three conversations

-1- 

[in his car, on the way to dinner]

Him: Do you know who is this singer? I really like her. 

Me: *trying to listen carefully* Mmmm... No..I don't think I know... 

Him: Are you sure? 

Me: Yes. Who is her?

Him: You don't know? Get out of the car now!

Me: Um ok. *trying to unfasten the seat belt* 

Him: *Laughing so hard* I am kidding.

Me: I think I know. This is Madonna! 

Him: Ah there you go! *caressing my hair*

Me: Oh my God you are so gay! Gayer than I am! 

Him: But she is good! 

-2-

[in my bed, the first time he stayed over]

Him: Do you know you snore? 

Me: *looking at him, trying to stay awake* No way. 

Him: Yeah you do. 

Me: You're teasing me. Go to sleep. 

Him: *reaching for his iPhone* Here, listen. 

Me: What? You voice-record me snoring?

Him: Yes. *laughing* 

Me: Noo.. *the voice-memo started to play* 

Me: God, I snored! *laughing* 

Him: Yeah, you're so cute. *hugging me from behind* 

Me: Go to sleep. 

-3- 

[one cold night after a week not seeing each other]

Him: I miss you. *licking my body*

Me: I miss you too. 

Him: I love your body. And the whole package. 

Me: *rolling eyes* You're lying! 

Him: *laughing* No I am not. You know that. What about you?

Me: Me? What are you talking?

Him: *licking my ears* What do you like about me? 

Me: Everything. *carried away by his tongue* 

Me: Wait. *gasping* I like it when you said 'oh yeah' while licking my body. 

Him: *stop licking* Really? 

Me: Yes. *Smiling* 

Him: *whispering* Oh yeah.. *licking my ears again* Oh yeah.. 

Me: *laughing* Just because I love it, doesnt mean you have to do it all the time. 

the meet me halfway

I always thought that difference was not a problem in a relationship. There's this naive boy inside me who chose to believe that even two completely-opposite guys could date long as it was love. A dork could be made for a hunk, someone who really hates the football could fall for a soccer player, and so on. Because there's no other us - we're each a unique person. People are created differently.

But the thing is, at what point do we draw the line?

It was when I saw this comic drawn by someone: a geek with long hair and beard was dating a super hot girl. His wardrobe was superheroes themed, and all in all you can say at first that he got a nice catch with the girl. Then the girl started to change him: she asked him to wear polo shirts instead, to shave his beard, and have his hair cut. By the end of the panels, she was dumping him. So it made me wonder: when two completely opposite people are dating, how long does it take before they start to try to change each other? And do you go along with that? Do you just walk out? Where do we really draw the line? Do you change yourself and then demand things from your significant other? Where is the halfway?

For me, I can't say much: I would give it a chance before call it end. At some point, it's not about 'changing' that very person, but more to 'accepting' them as they are.

Back to a few years ago, when I first moved to B-town, I met several people: we started to hang out and befriend each other. Then things happened: we each learnt our flaws. We had fights. I had fights. All four of us were falling out each other. But then we managed to be friends again. We learnt to accept the flaws, we learnt to accept each other. And I think when it comes to relationship, we need to be that accepting too...

The thing is, when it comes to relationship, acceptance is a difficult and expensive trait - or so I think. At the moment you become too attached to someone, you start to think: what is the best for them? And suddenly you just find yourself forcing things to your significant other - exactly just like when we're little kids, and our parents would try to teach us things. Is it something wrong? Offensive? Harmful? Frankly, I don't know.

But I do know that when it is not working, it is just not working.

partners: the key

This episode Joe and Louis were fighting about one simple thing: the key to Joe's apartment. Ali, Joe's fiancee, were questioning his giving his key to Louis. She then asked his man to ask the key back from Louis, but since Louis was reluctant, they decided to change the key instead. The two guy made up eventually. And by the end of the episode, we also learned that Wyatt had known all along that Louis didn't really give the alcohol and meat like he had asked him to.

You know what?

I learn tonight that a guy who chose you over his best friend for over 25 years is a keeper.
A guy who wouldn't mind your choosing to things he doesnt really approve of, is a keeper. Period.

The Best Thing That's Ever Been Mine..

 

 

I want that place by the water. 

I want that citylight shining on your face. 

I want that arm around me, too. 

 

I want to be taken by surprise, that of all goodbyes that I have ever known, you'll still said that you'd never leave me alone. 

