Sudden Desperation.

Independence.. something every high school teenager strives for... I have always been a very independent person. I never really experienced a bad case of 'homesick' and I always seemed to land on my feet whenever I had a difficult obstruction to pass.
A couple of months ago we had the chance to register for an Erasmus Exchange program. Although I had always wanted to go study abroad when the opportunity would be provided, I slightly hesitated at first. It didn't séém to be 'my time' to do such a thing. I mean, dreaming about it is one thing, but actually doing it, going away for six months to a place you've never been before.. is another!

Today that feeling really sunk in. A sudden fear of failing overwhelmed me. I just wasn't sure anymore whether I was ready for it. It's not just making your own dinner and doing your own groceries. I have grown used to doing that in the passed two years of college, but it's doing your own laundry and ironing and the entire clutter of doing a household.. holy cow
Yeah, that really is another thing.

I can absolutely take care of myself.. and it's been a life long dream to one day leave everything behind and go job hunting in New York, but now that my exchange program to Madrid is approaching I all of a sudden feel so tiny. Just one person to 6,750,000,000 other people out there.
Damn.. when you really see the digits.. that's a LOT of people.
Maybe I'm just stressed because of the upcoming finals. Anyway.. I've climbed out of my hole of desperation and got back to my feet.

I'm going to be alright out there.

x,

B.

Straight guys

With so many beautiful guys walking this earth, and only 20% of them liking guys, it can sometimes be frustrating to be gay. And that 20% is only an estimate. It could be more (and let's hope it is!), but very likely, it's going to be less. Good thing most of us are equipped with a gaydar.
Straight guys are a forbidden fruit. Almost all of us have fallen in love with a straight guy at some point in life. Or at least been infatuated. As for me, I have been infatuated by a straight guy for the last two weeks. The fact that he can never be yours, makes him even more attractive. It's like a child sitting in front of two cookie jars. One of the jars is locked. Of course you want the cookies out of the locked jar. It's only human. The objective is to keep control over your emotions and physical attraction.

So this video I dedicate to every reader who will lose control when staring into the eyes of a irresistible hunk. You might want to consider these tips. And if you've tried them out, be sure to report back to me. I'd like to know if they really work.

It's Eurovision time!

The telephone rang around 11 AM in the morning last Saturday. My mom picked up the phone. It was my godmother. She asked if it was okay for her daughter, a.k.a. my cousin, to stay over the night, because they would be going out that evening. My mother agreed. My cousin would arrive around 5 PM.

My cousin is a girl of twelve years old. She has long brown hair, and she is quite 'developed' already, which makes her seem older than she really is. She's a very energetic girl, and let's just say that manifests itself in her being very talkative. She talks all the time. When she's not talking, she's singing. I know that it is normal for girls to talk a lot at that age, but I bet my cousin owns them all. Thank heavens for inventing sleep.
Apart from being a total blabbermouth, she's very fun to hang out with. Coincidentally, the night she came over was also the night the Eurovision Song Contest was. I really like the Eurovision Song Contest. I don't exactly know why. Somehow it became a tradition to watch.
When I was younger, me and my sister would go to my grandmother's to watch the singing competition. We would dice some cheese, cut some carrots and selery into sticks and arrange all the homemade snacks onto a large plate. Then, and only then, we were good to go. During the contest itself, we would sit in front of the television, armed with pen and paper, assigning points to the songs. Then, after having seen every single song, we would constitute our own 'top' and 'flop top'.
Needless to say, I've grown a little old to go to my grandparents to watch Europe's favorite contest. But I still eat cheese and carrot sticks. And I still assign points. So at 9 o'clock, I stuffed a notepad and pen into the hands of my cousin. She was happy to participate.
When you're watching a show full of glitter, glamour and gay dancers/singers together with a girl that virtually never shuts up, blatant remarks about gays on stage are always around the corner.
My cousin does not know that I'm gay. I didn't out myself yet to my dad's side of the family.

"Oh my God, he's a gay"

she said confidently, after seeing that the guy on stage was wearing very tight glitter pants. I felt slightly uncomfortable after her remark. Because of the way she pronounced it, I could sense that 'gay' was a word she also would use as an insult. I know that she thinks about gay people in a very stereotypical way. But I don't blame her. Hell, she's only twelve. It's not her fault. Lots of factors contribute to the image every day. But I soothed myself with the thought that once I come out, I will distort that image. And she'll come to terms for sure.

