indiboi.com

I actually slept alone in my own bed Thursday night, though sleep is almost too strong a word for it, since I really don’t think I truly slept… I couldn’t after all that. *sigh*

So, along with that I was ‘informed’ I’d be taking my sister-in-law to Philly Friday. I already had plans with Matthew, but that didn’t seem to matter to anyone really, along with plans for seeing Patrick on Saturday. I knew Patrick had plans that didn’t particularly include me, not sure really, I think he might have invited me and I declined or something, I just don’t remember.

So, Friday afternoon I contemplate taking my overnight bag with me, but decide I’d be coming home anyway so it wouldn’t matter. I had considered just staying in Philly because I’d probably not get a chance to meet up to see Matthew anyway, but I just kinda wanted to be home instead.

Since Matthew had called me earlier that day while we were on the way, and I told him about being in Philly, I basically needed to just go with the flow of things and let both him and Patrick know later on what I was doing. He had mentioned he was going to basically say “this is what we’re doing tonight, you don’t have a choice.” Of course my immediately telling him that I was in Philly blew that little plan of his, lol.

Tiffany and I got to Philly safely and without incident, turns out my brother was still working, so it’d be a while before he’d be back, I decided to get on my way. It was around seven or so that evening when I was on the turnpike. I started making my calls, and I decided to just meet Matthew at the Velvet Rope whenever I’d get there, with him supposing he’d be there with his friends around ten or so. I remembered that was where Patrick was going to be too, so it turned out to be the perfect way to introduce both of them and their respective friends.

Unfortunately about a half hour outside of Philly I reach behind me to get my “detachable man sack” and find it isn’t with me in the car. I call Tiffany and surprisingly I left it at their townhouse, fuck. I was right next to an exit so I turned around, adding another hour to my trip. I guess ultimately it worked out, because I got to where we were all meeting in York about two minutes before Matthew and his friends did anyway. I would have been overly early if I hadn’t left my bag in Philly.

I knew I was in a bad mood all day, but it didn’t register as meaning I was being very anti-social until I actually saw Matthew and was kind of like …”bleh…” not because of him, but… just because, it was kind of like “wait, Indi, you want to just go home and sulk.” It was a bit too late to act on that realization though, heh. I just need to remember that alcohol fixes everything, hah… sort of. I think I just really, really needed to be with people that liked me, that I could be completely comfortable with, and have a great time with…. and get trashed.

I stood behind everybody at the bar as they were ordering drinks… I guess I was trying to make a decision as to if I was just going to be ‘there’ or if I was going to allow my overwhelming urge to drink take control. I knew I’d have a place to crash if I couldn’t drive home, with Matthew at Kate & Jill’s, but also Patrick would be there and I could go with him too. So, I said, screw it… I’m getting trashed, and I ordered a Grateful Dead.

It’s either the alcohol finally starting to take effect by the time Patrick arrived, which I’d say was maybe 40 minutes later, or simply the fact that he arrived, either way, by then I was starting to have fun. Matthew and Patrick seemed to get along with each other well, thankfully… and really, I mean that! HAHA! Considering the… uhm… problems that have occured anytime I either meet a friend of one of my friends, or they meet a friend of mine, it was incredibly nice for two people I like to get along with each other!

I’m attributing not having a whole lot of fun when going out with Patrick to the fact that I usually don’t know anyone else, so whenever he goes off to talk to people I’m just sort of.. ‘there’ basically alone. I think it has something to do with the different styles the two of us have also… while I’m not saying he wanders off and leaves me alone, it’s still uncomfortable. I tend to grab somebody’s hand and drag them along with me if I want them to meet someone, lol… it’s that whole “I want you with me!” thing perhaps. Regardless though, Friday night was very fun… all of us had various groups of people we could go talk with, I’d spend time with Patrick alone, with his friends, with Matthew alone, with his friends, etc. It was a dramatic shift in toward how I felt about that particular place, the Velvet Rope, from back in January when I barely even knew Patrick. I absolutely hated being there, enough to basically never want to go back… oddly enough now I actually want to go again, hmm.

