trogdor!!

um, this is in particular aimed at my female-identified friends who are now or have recently been in relationships with guys of one sort or another. (but i'd love to hear from anyone with a thought.)

sometimes i feel a disconnect from the queer community because i've got this privilege of being in a passing relationship, even though the dynamics of the relationship itself may not be so straight, and even though i'm still queer. hello, didn't stop checking out hot girls just because i'm married. y'know? not like i'm going to do anything. but who turns off that part of them when they're with someone? i see no harm in window-shopping, just don't go in the store. hell, we can even window-shop together if we want.

but yeah. back to the original point. which is that i have this privilege, and i feel really uncomfortable going into queer spaces as a result, because i feel as though i'm flaunting this. but i'm NOT STRAIGHT. and i do feel very invisible as a result. i try to be as nonchalant as possible about the whole thing and just make mention of ex-girlfriends or such when it seems appropriate. but it's just not a subject that comes up for me all the time and i don't want to make a huge thing of it all the time. i just don't fucking want people to assume i'm straight. sigh, i know this is so not a big deal in the grand scheme. but still.

and then there's the other thing. i want to be an activist again but how to do so? i want to be involved in the rainbow alliance at my school. if anything, being married has made me more committed to the idea of equal marriage because i've gotten to experience firsthand what it means to be married. so it's something i'm emotionally invested in and i'd like to express that through action. but beyond the standard confront-it-when-you-see-it, write-letters-to-politicians end, which i'm already doing, i want to be involved with a group of people committed to the same thing i am. and i'm afraid of going into that group of people and not being accepted. that's what it comes down to.

i was at pride yesterday and felt so apart from everything that was going on, even as i felt wonderfully immersed in my culture. i'm starting to feel as though i can no longer claim this as my culture. and that's leaving me with a lost feeling inside.

i'm having a randomly lonely night, after what was a good day overall. i'm suddenly realizing that it's the end of the month already and there are a ton of things i needed to have done by 1 march that are going to get rushed into completion. this whole february thing fucked me up yo.

i'm missing noho. well, not noho exactly. i went back and dug up some old correspondence from the last few months i lived there and perused a chunk of my life. i was pretty well 19 all right. i mean, i look at it now and go good lord i was immature, but really i was just 19. but i checked out some emails from that time that were between me and a former - i don't know, girlfriend, maybe, it was a complicated time - and i was surprised by the depth and tenderness and joy in those notes. i've always thought fondly of that time. whenever someone points to the succession of people in my life who returned my love with hurt, she's the one i inevitably come back with. yes, some of my relationships ended painfully, but that one ended because of physical distance, nothing else, really. and it's easy to think of that as idyllic because it was so short. had we stayed together, been in one location for an extended period, i imagine we would have broken up. but i somehow can't see it being out of betrayal. she just wasn't like that. she was earnest about her emotions but playful and fun at the same time. she managed a sort of wicked innocence. i'm glad i'm no longer 19 - i was in a ton of pain then and was feeling generally lost - but i can look back on my time with her with no regret.

but life now is good. i love my sweetie, and i enjoy being 26, and i get to be in the workaday grownup world and the kiddie punkass rebellious earnest college world at the same time. what i enjoy about the working world is that i'm in on that whole inside joke, the secret that gets concealed from kids, that it's all ridiculous and it doesn't get any better as you get older, it just gets funnier if you have the guts to laugh at it. what i enjoy about the college world is the studied seriousness but also the potential for spontaneity. i walked into the student union and joined a throng of people watching a latin dance class in the middle of the room. i poked around a few hallways, got invited to join a group of guys playing video games (i turned them down but seriously considered staying and playing), found the queer group and introduced myself. i'm not sure whether i'll go to their meetings or not. another complication of my emotional history. i found myself feeling the need to tell them that i'm married and realizing that it could wait. i'm going to have to come out to this crew as well, it seems. hm. but i'm in love with the student union and consequently with my school (again). the air force refers to that as being "re-blued" (air force color being blue). since my school's colors are green and gold, i guess i'm constantly being re-greened, which is a nice thought anyway since it sounds like spring or forests or christmas or something.

my writing sucks lately. it's long and rambly and has relatively little punctuation but is really fond of the dash. i should fix this. probably by writing more.