8/20 accomplished nothing yesterday. today was my second day at the internship, where i met my final boss, the miniboss (LOVED her), and my third and fourth layers of management. All of my coworkers are lesbians, cementing the fact that i am truly in my #lesbianera

our hospital gets some of the most challenging and nightmare-inducing cases in the world. there are cases of locked-in syndrome, for instance. i'm electing to be careful about how much i say that may be identifying. pretty messed up! however they essentially confirmed that they would hire me after graduating, which is the assurance i need to do great work.

my co-intern, also a lesbian, is one of the better youth i've met of late. i asked her about her hobbies and she shared that she was extremely into jigsaw puzzles. i don't get the impression that she has really discovered herself yet, but that she's working off of a solid foundation.

8/18 attended orientation at the hospital internship. the building is designed like a fortress in the sky - everything looks expensive. the organization employs more people than the number of students at my alma mater. everything felt serious except the new hires they were onboarding.

met my co-intern E who seems intelligent and witty. another lesbian, which rocks because i am in my lesbian era. grateful that she informed me that we do not, in fact, have class tomorrow. supervisors briefly came by and introduced themselves.

exciting start! boring day.

8/17 our lovely older lesbian neighbors gave us free tickets to see the indigo girls and melissa etheridge tonight. wow! melissa is truly just dad rock (hence her popularity) but the indigo girls hold that middle space of trying to invent and reinvent themselves to maintain relevancy. some middle space between the decemberists, fleet foxes, pearl jam, and the red hot chili peppers... but with a lesbian twist! don't get it twisted - i AM an indigo girl now.

tomorrow i go into my first day of internship at the hospital. trying to assemble an outfit. i will not lie - i am banking on the fact that being on my feet all day will lead to a convenient weight loss journey that will help me reclaim some of my wardrobe. this is compounded by my nipple piercing that makes, in my husband's words, my "hardware show" through some of my more antique clothing items (i.e. things i wore in 2018)

spent my last few days of summer break being a gamer girlie. forza horizon 5 is so fascinating to me, because it feels like the death knell of festival EDM culture. like, even before covid, we saw it taking its final breaths in a hospice setting. the game keeps emphasizing how much fun everyone is having while repping various Microsoft products. i think games like this will be really interesting 100 years from now.

8/14 met up with L after dinner and went to the martini bar. we began talking about her current boyfriend and were looking up his criminal records to determine why he doesn't have custody over his child. our conversation then turned to her drug use. she hasn't used uppers in over six months (a feat she accomplished entirely. on her own, but says that she continues to feel addiction and doesn't feel that she can disclose this to her therapist, whom she finds judgmental. i advised experimenting with a NA group in the city, finding a better therapist (there were other reasons), and being direct with her boyfriend. she's truly an amazing person and for all of her goofy party girl antics, i deeply admire her intelligence, wit, determination, and most of all her willingness to just dive into chaos (a trait I also share)

naturally a bit hung over from this - woke up at 6 am with spiralling thoughts. when i wake up in the middle of the night i sometimes will become consumed by specific personal issues in my life: here, it was the thought that my younger brother, now 20, still doesn't know that he's adopted. i did a great deal of research into late discovery adoptees, and determined that given his age category and bolstered support network, now may actually be the best time to bring this up, even though it should have been tackled before 3. it's extremely risky in some sense, but morally i believe he deserves the truth, biologically he should be aware of any pre-existing health conditions in his genes, and personally i'm sick of living a lie i have never believed in. i'm going to start rough-drafting a letter to my stepmother and father tonight, i think.

