Changes

Time flies when you are having fun.

It also flies when you are working your ass off.

I've been doing a lot of the latter.

Gap has asked me to stay on as a permanent part time sales associate. That is very good in more than one aspect: 1) I will continue to be making more income, 2) I will continue to meet more people outside of City Year, and 3) I will have some type of job for when City Year is over. I like working at the Gap most days and although I know that this place will not be my career I can recognize that it is good to have a job that you like for the immediate future.

For City Year I have been working my ass off like normal. We had a retreat this past weekend with our middle school students that is called Heroes Training Academy (HTA). Jane, one of the girls on my team, and I were both put in charge of this event. We went with the Superheroes theme and laid out what everyone would be doing. I was in charge of writing the schedule (Q2Q), creating the welcome, and setting up the team roll out. Out of all of those things, the welcome was most definitely the hardest. I used my cousin, Matt, who is way more knowledgeable about computers than I am to help me out. I had him take pictures of us that I sent him and create us as comic book characters. They turned out really great and fit in with our theme amazingly. If you want to get the PowerPoint of the welcome, just let me know. You will need to have Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 to view the presentation, however.

Soccer has also started back up and I am so grateful for this. Our second game was yesterday and I was actually able to go to this one. I worked my ass off, met a bunch of new players, and laughed with some of the crazy old ones. I am so glad that I kept Ripple Effect and didn't take up the offers for the other teams. I want my soccer time to be fun time.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you may remember the incident with Brad. You know, the STI scare. Well, due to my boss' urging I got myself tested last Thursday. Everything is all good, I'm still clean. The damn guy who was designated as my counselor really worked me up in the process though, saying things like "What would be the worst thing that could happen if this test has a positive result?" "What would you do?" "How is your emotional support system?" "What would your family think?" All of these questions while we are waiting for the blood test to get done and while only he can see the results forming. I will admit that I was starting to think that I did have HIV and that he was preparing me. When he finally showed me and told me that I was clean I almost started crying. What an emotional roller coaster ride. Bastard. However, this does give me a bit of a new lease on life and this spectre will no longer be at the back of mind as a possibility. I am very glad for that relief.

As far as other things, they are going slow. I really think that my enjoyment of Seattle would be so much greater if I wasn't working all the time and had way more freedom. I thought that Michael would be able to help with a lot of that. It's over between us, and was finally made official about a week ago. At the urging of my boss again, I wrote Mike what was on my mind and sent him to him rather than leave a voicemail or something similar. It is often easier for me to write things out rather than voice them. So, the letter I wrote him went on for three pages; I will spare you the details. His reply was long as well, at least, long for him, and went on to describe his phone being turned off because he didn't pay the bill, how sick he got right after a party that Friday when I tried to get a hold of him, his urethritis and sub sequential STI scare, and his new found time to do some long thinking about the two of us. He decided that our personalities were not good matches but also stated that he had never intended to hurt me. It's a bit late for the hurt part, but if that was the case, what was with all the pictures he put up of him and another dude before we were officially over? And the less than a week later changing to "In a relationship" status on absolutely everything? I think that I have been trying to get myself to hate Michael when really I know that I still like him. It's harder to allow myself to still like him rather than to start focusing on his faults to get myself to dislike him. Romantically, life sucks right now. On the one hand, I am single and free, and on the other, I just lost something that I thought was meaningful.

So, I go out. Somewhere in my screwed up head I associate fixing my emotional problems with drinking and flirting. I definitely accomplished both. One night, I went out with a co-worker, Ronda. We went to this bar/restaurant that she had been wanting to go to, then to normally my favorite R-Place. R-Place was completely dead. I got hit on, turned the guy down then Ronda and I went to another place called Neighbours. Neighbours stays open later but stops selling alcohol at the normal time. We were dancing and doing our own thing when suddenly the music changes and is suddenly salsa or something. Totally what we are not used to at a club. We made our way off the dance floor ASAP. While we were looking out at the crowd, I remember mentioning to Ronda that there were a lot of Hispanic guys there. I am actually very attracted to Hispanic guys, so this was not necessarily a bad thing. Almost immediately after that, some guy comes up from the dance floor (Ronda and I were standing on an elevated platform) and asks me if I want to do the cha cha with him. Ronda tells me to go do it and for some reason I play stupid. I tell him (his name is Mario, PS) that I don't know how to do it. He says that he will teach me. Who the hell am I trying to fool? I know how to do the cha cha, the tango, salsa, waltz, swing, Irish set dance, and more for Christ's sakes! In any case, it worked. He showed me a little bit of it and I immediately started doing what I already knew. He was, of course, dumbfounded. Anyways, I ended up hanging out and doing the various dance things that night with him and ended up finding out that this particular night was Latino Night. That explains things a bit. I went home with him that night and Ronda had some other people take her home. No sex for me though. Which was probably a good thing seeing as to how we were on the floor of a living room with another dude passed out on the couch nearby. I also spent the entire next day with him and his friends while they were shopping for new clothes. He works outside of Seattle and doesn't come in unless he's off. So, I have his number and we'll see what happens.

The night after I got Michael's response, I went out in full force. Completely on my own, I bought two bottles of what my roommate, Willy, calls "bum wine". Drank some of them, went to Bill's Off Broadway where I had a Long Island. Then went to R-Place. I met another guy here eventually. The crowd was small again, but larger than when Ronda and I had been there. I set my sights on one guy in the entire place. I normally do not do the approaching but this time I did. Albeit, I did it through one of the girls in his crew. When she was in line to get more drinks, I approached her and started asking questions about the guy and easily enough, he came over. I spent the rest of the night with this guy and his friends. He and I ended up going to Neighbours after R-Place and eventually to his apartment. I had drank a whole ton this night, the two of us kept buying each other drinks. We had some hot dog or something on the way to his house. After we got there, things went like normal hookups go (safely!). Well, I think it did. I don't remember the end result. His name is Jesse and is my age. However, I don't remember a lot from that night. I do remember getting up the next morning and being completely unable to find my underwear. To this day, that pair is still missing. Maybe he has found them by now, who knows. In any case, I went to work (yes, I had to work the next morning), still trashed, wearing what I wore out the night before, and even in a pair of Jesse's underpants which were admittedly too small for me. I survived the day just barely. I went through the first two hours drunk, the next hour hungover like hell, and the final hour feeling sick. I ended up throwing up in the women's restroom ten minutes before I got off work. Yeah, typical classy Josh.

In either case, I haven't seen Mario or Jesse since then although I wouldn't be opposed to either. However, I do know that I was really in having fun mode when I met both of them.

Another big change right now is that I am moving. I'm not leaving Seattle, however, though a series of events, a room has opened up at the AmeriHouse and I am going to take the opportunity. This location is so much more to my liking. It's much closer to Seattle's night life as well as closer to both of my jobs. Travel time is going to be reduced dramatically. This alone will allow some extra freedom back into my life. And now, with being able to go out and come back safely (without walking from downtown Seattle back up to Beacon Hill) I will be much more comfortable with going out. We will see how this all goes. Right now I am still packing for move as I cannot move in until the girl who has moved out takes all of her stuff.

I'm exhausted as hell and really in need of a nap, so I think that's up on the agenda. Hopefully, I will be able to update this thing more often so it's not such a mouthful each time I post.