askalex

Funny thing, I would have loved to go to Hopkins for middle school, but I really wouldn't like to go to middle school for Hopkins. Although there is a plethra of reasons why this is true, the particular one I had in mind is the way friends and relationships worked. Remember how in middle school if you had a crush on a boy or girl then all your friends would ask him/her out for you? It's fine (but sad) when you ask them to do it, but then they'd do it without you wanting them to. That was the worst. Thank God Hopkins isn't like middle school! Wait. Hold on. This kid, “Aaron”, asked me today, “Why is Hopkins so much like middle school?!?” Kinda goes against what I just said about ol' JHU, doesn't it? Fuck it, I agree with him. See, he confided in this girl about another girl he was interested. Confide means trust to keep a secret, right? Well she didn't keep it. Just like middle school again! Anyway, she told everyone in a certain club (including the girl he has a crush on, who is a member) his secret. As if that weren't enough, she tells the girl that he wants to go out with her for him without asking him. Why do that? Because she(henceforth called the Bitch) is a bitch. I don't know about you, but it's not terribly attractive (to me) to be asked out via any external device, be it the telephone, e-mail, AIM, or (especially) the Bitch. What should he do? Probably a better question is what can he do? The damage is done: He has become instantly less attractive to the girl he wanted, some other person is mad at him cause she thinks he is (but he is not) going out with one of her friends and essentially trying to cheat, and the Bitch is too self-rightious to know she's a bitch (she should take a hint from one of 65,300 webpages). At least he knows not to trust her or hang out with so many crazy people anymore.

Oddly enough, same thing just happened to me. This guy asked this girl I thought was cute out for me without me wanting him to (if you're him and reading this, bad form, bad form). Funny backstory though. Anyway, I don't know how Aaron's situation will turn out, but it can't be well if my situation is any indicator; the girl who was proxy-hit-on by me was terribly distant and awkward around me today (I only found out why later), I'm angry at the guy who did that, and I stubbed my toe walking to the Hut. So as a word of advice, be supportive if someone tells you a secret, but don't revert to the “middle school” you. Haven't we had enough?

My cousin came to visit me last weekend (part of my absence from this blog, in combination with 4 hours of midterms in one day and getting much more ill than I would have liked). I love having the guy here, he's lots of fun and good company, not to mention I can use him for party tricks (this kid belongs in a sideshow with how disturbingly ripped he is). Thing is, he's still in highschool, I mean, he can't even get into clubs that you have to be 18 for, or buy a pack of cigarettes (or in his case, black and mild cigars), so what do you do when you're escorting a kid like that around a college atmosphere. When he asked me, “what do you do for fun around here?” when he first got here, I told him I'd show him and not to worrie about it, but secretly I was already worrying myself. Yea, there's lots of things I do around here, some of them may even be fun, but that's a big task, entertaining someone who you can't take out to anywhere but XandO. So I resolved myself to finding everything that was going on around campus, and the kinds of things we could do around here later at night. You would be amazed at the amount of things that go on every weekend. Hopkins is a supprisingly active place, and I say supprising because it always seems that there is nothing to do on weekends except get drunk at some frat party (I couldn't even do that this weekend, SAE seemed to be about the only place throwing, and it was closed. Woe is me). So what is there to do for fun around here? Well, I definately encourage everyone to go out at night. Get drunk, dance, do whatever greases your sprocket. And for those unfortunate enough to not have a fake or be 21 you could by some alcohol from the Hopkins Deli attachted to the Hopkins House, the lady who works there never cards. Should you not be the type to drink alcohol, go ahead and steal Shaffer 3 for a movie (it's never closed). Bring a date, it might get you laid (if you are both celebit and don't drink then I'm afraid I can't help you, nor can anyone, excepting perhaps a monastary). I've found night times were never terribly hard to plan for if you just use a little ingenuity. No, the problems most people seem to have is finding something to do during the day. Now, you could always take the advice of my friend who's a brother at wawa and do during the day the same things you do during the night (get drunk and hit on freshmen walking into the AMRs), but that's never really been my flavor. Try going to E-level, or doing something out on the quad (eg ultimate, baseball, constructing a massive white ice sculpture). If you don't feel like it, check the posters at the dining halls when you go out for luch, or just as good, go out for luch somewhere. Take the college town shuttle to the mall and seduce high school students. Find out how to get on the AMR I roof (believe me, it can be done). Do something, there's plenty out there to be done. It seems more and more that people are telling me that there isn't anything to do around here, but that's crazy. There's plentity to do, do you really want to sit around and do nothing?

