wyatttorosian.com

Category: Wyatt’s Words

  • Saturday Night Fever!

    The past year of living through a global panini has been absolutely exhausting for everyone, and we deserve a #WhiteBoySummer as compensation.

    iconic

    Part of this process has been getting vaccinated.

    For starters – I’m not a needle person. I thought they were cool as a kid until my doctor thought I had leukemia (surprise! I was fine) and I had to get twice-weekly blood tests. Eventually I got bored and I asked the nurse to stick me in the top of my hand (ow) and after months and months, I grew to fear anything needle or syringe related (thank god I’ll never get into heroin).

    cmon jesus, get outta my stash!

    Needle-less to say, I slump over at blood tests and have to start singing Amazing Grace or repeatedly complimenting the nurse on her eyebrows to undergo any kind of medical treatment these days.

    When I heard there was a DNA-based vaccine by Inovio that could be administered with a small laser pulse I was thrilled – no more needles!

    Of course it’s stuck in clinical trial, and we’re stuck with good old fashioned stab jabbers by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, which sound like they could be the worst three drag queens in the business.

    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32cj2y

    the vaccines showing up to offer us hope

    I really didn’t want to get this vaccine until I absolutely had to and hopefully not ever. But when I found out my 93-year-old grandmother was able to get it, and to see the rest of my friends and family without getting a funeral home group rate I’ll need it, I decided to click through the link in the “please stop calling our office for god’s sake” email and sign up.

    Sure enough, I got an appointment at The Forum in Inglewood, and off I went on my merry anxiety-filled way to get stabbed in a rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood.

    A sea of cones awaited me in the parking lot. I pulled up, got my QR code scanned, and was flagged forward.

    (bitches don’t know bout QR codes. see yours truly in a different lifetime talk about them, and click here to see the full vid with cameos by my dad, the one and only Atomic)

    The jab itself wasn’t that bad, but the worst part was when they told us to pull forward in our cars and wait for “observation”. “If you feel any symptoms, put on your blinkers or beep your horn and we’ll come to you.” I joked “what if I just slump over the wheel?”

    The joke did not land.

    tough crowd, y’know

    Other than some residual arm pain at the shot site and a metallic taste by the time I got to the 10 on-ramp, it didn’t seem like I got a shot at all. Neat!

    The sweet nurses told me to return three weeks later for shot number two.

    And return I did, even earlier this time so I was third in line, just in time for KCAL 9 news to run around shoving cameras in people’s faces asking if they were getting vaccinated today.

    god can’t the paparazzi just let me LIVE

    The second jab hurt even less than the first, my joke which I tried again didn’t land which hurt even more than the first time, and I was back on my dumb bitch way.

    A friend in the medical field asked if I had any symptoms – apparently, the second dose can result in some feverishness but it differs from person to person.

    Of course not, I said. I feel great!

    never forget

    Somewhere around 10PM while I was busy Minecrafting I noticed something was deeply off. Body aches set in. My head and eyes started hurting. My character in the game just sorta stood there as the pain set in.

    POV: you asked a woman to make you a sandwich

    I ordered some miso soup for dinner and went back to the game. “Maybe it’ll pass,” I thought. “The neighbors are having a party, I could stop by for a minute and say hi.”

    It did not pass.

    my immune system noticing something new

    By midnight I had to call it quits. I’m usually the last one on, but I was dragging ass. A fever flared up. I needed to get into the bath.

    When I went to get up, my entire body felt like I’d been hit by a bus. I slumped into the bathtub, shaking from fever and chills.

    SAVE ME WHITNEY

    The epsom salt bath helped alleviate at least the fever and some of the pain. American Dad played on the iPad in the background as I started reflecting on my life.

    how many times was I kicked out of Club Habanos again?

    At least it seemed like the worst was over. Exhaustion set in, it was 1:30 in the morning, and time for bed.

    Things took a turn, and not for the better.

    I don’t remember much of last night, but most of it was consumed by sweaty convulsions and yes, even tears. My body knew something was wrong and was gonna power through it, somehow, alone. I just wondered when this internal earthquake would stop.

    By 9am I woke up, soaked, like I’d just gone on a two week bender with one hell of a hangover.

    enough about Club Habanos

    BCAAs have been my friend today as I slowly return to being human again.

    I’m hoping this is the last of it, for all of us. This past year has stripped away so much of our humanity – the ability to talk, touch, travel, interact.

    It’s depleted not just our energy, but our curiosity. We’ve turned inwards, and on ourselves, trying to find a way out.

