FunDOC

If I've learned anything in the past two first-days of classes, it's that UNC is full of boring and annoying people. True, I've always been under the impression that I'm just really fun and interesting and no one else can compare, but that has never been so confirmed as it was during the "fun fact" portion of FDOC today.

My actual first day of class was relatively unimpressive, but today, the first day of MWF class, I spent two and a half hours hating all the students in my classes. In my first class, Diversity & Communication, I showed up still drunk (it starts at 12:30) and ready to vomit and assumed the day was going to go horribly. But then my teacher decided against the typical "tell us your name and a fun fact about yourself" and had us tell the class the following:

Name
Hometown
Major
Memorable diversity experience
Ideal guest speaker (dead or alive)
Biggest dream

After I finally got my laptop to connect to wifi I was all set up to not listen to everyone's answers. Then there was a twist. We were going to have to recite the name of every classmate who spoke before us. There are about 40 people in the class. Keep in mind I'm still drunk and only have the attention span to focus on one thing: not vomiting in class. And I was last in line.
The first few people had pretty uninteresting answers - I studied abroad over the summer, Barack Obama, to get a job after college - but when we got to the girl who said her ideal guest speaker would be Beyonce, I lost it. My first thought was "mhmm TRU," but then I really started to imagine Beyonce as a guest speaker: standing up there with her one robot hand and her deep ass voice rambling on and on about how blessed she is. I love Bey as much as the next gay, but that would just be awful.
As if that wasn't enough, the next girl's biggest dream almost ruined the hard work I was putting into not throwing up. "I just want to be a mom." Vom.
Even more vomit-inducing was the slew of  "diversity experiences" that included charity work in third world countries. "I spent the summer in Kenya..." "I taught English in Cambodia a few years ago..." Luckily I had sobered up enough to keep myself from blurting out "Oh come ON. You're in college, do something fun! I spent a month in Hawaii getting drunk and slacking off."  Just a request to anyone who speaks to me from now on: good for you for reconstructing an entire village for orphan buzzards in Peru, but please don't tell me about it. There is nothing more pretentious than flaunting your charity work. And you know daddy always says an ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure.
In the moments when I wasn't loathing people for existing, I was thinking about what my answers would be. For my diversity experience, I thought about saying something about being gay in a small town, my month in Hippieville, HI and the 2 Chainz concert I went to last month. I ultimately decided on my Hawaii experience because "I lived in Hawaii for a month" always gets me those jealous looks that keep me young and attractive.
Next I thought "I have no idea who my ideal guest speaker would be." I thought about famous gays like Andy Warhol, fashion icons like Tom Ford or Alexander McQueen, as well as, of course, Britney. I thought I had settled on Britney when I really started to think. She DID say "dead or alive." Then I had my answer and was ashamed of myself for not thinking of it before: SpongeBob. I don't know what he'd talk about, but I'm sure he'd have something hilarious to say about anything. And if Saturday afternoons on my couch in front of the TV are any indication of my affection for the little guy, I think it's safe to say that I could listen to Spongebob lecture for hours.
And finally I had to narrow down my impossibly long list of dreams to find one that said to the class "I'm here, I'm queer and I'm more interesting than you." Obviously my first idea was "my biggest dream is to be famous." But let's face it, that's not very unique. Everyone wants to be famous and anyone who says they don't is an asshole and probably lying. So then I thought of my most serious and relatively new dream of being a model. That's interesting and all, but I always feel like people are laughing at me in their heads when I say that (if you are right now, shut up). So then I was thinking of all my other dreams, including being a bartender, owning and performing in a strip club in Myrtle Beach and - this one was a serious contender for "biggest" - that all the flies in the world cease to exist. When it was finally my turn and the class had stopped laughing at my SpongeBob comment (it killed), I said "and my biggest dream is to be a Kardashian." I waited through the laughter like I was on a live-audience sitcom and continued "I'm not exactly sure how that's going to happen. And if I can't get IN their family, I want to be just like them: all da money, a reality show and doing whatever the hell I want." More laughs. I was officially the most interesting person in the class, the JSchool, and, dare I say, the entire university and world.
I left that class with my head held high, glad that I had won the biggest laugh of the 40-person introduction line and that I kept myself calm when I thought I wasn't going to get to speak because the bitch ahead of me told 4 separate stories about her trip to Jordan  when there was only 4 minutes left of class.
Sidenote about this girl: I noticed her when I walked in because she had short dreadlocks, not unlike a bob, with ONE hanging down past her shoulder with a bead at the end that resembled a lightbulb. I know, what an asshole. One of her Jordanian (I learned from her today that that is in fact a word) stories did prove interesting, though: towards the end of her trip she was at a gathering with a small group of people from an array of countries and they decided to sing songs from their countries for the others. "One guy broke the ice; it was really cute he sang a song in Korean for us. So I decided to sing some Ella Fitzgerald, even though I am NOT a singer." After physically shuttering thinking about how awful that probably was, my next thought was "I woulda sang Miley."

