aaron rodgers

i'm not a diehard football fan, but i wanted to share this article i read today about aaron rodgers. http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2010/columns/story?id=6076694

i just love reading about athletes who are down to earth, don't let getting famous get to their head, and are still good guys at heart. (there was a similar rick reilly column about derrick rose you should check out too). this article makes rodgers sound like a pretty cool guy. and who knew, apparently he's one of them super smart jocks and gets all the jeopardy questions right! my litmus test for anyone is whether or not i think i'd want to get a beer with them, and rodgers definitely sounds like the kind of guy who'd be fun to go out for a drink with. i do think his belt celebration thing is pretty lame, but i'll cut him some slack on that lol. so even though i think the packers are the underdog this sunday i'm gonna be rooting for them to win. isn't everyone sick of steeler nation at this point anyway?

PS stay safe if you're in an area getting slammed by the winter storm. this winter has suckeddddddddddd.

cruising...

ok, my brain is ready for take off. i'm about ready to check out until graduation. not that i don't want to learn anymore and improve my medical knowledge, but there are a lot of movies i haven't seen and many tv shows i have to catch up on. it's kinda crazy that i have just 3 more months of formal schooling left before i am set loose on the world. anyway, i'm not the best at playing hooky as my baseline sense of guilt is too high usually, but i know many tactics from my friends that i will be trying out this month to get out of work early.....

i guess i shouldn't be writing about how much work us medical students try to get out of. kinda makes you lose faith in the medical profession right? i actually would love to know what the perception of doctors is nowadays. sure there's a certain amount of respect for the field still, but i think with all the malpractice anecdotes, long waits, healthcare reform/insurance issues, and plastic surgeon glamor docs on tv etc etc etc, a certain amount of distrust has been bred among the public. which i'm all for, as you as the patient shouldn't wholly place blind trust in your docs, but there is a fine line of patient autonomy, where i think many docs are getting tired of patients thinking they know best, when we're the ones who have worked our butts off to get this far and be shown no respect by patients and their families. it's just a very very fine line of mutual respect nowadays i guess. anyway as far as i know, all my non-medical friends are excited and proud that i'm graduating soon, so there's still hope that not everyone, myself included, is all jaded about medicine!

alright that tangent aside, i was very depressed to see that the blog i plugged the other day, (ajokelife.tumblr.com) got taken down by the author. that guy was so freaking funny and the blog just disappeared. i can only imagine something negative happened to him and that's why he took it down. maybe he got cyberstalked or something. hopefully not, and i pray for his return one day...

speaking of which, another blog i followed for awhile closed too, and again, no clue what happened to it. (fratclosetcase.blogspot.com) it was a closet frat guy's blog..the guy actually was a little semi-detailed about his closet stuff, at least enough that someone at his school maybe could peace things together and blow his cover or something. the internet is so fucking crazy nowadays with things going viral and things like that. anyway, if anyone knows what happened to these blogs i'd love to know.

that's it for now, just felt like expounding some random thoughts before i head to bed.

gun show!

i'm not one to lust after athletes, male or female, but i saw this picture of clay matthews on espn today and i was pretty damn impressed. apparently he was really skinny in high school, which is pretty hard to believe looking at him now. i'm not a juicehead or anything (man...jersey shore is invading my vocabulary, what is the world coming to), but i definitely think anyone can appreciate arms like these. anyway enjoy the eye candy if you're into ridiculously huge biceps.



by the way, as much as i like how the packers have looked in the playoffs, i think the steelers will win it 17-14.

relationships

one thing that has me hesitant to throw myself all in to the homo boat is whether or not i could have a real, meaningful relationship with another guy. i know sexuality is supposed to be a spectrum, and while i have had my fair share of man-on-man sex, i don't know if i could ever emotionally commit to another man. i've definitely had hookup buddies/friends with benefits whom i've liked and enjoyed spending time with, but could i ever get into a full-on relationship? i'm not sure. i just don't even know what that situation would be like. at least the way i've had my encounters with gay sex, it's always been kinda the 'get naked first, ask questions later' situation and the whole traditional getting to know you thing has gone out the window. and what does being in a relationship with another guy entail? the whole notion just seems very foreign to me, even though it obviously wouldn't be much different than any other normal committed relationship. there's always that joke about straight guys having bromances, so i guess it wouldn't be much different than that, except for what happens in the bedroom  haha.

the more i think about it, the more i'm definitely intrigued by the possibility. i've always been more of a gestalt kind of guy, and i think if i met a guy and really liked him, and he also wanted to pursue a relationship, i think i would be open to it. hopefully that would be someone in the same situation as me who would be charting similar uncharted waters. as much as i admire openly gay men for being out and confident and all that instead of dealing with all the fucked up issues of us closet cases, a relationship with an openly gay guy would probably be the equivalent of a may-december romance in terms of maturity.

