Maybe You Should Try Not Being So Much Yourself.

When I was a teenager, I bathed maybe once a week. I also didn’t believe in combing my hair. And my junk continually itched, so I’d have to reach down and scratch my balls from time to time, which – I am reluctant to say – I’d do in class.

I could not understand why I was so alone in high school.

And if life was a movie, what I would have learned after a whacky adventure was that I just needed to be more myself! Stay true to me, and friendships will follow.

Whereas the truth was that I stunk like a velour-clad hobo. And according to the social mores of the school, I’d marked myself as a weirdo.

Fortunately, as time went by, I paid attention to the signs. When I asked, “Why am I so alone?” I made note of the things that the bullies made fun of me for – and my unwashed hair and self-crotch-grabbing were top on the list.

After months of loneliness, I started to think, “….Maybe this is something that people care about.”

Because I wasn’t dodging showers thanks to some moral commitment – I just didn’t think it was all that important. My hair was uncombed because I never noticed anyone’s hair, so why would I notice mine? And while yeah, my balls itched, I wasn’t on a crusade to make people care about public testicular manipulation. I was itchy, so I scratched.

I couldn’t see how these irrelevant things mattered to anyone.

Out of sheer curiosity, I performed a scientific experiment: for a semester, I’d do these stupid things and see what happened. So I started to comb my hair. (Being me, I flipped to “combing my hair obsessively,” to the point where people made fun of me for my nervous habit of combing my hair, but hey, at least that was an improvement.) I showered more often – which had the unexpected benefit of making my junk itch less. And when I had to scratch the jimmies, I went into the bathroom like, apparently, normal people did.

You know what happened?

I discovered that people cared about really stupid things.

I won’t say I became the belle of the ball, but the average kids in the school went from “actively mocking me” to “ignoring me” – which, let me tell you, is a major upgrade when you’re getting bullied.

The science teachers taught me how old scientists had discovered tiny, invisible creatures called bacteria that nobody could see, but caused huge changes in life. I sympathized. Because in my Great Washing Experiment, I had discovered that there were invisible rules – things I utterly did not care about myself, but apparently made other people act in wildly different methods.

I came to realize that my personality was, in large part, an unconscious negotiation. Showing up in Cheeto-stained clothes told people something about how I was going to interact with them. They reacted accordingly.

If I paid attention to these invisible rules, I could change what people thought of me.

And as time went by, I discovered these rules weren’t “invisible” so much as “invisible to me.” My Mom had yelled at me to shower. My Dad had told me to stop scratching myself. But I had written all of these warnings off because I didn’t think they should make a difference to people, and so I’d just quietly erased the knowledge.

Over and over and over again.

So I quietly began renegotiating my personality – what did other people care about that I didn’t? It turns out that they didn’t like me changing the topic to something more interesting all that much. Nor did they like it when I raised my voice when I got excited.

Did I want to give up raising my voice when I got excited?

What elements were me, and what elements were negotiable?

“Who I was” became a careful dance. Because some things I didn’t care about – taking ten minutes to shower every morning felt like wasted time, but it really made my life better, so I went for it. Yet other things I did care about – I liked D&D, dammit, and if talking about my noble paladin Delvin Goodheart made me a nerd, then maybe I was a nerd.

I had to calculate costs for these invisible rules. People judged me by my clothing – should I put in the effort to learn how to dress really well, or should I do the bare minimum not to be shunned? (I dressed in nothing but black T-shirts and jeans for years because picking out the “right” clothing stressed me out – but that was enough to be acceptable in most places.)

I learned when you could get away with a good dick joke and when to let the opportunity slide – usually through paying attention to awkward silences and going, “Oh, that’s probably bad, isn’t it?” I learned what sorts of conversations made people uncomfortable, and what made them welcome.

I learned that paying attention was a skill. Those invisible rules? You had to look for them. People often didn’t tell you how you’d fucked up – you had to watch for the tensed shoulders, the glance to one side that said I am hunting for an escape from you.

Slowly, I became someone who was actually kind of liked. I’d become the sort of person who not only got invited to parties, but was actually welcomed at them.

