i woke up this morning and knew there was something very familiar in the air! and now when i am starting to write this essay, i know what it was, it was the writing bug in me that took a long vacation and now is back! so here i am writing about things that does not matter to anyone perhaps but me. life outside this virtual world is lived and loved mostly for others so i will gratify myself here.
  i have started to write on queer issues lately, or queer things that excite me or frustrate me, i will continue on that path. i will narrate a story of moving, and a story of expectation and dreams and of disappointments. for people who already have read my blog before, know where i am from and etc, but i will just give a quick sum  up. i was born and raised in india in a fairly liberal city and family though i was never comfortable accepting my orientation. it was more because we lacked role models there than the fact that i feared my family will be hostile. it is just like the time when the aircraft was not invented but still the idea of flying enticed us. after a long period of self denial and trying to "fix" myself when i finally realized that am "irreversibly damaged" (read born gay), i looked into places where being gay was not that big a deal. as i was in academics the search was simple, start looking for positions to continue with education somewhere in europe or in the states. i started that effort since i was 22 just after finishing undergrad but it worked out when i finished my phd and was 29! by that time i had a pretty stable gay friend circle in my home town, a stable "relation" with the most desirable man in town and a self proclaimed slut. but still escaping the land where no one wants to stand up and be a gay role model was important and hence the long flight to durham north carolina! now people who are not as ignorant and completely imbecile like me would be already laughing their ass off with my selection of the place. but let me tell you my dear with a brown skin and origin in a "third world country" you just do not have much option when you are trying to escape. and then i had this great offer for research from my boss at Duke (as you can see i have capitalized the D of Duke whereas i did not do it for any other place or thing which would grammatically need that. it speaks of my love for that school). so there i was in a small town of southern united states. with students from all over the world, but still very white, southern and twink in appearance. and i have to admit here i always felt attracted to men younger to me, and hence felt certainly delighted to be there. but the shock hit me in couple of months when i realized that damn white kids do not like nearly dead (read 29) brown men!! and hence my constant effort to look good enough for them started. i ran 3 miles 4 days a week, lost 30lb and started looking pretty good actually (not exactly by my standard but a comment that i often received from my friends). but still things remained the same and i mostly remained single, although sex was plenty. so plenty that at times i feared i would definitely catch a bug! anyway the scene was not completely hopeless as i dated couple of guys, fell in love, acted as an ass hole with at least one and was dumped by others (though i still like to feel i dumped them) and most importantly i came out of my decaying closet. now this process needs some attention. once in durham i met a girl, also from my own home town in india, and started to hang out with her quite a bit. i still remember the first day i went to her and her girlfriend's house and saw a picture of two of them on the fireplace mantle, i was shocked!! and yes you have read it right, i was utterly uncomfortable with the picture, but in a positive way. it for the first time gave me a role model of a brown person being openly queer. and then the rest is history. i came out to my family and friends who still loved me and i was this skinny brown fabulous gay man in town. amidst all these changes one thing remained the same, most guys i liked did not like me, and there could be various reasons for that, like am not their type, am obnoxious, not attractive enough or may be THEY ALL ARE RACIST!! and i picked the last one up as that suited my fancy more than any. so i started my campaign against all racist white gay men, and as i could not find the actual people who were racist, may be, i started my campaign with my friends, couple of them were fellow white men. anyway i did not find it important to be visible in gay socializing spaces, though continued to be excessively present at gay hook up places and tried to solve racism by fucking every possible white man who would take it. trust me though pleasurable, it did no good to the racism thing, if it ever existed.
  by this time i had already spent two years in durham, with a pretty big and diverse friend circle and it was time to move on. and during my stay in durham and my constant complain about white gay men being racist a lot of my friends suggested me to move northward where people are happier, calmer and gay marriage is legal. and fortunately i got a great position and government grant in university of calgary! now what do you call this? a joke of the millennium? or the bearded man sitting up there playing with me? really?! calgary of all places in canada?! my god! why didn't anyone tell me that it is like the texas of canada! anyway i moved to calgary, with the hope to meet more accepting people (read good looking gay men) but bummer! calgary though bigger in every way is much, much, much (i can continue adding "much" till my end but rather stop here as you get my point) conservative than durham. the reason could be, after all durham is a university town (however they deny) and hence inherently liberal. anyway after i moved to calgary and withing one month the brutal winter started, i took to my old way of "curing racism" by fucking white men. but in this mad fucking rush one day i had my epiphany, the same bearded guy or my conscience told me, enough, if you want things to change for you and everyone who does not appear in a queer map go out and do something. this time i took the advice, started participating in events and making friends, yay! life is wonderful! no wait i was kidding am still single and hate it that people do not find me attractive. but what i have realized is, if my theory of racism is right, it is partly because we are not visible in gay spaces. and hence i will work my ass off (no sexual connotation but i must not say no to anyone who needs my company as a compassionate man of love) to change that. i am so motivated right now that i think i know why i always came to not very liberal places in north america. may be the divine plan is to make me work for the liberalism! am sure every liberal place of present started like calgary or durham or may be worse and people worked hard to change it. to make a community, to make it welcoming so that when someone from far comes to that place with hope they have their arm stretched out in love. where pride is just not a once a year thing where you dance, walk and get drunk and go home with a stranger you met in the parade. a place where the pride of being able to stand tall and out and be yourself is year long, irrespective of snow and rain and sun. and by doing so you fulfill your moral and ethical obligation to tell people deep in that dark closet that it is fine, we love you even if you want to stay in that closet. if you cannot come out of it, we will go in your closet, close the door and will tell you you are loved. so this i think will be my life now, with a lot of work, a lot of depression, a lot of trail to change and to be loved and of course a lot of hook ups. i embrace it all.