Arms of an Angel

So if you've read my previous posts, you'll know that I was out in high school. I sort of eluded to some of the horrible experience I've had in high school, but I think it's important to remember and talk about the positive stuff as well.


So grade 11, I was 17 years old, I was out, I was fabulous, and I actually had a pretty good group of friends. All the girls loved me, the guys were mostly indifferent to me, which was fine, because I was also pretty indifferent to them as well. Well my high school had this leadership program from grade 11 students, that kids from all over the city would come to take.

Well in our grade 11 year, there were a few of my friends taking this course and we ended up adding a couple of extra people to our group that year. And one was J.


J was absolutely and utterly beautiful. He was like 6'3", somewhere around 190lbs, considering how much muscle he had on him, big hands and feet (and we all like to pretend what that insinuates), blonde shaggy hair and the most beautiful hazel eyes.

Needless to say, I was head over heels from the moment I met him, as was every girl in my group.


So at this point, I was out, it was no secret that i was gay, and was one of the reasons a lot of the guys in my group didn't pay much attention to me, and to be honest I was really alright with that, none of them were all that attractive. But with J, well he did pay attention to me. He said, hi, he talked to me, he actually acknowledged me. Which just deepened my crush on him. But he was straight, and it would never happen. I accepted that fact, but a boy's allowed to fantasize.

A few months into him hanging with us, he came with our group to the last school dance of the year. Now I used to love school dances, and i went to every one. I loved to get my groove on, and totally hammed it up with my girls. Usually making a production of our dances.

So at the dances, all the guys usually didn't show up, so more often then not, it was me and the girls on the dance floor, and the boys stood off to the side until the slow songs. Well the first slow song of the night hit, and J came up to me, and asked me to dance. I gave him a weird look like he had three heads, and told him no. I thought he was just taking the piss out of me. Like it was some big joke that he was going to embarass me if I danced with him, or if I said yes, he'd yell out something like, "Well I'm not a fag so DEAL!"


He kept trying to ask me to, but I kept telling him no, it's not going to happen. And made myself busy with one of my girls. He finally gave up halfway through the dance, which made me breathe a sigh of relief.

Last dance of the night, I'm dancing with my best friend H, it was Boys 2 Men's "On Bended Knee. When J comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder and asks if he could cut in. I said sure, it was the last dance of the night, and I kind of wanted to run out for a smoke, and wait for everyone out there. So I back up so he could dance with H, but to my surprise, he grabs me around the waist with such force that the only way I could keep my balance was to wrap my
arms around him. He held me tight making sure that I didn't fall.

I looked him in the eyes, and all I could get out was, "Why?"


"All night, you've been dancing with girls, you've never got to dance with anyone you like. I know you have a crush on me, and I'm flattered, but I'm not gay. But I don't mind giving you a dance."

The tears started to well him in my eyes, at this time I had never been kissed, never had a boyfriend, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to physical intimacy with someone I actually wanted, "But... all the guys here they're going to just assum..." I started to say, but he cut across me.


"Dude, I couldn't give a shit what the morons in this school think of me. So shut up and enjoy the dance." He joked, giving me a warm smile.

The tears started coming in full force, so I buried my head in his shoulder, and he just held me and danced with me while I cried.

Not a Bear

I am just below average in height for a Canadian male short.
I am fat.
I am gay.
I am hairy.

So because of those things, I am automatically put into a group of gay men. I am told that I am a part of the bear community.

If it looks like a duck, but it doesn't talk like a duck. is it still a duck?

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want to be a part of the bear community, or that their's anything wrong with the bear community. It's that I don't feel like a bear.

But why is that? Almost anyone in the gay community will tell you that the bear community is one of the friendliest subcultures of our large and diverse community. But whenever I go to an event, I feel awkward and out of place.

Well, we need to take a look at what the bear community is.

So what is a bear? We all know the physical traits right? Hairy and heavy set. They model themselves after a cliched working class man, in fact a lot of the bear culture came out of the idolization of the lumberjack. Jeans, flannel shirts, the isolation from civilization with a bunch of other men. The idea of being removed from society with a bunch of other masculine men? Not a surprise that it became the fantasy of a lot of gay men in the early years of the gay community.
But there's also a heavy importance placed on hypermasculinity, and thus, there's some shunning in the community of any man who isn't this ideal of masculine. Now mind you, there's many bears out there that might not be mentally this ideal of masculinity, but they entire community presents it physically, and I've witnessed some putting down of any man who doesn't meet this expectation.

So why don't I fit?

