Above the bar

A few quick things:

1. I passed the bar. After four months of worry and abject fear, it turned out I passed the damn thing. The morning the bar results came out, the website was immediately clogged with people -- it took two and a half hours to fight through the hordes of bar applicants to get the results. When the screen finally loaded, it was two solid paragraphs of text. "WHAT DOES IT SAY WHAT DOES IT SAY," I said to L. I couldn't find the word "pass," but I also couldn't find the word "fail." My heart was pounding. "You passed, you passed!" "ARE YOU SURE," I said. I tried to breathe deeply. "Yes!" she said. "IS THAT MY NAME? ARE YOU SURE THAT'S MY BIRTHDAY? DO YOU EVEN KNOW IT?" I said. I was in a scared and lonely place. "Yes, yes, you passed!" And lo, after months of tedious study, butt-clenching fear, and pathetic self-doubt, I passed the bar.

2. On Sunday we got iPhones! Now, instead of going to work juggling my ipod, cell phone, and blackberry, clipped to my belt like a sad white-collar Batman, I have one sleek bullet of a device. I am loving it.

3. Saturday night found me with my friend Freddy at a local gay bar, and due to a series of rapidly changing and confusing circumstances, I found myself being introduced by a friendly drag queen to sing karaoke in front of the crowd. "Ooh, he's kind of cute," she said as I stood there, lights shining on us, unable to see the crowd milling around. I introduced the song I was singing with a dedication: "This one's for you, Aubrey. We miss you, girl." "Whoo! Aubrey!" someone yelled. It was a promising start. After the song ended, approximately a year and a half later, the drag queen grabbed my hand to stop me from getting off the stage. "You know what he needs?" she said into the microphone, looking into the lights. "Blue tights! You know why?" I did not know why. I was ready to get off the stage. "Because he kind of looks like Superman! You Superman!" And although at that point I basically bolted back into the anonymity of the crowd, somehow it all actually made sense at the time.