alotofgaymistakes

[alotofgaymistakes]

[alotofgaymistakes]

“Life” via weheartit

[alotofgaymistakes]

[alotofgaymistakes]

I skipped a few weeks due to work and a mental health crisis. In that vein, my split personality is here with what I’m bopping too this week, in that all of these are all over the map in style and genre. 1. ‘Teacher’ - Chromatics

‘Teacher/I won’t ask for your advice/You’re alive - yeah/but you’re too scared to grab the dice/Teacher/they’ll throw flowers on your grave/like a leper/too infected too be saved’

I’m not going to lie - I’m too stupid to figure out the exact meaning of this song (I’ll get there eventually), but like anything Chromatics, the composition is a sonic drug for my ears. From open to close, first lyric to last, first note to the first riff to the first snare - an ethereal treat. 2. ‘Need 2 Know’ - RAEKO, Mating Ritual

‘I fell in love with someone who looks just like me/seems like I know what I want/I figured out how to warp how people see me/but I’m still stuck in this hole”

This one....feels like someone took my inner monologue and gave it form. Something weighing heavy on me lately is if I fit in. Have I found my ‘tribe’? Are my relationships alright? Where am I on the scales between secure and doubtful? I can’t sing, but this is the song I’d drunkenly belt at karaoke and end up scream crying halfway through it. It’s a personal listen, for sure.

‘Am I losing my mind?/Am I losing control?/Am I losing my way?/Tell me cause I need to know./Am I opening up?/Am I shutting you out?/Am I going insane?/Tell me cause I need to know.’

3. ‘Come Go with Me - Remix’ - Expose

Something modern music doesn’t do is a fucking song opening. I like my music to be like sex. It needs to have a bit of foreplay, it needs to speed it up and slow it down, build anticipation and excitement.

For that, I turn to 80′s and 90′s club remixes of shit. A version of “Come Go with Me” was on a complication 2-CD set I had as a kid (Club Mix ‘97), and the full version is a better treat.

‘Feels the same everyday/come home from work late again/work so hard/and never play/I can’t wait to take you far away’

One of my favorite “classic” dance tracks on repeat. 4. ‘The Enemy’ - Kita Klane Oh boy. I just like her voice and style. That’s all. 5. ‘I’ll Still Have Me’ - Cyn

I have a torturous love and hate relationship with this song because if I watch the music video I cry, and I just hate emotions. Such a gentle, soft ballad on love lost and relationships that have disintegrated, and at the end of it all, you just have yourself. And at least that’s something.

6. ‘Softstyle’ - Woh Oh I don’t know what the fuck this is, but it’s a banger. The music video is an even wilder meme, with so many video game references packed in. This is a “crank up the volume and dance” track. Throw it in your mix of house and dance music and let it ride.

7. ‘See Spaces - Dreamtrak Diamond Sound Remix’ - Teeth Oh, I have so many things to say about this one. Back when I first encountered EDM, it was associated with the more like, darkwave/dark synth/industrial sounding shit. This track throws me back to that definition, hard. It’s a remix, but the original still hits good too. The synths are rough and grating and harsh, but it’s ~aesthetic. The song goes from subtle (lmao if you can even say that) to brash and back so much.

Also, reverb.

‘Imagine yourself without me/if you are happier this way/I want to believe/Can I make you stay here?/Would I be free?/Lets be friends/Please don’t leave’ ‘I can’t imagine me without you/It was so sad this way, could it be true?/Could I take us back there?/Would he be free?/Lets be friends/Please don’t Leave’

Lyrics sites and I disagree with this song, because what I hear and what they say the lyrics are, are two different things. So I’m going with my notes, because I can. This is another song where someone’s taken a piece of my inner monologue and gave it form.

[alotofgaymistakes]

This week’s repeat fantasia.

