I hate Flash sometimes.

I made this huge video blog and posted it and I totally didn’t work. So I’ve kind of been stewing about that for the week. I hate not being able to express myself. Oh well.

What’s happened since the last post? Sam moved back to Reno. The thing with Zero is close to being officially over. Brian and Love Of His Life Johnny are getting more and more chummy.

I’m beginning to think that relationships will only work unless you completely stop talking to all your friends. Or if you sacrifice your friends for a relationship.

Christen and I might hang out on Monday. I so rarely see her these days that I treasure every moment with her. I’ve been making lolcats and such lately. Here’s my favorite one:

I was looking for my iPhoto library for some cute pictures to make into them, but I made the mistake of going back a whole year’s worth of pictures.

So.

Fucking.

Depressing.

Christen and I used to be like inseparable… and now she’s dating a guy that can’t be in the same room as me or else he freaks out.

I’ve been trying hard this year not be bitter. I mean, of course whatever happens I will always love Christen, but I miss a lot of my old friends.

And, oddly enough, I miss Alex the most.

I’m such a sentimental fool. Going to San Francisco reminded me of him terribly. We even took the Ocean Beach train that goes right by his house. The sinking feeling when I drove by the Safeway that we would go to. I mean, the whole thing lasted maybe like two weeks but it had such an impact. I mean, I pine for Drew all the time, but I have to pretend that I don’t because he couldn’t care less.

I miss the promise of an amazing relationship. For all the times that things have turned out terribly, I’m still waiting for some amazing person to come and sweep me away to Dubrovnik and Prague.

The promise of a blue, sunlit life under the soft glow of a MacBook screen, watching the trains go by outside, lying in the San Francisco sand.

It was a romantic fantasy the likes of which I’ve never experienced.

But reality had to intervene. I can’t afford to go to San Francisco every weekend, let alone every six months. I was so swept up in the idea of it all that when we did end up naked in his bed I had no idea what to do.

Well, that and the fact that he couldn’t commit to me. It seemed like an “it’s not you, it’s me” but we really didn’t mesh. I’m not a San Franciscan. I don’t feel like an adult even though I’m like three years older than him.

I fall in love all the time. With new friends, new foods, new lovers. I’m in love with the guy from Paris right now, but that’s another story.

I can’t judge Brian because I know what he’s feeling. But I can’t help but feel like it’s going to threaten to tear our friendship apart.

He made the ARGUMENT THAT SHOULD NEVER BE MADE tonight.

I had nothing to say.

But I did make one decision. I’m going to read Anna Karenina. According to Wikipedia, it is the highest rated novel ever. I remember Sarah saying that she had started it, I don’t remember whether she said she liked it or not.

I’m listening to Fiona Apple. And I’m completely unapologetic about it.

I want to be Chris from Davis. I want to be somebody that is unable to tolerate people that don’t live up to his moral standards. This is why he is online 24 hours a day and never seems to do anything. But at the same time I’m terrified of becoming the bad side of him. The person that has standards so high that he won’t allow anyone to talk to him.

I saw on Facebook that Adrian and his wife are renting a room in their house. They describe themselves as a “young married couple.” It’s infuriating how I will never have that kind of politically correct cover for my life.

On my bad days, I look at my coworkers and wonder if they really know what’s going on. If they can step out of their Elk Grove fugue state. Probably not. I’m in a fugue state of my own. Counting down the day until I graduate. Not able to talk to anyone but gay guys. Sex underscores everything we do.

December 18, 2008, I will have an A.A. in liberal arts.

I feel like at this point in my life I should be living in my loft working at a swank graphic design firm.

But that’s a ridiculous, clichéd dream. It’s like how all gay guys want to be fashion designers or makeup artists. I wish I could climb out of myself and become something that’s not dictated by all the media I’ve absorbed in my 22 years.

I like being an artist and a writer. I chronically underestimate my talents. I’m passive-aggressive as hell, I have trouble finishing the things I start.

I feel like I’m better than everyone because I’m used to being the big fish in the small pond in Crescent City. In real cities, I’m just another douchebag.

