Don’t give up! You can finish!

So Sunday was the first Chicago Marathon I didn’t run in seven years.

Except I actually kinda ran it. Well, half of it. Sort of.

Matthew, who intercepted me last year at mile 21 when I was as close to death as Bristol Palin is to a dancer (or a star) and propelled me somehow to the finish through my fog of pain and delirium and stab-me-in-the-neck-and-kill-me-nowium, asked me to return the favor this year for him and our friend Taz. Except he asked me to meet them at the halfway point.

So on Saturday night I carb-loaded at a touristy Italian place with Matthew’s family and then made what was supposed to be a brief appearance at a joint birthday party where I only semi-socially know the birthday boys and their slowly-becoming-friendly-to-me circle of friends. I figured the party would be nothing but a sea of panic-attack triggers and I’d be cowering in my own bed an hour after I arrived. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t have a nice time. The guests were nice, the snacks were carby, the hours flew by … and I was a groggy mess when my alarm went off at 5:30 the next morning.

Stupid panic attacks. They never work when you schedule them to.

But!

I got up, donned my running togs, loaded up on what ended up being not nearly enough food to get me through half a marathon, and joined Matthew’s family to cheer for the runners at the start and in Boystown and then I raced ahead to meet up with Matthew and Taz at the base of the Willis (née Sears) Tower, which is the last close-to-the-Red-Line location before the halfway point, where the marathon shoots straight west for a couple long, shade-free miles.

I was kinda pissed that the weather had been so gorgeous that morning; I’ve run the last six marathons in either extreme heat or extreme cold so of course the weather was perfect the year I didn’t officially run it.

And then of course the temperature spiked the moment I jumped in.

I was actually looking forward to running (and enjoying and even simply noticing) the second half of the marathon route this year. Normally by mile 17 I’m in my just-stay-focused-straight-ahead-and-run mode, so I miss out on all the festivities in the Mexican, Italian and Chinese neighborhoods the second half of the marathon snakes through. And since I was starting fresh at mile 13, I’d planned on enjoying a fabulous running tour of Chicago’s southside neighborhoods as I propelled my fabulous friends to the finish line.

But!

Matthew and Taz were already hurting by the time I met up with them. And the spiking heat just undermined their motivation. So we ended up doing a lot of walking. Which was fine; it was their marathon and I was just there for moral support when they needed me. Unfortunately, there’s tons of photographic evidence that we not only walked parts of the marathon but we were walked parts of the marathon proudly:

We’re not completely shameless, though; we mustered up the strength to run—and even smile—when the photo ops were especially photo-oppy, like when they included Chicago Marathon-branded flooring:

But the fact remained that I’m still training for the New York City Marathon in November, and I was scheduled to run 12 miles the weekend of the Chicago Marathon. So at mile 23 when Matthew and Taz announced they were going to walk the rest of the way to the finish line, I asked if they’d mind if I abandoned them and ran ahead just to get some miles in, since they didn’t need me to help them walk.

They didn’t mind, and I took off running … and it suddenly dawned on me that I was kind of sprinting through the hardest miles of the marathon, possibly making the other struggling (and legitimate) runners around me feel bad about themselves. But there was only one way back, so I kept going, planning to jump off at mile 26, right before the course veers over a half a block to the finishers’ chute.

To my horror, though, I discovered that the last half mile was barricaded to keep the spectators away from the runners. And unless I ran backward down the course, I was kind of stuck on my road to runner prevarication. And when I got to the 26-mile marker where the runners turned toward the finish chute, I stopped and tried to find a way to sneak through the barricades.

And that's when it happened.

Someone yelled at me. Someone yelled something encouraging:

Don’t give up! You can finish!

And the goodwill of that stranger, a byproduct of my original goodwill to help my friends, suddenly made me feel as fraudulent as Christine O’Donnell writing a résumé. Except I’d actually accomplished something. Plus I know “I’m you” is code for “I’m too stupid and lazy to understand the issues too” and not the endearing term of solidarity she hopes her stupid and lazy voter base interprets it to be. Plus I had my shirt off.

