Chapter 155: Vacation

I think the Go-Go’s said it best when they said, “Vacation, all I ever wanted, Vacation, have to get away, Vacation, doomed to be spent alone.” Okay, so technically I’m not on vacation. I’m not even taking the one vacation day I requested until NEXT Friday but after the week I’ve had the two days that make up a weekend are feeling a lot like a vacation… and like the song says, this vacation is doomed to be spent alone. My Mom has gone out of town and I haven’t made a single plan with anybody. Actually, that isn’t entirely true – my brother may be coming over for a bit on Sunday because he will be in town for something or another and his girlfriend wants to go hang out with her friends in town. That will be a good opportunity to discuss some of the wedding stuff. Speaking of wedding stuff, I have been meaning to talk about something wedding related here for the past few days but it just kept falling to the wayside of each blog. One detail of my brother’s wedding that I’ve been kind of iffy about is the fact that some of my Dad’s side of the family will be flying in from California to attend. If this were anyone else’s wedding, aside from my brother, this would be reason enough to back out and not even attend but since it is my brother’s wedding and because I am his best man, I can’t do that. So, instead, I have to face these family members who I have gone out of my way to avoid dealing with for years. It’s just my aunt and my Grandma, as far as I know, and possibly my Dad. I’d be cool with seeing my Dad, actually – the other two are the ones I am iffy about. Actually, even my aunt I am okay with seeing. It’s my Grandma that is the issue. It’s funny, because this Grandma was very involved when we were little. My Mom had to work a lot and such, so she would watch us and we would spend weekends at her house and such. When I was a little kid she was like my favorite person in the world, honestly, but once I hit my teen years I began to notice how much her involvement was less about genuine care and more about control. This was an ongoing issue for years. She was extremely oppressive throughout my formative years and, once I moved to Florida, became somebody that I tried my best to put behind and not think of ever again. I did a pretty good job of it, too, leaving any sort of holiday calls or anything of that nature to my brother and sister. It’s funny how my brother, sister and I all have a very different perspective on this woman now that we are adults – my brother has a certain reverence for her and really appreciates all that she did for us as children, my sister has a major sense of obligation towards her and almost seems like she is still looking for some sort of acceptance from her. Meanwhile, as I mentioned, I have simply tried to put her out of my mind. I feel no obligation to her. I don’t really have a lot of reverence for her because I now realize that while she was doing things for us as children, she was also using those as things to hold over my mother’s head. I don’t feel a lot of warm feelings towards her. I don’t necessarily carry negative feelings toward her, either. Basically, at this point, I am indifferent. There is nothing to do with her that has any real bearing on my life now. She is simply a part of the past. A large part of the reason for this is because of the fact that I am gay and she was very opposed to that and basically tried to shove me back into the closet at every opportunity. She once told me that I wasn’t gay, it was just the devil inside my head lying to me. I still laugh about that – if the devil was lying, he was REALLY convincing. If my being gay is the work of the devil I can’t wait for hell – it’s going to be a party! Like I said, she was a very oppressive force in my formative years and, although I made it through just fine, I can’t help but have no desire for anything else to do with her.

I learned something recently, though, that really puts a different spin on the concept of her and my aunt coming to the wedding. You see, the closest person to my Grandma is the aunt that is coming. They would often pair off to gang up on us and such in our teen years and were pretty much always doing something together, even living across the street from each other for years. Well, I recently received confirmation of something that my sister and I have joked about for years: My aunt is a lesbian. Apparently, it is common knowledge and has been for a while, from the way that my brother talks. Since my sister and I are in much more sporadic contact with anyone from California and my brother had visited them recently, we had no clue and he was very flippant about the whole thing. I was kind of shocked. Like I said, my sister and I had kind of joked about it for years but never expected it to actually be true. Apparently, she will be bringing her girlfriend along with her to the wedding. I assume, given that this is such common knowledge, that my Grandma is aware of this and, considering how close they are, must be somewhat okay with it. This is leaps and bounds away from what she was when I was a comfortably out and proud 15 year old and she was constantly trying to de-gay me. My sister is already talking about how introducing her to her girlfriend and family won’t be so bad after all. I am still weary of the whole situation but I figure this makes the whole thing a lot more interesting. I’m still trying to figure out whether or not I will be allowed to wear makeup to the wedding but after this news I am really hoping so. I want to make a bit of a splash with my newly gay and possibly gay-friendly family in town. We’ll see how that all goes down, though. Either way, it definitely adds a different element of excitement to the whole event… and here I thought I couldn’t be more excited for the wedding than I already was!

