“Three words to describe Kai: excitable, outspoken, scared
Kai, like a lot of people in his generation, is at once so assertive, self-assured, while also insecure and sensitive. He is so passionate about what he does but feels easily set back. He has a frenetic energy that sometimes he harnesses to do the work he wants to do, but he’s an over thinker and often gets consternated by this. He’s a deadly hopeless romantic, but similarly he puts on a hard edge to soften the blow of life’s disappointments. He loves people, and he is upset by people.”
I am in an espresso bar on Spadina, sitting at a large, square shaped wooden table, drinking an overpriced Americano (but it’s organic! Fair trade, man!). Across from me is a couple: Blue Jays (BJ) cap and Geeky Blonde (GB). GB has got her signature black rimmed glasses on, with frames large enough to not overtake her small, round, pink face. Her nose, mouse like with its upturned tip, points forward like a finger. Oddly enough, it matches BJ’s sharp nose (balanced by beautiful, drag queen lashes and light green eyes). Clad in a navy polo so deep it’s almost black, BJ sits on her right, his thick bushy eyebrows bouncing up and down while he tries to follow the nonstop chatter between GB and their future wedding planner (who I will name Jessica). Jessica looks to be in her late thirties; her long reddish blonde hair pulled back into a tight, straight, ponytail that reaches all the way down her back (type-A neurotic). Ironically, Jessica the wedding planner doesn’t have a wedding ring on. I think to myself: is this a personal choice? Is it PR thing? Is a wedding planner with a wedding ring bad luck? Or maybe she’s just never found the one. Maybe that J.Lo flick wasn’t so full of shit after all. Maybe her life is actually really funny.
But I digress.
I’m sitting in an espresso bar on a beautiful Saturday morning, and I don’t want to go in to work. I have four glorious hours left of my day and it kills me that at some point I will have to trek back underground, step into a long metal tube, propel myself uptown and eventually find my way out so that I can trade in the best parts of myself for something we call, the moneyz.
It breaks my god damn heart, I tell you.
These past few weeks have been slow and methodical in its absolutely uselessness. A few bright spots here and there, but overall, my attempt at generating a career for myself is at an all time stand-still. I wrote a pilot, hated it, wrote it again, sort of liked it, and then watched a bunch of other pilots and came back around to hating it.
(Jessica is leaving, but not before collecting her big, fat, paycheck.)
I’ve been re-evaluating my work, trying to generate new ideas to inject into my pilot, give it greater cultural relevance, to make something with a sharper edge. Reading things that I think my characters would read, watching things I think my character would watch. I’ve been trying to live my life as the characters would (What would Roukh do? What would Sloane do? What would Bryan do?). This morning I read yesterdays Business section in The Globe because that’s something Roukh would do, he’s that kind of guy. I also discovered how much I miss reading words off of actual paper, cause you just can’t beat reading things off of actual paper.
There are nights when I feel crazy, useless, lazy and productive all at once. I also think I might be a tad bit dyslexic. Mildly so, as I’ve noticed that I misread, mistype, and mis-do a whole lot of shit when it comes to letters and numbers… should I be worried?
One thing I’ve come to recognize as of late is my greatest weakness: self-doubt. It is paralyzing at times, and I work day in and day out to overcome it. I’ve noticed the ways it prevents me from doing what I want, when I want, and how I want. I’ve always managed to get by, just good enough to slip through the lines with out really putting myself out there. I like the safety of being a backstage. I think a lot about why this is, because I used to be incredibly motivated in the past; I loved to shine. At some point between high school and now, I lost the energy, the desire and the drive, and I don’t exactly know how to get it back.
But I have given myself five years to do this writer thing, to try and get a TV pilot into production. It’s a blue sky dream, and on some levels it’s incredibly unrealistic. But if we really do live once, if all we are are a series of cosmic, subatomic, chemical mistakes, than I owe it to my consciousness to give it all a shot. By thirty, if I don’t have a show on the air…who knows. Maybe I’ll be a retail queen for the rest of my life, but god damn, at least I tried.
The weather in Toronto has been absolute shit these past few days. From tiny teases of patio-swarming-weather to fucking snow storms two days later, it has been a solid month of summer-blue-balls.
But today, on this beautiful, warm, “first unofficial evening of summer” night, I am sitting in a Starbucks, sipping my delicious iced tea, watching hot guys pass by, safe behind a floor to ceiling glass barrier I like to call: “The Church/Wellesley Starbucks Judgment Bench”.
From up here, I get to sit back and watch all the different people-types walk by and wonder to myself all sorts of things, like where they’re coming from and if that guy has ever had a dick in his mouth (and the answer is usually, yes, he has).
