couldn't think of clever title. i really like tea

In support of Coming Out Day a few days ago, I came out as bi. This is something most of my friends and family already knew. I did it because I figured everyone who'd hear the message would accept me for who I am. I trusted them and had faith in them. I have a lot of LGBTQ people in my friends list. I wanted to show support and show that it's OK to be who you are. So I posted a small note with the tone of, 'Oh it's Coming Out day today, I'm bi. You probably already knew. Love for all my LGBTQ friends. Later gators.' I posted it like that because it isn't a big deal and I wanted that to come across. Precisely nothing about me or how I operate has changed. The next day, the fallout has begun, and I've never felt more disappointed in people. My boyfriend's family have basically just disowned me after knowing me and getting along with me for three years. Rather than talk to me or ask questions or give me the benefit of the doubt, they just assumed that my message was me announcing my availability to everyone (???) and is highly disrespectful to my relationship (???) and to my boyfriend. They cast judgment instantly. I know this only because his mother phoned him up during his lunch break to yell at him for an hour about me. She unfriended me on Facebook without a word to me, and now things are weird. I guess I just expected better. She has gay friends, she has always seemed like that kind of thing was not a problem to her. She said to my boyfriend on the phone during this conversation that if he were gay, she and the family would support him. It's served to really drive home how much of an outsider I am. It's an alienating and frustrating feeling to be aware of this double standard, to find out that no, bullshit is alive and well even where I thought there was none. It makes me feel as if they were looking for any excuse to exclude me, and now they have one.

I'm bi.

To them, I guess that translates to swinger or something. That because I have the potential to be attracted to both sexes, that must mean that I have to be exploring both of those avenues at any given time. That what I said is a bad sign and I must be looking for someone new or something. It makes me want to vomit.

I have a plethora of emotions right now. On the one hand I almost feel sorry for posting that, but there's that key word in there, 'almost.' I wanted to show my friends that it's OK to be who you are, it's normal and good to be honest with yourself and others. It isn't a big deal. 

I almost feel sorry for posting it because now it's caused some fucking stupid rift and people are all getting up in arms about it.

I don't feel sorry because when I said I was bi, two of my friends were honest with themselves and others, and came out, too.

I don't feel sorry because this stuff should be normal, and that this stupid rift exists is not down to me, it's down to misconceptions and assumptions made by people who, I have come to realise, can't be bothered to ask me what's up and instead would rather cast aspersions.

I feel disappointed because these are people who I had previously considered to be pretty reasonable and accepting. More conservative than I am certainly, but most people are. Nothing I couldn't live with. I thought they had the basics down. I didn't know exactly how different we are, and that's so disappointing.

I feel angry because how dare they make the assumption that I'm trying to get some on the side or something. How dare they assume that I would do anything to endanger my relationship or disrespect their son, and if my boyfriend felt disrespected by what I said, I wouldn't have said it. I'd probably not be dating him if his sensibilities were that delicate that he could not accept what my base orientation is. My orientation is not my relationship. They are entirely separate entities.

I feel angry because I haven't done anything wrong, and if there was this ridiculous witch-hunt going on for reasons to exclude me then it was only a matter of time, because I'm not going to hide who I am.

Who I am is a combination of many, many things, and one of them is that I'm bi. I always have been. That's not going to change, no matter who I'm dating, but I like to think it's going to be this one for a long, long time.

I find myself unable to bring myself to read The Death of Wolverine storyline. I know that he's a comic book hero and he'll 'be back.' I know that death doesn't mean the same thing for comic book heroes, but I just can't take it. My comicky friends keep ribbing me about it and making fun of me, because I keep saying I'll just skip this storyline and pick it back up when he comes back.

I guess, to me, I like to imagine Wolverine as a template entity that writers and artists experiment with. He's more of a Hub-verine. He has certain things about him that are immutable facts, and people get to use those to make 'their own versions' and 'what ifs' that all spider out from a central core idea. Because of this, he's not someone that can die, by nature of his in-world powers for one, and by nature of what he is as a concept. Therefore all stories about him, to me, are 'what ifs' and each writer's own version of what happens with him.

