I left for the conference feeling hungry ill and I returned from the conference feeling cold, hungry, and ill. Now, “what conference?” you may be asking yourself. Why, the MBLGTACC conference! I think it stands for something about gay BLT sandwiches.

In retrospect, at least from where I stand now, nothing in my life seems memorable or interesting. It’s all been kinda smoothed over into bla. Odd.

Sometimes I feel like I have a connection limit. The closer I get to some people, the farther I get from others. The operators in my head are rerouting calls and disabling the network. I fear that the system is down, the system is down. I’ve gotten extremely sidetracked and I’ve not yet begun to fight!

We members eight of the University of Minnesota- Duluth Queer Students Union set sail at 8:30am on Friday, February 13th (spooky fingers). For future reference, there were two vehicles, the van (Erin, Jesse, Rachel, Sarah) and the mini Saturn from hell (Mike, Topher, Tony, Whoreface-er-Brian). I still have no idea how long the drive was. The combination of bad disney music, bad gay music, hearing I WILL SURVIVE five hundred times, and Whoreface’s “amusing voices and sound effects” kinda removed my time sense. On the drive down we stopped in Minneapolis to meet up with their gay group to create a queer caravan. This resulted in a.) getting lost and b.) nothing. It felt good to know that South Dakotans aren’t the only ones to get horribly confused in that city. Oh, and the UM Twin Cities campus is absolutely amazing, well, the student center at least. A book store that looks like a department store and escalators. Escalators!

Sometime around 2pm we were en route to Ames, Iowa yet again. Mike (queermike, not to be confused with lunchmike, dinnermike, or mike of the matt and mike j combo) talked pretty much the entire time, which was cool because I got to know him n’ stuff. He’s also very funny (bitter, cynical, and pure evil). Though, I did reveal a bit too much to him. Ungh, one of the worst experiences of my life has become a joke, oh well, that way it becomes minimzed and less traumatic. For those of you in the know, the joke that is me refers to the events following prom my junior year. Ick. Brian drove for most of the time. Whoreface can not drive worth a damn. We swerved off the road, nearly got killed by semis, and in general got too close to cars more times than I care to remember.

Oh, and gay people have a horrible taste in music. I’d like to emphasize that point. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

*mumble* i will NOT survive *grumble*

Haha. Eventually we arrived in Ames, where we promptly got lost again. Soon enough we were checked into the HoJo and on our way to the campus (where we got lost. again). Do you see a pattern? I blame Friday the 13th. I fell down the stairs in middle school on a Friday the 13th during a fire drill once. Life is hard.

The other person in our car was Tony. Tony is an enigma, but pretty gnarly now that I’ve been around him more. Gay male bonding consists of catty insults, who knew? Tony can also hook me up with keys to the photo lab whenever I need them. Muahahah.

Eventually we found the campus and then sat for part of the keynote speaker and then half of us ran off like scavengers for food. Duluthians have short attention spans. I think we ended up at the on campus bar thing eventually. Gay culture is a culture of excess… There was a drag show but I wasn’t really into it. Mike and I left and hung out in a really fancy lounge area. He played the piano some and told me more about his life. I know most of his story by now, which is cool. Ooh, the best part of the night was when R. and Maria called. It was sad when Mike made me get off the phone, but then I got to tell him the Kentris story. The Kentris tale is an amazing one indeed. Ha, doom.

We got back to the rooms quite early. We were all too lame to enjoy the night life, which sucks, because the van went to a really cool indie club apparently.

Next morning we were up bright and early for a breakfast snack on campus! The amazing things offered to us included a granola bar and fruit snacks. There was much rejoicing. Oh, I saw Derick! and that was cool but then later I saw Derick! and whoreface and that was not cool. I miss talking to Derick! because the first day I met him was one of the coolest and most extensive conversations I’ve ever really had. Since school has started, it’s been little more than hello. I know it’s my fault too, but yeargh. Anyway, soon it was time for the outbreaks, I mean breakouts, to start. Mike, Rachel, and I went to dating for losers. I mean queer dating. It was pretty interesting, but then we had to go around filling out one of those sheets of like “same sign” “same birth state” and that kinda crap. There was a pretty boy (“stupid white boy”) but he ran away from me. Mike talked to him, but oh well. The end result of the workshop thing was basically to give blue dot stickers to those who were single and looking, with the idea that you could approach others with blue dots to trade numbers and etc. Bleargh…

Oh, there was also a 12 step guide to dating or something, which I may post here later. I follow some of the steps, sorta. Wheeeee. Oh, I should take this time to mention that I decided to bury the roses from my experiments in witchcraft in a snowbank in Iowa. That sentence is poorly constructed.

My next outbreak, err breakout, was on labels in the gay community. It was directed by Robyn Ochs, a huge bi-rights activist who’s a native of Massachusetts and was helping out with the same sex marriage stuff there last week. She’s incredibly cool, and after lunch we got to see her speak. She’s my hero, and her workshop and speech were the most informative parts of the conference for me. My final workshop of the day was by the same people who did the dating thing. It was about safe sex (“no glove, no love”). It was… enlightening?

