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| Porthos |
I'm recovering from PneumoniaAdd yet another malediction to my series of Job-like trials in recent weeks. I was in the hospital a couple of days ago. My lips were blue, my fingernails were nearly purple, and I couldn't breathe. My fever was almost at 104F, and I was shaking so bad that my teeth were chattering. They injected me with steroids, put me on oxygen, gave me breathing treatments, tried their best to reduce the fever, etc, etc. I'm now on 8 medications, including strong antibiotics, which have started to work. Now my fever's gone, and the only problem I have now is not being able to breath, a congested chest and nose, and a lack of energy. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Well you must be able to breathe to some extent, because otherwise you wouldn't have been writing that... 
That sounds like an extremely sudden onset of very severe pneumonia. Had you had a chest infection during the week or so before, or did you just suddenly develop those symptoms one day? Did you have to stay in hospital for a long time? Wow, eight medications... it must be really bad if you need that many for pneumonia! In addition to the antibiotics, what other medications have they given you for it? Anyway, I hope you get better soon! 
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| Akoni |
I read you surf, maybe some drops of salty water entered your lungs and inflamed some of the alveoli. | ||||
| Porthos |
Well I didn't mean that I couldn't breathe literally, Benjamin, good God! I just meant it's difficult to breathe.
And I just woke up with it on thursday, out of nowhere. |
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| Fredrik |
My guess is that Porthos, like most male teenagers, had a nasty cough and lots of slush in his lungs. It's really scary to listen to how some of these boys sound, you are just waiting for a new tuberculosis epidemic. | ||||
| Porthos |
Why only male teenagers? Doesn't everybody experience those symptoms? Mucus in the lungs and a nasty cough? | ||||
| fab |
Oh... Your not a lucky guy!
Good recover ! |
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| Deborah |
My sympathies, Porthos. Once, in my much younger days, I had what I thought was a bad chest cold that lingered for weeks. I kept coughing to no avail and got weaker and weaker until finally went to a doctor. Seems I had pneumonia, though it wasn't severe enough to warrant hospitalization. So I got antibiotics, and within a couple of days I was much improved. | ||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
Well that's certainly very unusual! Unless you have severe chronic chest problems and some kind of immunodeficiency disorder already, perhaps. Have you any ideas what might have caused it? Has that ever happened to you before?
LOL — I did an exam yesterday, and one of the other boys in the exam hall clearly had a rather bad chest infection. It was so distracting. I felt as though I had a kind of chest infection for most of last year (amongst other things). But this year, since being rather ill over Christmas and New Year when I lost quite a bit of weight, I've actually been feeling a lot better. I'm no longer having continuous infections, I'm much less tired than I used to be, I'm no-longer needing to go to the toilet 16 times a day, and I seem to have regained all the weight that I lost. It's great! The other weird development is that I don't feel quite so 'anti-sex' as I used to either, lol.
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| Uriel |
You're going to be gay, aren't you? 
Porthos, you seem to have a lot of problems. Testosterone poisoning? 
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
What makes you say that?
Seriously though, I need to start being honest with myself and accept reality, especially as I'm going to university later this year. Hopefully I'll be able to accept again what I had more or less accepted when I was 14, before my brief involvement with another religion (not the Unitarians) which seemed to have a lasting effect on me, even after I stopped being involved with it. |
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| Pauline |
Benjamin
if you're gay then you must join the Gay Thread because André was sad that Akoni is straight and there're more straigt visitors of this forum. 
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| Pauline |
Sorry I forgot to tell Porthos: Get well soon!!! | ||||
| Porthos |
People! Stop recruiting for the other team! Ben! Join our team man! Girls are sublime!! Girls, boobs! kickin curves, soft skin, long soft hair, and a pre-lubricated garage! You can't beat that!  
But of course, you have to do what you feel is right.... 
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'pre-lubricated garage', but I'm afraid that all that stuff has never interested me. I can't say the same about boys, however. But even so, I can't imagine that I'd ever be as 'sexual' as either you or Uriel; I still don't desire sex — just someone to have an intimate relationship with, with some hugging and kissing, LOL. |
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| Porthos |
So you have come to terms with the fact that you are gay then? | ||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
It's weird really, because I kind of came to terms with it about four or five years ago, but then I kind of lost that confidence when I was 14, when it suddenly seemed like a good idea to become a Bahá'í. I only considered myself a Bahá'í for about three months, but that religion seemed to have lasting effects on me, and somehow managed to convince me that I wasn't actually gay, and replaced whatever I used to think about in bed with a kind of overwhelming awe of God. Realistically, I'd say that I'm probably 'gay' in an asexual sense. I've never really been interested in sex, and I'm still not, but I think I'm starting to come to terms with the idea that it might not be so bad if I were in a committed relationship with someone. But, in all honesty, I'd definitely go for boys over girls (sorry).
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| Shouga |
You know, I'm sure it's not *THAT* uncommon to be uninterested in sex. Sure, most boys are interested in it, especially at your age, but it doesn't make you a medical curiousity just because you aren't. Additionally, I don't really agree with the term 'asexual' either, especially as it's often used so vaguely, by people who do have sex but just don't care for it in the same way that they *perceive* most people do. Maybe if you HATED sex, and the very thought of it, and had tried it and KNEW that you never, ever wanted to do it again, then you should describe yourself as thus, but to be perfectly honest, I think that one day you will be interested in sex, and that this is just you growing up. |
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| Uriel |
"Pre-lubricated garage"? Gawd, I almost pissed myself!
Bring on the pink Corvette....
