Rotations

Skylar started his "rotations" this week, which as I understand it roughly translates to "wander around a hospital trying to look busy so no one asks you to clean up poop."

His first rotation is in gynecology. They do these rotations in part to help the students try to figure out what kind of doctor they want to be. I already nixed gynecology for Skylar after I imagined a likely future scenario in which he calls from work every evening and says "I got gabbing with my first patient—she was a GODDESS—and then missed all the rest of my appointments for the day so now I have to work until 4:00 AM."

When he first started medical school I made a lot of jokes about what kind of doctor I needed him to be—all motivated by selfish reasons, of course. The list included only specialties that could give me access to cheap elective cosmetic surgeries and an ocean of botox. After a while I became worried that my jokes would get taken seriously so I way over-corrected and started giving a weekly speech about how I didn't care at all what he did as long as he was happy. Within 24 hours he started leaving open on his laptop applications to professional improv groups.

Ok, that last part isn't true, but if he had enough time right now to be funny it would be.

The point is, I need him to make us all look young again but I need him to think it was his choice. That way I can seem pretty and supportive.

5-Step Moisturizing Regimen

My moisturizing journey and skin care habits have been wrought with mistakes and youthful ignorance. I visited a tanning bed or two in my early 20s. "I just want a slight glow," I told myself, as I fried my largest organ in radiation chambers that came with a warning.

I cringe at the thought that in 2009 my sister, uncle, and I went to Guatemala and baked our bodies under the almost-equatorial sun to the point that we had rotate ourselves in a moving line under a spigot that dripped cold water for two full days. "But think about how tan we'll be when this all peels off," I remember one of us saying. "Totally." the other two responded.

Fortunately before I moved to Palau in 2012 I had started to think more about my future. "I don't want to come back to the U.S. looking like dried leather," I told a woman at the grocery store who had noticed I was shopping for sunscreen, just like she was. She said she was going to the Caribbean for a week. "Same," she said. "Why would I want to be hot for a few months if the price is prunes for a lifetime?"

I didn't moisturize in Palau. The air did that for me. But I did obsessively protect my skin from UV rays to the point that I did not receive a single sunburn in the time I lived there.

A year or two after I moved back I started dating a guy who was probably too young for me. "What are you thinking?" I asked him when he told me he was going to a tanning salon after work. I heard myself turning into an old man, so I just went for it. We were standing on the side of South Temple in downtown Salt Lake City, getting ready to cross the street. "Learn these lessons in your youth!" I shouted, impersonating some unnamed elderly person while shaking my fist.

Banana Bread

I work at a pretty big law firm (for Utah). There are nearly 200 attorneys spread out over several different offices, plus lots of staff. What this means is there are a lot of people at my firm I don't know.

The vast majority of the people who work for my firm are quite Mormon, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't worry from time-to-time that being a big fat homo wasn't going to cause some drama at work at some point. Fortunately I made some exceptional friends very early on who have been terrific allies in waiting--promising me that if ever I was mistreated, heads would roll.

I've never had to put that to the test because people have been just lovely. There are a few exceptions to that, but none involving anyone whose opinion matters to me.

I have friends in the legal community who will, from time to time, ask me how uncomfortable it is for me, a big fat homo, to work at what is known to be a very conservative and religious firm. They are often surprised when I tell them how pleasant it is--how much I love and admire the people I work with.

No, I don't respect everyone in my firm, but that would be true in any office of this size. In fact, I think it's possible that I'm treated better at my quite Mormon firm than I would be at some place much less so, if for no other reason because the people I work with are aware of the outside perception so they are extra careful to make me feel welcome and loved.

Better or Worse

I woke up on Saturday morning to tweeted videos of boys from a Catholic school taunting and mocking elderly indigenous people. If you somehow haven't seen this yet, you can find at least one article about it here. The school and the boys are being raked through the coals on social media. The whole event and the seemingly endless stream of videos that have been surfacing has spurred a bunch of debates in a very short period, several of which have been fascinating and sometimes disturbing to follow.

This isn't a political post. It could be--there are plenty of articles being published now about the incident--articles that try to digest the politics associated with the thing that happened. That's fine and well, but while I've watched with horrified curiosity for a dozen different reasons, one of the sub-debates happening has made me think about a topic I've wanted to broach on Stranger for some time: religion. You know. That other thing about which no one has strong opinions.

Whenever religious people are involved in some publicized despicable act, a conversation about religion and whether it's good or bad or something in between often surfaces. I'm usually curious to hear these debates, largely because for a long time I was quite religious.