And other unwashed nerds started to envy me. They’d corner me, telling me how I didn’t know what it was like, I was never really a nerd, I mean, look, people like you.

And I’d reply, “I know you think my personality is something inherent – but I used to be a nut-grabbing, unwashed outcast. You can get here from there, man – I know because I did it. And maybe it all starts from believing that there are low-cost ways you can change yourself positively to make a difference with other people. You jus have to pay attention.”

“Nah,” they’d say. “Some people just have it. And others don’t.”

And I want to tell them about the invisible rules. I want to tell them how yes, the way they stand too close to me makes a difference, and the way they arrogantly cut me off in mid-sentence makes a difference, and the way they forgot to wear deodorant this morning makes a difference. I want to tell them that yes, I know you don’t think it should make a difference, but there’s a distinction between the way you want the world to work and the way it does right now, and the sooner you can adjust to at least being aware of all these silly social customs, even if you never actually follow them, the sooner your life will start to change for the better.

But I remember me, back in the day. I remember Mom yelling at me that I had to comb my hair, and me going, “Who cares about that?”

A lot of people, as it turns out. And if I’d chosen not to comb my hair because I believed that my wild mane was important to who I was, and I had strode out to my eighth-grade class knowing that some people would think less of me for it, then that would have been an acceptable cost.

But I didn’t. Like these nerds haranguing me about my personality, I walked out with uncombed hair because I didn’t care, and because of that I blithely assumed that nobody else *could* care.

Alas. The world has an ugly way of teaching you lessons, even if you never learn them.

Threesomes Are A Lot Like Sex When You’re A Teenager.

When you haven’t had it yet, you feel like you’re missing out on something.

When you haven’t had it yet, everyone else seems like they have. Everyone has advice on how to make it happen, and yet the people with the most advice seem to be the most clueless about the actual act.

There’s a lot of people who claim to have done it and are, yes, bullshitting. Or at least bullshitting about how often it’s happened to them.

When you haven’t had it yet, your fantasies about what it’ll be like when you do have it are more influenced by porn depictions than you think they are. Even if you know porn is influencing you. Yeah, even then.

The people who’ve had it and tell you it’s not the be-all and end-all of experiences seem like they’re betraying some sacred trust. Everyone else wants this so badly! How can it not be a mystical, life-transforming experience? Shouldn’t they have given their shot to somebody else who deserved it?

It’s not the be-all and end-all of experiences, though. It’s just pretty good when it works!

When you have it, there’s a surprising amount of physical awkwardness involved. You’d think everybody would know where their hands are supposed to go and would never step on anything, but nope.

It’s not necessarily so earth-shattering that emotions cease to exist during the act. In movies and mainstream porn, when It happens, there is no giggling, and nobody ever feels insecure, and every feeling is carried away on tides of orgasms. But in real life, there’s occasional tedium as you wait for someone to get off, and uncertainty as you hope they like your body, and, yes, ideally orgasms.

It can be notably awful, too. There are times when you have it and you’d actually rather be elsewhere when it starts up, except it’s kind of awkward to leave. That’s really rare, thankfully, but it does happen.

That said, all these disclaimers make it sound like it’s awful. It’s not! When it works, it can be mind-searingly sexy, the hot experience you whack it to for years at a time. Most of the time, it’s like pizza in that it’s at least pretty good. But these unrealistic expectations that it’s got to be the BEST THING EVAR lead to a weird letdown, because when you’re expecting it to CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER and instead it’s merely a great time, people often come away feeling like they did something wrong. But they didn’t. That’s just the way it is.

The earth-shattering versions exist. They are, in fact, that good. It gets super-awkward when your first experience is the earth-shattering version and then you have a normal version and you really wonder what the hell you did wrong.

The first time is not necessarily the best time. You get better at this. It’s okay, this is an upward curve.

It’s easier to get than you think it is. Which isn’t to say it’s easy. But it gets a lot easier if you’re not so desperate for it that you’re clawing at every potential participant like a person grabbing at a life preserver.

It’s okay if you never have it. They’re fun. But people have gotten by quite happily without.

