Women still turn me on-

Tonight I’m in a decently chilled-out mood. I tuned to KGSR on my drive home from a friend’s house and discovered that they play a radio program I’ve not listened to in the years since netradio.com passed away: Musical Starstreams. Forrest, the host, seems to have an excellent taste in the best ambient music out there, and that chilled me out so smooth. I extended my drive for another hour just to listen and take it all in.

I grabbed something to eat and came home. Found a girl I’ve not seen in 3 years was online, so we chatted. Another girl I like also came online, so we chatted. And what was funny to me was the common threads running between conversations. It seems to me that we’re all lonely. We’re all trying for mates and running into no luck. We’re finding problems with finding mates who see things the same way we see them.

The second girl was having a major problem with men who make the wrong assumptions about relationships; her beef is that there are a lot of guys where she lives who feel that if the sex is good, there’s probably something wrong, because it’s obvious that they’re in the relationship for the wrong reasons. I mean, what about personality, intellect, linguistic patterns, right? Wrong. C’mon, guys; it’s not all about sex, sure, but, as she puts it, “I don’t think I could tolerate a lifetime of mediocre sex.” Well-put. Her main point of contention is that people should get out of the saint/whore complex; get away from it. If someone is good in the sack, they’re good in the sack. Sex is an integral part of the pair-bonding in any relationship; if it’s lacking, there better be a damned-good reason to overlook other shortcomings. Good sex is no reason to pull away from a relationship. In my opinion, and in my experience, the better the sex, the stronger I want to stay in that relationship, the more I want to see that girl, the more I will gladly compromise.

The first girl’s point of contention is that, for one, she’s not the kind of girl who will hide her true feelings, and she doesn’t want a boy who expects that out of a girl. When she has a problem, she’ll talk; sometimes forcibly, but she’ll talk. With her, when her man asks her, “Honey, what’s wrong?” there’s no, “Nothing, honey” spoken through gritted teeth. She wants a man to be her “partner in the business,” to discuss matters openly, and to take care of problems. She’s had enough with soft men; those who’re “afraid” of a strong-willed woman. And I can see where she’s coming from. I’ve had a girlfriend before (in my early years) who willingly sublimated herself towards the goal of keeping me and, honestly, that freaked me out. I don’t want half a woman; I want the whole woman. That means the great sex, the alternate point of view, the randomness and interest of having two minds in the deal. I can see her point.

I admit that I’m still a tad naive on the matters of love, but shit, if I can see eye-to-eye with these two women, then what’s my problem? Where are the rest of the women who share their viewpoints? Why haven’t I met them? Why is my bed still empty?

I have a possible answer. Roughly three weeks ago, I had an epiphany. Around 85% of my friends are male. A regular sausage-fest. The problem is that most of those guys, the ones who aren’t in a relationship already, are totally happy with sausage-fests, if you catch my drift. As I sat up at Mojo’s one night, talking tech with some of my buddies, I looked around the table and it dawned on me: I was surrounded by gay men. It didn’t bother me at the time, but it kinda bothers me now, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

So here’s my epiphany: I, Shawn Thomas, have become a “fag-hag”. I hang out with gay men. I live with gay men. I talk and chat with gay men, and I end up spending little time and energy on meeting the women I so desire. If I continue in this path, I may be a single straight man for perpetuity. And this bothers me. I don’t want a family, sure, but I do want a girlfriend, a partner, a woman. Women still turn me on. And I’m distancing myself from them for neither good nor ill. I’m distracting myself with sowing infertile soil, so to speak. I may have considered being gay at one point many years ago, but never experimented, never did anything about it. It’s not me. It’s not what I am. Women still turn me on.

It’s my hope that I find a solution to this problem soon. It’s been five thankless years since my last girlfriend, and over two years since my last one-night-stand, and it’s tiresome.

If I can see eye-to-eye with these two girls who, sadly, don’t live in my own town, then why can’t I find one who does?

:sighs: Women still turn me on.