anyway i doubt i'm going to be finding any eligible men, so i guess i'm just putting the idea out there to myself. some guys in the past, i probably was holding back any real emotions i may have had and was just kinda riding it for the physical part, but at heart i am really a relationship kind of guy. and it sure as hell is nice to sleep next to someone at night!!!!

edit: just caught up on some other blogs i follow. coincidentally this guy explored the same concept in one of his posts. link here some of the user comments seem pretty harsh! at least from my perspective. just more food for thought that just makes me not want to confront the issue period...i'm such a wimp.

happy 2011!

first, i have something important to say. immediately start following this blog. http://ajokelife.tumblr.com/ i came across it the other day and it is infinitely better than mine. this guy is hilarious, and he keeps his updates short, sweet, and pretty freaking funny. doesn't hurt that he is also pretty cute haha. i think he is canadian, that must be part of his charm. either way, i am sure he gets e-hit-on aplenty.

damn i am already doing a horrible job of updating this blog. i thought i'd have more time during the holidays, but of course the holidays end up being crazier than regular life, and now i am back to the regular life grind where time is always short, even as a 4th year. if you're not familiar with how medical school works, let me summarize:

pre-med school: you work your ass off in college and/or post-college to get into medical school because it is a hyper-competitive hellhole. (although with the doc shortages nationwide they could probably stand to be less exclusive)
1st and 2nd years: you study your ass off 24/7 as you learn an exorbitant amount of info in too short a time, then binge drink every few weeks after a test, thus wiping your memory clean.
3rd year: you get thrown into the clinical setting, aka the hospitals and the real world, and you learn to play the game of navigating the hospital hierarchy. (think the tv show scrubs)
4th year: you spend the first half stressing about getting a residency position job for after graduation. then once all the applications and interviews are over in the second half you turn off your brain until graduation.

this being early january, most of my fellow 4th years are finishing up interviews and getting ready to check out mentally, if they haven't already. it's funny because whereas in 3rd year, you are so worried about making a good impression and looking like the model student to get a good grade, in 4th year you really couldn't care less and you're just trying to scheme ways out of work ASAP. anyway, i have a few interviews left and i am almost ready for my turn to check out, but not quite there yet.

as far as other stuff, i am still paranoid as hell i have HIV. haven't had any more alarm symptoms, but of course that means nothing. i actually have a few new year's resolutions related to my sex life, which i may or may not share in a later post. some of them are hilariously ridiculous that i even have to make a resolution like that, but you can judge for yourself. anyway, that's all i want to say for now. gotta work on keeping these damn entries short!

scared

yikes..just published this post and realized what a huge block of text this is. prepare yourself...


if this blog is going to be my confession to the world, i may as well start out with a controversial post. currently i am deathly scared i may be HIV positive. "wait what?" you're thinking. didn't i just start this blog in the last post and appear to be a fairly intelligent, seemingly rational normal guy, in the MEDICAL profession of all fields? how could i possibly be foolish enough to have exposed myself to HIV? well, doctors aren't perfect, and even armed with more knowledge about HIV than i care to know, i've still made mistakes and continue to keep making them. my hope is that my last possible exposure will not cost me my health for the rest of my life.

so the story is, i was feeling pretty down a few weeks ago for a variety of reasons. i decided to browse craigslist and found an ad from a guy about my age in a city next to me. description and pictures seemed to match my type so i sent a reply back to his ad. first of all, i usually never respond to ads and create my own if i am going the craigslist route at all, so that was kind of red flag #1. the guy responds and sounds decent and we exchange some emails. he emails me the next day saying he is free and i am unfortunately still interested in random sex so i email him back. then he replies back that he only wants to fuck around bareback. i am thinking, "fuck, this guy is being up front about having unsafe sex, and if he's willing to fuck bare, posted an ad on cl, this is probably not a good idea." clearly, that should have been red flag #2 and end of discussion, PERIOD. at the same time i am kind of excited at the idea of fucking bare. i mean let's be honest guys, condoms are not fun and the few times i've fucked bare have definitely been nice. somehow i rationalize to myself to give things a shot, and we continue to talk back and forth, me trying to push playing safe and him pretty much only wanting to go bare. finally, despite all the million alarm bells going off for this situation, i decide to meet him and see what happens.

i get to his place, and at least he looks like a normal guy. his place is a little dirty but i excuse that and we start fooling around. his bed sheets were pretty nasty with cumstains or something, which was red flag #3, but obviously i was color blind throughout this whole ordeal and continue to ignore the fact that this guy definitely has some hint of being a cum slut/man whore. i mean come on who likes to sleep on dirty ass bed sheets? have a little self-respect.

