1. I openly advertise that I play piano and guitar, but I don’t often mention that I have also played cello (like several other tumblrs, it would seem) since the 4th grade. It is, I think, one of the sexiest things about me.
2. My father’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Hungary when he was a teenager to escape the communist rule, and before that he had several relatives who died in internment camps during the Holocaust. His family raised him and his brother as Catholics because they had ‘converted’ to avoid persecution. We did not know any of this until about 5 years ago, when his last living relative of his parents’ generation was about to pass on and she decided it was time to reveal their whole family’s secrets.
3. I snore loudly.
4. My earliest memory of childhood is when I was about 4 years old and my sister and I were playing (separately) outside in our front yard. All of a sudden she came running towards me screaming and before I knew what was happening, I was covered–head to foot–by a swarm of bees. I screamed and ran and shook, but they stayed on me until my mother came and shooed them away. I had several stings (thank the good lord I’m not allergic to them) all over my body, and I had nightmares about it for years. I am, to this day, scared to death of bees.
5. While I’m thankfully not allergic to bees, I am allergic to every single plant that I was tested for 5 years ago (something like 52 plants in all), including common, everyday grass. My allergies were a major handicap for me until I got allergy shots–3 shots a week–for 3 years. Now I breathe easy almost every day and it’s an unbelievable blessing. And I’m no longer afraid of needles, either.
6. I’ve pretended to be colorblind to get girls to help me shop.  It has, believe it or not, gotten me one phone number.
7. Once my sister pushed me down the stairs and I broke my arm (seems like she’s caused me a lot of grief). That was the one and only time that I’ve broken a bone.
8. When I was twelve I got awards from both the fire and police departments, commending me for my “heroic action” of rescuing a child from drowning.
9. Once, and only once, I tried to kill myself. I was, clearly, unsuccessful. I think because, as unhappy as I was, subconsciously I was still afraid of dying.
10. The closest I ever came to being in a bar fight, was in Tokyo 2 years ago, when I was (stupidly) competing with a very buff man for the attention of the same girl. Him and his ‘thugs’ surrounded me, grabbed me from behind, and were about to give me a beatdown when 2 enormous Yakuza dudes came out of nowhere and tossed the 4 guys out of the bar like they were nothing. Their boss came over and apologized for the behavior of the men, and I didn’t pay for a drink for the rest of the night.
11. I’ve vowed to myself to never have a long-distance relationship ever again.  It’s torturous.
12. I hardly ever carry much cash on me, but if I do, and a homeless person asks me for money, I always give him or her every bit of cash I have, I ask them their name, and later I’ll write down in my journal their name, the time, location, and the amount I gave them. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, if anything, but it’s something I started doing not too long ago and for some reason I’m compelled to continue it.
13. I dated a girl from my senior year of high school through to my sophomore year of college. When I told my mom that we broke up, she immediately began to cry. It was completely unexpected to me (I was not crying at the time, and she never really felt like the girl was right for me), and it ended up emotionally affecting me almost more than the breakup itself.
14. Over the years, I’ve seen Ben Folds play live 14 times.
15. I love watching sports–particularly hockey, tennis, and baseball–but I’ve never really seen the amusement in following sports.

This is gonna be sort of a stream of consciousness post (some thoughts I’ve had with no real direction), so bear with me.

There’s a tremendous age gap at work among the employees.  There’s two girls that are 19, then me (23), a guy who’s 25, and another girl who’s 27.

Then the next youngest person above her is 52.  And there are four others between the ages of 52 and 65.  But this post is basically about the two 19-year-olds.

Now as I talk about this, I’m going to try my best to not sound like an arrogant ass, but I’m the only one there with a college degree and they’re really not used to having someone of my intelligence level among their ranks.  And it’s not just book smarts, either.  Sometimes some of the general (and often what I think of as basic) cultural knowledge that I have surprises them.  More than that, even.

Like today, my boss was totally shocked that I had even heard of The Graduate, let alone seen it.  I mean, it literally knocked him backwards.

This is where I get a little mean: The other young people that I work with—the 19-year-old girls whom they’ve worked with for 3 years already—are soignorant.  I mean, incredibly so.  And I don’t mean just intelligence level; I’m talking about stuff that all my life I’ve considered to be basic cultural/world knowledge (basic history, etc.).  It’s really appalling to me sometimes.  Especially because these two girls are in college right now and I swear to god they’re more ignorant than a lot of the kids I tutor (who are in elementary school).  A lot of it, I’m learning, stems from their total and utter self-centeredness, but that’s going off on a whole other tangent.

And the older people are so used to those two girls that they just assume that all kids our age are just as ignorant and unaware of the world around them.  So when I come along and I can do addition in my head (yes, they can’t do it), and I can point out Russia on a map, and I’ve seen movies like The Graduate and I have a genuine interest in… anything.  Anything that doesn’t have to do with myself.