1. ‘Petra’ - Jahla This popped up when I was hunting around for new music, and I’m blown away. I love the energy - it’s a love song, and it’s so sultry and intimate. “You remind me of an ancient city/old as hell, but oh-so-pretty/grab my hand/run away with me/come see what I see…” Such a warm track. 2. ‘Oh Man’ - Amanda Blank I was wondering if this one was going to be a one-and-done with her 2009 album, but seeing this track pop up makes me giddy. “Might Like You Better” was a fun bop, and if this song is an indication of things to come from Amanda, I’m on board. This alt-rock-esque (I’m bad pinning down genres sometimes?) sound works with her voice and feels like a mature evolution for an artist coming out of a quiet period. 3. ‘I Am Not Waiting” - Austra

I’m just going to be honest here, I’m on board with this track just because I can bop my head along to the lovely high pitched warbles Katie coos out. I love her voice. Biased lowkey Austra fan. 4. ‘Dagger’ - Jinka

I’ve been watching Jinka for a bit now (Shock Mounted is a gag), and I think this is one of my favorite tracks from her album. The influence and sounds of genres like hyperpop and darker sythpop (think ‘The Knife’) in her work make my ears happy. ‘Dagger’ is a song about the push and pull of relationships and those who hurt you, come back, and the chaos and confusion that comes with it. 5. ‘Tap In’ - Saweetie. Oh I want her career to blow up. I think her raps are just straight fire. Too much editing would be needed for this to be radio-friendly, but the whole first verse is just fire. “Drippin’ in Chanay-nay, this ain’t goin’ on sale“ - good lord, I hope not. 6. ‘Obsessed (Bright Light Bright Light Remix)’ - Caveboy Came up in a discover weekly recommendation, danced around my kitchen while I was cleaning. Don’t know who this band is, don’t care. Dance track energy is enough for me. 7. ‘Annihilation’ - i_o, Lights I heard this awhile ago, then it blinked out of my consciousness, then I remembered it exists, and threw it back into my listening rotation. Me and vocal trance are friends, and this is such a sultry banger.

[alotofgaymistakes]

Followers or not, I’m just going to start posting what my ear candy is every week. I have a thing for digging around for “quieter” artists, people and songs that are fresh and new, and stuff that is flying under the radar. I’ve been wanting to start doing something like this, where I pluck 5-7 songs, and make a small playlist. Kicking it off this week:

1. ‘Rainbow Phone’ - Madison Rose

It’s chill, it’s pop, it’s colorful in a whole lot of aspects. I dig the vibe, and I can’t wait for what else this artist puts out.

2. ‘Save Room for Us (Remix)’ - Tinashe, MAKJ

The lyrics are emotional and have some weight to them, but this remix of “Save Room for Us” has big club bop energy. It’s definitely not like, “power-twink-crying-on-the-dancefloor-to-Sia’s-Titanium” levels here, but it’s in the same family.

3. ‘Sad Music’ - Jessica Winter

“I’ll survive/watered and fed/I need the strength to get out of bed/I’ve got a CD playing something blue” - a track that doesn’t take itself too seriously. We’ve all loafed around, wallowing in sad music to help us get over a breakup or through a rough patch before, right?

4. ‘HEY YOU’ - The Anxiety (WILLOW, Tyler Cole)

Don’t ask me what this is. I just want to blast the volume and dance around in my underwear.

5. ‘Famous Monsters’ - Chromatics

It’s experienced, not explained. You either like what Chromatics puts out, or you dont.

6. ‘Fragile’ - MNDR

I’m a huge MNDR stan, so I’m biased here. But Amanda talking about doubting whether your inner stresses are something you’re consciously doing to yourself (the lyric “is it me or is it chemistry?), and issuing a warning and a reminder about the impacts of words (“I’m feeling fragile/so watch what you say to me”) - there’s something relatable in it.

7. ‘Begging for Mercy’ - Bullet for My Valentine

This is a throwback angsy-rock-jam more than anything. Not a new song at all (from 2010), but I’d never heard of this band before, and someone drove through my apartment complex with this song blaring. I Shazam’d it, and it’s been on repeat. The chorus is a fucking banger.

[alotofgaymistakes]

I found this an absolutely fascinating read. (Disclaimer - I don’t like the pictures and images used throughout the article; it creates a certain....I can’t describe it, but I don’t like the vibe),

That different cultures name, handle, and address different symptoms and syndromes with regards to mental health makes sense when you think about it, because a lot of our mental health and how we handle it is tied to our cultural and societal attitudes towards it.

