If you were here, I'd tell you I'm sad again. It was bound to happen. What a glorious long stretch of happiness, though. That felt so good. I wish it weren't over.

I can't sustain optimism anymore. Whatever it is that's been making it possible for the past while ran out. I can do short bursts, but then, phthbt. Went to karaoke last night. Finished at eight. Been dead ever since. The world is just cold and heavy now and I want to sleep and sleep and sleep.

In two minutes I'm leaving for expat Thanksgiving, which I keep telling family and friends that I'm looking forward to in the hopes that if I keep saying it it will be true. I just want to sleep. I don't want to see people. I don't want to go to work tomorrow.

But I will. I always do. Sadness passes.

If you were here, I'd nod and walk away.

If you were here, I'd ask you to do all of my things for me, because I don't feel like doing them.

Kyle was here for a week, and we exhausted ourselves having fun. Now I need to be making worksheet activities to teach these kids how to say "Could you ask him to call me?" and I don't want to do it. I should be studying for my Navy test next Monday, but all I want to do is sleep. I ought to be writing the speech I'll give at the city English festival on Saturday, but instead of that I spend the afternoon and evening reading Wicked. And then there's the Japanese homework I've been neglecting.

Neglecting the things I should be doing has made me antsy and uncomfortable and I really wish you would just do it all for me, okay? Okay.

***

Being here with Kyle was surreal. It was almost like we were in college again, except now we're both out and we've both left the church behind as much as we can. We wandered around and he took pictures. We watched a movie. We stayed up late and talked a lot. We explored.

And we laughed. We laughed so much. We're both so cheesy.

***

Sometimes I get a schedule from hell at the school from hell and I have to remind myself that I'm totally up to this. It's just performance. It's just being goofy. It's just making faces and big gestures and tricking kids into doing work they don't want to do by adding a thin veneer of "fun." Totally within the range of my abilities. It's really just a question of energy, which is maybe a problem after this last excellent week burning the candle at both ends and also in the middle.

***

You know what? I really like Josh Weed. I think he is awesome. I read his Circling the Wagons speech the other day, and I just hummed with pleasure the whole time. He makes sense to me. He seems like the epitome of a guy who is trying to do his best with what he has, which is what I want to be. I guess you could say he's one of my role models. Not for the "married to a woman" thing, but for the "living his truth" thing. It helps that he does okay with words.

***

I just ate a green tea flavored kitkat. It was pretty much identical to white chocolate flavor, with just the slightest hint of green.

***

Wicked is such a depressing book. Kindle says it has about ten percent left to redeem itself . . . not sure if it can do that satisfactorily. I've got the soundtrack playing right now, though, remembering that exquisite night when I watched the play performed at the Orphium theater in San Francisco.

That, plus having written this post, makes me maybe calm enough to go back to putting together handouts for tomorrow.

Good night.

If you were here, I'd just grin for a bit. Years ago one of my oldest friends called it my "crooked little grin," and then I started paying attention to it and notice that yes, it actually is crooked. I smile mostly with the left side of my face. I guess? Feel free to contradict me.

***

Kyle is in Japan. (Forgive me for not combing through the archives to see what I've said about Kyle before. Be content to know that we met when we were BYU students a few years ago and that he was the last person to hug me before I left California for Japan.) Right now he's up on the north island, Hokkaido, with another friend, but then he's coming here for a week. I'm incandescent about it.

***

The friend who told me my grin was crooked: I miss her. She and her husband, another old friend, live in Utah, as do so many of the people I care about. He works for the church; she's a hairstylist. Kyle and I crashed in their basement once. Once she and I walked around at night in the neighborhood around my parents house and talked about painful things that people don't talk about. I have emails I wrote to her when I was fifteen that are painful to read because I was trying way too hard to be witty. We post some variant of "I miss you!" on each others' Facebook walls every few months or so, but that's it. She's one reason I have to go to Utah after I finish here.

***

This weekend we're going to Kyoto. The last time I was there was with another friend who was visiting. But she was here on business and I didn't speak or read the language yet, so we sort of squandered the opportunity. This time will be different because I've had oh-so-much practice now, and Kyle has his own unspecified knowledge of the language gained through his major at university. Most of my days here are pretty average, full of work and commuting and internet TV, so I'm really looking forward to a big touristy trip. And the fall colors in Kyoto are supposed to be the kind of things that make poets give up.

***

I'm still happy. It's unusual. I don't remember the last time I've been steadily happy for months at a time without a deep trough somewhere in the middle, a cluster of days when I go about business as usual but hating everything. Maybe it's the wine? At a rate of about two weeks per bottle, I've gone through one sangria, one cabernet, one malbec, and just tonight I started a bottle of tempranillo. I don't know.

The abs are still in there somewhere, hiding behind donuts that I didn't resist.

***

Today as I was walking to the post office / bank, a tall, well-dressed young man walked past me. (I'm a saunterer.) He walked very well, and I enjoyed that for a minute. Then he bent down to tie his lovely leather shoe, and I walked past him. His footsteps resumed and I expected him to overtake me again, but he didn't. He just stayed behind me, his original pace be damned. I like to think he was enjoying the way I walked. The thought made me grin.

Note: I feel like I have to explain that while being followed by a tall stranger might be creepy or unsettling in the US, Japan is just so darn safe. That there could be nefarious reasons unrelated to aesthetics didn't cross my mind until I thought about you reading this.

If you were here, we'd talk about salad. We'd talk about salad because I ate a salad today, and I'm eating a salad tomorrow, and I think that sometime soon I hope I hope I hope don't jinx it, I'll be able to see six pack abs in the mirror. Totally vain, but this morning I looked in the mirror and saw the ghost of them and it was the most energizing thing. The rest of my day was just lovely after that.

