This and that

Saturday I did something horrible to my back. I think I might have slept on it in a weird way Friday night and then I went to step Saturday morning. Frank, had us doing some crazy stuff at the end with our weights and after we finished my back seized up. From that moment on through the rest of Saturday I moved like a woman who is 9 month's pregnant. (I'd say that I feel your pain, Tara, but I'm pretty sure a sore back for a day doesn't cut it.)

Anyway, I spent the better part of Saturday laying on my couch, icing and catching up on my DVR. One thing I watched was some Primtime special on Teddy Kennedy. They, of course, showed many photos of Teddy with his two older brothers. I've seen many of these pictures before but this time I was kind of struck by what a good looking man Teddy was back in the day. I would even go so far as to say that he was probably the best looking of the Kennedy brothers that went into politics. The eldest Kennedy brother, Joe, died in WWII. Teddy is in the middle below. I guess he's the only one we have seen grow to be an old man.

As a side note, Frank told me after class on Saturday that he started a cheesecake company called Frankly Delicious. Go to his website and buy cheesecakes. Then come to his class with me and do step to burn them off.

Oh, and one more interesting side note. The last time I hurt my back like this was when I had a dream that I was digging trenches and had a strict deadline. I woke up and felt like someone had taken the shovel I was digging with and beat me in the back with it. No lie.

Keep Portland Weird!

My friend Stina is an expert on Portland culture. She's the one that got me hooked on PCP. This lady keeps a full calendar that includes local musicians' concerts, food and yesterday a couple friends and I accompanied her to Last Thursday, a street fair slash gypsy carnival slash woodstock event. The above picture (which I stole, thanks Stina:) pretty much sums it all up. We had some delicious food. Savory crepes, peanut butter crispies and Korean tacos from the Koi Fusion truck. We declined, however, the hash infused Fruity Pebbles treats that were offered to us. We also learned that NASA has plans to bomb the moon in October (no, we did not learn this from the same guy trying to sell us the hash treats). We dismissed it as ridiculous, but upon further research on the interweb today, I think there might actually be something to it. I'll let you decide.

At any rate, if you ever find yourself in Portland and want to exerience true Portland counterculture, talk to Stina. She'll tell you where to go.

Heal the world. Make it a better place.

I started this blog almost exactly 3 months ago. Initially, I wasn’t sure who I would tell about it, if anyone at all. At the outset, I only told my sister and then a little bit later I told drippingwithoptimism. I had been reading and enjoying his blog for some time. By now, most of my friends and family know about the blog, both gay and straight. Or same sex attracted vs. opposite sex attracted if you prefer. (Has anyone coined the acronym OSA? If not, can I claim that right now? I hear the phrase “I struggle with SSA”. Does anyone out there “struggle with OSA?”)

Anyway, I digress. As I’ve continued down the blogging path, I’ve started to more clearly see what I want my blog to be and do. Generally speaking, I think there is a huge divide and misunderstanding between SSA mormons and OSA mormons and I believe the divide exists inside the church because rarely are many members forced to face the issue on a personal level. Those who are gay and stay in the church often stay quiet about it and maybe even try to pursue an outwardly hetero life, so other members rarely know about them. Those who are comfortable being open about it often get frustrated with and eventually stop being active in the church, so the only homosexuals many members of the church know about are the ones that leave. This makes it easier to perpetuate their idea that the homosexuals are degenerates because they all leave the church anyway (or at least the ones they KNOW about).

Having said all that, I feel the need to clarify some things. One, I’m speaking in generalities and I realize there are many experiences and people that don’t fit into what I’ve described in the previous paragraph. Two, I’m not trying to say that the divide and misunderstanding is the fault of those who keep quiet inside the church or of those who get frustrated and leave the church. As I said in the last paragraph from two posts ago, everyone needs to figure out what their best path will be.

The fact of the matter is that there is a divide and there is misunderstanding. This all played out quite nicely (or not) during the whole Prop 8 kerfuffle. I heard news reports of protestors desecrating grounds and buildings I hold sacred. I saw facebook status updates of friends who compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality. Sometimes you don’t choose sides. Sometimes you’re on both sides. Sometimes you shut down and opt out because you don’t want to affiliate yourself with the ridiculousness that exists on either side.