But that’s not fair, because maybe he was just experimenting after that one incident where his best bud tackled him to the ground and sat on his face and he didn’t completely hate it. Totally legit! It’s all about sexual freedom, right? Or maybe he’s just a closeted mo’ (to think they still exist!). But really, what else is there to do on such a beautiful sunny evening other than to sit in a Starbucks and people watch like an asshole?? I swear it’s all to feed the writer in me.
I make eye contact with a few of the guys as they pass by. Some hold the stare, some turn away, and some just float on by. Oh, the eyes that got away. We could have been star-crossed lovers, if only you gave me more than one-fifth of a second…
But what really surprises me is how badly I want to stop some of these people and tell them things like, “I think you’re really cute”, and “I love how you rock that neon green beret” and “if I had your freckles I’d never stop taking selfies.”
I really don’t know how to get out of this race game.
I reach points where I feel empowered to move past it, but then there are days where I get knocked back four steps and it just feels like I’m never going to fully make it through. Do you just accept your lot in life when it comes to stuff like this? Do you lower your own expectations for yourself? Or do just try not to care and hope that it all fades away? In part, I almost feel like as if being a gay man makes this feeling so much worse. These are the times I wish I weren’t. Not because of homophobia, but because of the racism in the queer community that is just so suffocating.
You grow up. You try to define yourself and you try to find yourself. If you’re lucky, if you’re one of the ones who don’t fall through the cracks, you end up spending a large amount of your early years studying. You theorize, you get criticized and you build a thick skin. There are days you want to die and there are days you can’t stand life because it’s such a mind-fuck of beautiful things all around you.
But then you get older.
Some of your friends do die and some of them fall through the cracks, but there you are, still standing, a tiny fleck on this planet mourning another tiny fleck. You turn to a God. You wish you could have helped, you wish you could have done something different. But time moves forward and now, the most difficult task of your day is trying to drag your anchored-heart along the messy blue bottomed floor, hoping it doesn’t snag, praying that you can find the strength to heave it up and out, and into the daylight.
You meet other people and they’re wonderful. You shake a hand, smile at a friend of a friend of a friend and you wish you were them, dating them, talking to them and laughing with them. And then you snap out of it and you’re still standing there, staring at them from across the room, so you take your drink and walk away looking for someone real to laugh with.
And then there is that period of your life where you wake up every afternoon and spend twenty minutes criticizing yourself in the mirror. You don’t meet your own expectations and no one can ever seem to meet yours. Even thought you ended it, you wish they’d call back, tell you that you were wrong, that you’re worth fighting for and that they’re going to do it. But they don’t, and every time you see their name your heart aches a little because a part of you knew that if everything worked out, you could have become such a better person. Worked harder, played harder, and loved yourself more. But there you are, standing in front of the mirror, staring at the body that’s had too much drinking, partying, smoking, drug use, sex, freedom and other things that eventually get a hold of you in your mid-twenties. And you realize it’s all getting a little too much.
But then it happens.
Because all it takes is a walk to the convenience store to buy another pack of cigarettes, and because chain smoking on your balcony in the freezing cold is more romantic than sitting inside and doing what you love to do on your day off from pushing coffee, beer, technology, jeans and makeup.
You bump into them.
They’re in a fancy coat (of course they’re in a fancy coat) with a hat and leather gloves (those leather gloves you bought for them a little too early on), while you’re in your sweats, a ball cap and a mustard stain from two days ago when you ate a hotdog without the bun because you had no bread and were too lazy to go out and buy a real breakfast.
So they ask you how you are, and you struggle to cough up something interesting, something different from one year ago and they can see you choke. So they cut it short for your sake, half-heartedly hug you, tell you it’s great to see you, and as they walk away, you: you with that familiar shame you’ve tried to get rid of, you step above it and find the courage to thank them secretly because you’re just not ready for anyone to know.
And it’s enough to turn you back around to your bedroom, and it’s enough to inspire you to quit your job, push you to take the risks you’ve avoided all your life and finally try to become the person you’ve always wanted to be instead of the person you currently are.
I’m sitting in my sisters house with Applesauce and Finnegan, eating a pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream to myself and I just joined a gay dating site. And it’s only 12:35AM.
With my brand new set of teeth, let’s see how this all turns out.
I faded into my music. Nights awake, downstairs at the computer, blue night sky behind me as I tunnelled into an entire universe of moods and melodies.
I started this blog to catalog the entire experience, because getting braces in my mid-twenties was pretty much the only interesting thing happening to me at the time. I was two months from graduating and I craved for my next adventure. I half jokingly labeled the next chapter of my life as “Social Suicide” (thank you, Tina Fey). I wanted to use comedy as a way to hide the fact that I was actually quite nervous about the entire situation. My smile had always held me back. I was shy because of my teeth, and I never liked being in photos, and whenever I did get photographed I always smiled with a closed mouth. It was a huge insecurity of mine and I wanted to get rid of it.
