although i feel completely out of place, i think i’m fitting in. my body is so filled with anxiety that i don’t even bother buying an actual coffee drink from the red door café—the last thing i need now is caffeine. i find a nice corner table and crack open my bottle of sparkling water.

it’s a gorgeous golden autumn afternoon, leaves are falling from the trees, and all the students are in weekend mode, leisurely walking and chatting, or stumbling back from their laboratories after a long day of vivisecting mice or debugging multi-threaded algorithms. it’s the most peaceful i’ve ever seen campus, and i have trouble meshing this image with my memory of my four years at caltech.

in my manpurse i brought my ipod and a book and a notepad and 6 different pens. i systematically take each item out and arrange it on my table. my heart is still kinda racing, and i have no idea why. i look out across the courtyard and take another big gulp of my fizzy water. more leaves fall, more students i don’t know stroll by.

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times is my reply [usually with a roll of the eyes and a smirk] when people dare to ask me about my years at this nerd camp. people usually assume i’m referring to the strenuous curriculum. unfortunately, quantum physics and differential equations aren’t why my heart is racing this afternoon.

it’s not just the memories of clayton [ugh], or of sam [eek], or of steve or of chris—it’s the combination of all of them. lovers lost, friends taken from me, hearts broken. i knew moving back to los angeles, eventually i’d need to revisit these demons, and this afternoon something brought me back to pasadena, to sit here and… remember.

i feel a little bit insane, giggling to myself here at this café table all by my lonesome, as i think back over all of the good times. and i feel a little bit human, looking down at my blank notepad pretending to write, when i’m really just holding back the tears as i remember the not-so-good times. heartache sucks. love sucks. death sucks. the past—in this case, at this very moment—sucks.

some amount of time [2 minutes? 20 minutes? 2 days?] go by as i watch more leaves fall, and remember more and more long-forgotten memories. there must by hundreds of subtle visual and olfactory clues here that are helping me resurrect tidbits from the archives…

sneaking around campus late at night. ditching classes. sitting on the floor of my dorm, talking. cuddling. smiling.

not understanding why it was all happening. crying in the rain. saying goodbye. not being able to say goodbye.

i hear an ahem! directly next to me and snap out of my trance. i glance over and see a smile. without me noticing, a lanky, shaggy blue-haired boy took over the table next to mine. piercing gray eyes, tank top and baggy jeans and a stack of books. his eyebrow ring glistens in the late-afternoon sun as he glances down at his homework with pursed lips.

ten minutes later he catches me staring, and smiles back, again. nonplussed, i look off into the distance as i contemplate the meaning of life, what i’m eating for dinner and if, perhaps, whether i should just leave this boy to his own devices. he taps his pencil nervously before scribbling some stuff down on his notepad, tearing off the page, crumpling it up, and leaving it in the middle of his table. as he packs his bag, stands all 6’2″ of himself up and strolls off, he brushes the shaggy blue hair from his eyes one last time as he looks back with a smile.

expecting to find a hot love lust letter, phone number, or @caltech.edu email address, i uncrumple his paper. disappointed, i instead find a geodesic equation that i can’t quite satisfy. luckily, i’ve come a bit closer to satisfying my own equation—that complex formula of my life. today i came a bit closer to solving some variables i’d long forgotten about.

it’s been one of those weeks where i find myself swimming from party event to party event, trying my damnedest to fit in to this town of faux a-listers and gay-listers and wannabe celebutants.

i look around and i see people apparently having fun. be it the gay media afterparty or the filled-to-capacity v.i.p. room or even the ironic divey hole-in-the-wall. pleasantly chatting to each other, sheepishly cruising me, nervously clutching their grey goose-and-whatevers.

i run into lance, a cute shaggy surfer dude that i dated a while ago. last time i saw him was on halloween where he drunken lamented how much he missed me and wanted to hang out again. he didn’t really say as much, but the way that he groped me through my vanilla ice costume kind of inferred as much. i reluctantly gave him my phone number for about the eighth time.

tonight he’s dressed very dapper, and as he swims through the crowd i pretend i don’t see him. hey, you! he says and leans in for a kiss. i deflect by raising my cocktail and clinking glasses with him. he smells of lime juice and pretentiousness. even as he puts the moves on me he’s looking over my shoulder.

i know it’s not just the hollywood scene, i know part of it has to do with how jaded i am. but i just don’t get how and why boys run wild in this city, cramming themselves into boring faux-v.i.p. settings and pretend that they’re fabulous.

conversation starters: what kind of car do you drive?, 24 hour fitness or gold’s gym

about 95% of the boys in any bar have straightened hair. i thought gays were trendsetters… little emo boys in nebraska were hip to the angsty swoosh in 2003.

my new favorite thing to pick on is the presenting of the abs. following on the poetic no pecs no sex mantra of the 90s, boys now are obsessed about having a 6-pack… washboard abs are more important than personality, i’ve learned.