    Here’s hoping to less sweaty Saturday nights in the future.

    my hot Saturday night

  • Saturday Night Fever!

    The past year of living through a global panini has been absolutely exhausting for everyone, and we deserve a #WhiteBoySummer as compensation.

    iconic

    Part of this process has been getting vaccinated.

    For starters – I’m not a needle person. I thought they were cool as a kid until my doctor thought I had leukemia (surprise! I was fine) and I had to get twice-weekly blood tests. Eventually I got bored and I asked the nurse to stick me in the top of my hand (ow) and after months and months, I grew to fear anything needle or syringe related (thank god I’ll never get into heroin).

    cmon jesus, get outta my stash!

    Needle-less to say, I slump over at blood tests and have to start singing Amazing Grace or repeatedly complimenting the nurse on her eyebrows to undergo any kind of medical treatment these days.

    When I heard there was a DNA-based vaccine by Inovio that could be administered with a small laser pulse I was thrilled – no more needles!

    Of course it’s stuck in clinical trial, and we’re stuck with good old fashioned stab jabbers by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, which sound like they could be the worst three drag queens in the business.

    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32cj2y

    the vaccines showing up to offer us hope

    I really didn’t want to get this vaccine until I absolutely had to and hopefully not ever. But when I found out my 93-year-old grandmother was able to get it, and to see the rest of my friends and family without getting a funeral home group rate I’ll need it, I decided to click through the link in the “please stop calling our office for god’s sake” email and sign up.

    Sure enough, I got an appointment at The Forum in Inglewood, and off I went on my merry anxiety-filled way to get stabbed in a rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood.

    A sea of cones awaited me in the parking lot. I pulled up, got my QR code scanned, and was flagged forward.

    (bitches don’t know bout QR codes. see yours truly in a different lifetime talk about them, and click here to see the full vid with cameos by my dad, the one and only Atomic)

    The jab itself wasn’t that bad, but the worst part was when they told us to pull forward in our cars and wait for “observation”. “If you feel any symptoms, put on your blinkers or beep your horn and we’ll come to you.” I joked “what if I just slump over the wheel?”

    The joke did not land.

    tough crowd, y’know

    Other than some residual arm pain at the shot site and a metallic taste by the time I got to the 10 on-ramp, it didn’t seem like I got a shot at all. Neat!

    The sweet nurses told me to return three weeks later for shot number two.

    And return I did, even earlier this time so I was third in line, just in time for KCAL 9 news to run around shoving cameras in people’s faces asking if they were getting vaccinated today.

    god can’t the paparazzi just let me LIVE

    The second jab hurt even less than the first, my joke which I tried again didn’t land which hurt even more than the first time, and I was back on my dumb bitch way.

    A friend in the medical field asked if I had any symptoms – apparently, the second dose can result in some feverishness but it differs from person to person.

    Of course not, I said. I feel great!

    never forget

    Somewhere around 10PM while I was busy Minecrafting I noticed something was deeply off. Body aches set in. My head and eyes started hurting. My character in the game just sorta stood there as the pain set in.

    POV: you asked a woman to make you a sandwich

    I ordered some miso soup for dinner and went back to the game. “Maybe it’ll pass,” I thought. “The neighbors are having a party, I could stop by for a minute and say hi.”

    It did not pass.

    my immune system noticing something new

    By midnight I had to call it quits. I’m usually the last one on, but I was dragging ass. A fever flared up. I needed to get into the bath.

    When I went to get up, my entire body felt like I’d been hit by a bus. I slumped into the bathtub, shaking from fever and chills.

    SAVE ME WHITNEY

    The epsom salt bath helped alleviate at least the fever and some of the pain. American Dad played on the iPad in the background as I started reflecting on my life.

    how many times was I kicked out of Club Habanos again?

    At least it seemed like the worst was over. Exhaustion set in, it was 1:30 in the morning, and time for bed.

    Things took a turn, and not for the better.

    I don’t remember much of last night, but most of it was consumed by sweaty convulsions and yes, even tears. My body knew something was wrong and was gonna power through it, somehow, alone. I just wondered when this internal earthquake would stop.

    By 9am I woke up, soaked, like I’d just gone on a two week bender with one hell of a hangover.

    enough about Club Habanos

    BCAAs have been my friend today as I slowly return to being human again.

    I’m hoping this is the last of it, for all of us. This past year has stripped away so much of our humanity – the ability to talk, touch, travel, interact.

    It’s depleted not just our energy, but our curiosity. We’ve turned inwards, and on ourselves, trying to find a way out.

