The next morning, I woke up, and I was a dude.

Quiet an odd dream I had last night ...

I was with my family in a quiet peculiar institution. It was a sort of amphitheater, only, instead of seats, every party had a personal natural hot tub from which to watch the performance. The whole place was entirely nude, too. About halfway through the performance, someone on stage announced that there was a celebrity in the audience. He said the guy's name, and everybody turned to him and applauded him. I asked my stepdad who this guy is, but my stepdad said something along the lines of, "I'd tell you, but you're not ready to know/too young to know/you'll understand it better later." Well, this really pissed me off: my stepdad has a tendency to think I'm younger than I really am. I yelled at him and asked him to tell me more but he refused, and I got really angry and frustrated. At the end of the concert, I went up to the guy and asked him what he did. He told me about some philanthropic stuff he was into, and I didn't know the details of what that was, but it seemed nice and I told him so. I truly didn't understand why my stepdad wouldn't tell me what he did, but I kinda got the idea that I would comprehend his answer better if I knew what exactly he was talking about. Nonetheless, I felt much less frustrated and more complete now, so I went to bed in our little hot-tub side cabin.

The next morning, I woke up, and I was a dude. I was very confused and went out looking for answers before my family woke up. I saw some people I met last night, and I told them of my dilemma. Of course, we were all naked, which made the whole thing much more ... open. Well, they totally recognized me, despite the fact that I was suddenly a dude, and they believed me and agreed to help me figure things out. We tracked down all this information on me: my driver's license, birth certificate. Turns out I had a whole life laid out for me. No specific details, but the simple stuff were there: I had a name, a high school diploma, I was enrolled in college and had a dorm, and I had a birth certificate saying that my parents were still my parents. There it got a little weird; I had a twin sister: myself; I was my own twin brother.

Well, I went to college so I could find my sister (my self) in her dorm. Perhaps, I thought, she'd (I'd) somehow have a memory of me. Well, she (I) didn't. She (I) thought I was a weird freak. Then, I told her (myself) all her (my own) deep dark secrets that she (I) never told anyone. I think then she (I) believed me, only she (I) was very confused and needed some time to get used to the idea.

Having figured most everything out, I decided it was time to relax. First, I went and took a piss in the urinal just for fun. It was fun. Then, I decided I needed to masturbate. At that point, I got a little confused. I had never considered what I'd do with my cum once I came. I decided to do it in the bathroom and come in the toilet, but the whole bathroom-stall thing was not arousing, and I couldn't get hard. I tried to figure something else out, but I was clueless. I didn't want to make a mess! About then, I woke up, having failed at enjoying my penis.

Fuck homophobia.

These made me laugh a lot. I watched them over and over and over.
Fuck You! by Lily Allen

The Big Fat Gay Collab!


French (are hot).


Hungarian actors and writers.


Brazilians.


Manchester pride.


Kiwis.


Another Brazilian one.


Who's down to make one? Let's DO IT!

63rd Calypso

God gave me eyes so I could see.
My senses, though, don't set me free.
God gave me mind so I could think.
From this to that, I'd find the link.
Man gave me money, oh so grand.
Now I will never understand.

The Story: These rainy days are really fueling a love of hot coffee and books within me. Today, between my classes, I went and got a delicious Cafe au Lait with soy milk. A small, naturally. Well, by mistake, the cashier charged me for a medium, so the lady at the counter handed me a medium, pointing out the problem and apologizing for it. Well, the difference between a small and a medium is like 40 cents, so it's really no big deal, so I thanked her and went to enjoy the coffee. Only the real difference between a small and a medium is like four ounces, and boy, am I sensitive to caffeine! If I'd used my eyes and my mind, I would have simply not finished the coffee and been happy. Common sense. Only I am blinded by money, and finished the medium, knowing that it's what I'd paid for. Men often create futile symbols that obstruct our understanding of the world.

The Point: Blame Kurt Vonnegut for my turning every day epiphanies into theological poetry.
(Or, perhaps, it's poetic theology?)
After reading one of his books for the first time (Cat's Cradle), I've officially decided that Vonnegut is the best author ever.
He blew my mind, and I'm still coming.
And I've converted to Bokonism.