just last week i watched two boys walk up to each other, smile, chat for about 30 seconds, and then each lift up their shirts. if they would’ve touched bellies, it would’ve been hilarious. instead they just stood there comparing 6-packs and then exchanged phone numbers. charmed.

i wish i found these boys attractive. i wish i could go dancing to music that doesn’t make me roll my eyes. i wish people talked to one another. i wish i weren’t so choosy.

all the cool kids are doing it…

those of you who know me really well [close friends, close enemies, close stalkers] know that i love nothing more than learning. learning is earning. learning is burning. learning is gurning.

here are some of the things i’ve learned in the past week, this first week of 2006:

1. someone has created a song about myspace. why don’t you have a listen as i continue the list? go on. push the button. don’t push the button. change the station. change the chanellllllll….

   no drama. no no myspace drama.
   [thanks, .greg]

2. the better care i take care of myself [e.g. drinking less, sleeping more, eating healthy, exercising, taking multivitamins, drinking green tea], the more prone i am to fall ill. seems like whenever i decide to stay in for a weekend, or whenever i get on a new health kick and start hitting the gym more frequently, i end up with in implausibly gruesome cold or flu.

   on the other hand, when i spend a weekend boozing it up, making out with all sorts of gross silverlake boys, and eating fast food, i’m right as rain. maybe my body’s telling me i’m already past the point of trying to be healthy again, so why bother? i think i’ve heard my liver just shrug and go, meh?

3. riding the bus in los angeles is a surprisingly fun adventure. highlights so far include: crazy old man with beard hurling obscenities towards all the ethnic minorities [fucking' slibba slobbas, coming over here to take my [hiccup] our [hiccup] jobs awww fuckit]. crazy old man without beard hurling nonsensical obscenities towards the children, none of whom would even understand the 50s-era vocabulary he was using [you wanna come over and ride on the pony? we'll go to drive in. yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't ya ya little gretchen!]

   my favorite had to be the self-important teenage skateboarder boy who sat slouched for the whole bus ride, repeating the same two phrases on his cell phone to probably about 20 different callers, hey. i’m on the bus. no, i’m on the bus. what? no, i’m on the bus. yeah. uh-huh. no, i’m on the bus. the bus. i’m on the bus. yeah. are you going to hollywood tonight? yeah, me too. i’m on the bus on my way over. yeah

   and also

   the fucker broke my board. yeah. the fucker. he’s such a fucker, breaking my board like that. i know! it was brand new. that fucker’s buying me a new one. what? no, i’m on the bus…

   i’m still waiting for keanu and sandra to jump on and rescue me.

4. and, sadly, the new year started with a grim observation. the cute boy who works at the café next to my office, with whom i’ve been flirting with for the past 3 months, seems to have disappeared without a trace. i’m… [sniff]… i’m [sniff sniff] dealing with my grief in my own way, on my own terms— please don’t worry.

   with the grief, of course, comes anger. how could he do this to me? just vanish, without so much as a goodbye? after all we’d been through. the knowing glances from across the counter as he’d squirt raspberry flavoring into my plastic cup, only to fill it sexily with ice cubes moments later, and then pour his hot hot mocha on top?

   i never even got his name, sadly. but we’d winked at each other at least a dozen times. he was so cute… i’m almost certain he was either english or dutch [not that those two nationalities necessarily look similar, i'm just giving you my expert analysis]. in addition to his eurocute demeanor, he was my height, maybe 23, dark spikey hair, rosy cheeks and a constant smirk on his face.

   the last time i saw him was late one friday night, as a i stumbled from .the abbey to .the factory… we bumped into each other in that dark alleyway connecting the two hotspots… me with a gaggle of friends, him with his arm around a girl. for 0.8 seconds we stared and smiled. it wasn’t until 4.5 seconds later that it clicked who he was and i how i recognized him.

   but, by then it was too late. like kaiser ooze, he had vanished in a puff of smoke, without a trace. nice knowing you, hot café boy, nice knowing you. thanks for the memories, and the hot chai lattes.

5. atif, one of my best friends in the whole universe, slept with my hot straight boyfriend, chip. as much as i poke fun at chip, i did really like the lad, and wish i had a chance to say a proper goodbye to him. instead of goodbye, though, it appears that atif gave him a little how’s your father? my boy atif has made me proud… convincing chip that he, himself, was straight, luring him back to the den of sin [a.k.a. my old bedroom] and having his way with him.

   the icing [ewww... imagery] on the cake? afterwards, atif pulls up my website, showing him my blog, and doing the big reveal… guess what? i’m actually gay, and eric is one of my best mates! a ha! ha ha! ha HA! petty? perhaps. but i feel as if the balance of sexual power, of pulling politics, of the economics of sleaze has been finally restored.

well, kiddies, what have you learned so far this year? comments at right, in the tagboard, please.