Bigg On Life

Streets Are Uneven When You're Down

2011-03-27T11:13:00.003-04:00

A funny thing happened to me the other day.

There I am, standing at the elevator, just minding my business when my next door neighbor comes up to me. I've only ever met him once or twice before; he's a short little black guy, maybe in his mid to late fifties, one of those people who passes rapidly through the salt-and-pepper phase straight to pure white. Usually he studiously avoids eye contact, but this time he marched right into my personal space and started talking.

"You know the walls are pretty thin in this building," was how he started his story... Seems his wife, a nice lady I've only ever glimpsed in passing, never leaves the apartment anymore. He does all of the shopping, anything that requires going out. She hasn't been to so much as a doctor's appointment in two years. Agoraphobic I guess is the professional term. But she loves her TV shows... Or she did until cable got so expensive that they can only afford basic now. This man, my neighbor, was really worried about his wife when the cable went off: she got very depressed, withdrawn... Sometimes wouldn't even get out of bed. Until recently, that is.

After her last bout of five or six straight days in bed he came home one afternoon from work and found her dressed, coiffed and perky. She couldn't stop talking about a fight she'd heard the neighbors having - which of course would be us - and some of the juicy details she'd overheard. Over the next few days she followed the progress of our rapprochement with careful, water glass to the wall attention. She'd been doing better ever since - and all because she'd found something to occupy her. Something to absorb her attention, something that interested and titillated and even scandalized her at times. A story she could follow almost every day with characters she felt she knew.

In short, my love life is my next door neighbor's new soap opera addiction.

Her husband told me this so earnestly that I was a little afraid he was going to ask if she could join in, but that's not the case. (*THANK JEBUS*) No - she'd heard us talking about moving when our lease is up and was just as indignant as any soap fan reading a cancellation notice for their favorite video histrionics. Not knowing what else to do, he approached me. I'm still a little stunned; in his shoes, I'd never have told the principal players, not EVER. I'd have just hoped for the best. I suppose, though, that watching your wife of over twenty years drift slowly into a depression from which you were afraid she might not emerge would be enough to make you want a little control over the situation. Still, would you walk up to a complete stranger and tell them that listening to their sex life through the bedroom wall had cured your spouse's agoraphobia? I'm not sure I'd have the balls. It was sort of nice to be complimented even in such a backhanded way though.

"You queers done saved my wife's mind, an' I hope you'll never move" is a phrase I think I'll treasure for a long time.

Now I definitely think we're gonna move, FYI.

Title lyric from "People Are Strange" as covered by Echo & The Bunnymen.

This Could Be The Best Place Yet

2011-03-09T19:33:00.013-05:00

I feel so restless lately. Useless. Like I'm killing time that could be better spent.

I suppose it's at least in part due to my (very late) realization that I can probably look forward to about as many good years as I've already had... if I'm lucky. This makes me want to do something more with the time I've got left... But something for whom? I can't really see the logic in making the last thirty to forty years of my life into one big gesture aimed at someone else that would never be fully appreciated and which would probably be at least half misconstrued. So it only makes sense to make those years as comfortable as possible for old Numero Uno, right? Thing is that it makes me gag a little just to read the selfishness in those words, and even if that didn't repulse me (and it does!) I know it wouldn't work.

There are some truths that are transitory and some that are permanent, at least when it comes to people. My taste for Prince, however long it seemed during my adolescence and however horribly it scarred those around me, was transitory - and for that if I thought there was really a god I'd have to thank him emphatically. A more permanent truth is that I need someone to take care of if I'm going to make it. I don't really care enough about my own material wants and needs to cook and clean and pamper myself. This is not the same, I've learned, as saying that I don't care enough about myself. I do. I'm just too unmotivated by my own needs - contradictory as it sounds, it's true. I have to have someone that I feel responsible for (and to) in order to pay the bills on time and clean under the fridge once a month.

I have someone like that in my life. I suppose that since I have found him wanting in some regards I could get rid of him and try to find someone better. I know a lot of people would feel that they owe it to themselves to do just that if they found themselves in my shoes. I know that I could punish him; I've been in a relationship with someone who punished me because she found out who I really was, I know how that feels. I don't wanna do that. Not so much because I don't want to punish him (of course I do, I'm only human) but because I don't wanna be the punisher. I don't want to wear that hat and I certainly do not wanna internalize that whole vengeance thing into my world view. Who has time and energy for that? Obsessing over people who have wronged me feels like hiding in a dark closet and cutting myself - that sane and that likely to hurt anybody but me.

I just wish I knew what to do with the anger that bubbles up in my heart every time I think about it. I wish I knew how to turn those feelings of impotent rage and seething hatred into something positive. I hear that's possible... but then, every movie from 1930 to 1950 or so told us there'd be flying cars by now too and look how that turned out. The thing I'm really afraid of is that at some point those feelings will be present in the same physical space that he is, if that makes any sense. I'm afraid that I won't feel those things when I'm alone and not keeping myself constantly busy enough, but when I'm with him... I'm afraid that whatever pane of emotional glass I've managed to erect between those feelings and myself during the hours we're together every day will shatter. I don't ever want to so much as raise my voice in anger to him. I love him and I'm afraid of hurting him. I couldn't live with myself if I intentionally hurt him.

Those angry feelings, though, and that fear, those are the only really lasting scars of one dark chapter in what might be a long and varied story. I'm still reading along every day, just wild to see how it turns out... I just keep my fingers crossed in hopes of warding off cliffhangers.

Title lyric from "Time (Clock Of The Heart)" by Culture Club.

Days When I Couldn't Live My Life Without You

2011-03-06T09:13:00.008-05:00

I've been reading back over a lot of my old stuff lately, the blogs I wrote and the short stories, the comments on other blogs and Facebook. A little digitally-assisted trip down memory lane if you will. It's always good to look back through the old words and rediscover yourself, like recognizing an old friend that you haven't seen in years. A little sad, too. For all that I try every day to be a better and more ideal person I really haven't changed much. Sometimes I wonder if anybody really does change their own essential personality sheerly through force of will... Or if, as that cheesy vampire novelist said somewhere, we're are like flowers unfolding: ever more truly and completely ourselves. Every change actually just a further realization of who we really are and always will be. Forgive me if I find that both distressing and soothing at the same time, will you? It would be nice to think that my lack of change is not only not my fault but out of my hands completely...

Just as it completely sucks to think that somebody you love can't change for the better and if you really love them you'd better just fucking choke down all the parts you don't like because they're permanent.

Giveth and taketh away, right?

Right now there is snow on the ground outside my window.

I know it's just temporary: a few days ago we were in the forest looking at the tender new shoots the melting snow had uncovered, and we were wearing only shirtsleeves and jeans. The temperature has dropped exactly fourteen degrees since then and will surely rebound even higher within the week. March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, that's what they taught me in kindergarten. After much abstinence and an unbelievable number of miles racked up on my pedometer I am STILL packing around 20 pounds of winter gut between my ribs and hips. I lift free weights, I climb three flights of stairs four times a day and still my metabolism won't let me catch a break. Now that clean living and a reasonable diet have failed me after just a few months I'm going to turn to steroids and artificial thyroid hormones. Screw it - better living through chemistry, right?

Anyway, I didn't sit down here to write anything in particular and once again I've more or less succeeded at that. As one final reflection, you can try to do your very best without making it even once but if you actually try to fail you'll at least come reasonably close each and every time. Clearly, it's all about adjusting your goals - if you succeed at failing then aren't you still a success?

Have a wonderful time. Do all that you can to be happy because I still believe that it's all that really counts. Until I post again here, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Days Go By" by Dirty Vegas.

Melting The Ice For Me

2011-02-22T13:15:00.002-05:00

We are just digging out from an unbelievable ice storm. The ground, buildings and trees are all pebbled with ice that froze as it hit; the power was out for hours, and as someone who heats with electricity these days I can tell you that it was a bit of a bother. As if this was not bad enough, the sages who predict these things tell me that the temperature will continue to bounce around the freezing point with guaranteed precipitation to add to the fun. I will reiterate what I've said so many times before: I want to move ever so far away from snow.

Things between HB and I are... Well honestly I don't think there's an English word for the state of deep and abiding love overlaid with constant turmoil and uncertainty outside the phrase "soap opera." I am, however, willing to bet there's a single word that comes close in German. In any event we remain together and neither of us has followed through on the occasional strangulation fantasy so I suppose there's a silver lining in there somewhere.

I think in all honesty that the best thing for me to do is not to try to constantly tinker with our relationship as if it's a classic car I'm trying to make road worthy. I feel as though I ought to be doing that for myself instead. I've traveled a lot of rough terrain recently and suffered a few undignified dings and dents. I think that I will benefit far more from working on the things that are holding me back from the goals I want to reach, and if things work out for the better in my relationship in the meantime so much the better.

Sorry to make this such a short post, but today I am late for my daily mile walk and if I don't do it now I'll be doing it in the dark. The river is very pretty in its shackles of ice right now and all the trees look like they're made of glass. It doesn't make up for it being winter but at least it's something to look at, right?

As always, all of my best to all of you. I'll be posting again soon.

Title lyric from "Always" by Erasure.

Have I Been Wise To Shut My Eyes And Play Along?

2011-02-09T17:03:00.006-05:00

It's almost funny in a macabre sort of way when you think about it.

I mean, back in the day I really honestly thought that, because I was so unhappy day in and out over living a live, once I came out I'd be happy as a clam from that day forward. Once I was in a relationship with a guy I really cared about? Twice that happy. By the time we'd been together for years? I was sure that we would spend our days in purely pastoral bliss, caring only to gaze upon each other's countenances the way cherubs are said to care only for gazing into the face of God. Of course, like cherubim and fairy tale endings my imaginary future was just that - imaginary. Turns out that no matter how much you think you've got things settled and all the problems knocked your only real way of holding on to supreme happiness is to drop dead the moment you feel it so nobody can take it away from you. Isn't it amazing just how horribly life sucks sometimes?

Here's the thing though. Back in the day I didn't set out to live a lie, it just sorta happened that way. I told my ex-wife the day I met her that I was gay. She said it didn't matter, we could just be the best of friends. But then she said, "I think I can change you," and even though I laughed and said, "I don't think so," I stood right there and let her go ahead and take a whack at it. So to speak, anyway. I let myself be led into a lie without ever actually telling one. This time it's different: I think this time I've really gone and told a lie because I didn't want to admit that I didn't really know how I actually felt.

He asked me to stay with him. Every day he tells me that he loves me. He comes home on every break from work, he calls frequently and he constantly makes some very poesy gestures and protestations of love. He tells me whenever I express a doubt to him that he wants to show me that things are different. I don't think they are different. I don't believe for a minute that all of the romantic gestures and syrupy compliments in the universe can be taken as the true measure of someone's intentions. I've said so. He rather heatedly disagrees, and asked me the other night point blank exactly when I thought he could be doing ANYTHING I didn't know about as he rarely has more than fifteen minutes in any given day during which he can't independently verify his whereabouts. I didn't tell him that he had to be on my leash all of the time. I don't personally believe you can prove a negative. I also don't think one person can ever earn another person's trust back again. Do you? If you do, then please tell me how in the comments and don't be brief. At this point I'm willing to do just about anything.

What I can say for certain - as much today as ever - is that I love him. Really love him, the kind of love that makes you rush into burning buildings and sign your life away without a second thought. I don't think you get to decide who you're going to fall in love with. I only know what happened to me that very first time I saw him: I said "Oh, it's you!" even though I'd never met him. My life would have been so much less without him in it. I want to hold him in my arms at night. I want to tell him every day that I love him, that I forgive him, that I finally believe that in a real way it isn't his fault, it's his father's, his mother's, society's fault... But then I hear in my head how false that last part rings and I never say it. I don't really believe it. No matter what happened to you as a child there's got to be a time when you can finally put it behind you as an adult. I can accept that he's not there yet but I won't accept that he may never be.

I love him. Truly, honestly, deeply. From the deepest part of my own heart his face looks out at me. I just wish this wasn't so very damned hard. But like I said with my opening line, it's funny when you look at it right.

Irony always is.

Title lyric from "Carnival" by Natalie Merchant.

Questioning The Strongest Of Hearts

2011-01-25T10:22:00.003-05:00

I always knew this about him, right from one of the very first nights we spent together. But what really did I know? That he had a dark cloud over his past, that something had happened to him when he was very young, that it had been traumatic and consequently was something he'd only hint at and never really address. He's always been a quiet person; like my grandma always said, 'still waters run deep.' Not really knowing much about what had happened, though, and being the complacent idiot that I've always been, I didn't really pry. Not until it started to get bad.

His father - his real, actual, biological father - had been content to stay in the background until about four months into our move to this city. Then an email arrived from him, and a few Facebook posts, and suddenly HB was exhibiting all the classic signs of someone with a pretty serious anxiety disorder. I've seen that before, I've heard some of the medical school lectures where they introduce the topic and how to medicate it, and I've always felt the drive to prove that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So I tried to talk to him. It didn't go very well at first... And then suddenly he woke up from a nightmare and cried in my arms as he told me for the first time some of the really horrible things his father had done. Now, I don't know about you, but my first reaction was that he needed some sort of professional counseling. So, in my very best I-know-what's-good-for-you manner I made him go to a counselor at a neighborhood center who was probably even less prepared than I was. She referred him quite quickly to someone who worked in rape crisis - and who had never had a male patient in her life.

What followed was a dark time for him. I was only partially aware of this; even now, I would have to admit that some of my ignorance was his doing but some of it was mine too. I didn't want to know that when he woke up and spent an hour in the bathroom he was hurting himself, I didn't want to know where he was when he didn't come home... So I enabled him, I suppose. Until I couldn't possibly fail to see it, anyway, and confronted him about it.

I won't pretend that a single confrontation like that fixed everything either. Anyway, there wasn't just one. But I was willing to do things to help that no therapist would, and I suppose that someday soon I'll write a post about that too. I suppose you could call them trust-building exercises... But as different in degree from the silly things they have you do at company retreats as putting a man on the moon was different from kids playing spaceships in the sandbox. I won't say that things really even are fixed, not yet, but some of those exercises we did together plus the fact that I am much more aware of his whereabouts and actions during each and every minute do seem to be helping. Or maybe I'm kidding myself, I don't know.

What I do know is that when he tells me he loves me I believe that he means it, no matter what the concept of love actually means to him. And I love him. I don't want to even try to imagine my life without him. He helped me through something that almost killed me and I want to do the same for him. I just wish I was sure that it's possible for me to help him... Or that helping him won't kill me for that matter. But you know what they say: wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills up first. I hate that I don't know even deep in my heart if I'm doing the right thing.

But I'm still doing it.

Title lyric from "That's What Love Is For" by Amy Grant.

One Track Mind, One Track Heart

2011-01-16T15:17:00.006-05:00

The snowy sky outside my window is so misty and grey that there is no doubting winter. This is usually my dark time of year both physically and mentally; even my best winters have been long, moody and introspective seasons. This one is especially so even though I try to make light of it. I want to over-eat, I want to cry, I want to boohoo in my beer about how hard and unfair my life is. I literally feel stupid sometimes, like I can feel the machinery for thinking in its accustomed place but I can't get it to function properly. Caffeine either has no effect or makes me sleepy and irritable. The only thing that makes me feel even a little better is a large meal of heavy pasta - which for some reason does make me feel rather peppy after I wake up from the marinara coma- but my waistline get quickly bowed out of shape by that kind of indulgence. I am all at loose ends, as my grandmother used to say. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever shape up.

For all that I'm a mess I can at least say that I see some personal signs of progress in the issues we're currently battling. I will admit that, in the wake of some of the recent relationship turbulence we've experienced, I mentally tried on blaming HB for my current state of mind and body the way you might mentally try on a hat in a clothing store with no mirror handy. It was an ill-fitting and unbecoming garment at best. I'm not going to blame him - not because I'm such a noble and forgiving person but more because he's not really to blame in the first place. Sure, some of the revelations he's made to me lately about his past and how my role in his life has played into that trauma have really shaken me. I love him - no if's, and's, but's or though's - and I literally get frightened for both of us when I think of what it might be like not to have him in my life. He needs me and he knows it. I need him and I know it. If we're not in the healthiest place now it's because we're crossing over from a good place to a better one and the only way is through involves dealing with this in some part. That's the best I can do right now, and I don't think it's so shabby.

I did count one victory this week - I sold my first spoon on E-Bay. Here's a picture:

I got thirty-five smackeroos for that baby, and I don't mind bragging that I only paid TEN CENTS for it. I have around another twenty spoons like it - antique, sterling collectibles - and the most I've paid yet was fifty cents for one of them. I look forward to selling each and every one of them - along with anything else I think'll sell - from my new E-Bay store. Since I feel no remorse for asking you guys to wish me luck, I'll ask you here again - after all, E-Bay can be a harsh mistress. Still, it's kinda fun and it keeps me off the street.

So that's where I'm at today, kids. Things could change completely tomorrow. In fact, I'm pretty sure they will in some way. But isn't that what tomorrow's for? Maybe it will be a good change. I hope so.

Title lyric from "Oh No!" by Marina & The Diamonds.

Please Stand By

2011-01-14T20:18:00.001-05:00

I tried to write a post today but I just couldn't. It's so hard. I'll try again tomorrow. Until then, send me good wishes - I could use them.

I Don't Want Some Pretty Face To Tell Me Pretty Lies

2011-01-07T10:44:00.003-05:00

My days are anything but emotionally peaceful lately.

When I hear about something I'm unfamiliar with, my first impulse is to study up on it. While this has given me a wide (if generalized) knowledge base and a very interesting set of life skills along with the ability to work what I've learned into a conversation, what I'm learning recently hasn't been to my overall benefit. I've read things like this which, despite reading like a college essay done the night before is far more accurate about his behavior than his horoscope. I've read things like this, and then awakened in the middle of the night to creep into the bathroom to vomit and cry about it. The things I've learned lately have robbed me of my sleep, my peace of mind and my ability to take him in my arms and have satisfying sex with him. It haunts my every waking thought. What it hasn't done is the one thing I did all of this study for: it hasn't shown me what to do.

I've actually made up my mind to leave him. Not just once, either; a dozen times, a hundred. I have some really excellent reasons. He has put not just my sanity but my physical health at risk, he has lied to me so thoroughly and so expertly that even now the only facts I really believe are the ones I've established through my own detective work - pretty grim facts at that. He has actually made me question my own motives in loving him and that's not just a pretty good trick, that's damn near magic. There's only one thing he hasn't been able to shake me from, and that's the basic fact that I DO love him. I can't stop no matter how hard I try. I think sometimes that I am actually more concerned with his welfare and happiness than I could ever be with my own. So how could I ever leave him?

All through our relationship I've seen its parallels to my relationship with my ex wife, D. Every time though, our roles have been reversed. This instance is no exception. She struggled to love me because I was gay. I told her a million times that I could not help it, had never chosen or decided to be gay and just had to deal with it. She could never accept the idea that I could no more bury my attractions to men than I could change my eye color through force of will. Here I find myself in the mirror situation, where he has this burden he has to carry and certainly never chose. He tells me - as much of the literature on this subject tells me - that he can't always choose how it affects him or even control his own behavior. I get that he didn't pick this horrible mark on his soul, and I get that it's going to be there like a shadow over him. I've accepted that. What I'm not sure I can accept is that he can't control his behavior. After all, I subverted as deep and integral a part of myself as my own sexuality for almost two decades. He doesn't have to face anger and rejection if he tells his partner that he feels these urges to hurt himself or act out. I don't know if I can accept that he's going to lie to me. Much as I hate to admit it, I just don't know if I'm that strong.

Thing is, I don't know if I have to be that strong. At every other point in my life where I could have taken a stand and made a real difference I've been too cowardly and self-loathing to do it. This time, it could be - I hope so very much that it IS - that the love I can't deny I feel for him, the love that won't die in the face of all this ongoing struggle - will be strong when I can't be. Maybe this is one of those times they write cheap songs about, when love will see us through. If I believed there was a god, I'd pray for it.

Title lyric from "Honesty" by Billy Joel.

Nothing To Hide, Believe What I Say

2011-01-04T10:19:00.005-05:00

It's hard to love someone who's been hurt so badly that the marks are permanent. Nobody wants to think of themselves as damaged goods. Nobody wants to love someone who has big, ugly scars - even when they're the kind of scars that you can't see. Love should be blind, as my grandma used to tell me, but not stupid. Trouble is, you don't always get to pick who you love, sometimes love picks for you. I don't want you to think that I'm crying in my beer for having made a bad choice, either; just as I will make no apologies for loving a man, I'll make no excuses for which man I love. It is only that this has been a weight on my heart for some time now, and the only way I know to ease that weight is to share it.

When I met him, I didn't know this about him, I hadn't seen his secret face. His isn't the kind of trauma that you can see, it doesn't manifest itself in facial tics or mumbling aloud like a cartoon schizophrenic. It's something that he carries inside in a way that warps the way he sees the world. The language of trust draws him, but it's foreign; when he tries to speak it, all that comes out are lies. Like the victim of a fire or a terrible accident he can be ugly. But also just like them, he didn't ask for this, and just like them, sometimes the beauty shines out of him. He didn't ask for the fears and constant anxiety, he didn't ask for the impulsive behaviors that hold him back and make loving him so very difficult, and he certainly didn't ask for his parent to be a tormentor instead. I loved him before I knew, but when he told me and I had that moment of clarity during which - however short - we make most of our life's snap decisions, I knew that it wasn't enough, not nearly enough, to break the bond of my love for him. I just love him so very much, you see.

To further that analogy a little, however, most chains that are strong enough not to snap under even the greatest of sudden pulls will wear out under constant stress. The rope that holds a thousand pounds the day after it's woven will snap under fifty pounds of stress if you use it every day and leave it in the wind and rain for a year. Lately, there have been these little moments when I have to wonder how much strength there still is in our bond and how much has been worn away. I love him still, deeply and truly, and I try every day to recognize and appreciate a different way that he makes me happy. I just think... Forgive me for saying this, but I just think I might find my stresses lessened if I were not the only rope anchoring him. A true friend, a counselor, someone to help. The trouble is that talking about what happened to him guarantees that he'll act out, usually in some quite unpleasant way.

So I find myself here, tied by chains of love and commitment to someone whose burden is so much larger than mine, tell you (all!) about it. Does that make me so different from the rest of us? After all, life is a fatal condition with symptoms that begin early and accelerate with time. I know that each of you carries a burden as I do, and to compare them and say 'mine is more than his' is the height of stupidity. I try hard to 'sing in my chains like the sea' as Dylan says. But sometimes, if you don't mind, I'd like to bring them here and share them with you. If you share your load it's easier to carry even if it's no lighter, right?

All of my best, as always, to all of you. Thank you for being who you are. Bless you for who you are becoming. Always be close.

Title lyric from "Open Arms" by Journey.

Like A Fool I Keep Losing My Place

2011-01-02T10:03:00.004-05:00

Let's try something different. My old blog, which was wildly more popular, was all about me finally telling someone the whole story of how I found myself in the middle of a life that wasn't really me. I connected very deeply with a lot of people through the story I told there. Sure, I changed the names and some details so people who knew me wouldn't recognize me... At first. But gradually the story I was telling started to make sense to me and to everybody else. My story had a logical ending, almost a punch line. Then, like everything else in life, the story turned into something else and everybody else went about their business too.

Now I want to begin telling you a story. Trouble is, it's not my story to tell. It's not about me, at least not directly, but it's a story I know all too well. It's not a very happy story in some parts, either. That's not my fault, and I'm trying to make a happy ending for it, but only time will tell if I succeed - here or over there, IRL as the kids say. So here goes:

There once was a boy, and he was a very troubled and unhappy boy. I guess it's pretty common to figure that if a child is unhappy it's the parents' fault somehow. I don't want to believe that's the answer in every case, especially since I have children of my own, but I'm afraid it was true in this boy's case. This boy had lost his mother to cancer when he was still in the first year or two of school, leaving him and his younger siblings alone with their father... And their father was a bad man.

This boy got to shine in some ways. He was very smart and quite talented as a dancer and a musician for being so young, and he acted in serious plays in a very well-known playhouse and even appeared in a regional commercial. He went to a good school, and then he went to a very good school, and finally to the best high school available. He loved his brothers and sister, and like any kid he tried very hard to be good. Trouble was, he had a very bad man for a father. At first, after his mother's death, it had been only the father and the children, and bad things had gone on. I'm not going to paint you any graphic pictures, I'm sure you know what I mean. He molested the children, and even though something so hurtful as that is a pretty evil thing no matter how it actually happens, when some people do these things it's about torture and humiliation as well. So this boy, he had to go and shine and be brave in front of his teachers and directors and fellow cast and stagehands, he had to smile in pictures and go on playdates with his friends and the whole time this horrible black cloud was waiting for him to be alone in the dark to descend.

Of course like all boys this boy grew up. The day of his eighteenth birthday he left home and never went back. Everything he had from that point on was his own doing: his possessions, his meals, the roof over his head. He grew up very fast in some ways. Still, in his head and his heart there was still some part of that sad boy left, and that had an effect on everything he tried to do and everyone he tried to love. Sometimes, he did things impulsively that he was very sorry for afterward; plus, as always, he had problems with drinking and smoking and tripping too much.

So now comes the point where I would tell you how this young man - a boy no longer - resolved his problems and grew into a shining example of spirit and courage overcoming the odds. The problem is that, just like this really isn't my story to tell, that's an ending that's not mine to write. Nobody knows exactly how things will turn out yet. I hope that they will be as good and happy ever after as the fairy tales promise. But then, I hoped that for my own future too as I suspect you did. Life so seldom actually does go on happily ever after. It turns out okay pretty often, granted, and even when it doesn't you can usually get through it.

Except sometimes you can't.

I've told you this story because it weighs on my heart and mind lately. I want the best outcome possible for this young man, and yet I don't know yet if I can really even be a part of the solution. After all, sometimes even love and good intentions aren't enough.

Title lyric from "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough" by Don Henley & Patty Smyth.

You Can Count On Me

2010-12-19T20:29:00.006-05:00

Things are pretty quiet in my life right now. My current obsession is a collection of antique silver spoons that I found in a local thrift store; twenty spoons, some of them over one hundred and fifty years old and all of them sterling, and I got them for less than two dollars. This little baby is a Reed & Barton shell-pattern sugar spoon in the Savannah style:

While replacements.com sells these spoons individually (when they can find them) for $125 apiece, I am E-Baying this one for $45. I'm going to sell them all, but the process of learning their patterns and histories has made me dream of a third career selling collectibles on E-Bay that will pay my bills and satisfy my passion. Lots of people do it, too, but that big find (like my silver spoons) doesn't happen every day and I know that a lot of other people have that same dream. Still, it's fun to try, right?

I am a grandfather again as I mentioned previously, but I didn't include a picture of how very much he looks like me. See? The squashy, pissed-off old man look is right there. Hopefully it will wear off just long enough for him to get through his twenties.

Finally, I feel that it would be dishonest not to mention the state of the union around our house these days. Like every relationship, ours has its ups and its downs, and it's had some of both lately. We've fought, we've threatened to break up, we've spent huge amounts of time together relearning our old closeness, we've vowed never to be so silly again. Things happen in a living relationship because things happen in life. I think that's part of what makes life such a bitch.