Part of the problem is that each side sees the other as an exaggerated caricature of who they actually are. This is very skillfully illustrated in Eric Snider’s piece called “The Gay Marriage Column”. Read it. It will totally make you LOL and maybe even make you think a little also.

So back to one of the purposes of my blog. I want to bridge the divide. I want to heal the world. I want to make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race. Apparently, I want to do it by blogging about step aerobics and spelling bees and gym class and deformed dogs and denim jumper clad toddler dolls and bad haircuts and homemade lingerie and nudity. Ambitious? Probably.

Step in time

About a year and a half ago, my friend Emily talked me into coming to a step aerobics class with her at 8:00 on a Saturday morning. I’m pretty sure I pretended to be hesitant at first, but secretly thought it might be kind of fun. This was back when I was beginning to shed the frame of mind of avoiding anything that might make me look gay. Step aerobics was definitely one of those things, but my desire to try it won out.

Emily and I have spent the past year and half attending step on a weekly basis. Well basically weekly. Emily’s moving to Utah this weekend and getting married next month to a guy who I enjoy quoting SNL skits with way too much (Troy’s back! Troy’s back!). Needless to say, she’s been busy with that and hasn’t been able to attend as often, but last night she was there for the last time before moving. I think Mr. Step Instructor Man decided to go all out. I swear he did a line of crack before coming to class. We stepped to JT singing Sexyback at warp speeds. It’s not so sexy when he sounds like a chipmunk. I tripped a few times over my platform while trying to perform the “Johnson Busy”. Don’t worry, it only sounds dirty.

Emily and I have made lots of friends at step class over the past year and a half, and by made friends I mean that we assign nicknames to other people in the class and speculate about what their lives are like outside of class. There’s Lashes. We haven’t seen her in a while, but when she does come, she’s all done up, complete with enormous fake lashes. You’d think that would make her girly, but she has a weird edge to her that scares me just a tiny bit. She’s like six feet tall and I’m pretty sure she could beat the crap out of me.

Another friend is Stripper. She’s cute and petite and she does step like there should be a pole and dollar bills involved. I think we’ve speculated that maybe she could be a Blazerdancer. We haven’t confirmed that though.

Ballerina only comes sometimes on Saturdays and there’s nothing really exciting about her other than the fact that she does step like she’s in pointe shoes.

There’s a lady who we haven’t really nicknamed but she has a tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil lifting a barbell on her shoulder and she sweats like nobody should. She usually ends up right by me in class and by 30 minutes in, her hair is usually soaked. Whenever she does a twirly move, her long grey mane whips around and sprays me with her sweat. It doesn’t turn me on.

One of the most traumatizing for me is the Cougar. You can probably guess half of her story by her name. She could probably be my mother and she has the unfortunate habit of smiling and winking at very inappropriate moments. The worst incident was one day when she was directly in front of me in class and all the stars aligned in the worst way possible. There was a moment when we ended up facing each other while doing inner thigh kicks. Just as her foot was high over head, we made eye contact and she instinctively gave me a wink and a smile. And my whole body shuddered like when you eat something really disgusting.

There are definitely others; let me know if I missed anyone important, Emily, and remember to come back and visit me and all our friends. We’ll miss you!

Throwing in my two bits

Earlier this month, the American Psychological Association (APA) came out with a report entitled Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. If you’re neither gay nor a psychologist, you may have missed it. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, (it’s over 100 pages long) but I have read the executive summary since it’s only seven pages.

I’ve read a handful of news articles and blog posts about this report and it seems that, generally speaking, the discussion often seems to revolve around whether change therapy or reparative therapy is legitimate or not. For those of you who aren’t familiar with that terminology, reparative therapy is centered around the idea that someone who is attracted to the same gender can diminish and possibly eliminate those attractions and develop an attraction to the opposite gender. I don’t want to talk about that because I don’t think it really matters AND I don’t think that’s the most important part of the APA’s report.

Here’s what I think is important:

“Given that there is diversity in how individuals define and express their sexual orientation identity, an affirmative approach is supportive of clients’ identity development without an a priori treatment goal concerning how clients identify or live out their sexual orientation or spiritual beliefs. This type of therapy can provide a safe space where the different aspects of the evolving self can be acknowledged, explored, and respected and potentially rewoven into a more coherent sense of self that feels authentic to the client, and it can be helpful to those who accept, reject, or are ambivalent about their same-sex attractions.”

