...righteous vengeance and furious anger!

As I'm sure the imaginary followers of my blog all know, I'm leaving for CFI On Campus 2008 Student Leadership Conference in Amherst, NY tomorrow. It's a conference for freethinking students on reducing the influence of religious zealots in academia and government.

I figured that after the conference - since I'm already States-side - I'd make the trip down to DC, where Sophie has just started a Congress internship with the House Representative from her home district. Also, I've never seen Washington, and I love going to new places.

I emailed the conference organizer, Debbie G, asking whether there were any attendees coming from around the DC area that I might be able to arrange to carpool with to Washington after the weekend. She put me in touch with Frank B, who is driving through Philadelphia - a mere couple hours' bus ride from the capitol.

The exchange with Frank over facebook started simply enough. Debbie had contacted him to ask whether he had room for a stowaway en route to Philly, and he messaged me:

Frank: "do you smoke?

would you be with us both ways or what?

can you do some of the driving?"

"I do smoke," I replied candidly, "but would have no problem restricting the whole 'cancer research' thing to when we're on pit stops."

I told Frank that I'd be happy to help with the driving, though I'd only be with him for the return trip. I let him know that I have plenty of highway experience, especially in the US, and that as long as his car was automatic-transmission, I could take shifts behind the wheel.

I figured that the rest would be a simple matter of hammering out the final details (the route we're taking, how much I should pitch for gas, how he wants to arrange the driving shifts...) at the conference this weekend. Then I got this curt reply:

"I'm sorry, but I can't spend 8 hours in a car with a smoker. if you were to get back into the car after a pit stop smelling like smoke that would make me angry to the point where I could not drive safely. You'll have to find some other means of transportation to DC. You may still want to coordinate with Barry G, he also smokes and therefor will not be traveling with me."
-Frank B.

As a matter of common courtesy, I never smoke in someone's car unless they explicitly say that it's okay. Even when someone else is in my car, I make sure that they're comfortable with me smoking before I light up. If they're just saying "yes" to be nice, I can usually tell, and I'll refrain from smoking anyway.

But this is fucking rediculous. It's one thing if he's allergic to tobacco, or if I weren't willing to smoke facing downwind, but this is beyond sanctimonious. I get the impression that it's not the smell of smoke ("if you were to get back into the car after a pit stop smelling like smoke") that riles him, but the sheer fact that I smoke at all (I can't spend 8 hours in a car with a smoker).

I'm now realizing that this is a man who would have spent 8 perfectly good hours wasting my precious oxygen. He's essentially saying that the merest hint of tobacco will throw him into an apoplectic fury, rendering him completely unfit to safely operate a vehicle. Whether out of some sub-rational impulse, or sanctimonious douchebaggery, he's essentially saying that if I were in the car, he'd probably wrap it around a tree.

If I take what he said at face value, then this kind of person should not be allowed to drive. What happens if he's driving along with the windows down and the scent of cigarette smoke wafts in from the sidewalk? Will he mow down the next pedestrian in indignant rage? Does this extend to smelly and polluting paper mills and refineries?

Don't get me wrong. Smoking is a stupid, dangerous, filthy habit, and I'm in the process of cutting down my intake before I make the final push of stopping all together this fall. I'm 20 years old, and far too young to waste my life and money smoking.

That doesn't change the fact that Frank B is an idiot.

Untitled (Until further notice)

It's been a while since I've taken a hit of the sweet catharsis that can only come from airing my most intimate thoughts into the ether of the blogosphere. I think I'll shelve the decorum for the best summation I can make of the few weeks since my last entry:

Jesus fucking christ.

I drove to Alabama with Nez, Bryan, and J-Dogg, skipping two nights of sleep on a 45-hour, 85 mile-per-hour nonstop meander through the United States.

I went to Ken Ham's Creation Museum in Kentucky.

My ballin' blue minivan (don't fucking say it) broke down in Mountain Brook, AL, two miles from our destination.

I fixed it and got back to Ottawa a week ago.

Then I drove to Toronto a few days later. Because I felt like it.

I met up with Tall Penguin for an in-person mea culpa (here) over the bookstore bible incident (here, here, and here).

I drove back to Ottawa, making it into the city just in time to start my new job at 7am. A ten-hour shift on zero sleep is a feat made possible only through the wonders of Adderall. The perscription is mine; deal with it.

But despite the sporadic foray into my favourite rubber-stamped prescription psychostimulant, the fact remains that I haven't actually gone to sleep since Wednesday evening. Before that, Monday night was the last time my head hit a pillow.

Understandably, I'm beyond the stage of delerium. I'll be making posts on my adventures in more detail when I'm somewhere close to lucid. Until then, here's a rough sketch of the weeks to come:

Heading down to Amherst, NY for the Center for Inquiry's CFI On Campus 2008 Student Leadership Conference, an apparent coming-together of young collegiate agnostics, atheists, and freethinkers from Canada and the USA.

