7/30/22

Guys I literally don't know what I'm doing. 

I wanna start by saying Jean Paul Gaultier's A/W 2023 collection has been one of my favorite recent collections I've seen. Olivier Rousting was the designer, I honestly don't know if he was the only one I'm still not really sure how that works with bigger shows like this but he's the one I've seen most about, not to mention I do know he's the one who created my personal favorite looks, and he did such a beautiful job. I don't know the names of the looks or if they have any cause I just spent 15 minutes trying to find more info and couldn't find anything more than what I had already seen so I gave up, but a lot of the most interesting looks were the ones I assume were made via body casting, they did breast plates similar to ones we've seen before, I think most famously worn by Zendaya at the...VMAs? But the ones with pregnant belly's I thought were gorgeous. Some people had said they thought it was poorly timed with Roe v Wade being overturned so recently, but I kind of think it made it more thought provoking without the shock value, which I respect. I also really love that chrome has come back in the way it has, we're definitely seeing a lot of retro-futuristic vibes calling back to space age fashion very prevalent in the 60s and 70s, and I always love chrome like I eat that shit up every time so 100% earned some points from this guy over here. I also noticed a lot of African and Asian culture being referenced, a lot of large beads and neck rings which are a very obvious but beautiful nod to neck ring practices observed in Ndebele and Padaung cultures of South Africa and Myanmar. I think a lot of the designs, breast plates, neck rings, pregnant belly's, are meant to invoke femininity, whether or not its executed well, it does look beautiful and I think it combines fashion and culture together nicely. I bring this up cause its collections like this that make me feel confident in my choice of career path, a lot of runways, recently at least, seem like a stock pile of trying to be the most artistic and the most shocking, and have the most meaning, and be the most beautiful and its literally exhausting, especially because so many brands are starting to feel so similar in their transparency to be the most something, which call back to my rant about TikTok fashion trends. I think a lot of companies are realizing the best way to get publicity and be "successful" is to get attention via younger people on social media, and it feels like a lot of companies are washing down their artistic style for what they think would get the most attention, which is why I like accounts like Gastt fashion because they show you smaller fashion and style brands who are cool just because they're cool. But this collection felt more authentic to what "fashion" is; it doesn't need to be the most anything, literally as long as its cool and interesting to look at. Obviously some brands will always have their specific vibe, and sometimes it doesn't translate well into the style their trying to achieve, but Olivier definitely did something right in the way he combined art, fashion, and current haute couture styles. 

N E ways back to me cause lets be honest here that's what I'm best at talking about. This week has been so ugh, not even in a "I'm depressed" "I'm bored" yada yada, but just am literally so stressed all the fucking time, existing is physically fucking painful. I wont talk about it for too long cause there are some things I wanted to talk about that I already had on my mind, but I do need to vent and you're choosing to be here so please let me. Please. 

So for starters I go home in like just over two weeks pretty much. Its currently July 30th, I go home in like 17 days, and I do not feel ready at all. On the 16th my flight leaves at 6am or 6:30am, my parents want to stay at a hotel the night before and I do not want to do that literally at all its going to be my last day to see my friend(s?), last day to see my mom, last day to, as much as I hate it here, say goodbye to the house I grew up in, the town I grew up in, not the mention the color green, like I have zero interest in spending my last night before going home with the two people I want to see the least and the only two people from home that still can see me in Arizona. On top of that I move in on the same day, there's an event at school I might have to go to, I start work probably the day after that and I literally don't know how that's going to go, my classes start the day after THAT, I still have to finish packing, I'm definitely not going to see a psychiatrist before then which I had been wanting to do all summer. I have surgery inside my mouth on the 12th, I go on a trip to my moms families cabin in two days which is not going to be fun but I'm trying to stay optimistic about, I need to make plans with three people before I leave, one of which I don't want to do but I'm not going to say why cause they read this blog and I love them and its a personal issue so its not worth addressing. But it does lead me into my next segment which will most likely tip them off to what my major malfunction is;

Dating. 

Dating for people of my architype is not fucking fun. But before I get into that I'm going to talk about my experiences with it, and then venture into my long winded way of saying I hate men (yes this is my thesis statement). I've only ever had experiences with men. I'm not sure why. The running joke is that I have too much respect for women to put them through one more guy who wants to get into their pants, but I think the real hard facts are no woman would want to date me, I take it up the ass. Fair, harsh, but true. At the end of the day there are very few -I think- women who would want to get involved with someone who; A: has never BEEN with a woman, and B: In no way shape or form looks like he would WANT to be with a woman. Which is also fair, but this time not true. I love women. But I love women in the way women love women. I hold out hope, but I see it as very unlikely that my wants and "her" wants could be met in a realistic, and healthy way in order to maintain a functional relationship. So as funny as it is to say "men are easier", that's kind of what it boils down to. Not that men give it up easier and I don't want to put in the work to create a happy and trusting relationship with a woman, but at this point it really is easier to just stick with what I know.

