I told her that it is very difficult to manage that sort of thing and, generally, everyone is good friends with one another and that we see each other often enough for it to become nonspecial.

Or, maybe they do and they just don’t tell me.

Her point was, though, that everyone in Q&A is special and hot, especially in comparison to the rest of the world since the microcosm if the Q&A conference made us look fantastic since we were somewhat in control of things and power is sexy.

(disclaimer: That was not her point)

What was refreshing, though, was the fact that someone agreed with me, for once in my life. Throughout highschool, I was friends with women with no taste. One of them lived in England, where they have dreadful standards of beauty, and when I’d show her pictures of my crushes she’d always say “He reminds me of my father” or something equally appalling. She also found Alan Rickman hot. My other friends weren’t into Asians and liked pretty whiteboys, or miscellaneous boywaifs that wear makeup. It was very annoying and mostly I wondered what was wrong with them. (What do I like in boys? I like condensed faces, even proportions of feature and flesh, skin pulled close to the bone, rounded juts, spheres rather than ovals and evenly spaced teeth. I see the thinned cheeks, eyebrows that limn the socket, a pinhead mannequin with a chin. Just look at what myspace shots try to accentuate, it’s basically that.)

After Jamie and I decided we were hot for everyone, I went on a facebook friending frenzy that was largely motivated by misplaced good cheer all the while wondering why I hadn’t made a move on anyone I knew already. I remembered, then, that I was only good friends with about 1 male in Q&A, and that I didn’t particularly know what to do with it except indulge in the sundry catty gossip he heard. When I was trying to not look like a dumbass in front of someone else over dinner (by being cleverly furtive about gossip I basically knew nothing about), he asked me where I’d heard it from. I told him that it was from my 1 male person in Q&A, and he replied, “Oh, so you’re gaybestfriends now?” I made an indecisive noise but eventually agreed that yes, we were gaybestfriends, because it really does deserve its own category in that it is confusing and that even the slightest breeze in any direction will send everything spiralling into DOOM because emotions are terrifying and I do not know what males are, but I care to know more (and that’s the worst part).

Mainly, I’m just horrified by desire since it simplifies the way we see things, and tears lives apart in the same way anger does.

In other, stalky news, I was googling my old receptacle of adoration referenced in “Have they invented that meal-in-a-pill thing yet?” and I discovered that, shockingly, like other normal people, he comes home to visit during important holidays like Christmas and my birthday (in my head). I know this because he was referred to in a recipe for bread pudding that he made during the holiday season of 2008, and I saw a similar blog post from one of his friends from the bay area commenting on how delicious it had been.

I then remembered that wrong-gendered stalkers were quite possibly the lowest possible item on his “People to visit list” malingering a few notches under “proctologist” and “uncle who works at the morgue and likes to bring his work home with him” and it was pleasantly comforting.

Title self-explanatory. I’ve decided that the man that makes my falafel has the most beautiful smile in the world (you know those glorious smiles that sort of surround your face in a halo of light? The kind that just sort of happens and doesn’t ask anything in return? I could go on and on, but he has one of those) and I’d totally have his children. Also, the falafel are orgasmic, so I have a GOOD excuse to stare.

My friend Chelsea and I were sitting at a bus stop today because there were no other chairs available and we got into two of the most interesting situations ever.

First we ended up discussing acronyms very loudly in front of other people and she said she didn’t know what AT&T was and some other person nearby gave us a history lesson on the trans-Atlantic phone line.

Then someone cat-called at us as we walked by (‘Hey there ____’ it was some word for woman and it was somewhat flattering but it wasn’t ‘ladies’) and I replied with a ‘Hee~ey’ and I got a grin and a nod from them, though they also looked vaguely embarrassed. It was basically the best feeling ever, being considered appealing in some sense and I decided at the time that compliments should be tossed out whenever possible to make people feel insane and elated.

However, compliments thrown by me usually are inextricably bound up with potential creep-out factor paired with the consequent bludgeoning.

If I were slightly more androgynous it might work but at the moment I’d worry about things Spiraling Out Of Control.

We also saw a hobo pick through the trash can next to us and thought it was unpleasant.

We have a pretty fresh regime board for next fall, and the optimism is pumping like… something.

The conference on 3 May was a smash hit, if I may say so myself. Even though we started a little late, the keynote speaker Amy Sueyoshi was absolutely brilliant and hilarious; the audience was not slow to disagree.

