I automatically panic and think about how fat I used to be and the possibility that I am still that fat. I can’t breathe, I feel like I am about to pass out, and I want to crawl under a rock and die. I know this is due to my Body Dysmorphic Disorder (which that is an actual diagnosis… not my hypochondria speaking), and so I probably want to have sex with somebody that I don’t think will laugh at me if something isn’t perfect… Dear God, I will never have sex again if during my first time I am laughed at in any other way but playful.

I know I am seeing the wrong guy for me. He does drugs, he possibly is talking to other guys and doing the same things with them as he is with me, he kicks me out of his apartment when I say I’m not comfortable doing certain things, and he doesn’t believe in love or romance. Not that I am this big lovey-dovey guy… but I do believe that romance exists, and I want it. Maybe I’m asking too much to find a guy who is romantic and attractive.

I know that I should just say, “I think we have too physical of a relationship,” or, “Maybe we should talk about this before it happens,” but I just can’t seem to do it. I know that the moment that I say anything, I will be immediately ushered out from his basement apartment and out into the cold. And I like knowing that somebody is attracted to me. Nothing sucks worse than just floating about for two years without anybody hitting on you, giving a flirt, or flashing a passing wink… and that was my first two years at BYU. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I don’t really know who reads my blog, but those that read my blog and actually know me, I would really like your opinions. Although I already know exactly what will be said, but maybe getting a ton of disapproving messages will force me to actually do the right thing.

All my life, I have been known to go completely apathetic in unfavorable situations. So of course this week, if a nuclear bomb was going to hit BYU, I would shrug it off and go along my merry way. The problem is that when I turn apathetic, I lose my mind, do and say things that I shouldn’t say, and then end up hurting one of my friends.

Yesterday I had a big final I had to take, so studying initiated my general apathy toward the world. After six hours on campus, I finally get home and the one thing I want to do is to have a crazy make-out. So I text my what-ever-he-is and he doesn’t respond for two hours, and when he does respond he says that he has plans and then will probably just go to sleep. That is when I realized how pointless getting with this guy is… and it doesn’t help that I can’t make my mind up about him. Sometimes I really like him and would just like to tear off his clothes, but other times I just want to stab him in the neck with a fork.

Then my best friend up here lets me know that she just got back from a date with this guy she has been talking to for about a month. The problem is that she is moving three states away, and so dating him has just been for fun. But last night she told me that, “I’m not falling for him, but I am definitely tumbling.” So of course I respond with, “You’re moving.” She then blows up in my face, and I keep fueling the fire because that’s what I do when I am apathetic. My apathetic alter-ego just wants everyone to hate me. Then she tells me that her date told her that he loves her, which she found sweet. I personally think that telling her he loves her is premature because they have been on three dates and have been talking for only a month, and telling her he loves her is totally a way to keep her from moving. When I told Tal this… well she wasn’t happy.

I knew that I should have just smiled and said, “That’s nice Tal. How do you feel?” But instead, I went off on a rant about how him saying he loves her is stupid and how she is settling for the first guy to come along since her last boyfriend. I realize that she is older than the average age to get married and so she is trying to find somebody… anybody, but I would hate for her to settle for this guy just because he said he loves her after a few dates. I’m just worried for her I guess.

Oh, and I never got my make-out. I waited for some type of clue as to if I was going over or not… never got anything. I’d really like to stab somebody in the neck with a fork today.

So it is finals week… actually it is my third week of finals, but this is the last stretch before I walk, take an English class, and then actually get my diploma. Really this semester is about to kill me because the next two finals I take I have to get rather decent grades on to pass. It’s bizarre because I am getting A’s in all my other classes but these two just seem to be killing me. But I know that
recently I have been slacking off with studies for those classes.

It’s all because of a boy. I guess he is actually a man because he is in his late twenties and is finishing Grad School, but whatever he is… he is something in my life. He contacted me on facebook and I approved him because I never turn down people unless they are obviously prostitutes from Sweden, but he seemed nice and I approved. From there it turned to dinner and he turned out to be the most intriguing guy I have met in a long time. He ate crusty bread and drank red wine, we talked about music, and we said goodnight, nothing special. Then, I started going over to his house when he would get home from work… midnight. We’d watch movies, he’d smoke pot, and he’d get the munchies. The usual. Too bad that this has been the happening for the last three weeks: movies, pot, munchies. Every once and again I will feel a spark, but sometimes I feel his drug use is less recreational and more self-medicating than what he says it is, and that scares me.

My friends despise him although they have yet to meet him. I assume this is mostly because he is rather different than any guy they would imagine me with, but they also aren’t too pro about the fact that his weed usage makes it so that he doesn’t remember anything that was said between the two of us. That also bothers me: Both the fact that my friends don’t like him and that he doesn’t remember me.

Writing all this down makes it seem like I am in one heck of a situation…

So my writer friend has become obsessed with this weird form of poetry. It essentially follows a template and tells you exactly what to write. She has had quite some success with this form of poetry, so I thought I would try it out. It’s not anything special, and don’t hop to conclusions:

His eyes are deep pools
I’m afraid mine will become deep from a kiss.
Burning, glowing, acrid, fleeting.
Lips, taste of poison.
Juliet in Verona.
I go in for a taste.
Hover, stop, retreat.
My legs are janky;
Therefore, I must be clumsy.
Is this feeling three sheets to the wind?
This ever-present taste of crime.
Anxiety tastes so sweet.
I breathe in.
Lush, you’ve got yourself in quite deep this time.
And then haunted with guilt.
Chaotic silence.
And I will go further than Armstrong!
Nire aerolabangailua aingirez beteta dago.
The smoke waves goodbye,
and I’m still looking into those pools.


For the template, use this website: http://www.spynets.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9280
Write your own.