8/12 keep losing my mind at some of the insights in the book about gay men. "that hard-won sense of identity, which in turn built on a sense of autonomy, must be partially relinquished to produce a sense of intimacy. to connect intimately with another, we must surrender a part of ourselves."

this book is making me more empathetic to all of the shitty queer people i've had to deal with in my twenties lmao. i like the author's theory of why gays suck at sports and are better at everything else.

its always been somewhat puzzling to me that of all of my inner circle, i'm the one that got married. i don't mean that as a brag - more just a curiosity, given that i'm the child of divorce, the death of a parent, and gay. maybe i was just looking for something more specific and knew what i wanted? luck played a heavy role as well - i've seen the apps

8/11 feeling more acute anticipation about starting my internship at the hospital next week. i need to schedule a hair appt. finished the first section of gravity's rainbow. it's wild to me how much DFW aped pynchon's style - it makes me like IJ less, even though i found that book more entertaining. so far, gravity's rainbow is fine? there were one or two obliquely challenging sections that were lost on me.

walking down the street today to the grocery store, i got homophobiaed by an old man who seemed unwell (didn't stay around to pick his brain and find out.) he was just yelling at me and following me, and was too slow to catch up. its not a big deal since it isn't the first time, but jarring nonetheless - perhaps moreso because i was listening to odet's chapter on men being unable to introspect and process their inner lives. learned a great new word: "sport sex" - or sex for the pursuit of the physical activity rather than any sort of emotional cathexis.

truthfully, as a city boy i often forget that i am technically marginalized. then i think of all of the incidents that have accumulated over the years. it's never enough to really complain about, but i received many kind messages from straight and queer women, who have undoubtedly experienced adverse comments from men themselves.

storm tonight - sound of lightning scared the shit out of me. our toxic midwest trait is sitting on our deck to watch every storm that passes through. we were joking that my nipple piercings would start sparking before lightning struck me like in zelda (my husband is playing it again on the switch). they're much perkier than they were before. i'm officially in the "hard to stop playing with them" phase of my piercing recovery lol

8/10 one year since my husband and i got married today. we've been together for eight years, so it doesn't seem particularly novel, but we ate at a nice italian restaurant after going to the gay street festival this afternoon. took two photos i was especially proud of that capture my ideas of a good street photo. feng li is rubbing off on me - the way he embraces the dutch angle rather than thinking of it as a cliche.

at market days, i stumbled upon the only good thing there: an old gay photographer selling photos he has taken over the past 35 years named james klekowski. he gave me a great deal on his photos because he liked my shirt. while he has published three photobooks of chicago photography, all of his works here were erotic gay photography. it was immediately apparent that his work was above and beyond what the other vendors were selling (the guy who does gay disney erotica was back again - really now, how many more images do we need of aladdin getting fisted by hercules?) one of the things that makes photography special for me is that every photo is locked into the time and place it was taken during. fashions fade, but the emotions captured are timeless.

i bought the following photos: 1) a young, shirtless man wearing a cowboy hat and a lasso stands in the center with direct sunlight. to his right, a man his age with a white untucked button down is slightly covered by his shadow, draping his right arm over his shoulder with his left hand in his pocket. to his left, an older man stands in the shadows with his hand on the center man's cowboy hat. his shirt is tucked - he is in control. 2) cloudy day - diffuse lighting. central to the image is a shirtless man wearing a cowboy hat on a white horse. to his left, a shirtless man in the distance rides perpendicular to his position. 3) a leg bent in a pyramidal shape. three rows of pearled necklaces contrast against his black skin. it doesn't evoke candy corn, but the distance between each beaded row is proportionately that distance. 4) interior photo: a framed image of a mosquito against a grey wall. below it, a yellow couch with no armrests, and a dark wooden coffee table in front of it. on the couch: an exposed ass and legs, cut off by the right side of the frame.

there were many more photos to choose from, although the larger ones were less reasonably priced. as a collector of gay erotica, it felt important to keep these time-stamped images from the late 90s and early 00s. this was what was desirable at that time. klekowski's photos are, frankly, much more interesting than the collection i thrifted by sherwin carlquist.

my husband asked me what i plan to do with my last week of summer. i told them i either get to read five small books or one big book. is it time for gravity's rainbow? feeling like roxas. 