Well, I have never subscribed to the gender dichotomy, I don't feel that I'm either masculine or feminine, I do have traits of both, and I am not ashamed and refuse to change myself because of someone else's opinion. I will not conform myself to fit into a community. Either accept me as I am, or I'll move on. Which probably explains why I don't really fit in anywhere.

But that's not really all, and I will admit, that the cliched lumberjack, and a lot of the men in the bear community, I find really attractive. But this body, this fat and hairy body that I am in, I don't feel like it's mine. It's hard to fit into and subscribe to a community that is pretty heavily based on body image and size, even when your body fits, if you feel like you're in the wrong body.

So I am a fat, hairy man, with a neatly trimmed beard, and I am not a bear. So please people, stop telling me that I'm something that I'm not.

Just Who Is Skittles Anyway?

Skittles is a brand of fruit-flavored candies, currently produced and marketed by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, a division of Mars, Inc.. They have hard sugar shells which carry the letter S. The inside is mainly sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oil along with fruit juice, citric acid and natural and artificial flavours.

- Wikipedia

Well there's a very literal definition, but I'm sure we all know the Skittles Motto, "Taste the Rainbow." Well as a gay teen, sorry, let me rephrase that, as the gayest gay teen to have ever have gayed this far east of San Francisco, with a penchant for Rainbow Brite T-Shirts, glitter, and the very candy mentioned above, it didn't take me very long to earn the nickname Skittles.

Although the term was a failed attempt by some dumb jock in my school in using it as a pejorative I quickly fell in love with the name, and quickly adopted the alias. It was loud, it was obvious, and it was pretty in your face. Three things that I prided myself in being.

Growing up, I was never really allowed to be myself, I had an abusive father and a step father, and my way of rebelling, once I had discovered their disdain for my sexual preferences, was to make sure they couldn't make me hide this part of me, make sure that they could not make me feel shame for who I was. I was who I was, and I used that to spite them.

Maybe not the healthiest avenue to take, I can freely admit that now, but I am not going to pretend that I wasn't trying to make them feel the shame they tried to make me feel every day of my life, by making sure that everyone and their priest knew that I was a homo.

My alias though, quickly consumed me. I went from being, "A quiet kid with glasses, curly hair, and an Orange Plaid Shirt" to a raging flaming queen. The quotation being from a woman who led a gay youth group in my hometown of Guelph.

I started becoming a statistic. I was partying, way too had. Drinking away the depression I had from being kicked out of my house and not being able to have much of a relationship with my mother, because of her emotionally abusive second husband. I was sleeping with pretty much anything with a penis, in attempt to fill some void of a daddy complex that I had. Seeing as how I never really had a good male role model.

Skittles was vapid, shallow, hedonistic, and narcissitic. In fact, if I met the person I was a decade ago, I'd probably want to slap myself silly.

I'm not going to go through everything that happened to me as Skittles. Those stories will come out as I reminisce in future blog posts. Although, that's not all I will talk about. No, this blog is a place for me to rant and rave about those things that mean a lot to me. To discuss the socialization of queer men and where I fit in with that, or don't as the case may be. To talk about sexuality in a frank and honest way.

You see, Skittles is no more, I'd like to say that the alias went away over night. But the truth is, is that he didn't. Without making it sound like I have Dissociative identity disorder, more commonly and incorrectly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder, part of Skittles is still alive in me, but I'm no longer that vapid and shallow gay teen.

Instead, I'm somewhere in gay limbo, trying to find a place I fit. Feeling a lot like I'm in highschool again, with the cliques and judgements.

Skittles may have left the building, but to be honest, it doesn't feel like I ever left high school with the way that gay men tend to socialize.

You may be writing this off as the rantings of a bitter, fat, gay man, trying to recapture the days when he was young and sexy. And sure, you know what, let's be honest, there is a part of me that wishes I still had the sex appeal I did back then. Partly because I'd better know how to exploit it now for my own personal gain, ha! Kidding. But seriously, I miss being attractive by mainstream gay standards, it allowed me to have a level of ignorance that I no longer have. And let me tell you, ignorance really is bliss.

So a third of you are thinking, this guy is a pathetic whiner, another third is thinking of trying to find words to tell me I don't need to be skinny to be beautiful without being condescending and the last third of stopped reading and moved on to another blog by now because my writing is so disjointed and the grammar is probably atrocious, but I'm too tired to really care about catering to the last third

As for the first two, you're both right But hey, this is my blog and I'll say what I want to. If you want to argue, dialogue, discuss anything with me, you're welcome to comment. If you want to lurk that's okay to. I welcome you all to my inner dialogues, and I hope you don't need to run away screaming.