Still, I find that if you stand very still and look around you, the beauty that we all overlook will jump out at you. I am amazed every day at how much beauty and grace I'm surrounded by, and also by how often I fail to see it when it's right in front of my face. Such is the human condition, I guess. So I wanted to leave you with a little bit of beauty to remind you that it is in fact everywhere. Try and see it today - maybe it will make you happy the way it did me.

Until I blog again, my dear friends, let every little thing be good and right in your lives. I wish it for you. Peace.

Title lyric from "I'll Be Home For Christmas" ably covered here by Michael Buble.

I Discovered That My Castles Stand Upon Pillars of Salt and Pillars of Sand

2010-12-14T15:38:00.005-05:00

Yes, yes. I've been away. But here I am, and newly a grandfather again: my daughter Jenny had her second child just a few weeks ago. There are pictures (of course) but no batteries for the camera at present, so my assurance that this new boy is just as perfect as his older sister Morgan will have to suffice. Well, okay, that and this one picture of Morgan and I together: as you can see, she is less than enchanted with me when I am not actually holding cookies.

Speaking of babies, I have noticed a rather odd bit of female behavior in this context recently that I find rather alarming. From the time a new mother first takes her baby out to be inspected by the public (generally about three months old) until the kid's about a year or so, other women will gather around to admire the baby. They'll coo and remark how it looks like one or the other parent - and then they threaten to eat it. For instance, at a recent gathering, I heard all of the following remarks:

"Look at those little toes, I just want to eat them up!"

"Her little cheeks are like peaches, I just wanna nibble on them!"

"Her little round tummy looks so yummy!"

I kid you not on that last one. A dear friend of mine actually threatened to eat my granddaughter's stomach while she was still alive. Every woman I have witnessed doing this always either mimes eating the baby or smiles so hugely that it looks like she's baring her teeth. Either this is some sort of unconscious simian behavior or all of the zombie movies lately are having a really unhealthy effect on the mothers of America, people.

I was caught in the big storm like the rest of the midwest. I have come, in the last five years or so, from loving snow and the whole winter season to loathing it with a violent passion that borders on nausea. Our apartment, however lovely, is a sincere bitch to heat. Thus we spend lots of time snuggling under the covers while something or other plays on the TV or monitor or laptop. It's a challenge to stay in any kind of shape... So I walk up and down the stairwells of my building, four stories up and then two hallways over and then four stories down and then two hallways over or two hallways back, either way I start right over at the same spot and it's four stories up again. You cannot imagine how inspiring my many, many neighbors fail to find this. It's probably unhealthy that one of my motivations to exercise is to spite them, but there you go. Human nature at its finest.

Now I have to go. Be well, be warm, and have my best wishes with you wherever you go until I blog again. Happy holidays and whatnot too.

Peace out.

Title lyric from "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay.

Somehow You Find You Are There

2010-09-23T21:25:00.009-04:00

I find lately that I am restless and dissatisfied.

Our new place has come together pretty well. There are still one or two things I'd like to get for it - a vacuum cleaner and a computer desk are at the top of the list - but that will take about one shopping trip, and I've been putting it off just to have something to anticipate. Perhaps this is one source of my dissatisfaction: the move was about a weekend's worth of bother, and things have gone abnormally smoothly since. The new place is easy to clean and is likewise undemanding in the way of neighbors and community, so there's really nothing to occupy me but the Internet and my books... Of course I would never make light of the incredible depth and breadth of entertainment and education that the net offers, I just can't say that I'm occupied and happy with it these days.

I think that I want to try to write again, but in a different way. Something that distinguishes it from all of the things I've either failed to finish or for which I have never really bothered about publication. Something, no disrespect intended to this particular node and medium, besides blogging. I did that, it's all there, and my quiet life now does not really lend itself to low humor or high drama. I've thought about starting over again, but this time with a new moniker and a new address, telling the same essential story with new details and names. But why bother? I don't learn anything new that way, it's the same old dance. Oh, and before you get that feeling, I am not quitting this blog or blogging in general. I like it, I like writing these rambling little letters to the net at large. They are just no longer the vehicle I need to keep going forward, to get better at finding that precise word that so clearly communicates my meaning that you are moved to tears or laughter. I want to be a better writer, and thus a better person. Or is that selfish?

Anyway, after re-reading what I've written here, it hardly even makes sense. Maybe I'm deteriorating as a writer and communicator.

Or maybe my head just hurts after a long day with no caffeine, and I am ready for bed. Anyway, here are some pretty pictures of the riverside. It's only a few blocks from our house: we went there today and walked eight miles along the banks.

Okay, I stuck that last one in there to get some hits on my blog. It's been that kind of week, cut me some slack.

Peace out, everybody.

Title lyric from "I'll Find My Way Home" by John Anderson and Vangelis.

I Got A Brand New Attitude And I'm Gonna Wear It Tonight

2010-09-10T22:03:00.003-04:00

I've been watching people's faces lately. For a long part of my life, I didn't really have to watch anybody, so it's a new habit to me; in the Big Woods, eye contact is a very different thing than it is here. In the tiny town where I grew up, looking someone in the eye was no different than looking a family member in the eye - that's just how they knew you were paying attention. It was expected. If somebody wanted to communicate something to you, they could do it quite easily with their expression. When I attracted disapproving looks, I never had to wonder whether they were inspired by who I fucked, what I smoked or where I lived: the look told you.

Here, there's a whole new facial signature to learn. Or maybe I'm too old to learn it, I don't know. That could be why I am frequently baffled by people's intent. Did the lady who compressed her lips and shook her head at us yesterday know we were a couple? Did she just disapprove of my outfit and general sweaty disheveledness? (We had just come from a very long walk in hot temperatures, and I was schvitzing a bit, I confess.) When young men speak to me on the street, I'm never sure of their intentions- just a day or so ago, a guy who was waiting for the bus had to repeat himself three times before I understood that he was asking me for a cigarette. Of course, I no longer smoke - how embarrassing! More and more, I just don't understand people because I can't read all the other cues that accompany the words, I can't grasp the meaning of the faces that they make or their spastic little gestures. Here, where I am less than one hundred and fifty miles from the place where I was born. I had better luck reading body language in Michigan.

What I read mostly in people's faces these days isn't friendly or welcoming - quite the opposite, it's rejection and disapproval. I don't know why this should be the case now, and I wonder if it really is, or if that's just the way I'm interpreting their looks, inflections and undertones. Maybe people always felt a subtle disgust for me for being gay that I just wouldn't see, or maybe they masked their disgust because I masked my offensiveness: I got married, I raised kids, I was just like everybody else. Now, though, I'm not trying to hide anything. I'm not, as certain people are always saying, shoving my sexuality down people's throats or getting in their faces with it. That always makes me laugh... Plus it calls to mind for some reason the image of a young Susan Sarandon in the original Rocky Horror Picture Show: the absurdity of supposedly prudish suburbanites being corralled into a gay sex farce. I see straight people kissing each other all the time, holding hands, sometimes making out in public. HB and I hardly ever even hold hands, and although we've fallen into the habit of kissing each other when we part - whether we're on the street or the privacy of our own home - it's hardly shoving the fact of our gayness in anyone's face. So why all of the disapproval now? I guess maybe it's because I've lost my conviction that I should feel shame over who I am. I don't exactly feel like that conviction's gonna sweep over me any time soon, either.

A relatively new friend of ours pointed out to me, though, that there are a good number of people, both gay and straight, who aren't going to get over the age difference in our relationship any time soon. 'Not until you are both very old and it no longer matters to anyone,' I believe is how she put it. That just made me laugh, and still does. When she asked me why it was funny, I replied, "They'd shove me out of the way to walk a block in my shoes, let alone a mile." She had some fun making fun of the "country" way I talk, but she knew what I meant. I know a lot of guys my age who make noises about not wanting someone more than five years younger - but then they watch porn after porn full of guys HB's age, they go to the bars to watch guys his age dance and make out while they reminisce about how hot they were when they were young... All as if they were ghosts condemned to watch but unable to touch. What fun is that? Besides, we're long past that being an issue between us. He's clearly not after my money (I have none), and he can easily overmatch me in the looks department. It absolutely must be love keeping us together... Or possibly my cooking. Probably the love thing though.

So now that I've blogged about all of the stern looks and outright disapproval I've been noticing lately, I will leave you - hopefully to return in better spirits. I probably just shouldn't go out so much, staying home gives me far fewer opportunities to be irritated with people. To you, my 2.5 beloved and faithful readers, I send all of my best wishes and blessings. Be happy, be well, and kick some ass. Toodles.

Title lyric from "So What" by Pink.

They Say I'm Crazy But I Have A Good Time

2010-09-06T20:59:00.007-04:00

I have nothing new to say, having done remarkably little since we moved into the new digs. I have, however, taken pictures, so I'll share those with you instead of actually blogging. See how that works?

We are much further from the city than we were before, and I like that. However, there is no beach within walking distance from this place, and I don't like that.

Now we are a few blocks from the river where we used to occasionally go kayaking. Ironically enough, the kayak was one of the things we sold in order to make the move easier. D'oh!

Since we can't risk hypothermia and death by battering over rapids and rocks, HB drags me down there every day to indulge his new filthy habit: jogging. I knew when he finally quit smoking that he was going to turn to something even more heinous, and OF COURSE, I was right. That doesn't keep him from making me jog with him, though. I look ridiculous... Therefore no picture of me jogging. Just picture an overweight grizzly in gym shorts gasping and wheezing and protesting that he's gotta pee and you'll be in the ballpark.
It really is quite lovely at the river. The new neighborhood, the new town/suburb in which it is situated, and the new digs are all pretty nice... But crowded. There are a lot of people living in very close proximity while being squeezed into the guise of a small midwestern town. Sometimes that's an ill-fitting garment, sometimes not.
Another picture of our big front window. HB is crazy about the view, and sits in the loveseat in front of the window for an hour at a crack watching our neighbors go about their business. We both agree that half of everyone in this building is stark raving nuts, but he's mostly unperturbed by this thought whereas I think it provides nice camouflage for us - who's looking at the gay couple when there's a real show going on in the parking lot? He thinks that's a negative way to look at it, and I think that we must each be the judge of our own silver lining.
I'm trying the hat thing to emulate Spo, because at one point I must've seen him in a hat in one of his pictures and thought that he looked distinguished. I don't think that it does the same thing for me that it does for him, though. Plus I have a very fat head and the hat squeezes it.

To my surprise, I've cranked out a whole blog post around those few pictures. Now I am feeling a little proud of myself. I'm gonna take that feeling off to bed with me - G'night everybody!

Title lyric from "Life's Been Good (To Me So Far)" by Joe Walsh.

Yesterday Came Suddenly

2010-09-05T08:41:00.004-04:00

The morning I can see outside my great big window is just about everything you could ask from a September day: blue sky, fluffy cotton-ball clouds, tall green trees without a single colored leaf. Late summer is a beautiful time, and I thoroughly intend to enjoy it... I just wish it wouldn't arrive quite so early every morning. The windows light the entire apartment as brightly as a fish tank; trust me, there's no napping in the spotlight glare of early afternoon. Soon my circadian rhythms will be so firmly in control I'll be falling asleep in my chair at nine in the evening and HB will have to wake me to go to bed. Ah, how I hate senescence.

I have a cousin who has recently re-established contact with me via good old Facebook. In case you're wondering, I wince every time I use that phrase now. Facebook now is like the girl you were in love with in high school whose every little gesture was an act of magic... until she finally gave in, slept with you and gave you herpes. Now you can't remember her without feeling that little stab of ironic pain - and that's how I feel about Facebook. Anywho, my cousin - we'll call her Ruby here - is a sweet and wonderful person in my book. She's always been on the edges of my grandmother's family, partially because she has the very unfeminine trait of harboring strong, well-informed opinions and partially because she decided to have a baby without the benefit of a husband or live-in boyfriend and raise it herself. She once said to me that she had realized the man for her probably wasn't going to come along, so she instead she picked the guy whose looks and personality most pleased her out of a large number of options and told him they could have sex, no strings attached, until she got knocked up. Her son was one of the most beautiful toddlers I've ever seen, and he's quite a handsome young man now. This offended my family greatly, since they felt she should've at least pretended to be serious about someone and then tell everyone he spurned her after planting his seed as is traditional in our family. Ruby declined to accommodate them, and she's been a black sheep ever since.

Now she wants to establish a relationship with me and my brother, and by relationship she pretty much means a phone call, several Facebook messages and at least one really good gossipy story EVERY DAY. I am uncertain of how to proceed; in the last few years I've become quite the recluse, and I only see that trend continuing. HB and the internet bring in all of the world that I really need (and quite frequently more than I want) to supplement my own quiet personal reality. I am reluctant to take on the burden of her friendship or relatedness or familial obligation, however you wish to say it. She is a brooding, argumentative person like myself, and I have a hard enough time propping up my own mood and affect quite often. She also brings back memories of the Big Woods: this morning I dreamed that I was back there and that I had never gotten sick or left Deanna, and when I woke and realized that it was all a dream I felt the loss all over again - yet at the same time a kind of sad shame that some part of my heart still longs to return to what I can never have again. The dream specifically evoked parts of the conversation Ruby and I had about childhood family gatherings, a ghost I wish I'd never raised. Altogether, I do not know if I am strong enough to be the friend she needs, and this too shames me. I never would have shied away from this in the past, and I find this to be one more deterioration in my own character.

Ah, well. There are many such burdens in life, I suppose, which we can only sigh over before we shoulder them. I have no faith in any god, and not much in the notion that the universe is benevolent or in any way structured at all. If I do have faith in something, it's in myself and the great range of things that I can do. I am quietly trying to reclaim some parts of myself by having this confidence in who I am and what I can do, and to stop the quiet acquiescence to time and despair that has been creeping over me. This will be a good lesson in how strong I can be and how loyal, and like all the other tasks I'm setting I will have to teach myself to believe than I can acquit myself honorably even if I have failed to do so before. It's not an easy thing, picking yourself up after a failure. I am secretly uncertain that I will succeed at it, just as I am about my relationship with Ruby. The only mantra I have to combat doubt is "When the time comes do all that you can, but until then wait and see." I'll let you know how that works out for me.

Until I post here again, as always, I wish all of my best to all of you. Be safe, be happy and blessed in all that you.

Title lyric from "Yesterday" by the Beatles.

Don't Keep My Life Going Round In So Many Circles

2010-09-02T15:02:00.008-04:00

Well, it has been an interesting three weeks or so since I last checked in.

We've moved to a new address. We won't be here that long, but then again everything's temporary on a large enough scale, isn't it? In the meantime, I am partial to my new living room window. Looking out into trees is pleasant and reassuring, and being four stories above the parking lot has so far meant much more peace and quiet than our last humble digs.

The inevitable downside to this bucolic splendor is that the local police are hyperactive, aggressive and everywhere at once. They respond to noise complaints at any time of day, every traffic stop is a 2-car affair and they issue tickets for things like sloppy parking and loud music in the car. As almost everything is within walking distance, we drive very little and do our utmost not to look like vandals or (g-d help us) immigrants. One of these fine boys in blue who was stopped at Starbucks noted that I was streaming the Daily Show on Comedy Central while I waited for my beloved. He beckoned me over to his squad car and proudly showed me how he streamed Fox News on the built-in laptop there. Ever since, I have been very, very careful.

Still, HB is happy, I am content and when the worst of winter is over, our plan is to fly away like snowbirds to someplace altogether more congenial. In the meantime, we have had practice in keeping our heads down and our noses at least seemingly clean.

It's nice to be among the trees again. HB observed (at exactly the same time I was thinking it) on our last walk that this bustling little suburb is what the Big Woods might be like if it had a decent economy. There's that same close-knit feeling about it, the way the people at the grocery store and the library all seem to know each other. I find that I am happier watching this than being included in it. Just to know that it's there, like an invisible web all around me, is really rather comforting.

So, here I am. Still going. I just keep on keepin' on, as an old friend of mine used to say. While we are sharing some time on this planet, I wish you nothing but the best of happiness and fulfillment. Until the next time I can post here, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "My Lover's Prayer" by Otis Redding.

This May Mean You'll Have To Be The Stronger Man

2010-08-09T19:31:00.003-04:00

I am a man in flux.

We are ready to move again... But then again, we aren't. We've never accumulated so much stuff in such a short time. Just to sell the stuff we couldn't take with us means getting rid of a couch, chair, love seat, kitchen table and chairs, seven end tables... And that's just the big stuff. Books, clothes, around five pounds of beach glass, a TV set, lamps, dishes... I could go on and on. I suppose we could just bite the bullet and throw away what we couldn't donate or immediately sell - but naturally I am reluctant to do so. A lot of this stuff has a little story to go along, it means something. I'm not averse to selling it, but I want some return for my sacrifice. I've given away too much already, you know?

But of course, this supposes that we won't just be moving within the city as we've been discussing. There's a feeling that's getting gradually stronger in both of us, not yet discussed much but clearly mutual, that we need to go to California. Part of it is the overturn of Prop 8, and part of it - in all honesty - is the availability of medical marijuana. My brother is there; my stepdaughter, Brandi Rose, is there. The climate (at least in the northern part of the state) is far more congenial. Most of all, it will be so far from anything that we're accustomed to that it will be a new start for both of us in many ways. I think in my heart that all it will take is the lifting of the stay on the court order for us to be on our way - to get married on paper at last.

This is what I've been brooding over lately. I want to stop brooding now, stop saying 'what if' and make up my mind. Once I do, I know that my plans will become evident to me, that the way to go that will satisfy us both will be clear to me. Alas, I am yet discontent and undecided. Think good thoughts for me, as I always do for you, and wish (as I do!) that I will finally, for once, be able to make up my mind.

Title lyric from "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks -and god knows I've kinda been a bitch to live with in the last few days.

Meredith Brooks - Bitch
Uploaded by jesus_lizard. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Above Us Only Sky

2010-08-05T23:05:00.003-04:00

One of the things that constantly foozles me about very religious people is that, even though they insist that everything they do is to secure a comfortable place after death, they still fear that death and do anything that they can to put it off. If you truly believe that you will be in paradise the instant that you die, then why try to put it off? I get that it's considered god's commandment that you live out the life he intended for you, plus suicide is one of those no-no's that the bible doesn't really condemn but the churches unanimously abhor. Still, why take medicine, why see doctors, why eat right and exercise if it's just prolonging your earthly misery and postponing your admission to glory?

I don't myself fear death. I don't want to sound like I'm eager to embrace it, because I'm not; this life is all I know, and disgusted as I am with it I don't believe that something better lies beyond it. I don't think anything lies beyond it - but no, that's not a firm enough statement. I know that I was born to love men because of the longings of my heart from childhood and the evidence of my senses. I know in this same way, from a thousand little evidences, that there is (quite literally) nothing beyond this life. No survival, no post-game realizations, just oblivion. Believe it or not, that's okay with me - more than okay, I welcome that oblivion when it comes for me. To paraphrase that old song, it isn't easy being me, and it never has been. There are many things that I hold against myself, many failures that I have made even by my own lax standards. So very many things that I would change, if only I had known... What comforts me in the face of these regrets is that we all come into our various situations in the same way: naked, not even yet human, and certainly unknowing of even the simplest things that might have otherwise saved us... And also that this is, in a sense, the way we leave. I won't have to be faced after death with the knowledge of the meaning of life and how miserable my life might seem in the face of that knowledge. Not being flogged with that knowledge when it's too late to change would be good enough, but oblivion will also erase all of those grudges I hold against myself, erase all of the expectations that I have for myself and fail to meet, erase all of the memories that haunt me so. How, I sometimes wonder, can people want more than that, when seen in this light true oblivion is so much sweeter than the foolish dreams of heaven?

Ah, well. Enough philosophy. I must get ready for my beloved to come home from work. For all of my regrets and old memories, he is the best antidote I know. He really, truly loves me in a way that very few people are fortunate to experience. He is young, beautiful and talented; he could have any lover he cared to choose, but he chose me and continues to choose me. I do not deserve him... Which is all the more reason to spoil and pamper him, I think.

Until I can speak to you all again, please have all of my best wishes. I think of you, my loyal readers, and I am humbly aware of what a blessing you are to me. Be well, my friends. Be very well, with all of the blessings that I can give you.

Title lyric from "Imagine" by John Lennon.

It's Hot Here At Night

2010-08-02T20:51:00.005-04:00

I am ready to do something new.

I am tired of the city we live in. I am tired of the schedule we've fallen into, I dislike the local area as a longterm place to live, and I am generally cranky and irritable with even the slightest details of life. That's right: I'm so incredibly pissy in general mood and affect that I'm starting to take issue with things like my general surroundings and innocent bystanders. I remind myself of my ex-wife on her first period after a 36-month hiatus for pregnancy and breastfeeding, but I can't even tell myself that this can only last about ten days at the outside and then things will subside to a relatively normal level. Whatever is wrong with me better fix itself soon, or I might just kill someone and regret it later. Plus I just used the word 'general' in three separate sentences... This is how it starts, you know.

Part of it, I know, is the heat. We've decided to only run the A/C in emergency situations, i.e., days when it's over 92 degrees. That means that some days it's upwards of 85 degrees in the apartment, and we only have one fan. I say some days, but it's been a lot of days this summer. If we have another year or two like this one, my beloved and I are moving to Canada. I moaned and bitched about last winter, but it was a piece of cake compared to this. I stayed home and got very comfortably fat in toasty comfort. I have lost thirty five pounds this summer and sweated enough oily perspiration to fill a kid's swimming pool - how's that for attractive?

Then there's the fact that we've fallen into this rut where I stay home and play the patient homemaker and he goes out and makes a decent wage and consequentially has a social life. The fact that this is a perfect inversion of my former marriage to D hasn't failed to register on me; she was unhappy in that role - although I would point out that she had the kids and all I have is two fish in an itty bitty tank - and I am unhappy in that role. I want to go bravely back out into the world and find a job. I want to know people and have friends I met on my own and in general do that thing that people call 'having a life.' The cancer got its chunk of my life. I want to act like it's never coming back now, like I really am in that magic state of grace called remission. I want to go on from here.

Finally, there's our physical situation. I like our neighborhood in general, but things are still tense with several of the neighbors who actually share this building. We try to walk everywhere, but this is a sprawl city and the really interesting stuff is too far away to do anything realistic but drive. HB dislikes working for even so accommodating a corporation and wants to go back to school. We are talking ever more seriously about California, but secretly I worry and doubt that the money will really be sufficient to get there, establish a place to live and still feed us until we have paychecks rolling in. The economy isn't that robust anyplace in this country that I know of... But if anybody reading this knows different, please let me know!

So that is my current lament. I keep itching the heat rash on the backs of my knees like crazy, so I'm gonna excuse myself now to the men's and have myself a dignified scratch and follow-up baby powder in private. I hope that's there's more clement weather where you are, and that this post finds you in good spirits and good health. Please forgive my general crankiness as one more symptom of my inherently weak character. I wish nothing less than my very best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Hot In The City" by Billy Idol.

I See We Made It Through Another Day

2010-07-27T14:39:00.002-04:00

It's still so hot here. Even at night. I find myself flipping my pillow, looking for the dry side. Day and night I sweat buckets. I can't walk to the store two blocks away because I arrive looking as though I'd been showering in my clothes. I had to throw the old mattress pad away and get a new one... And I'm not even going to mention the kind of sweat stains HB leaves in the armpits of his shirts - oh, except that one the other day on his white work polo looked JUST like the Virgin Mary, for realsies.

I don't have much to report, though not because there isn't anything going on; I just can't seem to write much about the things I think most about, because it's the same anger and doubt that I've always struggled with, evidently without much success. I'm starting to believe that nobody really changes or gets better. We just get older and less willing to talk about the things we can't change. It's not a very charming prospect to me personally, but I'm not finding getting older all that charming either and I'm starting to get how it can go hand in hand with bitterness. If I didn't have the love in my life that I do, I am fairly sure I'd become downright hateful.

So now, to combat both my growing bitterness and the heat, I'm going to go and wallow in a cool bath like a big old walrus. Elephant seal. Sea lion. Pilot whale. Some kind of big old mammal that wallows a lot... But please, no water buffalo or boars, I'm feeling sensitive about my back hair. I will leave you now with a beautiful song. As always, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Sunrise" by Norah Jones.

Norah Jones - Sunrise
Uploaded by johan_. - Explore more music videos.

I Need To Hear Some Sounds That Recognize The Pain In Me

2010-07-22T20:14:00.003-04:00

This has been a hot year, no doubt about it. I can remember heat wave years that have passed before - although for some reason their numbers don't stick with me like the blizzards do. '77, now there was a blizzard for you. This year, though, it seems as though all I can do is lie around and sweat like a big old pig in in his self-made wallow. The exercise regimen which I am still faithfully following doesn't seem to be helping with actual fat loss, although my arms are bigger than they've ever been before and even my deltoids are looking rather impressive. The exercise doesn't seem to do anything for the big old ring of fat around my waist, and neither does the diet. I fill my twenty ounce water bottle four and sometimes five times a day, and it just oozes out my pores as cold oily sweat when I was promised that it would virtually wash the fat away. No such luck, I'm afraid.... But being fat, hairy and sweaty is wicked attractive, right? Because as long as it's an entire day's worth of effort in this heat just to get up, clean the house, lift my weights and perspire, that's about all I've got going on.

We had a pretty serious run-in with one of our current neighbors. HB evidently did something to displease him, and he let me know this by first shouting and threatening HB, and then shouting at me to 'control my boyfriend' and 'be a man.' I told him not to speak to me or HB that way, offered to fight if that was what he was looking for, and then snorted and walked away when he didn't seem to feel like pitting his 130 pounds against my... somewhat more than that. It's not the first time that I've been gay bashed or close to it, but it made me angry. We're in what's supposed to be the highest density gay neighborhood in this city, and still this. Sometimes it makes me sad, you know? But then I tell myself that given this guy's temper and the overly-large chip on his shoulder we would have butted heads eventually, and that our apparent relationship and sexuality was the first straw he grasped at to insult me. Believe it or not, that does help a bit. After all, it's not a lesson to me that the world is full of assholes. I just hope I see the day when he finds that sort of insult as unthinkable as I find using a racial epithet in return. Those days are most assuredly not here yet.

Enough of that, I want to close on a happy note. It's summer, we go to the beach every other day, we are talking of moving next to northern California - for real this time - and things are in general good, or very nearly so. In honor of my recent birthday, I have erased a year from my age, and next year I'm going to be a year younger still. My partner and I are happy with one another and content with our general lot in life. If there are rough patches, there are also happy interludes. So it goes.

I wish as always my best to all of you. Think of me often, as I think of you: with fondness and good wishes. Until next time...

Title lyric from "Bittersweet Symphony" by the Verve.

At This Moment In Time

2010-07-12T16:41:00.005-04:00

My son came to visit us.

It was nice to see him. He and I have been at odds for a while now over his current girlfriend. I think she's a bad risk; she's a cookie-cutter Big Woods girl, nineteen and a three year old, high school dropout, daughter of a girl I considered a predator in high school. Admittedly, I don't know the girl personally at all, just both her parents and her environment since birth... So I followed my somewhat atrophied conscience and told him that I thought his relationship with her was a bad idea. He quite rightly told me to mind my own damn business, and we have spoken only sparsely ever since.

Until last weekend, that is. He came, he spent the night, he went to bars with me and he went jogging with HB. We all went to the local vintage clothing shop, we visited the beach, we had some very intense conversations. I won't say everything's all better, but we've reached an understanding if not a rapprochement. Which doesn't mean that his girlfriend understands; she friend requested me this morning, probably because J went home and told her everything was all good now. Such is the way things go, and I am no longer even surprised.