8/9 this morning our friend L drove us down for springfield to attend the state fair. i submitted a photo this year to the art department, and was slightly disappointed to discover that it didn't place. i was more disappointed by the competition that one. an honorable mention was pixelated, and several of the winning photos fell into the category of "ooh pretty!" the more interesting photos, those that i felt were better than my own or had psychological depth, were not. so at least i am in good company. since i learned that the person who won one of the categories is technically a professional photographer and cheated by entering, i will be entering additional submissions next year under the pen name of my husband - ideally of vapid subject matter like christmas or pet photography. i play to win.

i love my husband's family, and i'm so grateful to have positive relationships with them. tommy reminds me that they are my family too, which given my complex mosaic of a broken family is an unfathomably kind thing to hear. other things at the state fair: saw the butter cow, had delicious milk (proud member of the dairy fandom!), went down the big yellow slide, tried copi for the first time.

in total, spent about 7 hours in the car today. thankfully, L is a gifted conversationalist, and i love asking spicy questions. we discussed her ancestry dot com results regarding her bigamist grandfather, her surprise marriage happening in two weeks and her expectations in becoming a stepmother (i've always said that being a stepmother is the hardest job in the world), her fiancee's presumed autism, her recommendations for musical theater (dipping my toe in while hating it - she said grow up and give in to sondheim, but more to my interests, recommends the operas of benjamin britten), and conflict within her greater friend group. tommy chatted about life downstate and the dramas of various cities we passed in the car. i discussed the time we met celebrity magician david copperfield, my time in sales, the flipped car on the side of the road, "divorce kid energy", observations from being in grad school for therapy, and the sexually charged encounter i had at the beach yesterday.

re: james, i saw your message. i don't want to ever discount the liberatory aspects of sexually charged queer encounters, because its there, its true, and its fun. there was a time that i was there, and i mostly loved every second. i just find the queer alternative for people like me (board game night) utterly harrowing...

(i despise board games with a sole exception: backgammon, the ultimate game of chance and strategy. i read once that if aliens from another planet ever played a board game, it would be go. i agree... if they are fucking nerds!)

8/8 this afternoon i finished reading sunjata. after, i was invited to go to the gay beach by my friend AJ. market days is happening this weekend, which is one of three gay events that occurs each summer. many of the people visiting the beach were from out of town, exhibiting the latest speedos purchased online. i think that instagram has recently introduced a feature censoring underwear ads, making the "look of the summer" even more challenging to discern. i think it is blue and white stripes, as i saw at least 6 examples.

in walter odet's psychological examination of gay men, he acknowledges two competing definitions of homosexuality. the heterosexual version chalks up encounters as purely a physical engagement - men fucking men. on the surface, his alternative seems nearly inconsequential - men attracted to men. a study from the university of indiana illustrates this distinction: how heterosexuals are theoretically in favor of thingns like gay marriage provided that they don't have to see men holding hands together. in a different mode of thinking, odet explains how attraction is a mode of cathexis. when people fall in love, they are cathecting. there is an emotional component that is often overlooked in favor of the sexual component.

i thought about this extensively when aj's shitty friends arrived on the beach. let me be fair: i'm not a fan, and for all of the reasons i say i should be a fan. i talk a big game about how people need to be fucking again. in that environment, however, the libidinal energy is aggressive in a way that, i feel, stunts any sense of community.

i'll talk with anyone. i love to gab. i was chatting with a man in his mid-40s - he was in africa during 9/11, while i had a concussion rendering the event obsolete in my memory; he told me that he hated taylor swift, while i mentioned that i hated lizzo (just her music though - i'll let you search "lizzo cancelled" and make you own judgments!) these things are inconsequential. what startled me is how his body language shifted from social mode to fuck mode. 

flattering, in some ways, but unnerving to me. i find it easy to socialize and challenging to make friends. i've always felt that the gay community struggles in the way that odet mentions - one of transaction over socialization. why can't we just chat casually? all i wanted to say was how folklore is taylor swift's only meaningful album, or how i saw lizzo in concert before she was cool and thought her only redeeming quality was that she was a flautist? instead, here you are, sidling up to me after confiding about the many speedos you have purchased in anticipation of your 11-day luxury cruise?

