Attitude

Attitude

One of the great things about my life is I have amazing friends. I'm talking about one-of-a-kind, go-against-the-grain type of people. Case in point, my friend Ryan.

My ex used to call him my straight boyfriend. That's because Ryan would call me at least once, sometimes two or three times a day. And we'd talk on the phone for hours. Actually, he talked and I listened. Except for a few exceptions, I hate talking on the phone.

Anyway Ryan is definitely his own animal. He's straight edge. Straight edge is a type of hardcore rock/metal music. But it's also a way of life. Straight edgers don't drink and they don't do drugs. In fact, Ryan has never drank in his life (I think he said he sipped beer once but that was all). To me that is utterly amazing. I think it's fantastic but insane at the same time.

When I first met him, he had a sleeveless shirt which showed off this huge tattoo of a fist and what looked like the letters SEX. But it's not, I think the letters are SE. Anyway, he looked like a white supremacist, so I was a little nervous because I didn't want to get killed. It turns out it's just a Straight Edge tat.

Anyway, he and I became best buds. But that sometimes caused friction in my relationship with Kevin. Ryan and I played videogames, tennis, basketball, watched really bad horror films and talked about Lord of the Rings--insanely geeky stuff. Stuff that I didn't do with Kevin, so naturally there was always a tug of war thing going on. I felt bad because I didn't want Kevin to feel left out, but I also wanted to do fun things with Ryan.

The cool thing about Ryan is, he's always there. When Kevin and I moved from our apartment to our house, we only had our friend Angi and Ryan help. Ryan and I ended up moving the entire apartment by ourselves, while Kevin and Angi set everything up in the new house. It was about 12 hours of grueling work in 108 degree temperature. And he never bitched.

When it came time to lay down a ton of rock in my backyard, once again Ryan broke his back and helped me out. And when Kevin and I broke up he was there. It's funny, cause we were watching TV and he looked at me and said, "I don't know what to do. Do you want to talk about it or not?" It was really sweet and something most guys don't do. Most guys (myself included) are afraid to talk about feelings but Ryan's really open about stuff. He'll talk about anything and laugh it up, gay sex, drugs, booze--everything he doesn't do.

Anyway, this picture is from Halloween. He went as Madonna. I went as Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots. We were thinking about going as Slash (him) and Axl Rose (me). His girlfriend Amanda (who is amazing and has done wonders for him) went as a bloody/gothic vampiress.

Ryan is just one of the wonderful people in my life. Thought I should give him a shout out.

Oh... we always sing the song "Attitude" by the Misfits. There's only a few lines but it's an awesome song:

Attitude, you got some fucking attitude
I can't believe what you say to me
You got some attitude
Inside your feeble brain there's probably a whore
If you don't shut your mouth you're gonna feel the floor