I have just about two months left at BYU and I can just feel the freedom a comin’! Of course, I have no clue where I am going to end up, or what I will be doing for my year of transit before I get into grad school (crossing my fingers). So at the moment, I just feel like insanity is coming just as fast as freedom is.

On another note, I hate the concept of feast or famine. Either I am in a desert wasteland, where nobody has the slightest attraction to me, or I am wading in pool of men and I have no clue what to do. Recently, I have found myself in the transition from famine to feast, which is good… except the fact that 50 year old men are now coming onto my scent. I find this very reminiscent to when I started blogging and I developed a creepy, stalker fan base, which would randomly show up in my hometown, when I was 17. Yes, I was jailbait. Now that I no longer have the repellant of statutory rape, the old men have now started to dive-bomb.

I found it a bit disturbing when I received a message from one guy (50+) who said he saw me at a festival and was disappointed that he didn’t see me at the after party. Definitely a smidge creepy. And recognizing me at a festival with thousands of people makes it creepier. Then another message came from a 47 year old who wanted to fly me down to Texas… and another from a 43 year old with a kid my age. When did this become acceptable, and where the hell are they finding me? People who are closer to my age are also biting, which is better. Although most are about a decade older, have suicidal tendencies, and are addicted to porn. I guess I just attract the weirdos, which makes me wonder, why? Do I dress like a weirdo? Talk like one? If I am a weirdo, somebody better tell me soon, or heads will roll!

Also, I have an increasing fangirl supply. This phenomenon I do not understand in the least. As fangirls go, I don’t mind girls willing to wait on me like a servant, but last time I let the fangirl populous do things for me… well I ended up with lips on my face and confusion in my eyes. Honestly, I appreciate the attention because I love when people tell me I’m pretty. So I probably nurture these weirdos until they get a little too close, and then get freaked out. But I just can’t turn away a compliment. I am actually addicted to them. So as long as they keep coming, I think I will be ok.

Last November, my bishop met with me to discuss me getting promoted in the priesthood. I denied and received a letter from him that was completely on my sexuality, how that was the reason I don’t feel witness from the spirit, and was in turn told that I was possessed. This of course is the speed version of what happened, and I will try to put up my post explaining the whole situation, but I digress.

This last Wednesday, I was talking to my father on the phone, trying to explain why I didn’t want my sister’s boyfriend to move in with me. I didn’t want to be blunt and say, “I don’t want him to live with me because I don’t want people back at home to know that I am the apostate child. I don’t want people to judge my parents because of how my life pans out. I don’t want to ruin things for my sister.” So instead, I was just kept saying that I was hard to live with. My dad then decided to insult me several times, and then reference the bishop’s last letter where it said, “… the dark side inside of you.” I really had no clue what this meant and my father told me that I needed to ask my bishop.

I would rather stab myself in the eye with a meat skewer than meet with the bishop, so instead I sent him an email. I asked him what he meant by the, “dark side,” and also why he gave me a letter about sexuality when that was not the subject matter that I asked about. But then I wrote him the truth; the letter haunts me. Because of that letter, I feel awkward around him and at church, and most of the time I feel ostracized. I feel like he judges me, and that he is two faced, and that he will treat me just like his previous members in Greenwich Village, whom he described as, “… visiting hell when I went to visit! They hate the world and everyone in it, and have no potential….”

He didn’t take to the letter too kindly and responded in the hour telling me how, “… I don’t HAVE to care one single iota,” and, “You are making this all up in your head!” Now I dread going to church even more and have an urge to vomit whenever thinking about having to interact with him.

But the moral of the story is that when I received this email, I reached out to people who I thought would console or try to help me. One, well I had a crush on him (he had a crush on me too… and I console him whenever he has pills in one hand and a knife in the other), but he heard that I was having a harsh time and just stopped talking to me. The other, he and I have blogged for a long time (and he used to always be there for me when I was having a harsh time) but he lent no support and thought that it was funny. I ended up calling my mother and discussing the whole thing for several, tear-filled hours (from midnight on), which is bizarre because she and I do not discuss things like sexuality and church because I just end up making her cry, and she makes me cry. We talked through everything though, and although it was awkward, she was there for me.

I guess I am just disappointed with those that I turned to first. I used to have this huge support from the online community, but now I don’t. I can somewhat understand it because I have stopped communication with them because I think they are whiney and are obsessed with themselves, but I don’t believe that that means that they can just turn away when I have a crisis. The problem is that I give everyone a “Come-to-Jesus” speech.

This speech has nothing to do with Jesus, but when I was given a “Come-to-Jesus” a year and a half ago, well that was what it was called so I keep on the namesake. Essentially, I tell these people that they need to get over themselves. Nobody cares that they are gay and that maybe they should develop other parts of their character before they become swallowed up as the annoying homosexual. This has offended people, I know, when I deliver it to them. But I think of how much my life was changed when my friend Sarah gave me a “Come-to-Jesus” and I hope that maybe I could influence these people for good, like she did for me.

But from giving these speeches, I have become hated. One person has said that I “… just don’t understand it anymore. BYU must be making you forget who you are!” Another has said, “I am not obsessed with my sexuality! Being gay is who I am!” I think that is a prime example of a concept flying above one’s head.

I don’t even know how I got to that topic but anyway, I am sad that I have lost a support system because I am unwilling to focus my entire life on one, small detail of my life. Maybe I should just get a therapist instead… meh.

I am not a clean freak. I can withstand some mess, and my bedroom is most the time in shambles, but besides my own space I would like to have a clean area. This has proven to be a problem with this year’s roommates though. They are the biggest slobs I have ever come across, and my kitchen sink, if not piled to the brim with used dishes, smells like it is actually a toilet. I especially have a problem with this because my roomies will use my pots, my pans, my forks, my plates, my bowls, my spatulas, my whisks, my blender, my food processor, and anything else that is mine in the kitchen, and then leave it to rot in the sink.