Patrick, Matthew, and I were at the bar, where I was trying to decide which drink to order, when Angie came in. I was like “this girl is FABULOUS!” to Matthew, lol, and as soon as she came around the bar over to where we were she was basically jumped upon, haha. I’m not sure, but that was probably the most excited meeting someone new I’ve seen in about forever, I know she was utterly taken aback. Later on, apparently, she was like ‘Uhmm… do I know him?’ as if they’d met and had a great time in the past somewhere, to which Patrick explained what I did to cause that, lol. It really was a priceless moment.

It was just really fun to be grabbed away to go talk with someone, or do the same… to have the ability to migrate either alone or with others to random groups of people we knew scattered about the place. I had just bought my third drink when Matthew pulled me away somewhere, I put it down on the table where everybody had their drinks…. when I got back to it, well, it was gone! I was so annoyed, lol, I figured someone stole my drink. Turns out that Jill, I think, had picked it up because they were moving to the other side of the bar… being very considerate, lol. Of course after buying now a fourth drink, I realize that she did that, lol. I hadn’t planned on buying a fourth drink because I figured that would get me a bit too drunk. Ooops! So I got to drink all four, lol.

Oh, I met Mel, the piercer, too. She has the most fantastic breasts! I guess it’s one benefit to being gay, women don’t mind you grabbing their breasts (as much as they would if the guy wasn’t gay, lol), and might I say, I had her boobies in my hands quite a lot during the evening, lol. Actually, come to think of it, I probably had a lot of people parts in my hands that night, hahaha! Always through clothing though mind you!

Matthew said he was buying ‘takeout’ and I totally didn’t realize until lastnight that he meant alcohol… I thought he was talking about, uhm, well… food! Which is why I was especially confused when there wasn’t any later on, lol. Later on being, of course, at Kate & Jill’s place.

I had a couple of options, drive home, stay with Matthew (they had, sort of, a designated driver), or go with Patrick. I definitely wasn’t in any shape to drive, damn that fourth drink! While I could have gone with Patrick that would have meant he’d need to take me back to York so I could get the car, so that seemed less than ideal, so going with Matthew and them seemed like the best choice. I didn’t fully intend on staying at Kate & Jill’s all night, Patrick was sort of waiting for me, but as the evening progressed and I just kept feeling drunk (continuing to drink beer certainly helped, lol).

There was a point in the evening where Matthew decided to take a walk and I decided to come with him, but I’m going to write about that in a different entry because it is such a massive tangent, bringing in all sorts of detail missing from previous writings about him and me. I guess we were gone for rather a while though, because eventually Jill (I think, though maybe it was Kate?) came to find us.

The four of us proceeded to sit out on their balcony for rather a long time, basically until the sun started to come up. We drank beer, smoked ciggies, and talked about quite a number of topics… from gender, politics, environmental & scientific impact on our food, relationships with our parents, coming out, and basically anything that could fit between those topics. It was fascinating to have such an intellectual conversation with a group of people… I don’t think I’ve had that occur since Pittsburgh! It was especially nice because we basically could use that as a way to know each other so much better too.

I don’t recall if I’d mentioned it before, but Matthew had a similar complaint as Patrick in regards to how he doesn’t really know me all that much better than when we met, so hopefully that morning conversation helped. :) I know I’ve been intentionally trying to break my habit of not explaining things when Patrick and I talk with each other, it seems to be working, thankfully.

Kate set Matthew and I up with blankets and pillows as we not quite stumbled into the living room where conveniently there were two couches. Less than conveniently the other couch was a mere loveseat, lol, and Matthew called the ‘real’ couch because he was taller… bah, by an inch and a half maybe! I’m so not used to people being taller than me! …or maybe I am, but still, most people are either my height or shorter. I’m not exceptionally tall or anything, Stephen and Cole literally towered over me with their 6′4″ bodies, but I also know tons of short people. :) It was also kind of funny because sometime earlier in the night I told Kate that I didn’t care where I slept (if at her house) if I was cuddled up with Matthew, lol. [I usually cuddle up with anyone if I’m sleeping next to them, unless they seem particularly paranoid about it [Jon as perfect example], because that’s basically the only way I can get to sleep most of the time. I’ve just grown accustomed to having either a pillow or a person in my arms.