i say this all in three directions. 1: he did nothing incorrectly. i'm glad to know that i still have some semblance of game on this doomed planet, and that he had interest. 2: it is deeply sad to me that i cannot have conversations with other gay men without it being part of some broader sexual agenda. i am married, monogamous, and could not be happier in that frontier - why must this occurrence be coupled with relations with others that are all or nothing? i also fear that people are moving away from brash sexuality and continue to see value in it 3: i yearn for a sense of queer community, and spent years trying to create one in a collegiate environment. covid probably killed that. for whatever time it existed after it graduated, i imagine each moment a partial success. but why can't sexuality and amicability coexist?  sex is great - friendship is better - they can both exist as a venn diagram, unified and separate. does that have to be impossible?!

ultimately i worry i'm the problem. i loved being a slut. i love being committed far more. i am lonely now, and crave community. i won't give up what i have for what is common. i wish there was an easier way to connect!

8/7 hung out with R for the afternoon. she was in a sour mood, but lightened up when we got to talking. living in the world is hard, and i recognize the strength of my own support network. an unfortunate truth is that going to school to become a therapist has made me a much more thoughtful friend. after describing how she had to get furniture for her new place, we made the executive decision to leave the lakefront and run over to the thrift store i used to work at to check out some options.

as a good karma token, i chanced upon a copy of donald barthelme's forty stories for a buck while we were there. not rare, but a huge find nonetheless! also got a copy of anne sexton's poems. we walked through andersonville for a while, browsing stores at random. i purchased a tea cup in a striking green and yellow tea cup - one of a set of five representing sensory experiences (mine was "sound", it's very pomo-inflected 90s taco bell aesthetic). 

i get a lot from all of my friendships, as they teach me so much about lives i don't lead. i'm listening to an audiobook by walter odets called "out of the shadows: reimagining gay men's lives" and in the introduction he mentions that cis women were especially gravitated towards it due to shared struggles. i can see this, or perhaps more accurately, i can see how these struggles rhyme, but there are many distinctions. from my cis women friends i have learned so much about the burdens of bra shopping, how horrible the apps are, the desires and doubts of motherhood. i think that marginalization in the workplace is comparable, although the experience is different - alliances here have been useful for our mutual gain.

although i identify as non-binary, i try to be realistic and honest about the fact that i pass as a cis man and gain all of the benefits included. to pretend otherwise is ridiculous - passing affords power, and in many contexts that power is something i can use to benefit goals that are meaningful to me. i choose to view my gender as an intellectual distinction rather than one that affords me some sort of social token. in this way, i can ensure that my identity does not serve as some distraction from far more serious affronts, especially those in the workplace. in the past, i have described my gender as a featureless, colorless sphere, but i think it is more akin to bugs bunny: boyish at best, unaffixed to a single territory, and situational. everything that i have ever done in the name of masculinity has been destructive, and i didn't even see it at the time. my current strategy is not to deny that, but to acknowledge it, understand it, and leverage it. my reading of judith butler's incomprehensibly academic "gender trouble" is that gender is imposed upon us against our will - although much thought has since gone into the liberatory aspects that it can afford, i think that her initial thesis bears weight. the social construction is a prison, and i don't think any one person has the keys. if this is the case, the least i can do is steal company time at the metaphorical prison i pretend to work at.

went to our favorite martini bar tonight to celebrate finishing my summer classes. a woman bought us a round of drinks - second time in a week. again, my mind turns to the cis woman projection onto cis gay men. the ladies at the spa at our resort were so friendly to us on our honeymoon, writing "love wins" on chocolates they awarded to us on our last day. these small kindnesses are piling up. this wasn't happening a year ago, and i wonder what it means. perhaps "allyship" is finally concretizing as a concept.

hoping to start reading my copy of "the book of the dead" tonight or tomorrow

8/6 rick owens opening an onlyfans where he sells videos of his feet while monologuing on the history of foot photography to raise funds for a trans youth shelter is having me rethink my relationship to his fashion. the fact that he has the words "SO CUNT" tattooed on his feet adds to the mystery, and reminds me that I have "OK" tattooed on my own foot.