Lunch was served on the lovely campanile esplanade, and for the first time in event history, we ran out of food- the facilitators didn’t have to eat restaurant white rice for the next three days. Many conference attendees also went to GAPA’s College Night, which was fun with drag and dance performances.

This semester was fun. We look forward to seeing you next fall, or else I’ll throw my ninja star title in your eye.

Ahem. My literature teacher tell me that you’d get that if you lived in Ireland, or Italy, or if the pope was your G.

Anyway, I’m not going to explain it. It’s funny. I swear.

This week was le sex discussion, in which we learned, among other things, that ‘having sex feels like you’re going to explode.’

That’s the sort of talk that puts the fear of god into sparkling virgin’s heart and further tightens the chastity belt protecting his behymen. This lack of butt action, in addition to leading to extreme grumpiness and colon cancer due to a lack of pooping, also leads to many other wonderous magical things, which I (as resident the-only-virgin-in-the-whole-world-ever, I-swear) am here to inform you of.
The topic of virginity came up in the middle of our discussion, with someone posing the question, “does it have any value? Did you value yours before you were divested of it?” To which the resounding answer was a firm and powerful “Meh.” Multiple good points were raised.

First, contrary to popular belief, you do NOT lose any superpowers once you’ve been Touched by The Wang. Second, sex feels pretty great. And third, virginity is dumb because the longer you wait the worse you’ll be at it when someone does deflower you, so you might as well buy a pack of sausages and some AXE bodyspray and start practicing, dummy.
I’d argue otherwise.

We’re going to take a trip back into history for a moment to explore what, specifically, I mean when I say that there’s a richness in virginity that nobody ever talks about, since they’re all adequately sexed and don’t remember what it’s like to be blissfully uninformed.

Our story begins in 1071 with William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, who was the grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine who patronized Chretien de Troyes and divorced Louis VI based on degrees of consanguinity. He was also, perhaps, the first Troubador.

“What is a Troubador?” you shall ask, and I shall tell you that the troubadors were the first assholes in Europe that touted and perhaps created the idea of Courtly Love, which basically informed the romantic beliefs of every single person in the western world up through this day, really. You may recognize some of trademarks of courtly love such as:

1. The ennobling and overwhelming nature of romantic, sexual love

2. The raising of the woman up onto an untouchable, perfect pedestal and;

3. The DEEP SUFFERING on the part of the two lovers.

Literature, dating from Tristan and Isond in the 12th century, all the way up through those trashy-chic Sarah Douglass books that I love, have narratives that revolve around these principles of misery and suffering and the ultimate triumph of perfect love, which ends in people riding off into the sunsets with their soulmates.

This belief, and a bombardment of turblent romance stories vomitted at us through all sorts of media has twisted our perception of what it means to feel love, and in turn, it’s changed the way we think about connection, changed the shape of our hearts so that “to love” in any way shape or form turns into something winged and perfect and transcendent.

When we are young, and impressionable, and we feel like we finally start to get the subplots in Disney movies, we end up reinforcing these beliefs, building on top of them until all of our needs, our wants and our actions revolve around this notion that love is the ultimate goal.

My evidence for this claim comes from the mere existence of the “Twlight reader” and “slasher” demographics, as well as personal experience. It is rare to see good romance written by people who are satisfied. It thrives on expectation, and connections between words, rather than any sort of realism. The act of union becomes only the framework upon which those that dream may place the expectation of something world-breaking, flash of light beautiful. We see these glittering ideas again and again clothed in trembling words until time refines this wordplay into a high art that makes your heart ache before you understand what it means.

The idea of love, with all the stories I’ve shackled to it, means something to me, in that I’ve spent countless hours deciding who would be my OTP, and what it’d be like to be The Uncool One in a threesome, because it’s cool to be in love, and it’s cool to feel differently, and to feel like you have an excuse to perform grand gestures for another person out of romantic whimsy. It is hard for me to communicate, specifically, what it is inside. I know, simply, that I know that the sky will be gray when I run through an urban landscape one day, chasing after the man I love and destroy at the same time, and how, if I just hope hard enough I’ll feel ecstatic like I did when this was all very new and when it seemed like the body and mind and evolution came together for the first time.

The thought of holding hands with someone still gives me fantastic jitters.

In a way, sex has become the ultimate symbol for all of this, as well as the gritty reality of it. To participate in the act, in a sense, would end it, whether it lives up to our expectations or not: it is not something that can be rethought, or reclaimed.