Today, I had reached my limit of waiting for other people to clean their shit, so I went to work. The worst proved to be my medium sized sauce pan that somebody decided to make instant mash in… two weeks ago. It has sat on our counter, in front of my cabinet, and I was not going to take care of it. Unfortunately enough, I should have dealt with it last week because the mash had cemented itself to the sides of the pan and would not budge. Nothing less than putting the pot on the stove and boiling it with baking soda could soften the residual potatoes enough for me to chisel the mess off for the most part.

As I was finishing up the dishes, the worst roommate of them all came out. “Can I grab a pot for my ramen?” I responded with, “If you do not wash the pot after you use it, I will kill you.” So he gets out my largest pot to boil water for ramen, places it on the burner with about a half a cup of water, and leaves the room. I was furious haw blasé he was about me doing all of his dishes, so I went to my bedroom to find my stash of revenge. Laxatives. I have a box on hand just in case I decide to become bulimic, and I would never want to puke up my previous meal (mostly because I have nice teeth, I would hate to melt them with hydrochloric stomach acid). I placed the tablet in the boiling water and let it sit for a few moments. My guilt caught up to me, so I poured out the tainted water and filled the pot with more water.

I went to take out the trash and chat with my friend, but when I came back, the pot was still on the stove boiling nothing. I snatched the pot off the burner and looked at the damage done. It wasn’t horrendous, but the Teflon is now flaked and I feel an overwhelming hatred towards Jim (my smelly roommate). So I pound on his door, yell a bit, and he comes out and just passes it off like nothing happened, although he did say he will buy my a new pot. My problem comes with the fact that all my pots and pans are a set, and he will skimp out and get me some cheap ass pot that I will then think of him whenever I open my cupboard; thus, I will never use
it.

Maybe it is because of kharma for putting the laxative in his water, although I did replace the water so he wouldn’t actually experience my revenge. I guess this just means that when you do something bad, you have to make up for it and more, or else kharma still applies. Or maybe I was supposed to slip him a laxative and because I didn’t, the universe punished me. Whatever it is, I am just still upset about something so trivial as a pot… and maybe that is a problem itself.

I’m stuck. I feel like I am just stuck and can’t get myself moving again and I don’t really know why. Things are going good for me; I am doing well in my studies, I have friends, I am graduating soon... So why do I feel like I am stuck?

Well for one, every broken person in the state of Utah flocks to me like I am some beacon of hope. Almost every month since I have lived here, I have either been asked to take somebody to the emergency room, Planned Parenthood, or the psych ward. It never stops. And I like to put on a cheerful smile and go about like everything is ok, but really it sucks and I hate being put in these situations. On top of everything, this guy who I occasionally like (but he lives in DC, so not like anything is going to happen there) randomly will call me and tell me how horribly depressed he is and I don’t know how to fix things when they are more than 30 miles away from my present area. My friend with the warty hoo-hah finally had a gynecologist look to see if she had genital warts or not, and now she wants to discuss with me every detail of her feminine hygiene with me: Tampons, douches, Vagisil. I am soon to just shoot myself to keep from having to hear about it.

One problem that I hate to admit is that my friends make me lonelier. All of them want to snuggle with me, flirt, and hold my hand, which just makes me realize how I am still alone and that the only people on this planet who are attracted to me are women. I love my friends, I really do, but they make my loneliness into an omnipresent entity. And so I have to get away from them to just sit in my apartment (which doesn’t help anything either!).

But on a good note, I had dinner with this guy who has been in my life for more than two years now and finally we are on the same plane. He is really the only guy who has ever taken me out on a date, and he will always have a special place in my heart, but he and I never really felt the same way for each other at the same time. Dinner between us was finally just normal, and I didn’t have to worry about what I could and could not say. Somehow, we finally became friends and I feel relief.

Sometimes I wish I was just 30. My life would be started by then, I’d have a job, a decent place to live, and possibly a relationship. And whenever I tell people that I just wish I was 30, they always respond, “The adventure is in the journey!” No, it isn’t. I want my adventure to begin once I arrive at my destination. And I would like to be at my destination now! I have never been known for my patience.

Sometimes I find it hard to write. I actually will sit down at the computer, write a post, and delete it all because I can. So I have been trying to write for a while and it just doesn’t end up happening, so I have decided that whatever I write now, I will not delete and will post whatever it comes out to be.

I’ll start off with stake conference, which was yesterday. We had an apostle show up and so everyone was all ready to shake his hand and feel his spirit. This concept I don’t understand. Why do Mormons feel the need to groupie apostles? That is essentially what they are doing and I am surprised that the women in my stake didn’t take off their panties and throw them to him while he spoke. I ate poptarts and wrote haikus instead of actually paying attention because I am at my limit of church.

It is stake conference,
Droopy eyes and quick doodles.
Attention? There’s none.

Matched makeup and clothes,
Pleated skirts and curly hair.
These Mormon women.

Showy high heeled shoes;
Platforms and suede and velour,
But can’t walk in them.

These same suits, same ties,
Week after week, all the same.
It reflects their souls.

Boring, boring men
Come to church to wed all these
Boring, Boring girls.

This morning, I was just in a foul mood. I had issues getting out of bed and walked to school by myself while thinking about how much I hate poptarts.” They come in packets with two poptarts, yet the serving size is one tart. Do they expect me to walk around with a loose tart on my person all day? Bastards at the poptart factory…” Then I realized I was walking behind a woman with fat thighs and was wearing corduroy pants. Every step her thighs would rub the cords together, making her chafing thighs an aria. I could barely control my hatred for this woman’s thighs that I decided to take a moment and pretend to tie my shoes until she was out of the range of my hearing. But then a man wearing basketball shorts decided to walk right by me.