I want to be made rebel. 

I want to believe it all again. 

 

 

A Mr.H

I rarely talked about the guy here in my blog. It's funny, since he's like my person. And in the wake that he's got himself a boyfriend, I thought that perhaps I'd write something about him.

He's Mr.H. I met him first during my college years back in B-town. So it has been like around 8 years and counting - I hope. He said he has always known about me since we introduced ourselves to each other - but I didn't remember if I knew him. It didn't take long for him to ask me the question, and to which I remembered that I said to him that I was not a gay. Funny. And embarrassing. I meant, to be honest, I am that obvious. So I was only fooling myself at the time.

He's my person ever since. I got my first gay porn from him. He's my first gay friend, to be honest. With him I could talk about almost everything - we used to hang out in the canteen inside the campus and cruise the guys. I was there during his first break-up. I was there when he told me about this crush he had deeply on a certain guy. He was the one who gave me fashion advice. He was there when I registered to my first online gay-dating website. I used to sleep over at his place. We shared food his mom made him. We stayed up the whole night once just doing our college assignment. If you watch Grey's Anatomy, it's pretty much like Meredith and Cristina kind of relationship. Some of our mutual friends would occasionally check how he's doing via me. Because as they said, when there's me, there's him. And I guess that's also how you know how close you are to a certain somebody.

What seems funny to me is also the fact that I am a shy person. I tend to push people away, or so he told me once. I am not a people's person, I guess. I only shed my wall when I know I'm safe with someone. When I know he or she accepts me just the way I am. And now in office environment, I only hang out with a bunch of people, although I am now more open to people. People who know me would say that I am a nice and funny person. I am warm and sometimes too kind. I am smart and really a team-player, they said. Sometimes I can be very much bitchy, of course, but they also know that I do not mean any harm.

Recently I got out of a really bad relationship. He was there. He was one of the few who knew it from the beginning. He wrote a post about that, even. He constantly checked on me. And you know what, Mr.H has always been on my side. He's my person. He knows me, and on several occasions he even pointed out how I would normally act on certain matters. He sees me. And he's also one of the few who helped me pick myself up and rising again after the pain. More importantly, he makes me believe that I am not awful, that I should give my heart a break. That someone better would come along.

All in all, I give my best to him. He deserves the best guy there is. He already went through all the hurt and pain, and I know that someone like him deserves the happiness. I sincerely wish that he and his boyfriend would make it to forever this time. Because that will give me hope that true love does exist for the gays, even if it's not for me.

So kudos to you, H.
And remember, I will always be there no matter what. :)

Love,
Ed* 

Perhaps

Don't speak, I know just what you're saying, so please stop explaining. Don't tell me cause it hurts...

My world ends, at some point.
Kurt and Blaine just broke up.
I'm sorry for the spoiler.

You know, I always thought that cheating is okay. Long as your boyfriend is completely honest with you. And long as it doesn't involve kissing. But apparently for Kurt it is not okay.

Perhaps I'm missing things here.
Perhaps I don't know better.
I remember Ko Sugar told me once that it was not okay. He said that cheating is not okay at all levels.

And just once, I thought to myself, perhaps it's also nice to have that kind of someone. Someone with whom I don't even have to say that 'cheating is okay' because I know he won't.

Perhaps.

The Not-Really R-rated Dream

I had a weird dream last night.


I was ended in my bedroom somehow inside the dream - with a guy. Not a perfect stranger, but a guy I know pretty well. He was a colleague from office, about my age, cute. I was eying him for a while until I knew that he's married and with a daughter already.  I dropped the insane and unhealthy obsession for him - I was not young to play that kind of game; you know, where you're kinda being a secret admirer or something..

Anyway,  The details were hazy, but all I remembered was he's suddenly kissing me. We made out. Pretty intense, I would say, to a level you would blush whenever you met him in your real life - I met him this evening on my way home, and oh boy I hoped that I were not too obvious..

But the problem was not that.

The thing was, the fact that deep down I remembered vividly that I didn't enjoy the intense kissing. I remembered that I felt that something was not right. Somepart of me told me that he was not supposed to be the guy. He couldnt be the guy. Then... why did I kissed him back passionately? Where did that leave me?

I remembered pushed him away, looking at him trying to figure it out.

Just that and I woke up.
 It was exceptionally hot in B-town lately.

I'm fine

It's always raining in November. 

