The linear transformation

I don't know what a linear transformation is. I still don't know (I can probably give a shitty guess) after I was supposed to 3 years ago, and even if I guessed what it was, could I prove some map was a linear transformation? That's basic math for people like me who are supposed to be mathematicians.

My story at Tufts is a linear transformation.

Hopelessly in a single direction, but valiantly fought. I look at the picture of me on my Tufts ID card, taken when I was a freshman. I look so innocent, with that nice, warm polo jacket that I lost somewhere, and that green t-shirt that I got in Japan in 2005. This break, I left that shirt at home and came back to campus. Symbolic enough, but home's not far away enough. This is an awkward transition stage from my past to my future. And I have to move further physically in order to complete it.

So I will probably go to Iowa for five to six years. Five to six years! That's a lot of time to spend in one place. I don't know if I can handle it, but I know for sure that I'm fed up with Boston and can't take any more of it. People here are just... so not me. And that sounds like a shallow, flamboyant-ish statement that I'd ordinarily not permit to escape my mouth, but it's true. I don't feel at one with anything here, especially not me.

Why not with me? I've changed a lot, really fast. Perhaps the transformation isn't linear. But we act like all transformations are that simple.

But I was at an on-campus LGBT party tonight that sucked, and it sucked because I didn't dance with anyone who I didn't already know. Que sera sera? Fuck that.

I was told to beware the phrase いい加減にする: to leave things halfway. That's what I've done on this journey. But I can't make it alone, and so I haven't had the push to get me where I need to be, to cure my pure ignorance of how to do these things. I've started an online dating profile but I haven't messaged anyone in a month, ever since I sent some guy a message and we went on a couple of dates and it didn't work. Why do I get discouraged so easily? I hate rejectionだから (that's why). And I don't get rejected frequently enough, so the natural dose of rejection just isn't there and any little bit is an overdose. Can't take it.

The other thing is, I'm not a freshman anymore. That party tonight was replete with freshmen who were all up for just having a fun spring party, and probably had lots of social connections in case they ever wanted to go to bed with someone. Well, I don't!

But I've changed. Had I never done pushups, situps, and gone to the gym last semester, my body would've looked like a freshman's. Right now I'm somewhere between muscular and cute, but it's an uncertain state - it just doesn't work. Yes, I think like this, all the time. It's inevitable. That cute, shy, unconfident freshman in the picture is still the shy, unconfident man, but he's no longer fresh and he's no longer the same kind of cute. All you can take from all this is this: there's a map taking me somewhere else, and I wish to God that someone would show it to me!

He's not willing to be flamboyant. He never fully was. いい加減にした。(I left it halfway.) Freshman year was the closest I ever got to being flamboyant. And yet there's room to go back and try to be who I can be in a form that everyone can understand - maybe then they'll understand something about me. I don't think anyone else who's gay understands, though. And that's my own fault.

I have to be honest. Sometimes I wish I were straight. But then I don't because I know I wouldn't understand anything about the world.

At least I can admit to myself that I don't understand anything about the world. That's something that a straight Alex wouldn't have been able to do.

Oh, to clarify: I waited until people started leaving to hit on someone, and it failed. That's what happens when you use the move PROTECT too much in Pokémon. Eventually you get hurt. But here there's a time limit; Pokemon doesn't have that!...

But I do.

All I can say to you is this: I, Alex, have tried to be the best I can be and not best anyone else. But all I have done is best myself. Beset myself with this all.

It's a lonely night in Somerville... yet I don't feel so bad about it. It's certainly not the alcohol; that never worked before. Because I know there is beauty out there, and it's in music.

This story is too fucking epic. Just like some things are "so fucking metal." I've got to win here before I get out of here.