anyway i had come into this hookup with the intention of just swapping head at most and maybe fucking him (bare or not i don't really think i decided going into it). the foreplay was actually kind of hot and i was pretty hard with the thought of being able to fuck him bare. but somehow he ended up on top of me and wanted to fuck me. i wasn't planning to bottom at all this hookup. i don't like bottoming much at all and i only bottom for guys who i've been with a while and feel a good connection with, but my string of poor decision-making continued. 

i let him push into me, and the whole time i am thinking "am i really letting this guy, this stranger, fuck me bare". he was a decent top at least and wasn't too rough with me, and after awhile we flipped and he wanted me to fuck him. i was still kind of reeling from being fucked and my initial horniness to fuck him bare had since dissipated. i managed to achieve a decent boner and did fuck him bare for a little bit, but at this point my rational mind, my higher conscience, my superego, whatever, had taken over and really evaluated the situation as it is: a mistake. i pulled out and just told him being fucked takes a lot out of me and i didn't want to fuck anymore but we could just jerk off if he wanted to get off. he said yea, he understood, but that he enjoyed fucking me so much that he had already come in me earlier....

whoa. what. in my mind i was flipping shit. this guy came in me bare? without asking or letting me know he was going to cum? i'm not an expert on anal sex manners, but isn't there a courtesy rule about saying where you're going to cum? especially if you're coming in someone bareback??? i couldn't believe he came in me and now i was pretty much trying to extricate myself from this hookup as diplomatically as possible. no one had ever blown a load in me before that day and this guy definitely had enough red flags and alarm bells for me to know this was not a great "first time" for that to happen. fuck. fuck. fuck. anyway, i just get myself outta there as politely as possible, to deal with the regret on the way home.

whenever i go through a craigslist hookup or something like that, except for the handful of times it actually goes well, i always go back home with a sense of regret or emptiness. i don't really know what i'm looking for in these hookups. a quick way to blow my load? an honest connection? pent-up sexual energy? a desire to fill some unspeakable empty void? i haven't figured it out but i keep going back down the same empty roads. i guess i just like the thrill of meeting the next unknown man, a man who might help me figure out all the confusion i've been dealing with since i started sleeping with men. i keep thinking the next hookup will be the last one, but it keeps happening.

anyway this time was no different and i went home with the usual sense of regret and anger at myself for going through another meaningless craigslist hookup, heightened by the fact that this was a very very unsafe hookup. i rationalized the risk this time because the guy was a young graduate student at a pretty respected university and probably wasn't that high-risk? fuck, just writing it i see how crazy it sounds. OF COURSE anytime you have unprotected sex, especially off fucking craigslist of all places, it is high-risk! fuckity fuck fuck. but i pushed the situation to the back of my mind, maybe putting higher priority to get my usual testing done sooner rather than later, but for the most part forgot about it.

that is, until this week, when exactly two weeks when this unfortunate encounter occurred, i began to have diarrhea. the first day i had it, i just put it off as the regular ol' runs, explainable by the fact that i had recently traveled by air and might have picked up something from the masses or ate something bad. but, i've continued to have the runs despite either not eating, or not eating much. it definitely rules out eating something bad, and as it is now day 5 and i've continued to have some pretty abnormal bowel movements, i am going out of mind scared that this is the manifestation of the acute HIV syndrome. you can google more about it yourself, but basically it's a bunch of non-specific flu-like symptoms that can occur as soon as 2 weeks to several weeks after exposure. the timing fits perfectly, and now i am sitting here as mr. hypochondriac. am i just a little warm or am i starting to break a fever? is that a real headache i have or just stress from the thought of being infected? was that just a twinge in my knee or am i starting to have joint pain? is that red spot on my chest a sign i'm about to break out into a full blown rash tomorrow? honestly, this diarrhea could be nothing, but i've never had something go on for this many days, and the timing of this is just so right and the guy had so many red flags of being a good candidate for being HIV+ that i am beside myself with worry. 

how could i have been so, so stupid? of course of course of course i know better, but why do i keep making these poor decisions? i am going to be a fucking doctor in a few months, and here i am engaging in the same unsafe behaviors we're supposed to deter our patients from. yes, i've fucked bare before, and every time i do, i go through this stage of paranoia until the proper time frame passes about whether i just exposed myself, and i vow never ever to fuck bare again. but here i am again, and now this is the first time i've had some very alarming symptoms and done it with a guy who really fits the profile of being an unknown and very likely carrier. 

i am trying to be realistic with myself and prepping myself for the worst. i've hooked up with enough men through craigslist and such that i truly deserve to pay for my indiscretion. but when i think of the ramifications of becoming HIV+, i just don't even want to go there. i'm only in my 20s, and the health insurance issues, doctor's visits, dealing with this bi/gay-closeted stuff on top of being HIV+, having no real confidants in reality to talk about this with, and all the normal young adult stuff like establishing my career and life..it's almost too much to handle. fuck. please let me be healthy.

