128. profluent

“History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That’s why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.”
— Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes

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profluent, adjective: Flowing smoothly or abundantly forth.

Today I am 29 years, 1 months, and 3 days old.

In comparison to the incomprehensible age of the universe, the age of our own solar system, or even the microscopically brief length of time that we have even been “human,” this is an insignificant fraction of an insignificant fraction. To me, that ineffable smallness is a beautiful thought—that I mean absolutely nothing in the near infinity of time and space, and yet am here all the same, with my own small thoughts, emotions and experiences, and the power to decide upon and create my own meaning.

“I suddenly felt very deeply that I was alive: Alive with my own particular thoughts, with my own particular story, in this itty-bitty splash of time. And in that splash of time, I get to think about things and do stuff and wonder about the world and love people, and drink my coffee if I want to. And then that’s it.”
— Julia Sweeney, Letting Go of God

This is something that never made sense before I came out as an atheist, and something that doesn’t make sense to my friends now who are theists. And I think that’s rather sad. I could be wrong, of course, about the notion that this is all there is; that there is no deity outside of the universe measuring the threads of our lives; that nothing awaits us after we die. There could be a god, but the probability of that being true is astronomically small, or at least insignificant as a fact.

A few days ago my friend Emily turned 30. In my experience, after 25 age doesn’t start to matter again until around 40, but reaching 30 is still a cultural milestone. While I was making coffee this morning, and taking the dishes out of the dishwasher and putting them away as I waited for the grounds to steep, I considered the idea that there is nothing we can do to stop time, the process of aging, or the inevitability of death. Someday, probably sooner than I’d like to think since time itself is a fiction that we create to make sense of our waking moments, I am going to die. Life is uncertain, but of that I can be certain as an organic being.

This past weekend we threw Emily one hell of a party as only twentysomethings with too much education and access to alcohol can. Since we aren’t teenagers it wasn’t a wild party by any definition. However, I did end up getting very drunk since the only thing I’d had to eat the entire day was a scone from Starbucks and two pieces of chocolate cake. The result was that I blacked out for part of the evening, although I do recall playing a Bach prelude from memory and then breaking down in tears because I’d just played a Bach prelude from memory and no one at that party fully appreciated that fact; the fact that I love Bach, the fact that I write music, write stories (or this blog), or all of the sundry incongruous elements that make up Me.

And there’s no one special person right now who appreciates that. That’s mainly what upset me this weekend. And I was up until about three in the morning talking in my bed with the only other gay guy at the party (who I wasn’t even sure would like me since 1) he’s a Christian and a pastor; 2) I’m an outspoken atheist and a loud one, and he knew that) about some of those things—including Seth, with whom we’ve both had unfortunate experiences.

In the little over a year since I came out as an atheist, the desire to deeply and intimately share the experience of being alive with another human being has grown a lot. In the past my youngest sister has expressed a total lack of sympathy or understanding when I’d talk about wanting to find a guy. (This is the sister who, incidentally, is currently substituting a dog for a meaningful relationship with a guy because she “can’t find anybody good enough,” which is not-so-subtle code for “fear of intimacy,” the congenital malady of my family.)

For me, the desire to be with someone comes out of the knowledge that this is the only go-round that we get on this planet, and I want to spend that time with someone who, out of all the other guys in this world, wants to spend it with me (and vice versa); who finds my quirkiness enchanting, and my insanity endearing (even if, at times, infuriating); and who desires as much as I do to deepen his understanding of humanity and of existence by exploring life with another person.

“I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me,” intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. “. . . A computer which can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program!”
— Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 28

When you believe that “there are other worlds than this . . . that this world, that seems so real, is no more than a shadow of the life to come” (William Nicholson, Shadowlands), it doesn’t matter whether or not if you find someone in the Here and Now. To my youngest sister, all that matters is knowing Jesus.

I want to focus on making this life the best one possible—which includes waking up with the guy I’m in love with (and vice versa).

