Coming out

A funny thing about coming out is that it isn't like you just do it once.  You come out every day, to new people.  When I came out, it wasn't too bad the first 5 or 6 times; those times were to my family.  But after that I got kinda sick of it.  I realized something; I knew I was gay, but they didn't all.  The experience of telling people wasn't hard or painful, but there were times that were more difficult than others.  However, that is not the point of this post.  I am talking about the fact that I was assumed straight until proven gay.

In preparation for this post I contacted a few straight guys and said things about how honorable it is of them to be out and proud, and that they are part of a rich history  of Gay.  I got 3 responses, 1.) "I like vagina, dude" 2.) a string of profanity 3.) "I'm not gay".  That was all I got.  Every day I have to pretend to be straight, and it can sometimes be a little much.  Why s it that it is so difficult to not assume things about people?  Why do gay people have to come out at all?  Why does it matter?

Moral:  Stop thinking that everyone is straight.

Moral #2: It gets easier every time I come out.  Soon it will be just as easy to come out as it is to remain silent.

Perfect Martini

Here I share my triumph of making a perfect martini.

Big City Video

imaginary firends

I just learned that most children kill off their imaginary friends when they grow out of them. Often the imaginary friends die in violent ways like car crashes or kill themselves. This has to deal with the child learning that death means going away forever and that it parallels in maturity to what is real and imaginary.

being a gentleman

1. Have a signature drink that you both can make at home after a long day’s work, and order with effortless swag at any bar you happen to be in. (This means no complicated ingredients and easy substitutes. If it’s a whiskey soda, so be it.)

2. Keep all negative social media activities to a minimum, because no gentleman engages in things like Twitter fights or passive-aggressive Facebook statuses. It’s just not classy.

3. Hold doors open for everyone, because that’s just a nice thing that you do.

4. Always text back promptly, even if it’s to let someone down gently. The worst thing you can possibly to do someone is leave them hanging so they can torture themselves with worst case scenarios.

5. Own and be able to sufficiently rock at least one suit. Suits are the greatest untapped resource that most men have access to, and can take even the most slovenly 4Chan dweller into slick presentability. You owe it to yourself to know your way around a suit.

6. Master a good handshake, so that you are neither depositing your limp sea slug of a hand on someone else’s palm, nor crushing them with your Rock-Biter-from-the-Neverending-Story force.

7. Never attempt to explain, under any circumstances, why a cat call should be considered a compliment.

8. Do not be afraid of accessorizing, because a pair of nice shoes or a classy watch can Upgrade U almost immediately, as explained in the Beyoncé song.

9. Do not refer to things as “gay” that aren’t homosexual human beings. People who call things “gay” as a pejorative are truly the raisins in the trail mix of life.

10. Do your best not to put others down in order to elevate yourself, it reeks of the people who categorize men by their Greek letter status.

11. Call your mother, even if you have to set up a Google calendar reminder to get yourself to do this.

12. Know how to cook at least a few good meals, because a) there is nothing worse than guys who assume it’s up to the woman to do all the cooking, b) there is nothing sexier than a dude who can cook, and c) everyone deserves to feed themselves well.

13. Make good eye contact, but not so much that it gets into “I’ve been watching you from behind your dumpster” levels.

14. Don’t corner people at house parties with your political views (and this goes double — nay, triple — for libertarians, as you guys are the most egregious culprits).

15. Erase the word “slut” from your vocabulary.

16. Treat every one with the same amount of respect and humanity that you would your father, sister, or boss — and think about why there might have been conditions on how you treated them in the first place.

17. RSVP.

18. Always put a little money away at the end of each month, and not because you’re saving for anything in particular.

19. Be up-front about your finances, because it’s unfair for anyone to believe in the outdated gender roles of “the man should pay for everything.” As long as you’re working hard and trying your best, you deserve to be honest.

20. Do not sleep with anyone who wants a relationship from you that you are not prepared to give. Using their affection to get something from them physically is easy, but it makes you a bad person.

21. Learn how to dance, at least a bit.

22. Never underestimate the great value of unexpected flowers on a day that is otherwise nothing special, especially in long-term relationships.

23. Don’t be disdainful of selfies, guys have just as much a right to look and feel good about themselves as anyone else. If you want a selfie, take a selfie! Just don’t be a dick about other people who like to do it, too.

