Struggling against the almighty tides of eventuality

To anyone who reads what I write because it’s funny (it’s not), or technically interesting (I hope it can be sometimes), this blog post isn’t really for you. It’s the kind of long-form drama bomb I’d hoped I was long done with, way back in high school. And while I don’t want anyone to feel they can’t or shouldn’t read it, as I’m posting it for anyone to read, I simply say you won’t get any comedy or knowledge here. You’re warned.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been avoiding making much of a public fuss. I’ve tried to avoid posting anywhere that an average person might see. And I think it’s time I mentioned why, if only so I can feel I’ve said my piece and can move on. This piece alone has been sitting in my drafts for over a week. It’s about time.

I don’t completely cut people out of my life. At least, that’s what I think to myself. In the course of my procrastination, and social ineptitude, I often let friendships slowly fall by the wayside, and eventually dissipate. But that’s not really what I’m talking about, and we all knew that. What I’m talking about is what people commonly do on various web sites when they’ve decided people have slipped too far from “good person” to “bad person”, and they not only need to sever ties, but do so loudly and publicly.

This may be a curious outgrowth of the phenomenon of the Social Graph as it currently exists in the world. Even all those people I’ve forgotten to call, they still remain, to the broader hive mind, as steadfast a friend as the ones I continually trust with the quiet personal despair that makes up my internal monologue. This is a bizarre environment which we’re all still figuring out; it was never more completely described that I’ve seen than in the post by Pinboard’s author Maciej Cegłowski, “The Social Graph is Neither“. When I stop talking to someone for whatever reason, they remain my Facebook friend, my Twitter follower, my LinkedIn colleague.

So, what does this have to do with my current absence? When I say I don’t cut people out, it means I don’t take actions to tell people I no longer want anything to do with them. In my most passive manner possible, I simply try very hard to no longer be where those people are. But I can’t just do that anymore, in this globally-connected world. There’s no “there” there, it’s everywhere. The old ways no longer work.

So, for the questioning minds, I will simply explain the following. In my life, I’ve intentionally cut off complete contact with only three people. Only one of them was because they hurt me. The other two hurt other people, and with relish, for their own gains. I have an almost insurmountable volume of personal abuse, extreme anxiety, and pain I’ll go through for someone I consider a friend. But I can’t abide someone turning that same abuse on others, particularly strangers.

And it isn’t easy for me to simply sever ties with someone. It’s painful. It’s painful because I always want people to like me, and I know that no one will after you tell them you can’t be bothered with them. It’s painful because I do want to help friends be better people, and I know I’m failing if I completely disconnect from their life. It’s painful, too, for the very selfish reason of pride: I’ve fancied myself an impervious judge of character, and such things as this serve at least the small purpose of humbling that feeling in me.

So, it’s a painful process cutting someone out. And so I make no fanfare, I do not announce to the world that it’s time for some “spring cleaning” on Facebook, and I don’t yell at people or give them diatribes for why I don’t want to be their friend anymore, because it’s not fun or a cause for celebration. I know nobody who’s not the friend being cut out cares who I’m friends with and wants to be told I’m doing this. And I know that, if my opinions mattered to the people I called friends before, those opinions would have been sought, and heeded. If my opinions were compatible with those people’s, things would not have wound up this way.

So, I will play this tune. It’s not a fanfare, it’s a slow, sad, meandering solo in the night. It doesn’t explain everything, for sure, because it’s a private matter and I don’t want to share it. But I won’t be chased from the places I feel comfortable because there are people who might not like me there, or who think I’m shallow for not standing by them in the hour their darkness turned outward on the world. I know there’s a reason that people do the things they do, and it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Acknowledgement that this suffering has external influences informs my desire to be more lenient on everyone, even the criminals among us. But there’s a difference between being compassionate towards someone whose rough life has made them hateful and harmful to others, and inviting that person into your world and life.

