Companion

It would begin in the evening and worsen into the night. My mind would belong not to me, but my burdens. They would chain me down, my body helpless and my self lost.
"I'm alone."
Who knows what provoked it. Periodically but random, like a migraine, but instead with images, rage and tears. The thoughts and feelings overwhelmed me.
"They'll kick me out. I'll be abandoned. I can't live on my own. Why would they do that to someone. I try so hard. I'm just so tired..."
Just a flood of thoughts, so irrational but vivid. One moment, I'd tell myself it's all not real, The next moment, I knew it all had to be true. My sanity would escape me.
"Hey Thomas, want to come out tonight?"
"No."
"Are you Okay?"
"I fucking hate everything and everyone right now."
My young-adult self was still too tender to take it all on; I could not have possibly understood why this happened back then. I could control myself so strongly in front of others, so how could I become so weak in these moments?

She would walk silently toward me. It's something she did not learn; it was perfected by nature. I would be shivering, cheeks wet with salty water, hoping it would all end soon. Did I mean my delusions or my self? In these moments I could care less which...

Emerged from a shadow, she would be beside me, cuddling up for warmth. My hands would hold her. Not tightly, but just enough to take in the comfort that was so quickly offered. She didn't understand why this would happen, but she always knew when I needed to be anchored down to the real world. When my troubles opened she would always beside me.

"Maybe this just is the way it is. Maybe someone else feels all the happiness in the world and so this makes it all even?"
Her answer would be a purr. That was always the answer I needed.
She was the single thing that kept me going when the small black window in the back of my mind would slide open and let the wild things in for the night.

I still thank her today. She still purrs.

2nd reason for why they're amazing

After finished the entry, below, I remembered another amazing example of what good friends I have (you might want to read the previous post first):
They know I would never ask for any type of birthday party in my honor, so they threw me a surprise breakfast (weird eh?) and built me a pinata, for me to bash at with a hockey stick in a park (even weirder right!?).

Below is the Emo-themed pinata. Sorry Mr. London Preppy for stealing your face-hiding box and turning it blue.

That's a creepy/amazing emo-pinata

To reiterate, my friends = the awesomes.

Unsaid Thanks

I often under estimate how much my close-friends really care about me. It's really easy for me to fall into the false mindset of I'm the only one who cares about me and only I can help myself. I won't directly mention my problems to anyone. Instead, I try to find a solution or ride them out on my own. It's obviously a layover from my old, closeted self. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

At this point in my life, my close guy-friends, Xav, Mike and Tim, know pretty much everything about me. I'm not the secret-ridden maniac that I once was. They are aware of the old-me and of who I am today. Suffice to say, they also see through my personality and can tell when something that bothers me is left unsaid. In their typical, straight-guy style (yes, they're straight) they tend to dance around the topic of my grief, without saying it, and eventually get me to freely talk it out. Surprisingly, they pretty much always give good advice about the situation as well.


They know how I've been annoyed at the lack of gay guys, with which I can connect. Like everyone, I have turn-ons and turn-offs. Most gay people I meet I tend to not be interested in. Naturally, most straight guys I meet I find attractive. Without a doubt most of you understand how annoying that is. Xav, Mike and Tim seem to have separately taken it upon themselves to find a guy for me. Of course, none of them would ever openly say that. They do however engage me with questions to figure out "my type". What about that guy? Why not that person? Well I know this guy... Xav seems to be the most pro-active since he keeps talking about gay acquaintances of his and arranges to coincidentally hang out with them and myself at the same time. I would probably never tell them this unless I was super drunk (ya ya, I like to be indirect like straight guys), but I love them for it.

I am so incredibly lucky to have these people as friends.

Good Night

Nothing beats a warm hockey night.

Ah, it's been so long.

CEGEP & Opening Up

In one of my previous posts I tried to describe my thought-process, when I was dealing with being gay and trying to hide it from everyone. I kept the post as short as possible, since I really could just go on and on about so many points, until all of the internet was bogged down with a story about a Canadian gay kid.