Peace out!
x

Boys and their toys

Boys and gadgets. It seems to be a perfect match. Yesterday, during my french exam, that theory got affirmed.
The exam started at 6 PM. I was there in time, along with the rest of my fellow classmates.

My french teacher was accompagnied by three assistents. From what I've learned over the past two years, I know that assistents are supposed to be resistively ugly, with only very few exceptions to the rule. They're supposed to have crooked teeth, a bad taste of fashion, all combined into a never-appealing physique. They're perfect to be watching over you when you're filling out your exam, as they provide no more distraction than the clouds smoothly sliding up high in the sky through the window.
Yet, yesterday's assistents defied the aspects of being an assistent. There were three of them.
The first one was ugly. Nothing noteworthy here. He acted slightly gay, but because he was already over 40 years old, it could be very possible that he felt he could act a bit more feminine, just because he had already proven himself straight in the past. All in all, I didn't pay much attention to him.
The second guy was the most attractive one for me. This twenty-something guy wore a vest with a green T-shirt underneath. He was tall, lean, had shaggy hair and sideburns. To top it all of, he had this boyish grin on his face. All the time. He distracted me every time I looked up while thinking.
The third one, on the other hand, was rather cute. Dressed in a navy blue sweater with white horizontal stripes, this guy was a bit beefier than number two, but in a good way.
At a random moment during the exam, the third assistant pulled an Apple iPod (or iPhone, I'm not sure) out of his pants.

Almost instantaneously, the other two assistants flocked together to look over the shoulder of Mr. Apple. I'm not sure what exactly he was showing them, but let's just assume it was something cool, something the other two hadn't seen before, and the owner was very proud of showing. The boyish grin that the most attractive assistant had on his face all the time, now had appeared on all of the faces. They were giggling. Like a bunch of fourteen year-olds.
My french teacher, a women, was sitting a few meters away in a chair. She was holding a red pen, correcting tests from a pile she brought. While she was doing something 'useful', Mr. Apple was still showing off his gadget, making the other two laugh. Then my teacher looked up, and looked at them. Her face was priceless. I could literally see her thinking: "Tsk, just look at them. Boys will be boys". And she continued her work.

XOXO
L.

The F-word (4)

Thinking back, the essay groups opened up a new world of information. Since everyone was being divided into groups, that consequently meant that his name had to be on the list as well. There was only one large disadvantage. The list was quite extensive. And by quite, I mean around 500 names long. Of course, girls could be deleted instantaneously, which left around 200 names up for consideration. My group consisted of three girls and one boy. But it wasn't him.
To be honest, I wasn't infatuated enough to check every single name on the list. I think I tried the first 50 names by entering them in Google, but I very soon found out that Google almost never provided me with enough information to actually identify him. At this moment, finding him would be fairly easy. I'd just have to check Facebook. If I didn't know his name, I would just browse through some pictures until I eventually found him. But Facebook wasn't that widespread back then as it is today, so the list was pretty much everything I got.
At our campus, we have a library that only holds books about our study domain. It's a feature that comes in handy, especially when you have to write an entire scientific essay about a subject you're not familiar with.
I still remember the day the other group members and I were expected at the library for a little tour. Because the librarians obviously didn't feel like playing tourguide for every single group, they bundled some of the groups.
We met up with the other students at the entrance of the library. I was pretty nervous, and I don't remember why. I guess the idea of meeting him was too much for me to handle. The tour started, and the nervosity ebbed just as fast as it had appeared earlier. I was caught off guard when all of a sudden he showed up. I initially thought he was late again (casually late had become his second name), but it turned out he wasn't supposed to be part of the tour group. He had probably just been studying there.
For a few weeks, there wasn't a lot of progress in my quest to find his name. In the meantime, my friends mostly positioned ourselves just behind B. and his friends in the auditorium. I didn't know B. at the time, but he was a good source for gossip, since his friends were socially very active. And of course, since he was already out, I loved the gay talk.
But let's stay focused. One day, I had a crystal clear view of mystery boy. It seemed he had some flyers laying on his seatback tray, indicating that he was very likely a member of the organisation he was flyering for. Of course, the name of this youth organisation was entered properly into Google as soon as I got back home.

There it was. His name. Both his first and last name, under a picture that didn't even come close to his gorgeousness in real life. Now I officially knew his name. Please welcome F.

