If you were here, I'd share my bowl of watermelon ice. We'd sit by the pool at my parents' place and let it melt in our mouths on this warm-but-cooling summer night. I've been to a lot of places, but this is my favorite. I'm out here now alone composing this.

The front of my thighs are sunburned because I spent the day floating down the American River with 20 people from my singles ward, 100 people from singles wards round about, and bunches of strangers. I must have been showing more skin than I planned. I must have been enjoying myself too much to notice.

I'm taking them at their word: I, like everyone, am welcome. I'm 25 and gay and inactive and welcome, and my ward lets me feel it. They are somehow unafraid of me believing differently, and I am somehow unafraid of voicing different beliefs.

Not all the time. Not, usually, in public. But during the chitchat times when people ask what's up I tell them I'm visiting my boyfriend in Boston next week and waiting patiently for him to finish his summer internship and be nearby all the time, and they say, oh cool, what's his name? When they are the church for me, I am happy with the church and it is something I want enriching my life forever.

Starting August 1, I will be moving out of my lovely, lovely ward, the Berkeley university ward. I'll miss it, and them, and I will probably come back to visit a few times, but my new ward will be out on the Peninsula. It will be great. I am apprehensive.

I will try to remember the confidence and pride that helps me here. It will be great.

It will be great.

If you were here, I'd ask how things are going for you. It's been so long since we've talked. I haven't been keeping up with the blogs, so some of you I've never known. For many months now I've been caught up in living life, not taking the time to consider it or share it. In the past I considered too much and lived too little; maybe this time I'll find some thin gold line of balance.

And you? Are you balanced? Are you happy?

I passed through a rite of passage for literate gay Americans yesterday, finishing my first Dan Savage book. He makes happiness look so very easy. He makes balance look easy, with a few decisive words about Catholicism and back to the soothing but not in and of itself convincing mantra that gay = good.

I hope we all get to that knowledge eventually, of course, but there's something about the way he presents it that glosses over the choking, scratching process of knowledge development and makes me feel silly for not being quite there yet, sometimes.

If you were here, I'd make you walk in the rain with me. We could have an umbrella, if you insisted, or we could just get wet.

Out in the rain we'd just be quiet except to say how beautiful it all is. Haha! Look at the clouds trying to cover the mountains! Look how full the river is! It sure is beautiful. With you here, it wouldn't even seem so cold.

Back in the apartment, after turning on the heater and either changing into dry clothes or putting on more (I would put on my blue 'old man sweater' that I bought in a WA thrift shop years ago), I'd talk to you about the future.

I don't know what it is about the past few days, but I've been full to bursting with how things might be. When I leave Japan in two months, everything is going to change. Thinking about it makes me feel like I've been eating Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. After being hobbled by my low language abilities for so long, I'm going to be swimming in English like a merman in water. After pretending to be straight for the past two years (mostly) I'm going to date again. Maybe fall in love or something.

The whole prospect is really exciting, and even though I would feel bad for repeating myself to you about the same things over and over again, that's what I would do if you were here.

God dammit, I'm comin' home.

The sadness passed, and came again, and passed again, etc. etc. It's life. I try not to get too hung up about it these days, make it into a bigger thing than it is. As a whole, this last year has been thoroughly satisfying.

Today, I put my futon in the sun and read for hours. There were workmen outside doing something to the street with a jackhammer and a dump truck, but I tuned them out.I made a huge pot of curry, easily enough to get me through to next weekend. I found new little sprouts on my houseplants, and I ate a spatula-full of brown sugar. I didn't go outside except to hang my laundry, and I didn't see another person except on my computer screen. And I don't mind that.

I made plans to hike in the national park tomorrow, possibly with an officer from a kind-of nearby Navy base. I found a contact in the Navy's 'family,' and they've done a good job of reassuring me that I'm qualified, English degree notwithstanding, and that being gay in the Navy really isn't the big thing it once was. Once I submit my application package next week, I could potentially know if they want me or not before I come back to the States in April.

I'm coming back to the States in April. Leaving is going to be like waxing my life. Pain so bad it'll make me squeak, but probably for the best.

If you were here,we'd go for a walk. As it is, I'm staying in where it's warm.

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.