Drug Free Schools

My sister suffers from migraines. They run in my family.
Not-so-fun fact: Migraine headaches occur about 3 times as often in women as in men -- 60% happen around the time of menstruation.
Migraines are no fun, no fun at all. Throbbing headache, nausea, vomiting. It's a very, very miserable experience, and I'm lucky to have only had a migraine a couple times in my life. My poor sister, on the other hand, gets them quiet often.

The other day, she got a migraine at school. On her off-period, she went to the nurse's office, asking for an Excedrin Migraine. Excedrin Migraine contains 250mg of Acetaminophen (Tylenol), 250mg of Aspirin, and 65mg of Caffeine (which treats headaches, especially migraines).

Cherry Creek High School, it turns out, does not carry Excedrin Migraine.
It's a caffeine free school.

Just another example how the 21st century is run by morons.

A rainy morning.

There's a true fall day outside my window. Rain has been falling on-an-off since before I opened my eyes, and puddles have collected in cracks and corners. Rumors of upcoming snowy nights spread faster than the common cold, and everyone seems somewhat unprepared for the weather.

This is truly a nice change of pace. My sweaters and jackets are rejoicing. Every morning when I opened the closet door, they held their breath, hoping I'd reach for them, but sighed with disappointed as I reached for a skirt once again. At last, their time has come. Not that my yawning skirts mind: they are ready for hibernation. It's a win-win situation.

I dressed in black and white this morning, matching the colorless weather, and went off to my early morning class. It was cloudy and sad, but I was much too busy being sleepy to even consider the possibility of rain. Thus, when 8:50 came about, and I had to walk to my 9-o'clock class, I had neither a hood nor the attitude to walk in the rain. Like most everyone else, I grimaced, hunched over, and walked quickly, silently cursing fall. One smiling stranger changed all that. A beautiful girl wearing a bright-colored rain jacket and a colorful knit hippie-style hat shouted the obvious to her friend across the field: "it's raining!" Normally, such a random and obnoxious exclamation would bring out the cynical critic in me, but there was so much joy in her voice, that I couldn't help but smile. "I'm so happy!" she shouted with a smile, and suddenly, I was happy, too. I smiled, straightened up, and saw the beauty in the gloomy morning.

Still, after my second class had ended, I was not about to make the ten-minute-walk back to my dorm in the rain. Instead, I curled up with a book by a window in the hallway and waited for the rain to slow down. The window was behind a staircase railing, and I sat in the window sill, feeling happy and cozy. It reminded me of my room at home: I have a big windowsill there, and my bodypillow made it a very comfy place to sit. Often, I'd sit there and read, glancing out the window at the leaves of the aspen that grew outside. After a while, the rain had stopped, and I went back to my room.

After lunch, I sat outside the library with a coffee, reading. As I read, the rays of the sun found their way through the clouds; my page was somewhat brighter, and my arms felt warmer. It was then that the rain - which had remained dormant since 10:15AM - restarted, leaving wavy polka-dots on my page. Not exactly a sun shower, but the sunniest shower there was all day.

The autumnal equinox is tomorrow at 21:18. Happy fall!

Pride.

It's time for me to be proud.


Time to be proud of my heritage. I was ashamed of it for most of my life, but I refuse to be ashamed anymore. I'll proudly tell others that I was born in Russia, I'll proudly speak with an accent. I'll proudly tell you what Russia was like and what it was like to live there. My heritage makes me different, it makes me special, it makes me unique. And I'm proud of it.

Time to be proud of my body. I will no longer look for faults with it, no longer complain about the little things as everyone does. I will no longer fall into the trap the media built for women, I will be proud being just the way I am.(about the image: John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the cover of their album Two Virgins. The idea was to depict natural human form.)


I will, from now on, be proud of my sexuality. I've hid it for so long, denied it for many years. I couldn't be myself when I was living with my family, when I was scared of the truth, when I refused to be proud. No more hiding. No more sleeping with men despite the fact that they never once satisfied me. From now on, I am proud to be gay.

