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Along with being closeted gay and the not blond kid, I was a ninety eight pound weakling in high school. The nervousness of screwing up in front of my classmates and my natural clumsiness resulted in being bad at every thing, and I was always picked last for any sport in gym class.. Because my brother and sister were in cross country running and skiing I did them to and let me tell you, there is no better sport to try and bulk up and be manly than distance endurance sports. No wait, scratch that, that’s the worst thing you can do.
When I first started at KU I was interested in learning about the lifting weights, but I had been trained in from high school that people laugh at you when you aren’t good at things. Like most colleges, KU had a recreation center that had a swimming pool, racquetball courts, and of course, a weight room. Despite my fear curiosity got the better of me, and I would go in the morning to try out different pieces of equipment. I wanted to learn more, but I didn’t want people to know I wanted to know more, so I did what every ninety eight pound weakling does: I went to the book store. I was so scared my roommates would see my copy of Bill Pearl’s “Getting Stronger” that I tore off the spine label so you couldn’t tell what it was when it was in the book shelf. Throughout college I would work out at the rec center or in the weight rooms in the dorms, but I didn’t want people to know. It was my personal secret.
When I started working at Multi-National corp, one of the perks was a discount on a membership at the local gym. Compared to the student recreation center, this was a huge upgrade. First, this wasn’t just a gym, but a wellness community complete with lunch and smoothie bar, outdoor heated pool, racquetball courts, weights, and personal trainers. I had arrived. I began going on a very regular three to four times a week, partly because I could see improvement and partly because I had nothing better to do. When the topic of the gym came up at work, my co-workers would tell me how health conscious they used to be back in they day, then shake their large Dallas guts in front of me. It would just make me say to myself “Must keep going to the gym, must keep going to the gym…” Between the gym next to work and the weight room in my first apartment complex, I had plenty of places to get my gym time in. The new apartment had a weight room too, so the tradition continued after I moved.
Some things I learned at the snooty gym:
Rich fat old men like to have snooty gym memberships and go regularly, but they never lose any weight. This is very apparent when you see them naked in the locker room.
No one will kick dirt on you, tease you, or otherwise even look at you while you work out. Most of the gym people are too busy looking at themselves.
Don’t stare at the hot people. Look at their reflection in the mirror instead.
The ratio of “people working out to look hot” to “people who are hot” who are working out is about three to one – lower than what’s advertised, but high enough to keep you coming back.
Personal trainers comes in all types. If you’re trying to gain weight, don’t stick with the granola eating hippie whose all about pilates.
By 24 I was already outside MTV’s target demographic. It was always on, and I always thought whatever was on was stupid.
A workout partner is like a roommate – the things that make you break up are the little things. You don’t have to be best friends, but it helps if you’re interested in the same goals are starting at the same level.
I know my straight reader out there doesn’t get the monthly magazine that comes with gay membership, which means you don’t have access to our super secret gay agenda. I could get in big trouble for this, but I’m going to share with the entire internet our most trusted secret.
The gay agenda is to live our lives as people, with a side order of please stop hating us.
Honest, that’s it. That’s our sinister plan. We don’t have recruiters. We don’t want to sodomize teenagers. We don’t even want to redefine spiritual marriage. It’s taken me a while to understand why gay marriage is such a fiery issue. While I think marriage would encourage stable gay relationships and help lower promiscuity, which for health reasons would be reason alone for such measures to exist, I’ve simply accepted as fact that I would never see this happen in my lifetime. Is it really worth the fight? I don’t want to be an activist, I just want to live my life. Why is it such an issue? I have my own personal theory. Before I begin, I must explain that I’m not the religious one in this house. I was raised catholic by my parents, but I was a bigger fan of Jesus’s golden rule than anything in the Old Testament (even the parts involving fire). I probably learned more about spiritual living from Bill and Ted than I ever did from the church.
I’m going to do some stereotyping of my own: to those who take a strict interpretationist view of the Bible, the idea that gays can be good people is as much of a wrecking ball as evolution. God destroyed Sodom because we’d turned the place into Studio 54, and so the gays had better be stopped before we do the same to the U.S. of fucking A. It’s impossible to argue with logic like that as it’s so deep rooted that no amount of reason will unseat it. This division has had a lot of casualties. It would be unfair to say that the entire spiritual community speaks with one voice on this, as the issue has divided the spiritual community and is at the center of the Anglican schism, causing divides between conservatives and liberals within the church. More personally, I’ve seen religion play a valuable part of people’s lives, but I’ve also had numerous friends who spent years reconciling their spiritual faith with their homosexuality. Using exile as a tool to enforce morality is a terrible thing to do for any group, especially one that lives by Jesus’ teachings.