It’s okay if you don’t want it, either. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

A Brief Announcement About My New Novel, THE UPLOADED

If you liked FLEX/THE FLUX/FIX, well, Barnes and Noble just dropped the news:

Here’s the summary of my new novel, THE UPLOADED, which asks what happens fourteen generations after we’ve built a digital Heaven.

….I am apparently incapable of writing anything simple.

Anyway, it’s up for preorder at Barnes and Noble at the link above. And you can read a larger essays on what happens when we don’t think through the politics of the afterlife.

Quiet Time At La Casa McJuddMetz

About a month back, I wrote The Pummeled Weasel, in which I said:

“I’m being flaky right now to my real-life friends because everything since September has been a chaotic shitstorm and I am not coping well. Bearing with me as I get overwhelmed and shut down would help. I miss you but every time I think about reaching out another diagnosis drops through the door.”

Since then, another major diagnosis has dropped through the door.  (My Dad is out of surgery and is okay, but he had a scary incident.)  And, as it turns out, the stomach bug I am suffering has turned out to be a full-blown case of major salmonella poisoning, so I saw Rogue One but that took pretty much all I had.  (God willing, now that the doctor’s put me on antibiotics, I’ll be better by Christmas.)

As always, I have things to say!  Just not the energy to write them.  And yes, I will and am prioritizing myself, but I thought you all should know that I’m not voluntarily being quiet, I’m just under a lot of medical stress at the moment and I love you all.

Ace? Graysexual? Demisexual? What’s With All These Stupid Labels?

There’s a ton of new vocabulary for people to absorb these days when it comes to dating: asexuality, demisexuality, aromantic, graysexual, saposexuality, and so forth.

And people who are unfamiliar with these labels often mock the abundance of labels: “Everyone’s a special snowflake now!”

It’s just the opposite, though.

The problem with labels is that they never fit properly. I’m polyamorous, but what do I have in common with the preening couples who date “secondaries” callously, vetoing other beloved partners for trivial needs? I’m Christian, but what do I have in common with those people who send their gay kids to electroshock therapy?

Those labels always have some ugly overlap. There’s always going to be some idiot claiming they’re “demisexual” in ways that make you retch. Cue fights about the One True Demisexuality… which nobody ever wins, because sexuality is so personal that no label common enough for people to have heard about it could ever apply.

But all these aces and graysexuals and sapiosexuals aren’t trying to be special snowflakes – those labels are, in fact, the opposite.

When someone clasps a label to their chest, they’re often clinging to it like a liferaft.

Because they’ve had these feelings for a long time – feeling like a freak, because they don’t see their emotional reality reflected anywhere. They don’t find it in movies, they don’t see their friends doing it, they’re wandering alone wondering what the hell all these weird emotions feel. Why are they so different?

Then they stumble across The Label. And you know what The Label means?

Somebody else feels this way.

And in many ways, the label’s not them trying to be a special snowflake, it’s them being so fucking relieved that enough other people felt this way that somebody had to make up a name for it.

There’s an abundance of labels these days. That’s because the Internet makes it so easy to have like call to like. In the old days, you may have been the only demisexual person in your town – but now you can find enclaves of them helping each other, informal communities answering questions. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s not that these people chose a label because it was trendy, it’s because they finally got to look around and see someone like them.

They don’t want to be special.

They just want not to be alone.

And in those cases, the label is not a label. It’s a sign left behind by friendly trailblazers, a post sticking up saying “SOMEONE’S BEEN HERE BEFORE.” And even just knowing there’s a pathway is encouraging, because it means that someone got to happiness from here and you can too.

The label’s the beacon.

And it’s not perfect, but by god is it better than wandering alone.

Don’t Forget: The Sound Of Music Sing-A-Long At Our House This Saturday!

I don’t know how many people will attend in the Christmas rush – but if you’re in the Cleveland area this Saturday and feel like watching Julie Andrews in heart-swooningly close detail on our Ultra 4k television, we are hosting the sing-a-long this Saturday afternoon.

Details are on Facebook, or just email me to ask me what’s up!

The Day I Realized My Uncle Hung Around With Gay Guys

My Uncle Tommy did volunteer work in Greenwich Village back in the early 1980s, when I was a teenager. He brought me along to help, which made me feel very grown up; I was eleven, and yet here I was stamping envelopes, doing data entry, working in an office.