75. votive

On the way home this afternoon, I was listening to this passage from The Selfish Gene:

“Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme pool. Probably it originated many times by independent ‘mutation’. In any case, it is very old indeed. How does it replicate itself? By the spoken and written word, aided by great music and great art. Why does it have such a high survival value? Remember that ‘survival value’ here does not mean value for a gene in a gene pool, but value for a meme in a meme pool. The question really means: What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The ‘everlasting arms’ hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor’s placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.”

—Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p.192-193

In my last post and in posts previous (in particular, one from a few weeks ago), I’ve been discussing and considering the idea of the existence of, and belief or non-belief in, God. I’ve pondered various theories, from theism being an evolutionary advantage for our early ancestors that we just never got rid of, to it being a “mind virus” that infects a person until a good dose of rational thinking cures him or her of it. But this idea of God being a meme (that is, “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture” (source: Merriam-Webster)) finally put into words what I’d been trying to articulate. Considering how fast Internet videos and catch phrases spread now, and that some are more or less enduring than others, puts the whole thing in better perspective. God is an idea—and ideas, as Alan Moore once wrote, are bulletproof.

Or is God an idea?

Along with this I’ve considered the possibility that I’ve made God what I want God to be—or not to be—to suit my notions of the world and how I think it works. It certainly is more convenient for there to be no God, since it eliminates the “problem of pain.” This world is all there is, and there is no benevolent God in the afterlife waiting to wipe away all our tears and put all things to right. We don’t have to work out how or why God might allow terrible things to happen because there is no God to allow it. Things just happen. Children die. Planes fly into buildings. We’re just another animal on the Serengeti plains, eating or trying to avoid being eaten.

But I keep wondering if we’re simply asking the wrong questions. Supposing that there is a God (and my sense is that there is). Why would such an all-powerful being expect us to erect this monolithic ideology around the idea that people are intrinsically evil (tainted through no fault of their own, simply by virtue of the fact that they’re born and without any choice given to them, by this supposed Sin Nature that was imputed to them when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden however long ago it was) and that Jesus had to be born as a human in order to be tortured to death for our sins (which we seemingly have no choice about committing since it’s inevitable that we’re going to do something “sinful”)?

If we look not to the Bible but to the world around us, we see a common theme: it’s broken and a mess, but we do the best we can and life goes on. Why instead do we spend all this time flagellating ourselves (literally or metaphorically) about what awful sinners we are in God’s eyes? What a colossal waste of time and energy considering how brief and wonderful life is! It would be like going to the Louvre and instead of marveling at the incredible works of art, we’re outraged about how other people aren’t appropriately appreciating the artwork, or aren’t looking at it in the right way, or littering, or talking too loudly—and completely missing the point.

This afternoon one of my good friends at work and I were discussing her son and his three neighborhood friends, and how she wonders which one of them might turn out to be gay. She and her husband are trying to raise him in as affirmative a way as possible so that he feels free to be who and whatever he is. Her neighbors are of the same mind.

Then she talked about a friend of hers from college whose friends finally made him come out for his own good, because they didn’t care if he was gay—they just wanted him to be authentically himself and to be happy with that. Hearing stories like this—about parents who love and encourage their children, and friends who do the same—both inspires and kills me. One of our art directors at the agency has a gay son who is currently studying to be a dancer at Julliard. They knew he was gay early on, and when he finally realized it they basically told him what any parent tells their straight son or daughter—we love you, and be safe. No complications. No hand wringing. No soul searching. As if it was normal.

Because (pardon my Finnish) it fucking is normal—se on vitun normaali.

What if I’d grown up in a family where my parents didn’t care whether I was gay or not? How much unnecessary mental anguish could I have escaped? And, thinking beyond just myself, I wonder what kind of a world we might have if all parents did that. If kids didn’t worry about being bullied at school because they were or are perceived to be gay.

It comes back to this cultural god meme.