It's always raining in this lonely town. 

It's always raining in me. It's always raining in paradise somewhere somehow. 

And I remember things. 

I remember how we used to hug each other. 

I remember how we used to fight. 

I remember you. 

It's always raining in my eyes. 

It's always raining in me, somewhere somehow. 

Until a shelter, until another umbrella, another arm, another heart. 

Until then, I'm fine. 

Partners: New Sitcom Preview

Anyone here remember the sitcom Will and Grace? The sitcom is about a gay man, Will, being best friend with a straight girl, Grace, and of course their love life..er.. mostly their being desperate that they still couldn't find that one person to spend the life with. Eventually they did, and we had a good eight seasons -and several emmys I think - watching them being funny and of course, loving.

The character Will was based on the creator himself, Max Mutchnick, who's also gay, and who's creating the show together with his best friend, David Kohan. Grace herself was based on another best friend, Janet. And now, they're back again with this sitcom, this time they're using their own story and wrote a new sitcom titled Partners.

Louis, played by Michael Urie of Ugly Betty, was a gay architect and formed a partnership with another architect fellow, Joe, starred by David Krumholtz. The two were best friends since childhood, and this could be reflected back to the two creators themselves. Louis was the gay one, like Max Mutchnick (and Michael Urie) and he had a boyfriend named Wyatt, handsomely played by none other than Brandon Routh (He was Superman once before Henry Cavill, and the movie was so bad it got mocked recently in TED movie from Seth Macfarlene). Joe was the straight one, and his girlfriend, Ali,  was played by Sophia Bush of One Tree Hill.

The pilot was a bit stereotypical, Louis was the typical gay, and Joe was the understanding one. It was funny every now and then, but other than the fact that the guys were best friends since childhood, nothing had amused me more. Seeing the couple dynamics but still able to making some space for each of their lovers, I think this is new. I mean, some of my friends complained that their friends were not spending much time with them again once they had a boyfriend/girlfriend. The situation even got raised a bit in TED movie, when Mila Kunis had Mark Warlbherg chose between her or the teddy bear. Apart from that, no other conflict foreseen in the movie, IMHO, but because this was only the pilot we're talking about, I think I would stick around for more episodes too come.

Meanwhile, enjoy  the snapshot of cuteness down below.

Joe 
How do you deal with Louis? I mean, doesn't he drive you crazy?

Wyatt
Well, that's easy. No one in the world loves like Louis.
I mean, I question a lot of his decisions, but one thing I never question is his heart.
And if you keep that in mind, you can forgive all the other stuff.

*

Louis
Ali, listen to me.
You've got to marry him  because I need to know if I'm not gonna be around to take care of him, at least you will.

The New Normal Again. :D

Brian 
We are bringing a baby into the world where idiot people feel free to say and do the things they say and do trained to ignore them! That guy is not the problem.  We are the problem.

David
Well, what did you want me to do? Get in his face? I'm not that guy.

Brian
I don't know!
I'm not crying for me. I'm crying because what if that happened in front of our kid? What will we do then? Just be ashamed of who we are? What kind of message does that send to our child?  I don't want our kid to feel that. To see him or her get hurt like that, that would just kill me.
As a parent, you're supposed to protect your child. You tell them not to play in the street, and-and don't do drugs and wear a thick shea butter moisturizer at night.
But how are we supposed to protect our baby from hate?

- the new normal s01e03

What did you read there? *Gee I feel like I'm giving out an english exam, lol.
But anyway, I'm going on with this The New Normal fever - while waiting for Partners - a new sitcom by the creator of Will and Grace - to finish downloading.

This new episode felt more drama than comedy, but since I think every gay guy could almost relate to the problem and issues raised, I think we can easily forget that. You can see directly Ryan Murphy's secret formula there: the whole acceptance thing that he has done so well with Glee. Only this time I think Murphy has brought that formula with a sample of the lead couple's daily life..

I had a conversation with Mr.H over the blackberry a few months back: he told me how he never liked the gay with queenie and bitchy attitude. I told him that it's just the way the gays has been doing as some-kind of self-defense mechanism. I might be wrong on this, but my point is, like the sample we have with Brian here: how he's the typical gay (I've mentioned it before in my previous post), that some of us might consider him shallow, but once we get to know him very closely, we know that he's a nice person inside. A person with love and simple goal in life like building a nice and happy family. Isn't that what we all want?

