I had a conversation last night, wherein I discovered perhaps the best name for a narrative of life at Beloit College, but I can’t remember now. Whatever. Today is Sunday, my day for updating the world about my status. Phone calls will occur later this afternoon (after my cell phone charges) and of course the requisite TealArt entry.

My classes are going well: nothing difficult yet. I have my first paper (feminisms) due in a couple of weeks, and I don’t think I’ll get the assignment for that until Thursday (maybe,) and it promises to be dead simple. In a fun and exciting sort of way. I have an “assessment” (psych) on Monday, which looks to be simple enough to complete in my sleep, which is really convenient given the time slot of that class. There’s another test-like thing in the Sociology class at the end of the week or the beginning of the next, which is the only thing I have to do actual work to prepare for, (other than general reading and stuff like that). So the school-work progresses much as I expected it, which is a very good thing indeed.

I have four friends who speak Russian in some degree. One is an exchange student, another immigrated as a child: so speaks it with her parents, and her (flawless) English is occasionally peppered with Russian. The last guy, did an intensive summer emersion program, and has taken a number of classes. The surprising thing is that I understand a surprising amount of what gets said. I have the vocabulary of an 18 month old, but I can kind of translate the important parts. It’s interesting, because I don’t think I’ve ever been in situations where my language skills have been semi-useful. Which when you consider the last time I had a Russian class was six years ago, is kind of good. On another linguistic level, my Spanish is also a lot better than I think it is, and I could probably Tutor people in first year Spanish. For all the faults of the last four years of my Spanish experience, my teacher did know the language really well, and her explanations have stuck. Maybe it wasn’t all for nothing.

I’ve become a little discouraged about the gay boy situation here. Fiveish in my class at last count: that works out to somewhere between a percent and a percent and a half of the class. I don’t think Kinsey was that far off. From what I can tell the percentages for the other classes aren’t appreciably higher, at this point. Now either there are people that I don’t see/can’t find (a distinct possibility), this place isn’t nearly as hippie/“liberal”/open as people claim it is (a certain truth, but I don’t think that’s it either,) or Kinsey misplaced a decimal. The perhaps more interesting observation is somewhere near half of them are “very-much attached” which strikes me as really uncommon and strange. Anyway.

Not to babble too much about this kind of thing but here goes another line of observation. I’ve been in the situation where I’ve had to kind of “come out” again. It’s really just a part of that continual coming out process, but it feels like “again” sometimes. I’ve not had problems or anything, but it’s weird. The “exciting” sigh of relief that I used to love so much, has mostly been replaced by anxiety and annoyance. I really want the gay thing to be a complete non-issue, but it doesn’t feel like a non-issue to me, and sometimes I feel like a one song-singer because I think about it a lot. There’s a lot more to be than this gay thing, but it’s still fairly important, and my position with myself is that heterosexuality is a bigger deal for straight folks than they/we think it is, but perhaps that’s part of the benefit of normativization (if that isn’t a word, it should be/is now.) It means walking a lot of fine lines, but there’s not much I can do really. In other news, I think I’m going to join the Breakdance club. It’s a pretty big time commitment. No, it’s a huge time commitment. But it’s not too much, there’s a very slight possibility of getting some credit for it, but I would do it anyway. It looks so fun, it’ll be good exercise, and just like Morris and International, I have a great desire to know how to do it. I haven’t given up on the idea of a Morris team, but I’m fairly convinced that I’ll need at least one other person whose familiar with the ways of Morris before I jump into that.

The other really exciting thing that’s happened of late is that I wrote up a proposal for the Affinity Story Project, I have to do some revisions, which I’ll probably get to sometime this week. I have the time it’s more about getting distance from the work so that I can make better revisions. Then I just have to get an example of a story or two (probably one from Chris and whatever I put in to it,) write a cover letter, and send it out to publishers. I’ll start looking for stories after that. This is quickly becoming real, and I think it’s really exciting.

On that note, I’ll leave you for now. See you later in the week!

I have a knitting post, and a few other ones that I’m thinking about writing, and they’ll probably appear later in the week, but for now I hope this little ditty keeps you happy. Cheers!

I was minding my own business and checking my mail today, when I saw a poster. It was an advertisement for the Beloit Christian Fellowship. Gag me with a spoon, but they’re doing a pretty good job of advertising and there is chalk and posters all over. Whatever, it’s cool.

