how to go about it

There is the whole thing about liking guys, and there are so many guys that I kind of find myself being friends with. Then there are the ones when I have . . . something I can't describe.

There are the not gay guys that I meet and have a moment with, those guys that I think, if only they were gay.

I can think of two right now.

It can be hard to deal with them, knowing how much I like them, and knowing I have no chance with. I want to be able to be friends with them, but it's hard to not think about the reality that they are guys that, if they were gay, I might could have a relationship with them.

But they are not gay, and I have no chance at this thing I think could be.

Sometimes it really hard to deal with, trying to force myself to just be friends and not have feelings. But when can we control our feelings?

nada, really

ugh, another wasted day. I won't admit to you what time I actually managed to wake up, but it was somewhat later than the time at which my alarm went off.

I didn't actually need to be up when the alarm went off, but it's the time I've set to not want to sleep past on those days I don't work in the morning. Today is a night shift day, so I don't work for another couple of hours.

Technically, I did at least wake early enough to accomplish a few things. I've checked my blog reader and Facebook and email. I still haven't taken the overdue books back to the library, but since I'm off tomorrow I'll likely just let them be another day late. I'd rather have time today for a shower and to finish my coffee.

So that's my morning/afternoon in a nutshell. Now it's off to smoke and read a bit of Hemingway. That's Momma's fault. She'd never read him, but for whatever reason she kept finding herself running into references concerning him till eventually she pulled down the one book we have, a book of his short stories. She left it laying out, and I find myself picking through it. I've always enjoyed Hemingway, so it's not hard to read him if he's just laying around.

hate at first sight

I am so tired right now and would like nothing more than to lay down and take a nap, but if I do that I ruin my night.

Have I mentioned that I hate naps? They just don't work for me. I wake up grumpy and a little disoriented and usually find I've slept longer than I wanted. Also, the only time I really feel like napping is when I'm consistently not getting enough sleep for enough days, and the nap only means I'll be awake later in the night than I want.

I have a whole pile in my reader that I'm not going to read right now. We went to Hot Springs NC for a quick camping trip this weekend, we being me and a a niece and the friend of said niece who drove up to hang out for the weekend. We met Momma and the boys there as well as some other friends and a couple of people I didn't know.

Of the people I didn't know, one was a cool girl and her daughter. I liked them well enough, but the guy she brought with her, a guy I can only assume is the boyfriend, was the reason my camping trip was completely ruined.

This guy was stumbling around in complete drunken black out mode, was going through people's things, stealing beer, playing his music too loud, falling into/onto tents and saying things that he would never have said sober. Apparently he's in AA, but if you don't not drink then AA aint gonna do shit for you.

In situations like this I tend to find myself growing protective of my people, and when the people present are family and/or younger people, I get more protective. I did what I could with the douche bag guy, but at that point there wasn't much I could do. I pretty much just had to hang out until he crawled into his tent for the last time

I'd arrived fairly late to the campground having worked that morning, and douche bag guy was well into being drunk, though at first it didn't seem soooo bad. He was obnoxious enough of course, but I didn't really get the full effect till a little later.

Anyway, not to go into the whole story, but the guy completely ruined the camping trip for me. Even the next day, when he was sober and hearing about what he had done the night before I still couldn't bring myself to feel anything other than desire for him to be away. His apologies for his antics sounded as if they'd been pulled out and used a number of times over the years, and I'm sure they have.

I've known people like this before, people for whom alcoholism is like a monster side of them that crawls out and takes their control. They act like fools and are annoying and offensive, and sometimes you can walk away and let them self destruct on their own. You can't help them because they aren't going to take help they aren't ready for, and they feel something like remorse when sober they are made to face their actions, but on some level it's still a sham. They are going to drink again, and they are going to be assholes again, and then they are going to do it again.

The next day douche bag guy hung back as the group that was going tubing set off up the trail. He acted as if he needed or forgot something. I was not tubing and was sitting away from the coolers watching random children. I heard a cooler open behind me and turned to see douche bag guy feeling around inside it. He didn't see me because his eyes were set on another of our group. Douche bag guy was watching the wrong person and continued to do so as he then went into my cooler.

I let him steal the beer and warned the friends that he was drinking again and stealing beer, and if I had animosity for this guy before it was all I had for him by this point. I decided it wasn't worth the trouble especially since I wasn't going to be there much long. Niece and niece's friend needed to get back to my town and their car and start their long trek back home.

