Hug?

Ever have one of those days, or in my case many days, where you feel that the world is slowly caving in around you and is trying its very hardest to make you feel like crap?

Well, welcome to my life. Between school, family injuries, my dog having to undergo surgery, and now finding out from mom that a pipe burst in our basement thereby semi-flooding it and that she has been alone in trying to take care of my grandpa and dealing with this series of seriously unfortunate events all at once, I haven't been able to get a good nights sleep, can't concentrate on work, and to top it all off, have to worry about two tests and my first major paper all on Monday.

Sometimes life sucks.

Hope your week has been going better than mine.

Take Care,

JP

Animal

Animal by Neon Trees.

Dave

I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but straight guys confuse me. Better put, not all straight guys confuse me, but those who leave you guessing their about actions and motivations do.

I’m kinda facing a Déja Vu at the moment; back in high school, Southern Charm confused me, but now there’s a new one who I’ll call Dave. Dave is a guy who lives on my floor and who I also have my Humanities class with. Since we live in separate hallways, I don’t see him too often outside of class, bumping into him between classes or at the dining hall.

So what about him is so confusing? Well, it’something I don’t really enjoy discussing, but it’s the pure gayness of him. I won’t go into too much about all the stereotypical stuff so I’ll just put it as he has so many stereotypically “gay” traits that he made my gaydar almost explode upon first meeting him. The problem is, this has happened many times with a few straight guys I’ve met over the years – Ben and SC for example. But I feel that Dave will likely be another case of my gaydar registering a false positive.

He’s a really nice guy, he’s from the Southwest and is shorter than me, though not terribly short. He swims and joined the crew team and water polo team at my school (btw, I’ve put my rowing career on a hiatus, it’s a bit too intense at my school and there isn’t a club or intramural crew). He has short blond hair and a really cute laugh. He’s also roommates with a really hot guy on the sailing team but that’s irrelevant. Our friend circles overlap somewhat and from I noticed, most of his friends are girls.

I don’t know if I’m really attracted to him, he’s a sweetheart but more friend material than anything. I will say this though, I have caught him stealing glances at me during Humanities and while before we really didn’t talk, we recently have been talking more in the hallways and outside. It’s probably all familiarity related though so I won’t really interpret these as anything beyond just that.

Sorry that my posts have been kinda boring lately but school is back in session so unfortunately that comes with the territory. Tomorrow looks to be fun though, our orientation advisor is having a reunion at his apartment and it’s pretty much going to be a giant pregame session, we might go to the gay club afterwards or just scout around for parties, I don’t know for now. Saturday, my best friend Maria is coming back into the area to visit so we’re having a big day-long date where we’ll be going out to dinner and maybe so partying or go to a club since there aren’t really any around her school. I’m really excited!

The weekend is almost here!

All the best,

JP

Drag Night at the Gay Club

I had never done clubbing before, unless your definition of a club is one of those programs after school where you debate current events; rather, I had never gone to an actual club club before, the kind with music, dancing and all sorts of energy. The main reason was that I wasn’t 18 yet, most clubs won’t let anyone under that age even enter, so on Saturday, the day after my birthday, me and a group of friends decided to go clubbing.

I imagined my intro into clubbing to be a gentle one, observing form the sidelines at first, drink in hand, but I turned out to be wrong, it was a gay club, and it was drag night. Oh yes.
My friends and I (three girls and two straight guys (well, at least one of them)) went to go see The Last Exorcism first, it’s a horror flick and it made absolutely no sense but I’ll go into that another day. We then hopped onto a bus and headed down to the club. Saturday night is drag night as we soon found out, and when we walked in, that is exactly what we were greeted by, drag queens. One was singing when we entered, then one did a comedy routine (I still don’t know if she was an actual she) and one final creepy one came out and walked around the floor and caressed my face as she walked by, I guess that was my “welcome”.

We got there rather late, around 12:30 and the music started up again around 1. The music was mostly a bunch of house techno and a lot of remixes of top 40 songs which made me really happy. Unlike most dances I went to, there was absolutely no grinding music which made me really, really happy, just good dancing music and I moved like there was no tomorrow. There was a fog machine which made the lasers and lights stream across the room mid-air and a strobe light and foam “snow” which blew my mind whenever they turned it on. It was seriously one of the most memorable effects in my life.

While we were there, the crowd was mostly 20 somethings with a few older guys there though I’m pretty sure I was the youngest person in the entire building. There were many women there too, and straight women, we figured that a gay club was the perfect place for women to go to and dance and have fun without having creepy men hit on them, for the most part that is. My friend Maudry had a creepy guy start dancing behind her and had to retreat behind our cover to escape him. That is why we go in groups.