    Here’s hoping to less sweaty Saturday nights in the future.

    my hot Saturday night

  • The terrifying present

    One of the things in life I’ve never understood (or, at least, never done a good job of trying to) is the concept of living in the present.

    It seems so alien – it’s easy to be running from the past and anxiously trying to scrape together some sort of future that the present is an obstacle.

    Notice the framing there: running from the past, scraping together the future. The past is something to be escaped, the future is something to fear, and the present is an ever-changing miserable membrane between the two.

    None of this sounds like much of a solution for happiness, but that’s like third on my to-do list today after those calls and emails I’ve been putting off.

    GOTTA GO JANICE I NEED TO BE DISSOCIATING BY 3PM

    One of the keys I’ve learned in dealing with the past and anxiety about the future is a commonality – fear. Fear of being swallowed up by losses and failures, fear of what shoe is going to drop next. It’s a cycle of pre-rehearsed anxiety and a recipe for disaster – pattern recognition working overtime.

    TODAY WAS AS UNPRODUCTIVE AS YESTERDAY, AND PROBABLY TOMORROW!

    Once you come to terms with the past, and tamp down the anxiety over the future, what’s left?

    The dreaded…“living in the present”.

    For many of us, the present is an entirely unfamiliar experience.

    For example, it’s now 5:31PM on a lovely day in March. It’s sunny outside, and there’s a slight breeze. I did everything I need to do today, I’m not particularly hungry or tired, and the calls I needed to do went well.

    an eternal mood

    A normal person would probably do something they like now – maybe read, go for a walk, hell, even clean.

    But suppose you’ve done all those – now what?

    Congratulations!

    You’re in the present, and the possibilities in front of you are endless.

    Literally endless. Everything from you could start engineering a zeppelin that runs on battery power to sending a text to someone you hate. Endless!

    “hey fucker!!!”

    Endless possibilities can make the present absolutely terrifying, because there’s a million ways to fuck it up.

    For example, you could get into amateur surgery, and then end up getting to take a fun ride in the woo woo mobile to the boo boo building.

    The whole idea of endless possibilities is there’s also endless ways to win.

    You could send a text to someone you really like that makes their day.

    “hey fucker!!!”

    You could drink some water, which will help you be less dehydrated, you flaky skinned sonofabitch.

    You could start working on plans to do something you really want to do!

    Or you could write this, because it was better than taking yet another nap today.

    “DISSOCIATING? I WOULD TOO IF I LOOKED LIKE YOU, LINDA!!!”

  • Good day to you sir!

    What is a good day?
    What is a bad day?

    Our concepts of either are usually tinted by the events that happen to us – you get a flat tire (bad day), you get a raise (good day), you get a haircut (good day), the haircut is bad (bad day). It’s a way to go through life where one’s enjoyment is reserved for only the obvious moments, the rest is muddling through to get to that point.

    What do we call a day where a combination of those events occur? Suppose you get a flat tire on your way to hearing about your raise? “Started off as a bad day, but turned out good.” Or the reverse? “Good day despite getting a flat tire.”

    Events take hierarchy, and that’s entirely subjective. What if a really bad event happens the day you get a raise? Conceivably a raise could ensure many future good days, but you took a horrific fall on your way out of the office. How do you weigh the goodness or badness of that day?

    Yesterday, by all accounts, was a good day.

    I woke up at a good time, showered, listened to music, got my coffee, took some calls, went for a beautiful hike, had lunch, read, worked at learning a new language, did some work, checked in with friends, did some writing, got a good workout in, had a nice dinner, did a little shopping, cleaned up, and got to sleep.

    By all means it was a banner day, and it felt good. Mission accomplished.

    Today I did the same exact thing and I’m at the writing stage, and it doesn’t feel like a good day for no apparent reason.

    A meteor didn’t strike at any of those points during the day. I wasn’t stricken with the shits or anything. A sense of malaise set in right around the fourth item on the list that dragged into the day. Just as I’d picked myself up out of it, I slipped during the hike and spilled the rest of my coffee. It was far up a canyon, no one noticed, but I still sheepishly walked back to the truck, picked up lunch, and went home, bumbled through the rest, took a nap, and here I am.

    So truly – what was the difference?

    Going into yesterday – I didn’t go into a Monday expecting it to go well. In fact, I expected a series of calamities that usually get written off as “oh, the Mondays!” which is the result of people slumping into the work week and not really knowing how the rest of it’s gonna go – usually the dust settles a little by Tuesday and you think “thank God, I made it through a difficult Monday” or “Monday was quiet and looks like it’s smooth sailing ahead”.