So I stick to men, to what I know. My first few encounters with men weren't consensual, so right off the bat, not off to a great start. Whatever I'm over it for the most part. But something I think a lot of people don't take into consideration when thinking about dating for queer men like myself is the area, the geographical location, in which you're expected to start. Where I grew up, I had literally never interacted with another gay man until I was probably 15 or 16. There were a few gay people I knew, my 6th grade girlfriend and I both came out as bi, I think she's gay now, then some more bisexual female friends, and a lot of my friends freshman year were nonbinary, so its not like I didn't know anybody, I just didn't know anyone I could relate to. My sister was that bitch in high school, she had a boyfriend pretty much the entire time, my friends were all in relationships at some point, and I had nothing. And on a very surface level, that isn't fair. Its not fair that people have no other choice but to invite only friends to prom, never meet anyone, and never get those experiences I feel like a lot of straight or cis people take for granted. Of course my position was slightly different than others, I went to schools with a max of 25 other people in my grade, a conservative area, and a mostly non-accepting family aside from my parents and dads side of the family, though even they weren't exactly the least judgmental people, and the rape definitely didn't help my ability to get out of my comfort zone. But what I've realized now, is that that experience, with all the specifications I thought were unique to my life, are shared by literally most gay men. Unless you're a rarity, from  what I've observed, you realized fully you were not straight very young, spent years figuring it out, had multiple occasions in your life in which you felt like you shouldn't ever figure it out, before coming to terms with it and being faced with the reality that even once you're out, nothing changes. So what do we do? We go online. I, like many others, had hit a road block in terms of getting the experiences I wanted, the love, the heartbreak, literally the ability to have fun, so I tried to find people like me. I was 15 when I first downloaded tinder, that didn't really go anywhere. The real kicker was TikTok, and Grindr. I was 16 at the time. Thank fucking god my friends had boundary issues so I never felt comfortable meeting anyone from the internet until college, but this shit happens to so many people. Originally it started as just fun, it was entertaining to have men be constantly messaging me saying all the rancid, foul things they wanted to do to me, and my prepubescent mind registered all of it as the love I needed. I knew it wasn't good love, and it only took a month of two to get sick of nobody feeling like a real human being, but it was a blast, just to have a place in which everyone there, in some way or another, was just like me. TikTok was really what helped me though. Grindr was great for entertainment purposes, but it never actually got my energy to grow, TikTok showed me a world of people exactly like me. People who thought the way I did and could show me ways to mature and become better for myself in ways I honestly don't think I would've seen as fast had I not been in the spaces I was. Eventually TikTok, Grindr, Tinder, Yubo (omfg) was where I met all the people I would end up feeling closer to than the people in my school. Before the pandemic, it was a healthy mix, I had my school friends, my real friends, and then I had the little gay people in my phone. But take away the physical part of friendship, and I realized how much I honestly didn't even like the people I was friends with. We weren't the same. I didn't want friends who called me a fag as a joke, or friends who had such a lack of grasp on the world around them that they still worried about all the drama happening with the people in highschool around us. I had evolved, or so I thought (but I did after lockdown I was never the same person and was so much better for it), past the need for people who really served me no purpose, and as great as that is for my emotional growth, it ended up biting me on the ass. without anyone to really connect to around me, my only source of friendship and comradery were the people I talked to on all these apps, some of them really were great and I still am friends with a few, but most of them ruined me. It was a constant cycle of people who wanted nudes, all hours of the day, older guys who told me I was cute enough for me being 5 years younger then them to matter, people I thought were just friends dehumanizing me to my body, and the constant blocking and re-adding that occurred on a semi-daily basis. Nothing was consistent. Nobody I let myself feel close to stayed in my life past 6 months, and that gets to feel like a lot when its almost all you have. I hit a really low point the autumn of 2020. See the thing with being gay in a small town is that you're only options in terms of finding yourself are to go online or make the best of what you had. I was not a make the best kind of person, I wanted to be happy, and I wanted it now. Online relationships were everything to me. I had gone on one date, January of 2020 and it ended very badly, my fault, but I wasn't ok with being physical with anyone yet. There was nobody else around. So having someone to talk to, think about throughout the day, facetime at night and share whatever events are going on in your life with, while nothing in your real life changed at all, it was perfect. But like I said, inconsistent. I learned very quickly what men wanted, and I learned how to figure it out without them telling me. The unfortunate part however, is the personality disorder slowly eating away at my stable thoughts. For months on end I was talking to people, sorting them into one of many possible relationship types in my head, and eventually growing an attachment (with limits that is I had a good amount of people that really only served as entertainment that I couldn't care less about), and then eventually I would get one of three messages to cap off the months worth of energy we had given each other; "I just cant do long distance" that's great I didn't want to either I thought we were just friends, "Hey I started talking to someone and its getting more serious, we can stay friends though" mother fucker facetimed every night for 6 months, I didn't facetime him, he facetimed me, or "pending". And in the fall of 2020, I suffered three fatal blows. First was the first guy who actually stuck around ended things with me because someone else had messaged him saying shit about me that I had told him in confidence, that scared my guy into saying we should stop talking, that one hit me hard. Then the replacement got a boyfriend the same week I was planning on going to the beach for him cause he had been complaining about how miserable it was alone, this was I think the first guy I had actually made plans with that I was intending on going through with. Then the guy who messaged me back in may, we flirted, nothing came of it I was still talking to man #1 at the time, ended up getting bored. Now what I will say is that I don't condone any of my actions at this time. I got really, really bad. I also think its unfair to expect someone to commit to me over the phone when we never actually said we were going to, I don't blame any of them for any of this, but it did hurt. And also I was assaulted again during this time so like definitely not the best few months of Christians life. But it all helped, it pushed me through to that point where I was chill with being by myself, and not needing the constant attention despite how good it felt. And the main thing that really got me through it all was knowing by August 2021 I was going to college and would finally have the chance to live life how I wanted to. No more phones, no more annoying highschool people, I could, in all senses of the word, flourish into the person I wanted to be. This bring me to my final point. The stuff that's made me the person I am now and the person I was meant to be; Dating in the LGBTQ community.