I don’t want to be an activist. I don’t want to throw my sexuality in people’s faces, to make them uncomfortable until they get over it, but I am tired of being used. I’m tired of political parties using oppressing gays as a way to get votes. I’m tired of watching state after state ban gay marriage in order to “protect marriage.” We don’t want to destroy America, we just want to stop being second class citizens.
I’ll end with a clip from the New York senate. During the arguments for the failed gay marriage bill, Senator Diane Savino gave one of the most moving arguments for gay marriage. Please watch share.
One of the perks of getting my first job at the tail end of the tech boom was that Multi-national corp flew me down for a house hunting trip. For the five and a half years prior I had lived in slummy apartments around Lawrence, KS, and I had very low standards for my new apartment. However when I flew down, Jeff took me around and showed me the town. One look at his swank pad and my standards completely changed; now I wanted an incredible living space and I had a day to find it. When I met my Realtor I gave her my specifications – it had to be an amazing living space yet located in the suburbs minutes from work. She really had her work cut out for her. During the preceding years of the tech boom North Dallas exploded with housing options to handle the new technology class, and all these complexes had amenities like coffee bars, golf pros to help you with your swing, on site car washes, and other useless items. Most of them also looked like the same white stucco apartments I’d been living in during school, which was no longer acceptable to my new found high standards. Hours before I had to return to Kansas the Realtor took me to Vail Village Club in North Dallas. The faux-hardwood floors and unique layout were nice enough for my new apartment snobbery, and I signed a lease.
My First Apartment.
The first week in Dallas I only owned what I had from college, all of which fit in my parents minivan, about $500 to my name, and no car to buy anything new. I took the bus three miles to work (which somehow took an hour), walked to the grocery store for cans of soup. The day I got my first paycheck and signing bonus, I stared at the checks in awe – I’d never seen a check with that many digits (there were 4) with my name on it. Over the course of the year I furnished: Target furniture my parents bought for me, A TV because I had a bad day at work, a couch because a friend from High School was visiting and I wanted it to look like I was a grown up, etc.
Living in North Dallas introduced me to many things. For example, my apartment complex had a racquetball court on site. Once Jeff and my co-workers discovered my apartment had that, I suddenly achieved the kind of popularity of a kid with the new toy on the playground. The complication was that I’d never played Racquetball before arriving in Dallas, which really didn’t matter to them. Jeff enjoyed pounding me into the ground, but my co-workers were nice enough to come down to my level until I got up to speed. Another thing I discovered were $30K a year millionaires; Dallas residents who made $30K a year but spent it all on nice apartments, nice clothes, and nice cars. Style as incredibly important to all my co-residents, and I struggled to even exist in the same league. Finally, I learned about loneliness. It’s hard to find friends when you move to a new city, and it takes a lot of time to adjust. Living so close to work gave me an easy excuse to not meet people – I could always just spend more time at work instead.
After a year I knew I wanted to move, but was too lazy to look for a new place so I renewed for six months. When that was up I decided it was time for me to look for something new. I now had new requirements
I didn’t want to be close to work. It was too easy to spend all my time there otherwise.
I wanted to be closer to Cedar Springs, the rainbow center of Dallas.
I wanted something cool and trendy
During the late nineties Dallas had been trying to revitalize it’s downtown by converting it’s old warehouses and buildings into loft space. Magnolia Station was the old Shell Oil headquarters. It was adjacent to the parking lot to the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Stars and Mavericks, and was the starting point for the Katy running trail. When I took the tour I just fell in love; this was going to be my new home.
The apartment
My office space
My living room
When I told my co-workers I was moving downtown, farther away from work, they were puzzled. One asked “Why move downtown? That’s where to strange people live?” They eventually accepted it, though the tailgate party at my place before the Mavericks may have helped. Even though it was only 600 sq ft, I still have fond memories. For one year when I was 24 years old, I had a cool loft apartment in downtown Dallas, lived a couple blocks from the gay clubs, and went running on the same trail as the rich and powerful of the city. I was one of the strange people, and I loved it.