I loved my co-workers.

They were all really funny guys, flamboyant, and they treated me like a grownup – which was to say they made jokes I didn’t get, and didn’t footnote. After the volunteering shift we’d all go out to a bar, and they’d sneak me into the corner – very grown up – and they’d drink beers and tell theatrical stories while my uncle gave me a roll of quarters and I played Donkey Kong Junior.

I loved them. They were bold, unashamed of their lisps – which was critical to a kid who’d been to vocal therapy to lower his squeaky voice – and they all dressed super-well.

I did not realize they were probably gay until I was almost thirty. That’s when someone said, “Man, the AIDS epidemic totally destroyed the gays in Greenwich Village,” and I thought, “Man, I hope all of my Uncle’s old buddies from Greenwich Village are okay WAIT WHAT”

I had all the pieces. But nobody had specifically called them gay. And I didn’t think that I was the sort of kid who hung around with gay dudes while I was eleven, so even though I had all these facts – a pretty much all-male volunteer squad in Greenwich Village, the stereotypical gay voice, flamboyance, great dressers all – they never coalesced into “Teenaged Ferrett hung around with gay dudes.”

(I called up my Uncle Tommy to confirm they were gay. They were. My Uncle was not, but he apparently did very well with the few women who volunteered with the organization.)

Yet that’s how life happens sometimes: you can have all the pieces, and not put them together because nobody gave you the word. I’ve had friends who took years to realize their Grampaw wasn’t allowed to be alone with them because he was a pederast. I’ve known folks who didn’t realize their parents were swingers despite copious evidence because it never occurred to them their parents could be swingers.

Sometimes you can be bathed in evidence of a plain fact and not recognize it because you don’t believe you’re the sort of person that fact applies to. I was just an ordinary kid from the suburbs, and at the time “gay people” were this wild minority – I didn’t think of myself as the sort of kid who had wild adventures with Greenwich Village Queens, let alone of myself as the sort of kid who’d idolize them. Likewise, my friends had ordinary childhoods with loving parents and the concept that their mom and dad were those swinger people just didn’t fit the mold.

You can have all these pieces lying about, unassembled. Until someone gives you a name. Until someone tells you that yes, you are that sort of person, you just didn’t think of yourself as that person until now.

So.

Does anyone who had a good upbringing think of themselves as “the sort of person who gets raped”?

I see people confused by delayed accusations: Yes, they were raped, but how could it take them time to recognize what happened to them? And much like my gay buddies as a kid, they had all the evidence but it didn’t seem, somehow, to apply to them. This wasn’t a Hollywood rape where a stranger barged into their house – this was a friend, someone they loved, and maybe they said very nice and kind things before and after the assault. Maybe they still like their rapist, or want to like them.

They had all these pieces of evidence – mainly, the fact that they didn’t want to have sex, and yet someone did things to them against their will – but that doesn’t make sense because they’re not the sort of person who’s a rape victim, and they feel terrible a lot but this hasn’t destroyed every last happiness in their life like everyone tells them it should, and so they know something bad has happened but that word “rape” doesn’t seem to apply because they’re not that sort of person.

Until all the evidences finally click into place and they realize that, sadly, they are.

Which is not to say that every person who gets raped is unaware; some are. The most toxic misunderstanding of rape is that there can be only one “accepted” reaction to it, and anything else indicates that the rape didn’t really take place.

Alas, people have all sorts of different reactions to life-changing trauma; look at any funeral, where some people withdraw into silence, and others need all their friends to party with them, and still others need to vent angrily about the injustice. There’s no singular script to grief, which means there’s no “right” way to do it.

But some rape victims get slammed by people because they should have known what happened right away. “Why didn’t they know?” And the answer is, for those people, that their vision of themselves did not encapsulate the sad concept of “I can get raped,” and as such they had all of these pieces of evidence lying around unassembled, waiting for that one key that would tie them all together.

It could be argued that they should have known. And they probably would have known, if it was someone else this happened to. But some times you’re blind to the events of your life simply because the evidence contradicts who you think you know who you are, and waking up to the person you actually are takes some time.

Especially when that person isn’t someone you ultimately want to identify yourself as.