I’m sorry that it hurts the people it hurts, but I cannot be friends with absolutely anyone, unconditionally. And that’s about all I have to say about that.

I’ve disabled comments on this post. Normally I want to know people have read what I’ve written, and want their feedback. This time, I’d just rather let my words be my words on their own.

The pictures in this post are sometimes sideways. I think this has to do with the metadata attached to the image and certain browsers’ inability to process it. I’ll work on fixing it but for now just kinda tilt your head a bit.

Well, I stated in my last post that I wouldn’t have much time for sleep, and it wound up being pretty close to accurate. As it turns out, Saturday I was able to sleep in just a little bit. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Thursday was my last day of work before the four-day weekend started. It was a pretty decent day, and at the end of it I went to Baltimore Perl Mongers. I was debating not going due to the trip, but I’m glad I did. We had our largest turnout yet, in spite of having no planned talks. We mostly chatted about what everybody did at work and played back a few YAPC memories. Afterwards, my fiancé Larry drove downtown to join Dawn and myself and we hit up a nearby Sushi bar. It was pretty nice although I’d already filled up on pizza so there wasn’t much desire on my part to eat anything.

Afterwards, Eric’s cats needed some care before we left. I normally provide catsitting services when he goes back to St. Louis, but since I was following him for a few days, that needed doing as late before I left as I could manage. After finally getting home, I packed and crashed for a few hours before flying out. That’s when things finally got rolling.

After I landed in St. Louis (the flight was a flight, nothing special so not worth talking about much), I headed over to meet Terri Langerak to rent her harp. She was very nice and really laid back, and I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend more time talking to her, but unfortunately both Larry and I were very hungry and pretty close to just falling asleep from our short night before, and I still had many errands to run. I will say, though, Terri played a couple tunes, one of which she wrote, and it was awesome. I hear tell she some recorded tracks available for purchase and I shall have to find those (I’ll post it in a comment if/when I do). But we got the harp and headed to the hotel in downtown St. Louis.

Terri’s Harp – Thanks, Terri!

Welcome to St. Louis

After grabbing some food at the hotel (Crowne Plaza Riverfront, it’s pretty awesome), and my taking a few winks, I ran up to pick up my tuxedo at Memory Lane in East Alton, IL. On reflection, food at the hotel was probably not our best idea. It took forever for the food to come out, even though when it did it was very good. If we hadn’t been so hungry and not on a very tight schedule, I don’t think I would have minded the wait so much. Still, I was, on both counts, and so I minded. Whatever, water under the bridge.

My Lunch – Greek Salad and Spinach/Artichoke Dip

Larry’s Lunch – Some Kinda Burger? I Forget

Then, tragedy struck! The place was closed before I got there. After swearing a blue streak, I realized there may still be hope. I’d been afraid they were closed on Saturdays, but they weren’t! So, I ran to drop off a portion of the money necessary for pickup of the tux at Eric’s mother’s place. He and Kristin (his now wife) were still running around getting final details hammered out, so I just sat and talked with his mother for a while. In spite of this being the first time I’d met her in real life (and only once having talked to her before, on IRC), she was very pleasant and willing to talk. I even almost got to see some baby pictures out of the deal but unfortunately they were in a drawer somewhere she couldn’t quite remember.

As I was driving out of town, and swinging by a funny little store called Steve’s Antiques that Eric had long ago told me about, I was called and told to swing around and pick up Eric and another friend of ours, Andrew Herbig, as they were stuck without a ride since the best man was hung up on a job. So, I took a few pics and hightailed it back to the house. There, I finally met Andrew (we’d previously only talked online). As we drove back to St. Louis, Eric pointed out many landmarks I’d only ever heard about. Sadly, we bypassed the place where he’d proposed as it was apparently a significant drive out of the way and quite a walk. Still, it was good to see some of the other places I’d heard so much about.

My Antique Shop!

