Rambling Wednesdays: The American Dream is not real.

That’s no one’s fault and there’s no one to blame for that, but the perpetuation of the myth that every American has the ability to work hard and become successful is just that—a myth.

Rambling Wednesdays: Why I don’t have more gay friends.

So I jokingly made a post about The Saturdays, and how I need more homos with whom to throw dance parties to their music, and I got a couple of messages asking why I don’t know many gay guys.

I’m not a complainer by nature. I don’t like whining about my “problems” or going to my friends on some I’m so sad about so and so because in the grand scheme of things, my life is awesome. This practice also carries over to the Internet. I’ve blogged off and on since high school and I look back at some of those old entries and think “wow, you were a really whiny brat, bitching about everything.”

Every once in awhile I’ll get the urge to write about being gay and my personal insecurities with being gay—especially in a city like NYC with an inordinately high concentration of attractive people—but then I’m like “wait, that’s stupid, don’t write that.” Welllll…..I had a really shitty day so I’m in this weird (but familiar) headspace where I hate all gay people and I feel like putting it down for these reasons:

It’s the night before Thanksgiving. About 80% of my traffic comes during Work Day Hours and I assume random people have me bookmarked to entertain them in their cubicles. Therefore, not very many people will read this.
Most of my friends are (still) straight men. Whom I love dearly. But talking about “feelings” with a straight man is like walking in on your mom getting out of the shower. It’s really gross and uncomfortable and you want to forget it ever happened.
I don’t really have anybody in my real life that I’d want to talk to about this. I’d like for the gay (and girl) friends that I *do* have to understand my whole love/hate relationship with gay bars/culture/dating, but to sit down and complain face to face always turns into “oh but Rafi you’re so great” and that’s not what this is about. I actually really like being Me everyday. I don’t need to be pooh-poohed and patted on the head and told to buck up. It just is what it is. (It’ll be more clear later)
I feel like there are other homos (especially brown ones) who can relate. So I’ll get a bunch of messages like “OMG that’s totally me.”

So here it go. Major whine session to follow.

11:41 pm • 23 November 2011 • Let's talk about what you think.
| me| rambling wednesdays| gay| dating| nyc|

Rambling Wednesdays: Peanut Butter and Jesus.

Skippy

^^THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE?

Is nasty as hell. I cannot fux with this peanut butter and I’m so mad I bought it. I wanted Creamy JIF. Even JIF with peanuts would be almost acceptable in a pinch, but the store was just OUT of JIF. And I was too tired from My Life to walk 10 blocks to the next-closest grocery store to see if they had JIF. So here I go, gettin the Skippy because people like it. I see it at friends’ apartments so I know it’s popular and it must be good.

Rambling Wednesdays: I want to talk about White Girl Hair.

It came up as a topic of conversation on a forum I participate in the other day and I’m still thinking about it. Not just white girl hair as a general entity of the universe, but most specifically how it ends up everywhere.

Rambling Wednesdays: NYC and My High School.

NYC is really small. And I ran into Dierdre Garrett Whitfield the other day.

On the train platform.

Rambling Wednesdays: My Pops.

I called my dad the other day for something random and the conversation made me want to write a quick note about our relationship…since I’m usually focusing my attention on Her Eminence Queen Mother, Empress of All That Is Holy, Righteous, and DoItMyWay.

Rambling Wednesdays: When should black people just lighten up?

I am the first to call out some racial jankiness. I am a black child of the rural South, the child of two old-ass parents who do not have the best memories of Jim Crow. As a matter of fact, my mom’s graduating class was the last all-black graduating class in South Carolina. I heard (and continue to hear) a whole lot of “white people this” and “white people that” because it’s still very real to them. So forgive me for being hyper-aware of racial injustice. I will pretty much notice it every time, even if the guilty parties didn’t necessarily mean it as such.

But at what point does it cross over from pointing out latent racism or correcting stereotypes, to being too sensitive? This weighty subject didn’t just come out of the blue. I was involved in something superserious and superimportant that got my wheels turning and I decided to write a few words about it.

Let’s talk about Dance Moms!

Rambling Wednesdays: Growing up gay.

After I wrote that Coming Out post last week, I started reflecting on how hard it really was to grow up gay in the rural South. The longer I live in NYC, the more it seems like someone else’s childhood, that it really has nothing to do with me. I’ve blocked out so much of it because it just feels like a movie at this point.

Being in this environment, in the house I grew up in during the middle of summer, is taking me back to that period after 8th grade when I got outed. I’m putting this down because A) I have nothing to do before dinner and B) I want to get it out of me. Some parts of the story will be slack on the details because, oddly enough, a lot of people from junior high, people I haven’t seen in over a decade because I ended up going off to boarding school, read my blog.