And what I like the most is the fact that David is the typical geek; but even so he felt the pain and sadness in Brian that he would still ask: what do you want me to do? He knew he's just as helpless as Brian but he still offered that kind of rock in his shoulder to rely on... That's when you know a guy loves you - like really loves you. It's never been undivided attention or anything grand. It's never that.

The New Normal

Ryan Murphy perhaps is a genius. Or not, depending on how you view his creations. He's famously known for his plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck - I can't bear to watch the all the gory details despite the two hot doctors as the main leads, then perhaps Popular - it was very popular indeed in my high school back then but then after season 2 it lost its soul and eventually got cancelled, then Glee - which to me is more like Popular but with Music and gay stories, then American Horror Story, then here comes the newest: The New Normal. 

The premise was simple: a couple - a gay couple is trying to have a baby and they found a goldie named Goldie with a daughter trying to start over her life after catching his husband having affair red-handed, who was willing to be a surrogate mother. . It was supposed to be a sit-com, and a few months before its premiere I think several medias have reported that there were several organizations trying to boycott this series. Well little did they know that all the controversies  indeed were good for marketing. 

So NBC picked up the series, and I had to admit that my first eyes were to Justin Bartha: He was the forgotten cast member of the wolf-pack gang in Hungover movies - the cute one in the first movie who's also the groom. Then being his couple is the queenie Andrew Rannells, the previous Broadway actor - I think - who has had several awards up his sleeve. The pilot indicated that he was the stereotypical one in the relationship: fussy, superficial, into fashions, celebs, obsessed about looks, and so on and so on. Justin Bartha himself is the geek, an OB-GYN doc who's the quieter one, and apparently, the understanding one. 

Along with the trio were Goldie's grandmother and unique daughter, also Rannells' funny assistant. Despite the witty and sassy lines about Nana's being bigot and racist, it was funny until the moment you hit the intimate convo between the two leads: they were sweet enough - not too ooey-gooey that I actually tried really hard to hold back my tears. There were so many lessons about family; for example when Goldie said that family is family and love is love, or when Rannells telling Goldie's daughter that she's unique and that trait will lead her to greatness and how her mother just loves her for who she is... And the ultimate breakdown for me was when Bartha and Rannells hitting the bar back. They realized that their youth had long been over-due. 

And it hit me hard: all the endless fun, endless party, endless sex, endless shallow things that we all do - they will all be passing-by, in a glimpse of moment. That one day we're going to wake up and realise that there are still many things in our life that we still havent done. I for one would not want to be that guy. I wanna live my life to the fullest. There's no time for craps like failed relationship. Like meaningless fights. 

So thank you again, Murphy. I dont care what critics say. I dont care if in the long run your show is going to be a disappointment. That's not the point here. I thank you for making me see what I do want in my life. And for that, I will stick to the show for a while. 

SuperGeek: Part 2

the city was still sleeping when he reached the highest building, not far from a high and big statue of the city founder just in the upper side of the city. 

he revealed his mask; and you could tell that with that kind of jaw-line, he's much more a  stud rather than a genius geek. he sighed, to the empty air, to the cold silent statue just in front of him. 

the new-republic city was built over a hundred years ago; the founder, Gaudi, was a father who lost his only son after being bullied. He sought for justice, but justice itself had failed him. so he immersed himself in the technology, secretly took over all the vital facilities, and finally became the most powerful man in the world. everything else then fell into their own place; the rebellion was started and not more than 2 years Gaudi proclaimed himself as the ruler, and founded a new city: the new-republic city. 

it took another 5 years before he could finally revenge his son: all the non-genius studs and the like were exiled to the suburbs, and they were no longer allowed in the daily and vital aspects of the city. Along with the studs was all things supernatural and can't be explained scientifically. life was never the same ever since.

our hero then put on his glasses. all the sudden, you met again the genius geek underneath the black tight spandex costume. six months before he resumed his new identity as a superhero - he called himself SuperGeek - he met a gipsy during his way to the border of a suburb to collect certain specimens. his colleagues had never been keen to do field trip, and since he had unexplainable desire to the green environment and mother nature, he had always volunteered himself to such task. 

the female gipsy was trying to locate her missing feline when she stumbled upon him. then suddenly, she was just a different person: she levitated a few inches from the ground, emitting a bright white light from her body and eyes. She didn't open her mouth, but he could hear her very clearly, like an echo in a silent valley: The time has come. You have to fulfill your destiny and bring back the balance to the world. 