I’m going to backtrack for just a bit and lay some groundwork—and I’m going to focus for now on homophobia, which happens to be on my brain and is currently (and no doubt will be) a major moral and political issue in the upcoming presidential campaign. Now it’s telling to me that the only places where homophobia still has a strong foothold is in the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Let me focus briefly on the latter two:

• Asian culture (and forgive me for generalizing here) is one steeped heavily in tradition and honor to family, though the up and coming generation is becoming increasingly Westernized and progressive, and less tradition-bound. To an outsider, it appears almost militaristic in its demand of unquestioning obedience and conformity to social mores.
• Africa—and here I’m trying hard not to be conscious of making generalizations or value judgements—is a continent that seems largely dominated by violence, ignorance, poverty and fear. That’s also true of many societies, but I look with sadness at the genocides and ethnic cleansings of even the recent past in Rwanda and the Darfur, and the apparent utter disregard for human life in the ongoing slave trade. That AIDS continues to ravage the continent because men largely refuse to practice safe sex, or believe that the rape of a virgin will cure them, is another symptom of a continent in desperate need of enlightenment.

Africa and Asia are two continents where any of the monotheistic religions haven’t had much historical presence, which is why I singled them out, and why I’m not surprised that the cultures would be strongly homophobic. For hundreds of years, the Americas have had a strong Christian dominance, and the Middle East is home to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Islam. Both began as largely tribal societies and religions, their religions reflecting the dominantly patriarchal hegemony of the culture.

Okay—brief excursus on sexual politics in the ancient world (which is very relevant to the discussion here) and we’ll get back on topic. Gender roles were rigidly enforced in the ancient world as social stability required that everyone know their place—and free males (those who held military or monetary power and property) were masters of that world, all others (women, children, slaves, foreigners) subservient to their wills. Consequently, because males were at the top of the social ladder, it was logical that their God was male too since he must be a bigger, stronger and invisible version of human males. And so God, like a freeman, becomes a homophobe.

Sex was often the politics of the ancient world, and a freeman’s social dominance often expressed itself through sexual dominance as well. A freeman could have sex with anyone—so long as he wasn’t violating the property of another freeman. Penetration is the key word here. A freeman could penetrate (i.e., dominate) anyone of a lower social rank—women and girls (all females were considered property of males), boys and male slaves. It was shameful for one freeman to penetrate (i.e., dominate) another since that other male was either taking on the role of a non-dominant (i.e., a woman or slave) or proving himself unworthy as a freeman by being soft or weak. Inevitably theology was woven into all of that, and it became a sin for two men to have sex since God, the überman, like any freeman, doesn’t like the idea of one man penetrating another.

Sorry, this is a huge idea to tackle in one blog post, and I must sound absolutely batshit insane and sex-obsessed, but bear with me. Fast forward a couple thousand years. At the core of every Christian pastor and politician’s polemic against gays and calling for the protection of “family values” is that same ancient meme, passed down like a collective virus that shapes and defines the culture around it.

And now I’m getting to Europe, which we purposefully haven’t talked about yet.

For over a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church was the dominant reigning power in known Western world. It dictated the thoughts and beliefs of everyone with an iron fist, from kings to serfs, holding the threat of damnation and often torture and death for heresy and unbelief—but it too was infected with that same cultural god meme that had come up through the same tribal Hebrew culture from which Christianity sprang.

Douglas Adams wrote, “There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.”

It was around the middle of the 18th century that people started having brilliant new thoughts, and the new meme of rationality began to take hold like a anti-virus in what came to be known as the Enlightenment. Suddenly it wasn’t okay to just blindly accept whatever you’d been taught or held to be true. We could understand the world and life through logic and rational thinking. And it took several hundred years, but eventually someone questioned whether our belief that it was unnatural for “man to lie with man” or “woman with woman” was right.

And that happened in Europe—just as the Enlightenment happened in Europe.

So if you’re still tracking, I don’t think it’s by accident that Europe is less homophobic, or that it thrives in places where rationality doesn’t. It is by employing reason that we move forward (in what I believe Dawkins considers a next stage in human evolution), for it was by employing reason that we abolished slavery in the Western world, developed science and medicine, recognized basic human rights and that women were the equals of men, and first got a glimpse of our place in this vast and incredible universe.

And now back to the idea of God.

… remember God?

