All About Trey

Random Thoughts on a Lazy Sunday

At dinner the other night, we started talking about email. How impersonal it can be. How it can take certain tones, and how it can be interpreted. For some reason when I get an email from someone I know, I can almost hear them speaking, so I think I do a pretty good job of interpreting email. But if you don't know someone, then it can be hard to figure out what message the email is really trying say. My customer is a pro at taking the absolutely worst interpretation of any email I send. It really is a gift for him. So it takes me twice as long to write him emails that are clear, succinct, and attempt to minimize any possibility of misinterpretation. I fail most of the times, but I try.

What does kill me are some of the quotes people add to their signature blocks. One guy has this as part of his signature block: "I solemnly swear to tell the truth as I know it, the whole truth as I believe it to be, and nothing but what I think you need to know." And no, that's not from Cheney's email. But seriously, if you got an email that said that, how would you react? Would you trust anything this person said?

So Dad. He's coming to visit in a couple of weeks. Well, he's coming to DC to go on a bike ride up the C&O Canal and then on into Pennsylvania. I'm gone when he first shows up, but will be back when he gets done with the trip. It took some convincing, but I finally coerced him into staying with me, in my condo, as opposed to a hostel. Yes, a hostel. My 76 year old Dad in a hostel. It's where the bike ride starts, so that's why we was going to stay there. Anyways, he's going to stay in my condo while I'm gone before the trip starts, and then when the trip is over he'll spend a couple more days with me before he heads back home to Mom. So questions. Do I de-fag the condo? I don't have pictures of naked everywhere, that's not exactly my decor. But I do have some fridge magnets that show shirtless men. And I've got this great poster from Ptown on my fridge of a sailor with a sea bag over his shoulder, and he's saying, "Sorry Girls, I'm Gay."
So to what extent do I purge my house, my home, to make him more comfortable?

And how comfortable is he? Not. I specifically end my phone conversations with him saying that I love him, but I don't get a reply. So things aren't great on that end. There's nothing I can do about that, I know, but I'm hoping that when he's here we can talk, even a bit about it. I sent my parents an email with the bio of my friend who won the award on Friday. My Dad responsed and asked me how I knew him. And I replied with the truth. He was the first person I had ever loved. That we had met in 2001, dated, and then broke up. But that we were still friends and that I considered him one of my best friends. I'm not sure how Dad will react to that. But we'll see.

I just love Joe. And it's not just Joe, but it's his readers as well. Joe's been talking about the ex-gay organization called "Exodus." He was asking readers to spoof the "Gay, Unhappy?" billboard that Exodus has in Orlando. And they have. But apparently Joe was contact by a mother whose son had killed himself after being "treated" by Exodus. Joe posted her letter
and it's heartbreaking.

Another reader posted something that just resonated with me. He said: "The gift of being gay is that it can force you to question many of the things you are taught and that others accept without question." And I think that's so true. I don't know all of the answers. And I'll never pretend that I do. Every human heart is a mystery, unique and important. And the world we live in is complex and fragile and precious. And I think we all need to ask the questions that we have, to help learn how other people feel, to help live in this wonderful world, and to help love ourselves and one another.

Sorry, didn't mean to go so deep, it just sort of went there.

posted by Trey @ 6:12 PM