chip

spikey bleached blonde hair. grey/blue eyes. a boyish but chiseled face, framed with tight little sideburns, with a naughty smirk that reveals perfect white teeth and a wicked tongue. slim swimmers build… biceps and six pack but it’s really an 8-pack. exactly as tall as me, so we can see eye-to-eye and so things line up appropriately. a white boy from the midwest with california skaterboy mentalities… perhaps a tongue piercing to spice things up.

we all have types, you know… types of people that you have dated or will date or are attracted to or were attracted to. for me, the above is my ideal type. the getmyjuicesflowingohmygodican’tstop type.

in high school in indiana, it was jeff, the quarterback of the football team one year older than me. think zack from saved by the bell, but hotter. jeff who i sat next to in trigonometry class, who i helped with his homework, who invited me to the parties. jeff who, to this day, am convinced was well aware of my affection.

when i started reading xy magazine, it was nathan, that delicious skaterboy raverboy from wisconsin whom i used to send fan mail to, then exchanged emails with, and who i had a disasterous date with. nathan, who, years later would be a writer at the very same magazine that i was now editor of.

and now i need to tell you about chip.

even though i shouldn’t, i really really shouldn’t.

chip is straight. no, bi. no, gay. but it doesn’t matter anyway, dude, you know?

chip has a boyfriend. they have an open relationship. no they don’t. we’re just fooling around, right?

chip plays the game better than me. it’s a symbiotic relationship… he needs me about as badly as i need him, but yet i’m always the one feeling like a complete ass afterwards.

the first time i met chip was at .discotec, and it wasn’t until we snogged macked for a few minutes that he told me he was with his boyfriend. i assumed he was just another confused american tourist exploiting and getting exploited by the london scene. i lied to him, agreeing that being bisexual is valid [i'm closeminded like that] and that i have no prejudices against straight/confused/bi boys [so not true—did you read #5 and #6 below?].

weeks later, after a few text messages, i convinced chip to come over late one night for [what was really my first ever] random hookup. he demanded a few cocktails before being comfortable for even a kiss. he was quirky, sarcastic, borderline rude, but eventually we had the slumber party that we both wanted, and it was hot.

eyes-rolling-back-in-the-head hot. steam up the windows, hand prints on the ceiling, where-did-the-past-6-hours-go hot. the next morning, i embarassed him horribly with a kiss in the early morning mist of finsbury park as he got on the bus back home.

months later, after entirely too many text messages, we meet again, this time at his place for some midday fun. his sarcasm has changed into full-out abuse, and i sit there staring at this object of my affection as he slags me off… asking me why my teeth are stained and saying my feet smell and telling me i have bad music taste. i know that this is all a horrible mistake, but i rationalize it as being no different than when 7yo sally tells billy that he’s gross.

it’s dr. jekyl and mr. hyde, in equal increments. i threaten to leave or to wash my smelly feet to appease him and suddenly he’s all affectionate and we’re at it again. afterwards, post-coitus he asks me if he’s going to catch anything from me because i’m gay. i explain [but don't lecture] about safe sex, and assure him that everything’s going to be okay.

over the next few months, i get flurries of text messages. he wants me to leave work and come over. he wants to come to my office and go into a conference room. eventually, we agree to meet up at my place one evening, but through a comedy of errors he ends up wandering the streets of vauxhall on his own at 1am, while i’m unknowingly [...] tucked away asleep in bed.

another instance, he gets so annoyingly persistant, that i refer darian over to him, just because i can’t attend to his constant texting. they exchange texts and agree to meet up, with neither of them knowing what the other looks like. whatever, none of my business… all i know is that got chip off my back case for a week or two.

you have to understand the torment. i fall easily and fall hard for boys this stunning. he’s a 9.9/10 for me, and that says a lot. psychologically, i’m attracted to his bad boy behavior. and i’m fascinated by him. he’s intelligent yet confused. confident yet insecure. and he trusts me, he’s slowly letting me into his closeted world.

this monday i hear from him. he’s having a crisis and needs someone to talk to. we meet after work. i feel like i’ve chugged red bull and snorted poppers while standing on my head. my heart is in my throat and i can hear it in my ears. blood is flowing. nervousness. anticipation. horniness.

dude, you live in the fucking ghetto [it's fucking zone one vauxhall inside the congestion charge with nice local amenities, bitch] and dude, why are you dressed like that [cuz i had meetings at work, bitch] and your place looks like one of those prefabricated model homes [give me a break, student boy] and, and, and. i can see where this is going, so i pour us some beer. we chug it. then some more. we chug it.