Getting over this last hill (mountain? I don't know, I've never gotten this close before.) is mainly a matter of not eating every sweet thing I can buy, which is surprisingly difficult. Japanese bakeries are like bakeries everywhere in that everything contained in them is both delicious and unhealthy, and there's a bakery between me and my schools no matter which of the four I happen to be teaching at. The thing is, though, in the past when I've told myself "Ok, this time we're gonna get that six pack!" I ended up wanting the donuts / maple loafs / melonpan / other-things-whose-names-I-don't-know more than I wanted to see the muscles. This time that doesn't seem to be the case, although I may be speaking too soon.

I don't know why this is, but I know that red wine helps. I think wine is gross, to be honest, but like all alcohol it makes interesting sensations and I can't stand to drink it too fast, so where before I might have sat down for an evening of internet tv, cakey things, and soda or milk, I've recently been writing or studying with a (tiny) glass of wine and a few squares of dark chocolate. (Seriously tiny, I can't do more than 100ml or so at a time, it's just too gross. I don't think I'll ever get drunk,  or at least not on wine. Gin, maybe.) And maybe watching some internet tv too. Modern Family = gold.

The point of telling you about my salad and abdomen and cake and wine is that I'm feeling good. Like, really good. I feel like I have people who like me and care about me, and while I'm pretty sure cerebrally that this has always been the case, I haven't always been able to feel it. It's true than most of them aren't in my geographic vicinity, but some of them are, and some of them will be, and you take what you can get, right? Nothing wrong with that.

There are angsty things lurking around in my brain like always and I could talk about them if I really wanted—there was this abbreviated discussion I had about the responsibility to feel loved versus the responsibility to make love feelable, for example—but I don't really want to. Is this okay? Can I end here, happy? Happy with almost visible abs, a nearly empty bottle of wine, progress on my personal goals, and a general sense of well being?

It came on so suddenly.

If you were here, I don't know what I'd say.

Oaks gave a talk yesterday. I didn't hear it, of course, I haven't listened to GC in years, but I heard about it through lovely facebook, and then Deseret News, and then the blogs. He came down on abortion, abuse, divorce, and adoption by gay parents. You know, all those things that "harm or disadvantage" children.

My parents were with my older brother's family doing who knows what in Texas on Saturday, so they didn't hear that. My mom and I were chatting this morning and she beamed about the Sunday sessions she'd listened to and dropped her customary hints that, "y'know, sometimes if you're feeling spiritual, you could always listen to GC."

I guess I just don't understand how something that sets off a million little bombs of anger and sorrow inside me—not Oaks' talk in particular, although that too—makes her so happy. Makes my sisters so happy, my childhood friends so happy. I don't understand how their balm of Gilead can be such [    ].

***

I talked with a dear dear friend yesterday about sex. She suggested I find someone experienced and very gentle to teach me about it. She said I'd know when I'm in love. She hinted strongly that the Mormon ideal I'd adopted—meet the love of your life, date, get married, then have sex with that person only forever—doesn't really work.

This is a problem because it seems to be working for my parents and 3/4 of my siblings, and many of my Mormon friends. But then, so does Mormonism. Something about me is apparently different.

***

From time to time gay friends have told me I just need to go out and sleep with a bunch of people and my views on sex will heal right up. I don't believe this. Maybe I won't only ever sleep with my true love, but I like the part of me that thinks of sex as special and important. And I guess I'm just afraid I'm a bit too much of a snob.

***

My dear dear friend also said that when I'm ready, I'll know. She said to trust myself.

Maybe what I resent so much about Mormonism is that in matters of sex and love it taught me to trust twelve old men instead of myself, and that early wiring is hard to redo.

If you were here, I might not feel like I've just done something very wrong. Maybe I would.

The first thing is this: I've lived in Japan for a year and a half and in this particular apartment for eleven months, which apart from my parents' house makes it the residence I've lived in the longest. But when four students on bicycles yelled "Haro misuta Peri!" across the street at me and I yelled "Hello!" back, a little old woman at the bus stop in front of me noted it and asked as I passed "Are you a teacher?"

(But in Japanese.)

And I said yes, and we conversed for a few minutes with me feeling a rising sense of panic the entire time. I ended the conversation at the first possible opportunity by edging away and finally just nodding and turning my back. And this was not a conversation that was dragging on and on—it was perfectly brief, and she looked terribly nice, like what my grandmother would look like if she had been Asian and not had a stroke when I was three. Nevertheless I ran from it like that time when a stranger pulled over to the curb and asked my seven-year-old friend and I to come over to the car so he could "ask us a question."

(Found out later he was my friend's uncle and was looking for the house we were playing in front of. Still freaked me out. Why couldn't he just ask from where he was?)

Why? I don't know. I'm hypothesizing that it has something to do with how in this country and this town in particular I am a cross between a washed-up celebrity and a circus attraction, or how my job is to speak about mundane things in the simplest terms possible  in front of generally unimpressed twelve-year-olds. I feel like my situation here has been training me to believe that human contact is onerous and difficult. I mean, moreso than it was in the states. I feel like it's starving any outgoing impulse I might once have had.

***

Today I finished reading The House of Mirth, by Evelyn Waugh. It was a cross between Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and The Great Gatsby. Overall I give it a 7/10, but there were some excellent phrases, like this:

Some men are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I remembered--I remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy me; and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could.

(Originally the second word was "women." Judge me if you will.)

The little ones would have pulled me down. I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. God that's beautiful.

***

I chatted my angst to my sister not long ago and she said that no, really, it'll be worth it. You're growing in ways you can't know yet.

***

The feeling of wrongness comes I think from seeing this change in me. I'm not a person who shrinks from grandmas . . . but I did. I'm a fairly strong conversationalist . . . but not here. The person I'm seeing myself become is in many ways great and overall I'm happy with him, but this weakness and fear feels both wrong and inescapable. I hope but am not convinced that it's a fluke of circumstance.

If you were here, I would just hug you for a minute. I hope you'd hug me back. It's kind of a vulnerable time and I feel small. (I'm not small. I'm like six feet tall and I live in Japan. It's weird to feel small.)