S0 where does this put us? We become needy horrible people that worship various pieces of text while simultaneously waiting for our front doors to pop open revealing the love of our lives, who happens to be rain-drenched (gloriously so), haunted-eyed and filled with an inhuman need of your virtue (he is NOT, however, a vampire, because vampires puncture holes in you with their teeth and are consequently not sexy unless you like undying). And it is our right to cling to this image, as it is more rich than anything that could happen in real life.

But there’s the rub. As we age, we get smarter, and as much as we try and convince ourselves otherwise, we realize that these things don’t happen. They never did, and, if we think hard about it, never will. We persist in thinking that they can, and at the same time know, that if we were to be loved once, it may happen again. Virginity is the final choice. To choose life, to depart from ignorance and chastity is the ultimate death of fiction. In choosing sex, you choose hope: love happens, it finds us and changes us in unimaginable ways, and we trust what our books tell us and have no need of brittle words in brittle worlds to shake us.

—

In case you were wondering, this is what I think about all day.

For all of you non-Celtic Studies majors, this means that this was the last day of going to the pub and pretending that we carouse noisily over spirits, when in actuality we sit in a circle and grunt out fractured Irish. I was placed in the corner next to middle-aged guy and terminally-ill somewhat deaf guy. The topic for tonight was ‘What are your dreams?’

Naturally, I had to be snarky, my piece to share went something like

“I mo bhriongloid, beidh mé i mo chonai i fochla sa Iorua le Internet mar is maith liom an Iorua agus Ní maith liom h-aon duine.” Meaning, “In my dream, I will live in a cave in Norway with internet, because I like Norway and I don’t like anyone.”

There was a moment of pregnant silence, and then my teacher, who is also hard of hearing, said “Well! I have an announcement to make, [Fenia] has decided to join us and study Celtic Studies. A little birdie told me.” Of course, this was in Irish, and I’m not THAT good. And then there was applause and congratulations all around and people said things I didn’t understand and I was generally embarrassed. I should have said something like “I want to buy a hooker and then sit on his face. HIS FACE. SIT ON HIS FACE AS IF IT WERE A CUSHION.” I bet they wouldn’t have noticed. Then I went back to staring at the hot native Irishman who somehow attends these things. [His name is Brian]

Middle-aged man, during a lull in the conversation, then decided to ask me where I was from. I told him, and then he told me, and there was some phonetic mix-up, in which I kept calling him gay without knowing it, because evidently New York, and gay, in Irish, sound similar. He corrected me fastidiously: “It’s Eabhrac. E-a-b-h-r-a-c.” I forgot a few seconds later.

Of course, he actually did turn out to be gay, as he later wrote down on a piece of paper, “Tá mé aerach.” and under it he wrote “I am gooy” (the a melted into an infinity sign) and I didn’t know what the fuck that meant, so I nodded and smiled and repeated “Tá mé aerach” to try and get the sounds right. He then hushed me a bit. He then said “It’s in the dictionary.” And then I sort of stopped caring and went back to staring at my eye-candy.

[By the way, the above is agrammatical. It should be "Is duine aerach mé."]

Then he asked me what my last name was, and then later he said, somewhat mumblingly “Tá sé go deas” and then he was cut off by someone else. This roughly translates into, “He’s niiiiice…” and I didn’t realize that this was addressed towards me, with the subject matter being delectable native Irish man.

I then became suspicious. Maybe my instincts were wrong, but

(We interrupt this post to tell you that Fenia’s roommate is probably talking shit about him behind his back in a different language to his sister. Screw you, roommate.)

I had begun to suspect that I had just been come out to, and that I had been labeled as a fellow fag.

I realized then that this was the first time something like that’s happened, actually, and it was weird, even though it shouldn’t have been. Now, if you don’t mistake me for a girl, it’s 97% obvious (more than glaringly, slightly less than “Can I borrow that copy of INCHES magazine that’s taped onto your shirt?”) that I’m fruit-tastic. But usually everyone else is considerate enough to not say anything, or to ask first.

Anywho, long story short, I think I feel vaguely harrassed, but I’m not sure, actually, and 40% of the males in that Irish gathering are queer and the rest are straight?

Unrelated: Remind me to never look at Downelink ever again. I’m convinced that pretty boys are bad for me.

When: September 18th, 2010 from 10:30am-3:30pm

Where: VLSB Lawn

*Please bring your favorite dish (or buy something if you lack the culinary skills) and be prepared to play some awesome Q&A activities!