and then some more beer. and then a cocktail. even me, the alcoholic, even my head is swimming. while imagining him naked, i am also playing the part of good concerned friend and dishing out some excellent advice. as i’m talking, he interrupts, telling me you know, you’re like the only gay person i’ve talked to like this.
Continue reading ’straight boyfriend countdown: #3 chip’

ben

it took me sometime to get over the heartbreak i felt from sam—for 6 months i was morose and angry and depressed and moody. of course, most of it was due to my own lack of experience immaturity, coupled with all of the other stresses and strains one encounters when going away to college plus all of the unique pressures of caltech.

towards the end of my second year of university, i started to finally have fun and enjoy life again. ricketts house [one of the 7 student houses at caltech] throws an amazing party called apache [uh-posh'] each valentines day. the party has a unique theme—it’s an underground jazz- and wine-fuelled french revolution-era party. but it also has a kinky crossdressing cabaret feel to it as well.

if you’re lucky enough to get an invitation, you and your date [dressed probably as a 1940s frenchman, military figure or just in burlesque lingere] must head to the far side of campus, and enter the tunnels underneath campus. there, you’re met by a member of the resistance party, who will point you in the right direction for the soirée. for the next 30 minutes, you wind through cavernous tunnels—lit only by candlelight—not knowing where you’ll end up.

eventually, you hear the telltale echoes of cocktail party chatter and jazz music coming down the last tunnel. as you emerge up the ladder, you realize you’ve been transported to 1940s france, surrounded by boys in vests and berets, girls [and boys] in lingere, vamps, goths and plenty of hot soldier boys, all enjoying wine and cheese and slow-dancing to the bubbly jazz quartet, happily and smoothly playing to a spacious courtyard with a balmy, twinkling evening sky above.

still innocent, and not yet an alcoholic, it took no time at all for me to nervously drink myself silly off of the cheap red wine. dancing by the bonfire with my friends, i couldn’t stop marvelling at how authentic the party felt—how i truly felt transported back in time.

i was sharing a dance with laura, one of my best friends, and someone who i’d just come out to. we clicked, definitely, but were so very different. her, a devout christian, participating in weekly bible studies. me, a burgeoning homosexualist, participating in weekly porn downloads. but, we had one thing in common—we both fancied ben.

ben was athletic [by caltech standards] and geeky [even by caltech standards]. he was a year ahead of me in school [pursuing a masters in math, already having a bachelors in computer science] but a year younger than me in age. a genius, even by caltech standards.

ben was most famous, however, for being constantly barefoot and kicking a soccer ball around campus, wearing nothing more than ratty umbro soccer shorts, crazy bleached hair everywhere and muscles glistening in the sun. people liked to poke fun at him, myself included, but also appreciated when he’d help laura and i with our math homework.

apache was purposefully underground and decadent, and there was a purposefully alternative [gay/trans/crossdressing/fetish] vibe to it. ben was standing alone, finishing some wine, so with no hesitation, i held out my hand and asked him to dance.

we danced, jokingly at first, beret to beret, then more intimately, striped shirt to striped shirt. his breath was heavy and stinking of sweet red wine. our eyes met, and we kissed. around us, a circle of onlookers, including several of the girls he was flirting with earlier—and his date, dressed in her sluttiest negligé.

we exit the party in silence, and he looks unhappy. we need to talk, he tells me.

it’s 4am at this point, and after a 5-minute stroll across campus, he takes out a key, unlocks the door to dabney hall, the beautiful, cavernous, ornately-tiled humanities building. which, as it so happens, also has a hidden roof patio.

we climb through the top-floor window, take off our berets, and sit on the patio, silently overlooking the mountains surrounding the san gabriel valley, breathing in the cool but moist early-morning mist.

after a few minutes, he starts: dude, i don’t really know what that was all about…

and then he stops.

he tries a few more times, but each time can’t quite finish his sentence.

his words say no, his body says yes.

this time, i’m not fucking around. no more tiptoeing around campus, no more hiding our relationship. the weeks fly by. he sleeps over, we go out in public. he decides that he’s proudly bisexual.

but, unlike sam, there’s no romance. at least, not on his part. we argue constantly, over everything and nothing… where to have dinner, why he didn’t zchat me, where he was last night.

