Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
@HOME. Wow what a day. All I did all day was sit on conference calls. Seriously, I was on calls for like 6 hours today. And then my boss wonders what the hell I'm doing and why I'm not getting anything done. Well QUIT scheduling conference calls. Other then that it was a pretty mild day. I went to lunch with Russell and Alan to Rito's. Man they have the best green chili burro in this state. Probably not that good for me but damn it was good. I can splurge once and a while. I stuck to the salad for dinner before I went to the gym to work out with Justin and Mark. Speaking of Mark, I pretty much think I finally talked him into coming to work with me. He needs to get the hell out of his dead end job and come over to the dark side. LOL. Though I digress.
So something funny happened to me yesterday but to explain it I have to go back to the other night. When I was finished writing my last post I decided to check out the other people with the word 'Gay' in their Blog profile. I came across a handful of individuals and the last one on the list was Sean's Blog So I got to his page but just as I started to read it my laptop went into standby mode. I took it as a sign that I needed to get to bed and get some sleep so I just put it aside and went to bed. The next day I received an E-Mail from Sean saying that he had read my Blog. It was amusing. Anyway it's nice to see some other gay people get involved in writing about themselves and their feelings. I've long felt that writing has helped me to get my thoughts out and basically it seemed to calm me down a little bit. Anyway check out Sean's Blog when you get a chance. I think I may have to change my Blog template and include a section for my favorite or notable Blogs. Right now I designed the template to match my website so I may just wait. I'm thinking about redoing the website in a portal or CMS formatted structure.
Man I was just thinking about the day I first started writing to calm myself down. Let me explain the background story first. It was the summer between my sophomore and junior year at University. I sort of had this thing for one of the guys in my fraternity. I don't know what you'd call it, I suppose crush would be most appropriate. I swore he was gay. He was a pledge at the time and I pretty much took him under my wing. Anyway over the course of the semester we would both get a little drunk and hang out. Many times alone. I just got this wired vibe from him. I SWORE that by the way he looked at me and even would touch me on the leg when we were sitting together that he was gay. Anyway one night when he was over and my roommates were gone, we were hanging out in the living room. I can't remember the specific detail but for some reason I almost think we were laying together on the couch. I decide that I was going to rub my foot along his crotch. I swear he was hard at the time. Anyway he freaked out on me and ended up leaving town for the weekend. I was shocked, scared and I don't know what else. I was not out to anyone in my fraternity and I was so afraid that he was going to go and tell everyone. The strangest thing happened. He didn't tell anyone. He did try to avoid me as much as possible until one night again we were both drunk. Somehow we ended up alone again and I apologized to him and said that I was sorry for what I did. I really wasn't but what was I supposed to do. Anyway he begins to tell me that I shouldn't be sorry and I'll never forget his words of "maybe some people are just not ready to handle that sort of thing yet" After that he begins to lift up my shirt and run his hand along my chest and stomach. I grabbed him and said "What are you doing? You just freaked out on me and now you're doing this" He stopped and sorted acted like he was really drunk. I ended up driving him home and I pretty much came out to him. He proceeded to freak out again and say that he didn't understand why people felt the need to come out to him and that they thought he was gay. Meanwhile I'm thinking "HELLOOOOO... You ARE gay" So after all that he still didn't end up telling anyone but we probably spoke again maybe another few times before the end of the semester. Even the last day of the semester at a party he came over to me and was smiling at me and trying to talk to me before he left to go home. Ok ... So the summer passes by and I decided to go back to the house and spend the last few weeks of the summer working at school and moving into the house early. There were only a few of us in the house that summer so it was pretty quiet. I had a lot of time to think about things and I had this feeling that just wouldn't go away. I was sad about what had happened but I had no one to talk about it with. So I got out a pad and paper and I started writing. I decided to write him a letter. I must have written for hours because I think the letter was like 7 pages when I was done. I can't even remember to this day if I ever sent that letter or not, I think I did, but what I do remember is the fact that I felt so much better after I was done writing. I felt as if a weight was lifted off of me and that I could get on with my life again. After that I started to keep a paper journal which eventually turned into my online journal. As of the last year or so I started to Blog and I took most of my online journal entries and put them into here. I would love to go back to my paper journal and also put them in here, unfortunately they were starting in 1992 and Blogger doesn't let you go back past 1999.
Anyway having these accounts of my life have really helped me through some of the good times and the really bad times. I couldn't imagine not writing. A few weeks ago I was reading through some of my old posts from San Francisco and it really made me realize and remember the feelings that I had back when I was living there. It was a unique experience to go back and re-read what I had previously written and be reminded of how intense my feelings were.
Well Justin just headed off to bed, I supposed I should get going now too. I think I've written quite enough for this evening. At least I'm working from home tomorrow and I think my boss is also on vacation. Guess that means it's going to be a pretty quiet day for me. Maybe I'll jump in the pool over lunch. We'll see.