Because we were under 21, we got big letters drawn on our hands in black ink to show we couldn’t have alcohol so we got some soda at the bar ($3 for a cup) at around 1:30. And just for full disclosure, I know to never accept a drink from a stranger and to watch the bartender just in case. We talked about how much for fun this was compared to going to parties and how we noticed pretty much everyone there was there to have fun and let loose.

By the time we left around 2:30, we were all hungry so we stopped by Five Guys for some fries and to get something to drink before heading back to campus where we had a giant group Lady Gaga study session until about 5AM (We’re weird, I know. But this was just the start of it). When I got back to my dorm, my roommate and one of our joint friends were in our room, they too had a crazy night by the looks of it. My roommate was giddy to say the least and was swaying when he walked, he would have failed a sobriety test within 3 seconds.

Me and our joint friend (who too was drunk, but less so I believe) were trying to calm my roommate down who by then kept saying he was hungry. I made him some ramen, cookies and milk and Pringles and made sure he drank plenty of water. He had also hurt himself when he hopped a fence by messing up his left leg and scratching up his arm which me and my friend also tended to via some Neosporin. I watched over him until 6:30 when I convinced him to go to bed. By this time, I had been awake for about 21 hours and was quite tired myself, I was running off the adrenaline from the club. I fell asleep around 6:45AM and eventually woke up around noon. I’m used to getting less than optimal amounts of sleep so it wasn’t too hard for me.

So there went my very eventful night, horror movie, clubbing and nursing my roommate, I probably have a good enough story to tell my grandkids.

School has started up again and that means getting back to work. I’ve managed to cope relatively well, I’ve gotten decent amounts of sleep, I’m not too stressed and with the lack of crew to eat up 4 hours of my day, I’ve made great progress in spreading out work. I even made time to join my college’s Pride club and Club Fencing whose first practice was today. It was actually really fun and interesting, we learned the basic stance and advancing and retreating. We’ll be learning more on Wednesday when our next meeting will take place. Also, the club co-president is hot! He’s a junior and wears these really fitted shirts that show off his defined chest and flat and likely abtastic stomach. Yum!

Anyways, I’m going to go back and do some more work. I hope you have an excellent week!

All the best,

JP

I'm Legal!

I'm officially 18! Another year older, don't feel much wiser, don't feel too different in general, but I can now legally buy a lottery ticket amoung other things :D

I have dinner with my parents and then a night on the town with friends. A great way to end a nice week of hard work.

Have a nice weekend :)

JP

Party Time

The last two day shave been quite crazy. With my first (half) week of school over, what’s a college freshman to do? Party.

Friday night was my first true college partying experience and it was a blast. I’m not a real drinker, I mean, I’ve had my share of champagne at parties but before Friday, I’ve never done a shot, had any mixed drink or a whole beer – well, I can now check those three things of my list. I pregamed with my roommate and some of his friends in their dorm and then I ended up joining some other friends and went to a beer pong party at one of the other dorms. I didn’t play but I did have one beer. Afterwards, we left to go to an acapella group party in DC, we got there early so we beat the crowds which turned out to be great for us. I had one drink while there, jungle juice, but we watched them make it so we knew nothing funky went into it. We danced for a while and talked but then we decided to move on. We walked the streets of DC searching for a baseball party but in the end, the police started patrolling the streets so we made our way back to campus, by that time it was about 1:30. We ended up going back to my friend’s room and watched a little bit of Austin Powers, but most of us started falling asleep so we ended it early. Final tally – 1 shot vodka, 1 screwdriver, 1 beer, 1 cup jungle juice.

I never got really hammered Friday, really, I just got pretty tipsy which I don’t intend to go much farther than. Yesterday night was a school sponsored dance in the library which they turned into a dance club. Unlike most people though, I didn’t pregame and stayed sober the whole night. I was having a study session with my friends beforehand (different group) and when they (all girls) began to change, one said “okay, don’t turn around, no free peep shows”, I responded with “um, I’m gay”. The initial silence intimated that they didn’t believe me so I had to reassure them a few times that I actually was which they finally accepted with a smile. Girls always seem to take the whole “I’m gay” thing better than guys for the most part. So before we headed out to the dance one of my friends who took a salsa dancing seminar and taught us a few steps to some Michael Bublé which we later deemed to be too classy for what was to come and we switched to some Ke$ha.