Plus I’m obviously capable of feeling shame.

Fortunately, I found a break in the barricade (the barricade-erecting people obviously didn’t plan for people running friends in and needing a quick escape at mile 26) and there were thousands of legitimate runners on hand to distract the well-meaning crowd from taunting me with their encouragement.

And now that all the Chicago Marathon mania has died down—and all the volunteers who man the free Gatorade tables along the lakefront trail every Saturday in summer have packed up for the fall—I still have to train. All alone. For another month.

And I can’t wait!

I run 22 miles this Saturday then taper down to 15 and 8 the next two weekends.

And then—after four years of waiting—I’m finally going to be running the celebrated New York City Marathon. With no injuries (so far) and no worries about November temperature spikes (I hope) and a glorious 26.2 mile course to keep me entertained.

And I won't give up.

Pop quiz

What does your brain instinctively tell you to do when, say, a runaway bus is careening toward you? Or a mugger with a knife is lunging for your guts? Or Rush Limbaugh is stumbling toward you with his pants around his ankles and yet another engagement ring in his hands?

Right. You run like hell. No thinking, no putting on a brave face, no fighting back.

Now pretend you’re retarded* (and I use that word on purpose here). Pretend that your run-like-hell instincts kick in every time a friendly person smiles and walks toward you. Every time you enter a crowded room. Every time you get a freakin’ party invitation in the mail.

Congratulations! You have a social anxiety disorder.

Based on my interpretation of my personal experience with this extremely stupid disorder—and, as you’ll see if you keep reading this freakishly long blog post, I have nothing but contempt for it and what it does to people—a social anxiety disorder is an extremely impractical case of bad wiring that makes you interpret friendly, fun, happy things as hostile and terrifying. And you have almost no control over it.

For most of my life, I’ve lived under the crushing immobility of this goddamned thing. Since before it had a name. Since before those drug commercials with the sad little purple ovals that never went to parties with the other ovals. Since before I even realized my instinctive, everyday terror of friendly, nice people was not remotely normal.

Here’s the part where I pre-emptively apologize if this post is nothing but self-indulgent navel-gazing and then explain that I’m not writing it for pity or to make you see me as brave for telling my story and exposing my soul. In fact, I’ve started and stopped writing various versions of this post about 50 times over the last five years. And I’m still not entirely sure I know what I’m doing here.

But I’ve kept coming back to it. Perhaps I feel the need to explain myself to anyone who thought I was standing against a wall being all arrogant and unapproachable that one time at that one bar/party/rehearsal/meeting/parade/street festival/movie/social setting. I was not being arrogant. I was not ignoring you. I was actually afraid of you. Terrified, even.

Or perhaps it’s because I’ve come so far since I finally unlocked myself from this prison thanks to some intense (and very expensive) therapy. I can now walk up to strangers and say hi. I can carry on a conversation without looking around frantically for a way to escape all its horrifying pleasantness. I even went to my 20-year high-school reunion—which even to normal people can be a whirling sea of panic triggers—four years ago and had the audacity to have a great time.

I think I’m mostly writing this just to focus my own thoughts and mark my place in time as I go on this adventure from part-time terror to full-time (I hope!) normalcy.

All my life I’ve assumed people hated me from the moment I met them. I’d look for proof of my suspicions and easily find it (that guy just looked away as he was talking to me! those people I know are having coffee and they didn’t invite me!) in the most innocent of circumstances. Then I’d retreat to the relative safety of my house and struggle to breathe in my dizzying sea of rejection and then wait for the next person to hate me. And it all seemed so logical and rational and everyday-normal that I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Or that it was fucking stupid.

My folks, without realizing how much I was struggling with this or even that I was in therapy, recently commented about how I was afraid as a little kid to run around the corner and ask our neighbors—who were our good friends—for something. Which tells me this stupid problem has been my “norm” since I was old enough to leave the house on my own.