I have a hatred for people who think it is okay to walk about in basketball shorts, especially when not properly supported. I can’t avert my eyes from the jiggling mass that is their genitalia. Back and forth it sways, and my stomach does the same until I feel like I am about to vomit. Why do people feel that that is attractive? I was especially mortified by this specific man because his penis was disturbingly small and I had the urge to call up my friend who has had many experiences with measuring for micro-penis.

I continued to walk to my class, and my hatred for the world increased with each passing second: He is fat; Her butt is the size of a baby hippo; I can see your genitalia; Your acne is atrocious, please wear a mask. I became a monster of epic, judgmental proportion. I can feel it in my bones that I am destined to become this bitter, judgmental monster and that scares me more than anything. How can I get rid of this mean monster because I never want to become bitter and mean. But as I wait for this mood to lift, I judge my roommates' hygiene, my neighbor's uke playing, and my friend's driving abilities.

Genital warts: The mention of the subject gives me the chills, but last night I was faced with my demons head on. My friend sent me a text message at midnight that read, “Could you differentiate between razor burn and genital warts?” I was hoping that a simple yes would stop the conversation but I was not that lucky. Instead, I was asked to be a wart inspector. I have had my run-ins with cooter before, and I swore to myself that I would never find myself in the same situation again. Unfortunately, when you swear against something, the universe sends it your way at every possible chance.

My best friend in high school had an issue. She got a bit frisky after the Winter Formal, and in the act, the condom broke. He changed out condoms and went back to work, but the next day, my friend was complaining about some pelvic discomfort. Her parents didn’t know that she was sexually active, so of course she couldn’t ask them to take her to the doctor, so she came to me. “Well I think there might be a bit of condom still in there… but I can’t see it. You are my best friend and I only ask you because I can’t go to my doctor.” This would be my first time experiencing a vagina in all its terror.

I donned gloves and a face mask that I had kept in my dissection kit from the anatomy lab and came over with my dad’s Maglite that double as a weapon because of its size. “Okay, I’m just going to take a look. And I will tell you what I see.” I have never been the same since, but I found the shard of latex and we were able to get everything sorted out.

“You want me to tell you if you have genital warts?” That she did. I tried to diagnose through text message but that was not enough. “Am I going to get cancer if this is HPV? Can they get rid of the warts? It doesn’t look like a witch’s nose, but is that how you can tell?” I wouldn’t pick up the phone when she called because I could never talk to her about the subject. Text messages were the only method of communication I would use so that she could not ask me to come over and take a look because than I could not say no.

“Well I can’t really diagnose without a smear and a raft culture… maybe you should go see a doctor.” She pleaded, “No. That scares me!” So I had to do the mist unfriendly thing that I have done in my life. I turned off my phone and I have yet to turn it on. I am sure that when I turn my phone back on, my inbox will be filled with texts of hatred and woe. But I cannot face inspecting another friend’s cooter with a Maglite and a mask, and so I will keep my phone off.

Once a year, BYU puts on a fancy dinner called, “The Etiquette Dinner: You only have one first impression.” I considered going, although I know how to wine and dine, but I wouldn’t mind a four course dinner. I considered going until my friend who worked at catering told me that the dinner lasts four hours. That is a marathon of etiquette, and I was certain that I would embarrass myself by the end of the dinner, so I decided not to go.

My professor saw me working in the lab and asked me if I was going to the etiquette dinner, assuring me that it would be fun and that the food is good. Is it four hours long? Yes. My etiquette attention doesn’t last that long. He was confused about that statement, and asked me to give him and example. So I asked him to get me a cloth napkin and I would show him.

We went to his office and he pulled out a bandana, and I started my example. I folded the napkin this way, and that way while talking about Madonna. When I finished folding, I grabbed the ends of the napkin and said, “… And I disguised myself as Madonna!” Right when I finished my statement, I pulled the corners of the napkin to my chest, and in all of its glory, the napkin formed into a pointy bra.

I was sure that my professor would be rendered speechless, and he was… but he was speechless because he could not stop laughing. After a snort and a snigger, he stopped and told me, “I will pay for your ticket if you sit with me at the life science faculty table. Please. I need the other professors to see this.” I politely declined, but he still gave me a ticket to attend. “If you decide to go, tell them that you have been asked to sit at the Life Science Professors’ table.” I still think I’ll pass.

My loneliness is becoming obscene; mostly because I feel like I am unattractive, which I blame on both BYU and my Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I try to make myself look good, and I walk around campus and don’t get a second look… from males and females alike. I guess it just is disheartening when it is against code for people to be attracted to you, and so I have no clue if what I am doing is actually attractive or if I just look like an idiot. All I ask for is some positive feedback.

All my best friends feel lonely as well, which my heart goes out for them, but my situation and theirs is totally different because people are allowed to be attracted to them, and they can get attention and not worry about being kicked out from BYU. But I coddle them, and tell them that they will someday find someone to compliment them and to finish their sentences, but I don’t really get that in return. They tell me that I am attractive, but it isn’t the same coming from them because they aren’t attracted to me. Maybe I should stop complaining, but it means nothing to me when they say I am attractive.

Most recently though, Talia has developed a crush, which she hasn’t had one in years. I’ve met the guy, think he is awesome, and suggest that she goes for him, and then she asks me if I have a crush on anyone. Well it is a fact that I am interested in a guy, but he lives halfway across the country and half the time I think he is a jerk. Does that count as a crush? She says no. So what does count as a crush? Apparently, to her, a crush is an attraction to somebody from afar, and they usually don’t know, but you like them and are intrigued by them. Back to the guy across the country: doesn’t that count? No. Why it doesn’t count is because I am only interested in him because he is interested in me. Now that I think about it… I’ve never crushed on somebody according to her rules. I only like people who
like me first.