In other words, the psychologist shouldn’t have an agenda for their clients. The client is the one who should determine the agenda. The therapist should be there to aide the client in that process of figuring out what is going to work best for him or her, without ignoring the same-sex attractions or spiritual beliefs. The idea that I am in charge is called self-determination.

“Self determination is the process by which a person controls or determines the course of her or his own life. LMHP (licensed mental health providers) maximize self-determination by (a) providing effective psychotherapy that explores the client’s assumptions and goals, without preconditions on the outcome; (b) providing resources to manage and reduce distress; and (c) permitting the client to decide the ultimate goal of how to self-identify and live out her or his sexual orientation.”

Aren’t we all supposed to be working out our own salvation? The part that stuck out to me in the preceding paragraph is that one of the purposes of psychotherapy is to explore the client’s assumptions and goals. I think that kind of exploration is what’s going to enable the client to more clearly define what path is going to work best.

I think too often we reduce the paths for gay Mormons/Christians/etc. down to two options: either adopt a TV/Movie version of a gay identity and forget about religion and spirituality, or do the opposite and try to ignore same sex attractions and conform to an idea of what they perceive their religion wants them to be (just pretend to be straight and get married). Also, the subject too often gets politicized and agendas start to bubble up and people take sides and we lose sight of the fact that we are talking about real people who are trying to figure out how to find happiness.

Bringing this to a personal level, I spent many years believing that reparative therapy was the answer for me AND for everyone in my situation. Looking back, I feel like I was on a hamster wheel that whole time, and years later I am still very attracted to men. This was verified for me when I was walking through the mall at lunch today and saw a giant Noah Mills in the window at Gap. I’ve shed the reparative belief and have taken the idea of marrying a woman off the table. Before there were only a select few who knew about me because I felt like it made no sense to be open about it if I intended to become straight and marry a woman. Now I am very open about it. My path is still being defined and it will probably continue to evolve throughout my life. I feel more myself than I ever have though, and I’m content a good deal of the time to not know where my path is leading but to just take it one step at a time and watch it unfold.

Having said all that, I’m trying not to make the same mistake twice in believing that since my path seems to be working for me right now, it’s the path for everyone. I know guys who tell virtually no one and marry a woman and seem to be happy. I also know guys who have gotten married and it doesn’t end well. I know guys who stay in the church and choose to remain celibate. Some guys choose to be openly gay and still participate at church. Some guys choose to not participate at church but still stay connected to their spiritual side and are probably actually better off for it. And of course some guys end up going off the deep end.

I could go on but this whole post could be boiled down to just this: It’s up to each of us to listen to our inner voice (the Holy Ghost, conscience, whatever you want to call it) and determine a path that will bring us closer to God, or fulfillment and peace if you don’t believe in God, and it’s up to those around us to allow us the space to do that.

Oh, and here's Noah so you know what I'm talking about:

Reunited. And it feels so good.

This lady is finally back in the country and she cut my hair today. No more disastrous cuts by the other lady at the salon. For my last haircut, I went to Hair M. I didn't like it there. It seemed like a Hooter's, but haircuts instead of burgers. They employ many lovely ladies to cut your hair and give you a beer to drink (I got water), and there's a TV for you to watch ESPN. I don't know if they intentionally named the place to sound like "harem", but it seems appropriate.

Anyhow, my lady made it back safe and sound. She said she had 10 days of peace and quiet and then that's when Iran had their election, quickly followed by riots and chaos. She said she wasn't too worried about being there in the middle of the chaos, because in her words, "if you die, you're just dead." She was more concerned about making it back to America. And she did. Apparently, things started to die back down about the time she left. Too bad. She said before she went though, that she wasn't expecting the trip to be a relaxing vacation.

Speaking of people in Iran, have you seen this one? Love it.

