Chapter 26: The Best Of You

So, today is World AIDS day. This is an epidemic that has overtaken our global community and taken the lives of a massive amount of our brothers and sisters across the world. It is a fucking tragedy. I don't even know how to begin expressing my feelings on something as severe and tragic as AIDS but on this day, in particular, it is a topic that needs to be discussed. I can't really say that I have much in the way of first-hand experience with AIDS, although I have known a few people throughout my life who have fallen victim to it. Nobody particularly close to me, but still people I have dealt with in my lifetime. Despite not having any personal experience with it, I still have a certain understanding of the impact is has on every single one of us. At the same time, maybe I don't. How can someone who has never watched someone they love slowly deteriorate really UNDERSTAND the impact of that? I can't even begin to imagine what that means on a personal level.

When I was younger, down on my luck and living on the floor of Don's bedroom at his mother's house, when my life was in one of it's darkest points, I had an online relationship. This is not a story that I tell often because I find it pretty embarrassing. Back at this time neither Don nor I had actual computers, but we had something that we can still laugh about to this day: WebTV. WebTV was a contraption put together by MSN, that you hooked up to your TV and your phone line and it gave you a version of the internet that was more dumbed down than most cell phones are capable of nowadays. Don and I LOVED that thing, and we both got ourselves in quite a bit of trouble with it, (Don a bit more than I did, but that is definitely a story for another day.) As I mentioned previously, I was in a pretty dark place in my life at this point. I had been kicked out of pretty much every place I had the option of staying, most recently an apartment I shared with my sister, and was no longer on speaking terms with most of the people in my life. My Mom was living in Florida at this point, and I just felt completely alone. I had Don, who let me stay with him, but he had a life that was very full at this time, with work and friends, (friends who were no longer speaking to me,) and such. So, I felt extremely alone. Then, on the WebTV, I came upon this guy. I don't remember all the details of how the whole thing started, but I began talking to this guy and we were as in love as two people can be on the internet, (which, when one is in a place like I was, is kind of a lot.) As he and I continued talking, he began telling me more and more about his life, including his alcoholic mother who was physically abusive and hated him after he came out and eventually he revealed to me that he had AIDS. Throughout the course of this online "relationship" there was that strange combination of genuinely believing what this person is telling you and also realizing that there is the possibility that they are just pulling stuff out of their ass. I cannot stress enough, I was in a dark place. Being in that dark place, I allowed myself to completely fall into this whole story. Over the course of our "relationship" he wound up being hospitalized and eventually died. My heart was broken... all the while realizing this could be complete bullshit. Either way, whether somebody actually died or the person who was making shit up to tell me decided I wasn't worth it anymore, I was sad. Eventually, I got over it. I wound up moving to Florida, (the first time I lived here, which is also a story for a different day,) and slowly got over the whole thing. Still, for the next couple of years I would get these random occurrences of people popping up IMing me and such telling me they were from the same city this guy was from, South City. South City is a place that is rarely identified as South City, because really it is South San Francisco. Prior to this online relationship, I had never heard of South City. I have never heard it referred to as that since, either, except from these random people who would IM me. I'd tell each one of them, "Oh yeah, I knew a guy from there" and they'd ask his name and I'd tell them and they'd all say, "Oh yeah, I think I knew that guy." Random, right? Also, after this guy died I found out about it from his sister, who had "heard so much about me," etc. I kept in very sporadic contact with her after the fact. One of these random people from South City that popped up online talking to me kind of kept popping up and kept talking to me, so we would email back and forth every now and then. Then, at random, I heard from his sister again and I responded to an email from her... then I noticed her reply to me was CC'd to the other guy's email address. My theory is that this was a girl, the sister, the whole time. You know how teenage girls will get obsessed with gay culture and such? I assume she was one of those girls who wanted to do a little role-playing as a gay man herself. Who knows, though?

I hate that story. It isn't a painful memory or anything like that but, again, I find it embarrassing. It also reminds me a lot of what my life used to be. I don't think the people that know me now really understand exactly how dark my life has been in the past. I don't think they understand the things that I have been capable of in the past. I did a LOT of things in the past that I am really not proud of. After all, there is a reason that everyone I had lived with, members of my family, all of my friends at the time were not on speaking terms with me in that story. There were a LOT of reasons. I wrote a song about this topic earlier today, called "Caricature." The chorus of this song says, "I am not the person that you see when you look at me, that is just a caricature of who I want to be. I am not the person that the mirror shows to me, that is just a caricature of who I want to be." Sometimes I really do believe that I have just figured out a way to fool everybody around me. Sometimes I really believe that I have just figured out a way to fool myself, and I am still that person I was when I was younger. The song kind of resolves in the end that the caricature of who I want to be is actually who I have become, and I do believe that... sometimes. I suppose it is all a matter of realizing that the person I was then will always be inside of me, and will always be capable of coming back out. I won't allow that to happen, though. I can't allow that to happen. I have come too far in my life to allow it to all blow up in my face.

