The good, the sad and the weird

Hey.
I can’t believe this is finally posting!!!!!!!
Yay!!!! My computer + word + OD = not a good match. I have to so this fast, while it works…
It’s the entry about the last leg of the trip. Which was how long ago? A month? More? Ack.
Things have been soooooo busy lately. I’m working 9-21 almost every day and i’m really sick of it. And I don’t seem to be making that muh progress, which just makes it worse.
And in addition to that there’s the preperation for the wedding. What a roler-coaster. It’s fun but everything is soooooo expensive! Which makes it stressful. I feel like we’re doing every single thing wrong…
Anyway. Here is the old update. Have to get it out of the way to make room for something new.

After the press conference and the picture, we flew back to New York for a semi-free New York day. We landed in the evening and Gail from OD came to pick me up from the airport. I was dead tired but it was still very fun. It’s the first time I met someone from Od for a second time, so it was less like an internet date and more like catching up with an old, old friend – where you are the only one validating for the other one that the world you both shared really exists. She updated me on all kinds of OD gossip that i seem to have missed. Turns ut there’s a whole "popular" crowd on OD. I really know no one from there. It’s weird how if you’re in a room with people you’ll know who’s popular and how close you are to them but in OD there can be other groups and other circles and everyone is sure that their circle is what’s really going on at OD, you know? And really there are other circles just as active? There’s no town square at OD where everyone meets. There used to be editor’s choice. What happened to that. I liked it… It made people from OD tiny celebs. So anyway, the evening was very fun! Gail took me to a great pub-restraunt in NY – she was right when she tought i’d like something like that. I also got to meet the very nice and gentalmanly (is that a word?) Mr Gail, and witness their relationship, which i’ve only read about but looks just as great as it reads.
Slept 02:00=7:00 that night – that was a welcome change.
The next day I took a train o Connecticut to meet Emmers. That was a first time meeting. The view from the train was stunning. So many trees! So much water! Little streams and big rivers wherever you look. I got a liitle big of the feeling of new England, I think. Different from other places i’ve been to in the states.
We met at the station (after she waited for me for a long time…). It was kind of weird at first. Someone you know so well but don’t really know. It’s also kind of asymetrical because she writes much more so I know a lot of details of her life and she knows less about mine. My first impression was that she’s much prettier than in the pictures! (Which are pretty themselves). Also I guess I wasn’t expecting someone who looks so… um… all american? I guess we all have the tendency to cast ourselves in our diaries as people who are a little bit on the outside of the crowd? Because we look at our lives from outside? But Emmers looked like she could fit right in the middle of the cast of some teenage drama show… she seemed really at home in her home… which I guess shouldn’t have seemed surprising but still was, if this makes any sense. (hey, Em, i hope i’m not embarrassing you here).
Anyway, we didn’t really know what to do and I had almost no time (ended up not making it to a debriefing session with the lawyer of the deal, but as I imagined – there was nothing more or new that they could tell us. The lawyer ended up making an a** of himself by taking way more credit for the deal than he deserved… never mind, different story that I can’t get into). Soooo…. we decided to go to Hartford, which is this very pretty historical town where Mark Twain used to live and all kinds of other famous=for=the=right=reasons people live or are buried. Everyone seemed to get a kick from the fact that I would come all the way from Israel to Hartford. But it’s cool! I’ll actually recommend it to people. It was bustling and full of New=England=ish life… not a dead town like Omaha (which has it’s own magic. Probably I’ll never see either one of them again). At some point of the day the strangeness went away and we talked about boys and OD people… got into very exotic topics for me, such as the motives people who re=enact the civil war… it was cool but probably too short. (Now I want to hear your version!)
So that’s it. Went back to New York, wrote some more, finished about an hour early, did about 20 minutes of not=that=much=fun shopping in New York. Decided that the next time I’m in America it’s going to be on vacation, so I can see anyone I like for as long as I like!
So that’s the good.
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The sad is that my rabbit died. I found out this morning. Turns out Nir knew since yesterday but wanted to be sure before telling me. I’m kind of shocked. It’s not as strong a feeling as a cat or dog dying, but I do feel a bit down. He was six and in this time i’d gotten very used to him. I also have an icky feeling I could have somehow taken better care of him. It’s sad… I don’t know i it’s such a good idea, people getting attached to animals with a life span of 7 years…
Nir wants to get new animals. He said "the neighborhood kids will come looking for him. We can’t disappoint them!". Isn’t that sweet? Actually, i feel really icky about the kids who will come to visit the rabbit in our yard, and find him gone. I know there are kids more sensitive than me and I really wish there was something to do so they wouldn’t have to hear about it. Guess we should have thought about it before…. so he’s thinking hamsters or birds. He doesn’t want anything in the house. I’m thinking no animals for a while. I don’t feel like it.
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Okay… and now to the weird!</span>
I think my brother is gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. But weird it is. I was thinking over the weekend when we were both at my parent’s house about how he’s never brought home any girlfriends, nor talked about dating any girls or even sleeping with girls. There have been girls around him, but he never called any of them his girlfriends, or even his "a girl I go out with". I always thought he was just kind of closed about his personal life, and hat when he’d be serious with a girl, he’d bring her over. But he’s 24 now… and no girl. Not even a date. Although he doesn’t *look* gay….
So on the weekend he was watching TV and I asked him what he was watching, and he said "The Runway". Do you know that one? It’s a reality show about clothes designers… I asked him "why are you watching that", and he said "I like the creative part of it".
Anyway, i’m not saying that anyone who watched "the Runway" is gay… but it triggered this scene in my head like in a movie, where the mom of dad says: "oh, he’s just picky, he hasn’t met a girl he likes yet. Lot’s of guys at 24 have never had sex", and then you see the boy wearing a hot pink skirt and dancing to ABBA….
But that’s not all of it. We were driving to Tel Aviv when his friend calls on the phone, on speaker and during conversation says something like "Are you going to watch the Eurovision contest (i won’t go into the Eurovision, but it’s more gay than ABBA)? That’s very important to your community". And my brother is like "what community". And the friend, i guess realizing his mistake, laughs it off and says "you know, the intelligence community" (this does make more sense in Hebrew).
If it had been any other day i would have taken it as a joke. The guy knew there were other people in the car, after all… but on that day… I mean – how many signs does a person need?! Do I need to be hit on the head with a polka=dotted dildo buy a leather=cald video=artist named Hans?
No, I didn’t ask him. And that’s what’s really weird. There has never ever been even a shred of uncomfortableness between me and my brother. We no each other so well that my parents say we have our own language. So is there a whole part of his life that I know nothing about? And important part! – love, sex, relationships. I know which drugs he’s tried… I know he smokes…. i know all the thing my parents don’t know. But I guess I don’t know everything.
You have to get used to things like your little brother having serious relationships. It’s more that than the gayness, even. As long as he was just himself I guess I could still see him as a kid. Now I have to rearrange the picture in my head and relaize that he probably grew up long ago…. another thing that’s bugging me is that maybe he’s secretive about his personal life not just because that’s how he is, like me and my parents thought, but because he thinks something will happen if he tells. Meaning, maybe he’s a lot less happy than I thought. That’s really disturbing.
I think I better talk to him but there’s also a bit chance that i’ll chicken out. We just don’t have conversations like that… I never even had the nerve to ask him if he’s had sex yet, so this? I wonder what i’l do. I don’t want a big taboo subject laying between us.
There’s also a part of me that wonders if my parents have known for years and I’m the only dimwit in the dark. That would be typical… and pretty insulting.