I hate holidays.

Unless you're old (and lucky) enough to have family and friends to share the holiday with, or young enough to be absorbed into your parents' family and friends, Memorial Day (along with most other holidays) suck.

Hello- I'm the bastard son of the New York gay scene. Pessimistic, shallow and self-absorbed. Ugh, I hate when I get like this.

Well a little about me perhaps? Sure- thanks for asking.

Hmm- well I'm 24 and gay in da big apple. New York is probably one of the best cities to be gay in, though I really need to get my ass moved to Chelsea so I can get the full homo-intensive experience for at least 1 year. See, New York is the gay mecca, for better or worse. Now I'm not one of those self-hating fags (I hate this word, but it seems to fit here) that hates all gay men, gay culture, gay fruit flies and the such. No- I'm actually an optimist. I would hate to see the truly negative queens roaming the streets. Talk about self-hating.

Anyways, I also think I suffer from the wonderful world of social anxiety. Yup, I am socially anxious. Joy. I never actually realized this until I had to stop drinking from a mono hang-over. For those of you who don't know what mono is, it's when your throat swells up, you can barely speak or swallow, you become thoroughly exhausted for weeks on end (we're talking constant sleep here), and your liver enzyme levels rise like the f'n Mississippi. It's the final piece of the puzzle that plagues my social life as of late. See, high liver enzymes=no alcohol. No alcohol=no social life (unless you can do without alcohol. In which case, fuck you Mr./Mrs. Perfect).

So it's this lack of alcohol that brought about my discovery that I get extremely nervous in social situations. See, while I was in high school, I accepted the fact that I didn't have many friends. I was immature and just thought I was shy. On top of the fact that I was a gay in the making, I just thought "College will end that." And it did. I had a ton of friends in college, joined a frat and made some gay friends along the way too. However, I never really noticed that alcohol was a key component of socializing in college (duh). As such, I never really had to interact with mass quantities of people sober. When I did, I wasn't all that talkative. But in college, who gives 2 shits? More often than not, you're drunk anyways.

So come this dry period I realized - "Uh oh, what the fuck is this? Sweaty palms, light-headedness, upset stomach"... **Sigh**. Yup- social anxiety. And compounded by the fact that my work is as anti-social as can be and quite stressful, it's gotten pretty bad pretty quickly. Usually I have my weekly drunken outlet to get rid of my syndrome of solitude in the workplace. No more. No outlet, no people and no social coping skills. Instead I have the wonderful task of trying to figure this out with a therapist who only knows how to tell me that I'm very good-looking ("Quite smashing" were her exact words). Not that I don't mind the compliment- who does? It's the fact that I don't pay 150 bones per hour to hear that. I can go on gay.com and have 50 year olds offering me $40 tip to blow me to realize that I guess I look ok. However, I could use some help here. :(

So that's the status of my life. In the future, don't expect to hear about my career. Business is business and personal is personal, and since I do have to pay my bills, I don't feel like incurring the wrath of every bigot by revealing my identity through narratives about my stress-filled workdays. Who knows though- maybe I'll open up in the future.

FYI- guess who goes to the doctor tomorrow to see if his liver enzymes went down?

It's ME, it's ME.

And guess who finds out if he can start drinking again?

It's ME, it's ME.

And who needs to hit the gym to get rid of my first noticeable pudge ever?

Yup- it's me. It's me.

Night night kiddies.