About Me
I am a graduating senior of UNC-Chapel Hill. My major is business; my minor is advertising. My passion is found in both and nowhere in either.
My passion is written creative expression. My writings are therapeutic, introspective, and agonizing. Writing, for me, is something like having bad sex with a very attractive person. The interim is unusually unsatisfying but somehow gratifying enough to continue. Or perhaps continued due to obligation. Negligible. In the end, the orgasm is a relief. And a little further along, we return to that bad sexual encounter and we somehow cherish it. Our memory has invariably locked it in as a bad experience, but it’s somehow increasingly erotic as time distances us from it. It becomes the attractiveness of the person with whom we slept—the motivation behind sleeping with them in the first place—that we are so fond of.
And with our imagination, that attractiveness—the inspiration—manufactures beauty retroactively.
What this means to say is that I often find writing a necessary evil—either out of obligation or minimal gratification with its inspiration. But as I finish a thought and return to it much later, I suddenly have an affinity toward it. It represents a pristine action of my past that, however bad, becomes beautiful.
Beautiful because it is meaningful.
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I am a light-hearted, easygoing person. I know that my profile here doesn’t really paint that picture very well, but I assure you my life isn’t full of childish inclinations toward philosophy. Truth is, my writing is virtually the only place my heart pours out so vehemently and rigidly.
I am compassionate not of ideas as one reading my words may think; my compassion is of reality itself. My reality and the reality of everyone in the world. Truth is not found through observation or experience. It isn’t lurking around some theory or in any writing.
No. Truth is found exclusively through the purposeful absorption of experience. What a hard task that is. It’s so easy to experience something powerful and inspirational, only later to forget and relearn all over again. It’s a pillar of courage to wholly absorb an event and apply it to the betterment of one’s reality. Most often, the events that we absorb are each miniscule, but when they are added together, they become mighty. Thus, our truths are shaped by millions of tiny events. And they are changed by events we translate into cataclysms to better (or lessen) ourselves—purposely.
As human beings, we live pristine lives. Every action, every thought, every emotion is played exactly as it is dealt. We have no chance to amend the past. We haven’t the ability to rehearse our trials and tribulations.
We are prepared with neither a script nor a talent. These luxuries are left to fiction and fantasy. Reality dictates that life is purely tacit knowledge—that only as we experience it can we find our truths.
We are heartbreakers and we are the heartbroken. Our minds often compete with our hearts, and in this contest, victory is had purely out of chance. Chance not in rationale, mind you, but the life reality has thrust upon us.
Me? My reality is that I am a romantic. My heart nearly always defeats my mind in matters of love, but my mind jousts with it hard enough to seal my insecurities and overwhelming curiosities.
I am one of the heartbroken, but I am unscathed. My pristine actions—those that occur just once—have wrapped my heart in layers of scars, but the marks on my heart are neither battle wounds nor regrets. Each represents an advance in wisdom, a growth in humanity.
In this regard, my magnificent missteps have furthered my journey to actualization.
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Sweet Guys
What would you say if I told you I counted your heartbeats to fall asleep?
What about if I keep track of the minutes since the day we met?
If I kiss your lips when you have the flu?
If I drive an hour to see you for ten minutes?
If I stay awake to rub you to sleep?
What would you think of me if I love you when you scream?
If I'm happy to freeze if it means you're warm?
What would you say if I told you that the highlight of my every day is watching you smile?
Would you hold me tighter? Maybe kiss me longer?
Or would you say: "Me too."
: -) I'm a silly boy. Many of you are too, of course. And silly girls. Not silly as in naïve or childlike. I'm talking about the kind of silly that's a virtue. The kind of silly that tells the world: "The most coveted possession of all isn't this shirt or these jeans; it isn't my name on a trophy or in lights. No, the most coveted possession in the world is someone else's smile."
That kind of silly means "sweet."
Doing nice, little things for people purely because you want to—that's sweetness. If it means romantically, as above, or if it means between friends and strangers, sweetness is one of those attributes that will never go out of style or slip into some social niche. That's because sweet people will be welcomed into any circle, if only to be taken advantage of.
We all want other people to care about us.
We want people who will pick up the phone when we call. People who will be happy for us when we succeed and sad for us when we fail—those folks that will go out of their way to make sure we're okay and expect nothing out of it.
We want these people in our lives regardless of who we are because it means we're here.
But we won't attract these people with flashy cars or clothes. Our professional achievements won't invite them, either. These things bring respect and envy, not compassion and loyalty.
We might instead fill our lives with people we really care about—who we want to do for what we secretly crave others to do for us.
Sometimes it's discouraging simply because so many people take advantage of others' sweetness.
But let's not give up.
Let's show the world exactly what it wants to see: people to make it smile.
On Being Romantic & Gay
Being romantic and gay means breaking a commonly held stereotype: that all gay guys are solely after lust.
I do not pride myself on being romantic. Certainly, it has done more harm to me than good. I've been down the road of promiscuity, though—I think most of us have (or will)—but that just isn't my direction anymore. I'm at the opposite extreme.
When I see an attractive guy, my mind doesn't automatically think SEX! Rather, my thoughts jump to what it'd be like if we were in love. What it'd be like to receive flowers from him. Or hear him tell me how much he loves me.
Dangerous territory? I think so.
Don't get me wrong—I love sex just as much as the next guy. Gay or straight. In fact, sex is a HUGE deal for me. When I'm with someone I really love, I become a nymphomaniac real quick.
Oh wow. Sorry. That was a little more information than you probably wanted to know.
But the point remains. I love sex. It's not the first thing that pops into my mind.
I guess I'm just a little girl.
Like an elementary schoolgirl playing house, I often forget that not everyone's after what I'm in it for. Most of the guys I've met are after what the gay world is famous for: hookups.
I've had my share of hookups and I guess you might say I've broken a couple hearts, so I'm not oblivious to what's going on around me. But that doesn't erase the fact that my mind seizes romance when an attractive person hits on me—regardless of what they're really after. And this isn't a good thing. Whether I'm in-tuned to the fact that they're after just a one-night stand or not, my romantic fantasies set the mood for how I'm going to treat this person
I'll be extra sweet. And I'll try to be a little sexier, though I usually end up just looking stupid. I'll do these things to tell this person I like them. In turn, they'll take my actions as an indication that I'm interested. And I am!
Just not interested in what they want me for.
Unfortunately, many gay men buy into the stereotypes they so admonish. Many expect that if you're attractive and attracted, the bed is the next logical step.
So I've gotten to the point that whenever someone I like hits on me, I make sure to tell them that my intentions aren't sexual. And while this sometimes scares potentially great guys away, I'd rather not have them screaming at me or forcing themselves on me when they find out later what's really going on.
Beyond Gay
This goes far beyond the gay world, though. Many women and men, gay and straight, feel the same way. We are members of an incredibly passionate group. When we're attracted to or paired with folks on the opposite end of things, our hearts are broken.
But we are not weak. Although our passions can overpower rationale, we live the life of extreme bliss and detrimental heartbreak. True romance rarely affords mediocrity.
I hope you'll stick around to talk more about romance with me, as it is without question my favorite topic.
