Articles Tagged: self-disclosure

Redlining, Part II of V: I Can Deal With That

6 years ago with 9 comments
I am trying to answer the question of whether a man can fall in love with another man. Last time, I talked about when I did, in fact, fall in love with S.; which might or might not mean that the answer is exactly “yes”. On to the next part of the story. ★ Ryan had just invited me to spend the weekend at the beach house his family had rented, which was perfect, because I had just ...

Thanks

7 years ago with 23 comments
I heard a nice idea from my sister: every time something happens that you’re really thankful for, you write it on a piece of paper and put it in a jar. Then, at the end of the year, you read the pieces of paper, to remember all the good things. I think I missed some big ones — I guess I forgot to keep putting stuff in the jar — and some of the things are on a whole nother ...

Dowsing

7 years ago with 31 comments
Warning — this post contains crude words and crude humor. It is for grownups, and by grownups I mean “people who are okay with jokes about people’s private parts, and some serious discussion about what those parts do sometimes.” There, that ought to make sure everybody reads it. Frank, the group leader this week, interrupts Gordon’s monologue: “I just want ...

Ain’t No Thing

7 years ago with 10 comments
Happy National Coming Out Day! I guess that’s a thing. Apropos of that, Boy, it’s a good thing having an awkward moment at a get-together doesn’t send me into a spiral of self-loathing and despair anymore. No joke, that used to happen. I’d flub a handshake1 or tell an unfunny joke or be the wrong kind of geeky when everybody else was being the right kind of cool, and ...

Fragment: One Reason it makes sense…

7 years ago with 7 comments
…to publicly disclose your homosexuality, if that is what you want to do: If you ask me to live a life where, in casual conversation with friends, I never make reference to anything that has to do with my sexuality, then you’re asking me to live a life that is very much different from the lives of 99% of the population. Which is to say, most people don’t talk about their ...

Slowly

7 years ago with 6 comments
J. and I have been driving for four hours or so, with C. asleep in the back seat. Even though the setup is perfect, we haven’t had a single DMC1 yet, just a stream of banter as we find the places where our senses of humor fit together. Is something wrong, or is this good? Is this how friends are? There are some things you can ruin just by thinking about them too hard. All we have to do ...

A History of Tears

7 years ago with 14 comments
“Oh, stop crying already.” It’s twenty years ago, but I remember the exact tone of my father’s voice, equal parts impatience and disgust. To me, crying is something that happens, not something I can decide to do or not do, so his command makes me burn with all the anger of which a nine-year-old is capable, which is a frightening amount. But there’s nobody I can ...

Masks

8 years ago with 15 comments
Back when I was in college and as crazy as a bedbug — a bedbug on a steady diet of caffeine, nicotine, and Nietzsche — I decided I was the phoniest bastard in the history of the universe and I wasn’t going to stand it anymore. I lie constantly, I told myself, and not only in words: I lie with my face, my tone of voice, my gestures, and even the way I walk. That raised ...

Spiders

8 years ago with 13 comments
“You’re gonna have to call in a prescription for more adderal,” says an instant message from my friend S. “My head is all fuzzy.” Oops, that wasn’t for me. S. hastily explains that he was trying to chat his wife, but got the wrong window. He’s been diagnosed with ADHD for ages, he says, and the last couple of weeks has been trying to cope with it ...

As Much As You Can

8 years ago with 9 comments
Once on a bus trip I met a recovering alcoholic named Hank. I knew he was a recovering alcoholic because that was practically the first thing he said. I didn’t know whether to be fascinated by this kind of haphazard self-disclosure, or put off by it. I recorded the incident in my journal; I was about twenty-one and in the middle of a very romantically-conceived bus-and-train trip around ...