The dance started around 10 and when we showed up the line wasn’t too bad so we got in pretty quickly. The first hour or so wasn’t that good, the DJ wouldn’t shut up for his life but by the second hour things picked up. My friend Maudry introduced me to Hot British Guy (HBG) who was a junior exchange student. On Thursday, they went to a gay club and he ended up dancing with a guy while there. HBG comes from London and he even rowed, plus his accent is damn sexy. When I met him he was dancing with Maudry and he went around group to group with friends from his dorm. I asked him about him going to the club with Maudry and her friends and said to invite me next time, not sure if he got the hint though. But with that he gave me his number and mines to him. Though I was too shy to ask him to dance that night, if we go to the club next time I’ll definitely will try and get a dance out of him. I question if he’s gay or bi though, I mean he seems pretty straight, and Maudry said she doesn’t know either, we both are now at the consensus that he’s probably straight but just very open minded which is just fine by me. He’s too old for me anyways, and hey, if I can just get a few dances out of him, I’ll be perfectly content.

We left the dance at about 2, by then I was exhausted and drenched from almost four hours of dancing. I headed back to my dorm, changed and went to bed. This morning I had a late breakfast and then headed off an activities fair on campus where all the clubs and organizations were present. I’m thinking of joining the fencing club and also the campus pride club; I’ll probably be getting emails about those soon.

Anyways, I hope you’ve had an excellent weekend and I hope you will have a great week.

All the best,

JP

Got His Number ;)

God, I'm exhausted right now, I promise I'll do a full post later but here's a quick sneak peek - in the last two days I've gone through a good set of firsts.

-First college party
-First time pregaming
-First time legit drinking (don't worry, I respected my limits)
-Got a hot British guy's number

I'll explain in full later.

Cheers :D

JP

College

So I’m finally all settled in! I moved in on Saturday and finally met my roommate for the first time (We’ll call him Dan). Conveniently for me, the distance between school and home is only a short metro ride away but as we drove through the garage, I realized just how far people have ventured to also be part of this fine institution. Alaska, Indiana, Vermont, Maryland, Florida, Alabama, actually, 49 out of the 50 states are represented here, poor North Dakota was the only straggler. As we loaded up a big orange cart with suitcases, boxes full of coat hangers and school supplies and a not-so-light fridge, I came to realize that “it” is actually happening. I’ve leaving the nest, living on my own for the very first time, and it was scary.

The elevators of my dorms was blocked for people to use so the carts can be lifted to be delivered to rooms so I got to climb four floors of stairs at least 15 times that day, thankfully, we can now use it. The room itself is actually very nice. The whole building was recently renovated, the carpet is clean, the desks, shelves, drawers and semi walk-in closets (Awesome, I know!!) are all in great shape. The rooms are actually amoung the biggest at my school plus each room gets its own sink which is proving to be very convenient. The view is pretty nice too, but I wish we weren’t in the path of the sun rise, it doesn’t work well for tired orientation-weary eyes.

After the final things were unpacked, I said bye to my parents, my mom’s voice getting shaky as what normally happens when goodbyes were said. A little about my roommate, he’s a really nice guy, he’s athletic and plans on running track while here. Probably the biggest difference between me and him though is that he is more of a partier than me, but I’ll into that more later. He’s of mixed origins, his parents are divorced, his dad owns a French Restaurant in the area while his mom lives far, far away. He also has a girlfriend who seems to be having problems at home judging from the conversations I’ve heard him have with her, he’s really supportive and reassuring with her though. He’s trying to get involved in the rack team and maybe club soccer.

That afternoon, we met up with our Orientation Advisors for what would be the first of many more times to come. My group’s OA is a really funny guy, he’s got the best laugh I’ve heard in quite some time and he’s currently a sophomore. We first met him at the orientation kick-off at one of the basketball arenas. It was sensory overload when we entered, all the OAs (there were over 150) were on chairs or the bleachers in neon coloured shirts dancing to blasting music holding up signs for their group. After a series of opening speeches and performances we headed out for dinner with our OAs. It was a box dinner we brought to a big rooftop lawn where we introduced ourselves and exchanged contact info. Afterwards we played some orientation games including “Ride the Pony” which, put blatantly, was giving random people lap dances, a giant game of ninja and some icebreaker things.

The next few days were various programs to help us get used to the campus plus plenty of barbeques, ice cream and shows to make sure we were exhausted by the time we got back to our rooms (usually at 2AM). Sunday I went to a prelude program about the LGBTQ center on campus which was really interesting. The final night we ended up metroing to Chinatown and the Verizon center and having dinner at this small restaurant.

Yesterday was my first day of classes, a Humanities/English course on the Apocalypse, Intro to Psych, Calculus and a Theology course. Most of the professors seem pretty cool, my calc teacher teaches math conceptually rather than through examples which will be a change for me but we’ll see how it works out. Yesterday I went to the crew meeting and it all looks so freaking awesome but it’s too much of a time commitment, at least for now, I’m trying to take up club fencing though. Alright, sorry for the long delay between my last post, I’ll try to be more regular once I get into the swing of things. I’m heading to class and then going for a run.

All the best,

JP

P.S. Holy Crap some of the guys here are bloody gorgeous, but i'll go into that later.