After we all three made our way back to the hotel, I grabbed a quick shower and we hit up Mike Shannon’s Steakhouse. The food was pretty much amazing, though I didn’t have much of, say, the gigantic appetizer that Justin ordered.

The “’64 Tower” Appetizer

I did, however, partake of the quite-amazing Johnnie Walker Blue that was ordered for the table at the end of the evening. Never thought I’d actually have any of the stuff, it’s usually too rich for my blood (and my wallet). But that right there is a bucket list item successfully checked.

The Best Scotch I’ll Ever Drink

On the way out of the bar, we passed by several horse and carriages, but we really wanted to snag this beast which was parked out front.

Kinda Want This Ride

We hit up more bars, and I’m pretty sure there’s no photographic evidence that can be used to incriminate anybody. Actually, it was pretty tame, just plenty of drinks all around. Thank god I limited myself, I don’t think I would have wanted to be hungover for the big day.

Speaking of, it was at a house by a beautiful lake owned (currently) by Eric’s grandparents’ siblings, but soon to be sold to his cousins. It was way far out into the country north of East Alton, and was very quiet and peaceful. Plus, there’s that lake!

The Aisle and the Music

After the Wedding, the Sun Gave a Show

The ceremony went very well – it got started behind schedule but I don’t think it’d be a proper wedding if it got started on time. They did the mixing of the sand, and I gotta say, that particular demonstration is growing on me. Eric and Kristin also read the vows they wrote out, which I gotta give them credit for, I think it’s the first time I’ve heard someone getting married actually say their vows such that people could hear them. Usually peoples’ nerves are far too frayed to do much more than mumble them. They were also very heartfelt and fit in nicely with the ceremony.

I had another entire day in St. Louis, but I’m about to pack up and travel for my trip back home, so I’ll have to fill in the rest of the details of my trip later.

I’m going to be traveling this weekend to play in/be part of Eric Will (@rakaur)’s wedding. So far, it’s all worked out ok. After some initial hiccups, I located a harp via Terri Langerak in St. Louis, and I’ll be playing on that (a Lyon & Healy Troubadour IV if memory serves). It’s been a long while since I’ve played a lever harp, but the pieces I’m playing fortunately are designed not to make it too difficult to get to the levers while still playing normally.

Troubadour IV – Not the one I’m playing, just one I found online

No, what’s gonna be a trick is staying awake and alert through Saturday. My schedule is pretty well packed through Saturday, and this scarcely includes any time for sleep. My original plan was to stay in St. Louis through Monday (flights were cheaper then anyway), and explore the city. At this point I may simply be passed out for the day, though.

Still, will be good to travel to a new place, and finally see where Eric grew up. He moved out here a few years ago to join me at my then job at EBL Engineers, and I’ve never gone back to see his hometown. He assures me it’s beautiful, and from the pictures I’ve seen I can believe it.

There’s not really much else to say at this point. I’d go into detail about what all will make my days so crazy, but it’s not very much worth describing; it’d be intensely boring to actually read, even though it will probably be very stressful to do. I just wanted to keep myself to writing something once a day.

I told you these posts wouldn’t all be gems.

I’ve discovered that after a certain point, I become allergic to not having tests. It doesn’t manifest in hives or in anaphylactic shock, or any of the regular symptoms. It actually results in a brain freeze. There’s just so much code I can write before my brain refuses to go any further. In a way, maybe it’s more like a phobia. I’m simply afraid to write the next piece of code, knowing how tenuously linked to reality I am by that point, and the next code could be simply the beginning of the cascade of horrible ideas and messy disgusting code.

I wasn’t always this way. For quite a while I was completely happy with not documenting, not testing, and just writing line after line of incomprehensible code. Now, I can’t stand having poorly-documented code, and while I can still stomach writing a project for a while without tests, I hit a point eventually where I just can’t go any further without knowing what lies behind is thoroughly tested.