Supposing there is a God, but we’ve created an idea of him in our image—male to boot, in all his jealous, raging, egotistical glory (and I don’t think it’s coincidence either that most theologians were males)—and built an entire civilization around that ancient meme. What must that God think of the amazingly ape-like creatures who go around stuffing each other or themselves into artificial moralistic boxes, or even going around killing each other, based on how they think he wants them to live.

What if God is like the curator of the Louvre, seeing all the silly Puritanical visitors obsessing about how furniture is arranged instead of enjoying the artwork?

74. dragons

I want to talk about Feng Shui, which is something I know very little about . . . Apparently, we need to think about the building being inhabited by dragons and look at it in terms of how a dragon would move around it. So, if a dragon wouldn’t be happy in the house, you have to put a red fish bowl here or a window there. This sounds like complete and utter nonsense . . . there aren’t any dragons, so any theory based on how dragons behave is nonsense.

There are all sorts of things we know how to do, but don’t necessarily know what we do—we just do them. Go back to the issue of how you figure out how a room or a house should be designed and instead of going through all the business of trying to work out the angles and trying to digest which genuine architectural principles . . .  just ask yourself, ‘how would a dragon live here?’

We are used to thinking in terms of organic creatures; an organic creature may consist of an enormous complexity of all sorts of different variables that are beyond our ability to resolve but we know how organic creatures live. We’ve never seen a dragon but we’ve all got an idea of what a dragon is like, so we can say, ‘Well if a dragon went through here, he’d get stuck just here and a little bit cross over there because he couldn’t see that and he’d wave his tail and knock that vase over’. You figure out how the dragon’s going to be happy here and lo and behold! you’ve suddenly got a place that makes sense for other organic creatures, such as ourselves, to live in.

So, my argument is that as we become more and more scientifically literate, it’s worth remembering that the fictions with which we previously populated our world may have some function that it’s worth trying to understand and preserve the essential components of, rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water; because even though we may not accept the reasons given for them being here in the first place, it may well be that there are good practical reasons for them, or something like them, to be there.

— Douglas Adams, impromptu speech delivered at Digital Biota 2, Magdelene College, Cambridge, September 1998

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I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking and writing lately about the veracity of Christianity and how it’s mostly a complete crock based on the extreme lack of evidence and support for believing in God (and, if you don’t believe in God, well, the whole rest of religion sort of falls apart around you).

The other night while shelving my books, I was listening to Douglas Adams’ posthumous book, The Salmon of Doubt, a collection of his published and unpublished writings from the nested subfolders of his Macintosh computer. The excerpt from the speech above is from a talk he gave at a science conference titled “Is There an Artificial God?“, which starts off by admitting to being rather cowed at first to be “in a room full of such luminaries,” but after a couple of days realizing that “you’re just a bunch of guys!”

I was particularly struck by those last few paragraphs of the speech, up until which he’d spent the majority of the time building up the case for a God-less world and discussing the definition of “life” (in a Douglas-like roundabout manner); but I guess his words spoke to the part of me that still holds onto belief in God, however irrational it seems at times. I’ll freely admit that there is about as much evidence for God as there is against, although the atheists do seem to have the stronger argument—after all, the invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

Where does the idea of God come from? Well, I think we have a very skewed point of view on an awful lot of things, but let’s try and see where our point of view comes from.

Imagine an early man surveying his surroundings at the end of a happy day’s tool making. He looks around and he sees a world which pleases him mightily: behind him are mountains with caves in – mountains are great because you can go and hide in the caves and you are out of the rain and the bears can’t get you; in front of him there’s the forest – it’s got nuts and berries and delicious food; there’s a stream going by, which is full of water – water’s delicious to drink, you can float your boats in it and do all sorts of stuff with it; here’s cousin Ug and he’s caught a mammoth – mammoth’s are great, you can eat them, you can wear their coats, you can use their bones to create weapons to catch other mammoths. I mean this is a great world, it’s fantastic.