Growing up Mormon, I was used to spending three or more hours at church every Sunday. Church events took up portions of my weeknights, too. For all four years of high school, one of my daily school classes was a religion class held just at the edge of the public school's property. The home I grew up in had religious pictures hanging in every single room, bathrooms not excluded. As a child I just sort of assumed that this was probably the case with every house in America. I was used to this. The religion wasn't a thing we did; it was a lifestyle, infiltrating every aspect of everything we knew.

2018

I sit at my desk at home on this snowy Sunday in Salt Lake City. Two dogs are wrestling at my feet, occasionally humping one another even though both are neutered. Apparently we have perverted pets. Skylar has just made a mess of my kitchen attempting to cook pancakes. And it's time to pen a year-end post.

I started this tradition in 2010. Nearly none of you were around then. I mean, around Stranger. I'm sure some of you were alive by that time. In 2010 I wrote to an audience of about five. In fact, in that year-end post, I wrote that during that year "I blogged and wondered how many people were actually reading."

There have been so many dramatic changes in my life and in yours since I quietly wrote those words eight years ago.

Skylar

Last week I got engayged. That's the same as getting "engaged," except cuter. Skylar made it clear to me a while back that if he was going to move to the great Mormon Siberia to be with me, I better make an honest woman out of him.

I actually didn't need encouragement. Skylar is the best person on this planet and I feel like I've won the lottery every time he even talks to me. That was sort of true the first time we ever chatted.

It was the summer of 2015. I was climbing into bed, late on a Saturday night, when I decided to check Tinder because I wasn't getting any younger.

This picture popped up:

National Coming Out Day

I was 21, sitting in a parked car with a friend who was several years older than me. I looked up to her greatly. She was an important friend--one that I trusted.

It was 2005. The friend was asking me about dating at BYU, where I had just started school. I told her about some of my experiences, including that I didn't really like dating all that much and found it sort of stressful. I told her there was a young woman who was a close friend of mine and whom my friends couldn't believe I didn't want to date. She was impressive in all of the ways that 21-year-olds at BYU find young women impressive.

But I didn't want to date her. I told the friend this, sitting in the parked car.

She said it sort of in jest. The statement wasn't a joke, but her delivery was in the spirit of teasing to some degree.

"Well I just hope you're not gay. I don't have the energy to try to talk you out of that right now."

My heart sunk so low that the nearly permanent sunken state it was already in seemed healthy in comparison.

I responded in the same tone in which she had spoken, denying "of course" the suggestion. I brushed it off as casually as I could, fiddling with a cupholder, suddenly very aware that I was doing it and wondering if it was normal to fiddle with a cupholder. It was raining now, and getting sort of late.

Dog Hike

Check out today's Strangerville (show notes at bottom), wherein Skylar shares the best coming out story I have ever heard.

*****

Skylar really wanted to go for a hike on Labor Day weekend. We found a good one that was dog friendly and decided that we would get up at negative 5:00 in the morning and drive to it so we could get started before sunrise.

We bullied Matt into just coming and staying at our house the night before. This way we didn't have to tell him what time we were waking up for the hike. We could just carry his body to the car. Had we told him in advance that we were leaving at 5:00 he would have never spoken to us again.

Adam, Teddy, and Renley showed up around 5:00, just as Matt and Ollie were stomping up the stairs from my basement guest room, yelling something about why was it still dark outside.

10 Tips For How To Respond to Someone Who Is Coming Out

Coming out of the closet never ends for a gay person. You have to do it all the time. Constantly. For the rest of your life.

Every time you make new friends. Get a new job. Talk to people at a party.

I start every morning looking into the mirror and screaming "YOU ARE A FABULOUS HOMO."

And it's never not a little stressful.

But it does get easier, which is good. It's good that it gets easier because coming out to people at the beginning is phenomenally intimidating. I don't know if I could find the right words to really explain what that kind of fear feels like. They should make a new word to describe that feeling. Judy Garland should include that word in her lecture when she visits people as a ghost to tell them they're gay (that's how we find out).

Since I have now come out to roughly, let's see, multiply by 60, carry the one, take the square root, ELEVENTY million people, I know everything and I'm ready to mansplain it all to you so please read the below in as condescending a voice as you can muster.

(Note, I am aware that not everyone is the same and that some of the ideas below may work better for some people than others, and I welcome any of you with insight to chime in in the comments. I offer these only as general thoughts that have occurred to me over the years.)