So it is with a project I’ve been working on that I hope will help me out at work: PGModel. I have been working on it for quite some time, though rather sporadically. It’s simply an ORM for PHP that is designed to be compatible all the way back to PHP 5.1 (I know it’s been end-of-lifed forever, but the project’s documentation goes into more detail on the “why”). And it does a few particular ORM-like things already, such as basic dataset loading and associations. These are all inspired, as the README states, by Sequel.

But while all of this is relatively simple at this point, it’s still already very complicated, and the more I write the more I worry that I’m missing critical bugs. So, I finally wrote myself a testing suite. It’s simple but I think it adheres to at least a subset of the Test Anything Protocol, and allows me to write a large number of tests fairly quickly and easily.

Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks. I could allow a function to be called à la call-user-func-array() to handle checking for exceptions, but it’s rather inelegant. As it stands, though, there’s no other way to check for exceptional cases, as closures didn’t become available until PHP 5.3. It’s also currently completely done from a memory of how testing works in Test::More from Perl, and as such is almost definitely far less feature-complete than a full testing suite.

There’s also already a unit testing suite written for PHP, but it’s sadly only compatible back to 5.2.7. So, I think, as long as I’m stupidly insistent on sticking with 5.1, I’ll keep using this. Who knows, maybe I’ll learn to love it, over time. But for now, I can finally scratch that itch and secure my code (more than it has been, at any rate) with proper testing.

I finally posted on this blog again for the first time in over a year last night. I’ve realized there are many reasons I don’t blog very much:

1. I don’t have much free time.
2. I never have anything to write about.
3. My writings, when they do come, are too haphazard and unrelated.
4. People will respond with unnecessarily negative responses.

These reasons are all crap. I shall detail why:

1. I have time for things that I make time for. In general, I sleep about 6 hours per night, and with commute time my work takes a chunk of around 10 hours a day of my time, 5 days a week. That still leaves 76 hours every single week that’s unallocated. I frequently fill this time with stupid activities like watching television and reading TV Tropes. Not having enough time isn’t a very good excuse.
2. There are a great many topics I feel very passionately about. My reason #4 gets into part of the reason I don’t talk about these very much, but there are others. Still, it’s just a trick I play on myself to worm my way out of actively showing feelings one way or the other on a topic. This is crap. I’ve realized this on an academic level, and even blogged about it at least once. Still, it’s something that I must remind myself of regularly: having an opinion is not, inherently, a bad thing. Expressing myself shouldn’t be as hard as I make it on myself.
3. This is, actually, a problem. I find that, the more I want to write, the more I want to cover various topics. I am a harpist, I am a programmer and database administrator, I’d like to be a linguist and polyglot (but again, going back to #1, I do not allocate time properly), and in my wildest imaginations, I think I’m an ok writer. I’d like to do all of these things, but cross pollination is a serious problem. Programmers don’t want to read my angsty poetry. I’ll get more into this further down.
4. There’s not really a polite way to put this so: “fuck ‘em.” I’ve long put up with people who override my speech and try to talk down to me. Either they think they know more than I do on anything/everything, or they quite simply don’t have respect for me, either because they have respect for no one or they feel like I’m an idiot. These things are fine and I can’t correct anyone’s behavior, but this is my personal space and I’m just not going to tolerate it anymore. At this point, I’m going to simply delete comments if I feel like those comments are detracting or distracting from what I’m trying to say; if you’re a friend or a family member of mine and I delete your comment? Well, tough cookies. Try to be a more positive person.

I think the only problem that isn’t simply me internalizing a level of criticism that is neither present nor valid is the problem of the fractured nature of my writings here. I mentioned in my last blog that I’m going to attempt to write my own blogging software from scratch. There are reasons I haven’t finished it already, but most go right back to the “improperly allocated time” space. But, in a nutshell: I want to maintain separate “blogs” for my various passions. This way, people could subscribe to only what they actually want to read about.