Frustration seems to run rampent this time of year. Perhaps it's Valentine's (aka Singles Awareness) Day, or even the whole spring fevor thing, but whatever it is, those who aren't getting any are getting despret. So it's no wonder that a friend of mine, “Emily”, asked me some relationship advice. More like sex advice, or something in between, really. “How do you tell if a girl is bi?” Being a lesbien in the very early spring, this question wasn't at all irrelevant, so I decided to take a stab at it. Now you'd imagine that most non-straight girls would have fairly good gaydar (a word I hate and will henceforth be refered to as “the Skill”), but she can't, despite all her trying, find any girls fitting her needs. Now this could be because there aren't any gay girls here, but as almost half my girl friends here at Johnny Hop are at least bi-sexual, I don't think this is her problem. So me being notoriously well versed in the Skill, she decided to ask where I developed the elusive Technique. As hard as it might be to believe, the Skill isn't something you're born with (most of those seem to be things that would have helped us survive before the development of civilized culture. I think the importance of detecting whether or not a woman was going to be more or less upset if you took her for your mate paled in compairison to the opposable thumb). Where did I get it you (she) ask(s)? Truth is, I don't know. Probably came from most of my cloest friends being bi-sexual girls as I grew up, or maybe my brother being bi-sexual himself. So in answer to her question I asked, “Do you look at girls differently then guys?” Getting my expected answer of yes, I went on to explain the main difference. See when I (being straight) look at a guy, with some small thought I can decided whether or not he is attractive. I may not have good taste according to most girls, but at least I can take a stab at it. If I see a girl, I also can decided (rather quickly) whether she's attractive or not. The key difference is that if I think the girl is attractive physically, by definition I am physically attracted to her (make sense?). With a guy, however, just because I've decided that the guy happens to be attractive doesn't nessicitate my being attracted to him. So in looking for this in other people (in this case girls), I see how they look at guys and how they look at girls. We expect it to be different even if they are bi; men and women are in fact different. But where the Skill comes in is seeing if there is a compulsary reaction to seeing this person, seeing if they can't help but feel one way or another about the person's apparence. Now you may be thinking I'm way off base here as there are people you feel not one way or another about and belong to the gender you are normally attracted to, and truth be told, there are people whom I feel indifferent towards too, but those people are few and far between, and even so, I can't by shear force of will make myself think of them as attractive or not. Again it's something I do naturally without any real control over it. Even though I've told Emily about this, she still finds it difficult to tell the difference. I guess she just needs see if she can find someone she looks at who looks at her as she looks at her so she and she will know if she or she is attracted to her or her instead of her knowing she can't be attracted to her, or she attracted to her (if there's one thing I hate about lesbians [and there is only one thing] it's that they make the pronouns so vague). So Emily, best of luck, and to the rest of you, are there any girls reading who are interested in meeting one?

I've descovered a few things in the past few days. One, no one wants to ask you for advice when you look upset, and two, bazilian jujitsu is a great way to relieve stress and a terible way to get over being sore from having run 3 miles the day before. No wonder that I'd apear upset in this weakened state, but it did bring up an interesting answer when someone asked what's wrong. “What's wrong?” they asked (I leave nothing to the imagination). “I've got a headache from oxygen deprivation, my throat's sore from being strangled for the past hour and a half (funny how these things go together), the nations capital is being put under martial law (that's right, we can't get into DC anymore without permission from the current ruling party [or so I've head]), my roommate thinks I'm a terrible person (keep in mind he thinks everyone is a terrible person, I happen to top the list though), and the only person offering any consolation doesn't want to make cookies with me for another week (a story for another time)!!!” Okay, so maybe that's not exactly how the converstaion went, in truth I don't think I told them much of anything, but that's an aweful lot to say for someone who hasn't been getting enough air as is. Now the tone of this blog isn't supposed to be that of a complaint, and I refuse to make an exception for this particular entry. Keep in mind I mentioned at the beginning that I learned a few things, but I only mentioned two. I also learned a few very good (and very bad) ways of handling with every day stress. Probably the most important example, is that when you're mad at your roommate, taking him to a class where you're encouraged to strangle him might not be the best idea. The real bummer is, the reason it wasn't the best idea wasn't because I could have potentially killed him, it's because he just enjoyed it too damn much. Besides this and a great recipe for plum pie, I also learned domestic problems, although hard-hitting, have a tendency to fix themselves given some small period of time. So as a word of advice, feel free to stress about work and school, but relax about what goes on with your friends; you're supposed to fight, and supposed to not care about it a couple days later (note that girls tend to hold grudges much longer then most men would imagine possible. Bare this is mind when defining “a couple days”). So in resolution, my throat feels better, I've regained the prior indifference I had with my roommate, and I get to make cookies with the girl next week. DC seems to still be a military state in which only the relatively afluent may live (assuming permission from the current dictator). What's a now unemployed warlord to do?