Proud to be myself, and everything it entails. I am unique and an individual. I will stand out, I will say what I want. No longer will I remain silent because I'm scared to say something that will make me seem "weird". I am not afraid to stand out, I am not afraid to be judged by others. After all, I am only myself, and no one else is me.

Home.

The words "home" and "hometown" have always confused me. Such simple words, yet it seems I've never understood what they really mean.

In ninth grade, I made a myspace. Clearly, there was some info I had to fill out. Gender: Female, Age: 15, Birth Date: 12.22.90, Religion: Atheist, Sexuality: Bi-curious (I changed that to Straight about a month later and it remained such, at least on myspace, for the remainder of high school). And, finally, the one that caused me the most trouble: "Hometown".

Unsure as to what I should say, I went and checked all my friend's profiles, wondering what their answer was. All of them referenced the place they spent their childhood, or the place they were born. Often, I knew they barely spent any of their life actually living there, but somehow they still referred to it as their hometown.

For a while, my hometown was listed as Khabarovsk, Russia. I figured that made sense: I lived there until I was seven, and then again when I was eight going on nine. Yet, somehow, I hated of thinking of Khabarovsk as my hometown. "Home", I've been told, "is where the heart is". Well, very little of my heart is in Russia. In fact, most of my heart hated Russia and hated being Russian. I hated being associated with Russian people, hated having an accent, hated standing out, hated any reference to Russia, hated everything that had to do with the one place I just so happened to be born. Khabarovsk, Russia, was not my hometown.

I then considered all the places I'd lived. Pullman, WA was not my hometown. Oh, I loved it dearly. I still remember its playgrounds, parks, libraries, and McDonalds. This was the first town in the United States that I lived in, and I loved it. Only I made no connection with the town or the people in it. I could have lived in any other town, and I would have learned just as much. I was a happy loner child, and I read a lot and colored a lot and spent a lot of time swinging, but I seldom spoke to any peers, to the extent that it worried my teachers, my principle, and the school psychologist. Without people to connect to, I can't imagine Pullman being my hometown.

After Pullman, I lived in Glen Ellyn, IL. For the first time in my life, I thought I had friends. "Thought" is the keyword. I really didn't. I only interacted with people within the classroom, while during lunch and recess, I was entirely alone. Still, class was lots of fun. For the first time in my life, in Glen Ellyn, I lived in a house. A huge huge house my stepdad renovated himself about a billion times over, a house which was actually two houses, two zipcodes, and two cities (Glen Ellyn and Glendale Heights). Also, unlike the small college town of Pullman, WA, Glen Ellyn was a suburb. I developed a sense of living in a larger community: Chicagoland. To this day, I still feel connected to anyone who's ever inhabited that area, especially those who've lived in the western suburbs. Nonetheless, after just a year, there is no way that Glen Ellyn could be my hometown.

I started sixth grade at West Middle School in Colorado. Middle school was miserable. I lived in Glendale, a small island-town far away from the rest of the Cherry Creek School District, far away from all my friends. I hated everyone that lived in Glendale and despised every bus ride to and from school. At school, I befriended the girls who were at the top of the social hierarchy. "Befriended" is not an accurate word. I struggled with non-verbal communication and failed to realize that I was not one of their friends, just someone who stood around all the time and was especially annoying. After those three horrible years, I never thought that Colorado could ever be my home.

The first place I ever regarded as a hometown was Palo Alto, California. I lived there my freshman year of highschool. For the first time in my life, I made friends, had a boyfriend, went out, enjoyed life. We had inside jokes, "our spots", and made tons of great memories. I blossomed into a person in California, but I still had a long way to go.