Between work and the holidays, B and I weren’t going to see a lot of each other in December and January. As an organist Christmas has a lot of extra responsibilities, and he added some more by organizing a Christmas concert at a church he used to play at. On top of that both of us spend the Christmas week with our parents – me in Minnesota, him in Missouri – so there’s a good week where we don’t have much contact. Knowing this, we had planned in advance to spend New Years together in Dallas. We bought tickets a month in advance with the thought to spend our new years doing the only things you can do in Dallas: eating, shopping, and partying.
I tend to dread going up to Minnesota for the Holidays. I could say that it’s because every year my sister transforms into a Christmas Godzilla, an insane beast hell bent on expressing holiday cheer and enforcing that all Christmas traditions are executed as they always have without waiver. She sings Christmas carols at random, she plays the same holiday tape we’ve had for 20 years on repeat (flipping when necessary), and she gets pissed if we don’t go downtown to see the Macy’s 8th floor display, requiring 3 hours of standing in line with a bunch of 5 year olds to see a bunch of animatronic dolls play out “The Nutcracker”. No, that’s more of a minor annoyance compared to not being out to my family. Between my mom probing into why I haven’t knocked up a girl and constant guilt on how my sister is the only one whose given her a grandchild, I am pretty worn out by the end. I sometimes imagine myself outing myself to my parents with the hopes my parents throwing me out of the house; they’ll forgive me eventually, I’ll be free of the heavy servings of guilt, and it’s not like I don’t have a car. As always, it wasn’t as bad as I was imagining. My parents had spent the month of December working with contractors to put a new kitchen, and the week up to Christmas was a mad dash to put the finishing touches in before Christmas morning. This year my sister couldn’t make it for Christmas week because she had to work, so she was coming up the week of new years. This meant there was plenty for me to help with and no Egg nog Godzilla to contend with. There was a whole mess of snow, however. I think we shoveled the driveway five or six times over a three day period.
—
I always think it would be exciting to take a trip over New Years, and then realize I’m far too exhausted to move by the time New Years comes, and you’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now. I returned from Minnesota to find out my entire team had taken Christmas to New Years off, meaning I had to take on all issues for the entire team. By the time I made it to Dallas, I was cranky and not good company. B in the meantime had flown down Dallas before me and had spent the past two days visiting a friend who has been making a miraculous recovery from pneumonia. When he came to pick me up from the airport, it went something like this.
B: OMG, this has been the best trip ever!
Me: I HATE LIFE!!!
I would like to think this played into what transpired. The fact of the matter was that while we’d been looking forward to this trip for a month, we hadn’t actually made very concrete plans. Before I had flown down I had tried to get hold of some friends of mine from Dallas to see if we could catch up while I was in town. Dallas was not immune to the cold spell that was affecting the entire country, with highs in the low 50’s and lots of mist and rain. So things got off to a bad start. When we had some troubles deciding where to go, we ended up going to the Galleria (a giant mall in Addison), but B didn’t seem to be having a good time. When I asked him what he wanted to do, he suggested we go see Avatar in 3-D. Now, I think James Cameron gets a lifetime pass for Aliens and Terminator 2, but B has very little patience for science fiction, so I wasn’t sure how well it would go. Right as the movie was about to start, a good friend from Dallas returned my call, so I texted him that I’d call him after the film. After experiencing 3 hours of 3-D Pocahontas with missiles, we were tired and not having a good time. I called my friend back, and while talking to him I could tell B was not going to be up for clubbing all night (which I was really looking forward to), so we spent New Years with my friends.
After B and I returned from Texas we discussed what had transpired. When we were at the Galleria, B thought I was frustrated because he is such a picky shopper (which wasn’t true; I’ve long gotten used to the fact that B is incredibly particular about what he wears) so he postulated that because I like movies, he’d try to make me happy by suggesting Avatar. He didn’t realize I had been looking forward to going clubbing, so he had no idea I’d given up the thing I’d traveled down for. Basically, we both ruined our own vacation trying to make the other happy. This is how I know B is special: no one else I know would have done that for me.
—
In the words of Steve Jobs, “there’s just one more thing.”
