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[19 Jun 2009|07:00pm] |
Thanks to the internet, it is so much easier for me to go on these 80's and 90's music binges like the one I am currently stuck on. I'm indulging in a lot of old favorites as well as guilty pleasures, though they're not so guilty when I'm in the middle of indulging, you know? You don't care what anyone thinks when you're right in the middle of belting out "Total Eclipse of the Heart" alone in the safety of your own apartment. The only ones that know are you, the apartment, and your computer. And possibly some of your neighbors. But it's okay, because you overheard them doing their own renditions of "I Wanna Sex You Up" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" last week, so you're all pretty much even.
The other safe zones for expressing your love for your guiltiest pleasures outside of your house or apartment are your car, where every other driver on the road is doing the exact same thing, and the karaoke bar, where almost if not every person in the room has knocked back at least a couple of drinks so this public display of love for A Flock of Seagulls and Hootie & the Blowfish is completely acceptable. I've taken advantage of all the typical safe zones for the terrible singing of cheesy and down-right bad songs today except for the karaoke bar. It's been a while since I've hit up one of those. With my daughter staying at her mother's for the next few days and therefore my daughter not being around to witness and subsequently be incredibly embarrassed by my nostalgia-induced behavior, I may have to hit up one this weekend. Then again, last week of school before the summer officially lets out at Central is this up-coming week, though. So really, I should be putting off any karaoke bar shenanigans until after that. So I'll bear that in mind.
I almost can't believe it's Father's Day this Sunday. I'm sorry, didn't June just start? Where is 2009 going? I swear, the older I get, the faster time flies. But anyway. It's bound to be a busy Sunday. I'm going to take my dad out for lunch, then the North East Muscle Car Club is having a Father's Day car show in the city so we're going to swing by there since I know my dad well enough to know that there are few things in this world he loves more than car shows. Then when the evening starts to roll around, I'll be going out for dinner with my daughter Julianna and hit up the shops on the block and probably top the night off with a stop by our favorite ice cream parlor. The simple daddy-daughter time I get with her is enough for me on Father's Day, which I tell her every single year, and yet she always manages to have something up her sleeve to surprise me with every year and I can't even begin to imagine what she'll have in store this year. But I'm telling you, I'm running out of room on my fridge and the top of the dresser in my room.
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[26 May 2009|02:08pm] |
You know, the older and more mature my daughter gets, the more I dislike adolescent boys. I can honestly say that if I had a twelve-year-old son instead, I would not have this level of disliking for adolescent girls. It's a double-standard, I know. It's not that I worry that at some point she'll be drawn into something by some sleazy little jerk. I feel like she's smart and has a good sense about people. She has the sort of god-given instincts that cause me to think she might one day pursue some sort of career in criminal justice. She would be amazing at it. But I digress. My point is, I'm not worried about her in the sense that I'm worried about her being naive or falling into something with the wrong person or letting herself get taken advantage of. I just don't like the way 13 and 14 year old boys are already looking at her. It's nothing disturbingly pervy, but it's that "how you doin'?" look Joey perfected in Friends. She's twelve. No one needs to be making the flirty eyes with her even if they're thirteen. She's a middle-schooler for christ's sake. I mean, I know middle-schoolers date these days. I don't get it and maybe it was prominent when I was in middle school and I just didn't notice because my nose was so stuck in my books so it shouldn't be so weird to me, but I know it happens. I just feel like twelve is so young for that. I'd love it if things like boys and dating just held off until she actually has the chance to, you know, get into her freshman year of high school.
At least no matter how much it's already phasing me, it doesn't phase her in the slightest. She doesn't seem to notice and she doesn't seem to care or be interested in it. I kinda hope she holds onto that for a while. What she cares about, when it comes to the romance and dating front, is me and how I'm doing in my romantic life. She's hit that age where she's concerned about me getting lonely. Since I'm gay and she spends half of her time with her mother, plus her mother and I are still good friends, my daughter has no worries about having a mother around. She has her mother. She doesn't need a second one. She has me, so she doesn't need a second father. She sincerely wants me to not be lonely. Meanwhile, I don't necessarily feel lonely. I have her. I have my ex-wife. I have my friends and acquaintances. I'm not going to sit here and say that a little bit of romance wouldn't be a nice addition for me life, but I wouldn't call myself lonely. But, I do understand where my daughter is coming from and that she just wants the best for me. It's sweet, really. I'd rather have her concerned for my love life than not talking to me at all and being moody and distant like some of the teenaged kids my co-workers talk about having. But I will ease her worries one of these days. I swear, I will.
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[06 May 2009|01:14pm] |
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Nerdy. Loyal. Sincere. Self-depreciating. Those four words sum Alex Deverakis pretty damn well. Born into a large Greek-Italian-Jewish family in the July of 1975 as the third son, and fourth child in general, to an auto mechanic and a nurse, Alex got used to a lot of things. Chaos; excess amounts of testosterone, guilt-tripping, and neurosis; a severe lack of privacy and peace and quiet; having a strong family to fall back onto when things are rough. Alex was never one of the cool kids when he was growing up. He had a naturally nerdiness about him but there was no one who brought it out of him more than his childhood best friend. He ended up being more of a science whiz than anything else, breezing through the science classes thrown at him, and he knew before he hit his junior year of high school that he would one day become a science teacher. It was like he was born to do it and he knew it, and he dedicated his college years to fulfilling that destiny. Of course, his life up until that point hadn't been all about school. Perhaps it would have been easier for him if it were - easier for him to think of nothing but academics, rather than going through the struggle with his sexuality and the fear of being found out by his very religious and very intense family. In an attempt to avoid being outed and relieve himself of the pressures from his family to find a "nice girl" for himself, Alex popped the question in college to a girl he had known since his freshman year of high school. He wasn't "in love" with her, but they were best friends and each other's first sexual experiences and if there was any woman he was going to marry, it was going to be her. A year after their wedding, on the 29th of October in 1996, Julianna Amelia Deverakis was born and Alex fell head over heels in love the first time he held her in his arms and she looked up at him. Having a family of his own, though, did not keep his struggle with his sexuality at bay, and all it took was a gay man with a physics and astronomy major at Penn to get Alex to give in to what he really wanted. Shortly after, when he was 25, Alex came out to his wife, which included admitted that he had cheated, as well as came out to his family. Despite the hurt his wife experienced, their divorce was relatively easier, or at least easier than he expected, and he was pleasantly surprised when he found himself getting shared custody of their daughter Julianna and not getting entirely shunned within his family. He's been able to move on with his life, with things gradually improving and getting easier with time, and he's officially fulfilling his destiny by holding down a job teaching physics and astronomy at Central High School. Though now instead of having the pressure put on him to find a "nice girl" for himself, he's now feeling the pressure from his family - mostly his mother - to find a "nice gentleman" to settle down with. Some things will never change, right?
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