#as someone not raised religious nd not really religious but still connects very much to the concept of angels | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jkl-fff · 7 years

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Ha! Well, thank you for acknowledging my basic human agency—my freedom—to answer or not answer as I see fit. Heh … Seriously, though, it’s no problem; please continue to send in any and all the questions you like. The attention and interest are, frankly, flattering. And the distraction is more than welcome—it’s fun!—so no worries.

First Time as a Teacher, How Did I Feel? This one is sorta tough, because I’ve kinda always been a teacher in one capacity or another ever since I was … gosh, 14? 15? That was when I started working as a camp counselor during the summer for the Boy Scouts (did so until I was 19). While I was there … Ho boy, I taught a ton of different merit badges—basket weaving, astronomy, emergency preparedness, first aid, wilderness survival, orienteering, small boat sailing, rock-climbing …

After that, I was on a religious mission for two years (because I was raised mormon and that’s just what mormons do) in France. Pretty much spent *all* of that time teaching people about the religion, or teaching other missionaries how to be more effective at teaching people about the religion (by Cthulhu’s carpals, I was so young and naif and desperately closeted back then … feels like it was four life-times ago …), and teaching a weekly free English class as a service to people. Though, naturally, the end goal of that was finding more people to teach about the religion, so … When that ended, I was asked to keep teaching in my home congregation, and did so until I was about … 23, and just sorta collapsed inside. Couldn’t keep pretending I wasn’t attracted to other men, couldn’t keep pretending the god I had believed in was helping me be happy, couldn’t keep pretending the whole thing wasn’t thrice-damned absurd … So I stopped.

Spent another year living in France after that, this time in the employ of their Ministry of Education as an English teaching assistant in a French high school. Then two years teaching French for one university while I got a Masters’ Degree (standard trade off: graduate students teach lower-level courses, usually getting their tuition waived, health benefits, and a modest stipend), an intense month teaching an accelerated French course for the National Guard, and finally (after a brief hiatus working for FedEx) here I am in my second year of teaching French for a different university.

To say nothing of all the Taekwon-Do teaching I’ve been regularly entrusted with since I was, like, 16 …

Like I said, it’s tough to answer this one. So constant, so regular, and for so long … I just don’t really remember how the first times at each respective task felt anymore. But I do know that it *now* feels exhilarating and energizing every time my class starts one of its French lessons. Those are kinda the times that I feel most alive during the week …

First Time Writing a ParaPines Fic, What Made Me Write It? “Adorable Like a Werekitten” (shameless plug time, read it and all my fics here: https://jkl-fff.deviantart.com/) was both my first ParaPines fic and also my first foray into fanfic altogether. According to the posting timestamp … jeez, that was on October 2nd, 2012—a little over 5 years ago … And as to what made me write it, well … ParaPines came into my life during what was a rather tumultuous time, emotionally speaking.

Back then, it was like I was adrift at sea (maybe I still am … but at least the sea is more-or-less calm now, whereas back then it felt like a maelstrom within a hurricane, and I would foundering). Happiness and companionship and love—even just as meaningful friendship outside of my family—were all things I had pretty much abandoned forever all hope of finding (gods above, I sound like an emo album from 2006!) when two things happened: I discovered some … er, ahem, um … erotic fanart of Dipper Pines (which led to discovering more fanart in general, which led to discovering Gravity Falls and ParaPines and ParaNorman, all of which I found to be some of the most fantastic and adorable things to ever exist), and I fell in love with a guy in real life.

Actually, the falling in love part might have been what made everything so tumultuous emotionally … Certainly, I was not happy before him, but I was content in my unhappiness. It was a stable, dependably gray life I led before him. And then, suddenly, in my life … him. Just as suddenly, I started questioning somethings … then everythings … then ALL OF THE THINGS! Why should I linger in misery? Why cling to celibacy? What purpose was there in remaining faithful to vows I had made for a god I no longer believed in? What exactly was wrong with being gay? Why was I so convinced being gay was wrong? Why did I loathe myself so? If I had committed no fault, why shouldn’t I deserve to be as happy as anyone who was straight? Why not *all* the gay people? Why not everyone everywhere? Why not me right here and right now? Why not me … and him, with him, for him and to him and through him and by him forever and ever? Of course, it was a slow process, what with being internal and psychological. Seldom so explicit and obvious as my gloss above suggests. No, it took months and years for most of these questions to work through themselves, and honestly some of that working is still taking place even now. I hope it never stops.

But I digress. All of this gradual falling in love with him and becoming friends with him and spending time with him and pining over him and despairing because of him—all of this, and more, which had me adrift in that maelstrom in that hurricane—was taking place during and after my discoveries, as I said above, of Gravity Falls and ParaNorman and the joyous amalgam of both that is ParaPines. I was in dire straits and desperate need of something—of anything at all—that could anchor me a little, and this fit the bill. Y’see, both shows are great (great writing, great characterization, great plot development, great messages), so I could enjoy them each unironically without a sense of embarrassment. And … and and and … the ParaPines fanart was all so … so pure, so innocent, so bright and free and easy. The boys always looked so cute and happy together, y’know? As if being gay with another boy was as simple as that. No big identity struggle, no big community turmoil, no angst, no pain, no fear. Just … two gay boys being cute and happy together, with everything being as simple as that for them … Basically, everything I was craving, everything I was fantasizing about, everything I wanted for myself and him … Everything I wanted “being gay” to mean …

So I latched onto this fandom like a life preserver (it may actually have been something that preserved my life), and soon found that I just needed to contribute to it. I *needed* to write, y’know? Needed to put all of the thoughts and feeling swirling and sloshing and storming around in my head down onto paper. So I started writing for the fandom, using that writing as a means to work through some of my insecurities and anxieties about being gay, about being in love with someone who I always dreaded would leave my feelings unrequited … Heh. Poor little Norman. Though they’re all foils for parts of me, he got the brunt of all my angst, falling head-over-heels for DipDopDoblivious.