I have some friends who are interested in languages. I have some who are interested in programming. I have some who are interested in writing. Still, if they have to spend even half a second wondering if something I’ve written will appeal to them when reading over an RSS output of my blog, then they’ll probably just skip mine entirely.

This isn’t to say I need a huge fandom. I’m not running ads on this blog so it makes no difference to me monetarily; I simply would like for people to be able to hear my opinions when they want, without them feeling like I’m shouting in their ears about topics on which they could care less only if they could somehow care a negative amount. So, I plan to split it up, but that’ll take some time, and I am tired of waiting on myself to do any one of 15 things before I start doing anything at all.

So, I’m going to try to force myself to spend at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour, on any given day, writing in this blog. I will probably write many stupid and inane things, and while I find my footing and get my split blogs set up, there will probably be a lot of excess noise, depending on the reason you personally originally stumbled on this blog. I hope anyone who’s actually reading this will bear with me while I adjust.

In the mean time, perhaps you’d like to read what I think are the two best posts on the site? They’re both “creative writing” posts, so you can skip it if you’re only here for the tech stuff: Running and The Advent of Autumn.

This past week I finally attended my first YAPC. While previously I’d attended the excellent Surge conference hosted by OmniTI as a commuter, and the brand-spanking-new DCBPW by the DC and Baltimore Perl Mongers, this was my first full-immersion conference with flying out of town and everything, and it was quite an experience.

My work sponsored myself and two coworkers to attend the three-day conference. They were going to send us to the two-day workshops beforehand but unfortunately they sold out before the long process of travel paperwork completed. Still, I think we got a very worthwhile event.

As with most conferences, there was a lot of value in simply being around other people who are passionate about Perl. If I’ve got one big regret about this past week, it’s that I didn’t spend more time talking to those people. It’s not for their lack of trying, however. Everyone I did meet was very friendly and willing to talk, and more than once we were told by conference organizers to simply introduce ourselves to others. I’m unfortunately far too quiet for my own good, even among such good company. While the Linode-sponsored beer garden certainly helped me feel more comfortable with expressing myself, I mostly wound up expressing myself through dance.

One of the big topics throughout the days, however, wasn’t even just about Perl programming, but Perl culture, and expanding that culture through diversification. Michael Schwern (@schwern) gave the keynote on Wednesday morning, and impressively dove straight into waters which have been churning and sinking many ships for a couple of years now: women and minorities in a culture dominated by white males: the “geek” culture. Still, he brought it up in a non-combative, humorous way that still got everyone talking, and I think that’s the whole point. As he said, he wasn’t going to solve the diversity problem in 50 minutes at the start of YAPC::NA, but it was quite awesome to see everyone get into the topic and discuss it throughout the conference with as much weight as how we were going to solve the next big computational problems in Perl.

Speaking of the next big problems… For me, my latest issues have been focused around web development, and I’m mentioning that almost purely so I can segue into my favorite scheduled talk of the conference: Glen Hinkle (@tempire)’s Introduction to Mojolicious. For a long while now, any time I’ve wanted to throw anything onto the web, I’ve reached straight for Sinatra, because it’s so fast to install, quick to write in, and so easy to deploy to Heroku. Now, I’m feeling like the rewrite I started of my own blog may be scrapped and redone in Mojo. So, while many talks captured my interests, nothing quite changed my whole attitude on a topic like the Mojo Intro.

Oh, yeah, and Damian Conway’s recorded talk on Regexp::Debugger? Ho-lee crap. Rocked my socks off.

So, in all, it was a great experience, and one I hope to repeat at future YAPCs. While I’m hoping to attend one abroad one day, for now I fear I will just have to stay local. If YAPC::NA proved anything to me, though, it’s that there’s a wealth of value even in that.

I think by now it’s news to no one about President Obama’s birth certificate. Almost everyone has strong feelings about this, and I do as well. But they’re mixed.

