Eric Scott Matthews

The Search for Intelligent Life Forms (for $700 a month)

So I have been looking for a new roommate ever since the Invisible Man decided to move out. The Invisible Man was great. He was around so little that none of my friends believed I even had a roommate. Always paid rent on time, etc. Sure there were moments of craziness like when he poured hot grease down the garbage disposal and clogged the drain leading to having my basement torn up and a new pipe cut and replaced, or recently when he left the windows wide open (three weekends in a row), you know in February in New England, instead of simply turning down the heat. But all in all he has been a good guy these last 2 years and I’m a little stressed in looking for a replacement.
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And one needs to go no further than Craigslist to realize that compared to some of them, The Invisible Man is a total prize.
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Somehow various female models and modeling agents seem to keep finding me, and they all want to “lock-in” a commitment without ever meeting me or seeing the apartment, because they are each moving to Boston from some exotic locale. When did Boston become the height of the American fashion industry?  Please, lets not tell Anna Wintour, we don’t need her here.
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Several of the guys answering an ad for a “gay-friendly” roommate wanted a picture of me. Um, no. One straight guy, during his interview at my place, after learning that I have a boyfriend, decided to tell me how he freaked out his gay college roommate by jumping on his bed and "cuddling" with him. I told him I am looking for a roommate who won’t be jumping on anything, especially my bed. (Sadly, this one was very cute too).
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So now it’s hitting March 1st already, and I’m beginning to think that a month or two on my own won’t be such a bad idea.
esm

So glad I didn’t bother

with the Oscars this year. I’m never a fan of the tedium and the self-congratulatory awards by people who are already overexposed. I had no interesting Dreamgirls; Little Miss Sunshine is good but overrated, and the only thing really interesting to was the inevitability of Al Gore actually winning something without a panel of judges swooping in and handing the prize to Jesus Camp or something (of course, it was technically, Davis Guggenheim who won).

Instead I had an incredibly dull weekend. I loved it. I wasted tons of time. Played games. Watched movies. I even napped.  It felt like a mini vacation without taking the actual time off. I have been way too stressed lately with the roommate search, work, and other little things. Sometimes it is great to just take off from the world and not even answer the phone.

Now it’s back to reality though.

esm

See-Line Red Line

I know it’s Presidents’ Day and I should be out snowboarding or at least recovering from Avalon, but instead I’m at work typing blog entry on my lunch hour. Maybe that’s why I am so bitter at the MBTA for shuttling us on busses all weekend (and today).  I can’t really blame the MBTA workers who need to corral direct the masses of confused, cold, and pissed off, but I also think they could be a little less like cattle ranchers and a little more like customer service reps. My half hour commute was an hour today, waiting in the cold, trudging through grey slush when the busses pulled up a block away from Broadway.
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This after working on a project till midnight instead of going out with the boys, and after STC woke me up at 3, drunker than he said he’d be and collapsed fully clothed and shoed in bed. I should be annoyed, but now that I’m writing about it I am amused. He is 21 and need to learn how to pace himself. So up I woke and off I went on my commute from hell.
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For some reason it wasn’t quite so bad the rest of the weekend. I even made it to the gym in record time because I decided to check out the one in Downtown Crossing instead of the gayed up South End gym.  Well the gym was great, if a little confused in its layout. But the real prize was actually the subway. For some reason the real freaks of Boston are not out and about at 3 AM; they are at Downtown Crossing on Saturday mornings.
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There was the hunched guy with the grey dreads hanging down to his/her knees. There was Mumble Woman and Silicone Girl. The usual tired, frozen faces doing the look-away. The man with the world’s largest beer gut in the world trying to tie his shoes without seeing them. And there was See-Line Woman Dressed in Red. Of course, none of her red actually matched. From her sweater to her nails to her shoes to her large lips to the freaky scarf, all off-shades of fire engine to mauve. Yeah, and that scarf thing. Nestled in her incredible cleavage was reddest stuffed animal I have ever seen. Some kind of marsupial with arms of a scarf that stretched around her neck in a warm hug.  More dreadlocks but harder, shorter and twisty under the faded orange-red winter hat. If only she had been on my commute this morning to entertain me while I was jostled and splashed on.

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Valentines Day: The Drama (sorta)

So Kathy Griffin was awesome. 98% new material, packed house at the Symphony. Makes me wonder if she can really hold on to that whole D-List title much longer. I won’t be shocked if she gets her own sitcom in the next few years.
It made for a fun if not so romantic Valentines evening, which was fine by me. Well fine until we sat down and two empty seats away drama followed.
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First of all Save the Cheerleader is a "friendly" guy. So in small town gay Boston—and the Kathy Griffin concert is about as gay as it gets— between the two of us we are bound to run into a gaggle of people either of us has been, um, “friendly” with. So, of course, one of the guys in the dynamic duo that sat near us was Matt, a guy STC has been friendly with in the past. I’m acquainted with Matt and I like him, but it’s always bugged me the way he calls my infamous ex “the most manipulative guy I know” with a kind of reverential tone of voice.