but the sex is good, and i’m still naive and young and confused about not only what i want, but what i should put up with. we go our separate ways for the summer, and rendezvous at my mother’s home in indiana for a week. my poor mom, still oblivous at this point, insists on us just sharing a bed [you're both big boys, what's the big deal?] but i awkwardly insist on separate rooms.

back at school in california, just before classes resume, i catch ben cheating on me. in a hottub. with a boy? no. with a girl? no.

with two girls.

he rationalizes it, saying that as a bisexual he has needs that i can’t fulfill. and, using his theoretical math skills, he outlines a rock-solid proof as to why this shouldn’t affect our relationship. oh no you di-int! i state to him very very clearly. kick him, and his soccer ball, to the curb: heartbreak #2.

of course, to top it all off, within weeks my stomach/libido/ego/groin/heart wretches to learn that there’s a new hot couple on campus: ben is now dating sam [straight boyfriend #6]. last i heard, they’re still together, living happily ever after in berkeley.

and, to this day, ben is the only boyfriend of mine that my mother has met… albeit, unknowingly.

blind passenger

you know how i lived in east germany, right?

well, i was a 15yo cultural sponge, and i soaked up the dark moody throbbing synthpop that covered every crumbling gray concrete surface in brandenburg. in addition to the usual staples [depeche mode, erasure], i also became indoctrinated into local cults like oomph and blind passengers.

blind passengers had one hit in particular which echos into my noggin somewhat frequently… a little track called too much. the vocals were effeminate yet fierce, and of course the lyrics were all in broken english:

okay, typed out it sounds lame, but it was catchy and an appropriate way to just throw your hands up and admit to being overwhelmed by the world around you.

yeah, that’s how i feel. some say that there’s not enough hours in the day… i feel like there aren’t enough days in my life. i see the weeks/months/years flying by and i’m not making the progress that i’d like to.

today, in particular, i was just generally pissed off. i left work after 6, and hadn’t finished nearly as much as i’d hoped. i got home, made myself a delicious caramel mocha, and cranked through some updates to marcos’ website. my lovely portugese stalker/lover/stalker phones me, reminding me that i promised to have dinner with his friends… i feign illness *cough* *cough* and he sees right through my excuse.

i chug another coffee, and get ready to sort through some material for the magazine. fuck, now it’s 10pm. the music’s loud, my fingers are flying across the keys, but i’m just not making a dent in the huge mound of an inbox.

knock knock knock, it’s atif. he collapses on my bed, bitching about the week he’s had, with a patient dying on him earlier today. okay, i may not be able to top that, but i show him a very important letter that i’ve been stressing about for, oh, i dunno, a year. he throws a skinny tee on me, fixes my hair, and drags me across the street for .south central’s 1st birthday party.

inside there’s a million familiar faces and free drinks and great music and glittery go-go boys and i’m just not feeling it. maybe it’s all the coffee. then .greg and .marcos and wes arrive, but there’s bad mojo swirling around and i’m still not having fun. i keep thinking about the 16,000,000 things i really should be doing.

then we’re at rude boyz… again. this time, i’m stone-cold sober, and the cute but sleazy promoter is all over me, trying to convince me to do the amateur strip contest. i’m not flattered in the slightest, and am feeling nauseated regardless. 2 minutes later, he asks again. a few minutes later, he asks again. drunken atif agrees to sign me up, and it’s just getting annoying. i go to the toilets cuz i’m just not feeling well, and he’s there—again—offering me £600 to take off my clothes. actually, his accent was so thick it sounded like he said, i give you six hundred pounds for you clothes funky hee hee.

there is too much. the day job, the magazine, this blog, my favours to my friends. and then, there’s the socializing… the great great friends that i haven’t seen in 6 months. the trips that i’ve been procrasturbating about for years. and the boys i’m sorta dating. vying for my time.

there is too much. i want to sow the seeds for the future, but it seems as if the years just fly by, with little-to-no progress being made. it’s frustrating, and sometimes this frustration comes to a head.

tonight, it came to ahead as i stood, surrounded by 100 wannabe scally lads, fred perry tops with collars ironed high by their mums, cluching the cans of lager even though they’d rather be slurping alcopops and snorting k, pretending that they’re common ladz when you know they despise the strippers on stage who claim to shop at jd sports.