I’m just as angry as it seems like someone should be at this sort of thing. After years of elegantly dismissing attempts to distract the agenda with moronic claims feeding off racism and paranoia, Obama appears to have caved to the shrill right. Instead of issuing a firm but polite “go fuck yourselves you god damned lunatics from hell,” the President issued his long-form birth certificate. And, y’know, it looks kind of like what any sane person figured it’d look like: a birth certificate from Hawaii.

However, part of me is a little curious at the timing. He’s been swatting at this pile of bloodsucking insects for, as I said, years. So Hairdo McBankruptcy throws his cheap rug on the stage, shrieking about the birth certificate that most Americans had already suffered ADD about, and somehow builds a campaign off that. Well, that and having a terrible show and a disgusting plastic-encased harpy of a wife. And then, just when everyone’s so distracted by the fact that he’s ineffectually sending lawyers to Hawaii to sip cocktails for weeks on end (cause they have absolutely no legal jurisdiction to get at anyone’s fucking birth certificate) that they won’t even focus on the Royal Wedding, the President drops his birth certificate.

“Look at this, bitches.”

Naturally, the people who were so stupid they were deceived this long are still in denial that a black guy had the audacity to run for President — er, I mean, that he was born in America. No, wait, I had it right at first. The birthers are quite simply racists. And Donald Trump was all too happy to play the part of the southern guy handing out the hardest American History tests to the blackest people during the reconstruction. He struts himself around and proudly proclaims what a historic douchebag he is.

And people are outraged. Baratunde Thurston posted an impassioned video response to Trump’s self-congratulatory bullshit festival. Steve Weinstein wrote an blog critical of our still-so-racist society. And these guys are right. It’s a startling thing to realize, as someone who was in his teens before he encountered the idea of racism and what it meant to other people, just how deep these veins of hatred running through our country are.  But I can’t help but wonder if  President Obama knew all this was coming as he released his birth certificate.

Think of it this way: Donald Trump has been building his campaign on jumping up and down on Barack Obama’s legitimacy for the office. Suddenly, the birth certificate’s available. He’s left sputtering about grades at Obama’s Ivy League alma mater. Not only that, but his stupid comments have incensed people who have, at times, been fairly lackadaisical since getting the President elected. I think it’s possibly simply a master stroke from a politician who’s gearing himself up for a fight to get re-elected.

And I should be angry at being manipulated, but it’s hard to be angry at being manipulated into seeing the truth. Sensible people in this country are often outnumbered, shouted down, and ignored. Americans are all too willing to throw reason and progress out the window. It’s a hard fight, but one worth winning. And you know, I hope this is the end of Donald Trump’s flickering candle in the world of real politics.

Because good God is that man a fucking racist moron.

Tomorrow I’m going to be playing on a concert in Towson. I really should be practicing, but instead I’ve decided to write a blog. My priorities: not very well in order. However, I think it’ll probably be fine. One of my pieces is not memorized (which is particularly weird because I wrote it), but it’ll be fine cause it’s just one page. Also, I might be able to finish sticking it back in my head; again, it’s only one page.

The bigger thing for me is that I’m finally gonna get back out there and play some music. My tendency to shy away from any performing has been more successful than I’d hoped. The last time I played a serious performance outside of a brief annual harp ensemble recital or even a gig, well, I can’t even remember.

This year I’ve asked to play more pieces than I have in the past. I feel a little bit like I’ll be taking over the program for a little while, and that doesn’t sit particularly well with me, but nobody has seemed to mind. I’m used to playing things a bit more cautiously, and trying really hard not to offend people with excessive hubris. It’s a trait I tend to find annoying, but many people around me have hubris in almost sickening volume and I seem to be the only one who cares, so I’m dipping my toe into the water. And it’s panning out thus far.