it was rather hard for him to understand everything - it was the first time he saw such magical phenomenon, after all - but the gipsy, being back to her own consciousness explained to him: there was a prophecy given by the city council just before Gaudi took over everything; that one day there would be a true geek with true compassion again, to restore the balance. and for that purpose and that day, the council had prepared everything he or she could possibly need. only a few were made known to this prophecy, and she was the last line of the prophecy protector. 

go south, dear, she said. not far from here, you'd find a secret underground pass to everything you'd nee;. my hope rests in you. just like that, she vanished into thin air, leaving our hero alone with this thought and disbelief. 

*to be continued

 

the pain unfelt

I have told myself you are not allowed to hurt me anymore. 

That's what hurts the most. 

(I Wrote This For You)

 break-up is never easy.

anybody who says the contrary is either lying,

or simply doesn't love enough. 

but we survive.

you know why?

because we know, 

as always,

that it gets better.

SuperGeek: The Beginning

The dark night was never this dark to his memory. The city had fallen asleep, apart from some dim lights in the middle of faraway, looking like fireflies flying to save their last lights. The man walked alone, looking tired but cautious. He had perfect hair, his broad shoulder somehow made you wanted to lay your head there for a while, and he would be exactly what you would want in a guy... precisely a century ago. 

It was only a few miles from his modest home when a few other men showed up. They all wore spectacles, no exactly your average athletic guys, but you could tell that they brought danger. He gasped and the ran away to the other directions, but the men managed to chase him using the jet packed to their shoes. He knew he was doomed when he ran into a dead-end - or was there exactly where the three other guys had lured him to? 

He turned around, waiting for God-knew what could happen to him, then solemnly closed his eyes upon stumbling the laser gun the three guys had brought. For solid three minutes, nothing happened - he slowly opened his eyes just to find that the three guys had been knocked down. He gazed around: nobody was seen there, he walked slowly out of fear that the bullies would wake up, when he heard a voice: Go home, dude.

A masked-men inside his fancy car - or a plane? - was looking at him, before flew out to the dark horizon. He whispered his gratitude, then ran home, with thousands of questions: who was that guy? What was his purpose? And more importantly, was he the answer to the problem the city had faced? He didn't know much, he was tired, but that night he knew he went to sleep with a slight hope that it would get better. 

* 

to be continued...

It could happen to you

It was 1 AM and I couldn't sleep as I have just gotten into a fight with my boyfriend - to think about it again, the fight was really a bit a small un-important matter. So that midnight I browsed through youtube and several webs about gay culture, trying to seek some comfort that gays could be happy and whole as well. 

 

Then I stumbled this article by queerty.com, posting about a really heartbreaking video that went viral. And my, watching a really heart-breaking video alone after a fight with your boyfriend is not a good idea. 

 

The youtube video was about a guy, named Shane, who has just lost his loved one, Tom, due to an unfortunate accident. They were together for six years, they came out together after the first anniversary, and they shared a mortgage and they were business partners. Shane's family was very supportive of him, but Tom's was not just quite welcoming. After going back to his hometown for Christmas,  Tom had made clear: he didn't want anything to do with his family anymore as now he found his home with Shane. At their fourth year, Tom decided to give Shane a promise ring: that they'd get married to each other once it has become legal. 

 

There I stopped and I cried like a baby. 

The accident for sure was devastating for Shane. But that was not the sob story. Tom's family had denied Shane's right to attend the funeral, and they had taken everything that belonged to Tom and did everything to their power to deny  Shane's existence in their son's life. 

 

There I stopped again, and I cried like a baby. 

 

The message was clear: it could happen to any of us. Shane has dedicated his video to promote equality, and to promote love, so what has happened to him will become a part for better future for all the gays in the world. 

Suddenly I felt so small. So selfish. 

In my country here in Indonesia, gay is still living inside the closet, including me. There's no way I could come out to my family, because they wouldn't accept me the way I am. It pained me, but I think even when the things I can contribute to help Shane with his cause are very limited, I still could do something about it. 

So I wrote this. 

Please share this too if it touches your soul. 

Lets do something, however small it is. 

Here's the video: 

The Forbidden Love

I've been engaged in one soap opera lately. Well, as you can already tell, any soap is full of drama, sometimes you can even find so many flaws in the story-line, and let's be honest: acting is the last you'd expect to be good. That's exactly what i had in mind until several weeks ago. 