Valentines Day Snow Storm

I brought an extra pair of socks and txted my boyfriend to wish him a happy St. Valentine’s day on my way into the office. It was ghosty when I walked off the stair onto the floor and into my cube. The snow. Drivers are shoveling out or sliding all over the road. The T was less crowded than I expected. Many are sleeping in, is my guess. Those few here in the office are already complaining. It really isn’t that bad out.
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Tonight Save the Cheerleader (yes, he’s the new boyfriend) and I are going to see Kathy Griffin with a gaggle of friends, most of them dateless. Date or no date, we are all pretty stoked about it. For me though, finally, deciding to be exclusive with someone after putting that decision off for a month has me thinking about the odd way we classify ourselves into dating, married and single. About this holiday.

Every year I am baffled by Valentine's Day. It's a simple holiday, one of the few that still is: you celebrate love or even lust— it’s all good to Cupid. No family calls me for a month in advance to berate me, “when are you coming home for Valentine’s Day”. Sure, CVS is all red and candified, but they don’t play Valentine’s day songs on the radio in EVERY store like they do for Christmas reminding the lonely and the resentful at every turn. There is no parade nor endless Valentine’s day specials on TV. No special bird you are supposed to eat, or cooking for 30 people, or being alone in your condo cooking for yourself and your dog while most of the rest of the population is eating dinner with 30 people. Sure, a lot of people are coupled off, but in our society just as many aren’t.  It is not just you.
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The Twelve People in the World

Only in the gay world can one get jealous that the guy you are seeing has dinner plans with your ex, who happens to be his ex. And who exactly are you supposed to be jealous of in this knot of a scenario? The ex? The new guy?
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There are only 12 people in the world and all the rest are just smoke and mirrors.

Even in big cities a lot of gays live in the equivalent of a small town, or a maybe more apt metaphor is high school. And in cities where there is a gay ghetto— Chelsea, the South End, West Hollywood, DuPont Circle— it is even more evident. Like the kids from 90210, we all know each other’s drama and after a few semesters it seems as if we have all been passing around the same boys.

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I thought I had found a way to deal with this whole small town thing. But lately the crowded interconnectedness, the incestuous pairings, well it’s getting to me. Sure the drama of all of us compressed and mingling makes for great story: my last potential relationship was sabotaged by the guy’s two best friends who hate me for “breaking-up” with their other best friend two years ago (who the hell has three best friends anyway?); this recent tidbit with the new guy I call Save the Cheerleader who still sees the ex boyfriend we both dated; my friend Gucci-Prada's tendency to go after any guy I show the slightest interest in. It’s all hilarious to read about, but at the same time it is exhausting. And living it is actually a bit boring. Gucci has become predictable to the point of banality. The ex boyfriend I share with Save the Cheerleader can’t let any of his ex’s go. The gossip. The same stories.
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Then again, sometimes I think we all complain about this phenomenon while at the same time perpetuating it. We like the drama, because we want to feel closer to our classmates, experience that whole world of high school that many of us, closeted, didn’t experience.
So, what’s the point? I mean, the one good thing about high school drama is that eventually you graduate, or at least you age out of the system.
esm

Gucci-Prada and Blu

Apparently, April is national heterosexual gettin’ it on month, as there are a plethora of birthdays 38 weeks later. Everyone and their mom’s chest hair seems to have been born in February. MB One, the Lesbian at Work, Gucci-Prada. Even Martyrboy’s birthday was yesterday.

Happy birthday, Bitches.

So I have been busy with all kinds of birthday shenanigans that have caught me by surprise. Last Friday it was Gucci-Prada’s All-Star Trailer Trash Birthday Extravaganza, which they probably televised on Logo. The original plan was to go to Albany, but that was not trashy enough (and too far in the snow), so the gaggle of us settled on going to Blu in Worchester. We trekked through the dreadful 2 inches of snow in a caravan of minivans. Ok, seriously, it was like 2 inches, you pussies, I can’t believe some of you backed out.
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Martyrboy sends me a text message which reads, in its entirety, “no”. I decided I couldn’t be bothered with the negativity and the obvious call for attention. He, of course, calls me an hour later to give me give me some passive-aggressive whine about how I ignore him all week, even though I chat with him on-line everyday to the point of probably losing my dayjob any minute.
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“I can’t believe you didn’t even call to acknowledge my message.”