After mentally kicking the people walking slowly in the rain in front of me on my way to my next class, I sat in the front row - not because I wanted to suck up or because I was at all interested in the class, but because I was no longer drunk but full blown hungover and needed to sit down - and was less than thrilled to realize that I had taken a class with this professor before and hated him with a passion.
A few minutes after taking my seat, I saw a lost-looking girl walking around in the hallway and she appeared at our door, looked at the room number, then at me. "What class is this?" "I don't know." "You don't know?" I wanted to say "No. I don't know what class this is. I registered for it months ago and only just looked at ConnectCarolina to see what classroom it was 5 minutes before I got here." I'd like to say that the nonchalance with which I approached this year's FDOC was because I'm a senior, but I've been doing that for years. "I finally looked at the schedule screenshot I had on my phone and said to her "Comm 521." "What class is that?" "I don't know." She looked frustrated. "521? What is that? Is that English?" "I don't know. No. Communications." She rolled her eyes and stormed away. I'm a senior, I'm hungover and you know what, in general I do not care about helping anyone. Don't fuck with me.
So once class started and this professor FINALLY and painstakingly got through several minutes of "uh.." (the reason why I hate him so much), he had us introduce ourselves the old fashioned way, complete with a fun fact. I stuck to "I lived and worked on a farm in Hawaii this summer," mostly because I wanted to stop while I was ahead. Most of the first few people had pretty basic answers, nothing I wanted to slit a throat for. But then we got to the second row of people and homegirl says "...and I went skydiving two years ago." Two. Years. Ago. Like that's cool and all but girl your life sucks.
And I didn't even get any time to recover from that gem; the next girl said "my great grandparents met in Ocracoke so we go there every summer." For once, I am speechless.

And now, here I am, sitting in my final class of the day (until 8:15, ugh). I nearly panicked thinking I was going to be late because traffic on campus ~*sux*~ and walked into class at 5:00 on the dot. Class starts at 5:30. I sat here feeling sorry for myself, but I got some relief when the professor came in and asked "does anyone have any music suggestions? I like to play music before class." Shy on the first day, as usual, the few people in the classroom was silent. Except for me, of course. So if any of you reading this were in the journalism school at about 5:25 and you heard Britney Spears' "Circus" playing loudly from a classroom, that was thanks to me.
And to get to know each other in this class, the professor came up with his own twist on the introduction game. I'm currently half-listening to my classmates explain their favorite website as they bring it up at the front of the classroom (and my Indian professor yell questions at them. Yell.). I'm avoiding volunteering to go next because obviously my favorite website is my own Twitter feed, but all of my most recent tweets are mean things about the people in this room. I'm thinking of doing it anyway.

So here's hoping for a long, stress-free, hilarious and drunk senior year. Go Heels!