I made a quick trip to the bathroom, walked over to the couch Matthew was on and gave him a kiss on the forehead, no idea why, it just seemed like a good way to say goodnight. I think that’s true of a lot of things I do, I don’t have any particular reason for doing them on a conscious level, it’s just affection, it gets shown in whatever way feels right at that very moment. I suppose sometimes that could get me into trouble, which is where that whole ‘dreaded’ idea of something being “boyfriend safe” comes into play… it’s always about intentions.

I woke up a few times during the night, as you know a guy sleeping on a two-seat sofa isn’t the most comfortable thing, lol. I know one of those times I woke up Matthew was also awake, we kinda waved at each other and then he got up to use the bathroom. The second time I started having this dream where I was talking to Matthew, I suppose, because I heard him talking on the phone. It was really funny to me when I woke up pointing at him ready to respond outloud.

We went out to smoke a cigarette, my very last one, lol, since of course I had totally planned on being at home before seeing him, remember? I don’t remember us talking about anything, I figure we were both in hangover mode, nice and cracked out. Drinking at a bar has one major disadvantage other than being very expensive… …it’s not easy to start drinking copious quantities of water after the alcohol. I do remember him asking me if I had anything in my magic bag, lol, unfortunately I hadn’t restocked it from the last time. I did have a good number of vicodins, but, uhm, no. After the cig he mentioned he wanted to take a quick shower, heh, I didn’t think about it much, but then I realized I was kind of stuck for a while where I was…

You see, there’s this really weird thing about their ‘apartment’ in regards to the bathroom; it’s also a hallway! You can’t get to the living room without going through the bathroom and likewise you can’t get anywhere else in the house without going through the bathroom, lol.

While I know it wouldn’t be a big deal if I’d walk through the bathroom (if he didn’t lock it), I still felt a little strange about it. I sat outside for a little while, just sort of becoming awake, drinking some yummy lime tea, a pleasant surprise since I tend to buy it all the time here at home. Eventually I figured he’d be done so I casually walked down the hall and was like “Hey, are you naked?” He opened the door fully clothed, lol, so I said “damn!” ;)

We got ready to leave, said our goodbyes to Kate & Jill and headed off to where I left my car. I’m not sure why, but it’s always really weird to leave from being with him. I never quite know what to say or do, apart from just going by habit and instinct. I suppose the feeling is pretty similar to when I drop Jon off, or whenever I leave from Patrick’s house. Most of the time I’d rather not be leaving their company, so there is this sort of anxiety that comes into play.

I half invite him to come with Andrew, Patrick and myself later on in the evening to see this movie at the drive-in, mention something about maybe seeing each other later that night or the next day, whatever might work out, we hug and kiss each other on the cheek, and tell him to follow me out of York so he’ll learn the non-hell way of getting back to Chambersburg. Welcome to Saturday, I’m still not back from Philly and it’s two in the afternoon.

Last Sunday, the 13th, Patrick came down for a little while and we watched “Anger Management” together. I’d sort of been feeling exhausted as usual and I think I was still sleeping when he actually got here. Matthew called and woke me up, and I think just at the moment Patrick was calling me too. Twenty minutes later he called and I actually noticed the beeping… he said he was at my house, haha. So I was quite… unkempt to say the least, it was fun anyway though. I had just finished my antibiotics and was still feeling very awful.

I guess Monday was spent mostly just talking with people, when Jon decided that we’d spend Wednesday together instead of Tuesday, but before the end of the night he’d changed his mind again anyway, so off I was Tuesday afternoon to pick him up. Originally we were going to see “The Stepford Wives” with two of his friends in York, but seems as though they couldn’t make it. We stopped at Issac’s in Mechanicsburg for lunch, stopped at the state store down here to realize that we didn’t know what we wanted anyway. Pretty soon it was time to head out to the movie, but I thought it would be nice to stop for a drink or two beforehand; yay for Applebee’s Mucho Mudslides… even though the quantity of alcohol in them is a little pathetic. Though a strange combo, Corona afterwards.

I figured we’d have plenty of time to get from Applebees the six miles to the theatre, of course I’d not counted on interstate construction. It worked out alright, we conveniently missed all of the previews and we able to pretty much start watching the movie immediately. “The Stepford Wives” was very funny, interesting how they’d changed what was originally a horror movie into a comedy, hehe.