Ask me about dental dams. Anything. I know all.

I think we went back to the hotel to prepare for the dance at this point. That took a few hours, and then we returned to campus to see the tail end of a lesbian comedian’s act. I thought she was really funny, but Mike was being bitter and selfish. He’s really good at that. I mean… he never judges or thinks about himself at all! Yeah, I have a little crush on him that I’m restraining. He even told me everything I need to know to take him. 1.) Tell him he’s smart 2.) Tell him he’s always right. Seriously, that’s it. He’s so egocentric he doesn’t even like if people compliment him on looks. I fear he might be the anti-christ.

After the comedian I became besodded with ennui, I mean, I waited for the dance to start. It started, and then I waited for my life to end. GAY PEOPLE HAVE HORRIBLE TASTES IN MUSIC.

Or maybe it’s just dances in general. I liked it when Erin dj’ed the dance thing here. I danced the whole time. Though, there’s a difference between dancing with seven friends and two hundred strangers. I wasn’t feeling the groove so I kept leaving, and Mike kept finding me. Oh, we were using the “buddy” system because word got out that Brian was going to bring a boy back to the hotel to fuck. The board decided that no one could come to our rooms but that we could go to theirs if we were back by 8am. Back to the dance…

You know in Queer as Folk when they show all the glittery, naked, sweaty hot bodies dancing and you’re like “wow! I wanna be there!” Well, I’d like you to rethink that part, especially the sweaty part. The dance floor smelled like ass mixed with a sea of gay boys bathed in bad cologne. Ick ick ick ick ick. Though, it was considerably less icky than the constant belching of my roommate. Grr.

I ended up on a nice couch and eventually Mike found me to try and get me to be social. We were talking and then Maren called me in a very special manner, but Mike’s bossy and won’t let me talk on the phone, so I had to go. When Mike and I were walking around I spotted a boy in pleather shiny pants and a frilly shirt. I was amused and pointed him out, more or less as a joke. While Mike and I were sitting, we kept seeing this boy walk by and Mike was telling me to talk to him, but naturally I didn’t. When we headed back into the dance and the boy was headed out, Mike had enough. Him and Stuary Smalley took off running to kidnap the poor kid. He was drug to me and we started talking awkwardly. Eventually we left the dance again to walk around. He too was a shy white boy that didn’t have the gay groove jeans. As a side note, Mike dancing looks like someone having a seizure.

Pleather pants boy’s name was Chad. There was a connection, but I felt like things were kinda off. We ended up sitting on a couch in some lounge and I was by the arm and he was right by me, you know, not default couch positions. I knew he wanted to do something, but I was too tired to make any move. It turned out that he was from Winona (which is a great town for many reasons, even though I’ve never been there) and he was staying at the same hotel as us. We offered to give him a ride home but then there was confusion saying he couldn’t come but then he could and bla. Lotsa confusion. Anyway, we get to the hotel and his key doesn’t work so we have to walk to the front desk to get new keys made and we head back to his room.

Naturally, the pleather pants at frozen to his legs by this time. *snicker* He changed into different clothes and we turned on the tv and people from his town started showing up. Eventually, some girl walked in with Sarah, from UMD. Me and her looked at each other and she yelled “topher!” and we burst out laughing. Chad and I started cuddling on a bed after awhile as more people walked in and out. I didn’t really say anything the whole time and felt weird being there as Chad’s arm candy or something. Some boy came in going off on homosexuals and how he was sick of stupid boys. He kept glaring at me. It was amusing. Sarah eventually left and I… didn’t. I spent the night in a roll away cot with Chad. We just cuddled and kissed mainly. It still felt kinda off, but very comfortable. It feels nice to be in someone’s arms and to have them hold you. I’d been deprived og physical contact for awhile so it was just really really nice. I got back to the room at 7:59am or so and was greeted by many nicknames and such. I guess I’m jizzy now.

Mike keeps wanting to call him Chris, the fucker. He dated a beautiful boy named Chris who left him for Jesus. Oh, and during the dating for losers workshop he commented that you should never date someone with the same name (which earned him a stalker named Mike). I found this amusing considering I’d made the same comment to Maren and Brandi over x-mas or something. We went to campus for one final breakout session (careers and sexuality, it wasn’t interesting to me, bla). Then it was time to leave and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Chad or anything which sucks. Oh well, I don’t know what’s going on.

I should’ve gone to bed a few hours ago or done some homework. I’m damn tired and confused. I want what I cannot have and have what I didn’t really want. Jet broke up with her girlfriend which makes me sad, and I hope Jet’s doing okay. I’ll see her soon and now it’s time to get on track since this conference stuff is finished with.

My next big event is portfolio review.

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