Fantasmic – a guest blog by Ethan Day

Ethan Day is guest blogging today. I think he is funny, entertaining and off the wall but I’ll let you judge for yourself. 😀

Let me begin by offering a warm and fuzzy hello to all the Wavesters for stopping by to listen to a little post holiday rambling.  I would also like to offer a big thank you to Wave for having me.  I always imagine you crossing your fingers and praying for the best anytime I’m involved.  😀 If it makes you feel any better, half the time even I’m not sure what I may say or do next.  It’s a charming little personality quirk of mine, though it is usually only aimed at my own expense.

Since it seems this is a time of year steeped in tradition, I figured there was no reason I should break with any of mine, so here it goes.  I have a short story coming out in a few weeks as part of a ‘snow and hot drinks’ anthology through MLR Press titled, Melting the Slopes.  I thought I’d take this time to talk about a few of the personality quirks of the main character from my contribution which is aptly titled, Snow Ho.

The story opens up with our lovable hero, Boone Daniels, waking up and finding himself in a predicament which I have personally never found myself in.  Boone discovers that he’s in bed with a complete and total stranger, not quite able to remember how he wound up there.  I can honestly say it’s never happened to me since regardless of the amount of alcohol I’ve consumed, I’ve unfortunately been one of those lucky individuals who somehow manages to remember every last embarrassing detail of my behavior while under the influence.  *Sighs* Good times. 😀

It’s really odd considering I’m not exactly known for having a particularly stellar memory. It’s almost as if in addition to my low tolerance for alcohol, the demon liquor somehow manages to download all my shenanigans into a crystal clear LCD-like clarity for me to re-live whether I want to or not.  The bonus here, for any future boyfriends who are out there, is that I’m a really cheap date.  😀

In addition to my low tolerance and thanks to my crystalline focus of memory, I’m acutely aware of the very thin line which separates my normal sweet, angelic, boy-next-door side from my inner Adam Lambert.  What it all boils down to is that after a few too many cocktails, Ethan’s protective ozone layer of common sense seems to vanish into the vapor, warming my globes, if you will. 

Now before I go misleading everyone into thinking I’m an innocent bystander – there have been occasions where I may have possibly had that extra drink having fully understood what would more than likely be the outcome.  I know! I know!  With great power comes great responsibility, which is why I’ve done my best to not abuse it. 😀  Well, that and your friends tend to stop believing it was just the liquor’s fault if it happens too often. I really should have surrounded myself with stupid friends.  Oh well, hindsight!

While I enjoy having that built-in get-out-of-whore free card, Boone prefers to take another tact altogether by pretending to have been a big ‘ole boy slut in his past.  It is true that he has indeed not been the reincarnation of Sandra Dee, yet he didn’t exactly blow the entire basket ball team in high school, either.

For Boone, his lies or exaggerations are really more about spin and the control of image.  I mean, let’s face it.  Everyone has different standards when it comes to the number.  You know the one, that number which represents the amount of sex partners we’ve accumulated in our past.  And no – for those of you just coming off that “fourgy” you participated in over the past weekend – there’s no such thing as a bulk discount.  They don’t count as one when you do them all at once.

But it’s this discrepancy in human nature that has Boone acting like he’s been the man-whore of Babylon all his life.  It’s his way of leveling the playing field so it won’t matter what the individual opinion of his latest beau happens to be in terms of the slut scale.  From Boone’s perspective it’s always better to wind up being less of a slut than they imagined as opposed to the alternative.  Make ‘em think the worst up-front thereby allowing them to experience relief upon finding out the truth. 

Boone likes to paint himself worse than reality, however there are people who do what I call ‘padding’ their past – a sort of airbrushing of the facts which isn’t perhaps completely lying, so much as blurring the lines and removing the jagged edges.  Making things seem slightly prettier than what the cold hard reality would actually reveal.  As time goes by, the individual who uses this technique tells and re-tells the softened version of their history so often that it tends to turn these revisions into fact. Is that really such a horrible thing?  I’m not completely convinced it would be, though it does make you wonder what they’d ‘forget’ to mention while you were dating them.   

That brings up the topic of the lies that we tell ourselves.  Can you really blame a guy for lying to you if they’re constantly doing it to themselves?  Is it even lying if you convince yourself of something that deep down you know isn’t true?  Some people might call that the power of positive thinking.  I’m sure that lottery ticket I just bought has the winning number on it.  I have a friend who went through this phase where he fell for every bi-boy that stumbled across his path.  Eventually, after having his heart broken several times in a row he finally took my advice and started saying “Bye” whenever a guy informed him he was bi.  To be fair, I don’t really think these guys were bi so much as gay’s in waiting – great big homo’s who just weren’t able to cop to it yet.  But for whatever reason my BFF wasn’t able to tell the difference between bi and self-loathing.

Perhaps the lies we like to tell ourselves are merely some sort of unfulfilled fantasy?  I mean, I used to fantasize about ten inches until I came face to…er…face with one?  Talk about the lies we try to convince ourselves of.  Telling yourself you can get the whole thing into your mouth doesn’t actually make it true. The bright side is, I now have a whole new appreciation for the respectable six or seven inchers.  It’s true – they may be less showy, but they work just as well and don’t require a need for a detachable lower jaw from our species evolution. 😀

There are also the lies told to us by others which we convince ourselves are true, even though deep down we don’t really believe it.  “Just relax and take a deep breath, it’ll fit, damn it,” springs to mind.  “Those jeans look great,” is another one I’m sure many have fallen for.  Never go shopping with a frenemy, folks.  But if you actually sit back and think about it, are all of these lies merely our inner fantasies and desires forcing their way to the surface in an attempt grant us our wishes?  Sure it may not be real, but is it wrong to allow ourselves to buy into the delusion for a little while?

When it comes to fantasy aren’t we all more than likely addicted to it, in varying degrees – whether you make your living by creating it or make your living so you can purchase more of it?  If you really stop and think about it, what would love be without fantasy?  No different than food, drink, or a quick shag into a rag, I would think.  Of course, not all fantasies are good. Sometimes they can backfire, an affliction I’ve most definitely suffered from in my real life as my fantasies tend to be much more fun and exciting than my reality.  But I do believe it’s the fantasy that keeps me open and constantly on the look-out for a real-life love muffin I can call my own.  If it weren’t for the things we imagined for ourselves, how else would we know what to strive for as we navigate the real world?

For me, Snow Ho is a love story about accidents.  It’s about a boy who’s in a state of flux in his life, neither living in his past nor moving toward any discernable future.   I’ve been that boy on several occasions when facing a new or critical juncture in my own timeline.  Whether we call it fantasy, day dreaming, lies, delusions or spin, I think they all come from the same place.  And while it’s true some are healthier for us than others, I’m not sure we could truly appreciate the importance of what we already have or would like to have without them. 

Melting the Slopes will be available mid-December from MLR Press and in addition to Snow Ho, will also include wonderful shorts by William Maltese and Jason Edding.  http://www.mlrbooks.com/books.php

Ethan’s Contact Information

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