Around Thanksgiving I’d been working a lot of hours, and I didn’t think I had the energy to make the 8 hour trip home for Thanksgiving. I can’t recall not traveling over Thanksgiving, including one year where I left at 4 AM from KS to make it home before the turkey was served. This may sound ungrateful and selfish, but not traveling over Thanksgiving is awesome. You get vacation without the stress of travel! You get to spend the weekend doing things you want to do!
I went to see my friend Bert on Thanksgiving afternoon because it’d been a while since we’d hung out. It’s very difficult to pigeonhole Bert in one or two sentences because Bert defies stereotype, but I’d say he’s one of the most fascinating people I know, as well as one of the smartest and funniest. A pragmatic genius whose still a kid at heart. So I’m hanging out with Bert, flying micro RC helicopters around his house (yeah, he’s cool like that), and he runs to his computer to restart his Lady Gaga mix. He started telling me how much he loved dance music, especially Lady Gaga. At this point I had heard of Lady Gaga, but only in a “well I heard that she was popular because NPR said so” way. Bert, who I think I can safely say is a mega-fan, began to explain why she is not like other pop stars:
She actually sings while dancing (take that Britney Spears!)
Then he tells me that he’s going to the January 9th show in Chicago, and he has two tickets, so would I like to go? How could I say no?
I flew into Chicago Friday morning, and spent the afternoon shopping on Michigan avenue and generally bumming around a city I really enjoy. When I finally got to the show, it was like I had arrived at the gayest science fiction convention ever: there were costumes, there was alcohol, and it was raining men. And the show – oh my god the show. It was less concert as it was Broadway show, with all the costume changes, video projection, dancing, and music.
By the end of my first year in Dallas, I had learned a major lesson: In 2001, at any given hour of the day, there was always an episode of Law & Order on. The syndication rights had been split between A&E and TNT – two cable networks that had very few quality reruns to air – so on any given night I could catch two episodes. On Wednesday nights, I could watch an episode on TNT at 7, an episode on A&E at 8, and watch a new episode on NBC at 9. Every episode opens with two random people in the middle of some conversation/fight/embarrassing moment who stumble upon a dead body, the detectives (best season: Lenny Briscoe and Mike Logan) ask questions and find a suspect, the Lawyers (best seasons: Jack McCoy and Jill Kinkaid, the Swell Season of TV lawyer drama) try to pin the case. At my worst I would think that any given moment of my life would be an opening scene to a Law & Order episode; I’d be making coffee in the break room thinking “what if I suddenly heard a scream, run over, and there’s a dead body? Next thing you know Briscoe and Logan are on the case!”
Obviously I had to get away from the TV.
The OSLC was helping, but they only met Tuesdays and Saturdays, and I usually couldn’t make it on Tuesdays. Browsing the internet at work – you know you’ve done it! – I learned that the Dallas Library system was looking for ESL (English as a Second Language) instructors. There were a couple of reasons I thought this would be good for me. For starters, I wanted to do some form of volunteer work, partly because I had the time, but also because I was out of school and needed to believe I still had my hippie granola values still in tact. A larger reason came from a desire to connect with my Hispanic side. I often played the game “count the Hispanics” in North Dallas, where I would look around a restaurant and see if I could find any Hispanics who were not part of the wait staff. It was usually pretty low count. As the middle class half-Ecuadorian I felt out of place, and I thought this could help. Finally, the Dallas Library was right in the heart of Oak Lawn, gay central.
The ESL program was run by Claire, a early 20 something who had graduated from Austin, TX. Her large amounts of enthusiasm made up for her lack of staff or budget. The library had two computers with a variety of ESL software (Rosetta Stone was a favorite), but they didn’t have anyone to administer the machines. On weekends they would have students come to practice their English in a conversational forum. Since most of the group was other ESL members, it was very comfortable for them if they struggled. Most of the students were from Mexico, but there were a few exceptions. One woman from Zimbabwe had a lovely accent and I always loved the sound of her voice. There was another woman and her mother who had come from Columbia. She had been a journalist in Columbia, but they were having troubles finding work in the US. I loved talking to them about their backgrounds and histories.
It was talking to them where I learned just how not Hispanic I am. An eye opener was when one of the students invited me to her cousin’s wedding (I think she thought it was a date). It was a full Mexican wedding, complete with full Mariachi band. One thing about Mariachi’s – the reason that they are so popular is that if you’re Hispanic you’re supposed to know every song they sing. If you grew up in Mexico, you’d be exposed to all this music growing up. Having grown up in Minnesota, I had no idea what to do when everyone burst into song.
