Onto day three of excruciating restlesness! I've been getting out, doing stuff, reading, etc etc, so why do I continue to be so bored? Last night I went to Robbie's and spent the night there playing World of Warcraft and watching the first Die Hard movie (Bruce Willis has hair! It's the 80's! It's...not a bad movie, for an action thing), the night before I finally gave into a friend of mine and went to a gay club in west hollywood with her. It was awkward (especially at the beginning...I imagine going with a decent number of people would've helped that), but overall it was just interesting. I was suprised at the number of hispanics (it is LA, of course), but aside from the flaunted sexuality everyone seemed to be fitting very neatly into my stereotype of what a club is. I went with my parents to Chinatown today to eat--I really have been decently busy, but something feels...missing.
I would say it's a sense of purpose, but it's not like I've had one all summer and it certainly hasn't stopped me before. I think it might be because so many people are gone in college. But whatever it is, I don't like it, and makes me mopey, irritable, and unproductive.
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Hi Brian - It's because it's the end of the old regeime (sp?) and before the beginning. That's why you're restless, BTW - Talk to me about "gay clubs" before you go again. I don't want you to confuse "gay clubs" with "gay people". I don't like bars and never met anyone interesting in one. I think they're kinda stupid and interactions feel forced and phony like they do in any bar - straight or gay. They're noisy and full of sloppy drunks. (Unlike genteel drunks like me and your Mom,,,,Kidding world!,,,,,Just kidding!....:)
I do agree with Art, not about being a genteel drunk, but about the "between" stage of things right now. You are about to launch on such a big change and you're ready. You just have a few more days to wait and it's the waiting that's driving you nuts. IMHO. Oh, and the fact that your friends are all gone and there aren't 200 options of people to call to hang with. And, god forbid, your hanging with your BORING parents. No wonder you're mopey and irritable!
This is really a very special time - this time between times. It won't come again for a long time. Look around. Think about where you've been, who you are, where you're going. When this time inbetweeen rolls round again - you'll be a different person.
(And if you think you're bored and restless now; just wait till you have to go to WORK! - that is, of course, unless you're clever like your Dad and go into the academy instead of LAW! - just a little editorializing.....:)
Art--this place was pretty much just noisy and full of sloppy drunks. I think of it as "first club experience" first and foremost, but for someone just out of high school it HAS been one of my first experiences interacting with gay people en masse, so I'm sure its had more of an effect on me than it probably should have. BUT I do fully realize that, just as the slice of people you meet at a straight bar or club would represent a small fraction of a population (in attitude, desires, and capabilities), so the slice of people I saw there represent a tiny fraction of the gay/lesbian population.
We're edging around a topic near and dear to my heart. I told your Dad and Mom recently that I am going to write an article on "identity politics" and the whole process of lableing and catagorizing, in general. I used to think solely in terms of prefabricated identites, lables and catagories which resulted in a kind of idiot thinking that went something like this...."I'm gay." "Gay people go to gay bars." "Therefore, I will go to a gay bar." It took me 25 years to realize that the reason I drank so much in gay bars was that the noise and lowest common denomenator stupidity made so anxious and depressed that drinking too much was the only way to numb it out. Because I was paying so much attention to my labels and catagories, I wasn't paying any attention to my actual experience.
I'm going to expand upon these themes in my article. So - I'll stop now.
I can't resisit another comment on the extremes to which I'm capable of taking this. In July, 2003 - we went to England and Scotland. I said to myself, Scotland has a cool climate in the Summer. Therefore, I will wear jeans and a warm long-sleeve shirt. When I got to Scotland and saw that it was 95 degrees fahrenheight, did I change my clothes? Oh no - I thought, "I can't be this hot. The thermometer MUST be broken. This is Scotland. It's not 95 degrees. I must be sick." I was indeed sick - but with heat exhaustion. And Scotland was experiencing the hottest Summer in 500 years. And my body was telling me that. But rather than accept this information, I clung to the "cool climate" abstraction until I was boiling. And then, I wanted to go home until I realized that it would probably be easier to simply change my shirt to something summery and short-sleeved. I get there eventually, it just takes awhile.
Haha brilliant Art. I'd be very interested in reading that article.
One impression I got at the club that I didn't mention was that many people there were *trying* to be as flamboyantly gay as possible--which, for many of them, felt a bit strained. I did not get the impression that it was a entirely a place where people who normally had to hide their homosexuality got to "be themselves"--they had hide themselves just as completely there. Different colors, parhaps, but in the end just another masquarade.
Gay clubs... I agree with Art. Loud, obnoxious and an assault on the senses. And being under the influence definitely helps one to overlook a lot of ugliness that's really there.
An interesting gender bender with regards to gay vs. lesbian clubs is the fact (and I am only speaking from a San Diego perspective) the lesbian clubs tend to be much "mellower" and less flamboyant. But, the only 2 lesbian clubs in San Diego have both gone out of business in the last 2 years... So, what's THAT say? Lesbians hook up and cook up (stay home)- gay guys will hook up time and time again- and many use bars as that avenue.
Just a thought from your lesbian aunt...
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