We stopped at walmart on the way back to grab the makings of dinner, got that started and dove into going through that one closet of mine downstairs. It was a little bit of a surprise to discover that most everything in there was paper too, but I did find some interesting things and Jon did leave with a few things I didn’t really want that he found worthy enough of keeping.

Unfortunately all of the dust in the air after going through that stuff had quite an effect on Jon, so he asked for a Clartin D, I figured no problem. I really didn’t take into consideration that we were about to go to sleep though… and that he has a tendency to snap them in half before swallowing, totally defeating the time-release aspect. Without much surprise his sleeping patterns were extremely strange. I’d be laying there almost asleep and then randomly he’d start talking to me, loudly, about random things, waking me up completely. This happened all night long! Needless to say I didn’t have any quality of sleep, and judging from how tired he seemed later in the day, well, he didn’t either… even if he doesn’t remember acting so strange.

On the way back to his place we stopped for Rita’s… green apple mistos are sort of good, though not quite as good as the mango ones. We also stopped for lunch again at Issac’s, which made the trip back to his place seem very quick. I guess stopping at the Cedarcliff Mall (haha, that’s a joke) helped with that too. Anyway, we hung out at his place for a while before going over to his friends’ place to watch the new “The Simple Life” …which he paid virtually no attention to anyway, I always find that amusing. He was actually filling out a job application though, rather amazing in itself, which all of us helped him out a little with. We didn’t spend too long there though, basically just long enough to complete that application, I dropped him off at his house and made my way home. Jon had made mention that he’d ask me to stay if he wasn’t going to be so busy… kinda seemed like I expected to be doing something else that night given that I was anxious when I left and decided to figure out something to do instead of just going home.

Patrick had given me his overtime schedule for the month, which sort of conveniently coincides with the ‘average’ days that Jon and I would in theory see each other. Of course that also means I’d not be seeing him on my way to York or back too. Seems that I tend to call Matthew a lot whenever I get within twenty miles of Chambersburg, heh, forgetting about the time I randomly called him, figured it’d be a good time to get my jacket back from him too. So, instead of going home I headed over to his place. He told me about remembering our cigarette incident, which I’d forgotten, heh… his roomate thought he’d developed melanoma, haha. No, it was just the two of us falling into each other while I had a lit cigarette in my hand… ouch for him.

Apparently my phone doesn’t work while at Matthew’s, so pretty much as soon as I neared actual “city” Chambersburg my phone started beeping with voicemails waiting. Turns out Patrick was getting off work at 1AM instead of the normal ‘overtime’ 3AM… seeing as how it was nearly midnight I decided to go up there and see him. I figured, if I’d already driven over four hundred miles in the last two days I might as well drive sixty more to see him too.

I quickly drove back to my house, sent him a few text messages, grabbed some clothes and such and started out on my way. I got there only slightly after he arrived, I think, so that was nice… he didn’t have to wait for me much. I had a very nice evening/morning with him, and I think we actually went to sleep before the sun came up… wow!

Since it was Chris’s birthday I basically had arranged it so I’d be in Harrisburg Thursday, not so much intentionally (because I’d still probably have gone up to see Patrick), but just kept it in mind, so that if he wanted someone to spend time with I would actually be available. So sometime Thursday afternoon I met him at Target and we basically spent a couple hours hanging out in that shopping centre… He wasn’t really sure what his plans were for the evening, so I decided to just head home, stopping at Giant in Mechanicsburg for lunch, heh.

Thursday night was utter hell… which lead to the post just previous to this, I still don’t know what the outcome of all of it will be, part of me doesn’t even care anymore, because it shouldn’t have ever happened to begin with.

In Catholocism when you think about doing something it is as bad as actually doing it. This concept is essentially where the ‘Catholic Guilt’ comes from, because we’re to feel guilty about even the thought of doing something that we shouldn’t. I was raised Catholic, I also went to private Catholic school for the vast majority of my educational life.

To this day the indoctrination of the guilt follows me… though I recognize that I can’t control everything I think or feel; however I can definitely control what I actually do. If something I would do would possibly and purposefully negatively effect any other person I refrain from doing it, period. Said more simply, I control myself.