Anyway, the poster in question had a picture of a pile of hay and a sheep, with the words “hey + ewe” written under the pictures. Very clever I guess, if you’re into that kind of thing.

My first thought was, “but Jesus was a carpenter.” And then I remembered the good Shepard metaphor, which clashes with the carpenter idea, but no one asked me.

They never do.

There are a hundred jokes about how the best men are either taken or gay, and I tend to agree with this. Availability, or more properly unavailability is very attractive and it shows prospective suitors that a person is mature enough for adult relationships, and able to commit. There’s some truth to this, and I want to try and distance myself from this in the rest of the post, but at the same time it’s worth mentioning.

In my opinion, the best ones are taken and gay.

Before I dig myself into a really deep hole, I’m going back up and address the real issue: long distance relationships, and my reactions to them.

Ok, so here on the second week of classes at glorious Beloit College, I’ve noticed that there are a hell of a lot of people, regardless of orientation who are in some sort of committed long distance relationship. I remember reading something on the accepted student boards (people who were going to be attending Beloit in the fall had the option of opening a dialogue on a message board. Anyway, someone said, lots of people come to Beloit and try to have long distance relationships with boy and girlfriends back home, and that college often changes people a lot often bringing about the end of these people’s relationships.

Well I haven’t seen a relationship end yet, but I would completely agree with all of these statements. There are tons of people who are in long distance relationships, and I suspect that the majority of them won’t last. This is kind of frustrating to me, both on one level, as I’ve been on both ends of the leaving stick, on anther level as there are tons of people that I view are taken: and unnecessarily at that.

Let’s start off with my view of the problems with distance relationships.

I have a very strong opinion that, one shouldn’t try to sacrifice the present for a hope in the future. Who knows what’s going to happen between now and then? People can die, fall in and out of love at the drop of a hat, people turn into assholes, become drug addicts, and develop emotional instabilities without any notice.

I’m also of the opinion that if people are meant to be together, that they will end up together in the end. I trust fate like that, which probably stupid on so many levels, but I’ll take that risk.

Given these things, I absolutely refuse to engage in anything that could be considered a long distance relationship. I won’t date people who I can’t reasonably see on a fairly regular basis.

At the same time there are people, like AW, who lives at least a thousand miles away. To deny that we have some sort of meaningful connection would be foolish and untrue. At the same time, we’re individuals, we’re living our own lives in the present (more or less) but we’re not just friends. Long distance relationship? You tell me. At the same I’d wager that all of my peers here who are have significant others back home are getting no more than I get out of such relationships, and I almost guarantee you that they’re putting the same amount of energy and likely into it.

My relationship with sexuality has also changed a little recently. I used to think that exclusivity was not only desirable but also requisite for any kind of relationship, and I suppose I don’t feel the same way anymore. This isn’t to say that in a stable relationship where two people live with or near each other couldn’t be exclusive and I do think that monogamy is desirable. But I also know that it’s possible to love more than one person, to be interested in more than one person, and even theoretically to sleep with more than one person, without it being a critique of anyone. That is, one can have a committed relationship with Person A, and still love (or etc) Person B without it being a criticism or a degradation of Person A. I think there’s room in a singular human experience to love more than one person, perhaps even at the same time.

How people act out the implications of this, is another issue completely, and one everyone should fully discuss with their partners and blah blah blah, I’m not terribly interested in dispensing advice at the present, just outlining what I believe to be true and possible at the moment.

So why am I writing this? In part to kind of stick my nose in the air, and say, I’ve reached the perfect compromise for myself at the moment. In part because there’s at least one fellow who I’d be all over, if he didn’t have a gentleman caller halfway across the country, and also in part because I’m tired of listing to people moan about the (usually) boyfriend that’s back home.

Interesting gender point here: I can’t think of a guy whose in a distance relationship with a girl at the moment. Ponder away.

But I can be patient, and ultimately I think things will settle down and people will come to their senses, in the mean time I’ll just have to make do with what I have. For now. Despite a little frustration, I think I’m pretty happy. So there!