24. Be compassionate, and know that you are allowed to experience the full range of human emotion. Where the gentleman of our grandparents’ generation might have prided himself on keeping all of his feelings in check for fear of seeming ‘feminine,’ a real gentleman knows that the best thing about him is his ability to be kind and empathetic. Everything else — yes, even the suit — is just icing on the cake.

10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down

Myth #1: They're coming for your guns.

Fact-check: No one knows the exact number of guns in America, but it's clear there's no practical way to round them all up  (never mind that no one in Washington is proposing this). Yet if you fantasize about rifle-toting citizens facing down the government, you'll rest easy knowing that America's roughly 80 million gun owners already have the feds and cops outgunned by a factor of around 79 to 1.

Myth #2: Guns don't kill people—people kill people.

Fact-check: People with more guns tend to kill morepeople—with guns. The states with the highest gun ownership rates have a gun murder rate 114% higher than those with the lowest gun ownership rates. Also, gun death rates tend to be higher in states with higher rates of gun ownership. Gun death rates are generally lower in states with restrictions such as assault-weapons bans or safe-storage requirements.

Myth #3: An armed society is a polite society.

Fact-check: Drivers who carry guns are 44% more likely than unarmed drivers to make obscene gestures at other motorists, and 77% more likely to follow them aggressively.

• Among Texans convicted of serious crimes, those withconcealed-handgun licenses were sentenced for threatening someone with a firearm 4.8 times more than those without.

• In states with Stand Your Ground and other laws making it easier to shoot in self-defense, those policies have been linked to a 7 to 10% increase in homicides.

Myth #4: More good guys with guns can stop rampaging bad guys.
Fact-check: Mass shootings stopped by armed civilians in the past 30 years: 0
• Chances that a shooting at an ER involves guns taken from guards: 1 in 5

Myth #5: Keeping a gun at home makes you safer.

Fact-check: Owning a gun has been linked to higher risks of homicide, suicide, and accidental death by gun.

• For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.

• 43% of homes with guns and kids have at least one unlocked firearm.

• In one experiment, one third of 8-to-12-year-old boys who found a handgun pulled the trigger.

Myth #6: Carrying a gun for self-defense makes you safer.

Fact-check: In 2011, nearly 10 times more people were shot and killed in arguments than by civilians trying to stop a crime.

• In one survey, nearly 1% of Americans reported using guns to defend themselves or their property. However, a closer look at their claims found that more than 50% involved using guns in an aggressive manner, such as escalating an argument.

• A Philadelphia study found that the odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun. His odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater.

Myth #7: Guns make women safer.

Fact-check: In 2010, nearly 6 times more women were shot by husbands, boyfriends, and ex-partners than murdered by male strangers.

• A woman's chances of being killed by her abuser increase more than 7 times if he has access to a gun.

• One study found that women in states with higher gun ownership rates were 4.9 times more likely to be murdered by a gun that women in states with lower gun ownership rates.

Myth #8: "Vicious, violent video games" deserve more blame than guns.

Fact-check: So said NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre after Newtown. So what's up with Japan?

Myth #9: More and more Americans are becoming gun owners.

Fact-check: More guns are being sold, but they're owned by a shrinking portion of the population.

• About 50% of Americans said they had a gun in their homes in 1973. Today, about 45% say they do. Overall, 35% of Americans personally own a gun.

• Around 80% of gun owners are men. On average they own 7.9 guns each.

Myth #10: We don't need more gun laws—we just need to enforce the ones we have.

Fact-check: Weak laws and loopholes backed by the gun lobby make it easier to get guns illegally.

• Around 40% of all legal gun sales involve private sellers and don't require background checks. 40% of prison inmates who used guns in their crimes got them this way.

• An investigation found 62% of online gun sellers were willing to sell to buyers who said they couldn't pass a background check.

• 20% of licensed California gun dealers agreed to sell handguns to researchers posing as illegal "straw" buyers.

• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has not had a permanent director for 6 years, due to an NRA-backed requirement that the Senate approve nominees.

23 Life Lessons You Get From Working At A Restaurant

Chelsea Fagan

1. If you don’t have a thick skin and complete abandonment of political correctness, don’t go near the kitchen. You will immediately learn there that what you consider to be off-limits is just the baseline of someone else’s sense of humor.