The day at work was pretty much the same as yesterday. It was busy enough that I was pretty much constantly on a call which I find incredibly annoying but I am glad for, if for no other reason than that it has proven me right. As I may have mentioned in a previous blog, a lot of my co-workers were getting a little too concerned about the fact that we hadn't gotten overly busy in November, which is historically the busiest month of the year in our industry. I kept telling them, "Watch, it's going to pick up soon. It's the same as usual, it's just starting late this year. Due to the economic climate, people are putting things off as much as they can." etc. Here we are, the first day of December, and things have picked up considerably compared to before. Is the company doing as well as it usually does? I highly doubt it. What company is, though? I am not concerned for the security of the job at all. Ever since the concept of California came up, I haven't been concerned with much of anything relating to the job at all. That is not a good thing. I have a terrible habit of getting ahead of myself, and while I am trusting the universe that this is going to happen, I know that I need to stay in the present moment. In the present moment, I need to keep this job. I do not need to fuck around and lose it. I am not worried about that happening at all but if I keep this "I don't care about anything" attitude it would be considerably more likely to happen. That would throw a major wrench in my plans and I will not allow that to happen. My plans are moving forward one way or another, and six months from now I will be on my way to California.

After work I came home and dicked around on the internet for a while and came across something incredibly disturbing on Twitter. There is an anti-gay hate group in Topeka, Kansas called the Westboro Baptist Church, (although they are not directly linked to any Baptist conventions or associations,) who have started numerous websites spreading what they believe to be the true word of God. These sites all have names like God Hates Fags, God Hates America, Priests Rape Boys, etc. One of their members, Megan Phelps, spent a great deal of time today "debating" with filmmaker Kevin Smith via Twitter, and spreading the groups videos as much as possible. I watched only two of these videos, one entitled God Hates Fags, and the other God Hates Fag Enablers. One of the things I found most interesting about these videos is the recurring theme of "God does NOT love everybody, and any church that spreads that message are sending their entire congregation straight to hell." I don't know what version of God these people believe in, but it is not a God whose love I need. The God that I believe in, (and yes, I do believe in God,) is not a being of hatred. Hatred is man-made, as far as I am concerned, and this group only serves as further evidence of that. They have made it their mission to spread hatred as far as possible. It is truly a despicable group. Beyond these videos, their biggest claim to fame is protesting at events like funerals of hate-crime victims. They also protested at the 2009 Academy Awards, because "Milk" was nominated for Best Picture. They call themselves a church, but their entire message is not one of God, but of hatred towards the gay community. They even go so far as to link every tragedy that has taken place in the world to somehow being God's way of killing more fags and fag enablers. I just can't believe a group like this is still allowed to exist in this day and age. Free speech, I suppose. It just seems like such a detriment to society, though. It is one thing if this group says, "We hate gay people!" but to put words into the mouth of God in such a way seems like a much larger sin to me than having sex with another man. Perhaps this is because my God is a God who DOES love everybody, no matter who they have sex with. Love is love. Love is not sinful. Hate, on the other hand... that seems like a pretty big sin to me.

Things like that really get to me sometimes. I just feel like there is already too much hatred in this world, why would there ever be a need to spread more? I just think about young people, who no matter how much they may think they are not, are very impressionable. I imagine a 13 or 14 year old boy in a small town who has probably recently come to the realization that he is not like everyone else, and that boy happening to stumble upon this video. I can only imagine how traumatic that would be. Even worse, I imagine a 13 or 14 year old boy in a small town who has not come to that realization and sees that video and begins to think, "Well, hey, maybe these people are right." They are spreading this video on Twitter, after all. It seems pretty clear that they are trying to spread this message of hate to the youth. I absolutely hate the concept that it may actually work on even one person.

Some days I really feel like the world is beginning to spin out of control. I know that is not the case, and I refuse to let that feeling get the best of me, but you just hear so many unimaginable things happening; things that make you sick to your stomach. You can't help but wonder why these things are able to take place. It is not a perfect world we live in but I like to hope that some how, some way, I can make a little bit of a difference in it. I hope that some how, some way, for every kid that saw that video and secretly agreed with it, I can help inspire another kid to stand up and fight against it, or at least not allow himself to fall victim to it. That has always been the goal, and I will keep my eye on that goal for the rest of my life.

The world isn't as crazy as it may seem, really. We just have to find our own ways to keep it in perspective. This is mine.