I am diligent in protecting other people from being the recipient of something done by me that would cause them discomfort, even more so when it could be even remotely sexual and especially if it isn’t meant to be. It’s about respecting one’s comfort zones; making sure whomever I am with is comfortable is extremely important to me. Sometimes I can go a little too far with that and forget about my own needs, by doing something that I’m not all that interested in, because it’s what will bring the other person more happiness. I think it’s both admirable and also somewhat pathetic, in that sense it becomes a fault.

When it comes to love, I think the idea of there being three distinct different kinds is sometimes lost amongst people. When one generally thinks of love the idea that comes to mind is that of a boyfriend or girlfriend, a wife or a husband; romantic love. Of course for one to say “I love my mother,” or “I love my brother,” etc, we immediately know that isn’t romantic love, but familial love. That distinction is pretty clear to me and I think most other people. The problem, perhaps, comes in when one needs to differentiate between romantic and the third type of love, that of friendship. It’s sometimes known as “Companionate love” which basically is the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are interwined on a deeper level than just casual aquantainces, your ‘best friends’ if you will. Certainly there are many cases where such companionate love becomes romantic love… I generally refer to it as the “When Harry Met Sally Effect” …and I think the best (romantic) relationships ultimately come from that sort of connection… at least from my personal and third-person observations [this is technically called Consumate Love, but going there means dividing love up even more than the usual three types… but you get the idea.]

To go with the “When Harry Met Sally Effect”… for anyone who has seen that movie, you’ll know that the first premise is that ‘men & women cannot be friends,’ in some ways amongst gay men there’s something a little similar. I’m not any particular exception to the idea that with gay friends (and straight friends of opposite sexes of course), there is usually one that likes [in the more than friends sense] the other, this isn’t always the case of course, but it is fairly common. Meaning, that there’s either something there on at least one side, be it fulfilled or not. Sometimes it’s fulfilled, other times it’s left unrequited. I can’t speak for anyone else, but to me friendship is more important than sexual fulfillment. I admit, I’ve been intimate with friends and that’s wrecked the friendship, I’ve been intimate and it’s not changed anything in relation to friendship, and others where it has strengthened the friendship. Each of us draw boundaries, be they very distinct or somewhat blurry… we all have different points where the intimacy of friendship becomes a little too much like the intimacy of romance. A problem inherent in those differences is that fact that something meant solely as affection related to friendship can be taken as romantic interest. It’s even more complicated when the romantic interest has already been explored, but that affection is still intended as that of friendship.

I hug my friends, particularly upon seeing them and when we depart from each others’ company. I kiss some of my friends, on the lips and or on the cheek, some of them do the same. We wrap our arms around each other, regardless of occasion, we hold each other, sleep next to each other even if there is a spare bed, just because. Friendship is extremely important, love, both loving and being loved, are extremely important; affection transcends the lines of sexual preference.

The lines do blur, even if we don’t want to accept that, nothing is ever truly as black & white as we might want it to be either. I feel that all of our relationships regardless of type, will always be varying shades of gray. Trust, boundaries both said and implied, and our own morality keep us where we need to be, whomever we are with. Especially trust, without it there can be no friendship.

Last Monday, the 7th, Jon and I had one of our characteristic ‘weekend-like’ visits, lol. I say characteristic because that makes the third monday/tuesday combo we’ve had in a row, actually it’s more like Monday through Wednesday usually, but either way, it’s very nice to have such consistency in spending time with someone.

There is generally some sort of ‘goal’ to be accomplished, or at least a theme. The first one was to repair his iBook drive, the second was basically a follow up of that on the software level. This past ‘weekend’ was basically going through our stuff, separating junk from treasure. We both have these horrible packrat tendencies and need someone else to help us decide to throw things away.

It was a very unique experience to help someone go through so many years of tangible memories… I don’t think I can say I’ve ever done that before, and it definitely brought a sort of intimacy that is hard to describe… basically like knowing someone on a deeper level I suppose.

We packed up a bunch of his stuff and brought it back here, with a fairly usual stop at Ruby Tuesday for boneless buffalo wings. We didn’t get back to Chambersburg until about eleven PM, and then shot down to Hagerstown to pick up some Pineapple rum & Peach Schnapps.

There were several tasks to accomplish before we could really go through anything here, which we not so quickly got started with. The bed was made along with changing the sheets, laundry done (which included his pair of pants), so we spent the rest of the evening in pajama bottoms, lol. He finally, which I say a little tongue in cheek, rearranged those IKEA paper lamps we’d bought together a few months ago; they look so much better now. The lounge area of the bedroom received a much needed cleanup too.