[alotofgaymistakes]

sometimes u gotta ask yourself

1. is it really that deep 2. do i need to make a situation out of this 3. if i do make a big deal out of this, what would be accomplished

[alotofgaymistakes]

Reblog this and money will be entering your life this week

[alotofgaymistakes]

[alotofgaymistakes]

Bad Date Stories: That Time Someone Shot Up In My Bathroom

I’m going to refer to this as a hostage situation. Because it basically was.

The Hostage Situation, Prior:

Grindr.

So, I had seen this guy on there. His profile came and went on my radar. His profile pic was attractive, and at the time his description came off as him being someone with a personality - I was interested, so I reached out. Crickets. I let it go. Plenty of non-responses and ghosts on the dating and hookup apps, nothing new, so I moved on.

Some time later (weeks? months? It was a while), my phone belts out the Grindr notification noise, and when I pull up the message -  Well whaddya know? Dude had messaged me. We chatted for a bit, and somewhere in the conversation I remarked that I had reached out to him before, but he had never replied back. He apologized, and said that the lack of response from him was strange because he thought I was attractive and definitely would have messaged back, had he seen something from me. Maybe the message got lost in a flood of others? A victim of a profile delete and remake? In any case, we were chatting now, and he said he was interested. The Hostage Situation, the Night of: Dude and I had eventually come to agree on hanging out, and he told me where he lived. He wasn’t too far away - just on the other side of town. Ah, but there was an issue:  he didn’t have a working vehicle. I can’t remember what the reason was, either. This didn’t come off as a problem by itself. I mean, cars break down, right?. People get in accidents and vehicles get totaled. Some people don’t need personal transportation and live in areas served well enough by public transportation (we’ve got bus and light rail where I live), and can get around and make do without. My vehicle worked just fine, so I didn’t mind playing chauffeur. I told him as much, and he gave me his address to pick him up. We decided to hang out at my place. I drove over to the address he gave me - it was an apartment complex - I parked, and let him know I was there.

Now this, dear readers, is where the slalom course of red flags began. Seasoned veterans of the dating world would have immediately had the Kill Bill sirens roaring in their heads, and started texting some friends for help on an exit strategy. I, however, drank the dumb bitch juice and had on my blinders, and got trapped the fuck in hell.

When he came down and hopped in my car, he had a backpack with him that he chucked in the backseat. We said our hellos, and when I asked about the backpack, he explained it was just his wallet and a few personal affects he didn’t want to leave alone.

((At this point, I had started to back out of the parking space and head out of the lot)).

Apparently, his current roommate had taken some of his stuff and thrown it out before, and ransacked and rifled through his belongings, and he was working on moving out to a new place, but in the interim, he didn’t want to leave certain personal valuables out of reach. My dumb bitch juice started to wear off at that point. On one hand, that seems like a logical thing to be doing with some personal possessions if you have a crazy roommate. On the other hand, that sounds shady as shit, and I was skeptical of his story.

On the way out his apartment complex, he stopped the conversation, to very forcefully suggest to me that we take a different exit out of the place. I continued on to the one I had planned to go out of, asking him why. “There were cops out here earlier, and I just don’t like cops. Fuck pigs.”

At this point, readers, my sonar finally started pinging. There was something up here.

At his urging, I took a right and looped around the complex and went out a different exit. My brain was shaking off the whole “Hey this guy is cute and he’s into me” vibe, and very quickly replacing it with a “how the fuck can I end this night quickly, because something is just not quite right here my spidey senses are tingling god damnit fuck me ughhhh” vibe. We got back to my place, he stood outside and lit up a cigarette, and I went back in and got us some drinks, trying to think of a plan to shut this shit down early. Could I have just been like “Hey haha sorry I changed my mind you gotta go bye?” Yes. Did I feel safe doing it? Hell no. I went back outside, drinks in had, and we sat down, and we started talking. We had one of those “talk about life, the world, art, spirituality” kinds of conversations. Except it was very one sided. Because I was mentally checked out, and he was just all over the fucking place. Eventually, we went inside, we talked about watching a movie. My fucking stupid bitch juice hadn’t worn off all the way, because my brain was still flirting with the idea of sex.