Tanksgibbing Reevyoo

My trip to Texarkana for the holiday was good.

I left a day later than I had wanted; got out of here at 10am wednesday morning and arrived in Texarkana around 4:30pm. Neverminding the smooth traffic flow, the two traffic jams (on a highway, no less), the torrential rain for 30 miles of the trip, the slowdown caused by accident rubberneckers, and the 10 miles stuck behind a 20-wheeled crane moving along at a leisurely 55mph, the drive up there sucked. The drive was around 45 minutes longer than usual. But I got there.

But for the visit, though, I got to see more of my family, buddies, and friends than I usually do on my typical two-day whirlwind weekend. Got the chance to help my sister and her husband with their “new” computer. Oh my god that piece of shit is ancient. After dealing with cleaning the dust out, upgrading the OS from Win95 to Win98, trying to get them online, installing more ram (it originally came with 16 megs of ram), and dealing with a new video card, they finally have a new computer and are now able to go online and check stuff out. So, to them, I say, “Welcome to Phaysis. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

I managed to eat quite well the entire weekend. The dinner was at my sister’s in-laws’ little shindig. Was nice to see them all again. Afterwards, I left to go see my own friends for the first time since getting home. Hung out until the wee hours of the morning, then went home. Friday, same thing — go out, come home late.

I managed to borrow a pc-card modem from a friend of mine, and was able to get online on friday nite. That was cool, kinda. Dialup sucks. (I’m so glad to be back home on my cable modem.)

Thursday night, though, I was so bored that I decided to indulge in my new hobby: wardriving. I was under the mistaken impression that Texarkana residents are still in the internet stone ages, unlike Austin, which have businesses that advertise free wireless access as a major selling point. So, on my drive, I found a ton of wireless hotspots in this one corner of town, and surprisingly enough, 95% of them were encrypted and secured. I did find three spots, though, that were wide open. That wasn’t so surprising.

I drove by this one hotspot and whipped into the parking lot to examine my readings. Found out it was open, and the major street that I was on was deader than a doornail, so I zeroed-in on the access point, picked up my laptop, and proceeded to associate with the node and I browsed for a good five minutes, tittering like a little schoolgirl. All the while, though, I had my eyes flashing between rear-view mirrors on the lookout for cops, guards, feds, whoever. A couple of times I had to do “turnarounds” in parking lots when the security guards in their nice trucks started coming my way, but not with this hotspot. I did my (mostly-legal) business and cruised on through the neighborhood and out of sight.

My little experience there gave me a few important survival tips, which I’m still compiling. But I had fun.

Ah, :sighs: work today, coupled with the long weekend and the tough driving, has left me tired and in need of some sort of energy or something. I want to write a journal entry detailing what all happened this weekend, but you’ll have to excuse me today. My writing sucks. Ah well.

Anyway, I got to have lunch with my mother sunday, and I hung out with her for the rest of the day until I had to leave for home. I left Texarkana around 8pm and got here at 2am. Total time for drive home: 6 hours and 57 seconds. I loaded my stuff into my apartment, unpacked, and got ready for bed. Let me tell you, sprawling out on my own big bed, with soft sheets, after that long drive, is a helluva lot better than trying to catch catnaps on my mom’s couch. Damn straight.

Ok, time to go kill some food. I’m starved.

AUS2TXK 11.26.2003

Hey Austin folks:

Heading to Texarkana for the thanksgiving holiday. Will be back sunday night. Wish me luck on the drive, and you guys take care and have fun, etc., etc.

Hey Texarkana folks:

I’m coming! I’m coming! I’m coming! I’m comi– oor, uh, I’m, um, I’ll be there in a few hours. Keep the light on for me, keep the turkey warm, keep the couch ready, etc., etc.

Hey Other folks:

Borrowing a modem for my laptop. Will be online every now and then. See y’all later, etc., etc.

That is all.

Retouch

I felt something this weekend.