There's a picture of me when I was nine or so on my bookshelf. I was small then. Super skinny. In the picture I'm shirtless and wearing a cowboy hat. It was probably summer. The kitchen stools are stacked up, so it was probably Saturday—chore day. It's a good reminder of who I used to be. I almost wrote something about how I used to be light and happy and carefree, but I haven't really been that way as long as I remember. Certainly not when this picture was taken. My face is so serious.

I mean I had fun, of course. There was always a sick feeling in the background, but I did have fun.

***
It's one in the morning and I probably won't go to bed tonight. See if I can make it to eight or nine o'clock tonight. It's summer vacation for another week, so I can do that.
***
My mom used to give us pajamas and slippers every year at Christmas. (Another picture in the same frame reminds me of this.) I'm glad she made that tradition. Even though I thought they were dorky at the time (I tended to just sleep in my clothes and walk around barefoot . . . don't judge me), it's a happy thing to look back on. One year they were all Taz slippers, even though none of us really liked Loony Toons except maybe my older sister. I clearly remember the way they glommed on my feet. They were very warm. I kept tripping over them.

I think the tradition stopped after my second year at BYU. That was the first year I didn't go home for Christmas. (So maybe it was just that I didn't get to participate.) But by that time I was pretty fiercely exerting my independence by coming out and fighting with myself about the church, so I didn't really notice.

***
Mostly if you were here I'd just want to be with you for a bit. I'm lonely. I'm not interested in making Japanese friends because I'm not very good at Japanese and I don't know how to be out in a foreign and homophobic country. The first takes time and work and discipline and the second, I don't know where to start.

That's a lie. Yes I do. I need to find out if I can be fired for coming out.

I should have done that a year and a half ago, but everything was so new and frightening then. I wasn't bold enough.
***
The last picture in the frame is my little brother when he was five or six. Now he was small, especially standing next to my dad. Even though he's tall and strong now he's always going to be little to me. Always there for me to watch over and protect and tease and hug. He's always been a cuddly little guy.

I don't understand how my older brother can think "It's better if we don't have a relationship."

Maybe because I'm taller than he is.

If you were here, we'd listen to the Killers. We'd be laying around the apartment enjoying the air conditioning because it's hot and wet outside. And loud. Cicadas are everywhere.

The summer after I graduated from BYU, I spent a lot of time laying around my parents' back yard, reading by the pool. I resurrected my library card from a desk drawer and checked out mounds of books from the local library, and one of those was Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion.Mostly it was interesting in the same way that looking through a box of old photos is interesting; I'm sure the essays were extremely topical at the time, but fifty years on they don't connect much.

Except one. I remember at BYU saying at one point that I couldn't respect anyone because no one could see what a fraud I was, which was a natural extension of thinking that I was a fraud yet not getting called out on it. So when I read this selection from Didion's essay "On Self-Respect" that first summer and again yesterday, it resonated:

The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself; no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through ones' marked cards the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the kindness done for the wrong reason, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others—who are, after all, deceived easily enough.

And I suppose that when I was younger and maybe even today I looked for self respect in the approval of others. Because when you're young and you grow up in an environment of people you trust and respect, you expect others' judgment to reflect reality. But people are deceived easily enough. I feel like Didion is tapping into and articulating something that I thought was just mine, like how I used to think I was the only guy into guys.

***

The Killers, man. That's good stuff.

***

Well, she goes on. "Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs."

Maybe most people don't need to read that, but for me the connection wasn't clear before. We all have responsibility for our own lives, but we don't have to accept that, much in the way we don't have to accept that our credit card balances gather interest. Reality goes on whether we accept it or not, but not accepting it sure can make things harder for us.

I feel like I have more character now than I did at university. Taking responsibility for my own life meant doing what seemed best to me, which is easier living on my own and away from BYU, being financially independent of my parents. I still do dumb things and sometimes I still try to duck the consequences, but less, Cause-and-effect doesn't mystify me like it used to.

***

You'd have probably fallen asleep by now, if you were here. But it's good for me to articulate these things.

If you were here I'd want to talk about two of my siblings, one of whom says I'm one of the best men she knows and one who said it would be better if we didn't have a relationship. I just erased five or six paragraphs, though, because I guess I've found something too private or possibly just painful for me to put on the internet.

So that's off the table.

Today and yesterday I climbed Mt. Fuji. Mm, it was pretty? The entire hike down was miserable? I don't really know what to say other than that, but I have a strong urge to write something here tonight.

How about David. David was sitting on the ground, bandanna tied around his head, looking out over the view from no-longer-the-summit of Fuji when I met him. He looked over at me and watched me for a few seconds as I experimented with a sidestepping gate that kind of kept me from slipping with every step. (Three-fourths of the path we took down Fuji was covered in half a foot of loose gravel and dust. And it's really steep.) He looked away when I reached his corner of the switchback, and my friend sat down to dust her backpack, and I thought, aw, what the hell.

I sat down next to him. He's about to start medical school in Washington. This is a last hurrah trip, up from Kyoto to Fuji, from there up to Tokyo and back to the states. He taught English in Ecuador for six months.

That moment was right. We shook hands and said goodbye ("And try going down the path in zig zags, you'll keep your forward momentum," he said) and I don't imagine I'll ever see him again or that I'd recognize him if I did, but the view was right. Forever and the tops of clouds. The ease of the conversation felt right. He picked it up as soon as I started, as if we were at a high school reunion instead of meeting for the first time purely because we'd climbed the same mountain and he looked at me and I thought he was cute. Speaking English felt right.

I saw him two or three hours further down as well, but he was talking to someone in his group and I had nothing else to say except "Please come home with me now," which I thought might come off wrong.

***

I fell asleep while trying to think of a good way to end this post. It was fantastic, exhausted sleep.

If you were here, we'd go for a walk. We'd walk to a shrine, because even though I just visited one, there are four within a half-kilometer of my apartment, and in their own ways they're all beautiful. We'd go to the one with the gentle little river running through the side garden where I met a guy named Toshi who was adorable and possibly gay and very friendly and definitely with a woman.