Ok, I know my TealArt break was only supposed to last a week, but to be honest with you folks, I’m kind of surprised that it didn’t last a whole month. I’ve started college, for real. It’s everything that I expected, basically. I like the classes I’m taking; I like the classes that I’m planning to take next year. I like how my high school experience has prepared me for this shift, I also like how so many of the classes I took in high school are going to be transferring here. Once St. Louis University gets it’s act together, and I figure out how to request AP transcripts, I’ll have 7.75 units, or 31 hours of credit. The whole notion of getting done in three years is very much a reality, and I love it.

Thus far my experience with my classes as also been generally positive, and as I expected it; this is to say that, I enjoy the subjects I expected myself to enjoy, and am a bit ambivalent about the classes I expected myself to be ambivalent about. I like the fact that things are working out. There certainly is the possibility for change in the future, but for the moment things are peacefully staying as they are.

I’m not really happy about my room assignment and the smoking status of the dorm I’m in. The smokers aren’t happy because they can’t smoke in the lounges, and the asmatics/allergic/non-smokers aren’t happy because the building reeks and people can smoke in their rooms. So it’s about. The consensus is that res life is using people with a non-smoking preference to change the culture in this dorm (which reaches far beyond the smoking of tobacco products). Frankly, it isn’t fair to either group. In anycase, I have a draft of a very polite and friendly email to the dean of students and the director of residential life that I’ll probably send out pretty soon depending on how I feel. In the mean time, I’m looking for a roommate so I can move into a special interest house next semester. I’ll probably post more on this in the future.

In other news, for one of my classes, we have to do a feminist activism project, and I’m kind of at a loss of what to do. The prof, said “take something you’re angry about, and something your good with, combine them, send a number of hours on that and you’ll be fine.” I’m not worried about the anger, and I’m good at computer stuff, knitting, writing, and traditional Anglo-Celtic ethnomusicology. I could knit some sort of avant garde, binary coded message into some sort of lace shawl. But that wouldn’t reach enough people, and the truth is I don’t want to do that, it was just a funny idea. Computer stuff and writing are easily combined, and I might end up doing something with a TealArt sub site, which I’ve wanted to do for a while, but that would require perfecting that code, which I’m stuck on. In any case, I’ll be writing more about this soon.

I’ll shift back to the total college experience for a moment. I have an awesome schedule. I’m only taking four classes, which no matter how hard the classes are it’s not that bad. The thing is that I’ve got this huge block of time in the middle of the day that I can use to nap if I need to and I can do my work. Without particularly trying to be an over achiever, I’ve been really good about getting my homework done at least 12 hours before it’s due. Getting up hasn’t been a problem either, though I suspect that this will change a little bit as it starts getting light later.

I must complain about the Internet situation though. Apparently the network is riddled with viruses because of people bringing their computers back from the summer. This means the wireless network is inoperable, which is more annoying than anything mostly because it makes it more difficult to avoid being in my room, which I’m trying to do as much as possible. On that note, I’ll leave you all for now, stay tuned for more updates and developments.

I had kind of intended to take a hiatus for this week. I just moved off and all, and they have us on this wacky summer camp schedule thing. We have all day seminars in how to be college students (well mine is about social science and Mars colonization, but the veil is pretty thin,) and then there are activities, most of which are pathetic.

I have one comment to make, borne out requisite ambivalence, and grouchyness: If it’s really easy to be a rebel, and all the authorities are saying, its fine to rebel if you want to, go for it, it’s no longer really rebellion. The purpose has been completely defeated.

I’m sure there will be more later.

As Chris reported, we talked for a while yesterday, and I think it was generally awesome. I completely agree with him, (gosh, that’s a first!) about the difference between spoken and typed communication. I would also say that, the people we are online, is a lot like the people we really are, and sometimes when we meet virtual buddies in real life, it takes a while for a physical (or vocal) report to develop, and the “jump” as it were is more the result of a non-normal first impression rather than some fundamental difference in personality expression.

At the beginning, the voice I heard was not the one I was expecting, but once I got used to, it was perfect and right. It was defiantly weird at first after all it was a “first meeting.” Once I realized on a more basic level that there are few people in the world that I’ve known (and been in such contact with) for five plus years, it was totally cool. It just took a few moments for my body to realize who I was talking to, I guess.

Chris recognized that the conversation was more flowing than it is in AIM, but I think that’s a symptom of the fact that in half an hour of phone conversation, we covered what might take several hours in AIM world. Very interesting.