Upstairs in the office we started going through my boxes, but didn’t particularly find anything all that useful. I did manage to throw away an entire black garbage bag full of junk though, so it was at least mildly productive.

All of this brought us close to seven AM, or so… we saw Venus, sort of, if you count live on TV, lol. After that we headed to McDonalds in our pajamas so that we could get breakfast burritos, yum! The mild picante sauce is kind of yucky compared to the hot stuff, btw.

We wanted to go to the flea market on Tuesday, but we both forgot to set any sort of alarm clock, oops. I’m guessing we probably went to bed around eight or so… but we did spend a good bit of that time talking to one another also. We quickly snapped into awakeness when I randomly checked the time and saw it to be four in the afternoon… getting dressed and driving out to the flea market, we ended up having maybe a half hour there before they closed, lol.

Jon has talked about this “Ranch Pizza” quite often and I figured it was about time for us to make it, though I was still a bit hesitant, pizza with ranch dressing didn’t quite sound appealing. Regardless of that I stopped at Giant on the way back so that we’d be able to pick up the stuff we needed to make it.

Jon had been talking to this guy Dave, I’d talked to him the night before too, and we’d made tentative plans for him to stop by here sometime Tuesday night. Jon called him, he came over and we made the pizza which was pretty good actually, lol. We basically just hung out, but that random urge to go to walmart took over eventually, plus we sort of wanted more of that ranch pizza. That’s when the lonely banana showed up, lol… We also took some photos of ourselves, just seemed to make sense at the time, lol…

Yay for needing to shave and otherwise looking goofy! :)

Anyway, we made ranch pizza again after jaunting around the various sections of walmart, glorious fun really. We also had a few more drinks, hehe… Jon then had this idea that Dave would take him home at 3ish AM, which I wasn’t having period, it’d be far too dangerous in my opinion. Jon suggested that Dave crash here on the office bed, and that’s what we did.

Jon and I usually sleep fairly late into the day, but he woke up at nine and promptly woke both of us up so we could all go to the flea market. It’s times like that when Jon is very lucky we find him so adorable, because otherwise I think we’d have beaten him silly. The flea market was quite fun though, we even found a life-sized bust of Elvis to which Jon felt compelled to fall onto his knees for, lol.

Once we returned home we found ourselves hungry again… a quick trip up to the Food Lion and we had chips, soda, and hotdog rolls, lol. I then realize that I’d never actually cooked hotdogs on the grill, couldn’t even get the damn thing lit! Thankfully my brother David was here and was able to get the grill going and I made my attempt at grilling. Jon was quite adament that his be burnt, well, he got his wish… because I burnt them ALL, hahaha. Everyone seemed to like them anyway, so all good… it was just hilarious. Jon made a comment, which sort of had jaw-dropping shock, that he never knew it was so much fun to be gay, lol. Hahah, well I’m glad to help… I think. :)

Around 3PM Dave left with Jon, which was extremely weird for me. We really did have a lot of fun though, so it did kind of suck for them to be leaving too. I told Dave to “take care of my boy” when we hugged right prior to them leaving, heh… obviously I was still being a little protective. I think we waved and said goodbye to each other a dozen times before they actually drove away.

Jon’s going to the beach this weekend, so I think we’ve shifted our weekly plans to start on Tuesday next week instead of Monday. He’s given me very specific instructions not to go through the rest of my stuff — I’d remembered finally where I stored my good stuff, but that wasn’t until after he’d left — because he wants to help go through it. We’ve also come to the conclusion that we’ll need to get everyone together (the boys) so that we can play Simpsons Monopoly, drink, and have boneless buffalo wings, lol. It is sort of interesting the circle of friends that we’re developing, can’t complain… too much.

I’ve resisted the urge to join that sort of thing for the longest time… I’ve never been much for the sort of online buzz, meme thing… but considering Sam bugged me about it, Jon kinda bugged me about it, and now tonight/this morning Dave brought it up, I figured what the hell.

So I’m looking at it, and I’m already connected to Sam… lol. Somebody Dave knows, knows someone who knows someone who knows Sam.

Anyway, amusing even if rather predictable.