I sit here at my computer, and I’m still trying to digest all the events of this weekend’s trip to Texas Renaissance Festival. Being away from Austin and all that my selfsame lifestyle entails, even if only for two short days, has given me a different perspective of myself and my angle on life.

Friday:

I took friday off from work and headed out to TRF to meet with Jon, Laura, Liz, and Doug, my friends from Texarkana, at the campground. The drive was steady and swift, and never minding my lateness in leaving town, I still made it there in good time, albeit an hour and a half late, as is my proper idiom. My friends had taken a bet as to when I’d arrive (thankfully, not “if”). Liz won the bet over Laura.

I set up camp, got my things organized, and proceeded to take in the surroundings while hanging out with my friends, cracking wise, bringing up memories. A major kick to the memories was the presence of our mutual friend Jason who I have not seen in the 13 years since my high school graduation. He brought a few new faces; his wife Christy, his brother Eric, and his brother’s wife Amy, and some other folks who, and I will be honest, I did not learn their names (apologies if any names are wrong). So, all told, our camp was fairly sizable this year and lent itself well to having very few dull moments.

Friday night went kinda quietly. Sort of. We made dinner and continued drinking and unwinding, getting into the “proper mood” for the weekend. We met a guy who came to us first to ask permission to set up camp next to ours. We consented wholeheartedly (and thankfully), and in no time he was set up. His name is Jeremiah, he goes by “Lord Nightshade”, and makes some pretty kick-ass chainmail and fetish clothing (if you are in the Dallas area and looking for some well-made stuff, I can give you his number). Luckily, his being a total stranger paid off – he was totally cool.

So, many drinks, a couple of drum circles, and one campfire later, we crash out one by one to get some needed rest for Saturday.

Saturday:

The next day, we go to the first day of the last weekend of this year’s faire. I dressed out in full garb for the first time in three years, and if not for the heat and humidity of this mid-November day, it would’ve been completely perfect. I toured around some time on my own and ran around checking out the jousting match, a few booths and shows, and met up with three of my friends who work at various shops. It’s always a pleasure to see Stacy and Kate at Dream Shoes. Pete, a friend of mine from Houston, works at McCoy’s Armory – I didn’t get to meet up with him until later in the afternoon.

During my wanderings, I found Jon and Laura at a cafe, so I joined them at their table, finished my meal, and enjoyed this incredibly good band from San Antonio named [E Museki]. They play traditional Italian, Greek, and Gypsy folk music, and they are really good. After we bought CD’s we wandered on back to Dream Shoes so I could introduce some of my Austin friends to some of my Texarkana friends. We later ran into Doug and Liz on the sculpture trail, walked together for a bit, and split off again in Sherwood forest.

After some refreshments, we checked out the animals there, among which were two camels and four elephants available for rides. The urge was overwelming me, so I just had to ride a camel — that was incredible, being something like twelve feet over the ground on the back of this lumbering, tottering creature. I had Laura take pictures of me on the camel at my request (Perl programmers have a thing about camels…). At the elephant ride we saw someone working there whose job, I swear, bears an uncanny resemblance to The Poopsmith. We got quite a bit of mileage out of that joke. We had some more wandering, checking out stuff and joking around, then parted ways near closing time as I went off to chat with my TRF friends while my Texarkana friends went back to camp.

Pete and his coworkers were unwinding and getting ready to close the booth for the night, so he invited me into the area behind the shop to talk. I had the chance to meet several more people, among them Ed McCoy, who owned the shop. We talked about the way business is run at TRF, and I was enlightened; I had misconceptions until then. I like knowing more about that place. I get a better perspective on it.

Pete had to go back inside to close everything down, so I stepped out to watch the very impressive fireworks. He had invited me to join him in his quest to sneak over to my campground and visit his group brothers and sisters at camp Chaos. While I was watching fireworks and he was gathering his things, we lost each other, so after fireworks, I headed back to camp and changed into comfy clothes, getting ready for whatever may happen that night. We had dinner and started the campfire while I managed to reconnect more with my friends. Jeremiah came over to hang out and figure out some plans for the evening.