It’s really strange being in this environment.  Honestly, it’s completely new to me, and sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it.  In St. Louis, I went to a private, college preparatory high school, so as an adolescent I grew and developed surrounded by really smart people who were actually thrilled by the pursuit of knowledge.  And it was the same for college, when I went to Washington University.

Here’s one of the most interesting changes from my life in St. Louis to my life in LA:  In St. Louis, whenever I met new people I would inevitably tell them that I was a student at Wash. U., and because it’s one of the very top schools in the country, everyone in St. Louis knows the school and I would be instantly recognized/judged/categorized in their minds as a person of high intelligence.  In LA, nobody has heard of Wash U.  Most people here don’t even know where St. Louis is.  So if I tell someone here where I went to school, unless they’re from St. Louis or somewhere nearby, it means absolutely zilch to them.  It’s without a doubt been the most humbling experience of my life.  I went from being instantly recognized as the cream of the crop, to being just like every other asshole out there.

It’s good to be away from that, because the truth is I am just like every other asshole out there—I always was—because I got so many privileges and so much recognition in St. Louis simply because of my school.  Here, I get nothing.  I have to work to earn people’s respect or recognition.  Not that I didn’t work hard at school, but it’s a very, very different experience.  It’s been a shock to the system, but it’s definitely brought me into reality in a way that I would have never understood had I stayed in St. Louis.  Honestly, I often miss that look that I would get from people after telling them where I go to school.  That look that says “well, aren’t you special” and I would say to myself “yes, yes I am.”

So anyways, what was I talking about before?  The girls at work.  Yeah.

I lost my momentum, but you get the idea.  I hope I didn’t come off as a holier-than-thou kinda prick, but really It’s just shocking to me every single day, the level of ignorance of these girls I work with.  On the other hand, though, who the hell am I?  Cuz even with my college degree, I’m still stuck working this shitty retail job.  So am I much better than them?  Ugh, I hope the answer is “yes.”

I could really go on and on about the things that frustrate me about these two girls, but I won’t (at least, not tonight).

Basically, I gotta get out of this job and into an environment that’s better suited for me.

Who am I?  Isn’t that the question of the decade?  In the literal sense, my name is Lawrence.  I’m in my 20s, out of college, and constantly in a state of transitions.  And already I’m veering away from the literal sense of who I am.  I say transitions, I suppose, because I have no idea what I want to do with my life, or what I want my life to do with me.  There are a few truths I’ve figured out about myself: I am overwhelmingly attracted to women, but am afraid of just about everything about them, and especially of sex.  This is partly thanks to my wholesome, midwestern (and Catholic) upbringing.  I’m not a virgin, thankfully, or else women would probably intimidate me even more than they do already.  I have been severely damaged by one relationship in particular, but that’s a story for a whole other day (and I promise, I will tell the story one of these days).  Let’s just say it left me with a very strong, very deep-set fear of commitment.

I long for a relationship that is uncomplicated, but so far I’ve only managed such a relationship with my closest friend, Neal, and with the piano.  The piano is simplest.  It has no wants, and the only thing that I want from it happens to be its entire raison d’etre.  It is there so I can play it.  I love it unconditionally and it does nothing but give.  Neal isn’t quite as simple, but still entirely uncomplicated.  I love him unconditionally, as well, and he makes it easy to do so.  Nothing divides us.  We spend money on each other and expect nothing in return.  We very simply enjoy seeing the other happy.  And it works.  Uncomplicated.

I’ve fallen in love, and more than once I thought I met the proverbial ‘one.’  To this day, I’m not entirely unconvinced that one of those girls actually isn’t ‘the one,’ and my heart is filled with regret and self-loathing for ruining it (yes, I was the dumper), but due to certain circumstances—specifically, that she is currently in a serious relationship with another girl—I’m forced to wonder whether the relationship wasn’t doomed, regardless.  She’s the only ex I’ve managed to maintain a somewhat normal friendship with post-breakup, which is simultaneously wonderful and heartbreaking.  She was my first real love, though, and that probably means she will be the toughest girl for me to ever get over.  There are days when I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love anyone else but her.  Obviously, I have a lot to say about her.  Look forward to it.

So that’s the basics.  ’Lawrence 101,’ if you will.  Man, that was tougher than I thought it would be, but it feels good to write things down.  Thanks for reading.  I hope you’ll continue to do so.

I created this blog so I could have a place to write longer, more personal journal entries. I am not going to begin quite yet, however, so for now you can satisfy yourself by reading the “Who am I? section (see above) and by visiting my tumblr, where I post very short entries (pics, links, random thoughts, etc.) many times a day, until this gets going.