    It was the second expectation where the self-deception began.

    Today was expected to be a good day. It was expected that things would go well, that I would feel accomplished and moving forward, that somehow it would be an improvement over the previous good day, and maybe it’s just that, good days from here on out, no bad ones, forever and ever amen. Something like that.

    Obviously that’s ridiculous. There will be flat tires and falling cartoonishly down hills and missed emails and gassy stomachs and setbacks that are constant and unceasing. Those don’t make up good days or bad days, they’re just the building blocks of days, little things that pile up and are dealt with and you move on.

    Days like today are where thoughts creep in: “apartment’s a mess”, “you should be working harder to get this off the ground”, “oh no, you’ll never get that house someday”, “obviously they don’t like you”, “you’re behind schedule”, and so on.

    All of that is mental scab picking – you, finding your own areas of weakness and healing, and scratching at them until they bleed and you can find satisfaction in uncovering the weak points, hoping that stronger skin grows in its place.

    Picking at the scab of good days causes bad days. It’s setting up false expectations of immediate success, and chasms of disappointment when that success doesn’t immediately happen.

    Good days – bad ones are right around the corner!

    Good days – at the first sign there could be any difficulty, the bad day’s a comin!

    Good days – can’t have too many of them in a row, or you’re cheating some natural order of the universe ending in you getting taken out by a zeppelin or something.

    The success, it seems, is in the practice. In sustaining the good habits during the bad days, in the flexibility to respond to bad things happening, in classifying expectations as “baggage” and not bringing them to the table.

    Every day is a good day as long as you’re a part of it.

    pour one out for a real one

  • Vulnerability

    It’s easy to write when you have something on your mind to talk about – you dissociate a little, channel something, words flow freely, and there you go.

    It seems almost deceptively simple.  In 20-30 minutes you have a finished product and you feel really proud of yourself.  You’re relieved, leaving only a trail of armpit sweat behind.

    The hardest times to write are when the voice feels – distant.  Like a friend who’s left.  You’re alone without your thoughts – it’s empty, and you think “well, I’ll just take a nap”.  And you do and wake up in a sweat of non-accomplishment, feeling slightly worse about yourself.

    It’s the second one I want to lean into instead of the first.  The first means I write once every three to four months and then go quiet again, enter a new season of life, and write again.  Feels good at the time, but it’s inconsistent, and I need to push myself to do more. 

    Admitting all the above (and endless, unctuous throat-clearing aside) is a form of vulnerability, a topic I have a particular interest in by virtue of unchosen life experience and hitting a wall enough times until I either break through it or learn to go around it.

    Vulnerability is one of the most, if not the most difficult human emotions because it usually comes after a struggle and is against everything we know.  It might be a surprise, but we as people are really good at putting up walls.  It’s a survival mechanism, it’s self-protection, and people at any stage of life or intelligence level are capable of and good at it.

    As men of a certain orientation – we are *especially* skilled at this practice.  We spent years, if not decades building up not just a wall, but a moat with barbed wire and backup trapdoors around our sexuality.  “Did that just make me sound gay?” “Do I look like I’m into dudes?”  “Do you think they can *tell*?!”

    It’s unrelenting, typically self-inflicted psychological torture, and it’s completely understandable.  Some of us were (and remain) in situations where the people around us just wouldn’t accept it for their own reasons.  They have a fossilized version of who we are, or what we should be, and the revelation we were into dudes all along would cause the other person to feel fatally vulnerable.

    That’s the struggle.  Vulnerable people are scared of other vulnerable people, so others put up walls, we put up even bigger walls, and we all pretend to be good neighbors.

    Meanwhile, the grass is overgrown on both sides and we think hiding that from the other person is how we preserve our relationship with the other person.

    This does not mean you should grab a bullhorn and forcibly come out to your elderly relatives.  Their life experiences are different in a measure beyond our understanding and capability.  They were taught differently, struggled differently, and even though they come from a place of love, their default is from a place of protection: they lived through the AIDS era and saw thousands of deaths and they see your face in 1990 obituary pages.  They deserve grace.

