Bryce Gruber’s Thoughts of the Day (furry little creatures edition)

I mean, when it’s time to rhyme rhyme, I can get down with mine. -Missy Elliot

1. A Ton of Wildness. Last week I had the pleasure of sort of being blown off by a dude (or so I thought, as it turned out it was just a miscommunication). But during the several hour period when I thought I was being blown off, I realized my bruised ego would have to be mended immediately. Why? Because I do my best parenting when I feel like I’m on top of the world, and that’s the top focus these days. So with haste I called my best gay, Gary, for a long walk along the Hudson River and a chat about life in general. We laughed, bitched, expressed confusion over the way heterosexual men behave, and somehow left each other at around midnight feeling totally renewed and full of happiness again. It was good. By the next morning I had a pretty severe virus, but that didn’t stop me from making a list of all sorts of personal growth stuff that I want to do. We decided that each week, from now until forever, we were going to accomplish 1 new thing that we wouldn’t normally do. We added 25 things to the first list, including easy feats like trying Cambodian food and more complex ones like a trip to Peru, and planned to update the list with new adventures every time we cross off 5 things. We started yesterday with a trip to IKEA on the ferry from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn. That might not seem that adventurous, but it was an easy one to cross off the list and we wouldn’t normally do it. Side benefit: Ben fell in love with the IKEA water taxi. Stay tuned for details about our upcoming weekends in DC, Chicago, Vegas, and about 16 other American cities.

2. Speaking of Gary’s World… I’m not sure if I’ve written about Gary’s pet chinchillas before, but they’re pretty cute in a weirdly soft rodent kinda way. Originally Gary had 2 males (or so he thought) to continue the entirely gay male vibe in his house. Everything changed when he realized he actually had 1 male and 1 female. How’d he find out? 3 babies. They were born just a few days ago, furry, cute, and hopping around like the little vermin they are. Unfortunately chinchilla mommas are only supposed to have 2 babies at a time, so the third came out a little… less fortunate. He was born with a lopsided head and couldn’t stand. Gary’s chinchilla grandbaby was born mentally handicapped, and things were turning pretty ugly pretty fast. I mean, I never thought I’d see a mentally retarded chinchilla in my lifetime, partially because it never occurred to me that chinchillas could even be mentally retarded, so I certainly wasn’t prepared with a plan of how to handle it. It was a sad weekend in Gary’s apartment, because the joy of chinchilla grand babies turned to the sorrow of having to euthanize the least fortunate of the litter (as per the vet’s suggestion). Benny was obviously devastated. Gary… well, not so much.

3. Birthdays and things… When ex-boyfriend and I broke up several weeks ago we agreed to take a pretty serious communication break until we were both dating other people and totally moved on. We agreed that on his birthday (which was this past weekend), I’d be the one to reach out to wish him a happy 41st, and then we’d see if we felt like talking from there on a friend level. Well, that whole day went by and I was too busy with life in general to remember that it was his birthday. It took me till about 8 or 9 PM to wish him a happy birthday… by text. He responded cordially, but I think I got the greatest gift of all: knowing that I didn’t really care, and that he probably didn’t either. There’s nothing better than walking away with no hard feelings.