I don’t feel I’ve prepared as fully as I would really have liked for this performance, in all honesty. I think that the pieces, while good, could be far better. Of course, there’s always room for improvement in every performance, but I played one of them for another performer today after rehearsal, and she said it sounded good. So, I’m going to try not being so very nervous, and hope for the best. I’ve tried a bit more than normal to get people to come to this performance, and hopefully it’ll turn out and I’ll be a big hit. I’m still a bit nervous though.

T minus 15 hours.

The rain was done driving itself into the ground. The smell of wet pavement drifted up to my nostrils. If I had had the time, this would have been around the point where I’d let memories wash over me, of a time way back in the past when running was a pastime, not a survival tactic. But that wasn’t possible anymore. I slipped around a corner, slamming my back against the dumpster, sinking to the ground. This would do for a bit. Breathing was a laborious process at that point. I focused on taking as deep a lungful of air as possible while making as little noise as possible. I could hear the skittering and scratching following behind me. It wouldn’t be very long. Somehow I’d get caught up and the running would start again.

Some time ago, I would have considered this a ridiculous situation that no one would ever find themselves in. I can’t really remember the exact chain of events, just that, in a moment, everything in my life was flipped onto its head. Friends were turning on me, confidants taking their deep knowledge of me and turning it against me. Running, it was the only way.

And I’d been doing it ever since.

My pursuers were relentless, at times I wondered how much they still retain of their humanity. It didn’t seem possible that a normal human drive could push them as far as they’d gone. But then, they were just following me. I guess that meant I’d always been going that far as well. I wonder what that said about me. No, that’s stupid, it’s pretty obvious what it said about me.

I was just as bad as they were.

Nothing I could do would really change what the outcome was going to be. Running from a predator only ends one of two ways, and it was clear that one of the options wasn’t really available to me. Inside me, I could feel that I was already turning into one of them, relentless. Hitting this dumpster was the first time I’d stopped since the rain had started.

Skitter, skitter.

I stood up. It was time to go. As I took off down the alleyway, I thought about animals in the wild. It was pretty well established that they didn’t think like we do. They don’t really process fear the same way, with a conception of their own mortality. They flee danger with a single-mindedness I used to envy. Would I still be running the same way if I didn’t fear for something like my life? Would it matter if I realized that my life was over, no matter what, and I was just prolonging the inevitable?

I took a turn around another building, jumping over a fence behind it, almost effortlessly. That sort of thing used to be beautiful to me. Like a gazelle leaping around boundaries, flowing over the landscape like water, but light as air, I had made my way through cityscapes night after night and day after day. But then, one of those days, all the beauty left it for me, and it was simply cold and utilitarian, another tool for me to use on my never-ending flight.

The last building in the block was coming up, and I slowed down. It had never occurred to me, but I should be happy. I still had my sense of self, in spite of everything that had happened. In between fighting to stay fed, to stay one step ahead, and to stay running, I had brief lucid moments where I realized that I was still alive. It was one of those little miracles that only occasionally made itself readily apparent to me. Even so, it had never made me happy until that moment, under a cracked street lamp next to a burnt-out office building.

I slowed down.

I turned around.

This was it, I decided. My life was still my own, if only for a little while longer. I’d spent my life living as a plains animal might, fleeing at danger, moving around the landscape, disturbing little. But it was time to change my habits. In that moment, I felt more alive than I ever had before. My blood was rushing through my ears, my breathing came rapidly, and my heart pounded in my chest. The skittering came closer.

A brief flash of doubt crossed my mind. This is stupid, you know there’s no chance, I was thinking at myself. Still, it turned out, that didn’t matter as much anymore. My life was still my own, and this was the choice that I made. Who knew, maybe it wasn’t so hopeless after all. But I was done with not facing down my problems. I was done with fearing my problems, and they would learn to fear me. The earth was solid beneath my feet, and I felt alive at last.

The skittering had become a clattering and soon it turned into a thundering, and washed out the rest of my thoughts.