    Everyone’s coming out story is different, I wrote mine in June on the 4th anniversary of my coming out: http://wyatttorosian.com/coming-out-the-other-side/

    To be completely vulnerable (yes, I’m using it interchangeably with “honest”, stay with me now) I did it all absolutely wrong.  I should’ve come out either at the end of high school or first year of college to everyone and let the chips fall where they may.  Maybe I’d be happier, I’d have a longer relationship, I’d have had more authentic bonds with friends at the time, and I wouldn’t have had to go through a decade-long tango of getting close to coming out, going back in the closet, doubling down on being straight, dating girls but still going out to gay clubs, having crushes on gay friends that could’ve turned into something more if I was forthcoming, and enough vodka to sink the Soviet Union.

    Those feel like lost years, and I don’t get an early-20s metabolism, energy levels, and unbridled optimism back.  In a way I feel I’m shuffling towards a dim unknown trying really hard to do everything right this time because it really counts. 

    The above is a form of vulnerability, I’m telling you, semi-quarantined and fully-bored audience at home, extremely revealing details about myself, my decision-making, and so on you can probably use against me…I don’t know how actually.  What would you do, print it out and go to Bank of America and say “he’s a big ol faggot, don’t give him a loan!” or something?  

    The below feels even more vulnerable to me even though it might not seem like it, but bear with me, if you’re tired of hearing my inside voice you aloud may want to step away from the screen, get some pretzels and a Dasani.

    After the demise of my last relationship I threw myself into a completely new project: I was going to help other gay men (and assorted alphabet characters) not feel so alone.  With help, I started up a new project called A Gay Tale – it was going to be a storytellers group where people shared their stories for others to hear so we could all learn.  Maybe sell t-shirts or something down the line, who knows.

    It seemed like a perfect idea at the time and like I was actually doing something other than wallowing in bed and carefully editing dating profiles: here’s a way to make a difference!

    So I put out earnest pitches on social media – and guess what? a few people actually signed up, and they were happy to contribute and be a part of it!

    Things were chugging along at breakneck speed: people were interested and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to give the people what they wanted!

    So I shared some of my own stories.

    The first was an elegy to my relationship that ended, you can read it here: http://agaytale.com/i-told-him-i-loved-him/ 

    It felt like the right thing to say at the time, and I reread it now and it definitely feels spot-on with how I felt at the moment.  It’s raw and real.  Angry.  Cathartic.

    The second story was my first (gay) kiss, you can read it here: http://agaytale.com/not-myself-tonight/

    This was a weird personal story I never thought I’d really tell anyone because it never seemed deeply interesting, but turned out to actually be kind of fun to write in retrospect.

    At this point I was really catching some steam with the project, and I was getting more and more submissions for stories (others which are posted at the domain).

    Then, almost a month in, I hit the largest, hardest, most unbreakable wall: I realized I still loved him, was irreparably despondent, and spiraling, and pretty much brought the whole project down with me.

    I didn’t want to talk about gay love or straight love or any love.  I didn’t even know what love was anymore.  I just wanted to cuddle for fuck’s sake!

    I became unglued in this description of a typical evening routine: http://agaytale.com/self-destructive-behaviors-volume-i/ 

    You think I’d have pulled back a little, maybe handed the reins over to someone else, taken some time to work on myself, and all that other self-care horseshit.

    But not me, goddammit!  I was going to barrel right through this emotional breakdown with absolute gusto!

    The last straw (heh) was this post documenting everything I drank since I was dumped: http://agaytale.com/self-destructive-behaviors-volume-ii/

    I’d like to think it was an exhaustive list, I maybe missed something here or there, but not being able to drink at home for over a year really caught up in the matter of a month or so.

    The project went off the rails right around the time I did, and I went through a phase where I just wanted physical affection and validation – an entirely human need, and one that I didn’t truly understand the importance of until the rug was pulled out from under me.

    The worst part was not feeling like I’d let myself down, I felt like I let everyone else down – I really, really wanted this whole thing to work and was really bad at asking for help.

    Maybe someday I’ll start it up again in a different form, maybe it’ll be based here, I don’t know.

    That’s my vulnerability: it’s a real experience that I went through and hopefully learned something from.

    What’s yours?

  • One year later

    A year ago today, at this moment, I heard “Code Blue” and a cavalcade of doctors and nurses rushed into the Cardiac ICU unit to try and resuscitate my mom. 

    https://www.instagram.com/p/B3FecrznvXm/?igshid=3tb6zpilv6an

    This wasn’t the first time. In 2004 she lost consciousness for approximately 10 minutes and was revived. Later, her installed defibrillator discharged frequently, indicating that her erratic heartbeat had moved outside of safe limits. 

    Two days before this moment a year ago today, she lost consciousness again, for minutes, and was brought back again.