And that's the story of my weekend mostly. I did go out for a bit last night, met up with some friends, played some pool and some foosball, lost all games played. It was mildly redemptive, if that's even the proper use of that, but it sounds good, so I'm leaving it. I know what I mean.

gays in sports?

Do gay people like sports? It seems like a silly question, but apparently even some gay people don't know any damn better.

Since I've been out I have not been personally involved in sports at all. I do enjoy watching MMA, and not for the gay, soft core porn aspect that has been pointed out to me often enough. I love soccer as well and played several seasons in a local adult rec league. I've also coached my sons' teams several times.

As mentioned, I've not been personally involved since coming out. When it was all new there was just too much going on, life sort of got in the way, and sadly, Momma and I both allowed life to get in the way for the kids as well. Big Brother is registered for the fall season, having missed a couple of seasons, and has his first practice tomorrow night, but I'm just not ready to be involved as a coach for a couple of reasons. One, I'm just not ready to do that, and two, I think he's getting into an age group that I'm just not going to be able to reasonably coach. Maybe that's my own fear getting in the way, but that's the way it is. I've always told myself that, as his coach and father, I needed to be able to recognize when it was time for me to step back, and I think now is that time.

None of that is quite the point or the motivation for this post, though my point does involve the gay and sports.

Reading at advocate.com I ran across a story that pointed out that there are gays playing college football and many of their teammates know that they are gay. There are no out players at the professional level just now, but there are a couple of players who've decided to come out after retiring.

And finally we get to zero in on my point, the comments to the article, the divide that still exists between gays, at some level, where we have to either be one or the other, flaming or macho. It's all in the comments, gays versus each other.

On the one hand we have the macho man that is soooo tired of the fact that all gays are seen as flaming and not into sports. On the other hand we have the guys who can't imagine that anyone would like such puerile pursuits as sports.

Pulling a couple of quotes from the comments will prove my point about this chasm.

-And, as far as being in the NFL and out, some players would prefer to stay closeted than to have gay fans swarming all over them-from Michael

-this sport has a built in macho factor that, hopefully, most gay men are intelligent enough to reject-from James

-Not all gay men want to play dress up and go shopping or tweek out on drugs-from Jon directed at James

I hate that, even among gays, we have to be one or the other. I'm certainly not the most macho guy, though I don't really feel I fall into a category that one would call flaming, but even if I did, that wouldn't effect the fact that I can appreciate perfect passes that set up a shot on goal or the skill it takes to work a good choke hold from a full mount. I can enjoy watching David Villa shake off a defender to put an impossible shot past the keeper and appreciate that he's one of the hottest guys in soccer. I can also enjoy looking at clothes and hanging out with a group of straight girls and giggle about nonsense.

We get enough stereotypes from outside of the gay community. Why do we force them on each other?

just like that

Driving south on Broadway, looking over the 640 interchange, over the ridge that ends right there, you can see the haze that is the air we breathe in this town.

It's one of the few truly hot days we've had this summer, not that we haven't had hot days, but most days have been unseasonably nice, even the days that were overcast, threatening rain.

The recycling has been taken and deposited. The dishwasher has been emptied and refilled and sits now full of clean dishes. A load of laundry is slowly agitating in the machine so that my pair of jeans will be clean for when I go see the boyfriend after work.

I'll wake up late Sunday, turn over and put my arms around him, knowing that he sleeps more than I do, and I'll lay there, slipping back and forth between nearly dozing and nearly awake. I'll slip outside before he's all the way awake and smoke a cigarette, and I'll then brush my teeth so he doesn't bitch about the smoke breath.

I should have stayed in bed this morning, waking only to still feel irritable from last night which ended poorly, me feeling a little taken advantage of, like everyone knew that I had control so they could all go and do whatever they wanted. I tried to make plans based on what people told me they would do, but in the end I was stuck at home because people knew I was stuck at home and had no need to concern themselves with what I might have wanted or needed.

That's a hell of a way to go to bed, trying to sleep but finding sleep as elusive as ever, the nearly angry mindset lodging in my skull and slowly growing into a headache that wasn't going to make anything easy.

I'm ready to be done with work, ready to clock out and speed west to his house, to feel his arms around me.