After that, I'll likely be heading down to Washington, DC. Sophie's there on an internship with the U.S. Congress, and I've rallied a loose fellowship of fraternity brothers for a pilgrimage to the chapter at George Washington University.

That's all for now. I need a shower badly; I smell like sex and Marlboros, dish soap, cheesecake, and the unmistakable aroma of chopped liver. Don't ask.

Sweet Home Alabama: T minus 13 hours and counting...

Short post:

Ever skip a night's sleep, just to find yourself too wired to get any rest the next evening? Counterintuitive as it seems, the last time I went to sleep was about 48 hours ago, and I don't feel tired.

I wish I did. Tomorrow's going to be a hell of a day.

I'm leaving Ottawa in a few short hours with Bryan and Kyle, en route to Nez's kidnapping in Ohio, and onward to see Sophie in Alabama. Between Ottawa and Toronto, I'll also be picking up a few drifters. Two housemates I found on craigslist's rideshare, one Carleton grad from PickupPal, and my friend Rachel from a small town in the middle of nowhere (because nothing beats five straight hours of unmitigated sexual tension.)

And I've barely begun to pack.

Nonetheless, it's been a hectic 48 hours; spent, for the most part, convincing and re-convincing my friends to commit to the odyssey, and persuading their parents to support their self-actualization with cold, hard gas money.

But through bouts of vacillation, flared tempers, doubt and uncertainty, this show is finally getting on the road. In 36 hours' time. I'll be in Birmingham.

Sweet Home Alabama: There's a road trip a'brewing

Two and a half weeks.

If I could pick one thing I want to do most, it would be to see my girlfriend Sophie. She's two thousand kilometers away, and I haven't seen her since March. If I could pick two things I want to do most, it would be to see my girlfriend Sophie and go on an epic road trip.

The solution is long overdue: I'm going to Alabama to see her. I've seen her in Toronto, Boston, and Ottawa, but in the four-plus years I've known her, I've never been to her home in Birmingham, Alabama.

The idea sort of came out of nowhere. I brought it up half-seriously with my friends, with zero expectation of anything actually coming to fruition. But both my housemates, Bryan and Ross, are up for the journey.

We're driving 1250 miles. Each way. Nonstop.

Excuse the cliche, but if you looked up "epic" in the dictionary, you would find this picture:


View Larger Map

Google Maps was, of course my first stop. My sweet set of wheels (a 1998 Ford Windstar) gets anywhere between 10 and 16 L per 100km, so the cost - for the entire trip - should amount to between 400 and 650 liters of gasoline. For you non-metric savages, that's about 100-175 gallons. You do the math.

Now, the farthest road trip I've ever done was the 600-mile trip from Toronto to Boston last February, made for the exact same reason. Not only that, but I've never once been to the South. Despite my Sophie's assurances of running water, full electricity, and the rule of law, the only impression I've ever actually had of the South comes from the movie Deliverance. But I love going anywhere new, so I scrutinize Google's route to see where I'll be going, and what I'm going to see along the way. And I had a second pleasant surprise.

The road trip gods (Google's code-monkeys) saw fit to plan our route within 15 miles of Dayton, Ohio, where one of my best friends from my high school days in Toronto, Sam, is now going to university. I promptly called him up to inform him that he would be kidnapped en route to Birmingham. He chose to do things the easy way, and decided to join us for the ride.

For the record, Sam and I should never be allowed in the same car together for more than 20 minutes at a time. When in the same room, we become two of the most immature people I can imagine. And neither of us can back down from a dare. The conversation went roughly like this:

Sam: Remember that time you went to the 7/11 in your underwear to buy cigarettes? Get ready to be overshadowed.

PR: You don't have the balls.

Sam: Yeah? Well a night's bar tab says that I do, and some lucky gas station is going to see them in all their glory.

PR: Yeah, and which state are you going to be pulling this stunt?

Sam: Hell if I know. Any state between Dayton and Birmingham. You can't rush art.

PR: I can top that. How about every state between Dayton and Birmingham?

Sam: You don't have the balls.

PR: Try me.

Sam: Alright. We streak at least once in every state.

PR: You do realize that we're talking about Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama, right?

Sam: Fully aware.

PR: You're on, bitch.

I'm paraphrasing, but that was the spirit of the conversation.

So two Arabs, a Jew, and a blind guy drive into Alabama....

This can't possibly end well.

On Open Relationships

To start, I'm in an open relationship. If you're in the intimate cadre of my 566 closest friends, you can see this on my Facebook profile. While most people tend not to bring up the details uncovered by their 3am Facebook-creeping adventures, those few who have brought up my less-than-traditional set-up have been mostly been guys, and the question often came with a twinge of envy.