    So this time when the doctor walked out of the ICU with choked up voice and said “we did everything we could do” – that was the shock that got to me.

    People don’t die and come back that often. And despite the fact my mom lost her heartbeat, she never lost her heart.

    It’s funny how the most potent memories we have of someone we lost are our final ones when we have a lifetime of good ones to choose from. How self-serving that we pick the last one, assign so much meaning to it, look for evidence of a profound regret or awakening.

    It’s been one year without new memories of my mom and that’s the most difficult part. We spoke almost constantly, an unending conversation of love and lessons. I have a lifetime of funny quips, stories, instructions, and crucially, grace.

    My mom was the most graceful person I’ve ever known. She could walk into a room with absolute elegance and poise (a trait that must’ve skipped me, I’m clumsy as all hell) and make you feel better just by talking to you.  But she was by no means a pushover or porcelain figurine.  She could drink and cuss like a sailor. She could tell you to go to hell – and you’d be thankful she did. But everything came from the heart.  

    My mother had endless patience for imperfect people, to the point where I think she felt it was her duty in life to be an advocate for them, to listen when no one else would.  

    By extension, she taught me to never think I was better – or worse – than anyone else; that the accumulation of things don’t make you who you are.

    I already have my dad’s temper, his intellect, his gregariousness, his toughness.  I’m still searching for my mom’s traits within me, because she was so much my dad’s equal – he set his watch by her approval.  What they had together was love, and I watched each of them struggle to live without each other towards the end of their lives.  

    Now they’re together. 

  • Coming out: the other side

    My therapist will tell you that “coming out” is one of the most pivotal moments of a gay man’s life.

    Being party to something you know is true, might be true, you don’t know if it’s true, but others – do they think it’s true?…is an indescribable magnitude of difficulty, ripping through like earthquake waves on a daily basis to the point where you forgot where you were when the shaking started.

    I never really “came out”.

    And it’s not like I walked out of my mother’s womb to show tunes (it was a C-section) – I genuinely think there was a possibility things could have gone either way.

    I saw a meme recently where someone posted a picture of a handsome guy at the gym and it said something along the lines of “as a gay man you’re so confused – do I want to look like him? Fight him? Screw him? All the above?”

    If you can understand that, you can understand what it’s like to be in the closet.

    This isn’t some tale of woe or discrimination. Sure I got called “faggot” in middle school, and to be fair I was probably acting the part. But straight men typically treated me with respect. Some straight women treated me with care, others with suspicion. Gays treated me with even deeper suspicion, and as I’d later learned, would privately thirst then tell their friends that I was silly for not coming out.

    I knew something was different with me in elementary school and I chalked it up to anxiety. I wanted to look like the other guys, and I always felt like I never matched up. It was weird. I kissed a yearbook once because he looked perfect, and I thought I looked flawed.

    But I had crushes on girls, huge crushes – from Allison in preschool all the way through college. They activated an instinct in me, something that felt wired and not learned, and of course that all added to the confusion.

    There were the typical drunken hookups in college – one notable one which ended in running out the door half naked in the rain. It happens. Happened with girls too.

    After college there was that “d” word, and I don’t mean “dick” – I mean “dating”. I hadn’t really done it and it seemed like everyone had. And I tried – I tried turning hookups into dates, but they ended messily with me and another guy trying to figure out what went where after way too much to drink.

    By the time I got to, well, 4 years ago, it all seemed a mess.

    I wanted to be like those straight guys, I wanted that image, it just seemed to be on a pedestal where I felt like I was, comparatively, on the floor. I even recruited some of those straight friends to help me butch up – and they treated me with compassion and acceptance as I was instead of the judgment I feared. But the identity crisis roiled inside like a bad case of food poisoning, and one night, after a lot of martinis while stumbling down Sunset Blvd, I typed out the following.

    It was not how I wanted to “come out”, but the force of keeping it down was too great. I wanted to vomit.

    I didn’t like close friends knowing I was sort of “wink and nod” into guys too and strangers wondering why I looked and acted a certain way.

    I felt shame. I felt shame for my family, who had always shown nothing but support for any of my decisions. I felt shame for my straight friends who tried to help me figure it out, like I’d somehow let them down. And I felt shame for what was to come – a lost opportunity at what I thought was a “normal” future family.

    The whirling dervish of awkwardness and fear and lashing out sliced to a stop that evening of June 24, 2016.

    I know my dad knew of how I related to guys before he died. I know it in my heart, because he knew my heart – after all, he became my best friend. And although it was never a conversation we formally had, and although he only asked once in high school and I thoroughly denied it, he wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t assume. He was just happy I was hardworking and focused, and accepted me. His knowing silence was the greatest gift.

