March 30, 2001 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

bigtips

Why am I suddenly jealous of my wealthier friends?

by M.T. "the Big Tipper" Martone

Dear Big Tipper,

I'm in my late 20s, and have a good job as an office manager, a handsome lover who respects me and is still sexy to me after five years. I feel grateful to be HIV negative and healthy in general, and I just keep counting my blessings over and over again, but nothing stops the fact that I am just so jealous of some of my friends.

It seems like they're all doctors or lawyers, or owners of successful businesses, and like they are able to take vacations and just spend money casually in a way I can't. My partner and I have a lot of debt from different places, some from medical expenses I incurred from a motorcycle accident years and years ago when I had no insurance, some from our college loans, some just from our car and other random expenses that crop up.

I feel stupid, like I should have decided to go to law school years ago when my friends did, and now I'm in an okay job, but even if I'm really frugal and stick to a budget, we'll never be able to live like them. I want us to have a house, and I worry about who will take care of my parents.

I feel guilty for not giving my lover a more secure life. I feel angry that some of my friends come from wealthy families and never had to borrow money to go to school. I don't want to feel like this. It makes me not want to spend time with my friends, and none of this is their fault. I'm just so frustrated with myself. I never used to be like this, and it's making me feel like a terrible person.

On a totally different note, are you still trying to have a kid? You haven't said anything in a long time.

Dear Owe Superman,

Debtors Prison

Bleah. What a sickening feeling jealousy is. It sounds like you're spinning out about something in particular right now, though. Has something specific come up recently? Do your debts feel unmanageable? Is there something specific that you aren't able to do? If you can pick out what's killing you in particular, you can probably take your frustration level down a notch or

two.

If you have some genuinely pressing debts and you're being called by collection agencies, you can call off the hounds by working with a consumer credit service. Granted, they're "free" services because they're sponsored by the credit card companies, so they're not particularly objective about who gets paid back first. But they can

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Builder will look

get the phone calls to stop. Check the phone book.

If you're in your late twenties (an age of painful self-examination, by the way), you have lots of time to change your career if you want, even without racking up more debt. If you actually want to be a lawyer, you could night-school it a

class at a time. It'll take a while, but what else are you doing? Meanwhile, take care of the things that are making your life good. You can't buy that stuff.

Ultimately, though, the truth is that we live in a world in which it's very difficult to feel good about yourself and your life if you're not affluent. It's just easier to have more money. Being around money but not

having it yourself can be torturous.

ing out and having sex with my best friend, who's a girl. I know that dreams aren't the whole truth, and that they aren't necessarily about what is truly going on in your subconscious, but it's making me feel differently about her when I see her during the day, because I feel like I have this secret. It's

BIG TIPS

Maybe you need more friends in different socioeconomic brackets, and to read fewer fashion and design magazines. Try to lower the constant influx of money-oriented media. Please don't let someone else tell you what your good life is.

Yes, we're still working on the kid thing. It just seems to be such a long process I thought I'd spare you all the minutia. I'll report in soon with the latest. -

Dear Mary,

I am in 11th grade, and have a question for you. I have had gay friends since I was in 8th grade, all guys. I've never been homophobic, and I never cared who anyone was attracted to.

Of course, most of my friends are straight, because that's how the world is. I've played on our high school's soccer and basketball teams for three years, so I haven't had much time to date, and although I've gone out on dates, I haven't had a serious boyfriend yet. It would be nice, but I feel like there's lots of time for that, and I don't feel lonely, just busy.

The point is, I've never thought I was a lesbian or bisexual. You can't not think about things like that when you have other gay friends, so I've thought about it, and never really felt that interest in girls, except as friends.

So the weird thing is, for the past few weeks I've been having dreams about mak-

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weird to be secretly turned on by your best friend, especially when you don't necessarily think you're a lesbian. Maybe I just read something or saw something on TV that made me have these dreams, but I can't remember what.

Do you think it's possible for someone to have these dreams and not be a lesbian? It would be okay to be a lesbian, but I really don't think I am. What do you think?

Probably Straight

Dear Dream Girl,

Sweetie, I'm not being flip when I say, who cares?

I know that you do, but calling ourselves straight or gay or even bisexual is ultimately an approximation of everything we ever are and feel.

It probably feels loaded to have dreams about a girl when you haven't clocked many boy hours, but that just makes it even less

likely that you could "pick" an accurate sexual identity. It's like doing a math problem with too many variables to ever get a right answer

Identity labels have their uses. You can fight invisibility and homophobia by letting people know they know someone queer. You're probably much less fearful and confused about what's happening right now because you've had out gay friends.

On the other hand, slapping a label on something can be limiting. What if you decide you're a lesbian, and then you're attracted to a guy? Please spare the world from being one more "lesbian who sleeps with men."

I think you should enjoy any sexy dreams you have, no matter who they're about, and when you feel like it, come on to whomever you're attracted to during your waking hours. Take care of your body and your heart, but don't make policy decisions about your love life. You'll have lots of interesting experiences, but you never know how they'll come wrapped.

Confidential to Fresh, My Ass: No, it wasn't nice for him to spray Body Shop Foot Refresher Spray on your butthole, but he was just joking. He didn't know how the menthol would feel. Give him a break. ✔

Burning questions? Contact me at the Chronicle, attention Big Tips, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland 44101, or fax to 216631-1052, e-mail

martone@drizzle.com.

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