trendymatt's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24.99998 and holding... It seems that my latest personal theme is that I feel like I'm faking it through life. I'm a sham, a poser, a charlatan. Ah, enter the fall season and the corresponding trigger in my brain for introspection as the leaves fall. This all came about one day about a week ago when I realized that while everyone around me seems to be generally overbooked, overworked, and scheduled to death, I've found myself with more free time than I can remember having since early grade school. This brought about the first level of my self-professed fakery: the job. Yeah, I have an office, but that's where work generally ends for me these days. I manage to run a research team meeting every Monday afternoon in which I rely on my bosses' inability to come to a consensus on anything to make it look like I'm accomplishing something when really, I've used the same meeting agenda for three weeks straight. I saved my own ass this afternoon when I remembered to change the date on last week's agenda before printing it out. Go me. And I would feel really bad about this if one of the bosses hadn't suggested a "department retreat" to go outlet shopping in Cincinnati sometime in the coming weeks. Compared to her, I'm a highly motivated go-getter. At one point over the weekend, I was wandering the aisles of Meijer when I came across a large selection of outdoor grills on clearance. Oddly enough, this translated to the second manifestation of personal fakery: manhood. My male readers might want to turn their heads for the remainder paragraph, because I'm about to divulge one of the deep, dark secrets of the male psyche to the ladies: forget shaving, losing one's virginity, driving a car, or fathering a child - the one true measurement indicating that one has become a man is through the use of open flame for cooking. I have never ventured outside my kitchen to cook a meal, and any time flame has been involved has been purely accidental. Seeing the line of bright and shiny, yet undeniably masculine Weber grills in what remained of the Meijer lawn & garden department brought it all full-circle for me. And, if I thought I would have more than two or three weeks of grilling weather left on the calendar I would have bought myself one of them for my own personal growth ritual. As it stands, I guess I'll either have to wait until next summer or start cooking my burgers with a disposable Bic. The third and final circle of deception is that of being a card-carrying, Pride parade-marching fag. Oh, sure, I get by. I've found myself dating guys for weeks or months at a time. I've even tapped into some latent lesbian tendencies by embracing the music of Melissa Ferrick and the Indigo Girls. I regularly give money to the HRC and try to go to a few Fairness activities a year. But I am completely devoid of a working knowledge of all that is revered as good and holy in the queer world: classic gay cinema. Yeah, I've seen In and Out and I own all of Margaret Cho's stand-up shows on DVD, but I can't quote a line from Funny Girl or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane to save my life. I haven't yet been exposed to Valley of the Dolls. I have no clue of the significance of the classic line: "But you are, Blanche. You are in that chair!" That alone is enough for many to request the immediate revokation of my Pink Card. So, that's where I stand. To put it more simply, I find myself turning twenty-five in a few days and I'm now making things up to obsess over at this, the age I had always envisioned as being the start of getting "old." Because, honestly, I don't have all that much to bitch about (for once) and it just doesn't seem right to usher in my mid-twenties in such a carefree manner. I am a child of the grunge generation, after all. 10:28 pm - 10.18.04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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