This is the first of what I’m hoping to have as a series of posts on sexual behavior, primarily in humans. I’m not a physician or a psychologist, but I’ve read a fair amount of Wikipedia and that seems to at least qualify me to have an opinion on the Internet, however poorly-formed. I’m not looking to really bash anyone, but I know these topics can be uncomfortable for some people, so please, if you’re offended by any of this, just don’t read it: proselytizing won’t find any souls to be saved here; I’m quite fine the way I am and I think any deity that made me would be too. However, if you find yourself disagreeing because you think I’ve put together conclusions from erroneous facts or just write like a monkey bashing at a keyboard (I’m always looking to improve), please don’t hesitate to leave a note in the comments.

I’m often interested by what people describe as features that attract them to sexual partners. It may be that I simply don’t have a hard and fast set of rules dictating what attracts me to someone else. There are some general guidelines, but I wouldn’t say I have a “type.”

Some of you who read this blog know I have a predilection for black men (not just african-americans, as it turns out). It’s alternately a joke or a really big joke amongst my friends, and it’s also, as time goes on, more and more incorrect. It’s not to say that I don’t still find myself attracted to them more often than to other people, but it’s no longer the case that I’m solely attracted to them.

Sexual preference is an evolving thing. Alfred Kinsey discovered in his studies that most, if not all people, experience a modification of their sexual preferences throughout their lives. While his dealt mostly with the gender of preferred mates, I tend to think there are so many more dynamics to sexual preference than simple gender (I’m sure Kinsey did as well and is probably just suffering a rather vicious bullet-pointing of his ideas on my end).

As a matter of fact, simple gender lines no longer really adequately describe people. There are men who enjoy dressing up like women, for any number of reasons: they feel like women on the inside, they want to become women, it simply is a way they enjoy sex, or just because they think it’s really funny. There are women and men who find each of these things to be appealing in their own right. At one point I rode the bus next to a man dressed as a woman, clearly on a date with a woman dressed as a man, and both seemed very happy with that. The fact that these people even found each other in the world is pretty amazing.

It’s become kind of a joke in the gay community that any “Queer Alliance”-type organization will try to account for all of these things in its name, its mission statement, or all of its speeches. I find myself loathing that aspect of organizations. Sure, we all want to be recognized as special in our own way, but after a certain point, when the lines become so blurred, doesn’t it become a hindrance to try and separate the ingredients back out? I identify as a gay man, but it wouldn’t be totally out of the realm of possibility for me to have sex with a woman. I don’t consider that a betrayal of who I define myself as, or a watering-down of what I feel. It’s simply an extension of the fact that, like my racial preference, I simply don’t feel the need to constrain my attractions to fit a label.

It’s sort of blowback to the whole idea of being gay in the first place. Gay people have fought to have their right to define their sexuality as “other” than heterosexuals for some time now, but it just wound up making a new pigeonhole. Now, you’re gay, straight, or bisexual. But what if you’re a woman or a man who’s attracted pretty much only to hermaphrodites? What if you are a voyeur who enjoys watching straight pornography but can only really achieve any active sexual pleasure with a member of your own gender? What if you’re a guy who has an operation to become a woman and then decides you’re still attracted to women (with thanks to South Park for that last one)? These things may deserve their own definition and name, but the more you think about it, the more you realize that you just can’t do it, any more than you can give a name to all the grains of sand on a beach.

So, once again, we are presented with a problem of nomenclature. The world of the last 20 years has had so many new ideas, that they have outpaced our languages’ abilities to keep up. Is it really right to even try to force categorization on people? Is it right to deny them that categorization if they want it? I identify as gay, more or less, but what about that couple on the bus? The nature of their relationship flows in the same river of humanity as mine but I’d be loathe to try creating a name for it. So, am I being prejudiced against them for denying them a place in the world with a name, or am I just being common-sense? Would I be comfortable with being labeled against my will, or with having a label I’m comfortable with ripped away? The murky and irresolute answers to these questions mirror the nature of the world in which they find themselves.