I volunteered for a little more than a year. The thing that made me decide to leave is when we got a native Texan volunteer. He had more of a teaching background than I did, but he spoke Spanish with a Texan accent (Hole-ah! Coh-moh Ess-tah Uu-Stead?). He also on his first day insisted on telling the students how to “correctly” pronounce their names (“It’s not Ed-war-doh. It’s Ed-ward. Ed-ward”). While I had to agree that he was probably helping more than I, I couldn’t take his approach. By that point, I was halfway ready to leave Texas, but that’s another story.
A few weeks ago I was invited to a gay friend’s dinner party, where he was serving a authentic Thai dinner for 15 (his mother was cooking it, but that’s another story). When dinner was served, half the party was eating at the table, and the other half was in his living room watching “Glee.” Everyone knew about it, most were fans, those who had never seen it had friends who were telling them they had to watch it.
I’m very torn about Glee, a show about music that has trouble hitting it’s emotional high notes. If you’re not familiar, Glee is about high school Spanish teacher Will Shuester (Matthew Morrison) who restarts the high school glee club. The pilot introduces a core set of members, but as the show has progressed more students have joined. His antagonist is the cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), who feels threatened because the glee club is taking resources away from her nationally known Cheerleading squad, the Cheerios.
I’ve watched since the pilot, and it’s been a rocky ride. For a show about outcasts the show seems to hate it’s outcasts. A central plot line has followed the popular kids as they’ve fallen from grace within their clique because of their involvement with the glee club. We’ve spent episode upon episode following the pretty people mope about how hard it is to not be popular, but there are 4 core characters (Mercedes, Artie, Kurt,and Tina) that have never been in the popular crowd yet that the show repeatedly puts into the background. You’d think the show was embarrassed to have to include unpopular kids in it’s plotlines about unpopular kids.
The writing is all over the map. From episode to episode the show can’t decide if it’s supposed to be a Telenovella or a serious drama. People talk about the glee club as if they’re in an episode of “The West Wing,” yet one of the major plot threads of the entire series is that Mr. Shuester’s wife has been lying for months about being pregnant. Seriously? One of the biggest writing failings is that characters exist in completely different pocket universes from each other; Shuester’s wife Terry and her sister exist in the “plot machination” universe, Sue Sylvester, Ken Tanaka (Patrick Gallager) and Rachel Berry (Lea Michelle) seem to exist in the “wacky” universe, and the rest exist in the supposedly “normal” universe. When characters interact with characters with people from alternate universes, the show really struggles to hold together.
So why do I keep watching?
…and that opened the episode. Rather than write original songs, Glee embeds lots of well performed standards into it’s episodes, usually tying them into the plot. The performances usually have to be edited down from the full song in the show, but they’ve been selling full length versions of all the music on iTunes and just released a first CD. It’s easy to see why all my friends love this show; it’s like gay catnip.
When I was talking to my friends they all agreed that the show had it’s flaws, but we couldn’t come to a consensus what those flaws were. Some wanted more of the campy fun plots, others wanted the show to take itself more seriously. Some hated the token gay character Kurt (Chris Colfer), others (mostly me) loved him. The past few weeks the show has given some time to the outcasts and stabilizing the wild tonal shifts that make the early episodes hard to watch, but they still have a fake pregnancy as a core storyline. I think the show is a mess, but it’s a mess with something for everyone and good music to cover it’s flaws.
Would you like Glee?
If you are a straight guy – do you like twenty-something women playing teenagers in tight outfits? Then you might.
If you’re a woman – do you like drama? Did you hate high school? Then maybe.
With a project deadline looming I couldn’t find the energy to drive to Minnesota this year. I feel bad that I’ve enjoyed it so much, but with some analysis you might understand my view.
The downsides*
I didn’t get to see my Parents, favorite Aunt and Uncle, or my Grandmother for Thanksgiving.
The upsides
I didn’t have to spend 16 hours round trip in the car, or 9 hours in transit via airplane. I’ve traveled almost every Thanksgiving for the past 15 years. It is an exhausting time-sink.
I got to sleep in. My parents like to wake us up to eat breakfast. My parents also like to get up at 5:15. You see my issue.
I got to go running, swimming, and do other activities I enjoy. Running and biking are complicated by the cold weather, and I don’t have pool or gym in Minnesota. I’ve considered joining Snap Fitness just so I can go to the gym in MN.
