I don’t know if anyone looks at this blog anymore, but I’m doing an Instagram giveaway of some my memoir collection This City Is a Minefield, my poetry chapbook Romantic Hopeless, and a funky bookmark. There are a few more days to enter (until Monday August 10th). Just like this post, tag a couple friends, and follow me on Instagram. Good luck!
Hello, all! I’ll be reading from my memoir This City Is a Minefield next week on Tuesday July 28th as part of the Pride Writers Showcase, organized by the Vancouver Writers Festival and Vancouver Pride Society. It’s a free event and will the livestream begins at 5pm PST. There’ll also be a Q&A session so if you’ve always wanted to ask me something embarrassing in front of others, now is your chance to do it!
Details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1183907651978148/
My book, This City Is a Minefield, is now available on Chapters/Indigo! At the moment, it isn’t available in stores yet, however. If you live in Vancouver and want to support local bookstores, you can also order a copy in at The Paper Hound. In fact, inspired by this tweet, I’ve been encouraging people everywhere to go to their local bookstore and get them to order a copy in for you. Oftentimes, the price will be cheaper than buying on Amazon. Plus, it gets the attention of the booksellers, who may recommending the book to customers and potentially carrying a few copies in store (which equals more visibility). A couple of my favourite independent bookstores to order from in Vancouver are Pulp Fiction and Book Warehouse.
Lastly, if you’d like to support me/my book but currently don’t have the funds to do so, I suggest getting your local public library to buy a copy or two so you can read it for free (most libraries have a Suggest a Purchase page on their website). If you live in Metro Vancouver, my book is order at VPL and you can place a hold on it here. I know authors don’t really publicize or encourage getting their books from the library, but as a library worker, I know how valuable these spaces can be to low-income/young people. When I was young, I frequently searched the library catalogue for gay-themed YA novels (buying books never occurred to me), so to have my book available for young queer people and knowing it might help them means the world to me.
It’s been a while.
I haven’t posted anything on here for quite some time because I didn’t feel like I had anything to say, and anything I did have to say I just tweet. That and I guess this blog reminds me of certain people who are no longer in my life, and it makes me sad.
Anyway, a quick but exciting thing: the book that I’ve been trying to get published for so long is finally getting published. This City Is a Minefield is a collection of memoir and personal essays about growing up gay, Chinese, and Canadian in Vancouver; it’s being published by a small press called Signal 8 Press, and will be available online and in independent bookstores. It is currently already available as an eBook on Amazon; the print book will be released one week from today, on November 5th. If you buy it/have bought it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or on Goodreads to help spread the word.
As you can imagine, I’ve been working at trying to get this published for many years. I probably ranted and posted about my progress on this blog, so to be so close to getting it release into the world for all to read and experience is wild. I really hope people read it as it means a lot to me, and I hope it means something to others as well.
-A
The cover
I always do this and end up feeling incredibly shitty on so many different levels. It’s as if I come out of a trance and I think, God, who was that? What did I just do? Why did I do that? And I keep telling myself it won’t happen again, that I’ll be smarter and wiser and so much better and maybe it’ll last for a while. But then I always end up slipping up and feeling like I betrayed myself.
I think part of it is the horrible guilt after, but more recently, it’s been about STIs. I usually have no idea if they’re clean or not, and I almost always forget to ask before it happens. It doesn’t even cross my mind. It’s frightening.
How do I allow others to take advantage of me so easily? I’m getting better at it, but honestly, I think I need to be empowered to tell someone no and to walk away after. But it’s never easy as that, is it? It’s not enough to be aware of it. I have to do it. Or learn to. So I don’t end up feeling so miserable and sad and like I’d just been sexually assaulted, which, in some ways, I suppose I was. Like when the guy started riding me without a condom and didn’t say anything. And I didn’t say anything until a couple minutes in. And yeah, at least I did it and stopped him, but I expect better from myself. don’t others as well? I don’t want to be easy; I don’t want to just sleep with whomever puts their hands on me.
I’m getting better. I know that. And if I were more objective, I’d tell myself I was proud of myself for accomplishing that at the very least. But I really don’t want to feel this shitty and just so goddamn used like this. It should needs to stop. Ugh.
Sincerely,
Fucked-up Aaron
Man, it’s really been a while since I’ve posted. Here’s a quick post about my newest piece, a personal essay about figuring out how to reconcile a tri-cultural identity.
Any thoughts or comments? Post below!
Source: The complicated journey towards identity as a gay Canadian man of colour
[About two days’ with of relatively engaging, interesting chat on Grindr later]
Me: Do you like cuddling?
Him: Of course. Who doesn’t?
Me: Some people don’t. I think they’re lizard people.
Him: haha, lizard people is right.
Me: I also once converted a non-cuddlier into a cuddle fanatic.
Him: hahaha, look at you go!
Me: Would you like to cuddle sometime?
[No reply for several hours]
Me: [in an attempt to not come off as a slut] Or we could go for coffee/drinks first before jumping into bed.
[No reply for several more hours]
[He’s logged in, hasn’t responded]
Me: is that a no?
[Conversation disappears: I’ve been blocked (or he deleted his account, who knows)]
I don’t get it. I thought it was going fine. Did I do something wrong?
Beep bleep bobbity boop grr arrrgh attack attack attack!
aaron's random musings 