All of which to explain why I’m so invested in these two, even today, and probably will be for the rest of my life. Simultaneously, they’re now imbued with parts of my very psyche and identity, and have basically kept me from ripping myself to pieces.

Oh, and more specifically for ALaW, I saw some freakin’ adorable art by @skeletonizer featuring werecat Dipper, and sorta had to write something in which Dipper became a werecat. Like, it was too cute to be resisted. Heh. I remember being shocked at myself as I wrote it (“Really? You’re writing a story about a crossover of two characters from completely different franchises? You sunk this low?”), and trying to justify it to myself as a literary exercise (“I’m seeing if I can write in a completely different tone and style than I normally do! That’s all that’s going on here, I swear!”) so I wouldn’t feel like such a nerd/dork/geek. Ha! Although it turned out to be a slippery slope, that ParaPines fanfic, since now I’m sliding down it all “WHEEEEEEEEEE!” with no hope of every getting back up and out of it. And embrace the persona of being a nerd/dork/gook wholeheartedly (life is too short not to let yourself love what you love because of what anyone else—including yourself—might think).

Best “mistake” I ever made, deciding to write that fanfic!

(WARNING: A LITTLE NSFW AFTER THIS)

First Kiss and First Sex *sigh* These can both be conjoined, as they happened at the same event. The memories aren’t exactly pleasant for me (or rather, memories connected with him aren’t exactly pleasant for me now … they’ve all become rather melancholy), so I’m not going to dwell on or develop the answers overmuch. It was at a New Year’s Party, one that was jampacked with people and flooded with alcohol that people had brought with them to contribute to the festivities.

Now, I loved (love?) him, but I’ve never been under any illusions: he’s self-destructive, he’s damaged inside (more so than average people), and he’s an alcoholic as a result. That night, he imbibed freely and flitted about like a boisterous social butterfly. And I, true to my demeanor, drank only water or orange juice mixed with fresca. For the most part, I stuck to corners or quieter spaces or would linger out on the deck and watch the city in the distance (perhaps I would’ve spent the whole night out there, save that it was December-becoming-January and bitterly cold). Y’see, I’ve never much cared for parties; loud music, jumbled conversations in a raucous din, tight spaces filled with people, strangers everywhere I went … I’ve never cared for any of these. They overwhelm me and tire out my brain. But I would periodically go in search of him and check that everything was still okay, then force myself to try and socialize a little before seeking out a quieter spot again. As midnight approached, he came in search of me. He said he wanted me to be his New Year’s first kiss, and … and I had been pining for him for months at that point, dreaming of it—of my first kiss—being him, being the first person I had ever been *in love* with, saving my first kiss for him … Such a silly, romantic fool I was … so of course I acquiesced at once. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but … Gods above, he was clumsy and uncoordinated from being drunk and there was that sickly-sweet aftertaste of booze on his lips. Yet it was the best kiss of my life—a kiss that sorta ruined kissing for me, because no other kiss has ever made me feel like that one did …

Next thing I knew, he had led me down into the basement, which was a roiling cauldron of fog (from a machine) and colored dance lights and silhouettes of other guys moving slowly to the music. The room wasn’t big and there were plenty of other guys in it, yet it felt strangely private. The fog made it impossible to recognize anyone unless you were standing right next to him, plus there seemed to be an unspoken understanding on the part of all present (all except me, who felt lost and at a loss in an alien world, since I wasn’t completely out yet and all of this was new and confusing to me) that this space was one free from the gaze and the judgment of others. Every man was anonymous down there, in a way, even to those he knew. Even to himself, perhaps. Maybe that was why he had brought me down there. Like a spatial manifestation of drunkenness, that room was a haze of socially accepted deniability to those went in. Anything that happened down there was considered to stay down there and dissolve from memory and the real world when the fog did. Inhibitions didn’t have to exist, and neither did consequences or responsibilities. [Which is all utter bullshit, by the way. You are you; you are what you do and what you say, and neither alcohol nor anonymity absolve you of responsibility for what you do and what you say, for who you are. People like to tell themselves the fairytale that these things can change you, or that it’s not really you when under their influence … but, like all fairytales, that’s bullshit people tell themselves to feel better so they can try and skip out on owning up to their own mistakes. Gods, I *hate* alcohol sometimes.] Anyway, he made out with me for a while against one of the walls. I should’ve said “no”, I should’ve told him that he was drunk and this wasn’t what he really wanted, but … When I made some feeble attempts at protest, he just said, “Shhh …” and kept going. And I was too weak to insist after that, too desperate for something more than just hanging out with him to refuse … Some other guys joined us for a bit, and he initiated a circle jerk with them. But I was only interested in him, and I guess the others picked up on that because they soon left me and him as alone as one could be in that room. He stroked me for a while, then sucked me for a while, but wouldn’t let me return the favor for long because he was “too drunk to get it up” …

The next day and every day after that, we pretended that nothing had happened—never spoke of it—though when I hinted at it … it was clear that he did remember. Crystal clear. But he wanted it to be something that dissolved with the haze of the room and the alcohol, something that wasn’t and wouldn’t then or ever be remembered, something that would never exist in the real world.

Sadly, that wouldn’t be the last time I got my heart broken by him. People think I’m smart, but I sure do make some dumb mistakes sometimes … and I make them over and over again …

Thanks again for the asks! Hopefully that downer ending on that last one won’t deter anyone from sending in more asks, though. Don’t be shy, people! Send in anything and everything you want to know! I’d be more than happy to answer them (and especially now that I just finished making myself depressed), and find them quite the fun distraction!

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