I should mention now that I hate men. Not all men of course, but men in general bother me. I have this friend who doesn't go to JHU call me today asking me what my definaition of “exclusive” was. See, this girl, “Julia” caught this guy making out with some girl a couple nights ago and doesn't know how upset she's supposed to be. Anyway, she's been hooking up with this guy for a little over a year now, and come about 3 days ago she told him that she can't be sleeping with him anymore without something more there then sex. Fair enough, we all think, as did she, so she (or maybe he) suggested for them to be exclusive. Well, this is great, except what does that word mean? Well I always thoght the definition was fairly clear. Once you're exclusive with someone, all the standard rules of cheating apply (perhaps excepting the one from Road Trip). Well, last I checked, making out with some girl at a party who isn't Julia counts as cheating. So what should she do? I guess there are lots of answers, the most common of which is that she should simply lose the guy. I only half agree. I mean, think about it, they've been seeing other people for over a year of their “relationship” and they just set some kind of rules down and he already screws up. But can you blame him? Were I screwing around with a girl for that long without doing any kind of actual couple stuff (I don't believe they've even gone on one date) I wouldn't know what she ment by exclusive. If we hadn't been dating this long, why start now and ruin the potential for more of the best sex of my life (I've never actually done anything with this girl, but I'm sure she's a demoness in bed). I'd think exclusive ment not sleeping with other people and her motivation was defense against STDs or some such. But then again, I'm asuming if I were this guy I'd be a moron asshole too. Among other things she also wanted him to “put in more of an effort” into them. That's boardering WAY too much on female vagueness, but he should be able to pick up on some of what she ment. So why give him another chance? Well, having met several guys (and being one myself [have I given away too much of my identity?]) I know we are really bad at fidelity in general, and much worse when we don't know if it's exactly fully expected of us. Plus this is a huge behavioral change for him without a whole lot of a situational change. Usually when I become exclusive with someone, it's when I first start officially “dating” them. That change in status makes it easy to change the rest of my behavior (ie. I'm a boyfriend now, I should behave as one), But they still aren't together, and they aren't even dating. What's the guy supposed to think? I don't want to side with him at all (I remind you of the first sentence of this blog enry) but I really think she needs to be much clearer with him. I also think that if she wants somehthing serious with him (she does), she needs to actually start dating him (which should be distinguished from “dating” him [I think some important/powerful person (perhaps the leader of the Free Masons) needs to fix this whole debacle of the labling of interpersonal relationships]). So I told her to ask him out to coffee, or an equivalently not scary date, and figure out if she can even actually click with this guy. Seriously, from talking to her, she made it seem as though she'd never even had a good (or any) converstaion with this guy. Anyway, I thought it was a good place to start. As much as I hate to deprive the society of men of one of their precious sex pots, my ultimate suggestion is to really probe this thing to see if they have any potential as more then just people who sleep together, and if not (which will probably be the case) just get rid of the guy entirely. But guys, seriously, as long as the sex is good enough, wouldn't you rather be in an actual relationship with the girl?