I hope the summer is treating all of you well. I hope that you are enjoying warm days (but not too hot!), cool nights and the love of those closest to you. As always, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Sunrise" by Simply Red.

It's the Simple Things In Life

2010-07-07T07:55:00.003-04:00

It has been so oppressively hot here lately. I sweat constantly; my scalp and forehead perspire most, until it drips from my nose, earlobes and chin. Naturally the heat is miserable for us. I looked forward to this all winter, suffered in the doldrums of the cold with dreams of summer in my head. Now it's here and I find myself picturing cool spring mornings, frost on a layer of autumn leaves, seeing my breath in the air while I walk with my coat collar turned up. This is to me a perfect illustration of the human condition: yearning for what we don't have, no longer wanting it the instant it's finally within our grasp.

Just when I was sure that we would not, we have made a few friends here. Mostly, I'll grant you, from going to bars... But that's where we find our own people. We also met a few at Pride, and evidently made more of an impression there than I realized. More than one person we've met at the bar around the corner has said by way of introduction that they recognize us from the parade or the events at the park. It doesn't hurt our visibility either that HB works at one of the most popular venues in our very gay neighborhood. As always happens, a few guys have decided that they would be a better match for him and tried to compete, but I will admit that I have yet to take one of them seriously. We've just been through too much together, they have no idea what we've been through together. Anyway, what I wanted to say was that the part I like best is that almost every guy wants to tell his coming-out story. Always the same story in essence, but different as snowflakes in the details. I think that if I had my life to live over, I would go into counseling in some way and specialize in treating gay men and lesbians. Their lives are endlessly fascinating to me: like mine, but not the same... That spark of recognition, when you see something in another that you thought you had to carry alone. All the pundits say that gay people don't have enough in common to make a viable political or social movement, but I disagree. I find that no matter how different we are, the common ground we share is almost always enough to bond us.

Anywho, enough reminiscence. Today my beloved will be home early, and I want to have a nice clean apartment and a decent meal waiting for him. I hate to cook in this weather, so it's cold steak fajitas with fried zucchini and onions, antipasto salad and a nice blush zinfandel. Maybe a little vinegar pickle. I will practically have to fistfight with my neighbor across the hall for a shot at the laundry room, and I will mostly likely have to become very firm with whichever of my neighbors it is that has claimed the unused flower bed under our window as their private party pad. This afternoon I will walk a mile and a half round trip to the meat store and farmer's market to get cheese and some decent greens. I have already done one set with free weights, fifty eighteen-pound dumbbell curls with each arm, and I'll do five more during the course of the day. The bathroom sink must be cleaned, the toilet needs a good bleaching and every time I get out of bed I promise myself I'll vacuum the rug but have yet to make good. Maybe today will be that day. If not, at least I've got a blog post under my belt - that's one more check mark on the list, right?

All of my best to you and yours. I wish you a cool breeze, a warm reception and long rich nights. Ciao.

Title lyric from "All Summer Long" by Kid Rock.

You Know It Feels Good Just To Be Alive

2010-07-03T10:06:00.004-04:00

"You're gonna hafta cut those apron strings sometime, Mommy," a voice said in my ear.
HB'd had a set in the middle, after the girl with the eight-year-old voice who sang a downright appalling rap tune in her best Sunday School style and before the schizophrenic guy whose meds now permit him to do standup. Just another open mic night in some urban watering hole.

As an aside, I want to say how proud I am of my guy. I always thought his noodling around with the piano was just one of those things, the little artifacts we take away from childhood. I myself can play "Good King Wenceslas" quite nicely, even though I can no longer name a note I'm playing. HB, though; he got this beautiful Yamaha keyboard, started playing it every day and the next thing I know he's a local sensation. I never would have expected it of my calm, mathematical partner... But there you go. Life's always handing you something unexpected.

Like the guy who came up and spoke in my ear, saying something about Mommy's apron strings. Not a bad looking guy, somewhere around my age, grayer and leaner than me. Little jeweled stud in his left ear, but what does that mean anymore? Like this being a straight bar but this guy being so obvious to me because I'm wearing my pink triangle T-shirt. The rules are changing these days, and I for one realize that I should be welcoming it instead of being all old-geezer cranky about it. But seriously, in a straight bar while my partner's stowing his keyboard in the van?

Right about then what he'd said penetrated the two shots of Patron I'd had while I cheered for HB. Oh.... He didn't realize.

"That's my partner," I told him.

The guy held his hands up, palm out, surrender style. "It's all good," he assured me. "Just saying hello. I saw you at the parade."

"Hi, my name's Brian," I held out my hand. While we shook, I said: "Can you tell me where the men's is?"

He pointed. I stood on my tiptoes, looking over the heads of people listening to a schizophrenic comic, trying to see a door or a sign. When I spotted it, I thanked him and started parting the crowd in that direction.

Washing my hands, I took a good look at myself in the mirror. I'm not the same anymore, you know. I don't look the same. I remember, sometimes, that guy who had lived all of his life in one house, in one town, in one small mindset. I thought then that I was different, that my perspective was broader and more informed than those around me. Now, I have seen and done things, both good and bad. I have met and learned from people whose lives I could never before have imagined. I have seen places that I had before only read about in books. I have learned, and grown, and I am older than I was. I'm not the same anymore, I am becoming different in fact in the ways I only thought I was different before.

But I am still me, and I try to remember that face I used to wear with fondness rather than regret. I am still six feet tall, still left-handed, and when the muse is with me, I can still write the way I once did. Which is what I have done here, this morning, for those of you still with me.

My best to all of you, as always. I hold you in my heart until next time.

Title lyric from "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones.

I Want The World To Know

2010-06-28T13:47:00.017-04:00

We went to the local Pride on Saturday. It was quite an experience for us, to say the least.

I took a NUMBER of pictures of the cowboy dude in the center of this photo. He eventually took his shirt off and put his arms around HB and me for a picture, but I'm keeping that one private. I just look too cravenly slutty in it, sorry.

This very charming couple turns out to live just a few doors down the street from us. We have a date for tea and cake next week.

There were protesters, of course. I spoke with several of them. The one I spoke with the longest assumed out loud that HB was my son and that we were just spectators, a mistake we were quite happy to correct. I think she was more intrigued than she let on, but of course the rest of her church protest group was watching and she couldn't let on, as we say in the Big Woods. That's her, hiding behind the yellow sign.

The protesters were mostly pretty limp. One or two had bullhorns and attitudes, but even they seemed to be just phoning it in.

This guy was my favorite protester.

I got a terrible sunburn. We got cruised a LOT, which is always good for the ego. I thought I saw Cubby there, but when I yelled his name at him he didn't look at me. If you were there, you missed an awesome chance to pinch my ass in front of my hubby with no penalty, dude.

We went down to the lake to cool off afterward. We were supposed to go to a Pride after-party, but we had to call and politely cancel: our sunburns were too bad, and we'd had a big day.

While we were at the lake, we learned that our people are indeed everywhere. In case you can't read it upon embiggening, the motto on the flag says "Surrender The Booty."

The sunset sure was pretty that night, though.

Because Pride is sort of the gay New Year, I am once again making my annual Pride resolution. This year, my resolution is to be a better partner to the man I love so much: to be more supportive, more attentive and always more forgiving. To listen to him and not to all the paranoid voices of old relationships in my head. To move always forward toward a better future.

As always, all of my best to all of you, and happy Pride to one and all.

Title lyric from "I'm Coming Out" by Diana Ross, ably covered here by Beyoncé.

Have You Changed My Mind

2010-06-19T19:09:00.003-04:00

I guess I've lived a somewhat sheltered life in some ways.

I know that people all live in their own worlds. None of us is really on the same planet; we're each the god of our own universe, the only one who really exists. Your world begins when you're born, slowly becoming more complex as you perceive it more and more clearly... But all it's really made of is those perceptions and your understanding of them, and if you think about it all of our perceptions could be false to a greater or lesser degree. Our senses play us false all the time, and those are only the senses we have. Haven't you ever seen a blind person and wonder what other way we all are blind to some basic of the facet of the universe that we all lack the eyes to see...?

I'm sorry, I didn't really mean to go off on a philosophical tangent. What I meant to tell you about was what caused someone to unfriend me on Facebook the other day. This is how that story goes: I play just two games on Facebook these days, but about five hundred of my nine hundred friends are people I randomly "met" through the games I play. The games give you advantages for having more friends who play, you can send each other free presents... I'm sure you either know how it works or don't want to know. Anywho, I met this nice lady in Texas that way. She played the same game I do, and after seeing my name on the game board, she requested me as a friend. I accepted, and we began to interact in the small ways that people who are only digitally acquainted do these days. I read her status updates and noted references to church and bible, but so what? My best friend Mish does that too and she's about as devout as Lady GaGa - possibly less so, I'm not all that familiar with GaGa's religious practices. She commented from time to time in a polite and noncommittal way on my status updates that were more or less value neutral. She even referred a relative to me - who promptly unfriended me when I posted a link to a very respected economist's opinion that the stimulus had worked and that Obama was doing a good job financially with the observation that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

But then... Oh, then. I posted a link to a petition to repeal the changes that the Texas Board of Education has made to the nationwide textbooks. In short, it's my opinion that their censorious actions violate the division between church and state - as I commented, you wouldn't want the government deciding what religion your children will be educated to believe, would you? I may have also observed that they've turned every school into Sunday School in Texas, and I'm pretty sure that's where I crossed the line. She commented that this was the precise reason why she loved and lived in Texas, and then unfriended me. Perhaps predictably, my feelings were utterly crushed.

I will try to be brief in my summation of the lesson that this taught me, as I know I've already run on and on. To wit:
1. Religion allows some people to feel assured that they are absolutely, without question in the right, and may treat people who disagree as they see fit as a consequence.
2. Even though the separation of church and state came from those worshipers fleeing oppression in Europe, some modern Christians - perhaps because this very facet of our government has allowed them to worship, speak and proselytize freely - believe that, because they are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT (see #1), they have the right to treat anyone who believes differently than they as they please.
3. The self-identified Christians I am referring to are actively trying to turn back the religious freedom and civil liberty clock by political and legislative means because... See #'s 1 and 2.
4. Given that these things are true, the only accurate summation of the entire situation is that these people and their political agenda represent a threat to our freedoms as Americans - even more surely than Al Qaeda, who don't hold down American jobs and don't have the same access to our political machinery.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just as hysterical and hyperbolic as the people I'm talking about. Or maybe - just maybe - I'm a big fat baby who's pouting because somebody else took their ball and went home. I dunno. After all, as I explained up front, we all live in our own little world and that's a pretty shaky proposition to build a reality on. But I had a few minutes and I felt like blogging, so if you've stuck with me this far I guess you've been treated to the kind of things that go on in my head. Lucky you, no?

As always, all my best. I think of you each fondly every day. Please think of me that way too - thinking of you, and wishing you good things.

Title lyric from "Come Back And Stay" by Paul Young.

We Go Where We Like, We Got Overtime

2010-06-17T12:02:00.005-04:00

This certainly has been an interesting week. Interesting, that is, in the sense of the old Chinese curse that goes, "may you live in interesting times." It has been my experience that happiness, peace and prosperity are all very well, but boring as watching alcohol evaporate and easily summed up in a few words. Problems, however, come not only with their own juicy vocabulary but the urge to share them at length with the world. It's a sad reflection on the world that truly happy people have so little to say... But governments the world over should take note of it, and try to make the maximum attainable and sustainable happiness possible for the greatest number of their citizens. In addition to being taciturn, happy people don't start revolutions.

HB's workplace has seen a great deal of turnover recently which resulted in his promotion to management trainee. He was quite enthused at first, so I kept my mouth firmly shut. I've been a management trainee, and it's one of those awkward transitional states like adolescence where nothing ever turns out quite right and you're never really certain about anything. It's worth the rewards on the other side, sure, but I wouldn't want to go through it again personally. So far it has resulted in a greatly increased number of work hours. Better paychecks are nice but somehow never seem to make being a prisoner of the schedule completely worth it; he has worked several fifteen hour days recently, and he's just not used to that. It now appears that we won't get to go to Columbus Pride, something we were both looking forward to, and even attending the local Pride is up in the air. He also gets scheduled until midnight one day and at six AM the following morning quite frequently, which makes him groggy and snappish. I am so very proud of him that he still hasn't had a cigarette in over a week, or at least that he's going to much greater lengths to sneak them. Either one is a victory, right?

For myself, I continue to work out - I find that leaving a pair of 20 pound free weights centered directly in the hallway so that I must constantly trip over them very motivating - and wrestle with eating better. It's actually pretty hard to stick to my diet, and my downfall isn't having ice cream in the fridge or corn chips in the cupboard. No, my downfall is the constant rain of Starbucks beverages that HB so considerately brings home. I can eat raw spinach and cherry tomatoes while watching HB plow his way through an ice cream cone the size of a turkey leg with no qualms, but you wave one of those big creamy frappuccinos in my face and it's gone. We all have our weaknesses, after all.

Speaking of weaknesses, I am going to reward myself now with one of my biggest, an after-the-workout walk to the beach. The water is finally warm enough to make wading pleasant (I've privately vowed never to let that filthy crap rise above my knees, you know) and despite having around fifty pounds of beach glass already cascading off my windowsill into the air conditioner, there's always another amazing piece waiting in the sand for me. Have a wonderful day, all of you (both of you?) who still read this.

Toodles, folks.

Title lyric from "Feel Good Time" by Pink.

Then What Will They Say About Me?

2010-06-10T15:58:00.005-04:00

I am tired of the cycles I go through.
I'd like to iron out my metabolism. I have good days, weeks at a time, when I feel energetic and happy, ready to spring up and not just greet the day but beat it into submission. Days when every action I take feels useful, constructive, thoughtfully taken. Then I have a few days that start out optimistic but just don't pan out the way they started... and then boom, a week or so of bad days. Dragging myself out of bed, overdosing on caffeine to no avail. Exercise is an effort. Facing the day is like facing creditors with no money when you're a week overdue. My best friend Mish tells me that I'm finally having psychic periods, a malady inflicted on me by the collective jealousy of all my female friends for the crime of daring to be happy. She's quite a comedian, that girl, whereas I believe in better living through chemistry... So I'm looking to score some human growth hormone and steroids at the very first opportunity. Yay for drugs, right?

I'd also like to fix my temper while I'm at it. Oh, I talk a good game, I know when to keep my mouth shut because any words I'd say would only be angry and bitter, I know when to take a soft tone and be forgiving and compassionate even though I feel neither. I'm not entirely stupid, I just act that way. I just want to be able to really accept the brief, transitory circumstances of my own life. This is the story I get to tell, and I can only tell it with the voice I've been given. Easy to say, hard to live. I keep trying though.

Patience, I think that's probably the key. I have more now than I used to have, but I'm getting all antsy about having more delivered. There are still plenty of times when I could use more, especially since it takes so much patience to put up with me. Sometimes I replay the events of the day in my head and realize that, in HB's shoes, I'd probably have killed me and had a nice case for acquittal on the grounds of justifiable homicide. He didn't kill me though, and he hasn't killed me, and even continues to not kill me. Isn't that sweet? I should ask to have that engraved on my headstone... Unless he does, you know, actually... well, kill me. But who could blame him? Maybe the alternate inscription should read, "Fortunate that his loved ones held back for so long."

But now I have to go, as he'll be home soon and I have definite plans for our evening. I hope all is good for you and yours. Until we meet in blogland again, I'll keep right on being me.

Title lyric from "Just A Gigolo," as covered by David Lee Roth.

Time Is Precious I Know

2010-06-05T12:36:00.003-04:00

So, my beloved has once again vowed to stop smoking. I support him in this endeavor, just as I always have, even though it makes him cranky like a baby on an airplane. This time, though, I actually think he might make it.... because he's substituting another source of oral satisfaction for the cigarettes. Now, I'm sure that sounds a little salacious (especially, not to brag, the quality of the oral satisfactions available) but it's not. Oh, if only. No, he's substituting ice cream cones for cigarettes. When I realized this on day three with no cigarettes - I'd just come back from the store with a box of mint chocolate chip and scooped him up a huge sugar cone and added fudge and walnuts - I went into the bedroom where he was watching TV, lifted his shirt and kissed his abs goodbye. All good things pass away, I guess, and what with the automatic weight gain associated with quitting smoking and a steady supply of Ben & Jerry's (he loves chunky monkey, how cute is that?) I figure I'll be the skinny one for a change. Bless his heart.

Pride is coming up soon. If we can both be free that weekend, we're going to try to make it to Columbus Pride, which I hear is a total blast. And I quote, mind you. We wanted to go all out, but we've decided that we owe it to ourselves to move again. We want a better life, so naturally we're going to sell everything we've accumulated (living room set, dining set, bed, antique wooden love seat with hand sewn cushions....) and drive to California. At least we've both talked about doing that, anyway, in tones of great bravery and deliberation. I am also scouring nearby neighborhoods for a much better, more private rental on the sly, mostly because I think that if I slapped down a hundred bucks on an apartment within walking distance my adorable spouse would go along without a peep of protest. I guess we'll see.

My exercise program is actually going unexpectedly well. Unlike earlier attempts where I'd puff along for weeks without a sign of progress, I immediately lost fifteen pounds and my arms are noticeably bigger. I am quite happy with this, and vow to myself during my daily situps punishment that I will no longer look as if I might be nearing the middle of second trimester. That's the goal anyway, but if I can achieve enough consistent progress to be halfway there by Christmas, I will be a very happy camper.

I want to close with a mention of someone who did me the great service of giving me the nudge I needed to start blogging again. Thank you. I hope your cold is over; summer colds are the worst, or at least that's what people say in the summer in my hometown. In the winter they say, "Don't touch my food or I'll kill you."

My best wishes and kind regards to all of you who read this. Have a wonderful day, one and all.

Title lyric from that golden oldie, "Time (Clock In My Heart)" by Boy George and the Culture Club.

Even If You Cannot Hear My Voice

2010-06-02T01:26:00.003-04:00

Once upon a time I made some flippant remark about how hard it is not to get older that evidently impressed someone I consider I friend I haven't yet met. He even put it on his Facebook page. It reminded me that we never know how we touch someone's life until after the moment's long over. Thing is, I was wrong.

So, I've decided that I'm going to get younger. Part of that is just being open to new things again, keeping an open mind, telling myself that even the best things I've felt are just the best things so far. But part of it is physical too. I've decided that I'm going to get in serious shape, and unlike the other eight billion times I looked in the morning mirror and made idle promises, this time I seem to mean it. I've started exercising a great deal, trying to build muscle and lose weight. I don't just want to look the way I used to - I want to look better than I ever have. On the few occasions it's occurred to me to wonder why, it also occurs that this is probably my last good chance to actually experience turning heads and feeling flattered by others' attention to my appearance. As Mae West undoubtedly said at some point, you gotta look your best for as long as you can, 'cause once it's gone it ain't comin' back.

My other strategy thus far is to widen my scope. I'm trying out whole new web communities, and I'm constantly amazed at the vast amount of available resources for anybody who wants to learn and can read English. (Okay, I use Google Translator on anything that's not English... Except Danish, but even then I compare it to the translation just to make sure I'm right.) When I read things in the political blogs and see things on the news, I'm winning back my old skepticism of the easily digestible four-line news item everything's been reduced to these days. Oh, and I'm going to stop using phrases like 'these days' (as in 'kids these days') and admitting that I know where Vietnam is on a map and that I can remember the war fought there, because that's evidently the dividing line between the living and the fossilized these days. Okay, that was sarcastic, but I'm not ditching that.

So that's what I'm doing out there, not posting. I'm trying to better myself these days. I'm really working at it. I've got the greatest guy anybody in the world can ask for, and even if I no longer believe that anybody with an angle can make a million, he gives me the faith to go on looking for better things ahead. Good things... And that's what I wish to you, whoever may read this. I don't believe in prayers or good vibrations, but as my grandma used to say, you have my warmest regards.

Toodles, kids.

Title lyric from "Run" by Snow Patrol.

Nothing Lasts Forever But The Earth And Sky

2010-05-05T13:05:00.008-04:00

I thought for awhile that I might have given up blogging. It's a dated artform, a transitional attempt to put 3-d pegs in 2-d holes. It still gives nod to the old styles and protocols of paragraph and punctuation, those quaint dinosaurs from the age of literature. It remains to be seen if they'll flourish and survive in the new era of six word tweets and hashes, Facebook updates and breathy disemvoweled pronouncements made via cell phone. But somehow, I keep coming back.

I am starting to miss living in the woods. I miss the trees sighing at night, I miss the sound of a distant train's horn (and believe me, the one that pounds past my bedroom at 4 AM is no comfort in this regard), I want to have fewer people around me and more room to let my thoughts grow. Someday soon, I think. I feel a bit like the character Beorn in the hobbit, brooding over his lost mountain territory. People called him a bear sometimes, just like me.

I wrote a novel. I tore through it, tried everything I could think of to make it conform to the plot and dictates of current taste in fiction. It was awful; it stunk up the very pixels on the screen, no mean feat. I used to fantasize that perhaps after my death my online works would be discovered and collected by some enterprising college student... A small vanity, but sometimes I permit myself these little indulgences. As I was reading the atrocity I had written, however, an inverse fear suddenly gripped me: what if that really happened, and due to the eternal nature of Google documents where I'd uploaded it, this piece of dreck might become the work for which I was best known in this fantasy future. The horror, the horror....

But that's all I have for now. Consider this a hello to you: to my beloved blogfriends, I think of each of you every day; to the strangers who stumble across this drivel, I hope it entertained you for at least a moment; and to those of you who might someday read what I have carelessly written, forgive me please. I knew not what I did.

As always, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas.

I Don't Wanna Ride This Roller Coaster

2010-04-11T21:22:00.003-04:00

The other day, HB's friends came to take him to work. He hadn't realized that it was so close to the start of his shift, and so they got to sit at our table and watch me calmly lay out his work clothes (I already had them together - shirt, pants, undies and socks folded in a neat pile after the previous day's laundry), hand him his lunch, remind him to pick up dish soap on his way home and receive a hurried kiss on his way out the door. After work that night, he reported to me that they'd asked if I always did things for him that way; he'd replied that in the course of our relationship, he'd never washed a dish, done laundry, cleaned a room or come closer to cooking for himself than microwaving something I'd already prepared. Instead of being impressed or envious, though, they'd been rather amused by this little boast. 'Wow,' he quoted one them (they were both girls) as saying, 'do you ever slip and call him Dad?' The other chimed in with, 'Or Mom?' and they'd both had a good laugh. He was a little miffed, but I understood perfectly. After all, like him they are both young enough to still remember their own parents mostly as disciplinarians but old enough to miss being cared-for and worry free in childhood and adolescence. To me, though, the whole incident was a somewhat painful reminder that he is not just the central feature of my life, but pretty much the entire reason for it. If it weren't for him, I cannot think of a single reason to get out of bed in the morning.

When I left the Big Woods and my home, I felt like (and still feel as though) I'd left a good portion of my soul behind. Lately, though, instead of still mourning that loss, I feel more and more as though I should finish the gesture: just jettison everything that still connects me to who I was before I met him, before I left there. I miss my little kids every day with a pain that never grows dull; my big kids, no longer teenagers (J is twenty, Amber 21) still get in touch from time to time, but our relationship is changing into that wary, semi-adult, semi-adversarial state that most people under the age of thirty-five to forty have with their parents. Deep in my heart, I feel an urge to finish cutting the ties to the person I was so that I can truly reinvent myself: no longer the proud small-town hick, no longer the man who stands astride not two or three but four very disparate worlds, but now lacking a new face to take the place of the old one.

I want... I crave, in a very deep way that is immune to reason, another child. I want to raise a child all my own. I suppose I want to prove to myself that I am a good parent, that if I did not have to share parenthood with an unstable and vitriolic mother I could do a superior job of child raising. Not perhaps the best motive for bringing another human life to an already crowded planet, I know. Children should never be a sop to one's ego or a way of making up for past mistakes, I tell myself. This of course does nothing to dispel the desire.
I find myself often daydreaming and fantasizing about it, surely a trouble sign. I imagine HB as a calm and devoted (if somewhat distracted) father, while at the same time I picture myself in the role of primary parent/mother. Doing laundry and dishes and housework for two instead of one; diapers, late nights soothing cries, first steps... School. Play dates. Pets. Chores. A house in the suburbs (if not the country). All the things that young couples - or at least, young STRAIGHT couples - dream of too.

Facts, however, stubbornly remain facts. I am not young anymore, and please restrain your impulse to tell me that forty is anything but middle-aged. My health is decent at the moment, but having had an aggressive form of cancer that no doctor in the world would say I am totally cured of - that generally takes five to seven years, and it's been two - makes any expectations of a long and healthy future suspect at the very least. My partner is young, yes... But the kind of young that could want very different things five or ten years from now. We are back on more stable financial footing now, but who knows in these times of economic uncertainty how long that will last? When I set these (and too many other) facts up side by side, they are much harder than dominoes to knock down. So, it would seem that my dreams of becoming a parent again are just that: dreams. Fantasies. Never going to come true.

So now, I suppose that my remaining task is to reinvent myself without them. To find a face to wear that is just mine, without reference to others. Some way to navigate the rest of my life - however long or short - with some kind of balance, some kind of peace.
I just wish it wasn't so damn hard.

Title lyric from "End Of The World" by the incomparable Matt Alber.

I Feel The Love That's Really Real

2010-04-02T12:00:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. Today promises to be another one. HB had the day off yesterday, and we had a very congenial day: we shopped, we went to the park and, after jogging, climbed the underpinnings of a very large bridge and discovered a very scenic place to be homeless... If you don't mind heights, the view was fantastic. Of course, I imagine such a perch gets pretty well ventilated in the winter.

Today I absolutely MUST clean the house, a task I've been neglecting since my beloved has been home so much. He had a few days off in a row, worked one day and then had another day off - we're still getting back in the swing of having a regular schedule, and since they've changed him from mostly early days to mostly late evenings and closings, it's proving to be even more of an adjustment. This disruption, however, has paled next to the complete cockup I've made of our sleeping schedule by so simple a thing as moving the bed.
The bed used to be head in the corner, with HB's side along the inside wall. I rotated the bed 90 degrees, so that my side was against the outside wall instead... And instantly ceased to be able to sleep more than fifteen consecutive minutes. I tried everything. I took a benadryl before bed, I avoided caffeine all day - a MAJOR sacrifice - and took a long relaxing hot bath before bed. HB and I even had our personal relations right before bed instead of when we wake up like usual. Nothing worked. Finally in desperation we switched sides last night so that I was on the outside and he was against the wall again... And I slept like a baby. HB, I'm sure, just thinks I'm being petty and stubborn, but sleep comes when you can get it, right?

Today we're going to walk to the big open air market and buy some produce. We've been eating a lot more stuff you can put in a pita or a tortilla, even sprouts and avocado. I am already seeing the results in my waistline, and the extra exercise that all the sunshine has allowed is having its effect too. Someday soon I think we'll leave this city - the worst winter city in the country - for somewhere warm where the skies are always blue and the air is always warm. I wonder what a ticket to Guam costs these days?

Until I blog again, my best of course to all of you. I hope the weather is fine where you are, and that every little thing is as it should be in your world.

Title lyric from "Walking On Sunshine" originally by Katrina and the Waves, here very perkily covered by the Glee kids along with Beyonce's "Halo."