Japan has its gorgeous moments, when the whole country looks open and smooth and smiling like Toshi's face. So did Washington, California, Utah, and even frigid New York.

There's part of me that's convinced that a new place will make everything better, but it won't. In every place I've ever had a computer I've binged on internet TV. I haven't held down a constant exercise program since my weight training classes at community college. Given the option I don't talk to people, which might explain my lack of progress with Japanese. I don't like alcohol or loud music except very rarely. Sometimes I let the dishes go unwashed until I have to use chopsticks to stir my chocolate milk. These are the things I feel are holding me back, and they're not location dependent quirks.

But maybe understanding small talk and being openly gay again will make a difference. I hope that at my next job I'll be able to make friends with my coworkers a little more effectively. I hope that at my next job I won't feel my soul slipping away from me a bit at a time.

My roommate Jeff once asked me what my greatest fear was. I said "That nothing will change." What I meant was "That this feeling that I'm wasting my life will never go away." 

Same fear.

The world just goes on forever.

The thing about reading is that you get exposed to ideas that are terrifying, and then you can't unthink them. I read A Short History of Everything the other day, just before my kindle exploded. That was following on the heels of some Hitchens tripe. Somewhere along the way in Japan I turned into an atheist.

Or maybe it would be more correct to say I stopped not being an atheist. Because it feels like belief (or trying to believe) took work, and atheism is what's left when I stop trying to cover it up and distract myself.

My mom smiled at me and said "Some day you'll realize what a big mistake you're making." I smiled back and changed the subject to something about a movie, I think, because what other response is there? "Fifty years from now you'll be dead and then you won't exist anymore?" Hardly appropriate, even if it's true.

The days are so hot and sweaty here I smell sour half an hour after showering. It's pretty gross.

There are only four more classes in the semester.

I'm climbing mount Fuji in two weeks.

If you were here, we'd stand on the back porch and listen to the rain. We'd be leaning on the balcony wall, my right arm about six inches from your left.  We wouldn't say much for a while.

***

My parents are visiting.  Every day, I see them when I wake up. And just before I go to bed.  It's weird. I'm so used to being alone.

They're so proud of me. I never doubt this. It's obvious all the time, when they look at me, when they talk with me, when we laugh. The fact that they came across the planet to be with me, and that this is the second time. The way they trust me to lead them around everywhere. It feels very healthy and loving and I like it a lot. Being an adult kind of rocks.

Today we went to a mountain and walked around a garden on top. Then we came home, and the rain started just as we walked up to my apartment. It's a soft, gentle rain that happens every few days this time of year. The last typhoon was a couple of weeks ago. I kind of hope we get another before the padres go home.

***

I dunno, for the past while it's felt like Mormonism isn't that important to me anymore. I guess I'm getting comfortable with my disbelief. I guess I've reached a point where I can stop mourning the things I'm not getting from mormonism.

***

My parents know this, I'd tell you.

***

Can I say the worst is over without jinxing it? Because I think that in the future we might talk about beauty and truth instead of just mormonism.

Or not. I can't really say.

If you were here, I'd tell you what I thought at Mormon church today.

I wasn't planning to go, but on Friday I saw I'd missed a call from the missionaries, so I texted them back that I'd be free in an hour. But since I suspected they were calling to see if I was coming to church on Sunday, I thought about my answer to that and added "or I'll just see you on Sunday." They texted back that they'd see me then, and also that there was a ward barbeque Saturday.

Very kind, but no thanks on the barbeque. Whatever it was once, the way I'm engaging with Mormonism now is definitely not social. 

When I got to the church building today, I felt really awkward and out of place as people tried to talk to me and find out where the elders were. My Japanese is good enough now that that wasn't the reason things were awkward, but I couldn't put my finger on what the reason was.  People smiled and shook my hand and introduced themselves, and they even dug up a youngish guy who spoke English really well and had just gotten back from living in Angola for a year. 

The missionaries caught up with us just as I was being herded into one of the Japanese-speaking Sunday school classes, and the American one took me aside with a ward missionary while the Japanese missionary took an investigator into the gospel essentials class. Our lesson was about baptism.

The thing that struck me and that I want to talk about is that as we read scriptures and the little manual, I thought that it made sense. It felt true to me. Not true in the scary, one-true-church style of the Mormon church, but true in a way that was just true. Why get baptized? As a sign you're willing to focus on living a life like Christ. Because that's what we promise when we get baptized. And the things God promises back are the consequences of trying to live like Christ. Makes sense to me.

I chose to ignore the part where the elder talked about authority because as far as I can tell, that's really just a formality that has nothing to do with the ordinance itself, and God can figure all that out later. 

As a result, I took the sacrament for the first time in years. Maybe since before I graduated from BYU, I don't remember. Because even if I don't believe in the authority of the church and it's priesthood (or at least that it isn't all it says it is), I also don't believe in the need for that authority. It's the commitments I make that matter. God looketh upon the heart and all that.

But then I left Sacrament meeting early, because I realized (duh) where the awkwardness came from: the organization sponsoring the service says that one of the desires closest to my heart is Wicked, capital "w." That meant that to interact with anyone there, I had to either pretend to be straight or be the poster child for Gay, and neither one appeals.

So instead of finishing the meeting and sticking around to socialize, I went and bought sushi and a couple of fruit sours.

I don't think I'll go back next week. Maybe when my parents visit next month.

Victory. This morning I made four large onigiri, filled them with fish, wrapped them with seaweed, and then (hours later) ate them for lunch. They were yummy. I'd been meaning to make onigiri almost since I got here, and my one previous attempt was so gross by the time I ate it that it doesn't count.

(Onigiri don't refrigerate well, btw.)