I’m in introspection mode tonight because Brian keeps telling me that I’m really mean to people. Which, of course, is true… but I’m not mean the people that I care about. Being catty and being mean are two different things. I find it hard to pass up a good joke even if it’s at the expense of a friend. Which is definitely not a good thing, but hardly an impeachable offense. I love my friends. That’s why I care who they date and who they are.

But this isn’t about me being mean to people. Brian and I are mean to people all the time. For god’s sake, last year like now we were taking fake Caitlin Hines pictures to make fun of her. This is about me not having a shred of a respect for Brian’s boyfriend. And for Brian, an attack (or apathy) on his boyfriend is an attack on him since he defines himself through his boyfriends.

I don’t mean to attack Johnny. We just have different value systems.

My value system:

People that don’t read real capital-N novels are ignorant. People that solely read young adult fiction are idiots. People go to church to tell each other lies and to reinforce the misguided belief that they are doing good in the world.

People who don’t read, who don’t question what they are told, who don’t seek out answers other places than the ones served up on a platter by the establishment, are doing their part to destroy this world.

I feel like the battle between ignorance and transcendence is happening in this very room. I guess in a strange way that was what I found seductive about Adrian. He was wrong most of the time, but he have the tenacity to stand up for what he believed in no matter what. I can’t decide whether I’m ready to completely discount people on the basis of my preconceptions, but one other barometer do I have? Christen is much more likely to completely write off people than I am (and I am jealous of her ability to do so) but I feel like there is some iota of intellect in everyone.

People want their preconceptions to be reinforced. I read this study linked from Reddit that said that when most people go online to find out answers to questions, they already have the answers in their minds and they want to find out that they are right. They will discard information that contradicts their beliefs in order to prove themselves right. For the weeks after I read that article, I realized that I was doing it too. I forget what I was looking up, but this one thing I was researching I realized that the first result on Google was a page contradicting what I had thought the answer would be. I ignored it and clicked on the one under it that was more in line with my beliefs.

We all do this. We want to feel like we are right, like we have a plan that would cure the world, but since truth is subjective, there never can be such a thing.

I felt like tonight Brian mostly reading off a list of things that he knew would make me angry. He wanted me to validate his choice of Johnny. I just want to know: why is he telling me? Whose approval does he need?

I think he sees now that he’s going to be with this guy, they’re going to be hanging out by themselves. And if they’re going to be hanging out with me, I’m not going to suborn a vacuous way of life.

I don’t know why, I can’t stop thinking about Alex and Drew tonight. Doom after doom. If only I knew what was going through Drew’s pretty head. When we were at Rasputin’s in SF, I saw the Murder, She Wrote DVD set.

I’m so angry and dismissive of people, and then months later I would give anything to be back at that moment, the first kiss, the furtive glances, the awkward meeting at Adalberto’s. The fish sweater.

I’ll get over it.

Someday.

It was raining as Sam and I crossed the Golden Gate.

We still hadn’t decided where we were going to go, although as we navigated through the traffic to Folsom Street we knew that our mission was to find the skeeziest place we could.

At around Fifth and Folsom we pulled into this Blade Runner-esque car parking lot that had elevators for each individual car…hulking machines in the rain, built for genocide. A man came out of the shadows and gave us our parking ticket, which is still on Sam’s dashboard.

Braving the rain, we got out of the car and set off down Folsom Street. The water was coming down relentlessly, and the streets were empty save for the puddles. For a Saturday night, it felt like we had truly crossed over into another universe.

Three soaking wet blocks later, we huddle under a second-floor balcony to check Sam’s phone for directions to a place to go.

The one that sounds the best is called Hole in the Wall. The description mentions a place “where people of all cliques could come together in harmony and alcohol,” so it seemed like the perfect place to inaugurate our evening of debauchery.

Eager to escape Zero and my real Sacramento life, I had turned off my phone before we even left. We slogged through the rain for a few more blocks, so wet we couldn’t see out of our glasses.