Turn Your Heartache Right Into Joy

2010-03-30T13:18:00.003-04:00

Hey there, blog folks. I am all at loose ends today. HB has the day off, and even though it's only one o'clock in the afternoon we've been drinking creme de cocoa in our coffee all morning. Horrible, irresponsible behavior... But I stayed up last night cleaning the place up, and I did three loads of laundry and made roughly enough fried polenta and chocolate crisp cookies to last until we both outweigh grizzly bears, so I figure I've earned it.

The internet is a funny place, isn't it? HB and I were laughing last night about how we turned up with the same Facebook friend. We both met this guy in the same forum at different times, and even though we both told him we had a partner he had no idea that we were referring to each other. The kicker? He lives in Malaysia or some such south sea place and doesn't speak a word of English. Between the powers of Google translation and Facebook's sleazy whore ability to suck in anybody, we have both become virtual acquaintances of a man we'll never meet and would not only not have known existed but would never have dreamed of (he writes ad copy and does traditional tribal tattoos on the side) in a million years. Oh, and now he sends us these long heavy-breathing letters about how we're the perfect pair to complete the threesome he's always dreamed of, complete with pictures of himself in what I am charitably assuming is his native tribal dress and NOT a $4.99 muumuu from K-Mart. Hurray for the digital age, what?

We have also made a real-time, in-real-life mutual friend as well. He's pretty strange, but I like that. He's a local tattoo artist and musician; he does these amazing, almost luminescent tattoos that make me want one, plus he and HB can talk about the kind of music they like (strictly awful, trust me). What I think I like most is that he's straight and has a longtime semi-girlfriend who's been trying to nail him down into a permanent position for over a year now, but still finds us completely fascinating. The other day we ran out of toilet paper and played rock-paper-scissors to see who had to run to the corner store and get more, which made our friend, Jake, absolutely crack up. He explained that his girlfriend would just have sent him (Here's some money, here's your coat, don't take all damn day about it) and that would have been that. He walked to the store with me too - HB always gets me with that paper-covers-rock nonsense - and delicately inquired if that sort of egalitarian spirit worked for us in the bedroom too. I told him to, the next time he had just had really great sex with the girlfriend, imagine that it was time to roll over and give her a turn too. He didn't say anything for almost the rest of the walk... Which kinda serves him right, in my opinion.

Well, now it's time for me to run. Have a great day, enjoy the early spring and remember to love the ones you've got. All my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Love The One You're With" by Crosby, Stills & Nash.

The Sun Is In The Sky Just For You And I

2010-03-24T10:13:00.003-04:00

Hey folks out there in blogland, this is me checking in.

Spring is definitely here. I can remember years when it was not this reliably warm and sunny until the middle-to-last weeks of April in this part of the world, but I am hardly complaining. Long reign the sweet lady Spring, and all of her cute fuzzy little minions. Speaking of, I knew I was rooting for the right team. The yellow crocus in the corner of the yard brought his friends, and now they are militantly trying to outnumber the purple ones. I always root for the underdog, though, so if the yellow guys win too decisive a victory I may have to switch my allegiances. I'm like that.

Not a lot of deep thoughts today. HB has a few days off and we are pretty much just enjoying the view. We saw Alice In Wonderland in the theater instead of downloading it, and it was fun. We went to an advertised 'Couples' Fair' just for the challenge, I suppose; it was advertised in the local coupon fliers and on all the grocery store bulletin boards as 'a shopping event for lovers, spouses and their friends,' so we went. I expected it to be a bunch of straight couples in their late fifties and early sixties getting huckstered for life insurance and weight loss plans. I was wrong. It was a bunch of little booths in what was probably a grocery store in a former life, and they sold everything from carpeting to incense and ninety-piece tool kits. Nor were we the sole gay couple, either... Not by a long shot. We got sniffed over by some of the local finest, especially in at that booth that had a big Harley Davidson sign out front but was nothing but riding crops and ball gags on the inside. Okay, maybe they had a leather jacket and a vest or two, it was clearly NOT catering to bikers and that's all I have to say about that, m'kay? So that was fun.

What else, what else? Oh, yes. My son came to visit us out of the blue - we've only asked a million times when we could actually PLAN for his visit, but no - he just pops up out of the blue. Seems he's seeing this girl back in the Big Woods. Her father went to school with me, kindergarten through graduation. He's very smitten. What should he do? I advise him that he's too young to get serious, he'll ruin his life, this is a bad idea... I even told him that serious relationships could wait until after grad school. He gave this huge sigh of relief, hugged me and kissed me, thanked me and told me that he was so relieved to hear me say that....
AND THEN HE GOT ON MY LAPTOP AND CHANGED HIS RELATIONSHIP FROM 'SINGLE' TO 'IN A RELATIONSHIP' WITH THIS LITTLE GIRL. He did the exact opposite of what I advised him. If I really believed in heaven or god or any of that stuff, I think I might be hearing something like hysterical laughter from up there. Fortunately for my already contused ego, I don't.

So, that's my report from here in the land of Dealing With It. How are things in your neck of the woods?

Title lyric from "The Birds And The Bees" by Patrick & Eugene because I am madly in love with both of them.

I Hope You Get Your Dreams

2010-03-20T07:20:00.000-04:00

This is how we show support: we are in UP territory, the sun is bright but insubstantial and we are killing sparrows. It started over an argument as to how good a shot my grandmother was, a disagreement first raised by my daughter Amber and tossed back and forth like a hot potato until there was nothing to end it but all of us spilling into the cabin's half-cleared lawn to shoot tiny, fast moving birds with medium-caliber weapons. Each of us is enjoying (among other things) a blood alcohol content that makes us ineligible to drive and a nice weed buzz, and every time one of us manages to shoot a bird instead of foliage - or one another - everyone cheers. Fortunately our attention span for this particular enterprise is less than half an hour, but at the end we all agree that we are crack shots and that a good time was had by all. Then we all go back inside to drink, smoke and eat ourselves stupid. Spring break among the hill people.

My life seems so much quieter since I went there. HB's off work for a week due to remodeling; we've watched movies, even seen Alice In Wonderland in the theater, cruised endless thrift and retro stores, moved all the furniture and had sex on every flat surface in the apartment. We are both trying to eat less, particularly late in the evening, so we've been going out more, even if it's just to the free lecture at the library. I find this helps with my overall state of mind even if it's not a cure. Less time to brood, I suppose.

Today I counted thirteen tiny crocuses springing up in the front yard of our building. Most of them are purple or white with purple accents, but there's a tiny, seashell-fragile bloom coming up in one corner that's a very pale gold. That's the one I'm rooting for to last the longest. It's my promise of spring: no matter how long or dark or cold the winter, spring always comes. Bad times can't last forever. I look for that crocus every time I go out the front door, and every time it smiles and nods back at me. There's hope, it tells me. No promises, but lots of hope.

So that's what I'm going to do: I'm going to follow the excellent quote that nothing is hopeless - we must hope for everything, and hope that the good things I have will remain mine and that more good things like them will come my way. I hope the same for you. All of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Put Your Records On" by Corinne Bailey Rae.

Caught Up In Circles

2010-03-17T13:55:00.004-04:00

Just over a week ago today, I was feeling all down in the dumps as usual and wondering where I'd gone wrong. Part of it was the whole depression thing, part of it was having tried for and lost a job opportunity that I would really have loved. I didn't want to leave our apartment. I didn't want to so much as get dressed. I just felt awful.

Then someone started knocking on my door. Our building just has an outside door that's always locked: no bell, camera or intercom. I thought at first that it might be for me, but I didn't want to believe it. Of course, I elected to start frantically cleaning instead of frantically dressing, but by the time they were tossing stones at my window I knew somebody was trying to get in touch with me.

My best friend in the whole world, someone I just adore, came with my daughter and two other mutual friends to get me. They took me all the way to Michigan, where my two oldest kids spent their spring break with their fat old depressed dad instead of partying it up in Florida. Which is not to say that no alcohol was consumed (or anything else!), but we did mostly spend almost a full week cooking, shooting skeet and having heated arguments over card games. This was partly because the weather didn't fully cooperate - there were two really gorgeous days, then rain and fog and general cloudiness- and partly because we were engaging in our subculture's equivalent of a drum circle. Everybody got together, everybody sat in a big circle and passed stuff around, everybody aired their grievances and tried to make peace. There was even a brief spate of actual drumming and mushroom eating, but it didn't last long. Then it was over, and they brought me home. To me, that is the very ultimate definition of a good friend: someone who will read on Facebook that you're bummed and immediately make an UNANNOUNCED four hundred mile car trip to snap you out of it.

It's been aggressively, militantly sunny since I got back home. The weather is warm and pleasant. I bought giant kites at the Everything's-A-Dollar store and we flew them on the icy beach alongside rotting snowbanks and exceptionally dirty seagulls. I made ravioli and meatballs that turned out marvelously. I made a beef stew that turned out less than marvelously. Time marches on.

I sometimes think that the age of search engines has spoiled me. I keep imagining what the world could be like if everything were meta-tagged and searchable, so that I could find any bit of information in existence if I asked for it correctly. So I could google up the way it felt to be eighteen and bitter and optimistic at the same time. So that I could search down a conversation I once had that I still turn over in my mind sometimes, wondering if I'd said or done something even slightly differently, been just the tiniest bit less selfish and more justified, if maybe I could have arrived at a different today than the one I live in. I could google the big question, 'what would have happened? Did I have a choice? Does it all mean anything' and hit the I'm-Feeling-Lucky button. Do you ever feel that way? Do you think that the world could be like that someday, all cataloged and and indexed, creating one huge database as it goes along the way physical things cast a shadow? I guess I doubt it... But a boy can dream.

I am in fact still alive, and hope to return to a greater semblance of normality shortly. Please keep checking in, because I sort of cherish your comments as a sign that someone out there really is listening. All of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper.

I Waited 'Til I Saw The Sun

2010-03-08T13:40:00.004-05:00

Hey, kids! Remember me?

Today was sort of a big day for me. The sun was shining for the third day in a row, shining so bright it seemed like capital-S Spring. Somehow I managed to get up and open the windows, and when the breeze came in, it smelled... Oh, I don't know if I can describe it. Like crocuses and warm earth and robins, like melting snow and rising sap, like the return of Aslan or the first of May. It all shook me right down to my toes... And somehow I started being able to move again.

I have been depressed. In the general sense, I have been a depressive person all my life. Some people are like that, and I am one of them: doomed, most likely by biology, to never drink from a glass more than half full. In the more specific sense, I have been depressed for several weeks now, a black depression that sucked every bit of life and will and happiness out of me. Days went by when it seemed like too much of an effort to get dressed, to cook a meal, too much even to smile or at least pretend to smile. Forget feeling happy; the idea of just feeling okay, of feeling normal, was as foreign as the feeling that dowsers profess to get when standing over subterranean water. It was awful... Not that I'm foolish enough to believe it's over now, of course.

I don't know why I get depressed. I'll repeat myself (as good old Paul Simon said in that song) at the risk of being crude: I DON'T KNOW WHY I FEEL THIS WAY, I just do sometimes. Someone once told me that it's the natural consequence of using psychotropic drugs: when you've used a substance or an action to feel good just so many times, your brain forgets how to do it on its own. Friends and neighbors, this is quite possibly one of the bigger lies told to me. I started smoking pot as a teenager precisely because it kept me from feeling this way, and I've never been a regular user of any substance that didn't offer me the same service. If they'd known all that they do now about depression way back then and I'd been treated with the kinds of antidepressants that we know today, I might never have touched weed or anything else illegal... Which is of course a nice thought for the anti-drug folks, but worse than useless to me for an easily explained reason: that was then, and this is now. Beating myself with notions of 'if only' is no more useful and just as painful to me as it is to parents who have lost a child and torment themselves with dreams of how they might have prevented such a loss. This is what happened to me; this is how I am; this is my situation, and with it I must deal.

Yes, deal with it.

My poor beloved partner has borne with me as he always does, with love - and with faith that this too shall pass. He's seen it come and go before, after all, and as he said to me yesterday as he kissed me on his way out the door, 'you'll feel better soon. It's just that time of year.' He knows better than I do that my major malfunction is nothing so regularly scheduled as Seasonal Affective Disorder, but he also somehow knows that it always does pass. Bless him for that, and for his unflappable ability to wait patiently for me to want to live again. I love him so much, I can only wish that I could deserve him.

Of course, today could be just a fluke, a twitch of the heavy curtain that covers my emotions sufficient to let in a little sunlight. I hope not, but time will tell. If it is the beginning of the end of a very dark season, I'm sure it won't be the last such black time I have to wade through. I have thought so many times in the last few weeks that these intermittent periods will eventually have to end: maybe I will find some miracle medication that will make them go away, maybe they will grow shallower and less frequent as I get older, or maybe in the throes of misery and worthlessness I'll take my own life one day. Any of these options would be A-okay with me, even that last one. I am after all just a person, no better than anyone else and probably not as good as some. I haven't begun to comprehend everything about the world that there is to know; my voice is just one voice, a single narrative among the uncounted billions of human stories. I only really matter to me and those who love me and remember me... Which is true of all of you, after all.

But the sun is shining, and I can hear the birds outside my window. I still feel lighter somehow. For too many days I have felt as if the air had thickened to molasses, and every movement, every gesture required not just an effort of will but an expenditure of strength. Today I feel suddenly as if I'd managed to crawl out of the molasses pit, and every movement I make seems only tenuously affected by gravity. So, I am going to make the most of it. I am going to go outside and walk, I'm going to feel the sun on my face and smell those damp earthy smells that winter makes as it dies on the ground. I'm going to see crocuses, buds on tree limbs, squirrels and birds. I'm going to breathe very deep and tell myself that it's still good to be alive.

I hope you all get a moment to enjoy this time of transition. I hope you all feel your spirits lifted, your cares lessened, your burdens eased. We all have a past that we can't change and heavy lumps of sorrow in our hearts that no amount of sunlight can dissolve... But we can also feel the good things, the things that tell us we are yet alive and still fallibly human, and sometimes those are good things to feel.

For those who are still reading, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones.

I Will Go Down With This Ship

2010-02-15T16:49:00.004-05:00

I have been putting off blogging this last week. I wrote a number of witty posts in my head, and I suppose that when they invent a telepathic word processor I'll be the most prolific author alive... If that last condition still applies by then, of course. Until then, I must work harder to procrastinate less.

I've been sort of down lately. I suppose it's more the weather than anything, but I feel so bad some days for poor HB. Never on the days that feeling so would prevent me from doing the things that I feel badly about in the first place - on those days I'm at my wit's end with him - but always afterward. So now I'm making a sort of little ritual out of telling myself to 'just let it go, it's all small stuff...' Really, the things that irritate me are petty: he bitches and moans constantly about the cost of laundry, and then will put his clothes in the hamper if he's so much as taken them out of the closet and considered them. He will open a container of leftovers from the fridge, take three bites and then put it back WITH THE FORK STILL IN IT. Sorry, that one still baffles me a little. Plus he has this way of buying me absurdly inappropriate little gifts that are nevertheless so damn sweet - a box of chocolates (I'm trying so hard to adhere to a better diet), Goldschläger, which I love dearly and therefore must never have again, fresh flowers... Okay, on second thought, maybe the gift thing doesn't annoy me nearly as much as I thought. I love him, he's mine, and I should walk on my tongue before I criticize him, I know. Would that I were a woman and could blame this shortcoming on estrogen like my grandmother and aunts always did.

Then there's the fact that my relationship with my neighbors in our building has slowly evolved to covert warfare. I hate them all, with the exception of the nice little man across the hall who has lived here for 22 years. He's all cute and 70's hobbit-y (think gold chains and lots of chest hair bursting through open faux-silk shirts on someone who's 4'10" in thick soles and you'll be getting close) and he has such a huge and obvious crush on HB that I occasionally find it both painful and funny at the same time. Whenever he sees HB, he lights up like a furry little dog being shown its favorite treat. He asks HB to come and perform some act of household athletics at least once a week, and HB never fails to groan and say that I'm better at it. "Not him," our hobbit says every time, cutting me so dead with his eyes that I feel diced and peeled. "Won't you come?"he croons to HB in his odd Middle-Earth accent, and practically skips ahead of HB when he grumbles but obliges. I can't seem to get mad about him, though; it would be like getting mad at a teddy bear, or... Bilbo Baggins, or something. Besides, when the story I sent to the Enquirer exposes the truth about the hobbits having emigrated instead of becoming extinct I'm going to make a bundle. You'll see.

Now it's snowing again and the wind is driving it straight sideways past our huge windows, which in addition to providing tons of natural light let all the heat escape immediately unless we cover them with heavy rugs and blankets. Someone has a load of clothes in a dryer in the basement laundry room, and the mist from the vent is making so thick a cloud that it keeps triggering the security lights. With any luck, my strobing snowglobe winter wonderland will flicker at that exact frequency that induces seizures. Brain damage or not, it would be a whole lot less dreary.

Until I blog again, my best to all of you. Stay warm, stay safe and stay away from TeaParty rallies. Happy Washington's birthday to you all. Hang in there, and I'll do the same.

Title lyric from "White Flag" by Dido.

Call Yourself A Cool Cat

2010-02-06T21:06:00.007-05:00

This week, HB got the chance to travel to Rhode Island and back for something he's always really wanted to do but I am forbidden to blog about. He was gone for almost two whole days and I completely lost my mind. I'm not working, my longest walk is to the library (about two miles round trip) every other day and without him to mess up the apartment and be regularly fed I was practically climbing the walls. I read a novel, I drank several cocktails, I bought a candy bar I'd been eyeballing and ruined my diet. I also laid about on the couch, bed and chair and felt sorry for myself. I didn't want to do anything useful, I didn't want to keep myself busy and I certainly didn't want to blog. Thus I went so long between posts. I regret it; I miss blogging every day, and more and more often vow to better. Except this time I think I'll vow to vow to do better and see if that helps.

In my own defense, Facebook is destroying my ability to communicate effectively, think clearly and fully dress myself. I literally swam in a sea of Facebook entries for half a week, which combined with three cups of the very strong coffee HB brought back to me as one of his many souvenirs leads me to a related topic, to wit:
Omigod, I have so many blogger Facebook friends. Hi, I bet you've all seen me on there, I'm that annoying doofus who plays the games with all the annoying announcements and is constantly becoming a fan of something silly. I just love Facebook, I can't help it. It's like high school, except in my fantasies instead of reality. You can argue with people on polls (I do it ALL THE TIME in annoying all caps like that) and it's sort of fun to piss them off. You can play the games and be a mob boss (I'm a level 361 but I had to check 'cause I'm so awesome I go up two levels every day) or make yourself a house in YoVille (hi Kim, I love your place! Have you checked out my pumpkin house yet?) but I had to give up Farmville, FarmTown, FishWorld, Cafeworld, Roller Coaster Kingdom and Vampire Wars because that was just TOO MUCH caps definitely intended. Plus I have to give my opinion on every single status message ever typed, texted or voice-to-symbol-ed. If it's in my Newsfeed I'm gonna comment, you can COUNT on me.

(Oh, hey, you wanna be my Facebook friend? Just request me and we'll be besties!)

Anyhoo, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, HB got me some really great coffee. I drank like three cups... pots... gallons too much of it. Now I won't sleep for a week. Thank Google it's my job to vacuum the hallways, I'd probably have ours hoovered bald in a day or two. Plus it drives my noisiest neighbors absolutely nuts when I vacuum outside their doorways at 8 PM. Since these are the people who have screaming fights with their crack-fiend girlfriends (I know, I heard every decibel of expert testimony) or watch the Star Wars trilogy at theater surround sound levels (yes, it's Dolby, I get it) or instruct their children in the many uses of the F-word (it's a noun! It's a verb! It's an adjective, an adverb AND a gerund!) at the top of their lungs, all at 3 AM. I have never felt so misled by an apartment in my life. All autumn long this place was dead as a doornail. Then the temperatures dropped below 32 degrees Fahrenheit and suddenly all my neighbors' true colors started to show, yes indeedy. Wait, wasn't I talking about coffee? Because HB brought me some back from his trip.

Now that he's home - he came home a whole half day early because he missed me - and he was out of clean underwear and hadn't eaten in two days, but I'm fixing that! - I'm going to shower him with attention. I've planned elaborate meals that I will eat only a mouthful apiece of and long, browsy trips to the nearby shopping supercomplex where we can observe every vile thing ever imagined by the human psyche IN STRETCH PANTS and also buy a nice steak or two. Plus I've set aside several considerate blocks of time in which he can tell me how much he missed me and how next year we'll go to Mardi Gras together instead. Aren't I thoughtful?

Now, however, I must leave you. I put his sandwich in the oven a little while ago. It's chopped roast beef leftovers with sauteed onions and mushrooms plus some homemade gravy and a sprinkle of mozzarella and a few crumbles of feta just for that extra little flavor. I know, I know, what am I gonna serve on the side, liposuction? Be quiet, he came home and gave me a big hug and told me that he loved me and missed me and it was just like way back in the good old days when we had to sneak around my son... Except with much better food and decor. What can I say, I've evolved.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone, and probably at least a good first half of the week at the rate I'm going. Come see me on Facebook - we'll ride unicorns or kill a vampire together or something.

Kthanxbai!

(Title lyric from Pants On The Ground! by Larry Platt, which I chose because HB said that all the kids are posting it! DON'T JUDGE ME I'M POPULAR. Kthanxbai!)

And I Find You Kind Of Funny

2010-01-29T21:05:00.005-05:00

So, some of you asked why I said our new gay couple acquaintances will never be our new gay friends here. I thought it over, and decided to post about it. I thought that the worst that could happen is that one of them somehow reads this and chokes to death on their own rage... Which would be a pity, because I wouldn't know in advance and therefore couldn't capture it happening on video. I know, I know, YouTube will be the poorer for that, but here goes anyway.

They live in the adjacent suburb in a real actual house as opposed to an apartment. We met them through a certain website which shall remain nameless - suffice it to say that they were rather impressed with a video we made and posted that we thought might give people incentive to get to know us better. (Lem, I can just see you starting to giggle - yes, THAT site.) They contacted us and announced that they too were an age-gap couple (I hate that phrase, 'May/December' because it makes me sound two breaths away from my 200th birthday). As it turns out, the age gap is between 31 and 39; eight whole years, big deal. Nevertheless, we are eager to make friends, so we took them up on their invitation to meet.

So, we arrived at their house around seven o'clock. Their house is excruciatingly decorated in a style that my (mid-70's) aunts would love - lincoln green wallpaper with fleur-de-lis, mirrors and pictures in gilt frames, persian-ish carpets over dark hardwood floors. Plus they have three or four (or thirty) of those little long-haired yap yap dogs that I hate. They ushered us in and sat us down on a sofa with upholstery hard enough to leave bruises and offered us something to drink.
"You got a beer?" HB asked.
"Are you old enough to drink?" Mr. 39 wittily shot back. He needn't have asked, as they did NOT have beer - they offered tea instead.

By way of making conversation, they asked how we were doing, and I replied that we were a bit tired and sore - mostly because I'm fat and out of shape, and we'd gone kayaking that day.
They both exclaimed as if I'd said we'd been butchering opponents in gladiatorial cage matches.
"I can see that it does WONDERS for your muscles," Mr. 31 enthused, plopping down on the sofa between us. He squeezed HB's bicep and my thigh like he was perusing beef roasts at Safeway.
HB and I exchanged looks that said, Great, here we go again. We had, after all, made it perfectly clear that we were only looking for friends, but evidently when you make friends online the 'with benefits' is implied. Or something.
Mr. 39 swooped in and asked what we thought of their house.
HB looked around, shot me a panicked glance and said, "Gosh, it sure is... ornate."
Mr. 39's eyebrows slammed together like prison gates, and Mr. 31 sagged like he had an air leak.
"It's wonderful," I said, "Did you guys do this all by yourself, or did you get a professional in here?" This really didn't seem to mollify them much, though, possibly because they were both psychic enough to hear me mentally add, Because any professional who stepped back and looked at THIS finished product should have taken their own life.

Things sort of went downhill from there.

They're both passionate about opera (sorry, Spo - ew!), high fashion (huh?) and raising orchids (interesting), plus Mr. 31 makes animal sculptures out of seashells (complete with little googly eyes!) and Mr. 39 knits AND crochets. Not that there's anything wrong with that... It just didn't offer us a lot of common ground, y'know? The only real opera I've ever seen was Puccini's La Tosca, and that was in 1987 and I fell asleep about twenty minutes in and didn't wake up until Floria throws herself off a cliff or out of a window or whatever. We both hate small ratty dogs with too much hair, I can sew enough to hem a pair of pants or fix a (small) rip in something but neither of us come close to knitting or crocheting, and quite frankly I think anybody would be laughing behind their hands at the seashell animals... But hey, THAT'S JUST ME.

They offered to feed us... Ethiopian food. It really wasn't that bad, it just sort of reminded me of four different kinds of baby food puddled on a big lumpy tortilla like different colored dog messes. HB was to later remark to me, No wonder people are starving in Ethiopia - I'm STILL hungry. Nevertheless, they had tried hard to impress, and while we strained mightily to be polite, interesting guests, I think we probably only pulled it off because they didn't take their eyes off our crotches all night.

In the end, they declined to watch the movie we brought - 30 Days Of Night, the very best horror movie made in the last decade, and when they started hinting that they'd like to get physical with all the subtlety of a Mack truck rear-ending a compact car we begged off (we were just SO TIRED AND SORE!!) and went home, had whole pizza between the two of us and watched the movie by ourselves.

And that, oh blog friends and neighbors, is why they will probably never be our best gay friends. To quote HB: OH WELL.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Title lyric from "Don't Stop" by Patrick & Eugene - my favorite new song introduced to me by JimmyCity.

I Wake Up Every Evening With A Big Smile On My Face

2010-01-26T21:24:00.003-05:00

I have been a bad blogger.

I've been promising myself I'd do a blog post for days now. It's not like I don't have time - I've been carrying on a message thread on Facebook with an old friend for weeks now that I reply to three or four times a day for paragraphs on end - and it's not like I don't have the inclination either, since I've been idly composing posts in my head for days and days... I don't even have a good excuse, really. I guess I'm just lazy.

The van has been re-wheeled, and I got out of the whole ordeal paying less than $100. I did so basically by being unfaithful to a promise I made HB: I called an old friend in Pennsylvania, had him bring me a fair amount of a very popular consumer product still technically illegal in all fifty states - at least without a prescription in seventeen of them - on the promise that I'd pay for it later. Pay wholesale that is - of course. I then spread it around to all our new friends and HB's co-workers, which was how he found out about it and did everything but turn me over his knee or have a hissy fit. He was somewhat mollified by the fact that I paid for the van, paid the cable bill, paid the cost for the product and still had enough money left over to buy him a very nice dinner at a very nice restaurant - not to mention having enough of said product left over to calm him down both before and after the dinner out. Say what you will about my ethics and morals (or lack of them), the black market IS recession-proof.

I am constantly plagued by some of the most vivid dreams I've ever had in my life. Most of them revolve around my extended family and how very much I dislike them - which is sort of a surprise, considering that I haven't seen any of them in fifteen years (or more!). Far from the sort of nagging dreams that tell you that you've made a huge mistake in exiling someone from your life who has something meaningful to teach you or a lot of love to give, my dreams seem to be rehashing just how justified I am in ditching them. Which is nice and all, but why the heck aren't I dreaming about anything that's happening NOW?