I feel like onigiri making is something that I'll use after I've left Japan, which is nice because most things here feel like they're going to fade away as soon as I turn my back. Aside from the enormous number of enormous people and the faint grimness to everything, it was easy to slip back into USA mode when I was there a couple of weeks ago. When I move back for probably permanent in March, I think it'll be almost like I was never gone, except that a year or whenever down the road when I'm living in Seattle or Texas or wherever I'll occasionally make onigiri.

The thing is, I look back on the past several years and the years since BYU feel like they've lacked momentous things.

Whatyousay?! What about the cross country roadtrips, the foreign countries, the weird and awkward little jobs, the cool people?

I can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't gone to BYU. Going to a different college? No idea how that would have turned out. Not going to college at all? Unfathomable. And after graduating BYU, well, I remember the experiences and the places and the people, but I can also imagine my life had they not been in it. Port Townsend was great, and I still write to several of the lovely people I met there, but at the same time nothing picked me up by the shoulders and shook me till my fillings rattled.

I wonder, was my BYU experience so intense that it's ruined me for what comes next? I think of Brave New  World: "Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." My time at BYU was fully of misery and it's over-compensations. It was extremely unstable. Whether I was in a "Yay Mormonism!" mode or a "Woe is me" mode, I continually felt like I was fighting against misfortune. Ooooh did I struggle with temptation. And of course, all three years at BYU were a long, drawn out and "fatal" overthrow by doubt.

The thing I got from BNW was that, like the savage, I also claimed the right to be unhappy. And I am sometimes, yeah, but it's a tame unhappiness, not an epic one. Without my grand masochistic rock-and-a-hard-place of the LDS church / BYU and homosexuality, everything's kinda plain. I want my life to be spectacular, glamorous, picturesque, and grand, but right now victory means the successful construction of a riceball.


I wonder if perhaps it's the search for an antagonist (or at least a challenge) that keeps me popping back into Mormon chapels. Maybe what I need is another fatal overthrow.

Most of these aren't directed to anyone in particular, but this one is.

I don't know what's wrong with me. We met once, more than a year ago, but your name is still a little fishhook of pleasure, and that in itself is problematic because your name is also my friend's husband's name and I don't really want to be reminded of how when we were sixteen I tried to seduce him with a pool and cannonballs.

I wish you weren't going on a Mormon mission. I understand that you still love the church even though I think you're outgrowing it pretty quickly, and I think you'll make it through in a blaze of glory, but that just puts so much more between us. Now even if I end up in the state you live in—and I was quietly planning to myself how to make that happen, a year or two down the road—you won't be there, you'll be in New Mexico. And when you finish your mission, you'll still have years of Mormon sponsored school, unless I can finally get you to transfer.

What kind of magic can pull me to you so insistently from so little? Let's be honest, questionable fast food and walking around a California suburb is not normally remarkable, certainly not a year after the fact.

I don't know how it would work. You don't like reading. You want to be a goddamned dentist.

I  want you to know about this hot sweaty mess in my head because I think I have to block you on Facebook and Skype. It's not your fault, per say—there's nothing that you should have done but didn't—it's just that you don't do what I wish you would, and I don't like the distracting and ridiculous and wholly pointless ache I feel when I see your little digital icon that is definitely not your beautiful body here with me. You'll be fine without me, of course, and honestly I'm not convinced you'll notice once my little links and comments stop peppering you.

I'm trying to be adult about it, though. I mean as much as I can. I may have a few years on you, but I'm still young and "feelings" are every bit as weird and difficult to manage as they always told us.

My grandma died about three feet from where I'm sleeping this week. This doesn't bother me. She was ready to go; I was seven. My brothers and I traded rooms every few years growing up, and I was in this one from ages twelve to fifteen. It feels mine in spite of the extra couch and my mom's treadmill.

I'm on a saggy air mattress watching the world outside my curtains brighten. I woke up and raided the cupboard for Hostess mini donuts somewhere around three am. There are birds out there, and a little bit ago I heard one of my parents get up.

My job is to enjoy everything. You would think it would be easy, but really we have to work at it. You have to pay attention or everything feels the same. It takes effort to distinguish one day from another.

Now. It didn't seem that way at BYU. Homework and classes were always changing. Life had a flavor of persecution to it. There were all these people everywhere with big plans, and I had big plans too. There was escalation and movement and hope that when I graduated I would never be sad again.

Three years on (as of April 28, I graduated three years ago!), I'm aware that that was not so and it seems my only recourse is the aforementioned enjoyment of everything. I hesitate to say this because sometimes I'm not okay, but I think I'm doing pretty well. Maybe I do swim endlessly around BYU and mormonism and being gay, but that's not a dealbreaker I think.

***

I rented a car yesterday. Feels like a milestone. 

Over the past month I've read the first twelve Wheel of Time books and it's all Kyle's fault. (Dammit Kyle!) He was excited about them at BYU for reasons that, having read the series, I don't understand. Nevertheless, pretty much every free minute for weeks has gone into finishing that series, which came after finishing the first couple fistfuls of the Desden Files books, which Kirk recommended. Which came after the Tru Blood marathon, which Mark recommended. Which came after the Big Bang Theory marathon, which Christian recommended. Which . . . you get the idea.

Following recommendations is what I do, apparently. Something that can enrich an existing relationship gets precedence. All other things appearing equal, a friend's recommendation makes a thing pop--and yeah, most things appear equally appealing, or unappealing.

***

I have a red shirt I bought in New York just before I came to Japan. It feels like it's hugging me and whispering compliments to my soul when I wear it.

***

I went to Mormon church today. (No one ever recommends this.) 

This morning I woke up two hours before my alarm, laid in bed for two hours watching Youtube videos, and then went to the chapel. Sunday school was taught by the missionaries, in English, to me and a visiting girl and a guy who either wants to improve his decent English or is a ward missionary or both. 

The lesson was on the plan of salvation. Made me think of things I hadn't thought about in a long time, like Adam and Eve, and the veil of forgetfulness between this life and the one before. All the way through SS and sacrament meeting and no panic attacks. 