In fact, while I’m friendly with people from grade school through college if I run into them somewhere, I made no lasting friendships there. Aside from the handful of people I exchange Facebook greetings and holiday letters with, I have no actual close friends from school. And at my high-school reunion when people were planning parties at their houses and hotels to keep the fun going, nobody invited me to any of them. And why would they? We have very little shared history, so we have no old times to relive and no catching up to do.

One of the cruel ironies of this stupid problem is that people can interpret your terror as standoffishness. You don’t talk to them because you’re terrified of them, so they avoid you because you don’t seem nice or approachable. And then they keep avoiding you. And then you have real reasons to think they hate you. And the cycle never, ever ends.

And it’s really the most retarded* problem you could possibly have. (“Hi. My name’s Jake, and I’m afraid of nice people.”) I mean really. It takes pathetic and illogical to pathological new lows. (I just made that up! But it kind of makes sense!)

Here’s a brief list of the everyday ordinary things my social anxiety disorder has made me too terrified to do at one time (or sometimes a hundred times) over the course of my life:
• flag down a waiter
• hail a cab
• ask a clerk for help in a store
• ask a stranger for directions/the time
• walk up to a stranger at a bar or a party
• let someone introduce me to a stranger at a bar or a party
• ask someone to spot me at the gym
• ask someone in the aisle seat to let me out at my bus/train stop
• call/text/email someone I just met and ask him or her to do something fun
• make small talk with a co-worker
• make small talk with a doorman
• join an informal gathering of people after work without an express invitation
• join an informal gathering of people after a rehearsal without an express invitation
• call a meeting for a volunteer committee I’m supposed to be heading
• throw a party
• go to a party
• make small talk in an elevator/gym/audition/dog park/you get the picture

Sounds ridiculous, right? But when you’re trapped in a crushing, paralyzing fear, doing any of these things is as impossible as melting into the ground, which you’d prefer to do anyway.

And just try to find your fucking self-esteem when you’re walking an extra six blocks to work in the rain because you were too paralyzed to ask a stranger to let you up from your seat so you could get off the train at your stop. And then stop wondering why I’m describing this disorder with so many swear words.

Fortunately, my case hasn’t been lock-myself-in-a-dark-room-for-20-years extreme. I’ve had entire days an even weeks where I found myself somehow unshackled from this stupid problem. And I’ve never had these issues in places where I was “supposed” to be—like family gatherings or job interviews or official work projects or client presentations or rehearsals.

And there are cures. They take work, but this big ugly animal can be killed. I’ve seen three therapists (so far) to make this happen. The first therapist diagnosed the social anxiety disorder about seven years ago, which gave my enemy a name … and gave me something specific to fight, which was actually pretty helpful. But that’s as far as she seemed to be able to take me. The second therapist just didn’t click with me, but I stuck with her for a while because she was in my network. And the third therapist was the one I needed. He asked simple questions and offered logical insights and maintained a bemused, judgment-free demeanor that let me voice all the crap in my head and hear just how ridiculous—how staggeringly fucking ridiculous—my fears were when they left my brain through my mouth and came back in through my ears.

I started seeing him in January 2006, and by May I considered myself reliably functional in polite society. I can now go places that have historically been nothing but a sea of panic triggers—parties, bars, street fairs, networking events, actually anywhere large groups of people congregate socially—and I can walk around and socialize and laugh and leave and spend hours without it even occurring to me to have an attack. It’s a whole new world … and all it cost me was a lifetime of frustration and loneliness, five months of intense conversations and terrifying real-life practice, and a couple thousand dollars in out-of-network co-pays.

Looking back, it’s also driven almost every major choice I’ve made in life: I majored in English literature (four years of reading—minimal human interaction required), I built a career as a writer (but not a reporter, because that would involve talking to people out in the real world), I studied piano (no time to talk when you’re trying to master Debussy), I became a six-day-a-week gym rat (lifting requires no human contact—and it helps grow muscles that might work as an ice breaker when a simple hello is too terrifying), I started running marathons (exercise, fresh air, physical proximity to other runners at times, but no human interaction required), I built up a mildly popular blog (all typing, no talking) … see a pattern?