HB and I got to go kayaking again the other day. The weather here has thawed for the last week or so, the temperatures have been hovering in the mid 40's and that means that the water is warm enough to kill you in several minutes instead of one minute flat. We really went all out and wore (borrowed) full body wetsuits which looked mind-bogglingly sexy on him and made me look rather like an off-colored penguin. It was actually a fairly good time in spite of being a life-threatening workout, and when we were relaxing in the living room of our new gay-couple acquaintances (who will NEVER be our friends now) we both looked and sounded ever so athletic and butch. I think that alone made it almost worthwhile. Of course, for two days afterward both our faces were so chapped that they resembled a baby's diaper-rash-y bottom and when I was pointing out what I was sure was frostbite to HB he said, "I think that's a liver spot," but whatever, right?

Now I must go and pack HB's lunch for tomorrow. I found him a Scooby-Doo lunchbox in a thrift store, and while he says he loves it I think he's secretly mortified - especially since I showed up at his place of work and chided him, "Snookums, look what you forgot!" One of his co-workers (the little b-word) looked at him and whispered, "Is that your Dad?" He just shook his head, but I think later he told her that I'm actually his post-op male-to-female transsexual grandma. Again, whatever.

So, until the next time I can guilt myself into posting here, I wish all good things to all of you. Take care of yourselves, and if you can't wait to find out what I'm up to, poke me on Facebook - Java does it all the time.

Title lyric from "Gives You Hell" by the All American Rejects - dedicated to my ex-wife.

I Swim, But I Wish I Never Learned

2010-01-18T21:17:00.003-05:00

Words fail me.

Yesterday, we discovered that someone had stolen the front wheel from our van. Yes, you read that right: they took the whole thing off, rim, wheel and lug nuts. They left our axle sitting on the ground. They even took the hubcap. To use an old Big Woods phrase, this has me utterly foozled.

I can only hope that it was somebody who really, really needed it. (But who does that, I ask you?) I hope that it wasn't done just for the money - if there is actually money in it. I've known a lot of junkies, and I've known a few fences, and I'm still trying to picture one of the former showing up at one of the latter's place of business with a tire still on the rim and saying, "So, what'll ya give me for THIS baby?" Somehow, I can't quite make myself believe it... Although I guess I've seen stranger things.

It's going to cost us more money than we have on hand at the moment to replace. I can almost hear the person who took it telling themselves, "Their insurance will pay for it." I've told myself that sort of lie before too. Sadly, that's not true. With me not working and HB not working in his field, we are poorer than churchmice and have only liability insurance. Still, I've figured out at least two ways that I can fix this, and I know that life will go on. I only hope that there will be no repeats - I don't fancy sleeping in the van with my pistol to discourage thievery until we can afford a car alarm.

What upsets me is how much this has disturbed HB. Like me (albeit for different reasons) hasn't had a lot of experience with having his possessions stolen. I don't have a lot of experience with it because I was one of the bad fish in a very small bowl, and nobody really thought it was worth their time, effort and life to mess with me. He doesn't have experience with it because he was raised in an affluent suburb by people with the money for good security. Neither of these situations is the case now. I am a little bad fish in a very big bowl, and he is far from the comfort and security of home. I hate how paranoid and distressed this has made him, and when he said he wanted to move back to Pennsylvania, I have to admit that I felt the same way.

But we can't do that. Our life there is over now, and to return there would be a step backward. We need to move on. Granted, this was a blow for us financially, but life pulls those kind of punches all the time. Worse was the damage to his spirit, his peace of mind. I hate that. I don't hate the person or people who did this, mind you: they thought they had a good reason, and even though it wasn't a good reason, I've done far too many things I thought were a good idea at the time and only learned the folly of later. Life has a way of teaching you those lessons. Whoever did this will either learn from it or not, but it's most likely not up to me to be the instructor in that particular schooling. Life is a series of low blows, and it kills everybody eventually. The only way to win is to live it on your own terms and not let the loss of things become the loss of self.

Who knows, maybe that's why this happened; after all, that's a lesson I still need to be reminded of quite often. I spend too much time brooding on what I've lost, as if material things could ever mean as much as what's in my head and heart. I don't know. I don't have to know. I just need to get us through and over this, and ready for the next thing to happen.

Wish me luck with that, huh?

Title lyric from "Badfish" by Sublime.

Taking Everything In My Stride

2010-01-14T18:23:00.005-05:00

Here we are again. Thank you all for your kind comments on my bad job interview experience; it was traumatic, but now I'm over it and we need never speak of it again... Or at least not until it happens again.

HB and I are long over our little misunderstanding. It took a really good fight - as opposed to an argument - but that's okay. I think that even the best relationships, when under pressure, can benefit from a good fight; it vents steam and drains off poisons that would otherwise accumulate. It also provides the opportunity for a romantic make-up - although I think that our upstairs/downstairs neighbors would characterize our makeup session as more noisy than romantic. One of them made some oblique reference to it in passing while we were both in the laundry room, and I commiserated: "It sucks that we can hear everything doesn't it? By the way, are you over that HORRIBLE gas attack you had the other day? I'm just glad we only had to hear it and not smell it." Unemployed or not, I am not at a loss for words.

I have been wasting my internet time lately. I should be writing... And I do, sometimes. Other times, I spend more time than I should checking out sites like Guys I Blocked On Grindr and Facebook's poll application, Your Say. I find the latter particularly amusing, not just for the misspellings (rampant) and the ignorance (endemic) but also just for the chance to stir the shit a little, as my grandma used to say. So many of the polls are blatantly, hideously biased in favor of right-wing Republican ideals, far out fundamentalist philosophy and just plain stupidity that it becomes a pleasure just to mess with people. Never being at a loss for words is an asset there as well.

I am impatient for the return of summer weather. The time seems to drag when the days are short, and being frequently trapped indoors has given both HB and I a near-fatal case of cabin fever. We decided to try to break up the monotony by inviting several of his co-workers over for dinner a few nights ago, and while it was interesting as an experiment, I can hardly call it a roaring success as a social occasion; our guests were a couple and two singles, and a more awkward mix could only be achieved by putting Rush Limbaugh, Oprah Winfrey, Keith Olbermann and Lady GaGa together in a very small room. I will say this, though: the exchange of views was VERY lively, especially when the after-dinner conversation turned to politics - and gay marriage in particular. I bit my tongue as best I could, but eventually I HAD to say something... And in this case, never being at a loss for words was not a good thing. After our guests left, HB spent almost five minutes holding his sides and laughing over what I said. I apologized to him for insulting his co-workers, and he replied that the husband of the couple didn't even work with him, the wife did, and that he was willing to bet that they carried on our argument long after they left us. Once again, I have failed to promote marital harmony. I guess gay marriage really CAN affect a straight marriage in some instances.

Now I must go and fix a late supper for my beloved, who is still at work. I'm thinking pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing with raisins and apples and maybe a pie for dessert. If this weather keeps up they'll have to remove a wall to get me out of the apartment, but at least I enjoy my own cooking. I think our poor guests of the other night did too - at least, before the discussion started.

As always, I wish all of you my best. Stay as happy and warm as you are able, and look forward with me to the return of the summer sun.

Title lyric from "Highway To Hell" originally by AC/DC, here charmingly covered by the fantastic band Hayseed Dixie.

I Don't Need No Carryin' On

2010-01-08T13:35:00.003-05:00

I am in the foulest possible mood.

We did in fact go to HB's hometown for some hang-time with his friends. He had a great time; I was quietly bored, but kept my mouth shut. Isn't that what a good partner does? Then we went to see my two older kids and best friend in Erie. He ran into friends from school, and again had a blast. I had a bearable time, although things are tense with my kids and distracted with my best friend. Fine with me; the trip was about HB, who usually takes a back seat during all my adventures, and he deserved the spotlight.

Then we got home.

I was greeted with the news that a job prospect for which I'd gone through a first, second and third interview was not going to be my job. In my best and most professional manner, I called the HR lady (why are they always ladies? Just curious) and asked if there was anything I could do differently or should work on for next time. This very nice lady actually LAUGHED OUT LOUD at me and then took a few minutes to dress me down on the following points:
1. I had at one point said the words, "my partner," which told her more of my business than she (or anyone reasonable, by her tone) would ever want to know.
2. I should not say that I had been out of the job market for "health and personal reasons." Evidently I should have made something up.
3. Due to an unfortunate incident that occurred in 1986 (!) I am not an attractive candidate.

Even after all that, I was still able to more or less civilly thank her and hang up without addressing her as 'you castrating bitch.' Possibly the only point for me in the whole sordid episode. Afterward, I made the mistake of confiding my crushed feelings to HB, who with the best of intentions still administered the final blows to the punching bag that my ego has evidently become: he lectured me on how I must try harder because it's hard for him to be the breadwinner and it stresses him out (his words) that I don't have a job yet. Never have I felt the gap in our ages more keenly: I actually wanted to remind him that he'd have to go to school for eight friggin' years to even be considered for my last job, and that I held it longer than those eight years in spite of some serious competition and the utter distaste the organization's capo di tutti capo felt for me. I didn't of course say anything like that. Instead, I went to bed and sulked...

And that's where I am right now. Sulking in bed. Those of you wishing to console me may do so in the comments - remember, you just can't stroke my ego too hard at this point. Shameless pandering to my wounded pride is my objective. If you're of a mind to agree with HB - or god forbid, HR bitchface - I would politely suggest that the lake three blocks from my domicile might be a good place to soak your head. Just a suggestion.

I hope you're all having a better day than I am. This (and the massive amounts of chocolate I'm inhaling) are going to ruin my diet.

Title lyric from "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter.

PS to Java: sorry not to respond on Facebook - there's only so much I wish to explain in so public a forum. Hope this answers your question...

I Got A Brand New Attitude, And I'm Gonna Wear It Tonight

2010-01-05T16:26:00.004-05:00

Here we are again in the trough of the new year, becalmed in the doldrums of snow.

I hate it. I have decided that I'm dead set against winter in every regard and doubly against people who like it or think it's 'pretty.' A few days ago the wind chill was -20 F, and it came right in off the lake, not so strong but so very cold that I felt like a wooly mammoth about to freeze and be found ten thousand years from now, cud still in my mouth. I won't go out unless I'm forced to, and then I bundle up with layers and layers and still feel cold. If I hadn't read enough about global warming to know that the name is misleading, I might wish for more of it rather than less.

HB wants to go home for a few days and see some old friends who are relatively near, having come back for the holidays to visit from the west coast. I find that I don't want to go along; it's really only relatively near, the drive is long and bound to have some unpleasant spots due to the weather and I just feel cross and sore-headed in general. I know I won't be good company. Still, I will probably end up going and making the best of it. I could see some people I know while I'm there - although this is his hometown, not mine - and maybe we could stop in Erie and see my kids on the way back. I don't really want to, though - everyone in the winter world seems to have withdrawn into their warm rooms and heavy clothes for the dark time of the year, and that's all I want to do: squat in my room like a caveman over his fire, cursing the cold and dark.

The amusing part - I suppose - is how carefully HB and I have been treading around each other, how diplomatically we discuss our feelings and give each other TONS of space. We've learned our lessons, we've fought our fights, now we are cautious around each other, not wanting to make things worse with unnecessary bickering. We drink great quantities of tea with honey and cream, we tried out the wonderful liquor recipe that Lisa sent us - okay, we had to substitute a few ingredients, but it still tastes marvelous - and we eat a great deal of ham and turkey, having had to grimly lay off the mashed potatoes. We will survive, and in the spring emerge from our den to stretch and yawn and explore again. for the next six weeks or so, though, I see a minimum of unnecessary trips out of the burrow. Even the sun has gone mostly to sleep these days.

So, friends digital and physical, I hope that if you do not live someplace warm and sunny and marvelous year round - not to mention any names, Spo - I hope that you have a snug warm burrow in which to curl up. I wish you lots of cocoa, coffee, tea or mulled cider (damn, that sounds good) steaming in big cups - with marshmallows, if that's your thing. I recommend big thick slippers, heavy bathrobes, flannel pajamas and a real working fireplace if possible. This is the time of year for good thick books, comfort food and drink and lots of long sleepy dreaming nights. Put your coat and hat on when you go out.

We will not be caught here in the land of snow and ice forever. Spring will come again.

Title lyric from "So What" by Pink.

I Believed In Yesterday

2010-01-01T11:50:00.002-05:00

Probably very much like everyone else, I find myself getting introspective at this time of year.
I'm prone to brood over my own shortcomings already, and lately I've been doing more than my share. I suppose it's natural; the snow has finally fallen no matter how much I didn't want it to, and the days are short shades of gray. Charcoal dawns, silver noons, fuligin nights. Who doesn't have a sense that we're in the end of a cycle, the end of a decade, and hopefully the end of the whole hysterical fin de siècle behavior attending the advent of the new millennium? Or maybe that's just me. I hope for the best, that the Great Recession will end, that thing will improve for me personally and for the world around me in general, but all that's for the future, and right now I'm immersed in the past.

It occurs to me quite often that I am not the same man I was five (or even three) years ago. Five years ago I was that guy: a big, fat doormat who did what others expected, was always there to offer whatever help he could give, and who loved his family very much. I remember that guy. It was both comfortable and awful to be him, and I never can be him again, even if I tried my damnedest. He lived his life, and then the cancer came; the cancer, the divorce, and the tearing asunder of everything he - I - ever tried to build. Everyone expected him to die, and it really was what he (and they) wanted more than anything in the world. In a sense I think he did die... But I didn't. I'm a different man than he was, I live my life an entirely different way. Not just in my choice of partner, but so many things more. Now, I get what I need. I think of me, and while I think of HB too, part of what I love about him is that I don't have to rescue him. He's old enough and more than smart enough to take care of himself. He loves this guy, the new me - but then he never actually met the old me.

Upon reflection, I think HB would have hated the man that I was. I am a little surprised to find (and admit) that I do. Maybe that's enough digging in the past for right now, at least in print.

The only other news in my life is that HB is quitting smoking... again. He has made it his New Year's resolution, and is now going through the same motions for the oompty-billionth time as if it really has a prayer of working when it never did before. His problem (in my private opinion, anywhoo) is that he doesn't want to quit smoking: he just doesn't want to pay for cigarettes or have any health problems. This prompts me to sing to him, 'You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have... the FACTS OF LIFE,' and even though he's far too young to have ever seen the sitcom he still gets the reference and throws things at me. My quote for New Year's Eve was this: "I hate it when you FORCE me to force YOU to do things."
I said this as I got out a cigarette and took a puff because he was whining that he was craving a cigarette but didn't want to smoke one and being generally pissy about the whole thing. It was the first one I've so much as tasted in weeks, and it made me immediately swimmy headed and sick to my stomach shortly thereafter. What did I ever see in those things?!? This morning before work he stuffed his pack in his pocket and muttered something about tapering off.

My prediction? He'll smoke until he needs a new lung... Then he'll switch to snuff. Jeez (implied eye roll), some people. But oh, dear, now it's almost one o'clock and I've got to go and figure out something to feed the poor thing when he comes home on his break. It's been great chatting with all of you - I eagerly await the influx of comments, as they are often the little gems of affirmation that brighten my otherwise dreary days. So leave one!

Title lyric from "Yesterday" by the Beatles.

All Of My Best To All Of You

2009-12-24T18:38:00.003-05:00

It's Christmas eve, and there's magic in the air. Can you feel it?

I walked to a rather distant market in a bad neighborhood today to get that one essential ingredient for tomorrow's feast. On the way I passed through, in the course of one of my infamous shortcuts, an abandoned courtyard between equally abandoned factories. Several gentlemen were out in the sheltered space, desultorily playing dice beside a fire in a barrel. From the looks of their faces (particularly their lips) and hands, I'd guess that they were fans of that famous American cocaine byproduct, crack. Ordinarily I'd've been rather wary of them, but I was all wrapped up in my Christmas plans and dinner menu, and I skipped gaily right past their game. Did they rise to rob me, or call rude names? They did not. One and all, they wished me a merry Christmas, and the closest one advised me to stay warm, as the wind was bitter.

And they say the Christmas spirit is dead in America. I say not.

Today, as a sort of Christmas present from the universe, a wish I've long cherished was answered. My daughter, one of my little girls whose mother won't let me see them, sent me a message on MySpace. She wanted to know if I could contact a certain person back in the Big Woods and ask them to do a favor for her. Using my magic mirror, the internet, I contacted that person (who was delighted to hear from me, and did twice as much for my little girl as I asked) and made the arrangements; just to go that extra mile, I made sure that she was watched over during her use of my favor and that she had a ride to and from. More than that I won't say, at least in the way of details. But still: we surely live in the age of magic, when I can with a few typed words arrange for something that my estranged child wishes yet all the while erase my tracks, so that anyone with access to my servers and internet account could not even see the whole interaction take place. Miracles, I tell you, Christmas miracles.

Tomorrow morning we will open presents. I have downloaded almost every Christmas special ever shown on TV, including (but not limited to): A Christmas Story, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty's Christmas Special, A Muppet Christmas Carol, A Charlie Brown Christmas and that claymation one that follows Santa's early years - the title escapes me. We will watch Christmas media, and listen to Christmas music, and drink eggnog and wassail and spiced rum, and smoke opium (not traditional, but we will!) and very probably remain unclothed the entire day. Our big dinner will consist of ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, cappuccino pie and fresh baked bread. Since one of our Christmas assignments was to buy each other three complete outfits at the vintage clothing store around the corner, we will have ourselves a little Christmas fashion show. We will have long, loud, obnoxious phone conversations with our antiquated relations; we will have showy webcam interactions with our more hip consanguineous contacts; and, of course, we will revel in our closeness with one another, untarnished by three (going on four!) straight years of relationship. I can only hope for your sake that your holiday celebration is as fulfilling as ours.

For now, though, I must say goodnight. I wish all of you my very best. I am sending special holiday wishes to my regulars - oh, Java, Spo, Larry, Mike, Rusty, Sean, Lisa... All of you, those I've named and those I've missed, have the very best of holidays. I wish you love. I wish you happiness. I wish you contentment with all of your choices. Be at peace. Know my love.

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you.

To the accompaniment of "Christmas Dance" by the Peanuts gang.

'Cause I Ain't Been Nothin' But Bad

2009-12-21T07:43:00.005-05:00

Today I'm going to the plasma clinic to sell some plasma. HB and I affectionately (or mockingly, depending) call it the Needle Farm: after an hour of welfare-office style waiting room, you get a barrage of medical tests and questions, all of which are painful and accusatory. Should you make it through this gauntlet mostly unscathed (finger pricks and embarrassing revelations don't count!) you get to lie on a hard bench with a half-inch or so of bare needle sticking out of your arm for an hour and forty five minutes on average. Naturally, a good time like this is resorted to only sparingly, but it's Christmas week, times are hard, and I can really use the $50. I'm as surprised as the rest of you that they'll take me, but I haven't got anything contagious, it's been over two years now since chemo (!) and I'm well over the weight limit. Selah.

Some of you asked me about Google Wave. You can read all about it here, and watch the hour long video, or I can boil it down for you into a single paragraph:
It's what you'd get if you took all of the things that really work from email, instant messenger and online office software and crammed them all together. It's a real-time communication and collaboration platform; it's the ICQ, Yahoo Messenger and some aspects of Facebook of the future.
You can get online with some friends, watch each other type responses in real time, set up a meeting and plan routes, collaborate on a document and save it to Google Documents when you're done... While you're having a conversation with several friends in real time, you can also have a sidebar conversation with one or more participants in a separate little popup. You can replay the entire conversation/exchange/IM as if it were a video. All parts of it are time/date stamped. It eliminates all forms of email tag, lost emails and provides a precise record of the entire interaction right down to the edits. And all of that is just in the beta version. Right now you need to be invited to get it... But if you'd like to wave with me (Larry, I'm still waiting to hear from you) then all you have to do is email me and I'll send one out to you.

I have a terrible toothache. It's a cavity, probably from all the sugar I shovel into my coffee. Being uninsured, I must go to a free clinic to get it taken care of; the earliest possible appointment I could get is two and a half weeks away, and they don't call if they get a cancellation. As I don't wish to resort to hyperbole, let me just say that it hurts pretty damn bad and leave it at that. My first instinct is naturally to take something for the pain. Catch is I can't get something until I see the dentist - two and a half weeks from now. Some people would just stop there, sigh and suffer. That's not so much me. I went to a very bad neighborhood and scored an ounce of some very good opium for an absolutely mind-boggling low price. Now I've taken to my bed to smoke opium and read blogs and play YoVille on Facebook. That's right, folks: it's easier AND cheaper to buy an illegal drug raised at least a thousand miles from me (at least!) than it is to get decent healthcare on a timely basis. I could go on a nice long rant about that, but I consider myself above such sordid topics as politics. Besides, the opium's absolutely wonderful, strong as a mule and cheap as powdered milk. My tooth doesn't hurt anymore, and I'm getting stoned for Christmas: win/win.

Now, however, I must go and bathe myself so as to be - if not stunningly attractive - at least not offensive to the nose of those who must see me half-dressed at the Needle Farm. Christmas is only a few days away now - have you made or said or bought something meaningful for the one(s) you love? We only have here and now, you know, so there's no better time than this.
In this holiday season, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from the YouTube video, "Ralphie's Got Nuttin' For Christmas," cribbed from the movie A Christmas Story.

With Every Christmas Card I Write

2009-12-17T19:24:00.003-05:00

Sometimes lately I sort of picture the internet as my own magic mirror. Not so much the 'mirror, mirror, on the wall' sort, although it does have that going for it: if I can phrase the question just right, the internet always does know the answer. No, I mean more like a crystal ball, except they're tacky and I don't like them. So, I look in my mirror - or forest pool like a druid, that's a good image too - and I see things. I watch my kids Facebook statuses change, I observe their MySpace pages and read their emails to me, both in words and between the lines, and I get a picture of what's going on in their lives. Sometimes a more accurate picture than they'd like, I'm sure; like me, they both use the same password they've been using since they could sit at a keyboard, and I occasionally take a gander through things as personal as their cell phone records and bank statements. You add all that kind of information and stir it with a pinch of parental intuition and a healthy dose of control-freak level paranoia, and you've suddenly got a way better handle on the personal life of your adult children than any other generation before you. Sometimes technology makes our lives better and brings us closer to the stars, but I don't have to be psychic to tell you this part:
This is NOT an advancement in parent-child relations. There ARE some things your parents probably shouldn't know.
Now, like Forrest, that's all I'm going to say about that.

My beloved and I are both a little stir crazy. Today we walked to the beach by way of the railroad tracks. On the way there, I picked up every shard of colored glass I could find, all the while picturing myself forgetting and cutting my hand to ribbons by stuffing it in my pocket to get warm. When we arrived there, thankfully unsliced, I tossed the broken pieces one by one into the shell-and-pebble shallows around the foot of the bluffs. Then we walked about a mile west along the shore, picking up bigger and more exotically colored beach glass than I've ever seen before. As I remarked several times, when you give to the lake she gives you back in kind... Unless you really depend on her, because then she stabs you the first time your back is turned. Still, the beach glass is pretty.

I am still playing with my Google Wave account, so if anybody wants to wave me just send me an email and I'm happy to wave back. I predict that this new platform is gonna take off like a rocket. It incorporates several lessons that email and instant messenger taught us by trial and error in an 'of course!' sort of way. Businesses are gonna love it - whereupon it will acquire several hard-to-use and mysterious main functions that will cut down its original genius by 90%. I for one look forward to this as a career opportunity. Getting it right the first time is showing off, after all. Getting it right the third time? Ah, now that's job security.

Not many days until Christmas now. Even I am feeling the urge to shop a little. I want to get HB something wonderful, something that will make him happy, make him smile so that he lights up the room. So far, none of the things I can think of (but still afford) offer this quality. I'm working on it. In the meantime, I keep him plied with chocolate - it keeps the holiday dementors away.

Here's hoping you too have a happy holiday dementor free celebration this year. I keep saying 'if I don't post again before then,' but I expect that I will... And now that I've said it, maybe I won't. Who knows?
Happy holidays. All my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "White Christmas" as performed by cartoons.

The Stars Are Brightly Shining

2009-12-16T11:33:00.003-05:00

Getting older is no fun. Not only do I have to shave my ears every couple days - otherwise I get a fine fringe of blond hair growing from the helix (you know, the outside rim) and a few wild strays coming straight out of my ear so big and thick they look like pencils stacked in a cup - but now my eyebrows have decided to grow so amazingly long and thick and crazy that not only will I be able to form them into a comb-over, it will be a 'fro comb-over. Lucky me, huh?

In an effort to get more exercise, I've started walking about a mile to the lake shore park. There's a trail along the "beach" there - I use the quotes because I've heard people call it that, but it's more of a shingle than anything - where I find all sorts of beach glass. I now have a rather large handful of the best pieces on our windowsill. I have all colors, even the really hard to find ones like pink, purple and bright yellow. Dark beer-bottle yellowish brown is common, and so is green; dark blue, like a Vick's bottle, and taillight red are less common. It takes me about two and a half hours to make a full circuit. There's one spot where a rough staircase cuts down a steep bluff to the pebbled beach; the view is just magnificent, even when it's unbelievably, mind-numbingly cold. I stood there yesterday and reflected that it would be an awesome place to have a cigarette, but then I realized that it's been over three weeks since I did more than take a half-hearted puff from one of HB's. I actually blurted "I think I quit!" right out loud while I was standing there watching the evening storm clouds stack up behind the horizon. The nice lady walking her dog behind me definitely thinks I'm nuts now. I don't mind; honestly, I wouldn't have worn her outfit to my own execution, so there.

We really are pretty content with our lot just now. I've gotten into a sort of rhythm of cooking and baking all his favorites on a repeating cycle so that it's always about a week since he's had any one dish or treat. His job, despite the demanding schedule, is turning out quite nicely and he's being considered for promotion in a preliminary sort of way. The more we explore the city, the more convinced we become that we stumbled into the best possible neighborhood and region by sheer blind luck. We have also become quite faithful patrons of the local library and their large DVD selection: we don't watch TV - at all, period - but we do like to catch our favorite old movies that way. We download anything new we want to see, and if there's some sort of news coverage we want to see, the Internet obligingly shows us more than we really wanted to know. Sure, we could have more money, more possessions and a higher social status - but I figure that will come in time. I guess I can wait awhile as long as my guy's with me.

Finally, for those worrywarts out there who take a set date like a personal challenge, don't forget that Christmas is only NINE DAYS AWAY. My beloved and I have not yet bought a single present, decorated or even listened to Christmas music voluntarily. I figure that we'll do just about all that in one day, probably this Saturday or Sunday, and then just sort of phone in our holiday celebration. Our big anticipation as the year draws to a close is the magnum-size bottle of Patron tequila and a similarly oversized bottle of Irish Cream in which we intend to drown our holiday spirits. Hey, we know how to have a good time.

Until I post again, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "O Holy Night," one of my favorite carols, as performed by the Acquire A Cappella choir.

Five Golden Rings

2009-12-13T16:05:00.004-05:00

So, I got tagged by Java to do this meme thingy. I love meme thingies - it's been too long. In this one I'm supposed to talk about five things I enjoy. I started out trying to put them in order, from what I enjoy most to what I enjoy least, but my mind does not and never has worked that way: I like what I'm enjoying at the moment most. As our cheese-eating surrender-monkey French friends say, "C'est moi." So here are five things in no real sort of order.