***

No one ever recommends that I do massage school, either. In fact, several people have said they think it's a weird idea and they can't see me enjoying it. My family thinks it'll be a waste of my brain yet also says "Hey, it's your life." But I want it, so when I'm done being in Japan, I'll be a student again. I'll find some way to not feel sheepish when I tell people I want to do massage school.

***

In my BYU freshman dorm, I sat on the super comfy brown fuzzy front room couches with my marked up Book of Mormon and thought sadly to myself that the book's advice was a little far away. "Even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you," Alma said. I couldn't even desire to believe. Too much hurt. (This was my problem with so much of scripture and also that douche C.S. Lewis: it assumes too much. Why would little miserable seventeen-year-old me even want to believe in this religion? Believing Christianity is not a happy prospect, at least for the gay of us, and if you try to represent Christianity as a religion of pure and obvious joy to me, I will feel like you are invalidating what I've been through, and I will sock you.)

Somewhere along the line I started wanting to believe. Not believing, but wanting to. So I went to Mormon church today. Maybe this will be a gradually permanent thing, or maybe not, but right now if I want to go that's okay. Maybe it will decide the course of my life and maybe it won't.

***

I want to go to massage school, so I will. Maybe it will be like editing and I'll realize after a few years that it was the idea I was in love with and I really loathe the reality of it. Maybe it will decide the course of my life and maybe it won't.

***

I despair of finding a calling in my life, or even stability.

***

Red shirt.

.

One in the morning and I'm looking at pictures of a man. I met him years ago. I slept next to him last week. Like brothers on a hotel bed.

God, the feel of his body. He's stronger than I am, broader, just barely taller. He sang Moves Like Jagger, which at first seemed questionable and then gradually perfect. We danced. We rode trains.

I watched him make out with another man, which was on one hand kinda hot and on the other depressing.

I won't see him again for at least a year, probably more, and so I'm stuck with just the time we had together, even though it wasn't what it might have been. I'll likely never see what might have been.

I'm friends with a lot of people, but it makes me sad to think he and I are just friends.

Anyway. It's one thirty in the morning. I don't think I'll feel like sleeping ever again. I will still be poor when I leave Japan. He will be with another guy. Maybe I won't be thinking about him still.

We did karaoke the other day.

At the St. Patrick's day parade I saw a guy who gave me the electric feeling. He was standing in the crowd opposite me and everything felt orange when I saw him. My eyes kept clicking back onto his face.

It turns out he's a dancer with a touring group, and he gave a little performance. I talked with him  after, got his name, facebooked, sent a message. Will probably not hear back.

I do not know about this electric quality that some few men have that makes me want to be with them. I've felt it from straight men and gay men. It's like their eyes are the key to making that warm thing that has never existed but can save everything in the entire world.

The karaoke was  fun too.

It's my three week unpaid spring break between contracts now, which makes me feel eager to be back in the states. I think about what I'm going to do after I get back . . .  I don't know, exactly, but I'll find a way.

And a date. I have a date tomorrow with a guy in Tokyo.  Because I don't want two years of not even trying to love someone.

I could write any number of things here, but sticking to the theme, here's what I'd say if you were here:

I'm sorry. I don't . . . today . . . Today is a clay day. I'm heavy. I feel like my lines are all smearing into one another. My sculptor isn't very talented and I don't want to lift my arms. All the chemical potential energy is useless if the circuits are closed. Nothing is happening. My body is congealed around me.

It's a don't care day. It's been a don't care week. Surprised the flies aren't buzzing.

I think I will never stop being a chatterbox of whirling emotional gay mormon angst.

I'm going to church tomorrow.

There is probably not anything that you could do to change this feeling that everything golden and warm means nothing and is actually just clay. It's the thick, river kind of clay that I just have to slog through, that sucks at your legs as you're going so that you get angry and then you give up hope and just stand there until you can't just stand there anymore even if you don't know why and you move on.

Lately I've been eating desperately until my stomach hurt trying to make my body stop feeling like it was going to smear itself away or collapse inward into nothing and it hasn't worked, and there's nothing to do but keep on.

But obviously, obviously it's not too bad because I'm still doing a bang-up job at work.

Can you imagine being covered in ashes?

They're itchy all over your skin and every few seconds another one falls from your hair. You huff in reverse to get them out of your nose. You can smell, everywhere, the aftermath of burning.

***

I'm waiting for an email from an FBI agent. Honest truth. I'm looking at post-Japan careers, and it turns out that a friend of a friend of a friend is a recruiter for them. At BYU there was an FBI recruiting seminar once, and it sounded interesting to me then, but they don't hire anyone who isn't at least twenty-three, and since I was only nineteen at the time (I graduated at twenty) I didn't think about it seriously.

So there's that.

Staying here is also an option, one that's becoming more attractive as I get the language kind of down and make a few more social ties. Possibly staying here-here, in the same city, or possibly moving to Yokohama to work in the branch office. I'm getting pretty comfortable here, so if they could just up my pay by half I think I'd be sold. (Sold on one more year, that is.)

Passing my kendo test last weekend went a long way toward making me feel at home here, I think. And last night, sparring at the boxing gym, I also felt like I belonged. (I hit a personal record for continuous jump rope time, among other things.) As nice as it was to live in the US, I was too worried about money or school or Mormonism or The Gay to feel that belonging most of the time, so even with the language barrier, what I'm feeling here is valuable.

I've been able to keep in touch with many of my friends, mostly through letters, some through Facebook. We keep each other posted, we talk about curiosities and boys and jobs and hobbies. My model for letter writing has always been Pride and Prejudice. I think I'm coming into it more.

I wrote another several pages of novel the other day.

***

Things you burn: flags; corpses; phoenixes; fields; houses; fuses; forests; incense; evidence. 