This journey has also made me acutely aware of other people suffering through the same bullshit. I recognize the signs. I see the terror. I often step up and say hi when I see someone cringing helplessly against a wall in a crowded setting.

But I don’t try to forge friendships. These people represent what I hate the most about myself. At least my old self. I don’t want to be dragged down by their stupid problems, which I fear are still on the verge of re-becoming my stupid problems. Call me insensitive, but I look at my calculated distance as self-preservation.

Facebook has been both an ally and an enemy for me in this adventure. It’s obviously great for building friendships out of casual encounters and staying in touch and making plans with people. And for putting my always-trying-to-be-clever self out there for people to see and maybe like. But every once in a while I’ll be scrolling through the news feed and I’ll stumble on pictures of parties or dinners or roadtrips populated by lots of people I know. People who obviously didn’t invite me to join them. And the rush of rejection and despair and frustration sometimes hits me so hard and so fast it crushes my chest and literally sucks my breath away.

Yes, it’s irrational. Stupidly, retardedly*, even arrogantly irrational. Especially because I do get invited to do stuff. But in my mind I’ve worked so hard to meet people … to build organic, genuine friendships that don’t come from me being too eager or pushy … to not go to that place in my head that says the people I meet all hate me and I should just give up … that I feel I somehow deserve the payoff of a whirlwind social life and an exhausting social calendar. And when I see tangible proof that I’m not on everyone’s radar when they plan their get-togethers … well … let’s just say this adventure out of my stupid retarded* (last time! I promise!) problem is still more of a journey than a destination.

So.

If you’ve read this far you’ve concluded that I’m at worst a mess or at best a writer in dire need of a filter. Or maybe that I’m just as screwed up as everyone else, only I have a bigger platform to broadcast my problems to the world. But if my endless blather helps one person see there’s an escape from his or her anxiety prison—or if it helps you guys on the outside understand that pathologically quiet people are not always the unapproachable snobs they seem to be—then maybe I’ve embarrassed myself here for a good reason.

In the mean time, I’m still getting a huge kick out of my new skill: walking up to strangers and saying hello. Even better: walking into social settings and looking at strangers as potential new friends instead of obvious-to-nobody-but-me Ninja assassins. And if you need proof, I’m totally free to come to your parties and show you.

* I know retarded is a horribly offensive word in most contexts. My domestic partner’s brother is clinically retarded. And since he came to live with us I’ve stopped using the word entirely … except in extremely appropriate circumstances. Like describing a brain that’s terrified of friendly people. Or dismissing the rationalizations for denying equality to gay families.

Proud to blog

Pride weekend in Chicago was one of the best I can ever remember. And not just because the weather was perfect. And our bathroom renovation was finally done. And I finished the Proud to Run 10K in 55:21—an 8:55 pace, which is well within the parameters (though still on the slower end) of my personal acceptable-pace continuum. And for the first time in nine years of Chicago pride festivities I didn’t even have a glimmer of a panic attack, which is how my lifelong social anxiety disorder and I have traditionally chosen to respond—often by hiding in the house—to the horrifying prospect of large crowds of happy, friendly people who want to talk to me. Social anxiety disorders are retarded, and I’m pretty proud to report how far I’ve come in beating down my own personal retard in the nine years I’ve lived here. (That metaphor probably came out a bit harsh, but words cannot describe the anger and frustration I feel over all the living I’ve lost while hiding in my house as the world partied on happily outside without me.)

Wow. I didn’t mean to go there in this post. But I did and I’m not taking it back. Because my pride weekend this year had an extra level of pridyness that I've never enjoyed before. And it felt great!

PLUS! I took pictures!