1. Making a home for me and my partner. I love it. I like the cooking... but I also like the cleaning up. I like rearranging the furniture. I like doing the laundry and making sure he's got work clothes hung in neat little outfits each on its own hangar: black polo shirt, khaki pants (flat fronts, no pleats!), boxers or boxer briefs for undies plus a pair of socks matched all the way down to the subatomic level. If one sock has a stain, then the other one by god better have a matching one, that's all. What was I saying? Oh, yeah. I love housework.

2. Reading. I have loved reading all my life, and that's why I sincerely believe that the Internet is going to be what saves the human race - because it's finally given every child the incentive to learn to read at least pictograms, and therefore furthers education. Here are some books I've recently read: The Short Sun Trilogy by Gene Wolfe; Evil Genes by Barbara Oakley; The Plague & I by Betty McDonald; The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway; The October Country by Ray Bradbury; The Book of Lies by Richard Metzger; Duma Key by Stephen King; and Illusions by Richard Bach.

3. Being with my partner. I really love his company. It's not just the sex, it's that he's smart and funny, that sometimes he's all endearingly naive and the next minute just as jaded and cynical as I could ever aspire to be. We fit together; we both give each other something that the other lacks, a sort of yin-yang thing in endless regression. I waited all of my life for this relationship, and I'm not taking a single minute of it for granted. All you have is right now, so planning the good stuff for later is senseless.

4. Learning/working. There ought to be a word for the process that's both of those things. Every once in awhile you meet someone who's really good at what they do and loves it. They learn every day from their work, and to me that's one of the happiest feelings in the world. Plus I don't believe there's a better way to satisfy the natural human need for purpose in our lives. When you love what you do and just keep getting better at it, you feel like it all means something, like you made the world a little better through the job you did, even if it's waiting tables with a smile until 4 AM or installing the best damn garage door openers in the world.

5. Intoxicants. There, I said it. Whether it be our weekly bottle of (cheap, bum) wine, a joint or a night at the bar, I like to get a little buzz on from time to time. I'm pretty tired of the prevailing Nancy Reagan-esque attitude currently prevalent which says that enjoying any such behavior is an addiction and a sin. Yes, there is such a thing as too much, there are people who can handle it, people who can more or less handle it, and people who are degrees of fucked up by it. I get all that. Guess what? I still like a buzz from time to time - me, and about three quarters of everybody else I ever met - and the other quarter just wouldn't do it in public. As long as you can say you've got hold of the bottle or whatever instead of it having hold of you, I figure you're at least a little bit ahead in the game. Sure, living your whole life never having tried or desired to try any of it is probably a very exclusive feeling, and any who have it have my endorsement - more power to you. But I haven't been to that magic (and pretty small) island of moral high ground since I was eleven.... Anyway, I hear it's boring up there.

So there you have it! My five things. Now I have to nominate five people, and that is SUCH a drag. I mean, sometimes people are overwhelmed and can barely cut five minutes out of his busy schedule to blog because he's doing something that's actually important (Spo - but I'm pretty sure somebody else already got him anyway) and some people (like me) are too damn lazy to post very often... *cough cough* TROLL *cough* so, anybody who wants to participate can feel free to do so and link back to me, freebie style. Here are my nominees for five friends:
Michael; Lemuel; The New Me; Lou; and of course Java in return. See kiddo, yours is already done!

Happy holidays!

Title lyric from the Christmas classic, Twelve Days of Christmas, as performed by Straight No Chaser.

May Your Days Be Merry And Bright

2009-12-13T10:55:00.003-05:00

I just looked out the window. The outside world has all the charm of a soggy, discarded diaper: gray clouds, gray sky behind them and gray city poking up under them. Even the lake is more gray than green or blue. Blech. My beloved has the day off, and I believe that we're going to stay inside and do nothing much all damn day. We have about six DVDs of The Simpsons, a few Looney Tunes and National Geographic's "Taboo." We have the cinnamon coffee cake I baked yesterday - or most of it, anyway. We have a chicken thawed in the fridge that I could roast, or enough ground turkey, beef and pork to make a big old meatloaf. We have about ten books apiece from the library to read. I predict that we'll be bored to death.

Yesterday we discovered that I can not only lift HB completely off his feet, but that I can hold him up with one arm while I tickle him with the free hand. HB is desperately ticklish and hates it when I tickle him - he claims it's a form of abuse, how funny! - and always tries to tickle me back. I'm really just not that ticklish, so he usually ends up red-faced and punching. I still find it hilarious. Call me an asshole - he has, and he still loves me.

I have this hobby lately. I like to participate in Facebook polls and buck the prevailing trend. If they're against something, I'm for it. If they're for it, I have scientific evidence that they're wrong. It's not hard to get the participants riled up, as most of the polls are of the "When will you stop beating your wife?" variety and attract people with belief systems that might not be internally consistent, but are definitely deep-seated. I've been called every name in the book, been prodded with bible quotes and been pitied for my generally hell-bound ways. Maybe it's not exactly to my credit that I find it funny to mess with these people, but I still maintain that it's an entertaining way to kill fifteen minutes and still reach out to and interact with new people you'd never otherwise have met.

We are still not planning anything for Christmas, but we will be buying gifts for each other - sort of, anyway. I made a list of all the household things we need, from pots and pans right down to toilet paper and dish soap. We're going to the Dollar Tree (everything's a dollar or less!) and split the list right down the middle. Then we'll wrap everything we get and put it under the tree. That plus a few personal gifts for each other, the kind that take long term plotting, and we'll have ourselves a merry old time. We still haven't pirated a Christmas tree yet, though.

Now it's time for me to put the bread dough in the oven if I want to have bread with dinner tonight. Several of my little beloved's work friends, who are mostly fed up with his stories of homemade dinners, bath towels hot from the dryer and ironed underwear, are coming over to judge me - probably harshly. Oooh, I can't wait. Especially since I'm gonna clean the bathroom for the THIRD TIME this week - somebody better get a whole lot more conscious of his aim in the middle of the night, and after I've bitched this much I sure as heck hope it ain't me.

Talk to you soon, everybody.

Title lyric from "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby.

Heart Is Full Of Unwashed Socks

2009-12-08T19:23:00.003-05:00

You know, there was a time when I blogged every day regardless of whether something worth telling had happened or not. I always felt a little guilty if it got toward six o'clock in the evening and I hadn't done it yet - like I was shirking a duty. Nowadays if I manage it once a week I feel positively heroic. Just now, I looked at my last post and thought, You only got three comments and you want to post again ALREADY? That whole thing about getting lazier as we age just might have an ounce or so of truth to it... I guess.

I was walking through a semi-vacant parking lot on my way to Discount Drug Mart today. It's the epitome of urban sprawl: the lot faces the backsides of three apartment building, every balcony and cornice studded with the mooning cheeks of satellite dishes, the ground littered here and there with broken bottles, condom wrappers and used condoms, half shredded newspapers... The grimy sort of loam into which cities decay. I try not to look around too much when I pass through there, but I couldn't help notice somebody crouched by the fence. I thought at first it was a kid, but then decided that it was an old lady - it was the Disney logo'd hat and mittens combo that fooled me. Against my better judgment, I walked over to see what she was hunched over.
It was a cat, a very small and thin cat that had just given birth. She had one lone kitten yawping at her breast, and she looked very frightened, about to run.
The nice lady - I'd put her at somewhere between eighty and a thousand - gave me a nasty sidewise look and rustled indignantly, like a broody chicken when you get too close to the nest.
"Huh," I said, hoping that she'd open the conversation with something like, "This is my cat," or "I just found this cat and I'm gonna take care of her," hell, maybe even "Mind your own business, sonny." Any of these would have been acceptable.
"You hungry?" she said.
I don't hear very well. "I beg your pardon?"
"Isn't that what assholes like you do? You eat the baby kitties?" she inquired innocently, and plucked up the blind and wriggling kitten. "You wanna bite?"
I stood up straight and walked away cursing myself. No good deed goes unpunished, you know. I hate the city sometimes.

My landlord is in the bathroom re-tiling around the tub. Seems we had a little leaky poo, and it was worse than any of us thought. He's putting the original turquoise tile from the fifties right back, too. Looks nice. Now maybe we can use the shower again instead of having to take a bath every time. I can never find a shower tall enough to comfortably stand under - is every contractor and plumber in the universe under five foot five? And HB likes one that swivels UP so it can spray on his chin while he shaves. I have my eye on one of those shower arm attachment dealies for Christmas, and while it costs a bit more than I'd like I'm willing to sell my bodily fluids to get it, so now my problem is going to be wrapping it so that it isn't obvious. Last time I did that I wrapped something to look like a guitar instead of whatever it was, and HB was very disappointed. This time maybe I'll try to make the shower attachment look like a golf club.

We don't have a tree yet. HB is all for driving to the local park in the middle of the night and appropriating one, despite the fact that it's a state park and every streetcorner has a camera to see who illegally turns right on red. I foresee instead a trip to the vacant lot behind the currently empty factory up the railroad tracks. There are several scraggly trees that are more or less of the evergreen variety there, and they'll look just as bad as the purloined but authentic pine might have, I'm sure. Then it's going to be dollar store decorations, complete with tinfoil stars and popcorn strings. If I know myself like I think I do, I will melt into a sentimental puddle every time I see it until mid-April or so, but still insist on keeping it for another two weeks just to wring out all of the Christmas wistfulness possible.

My ex has been at some pains to explain to my daughters that I am in fact one of those dreaded (and dreadful) homosexuals, and that this was the root cause of our divorce. Discussing this via instant messenger and webcam leaves something to be desired, I can assure you. Nevertheless, it seems to meet with less resistance than it would have from children of my own generation. I resist mightily the notion that the human race is progressing in any sense except toward destruction via entropy, but my own experience so far seems cautiously optimistic. They have, after all, met HB before, their mother just helpfully connected the dots. When they asked me if I was with someone (I said 'yes') and if it was HB (once again, 'yes') they seemed almost guardedly enthused. It's hard to tell from webcam and text... But I don't think I'm imagining it.

It's on this optimistic note that I will take my leave. It tried to snow here today, but I went outside and stood with my fists on my hips glaring up at the sky, and of course it lost its nerve and blew away to bother someone else. When my downstairs neighbor asked me, "You chasin' away the snow, boss?" I replied that I'd sent the snow on its way. "It'll be back," he sad, but very sadly, as if he was dumbing down bad news for someone too dense to immediately understand. He can pity me all he wants. I say "NO WHITE CHRISTMAS!" and I mean it. I will send all of my snow off to Lem and Spo - Lem's used to it and Spo can use it.

Talk to you soon, one and all.

Title lyric from "The Grinch Song" from the Dr. Suess animated classic, "How The Grinch Stole Christmas."

What Kind Of Christmas Music Is That?

2009-12-07T13:23:00.003-05:00

I like to read a lot. I'm just finishing up Betty McDonald's books, The Egg & I, The Plague & I and Anybody Can Do Anything. I always loved her novel, Onions In The Stew, but until I picked these books up - all published before 1950, so not always easy to find - at the library, I hadn't realized just how much I love her easy writing style and deadpan humor. She also wrote the Mrs. Pigglewiggle books for children, which I also loved but hadn't realized were by a favorite author. If all this sounds like I'm reviewing her for cash, I'm not, and if you're not a reader then you'll never care much for her work.

I got to thinking, though, after finishing her book about her adventures with egg farming and her first marriage. When I'm deep in one of her books, I always find myself thinking how nice it would be to be able to meet her and get to know her... But afterward, as I think back on the whole story, I am always struck by what a child of her times she was. Her first house with her husband - when she was no older than my daughter Amber - had no electricity or running water. She contracted tuberculosis back when there was no cure or immunization. She was quite liberated for her times - she smoked, drank, wore pants and worked for the government - but her views on topics like sex and abortion were somewhere to the right of Joseph McCarthy's. It always distresses me to think that we're all like that, shaped more than we can even realize by the events we witness and the attitudes that surround us. As if personalities come in five basic types like shirts at Wal-Mart, and we all fool ourselves into feel unique and original the same way Wal-Mart sells five thousand variations on the same five shirts, by swapping around the details of cuffs and collars and buttonholes.

I know that I certainly feel rather ungrounded in tradition, removed from the influence of my peers. Most of the people that I've known (and now have lost touch with) will be celebrating the upcoming holiday with family and friends in the same old traditional grind. HB and I will be alone for the holiday, and are talking idly of renting a kayak and trying out the local river. We figure it will be refreshingly free of other enthusiasts, the lousy freeloaders who always spoil our good time. We'll eat our holiday meal around his work schedule, and probably exchange presents in bed like we did last year. He has slowly battled me to a draw on the subject of a tree, and so we will in all likelihood have one of the Charlie Brown variety shedding needles and dirty water on my carpet. My entire contact with my children has been whittled down to the internet, but somehow that's evolving into a rich and daily exercise, so they will be with us digitally rather than physically - as will most of our other friends. I forsee a day-long online camera chat if the weather is bad at Christmas. Who knows? As technology progresses and gasoline becomes more and more expensive, telepresent Christmases may be come all the rage. Perhaps I'm just ahead of my time but still conformist after all.... Darn it.

Now, though, I've got to go and mash my potatoes. I've given up on trying to eat healthy; it was so easy in the summer, when you tripped over a fresh vegetable stand on your way to the curb and the poor desperate farmer would sell you his beautiful produce, hound dog and pickup truck combo or one of his kids at rock bottom prices. Now all the farmers seem to have starved, frozen to death or been foreclosed upon and sent to debtor's prison. We eat a great deal of mashed potatoes and gravy: I keep a plastic ice-cream bucket of mashed potatoes in the fridge, right next to two spaghetti jars of gravy, one chicken and one 'brown.' There's another big tupperware of stuffing on the next shelf down, plus a whole container of sweet potatoes we're still grimly chowing through. I bake a fresh loaf of bread every day and it turns out different every time: rise ten seconds too long = far too light and airy; ten seconds too short = dense and doughy; exactly down to the nanosecond correct = soft inside, leathery crust and crumbs everywhere. HB loves it regardless. His idea of healthy winter eating is a big plate of all this plus a generous slab of whatever meat is available, canned or creamed corn and an apple for dessert. I walk literally everywhere I go, eat one limited meal a day, lift weights and still look like Shamu.

If I don't get to post again before then, have a wonderful holiday. No matter how you celebrate it (or how much you dread it) I hope this year's holiday season is a time of real relaxation, true love and perfect contentment for you and everyone who's important to you.
All my best to one and all.

Title lyric from "The Christmas Massacre Of Charlie Brown" by DJ John.

Download the mp3 here.

May Your Every Wish Come True

2009-12-05T22:55:00.003-05:00

Wow, six whole calendar days with no internet. I have that giddy sense of accomplishment not uncommon to addicts during their first few days of sobriety - you know, that whole "Now that wasn't so hard!" thing right before reality sets in. Fortunately for me, getting internet access is as easy as making a phone call one night, paying a nice man forty five dollars and a handshake the next morning and buying a wireless router this very afternoon. Boom! We're back in business, baby.
The only thing that really has happened while I've been wireless-deprived was not something I was really expecting. Just before the old account went dead, one of my little girls contacted me through an old myspace page that I'd completely forgotten about. Now, their mother hasn't let me see or speak to them in over two years now. I miss them more every day than I can say... But I don't say. I write about it, I think about it until I'm tormenting myself and I try my hardest never to let on to anybody. Why? Because nobody seems to think it's wrong, or share my sense of outrage? I've been to lawyers who laughed at me. My best friend told me that even though there is nothing I can do right now, the day will come when they'll want to see me and then there will be nothing their mother can do to stop them. Having to accept that as consoling wisdom from somebody who only wants to make me feel even a little better is a bitter enough pill to swallow. But when my little girl messaged me, she was so angry. So angry. Her mother has told her that I don't care about them, the presents and letters I send go unseen and my kids hear only how I wronged them and their mother. It was like having some of my worst nightmares come true.
It's the wonder of the internet that it connects us in a way that we never could be before. I have Facebook friends and Google Wave acquaintances from Malaysia, India, and the Phillipines, literally on the other side of the world from me. I can talk in real time to them, I can see their faces in a little window over my rapid text lines and know that they can see mine. This was the medium that my daughter used to reach out to me, so I reached back to her: I downloaded instant messengers, opened creaky old profiles like dusty books from an attic box, I used search engines and bots with the skills I picked up from cyberstalking. I finally saw her on a popular but slightly dated social networking site and opened an instant messenger window to her, complete with feed from my camera. We are miles and state lines apart, but she saw me and I saw her. She said what I had to say, and I said my piece.
She took back a lot of the angry things she said in the initial email. She called me daddy.
I cried a little.
Now she has to sneak away to a friend's with internet access to reach me... But she can reach me. She hasn't said a lot yet, but as I'm typing this there's this little winking green light down in the system tray of my computer, telling me that she's online and looking at the pictures and messages I've left for her. We're starting. Starting to connect again.
I miss her and her brother and sister so very much. This was such a horrible time for the cancer and the divorce, but the only possible time for the happiness I've found with HB. I'm trying so very hard to be the kind of person who deserves the love that he already knows, mostly in hopes that such a leap will make earning the love I want seem a little easier to make. I have no certainty (or any real basis for hope, for that matter) but I plug on.
With all of that said... In a day or so we're going to go and get a Christmas tree. HB will almost certainly have to work on Christmas day, so there is no point in trying to arrange some sort of large holiday reunion scene with the kids - and that seems almost like mercy, because the holidays are already for some stupid reason so fraught with emotional overtones and snap judgments that I'd hate to load all that onto so important a next step. So, off we'll go to get a Charlie Brown Christmas tree and a great many enthusiastically wrapped presents from the dollar store. We've invited some friends over for the days immediately after Christmas but preceding the frantic New Year's drinkathon we get roped into every year. We're going to gamely entertain in our sad little Gift-Of-The-Magi apartment with homemade cake and very good coffee, we're going to be witty and fun and not spend a dime that we're not forced to at gunpoint. I keep telling myself how much fun it's going to be.
Now there's a little flashing green icon in the corner of my dashboard here, and it's my daughter again. A whole week later, and now she's ready to talk again. I wonder what she'll say.
I wonder what I'll say.
If you've got any holiday spirit left at all to make the effort, please wish me luck with this next part. It means so awfully much to me.
Happy holidays, everyone.

Title lyric from "Happy Holidays/Holiday Inn," the Beef Wellington remix.

Wheel In The Sky Keeps On Turning

2009-11-28T13:36:00.003-05:00

This morning I woke up from a nightmare so bad that it actually made me cry out in my sleep. The crazy part is that HB woke up from a very similar dream only a minute or two before me - he was the one who shook me awake. We both dreamed that there was someone in the apartment with us, someone who scared us both very badly. Since we didn't spend the day together yesterday (he had to work) I'm going to ascribe it to the 'Thanksgiving sandwiches' we've been eating: cold turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes on white bread with gravy and cranberry sauce as the condiment. I'm choosing to believe that Scrooge was right when he told Marley, "There's more of gravy than the grave about you." Otherwise, I'd have to accept several things about the universe that I don't want to believe. I just don't want to get too good at rejecting the evidence of my senses in favor of what I want to think... Otherwise, I might become a conservative republican.

Thanksgiving was just the two of us, and we had both a very good meal and a very good day. He loves the traditional Thanksgiving menu, and I cooked all of it: turkey, real mashed potatoes with turkey gravy, sweet potatoes (yams, if you prefer), stuffing, and my own addition, fried mushrooms and bacon. I made dessert too - chocolate cake with coffee-flavored pudding for icing - but we couldn't even walk to the refrigerator after dinner, let alone put something else in our mouths. No wonder America's #3 on the list of the fattest per capita nations in the world.

I got some bad news on the job front yesterday. A job I'd applied for and really wanted turned me down. HB was very sweet - he immediately went out and bought me flowers and candy (as if I needed more calories at that point) plus a note outlining the top five things he loves about me. I decided to go for a walk, and he tagged along. When we left the building, there beside our dumpster was a brand new dining table complete with four chairs, all of them as nice and unmarked as if they'd left the showroom an hour before. We've desperately needed a table to complete our furnishings, and there it was. I'm not a believer in god or signs or anything, but I do think that there's an up for every down and that was ours.

HB's mentioned getting married more often lately. I don't personally see the point: we've had a ceremony, we wear matching rings already, we live together, we've designated each other as our dependents, executors, next of kin and whatnot at every possible legal juncture... What more could a piece of paper give us? Something to rub in the faces of those who object is the prize for him, I'm afraid... like his parents, for a top-of-my-head example. Still, if that's what he wants, he'll probably get it eventually. He always does. How can I say 'no' to him?

Now I have to go out and do a bit of shopping. Just mundane stuff: light bulbs, toilet paper and Advil. I should also clean the apartment, as it's a mess again even though all he did was pass through it on his way to and from bed. He's working extra shifts this weekend at the request of his boss, and while I miss him while he's away the money will come in handy for Christmas. Until you hear from me again, I hope you'll hold me as fondly in your thoughts as I do you. As always, all my best.

Title lyric from "Wheel In The Sky" by Journey.

Sometimes Solutions Aren't So Simple

2009-11-22T14:54:00.000-05:00

I keep having these dreams about my ex-wife. Isn’t that stupid? I had one last night, but it was like one of those clip shows that TV networks use to fill out the season in a long-running and slightly over the hill sitcom: the characters sit around and reminisce about the stuff they’ve done, complete with recorded recaps to take the place of an actual story line. Last night’s dream was just like that. I hated it. I hate all of those dreams, the ones where I try to hurt her and can’t, the ones where I beg her for forgiveness for the past and she just laughs at me, but the most hated ones of all are the ones where I’m reliving some of the golden years of our marriage, laughing with my kids, cooking in the kitchen, smoking a bowl in our bedroom while a blizzard grinds away all the colors of the world outside into blank whirling white – and then she’ll suddenly turn on me, become completely enraged and I fall out of the happy time like falling overboard from a boat.

I suppose that these dreams are normal. Anybody who has lost as much as I have probably has dreams just like them. I tell myself that sometimes, just like I tell myself not to be such a goddamn pansy, that everyone has lost as much as I have because the past is gone for all of us. Nobody can call back their happy times any more than I can, and I don’t see everybody else crying in their beer or coming suddenly awake from a dream that hurts more than a knife twisted in their heart. I tell myself that, but I’m remarkably deaf when it comes to hearing sense, especially from me. I guess that could be because I so rarely hear sense coming from myself, but that’s another whine for another day.

Somebody told me recently that I should never even consider partnering with someone I’d be ashamed to be caught with in flagrante delicto. I thought about that this morning as I lay in bed. Far from being embarrassed if I was somehow discovered in the act with HB, I’m pretty sure I’d be downright in-your-face proud of myself: look at what a catch this old man has made, I’ve still got it. I couldn’t be happier with him, prouder of being his partner or more assured of our love… So why the dreams? I never felt that way about my ex; oh, I certainly loved her as best I could and far more deeply than I ever intended. It was just that little niggling feeling in the bottom of my heart or the back of my head, the feeling that I’d settled for a conventional relationship with a woman because I was too cowardly to pursue the love of a man that I really desired. I feel none of that about HB. What I do feel, at least sometimes, is that I’m two people: the gay man I always knew I was, and the straight man who occasionally wakes from his induced coma to look around and plaintively ask how all this happened, and why. I hate it. I hate that feeling, I hate the regrets and the ache of missing what’s now gone forever. Sometime I think that if I could take a pill that would erase my memories of life between the ages of nineteen and forty I’d gobble it down in a heartbeat. That thought brings to mind the old saying about how it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all… But if someone were to say that out loud to me in one of those minutes, they might find themselves punched good and hard in the face. Fair warning.

Ah, well. Enough self pity and indulgence. I must clean the apartment, as my beloved is wonderful in so many ways but a bit of a slob – not a criticism, just an observation. He was called into work unexpectedly this morning at five AM, and when he get home he will be ravenous, so I am making lasagna: I could have spent all day simmering the sauce, hours to prepare the layers of noodles and cheese and mushrooms (he likes it with a thin layer of mushrooms and mozzarella between the ricotta and meat sauce layers), but I didn’t. I have discovered that I am actually proficient enough to sling a lasagna together in about an hour and a half, and while the ricotta comes out a little squishier than if I’d slaved over it all day, it’s pretty much fine otherwise. After that, we will watch a movie and go to bed early.

That’s right: my big gay agenda absolutely bristles with evil. Such is a sodomite’s life, right?

I hope that your upcoming holiday week is absolutely wonderful. I hope that I can check in with you all before the big turkey day, and if I can’t, please remember what my daughter Amber (a confirmed carnivore) told her semi-vegetarian sister Brandi:

“It’s not a sin to kill a turkey – hell, those birds are so damn ugly they’d kill themselves if they could hold a mirror right.”

All my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Shadow Of The Day" by Linkin Park.

I Begin, Baby, Where You End

2009-11-17T11:23:00.002-05:00

I think my contentment is slipping.
It's not that I'm unhappy, mind you. Unhappiness is an active affliction: it doesn't leave you alone. It keeps poking and prodding and biting you at inconvenient times, and it never lets you forget it's there for more than five minutes. I don't feel like that - thank the FSM. I just feel useless, at odd ends. I feel like there are so much bigger things I could be - SHOULD be - doing with my time. I feel it when I see the geese V-ing south, honking to each other like dogs barking; I envy them having a place to go and a job to do, and then I feel stupid for it. More than just something diverting to occupy my time, I want that old sense of certainty back - that you do certain things at certain times, like shaving in the morning and eating turkey at Thanksgiving and feeling pressured in the first two weeks of April even if you've already filed. I used to know the steps to this dance, back when I danced at the traditional ball. Now I have to make it up as I go along, trying to find a rhythm for my improvised steps on streetcorners and in parking lots. The only comfort I have is that it hardly matters if I do it right or wrong, and matters a whole lot more that I just do it.
So I do. I just wish I felt more certain about it, that's all.
Anywhoo, my beloved partner has three whole days off in a row - an unprecedented stretch. We have a few dollars to spend and a whole lot of leisure time between now and Friday at 8 AM, so I will probably be doing the shopping and bill-paying and general running around that life generally entails: our library books and DVDs are due, the phone will probably be shut off if I don't pay it pretty quick and we could really use a new brand of shampoo. Little things, you know? Of course, greedy pigs that we are, we've already watched all the new stuff we've downloaded recently - I thought the most recent episodes of the Simpsons and Family Guy were particularly clever - so now we must wait to download new ones. I have committed myself to finding a new activity that is outdoors and semi-strenuous physically but doesn't involve running, jogging or talking to strangers, so maybe we'll work on that one as well. Plus (of course) we'll spend a lot of time in bed. He IS rather young, you know.
How was that for a segue, eh?
But time just keeps passing, on and on and on. I was looking through my blog archives over at Chambered Nautilus the other day, it amazed me how many words I've written and how many times I've repeated myself. Yet I find that the line of my story is both true and almost fairy-tale simple: I was unhappy but unwilling to change, then my life was torn apart by a catastrophe and ensuing divorce, but just when things looked darkest my knight in shining armor appeared and loved me back to health. Now I think the question is, will I write something bigger with the days of my life that still are left to me? I hope so, but I know I won't be doing it today. Today will be a little housewifely shopping, a trip to the library and then the preparation of an elaborate meal with a movie and even more elaborate dessert for afterward.
I know, I know, if I don't sharpen up my big gay agenda they're gonna take away my ruthlessly evil badge. After having been in a married-type relationship with both a woman and now a man, I can say this with authority: there are differences, but a whole freaking lot fewer than you'd believe. The only real difference is the biological one: he doesn't have periods, so his moody bits come twice a day instead of one weekend a month. That and maybe we're better about dividing up the chores, although he's never washed a dish and I refuse to take out the trash. Now that I think about it, I guess that chore thing doesn't really qualify, does it?
But now I hafta go and actually DO some chores. Speaking of the dishes reminded me that I really must do mine this morning, and a whole lot of cleaning before we're ready and presentable for the grocery store. With that in mind, I suppose I'll quit blog-crastinating and get to work.
My best to all of you, and I wish that I could contact you more often. I hope that you think of me as frequently and fondly as I do all of you.

