Re-entry blues

The wreath is still up on my door, the stockings still hung with care (when Shazaam doesn't swat them down), and the last vestiges of the Poinsettia in the kitchen still hold on strong, but this week's return to work remarked the definitive end of my winter break. I hate to admit it, but it felt good to get back into my routine, though certainly not easy. You can bet your sweet ass it was an Uber ride to- and from work all three days I was back. But it was all novel again, trekking to the BevMo for provisions and to the gym after work.

I am now at the point in my life where I don't just reflect on how things are now compared to just five years ago, or even ten years ago, but now a full twenty years ago. Nineteen ninety seven would have been my second quarter of my sophomore year in college. If I'm not mistaken, the 1996 summer was the only one in which I returned home during my college tenure. I got a job at Target to pull together a little money, only to have it all divested into the purchase of new contact lenses. I also dyed my hair red. And when I returned back to school that fall, it was with my loathsome new roommates, the only two gay people I'd befriended my freshman year, and who I was fated to live with for my sophomore year in off campus housing. Why, we even had a homophobic fourth roommate who I had the misfortune of bunking with, and whose friends from out of town one night busted into the room after having been screaming homophobic epithets at me to let them in one night after partying. He moved out by second quarter, I believe.

It was also the first year I did E at some party. I was not too keen on hanging with the whole group of people at said party, so bid adieu to my hostess, and hightailed it home, not really feeling a thing. Once I got back to my apartment, I started playing music, and I specifically remember the point when it kicked in--when I played the Junior Vasquez deep house mix of "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls. It still gives me flashback chills.

I used to keep journals during this time as well, which would hardly read as a magnum opus today, but in which I kept track of my favorite songs for the month. This would have been about the time of The Cardigans' "Lovefool," Everything But The Girl's "Missing," and one of my all time favorites, Reel 2 Real's "Jazz It Up." Suffice it to say the first two songs would continue to be played for the remaining two years of my college career non-stop on the radio, and the third would be a staple on my mixtapes for many more years to come. I just heard "Lovefool" for the first time in awhile in an Uber home Friday night, as a matter of fact.

I had begun working at the dining commons by this point, and befriended the beautiful Guy, with whom everyone was in love. A beautiful, charming Filipino boy who would kindly accompany me to my gigs at the AM college radio station, he really did have a swarm of hangers-on who were all chicks, and was ostensibly straight, but he seemed to hang out with me quite often. I think he had once made mentioned about how he didn't mind hugging friends of his, which I believe was as close to bi-curious experimentation as he was probably willing to go, but I didn't pick up the cue. I didn't pick up the cue from ANY of the guys who made them at the time, something I regret so tremendously today, English words cannot express. I never got the memo that college was a time guys were willing to experiment, and let more than a few opportunities slip down the drain because I was too busy being, out, gay, and proud instead of being out, gay, and on the prowl, or even just remotely aware.

Before the school year ended, I had made a new group of friends through my connections at the radio station, and would transition to a whole new clique, leaving the pair of assholes I'd been living with that year behind, and hitting the half way point of college career.

What a time.