We started pride weekend at a rooftop party at Boytstown's fabulous Center on Halsted. We didn't know many people there so I didn't take many pictures because taking pictures of complete strangers is kinda creepy. But I did snap this view of the Chicago skyline rising above some of the heads of some of the aforementioned strangers. For those of you who are new here, this picture contains Chicago's four tallest buildings in order of height (though since they're not built right next to each other, the height hierarchy isn't readily apparent): the John Hancock Center (#4) is the black building peeking out behind the brick-y buildings on the left, the oft-forgotten Aon Center (#3) is the flat-topped white building with the vertical black stripes three buildings to its right, the so-new-it's-not-totally-finished-yet Trump International Hotel and Tower (#2) is the silver thing gleaming in the center of the photo, and the soon-to-be-called Willis Tower (née Sears Tower, #1) is the noble black structure climbing skyward on the right:

We left the Center on Halsted to head to a couples' party at the lovely home of some boys from our book club. But I don't know any of the guests well enough (yet!) to post their pictures on my blog. So you'll just have to use your imaginations to picture us all laughing mirthfully over some wry anecdote I've told about my New Yorker subscription as we stand around swirling authentic Champagne and chomping hand-rolled canapés in our velvet smoking jackets. You can't tell in this picture but under my velvet smoking jacket I'm wearing my new basketball shirt. Seriously. It has a picture of a football with the word "baseball" under it. Get it? It's funny because I don't speak sports!

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay at the party long because we had to be up early for Proud to Run, the big gay 5K or 10K (you choose!) that always kicks off pride weekend in the sweatiest, shirtlessiest of ways. I wasn't functioning well enough to use my own camera so early in the morning, but our friend Shaine was at the finish line, and he provided the only photographic evidence of my participation in the event:

Since we live mere Ks from the the finish line, we always invite all the sweaty runners we know over to our house after the race for Proud to Brunch, a festival of delicious pastries, warm egg casseroles, dehydrating beverages and ridiculously hot friends:

Some of these ridiculously hot friends were race winners. And they shamelessly rubbed our faces in their bemedaled superiority:

Or they just stood around our house being hot:

Sometimes I sneaked my way in the pictures to show off my tattoo, which still has the power to shock me with its way-bigger-than-I-thought-it-would-be-ness:

And sometimes, like some Lawrence Welk sister act, I posed with other tattooed friends to show off our "ink," as the cool kids in prison call it:

And just to prove that we count a few women among our hot runner friends, here is a gratuitous Proud to Brunch chick shot:

We spent the rest of the day hanging with other friends at Pridefest, the street fair that takes over Boystown for the two days leading up to the parade. It was actually my favorite part of the whole weekend; we ran into everyone we knew, we ate food out of paper wrappers, we drank fruity drinks (some with alcohol!) and we spent almost the entire afternoon and evening with another couple we'd previously only kind-of known as bar friends. We ran into them the moment we got to the street fair and we really enjoyed laughing and eating and drinking and gossiping our way through the rest of the day together. Except we all stood too close to the speakers for the perhaps-named-after-a-misspelled-Cole-Porter-song Inaya Day concert. And 48 hours later I'm still having trouble hearing out of one ear. Uff da.

The next day was the pride parade, which the domestic partner and I marched in ... in one of the ass-last parade entries. We were so ass-last, in fact, that we met up with our fellow marchers before the parade at Fullerton Avenue, a whole freaking mile south of the parade's official Belmont Avenue starting point. But, in a fit of possibly unintentional homosexuality, we had our pre-parade doughnut party in Oz Park, which was built in honor of Wizard of Oz creator and Chicago native son L. Frank Baum. And you know what a Wizard of Oz-themed park means, don't you? DOROTHY STATUE!

And as a true friend of Dorothy, I can't think of a more fabulous photo op to sum up a more fabulous pride weekend with a more fabulous domestic partner in always fabulous Chicago.

Guess what I'm not wearing today:

1) Pants
2) My grandmother's lacy underthings
3) John Ashcroft's sweaty wifebeater that I got on eBay for $17 (a steal!)
4) My freakin' lipo girdle

If you guessed 1 or 2, you're weird. But in a killing hookers in the basement fun kind of way. If you guessed 3, please never read my blog again.

If you guessed 4, you are hereby invited to celebrate a lifetime of ungirdled freedom with me. Woo-hoo!