The amount of thinking I put into things was really just fucked up. Like I said, I doubt I could have kept that up for much longer. No, I wasn't just waiting to explode out of the closet. It's more like I was just sinking into a depression where I was just caring less and less about anything. Who could stand to be scared of themselves, scared of showing feelings around others and always being hyper-aware to defend one's image. Nothing made me happy, however, in the eyes of everyone else I appeared to be an average, active, well-like 17 year old. Back then, my favorite days were when I was alone and doing nothing. I wouldn't need to think or concentrate on hiding how I felt. With tv, I would barely need to even think. To be so good at hiding one's self from the friends and family is a scary thing. It's a lie to say I hadn't thought of killing myself.
Cue the sad violin.

Dramatic photo for effect!

Entering CEGEP, I was still very much that closeted, self-depressive asshole from highschool. (As reference for all you non-Quebec readers, most students in the Canadian province of Quebec go to a post-highschool institution called CEGEP, which is like a ladder step in between highschool and university. It actually replaces grade 12 and first year of university.) The leading up to my coming-out was initiated by change of school and people I met. I came from a small, preppy highschool (according to me: overpriced and filled mostly with kids who had no concept of reality) who's whole student body was 400 people. That meant my grade consisted of 80 students. Everyone knew everyone else and most tried their best to fit in. On the other hand, my CEGEP had atleast 1500 students, across 2 grades. It was a lot more diverse and I got the chance to meet tons of people who were radically different from the average highschool personality I had encountered. You all know the cliche of re-inventing one's self when thrown into a crowd of strangers. I didn't pull a 180 degrees, but in a sense this gave me freedom. I got to distance myself from highschool friends, with the exception of my close guy-friends, and mingle with new people.

The general group I come to know and like facilitated me letting down my guard and opening up. In part, it was because they were friendly, cool and not so judgmental. The main reason, however, was that I didn't care about them. Yes, that sounds harsh, but let me explain: For the first time, I could be around friends whom didn't know me very well and whom did not have so much history with me. I felt as if I could "test them" in what I chose to share about myself. If they didn't like me, I didn't care if I lost thier friendship or potentially turned against me. There were another 1495 people to get to know.

It sounds megalomaniacal and sad that I could consider people in such a manner, but you need to remember how I thought. In my mind, I needed to protect myself. I've always had friends, but the term friend to me represented a person who only knew the image I chose to show them. They knew very little about the real me. Hell, I didn't even know much about the ream me since I spent all my time surpressing myself. They were in a way test subjects (take a wild guess what subject I studied. Yup, science.)

Similarly, even my real friends, the ones that I refer to as my close guy-friends knew in reality nothing about me. I realize that it's odd I would call them my close friends, since they were in the dark about me as much as a new CEGEP friend. I felt close with them more because they trusted and confided in me. They cared about what I thought of them, so I reciprocally cared what they thought of me - even if I didn't share genuinely feelings with them very often.

That was what set the stage for me telling the first person I was gay.

Encore

My hands slide into the crack, to pry the opening wide enough to pass through. The door creaked against the branches lying in front of it. The rust had been smoothed by its rubbing with the branches over time. We were clearly not the firsts to have ventured inside and it was not the first visit I had payed this place.

We began the climb up the metal gratings stairwell. We kept turning upward for what seemed forever. Ever so often we passed a cracked window. Even with the glow of the city, light couldn't make it past the window threshold. The shine of our cellphones were the only keys to our sight.


Black powder covered everything. Was it coal? Probably not. I tried to keep my hands away from touching anything, but slowly the rust on my hands mixed with the black soot. The sleeping bag I carried also rubbed up against the walls as we walked upward, higher and higher. Some time ago wayward pigeons had made their way into the shaft. They had never left either.

Down a walkway we went. Under a pipe. Over a threshold. Don't fall into the powder. A porthole in the floor. Lifted up, we look in and only see darkness. Our light can't find the room's floor or walls. Only black powder floating in the air. That is a fall I would prefer to avoid.