i started to bark at atif and .greg, and that’s when i knew that i’d had too much. too much distractions. too much regrets. too much to do, too much guilt, inputs, loving, hating—all coming at me at a thousand miles per hour.

wish i could just hit pause.

green day… well… where to start. green day were officially my 2nd favorite band throughout much of high school… i was initially drawn to them as prescient pubescent rumblings indicated to me, hey eric, you should -definitely- put up lots of posters featuring these 3 cute punk rawk boys all over your teenage bedroom walls. and i loved their music… for me, a suburban whitey struggling to escape, they captured my angst well enough. i shopped all over town trying to find their music, and in the end i mail-ordered their back catalogue, saving up enough of my minimum-wage earnings to get that money order for $48.00 for four e.p.s plus shipping and handling.

my highschool friends mostly hated green day [they were more into ace of base or tlc], but because i was the only one who could drive they were forced to listen to my mix tapes. as we’d pimp around after school [read—circle around the block and maybe sneak over to taco bell], they’d have to endure a spotty 17yo eric, so incredibly far-removed from the punk rawk scene, yet still needing to explain song after song to his friends.

old school [pre-1,039 smoothed-out slappy hours] green day was just a smorgasbord of distorted, amped 3-minute long teen angst anthems… and, at the time nearly every song applied [obviously] to me and my teen angst. the track that resounded the most with me was coming clean, which was one of the very first evijhserf entries.

here i am, some *cough* *cough* 10 years later. and i have to say i’m still madly in love with billy joe, tre cool and mike dirnt. before, it was pupply love [horny teen infatuation]. now, now i grin from ear-to-ear as singles off their recent album climb to the top of the charts, saying a big fuck you to redneck america.

after a naughty weekend of lazzzer-fuelled afterhours clubbing, drowning in puddles of tech house and vocal trance and gritty electro, .gregiño and i effortlessly shifted gears to see our favorite punk pop band live and in concert at the hammersmith apollo.

highlights:

1. walking past the queue of 5,000 punters waiting to get into a venue with 1,800 capacity, we decided to grab a greasy snack at the chippy. inside, were two 16yo punk rock girls from swindon [where's your accent from? we all asked one-another] who had been queueing for 8 hours, only to be turned away for having fake tickets. apparently some shmuck on ticket scalping central offloaded tons of counterfeit tickets. superhuman green day somehow convinced the venue to cram in an extra 1,000 fans—fire regulations be damned!

2. absolutely perfect seats—3rd row center of the balcony—which put us within sweating and spitting distance of the band [almost], and provided us an excellent eagle-eyed view of the shirtless, mohawked mosh pit below. in front of us, a lanky pierced 16yo punk rock boi, accompanied by his chubby 8yo little brother, who mimicked his older bro’s every cheer, clap, move and groove. absolutely adorable.

3. the band still exudes raw punk rawk energy from start to sweaty finish. billy joe hyperactively jumps around stage and climbs the speaker stacks. mike dirnt convulses on the ground with his bass. and tre cool excitedly pummels through 22,000 drumsticks, with a goofy forlorn look on his face throughout.

4. the lighting setup is perfectly suited for a band like green day. the show opens with an impressive wall of strobes which immiediately synchronizes your brainwaves to their riddims. then, throughout the show, video screens and projectors and fiber-optic curtains pop up to program the audience with the band’s anti-bush, anti-redneck political propaganda.

5. they keep it real—for real. billy joe takes a few minutes out to just repeatedly say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and you can tell that he means it. and, probably one of the most unique things i’ve seen in a while:

6. when billy joe asks, can anyone here play bass? and, before you know it, they’ve dragged 3 willing kids from the audience up on stage, and have them play the drums, bass and guitar for basketcase. i’ve never seen three luckier—and happier—teenage boys. the guitarist kid finishes his performance with a perfectly-executed stage dive. ace.

and, finally…

7. the brilliant creative energy they invested into the show. throwing in a horn section gave a few tunes a more skavoovie flavor, and allowed for some funky james brown moments—particularly when billy joe kept faux-fainting on stage, and one of the horn players would throw a fur cape on him, which [of course] was shrugged off moments later. is billy joe now the hardest working man in punk rawk? and they ended the show on a camp high note, with a solid rendition of we are the champions.

i love music. i love clubbing. i love deejaying. i love tunespotting. i love internet radio. i love my mp3 player. i love superstar deejays.

but, dammit, i love poppy punk, i love live gigs full of energy, and i loves me my green day.