But our early man has a moment to reflect and he thinks to himself, ‘well, this is an interesting world that I find myself in’ and then he asks himself a very treacherous question, a question which is totally meaningless and fallacious, but only comes about because of the nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks at his world and says ‘So who made this then?’ Who made this? – you can see why it’s a treacherous question. Early man thinks, ‘Well, because there’s only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he’s probably male’. And so we have the idea of a god.

Then, because when we make things we do it with the intention of doing something with them, early man asks himself , ‘If he made it, what did he make it for?’ Now the real trap springs, because early man is thinking, ‘This world fits me very well. Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely’ and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him.

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.

I love the puddle analogy. And he makes a strong point—we have a natural tendency to want to believe in God or a deity of some sort. Try as we might, we never entirely grow up, and the thought of having a “heavenly father” is rather nice. Someone to look out for you and so on.

Lately I’ve been having discussions about God along the lines of, “What does it matter if it’s literally true so long as you believe it?” I think it matters quite a lot, personally. A recent NPR article on Evangelicals questioning belief in a historical Adam and Eve had quotes from two scholars—one is Fazale Rana, vice president of Reasons To Believe, who said that “if the parts of Scripture that you are claiming to be false, in effect, are responsible for creating the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, then you’ve got a problem.”

The article continued with a quote from Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, who said that “without Adam, the work of Christ makes no sense whatsoever in Paul’s description of the Gospel, which is the classic description of the Gospel we have in the New Testament.”

Alternatively, you have Dennis Venema of Trinity Western University saying, “There is nothing to be alarmed about. It’s actually an opportunity to have an increasingly accurate understanding of the world — and from a Christian perspective, that’s an increasingly accurate understanding of how God brought us into existence.”

Nothing to be alarmed about? Even when Paul wrote that “death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come” (Romans 5:14), or “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). This is a literal, non-metaphorical Adam that Paul is talking about.

We could say that, okay, Paul was studied in Jewish theology so his perspective reflects his theology. Of course he assumed Adam and Eve were real. Standards and expectations of scholarship were different back then—they would have never questioned the veracity of the story. The entire Jewish culture was based on it!

Besides—who’s to say that Paul had any more authority than any other early Christian writer (e.g., Augustine, Tertullian, Origen, etc) just because he was the first to tackle theology? Aren’t our attempts at describing God just stabs in the dark anyway? And most every post-first century Christian writer based their theology on the work that Paul did in those early years of the Church.

Okay. What if Adam and Eve are merely metaphors for humanity’s “sinful” condition, and the rest is still true? That Christ came to earth to die and redeem us? After all, we don’t necessarily need a Garden of Eden for people to kill, cheat, lie, steal, etc. However, if there was no Tree of Life and no “original sin” to offend God in the first place, why did Jesus end up on the cross? What was he “saving” us from?

This is where everything starts to fall apart for me. The idea that it could be a fiction and still “true” in the psychological sense is very attractive because it offers you the option of having your proverbial cake and eating it too. Again, of all people I should have the least problem with gleaning “truth” from fiction. But somehow, it just doesn’t add up. You can’t base an entire belief system on what amounts to a fairy story. Either it’s true and it happened, or it isn’t and it’s irrelevant, which pretty much makes the rest of Christianity irrelevant. It just turns into this self-help religion, and there are plenty of those around that do a better job and don’t teach you that you’re a horrible person and God loves you, but unless you believe this, this and this, he’s going to throw you into Hell forever.

Now, as to Adams’ proposal of an “artificial god,” a fiction which has been around for thousands of years because it works as a psychological construct, I’m on board to an extent. Yes, there are tenets and principles of Christianity that are good. Love your neighbor. Do as you would be done to. Don’t steal. Those are good things. And just like the dragons of Feng Shui make complex architectural principles simpler, if believing in God makes your life simpler, then you should believe in God.

I guess what I really don’t like about Christianity is its denigration of both humans and human intellect. It ultimately teaches that you’re a horrible, disgusting person who, for no direct fault of your own, was saddled at birth with this collective guilt that Jesus had to die for 2,000 years ago by being nailed to a tree. What’s so wonderful about that?