8/5 went to wnba game tonight - tickets cost almost nothing. unusual for a sports team in that all of the players were hot and sounded intelligent when they spoke on the jumbotron. the last cubs game i was at i watched one of the teammates incorrectly identify the location of san francisco as being in oregon. what?! i also picked up an extremely cursed piece of swag - a blue foam finger with DCFS printed on it. i guess they were sponsoring the event? with this new acquisition, i've decided i'm going as "social work" for halloween this year - looking to purchase a cardigan

8/4 - mostly spent the day writing my final term paper. i'm in grad school to become a therapist because i hated marketing and ai was coming for my job anyways. now all of my old coworkers are scared or unemployed. really scary times all around! my term paper was about how i plan to employ therapy and what i see as my "therapeutic process" - maybe i'll copy paste it here after its graded.

6 minutes until class - my last of the summer. mixed feelings about it. it was purely online and i did not enjoy that aspect. one of my classmates was blatantly using ai to complete assignments and she was a CATHOLIC NUN. isn't that like... bearing false witness or whatever?

added a creative essay i wrote in grad school (better than i remember it, but like everything i write could use editing) and did some creative writing about some of the gay bars i've been to. it's too late for me to ever go to the hole in chicago now - i don't own enough leather to enter anyways.

for the time being, i'm making the executive decision that it is okay for me to use my first and last name here. i may have to change that later - but i sense you'd have to use some pretty deep boolean searches to find me here. if i'm running to be chicago's mayor in the future and you find me here - hi! you're probably thinking "man, this pete's a freak!" and you'd be right. i lived a full life, and cared a lot about things. some of my opinions were wrong, and i wasn't afraid of them when i wrote them, but i am probably starting to regret them now! but hey, at least i'm not lori lightfoot right?

8/1 last night I had an idea for a hyperlink-based game based on weed-induced stories liam and i used to tell each other in college. waiting on the site dev to approve my new account - i've written out a healthy chunk of the script already and designed a few ideas for puzzles. as the site evolves, the structure of the game may change with it.

got bored of this activity and dug up some poetry i wrote a couple of years ago, posted under a new subtopic. it's funny because the poems i thought i loved the most were the roughest, and the poems i thought were the roughest did the most. completely forgot about one of them which was my favorite of the whole lot.

i'm not sure that i'm going to try finding them a home, but distance gave me room to learn a few things from them: 1) sometimes i reach too hard in a poem to try and procure an impact or meaning. ambiguity can be even more powerful. my favorite line in my poem about the last interesting time i did acid was when i was like "i would like to speak to the manager of the triad. your product is horrible." i think the humor works here because the poem is so caught up in the inconsistencies in perception and makes a half-hearted stab at trying to assign blame to it. 2) too adventurous with metaphors. my revision of the poem i got published was far less effective than the original, and i'm so glad i submitted the wrong file when i did that so the original made it to print. plain statements work for me, and while my poetic metaphors can have beauty, i often find that they cause greater strain on me reading them in retrospect. emphasize mystery over metaphor.

when i was a marketing content creator, my boss, also named pete, used to ding me for emphasizing fear, uncertainty, and doubt all of the time. i don't think that i was ever wrong for doing so from an intellectual perspective, but from a consumer perspective i think he was correct. now that i am decoupling myself from the marketing world, i can start writing in a way that brings me joy again. in doing so, i think i can become a better writer.

7/31 - read introduction to lu xun's complete fiction. it's amazing that humankind keeps inventing new versions of friedrich nietzsche. it's like how evolutionary biology keeps turning non-crab animals into crabs. weather is nice and i want to go outside but i'm worried about getting sand into my nipple piercing at the gay beach. maybe i'll get nipple pasties. the gays are yearning for a new form of eroticism, what with wearing their outmoded brat green thongs from last year. passe. pasties in 2025 are about what you can't have - lightly swollen nipples.

7/30 - james told me to get a flounder. here i am. downloaded all resident advisor album recs for 2025 - highlight: romance in the age of adaptive feedback by unspecified enemies. finished tripas by brandon som (cool concept, not a fan of list centric poetry) & a brief history of the midwest by andrew grace (depressing, amazingly good nested poem on addiction). will add more to my site tomorrow