Wow. So many new people just joined Oasis in a deluge. It's great - things looked so glum here for awhile. I can't help but feel a slight sadness, though, about the fact that, as a veteran, I feel like a stranger here now. Most of the writers that were here when I joined nearly two years ago (oh my god, where in hell's name did two years go??) have moved on, which is good for them. Some have stayed, and I still enjoy reading what they have to say, and I am looking foward to the newest wave of queerling writers. It's just that, in my phases of denial and confusion, I had made Oasis a mental and emotional haven, and a lot of what that entailed has now evolved into something new and different.

Not to say that new and different isn't good or shouldn't be celebrated, of course. I'm just being an old sappy fart.

In any case, I would like to extend my warmth and queer vibes in the way of all the new members of our community and, in light of the two year anniversary in which I discovered oasismag.com give a whole-hearted thank-you to Jeff and Adrian for making Oasis possible.

Now. Moving onto business: gaydar. All I can say is... grrrrrr. Where is it and how can I get my hands on it?? I used to believe that "gaydar" was silly and just an excuse for gay people to project stereotypes onto others, but now I'm finally starting to understand what people mean when they say they have it. Contrary to popular conceptions, however, it is not something you magically acquire once you realize you like the same sex.

-First, you have to embrace it, which took me about 4 years to do (and which I'm still doing to an extent). You cannot see in others what you have trouble seeing in yourself.
-Ridding yourself of that barrier, you then need to start working on becoming more intuitive to the energy of the individuals around you. Do they skirt around any topics? Or avoid pronouns? Those are some of the obvious signs, but what about their body language? How do they interact with each sex (which, if s/he is bisexual, won't help you too much)? Learning how to be intuitive requires being in tuned with a certain set of vibes in life, and I think I've forgotten how to do that. I'm relearning to study people in a way that was natural to me when I was a child but, admist all the chaos that I let clutter my consciousness, can no longer seem to do so readily and easily.

My friend D is gay, and he has an excellent gaydar. It's erie, really. He knew about me and he knew about a girl at a party we went to who looked as straight as can be to me. So tonight, when I saw him after class, he came up to me and said: So when are you and M gonna get together?

*Sigh* M is a girl who I thought maybe was interested in me at first. She made an effort to talk to me in class every day when the semester first began, and once I caught her looking at me. We made eye contact and she smiled, and immediately I was suspicious. After I got to know her better she started talking about boys a lot, though. I came out to her finally when the opportunity presented itself, and we went gay clubbing that night with a guy on her floor who's gay. When I was talking about the girlfriend I had this summer, she was looking at me in a strange way, and something told me that she... wanted to distance herself from what I was saying, maybe? Hell, I know I'm reading too much into it, but there's no doubt that the way she looked at me was strange. And she told me that her best friend is bi so it shouldn't have anything to do with homophobia. When I was dancing with a girl at the club she looked over at me and I think she... did she smile? What look was that? She gave me a half-smile I think, like a "good job" sorta thing. When we sit next to each other in class we giggle a lot and have a good time (which I shouldn't be doing now that I'm in college lol, but that's ok because it's fun anyway), and today I put my head on her shoulder and she didn't try to move it away.

So yes, D thinks she likes girls (and we must have blatantly been flirting or something tonight), and although human fallacy is definitely a factor... I want to believe him. Maybe in the beginning what I felt really was my gaydar kicking in. Although, when we were in the cafeteria tonight she ran toward someone else in the other direction without even saying goodbye. She did however say that, although she had too much work to go out to dinner tonight, "we'll eat dinner together some other time".

I don't know. I do know that I'm hesitant to spend much more thought on this, however, because tripping over a straight girl is not how I want to spend my time/energy/emotions. I think we do have somewhat of a chemistry though, and she's never explicitly said that she's 100% straight so... we'll see.

So much for sleep. I crawled into bed at midnight and here it is, 3:15 am. Why in god's name am I still awake?

-Roag