Ohm shanti shanti shanti

When I get home and people begin to ask me "How was Hawaii?! Wasn't it amazing?," I truly don't know what I'm going to say. Of course it has been amazing -- I've swam in the Pacific Ocean at both white and black sand beaches, jumped into rivers surrounded by waterfalls and made friends with locals. I can say with certainty that this has been the most amazing experience of my life, but I can also say that the majority of these amazing things have occurred on weekends. That being said, if every weekend is a dream, every weekday has been very close to a nightmare.
There is nothing better to describe my entire experience here than the position that I am currently in: surrounded by hippies, drinking out of a mason jar, watching a movie about plants and smelling like mildew.
When we signed up to come to this place, we were asked to bring or buy organic shampoos and soaps; how cute, we thought: we're going to be living off the land. We pictured standing in the field together, swinging pick axes, singing Wade in the Water, shielding ourselves from the hot tropical sun with big beautiful sunhats. There have been pick axes and singing, but that was just about the end of the similarities between our dream trip and the "reality" that we've been living here.
As I sit here scratching my bug bites, I am reminded of our first day on the Big Island: we were picked up and given leis at the airport and taken into Hilo, the large city on our side of the island, where we shopped around in natural foods stores and a farmers' market. We were overwhelmed with excitement: "We're in Hawaiiiiiii!" we chanted as we walked along the sidewalks, gazing at dirty men playing ukuleles and kicking chihuahuas. We decided to buy some things at the market, thinking that farmers' markets and natural food stores would be our only chance to buy our own food (necessary because they only feed us two meals a day -- and I use the word "meal" very loosely). Our guide and boss for the month insisted that we try a local favorite drink at her favorite spot while we were in town. "You guys have to try the kava bar while we're here. It's this amazing drink with amazing effects; you'll love it!," she kept saying. Hell yeah, we thought; first day here and we're going to a bar in the middle of the day. The drink that we tasted should have been a HUGE hint at what the rest of our time here would be like: halved coconuts were placed in front of us and we were served kava, a brownish watery substance, out of a cauldron that was perched on the bar. As we were led through the kava drinking ceremony -- splashing some on the floor (for the homies who couldn't make it to the party), into the air (for Biggie and Tupac up in the sky), over our shoulders (?) and then clapping twice -- we threw it back. Or at least tried to. We were later informed that the "kava" from which this drink is made is a root grown in Hawaii. And you know what? That's exactly what it tasted like. A root. More specifically, the dirt that the root came out of. I opted out of drinking the rest of mine despite the promise of its magical effects: a relaxation and apparent close-to-drunkenness. Not worth it. I watched my friends get a taste for the liquefied dirt and when they finished, we headed to the farm (first stopping at another natural foods store, "The Natch," it's affectionately called here, where we got a delicious lunch from a buffet).
We arrived at our cute little cabin -- jungalow -- and unloaded our things, then were shown around the farm. Again, we were so excited. We spent our first night in the spa and settled into our cozy beds, happier than ever to be in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
Come Monday, we were in for a reality check: we weren't here for paradise, we were here to learn and to work. We quickly jumped on the available job of housekeeping, the idea of which kept us entertained for at least two weeks, but we were also required to work on the land two days a week, which was quite the experience. On our first day on the land, we spent about 37 hours laying down cardboard and then mulching a mud pit. Having been forced to spread mulch for nearly my entire life at home, this seemed like it was going to be a piece of cake. And it was -- aside from the constant hoards of bugs and the downpours of rain that occurred every five minutes. We were told that summer on the island is the dry season, but you could've fooled me. All rain, all day. I sadly forfeited my hopes for returning to the mainland with a beautiful bronze tan only a few days into the trip. I'm sure most of you know that if it even seems like it's going to rain in Chapel Hill, the chances of me even getting out of bed are slim to none; so waking up to the sound of rain on our tarp roof (very similar to a blitz gunfire) and going out to work in it was not one of my favorite things about Hawaii, to say the least.
If there's anything that I've enjoyed less than the bugs and the rain this month, it's the food. Our first "all natural" food experience was breakfast on Monday: a "chocolate" smoothie and oatmeal. Oh my god, a chocolate smoothie. For breakfast! These people really know how to live, I thought. I don't know if any of you have tasted raw cacao, but it is absolutely nothing like the Hershey bar that it can eventually be made into. This smoothie looked, smelled and tasted like dirt and the oatmeal wasn't much different. Lunch consisted of little more than a bowl of leaves and maybe a soup, none of which interested me. This is advertised as a cleansing retreat, so I'll just cleanse for an entire month. I set out on a mission to fast for an entire month, but that quickly ended on the first night after work when I thought I was starving to death. Luckily I eventually developed not only a taste for, but a love for quinoa, which is served most days at lunch. It's sticky and heavy and gives me some of the protein I need to half-ass the slave work I was expected to do every day. After two weeks, even this routine got old, and we biked into town to stock up on MSG at the drug store. I still eat quinoa and drink water all day during the day, but come nighttime in the confines and secrecy of our jungalow, I stuff myself with delicacies including Oreos, Cheetoes, Ritz Crackers and, mostly importantly, Pepsi. So for any of you who were expecting me to come home fit and tan, I am sorry to let you down. I'll be coming home exactly how I left.
My time on the farm hasn't been all bad, I suppose. I'm here with my best friends and I have a comfortable bed and the jungle is very beautiful every now and then when the rain lets up. The farm where we're staying offers several beneficial classes and events, which we have been trying to take full advantage of. Our first class was hula, which is a lot harder than it looks, especially when you're just thrown with no training into warm-ups with the royal court dancers. I found the love of my life in that hula class. I immediately forgot his name after we were introduced, but I will never forget the sight of tightly wrapped sarong as he danced in front of me.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for me here has been how much I've enjoyed yoga. It always seemed fun, but the only experience with practicing yoga that I came here with was the one time my friend forced me to go with her freshman year; our teacher had a lisp and I could barely stretch my fingers past my kneecaps. Needless to say, I never saw myself doing yoga again. But hey, I'm in Hawaii and I'm supposed to be relaxing, so why not? The first week of yoga was nice, but in our second week, I fell in love with our yoga instructor Maura. Not only is she beautiful, but her voice is the closest to heaven I have ever been and the closest I will likely ever get. She's been the only person here so far that doesn't judge us and she sings along when I tell her in song how much I love her. Every yoga session with her leaves me near tears and melting into the mat. Our second week of yoga with her was perhaps one of the most transformative experiences of my life. She called it "restorative yoga" and if you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it; though I'm not sure of how effective it will be without the voice of our angel there to guide you. At the end of every class, we end with an "Ohm shanti shanti shanti," which I've adopted as my new motto. If you ever see this, Maura, thank you again. Please call me and/or send me a recording of your voice.