I’ve thought about the whole situation, and it really is true. And I blame the whole situation on a flaw of mine: If somebody compliments me, I can’t resist. Is my confidence so low that I will like anybody who says I am attractive? Well, that seems to be the case. And so now I am stuck, trying to find out if I really do like this guy or if I am just addicted to his compliments. I took into consideration every relationship(ish) that I have ever been in, and I know that I am just addicted to compliments. All of them tell me I’m pretty and I just become smitten. Yes, I realize this is bad, but I don’t see how I will ever overcome this flaw.

The first step would probably be to go back to therapy, but I never want to return to that route. Therapy was hell when I did it, and it sucked, and it made me go to the depth of despair. Also, I am afraid that if I go to therapy again, drugs will be offered like they were before. It was hard enough to resist behavioral drugs before, and now with almost every one of my friends on antidepressants, it will probably be ten times more difficult to turn down drugs. Can I find a way to overcome this flaw without professional help?

I want to open an ice cream shop. I think it would be the most marvelous thing to ever do, and for the last year, I have told everyone that I will open an ice cream shop after I work for a while. The professor I work for has pleased for me to go to graduate school, and I would tell him, “Meh… Maybe. I just want to be done with school right now.” But for months, whenever he would see me, he would ask if I have considered going to grad school.
I was just sitting in class today and I decided, “I want to go to graduate school.” How to actually go to grad school still evades me, but I just feel like I want to go all of the sudden. It’s not that I don’t want to open an ice cream shop anymore, because I still do. But now, I just feel like ice cream can be something I do on the side.
So the problem is; I graduate in four months. Usually, people apply for grad school their senior year of university. I have fiddled around my whole senior year, so that option is no longer available. Also, I have not taken the GRE (and it scares me to death), my grades are only decent, and my research is at a standstill until I can get somebody to share some resources with me (because my lab receives no funding).
I really hate my thinking processes. One day I will just be strolling along and decide that I want to do something which I have no preparation for, and it generally flows in the complete opposite direction that my life is headed. Also, I develop fears of doing things that mark adulthood. Getting my driver’s license about killed me, and I procrastinated it until my parent’s started charging me $20 each day that I didn’t have my license. Applying for University made me physically ill for a week and I procrastinated applying until realizing that I couldn’t mosey about the community college another semester (I had been able to graduate for a year already but just never did). Getting a job up here is something I really need, yet I can’t motivate myself to actually go around and apply because adults have jobs. Can I keep living like this, having to be pushed to continue further along in life?

I haven’t blogged in about a month, mostly because I am dissatisfied with the writing format I was attempting, and also I only have two readers. So I decided to go back to the journal type of writing style (which I don’t edit). It was successful before right? So why not go back to that kind of writing?

I guess the most major thing that has happened to me since this semester has started is that my roommate moved out. And when I say moved out, I actually mean that he just stopped coming home. He put his contract up for sale after a week of staying at our older roommate’s place, and now I rarely see him. It wasn’t really much of a surprise, because Johnnie (the older roommate) has been after Remington (the one that just moved out) for months, and Johnnie has some power over Remington.

I felt it in my bones after Rem didn’t show up after three days, so I wasn’t surprised when a week later (at midnight) I get a text from him that says, “Don’t be mad, but I’m moving out. Please don’t pee in my shampoo, and I already put my contract up for sale. So if you could give the tour to anyone who shows up? We can still hang out.” The problem is that he was my only friend who lived with me and essentially my only male friend in the ward… possibly the state. I just don’t get along with men well.

So now, I attend Elders’ Quorum and sit by myself. Sometimes the Bishop feels like he should come and shake my hand, and I attempt to smile at him. But ever since his letter that he gave me about being possessed, all my smiles toward him look painful and psychotic. The Bishop really is determined to get me to go to one of his weekly “Date Dinners.” I have been invited 12 times, and every time I send back an email reading, “I can’t go. I have cholera.” The first time I sent that email, he asked me in church the next day if cholera is common in the US. Now he doesn’t even ask me if I am feeling better. He just smiles, waves, and tries to chase me through the crowd to ask me if I would meet with him later.

Apparently, the Ward Missionary Leader has been lying about me to the bishop. He has said that I have been at every meeting for the last year and that I am really helpful, and I magnify my calling. I actually haven’t been made aware of any of the meetings for my calling for the last year. Sometimes I will crash a meeting, but the rest of the ward missionaries don’t really approve of my arrival. This is because I shame the lot of them because they choose not to know certain members of the ward because they are different. I somehow know everybody in the ward, their calling, their home state, and their favorite food, so I don’t understand why the ward missionaries pick and choose who they magnify their calling upon. Especially because the people they are ignoring are the ones that they should probably be visiting.

Speaking about visiting, I now have a “Personal Priesthood Interview” every week with the Elders’ Quorum President. Every week he comes and talks to me about what I can do to receive a witness that the church is true, and the problem is that I have tried everything that he has suggested and more. I’m really just giving up on this whole religion thing, and so when I graduate in four months, we’ll have to see where I end up.

Also: Graduating is making me crazy. Mostly because I have no clue what I am going to do after I graduate. I really want to open an ice cream shop, but that isn’t a realistic goal for the moment. So maybe I want to travel, but now I have been goaded into going to grad school in a year or two. I could move back to California, but I don’t want to be anywhere near my family (I love them and all, but I need distance to be loved by them). So now I am just floating about my options. Considering the east coast, but I have no clue where to go from here. I really just want something to fall into my lap or for somebody to tell me exactly what I will be doing, because I suck at decision making and my agoraphobia kicks in whenever I think about doing things that are considered “Grown Up.” Because let’s face it: I am 19 and scared to go out and face the world.

I miss pronouns. And people may ask why I miss them and how I can miss them, but it’s simple. Being gay at BYU, pronouns fly out the window and ambiguity takes its place. He took me on a date may seem like nothing, but something about saying he can make all the difference. But when I was dating Curtis, all my roommates swore that I dated a 6’4”, 27 year old, film major comedienne because I would not identify him as what he was… a boy.