The mythical "Open Relationship" seems, to most men my age, to combine the best of all worlds: the opportunity for intimacy with someone special, the opportunity to seek sexual gratification from other sources, and the opportunity to decide for yourself how best to strike that balance.

Let me tell you: it's not all it's cracked up to be.

And no, it's not because of jealousy. While we keep the details to ourselves, my girlfriend and I hide nothing from one another. She is, completely and unequivocally, my best friend. Sophie and I were friends long before we became involved, and I began the relationship on the sole condition that it could not, under any circumstances, come at the expense of our friendship.

If jealousy were to become an issue, I should expect it to be more from her side. While our relationship is explicitly open, Sophie does not sleep around. The same is not true for me; and while this is all kosher with Sophie, every time I have sex with another woman, it still feels like cheating.

It's not like I have any moral qualms about sex. As long as it's safe, and nobody is taken advantage of, I think it's a beautiful thing. There's a broad spectrum between the gratuitous fuck and the world-changing feeling of making love. If you're just counting sex, I've had my share. My fraternity's chapter saw fit to vote me the Most Promiscuous Brother of '07/'08, mostly owing to one high-profile (within fraternity circles, that is) threesome last February. I've slept with a few girls, yes.

I've only ever made love to one.

It's a term that sounds so trite until you experience it yourself. The feeling of caring more than about your own sexual pleasure, or even someone else's, but instead about letting down all of your defenses and giving yourself completely to another person. And when it's done, holding each other close and telling all of your secrets without saying a word. My MO with girls has always been "nice guys don't get laid." Sophie is the only person with whom I've ever let myself just be... myself.

I've seen her three times.

Enter the "distance factor," stage left. She lives in Alabama. Goes to school in Boston. After meeting in Toronto over four years ago, we kept in touch over MSN and near-daily phone conversations. The friendship began to take on more intimate overtones a year or two ago, and every once in a while, we would make plans to visit one another, only to see those plans fall through. We would always put the romantic aspect of our friendship on hold whenever one of us was in a relationship with someone back home.

But she was privy to the triumphs and anxieties, the trials and tribulations of every romantic involvement I ever had. We saw one another through more then our fair share of respective first-date jitters, and break-up train wrecks. But there came a point last February when it dawned on me who it was that I wanted to be with.

When reading week started (reading week is the Canadian version of March Break, only - you know - in February), I packed up my bags and set off with my best friend on the long overnight drive to Boston.

Before making the trip, I had ended a no-strings-attached thing I had with a friend I'd been having sex with back home, just in case things got serious with Sophie.

I was only there for one night, but it was easily the best night of my life. She seemed to want - for some unbelievable reason - for her first time to be with me. That may not count for much to some people, but that was a lot of pressure for me. I mean, I'd been the first for a girl before, but never with someone I really, truly cared about. And yet, it was a first for me too. I made love for the first time, and got hooked.

The next month, she came up to Ottawa for a week for her March break. It stands out as probably the best week I ever had. I skipped all of my classes - studious guy that I am - and practically barricaded myself in the room with her. We only had the week together, and we were going to make the most of it. My roommate hated me.

When the week was over, it was unclear when we would see each other again. I don't know how we came to it, but we made the decision that an open relationship was best for us, because we had so little opportunity to be together.

Yet sex had made its inevitable impact on us. Where once we would tell each other everything, I found myself opening up to her less. Despite the open status of our relationship, every time I slept with another woman, it felt, on an intuitive level, like a betrayal not only of her, but of myself.

So I began to spare her the details. Where once I would tell her everything that was going on in my life, now it felt wierd. How could I tell her what another woman was doing with me, while the distance that separated us kept her from doing the same?

Fast forward to two weeks ago.

I had sex with Rachel. She is a close friend of mine, and goes to the same university as me. It wasn't quite planned: it just sort of happened. She's spending the summer in Toronto, and I was there for the weekend. We met up for drinks, and one thing led to another, which led to my place. And now things are a mess.

Because even though it wasn't the same as what I have with Sophie, it was, inexorably, more than just a fuck. And striking that balance between intimacy and sex in my relationship with Sophie became a lot more complicated. Even though I'm not in love with Rachel, the sex was intimate. Having "just sex" with someone hadn't really caused any problems with respect to the open relationship. But what do I do when it's not just sex?

Rachel is coming up to Ottawa for the weekend to see me. She knows about my relationship with Sophie, and she surely understands that nothing serious will happen between the two of us. But I'm worried about whether or not I can keep this from getting unmanageably wierd. Rachel's my friend, and I don't want her to feel rejected. But I love Sophie, and need to find a way to make sure not to become romantically intimate with someone else.

That would be something that she could not forgive.



For all you guys who wish you were in my shoes, and love the idea of being able to fuck whoever you want while still being in a relationship, let me pitch in my two cents: be careful what you wish for. It might just come true.