On a somewhat aside, I made a very interesting socio-geographic observation about suburbia. Bay Area and Chicagoland suburbs are very different from newer Denver suburbs. In Chicago and the Bay, every town had a strong personal identity, including somewhat clear boundaries and a downtown. Each suburb had a highschool of its own, so everyone who goes to that highschool lives in the same town. Thus, it was easy to relate to and to befriend everyone and anyone in the school. In Colorado, on the other hand, multiple suburbs fed into both my middle and my highschool. Often, kids would self-segregate based on neighborhood. That led to other types of segregation, mostly race and class segregation, and created powerful social hierarchies based mostly on wealth. I believe another factor contributed to the wealth-based hierarchy: in Palo Alto and Glen Ellyn, the downtown was a wonderful place to hang out. When the suburb has no downtown, the only place for youth to assemble is the mall, which naturally draws attention to wealth. I talked to my AP Human Geography teacher about this last year (not the segregation, but the suburbs' personal identities), and he said that the reason this is the case is because Chicagoland and Bay Area suburbs are older than Denver Metro Area suburbs. Older suburbs around Denver - such as Littleton and Aurora - have much stronger personal identities, and even might have their own downtowns. I will refer to this paragraph later in this blog.

After a year in California, I, sadly, moved back to Denver. Things were tough at first. I lived once again in Glendale, and hated Creek. It took me a long time to find my place, and I reluctantly spent a lot of time alone, seldom going out. That, combined with intense adjustment depression, made my first year back especially difficult.

The summer before my Junior year of highschool, my mom purchased her first home. It was close - only two miles away - to my school and much closer to all my friends. At last, it was easier to go out, to hang out, to have fun. I began to settle in, and even learned that there are things I could enjoy about Creek (such as the many fun courses it offers). For the first time in my life, I began to feel like I have a home and a hometown. I made some of the best friends in the world my last two years of highschool and had the time of my life. It was then that I also fell in love with Colorado, and I knew that my heart will always stay here. I love the mountains, I love Denver, and I love this amazing state.

Also, around that time of my life, I began going to Tomahawk Ranch as a CIT. Tomahawk is a home like no other, a retreat not from stress or worry, but from the stress and worry of the real world. It's a place to dream, to love, and to be yourself. The friends I made at TR are amazing, and I will forever consider it my home.

Despite the fact that I now know what my hometown is, my confusion about what to call it has not gone away. Whenever someone asks me where my hometown is, I usually say "Denver" or "Denver suburbs". Technically, my address says "Englewood", but I don't live in Englewood. I remember during college orientation, I was talking to a guy from the Denver Metro Area, and he asked me where I'm from. "Denver-ish," I answered, and he accurately replied with, "Greenwood Village? Centennial?" "Yeah," I laughed, "How'd you know?" "Denver-ish usually means Greenwood Village or Centennial. People from Aurora say Aurora, people from Littleton say Littleton, people from Denver say Denver, people from Highlands Ranch say Highlands Ranch. People from Greenwood Village and Centennial don't know what to say." Which is true. Greenwood Village and Centennial have very unusual boundaries, contain many unincorporated neighborhoods, and have no personal identity. The closest thing we have to a downtown is the Denver Tech Center, which is mostly office buildings and places to eat, and even that's fairly spread out. Lately, to Colorado natives, I've begun answering "Greenwood Village", though I'm slightly embarrassed. I had a really good conversation with a girl from Highlands Ranch about how much it sucks to be from "one of those" embarrassing places.

The word "home" also took on a new meaning for me lately. I've realized that, in college, "home" refers to your hometown and "school" refers to where you live most of the year. Well, somehow, that just doesn't work for me. Sure, I refer to "home" as "home", but it's not the same definition of home that I've used all my life, that word took on a meaning that's entirely new. When it's time to head back to Boulder, I tell my family that I'm going "home". I've had many temporary homes in my life, and this is one of them. But, just because its temporary, that doesn't make it any less of a home. I love Boulder, I love the people I've met here, I'm beginning to love my school, and I love living up here. This is, truly, home.

Edit: Colorado is my home. I've noticed that, whenever I go out of town, even for just a weekend, I feel so much joy when I return. Denver - downtown Denver - is my home, and whenever I come home from Boulder, I get a rush whenever I feel myself approaching the city. Boulder is also my home, I miss it so much when I'm away, and I feel happy the moment I return. 01.06.10