    Before losing my mom, she got to meet and spend time with my partner. He was very sweet with her – as if she was family already. My only regret is they didn’t get to spend more time together, although lord knows what tea they’d have spilled together.

    The point is – for anyone gay, bisexual, what have you – it gets better if you make it better, and that choice is up to you. You can suffer and struggle or you can make a life for yourself. Those who present themselves as “allies” are often the worst bullies, trying to fit you into a preconceived notion of what it means to be gay or lesbian or trans or however you choose to identify.

    Case in point – Rep. Aaron Schock. He was the youngest member of Congress, a Republican, and obviously handsome. The bitter gay Left tore into him like vultures even though he never came out and just, on the surface, was working out. They bullied him, and it was far more insidious than just calling him “faggot” – they tried to forcibly out him and paint him as a traitor to the gay community for his political views.

    this was their “evidence”

    I pushed back against this forcibly in a 2014 post entitled “Leave Aaron Schock Alone“, and I regret not the sentiment of standing up for someone being bullied by the media, but the object of who I stood up for because of the following.

    Later into his term he was forced to resign from Congress after being investigated for illegal use of campaign funds, and instead of sticking in there and hiring some Dershowitz-like attorney to defend his “honor” as an Illinois politician, he caved and took a government plea deal to avoid prosecution and pay back the funds.

    But that’s not the bad part.

    He outed himself as the stereotypical WeHo fitness gay, popping up at Coachella and on Grindr, and fed into the worst narratives he was accused of as a gay dilettante who lifts.

    “hey guys, which way’s the circuit party?!”

    Of course a smart man would’ve handled campaign funds correctly and even in absence of that, partied discreetly and/or found a nice man and proved the haters on the left wrong. Instead, Schock turned into some fake IG “I’m evolving, love me again” influencer and confirmed politics-wise that he never really wanted the role but was probably bankrolled by some rich Illinois Republicans to run with the tacit promise of “don’t be too much of a limp wrist” – for shame.

    Not that I have any strong feelings about it.

    Wait…yessIdo.

    We were rooting for you…we were all rooting for you!

    Tyra was mocked for this as an early reality show meme moment even though in context – she saw a young black model who reminded her of her making excuses for her shortcomings and blaming how she was raised. Even earlier in the clip Tyra says “when my mother yells at me like this it’s because she loves me”. She recognized the similarities and wanted someone to create success instead of self-pitying.

    When I saw Schock, I saw someone who was like me – probably in the closet, probably didn’t know how to admit it, and felt like I needed to stand up and defend. A lot of that is because I felt like I had to stand up and defend myself, and it hurt to see someone else being treated badly who was struggling.

    The anger comes in seeing that person then walk across and join those haters and admit “yeah, I’m a big ol gay and all I care about is pool parties and being pretty” when you see that, well, Schock had the potential to really change a lot of minds. He looked sharp, and could’ve been an effective politician. Hell, who knows, he could’ve been President, a much more telegenic alternative to “Mayor Pete”. So to see him floundering around in civilian life when he had an opportunity I could dream of, while I struggled to build those kinds of opportunities for myself, was gutting.

    I avoided coming out because I didn’t want to be typecast. I wanted to be able to make a funny joke without people thinking I was mincing like some Charles Nelson Reilly parody. I wanted straight men to be comfortable around me, and not think I was some Svengali, pulling them close just to strike at their weak moments. I wanted straight women to think of me as more complex than a bracelet they could wear to go shopping and complain about their problems. I wanted people to think I could be the whole gamut, from silly to sexy to butch to boring to smart to goofy and anything in-between without those arising from some expectation or assumption, but from me as an individual.

    And now? I think I have it. I feel free to be expressive and introverted, meet anyone on their level, and be myself.

    I feel free of the barriers I created for myself, and it’s my “coming out” wish, 4 years later, that others can feel that same freedom. There’s a lot of people out there – and we really are all rooting for you.

    I’m here to show: you can make it better.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BtjuYLpgo4t/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    and there’s nothing wrong with being an instagram thirst trap

  • #Wyatt2028

    http://bulletproofdiction.com/how-trump-could-lose/
    A fun little ditty I wrote about the potential downfall of the Trump administration

    You should want Trump to succeed.

    Because if he doesn’t, you’re gonna get me in office for a few years.

    And I promise I’m a lot more focused, a lot more precise, a lot more motivated, and a lot meaner than he could ever be.