We walk through the door opening to the roof. The view reminds us why we had decided to come back with sleeping backs.

We look, we talk, we laugh, we drink. We soon find ourselves only in our underwear.

I didn't mean these to be this tight when I bought them, he says.

I didn't mind.

I said he was beautiful the first time met him up here. It's hard for me to believe how much better looking he was that night.

Abandoned Building and a Perfect Guy

Over the last 2 years, I’ve really gotten into exploring the nooks and crannies of my city. Walking through the dark alleyways, climbing up the rusty fire escapes and venturing into anything that looks old, decrepit or abandoned really gets me going. Typically, the grimier, the better. I find it incredibly interesting to see places and objects that once had direct meaning or use, but now just sit there and slowly fall apart. An added bonus is finding private buildings and spaces that strangers have “reclaimed” and created an new (usually illegal) uses for. Highway underpass DJ parties anyone? Fuck ya!



It first started with climbing up onto the roof of buildings downtown and at my university. My first partner in crime, Alicia, and I would just sit up there, stare out at the cityscape and sky while talking about everything and nothing. It’s those moments that I value most with people; the ones just relaxing and watching while talking about our lives, loves and worries. Surprisingly, we would rarely bring alcohol with us. Xav soon joined the fun, which led to 1:00 am trips across the city on our bikes and running across roof tops in the student-hipster part of town.

Recently I followed Xav’s instructions to get to the top of an abandoned industrial silo. He and some others I had yet to ever meet were already up there, so I followed to their vague phone directions to get up there. Skipping over the details of the creepy/amazing pitch black route (cell phones are amazing sources of light to avoid falling through rusted gratings) I walkout out the door onto the roof of the silo. It is quite possibly one of the best roof-top lookouts I have seen. You could see everything in all directions. The splash of the city lights against the mountain and the sky make is a beautiful sitting spot. In case you had wondered, the Winds That You Rise banner at the top of the blog is a photo of the view. To add to the perfect settings, Xav’s friends were pretty cool and I had a great time chatting with them. One in particular was the focus of that night.


I rarely ever find someone to be incredibly good looking, but he was just that. Everything about him seemed perfect. He’s tall, with blond short hair and eyes that lit up when he smile. He was really friendly and easy to relate with, so I had to concentrate not to swoon every time while we talked. His body looked pretty damn good too, which was hard not to notice when he decided to climb up onto higher roof-top levels of building.

It’s annoying when you find someone attractive and you don’t know if they’re into guys. That seems to be the story of my life. But the whole evening I kept jumping back-and-forth over the line of maybe he is, maybe he’s isn’t. I tend to start making little observations about a person’s behaviour, trying to conclude whether they play for my side or not. With him, I started settling that he was for the ladies.

I had to leave early to meet up with some others friends, so I said my goodbyes to everyone and gave some of the gang hugs. As the last person to get a goodbye, the man of my focus for the night came right up to me and pulled me in for a really good hug. Hopefully you all know the kind I’m talking about. Nice and strong, both arms holding the other person. Your chest and torso flat against the other person’s. Your cheeks rub together – and not in the French Canadian hello/bye cheek kiss type of way. His stubble rubbing against me felt amazing. That was the kind of hug you just don’t want to let go.
That affection pretty much sent fireworks off in my mind. I’m sure some might think a blowjob would have been a better goodbye, but shit that was some real good hugging. Man, why did I have to leave then…

I could give him a name in this blog, but I won’t just yet. Don’t worry, I do have more to write on him.

I feel like that last post was a bit heavy so here's a funny youtube video to lighten the atmosphere.



My friends and I love this video and I am really good at doing the double-masturbation gesture on friends in public.

