Ahhh....Progress

The Price of Progress

It really sucks to be great sometimes. (Yes, that sounds REALLY arrogant, but I couldn't find a better way to put that.) This is particularly true when the people around you have no real sense of what it means to be above average. And THIS is why I hate my current job and my current surroundings in general. People who are satisfied with their own mediocrity have no positive investment in your success. In fact, some of them are threatened by the idea that someone else might want ot achieve great things (i.e. "How dare you think you can achieve more than me?") and it really makes you want to cut these people off. But what happens when these people are your family members?

Funny V-Day

So I have quite a few exes, just given the topsy-turvy nature of both gay relationships and 18-24 year old relationships in general, but very few are of any real note. But this Valentine's Day, I got a call from one of the noteworthy ones. I was with this guy for the spring and summer of 2005. He was a very nice guy, a bit selfish, childish, and lacking a bit of perspective (the kid kept telling me he would've gone to Princeton, but didn't really like it; mind you, he was a student at a community college when he told me this. Ummm....nobody opts for a community college over an Ivy. You might opt for a Stanford or WashU or Morehouse, but NOT anybody's community college). But whatever the case, he was my boo and we had a really good relationship and a REALLY bad breakup. He loved me, but he didn't have enough time for me. So when I decided we should end it, he cried and he cried hard. He couldn't even bear to hear my voice for months. But, whatever the case, we chilled twice in the spring of 2006 and he was, at that point, in a relationship with an older man who he seemed to really like. Well, he called me on v-day to tell me how much he missed me and how the older man couldn't compare. :-D Suffice it to say that it put a smile on my face, but more importantly, it really made me wonder what would've happened if I had been in Jersey and we could've reconciled. Hmm.....interesting.

ThaOthaBrotha? Who's That?

So I'm sitting here looking at 50 Cent's movie "Get Rich or Die Tryin" and there's a scene where 50 is riding in his new car. He looks over into the rear-view mirror and starts practing his gangsta speak. "Who the fuck you lookin at?" "Get the fuck out of my car!" First it made me really nostalgic, because I remember looking in the mirror and talking to myself. I remember singing in the mirror. I remember practicing my romantic lines. I remember posing. And it really made me think about the faces we put on.

I mean, it's part of life to have many masks. You can't logically be the same guy at work as you are with your significant other. And it doesn't make sense to interact with your children in the same manner that you interact with your buddies from college. It's just a matter of appropriate behavior. But what about constructed identities? And, more importantly, what happens when we can no longer tell the difference between who we are and who we have constructed?

One of my boys is a very attractive guy (as tends to be the case). From our dealings, I've always thought he was emotionally void due to his past relationships with guys and therefore less apt to get hurt in any dealings he does have with them (compounded with the power he wields by being as attractive as he is). However, recently, he tells me that the cold face is just a facade and that he is actually very sensitive and emotional. He just puts on the cold face to protect himself. But yo, how is it that I've known the guyf or 4 years and that's the only face I've ever seen. Mind you, I'm not his type so he didn't give me the cold face to protect himself. yet that's the only person I knew.

On a somewhat similar note, I have always prided myself on being nice. I know that so many people in th world are mean and unabashedly so. So I was very happy to be different and was very proud to be nicer than most other people. however, nice people often get trampled over, so I developed a very cutting sarcsem and wit to protect myself. And, of course, I honed it over time, becoming increasingly proficient at cutting to the heart of people with my words. So I was talking with some friends my sophomore year of college and I said, "yeah, I'm a real nice guy, " and they laughed. They laughed hard, inf act. They couldn't believe that I formed my lips to even say that. Then they went so far as to say that I was the meanest of the entire group. Now it seemed that the personality component that I had developed as protection had become a very permanent part of who I was and I didn't even know it. Talk about a shock.

Usually I can end these mental rants with some sort of closing statment or moral to the story, but I don't even know this time. I guess I'll have to give it more thought.