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Phone me. Of if you don’t have my phone number, my details are on Facebook.

I’m visiting friends in Leeds and Paris over the coming week. I’m really looking forward to it but at the same time a little bit apprehensive because I want it to go as well as ‘mes rêves’ and anticipations would have it.

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It’s 2:30 AM. My question; go to sleep and fail my exam or stay awake reading all night and fail my exam? I can’t decide.

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I’ve been getting annoyed, these last couple weeks, by a thought that keeps recurring to me. I used to love the television show Will & Grace when it was on. I didn’t actually watch it all that often because it was on at inconvenient times in the UK but I’d watch it online and stuff. It has fantastic writing and it looks like the characters (and actors) have a lot of fun which gives it an unusual energy. But what’s been annoying me is how they take the issue of being gay and play with it as though it’s something to giggle at but never really focus on. This was evidenced to me a couple of days ago by a bloopers video I saw online. They use the gay line at every turn they can but the show and the actors are never honest about it. There are innumerable kisses between Karen and Jack, between Will and Grace and between Grace and Karen. Because straight or lesbian is ‘A OK’ on US television. But boy on boy action, not a chance. It’s a gay show and yet there is only one kiss in the clip show of guys kissing. Can mainstream audiences only accept gay shows if it’s laughing at the gays and not really with them?

Of course there’s the issue of actors themselves being out. How gay is Jack? So Gay. But Sean Hayes, rigidly in the closet. No utterance of his heterosexuality is uttered. He just doesn’t talk about it. Randy Harrison, one of the most high profile gays actors on television with his starring role in the US version of the British show Queer As Folk, hardly talks about it.

Nobody, not one single person is going to get over the idea of being typecast as gay if those who play gay don’t talk about it. When T.R. Knight from Grey’s Anatomy goes on ‘Ellen’, as he did two days ago, and can hardly articulate his position, never actually saying ‘I’m gay’ and refering to the ‘faggot’ name-calling he was subject to by a fellow cast member as ‘that hateful word’ (after his initial mumbling of the term), gays get weaker. Lots of peole heralded Knight for coming out publicly. He didn’t come out, he was kicked and pushed out by media reporting of the bust up on-set between two other actors that led to his being called the term. He may be articulate and kind and a thoroughly nice man, but he betrays himself by not having the courage to be open in the first place. It may be hard to be gay in the media but it can’t be hard to be gay in Hollywood. Give me a break, the place is full of gays. It’s clearly not being gay that’s the problem, but being publicly gay in Hollywood medialand.

So the US entertainment industry is using gay as a plot device but when it comes to actors actually being gay, that’s a no no. Apparently gay doesn’t sell in the magazines like a nice airbrushed People magazine headshot will do of a straight actor. No, wait. People magazine. Isn’t that the one that hosted Lance Bass’s coming out, and TR Knight’s and numerous others? Now you look at UK television and there are shows like Torchwood that has a bi/gay/straight/who-knows-what main character played by an actor who ‘married’ his male partner not long ago. If British shows can stop pretending, can’t they do the same stateside? And gay-vague isn’t good enough. It’s like the sidekick of Clair Bennet (the cheerleader) in the show Heroes. Gay. He’s gay. But they won’t say it, apart from when some kids in the high school corridors call it out as an insult. Because that’s what it’s seen as, and that’s what it’ll stay until entertainment considers it no longer a taboo topic. Let modern day people like Cole Porter stop hiding under the carpet and come out. Can’t Hollywood stop playing at gay? It’s not a fun game anymore.

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When I was in secondary school I didn’t really enjoy myself very much. A lot of the time I was disinterested in what I was studying and felt pushed to work. I was pushed to work; I had to be. I had no motivation. I was constantly nervous and on edge because I knew, or at least felt, that I was not doing as well as the other boys. Very infrequently did I have confidence or pride in my work.

When I knew this, when I felt I was doing something wrong or not doing it right I would get a ill feeling in the pit of my stomach. This wasn’t a feeling of illness in the medical sense, but a general unease. I was on edge. I get this feeling still when watching suspense-filled movies. I’ve tried to watch the film Match Point twice without success. I can’t stand it.

It’s the feeling you get the morning before a major exam or test. You don’t trust yourself to eat because you’re too afraid.

I got this this evening. My day up until a couple of hours ago has been pretty great. I’ve done lots of reading, went and had coffee with friends and confirmed the result of my French language exam. I passed. I can’t tell you how happy that made me. It means, if nothing else I will have passed at least one exam this term. My politics classes written in French are perhaps another matter.

But my ill feeling came when I got a quick email from my landlord. He’s a pretty nice guy. We’ve had a little bit of minor friction but I have nothing to complain about really. What absolutely terrified me is that asked me:

Maybe I am wrong, but I think I did’t get the rent of January.

Oh. My. God.

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A product from American Apparel, or at least using an AA t-shirt, celebrates the fact that the end is nigh! What’s best about them is not only do they have nice little brushed out pictures of Bush (41), but you get a little pot of ink and a brush to swipe out his face on the remaining two images as the day draws near that his reign of terror over the world comes to an end. It’s like DIY t-shirt making, but with the hard part already done for you. Perfect gift for all those 6 year old girl aspiring political activists in your life!
end-is-near.com

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This very table would have come in very handy during my French exam this morning. Well, that’s one mark down, only about 200 left to go!

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I don’t really like doing New Years type things. The whole evening makes me feel like it’s forced. Perhaps it’s because celebrating and the idea of forced dancing with family is kind of like a heterosexual torture to me. But here I’m not really thinking about the night of New Years itself but more the resolutions that are so often obligatory around this time of year.

You may have guessed, but I’m not a huge fan of them either. Why make a resolution if you’re sure to break it? What’s the point but to placate some people who are putting pressure on you to name some banal subject on the spur of the moment. Well I didn’t really name any such subject, other than my desire to go travelling more this year. That’s not so much a resolution as a wish. It’s kind of dependent on my bank balance: it that’s up to it, I’m up to it!

But I do have a resolution, I’ve decided.

Over the course of the last four months I have at times not worked very hard. I’ve allowed myself to become incredibly stressed with the idea of failure and the idea of not appearing to have worked hard during the course of this year. Which, in itself, has prevented me from working because at times like those, I lose all motivation and drive. Tonight is one of those moments. But I have worked, much more of the time, extremely hard and as a result I resolve, in the following six months of this year, to put myself ‘out there’ more and have more fun, thereby learning more effectively. I want to be doing more hard exercise (not that Brussels helps anyone doing that… It’s like a minefield just navigating the faeces on the pavementes) and not just the long trek to my University and back. I aim to get back into it all! My intention of this year is to really have pretty alright french by the end of the year, but that doesn’t have to involve driving myself into the ground by becoming an unproductive hermit. More socialising, less fear and more fun are all called for.

It’s an odd New Years Resolution: Party more, and be good at it.

This, this is just eye candy. And it’s why I love, but cannot yet afford, DSquared clothing. The aim: be more like the boy on the bed, less like the boy in the background!

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