41. deschutes

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. – 2 Corinthians 4:6-10 (NASB)

I went on my first, official, declared date as a gay man tonight. Met him, of all places (surprise, surprise) online, on OkCupid, one of the more reputable places for such sordid activities. The guys there seem less interested in just random hook-ups and more in finding something long-term. Of course there are always those trolls, but so far they’ve seemed of a better ilk there.

… so soon, so soon,
And the crows they swoon
At the two red holes
In his right side, oh…

So my date tonight was a 30-year-old guy from the southwestern suburbs. We’ve been emailing and texting for the last couple of days, and we both had free-time tonight and decided to meet up, mainly to imagine the possibility of dating together. I think we both went into it with few expectations other than to see if we were at all compatible, and that’s pretty much how it went. He was cute, and a nice guy, but it was clear from the beginning that he was just too effeminate for me. (The really creepy thing is that he reminds me a lot of my sister’s husband.) He has a lot of baggage from past relationships, doesn’t have a clear direction on where he wants to go in life; and an top of that, he didn’t know who Douglas Adams was, hadn’t read much C.S. Lewis, and in general wasn’t the intellectual or spiritual package I’m looking for in a guy. He was a music major and is into musical theatre, so we ended up talking for about five hours, but that’s probably as far as this is going to go. And then I ended up giving his car a jump because the battery was dead!

So we keep looking, try not to think about the fact that I’m terrified that every guy I date is going to be like this, and that he is out there. Somewhere.

Does anyone know how to make a Bat-Signal for masculine (i.e., “straight-acting”) Christian gay men?

… it’s gonna take a long, long time
But we’re gonna make something so fine…

Listening to Laura Viers new album right now and absolutely loving it. I actually got it a couple months back, way before the actual public release, when she opened for The Decemberists late last fall, and fell in love with her songs. Her lyrics are pretty great. Here’s one of my favourites:

July Flame
Sweet summer peach
High up in the branch
Just out of my reach

Can I call you mine?
Can I call you mine?

July Flame
I’m seeing fireworks
They’re so beautiful
Tell me why it hurts

39b. freeze ray

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.

To explain—since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe

Moping ahead, FYI.

Has it really been this long between updates?

Basically, right now I’m despairing and reeling from a bit of a crushing disappointment. I met up with the friend of a friend of mine who happens to be gay, Christian, going to seminary, and loves Jesus. A few weeks ago he came out to his fundamentalist parents, and the conversation didn’t go so well; so I was curious about how he was doing, and if I could be of any help. Turns out he’s one of the most level-headed guys I’ve ever met: humble, adorable, and almost everything I could have imagined in finding a guy.

Oh yeah—and gorgeous blue eyes. Gorgeous. (Did I mention that he loves Jesus?)

So we did coffee on Saturday for about four hours, then went to Solomon’s Porch on Sunday evening, and went out to Pizza Lucé afterwards to talk about the sermon.

… and in the process defined our relationship. Well, rather, I went balls out and laid everything out on the table: not something I’m used to doing. No expectations; certainly a level of hope that he might possibly feel the same way. It was one of those all-or-nothing moments, and I just wanted to know if he felt anything for me at all beyond friendship.

He was very flattered, and very nice about it, but he said he’s not interested in me romantically. We had a relatively long talk about it, and came to an understanding, and I’m as okay with it as can be.

Still, I’m feeling rather… down. This is the second guy in a row who’s not been interested in me, and everyone keeps saying that I’m this great, amazing guy; and at least this one had the decency to tell me to my face (because I asked) and not let me be led on; but no one’s interested. And yes, I’ve only been on three dates in the year and a half that I’ve been out, but I still can’t help but wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Emily and I had a long talk about this last night, and then with Justin this afternoon: both of them assured me that isn’t true. So even if I’m some sort of unicorn, I’m still alone.

Perhaps my standards are too high. I am expecting a lot from one person (speaking of unicorns). But of course they’re high, because I take this quite seriously—and this is my future. Our future. And I’m not looking to date “casually” (ye gods, I hate that term).