So, as we’re all sitting around and carrying on, we hear a bunch of shouting and merrymaking in the campsite 20 yards from ours. Someone looked over and remarked, “Hey, are those people naked?” We all looked, and sure enough, they were indeed naked and quite noisy about it. They were a wandering group of roughly 20 guys and girls in robes and cloaks who were going from campsite to campsite flashing people (I later learned they go by the group name “The Church of Shrinkage”). And wouldn’t you know it, they’re coming our way!

The first to reach us looks around, asks, and makes sure there’re no children present before anything naughty happened, and then the whole group swoops in and surrounds our pavilion to wait for the count from their leader. On threecount, the robes are open, and sure enough, they were all very naked. Wow. We laughed our asses off. They stood there for a good ten seconds wagging around their bits and having fun. Wow. And, if you ask me, not a single one of the girls was ugly, and they all were shaven (even some of the guys!). Wow. And there I was without my camera. Damn. But they moved on and we were left there totally dazed and laughing; most definitely lightened up our moods. I found myself completely unsettled (in a good way) for the rest of the evening because of it. Damn.

Later, Jeremiah and I headed over to the main drum circle to watch some members of Chaos and some other groups doing their firebreathing stunts. Absolutely amazing to see. I took many pictures. And guess who shows up to do some firebreathing? PETE! So after he finished doing his thing, I met up with him for some congratulations. He invited me over to the main Chaos camp to meet some people and just hang out. Since I only knew Pete and no one else there, I felt out of place, so I ended up wandering off after a while and walked around the campground. Meanwhile, drum circles were happening — the main one, a lot of smaller ones elsewhere, and the drunken and debauched one that I completely missed out on by leaving the Chaos camp. Double-damn!

So I’m back at camp, and later on, folks start filing off two by two for bed. Jeremiah and I sat around the campfire and entertained whoever happened to be passing through. I headed off to bed around 4:30am to get some necessary sleep.

Sunday:

This morning I got up around 10:30 with my tent, by my guess, a toasty 100 degrees. Completely groggy and gross, I stumbled out to take care of business and try to wake up. After sitting with my buddies joking and whatnot, I get myself cleaned up and strike my camp. Most of my friends didn’t go in today, either because of illness, lack of money to buy another ticket, or lack of interest, so I sat with them until something like 2:00pm. I caught up a bit more with them on Texarkana happenings and other stuff, then I made my farewells and went off to the faire.

Today’s wanderings were solitary, and I reflected a good deal on the happenings of last night, many details of which I’m leaving out here. I dunno, but last night gave me some perspective. Somewhere along the way, I think I lost touch with the thinking that goes along with having a good time, with becoming a social creature, with letting go. Both nights of faire I found myself gravitating back to the campfire where I became sedentary, just letting the activity wash over me and flow on past. Even though I had fun, I still missed out on a lot because I was too inside myself looking out. There’s still a lot I’m trying to digest, but walking around by myself gave me the chance to start the process.

I touched base with Stacy and Kate, then went on to get some food and smokes. Watched a few of my favorite stage shows and took a bunch of pictures. Actually found myself browsing shops looking for jewelry and chzotzkies. Around 5pm, the clouds that’ve been building and threatening all afternoon finally dumped everything they had on the faire. For some reason, I found that incredibly amusing. I simply pulled my umbrella out of my satchel, walked deeper into the faire and had a good giggle while watching all the people running like mad for the front gates. Heh. Like that’s going to help anything.

The crowd dwindled down to only of fraction of what it was (which today wasn’t nearly as much as yesterday), which was fine with me. But the shopkeepers weren’t happy, to be sure. I walked over to McCoy’s Armory and found Pete. He invited me to the back of the shop again and he gave me the lowdown on what happened at camp Chaos last night, after which I expressed my grief and regret over leaving too soon. We caught up on some more stuff before the word was passed around that the fair was to close an hour early, and I bid him farewell. He invited me to come visit him and his friends in Pasadena some time – I should take him up on that. I walked back to Dream Shoes to bid farewells and seeyalaters to Kate and Stacy before I made for the front gate and on to my car.

