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.