Karma on to the Gay Club/ Bottom Problems

Karma:
I have long believed in negative reprecussions of Karma. That is, my good deeds seemed to reap me no cosmic benefits, but I distincly felt that the second I did something bad, the big Buddha/Adonai/Cosmic Being was going to karmically spank me. And NOT in a good way.

But I have since realized that my good deeds come back to me in a certain way: I have never (knock on wood, pu pu pu) permanenly lost any thing super important. Important things I lose are usually returned to me by kind strangers. My wallet had once returned to me TWICE by strangers in a two week period. And this last week, my French cell phone slipped from my pocket on a bus I was taking back to Avignon after a not-too-useless assistant support meeting. I realized I couldn't find my cell phone, and when my roommate called it to see where in the appartment it was, a VERY nice student at the local university picked it up, and arranged to meet with me the next day to return it to me. It is such a good feeling when a stranger does something so completely altruistic for you, not just for the personal benefit that is realized, but for the knowledge that someone out there is doing for you what you try to do for others.

After recuperating my cell phone from Aurore, and giving her a bottle of wine to say thank you, I was in a benevolently happy mood. Stopping by the waaayy overpriced corner grocery store (6 eggs: a euro forty. Scanadalous!), the man ahead of me in line was searching his poches (pockets) for the 4 centimes, exact change, as requested by the coin-lacking clerk. I swiftly nudged four centimes across the counter. The man said, well then, if I take this, you have to take this, and handed me a euro. A euro gift after a 4 centimes gift! I demurred, but he insisted as I had insisted, so I took the euro, and then petted his dog, which then bit me. But I think it was trying to play.
The message: Aim to give back better than you get. And it's ok if the dog bites you.

Later that night (this was all Friday), my friends, fellow assistants Aoibhéann (very Irish), and Adam (very Austin, TX), came in from Orange to play. Poor suckers not only work there, like me, but also live there. Anyway, they come in one night a week, and stay with me. We go out, and in the morning (uhh, noon-time), I make eggs with brie, and cayenne- and onion-heavy breakfast potatoes.

We decided to check out "L'Ésclave" (the Slave), the local gay bar. We went, we saw, we forbade my friend from cruising there, EVER. When we arrived, it was kind of dead, just old gay men staring at each other over the rims of their cocktail glasses. There is something particularly sad about old gay men out to cruise. Maybe it is the pitiful combination of desire, wrinkled cured skin, and pierced ears. Anyway, it started to pick up when some more people started dancing. A DJ spun euro club tunes (hip-hop remixes, world pop, house), and a flatscreen flashed gay soft porn. Beefy men coming out of buildings, shirtless, carrying gym bags, looking available. But then you'd be grooving to a Whitney Houston dance remix, spin around and see said beefy men's beefy penises as they soaped up in the shower. I blushed under the violet and green rays from the light machine.

Looking for the bathroom, I wandered up to the top floor of the club to find myself in the strangest bathroom I'd ever seen. Low low lighting, stalls with no doors and no toilets, and signs with cartoon graphics of condom-sheathed cock and balls circled, and the unprotected bare penises X-ed out. It was a sex room!! Thank goodness no one was using any stalls at the time, I would have been just a little embarassed to interrupt the type of tryst I would not exactly be welcome at. But apparently, the sex stalls are typical of less-than-welcoming regions. There are so many little towns and villages in Provence, that it is hard to integrate into, to create, even, an LGBT-supportive community. Homosexual men and women are often very isolated from each other and from their hometown communities. So when people arrange to hop a train and come out into Avignon, they don't have anywhere else convienent/welcoming to get a little loving. Thus, the sex stalls.

It was my first time out at a specifically Gay club, and while it wasn't too hopping that night, I think it was fun enough, and a good option for going out with the right group of people. Read: no lame ass hetero guys saying, I have nothing against gays, it's just I would hate for them to hit on me. Why do so many (too many) straight men think every single gay finds them irresistible and cannot wait to slip them a one-eyed surprise? Please.
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I would love some feed back from anyone who knows a little sports medecine. I have a problem with my left butt cheek. Whenever I do any type of exercise, especially jumping in dance class, and less so with swimming, I get this pain in my butt cheek afterwards. It feels a little achey, and like it's centered where my leg joint is, like IN my butt cheek. I think I may have a problem with pulled ligaments from my butt to the ball joint of femur. Sometimes it hurts alot. It seems to feel a little bit better when I tense/flex my butt REALLY hard, or if I do a chair stretch to stretch out my bottom. What is wrong with my ass? Goodness!