Curtis came and went, and I’ve kept it single since. But my roommates would never let Curtis go. It could have been the anonymousness of it all, maybe the whole situation was too much akin to a whodunit, but they would keep bringing him up, trying to find out who this cougar was and what she looked like. I would brush them off and play aloof, hoping that they would never find out because then I would be getting the boot from BYU with extreme prejudice. But then one day, Curtis fell back into some old habits, and rumors flew that he had been admitted to a loony bin in California. My girls were out of town who knew about him, and so I had to keep it to myself and I felt like if I did not tell somebody, this secret would atrophy in me and rot.

So one day, on the way to the store, my roommate Remington tagged along because he was sans a truck and sans motivation to walk the three blocks to get the last thing he was sans… food. He mentioned that somebody should be put in a sanitarium, and then there was no stopping my secret. I had to talk to Rem. “Remember the person that I dated? Well, I just heard that that person was put into a loony bin. It’s funny that you mentioned putting somebody in a sanitarium because that’s right where Cur… the person that I once dated, is.” He rolled his eyes and looked at me, “I don’t care who you dated. It’s not like I know them or would even care.”

Well, I guess this was my time to see if he really didn’t care. So nonchalantly I said, “Do you really want to know the name of who I dated? I dated somebody named Curtis,” his eyebrow rose, “Now do you see why I don’t tell anyone who I was dating?” I waited for him to say something, but it was silent in my truck. And finally he said, “Yeah. If I dated a girl named Curtis, I wouldn’t tell anybody either.” Now my eyebrow had rose, but my lips were pursed and I’m sure that utter confusion registered across my face. “Really Rem?”

We arrived at the store and didn’t speak another word. He grabbed his cart, I grabbed mine, we reconvened at the truck, and we sat in silence on the way home. This was after eight months of living with Rem, and it took another two months before he actually grasped the concept of my homosexuality. I didn’t get kicked out of BYU, but I still find myself catching on pronouns when I speak. It’s almost as if I am cursing, but I have hope that one day, I’ll be able to say he took me on a date.

Saying, “Today will be the first day of the rest of my life,” and actually making today the first day of the rest of my life, doesn’t really seem to match up. But I said it, last night, and I am hell-bent on reinventing myself.

Mostly this has been inspired by my roommate Remington, whom last night told me that I am lame because: I sit around, watch TV, don’t have a job, and am boring. I pray that he doesn’t actually hold me as boring, but I’ve felt it developing for a while now, especially because Remington is hanging around with Johnnie. Johnnie, a roommate of years past, was a good friend of mine, and Remington, Johnnie, and I were near inseparable. We would hang around, go find girls to hang out with, and dink about until late in the night, but then he moved out and Remington and I had to become friends without Johnnie. This worked well enough until they started hanging around again, but this time, I wasn’t invited.

The worst part about my relationship with Johnnie and Remington is that I have become nothing but a novelty act to them, and whomever they decide to hang out with. To them, I am nothing but, “Our gay roommate,” and they feel the need to tell everybody this fact. I actually despise that they call me that, especially because I don’t really like gay people.

It’s not that I hate every gay person on this planet, but I do hate people who are obsessed with their sexuality. Everything is gay, gay, gay, gay, GAY! Unfortunately enough, I used to be one of these people, and so now that I have evolved from that stage, I realize how annoying it is. I guess the best way to describe my hatred would be to give a verbal comic. It’s a single frame with two hippopotamuses at a watering hole. One of the hippos has a word bubble that says, “I’m a HIIIIIIPPPPPOOOOOOO!” and the other hippo says, “God, I hope all hippos die.”

It’s a bit humorous that Johnnie and Rem feel that it is ok to tell everyone about my sexual preferences because a year ago, when they found out, they were going to report me to BYU honor code offices and have me kicked out of school. But somewhere along the way, they decided that they liked having me around, and I took care of them because they cannot live without having a responsible person to make sure they don’t fuck up too bad and keep them out of trouble. But now, I am the butt of every joke and every story. I am made out to be nothing but this cloud of confetti and rainbows, which I pray that I’m not.

Last night, after Johnnie had told me that he had a big discussion about me with a bunch of people in his class, I found him curled up in my bed. This ignited something in my brain and I beat up Johnnie. I punched him til’ he had the wind knocked out of him. He still wouldn’t budge from my bed, and so I grabbed his ankle and tried to rip him from my sheets. To my dismay, he had grabbed on to the frame of my bed, and when I pulled, the bed frame came apart into thirty different pieces. My bed came crashing to the ground, smashing my luggage that I had stored underneath my bed and leaving my room a mess.

I had to leave (leave being an understatement) and so I put on my coat and prepared myself to walk about Provo until I didn’t have the desire to commit homicide. “Snakers! Aren’t you gonna go find girls with us?” If I am so gay that they can only describe me as a homo, why in Hell would I ever want to go out and look for girls? I slammed the door behind me, but because our door has warped from this winter’s snow, the door just bounced back open. Either I had to save my pride, or save my electric bill… so I walked back and grappled with the door until it was closed.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, I seem to end up at a Plasma Donation center. Mostly because I am jobless and if I have any desire to eat, I must sell my body. For months the routine was clockwork: Park at the wig shop, walk to the plasma center, read a book, have my blood sucked out of me. It could take anywhere from an hour to four, but I couldn’t care less. I had nothing better to do with my time and would most likely end up taking a nap on my couch after consuming an entire jar of peanut butter.