Title lyric from "Circles In The Sand" by Belinda Carlisle.

Watching The Sun Trace Shadows On The Floor

2009-11-12T18:52:00.004-05:00

I want to tell you the stories of my days, to illustrate some grand design through the telling in my own folksy homespun voice - and yes, I really talk this way too. I want it all to add up to something. I know some really terrific stories, you know; one of the greatest I know is the crazy love affair I'm still having with my guy, and I have no idea how it ends... I'm sort of hoping that it never does, you see.
But my day, whether this day or that, is pretty mundane. I walk to the grocery store, I concentrate on how I cook meals and make a home. I spend a fair bit of 'me-time' on the Internet too. I love Facebook games, and I play all the biggest ones. Except Farmville, I don't play that one anymore. It got too damn demanding for me. I'd rather spend that time reading a book, sewing up HB's favorite pajama pants (note to self - still haven't done that yet), planning surprise desserts and day-off excursions to things we haven't crossed off the list. I write a lot. I wrote this the other day:

Lately I have that old feeling again.
The feeling is that I'm stalling, failing to progress. Does everybody get that, I wonder? I know that life isn't one long school with set tests and examinations, I know that the goal isn't the same for everybody. I just wish I could convince some of the mental passengers in my head that it's so, you know?
Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. People who spend enough time with you get to take up living space in your head after while: they move right in like your mind is an apartment building, and they're always dropping in at the most INconvenient times to offer you their sage opinions. Your parents, your best friend in fourth grade, your lovers, even your adversaries. The get to be one of your shadows, always there, always unwelcome. Mine are all convinced that I have taken the wrong turn at every fork, and that my only distinction is in displaying to all the world just how utterly wrong a man my age can go with a bad attitude and absolutely no successful opposition. My own voice is the one that consoles, that forgives, rationalizes and soothes. Even in my own head, I'm the only one who's still doggedly convinced I'm right.
When I start to agree with all of those voices I tend to look back over my life in the most critical of terms. Right now, for instance, I feel as though I came to this city to make some sort of breathrough to a new and more settled way of life. A more responsible way of life, if you feel me. Yet I find myself up to the same old tricks, mostly because they're the only ones I know. I smoke illicit cigarettes on the down-low from my partner, I play Facebook games when I should be accomplishing something, I even lied about what I'd done all afternoon the other day to make myself sound like less of a lazy shit even to myself. All those examples are just the tip of the iceberg, too - but I've taken an oath not to write online about some of the other habits I've fallen back into quite easily as a result of being so close to my old stomping grounds... 'Nuff said. The point is, I feel like I'm idling around doing jack-all when I should be... doing something.
Thing is, the times when I feel most this way seem always to come right before something does happen, and it's always something I didn't plan, didn't see coming and works right out on its own. I don't know if other people's lives are that way - that you work and strain and pray for something until you're blue in the face, and then about ten minutes after you've given up it pretty much falls in your lap with a ribbon around it - but I have this sort of working theory in the back of my head that all of life is that way, just a bunch of random shit that happens to us more or less because of who and where and how we are - and that all of our efforts to change which shit happens to us when are largely in vain. I don't mean to sound defeatist, because it certainly doesn't feel that way. HB just sort of happened to me, just the way I wished for him, and not because I read books on how to be a great catch or worked out and had my teeth capped or any other way you can be rich, handsome and successful through your own good works. I got him because he was just what I wanted and I was ready for him... But he came when it was his time, not mine. If I hadn't been exactly who and where and how I was the minute he was ready, I'd never have met him - you see?
There are even times when this quality of the universe made me vaguely understand where spiritual people are coming from, or at least the spiritual sort who do a lot of time in AA. I resist approaching what I need to do in life on that basis simply because it isn't pragmatic enough: the universe really is a little too random for everything to be planned. We're the ones who make synchronicity work, I think.
I wrote all of that in one sitting - in much less time than it probably took to read. I'm always writing little scraps like that. I save them all in folders, and then again in my Google documents (All hail Google!) in the vain hope that maybe someday somebody will want to read them again, or (even more vain a hope) even publish them. Hey, we all get to dream, so why not dream big?
Even as big as I dream, though, I can never quite seem to top how exactly right things keep unfolding between the two of us. He's been my rock through this latest emotional jolt with my kids, and I don't think I could ever begin to write well enough to capture how wonderful I think he is or just how precisely made for me he is. No matter how bad I have it, I'm still pretty lucky, aren't I?
But now I gotta run off and do mundane things. Sauce for stuffed shells doesn't appear out of thin air; plus, he likes the little details when he's fresh in the door, a hot bath drawn, his favorite lounging outfit laid out (pajama pants, a cotton T-shirt worn thin as a kleenex and his Cartman slippers) and something hot coming out of the oven. Plus I actually bought some potting soil and planted a little plant to have some greenery around here, and if I don't mess with it again soon it just might live.
Toodles, one and all. Thank you too for your kind wishes. If only I could offer you more than a virtual hug, I promise I would be as persistent as the really creepy guy at the office Christmas party.
But now I really MUST run. For realz, as the kids say. Later.

Title lyric from "Good" by Better Than Ezra.

Do Whatever It Takes In Your Heart

2009-11-10T08:37:00.005-05:00

Being this close to my old home is hard. Really hard. We've been as far away as the upper peninsula, the Black Hills, even as far south as Evansville in that state at the crossroads of America. Now we're an hour or so from home (depends on who's driving) and I go back to see my adult kids fairly often.
Take the other day for an example. I called my son - I believe it was a Friday morning, Ohio sky the color of television snow but not cold or rainy. More of an absence of weather than anything, really.
"We thought maybe we'd come and spend the night tonight," I said to my son on the phone. "HB's gotta work on Saturday at six, but that gives us lots of time."
"Um, yeah," my son said. He seemed ready to relay something unpleasant. "Thing is, the little kids are coming on Friday."
For just a second, I leaped to conclusions. I haven't seen my own three youngest children in almost two years now. My ex-wife refuses to let me see them, point blank, and given where she lives and with whom simply going to confront her is not an option unless I'm ready for a shoot-out. Literally. "Really? What time? You think I could see them? We could stay until two or--"
"Dad, no," my son interjected. "No, we can't do that. Amber and I would get in big trouble with Mom. She'd never forgive us."
"Are you serious?" It was like he'd kicked me good and hard.
"Yes, I'm serious! Maybe you shouldn't come back to town at all this weekend." He sounded angry, but right then I was pretty pissed off myself. Gut reaction, and something I feel terrible about now, but to know that they're so close and then to have such a bright and momentary hope crushed immediately... It hurt. What else can I say?
"Fine, then," I said as calmly as I could possibly be - which was pretty calm, I think. "We won't come." And I hung up.
Later I spoke to my daughter. "He's so stupid," she said by way of comfort. "I had no intention of telling you."
"I suppose that's kinder," I said. I may have sounded just a trifle bitter.
"Well, what do you want from me?" she asked.
I told her that I was forced to conclude, from both her actions and her brother's, that they both agreed that I shouldn't be allowed to see my own kids. I told her that I felt she and her brother both judge me rather harshly over things that happened in their childhood that they're only seeing one side of, and not a very mature side at that - holiday arguments, privileges denied, things overhead meant to be kept between my ex wife and I that they misunderstood. She (rather loftily) replied that she loved me very much and understood that I had always done the best I could, but that if she were in my place in certain instances she might have done very different things. Then she told me not to think about it and said goodbye.
Since then, I've been sort of stewing over the whole mess. I hate that my ex can just stand up in court and say, "He's a sexual deviate, your honor - he lives with a man half his age, younger than his stepdaughter. He shouldn't be allowed to see his own children," and the courts in Pennsylvania (who were empaneled by Cotton Mather) will heartily agree, case closed. Even if I had the money to hire an expensive lawyer and plead my case in the media it would be a tooth and nail battle: the family court in that particular county being famed for its conservatism and rigidity in such matters.
So I sit here. My coffee is cooling in the cup by my hand; the apartment smells of fresh baked bread, espresso and incense. There is money in the box on the dresser for the rent and the car payment and the bills. My refrigerator is interestingly stocked with fresh vegetables and fruit, cups of yogurt and a few remaining slices of cappuccino pie; there is fresh laundry stacked in the closets and folded in drawers; the internet is here beneath my fingertips, the whole imaginary electronic realm available at high speed. It took me all of eight weeks to assemble these things, the trappings of a comfortable life, and the delight I took in that fact is utterly gone now. Instead I think over and over of the things I lost in my head, the needle of my thoughts digging a deep and painful repeated groove. It's as if I had never mourned these things, or consciously put them away like the mementos of a painful accident that left me maimed, less than whole, but functional.
So what will I do now?
I don't know what to do. I. Don't. Know.
More than anything right now I want to take Amber's advice: I don't want to think about it anymore. I just wish I knew a way to do that.

Title lyric from "Hate Me" by Blue October.

Blue October - Hate Me
by UniversalMusicGroup

In The Middle Of The Night

2009-11-02T22:50:00.002-05:00

I think I have an ear infection.
My left ear certainly hurts, an under the surface pressure and pain like a swollen gland or an abscess. The pain radiates out from my ear to the top of my head and into my jaw and temporomandibular joint, and I'm afraid that in addition to making it hard to sleep, eat or get anything done, it's made me just the tiniest titch cranky as well. My beloved is across the darkened room from me as I write this, pretending to be asleep in the most grimly determined fashion possible. Even with his back to me I can tell he's clenching his teeth. That's his tell, his dead giveaway: he always clenches his teeth when he's pissed. God how I love him.
I'm not sure about the jobs I interviewed for awhile back: the job field is very competitive here, and my recent medical history and ancient criminal record (22 years now!) may be making me seem like a bad deal. If so, then... so. I don't know what else to say or do about it. HB's new job, on the other hand, is going gangbusters, and he is once again putting beans on the table. He doesn't seem to mind, and I certainly don't mind either. The jobs of housewife and nosy building super are perfect for me, giving me lots of time to write and just plain interact with the net itself. Of course, a lot of that time is starting to be devoted to cleaning and baking and exercise again as routine reasserts itself. You get a certain age, you start to feel more comfortable in the groove that you know. It's a hell of a thing to admit, but there you are.
I recently had an HIV test. We continue to not have it, the dreaded IT, the plague, GRID, or as one of our close friends so charmingly calls it, 'the hiv' so as to rhyme with 'give.' I guess that goes with that whole monogamy deal: you don't bring it into the relationship with you, you don't go outside the relationship and your biggest dirty deed is watching porn together, and whaddaya know? You both stay negative. I read today that premature aging is common in people who have lived with the virus for a long period of time, especially if they've been on protease inhibitors. Bone loss, senility, all that jazz. My brother's been positive since the late eighties, he's still going strong, but hearing that frightens me. If he needed me, I'd go to him and help him, but I'd rather he never actually needed me like that.
We have a number of new neighbors in the building, and at the current moment, someone or some ones are playing their music much, much too loud. The sad part is that I can't quite figure out whether it's coming from upstairs or downstairs because of the whole ear infection deal: I know that it's loud enough for me to hear it and vaguely pin down the genre as either eighties soft rock and R&B or Motown, or possibly a mixture thereof. Which is nice and all, musically speaking, but not cool at this hour. Some people are just dicks that way I guess.
Speaking of people who are dicks, I think I'll stop being one and wrap up this post so HB can finally get some sleep. He put in a ten hour day today, eight regular hours and a two hour paid meeting, and now he's pretty well whipped - and the loud music from the omnidirectional neighbor(s) isn't helping matters much, but then neither is my screen light or key clicking. So I will bid you all adieu and good night, and hope that things are well and happy with you, and that things are (as our new acquaintance Mr. Blackwell is always saying) well and truly sorted.

Title lyric from "River Of Dreams" by Billy Joel.

Billy Joel - The River Of Dreams
Uploaded by val6210. - Explore more music videos.

It's A Bittersweet Symphony, This Life

2009-11-01T11:49:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I like to play the "what if" game. Don't you? I think everybody does, a little, but I tend to take it a bit far. Still, I think that's what makes my writing better: I like to imagine fully all the interactions and consequences of a situation, to try and assess the changes that occur if I change this or that little detail. Isn't that what makes up our lives, and makes each one different from the others? The difference between this and that detail, between growing up here or there, rich or poor, educated or ignorant...
I think that if somehow HB and I were handed real security on a silver platter - I'm not just talking about money, but the freedom from ever having to worry about having enough of anything again - I think we'd be farmers. We've tried a lot of different things that other people and the media have suggested, the bars and the beaches and the nightclubs. Some of those experiences were a pretty good time, all things considered, but none of them was so amazing that we wanted to make a lifestyle of it. We're just into each other, we stay home at night and get excited about special meals, a good movie, a new wine or some really great weed. I think that the constant, repetitive schedule of a farm and its seasonally changing demands would fit right into our shared pleasures. Sure, he's a child of suburban sprawl with no real concept of the amount of hard physical work that goes into even the most mechanized farming operations; sure, I'm not as young as I used to be, and just between you and me I find that these days I'm having a hard time just staying this age without getting older at an alarming rate. So what? Granted, that cuts out large-scale commercial or beef farming because it's just TOO labor intensive, but that's not what I'm picturing here. I'm seeing something more on the scale of the single-family farm that specializes in nothing really and mostly just supports itself: fields that grow produce for the kitchen and feed for a few cows, goats and chickens, maybe a tank-house supporting a catfish/prawn/krill cycle that would net a few bucks.
It's a pretty dream, isn't it? When you get right down to it, farming or writing or even parasailing are all just ways to exercise the body you've got for now while you kill the allotted time between birth and death... Or more like the time between understanding and death, because that clock doesn't really start ticking until you realize it's there. But that's how it is: none of us really knows why we're here, or what the world is really all about. We just do our thing while we have it to do, and that's what I'm doing too. Working, living, and spinning out dreams that I sometimes write here to share with you.
I hope that, as autumn slides into late autumn and inorexably toward winter, this little blog of mine finds you content if not happy, occupied if not happily busy, and (more than any other wish I have for you) loved and in love. Even if there isn't a soul mate in your life, there is so much of life to love. Like one of my favorite books says, 'If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.' Until the next time my words reach you, here's hoping that you get the time and peace to see the world that way.

Title lyric from "Bittersweet Symphony" by the Verve.

So You Learn The Only Way To Go

2009-10-26T14:45:00.003-04:00

Early afternoon in late October, and my apartment is full of strong smells: boiling coffee in the old percolator, chocolate incense sticks stuck in a gargoyle candle-holder and lit, chicken roasting in the oven. I am older than I ever thought I'd be, the days pass me faster and more complicated than I can grasp, I am belligerent, opinionated and of little use to most anybody these days. Yet I can still work a man's hard day and keep house better than some women I know besides, and that's saying something.
It's like that bad year of divorce and cancer was the very middle of my life. The dark abyss in the center of the lake where you almost drown. I kept swimming and now I've found my stride again. I'm not in the warm shallows again yet, but that's fine. I'm not ready to be.
Here now, on the other side of that divide, I find myself keeping house with that young man. How did this happen? He's been here for so long that everything that went before him seems like a dream... And yet the most popular song on the day he was born was Vogue by Madonna. I've raised children older than him, and at least one of my daughters has found him crushworthy in the past. The other day he very excitedly explained the plot of a book he'd started reading. I was baking cookies while he talked - I really like the white chocolate macadamia ones, which is funny because I don't generally like white chocolate, it's not really chocolate at all - and he accused me of not paying attention to him.
"I was listening," I protested. "You were telling me the plot of They Whisper, Robert Owen Butler, right? And I was listening."
He frowned at me. "Robert Olen Butler," he corrected, "and you've already read it? Why didn't you tell me?"
I thought about how I'd watched him pick that one out at the library, how he'd come up the aisle behind me and seen the one book out of line with the others, the one I'd pulled out and looked at which then caught his eye. How I'd vaguely looked forward to discussing it with him.
I shrugged. "It didn't seem important."
"I just thought I'd picked out something you'd like instead of the other way around," he said. And then, "You're right, it's not that important."
I hate the little moments like those. But what do you do? Every one of us is taking something too far at any given moment. We're all too loud, too impatient, too inconsiderate, too demanding, too something and we fuck it all up. I don't know anybody who lives any moment of their lives just right, or not for more than a few moments at a time anyway. That's one of the less attractive things about life and the way it goes on eating and shitting and bleeding through its appointed rounds and then dies.
So next time I'll show an interest in one of his enthusiasms that I really don't feel one way or another about and just fake it 'til I make it. I've actually come to more or less enjoy several music groups that way, y'know. I love him so much that it frightens me sometimes: not only that our love is temporal and doomed to pass upon one or the other of our deaths if not before, but that its quality is eroded by the daily wear and tear of mortality just like an expensive piece of furniture. I know I'm luckier than most because he's constantly new to me, constantly becoming someone else that I love even better than the man he was. He's probably humored me in a million small things to the few that I've been momentarily less self-absorbed enough to see. I do sometimes wish that there was a better way for me to say "I love you" than to be less insensitive and self-centered than usual, but there you go: I just gotta be me.
So tomorrow I'll join in his new enthusiasm, and maybe for a minute or two it will make me new(er) too. He's doing a pretty bang up job of keeping me young so far - thank god I'm doing my end by staying equally immature.
My best to all of you, as always.

Title lyric from "Through The Roof" by Gogol Bordello.

The Best Luck I Had Was You

2009-10-21T18:05:00.003-04:00

Time has gotten away from me, hasn't it?
So much has happened. Where to start? Well, last week I interviewed at two different universities and a medical school. Two of the jobs are pretty much like the one I used to work before I got sick and divorced and all that... And one is for a better, more responsible position. I don't know if I'll get even one of them, but so far things look good. I've been called back for a second interview at the medical school and one of the state schools, the HR guy loved me at the third... We'll see.
When I went to the medical school interview some nice little girl in scrubs hit our van with her car. It sounds pretty calm written out like that, but it happened exactly ten minutes before my interview and I so completely freaked out. She took my phone number and called me later... And acted as if I would assume responsibility when SHE rear-ended me! Wonders never cease.
HB loves his new job. It's less than a block away, it pays well and he adores the hours. This is a good thing; even though I'm only working as the building manager (a job very light on responsibility to say the least) I manage to keep quite busy, and now he's happily occupied as well. It gives a much nicer shape to our days: I get to grocery shop at the little international market instead of the dollar store, we walk and jog at the beautiful park up the street that's right on the beach and we've gotten to sample the local night life a time or two as well. All very good things. I will say that sometimes I feel as though we're evening up some internal scoreboard as much as amusing ourselves - as if getting to do all the little prosaic things together somehow proves a hypothetical point to somebody, somewhere - and that it's the small things that we actually enjoy more. We go to the library and take out DVDs and books, we download the latest movies and watch them together, when he gets home from work I often have big, sumptuous meals all prepared, his bath drawn and a joint rolled. Those are the things I think we'll look back on as the fondest points if we ever look back at all. These small things, plus the way the trees sound in the wind here, the way the train whistles as it gets closer and closer, the towers of the city so close to the water with a sky like cement behind it.
We're keeping on with keeping on. I take care of him, he takes care of me, we love each other. We're happy, or at least as happy as we can be. We're looking forward to the holidays and we're looking out for each other. I hope you're all doing the same.

Title lyric from "Say Hey (I Love You)" by Michael Franti & Spearhead.

Don't Hang On, Nothing Lasts Forever But The Earth And Sky

2009-10-08T09:50:00.003-04:00

Back again - sorry it's been so long since I've posted.
Things are still in a state of flux with our new location and life; my beloved got himself a new, much better paying job that's literally less than a block away, I have an interview with a major medical school early next week, an emergency in our landlord's life called him away to another state and as a result I'm now the de facto landlord for our apartment building. It's strange how much can change in just a few days, isn't it?
Of course, it's not all blue skies and roses. It never is, at least in my experience. My guy has developed some troublesome health symptoms, and now I'm going to stress until we hear from a doctor whether it's something we should or shouldn't worry about. The news from back home is always troublesome: my daughter Amber, against everything I've ever taught her and her own considerable common sense, drove home drunk the other night and probably narrowly avoided killing someone else or herself - prompting a four hour phoned-in screaming match between us. My son is having trouble with his chemistry courses, most likely because I'm not there to constantly nag and guilt trip him about his study habits. My ex-wife has split with her most recent beau and now is going to spend the winter in my house and childhood home, a daunting mission given that she can't cut her own firewood the way I always did. It seems like there's always grist for the mill if you're the worrying type. I try very hard not to be the worrying type... But sometimes it seeps in no matter how serene you try to be.
One sign of how things get to me lately is the incredibly vivid and memorable dreams I've been having since we moved here. Last night I dreamed about my ex-wife, specifically that she was mocking me and no matter how I tried to retaliate it had no effect. I was literally powerless to stop her or hurt her - I can't think of a more accurate depiction of my actual feelings where she's concerned. Of course, I also dreamed that I was friends with the president and his wife, and that Michelle Obama and I had to go out searching for one of her daughters who was at a party with Amber - I couldn't even BEGIN to guess what THAT means. It's been a long time since I had dreams that I remembered, let alone dreams that were so vivid. Some of them are just plain silly, too - the other night, I actually dreamed an episode of Gilligan's Island that was in black and white and was complete with all the characters, opening and closing credits and theme song. The human mind is a strange thing, isn't it?
Right now, though, I can hear the guy in the sole occupied basement apartment blasting out his music at sonic-boom decibels and I must go down and speak to him AGAIN. Last time I had to speak to him, he complained that I never say anything to the 'old lady' on the second floor when she plays her music rather loud; for the record, she's fifty-four (hardly 'old') and listens to Vivaldi, which I view as providing elevator muzak as a free service. Of course, my basement rap aficianado doesn't see it that way, and didn't seem to appreciate the joke when I explained that you can't spell 'crap' without 'rap.'
Catch you again soon, everybody. Until then, all my best.

Title lyric from "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas.

In Fact It Was A Little Bit Frightening

2009-10-03T17:44:00.004-04:00

I was doing the laundry this morning. My guy has this weird way of taking his socks off so that one ends up balled up inside the other - please don't ask me how that works, I'm personally mystified - and one pair somehow managed to sneak by me in that condition. I found them that way when I took everything out of the dryer. Of course the inside sock was heavy and wet. I started flicking the outside sock by the toe in hopes of separating them... And somehow managed to hit myself square in the nuts with them as if they were a set of nunchucks. I dropped to my knees, clutching my bruised groin with what must have been a somewhat amusing expression on my face. I know this about my expression because he's STILL walking around the apartment muttering 'right in the nuts' to himself and giggling. This, you see, is my reward for being a good housewife.
Without wishing to go into specifics, I have managed to lay hands on six hundred and fifty dollars since eleven A.M. this morning. Yesterday we were sure that our van would be repossessed; today, the payment is made and we have money for the rent and another payment left over. If you were to ask me what my secret to making that kind of money in so short a time frame is, I would tell you: nothing you'd be willing to do yourself. Let's leave it at that... Except to say that while he is still considering the porn gig, this has nothing to do with that. End of story.
We wanted to go to the national equality march next weekend, but unless we manage to find someone local to carpool with it probably won't happen. I would like him to be able to participate in what will doubtless be a major historic milestone in our civil rights struggle, not to mention take part in the general party atmosphere that will doubtlessly pervade the entire event. It would be wonderful to go... But even if we can't, just by being together and visibly happy in the face of general societal disapproval is, in my eyes anyway, doing our part.
But now I must run. My beloved will be home at nine tonight and I have a special evening planned. We've been worried and run ragged all week, and tonight we're going to relax. I hope that you all can take a moment or two to unwind this weekend as well.
All my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas.

I Know We Will Never Look Back

2009-09-30T09:42:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I think that our new home is not the ideal move that I initially thought it was.
Oh, I'm sure things will settle down once we've both found the right jobs for us - so far, things aren't working out with our first efforts - but for the moment, things are stressful money-wise. It's not that I'm pining for all the things that money can buy, mind you, just that we're somehow still having trouble covering the basics and still being able to deal with the emergencies that arise.
And oh, how they continue to arise.
Yesterday, the van decided to just up and die. In the rain, on the first really cold day we've seen this winter, a great many blocks from home... And (of course) in a neighborhood that made downtown Baghdad look positively gentrified. Available cash when this happened? $11.17, with the $1.17 on the end entirely comprised of dimes, nickels and pennies in the change tray. Plus (of course) with several of our most expensive possessions on prominent display through the back windows with no way to hide them. (As he reminded me while we trudged home through said rain and cold, I was the one who said "tinted windows are illegal anyway.") Turns out it was the battery. We couldn't afford a new battery, but since we both have to get to work, I did some fast talking - something I'm rather experienced at - and now we have a working van again, along with an additional $25 in debt that we can't pay.
Then there's the rent - due tomorrow, when we will still have $11.17 to our names - the van payment, my prescription that will need refilled soon... The list goes on and on.
It's not like we aren't trying to fix this, either. I have job applications in at every college, trade school, university, medical school and high school in a thirty mile radius; failing that, I've also applied at literally every business that would take my application and lies within walking distance, and that includes Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Failing the more traditional employment options, we've also tried some new things. Even, since some of our naughty online profiles have generated SUCH enthusiasm, the world of online adult entertainment. At the moment, my beloved has made it through the first two levels of contact with Sean Cody, having heard first by email and then by phone from the producers. I'm sort of proud of that... And sort of scared by it too. But, as he points out, it's money, honey.
Still, we remain strong in our love and confident that we'll succeed. Granted, I am no longer so sure that this will be the ideal place and time for us to relax into the bliss of all-male matrimony... But if not here, then somewhere else. The song says that you can't keep a good man down, and I figure we've got double the chances of not being kept down. What we really need now is a bit of luck...
Well, okay, that's not entirely true. What I really need now is information. I need to know what business close enough to commute to needs someone like me so that I can go to them and work my magic. I know I've been off the market for awhile, I know that I have a few strikes against me (my age, my medical history, stuff like that), and BELIEVE ME I know what kind of shape the economy is in both locally and nationally. Still, I am very confident that once my foot is in the door I can do what I do best: charm people and pull off those odd lucky moves that I seem only to be able to do when I'm not really trying.
So, while you're wishing me luck, also wish for better intelligence. I know I am.