my only plan now is to wait out these bowel issues, keep careful track of my health and symptoms, and plan to get tested in a few weeks. i know if i am truly infected the typical HIV test won't turn positive for at least 3 months, up to 6, but i don't really know how or if i'd want to go about trying to get an HIV viral load test before that. i've never used my health insurance, but it's under my parents still and i don't know exactly how much they'd be able to see. i guess i should find out. i will definitely get free testing in january, but even if that's negative i don't think i'd take it as a clean slate.

well, this is only my second entry and it's already reaching novel lengths so i guess i will wrap up. thanks for sticking through it if you read through all my paranoia and shit. literally. i imagine it must be somewhat disgusting to read about other's bowel habits and issues, but i guess being in healthcare has desensitized me to that kind of stuff so sorry if you were offended by that bit haha.

i think i read in another blog that closeted guys go through these stages in sexual maturity..one of them being the manwhore stage. i definitely have been in the manslut stage for too long...and it certainly may have cost me dearly this time. with 2010 ending, a bunch of changes in my life coming in 2011, and this very legitimate HIV scare looming very large in my life right now, i think 2011 will definitely be a different stage in my life. i won't go so far as to say i will open up to my family and friends about my sexuality completely, but i will definitely try to be more honest to myself at least about what i want instead of just trying to fulfill these primal urges. i'm still exploring the issues around being a guy who likes having sex with guys, and i know the other bi/gay/closeted/past closeted guys out there can understand it's not an easy road. i'm just not there yet to be completely open to the world about it, that's for sure. just please please please, let me still be HIV free and i can do a better job figuring this shit out!

this post is fucking ridiculous and long, but i'm glad to get it out there. i just had to get this immense fear off my chest now. thanks again for reading.

first post

hey readers
i am joining the blogosphere. specifically, the blogosphere dedicated to the world of bisexual, gay, and closeted men out there. i am another one of these closet cases, and i've been following a few blogs over the past few months of young guys like me who are just uncertain about their sexuality, so choose to live a "double life"..straight on the outside, gay on the inside, like some horrible oreo cookie. most of the blogs i've followed sporadically are college guys or athletes dealing with these issues, which is cool to read because when i was in college while it was in the back of my mind, i definitely didn't think much about messing with guys and certainly never acted on it, but i am glad to know it's happening in college. now me being in my mid 20s, i definitely wish i had started to explore earlier because i feel like at this point i am royally fucked for waiting so long to explore my feelings for guy on guy action. so i am starting this blog to finally explore these issues a little further with my personal spin. i definitely didn't imagine there was this whole network of closeted guys with blogs, but it's very refreshing and i hope to contribute and maybe help out any guys in a similar situation to me with my writing.

anyway, a little about me--i lived the model life up until now. i did well in high school, was popular and well-known around school, the guy with all the answers you might say, then went off to a great college and had a lot of fun there. i then went on to medical school in a major american city. i am currently finishing my last year of school, and in a few months i will be out there practicing real medicine. yet, throughout all this, despite acting "straight" and pursuing women and such on the outside, i knew i had sexual feelings towards men still. i began experimenting with men throughout medical school, with no one, friends or family, aware of my activities except of course the men i've slept with. as you could imagine, managing medical school, my sexuality issues, and normal day-to-day life has been pretty tough, but hey, life is hard. at this point i would say i am probably 60% gay, 40% straight, but that of course is subject to change.

for my own privacy reasons, i will try not to go into too many personal details that could reveal who i am or where i am. yes i am that much of a closet case. but from my standpoint, i now have an emerging professional career to worry about, and i do not want to become known for being "that doc with the gay blog". and as much as i'd like to share some "House"-like stories from my work in the medical world, unfortunately there are some very real privacy laws regarding patient information, so i won't be able to share too many, although i will try to share some if they are non-specific and entertaining enough. honestly, when i was debating starting this blog, i was wondering if i should even reveal that i go to medical school, but i figure if i am going to be somewhat honest in this writing i needed to reveal a little bit of personal info. so i do promise to be as candid as possible, but cut me some slack.

ok, that's enough for my first post. i actually already have a second post written and ready to go, but it's a doozy so i will save that for tomorrow. i honestly have not written anything that long since college, so i will definitely scare off a few readers with the upcoming block of text. this is pretty long itself. anyway thanks for reading and hope you continue. besides the catharsis of finally getting out this hidden part of my life, i'm really hoping to get some good dialogue and feedback going from other users. it might help me figure out what the hell i'm doing!