One Tuesday, I went along with my biweekly routine. I had parked at the wiggery when the owner came out to give me a lecture of how I wasn’t allowed to park there. “I’m sorry. Is there a sign or something that is posted because I just didn’t know?” I could tell that she was extremely upset because her wig had started to move about her head whenever she would give me a shameful nod. Finally she noticed the hairpiece flopping around, adjusted it, and told me, “You know, I have elderly customers that can’t walk far distances and you are taking their parking spaces. You are not allowed to park here, and the plasma center has been told that they need to inform their donators that they can’t park here. You parking here is like parking in a handicapped spot and you should be ashamed!” I am not one who likes an argument, or confrontation for that matter, and so I moved my truck three spots down from her shop and gave a polite wave when I passed by her window. The wig woman didn’t appreciate it though because she was busy applying adhesive to her wig and I could see her bald head for what it was: Spiteful.

I went into the plasma center and asked about the wig woman. Most of the phlebotomists told me that she was crazy and that she is not allowed to shoo away people from parking in front of her shop. One in particular was very disturbed by the wig woman’s actions. “She is just pissed off because we bought her old store and made her move so we could expand. She is a bitter, nasty, old woman…” she walked away still speaking about why this old woman was so upset but I couldn’t follow and listen because I had a needle in my arm, keeping me to my lounging chair. “…And I just looked at her and walked away! She needs to up her meds! Oh, I just asked and you are allowed to park there, so I expect that you park there when you come on Thursday.” I really was clueless to why this phlebotomist was so upset at this geriatric, but I had been given a command by my phlebotomist and it is best not to make one’s phlebotomist mad.

Thursday came and I found parking at the wiggery again. I knew that if I could make it indoors before she saw me, I would not have to deal with her. I parked, locked my door, and scurried off, but as I had passed her window, she saw me. I couldn’t help but smile and wave. I prayed that she wouldn’t recognize me, but she did. I could see a scowl develop on her face and she started to tromp towards the door to put me in my place (which ironically, her wig never seems to be in its place). I panicked, and I ran. Bursting into the plasma center I screamed out, “The wig woman! She’s after me!” The other donators looked away from the movie to see who made the ruckus, but within a second of seeing that it was me, they all turned back to stare at the TV.

I waited for her to come in and chew me out in a crowd of people, but she never came. Was she waiting outside the door for me? Or could he possibly be keying my truck? My worst fear was that she would glue last season’s wigs across the body of my truck. If she put wigs across my truck, I would have to take the bus home, mostly because of my fear of hair that is sans a scalp. But when I left, nothing. She sat at the window, looking for customers, and the only vehicle near her shop was mine. I had no other choice but to gird up my loins, walk into her shop, and say, “I’d like to try on some wigs.”

12:00
Always, the nights that I need to get some good sleep, I hear it, but I only hear it when I am actually under my blankets. A constant squeak that happens every thirty seconds, and it has to be something metallic and swinging. This is all I know about this alien noise, other than I can’t sleep when I hear it. Listening to the noise, I put together every image of what it can be in my mind. Swinging and metallic… It could be some sort of hanging sign. Or we do have a park across the street. If I can hear a squeaky swing 50 feet away, I’m probably half rabbit. Whatever it is, I can’t sleep, and I’ve been trying to sleep for much too long now. So I’m going to solve it.

12:30
Undeniably, I must look like a mental patient. My pajama bottoms are extremely thin, and I have a jacket on but no shirt. Also, I am wearing an ushanka and some moccasins that have been spray painted green. If that is not the poster image for mental illness, I have no clue what is. The biggest issue is getting out of the door, I have opened the door several times and can’t seem to make myself actually exit my apartment and immerse myself in the frigid, night air. I just open the door, stand in the doorway for a few moments, close the door, and then shiver with my hands out in front clasping a can of WD-40. So I decide it would be better to go back to bed and just hope that I can fall asleep.

1:15
I’m back up. This time I have managed to wrangle on a shirt along with the aforementioned greasing uniform. I tried my hardest to just fall asleep, but that squeak would appear in my dreams and wake me up, which then would lead me to bitter anger (which is not conducive to sleeping either). This time I am going to actually grease whatever it is that is causing my angst, and nothing is going to stop me.

1:35
Returning from outside, my brain feels like it may have frozen. My processing abilities are definitely impaired, and I am not certain that I have actually solved the squeaking. But I believe that I have exhausted myself so much that when I lay down, I will most definitely fall into a coma of some sort. I went 100 feet in each direction of my apartment and have greased: three sets of swings, five swinging signs, a screen door, several mailboxes, and a jettisoned fan that was near the dumpster. My entire can of grease is empty, which should attest to how frantic I was while greasing the world, but I feel like I can sleep in peace now.

1:45
I’m already back in the uniform, and I was wrong about being so tired that I would fall into a coma. The squeak still exists and I’m at the point now that I am about to kill somebody if I can’t fix the squeak. This time, I don’t have any more grease, so the plan is for me to kick the squeak out of whatever I find that makes noise.

1:50
If my toes aren’t broken, it will be a miracle. I wandered right outside my apartment and listened for the squeak. I wandered about like a deaf person until I came across a meter of some sort (but I can’t seem to identify what type of meter it is [but that isn’t much of a surprise]). I started out gently by just grabbing the meter to see if it would stop. No dice. I rubbed some snow on all the joints. No dice. At this point, I was desperate, so I shook the meter like a baby, hoping that it would develop brain damage and shut up. No dice. It was definitely a resilient meter, so I kicked it. I kicked it over and over again until it finally gave up the ghost. Finally, silence. It could have been cold induced madness, but for a moment… euphoria.

I have taken to cooking since my departure from home. I love making all sorts of goodies, from chutney to caramel, I’ve made it. So when my friend asked me to help her make compote, of course I was down for the challenge. It seemed simple enough and sounded fancy, so we went off to the store to pick up some rhubarb and port wine.