I got to catch up on TV shows, and not have my parents want to watch, leading me to spend all my time explaining what is happening on said shows.
I got to hang out with friends and not have my Mom make me feel like I don’t love her because I want to spend time away from Family.
I got to use my laptop without my parents asking me what I’m working on every five minutes.
I got to cook. A lot.
I got to clean the house. After months of neglect I had to get a HASMAT suit to clean my bathroom.
I did laundry. Yes, I could have done that at home, but when your parents are 500 miles away it isn’t convenient. Plus my clothes would be all wrinkled by the time I got home.
I made a Pumpkin Pie just for me.
It’s sad, but I want to do home-giving every year.
—
*The other downside was that B went home and I haven’t seen him since Tuesday, but that would have happened if I had gone home or not.
Once you leave college it becomes a whole lot harder to meet people, and it becomes especially hard when you move to a whole new area and tend to be a homebody. Jeff was the only person I knew in Dallas, but he lived in downtown Dallas near Deep Ellum. Jeff tended to give directions as if you already knew where you were going and simply needed someone to confirm the streets you were to turn on. I had only began driving in March, and when I had picked up my car I told him specifically not to drive on any highways home so I could follow him, even though the dealership was half way to Fort Worth. So of course the first time I drove to his place I missed an exit and ended up in the scummiest area of Dallas I had ever seen, complete with cars on cement blocks, old guy drinking from a forty, and crumbling houses. I got back on the highway, hit my exit, and then my problem was trying to parallel park between a Honda S2000 and a BWM; Dallas was like that.
Jeff was a good friend to have, but I wanted to meet other people. I tried many ways to meet people. I tried joining a running club only to find that running wasn’t the most social activity
Me: Hey (huff puff) So do you come (huff puff) here often?
I tried the internet, which wasn’t good if you wanted to meet them in person.
And then I tried soccer.
I had joined my company’s indoor soccer team, despite the fact I had never played soccer before. The nice thing about company soccer leagues is that the company pays for everything, and they usually take anybody because they’re desperate for participants. I wasn’t any good, but I was enthusiastic and I showed up for games, which is known as good enough. About March of 2002, I thought it’d be good to try to find activities to meet other gay people. I wasn’t out at work and I had very few gay friends, and at the time that seemed like the thing I needed most of all. That’s when I discovered the Sideburn.
The Oak Lawn Soccer League was a LGBT soccer team of Dallas. They had a co-ed membership and played co-ed outdoor and indoor matches, and practiced on Tuesdays and Saturdays. For me this seemed like an ideal place to meet people. A gay sports team! In high school the jocks picked on the gay kids. Now the gay kids were jocks!
One thing I had to learn was that amongst gay sports there is a hotness hierarchy. The easiest way to explain it is to say that in the straight world there is a hotness hierarchy to women’s sports. Some sports are just hotter to see women playing than other sports. The top three would be
Beach Volleyball (Bikini + Sport = HOT!)
Gymnastics (As long as they’re legal, otherwise it’s just creepy)
Lesbian Mud Wrestling (It’s a sport, right?)
Where as the bottom three would be
Basketball (Ew)
Indoor Volleyball (No Bikini? LAME)
Hockey (IT’S A DUDE SPORT!!!)
In the gay world the top three would be something like
Swimming (Speedo makes the gay world go ’round)
Soccer (You want to take their cup off)
Lesbian Mud Wrestling (It’s a sport, right?)
Most of the people on the team knew about the hierarchy. As Dallas had no swimming team, the gay soccer team were the Adonises of Oak Lawn, and they knew it. Being that I was not beautiful and not all that good at soccer they really wouldn’t give me the time of day. I admit back then this hurt, because here I had finally found a group that wouldn’t reject me for my sexuality but they rejected me because I wasn’t all that good at soccer, but I’ve come to realize that ostracization is really what being gay is all about.
I have a higher amount of stick-to-it-ivness than most. The Saturday practices were very close to my apartment and the guys on the team were really hot, so I kept coming to practice in the hopes I’d someday fit in… except for one time the Sideburn played my work indoor team. I was so scared of being outed I nearly skipped the game, but in the end I played with my co-workers, and I ran off without talking to anyone after the game. Looking back I wish I had been outed; it would have made life much easier.
