I had my first feature-writing class last night, and afterwards, I was ready to quit. Matt had never seen me so depressed.

For one thing, I’m the only male in the class. The other 13 students and the teacher are all female.

Some gay men thrive around women; others feel alien around them. I’m the latter. Around most men, particularly most gay men, I can take comfort in a range of strong but familiar emotions: lust, envy, competition, empathy, identification, distaste, admiration, curiosity. Around most women, I don’t know how to act or what to feel. Women are not as psychologically resonant for me, or at least the resonance is too buried.

And I’m not comfortable enough in my manhood to be “one of the girls”; I don’t like playing the token gay guy. One of the exercises last night was to take 10 minutes and privately brainstorm on a sheet of paper about what topics we might want to use for feature articles. Everything I wrote down revolved around homosexuality. Gay marriage; closeted gay spouses (since the McGreevey thing has been in the news); gay dating; gay legal issues. The teacher, Beth, asked for volunteers to read theirs, and I didn’t volunteer, because I knew that if I did, I’d immediately be the token gay guy. (When I mentioned this to Matt, he asked me if any of the women were lesbians. I don’t know. If there were, they weren’t obvious.)

So there’s that.

Besides that, feature writing just doesn’t seem fun. I’m probably totally overreacting or focusing on the negative and unfamiliar, but anyway: Beth referred to a few types of feature articles, and among these are things called “charticles,” which appear to be articles in the form of charts, or snippets of text accompanied by graphics. There’s also service journalism, which doesn’t move me.

Near the beginning of class, Beth passed out a bunch of magazines to illustrate different types of articles. Except for two or three, they were all women’s magazines. (Fortunately, I got the New Yorker.) I don’t want to write dumb little personality-less pieces. I want to be like Michelangelo Signorile or Dan Savage or Andrew Sullivan or someone like that. I want to write gay stuff.

Perhaps blogging has spoiled me, but I really want to write about things that I’m interested in and that show my personality.

And I’m being so stupid here, because of course I can write stuff like that. It’s just a matter of appropriating the things from the class that I need, of putting my own stamp on my experience of it.

I was depressed last night because I’ve wrapped up my three-year commitment to my job, so I’m free to leave without penalty, but what am I going to do now? Work at this job until I retire? Go through life without making anything of myself? And if I do want to make something of myself, go for some sort of goal, is it going to be unpleasant? I want life to be fun and as stress-free as possible.

I saw an opening for myself, some hope, a possible way out of the boredom, only to realize it was a mirage. That’s not a good feeling. Brick wall. Is this all that there is in life?

I don’t feel quite as negative as I’m making this all out to be. I’m just trying to describe all of it so I can work through it, which I’ve already begun to do.

So I’m not quitting the class, and I’ll see what I can do with it.