I just got back from my 11-day checkup—the one where the doctor is supposed to tell me I'm healing nicely but I need to keep squeezing my kidneys down into my rectum wearing the girdle for another week. But instead, he said I'm healing nicely and I am hereby allowed to celebrate life with my tits to the wind (that's just an expression, for the record—I don't actually have tits and if I did I wouldn't let them flap in the wind because it might hurt innocent passers-by attract amorous lesbians and they can be harder to get rid of than fundamentalists and once you have an infestation of either there goes the neighborhood because suddenly it's all flannel and Dockers everywhere you look and you start to feel out of place in your discount couture and god knows nobody wants that) and he doesn't want to see my bruisy, swollen ass again for two months.

So I marched triumphantly—albeit slightly unsteadily since my core muscles had forgotten how to hold me up during the evil Girdle Regime of 2005—out the door and into the street. And I came straight home to blog about it since I have no actual human friends who want to hang out with me to park myself in front of a TiVo hard drive packed with CSI reruns since I have no actual human friends who want to hang out with me.

I also have full permission to head back to the gym but I've decided I like being lazy and I'm going to lounge around and see if I can regrow all that fat which I plan to do tomorrow over lunch. Though I don't think I want to change my shirt in the locker room just yet; my bare midsection is still a little disconcerting to behold—even for the pervy homos who think nobody can tell they're gay straight guys.

In the mean time I'm left to contemplate just how freakin' hairy my tummy gets when I don't shave it. (I've been shaving everything but a saucy little trail that leads south from my belly button for at least 10 years, and I'd forgotten what a teddy bear I'm capable of being. But I didn't shave for a couple weeks before the surgery to pre-empt any itching issues. And I'm not shaving any time in the near future because now my tummy's kind of like that science experiment you did in third grade where you rubbed a piece of Wonder bread on the dusty blinds ostensibly to make mold grow but more likely because the janitor was too lazy to clean the blinds himself because he was busy killing hookers in the basement and I'm curious to see how hairy it actually gets.)

Anyway, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that Jake's gonna finally stop bitching about his freakin' girdle Jake's gonna finally stop bitching about his freakin' girdle. Although, given the shaky state of his core muscles at the moment, your sigh will most likely be louder than his.

Survey says ...

So three years ago I get this notice from the Census Bureau telling me I’ve been chosen to participate in some survey, and some guy will be contacting me in the near future to make it happen. Fine, I think. Surveys are kinda fun. Bring it on.

Then the guy calls me and tells me it’s three hours long and he has to come to my house to do it—all of which sounds irritating and intrusive, so I politely decline his invitation. But he insists, implying that the government doesn’t give me the option of saying no, Comrade, but he’ll come to my office after work some night if that will be more convenient.

Sure, I guess.

The coming-to-the-office part makes it seem a little more safe anyway, so I acquiesce and eventually find myself sitting in one of our conference rooms with a creepy-looking government employee answering an ENDLESS series of increasingly personal questions about everything from my family history to the racial makeup of my friends to what’s on my rap sheet to my drinking and drug habits.

But I answer the questions, feeling all smug that I have black friends and a squeaky-clean record and no unseemly habits and parents who never hit each other. And the guy finally leaves, but not without rewarding me with a Census Bureau-logo ruler. Three hours for a friggin’ RULER! (I still have it somewhere, in case you want to drop by and see how they measure linear space at the Census Bureau.)

Fast-forward to last week. Another notice arrives in the mail. There’s another survey we’d like you to participate in, Comrade. And apparently it will happen every three years FOR LIFE. Lucky me.

Only now, I’m told a little more about it: It’s designed to identify correlations between substance abuse and evolving lifestyle indicators like health, family, criminal records, traumatic events, etc. And this year I get $40 for starting the survey and $40 for finishing it.

So last night I started the whole process over—only we did it in my house, and they sent a different creepy-looking government employee.

And either I just didn’t remember the scope of the questions from three years ago or they got waaaaay more probing. Again, I was all smug in dismissing every question about drugs and alcohol with a curt “never”—the answer I also gave to every question about being neglected as a child and being the victim of violent crime and endangering other people’s lives by driving recklessly.

