A Piercing Question, or the Musings of Mr. Bradley i

So for all you people out there actually paying attention to me, here it is, the first real musings of Mister Bradley, where I'm pretty much going to ramble on about whatever crosses my mind when I happen to be writing. So bear with me, hold on for the ride and let the ramblage begin. (Side note: sentence structure kind of deteriorates in these kind of things as I resort to a stream-of-consciousness style of writing and my thoughts don't always make grammatical sense.)

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I've been meaning to pierce my ears for a long time now. I don't even know why, really. I don't think people with piercings are any more or less attractive than those without them. And it's not like everyone in my family is riddled with piercings. (Though my older sister used to have three rings in each ear and a tongue stud when she was being a crazy, rebellious teenager. Then she got over it and went back to normal—but with a really cool but slightly grody scar-thing in her tongue.)

I guess maybe I want to do it as a kind of statement, same as my sister. My mom would freak out and demand that I take them out, which would be an ulterior motive at the very least and the primary reason behind it at the most. Plus it's something that gay people do—oh wait, didn't I tell you I was gay? Oh. It must have slipped my mind because it really isn't that important. People who refuse to associate with me or become friends with me only because I'm gay, I see absolutely no point in associating with them. I don't want to be somebody's bragging rights—"I've got a gay friend, I've never had one of those before, you don't have any gay friends so I'm cooler than you"—and of course I don't want to be somebody's excuse to project their insecurities and fears in life on somebody who never did anything to deserve them. Oh, wait, except be different, and that seems to be a good enough reason to put anybody down, because she has funny hair or he has weird clothing or she likes girls and he likes guys.

ANYWAY, I guess the ear-piercing thing is a statement for a lot of things, cause all I really want to do with it is piss my mom off and try advertising to the nonexistent gay population around here. Only I just found out that there's is in fact at least one more gay kid who goes to my school. Thanks to a mutual contact, I started chatting on MSN with this kid from school who was so confused about how he was feeling and stuff like that, which is generally how everybody's story starts out. (I've compared all my homosexual friends' stories—three lesbians and one gay guy, though the numbers are kind of exploding around me— and found we all follow the same mold, so I'm assuming that it's pretty much the same everywhere.) And so now we're becoming really good friends and he told the guy who kept using him for blowjobs to shove it up his ass, and all of a sudden I know of another gay guy at my school, one whom I get along with. (The other guy I can only handle for about twenty minutes before he grates on my nerves.) And this whole thing was a huge revelation/ego-boosting experience, because just earlier that day I had blown up at my other gay friend about how I was so sick of watching everybody be able to hold hands and make out around me while I just have to watch and listen to them bitch about how their significant other is being so /straight-edge/drama-queen/weird/possessive/any other adjective you can think of, not to mention that I was being jealous and bitter of him because he actually had a boyfriend and he hasn't come out yet, so I figured that I deserved it more because I had to put up with the dumb comments and snide jokes and weird looks and even blatant hatred for who I was, with absolutely nothing to show for it, while he didn't have to do any work and got all the benefits. (Tanner, if you ever actually read this, I'm so sorry for all of that, I really am. Yes, it's all true, but it was extremely insensitive and uncalled for. You've done nothing to deserve that, and I really am happy for you and Jay, I'm also just filled with the Evil Green Monster of Envy and Dumbassery.) So the random appearance of another gay guy at the school helped me immensely with my existential crisis.

Anyway, so today during 4th period my lesbian friend and I were talking over the assignment, "Firsts & Lasts" and sharing various firsts and lasts in our lives. She mentioned the last time she pierced her ears (at three in the morning) and then I mentioned that I'd been meaning to do that for a while now. She offered to do it today after school, because she carries random stuff around like needles and rubbing alcohol and matches. But I had to catch a bus, and besides, neither of us had ice. So tomorrow at Poetry Club, if either of us figures out how to get solid, cold ice all the way to after school, I am probably going to get my ears pierced.

Though I really don't know what to expect from my mom. I mean, in the past she's been really angry about stuff that I've done, like having my hair dyed purple and deciding that no, I didn't want to come home right now, but she's never actually done anything about it. She didn't make me dye my hair back, and she threatened not to let me hang out but I always did anyway. So she'd probably be really mad about it but then just try to ignore it and hope that it will go away. The one time my mom and I ever discussed my being gay was right after I had a yelling fight with my ward's bishop in which I said that no, I'm not a sin against God and that he could take his doctrine and shove it up his proverbial ass. I was crying because my bishop was frustrating and frustrating people make me angry and that makes me cry, so my mom wanted to know what was wrong. So I told her I was gay and then we've never talked about it since. So her reaction is pretty much on the unknown side of things.

All my friends would think it was awesome because they think everything I do is awesome, and so me piercing my ears would be cool by principle. So i think we're good on that front.

The rest of my family would . . . well, that's also very unknown. My sisters would freak and stuff, like they freaked when I got the ice blue pants that hug my calves in all the right places. And also whenever they see the FREE HUGS shirt or the NO FREE SAMPLES or the red pants or the red vest (never worn it yet cause it's not cold enough—thank you anyway, Erika). So, yeah my sisters would freak. And yeah.

So, there's really no way to end this without sounding like it's only half an entry and the other half broke off and is floating around cyberspace—but it's not, and this really is the end.