But the thing about changing yourself is that everyone will eventually find out that you’re trying to change yourself. People begin to look at you more closely, trying to figure out exactly what’s going on and what about you started it all. When I told my friends, some of them were pretty excited for me, and then there were those that never noticed my teeth at all. But I did. I noticed them, and other people noticed them, just like they noticed my skin and my eyes and my body shape.
And when it comes to changing our bodies, in this world of “self-love” and acceptance, it almost feels like you’re betraying your kin by conforming to the corporate culture of a singular definition of “beauty.” Straight teeth, slim body, perfect hair… I found myself trapped in this pit of narcissism, and it sucked. I needed a way out, I need some sort of direction to calm the frustration that lived under my skin.
So in hopes of finding a positive, metal-mouthed role model for my life, turned to the one and only, Ugly Betty. Every time Betty Suarez learned a lesson, I learned a lesson. I watched her life unfold before my eyes, hour after hour, and cringed at her optimism; the type that gets you into the most horrible positions, but when it pays off, it pays off. And I loved that about her! I loved how hard she worked and how challenged she was by the world around her! And most importantly I loved how she always failed before she could succeed.
In one week I will be getting my braces off.
Looking back to when I started this blog, I remember telling myself, “Kai, you better start doing interesting things.” I needed to find excuses to write because I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to live a life worthy of a blog. I also secretly wanted my biggest insecurity to churn out the best time of my life, to eventually be turned into a mini-series of maybe even a wonderful gay-cult-comedy for Gaysians. I wanted Betty Suarez hilarity with Buffy/Angel angst with a handful of Gossip Girl glam!
And did that happen? Not so much.
Because I am not a gritty/glam kindda guy. I do not wake up in random beds every Sunday morning, I do not find myself caught in out-of-context-drag, and I most certainly do not immolate myself with alcohol for shits and giggles and #nothingelsetodo. And so instead, I focused in on the sex and the drama that occurred in my life because I thought it would make me more interesting. I swept away the vulnerability and the vicious cycle of self-pity because I didn’t want to bother with them. I didn’t want to be sad anymore, so I continually sold myself short because I wanted to be sexy and wild.
But what was most strange was the anxiety I carried around with me whenever I posted an entry. I was scared of having the people in my day-to-day life (the old friends, the new friends, the work friends, the forgotten friends) read about the stories I casually shared with the Interweb. I fretted over whether or not the Kai on paper properly reflect the Kai in real-life. I wondered if friendships changed when consumed through a different medium, and if so, was there a version of Kai that felt more real and honest than the other? At the end of the day, between Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, it all just seems like one big experiment in narcissism.
Despite all this, I still want to find ways to stop hating myself for being all the things I am and I also want to finally be able to smile with my teeth. I’m part-way there on the former and I’m almost there on the latter. I’ve learned to give myself some credit by walking away and letting go when I needed to, and I’ve recognized that the only way to begood is to dogood, no matter how uncomfortable the choice, act, and fallout may be. Narcissism is a dangerous game. Too many photos of yourself and you begin to loose yourself.
And now that I’m reflecting on these past two years, I realize now that my story really is changing. It hasn’t been dramatic or epic or climactic, but it has been quiet, thoughtful and full of surprises. Choosing what to let happen and what to force forward, learning when to step back and when to stand down, thinking critically about all the different lines to cross in face of greater and more challenging adversity, all of these tiny little stories make up the narrative of a life I am now beginning to really feel like I can call my own, and that’s a story worth holding onto.
A few weeks ago I met a guy from a gay-phone-app (not Grindr).
He messaged me, I message him, we upgraded to texts, and then we were arranging to meet for coffee. At the time, I was trying to come to terms with the whole single, gay, dating thing. I had just turned twenty-six and I was determined to not let being single keep me from having a good year. But of course, when you finally begin to believe that you’ve got all your ducks lined up in a row, Life will ultimately decide to throw you a curve ball just to shake things up.
It was a cold-as-fuck Sunday night and I was sitting in a Starbucks three Starbucks away from home. I had seen a few photos of this guy and we had both given each other permission to creep our Facebooks. I was pretty floored at how cute he was, because cute is not something that usually comes my way, and deep down I was beginning to feel optimistic. I told myself that I was going to meet this guy, enjoy the night, and even if within the first three minutes I realize he’s not someone I want to date, I will still aim to have a great conversation with another human being.
Cue the Boy walking in.
Cue the Americano, the 7 packets of sugar, and the excitable use of hand gestures.
Cue the boyish charm that he knows nothing about.