But after a while, the questions started making me sad. And then sick. Before you were 18, how often did your father hit your mother? Have you ever assaulted someone with the intent of causing serious injury? Were you ever sexually molested by a stranger? By someone you trusted? Have you ever gone more than a month without having somewhere to live? Have you ever done or said something hurtful to intimidate someone into letting you have your way? Have you ever taken sexual advantage of someone who was under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Have you ever taken prescription drugs that weren’t yours? Have you ever been witness to a terrorist attack or violent crime that included casualties? Have you ever unexpectedly stumbled upon a dead body? Were you ever intentionally injured by a stranger in a public place?

The questions kept coming and coming and coming, and it occurred to me that somewhere in this country there are people who could answer yes to them. And odds are, if they could answer yes to one or two horrible things, they probably could answer yes to a lot more. I interrupted the numbing barrage to ask the census guy if he’d ever had people answer yes to any of the more horrible questions. He emotionlessly confirmed they had and plunged right in to the next question for me.

And some of them I had to answer yes to. Have you ever lost a friend or loved one in a terrorist attack? Have you ever been verbally harassed for being gay? Have you ever suffered from a panic attack?

Ugh. I should have said no about the panic attacks. They were all a part of the exciting world we call social anxiety disorder, a little mental prison I inadvertently locked myself in for most of my adult life. I’d get panicky and physically ill in situations like crowded bars and parties (especially parties), so I went out of my way to avoid them. Until last year, when I finally freed myself (surprisingly easily) through a handful of sessions with a therapist. And now I try to attend every social event and party I'm invited to so I can accomplish some way-overdue catching up on my social networking. And maybe find me a freakin' boyfriend. But I digress.

My point is that saying yes to that one question about panic attacks opened the door to a labyrinth of more specific questions about them: frequency, duration, severity, symptoms, delayed reactions, effects on my behavior, embarrassment, etc. etc. etc. And by the time we’d gotten back to the rest of the questions, we’d spent an inordinate amount of time blowing the panic attack thing waaaaaaay out of proportion. Which made me extremely thankful that I didn’t have to answer yes to any of the other questions. It would have literally added hours to an already-too-long interview. And it would totally have made me miss Queer Eye.

So the survey ends. I get my 80 bucks. The creepy-looking government employee leaves. And I immediately call my parents to thank them for things a child should never have to specifically thank his parents for: Raising me in a loving, stable home. Shielding me from the horrors that obviously befall tons of other kids. Giving me the kind of worldview that makes me able to appreciate everything I have. Moving out of an all-white neighborhood when I was young so I could go to an integrated junior high school. Never hitting each other.

HOLY SHIT

So I'm at Market Days yesterday and I run into my friends Bill and Gabe from Miami (because it IS a small world) and we're wandering through the throngs admiring all the hot men and dodging all the dogs and strollers (who brings dogs and strollers to a crowded street fair?) when my eyes lock with a beautiful man standing in one of the booths. Since we're not able to move very fast in the crowd, our eyes lock a good 10 more times -- and we both get these huge shit-eating grins -- before I'm fully past him. Now, the Normal Jake would panic and keep moving because What If He Didn't Like Me. But I'm getting pretty tired of the Normal Jake, so I -- palms fully sweating -- break away from Bill and Gabe and actually WALK UP TO HIM AND SAY HI. That was Saturday about 3:30 in the afternoon. It's now 9:17 am on Sunday...

And Jesus if he doesn't score high on the Boyfriend Aptitude Test:
Doesn't drink. Check.
Doesn't smoke. Check.
No drugs. Check.
Polite to strangers. Check.
Cool friends. Check.
Fun to talk to. Check.
Gainfully employed. Check.
In a career he loves. Check.
More of a homebody than a party boy. Check.
Amazing kisser. Check.
Decent and kind. Check.
Into me. Check.
Cuter than all goddamn hell. Check.

I'm either in the middle of a very fun weekend fling or at the beginning of a very cool romantic adventure. And you heard about it here first.