Wednesday, June 02, 2010

A philosophical evening

A few days ago, I went out for dinner with blogger J.P. Rügnitz, who writes the blog A-Philosophical (Here: in my world. He'd been emailing me on and off for a few years, and then last year when he moved to London I did a "Dear GB" posting for him, to try and give him ideas about how to find a good job. But until we went out for dinner together, I'd never met him.

"Hi, are you J.P. ?" I ask, getting up from my seat in the restaurant bar when I see a likely looking guy coming towards me, "did you find this place OK?"

"Yeah, but I had no idea who you were or what you looked like!" answers J.P., clearly feeling that I should have given him a few more clues about myself prior to our rendezvous.

"Sorry about that," I reply, "but now you're here, why don't you go and put your coat in the cloakroom :-)."

I don't normally meet people who know that I write this blog, although I do sometimes make exceptions for established bloggers, like J.P. for example. But given my desire to stay anonymous, even when it comes to meeting established bloggers I always try to hang on to my anonymity until the last possible minute!

We have a drink at the bar, and then after fifteen minutes or so when we've finished our drinks, we move to our table for dinner.

"So why is your blog called A-Philosophical?" I ask once we're seated at our table, "I've never been able to work that one out!"

"It because I studied philosophy at university :-)," answers J.P., "Western philosophy, that is."

During the course of the evening we discover many things about each other. Even though J.P. is still under 30, he's already had an interesting life. Apart from Uruguay, he's lived in the USA, Spain, and now London, picking up and then discarding several lovers along the way!

All too soon it's time to go home. J.P. has a party to go to, and I have a busy day ahead of me the following day so we have to adjourn. One of the things that I like about living in London is the fact that it's such a melting-pot. The more fascinating guys like J.P. who live here, the better!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gosh. No offence but I don't understand why anyone would meet up with someone who keep EVERYTHING under wraps.

And this:

""So why is your blog called A-Philosophical?" I ask once we're seated at our table, "I've never been able to work that one out!""

Is this something like a backhanded compliment? it's like you just told him "I didn't find anything particularly philosophical about your blog. You've totally mis-sold it."

Latelygay said...

What is liberating about London is it's established gay culture and the protection we now have in law.

It's no wonder that gay people make a 'b' line here.

I was entertaining my Ex (Malaysian) and his BF (English) at the weekend. The BF, much at my urging, had finally come out to his family which was really overdue as they've been co-habiting for a year!

Anyway, we both turned to my Ex and said 'your turn!'.

Yes, it's great that guys can come here and escape the strictures of their past lives, but it's still sad that back home, so to speak, they have a foot in the closet.

Another Malaysian friend (no, it's not entirely a specialism, just a coincidence!) suddenly lost his mother a couple of years ago. She never knew about her son and how he was in blissful with Mr.Right in a civil partnership, and now he very much regrets that he didn't have the chance to share his joy with her.

Forgive, the ramble, but I suppose in the spirit of yesterday's Laws' remarks, yes, it's oh so nice to go travelling but don't leave it too long and you'll never get to go home. Not even to say goodbye.

Antony said...

Yeah I like London for it´s melting pot of all different people, ideas that it has. But dislike the size of London, the crowdedness - especially on the tube at peak times.

Thanks for another interesting post.

A x