    And worst of all – I know how this government works.

    It’s your choice, America!

    #Wyatt2028 at your peril.

  • Wyatt Torosian, Author

    One of the things I deeply admire about Ann Coulter is that she has one byline: “Author.”

    It’s in her Twitter bio, and it’s so barnburningly succinct.


    In an era when anyone and everyone is trying to be a “brand” or what have you, it’s good to see some people still focus on the “do” part of “what do you do”.

    And as someone who’s been weirdly associated with politics since, well, since I read my first Coulter book about 15 years ago, I always imagined that could be me too someday.

    “Author.”

    Of course, you have to write a book first, and what a book idea I have.

    A truly scathing polemic, a treatise railing against the political system in this country, a jeremiad of the people left behind by it. I’ll name names, I’ll spill tea, I’ll be dragged into a conference room where a team of attorneys goes line by line and asks at every name, “are they litigious?”

    And all of that sturm-und-drang for what? For something that can’t be published so I’ll be forced to print it myself and whore them out by carefully placing a copy over my balls on OnlyFans?

    As tempting as it is to send a book to subscribers at the $9.99/mo “shaft and more!” tier, it’s probably not gonna work.

    Then scrolling through Twitter (the activity that keeps me from writing a book) I noticed yet another Trump tweet promoting a book by one of your garden variety Fox News conservatives. This time it was Pete Hegseth who’s done…something right wingy of note (idk, play baseball, started a fast food chain, merked Osama, they all run together in my mind) with his “fantastic new book”, imaginatively entitled “American Crusade”. After plugging Pete’s appearances (on Fox of course) Trump goes on to say “Get your copy today!”

    Something clicked. A light went off. Or a bulb broke inside me, I don’t know.

    I should abandon all principle and write something with the express purpose of getting Trump to tweet about it. It’d go to number one, just think of the huge week 1 Costco sales.

    Imagine: a heavily photoshopped cover titled “AMERICA’S PROMISE” and it’s just me smothering someone to death off camera with a flag (paperback edition shows the full scene where I took “breath play for freedom” too far.)

    Inside – each chapter starts out as generic conservative pablum but veers into rants and recipes eventually with a blank coloring section for kids.

    If I played my cards right, it’s a really fun piece of outsider art that buys a house.

    Otherwise, what’s the point of being an author?

  • Wyatt Torosian, Author

    One of the things I deeply admire about Ann Coulter is that she has one byline: “Author.”

    It’s in her Twitter bio, and it’s so barnburningly succinct.


    In an era when anyone and everyone is trying to be a “brand” or what have you, it’s good to see some people still focus on the “do” part of “what do you do”.

    And as someone who’s been weirdly associated with politics since, well, since I read my first Coulter book about 15 years ago, I always imagined that could be me too someday.

    “Author.”

    Of course, you have to write a book first, and what a book idea I have.

    A truly scathing polemic, a treatise railing against the political system in this country, a jeremiad of the people left behind by it. I’ll name names, I’ll spill tea, I’ll be dragged into a conference room where a team of attorneys goes line by line and asks at every name, “are they litigious?”

    And all of that sturm-und-drang for what? For something that can’t be published so I’ll be forced to print it myself and whore them out by carefully placing a copy over my balls on OnlyFans?

    As tempting as it is to send a book to subscribers at the $9.99/mo “shaft and more!” tier, it’s probably not gonna work.

    Then scrolling through Twitter (the activity that keeps me from writing a book) I noticed yet another Trump tweet promoting a book by one of your garden variety Fox News conservatives. This time it was Pete Hegseth who’s done…something right wingy of note (idk, play baseball, started a fast food chain, merked Osama, they all run together in my mind) with his “fantastic new book”, imaginatively entitled “American Crusade”. After plugging Pete’s appearances (on Fox of course) Trump goes on to say “Get your copy today!”

    Something clicked. A light went off. Or a bulb broke inside me, I don’t know.

    I should abandon all principle and write something with the express purpose of getting Trump to tweet about it. It’d go to number one, just think of the huge week 1 Costco sales.

    Imagine: a heavily photoshopped cover titled “AMERICA’S PROMISE” and it’s just me smothering someone to death off camera with a flag (paperback edition shows the full scene where I took “breath play for freedom” too far.)

    Inside – each chapter starts out as generic conservative pablum but veers into rants and recipes eventually with a blank coloring section for kids.

    If I played my cards right, it’s a really fun piece of outsider art that buys a house.

    Otherwise, what’s the point of being an author?