Dealing with the Closet in Highschool

Last night was a great time with a big group of friends. The bring-your-own-wine concept of a restaurant really doesn't get the credit it deserves. When you have 15 people each bring a bottle of wine (who cares what kind, I'm no wine aficionado - alcohol is alcohol) good times definitely happen. I left the group early to see the Cut Copy concert, unfortunately I didn't think to buy the tickets early. The concert was soldout and even the scalpers didn't have tickets, so I rejoined the winefest.

My close friends, along with the extended network of friends, were all there. Apart from the boyfriends/girlfriends, we all pretty much met in highschool. With the exception of my close-guy-friends and a few others, I'm usually pretty indifferent or disinterested about seeing other people I knew back in highschool. There are a few reasons for these feelings, but the main one is that seeing them makes me think back to myself and how I felt back then.

For the most part, highschool was lots of fun for me. I liked learning, I'm good at math, science and all the other subjects. Being on the football and track team was also lots of fun. My negative experiences stem from me being gay and how I dealt with it back then.

My reaction mechanism for being gay was to hide it as much as possible. Like most people who are gay and in highschool, I was scared that if someone found out I was gay, everyone would be disgusted and afraid of me. I would lose my friends and family and I would be alone. I spent countless nights running these long scenarios in my mind of how everything would go wrong and I would be abandoned. I knew that there was no one for me to possibly speak to or express my feelings to so I just buried them deep inside my mind. That is unfortunately one thing that I learned to be very good at. It's only looking back at it all now that I can describe my warped mindset and way of acting.

My mind would always be in a state of alert. I had to make sure to never do anything that could be labeled or linked to gay. I would only express my like for things that I thought were linked to straightness or normal guy things. A lot of this would come from me constantly gauging and remembering other peoples' reactions to things. I wouldn't bash gays or the idea of homosexuality, but I wouldn't dare touch it or consider mentioning anything related to it (The only exception being me at home alone with the internet's gay porn. Wooo!). I'd even go so far as to constantly analyzing the way I moved to make sure I never looked gay and to analyze other people so that I could always "blend in".

With the constant strain on me to keep up a perfect portrayal, even if at times it was for something as mundane as the type of music I like, my mind and personality wasn't exactly the greatest in the world. I was kind of an asshole. I disliked meeting new people and I would disregard someone very quickly. I would hide it around my parents, pretending to be a happy-go-lucky kid, but I was depressed. To hide my feelings, and not just those of finding other guys hot but happiness, curiosity, creativity and the willingness to share a part of myself with others, was pretty much killing me slowly.

I think it's time to bring this all back to the present now. Seeing other highschoolers back from my closeted days just brings back all the emotions I felt (or didn't feel at all) back to mind. But yesterday was different. I didn't feel that way. I wasn't brought down by my memories. The 15 of us just had a great time eating, drinking and then going out.

And time now begins...

Hello anyone.

Introductions are always hard. You can’t possibly sum-up all of yourself into the 5 sentences you can blurt out, when giving that first handshake or wrapping around for the first hug. This being the internet-and-all, there’s no normal way of basing an initial judgement, so I expect anything I write can be interpreted a whole bunch of ways. Makes you wonder why any bloggers should try this hard to convey a part of themselves to others.

Well, I’ve said the word: Blogger. This blog will be the record for my experiences and thoughts. I’ve been alive for 23 years; born and currently living in Montreal, Canada. Enough things have happened to me to be a good source of entertainment. I know I like to entertain, so I see this as a good medium for me.

A running theme, here, will be myself, my gayness, my friends and my thoughts. I’ve started coming out roughly at the age18, but a better description would be I’ve been coming out to people I know from between the ages of 18 to 22. Right now, pretty much only my family remains as those who don’t know. All parts of my personality are linked and have affected each other greatly. I am many things other than just gay, but being that has tipped the scales in some directions.

I haven’t quite decided how much or how little of myself I will share with you all. I think the level of comfort and amount of detail will soon decide itself. As a first entry I think this is long enough. Maybe my introduction will leave a good impression. Undoubtedly you, the readers, will interpret based on your own personalities and views. I guess I am whoever you want me to be then.

Thomas