Now we get to college. Mind you I've never kissed anyone, and considered myself a virgin cause virginity is fake and I can define it however the fuck I want to. My first date with a guy flopped, we never even touched and he ghosted me after the third date, no hard feelings other than not having the balls to at least end it over text if not in person. He wont even make eye contact when I see him on campus cause he's a pussy. But a good guy. Wish him the best. I've had a handful of dates since then, all of them kind of ended up sucking. My first kiss was kissing my girl friend while I was cross dressing to get into a frat. A good memory but not really the way I wanted it to go down. What the real kicker is is that even with the experiences I do now have, getting to college didn't really change any of it. I love her very much, but the fact that I waited 18 years to kiss someone and it was just a drunk decision made in a dirty frat house with a friend? Kind of makes me sad sometimes. The real REAL kicker though, is how fucking emotionally stunted these men are. Say what you will about my decisions in highschool, I regret none of them because I feel so much more capable of handling myself and being a good person to people. And what I've realized is that not everyone has had those growing experiences. I am a queer man, but so many people I've interacted with are people who just happen to be queer. Being connected to the queer experiences really does affect your outlook on how you go about interacting with gay people. They're the one who are masc4masc, no fem, no chub, whites only, the kind of gay people who use being gay as a means to justify every dickish thing they do. Racism, transphobia, fat phobia, fetishization, and overall dehumanization of any minority pretty much is so prevalent its sickening, and not in a good way. And that's why I regret nothing I've done. The online relationships, the pushing highschool friends away, the self-inflicted mental torment I caused because of how badly I wanted to be normal, it all made me so much better than literally everyone else my age. I know we make fun of the bitches who say "trauma makes you funny" but having experiences in which a good majority of your mental space is taken up with constant reminders of how miserable you are, it does make you grow. A lot. And as much as college will be better than being at home not being able to live way you want to, it wont be much better. And that, my friends, the men I've dealt with over the almost 20 years of my life, is why I'm so bitter towards most people. Because I have been exposed to so much variety, the closet cases, the masc4masc, the bears, the jocks, the twinks, the actual decent human beings, that I genuinely believe in my heart of hearts that I know 99% of human beings suck ass. I'm so mad at most things because most things are dumb. But you know what? Some things aren't. Some things, and some people, are beautiful, and kind, and smart. Now I'm not saying I'm one of them, hell with how bitter I really am I may be the opposite, but the lesson I've learned, the one main takeaway, is that I know now what life I want. I know who I want to keep around, and I know who the truly beautiful minds and hearts are. I'm never going to be done growing, but the things my experiences have taught me have prepared me so much better for growing beyond who I am now. Slay.

That's all. I love everyone you're all really cool and sexy I hope you enjoyed reading, if you did, read next weeks post too. Make sure to check out my depop at some point, I have a sale starting semi soon so keep an eye out for that. I hope you all have a wonderful day and week and I will speak once again next Sunday. :)

Lot of love,

     ~Christian Reid