Suffice it to say, as far as first pre-dates go (coffee is not a date, it’s a pre-date, just fyi), it was pretty damn successful. We asked each other personal questions, talked about how people smuggle pot over airplanes, and at the end of the night he offered to drive me home. We ended it with a small kiss, a plan for another date, and a warm, happy feeling inside.
Two days later, I invited the boy over to hang out. We were going to go on a real legit date but I was exhausted from work and he had recently lost his job of ten years. And so, we decided to stay in and make out.
The kissing began in the living room, which then migrated over into the bedroom, which resulted in the two of us entangled in each others limbs like teenagers. And you know what? It was hot, and despite a few awkward tongue fumbles as we tried to get into each other’s kissing groove, there was some solid make-out action happening! But then something happened: my face began to get really hot. I didn’t want to alarm myself at first because, well, kissing was happening. But the more we kissed, the worse it got, and so I got up, went to the washroom, turned on the lights and found the area around my mouth covered in hives. I was having an allergic reaction to our kissing. Anywhere his mouth had gone, there were hives. Totally sexy, right?
At this point, I had two choices: I could try and salvage the night, or I could end it right there and bask in the glow of humiliation and curse my sensitive skin. But if the cult of Rom-Com had taught me anything, it was that if you like a guy, you do whatever it takes, even if it means putting yourself through more humiliation like making him drive you to the nearest Pharmacy for some Benadryl. So with a knit scarf wrapped around my face, I walked up to the counter and mumbled my problem through the thick strands of yarn that covered my face. And God bless her soul, she was the most delightful and empathetic pharmacist ever. And even with what looked like a bad-case of face-Herpes, I was quite alright with the night so far. Back in the car and on the drive home, the two of tried to figure out the issue—was it his saliva? Face cream? His stubble? We had no idea. The only choice of action was process of elimination, which of course involved more kissing, and we were both okay with that.
As February passed, we had a few more hangouts. We narrowed down my allergy to his beard (he licked one arm and rubbed his beard on the other, and voila! Beard = hives = sad face). But despite this challenge, we continued to have a lot of fun…until of course, life decided to happen.
The Boy was laid off the day after we met. It was a rough transition for him and he was feeling frustrated and lost. He realized that he would have to go back to school, go on E.I., and change his entire way of life. He held a lot of pride in what he did, and out of nowhere it was stripped away from him. And while I really wanted to be there for him, I was getting frustrated as well. I finally meet a great guy, and because of reasons out of my control, I’m not going to get a chance to see where it goes. Getting to know someone, especially on a romantic level, is an incredibly time consuming thing to do, and when going through a life change like that, it just seems impractical. And so I told him to take some time and to give me a call should he ever want to pick up where we left off.
***
The funny thing is, on our first date, we talked a lot about the idea of multiple universes. He’s a huge Fringe fan, and he loves talking about wormholes and sci-fi and all that jazz. He believes that every possible outcome in your life is happening right now in an alternate parallel universe, which is a pretty nifty idea when you really think about it. I mean, Sliding Doors circa Gwyneth when she was tolerable, amiright? I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had gone to Western for Communications instead of York. Would I be happier? Maybe I am. I’d like to meet that version of Kai someday.
But back to Fringe. So on our second hang-out-slash-date, he showed me this little clip:
It’s a beautifully shot scene, executed with a whole lot of heart, and it really does capture the powerful beauty of hope.
But what matters here is the song.
Yazoo’s “Only You” is one of my favourite songs of all time. I first heard it when I saw Can’t HardlyWait some twelve odd years ago.It plays at the end of the film when the adorkable Ethan Embry finally kisses Jennifer Love Hewitt at the train station. Every time I watch it, I melt, because it’s about two people who take fate to the next level. The entire ethos of the film is best summed up with this line: “Fate! There is such a thing as fate, but it only takes you so far. Then it’s up to you to make it happen.”
In no way am I suggesting that this guy is The One. I mean sure, it crossed my mind a few times, but let’s face it. The ball is in his court. He’s going through some serious life struggle, and if past experience has taught me anything, it’s that I may never see him again. Boys come and go, and most of the time it’s for the best. But in the universe where I believe in fate, and believe in an honest and realistic way, I can only hope that when fate comes my way, I will have the courage to make the rest happen.
v) those first few days of wonder. the getting to know you’s, the hands that rested comfortable on the small of our backs, all those tiny touches, smiles and secrets we shared.
vi) summer driving with the windows down. warm golden rays stretching across the city, through the cold glass buildings, directly into my tired eyes.
vii) remembering that it was once good.
viii) waking up and looking into the mirror, only to find my naked torso covered in your tiny scratches from the night before.
Romance frightens me and thrills me at the same time. I ere on the side of caution when it comes to matters of the heart, because if you’re not careful enough, you might just slip and fall into the raging waters of the sea.