I was in my pinstripe wool suit, which is impervious to cold, but my face was sopping wet. We entered through an opaque, thick plastic curtain to a place that I can only describe as the ultimate place for Rob Zombie to hang out.

Above the dimly lit pool table was a huge motorcycle suspended from the ceiling. Emanating from it and twisting all over the ceiling to the back of the bar was a massive “snake” of lights, tangled luminescent cables, industrial parts, etc.

It glowed every neon color of the rainbow and was terribly distracting. I had no idea what it was until someone came up behind me and started toweling me off. It was the bartender, he toweled off both Sam and I. Once we were settled in, we ordered drinks.

A shot of Stoli for me, and a lemon drop for Sam. We absorbed the atmosphere. The end of the bar was covered in what looked like a mass of wax from hundreds of candles, and every part of the bar was covered in skulls, hick, and punk memorabilia. The music was amazing. I had never heard any of the bands, but it was like if every band was Rob Zombie but in varying degrees.

Sam tried his luck at the pinball machine (it wasn’t good) and after about an hour we made our way over to the second bar of the night.

On the web site it was referred to as My Place, somewhere that offered an abundance of dark corners, and was a competitor to Hole in the Wall. We arrived at a darkened building that a bum told us used to the place that we were looking for.

The third bar on the list was the Powerhouse. I rolled my eyes, but it was indeed the level of ultraskeeze and ultrasleaze that we sought.

I had heard things about that place. Terrible and wonderful things. I had heard that my favorite porn stars frequented it. I had even seen a video in which Damon sucked off nearly everyone in the place (one that I’m having a bit of difficulty locating, unfortunately).

But the whole point of the night was to have fun. And if we didn’t go to the Powerhouse… what fun would we have been having? I was also in my suit, which meant my penis was safely behind like four layers of clothing. Walked three more blocks, and the unobtrusive sign glowed above us. POWERHOUSE. Sam and I made eye contact for a moment before we went in… I couldn’t imagine the state we would be in when we left.

The place was a lot less skeezy than I imagined (or remembered from the video), but at this point it was still about 8:00 p.m.

I got a shot of Jack Daniel’s (which I don’t even like, but the bartender laughed at me when I ordered a Mojito so I had to reaffirm my manliness), and Sam got coffee. There were only a few guys there, so we explored. I was initially pretty nervous, but Sam tried his luck at the pinball machine there, lost, and we went in the back to smoke.

The place has two levels, the first level that you walk into with the bar and then the second level in the back where it goes up five or so stairs and it’s a bit more… intimate. There are about five TVs playing Colt porn, with the red spectrum turned way up on the TVs so it looks like Vegas inside. The lights along the top of the bar were Crisco cans, and the back wall was painted with a DANGER sign that took up the entire back wall.

The whole place glowed red against black walls, and as I sipped my apprehension away, guys trickled in over the hours. Sam and I went outside to smoke, then in to drink, and out again. The smoking area was actually the best place to hang out with the best seating. We claimed a spot way at the very back with two facing benches and a huge painting of a naked man above us.

We smoked and talked about the whole situation of everything that was going on in Sacramento… the bizarro world of all of our friends and all of their varying degrees of doom.

We went back to the bar in the front for more drinks, and Sam recommended I get an Amaretto Sour. I never had one before, so we both got one. It was the most amazing drink. Two more later, Sam and I were talking about the reason that we didn’t like each other, and a thousand other subjects you never think of until you are completely wasted.

We talked about what happens when we get drunk (and, mind you, this is the night after the Hamburger Mary’s situation). Okay, I’m going to admit it. When I’m drinking, I’m easier than normal. When I’m drunk, I’m 10 times easier than normal. And I’m pretty easy to begin with… so being drunk in a leather bar…not such a good idea. We resolved not to get drunk at all costs, our true cocksucking natures would manifest themselves.

The point came where we were severely trashed and were back at our haunt near the back of the smoking room discussing any sort of secret we had ever harbored against the other, when I noticed the door to the back room open.

Damon.

He had all of the presence and grace of Princess Diana, except for that he devoted his elegance to the art of sucking cock. The earth faded away as we moved into the orbit of a new and happier sun.