Before we went upstairs though, he wanted another drink. And by another drink, I mean he picked up my handle of Cherry Smirnoff, and downed nearly half of the bottle, while I went to the bathroom to piss. We went upstairs. I threw on one of the Resident Evil movies since it was something we both enjoyed. About 15 minutes into it, he got up and said he had to go to the bathroom for a minute. When he went, I noticed his backpack went with him. He was in there for awhile. Then he came out, and hopped back on the bed, and continued watching the movie with me. Immediately, I noticed something different. His whole body language, his mood, his speech - totally different. More relaxed, but also a bit....disconnected from reality? He attempted to initiate some flirty contact. The making out, however, didn’t last too long or get too far. He started acting kind of tired and sloshed. He couldn’t focus for shit. I guess that vodka’s finally hitting him? He said he was tired, apologized for it, materialized a Red Bull from his backpack, and proceeded to chug it. 

We went back to watching the movie, with little fits and starts of conversation here and there, but on the whole - he was half awake and not even there anymore. How, I have no idea, because he just fucking chugged a Red Bull. I was skeptical as shit. What did he do in the bathroom? I wanted him gone, but now he was basically asleep on my bed. After about 40 minutes or so, he woke up. Red Bull started to do it’s job. He wanted to go outside and have a smoke. So we went out, and man oh man, did the mania suddenly hit out of fucking nowhere.

MIllion miles an hour talking, couldn’t stay on a topic for more than 5 seconds, kept forgetting the cigarette was lit, all over the place, m a n i c. Inside my head, alarm sirens. We were out there for I don’t know how long, through I don’t know how many fucking cigarettes. I just wanted to be done with it. I just wanted it to be over. Something was up here, and I wanted zero part of it.

I didn’t want to be confrontational, or even try and assert myself in a way that could cause conflict, in trying to shut this shit down. I tried to be subtle. I started hinting that we should wrap the night up, that I was getting tired, I should probably take him back home soon, I had stuff I wanted to do tomorrow, etc. etc. They all just bounced right off. I couldn’t even get back inside to take a piss, I was trapped in this conversation, clawing for a way out. Somehow, we got stuck talking about Trent Renzor and Nine Inch Nails for like 45 minutes. I feel like I deserve an emmy for the performance I gave where I pretended to care about Trent Renzor and Nine Inch Nails for 45 minutes. Let me be very clear here: I do not give a shit about Trent Renzor or Nine Inch Nails. I was, however, fantasizing about putting a nine inch long nail through my skull.

It was like 3 or 4 AM at this point. Homeboy had burnt through all his cigarettes. He had chugged half my vodka. He had gulped down a giant Red Bull. We had exhausted every fucking conversational topic we could think off. Alice was abandoned on my TV, beheading zombies for an audience that was no longer watching.

When I FINALLY was able to steer the conversation to a stopping point and step back inside, dude had a fucking moment of self-awareness, and realized that he was just a bit too wound up. (Gee, you fucking think?) The answer to this seemed to be a two part solution. The first was to pick up the bottle of vodka on my counter, and finish it off.

The second part is what smacked me across the face. He pulls out a fucking bag of pills from one of his pockets. Xanax. He offers me one, as he proceeds to just casually stroll into my bathroom, crush one up on the counter, and then promptly fucking snort it. Oh, is that what he was doing in the bathroom earlier?

I declined the request, and just stood there a bit dumbfounded for a moment. I didn’t know how to get this person out of my house. I was tired. I wanted to go to bed, but somehow, there I was, trapped with someone who will henceforth be known as ‘Speedball’.

Where in my life did I go wrong?

Luckily, amazingly, wonderfully, my prayers for an end were answered in some sort of fucked up monkey’s paw fashion. Apparently, snorting xanax is effective, especially when mixed with a ¼ of a handle of Vodka, because holy shit, did this dude fucking crash. The exact series of events here is muddled in my brain. He we wound back upstairs in my bedroom, where he just passed the fuck out on a corner of my bed. Hard. Didn't even get under the covers. I sighed, crawled into the space of my bed not occupied by an erratic junkie, and passed out. It was like 4 or 5AM at this point.