It was one lousy afternoon in the office when my boyfriend told me that there's this list of 100 hot guy, issued by afterelton.com. I can tell you that normally I am not a fan of such thing, but since this was issued by afterelton, a prominent gay site focusing on the pop culture and my boyfriend told me that most likely the voters were gays and their friends, one could very well expect that there'd be gay and bi men all over the list - and this was true if you took time to read the introduction. Needless to say, soon after i found myself drooling over the list - Adam Pally of previous post scored a spot in the list - and stucked at number #18... (Go see and click the youtube link. You'll agree with me). The guy's Thore Scholermann.

 

Then my journey began. 

The soap was entitled Verbotene Liebe, a German soap opera literally translated as Forbidden Love. Lame, but steamy, dont you think? Given the worldwide fanbase, and of course my curiosity from the kissing scene, i began to search. What is this series? 

 

It didnt took me long to see the storyline - a soap isnt supposed to be all complicated, is it? A guy named Christian Mann (Thore Scholermann) was in a growing relationship with Oliver Sabel (Jo Wiel); they were owners of a bar named No Limits. It was not a brand-new soap, as it is now currently at 4000+ episodes since its first airing in 1995 - but Chris and Olli's stories were only as early as 2008. Involved in their love-dovey scene was a big aristocratic von Lahnstein family, tackling several issues as we know now, for example drug addiction, incest, rape, murder, HIV, and of course sexual confusion and LGBT culture. 

It was easy to fall in love with Christian - for me - and after constantly talking about it to my boyfriend, i have been successfully infected him with the addiction as well. Which is fun, because we get to talk about it every now and then, and he himself has told me that it helped him seeing clearly what he wants in our relationship. 

 

Although there were a lot of queer series (The Lair, QAF, The L Word, etc) and LGBT characters (Modern Family, Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters, and a few other soap in USA), I dare to say that Chris and Olli's stories were of different taste. Despite the drama, you could say it somehow reflected the real situation any gays would face - or at least that's what the worldwide fanbase and I thought. I often find myself wondering the same thing like Chris or Olli, and sometimes it's interesting to see how they reacted to their problem, coming down to commitment, and finally, most importantly, staying together as long as possible. In a way or two, I think Chrolli's story could be some kind of reference to gays out there: how to be supportive like Olli and how to be manly and protective like Christian. You might think i am a bit delusional here, but hey, hope always dies last, doesnt it? So let yourself be hopeful. Sure, you could expect the drama to be a little bit exaggerating, but let's be honest: we crave for drama. We're a drama queen in denial ourselves. 

So enough with the chitchat. You must be getting a bit impatient. Here's the complete playlist you can find in youtube: PLAYLIST1 , and dont worry, although it's German, the uploaders (nick ichglotzutube), has been kind enough to provide the english subs. Several of the videos have been blocked due to the copyright matter, but my boyfriend has tried to use Proxytube to download the blocked vidoes. Proxytube is an add-on for mozilla firefox and it's free to download. So what are you waiting for? Go. Spread the words. Be happy.

Meanwhile, enjoy this short youtube video.

  

   

The Happy Endings

Max: God you're perfect!

Grant: Oh, come on, Max! Nobody's perfect!

Max: Ssh! Save it for them. I don't care.

(Happy Endings, S02E14)

I was writing about how great and handsome the guy Grant (played by James Wolk, who also starred in comedy You Again as Kristen Bell's hot brother), and how sad I was that the character Grant and Max didn't make it, then I realized one thing: it was not so important anymore. 

Instead, I remembered one conversation I had with my boyfriend regarding Max (I knew I should have uploaded Adam Pally, the guy who portrays him instead but I didnt), about how Max was different from the stereotypical gay guys: He's chubby, he mostly didnt care about anything - including his fashion choice, and he ate a lot. I think we need that kind of guy more - not someone who's paying too much attention on what to wear, how to behave, etc that they forget the very essence of their own existence: being happy and being whole as themselves. 

So, to the genuine gay guys out there. Whoever you are. Para hoy. Live the day.

The Morning Has You

The sun would always rise, or so I thought. I have never really considered the possibility that one day it would stop rising and then the world as we all know it, would just disappear. Yet that early morning, the sky was still fervently indigo, and the mighty sun was still nowhere to be spotted in the eastern horizon. 