That’s just my response. I’m going to go back to being on fake hiatus until next week. I’m trying to line up some awesome guest bloggers, but so far little luck. Stay tuned in any case.

In a very bold gesture I ripped out the vest I was making, and have started on the sweater that I’ve wanted to make for a long time now. It’s going to be a basic, shirt style, dropped shoulder number. Seed stitch borders and trim, with a plain stocking stitch body. The only typically Sam features (ie really weird things) is that I didn’t even bother coming up with a pattern for this sweater other than measuring a sweater that I think fits me very well and coming up with a gaguge. The other Samish feature (if I ever writing a knitting book, it’ll be called Samish Knitting) is that I’m combining yarn from two different dye lots, and with a lot of black Rit dye (or possibly India Ink), I hope to make this a non issue.

I’ll post a pattern once I have a garment completed. I’d do it sooner, because it’s a really simple and standard design, but I haven’t a clue of how I’m going to shape the neck, and with luck I’ll have decided by the time I get there.

It’s really nice to have a big project on the needles again, and I also really like how quickly it’s passing. I started it yesterday evening and after a number of failed cast on attempts I know have the effective 2.5 inch bottom trim, and 3 inches of the body-proper completed, and it’s smooth sailing till the underarms (no short rows needed!).

In other knitting news I’m working tirelessly to put together a knitting sub-site for TealArt. Basically it would be the same as regular TealArt, except only the knitting posts would appear, and I’ll be able to create a knitting specific sidebar. Also, I think it means there’ll be a new knitting contributor.

So stay tuned.

The Parting Glass (Part 1 of an indeterminate number)

Oh all the money that e’er I spent
I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e’er I’ve done
Alas, it was to none but me
And all I’ve done for want of wit
To memory now I can’t recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all

Oh all the comrades that e’er I’ve had
Are sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e’er I’ve had
Would wish me one more day to stay
But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I’ll gently rise and I’ll softly call
Good night and joy be with you all

It’s all been done, before, but just cause I think it’s cool, and I don’t want to bother to ask people permission to write about them (and symbolically altering names is kind of stupid,) I’m going to identify characters discussed in web log with initials, or relationally. Along with this, privacy seeking measure, I’m going to remind the readership, that the stories I tell are important to me. If you figure out who the other actors are, good for you, don’t share. Secondly, as always, if I leave something out of a TealArt post and you want to know more, wait till I write more about it, or email me about it. There’s some method to my madness, usually.

I said good-bye to A.W. today. I keep doing that, and will keep doing that for a long time. Don’t ask me why. I used to be ambivalent about him, a problem that often got worse with interaction. Now, I’ve seen him way more in the last three weeks than I’m used to, and if anything I’ve gotten less ambivalent. Its funny, I’m moving away in about a week, and this was probably the hardest good-bye, and it’s not the first time (nor the last) I’ve said good-bye to him.

Because I’m in a Babylon 5 mood, and really deep down, I’m just a regular old geek fanboy, here’s a couple of things from the end of season five. Delenn, said that there’s no word for “good-bye” in the Mimbari language, because all of they left open the possibility for a “next time.” The second thing, G’kar, says good-bye to someone staying on the station, as he makes some speech about how, if you spend enough time in a place or with a person, you take a little bit of the place/person with you when you leave, and you leave a little bit of yourself behind. G’kar says something like “the part of me that is going, will very much miss the part of you that is staying.” Something like that. Both of those ideas are kind of key to my experience.

I’m going to a party in an hour and a half where I get to say good-bye to a bunch of the people I went to school with. I never socialized with them very well, but we have a bond. I suppose, and I think it’s important for closure that I go to this party. Let us note, I went to one of their graduation parties, and other than that I completely avoided their madness. Ignoring that fact, it’ll be fun, and then I get to go to my second to last gay-youth group meeting. That’ll be sad-ish.

It isn’t like I’m dying, and I’ll be back, but these “goodbye for now"s are difficult. Especially in cases like A.W. where I really really want to spend time with him.

**Update:**The party was a huge non issue. It was good to see and say goodbye to the folks, but those are some pretty lame parties, and I feel good. And then I left, and felt good for doing it. Saying goodbye to A.W., though was still so much more amazingly difficult. Alas.