Cooties

I actually kind of like this one, but it brushes on a bit of a serious topic. Cootie prevention and sex education.

Luckily for me, I grew up in sensibly secular Canada. Sex education was a mandatory part of Physical Education, which, in the province of Ontario, is a required credit for a high school diploma. Phys Ed was a ninth-grade course, so at the tender age of 14, high school freshmen learn a few things about sex.

The basic mechanics of it were fairly straightforward. By the time we entered high school, most kids my age already knew a fair bit about sex. There were probably a few in the class who were sexually active, but at that age, I would call it a fair bet that most of my classmates were probably sitting firmly at third base, if that.

Still, there was useful information to glean from Sex Ed. We got to see nasty pictures of terrifying diseases. We learned how all the parts work (not that I can honestly still remember what my vas deferens does, but no matter). Most importantly though, we learned about contraception and disease prevention. Abstinence was taught as one of the methods to protect yourself, but it was never implied that taking that route was morally superior. Trained volunteers even demonstrated how to roll a condom onto erotic vegetables.

Did I come out of that class behaving any differently than I had before? Not really. It was still another year or two before I finally got laid. But I did come out with a sense of normalcy about it.

Fast forward one year.

My Jewish youth group (hey, I wasn't born an atheist) had held that year's International Convention in Toronto. Of course, being a hormone-addled 15-year-old, I spent the entire time chatting up every single nice Jewish girl and her chest.

One girl that I had really started to fall for was this stunning blonde cheerleader from Alabama. She's actually one of the smartest people that I've met, but I didn't really know that at the time. Her name wasn't actually Sophie, but since there's a good chance that she'll feature in some more personal stories, she's going to have to remain Sophie as far as you people are concerned.

After she convinced me that she wasn't joking, there actually are Jewish people in Alabama, we actually started to hit it off. While I never worked up the courage to make a move while she was in Toronto, I did get her email address.

We kept in touch after she went home, talking on MSN nearly every night. It was only a matter of time before a conversation turned to sex. Funny how that happens when you're 15 and thinking about it constantly, eh? When I told her about my school's Sex Education sub-course the previous year, she was absolutely floored.

"Your teacher actually advocated condom use? If that happened here, they'd be fired so fast!"

I was stunned. To me, Abstinence-only sex education was something you read about, a policy that mythical fundamentalists in a far-off land taught their spawn. Yet while my classmates were learning how to play safe when the clothes came off, her classmates were instead taking a class-wide abstinence pledge.

She was as appalled as I was. She could barely believe that we Canadians, who I had always considered to be a fairly middle-of-the-pack bunch, were amazing enough to adopt such a progressive policy as teaching young adults how to safely do something that they're going to do anyway.


I was going to try and conclude with something profound and thought-provoking, but it's past 5:30am, and I'm fucking tired. Just roll that around in your head for a minute. Having your education determined by religious doctrine isn't something that happens to someone else. It happened to Sophie.




Update: Hours after writing this, I find this article in the Schenectady Gazette, via Salon.com. Turns out, there's a classroom's worth of parents who are outraged by the way their grade 7/8 snowflakes are being taught Sex Ed. They're mobilizing the suburban mommy militia, and taking torch and pitchfork to the school district administration.

The crime? While teaching students the facts about sex, the curriculum actually acknowledged the fact that we have body parts that can give pleasurable feelings. Masturbation was even mentioned!

When will school administrators realize? If we don't tell them that it can feel good, they're not going to find out! It's that simple. A doctor said so:

Dr. Michael Rochet, a physician, said the school district should search for alternatives for Planned Parenthood programming because he believes the instruction will facilitate curiosity among students. [emphasis mine]

“It will lead to more sexual activity,” he said.

Rochet said he wants parents and educators to get together and work on a program for the coming school year that can be molded to the community’s needs, as opposed to taking on programming of an organization that’s already developed.

“We don’t have to follow everybody else. Let’s lead the pack,” Rochet said.

In an effort to ensure parents would have a say in their children’s participation, the district issued forms so that parents could decide to have their children excluded from the instruction.

Here's why they should not have this option: their children will have sex. If not now - they are in middle school - then in a few years. It's a fact. Especially in Montgomery County, where the teen birth rate is the second-highest of any in New York state.

Teen birth is a greater policy issue, but it's not the reason the course should be obligatory. Disease is. If teens have a baby, their life is ruined. If someone passes on a sexually-transmitted disease, it has endangered the health and well-being of everyone within six degrees of sexual separation. For the same reason that schools can mandate vaccinations against Polio and Co,
it has a duty to mandate Sex Ed as an innoculation against stupidity. A student with Polio would be a danger to the school at large; so too, the student who might be imbued with the wond'rous gift of herpes.

Teach them when they're young, so when they start, they won't be idiots.