Not terribly long after, do I wake up, as does he. It was around 8 or 9AM. I had to walk the dog. He was still groggy. Perfect. I can have some alone time for a bit. I went outside, and cooked up a plan while the dog did the business. Would saying I got a work call for an important issue get me out of this hell? Could I fake it? It’s worth a shot. When I came back in, I pretended to be finishing up a phone call with work, and made sure he overhead me. Then I laid it on him that I needed to take him back home, as I had to focus on some stuff for work that had come up. He tried to poke at the topic of hanging around, but I shut the shit down. Ha. Ha ha. No. (Why didn’t I think of this the night before? Fuck). After a pit stop at a gas station for him to pick up cigarettes, and I dropped his ass off at his apartment, and sped. the fuck. away. 

When I got back home, my roommate had woken up (I forget where the hell he was in all of this), and a very exhausted, irritated me, told him that I was buying a gun, and placing it in the closet, and the next time I am trapped in a fucking nightmarish hell with someone like that, I am going to shout a safe word, and upon hearing it, my roommate was to promptly get the gun, and just fucking shoot me in the head.

He looked at me like a deer in headlights as I went upstairs and collapsed.

Text and Grindr messages from Speedball went unanswered. However, I didn’t have to work too hard to ignore them though. His grindr profile blipped out rather quickly after the ordeal (either he deleted it or he blocked me), and he didn’t try too hard to keep up with me via text either. I resigned myself to the idea that maybe his phone got stolen. Or damaged. Or sold for drugs. Or all three.

Epilogue 1 (Short Nightmare)

About a month later, I’m out at one of the clubs with some friends. Someone throws their hands over my face and says “Guess who?” in my ears.

Speedball. It’s fucking Speedball. I wanted to die.

The group of people I’m with, blithely unaware of this person or what the fuck I had to go through with them, make a space at the table.

Great. Awesome. Wonderful. Love you gays sooo much.

For the next half an hour or so, he’s chatting me up. Some passive aggressive backhanded compliments here, some snarky gay snark there. I’m playing along as nice as I can, sipping my drinks, he’s grabbing my thigh, I’m pretending not to notice, you know, just “FUCKING GOD DAMNIT SHIT HELL AUGHHHHH” things.

Thank god I was driving friends. Because when they wanted to go, “Well nice seeing you but I’ve got to go take these guys home byeeeee” was my bullet train ticket away from that particular trainwreck.

Epilogue 2 (Hilarious Additional Details Come to Light)

Almost a year after this whole ordeal, I was having brunch with a friend at the time, and somewhere between my omelette and my mimosa, was my mortification at how my friend’s roommate had gone PSYCHO on him, attacked him in the hallway of his apartment complex, caught on camera and all, and how the guy had skipped court dates to show up for it, but the cops were not pursuing the roommate or seemed to be making a huge deal of it at the time.

I had asked him who the fuck his roommmate was, and what prompted the attack.

HA. 

HA HA HA HA HA.

HA HA HA.

HA.

Turns the fuck out? His roommate was fucking Speedball. The attack? Came after a conversation about either rent, or him not bringing drugs into the apartment, or something like that (can’t remember clearly).

My brunch damn near fell out of my mouth.

I told my friend “Hi, hello, yes, I know this fuck. We hung out. It was a fucking shit show”, and I proceeded to tell him the whole fucking story. Oh man, my friend fucking LIT. UP.

“OH, WAIT, YOU’RE *THAT* ROBERT???!!”

Turns out, Speedball had talked about me, and our time hanging out, to several people. One of which, was my friend.

This is where I learned that, in addition to the alcohol abuse and xannies that were on display for me that night,

WHEN SPEEDBALL WAS IN MY BATHROOM WITH HIS BACKPACK, HE WAS ALSO SHOOTING UP HEROIN

(he had told my friend about him doing it in my bathroom???). Turns out, I didn’t pick him up from his apartment, he was actually couch surfing at a friends or some shit, all the shit he had told me about bad roommates and shit getting stolen from him and finding new places to live and his car being out of order? Total bullshit, and 110% related to some junkie life drama.

MFW.

And this, is the story, of how I was held hostage for like 13 hours by a fucking addict who drank all my vodka and snorted xanax and shot up in my bathroom.

[alotofgaymistakes]

[alotofgaymistakes]