The Importance of Being Nerdy with Nico Minoru

I don't go out drinking often. I'll go out on a Sunday evening and perform at the local open mic night because, quite frankly, it reminds me every once in a while, that somewhere inside me, there still resides something of an artist, and one, albeit through the medium of nineties era indie music, that can still move people to some degree.

When it comes to your typical "lads"'night out, however, I find myself reminded each time I venture upon one exactly why I hate the concept in its entirety.

I have never been "one of the guys". From the onset of my teenage years, I have found myself tending towards the female of the species for friendship; indeed, it has often been said that I am the gayest straight man that most people know. Do I find that to be a bad thing? Well, no, I don't. In fact, most of the time I take it to be somewhat endearing. Since "finding myself" in that typical, retrospectively pretentious way in my late teens/early twenties, I've always been comfortable in my oft seen as ecentric behaviour and fashion.  Waistcoats and scarves? A must in any weather. 

It pains me to find, as such, that after years of trotting the globe, being accepted for the bizarre being that I have found myself quite happily becoming, that I have returned home to be seen as little more than the outcastable oddball that I have tried so very hard to escape from.

Perhaps it is simply small town thinking (that's right Durham, I'm talking to you), but to venture out on an evening with one of one's closest friends, slightly more dressed up than your typical "too tight for your steroid-induced pectorals t-shirt" brigade and be ridiculed at every turn by fellows who can barely bring themselves to string a sentence together... Well, in all honesty, sometimes it just reminds me a little too much of the pathetic-ness of high school.

In all honesty, I'm proud of my nerdiness; without my love of comics, I probably never would have finished writing my children's book (yet to be published, but hey meathead, have you ever written a damned book?), never have travelled the world, and never have met the amazing people that I have along the way. 

You feel the need to mock us? Then do so. But remember, without the nerds, you wouldn't be bitching about what your girlfriend did on Facebook last night with the fella down the road, you wouldn't have 90% of the DJs that you're making bizarre hip movements that you call "dancing" to, and perhaps most importantly, you wouldn't even be in that ruddy nightclub in the first place. I mean seriously, have you seen the guys running these joints? Take away the booze, the bouncers and the blow, and even I could take half of them in a bout of fisticuffs.

So, in a piece of self-affirming rantage, I urge you all to be proud of who you are. Though if you're a beefcake bully douchebiscuit, you can go die in a fire for all I care. Face.