My guess all this time (sorry to speculate on your sexuality for afar, but I'm only human, Benj!), has been that you have gay feelings, but are not very comfortable with them, and that asexuality has been your defense mechanism, a way to not have to deal with them. This seems to have happened in some degree to many gay men I've know -- they either try to date women (and come close to, or do, marry them), or are simply too shy to date anyone at all (not surprising, considering how in-you-face and overwhelming many gay men can be; imagine dealing with that if you were shy and unsure of yourself and what to make of all this?). I'm pretty sure the priesthood attracts many men who look at the vow of celibacy as a convenient way to not have to deal with a sexuality that is at odds with their own religious upbringing. And then there are the men who try very hard to cover it up -- they are married men or ladies' men during the day, and prowl the streets for gay tail at night. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Yes, that's probably right. I haven't really wanted to admit it, so I've just taken advantage of my naturally low sex-drive and attempted to avoid anything related to sex altogether. Bizarre really, because I know that it would be much much easier for most people to accept/understand me as 'gay' rather than 'asexual' — which is actually what I've said all along. Not to mention that I don't think that anyone I know seriously believes I'm 'straight' anyway. So was there a specific reason for why you'd been able to guess that, or can you just sort of tell sometimes?
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| Pauline |
Society, also the tolerant places, does prefer having normal poeple, so if you don't conform to this normality, you will feel less worth. some of it is because of mean and nasty judgements by other people, some of it you have of you because you would prefer it also to be normal. But to deny it isn't healthy and maybe you will suffer more if you will not admit /accept. i'm not being bossy because I didn't told people the infos about me what I've told on the forum and I've not the courage telling people in real life, and I don't know if it will be possible. so, for sure I don't tell you what to do. Benjamin I've seen a terrible website about you must not be gay. The man is against gay people and tell that God is as well, but the man was gay before. He has described him : reformed gay. First, it seem like an hatred website, btu when you notice that he was gay ( therefore is gay I think) it's very sad. What you think about it? I've heard that God love eveyrone the same and for him it's not important your race, sexuality, illness, intelligence etc... but the website's shwoing a very sad situation. http://www.donniedavies.com/ |
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| Porthos |
You could tell, and it least it seemed obvious to me but I didn't say anything. You were completely uninterested in girls, but you seemed to have a fondness for the idea of shirtless boys, and talked about it frequently. A lot of boys are insecure about this issue when they are in fact gay, and invent protective mechanisms within their psyche designed to tell themselves otherwise, which are themselves, built on fantasy. In your case, you developed a distate for sexuality all-together. But deep down inside, you have the hots for men.
I've noticed something. It seems that there are far more exclusively gay men then there are exclusively gay women. There's a huge disparity it would seem. Why? |
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| Pauline |
what I wrote in my last message maybe it's not clear:
I don't mean that it's very sad to be gay!!!!! I meaned that it's very sad that the man who has created the website (for which I've put the link ) who was gay, now tells that God hates gays and nobody mustn't be gay, it's bad etc... This message is for explain better because I think that it can be misunderstood what i put.
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| Joanne |
Just kidding.
(sort of...) |
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| Shouga |
There's a lot of truth in that...
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| Deborah |
Benjamin, I'm not sure why you say "that's probably right," since you and Uriel aren't saying the same thing. Only time will tell, of course, but I find it perfectly believable that Benjamin's your low sex drive could have a physical cause. Or not. Or that your physical make-up could change. |
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| Shouga |
I still stand by what I said; I think Benjamin's asexuality is part of the process of growing up. People go through different phases and interests at different times. | ||||
| Pauline |
it can be that one day Benjamin will fall in love with someone, then he will know. But, he wrote it would be boys not girls who interest him, so it seems he know.
The nasty man on his website can shut up - we can write him some emails telling him that he's wrong!!! |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
What I meant was this: I've never really been interested in sex (and still am not), but I've 'liked' boys in a way which I can't really explain since I was about 11 or 12 — the same is not true for girls. I suppose that that makes me 'gay' in some sense, although whether it really makes me homosexual at the moment is perhaps more debatable. I've only just started admitting to myself that I'm essentially 'gay' — I decided at the beginning of the year that I was going to have to think about this seriously this year because, afterall, I'm almost 18 and I'll be leaving home in six or seven months. For ages, I had admitted only the 'asexual' part to myself, because I wanted to avoid having to deal with the fact that I find boys attractive in some way (although I'm not quite sure how).
The other day, I was reading a forum for gay teenagers and early 20s from the UK. On one thread, many people had described how they had been bullied at school because people were accusing them of being gay. But when they actually decided to tell everyone at school that they were gay, the bullying stopped, and everyone respected them. So it seems that it wasn't because the other people were intolerant of homosexuality that they were bullied, but because the bullies just wanted to exploit potentially insecure people.
Some (misinformed, in my opinion) Evangelical Christians and other religious conservatives believe that 'homosexuality is a sin'. The problem is that they often use a different definition for 'homosexuality' than most people. They think of it as a behaviour, something which one does, whilst we would think of it more as an 'orientation'. So, when he says that he is no longer gay, he probably means that he hasn't had a sexual relationship with a man for a long time. Anyway, enough about me. How are you now, Porthos? And since we're on this topic, I've noticed that your general attitude towards gay people seems to have changed over the past few months, which is good in my opinion. |
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| Uriel |
Well, you're pretty transparent, Benjamin. Hate to tell you, but I found it obvious from the first discussion on asexuality. I figured you had two separate things going on -- homosexual tendencies, and a low sex drive, probably hormonal in nature. I still think you need to get that second one checked out and fixed, so that you can more fully enjoy the first one.
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| Porthos |
I've been feeling better. I'm off the antibiotics now and I'm recovering swiftly. But my lungs are still really weak, and I'm still coughing quite a bit. | ||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
That was quick. People I've known who have had pneumonia have had to take antibiotics for several weeks, often well over a month. Even when I had an infected toenail, I was on antibiotics for three weeks. |
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