Saying Aloha to my struggles

As my month in Hawaii begins to tip over the halfway point, I'd like to make it known that it's not as glamorous as it sounded. A typical day for me here consists of hippies, dirt and bugs and only those things. But more on that later. 

If you've been in contact with me for the past year and a half, you probably know how much of a mess my life has been. It started when I was invaded by a demon or two or six in December of 2011. Ever since then, I've done nothing but struggle. Sometimes the struggles are small; sometimes they're big. Sometimes I sneeze every minute on the minute; sometimes my computer crashes when I open it up to use it for an exam. Sometimes my phone won't send text messages; sometimes my car breaks down on the interstate. Big or small, laughable or panic-inducing, struggles have been present for what seems like a lifetime. I tried to convince myself that this demon would be kind enough to leave me alone for a month while I try to relax in the Aloha State. I wasn't foolish enough to believe that my travels would be struggle-free, but I hoped and prayed to everyone and everything that things would go smoothly. The results reminded me why I never pray in the first place.

The pre-Hawaii struggle began when I spent nearly $3000 in one week -- a week I began with just under $1000. I won't bore you with those details, but I will just say that I am very grateful to my amazing parents for their help and support. The struggle continued when I got sick, went to Campus Health (who, as usual, could not tell me what was wrong with me), and had the pleasure of picking my phone up off the concrete and basking in the beauty of a newly shattered screen. An easy fix, especially with an Apple store so close to me, but the aforementioned bank account problems put a halt to thinking about phone repairs fairly quickly. Luckily I can record this on my list of small struggles, as my phone is still functioning just fine (aside from a charging scare I had last week). Next I had an issue with the USB ports on my replacement computer, which was a dire issue considering I needed a way to sync all my new music for my 12+ hours on a plane and month in Hawaii that were approaching. 

"The way my life is going, I bet the plane won't even take off next week." 

A dramatic reaction to a computer problem (that was easily fixed after a lot of tears and a lot of damage to my hair and scalp), maybe. But inaccurate it was not. My roommate managed to fix the first problem of our departure day by finding a replacement ride to the airport after our original ride canceled; hopes and prayers that that would be our only struggle again went unanswered, as our flight was delayed after boarding due to mechanical issues. Not a big deal for a relatively relaxed person like me, but the issue lay in the fact that we had a fairly short layover for our connection flight in Detroit. Once the plane finally took off, we literally ran with a nice couple who was also on their way to HI to catch our next flight. And if you know me, you know that running is something I like to keep to a minimum (even though running on the moving sidewalks was pretty exhilarating). We made that flight: major struggle avoided. We made it to Seattle with plenty of time to catch our next connection -- that is, we would have made our connection had our flight attendant from Detroit not sent us in circles to find our gate, which was right beside the gate at which we just arrived. So after running down about a mile of stairs, taking about 37 trains in circles, we get to the gate she told us to go to, where we're informed (very rudely) that we are in fact at the wrong gate and that we need to go back to where we came from. So again we board the trains and run back up those miles of stairs and we make it to where we're supposed to be with seven minutes to spare before our departure time. Struggle avoided again, right? Wrong. At this point we were informed (again, very rudely) that we were not allowed to get on the plane that was sitting right in front of us with people still standing under it because they stop boarding at a ridiculously inconvenient time, something like eight minutes before departure. So we're pretty much shooed away and told that there is no hope for our trip to Hawaii. After a very forceful phone call to a Delta representative by my roommate, we were transferred to another flight with a Delta partner. Struggle fixed, right? If you've been following, you can probably guess that the answer is a big ol' WRONG. We get to Alaskan airlines (miles of stairs and 37 trains later) and we're told that we can't get on yet another flight; I don't know if the aforementioned Delta representative just made up the fact that she got us on another flight or if the people running the Alaskan Airlines desk are just trained to be as difficult as possible, but they tell us that the plane is full and there's no way we can get on it. "We only have one seat open," they told us. After some more demanding, which was approaching a screaming hissy fit from the three of us, we're put on the plane (which meant that either the plane actually had more than one empty seat or two people were kicked off -- at this point I really didn't care which). So after a major internal struggle over whether or not to pay $10 for in-flight entertainment, deciding to forgo it, taking a sleeping pill and popping in my headphones, it was smooth sailing over the open seas from Seattle to Oahu, where we surprisingly managed to check in to our cute hotel, find food and get to sleep without a hitch. I even got to settle my craving for fried rice the next morning while waiting for our flight to the Big Island. It seemed like the rest of the trip was going to go smoothly with little to no struggles. Right? Stay tuned. 