I started the second draft of my novel today. My sister and I both enjoy writing, and she's working on her second manuscript, so we made a pact to prod one another. I keep her most recent prod in my email inbox. It stares at me accusingly every time I use the internet. (Gmail is my homepage. And my homeboy.) I put down three hundred words and a few more while I waited for my rice to finish. So, page one or so. A good start. My goal is to have the second draft (the draft I'm willing to show people) finished by my birthday, in December. Can do.

Sometimes you meet somebody and there are butterflies. Butterflies made of lightning. On meth.

The last time I met such a butterfly maker was before I left for Japan. The week before, actually. It was the weirdest thing. By objective standards is was an "eh" grade date, just fast food and walking and talking, but there were butterflies and I still don't understand why. He wasn't even legally an adult yet, which I'm going to count as not scuzzy on my part because I was only twenty-two and see above about fast food-walking-talking.

He wants to be a dentist. I don't know what my butterflies are thinking.

He's on my mind because we keep in touch, and we Skyped last week. There were butterflies again. They got me thinking about life and what's maybe next and what it will be like to not be single, to make job and life decisions while not being single, about being married, having kids. Probably not with him (because persistent butterflies aren't enough . . . right?), but with someone, someday. Maybe in the next few years. Someone will give me butterflies who doesn't want to be a dentist and who is maybe finished with school already.

I was telling my mom about this because yes, I tell my mom and my sister about my crushes, and she mentioned the recent Washington state gay marriage decision. She said the gay guys who were witnessing it were pictured with some adorable children. She seemed happy for them. I'm looking forward to sharing my excellent family.

Tomorrow is my level test for kendo. I'm anxious almost to the point of hyperventilation. When it comes to words I'm moderately talented and when it comes to sports I'm not talented at all. Everyone will be watching. If I perform like I did at the dry run this evening, I'll make a lot of mistakes.

But it's ok. It's a game. It's a sport. It's for fun and exercise and ok, also bragging rights because kendo is impressive. It's okay to make mistakes. (But that doesn't mean I like it.)

And if you were here, after telling you all this, I'd sniffle and rock back and forth like a slightly crazy person because I think it's time to just be with what I'm feeling, now that I've expressed it.

If you were here I wouldn't feel so bad because we'd have been talking over the past couple of weeks, when I wasn't angsty. As it is, I feel like I'm a bit of a downer, only talking to you when there's a snarfy feeling in the back of my skull.

The problem is that I feel incompetent here all the time. Next week is my kendo level test. Today was a trial run. I made so many mistakes that the sensei stopped counting. I still don't understand half the directions. I got there late because I got lost, asked directions from an old woman, and ended up getting on the wrong bus. Downer.

The evening after that was pretty great, though. A performing group called the Young Americans had a show tonight. The first half is a medley of "American culture" things (90's hip hop, Shenandoah, swing, blues, etc.) and the second half was a children's program. It was super cute. I . . . well, I should describe it. And I could. But the back of my skull is snarfy so many I actually can't just now.

And after, my kendo sensei took me out for soba. We managed a mangled but fairly uninterrupted conversation for the whole meal. Which was delicious.

I'm listening to the soundtrack to Hairspray and feeling intense nostalgia waves. One of my favorite roommates was crazy about that movie. Gosh I miss him. And the others we shared the house with. And so many other things. Grease. (The movie.) Being good at things.

Look, I know this passes. Being here is a good thing. I want to be doing what I'm doing, difficult as it is. But tonight, there's snarf and I can't think and . . . other emo things.

You know, I'm kind of glad you're not here tonight. I'd be grumpy company.

Today I feel failure.

My Japanese failure started when I went to the mormon chapel for the second week running. I arrived ten minutes early (as opposed to last weeks' twenty minutes late) and there was a guy standing in the hall. He started chatting at me and I had no idea what he was saying. No. Clue. I eventually made out that he had shared his name with me(don't know if I can say I forgot it since I didn't really understand it in the first place)and was asking for mine; that he had invited me to an as yet unplanned YSA activity in February (more confusing because it's apparently just SA here, even though this guy turned out to be 27); and (most awkwardly) that he was thanking me for accompanying the elders on a dinner meeting with an investigator last week.

Is that what that was? Whoops.

I didn't know how to assure him that it was not my intention to help convert anyone, so I just said "It was fun."

I understood maybe thirty percent of the first two talks (female speakers who gestured and spoke kinda slow) and ten percent of the last one (a male speaker who did not speak slowly or gesture at all). They were all on the word of wisdom, which was ironic because I enjoyed a cup of coffee with a friend on Friday day, a beer and a mixed drink with a friend on Friday night, and a cup of tea with a friend on Saturday. Still, I like the spirit of health consciousness behind the topic.

I left quickly after the meeting ended, and as soon as I rounded the corner I was asking myself why I'd gone at all.

• Sacrament meeting reminds me of my family. We sang "In Our Lovely Deseret" as the closing song, which in addition to being hilariously fast when you're reading the lyrics in Japanese script was my family's FHE theme song, sung at least twice a month for most of my childhood.
• There's a feeling of community there that I haven't felt anywhere else. Everyone (or the adults at least) is there because they want to be there. There's no pressure to learn, no tests or paychecks involved.
• It's safe. I can't really fail at mormonism, at least not the unorthodox way I'm engaging with it.
• Being there helps me see that I'm not spiritually battered guy I used to be. Where once I got panic attacks, now I have peace.
• The missionaries are thrilled to have me there. I feel like I'm making their day.
• The missionaries are there. This one I feel is dangerous. As lovely as it is to sit next to an American guy my age, to sing together and whisper occasional commentary back and forth, he's a missionary for a church I don't believe in. Our interaction is wholly dependent on my participation in the Mormon church. 

I don't regret going. I felt warm and fuzzy and special there. But I wonder if it isn't unsustainable, like drug happiness. The next few weeks will make it clear, I think. If it's the novelty, that'll wear off. Sometime the elders will bring more people to church and I'll sit by myself, or they'll get transferred out, or I don't know.  I awkwardly imagine what the conversation will be like if they try to get me to be more active than I want to be and it isn't pretty, full of righteous gay pity-party indignation. If I keep it up, I imagine someone will get close to the topic eventually and that will be messy. But for now, I don't regret going.