Your best stallion-being solution

One of the favorite parts of my day at work is scanning the list of quarantined spam emails. Every morning I get a list of emails that the filter thinks is spam and if something I need happens to have been quarantined, I can choose to have it released to me. The best part is reading the subject lines. Some of them read like tabloid headlines translated into English by someone who doesn’t speak English. Others are entertaining because of the tricky euphemisms used to try and get the email past the filter and out of the junk email box. I’ve compiled a list of some of the best:

*Become her night entertainer
*LHJ has selected you (that’s Ladies Home Journal that has selected me)
*Free old cars!
*Boost your bomber
*Gold found inside Jackson!
*Killer caught killing
*I have acid burn! Help
*Hitler relative found!
*Your imaginary friend writes

And my favorite so far and perhaps the most romantic subject line in any email ever:

*Bomb her womb with your huge cannon

I’m a little bit disturbed at how many of the male enhancement spam I get uses artillery imagery

This one is serious and has no pictures

I recently started team teaching a mission prep class in my ward. We’ve had two lessons so far. I taught the first lesson, which was a pretty generic introduction to missionary work. My friend P Dizzle taught the second lesson which was entitled “Personal Worthiness”. As a side note, the words “worthiness” and “worthy” tend to rub me the wrong way, only because they are too close to the word “worth” and therefore are too often confused with each other. That’s probably the subject of another post though.

The discussion in this lesson tended to revolve a lot around rules and how we should obey them. I was sitting in the back of the classroom and looking around at the guys and girls that were there. I was trying to imagine what might be going through their heads during this discussion and felt the need to intervene. I said something along the lines of, “with all this talk of rules and obedience, it might seem that you are being asked to surrender who you are and become a robot on your mission.” I also said that it didn’t necessarily need to be that way and that you could obey the rules and still remain true to your own unique personality. In fact, it’s your own unique personality that is going to be able to connect to people in ways that others won’t be able to. (And not in a gross used car salesman kind of way but in a more organic you are looking for something more in your life and think what I have to offer might be helpful to you kind of way.)

I got to thinking throughout the lesson about my own relationship to rules and how it’s changed over the years. Up until a couple years ago, I was a complete conformist. I would outwardly portray that I was living by the rules, anyway. Sometimes I was even living by the rules inwardly, but in a lot of ways there was a serious disconnect between my outward portrayal and my inward reality. I know I’m being vague here, but I have no interest in publicly disclosing all my past transgressions :) This has all been shifting in the last couple of years and my outward portrayal and my inward reality have been coming more in line with each other. As I sat in the class thinking about it, it occurred to me that one reason why this is so is that I’ve started to view rules and commandments less as something that are there to control my life and more as something that gives me control over my life.

This hasn’t meant that I am now even more vigilant in following the rules. (or making it look like I am following the rules) If anything, I have become more relaxed. I think my current view of rules and obedience can be summed up as follows. Generally speaking, the younger you are, the more you probably need to be guided by rules. As you get older though, you start to connect more to your inner voice or the spirit or your conscience or whatever you want to call it. You get better at learning what makes you happy and what doesn’t, what contributes to your overall growth and progression and what detracts from it. Not only do you learn those things, but you also start to gravitate towards those things that contribute to your overall well-being and growth and leave behind those things that detract. You start to rely less on rules and expectations of other people or cultures because you’ve developed a healthy and strong inner voice. This is good because we shouldn’t need to be commanded in all things. I think this post could be an expansion of the spiritual self reliance post.

That’s all. What do you think? Has your relationship with rules changed over time? Do you disagree/agree with anything I’ve said? If so, what? And Why? Would you change or add anything? Talk to me. Go.

MacGuyver, Penthouse Dreams and PCP

This weekend was full of bloggable experiences, so I will cut to the chase.

#1 The Ward Campout – I went camping with the young single adult congregation that I belong to at McIver State Park. Say it out loud. It sounds like MacGyver. He wasn’t there though. There were two very memorable experiences at that campout, one of them entertaining and one of them not so entertaining. The entertaining one was when we played kissing rugby. Instead of explaining the rules of the game, I will just tell you this: you basically try to kiss someone on the face while they try and stop you. I may or may not have tackled a girl in my ward to the ground, pinned her down and kissed her, and there may or may not be an incriminating picture of this on my friend Courtney’s blog. If our blog posts about the weekend seem pretty much the same, it’s because we basically spent the weekend together. Except for the belly dancing class. I didn’t go to that.

The other less entertaining event of the campout was the horrific noise that woke me up at around 2:30 or 3:00 am and went on for about an hour. (Courtney’s version is much less dramatic). Two people brought their dogs camping with them. The noise that woke me up led me to believe that a bear had captured one of the dogs and was dragging it through the woods while eating it alive. The other option was that some pigs were being slaughtered nearby. How she slept through it, I’ll never know. Someone explained to me the next morning that they were in fact coyotes. Coyotes? I thought those things only existed in cartoons with roadrunners or on bad t-shirts howling at a full moon. At any rate, I don’t like them.