2. Bad tippers are the worst kinds of people, and are often terrible in many other ways than just being cheap.

3. Correction, the worst people are those who don’t tip or tip very badly, and accompany their financial insult with a snarky note left on the receipt.
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4. The pain of a bad seating chart is a real one, and not a single customer will care or understand that you got slammed while someone else is totally dead.

5. The difference between the people who have never worked in food service, and the people who have, is always clearly visible. And a lot of time it has to do with the basic degree of respect they give to the people who are serving them.

6. Make back-of-house’s life easy, they will make yours easy. Working is always about scratching someone’s back so they’ll scratch yours, and you’d better not break that chain.

7. The only people you’re going to be able to hang out with — and often date — are by default going to be other people in the industry. So you better like the people you work with it, because no one else is going to be coming out with you at 1 AM.

8. There is absolutely zero shame in eating the plate that gets sent back barely-touched because someone either misunderstood what they were ordering or is incredibly fussy about their perfectly-good food. People who will judge you over shit like that are people who don’t know the joys of a pristine plate of onion rings coming back to you when you are starving.

9. The most important friend you will make is the one who will cover for you while you eat, crouched next to some appliance in the kitchen. True friendship is about taking the fall so someone can eat.

10. There are a lot of people who are going to look down on you for working a restaurant, and treat you with massive disrespect, and you just have to get over it and remind yourself to never be like that in your own life.

11. If you are good to your server, your experience will be about a thousand times better, and you might even get free stuff if you’re lucky.

12. There is nothing better than a chef who is currently trying out new stuff and has tons of excess food for everyone to try. The best friend anyone can have is a good chef.

13. Line cooks are some of the hardest-working, most humble and honest people in the working world. And many of them happen to be felons. And when you see them get off a 14-hour shift and still manage to make jokes with you at the end of it, you realize that every judgment we make about the guy with neck tattoos is completely off base.

14. If you’re a female waitress/hostess/bartender, some of the more drunk male customers will take it upon themselves to also designate you “professional receiver of gross comments and inappropriate touches.”

15. A good manager is the one who will shut shit like that down, because they would rather lose the money from that customer than have someone who mistreats their staff.

16. Even the best establishment can be run into the ground by a petty, spiteful manager.

17. There is no worse an experience on this planet than working a busy brunch shift when you are brutally hungover.

18. If you don’t make friends with the bartender from the get-go, your life is going to be difficult. And you quickly learn that this also applies to the places you don’t work at — treat your bartender well, reap the rewards.

19. The calm before the storm (also known as the rush) is one of the most precious, fleeting moments in life. And as soon as you see that first customer looking at the specials board just a little too long, you know that it’s already over.

20. Never be the person who comes in just as the kitchen’s closing and orders something really complicated. Just don’t be that person.

21. In the best restaurants, you’ll become like a little family, and live through several very important moments together (especially because you don’t get days off for normal, human things such as holidays or birthdays).

22. There will be one item on the menu that you fall in love with so much that you actually start having dreams about it, and go through withdrawal when you don’t have it for a long enough stretch of time. You can actually get that way over, say, a cream of crab soup. It’s like heroin.

23. Going back to a place you used to work and seeing all the old group — and getting to eat and drink all your favorites again — is one of the best feelings you can have.

guns

My stance on gun ownership is similar to my stance on most wedge issues. I don't care to an extreme degree in either direction; what I do care about is that some people seem to do nothing but talk about it. I get it, it comes up sometimes, but if 85% of your profile updates or time line involve being for or against guns, then I likely think your an ignorant fool without a thought in your head who can find no better way of attracting attention than my flashing controversial photos and banners.

To love somebody

Cause if you can't love yourself, you can't love anybody.  But also, there is going to come a time when it seems that the love of others is all that matters.  You will relish it, and want to collect it to save up as reserves.  But you can't hold it, like trying to pour a gallon into a shot glass.  Your withered heart is the shot glass, a hundred times too small.

Choosing

This is not about me, it's about a friend of mine.  She came to visit me in nyc this weekend.   We didn't have any hard plans so we winged the trip for the most part.  But therefore two things she DID plan: a concert and a sexual encounter.   Neither happened for her, her flight in was so delayed she missed the concert (she had them transfer the tickets to me)  and the guy she was supposed to meet up with never returned her messages and calls.  So this leaves her with just one option: a man she met on the plane: one who so serendipitously won her favor.
I tell you this story to remind you that when life gives you lemons; make orange juice and leave everyone wondering how you did it.