You're going to need to be filled in on a little bit of a back story for this one. In as few words as possible boy meets girl (I get that), boy fights with girl (I definately get that), boy falls for girl (where the hell did that come from), boy fucks up with girl (well, 3 out of 4 ain't bad). So this guy “Chris” is talking to his lesbian friend about male/female interactions (???) and she suggests he should apologize to her. It's worth noting that although things got screwed, he didn't actually do anything wrong (Guys, I'm sure you understand. Girls, you may as well just create some fictional thing he did so we can proceed). So why should he apologize? This is just what Chris asked me. As to not leave you in the dark too long, he definately should (Girls, I'm sure you understand. Guys, you may as well start believing in karma so we can proceed). When I told him this (I didn't actually tell him this, if he really wants the answer he should have to read it here. In light of this fact, the rest of the dialog is completely made up) he was baffled:
“Wait! I didn't do anything!”
“Repeating yourself seems a little silly, for a handful of words more you could have said 'I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do anything.' and gotten a whole lot more utility out of it.”
I don't think it was striking home like I had intended. “But I didn't do anything.”
See, although his lesbian friend isn't up to par on romantic guy/girl interaction, being both a girl and being attracted to them does give her a slight (-ly massive) edge over Chris. What I have yet to explain to him is (I gave up for the time being, it was an excersize in frustration) there isn't a downside to his situation. He's not going to make things worse doing this, and he doesn't have anything to lose (saving his pride, which I'm sure was erraticated long ago if he likes girls like this). Point of fact, he should be sorry, not for what he did, but that things went sour in the first place. If she's worth the effort he's already put into her, isn't she worth this little bit more?

Can two girls actually have “sex”? Now before every lesbian and bisexual girl writes in to yell at me for entertaining this question just because I like to talk about my fantasies, I wasn't asked this by some horny guy day-dreaming about what he could convince a couple girls to do in front of him by giving it another lable (well, not this time), I was asked by a bisexual girl who thought otherwise. For convienence we'll call her “Mary”. Well, Mary has a date next weekend with a girl she met online, and they're planing on engaging in about every sexual activity two girls can without the aid of special toys. The thing is, she'd never do this with a guy because she'd never have sex with someone she's not emotionally attracted to. When I asked her about why she would be willing to do this with the girl, Mary remarked, “It's not like we're having sex, are we?” Clearly this she has never seen Chasing Amy. I mean think about it. If one girl dons a strap-on and penitrates another, we (I) would clearly consider that sex. It seems a little unfair that these same two girls can't have sex without this mechanical assistance. What it boils down to is this; sex, even though when considered only physically is great, is the most physically intimate thing two people can do together. What seems more intimate to you, a person's toung on someone's most sacred regions, or just some big rubber phalis?

So my friend “Dan” comes up to me today and asks about this cute girl who he finds interesting, but thinks he's haveing too much troubble manageing to become friends with her. Now if you're reading this thinking, “What the hell is he talking about? How can you have to 'manage' to become friends with someone?!?” then you have a small inkling of what I was feeling when he asked me this. Apparently he runs into her every now and then and they have a small (10 second) conversation about htis one thing they have in common as they each go their seperate ways wherever it is they're off to. This really worries him. I can't imagion why. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems how most people meet is by talking about the thing(s) they have in common pretty much exclusively for some time and eventually branching out from there. So I says to Dan I says, “Stop worrying about everything,” he worries about everything, “And just keep doing what you're doing.” What I should have said was stop whining and act like a man, though I imagine acting like an assertive girl would have done just as much good for the poor kid. Anyway, if you find yourself in the same situation, just talk to the person. Everyone is always scared to go up and meet people, but most everyone loves it when people want to come up and meet them. So what's there to be scared of, really?

Q: Who are you?
A: A common theme of this site is never revealing the real names of the people who are mentioned.
In following with this tradition, you can call me “Alex”.

Q: Why should I ask you anything?
A: You probably shouldn't. As is, however, tons of people ask me questions, and even if you don't
hear what you want, you'll probably at least be amused.

Q: How do I ask you a question?
A: If you want privacy e-mail me at askalex@jhu.edu otherwise reply to this post with your question.

Q: You seem to be replying to questions, but for many of them, no one seems to have posted the
question. What gives?
A: Most of the questions I answer are from people I know in real life and were never sent to me.
should the message have been posted, I may have not posted the message for everyone to see for
any reason of my chosing. As a general policy however, I will post the questions you ask me
for all to see unless you make a specific request not to.

Q: Is there a spoon?
A: There is no spoon.

Q: But there is a spoon.
A: The Board of Review is still trying to decided if that is in fact a question. All the same, our working answer is that if there is a spoon, it must both be ours and too big.