#2 Street of Dreams – Saturday after returning from the campout, a group of us went to the Portland Street of Dreams. This year it was held downtown in the Pearl District instead of out in suburbia. We spent the afternoon touring million dollar penthouses and coveting. Well, except for the one penthouse with the random gross stuffed animals scattered throughout the place. That was just weird. Afterwards, we hit up Cha Cha Cha for some delicious Mexican food.

#3 Portland Cello Project – Portland is great for music. Portland Cello Project (or PCP as it is affectionately referred to) is one of many reasons why Portland is great for music. PCP is an indie cello orchestra. Sometimes they do Bach and sometimes they do a concert at the Doug Fir Lounge and do covers of songs by Madonna, Justin Timberlake, George Michael, A-ha and Michael Jackson, just to name a few. They did the latter on Saturday night and I went with roughly the same crowd that did Street of Dreams. For the vocals, they got a bunch of singers from local bands. They did Man in the Mirror and I sang along, even though I didn’t have my hairbrush with me. At the very end, all the vocalists came out on stage with headphones and they all sang We Are the World. That was the most fun I remember having at a concert.

Another fun part of that concert happened before, and Courtney mentioned it in her blog post. There was an erotic arts festival going on next door to the Doug Fir and we accidentally almost bought tickets to that instead of PCP. Courtney and I waited outside for other friends to arrive and got in some good people watching time. It was magical.

I was one of those kids

The pattern of my posts lately seems to be the following: I tell you about something I did recently and then somehow relate it back to some awkward/embarrassing childhood memories. This post is no different. Sunday night I watched the documentary Spellbound with some friends.

It follows 8 kids as they prepare for and compete in the national spelling be in Washington, DC. You can probably imagine the type of kid that would make it all the way to the national spelling bee. They’re not normal. I would say that they are highly intelligent, but if I’m not mistaken, insane spelling skills don’t necessarily translate to genius status. Eccentric seems like a more appropriate word. I want a follow up documentary in 60 years that shows what these kids are like in their 70’s when all their eccentricities are amplified. 60 fold.

Anyway, on to my childhood. I was probably well on my way to becoming one of those kids. My 4th grade year was the first year I could compete in the school spelling bee, and for some reason I became obsessed with preparing for the bee. I remember sitting at the kitchen table after school, writing out every word on the list 3 times. My mother would quiz me every night before bed. My work paid off and I won that bee. It was a crowning moment in my life up until that point. I even remember what I was wearing. A red sweater with thin yellow and green horizontal stripes. I was devastated when I found out that 4th grade winners couldn’t go on to district. Maybe it was for the better though.

There were other signs that I was not a normal little boy, intense enthusiasm for spelling bees aside. The first clue, and one of my earliest memories, was when my uncle told me it probably wasn’t a good idea to tuck my sweatshirt into my sweatpants.

I was also an immaculate housekeeper. My bedroom was always spotless and everything was always in its place. Even though it never got messy, I’d clean it EVERY Saturday. I vacuumed and dusted, especially my spelling bee trophy and piano trophies.

Another sign was the inordinate amount of time I spent on my hair in the morning before school. My younger sister will tell you that she grew up thinking it was normal for 13 year old boys to use a blow dryer, lots of hairspray and 20 minutes to do their hair. Once, in my 8th grade earth science class, a boy came up to me before class started and asked, “Dude, how much time do you spend on your hair?” It was apparent to me by the tone in his voice that however much time I was spending, he thought it was too much. I nonchalantly threw out a lowball answer that I thought would be much more normal. “I dunno, 10 minutes.” He stifled his laughter and walked away.

In my defense (perhaps), I think part of the reason it took so long was that I would also dance and sing into my hairbrush as I got ready and listened to the radio. I specifically remember singing and dancing to Man in the Mirror. It seemed appropriate. (RIP MJ)

Anyway, that’s probably enough memories. I have a two day training class for work starting tomorrow. The topic is “How to build support for your ideas”. If there are any role playing activities, I will go ape shit. I promise. I also have a ward campout this weekend. These activities may serve to dredge up more childhood memories to share. I know. You could only be so lucky.