The thing that sucks most about this is that I could do the club scene if I wanted to. I could be getting laid every night, but I won’t because that’s not me. My fucking morals get in the way, and we both know that playing the slut and having wild, crazy sex wouldn’t make me happy in the end. So I’m taking the high ground and am still miserable. In the end, I may be right, but no less alone.

I do know that the # 1 thing I’m looking for in a guy is that he loves Jesus, can articulate why, and has reconciled his sexuality and his faith to a degree where ten years down the road he won’t suddenly realise that being gay is wrong and leave me. That is a deal breaker. Even if he’s the most amazing guy in the world, if we can’t agree that Jesus is everything, we’re not going to be able to agree on anything else. Yes, that’s a massive generalisation, but when it comes down to it, that’s got to be central.

Because the fact is that I’m a progressive fundamentalist, proud of it, and I take Scripture and its place in my life very seriously. So as I said to a friend of mine at work this afternoon, if he loves Jesus (in a serious way, not in a “Jesus is my friend” way), everything else will fall into place because our priorities align.

I’m saying this knowing that such a man is probably rare, and my chances of actually finding one are about as good as getting struck by lightning three times in the same day. I’m not too hopeful or optimistic, but trying not to be bitter and jaded. No one wants chewy snickerdoodles. However, with each new rejection, all my fears and insecurities are being reinforced and confirmed, and I’m finding myself less willing to be generous, and more guarded with my heart and affections. Even this time around, being open-minded and trying to not have any expectations, I still got my heart stomped. Not intentionally, but it still happened.

Again, I’m trying not to have expectations going into this—dating, and all. There are some general things that I’m looking for, of course, besides the spiritual aspects. As a male, attractiveness is sort of a presumed quality. And some of us get a lot of flack for it, but I’m definitely looking for a masculine, non-effeminate guy. While he doesn’t need to be built and muscular, I am attracted to slimmer, trimmer guys. Toned is a plus, but not essential. An average build would be acceptable, but let’s be honest (and this is a very crude analogy so bear with me), it’s like buying furniture—first you have to imagine it being around for a while before committing to it. He’ll have to do the same with me. I’m picturing having sex with this person (and lots of it), but also waking up, going to sleep, eating, arguing and travelling with him. And some of that will happen over time as I get to know him.

On the positive side, one of the good things that’s come out of this is that in actually contemplating being with someone, I would be willing to adopt children and raise a family with the right guy; and those of you who know me know how I feel about kids, and how radical a statement that is.

I might have said this before, but I wouldn’t need to work as much as I do. The craziness of my life is largely a placebo to fill the empty void-chunks that remind me that I’m a miserable, lonely guy. And it would be nice to be able to pour time into someone rather than something. Sure, I’ve accomplished lots in the last five years, but I also want be known for being a good boyfriend.

It also made me realise that I do want to get married, regardless of whether or not it’s legal and recognised by the time we get to that point. I’m kind of old fashioned, and want to formally commit to one guy (even though the sex part might not be attached to any sort of ceremony). It would certainly be weird having my family there, if they decided to come at all. But hell, I’ve had to watch my sister kiss her husband, so they can damn well do the same for me.

But moral of the story is, via extrapolated matter analyses from a piece of fairy cake, I’ve determined that since I haven’t found the right guy at 27 that it won’t happen at all, because the statistical likelihood of actually finding what I want is pretty low. And the one guy I did find who seems absolutely perfect isn’t interested in me in that way.

So I’m sort of getting a bit of my own from when I broke up with my first boyfriend. Now the glove is on the other hand. And it hurts like a banshee, man.

In conclusion, it should be noted that I’m not giving up entirely on seminary guy (but in a non-creepy, wait and see way). I am kind of an acquired taste. Maybe over the next few months, if he doesn’t start dating someone else, I can win him over with the charms I’m going to acquire over the next few months. Maybe I could try singing some Dr. Horrible to him sometime…

I just think you need time to know
That I’m the guy to make it real
The feelings you don’t dare to feel
I’ll bend the world to our will
And we’ll make time stand still
That’s the plan
Rule the world
You and me
Any day
Love your hair

Happy Birthday to me.