Underground Thoughts

–Uptown 6 Train–
Wanting to escape for some one-on-one time Darren and I headed to a B&B in Williamsburg MA for 4th of July weekend. The house overlooked acres of lightly forested hillis. The host Carrol was delightful.

The town had a lot of history, veggie eating options and small locally owned shops. But what was surprising to me was how gay friendly the community was. Being a small farm town I expected it to be a little hostile but it was quit the opposite. Multiple churches had small rainbow flags outside of them. We found out the mayor was gay. And people didn’t even look twice when we held hands. Yet it still had a small town country feel.

It was extremely comforting to know that when I’m ready to leave the chaos if the big city someday that there will be safe places to move my family.

A summary of a campaign I worked on the last few months. Click pic to see entire article.

Sunday morning Todd, Adam, Kaaren, and I treked up to Queens to walk with Christine Quin and the NYCity Council in the Queens Pride Parade.

Todd and I were asked to be water boys. We were happy to have a job that gave us something more to do than walk awkwardly along with the group.

Had a good night tonight. Met up with my friend Kyle and went out dancing. Love the kid. We always have such a great time when we go out. We meet the most random and cool people, and have fun without really trying. I ran into my good friend David. I met him my first night in NYC. I arrived with no where to stay and my friend who was vacationing here knew David casually ad introduced us. David let me sleep on a blow up mattress at his apartment while I searched for something more permanent.

Things are moving a little slower than expected. We still don’t have a venue for our upcoming event. But we at least have our logo halfway designed, our website halfway completed, and a good estimate of our budget.

–8:46 Downtown 5 Train–
Darren planned a surprised event this weekend. So at 7 pm Sat night we headed to Radio City Music Hall. I was expecting some random music group. So when we got there and I found out it was Yanni I was pretty shocked. Darren had seen the marque the week before and had remembered me talking about how I grew up playing Yanni. The concert was probably the best live musical performance I had ever seen. The tour named Yanni Voices featured many of the pieces I played as a teen, with additional vocals added. By the end of the concert a number of people were out of their seats dancing. The crowed was so enthralled they managaed to get two encore performances.

–10:19pm standing in line at wholefoods–
Had a great second meeting today. The major project that I need to get finished in the next few weeks is the logos for both Fun2Funds and the event itself. Hopefully finding a designer isn’t to hard. The other large project is recreating the website using Wordpress software. Hopefully Darren and I can get a good amount done on it this weekend.

–1:05am Uptown 6 Train–
This morning i took a run around the resevoir. I seriously think NY is tge best city on earth. Where else can you job 5 blicks from your house and have a 1.6 mile track around a mini lake, with over hanging cherry trees and a city skyline? Darren and Then returned to central park that afternoon to read and nap.

We finished the day sitting on our computers learning Wordpress software and uploading it to our respective domains. Hence why my blog now has a completly new look. We are now one step closer to getting OutwardView up and running. I have been a little worried if we would be able to work collarboratively on this project without getting on each others nerves. I can be somewhat of a perfectionistic control freak. But so far it’s been great, and being able to work side by side on something we both are passionate about has added a new dimension to our relationship.

–9:58pm in line at Wholefoods–
Back when I was home in Tulare, Ca. with the family for Christmas I met up with Joseph Ramos, a friend from high school. We swapped stories of what it was like to be closeted and in high school, expressing how we wish we had known about the other as it would have helped much of the anguish we were experiencing. We then had a long talk about how we had grown up only seeing the negative and over stereotypical personifications of gays. the rainbow waving, thong touting, hand flicking, tongue piercing boys that we were terrified we would eventually become if we accepted our sexuality.

–8:50am Downtown 4 Train–
It was then that we started to discuss how basic equalities such as gay marriage would never be supported in communities like our hometown unless these good people were able to see first hand the healthy, productive and normal citizens that most gays are. Both Joseph and I had escaped our conservative farming community to larger cities. But we realized that it was our hometown of Tulare California that needed to witness our healthy and moral lives.

Being in online PR I naturally brought up the idea of starting a blog. One that would host the profiles and stories of guys like us. Making them accessible to the many students now in high school, who’s only window to the outside world and hope of a better life was their computers.

–8:41pm Uptown 6 Train–
we then talked about how guys (and girls) like us need a channel to communicate back to the community that raised us. A way that they could see first hand the good adults we had matured into and that we were not ashamed of our sexuality. It would be our goal that next time an amendment like prop 8 was up for vote many more Californians would realize that they are voting against their very own children, siblings, grandchildren, cousins, and friends. Gays are not the crazy people they see in movies and on the news, we are them.

Borrowing a pen from the waiter I started outlining our thoughts, we wrote a mission statement and began brainstorming domain names… we originally were thinking StandOut.com but being that it wasn’t available we are now thinking, OutwardView.com. I think it adequately describes our mission. Giving the next generation stuck in our hometowns a view of the outside world, as well as the older generation who need an opportunity to see beyond their illogical fears and biases.