Title lyric from "I Will Buy You A New Life" by Everclear.
I Will Buy You a New Life by Everclear

Look Into Your Heart And You'll Find That The Sky Is Yours

2009-09-26T22:28:00.003-04:00

I wish I could say that our life together is one uninterrupted dream of domestic bliss. Alas... It ain't so.
There's the big stuff that sets us back. Money, I would say, is number one; but then, isn't it the number one issues for most couples? Currently we have even less than we are used to, mostly because we chose this place based on demographics and just blithely assumed that jobs would be easy to come by. In this economy, that was a bad mistake... But I am still firmly committed to just grimly getting through it. As I said to him just last night, every single aspect of our lives changes if we just give it enough time. I have the property manager gig to help us, he is currently working, and if there isn't so much as counter help at McDonald's available - yes, I climbed down off my high horse and actually applied at McDonald's, advanced degree and all - things can't stay this bad forever. In the meantime, we'll get by somehow.
Then there are the little issues. Some of them are sort of funny, like the way he never turns off the shower valve - I always forget this and just turn on the taps in the tub, suddenly - hey presto! - it's raining on my head. Then there's my habit of speaking for him in public even when I'm not the one who's been addressed; like he says, it's a little demeaning, as if he isn't old enough or smart enough to answer for himself. Or the way he's so careless with money, leaving it wadded up in his pockets so that he has no clue how much he has at any given moment... Or the way I tend to fuss at him like a mother hen.
If these little things didn't clutter up the landscape of our lives, I don't think our relationship would be as real. How can you feel like you love someone if you're so damn careful all the time that you can't say and do what's natural to you? Isn't that what love's all about, never having to say you're sorry for at least the little things? I can at least say that it doesn't slow us down. When we're irritated with one another we're just as likely to laugh and say 'I love you' as we are to gripe, and that's what holds a relationship together. I know personally it's hard to stay mad at him and very easy to forget why I was angry in the first place... Picturing his bottom in his tight little biker shorts certainly helps, I'll say that.
In fact, I think I'll just go all the way out on this limb I've started climbing: the fact that I get annoyed with him sometimes and then get right on over it (and vice versa, of course!) is the reason I am so sure in my heart that he's a keeper. As long as we can keep right on enduring through the big stuff and laughing away the small stuff, we'll be okay.

Title lyric from "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz.

Jason Mraz - I'm Yours
by jasonmrazworld

Because Of You I'm Running Out Of Reasons To Cry

2009-09-23T07:10:00.002-04:00

Ugh, I hate these early mornings.
The partner's 'dream job' has turned out to be anything but: it's all the way across the city in some obscure suburb, necessitating a freeway drive of half an hour. The freeways here (as my Facebook friends could tell you) are not high on my list of this state's positive features. The signs are confusing or nonexistent, everyone swaps lanes with impunity and the state police seem to regard traffic tickets as a random game of chance based solely on who will pull over when they turn on the lights instead of who is actually speeding. As if this wasn't bad enough, his eyesight has deteriorated slightly and he needs a new prescription for his glasses - which we naturally cannot afford. Bad enough in the bright light of day, but in the early morning or at night it becomes a real liability. I worry constantly when he has to drive by himself. I've seen all the movies where the hospitals refuse to notify the partner or allow them access, and while we've taken all the necessary precautions for me we never thought to make them reciprocal (he's young and healthy!), and so I fear that if something ever did happen I might be among the last to know.
At least I got him off to a good start this morning. He likes a fried egg for breakfast, over easy, and I have learned how to make it exactly to his liking right down to the three slices of toast (two to make a sandwich of it and one to mop up afterward) and two slices of fruit. I use an old-fashioned two-cup percolating coffee pot that takes half an hour to deliver... But makes the darkest, richest coffee you can imagine. One cup of my coffee is just right; two cups, and you end up so caffeinated that you vibrate slightly. After breakfast I shooed him right into the shower, and I had his work clothes hanging on the back of the bathroom door, complete right down to the undies and socks. His car keys were in the basket by the door along with his fully charged mp3 player, his shoes on the floor right below the basket and all was right with his world. He's not much of a worrier about the little things, is my beloved.
Sometimes I think about the effect I've had on his life. When we met, he would never wear socks (his shoes stank so bad that I'd sneak baking soda into them whenever he came over), he never ate on a regular schedule and his bed had no sheets or pillow cases. He left his money wadded up in his pockets and never had a clue how much he had. He was on a perpetual search for a comb, his wallet, his car keys and any bit of paperwork that had passed through his hands. Now he insists upon white cotton tube socks folded together (no folding the top of one over the other - it ruins the elastic, he says!) that MUST be properly mated, he eats three square meals a day prepared to his liking and he's been known to bitch if the bed isn't made when he's ready to crawl into it. As for money and paperwork - I hang onto that, and dole both out as needed.
If it sounds as if I'm bragging over having trained him, however, then I've misspoken. The impact he's had on my life has been far greater. I can honestly say I'd be dead right now if it weren't for him pushing me to live. He gave me a reason to want to fight when that was the last thing I wanted to do, and all the other stuff I've done for him is not only small potatoes but a very inadequate repayment of all that he's done for me. I love him so much... And now I'm going to worry until he calls me on his break and tells me that he made it to work in one piece and that everything is okay.
That's just how I am, I guess.

Title lyric from "Underneath Your Clothes" by Shakira.
Underneath Your Clothes

Who Could Ask For More?

2009-09-18T11:09:00.004-04:00

There are parts to my new phase of existence that I find a little frustrating, to say the least.
In the last two weeks, we've had our electric service, internet and landline all turned on. Of the three, only the electric was without headaches: I sent them an email, they directed me to a website where I filled out a form, they sent me an email confirming my request. All done. The internet wasn't terrible, either, but only because I've set up a DSL account before; if it weren't for my prior experience, I'd probably have had some trouble with it. But the landline? Holy cow.
First they offered discounts during the signup that evidently evaporated during the installation process, because even though those discounts are prominently displayed on their website, none of their customer service agents seem to have a clue that they exist, let alone that I might be entitled to any of them. Every single customer service representative pushes DirecTV with the zeal of a mormon missionary; several of them had such a thick regional dialect that I could barely understand them. One woman put me on hold for a minimum of ten minutes every time I asked a question - and she STILL screwed up both the information she told me and the order she placed for me. My bottom line: a landline and DSL may be cheaper, but the instant I can afford cable internet and phone again, I'm dumping my current service like an obnoxious boyfriend with bad teeth and body odor issues.
Some parts of our new existence, however, have been a positive delight. Walking two blocks through some pretty impressive houses - not mansions by Hollywood standards, but damn close - to the beach is nice, even though I can just imagine what it will be like in winter. Our neighborhood is filled with gay and lesbian couples, and even though it's one to two blocks in any direction to a major thoroughfare, every night is filled with the quiet sound of crickets instead of constant traffic. The streets are lined with huge maples and oaks, and a great many of our neighbors have landscaping to be proud of in their front yards. Whenever I am tempted to complain or become irritated, these little grace notes temper my irritation.
On another note, I am now looking for a full-time job again. I have a number of resumes submitted, but I have yet to apply to the medical school here in spite of being almost overqualified for some of the positions offered. I will honestly admit it: I am afraid. Afraid of being rejected, afraid of getting a bad reference from my former captors in the Black Tower, afraid that my long illness has reduced me as a person somehow so that I am no longer as capable or attractive as an employee as once I was. I know that I'll have to conquer these fears and apply there if I really want the kind of job I'm meant to do... But sometimes conquering a fear is a daunting job. Wish me luck with it.
But for now, I have to go and do some housework: clean the bathroom, do the dishes, make lunch. Our lives keep right on ticking through their appointed cycles just like everyone else's. Plus I MUST go for my job through the neighborhood; being sick and half starved for so long has positively wrecked my metabolism, and I'm suddenly finding the battle of the bulge harder to fight than al qaeda. Wish me luck with that one, too - my partner's too hot to have a fat lover, you know.

Title lyric from "When I'm Sixty Four" by the Beatles.

When I'm Sixty-Four
Uploaded by ronaldmacdonald33. - See the latest featured music videos.

Children Get Older, And I'm Getting Older Too

2009-09-16T04:28:00.003-04:00

I am awake so late (4:30 AM my time) because my stomach is bothering me.
I don't have to think so much about being sick these days. It's still always with me, but we eat pretty healthy and I get plenty of exercise. That really helps. What doesn't help is occasionally eating too much - and eating even a cupful too much is harder on me than people I know who've had bariatric surgery - or eating junk food. Tonight I did both, and now I'm paying for it.
Sometimes I wonder how it will work out. Will the cancer continue to recede in importance in my life until it's just something bad that happened to me, like the divorce or the bankruptcy? Will it come back again like an unwelcome guest and set up housekeeping somewhere between my breastbone and navel? I don't know. Some days I think one thing, some days another. Right now, after having to take an industrial strength antacid and a pain pill, I can sit here musing about it (and belching!) without it seeming like too big a deal. I don't want the cancer to come back but I know it could - just a hope, not a fear or a dread. Other times, like when I'm holding my guy in my arms and counting my blessings, I am very much afraid that it will come back to take all of the good things I've built up since it was last here. There's not much I can do but hope right now, so I hope so very much that it's gone for good.
I got to see my two middlest daughters when they sneaked away from their grandparents' house last weekend. I wish so badly that I could spend more time with them, or even see the little kids, but I am not fool enough to spoil the joy I felt when I held my granddaughter with bitterness over not getting more. It was great to see her; it was great to see them; in time, I think, more will come. Patience has worked for me in this matter so far, so I will give it more patience and see. Morgan - that's her name - is so tiny and soft and crinkly. I'd forgotten what very new babies are like, how they smell of milk and untainted flesh. When I held her up so that we were face to face she looked and looked at me. I wonder what she saw? I wonder what it feels like to be so new, to have so very little in your mind and heart but the demands of the body and the input of the senses? After they had gone I said to my guy that I missed having a baby around the house... And he reminded me that in these days of wonder anything is possible if I want it badly enough.
I know that's true, but I would not burden his life with an infant right now. I would not take on so great a responsibility again not knowing if I would be there to see the job to completion. I have walked that road already, and he isn't yet at the point where having a child is the obvious next step. I guess it's true that the great virtue of your grandchildren is that you can love and cuddle them and then send them home. It just still feels strange to me to say so, when I feel no older (and sometimes not even so old!) as my guy, who still has decades ahead for parenthood and middle age. I don't feel like I'm over forty, that's for sure.
What I do feel like is getting some more sleep, so I'm going to go and lie down next to him and count all of my many blessings. I could use a little beauty sleep so that I don't look like I'm over forty any more than I feel it. I wish you all a good day, and all my best.

Title lyric from "Landslide" by Stevie Nicks (as performed by the PS22 Chorus)

Be Welcome To This Place

2009-09-12T21:37:00.002-04:00

She's less than a month old, and she's my granddaughter.

Title lyric from "With Arms Wide Open" by Creed.

This Must Be A Strange Deception

2009-09-10T10:39:00.003-04:00

I feel like I'm on a real upswing lately. I was about so say that so many of my wishes have come true, but is it really a wish if you planned for it too? I don't know about that... But I do know that things seem to be lining themselves up with an absolutely unnatural speed and symmetry, almost as if they were preordained. Within the space of one month, we've achieved the place of our own (no roommates!) that we've talked about since my exile from the Big Woods. I feel healthier than I ever have - if only because I never noticed and savored before what it's like just to feel okay, not sick or feverish or nauseous or even uncomfortable. I have a job that I can comfortably work and not worry about missing time because I'm sick or that the stress will make me sicker. I have my partner, the absolutely greatest guy in the world. I wake up every day glad to find him next to me and still more attractive than the day before. Seriously - I know how greeting card that sounds, but it's true.
Granted, our lives and desires aren't exactly average. We like different music, we both frequent some pretty obscure message boards and chat sites along with the mainstream ones, and we almost never watch TV. We are constantly mistaken for father and son since he broke down and got a crewcut, but the people who know us are always surprised that I wash, cook and clean for him because I'm 'the butch one.' As somebody once observed, stereotypes sure do save time; without any to follow, our lives set their own pace. The normal milestones - kids, empty nest, first home purchase - don't really apply for us because I've already passed them and he has yet to encounter any. We set our own instead, and that seems to suit us just fine.
I have my fingers crossed that this trend will continue and we'll be able to lay down at least the same financial foundations that most other people my age already have. I lost mine once, but I am confident that acquiring them for the second time will be made easier by my experience. Now that we're ready to put down some roots again I want to be able to buy him the little things he needs and wants. I want to be able fix him elaborate dinners and take him for day trips to see my kids or his parents. Most of all (and probably least likely) I'd like to have a cushion for us to fall back on if (when) I get sick again. I know this is a terrible time to hope for so much... But Jiminy told me that if my heart is in my dreams then NO request is too extreme. After having seen so many extremes in the last few years, I'm ready to believe that.

Title lyric from "There Must Be An Angel" by the Eurythmics.

Live Until You Die's The Only Way You Stay Sane

2009-09-08T12:27:00.003-04:00

Sometimes things go your way... And sometimes they don't.
Our new apartment is an example of something I'd say was 'meant to be,' even though I don't really believe in fate or any guiding intelligence that 'meant' it. We waited patiently, and suddenly everything lined up and fell together in less than two days' time. I feel like our new home is the right place for us to be because it happened at the right time and in the right way. This morning's attempt at a commute to my beloved's new job, on the other hand, is an example of the opposite occurrence.
We were prepared. We got his outfit together, we googled the directions to the new job, we left half an hour to spare over and above the time google indicated we'd need. Everything should have gone perfectly... But instead, we missed one turn - just one! - and ended up sixty miles out of our way. This depleted a quarter of a tank of gas that we really couldn't afford to lose and made him an hour and twenty minutes late on his first day. Now I am waiting in the cafe down the street for him to be finished... But as I look back over the events of this day that's only half over, it seems pretty clear that this job isn't going to be the one for him. The signs are against it; I guess, if you believe in that sort of thing, that it just wasn't 'meant' to be.
I am sanguine. There are places within one block of our new place that will work just as well (if not better), plus I've been in the apartment less than a week and have already earned half a month's rent in credit with the landlord. If his job isn't meant to be, the apartment definitely is, so something will turn up. I have faith... Even if I don't believe.

Title lyric from "What I Got" by Sublime.
Sublime - What I Got

I've Never Felt This Healthy Before

2009-09-06T08:37:00.003-04:00

I had one of those funny little moments yesterday. Not a flashback or deja vu, although it had some of both of those things to it. No, it was more like realizing that you've been given something you really wanted, a gift you longed for and agonized over... But didn't even realize at first that you finally had it.
See, I went out for a walk with my beloved yesterday. We were exploring our new neighborhood - big old houses, grand apartment buildings with names and brick porches and long honorable histories. It's yard sale season, and everybody had something out on their front lawn. It was a really great way (at least in my humble opinion) to gauge the sort of new neighbors we've picked: by the items that they've cared enough to purchase but disregarded enough to sell to casual strangers for a dollar or two. My overall impression was favorable, and there were actually one or two items I really wanted.
One of those items was a set of stacked octagonal serving bowls. I'd already managed to land a set of dishes - unglazed terra cotta and everything square, even the cups - and they bowls were perfect. Black lacquered, a little too big... Thing was, there was another couple there that almost got them before me. A gay couple at that, although they both looked about the same age (mid twenties) and both with that thin, willowy build that says 'I count calories.' They kept giving us nervous looks as if they expected us to assault them at any moment. (As an aside, HB's forced exercise regimen of the last year or so has really paid off: not only did I move almost all of the furniture by myself with no trouble, but I also carried him across the threshold without breaking a sweat!) When one of them grabbed my coveted bowls and asked how much, I calmly said:
"I really wanted those," and he startled and handed them right over. I thanked him very politely...
But when I was paying for them, I had a sudden memory of being in my old apartment in Erie, alone, before HB came to me or I'd been diagnosed with cancer. I was so sick and scared, miserable and alone... And I dreamed then that I would live to someday have a life and a partner and a nice place of my own. I wished for it so very hard that it made me dizzy. It was the mental shield I used against my fears, my pain over the breakup of my marriage and even the dread of not knowing if I'd live. But then HB came to me, and I sort of forgot my wish in the warm circle of his love. If he was with me, I figured, it didn't matter if I had that other stuff.
Looking up and down the street as I handed the lady my dollar made me realize it, though. My wish has come true. It came true because its time had come, like three bars coming up on a slot machine and paying off a hundred to one. There were other couples out yard saling like us, and some were straight couples and some were gay and lesbian couples, and nobody was singling us out or even really noticing us that much. While I was walking home, I reached over and took his hand. I held it all the way home (half a block) and felt such a sense of fulfillment that I wanted to tear up a little.
I am happy now. This is my time. I have the most wonderful partner in the world, I am in my own place doing my own work in my own appointed hour, and all is right with the world. I can only wish that you all could feel what I'm feeling too - because it really is my best, and I want everyone to share it.
I love my guy -this song's for him.

Title lyric from "Head Over Feet" by Alanis Morissette.

Didn't Make Sense Not To Live For Fun

2009-09-04T10:21:00.004-04:00

Here I sit in my new place. Life is funny, isn't it?
I used to have two whole housefuls of stuff. Now I don't have enough to furnish two rooms. Just the bed I'm sitting on (HB's), some boxes and some clothes. Lest you think I'm feeling sorry for myself, the marvel to me is how sure I am that I don't miss all that stuff or the grief that filled my life when I had it. The stuff - furniture, books, clothes, tools and everything else under the sun - never made me happy for more than a few minutes. It was some of the choices that I made and some of the people in my life that were the real source of grief, and the lesson that I've taken away from that is that you always pay for bad decisions - ALWAYS - and you usually pay far more than the decision was worth. So now, I'm trying to make better decisions. Trouble is, your decisions are only as good as your available information and I haven't had a clue in years. If anybody out there has a clue they're not currently using, feel free to send it my way.
Anywho, tonight I go and pick up my beloved from his old job and thus shall we be reunited. I am already formulating an itinerary for the day: looking for a new job to go with the property manager package, cleaning the place up (with no furniture, it should be a snap) and then making a two hour drive back to the old place to get him. I have a feeling that, what with one thing and another, tonight will be another sleepless night. Unlike some of the previous ones, this one should be more satisfying than frustrating and sad. We're both feeling the new adventure in the air: unlike the other places we've lived, this time we know absolutely no-one and have never been here before. I have already identified several of the things that I think I will come to passionately hate in time - loud train and jet noises, extremely rude neighbors of some bizarre ethnicity I can't identify let alone stereotype, and an emotionally needy landlord who spends a lot of time in the building. Right now, I'm just feeling the happy buzz... Sort of like a fly before somebody swats it, you know?
I have taken an oath to be a better blogger, so be prepared: every day I'm going to pirate some internet signal and post something here, even if it's short and utter drivel. Bemoan the general state of my character if you must, but now that you've been warned you really can't bitch about my blogging. So there.
My love to all of you.

Title lyric from "All Star" by Smashmouth.

Smash Mouth, All_Star 1999
Uploaded by harrison73. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

And They All Look Just The Same

2009-08-29T17:00:00.003-04:00

I've been bursting to post this for three days now, but I was afraid to jinx it. Now, though, with keys in hand and my laptop set up where the kitchen table will go, I feel confident enough to say it: we've found the PERFECT place for us.
It's tiny, I'll say that: four rooms, all of which would've fit into my old family room with some left over. It's also in an apartment building with eleven other units, which was hardly the ideal I dreamed of so many nights over the last six months as I listened to our lesbian roommates' cats yowl and scratch outside our bedroom door. But now that I've taken the keys and been hired as property manager there's no going back.
It's a whole new start for us. New place, new city, new jobs. We know absolutely no-one. The owner of the building thinks my partner is my son. The blocks surrounding us are wonderful; restaurants, coffee shops, night clubs, a gym... The beach is four blocks away to the north. It's a small pocket of paradise, though, in a rather grim rust-belt sprawl. Three blocks south you'll find yourself in a war zone full of crackheads and gangs. I'm still trying to figure out the nature of the magical boundary that keeps the walking dead on their side and the yuppies and dinks surrounding us safe. (Dinks are Double Income No Kids couples, in case you were wondering.) Whatever sort of invisible fencing the city uses certainly works, because I saw several smiling young blonde hausfraus out walking their dainty furballs at seven this morning without a care in the world. The one that waved to us and hollered "Welcome to the neighborhood!" was actually wearing fuzzy slippers out on the street.
So get ready for yet another chapter in the constantly unfolding car wreck that is my life. The posting will be a little sporadic this week, but once we're all settled in - I think that should be about a week from now, when HB's done with his old job and joins me - I'll be blogging a LOT more. After all, we'll have to amuse ourselves somehow, and all our neighbors have wireless and not a clue what a secured network is.
Viva suburbia!

Title lyric from "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds.

An Exit To Eternal Summer Slacking

2009-08-13T09:51:00.003-04:00

At one point in our moving plans, we discussed just giving up the idea of a fixed address altogether and living on the open road. Here today, gone tomorrow. We went so far as to window-shop small RV's and conversion vans. We visited a travel center just to see what pay-showers were like, and I was a little shocked to see some of their "accommodation" prices. Gay bathhouses are probably cheaper if you don't rent a room... and fend off the clientele, of course. After all that research, we decided that we wanted a place of our own to settle down, sprawl out and become attached to and in. Instead, here we are in that charmless corner of hell anyway; the rental we had arranged was seriously damaged in a fire, and other than refunding our deposit the owner had no other compromises to offer us. So rather than try to make a go of it in a new city from scratch, we have decided to spend a few days here and a few days there revisiting old haunts until we can land another habitat in the zip code and neighborhood we'd planned on. We are, for want of a better word, homeless.
Thing is, it's not so bad. We've landed some very nice temporary digs so far, and I'm having fun seeing what I can do from scratch. It's sort of a challenge to set yourself a dollar amount and then purchase EVERYTHING that goes into a meal, right down to the spices. It's definitely a challenge to wash a shirt in the sink and then iron it dry in less than fifteen minutes. It is actually impossible to wash anything below the waist at a public restroom sink without taking your pants off - not something I recommend in every restroom. What a funny society we've become where it's easier to pirate a wireless internet signal than it is to bathe to a reasonable hygienic level. If it weren't for the YMCA I think we'd die of septicemia or gangrene or some other gritty BO smelling disease.
I am struck time and again, though, at how happy my beloved makes me. After eating one of my improvised meals the other day, he complimented me so lavishly that I actually had to blush a little. When I see him smile it makes my heart lurch awkwardly against my ribs. I can't believe sometimes that I can be this dorky and fourteen-year-old-girlish even after a year or two, but there it is. When the graffiti you leave on a men's room wall is your initials joined with a plus sign inside an arrow-smitten heart, you know you're sunk. I find that all the little discomforts and uncertainties just fade away into white noise because I am so busy taking care of him, and the way he takes care of me lessens every worry I still carry.
In short, things are pretty good, and we are on an adventure. No, we are not being even remotely good, but I am pathologically careful. I look out for him, he looks out for me, and we are becoming experienced in a whole different way of living that I don't think anybody would voluntarily choose. Wish me luck, kids.

Title lyric from "The Way" by Fastball.

I'm SO Moving On

2009-08-12T11:43:00.001-04:00

I'm back! Did anyone miss me?
....
What? YOU DIDN'T REALIZE I WAS GONE?
Oh, okay. No, really, it's all right. I see how it is. You've got a life, you have other things to do, there's a lot on your mind besides my blog.
Right?
Right.
Well, I'm still gonna post something... As soon as the last box is empty and I've found wherever it was that I lost my mind.
So, soon.
I hope, anyway.

Title lyric from "Since You've Been Gone" by Kelly Clarkson.

Kelly Clarkson - New Music - More Music Videos

If Your Mind's Neglected, Stumble You Might Fall

2009-08-05T12:06:00.002-04:00

I grew up in a town I like to call the Big Woods. From my childhood home at the top of the hill looking across town, all you could see was trees and the occasional roof. It's literally in the middle of a forest; you can walk all the way across town without ever once leaving the trees, and even when you're just a few yards from the highway and can hear the cars whizzing by all you can see is green leaves and tree trunks. It probably sounds lovely, and I'll admit that it's a beautiful place in its way. It's also the most racist, homophobic, anti-intellectual place I've ever known. The hardened core of citizens are all the kids who couldn't do well enough to escape - just like their parents and grandparents before them.
I always loved it there. Even with all the hate and the stupidity and the violence, it was home. It's the place I feel even to this day that I belong. Thing is, I always thought I was different from the others in that respect: I made it out, more than once, and came back of my own free will. I stayed because I wanted to, not because I was a loser and didn't have any other choice. Now I think maybe that's true and maybe it's not. I am, after all, not there any more. I have escaped... Or more properly, I've been exiled. What I didn't realize when I turned my back on the only real home I've ever known is how much of it I carried away with me.
Back then, I used to wish that I could find a place where people didn't care if I loved another man and not a woman. A magical place where I could walk down the street holding my partner's hand or put my arm around him in a restaurant without attracting a second glance. I never guessed when I was making those wishes that I should also wish to be ABLE to do those things, to show my affection in a public place without inhibition... Because apparently I can't.
We recently went to a camp-style retreat at a gathering place for gay men. We went mostly to make some friends and have fun camping. We love to camp, we love the outdoors, so why not?
But every time I saw other couples holding hands, I found myself to be the one staring. When I kissed my partner or put my arm around him, I would feel my face flushing with embarrassment and a whole host of surly emotions rising up inside: I wanted to ask everyone what the fuck they were looking at, to challenge someone to a fight. Thing is, none of them actually were staring, and certainly none of them were going to call us a name or pick on us - everyone else there being more or less just like us.
I've known for awhile now that I have an issue there with my feelings not matching up to my resolutions. I know in my head that it's no big deal. I've seen other gay couples in a public context and my entire reaction has been to note that they are in fact a gay or lesbian couple - and, in the case of two guys, to assess their relative hotness, I mean, I AM a guy too after all - and that's pretty much it. I have to imagine that most straight people feel more or less the same. Maybe they think 'couple of fags' instead of 'gay couple,' maybe they feel amused contempt that I don't, but I still don't think it's any more of an earth-shattering event than I do. Still, when I drop my partner off at work and give him a quick kiss, in the back of my head I'm always certain that people are staring and laughing at us, judging us. It makes me just as angry, just as ready to pick a fight. I have, in fact, very nearly gotten myself into real trouble by responding to halfhearted ignorant comments from a teenager by offering to send him home in a paper bag. Fortunately for me in that case, I probably could have and he knew it and took off immediately.
I thought I was over the hard stuff when it came to accepting myself and the facts of my life. I don't lie awake at night wishing I weren't attracted to men, I never have. I have told complete strangers with casual directness that "No, I'm gay, and this handsome fellow here is my partner." I've actually thought to myself that it's easier to tell people that I'm gay than that I'm bi, which is probably a little closer to the objective truth. I've faced down the mountain of assumptions, preconceived notions and contempt that most straight people have for gay people - far more than just once. I thought it would get easier.
It wasn't until I was actually in the sort of atmosphere that I always wished for that I realized just how very far I have to go. Instead of congratulating myself on how emotionally strong and together I am, I should be confronting and overcoming this internalized judgment on the love I feel so strongly for my guy. I keep feeling like it shouldn't be this hard; I really, truly love him, and all I want is for him to be happy. How can he (or I) be happy when somewhere in my brain is a little censor parroting all the horrible things my mother said to me before I was eleven, or the other guys said to me in high school?
I guess this is one fight that doesn't end until I do. Having realized this makes me hope that the slow change in people's attitudes toward sexuality since I was a kid makes it easier for the young people who are coming out to day. I hope that gay boys and girls in their teens and twenties have it much easier than I did, and that they'll never have to go through the process that implanted all that negativity in my head where it's so hard to reach.
Sad thing is, I don't think that we're there yet, as a society or as individuals. And that just sucks.

Title lyric from "Connected" by Stereo MC's.

Stereo MC's - Connected
by ptidavid