From the balcony I was standing in, there was a bit cold feeling clinging in the weather, but the atmosphere for sure felt fresh. I hugged my arms tight, watching the gentle wind blowing all the trees and taking away some of their leaves, before eventually leaving them behind. I watched those leaves falling down to the empty yard like green confetti after a big orchestra. I have always loved falling leaves since forever ago, as to me it was like a grant poetic gesture. Was it about loss? Or solitude? Or an atonement to the past? 

I turned my head to the bedroom behind. The curtain stood still, and the indistinct ray of light had created a shadow on the floor. I could see that he's still sleeping, soundly; the very same peaceful face I had touched the night before. I smiled remembering every detail, and the same time, he opened his eyes, still sleepy, but I could feel that he's smiling too. 

He reached for his glasses, then still with only his boxer pants, he walked through the sliding door to the balcony and hugged me from behind. 

'It's cold here,' he said. But he's warm. He lied his chin on my shoulder. 
'It's beautiful here.' I said. I turned to him. He kissed me. 

It was the very first morning we wake up together. 

the warmth

It was already dark outside when I returned home. I was extremely tired but the thinking that he'd be inside waiting for me, had carved a smile on my face. So I opened the door very slowly, as if the serenity would break had I created loud noises and then he'd run to the door just to find me.I took my shoes off, gently, then with my socks still on, tip-toeing to the kitchen nearby to wash my face. I had wanted to always look fresh and lively when with him. 

He was reading by the fireplace in our small library, the smooth carpet and a moderately big sofa just in the middle had made the room cozy and comfortable. For a moment I stood still, couldn't decide the source of the warmth radiating from the room: is it him or the yellowish reading light? I hugged his shoulder and he greeted me while putting his book away. It was a book by Kafka, the one that he had spent almost forever to look for. 

 

'How are you?' He said, lightly kissed me. 

'Tired,' I said, walking around the sofa and sat beside him.

He smiled, 'Come,' he patted his laps, to which then I lied my head down. 

'I miss you,' he said again, his hand caressing my hair. I sometimes still found myself quite amazed by his small gesture despite the years being together. I looked at him again very closely, and this time he returned my gaze. There was this peaceful serenity again, and it was as if nothing else mattered. It was like there's this warm blanket covering us, that I was safe in his arms, and that we could forget the rest of the world for a while. And more importantly, that we had each other for God-knows how long.

 

'I miss you too,' saying that more to myself as I know he would have known already.  And that precise moment, I know that the warmth was radiating from him.

s.h.a.m.e

perhaps everybody's running from something. something really dark that we don't wanna know, we don't wanna face. but it's there. yet the question remains: where is the end point of the run? 

in this second feature film directed and written by Steve McQueen, we're introduced to a healthy and lively handsome man named Brandon (Fassbender - this is in fact the second time they worked together after the famous 2008 film Hunger), who was also hiding neatly the fact that he's a sex-addict. there's no explicit explanation as to why he was who he was, yet interestingly that's not the key-point the film had wanted to describe. the lack of dialog - despite that it was set in the famous city New York - with the tall and cold building as the backdrop, merely added up the gloomy portion of the movie. perhaps, one could say, as dark as Brandon's past. 

his endless sex routine was then distracted when his sister, Sissy (Mulligan), came into the picture. the woman, in a way or two, was actually a resemblance of Brandon's pathological problem: she was very much clingy to men to the extent she would beg for their love. 'New York, New York,' she sang the famous song in a cafe in a very slow tune, and it's painfully mesmerizing. it was through Sissy that Brandon slowly realized that he had the same pathological problem. 

there's no problem-solving there, although we did see Brandon's questioning himself and his morality (perhaps) everyday in silence. but knowing your problem (to the extent that you want help) isn't the same as questioning yourself - yet, again, this is not a drama that would give us any glimpse about that kind of fight. this is a movie where everything is laid down and given back to its viewer point-blank to interpret (and perhaps, to relate). so Brandon ran away from a woman to another woman - and instead of healing, he created deeper and deeper black hole inside his soul, and this was the core emotion of the movie after all, as the sex-scene and the full frontal nudity (which earner the movie an NC-17 rating) were so paralyzing that there's nothing sexy about it. 

in the end, 'We're not bad people. We just came from a bad place,' as Sissy told Brandon over the phone. and to that, perhaps we can't really escape.