We tracked through the aisles of the local grocery store looking for any trace of alcohol to no avail. We could find beer, but besides that, the only alcohol we could find was Listerine. I knew people who had cooked with wine before, so I decided to give a friend a call, but unfortunately enough for me, my phone decided to break, leaving me to yell into the receiver and the speaker working for every other word. “YOU KNOW, LIKE A LIQUOR STORE! WHAT? UTAH ONLY SELLS ALCOHOL AT STATE LIQUOR STORES? WELL WHERE IS ONE? WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR A THING YOU ARE SAYING AND I JUST NEED SOME BOOZE! YOU KNOW WHAT, MY PHONE IS BROKEN, AND CAN SOMEBODY ELSE CALL YOU AND GET DIRECTIONS?” By that time, the entire store had stopped their last minute, Saturday-night-before-the-Sabbath shopping and just stared, mouth agape, like cows in a pasture. “What? I just need some booze! Is that too much to ask?”

So we left to go to the state liquor store when I look at my truck’s clock. 11:34. It was time to beat the clock because there was no way that liquor stores would be open on a Sunday in Utah, so we rocketed down the street to find said boozery. Now that I think about it, driving to find booze may be worse than driving under the influence. In a panic, and at 11:40, my friend who needed the wine suggested we go to Wal-Mart. “Wal-Mart always sells alcohol; it’s like their main source of income!” So I raced to the local Wal-Mart, but I had no time to park, so I pushed my friend out of the truck so she could race in and buy the wine before midnight and I would park.

I get into the store and try to find my friend by calling her, but because my phone was broken, I had to resort to putting my phone on speakerphone and walk about like I was on a reality T.V. show. We reconvened by the candy, where she informed me that Wal-Mart does not sell alcohol. I looked at my watch. 12:02. Defeated, we grabbed a bottle of grape juice and decided to make compote the Mormon way.

Sometimes things happen that make you stop for a second and question what the hell you are doing and why you are there. This moment came to me after a movement: a bowel movement. Crowding into a girls bathroom and watching your professor fish a parasitic worm out of a toilet was my moment. Is this my life to come? Why the hell am I here and what the hell am I doing?

Time froze in that bathroom and I reviewed my time here at BYU. I came to last February, where I wore a shirt with a rainbow and an umbrella on it. Of course the reaction of my fellow peers was one of disgust, but one fellow student’s reaction trumped all reactions. He wore a “Yes on Prop 8!” shirt, and felt that my shirt with a rainbow challenged his political views. So the first thing he did when he saw me was yell out, “Faggot!” And in turn, I responded with a resounding, “Bigot!”

After a class of getting the stink eye and being called Queer every time I went to the back of the lab, I couldn’t take his idiocy one more second. So I tromped to his table and asked, “Are you from California?” He answered with some speech about how he was born and raised in Utah,”… you know, Zion.” I stopped for a second, looked to the ceiling and asked, “So why are you wearing a Prop 8 shirt? Get your own politics.” Walking away I had to call him an ass through a whisper because I didn’t need to get kicked out of BYU for cursing.

Later that day, we had a devotional from the highest up Catholic in the United States who spoke about Catholics and Mormons working together to defeat gay marriage. I was the only one in the building who did not stand and clap him offstage and I could feel that everyone was looking at my rainbow shirt. I wanted to get out as fast as I could, and while walking across campus, the guy with the Prop 8 shirt saw me and yelled out, “Queer! Hope you listened to the devotional today!” I glared over and yelled out, “You pompous bastard!” and then he started to approach me. I knew a fight was a brewing and I wasn’t going to be the loser. I dropped my bag and prepared for him to give the first punch, but instead he just marched up to me, took his gigantic cup of PowerAde and threw it on my shirt. All I could do was scream out, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”

The campus police wouldn’t do a thing. They told me that I was overreacting and there was nothing they could do. They suggested maybe going to the Honor Code Office, but I couldn’t hold it together for one more moment, so I went to the highest floor of the building I had most classes in and cried in the bathroom for an hour.

I snapped back to reality in the girls bathroom, fishing out the worm, and realized that this was where I cried last February (in the men’s bathroom though). I had to brace myself back then, and now I had to brace myself because I was the student who was tasked to hold the jar with formaldehyde for the worm.

My shoes cause senseless ruckuses across campus. I will saunter away to class or the library, and at least 35% of the people who pass by me will take a glancing peak at my shoes. Another 10% will actually whisper to their walking buddies and laugh about my shoes, and a good 5% will either laugh or tell me I look like an idiot. And besides all the brouhaha, I refuse to get rid of my shoes.

From that statement, one might think that I am either wearing some gaudy high heels or maybe clown shoes; but no, I wear a pair of shoes I bought at Wal-Mart. Now when I bought them, they were white… and today they are neon pink. But they’ve been pink for months, and I have gotten poor reviews since. I find the shoes to be very symbolic of whom I am as a person, and the may serve as a cautionary notice to anybody who comes in contact. I am not your average BYU student. I am not conservative, I do not want to get married and have loads of children, and I do not believe that the Mormon ideal of life is the life I want for myself.

So on the first day of class, I had my entire Parasitology class glaring at my shoes. It makes me laugh that people think they are so discreet and that I have no idea that they are staring. Sometimes, I find it fun to clear my throat and announce to the class that it is impolite to stare. If somebody has sat down next to me and has failed to see my shoes, they get up and move as soon as they catch a glance. It’s better that they move because of my shoes than for them to move because I complain when religion gets mixed into our science courses [I hate when my science courses feel the need to mix in religion. If I wanted to sit in a class and hear about how Jesus wins and evolution is only a theory, I would go to church].

So as I walk across campus, I revel in the gawking stares of the passerby. Because if somebody can’t fathom how I can wear neon colored shoes, then they can’t fathom how I don’t live like every other BYU students, and they definitely can’t fathom how much better life is when you don’t fit in with the crowd.