I'd like to take this moment to formally apologize to Taylor Swift.

I've always said that I was never "in the closet." I was never hiding the fact that I was gay; I can't exactly explain it but it was like I wasn't until...I was. I still whole-heartedly believe that, but as I look back on my pre-gay life, I realize that I was holding myself back - there were so many things in life that straight guys weren't supposed to be into, so I kind of hid my interest in them and didn't allow myself to pursue them as interests. It wasn't until recently that I finally started to allow my slightly gay-skewed interests to blossom. Here they are.

The first interest-block that I let go of was my aversion to Glee. Even in the beginning I thought it was a little too stereotypical gay to watch it, but once I did and I was exposed to just one scene of Darren Criss and one song by the flawless Lea Michele, I couldn't resist any longer. I'm still slightly ashamed to admit, though, that often I listen to the Glee version of a song on my iPod more often than the original.

If you see me in person often or are friends with me on Facebook, you probably have noticed that I no longer hold myself back from grabbing every box of $4 drugstore hair dye that I can get my hands on. It's gotten to the point where I don't remember what my natural hair color was and I'm not exactly sure what color my hair is supposed to be right now.

Similar to Glee, I never indulged in Sex & the City until after I chose to be gay. (Joke). In fact I completely believe that if there would have been reruns of the series on E! before the past year or so, I would have been gay a long time ago. I know that watching reruns on basic cable is no way to experience the series, but I believe I have seen every episode that is acceptable to play on regular TV and I must say that Carrie Bradshaw is my idol and I want to be her someday.

Speaking of Carrie Bradshaw, I have decided to no longer stop myself from describing someone or something as "fabulous." Talk about stereotypical, I know, but sometimes there is just no other word. To describe, say, a six-inch fringed platform stiletto, a thigh-length coat with a fur collar or Carrie Bradshaw herself as anything other than fabulous would just be inaccurate. I've always known this and I can't tell you how many times I've stopped myself from uttering the word, even into the last year when I was as gay as I thought I could get. As a result there's a lot of "fabulous" built up inside me. So get ready world.

Other things that fall into the category of too-gay-until-now interests include jorts, hair spray, eye liner and eyebrow tweezing. But the biggest surprise of my gay career so far has been my sudden recognition of the perfectness that is Taylor Swift. If you knew me prior to the past few months and the release of "Red," you've probably heard me rant about how much I hate Taylor Swift, how horrible she is and how all her songs sound like she's just reading a page out of her preteen diary and strumming a guitar. Then when "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," the first single off of Red, was released, I thought maybe my inability to stop listening was just a one-time thing. She got lucky writing a song that was so annoying that it was catchy. But then as she released single after single, I repeatedly surprised myself when I didn't hate them. So then I switched from "I hate everything Taylor Swift says, sings and does" to "I hate Taylor Swift but the singles from her new album are pretty good." Then when the album came out and I couldn't stop listening to it, it changed to "Taylor Swift must really be maturing because I really like her new stuff." And I was content with this. But then as I would periodically hear some of her older music on the radio or coming from my roommate's room, I was taken aback by my lack of hatred. No longer was I gagging at the sound of her voice or making fun of her lyrics (though I do still tend to sing "Ours" and "Mean" as one song because, come on, they are the same song), but I was actually enjoying and on some cases relating to the songs. Maybe it's because now I know what it's like to be a teenage girl crushing on a boy who will never notice me. I guess I'm just a little late in experience what Taylor apparently did when she was 14.

Nowadays you can find me listening to Red, dancing, singing and crying all at the same time, on a daily basis. I can't get enough of "I Knew You Were Trouble" and I sob uncontrollably to "I Almost Do" every single time. So here it is world, I'm caving in. I accept Taylor Swift as my leader and savior and I am never. ever. going. back.