Anyway, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, it is the weekend and today was the perfect way to cap off one of the most irritating weeks possible. Work felt slightly less long than it did the rest of the week. This is mainly because I spent most of the day talking with my co-workers, who were in an unusually upbeat mood today. There was all kinds of crazy talk going on, including my co-workers both saying that they could never date a handicap person. Their reasoning for this was because if they got into a fight with them the first thing they would do is talk shit about their disability. Everybody got a pretty good laugh out of that. I told them about this time in the past when I was interested in a guy in a wheelchair but nothing ever came of it, and made the comment that I would be okay to casually date a handicapped person but don’t know how I would feel about getting involved enough to have to take care of them or anything. It was a very casual, light-hearted conversation that nobody thought much about. Later, I was told by a co-worker who sits on the other side of our cubicle walls that one of our other co-workers who has a prosthetic leg was really upset by the whole thing and was planning on saying something to me about it. I was very flippant about it because I didn’t make any comments that could be construed as offensive but the more I thought about it the more I felt kind of bad. It’s kind of unusual, though, because I have never really thought of this guy as handicapped in the first place. I mean, I understand that he has a prosthetic leg but he’s got kind of a big personality and, when he happens to come to mind, the prosthetic leg is the last thing that comes to mind. Still, I do feel really bad about the whole thing. Like I said, I don’t feel bad for any of the comments that I made because I don’t really see them as being offensive in any way but I do feel bad for the fact that the conversation went on for so long and I was laughing along with the other people talking. It was very silly talk. I feel bad, though. At the same time, though, I find it a little irritating that, considering I wasn’t overly involved in the conversation, I was the one to be confronted about it. The two girls that were having this conversation are pretty big personalities and may not be the most approachable people in the world but the issue was with them and they are the ones who it should really have been taken up with. Still, I can understand people not wanting to try to confront them. I don’t know. The whole situation left me pretty irritated and very glad to get out of that place this evening. My workplace is full of little dramas like this every single day and it can get really irritating.

When I came home, I sat down and watched a couple of episodes of “Chelsea Lately” from this week, and had leftover ham and potato salad from Easter for dinner. I wound up spending the bulk of the evening watching “RuPaul’s Drag Race” episodes, though, even though I really have a whole week’s worth of TV on the DVR. The only thing I watched this week was “American Idol” and my DVR records a LOT of different shows, including “the View” and Oprah every single day. Tomorrow will likely wind up with a few mini marathons of both of those shows but I just wasn’t in the mood for it tonight. I spent a little while experimenting with a new makeup look, using hot pink, green, black and silver glitter. It didn’t look bad, honestly, but it was a little over the top. I am good with over the top, though. I just felt like the silver glitter kind of overtook the look when the real focus was supposed to be on the pink and green colors. Over the past few days at work, I have drawn up a few concepts for makeup looks that I would like to try out this weekend using my NYX S104 “Every Color Imaginable” eyeshadow palette. One that I came up with was inspired by the song “Birthday” by Leighton Meester and includes blue, gold, silver and pink. If I can figure out how to make it work on my face like it does on paper it will be pretty amazing. It’s kind of funny how that look came about, actually. A few months ago, on Whitney’s birthday, I had written a blog that I titled “Birthday,” after that song and completely at random on Wednesday afternoon I got a comment on it that was just signed Stephanie. It said, “I really hope Whitney read this. I hope she appreciates your friendship. I wish I’d said Happy Birthday when I thought of you.” Interesting development. I assume that this was from our old friend, Stephanie, who was a part of our three girls and a gay group back in 2007-2008. It was kind of a fragmented group, me and my former BFF, Zenda, and Whitney and her former BFF, Stephanie. We were all really close but Zenda and I had a major falling out at one point and it turned into a three person group. Then Stephanie and Whitney kind of fell out and it became me and Whitney on our own and we got closer with some of our other friends, like April, Devin and Nate. It’s funny because I have always felt a little bad about the way things happened between Stephanie and I after she and Whitney fell out. We made a few attempts to maintain contact and such but it just never quite happened and we eventually just fell out of touch. I assumed that Stephanie just figured I had chosen Whitney over her, although that was never actually the case. It was more a matter of Whitney always making the effort to be in contact and such. Whitney was just always around and Stephanie was much less available. At the same time, though, I didn’t exactly make the most effort in the world to keep up with her, either. I don’t know. The whole thing just makes me feel kind of shitty. It just reminds me of the fact that I have always let people go too easily. I have done this all of my life. I don’t know why, exactly, but it just seems to be the way that it has always worked for me. I am trying to correct that now, although I am concerned with how well it is working out. Anyway, the day that this comment was posted it was kind of stuck in my head and the song that inspired the title of the blog was in my head, as well, and I sat down in my cubicle at work and came up with this makeup look to express that a bit. I also came up with a look inspired by the song “Perdido (Music Of The Night)” by Melanie B, which has a very mexican flare to it – it’s very bright, with pink, yellow, blue and green. I like to think that this look is kind of like a big piñata on the face!

It is 1:29am and I am pretty much ready for bed, although there is one last thing I do want to mention before I go. I have been really trying to dedicate myself to devoting at least 15 minutes a day to practicing piano. Yesterday night, I sat down and kind of struggled through 15 minutes of diligent practice and quit as soon as the clock struck the 15-minute mark. Tonight, I sat down to the piano again and started trying to practice the piece that I am working on for class and, something magical happened. It was like there was a click in my head and I had a mini “a-ha” moment at the piano. This piece I have been playing around with has suddenly come together much more than I was starting to think was possible. I get it! Don’t get me wrong, this was not the big “a-ha” moment I am still waiting for at the piano but it was a pretty major development in comparison to where I was last night! I am really excited. This is going to work out for me – I am certain of it. I am going to get to a point where I can start writing my own shit on the piano and it is going to be absolutely amazing! The Universe is working in my favor, after all, and I just had to take a moment to express my gratitude for the mini “a-ha” moment it granted me with this evening. It was so awesome and I cannot wait for even more! For now, though, it is time for bed. I am keeping my fingers crossed not to wake up at 2:30pm tomorrow. That is a bad habit I have developed for the past several weekends and I need to cut that shit out ASAP. So, off to bed I go. Goodnight.