There are certain characters to whom I relate strongly, and having them in my life in some form helps my anxieties, and inspires some of my creativity, too. There are people from Mass Effect, like Joker, Ripley from Alien, frankly there's a big list but one of them is Wolverine. I avoid things, even canon things, about those characters' deaths. Alien 3 doesn't exist for a number of reasons, and several of those are Ripley, Newt and Hicks. I just don't like it. 

Wolverine though I relate to most of all. We're canonically the same height! We're Canadian. We've got some social problems. We struggle with a shitty past and how to harness it and/or let it go. We like being out in nature. We're pretty specialised with what we know about and do. Oftentimes we wind up a little alone, and we're sort of okay with that, but also kind of not. We're mostly quiet except for when we're eviscerating our foes. We're passionate about the people we love. We're also pretty scruffy and rough around the edges, but clean up alright. We came from a place that expected us to be one way, but we turned out completely different and bear some scars from that. We have an interest in Japanese culture. (He's a bit more of a weaboo than I am, though.) On top of all that, too, we are survivors. We get through things and get things done. We take blow after blow, and it hurts and sometimes really fucks us up but we get up and keep going.

Did I mention Canadian? Yes.

I like to use Wolverine as a bit of an escapism thing, or as kind of metaphorical encouragement for my own life. He helps remind me that it's okay for me to be a little "blue collar" and gruff, or enjoy being alone, or not to always know what to do with the bad things that have happened to me -- because he's like that, and he's important in people's lives and people like him. (In universe, too.)

So because of this the idea of reading a storyline where he loses his powers and dies, and his friends react as if he's gone forever is unpalatable and not very fun to me. I'd rather busy myself with the other Wolverine stuff out there that has him overcoming challenges and being a hardass. That's way more fun to me, and I wish my friends would understand this. There's enough defeat and sadness in my life, I don't want it in my fun escapism too.

When I was in the grocery store a while back, I saw this fancy, future-as-shit looking razor with like a million blades that promised the best goddamn shave ever. In need of a new jungle-shucker, I bought it, thinking, 'hot damn, a quality men's razor should have no issue with my piddly golden body hairs. A quality men's razor needs to rip through hard-as-nails facial hair every goddamn day and be replaced whenever the guy can be bothered to.' I imagined hard-as-fuck people with impossible facial hair just rending that shit away with this razor and I paid the price for it and a pack or two of spare heads. It sat on the shelf unused for a while as I still had a bag of badass disposable Bics to thunder through.

So I got real busy a few weeks ago and didn't shave as much as I normally do during my showers because I needed to get clean quick. My priority was just getting to the point where I was hygienic and didn't smell, not being a sex god. But it was 'no problem,' I thought, as I headed to the shower today with the intent of ridding myself of my god-given fur coat; 'I have my fucking Buff McBeef Bagwell Hulkrock razor. My shaving needs are basically in the perfectly sculpted arms of  a Chris Hemsworth-esque razor god.'

By the time I was done with my pits, the razor was winded. It was like, 'Okay, just give me a sec,' doing the razor equivalent of holding its knees and wheezing. 'You're fine,' I replied, using my thumb to wipe down the blades because I'm a hardass and know how not to cut myself.

By the time I was half-done my nethers, it was practically in tears. 'Stop,' it was gasping, as I had to resort to going against the grain with double and triple strokes to even pretend to clear an area. 'Bitch, please,' I hissed, wondering if the razor somehow just needed more than a fuckton of shaving lotion as lube.

By the time it got to shaving my legs, I was basically rubbing a dead fish on them for all the effect it was having.

Now hold the phone here ladies and gentlemen and those in-between because one of two things are going on here. Either I have industrial military grade snatch hair that the army ought to harvest and use for some kind of uncuttable binding system (protip: I do not) or, men's razors are fucking shit.

As the hot water started to fade, being steadily replaced with icy water because my boiler is about the size of a baby's clenched fist, I was suddenly overcome with fantasies of my old bag of £1 Bic razors from the fucking convenience store up the road, and how ugly and unglamourous and plastic and utterly non-future-as-shit they were, and yet how well they destroyed the rainforest that is my body hair. You could use those things in place of a goddamn logging team and nobody would notice.

In short, I bought a man's razor expecting it would be able to do the job better than a dinky £1/300000 pink plastic piece of fuck from behind a Tesco counter, and it isn't possible to be more wrong than I was that day. If Jillette is the best a man can get then shit, I feel bad for you son.

Take a Sad Song, and Make it Better