I looked behind Damon, and it’s Jesse O’Toole. Both. In. The. Same. Room.

“I need a cigarette. NOW.” I said to Sam, wide-eyed. Damon squeezed past us to get to the back of the smoking area, and I literally almost passed out.

I chain smoked the rest of the night…I didn’t even wait for Sam to light his cigarette before lighting mine. We did this double fisting dildo cigarette lighting procedure where we lit both with one lighter…something we discovered is really hot.

I was able to overhear Damon’s conversation because he was only about a meter away from me the whole time. You know how you have that internal health bar that tells you how horny you are? Well, it had been rising all night long.

At this point all I could say was “oh my God omg omg omg”, “why does HIV have to exist” and “whyyyyy?”

Sam talked at length about wanting to trace Jesse O’Toole’s tattoos with his tongue, while I tried my hardest not to stare at Damon. (After a while it was just too much. We had to leave the smoking area. Pushing our way through the crowd (there was a crowd this point) we went back inside. Where before there had just been a few skinny guys in assless chaps drunkenly faux-wrestling, the place was packed now. And where before it was standard overweight afternoon-bar clientele, all of the hot guys were starting to show up.

You know the people that are there at 8 p.m. or either from out of town, bored, or just plain desperate, but the ones who show up at 11:30 mean business.

We got to the bar and I ordered a shot of Jagermeister. I only drink Jager with Christen, but this was an exception. PORN. STARS. IN. SAME. BAR. AS. ME.

Slam down the shot, and at this point I realize that I am forehead to forehead with Sam as he sits on one of the stools in the back of the bar. I was a nervous wreck, but he wasn’t much better, both of us mumbling about how hot Damon and Jesse were, both of us talking about how we had to control our baser instincts at all costs.

The music was pumping, the red light seemed to seep into everything. All we could see was lust. The rub of a crotch across the room, a long tongue kiss down at the bar… sex just seemed ready to break out at any moment. Ultimate, all-encompassing sex that would leave no orifice unfilled.

Sam and I were close approaching the point of no return. The point where we really would suck off and fuck every guy in the place. I don’t know how long we were forehead to forehead, but before long we realized what we were doing. It was a strategy to block out all the cock around us.

And then it happened.

The spark lit in the vacuum, and the flame spread across the world, consuming us. I staggered back, and we caught each other’s gaze. It was there. We would have fucked them all, gangbang of all gangbangs…accept AIDS and death and and rot just for that one moment in the bath of the ruddy lights and the attention, the cocks of hundreds of men.

He grabbed my arm and we ran.

Ran out of the bar

Ran out of San Francisco.

Ran for our lives.

We fought the urge all the way back to the car. Every guy we saw… it was all we could think about. Some 16-year-old looking kids asked us to buy alcohol. Those were bad thoughts. We got back in the car, the doors slammed, and My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult blasted.

It was all we could talk about. We couldn’t form sentences. We stopped at the In-N-Out near Richmond to eat, then continued back. The whole night we talked about cock. About how it was a religion. About how we had seen the end.

The end of everything was in that bar. The AIDS… the filth… but the desperate need to do it. To destroy everything for one need. We had found the abyss. We looked into it and couldn’t be more turned on. It was death but it was life too… we would have killed to be able to do the things that Damon does, but we had to struggle to justify not dying for it.

Damon would. Which makes him not just a porn star. It makes him a God. A sex God.

To die for sex.

He is the modern Adonis that we kill so that we might live. We watch him martyring himself for us, but he would do it if there was a camera or if there wasn’t. He is his alter ego. Jesse O’Toole, Christian, they all are. To be able to live like that is amazing.

We couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.

It was by far the hottest experience of my life, even though we had sex with no one.

I was bored in algebra and set up a caller tone!

It’s New Order, which is awesome.

I tried to use the Netflix Instant View thing to watch a movie and the Windows Media Player upgrade bricked my VMWare install. Thank the gods for automatic versioned backups with Time Machine. What did I do before then? I just need to restore it and then I can blog about the extraordinary San Francisco Trip.