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prologue - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8

Sinfully Virtuous.

People often engage in deadly sins.
We've all heard of them.

Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Wrath
Envy
Pride

There they are. All seven of 'em.
Recognize some? Recognize ALL of them?

Well, today I was thinking of sin. What makes ones' actions sinful. Today I'm kind of in a difficult place. Whereas I should be studying for my finals, I am just pondering around. So consequently, and the following is rather an attachment to my personality, I feel guilty.

But then again, what? Does one have to feel guilty when one has an off-day?

That's what got me thinking about sin. Is it sinful to do nothing? To just enjoy a day off. Oh... yeah... it is. Sloth. Or put rather easy: being lazy as hell. Ohh mannn..
Now that we've established the fact that a simple thing such as this one is even a sin, you can all imagine we all actually live very sinful lives.

When you think about it, however, life would be extremely upsetting and tedious if we would engage in only the seven 'delicious' virtues, the seven sins' counterparts. Things like kindness, humility, patience, charity... you can complete the list.

No, that would be boring. Isn't it human after all to have some kind of balance between the two? Sometimes the balance is just outweighed by the greedy part and you forget to be charitable for a minute. You just think of yourself and yourself only for a couple of minutes. As soon as you're satisfied you can return to the charity side of the balance.

No problem, it seems. As long as the balance is right in the middle or at least not on the sin side all of the time, I think you're doing a great job.

Food for thought, isn't it?

x,
B.

Weirdo

Tonight I'm going to do something I have never done before in my life. I'm going to watch X-men Origins at the movie theatre. And I don't have a date. I'm going alone. Just me, myself and I. Shocking, right?
Initially, I was going to go with B., but since he has a pretty dense schedule and was booked for this week, I decided to go by myself.
Apparently, going to the movies alone is a taboo. It seems to be not done, I noticed, while I was telling my friends what I just told you.

"What?"
"You're going all by yourself?"
"I don't think I would enjoy going alone."
"It's so... weird."

I am weird, that much is clear. But why is it so hard to go to the movies alone? Why can't we survive on our own?
A lot of the things we do, we do alone. Reasons are often very obvious. We study alone because we want to avoid disturbance, because we need to concentrate. We don't like people watching over our shoulder when we're sitting in front of the computer, because we're in need of privacy. I can write a book twice the size of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, solely summing up things we do alone (but don't dare me, I'm not going to).
When you look at it rationally, going to a film would be something you'd like to do on your own. First of all, there's no need for a discussion in front of the box office about what movie to go to. Since you're going on your own, you can pick the movie you want. Secondly, the movie theatre isn't the best place to socialize with friends. Who came up with the ridiculous idea to socialize in an entirely dark room with blasting sound anyway? Since talking is socially prohibited and you're not even seated face to face, why bother bringing anyone?
I guess going to a movie with friends is a cultural thing. Celebrating the independence you gain as a teenager, away from the staring gaze of mother and father. It provides topics to talk about with friends. It's a bonding thing, it seems.

Before every reader/friend never wants to take me to a film again, let me just say that I don't detest going with friends. I even prefer it. Nothing more fun than going together with friends. But I don't think it's weird to go alone. If you have the self-confidence to face a room full of friends and couples, then go ahead. Just enjoy the film. Because that's what you came to the theatre for in the first place.

Ily!
L.

The F-word (3)

Since I didn't know this guy's name, and I wanted to talk about him really badly, the group and I thought of the perfect nickname for our auditorium hottie. The nickname was based on an actor, because we all thought he (obviously) resembled him a lot.
During the next few days my friends and I had classes together, I would always manage to bring him up again. I had to be careful, though. Since I hadn't come out yet (I would only start coming out a year later), I couldn't make it too obvious that I liked this guy in that kind of way. I guess I pulled it off flawlessly. Nobody had a clue (or at least they didn't tell me they suspected something).
His sexual orientation, on the other hand, was brought up fairly soon. While one girl thought he was gay, and the other thought he was not, I rested in the middle; conflicted about what to think. Sure, he sent out some gay vibes. Then again, wasn't that just wishful thinking? Didn't I just see what I wanted to see? As if I was looking at his behaviour through a microscope, overestimating every single hint? I wasn't sure at all. I guess my gaydar wasn't well adjusted at the time.
And so, finding out if he liked boys or girls became part of my quest.
Very soon, we found out we had to write an essay as a group. I kept my fingers crossed. Since the group members were assigned to a certain topic based on their last names, there was a very small chance that he would be in my group...