Oh yeah, this was about failure. After failing to understand Japanese there, I went to an extra kendo practice that my coach had set up for me because of the impending grade level tests. He doesn't speak English, so I failed Japanese some more with him. I also failed at politeness (arrived a few minutes late) remembering the forms (there are ten, and the names and steps are all new Japanese vocabulary), and, pleasing my Japanese teacher, who was there to translate and who ended the evening with the comment "Sometimes I forget how much you don't know," which I suppose might not have been intended as an insult but which still hurt because sometimes I forget too but not today.

But this is all angsty. To be honest, now that I'm a little removed from the events of the day and I can just think about them, it's been a pretty good day. I enjoyed the Mormon church and the train ride to and from. I chatted for a few minutes with my mom (who does not know about my chapel visits because I don't want her to get her hopes up), I enjoyed some lovely bakery snacks, and I finally got a written copy of the kendo form names so I can practice them. I didn't have to teach any classes. I slept in. I read some Michael Creighton and washed things.

I guess the angst is there because I feel like something's missing, and the whole Mormon-elder complex is similar to the missing thing but not it. That and the Japanese and the kendo all together feel like failure, even though on the whole today was good.

Anyway. If you were here I'd probably punch you in the shoulder and then act like I didn't do anything. Just to see what you'd do.

I feel like talking but there's no one here. I've been washing my dishes every night for the past couple of weeks because I read somewhere that the way to become a person who keeps a tidy apartment is to keep a tidy apartment. It's a steady clean clear area in my cluttered house.

I taught mentally challenged third graders about "I want" and "I want to" this morning. We played a white elephant type game and then go fish, and then a fill in the blanks thing plus a review about telling time. It went smoother than I expected. The special first graders were in a bad mood when I taught them last Tuesday, and then their abilities are different and I didn't put as much effort into that lesson, so what can I expect.

You're not here, so I'm talking to myself.

Last week I went to the Mormon chapel, did I mention that? I want to see if I can make it mine, somehow, instead of Mormonism being an accident of birth. Y'know. Like mental retardation, or a crooked finger. I want to demote it from worldview to heritage experience. If I completely stop engaging with it, it'll always be ingrained in me. That's probably unhealthy.

It's been a busy week. I want to go grocery shopping, but it's so cold, and I really enjoy laying in bed.

The elders are not lookers, but they're white and male and American and around my age so I feel myself drawn to them. I think I have to be careful about that. They're so like me, but also so very very not. I have to keep reminding myself—Matthew, these boys do not care about you. They're here to proselyte for a church in which you were burned for years. They may want what's best for you, but their idea of what that is is very different from yours. So be careful.

Anyway. If you were here tonight, I dunno. I might ask to cuddle and then fall asleep on you. I'm feeling young and vulnerable. I'm tired.

If you were here tonight, I'd tell you about how I went to the Mormon chapel today. We'd sit on the bed, I think, because there are a few days of clutter everywhere else and it's cozy up here. We could watch everything like lords of it all. Lords of the grocery bags and discarded jackets.

I found the chapel with the little map that the elders gave me some months ago—I think I mentioned it. On the way there I asked a woman about the correct train stop to get off at, and later a man about a park where I could eat my bakery-bought lunch. I understood half the words. That was enough though. I got off at the correct and tiny station in a depressing area of Atsugi where there was a factory smell and a lot of concrete and wires and cars. I found a garbage-strewn set of benches and a little shrine by the river and ate my lunch there.

I was anxious but not freaking out when I passed the chapel the first time. It sort of pops out at you with sudden white largeness. A spiral staircase, half of the first floor given over to parking, a couple of people walking out. I walked past them and past the Create drugstore across the street. (This is when I found the park and ate my curry roll, my tiny pizza, and my doughnut.)

I felt light and fizzy when I walked back and in. I lingered in the empty little front room and looked at a display of different language editions of the Book of Mormon. '80s era posters in English. Ads for the English classes the elders teach.

Up the stairs. They were narrowish, just enough room for a person going one way to pass a person going the other way. At the top, a Japanese woman saw me and said "Hello" in English. I tried to ask for the meeting schedule in Japanese, and she asked what meeting, and I had no idea how to say "sacrament meeting" and she didn't switch to English, so "Hello" was probably the extent of her abilities in that regard. She said there was a meeting going on then and held open a door right there in the narrow hallway and ushered me in.

This was at two thirty or three, by the way. "Baptism," I said to myself when I saw a little Latin American kid at the front and his family up there too and not exactly a full house in the rest of the folding chairs. Bingo. I sat down right by the door I'd come in and listened to the little guy thank everyone for coming. Someone in the column of chairs next to me went up to the front and told the elders I was there and they came back by me, smiling huge. I bet I made their day.

Are you from England? I'm guessing you're a member. How long have you been here?

American, actually, from California. Yeah, haven't come for a long time though. About nine months.

He gave me the schedule for the meetings. The bishop spoke a little. We sang "I Am A Child Of God" in Japanese and it felt warm in my head and then a prayer, a few more pleasantries, and I left.

"See you next week" he said, and maybe he will, I dunno. It felt good to sit there. It was familiar and comforting and I didn't feel suffocated. It was interesting to see how much I could understand. It was a baptism, though, and I arrived close to the end. Two of the three people I heard speak were adorable and Latin and simple and children. There was a lot of space. There was no sacrament ritual.

If you were here, I don't know if you'd ask why I'm going or not, but I ask myself. Answer: Mormonism is part of my heritage. I don't really want to cut it out of my life. Pain aside.

I imagine you'd raise an eyebrow if you were here, but maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Now I need to turn on the heat and wash the spoon I ate mango yogurt with earlier and brush my teeth and sleep. School starts again in a couple of days. I'd get up and we'd hug, if you were here.