I can be so socially inept at times! Mind, I'm not the complete nutcase I was when I was in my teens. Back in my home town of South Shields, near Newcastle, I could sometimes barely put my head out of doors without the anticipatory fear of challenging social encounters. But even now that I'm a big boy, I still fall apart when I'm around a man I find attractive. And still, I find very occasionally people I'm interacting with at work giving me odd glances, as if to say, "Hmmm - that guy's a bit ... different."

Considering this latent social inaptitude, it's odd that I tend to deliberately fling myself into confrontational situations. Like at the gym last night. I was waiting to use the incline crunch board. Now the unwritten convention at my gym, like at most gyms, is that if someone is waiting, you let them work in with you. So as the guy I was waiting for finished his set, I asked him if I could work in. But he looked at me and said flatly, as if there was no question about propriety, "I have one more set." I retorted "Yes, so can I work in?" Of course, he wouldn't let me, and we argued briefly before I realized it was a waste of time. It took him two minutes of rest between sets so as he started his last set I said "I could have done one set already!" To which his response was that I was being selfish.

Now, I actually hate confrontation. It leaves me feeling anxious. So why do I thrust myself into situations like that? Part of it is that I'm increasingly tired of the selfishness that seems increasingly prominent in people's public behavior. My feeling is that if you don't step up to people like him, then you're contributing to the problem. The spin side of that is that in taking on those issues, you're adding stress to your life, which ain't a good idea.

It's funny. Cecilia, my trainer, is so much like me. When she joined me shortly after this incident, I told her about it and, sure enough, when we ran into the guy later on, she challenged him too. I almost had to pull her off the guy! Yet she hates confrontation as much as I do. She puts our behavior down to us both being Capricorns. Now I don't have a nit's worth of belief in astrology, but it is a fact that her birthday is Dec 22nd, the day before mine.

It was a coincidence that there was another complex (for me, at least) social interaction at the gym yesterday. It must have been in the stars (are you listening Cecilia? :) Half way through my workout with Cecilia, I came out of the little bathroom upstairs and almost walked full tilt into someone who had been standing next to the door. He raised his head, then kept raising it as he took in my full height (when you're six feet five you get used to that kind of reaction.) But then he smiled, as if in recognition. I was a little confused because I knew I'd never spoken to this guy before. After some garbled, almost comic conversation between the two of us, I was able to catch his name while we shook hands, and he explained that he often looked at my website from work. Wow! This was the first time someone had actually come up to me and said they recognized me from the website! Fame at last :)

So what was awkward about this? I'll tell you - it was a guy who I've seen in the Castro now and then for several years whom I've always had a little crush on! He's just so darned cute and masculine. So I was all a jitter when here he was shaking my hand! Now I'm not completely sure how I'm perceived on this website. I'd imagine that casual visitors would take a first guess that because I'm so "out there", both graphically and through the written word, that I'm also equally "out there" when it comes to sex and dating. Ha! So here's the truth - I'm like a giggling school girl around guys I'm attracted to. In fact, when it comes to good-looking guys it would be easier for me to interact with them if I wore a bag over my head!

You're probably wondering if I made any indication at all to this guy, Logan, that I was interested. You kidding? I mumbled something about having to get back to my workout (which was true, since Cecilias don't come cheap :). But still, I suppose there are some advantages to having an online journal ... :)