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prologue - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8

The F-word (2)

It was (and still is) great fun to talk about the people we saw entering the room. I remember us making up names for people that were clearly distinctive from the rest (because we didn't really know their names, and we needed a name to address them in our gossip). A garish haircut, weird clothing, it didn't matter. As long as they stood out, they would receive a nickname. A girl with Chinese roots became our very own Lucy Liu, whereas a guy with long blonde hair would be crowned 'the blonde God'. A stubby girl with blonde hair who looked like she had been repeatedly molested while spraying too much hairspray on her locks was instantly named 'the one with the exploded hair'.

Then he entered, casually late. My pupils dilated. Endorphines were released into my bloodstream. For a second, paralysis struck my body.

"..."

My god. This guy was intrinsically gorgeous. As for me, definitely an inhabitant of red-tip village.
Around 1,75m tall, this guy had amazingly beautiful out-of-bed (brown) hair, brown eyes, sideburns combined with a perfectly nonchalant five o'clock shadow. He was lean and wore clothes that only he could pull off. And perhaps the most attractive aspect: his confidence skyrocketed through the roof. He demanded to be looked at, but not in a cocky kind of way. From the very moment he entered the auditorium, I (and very likely along with at least 10% of other people in a 50 meter radius) fell in love. I fell in love in a shallow kind of way. I fell in love with his looks. After consuming him visually, I couldn't help but thinking:

"I must know his name."

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prologue - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8

A Storm is Gathering.

Last week, I saw a video on another blog.

I take a moment to pauze...inhale...exhale. Okay, now I think I'm ready to write something about it.

I have been terribly busy, these last few weeks. With school, with friends, with everything. That's why I didn't take the time to write about this -for me and I think al lot of other people in the world- special topic.

Perhaps some of you have already seen the clip, or at least heard about it. In case you did, you must absolutely feel the same way about it as I do. The clip is made by 'The National Organisation for Marriage' and is titled 'A Gathering Storm'.. or something like that. If you enter it on YouTube you'll definitely find it (and some spoofs as well. Duhh it's absolutely spoof worthy)
This organisation made the clip to gather as much people as possible who are against same-sex marriage. THAT'S JUST A LOAD OF CRAP. Excuse me for my language. Not.
In this video the 'witnesses', who are actual people that feel threatened by gay marriage
-oh come on-
talk about how their freedom is in some way taken away by extending the right to gay people to get married, they talk about a storm, something bad. I was absolutely caught off guard by this message. I just can't believe how an organisation can spend so much money on a message like this when there are millions of people that live in poverty and dispair.

I just had to get that off my chest. Feel so much better now. I seriously hope that one day, the people who participated in this video message, will regret their actions and realize that it's them taking away the rights and freedom of other people and not the other way around.

x,

B.

The F-word (1)

It's the end of September 2007. I just graduated from high school three months ago, had a great time doing my summer job, and now I was pushing the enter-button on my life's keyboard; Leuven would (hopefully) be my home for the four years to come. Exit sweet high school life. Now I was running with the big dogs.
A chilly wind was heralding the onset of autumn as I walked down the street, headed towards the auditorium I was going to have my first class at. I met up with some high school friends on the way. There were three of them: two girls, one boy. Up till now, only one of them sticked to their original choice of bachelor.
The boy was the first to realise he wasn't fit for the job. He initially started of really well, attending all classes. Quickly, however, the number of skipped classes started augmenting. He eventually ended up skipping almost all of the classes. I guess he just enjoyed the freedom of standing on his own feet too much, and was cleary not prepared to sacrifice this freedom to studying. The other girl seemed more persistent at first. She attended all classes, and didn't even had grades too bad to say out loud. But she didn't really like Communication and Media Sciences. So, after a first semester, she changed course. Japanese Studies it was. Then Journalism. As of this moment, I don't know too much about her whereabouts.
We entered the auditorium. The hall was pretty crowded with students already, despite the fact that we were twenty minutes early. We took places somewhere in the middle of the room.
The seats were comfortable, made of a gray fabric, and automatically folded out when you stood up.
We very soon discovered that this was going to be the setting for our new hobby: spotting people. We sat back, stretched out our legs and just watched and labeled. Little did I know who was about to enter the stage...

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prologue - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8