I’m at the AR library and this asshole is having a loud conversation in Russian.

I want to go up to him, “I’m sorry, could you be more of an asshole? Just a little? I mean, talking on a cell phone and doing it loudly, and in a foreign language! I think you’re just going to have to step on my foot or steal my MacBook to level up in assholery.”

So yeah, I should start on my algebra. I can’t get work done at home these days.

I at least went for a jog this morning. The first lap was okay, but I died on the second one. Ick, I’m getting out of shape.

Oh my God!

Dragon NaturallySpeaking plays well with Leopard’s Core Audio now!

Which means I can listen to music and dictate at the same time. This is awesome! My fucking grandma is lurking outside my room so I’m going to go into my car in the front yard and dictate. God I love having a laptop.

Okay, I’m in my car.

So Friday. I have been putting off seeing zero all the time. We hung out when I was with Kevin, but I just never want to be around him when we’re not in public.

His computer kind of died when he upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu, so it was my task to go over and fix his machine. Thankfully, it wasn’t a very bad problem at all. I had all my data recovery software to grab files off of the system in case we had to do a full wipe and I was prepared to SSH in and grab files that way, but I just burned a new install disc and we grabbed the files using the livecd.

So while we were over there Mari asked us if we wanted to go to karaoke. I have nothing against karaoke since my mother dragged me there every weekend for like three years, and I was anxious to get out of the house, so I acquiesced. We piled into Mari’s shiny new VW Bug and pulled up in front of Hamburger Mary’s.

I met a few of the people that they knew from there, and zero introduced me as his boyfriend, which I suddenly realized I was very uncomfortable with. I was having a good time, but at the same time, I really felt like I was just caught up in this inertia from hell. And then I saw it.

The bar.

It’s curious feeling, when one is 21. We all have those “God I need a drink” feelings when we are not quite 21. But now I’m 22 and when I feel like that I get a motherfucking Long Island iced tea.

So I downed it in the span of about five minutes, and proceeded to just be a horribly and utterly drunk the entire rest of the night. It was truly a horrific moment, because when I’m drunk I just want to make out with everyone…but the one person that I was supposed to make out with the idea just revolted me.

So I contented myself with living out my fantasies through Brian, who was meeting a new guy that night. I think they hit it off pretty well, but I haven’t talked to him yet so I don’t really know.

Brian and Mario showed up and hung out for a little while before they set off to find Brian’s beau, and I had them show me pictures of the guy. He wasn’t bad looking, but I guess I should’ve looked at his interests before I judged him on that criteria alone.

Right before the two of them left my phone died so I was drunk and completely unable to send drunk texts.

I feel completely and utterly trapped in this thing with Zero. And it’s all my fault.

So we went back to his house, yada yada yada, woke up the next morning, surfed 4Chan for a while, then I got the hell out of there. Sam had been texting me about going to San Francisco.

I was kind of lukewarm on the idea, but I went home, showered, sat down in front of my computer and thought “oh God. This is how I’m going to spend the rest of my night.”

I needed a fucking vacation.

We didn’t even say where we were going. Not until we got to Vallejo did we even consider the idea of finding out where we were going to go in San Francisco, although we had agreed on going to sleazy bars.

The rain was coming down in sheets, but as we hit the Bay Bridge it had slowed to a steady drizzle…now was the time to find out where we were really going to go.

Okay, so I’ve blogged before a few times about my favorite porn star Damon.

But um.

I met him last night.

I was FREAKING OUT. Christen’s coming to pick me up and we’re going to go shopping at Whole Foods, but when I get back I’m going to blog the whole sordid tale.

Also, remember how I disabled comment spam checking? I got about ten spam comments today, so I’m going to have to turn it back on. But it’s different! You just have to solve a simple math problem to prove you’re not a spambot. I’m hoping this will work better than the ones that use all this complicated blacklist stuff to determine if it’s spam.

Tell me if it doesn’t work! <3

PS: We launch my company’s website on Thursday. ZOMG!