On the drive back to Austin, I listened to the E Muzeki disc I bought and fell in love with it. It touched the sadness I feel about seeing the end of something, the sweetness before the parting, the looking back on what all just happened and where I had missed so much. Sure, there’s always the net and the easy communication with people who’re far out of town, but that doesn’t replace actually being in their presence to hang out and carry on.

And it’s somewhere in all that that I felt something. I felt humanity touch me again. I can’t believe I’ve been giving a lot of these things the pass for so long. It’s there if I’ll just reach out, wait, or speak first. But I’m still digesting. I’m still learning.

Paper update and other updates

Hey folks.

Not sure if I overreacted about the local newspaper’s choice of story placement (see last journal entry). I did get a reply from the editor two days later, though. Here was his response:

Thanks for your email. We make these kinds of tough decisions daily, and inevitably the results trouble some of our readers.

I enjoyed the breakdancing story and thought it thoroughly deserved front-page play. It told readers about a local phenomenon that, I suspect, few knew existed. I found it informative and interesting.

As for the mouse pox story, there’s no indication that an epidemic infection looms on the horizon. In fact, humans cannot contract a disease from it.

We’re mindful of the delicate balance we must strike between local and non-local, hard and softer news. Thanks again for your thoughts on the issue.

In some way, I can understand his viewpoint, but we each had a miscommunication about what our message intent was. My concern was something that the mousepox article barely touched upon: the ability to use the exact same research to alter the smallpox virus, which humans can get, into a supervirus. My stance remains; more exploration of the ethics and social code behind creating “superviruses” needs to be done in public forum. What we’re asking ourselves is if God can create a rock so large that even he can’t lift it. And right now, we’re creating.

Ok, on to current news:

I’ll be taking friday off (using some well-deserved vacation time) to head up to TRF a day early. Will be meeting my Texarkana friends and their entourage at the TRF campgrounds around noon to set up camp and begin festivities. The weather doesn’t look that fantastic, the group is smaller than expected (thanks to some last-minute backouts, dorks), and I’ve not been feeling my best this week, but it may end up a decent weekend. I can hope, at least.

Healthwise: monday, I suffered a sharp pain in my left kidney. It struck once and disappeared. My kidneys have been kinda tender for a few days, so I’m overdosing on water and trying to eat and drink right. So far I’ve noticed nothing else wrong — my “waste” is normal, in the normal amounts, no burning, no discoloration, nothing. Totally odd. I think after this weekend I may see my doctor if it persists.

Cardio-wise, last night I started tweaking out with something resembling hypoxia. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t make any diagnosis, but in my hypochrondriac research online it’s what it feels like. Google it sometimes. My smoker’s lungs breathe too shallow, especially when I lay down for bed. I just start freaking out. Today, after work, it was a bit worse, and it’s the head-rush-and-spin with the lung-tweak and the steady, hard heartbeat that only a smoker could love, and I hate it. I want to quit so badly. I need to. Again. For good. For life.

I’m a fucking addict.

On a lighter note, my roomate and I just extended our lease on the apartment for another sixth months. We love the apartment, and the feeling of semipermanence that living somewhere for over a year can afford, and this time around the rent is fifty bucks cheaper (to a grand total of $645/mo), but the tiresome situation with the stupider-than-trailer-trash neighbor and his fondness for “bass cars” is growing long in the tooth. I’m not sure how many people in this tiny complex appreciate his frequent gifts of “Skrew’d music”, and I most certainly don’t appreciate his and his girlfriend’s constant shouting, yelling, and loud thumps next door, but it appears to me the landlord, tho we like him, might be a little too soft on dealing with many complaints. Aside from calling the police on something that could quiet down as quickly as it flares up, what can we do?

Daily bothers, daily pains, daily regrets. I’m gonna take a “chill pill” and go to bed. G’nite, all.