I realize that this isn’t exactly a new post (at least conceptually,) and I realize/hope that this kind of discourse isn’t ultimately useful to anything or anyone; but at the same time, it’s an issue/debate that I find myself caring about a lot. Additionally, I think I’ve become a lot more coherent on the issue of late, which might be helpful. This doesn’t mean I have any answers, but my questions are more crystallized (to mix metaphors a bit,) which I need to learn to become content with. Let us also not forget the fact that I’m bored out of my mined (mostly,) and musing about this is one of my favorite things to torture myself with in fits of boredom.

I suppose these statements/questions, on some level apply to every kind of group identity, social identities like race, class, education, age, and of course gender/sexuality for starters. Because gender and sexuality are my thing, and while I’m perfectly content to go on about race and class, I’ll constrain myself a bit, but I would beg the readers to not be so constrained.

As I explained briefly in the Why it all Matters post, identity is made up of: what you actually do, what you see yourself as/claim, and how other’s see you.

I think there’s a Vorlon quote from Babylon 5 that says something like: Truth is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and fact or something like that. It’s an interesting analogy that I don’t want to stray into, so I’m moving on.

I view the trifold aspect of identity as one of the unexplainable facts of the world. I’m not sure how I feel about the “how others see you” part, and “what you claim,” and while I’m at it strict behavioral identities don’t really fully account for the complexities of identities.

So the questions I’ve been asking:

• If an effeminate (gay acting, for lack of a better term) guy, says he’s bisexual, but only has relationships with women; then what’s up?
• What would the “status” bisexuals in long term monogamous relationships be, and how does their previous relationship history affect their identity?
• Are non operative transgender people, who don’t take hormones, aren’t seeking surgery, and often live in the gender of their birth, really trans?
• If a women exclusively dates women, and is out as a lesbian, and then falls in love with a man and gets married and lives in that relationship happily for 20 years, is she still a lesbian?
• If someone is out as a bisexual, but is only has relationships with one sex, are they really bisexual?
• If someone claims a particular identity, and then “changes” identity at some later point, is that identity shift apply retroactively? Does behavior affect this?
• If someone who is out as a gay man doesn’t have relationships with men at all (or only occasionally), are they still gay?
• If a man, who dates women exclusively, has sex with men occasionally, is he still straight?
• In cases similar to the one above, would that man’s behavior affect the answer; that is, if he bottomed (took the receptor roll during anal sex) would that affect the answer?
• An individual whose in the closet, has very little if any heterosexual attraction, dates heterosexually, but given the proper contextual situation, would be almost exclusively homosexual, is

Again, the idea of retroactivity plays into this one.

There is of course the obvious “why does it matter” response, but excluding that, I think there are two ways to answer these questions: what they are, is guided by what they do, or, regardless of what they do, they are what they say/feel they are. In my gut, I usually answer behaviorally, though on an intellectual level, I know that the ‘say/feel’ option is probably closer to the truth. Something inside me says, bisexual people need to have relationships with both men and women, or they’re really hetero or homo, and that a self-identified gay man shouldn’t have relationships with women. That a man who had a relationship with a woman for a number of years, and then only had relationships with men would be gay. But bisexual people frequently lean one way or the other, that some homosexuals have hetero relationships (to varying degree’s), and that lots of homo-leaning bisexual people, identify as gay men (and lesbians). I suppose the thing is, that there’s no one right answer to identity, that it’s an individual combination of those aforementioned three aspects.

Once we’ve gotten that one mostly squared away, the issue of “Why it matters anyway?” remains.

Identity is important because it makes it possible, let alone easier to study sexualities and gender. It separates people into groups that you can study. It allows people to fit into communities based on their identities and the intersection of their identities. Having said that, you could also say, that identity segregates people and enforces stereotypes.

And it does.

Knowing this, is the fact that identity is the source for a great many things that are wrong, reason enough to abandon it, knowing that there is a lot of insight to be gained by studying identity?

Having asked that, I don’t think that its possible to ever completely avoid identity. It’s as central to the human experience as oxygen, Swedish Meatballs (Babylon 5 joke, please disregard,) curiosity, and fear. Therefore, if identity is unavoidable, how on Earth do you study it (in some form) without releasing (and therefore bathing in) the unavoidable detriments of identity?

Full Stop.

That about covers it for now. Maybe it’s enough just to write something like this, to acknowledge that the issues are out there, and then maybe it’s not. Well I tried. Hopefully I can avoid this for a while now. Carry on.