out, durned gay

With the new job I'm meeting lots of new people. There is one guy, a gay no less, that works within the family of companies I'm now a part of, and one of his bests friends is also a best friend to Momma and me, and they both know about my own faguality. There's also a bartender down the block, also part of the "corporate" family, and I told her just a couple of nights ago. The cook with whom I drank beers and got high after work one night last week now knows, as it came out as we were partaking in the drinking and smoking.

The cook in question didn't believe me at first. He kept asking if I was serious, if I was messing with him. He pointed out, perhaps a couple of times or so, that he didn't care, that it didn't make any difference to him. After expressing his surprise and finally being convinced that I was in fact serious, he seemed to try to play it off. He knew, he told me, or was pretty sure. Something I did, some way I acted, perhaps a mannerism, something indicated my gayness to him. Then it was my turn to be increduless (a new word that means almost incredulous but not quite actually at all) and wonder what I'd done.

I started this post several hours ago. It was actually a growth on the side of my most recent post, and my self editing brought the monstrosity to my notice. It isn't that it's a monstrosity as a post, but as part of that last post it most certainly was. So it became it's own post. I copied it and pasted it into a new blog posting window, and now I seem to have gotten back to it.

Coming out I think, somewhere along in there.

Without trying to narrow down the place I work to any local readers, I will admit that I can see some people ice skating when I'm at work. Tonight there were some guys from a local hockey team. They were wearing their jerseys, and I wouldn't really have noticed except that I smoke and I went outside to do so and saw him.

Of course it was not to be, the jock on the ice isn't going to notice the aging gay punk guy skulking around checking him out, but I did mention it to one of the servers in a "hey, did you see number blank out there on the ice?" sort of way.

"I'm not really into hockey players. I like skinny nerdy guys," she answered.

"I do too," I said, "but that number blank is awfully easy on the eyes."

I also complemented her on her tights later in the night, but only after she pointed out how one leg was completely twisted, and they really did look great with her jacket. That's got to be a little gay. I don't know that she's figured out that I'm gay, but in trying to be me I find sometimes that I'm kind of gay.

Then as the night ended, as I sat outside waiting for Momma to show up, drinking a beer and enjoying a cigarette while chatting with one of the managers, it really happened.

I've mentioned Momma and/or the kids as one does at one's job. She asked me first about the kids, probably their ages. I told her and showed her the picture of them that is my phone background. She asked how long Momma and I have been married.

And then it happened.

"Well, we've been married for a bit over ten years . . . but . . . well, it's pretty much over," I say, or something very like this, in answer.

She can't help but wonder, "wha . . .?"

An answer I've used a couple of times now, "yeah, coming out will do that." And I'm met with some amount of incredulity. I'm used to it, and really, it's to be expected.

And really, the only thing holding me back in a general being out sort of manner is that knowledge that not everyone knows, and it's not something you go in proclaiming. At the same time I'd be so much happier if everyone just knew already. I'm already over it and am just ready for everyone to deal with it and let me know how they plan to deal with it, so I can deal with it and know how things are going to be.

sorta weird

Anyone around the ol' deskfull that knows anything probably doesn't need the whole coming out story. It's been a little over a year now, and while lots of things in my life have changed and are changing still, there's been a somewhat constant sort of thing.

Momma and I are still legally (technically even?) married, though at some point that will likely change. We will always be parents to the boys of course, and though we have put each other through some shit lately, we have discussed that our friendship is extremely important to us both and that we both have to work to keep it so.

That of course raises some questions, and the aforementioned shit we put each other through raises some doubts sometimes. Our attempt to remain in the same house is a huge part of the issues/doubts that we've had lately. For similar but different reasons for us both, it seemed at one time like not a bad idea for me to stay here in the house. Turns out, it was a somewhat not good idea.

Having come off the three years of being a nonworking stay at home dad, getting back into the business was easy at first, almost like riding that bike you never forget, but it was also a little odd. I've mentioned the three days making sushi and the three weeks at the bar. Add in the four months at the gpub, and all of this in less than a year. It's like my early work history all over again, back when I was a dumb smart ass punk with an attitude a mile long except that I've been reeling in some of my douche-ier side in favor of being less of an ass.

Really though I began this post with a whole other point. Out of force of habit I refer to Momma as my wife in daily, random encounters with people I randomly, daily encounter. And as mentioned it's still at least legally a fact of our lives. But she is essentially just a very close friend at this point, our husband and wife days being somewhere behind us.

Ex wife sounds a little cold, and it doesn't do justice to the facts of our recent past or current relationship. Baby momma is just out on obvious grounds. And from there I've pretty much run out of options. For people that know us in real life of course there is always her actual name by which I can refer to her, but then there are people that I know or meet that she doesn't.

I haven't really talked to her about this. We have a habit of saving discussions up and letting them all out at inoportune times, partly I'm sure to continue to save each other some amount of hurt and/or bad feelings. That I need some new way to respectfully refer to her is just another sign of the ongoing change, and the change just keeps being this huge thing looming over us.

I suppose some of this is a bit melodramatic. It really isn't such a huge change, and whether or not it's really looming as such is almost debatable. It is a fact of life for us, and it is a fairly big thing, and it does color so much of what we do and think and feel and . . .

So into the I-just-don't-know file we can store all this for now. It's coming eventually. I'll figure it out, make sense of it all. And before any of us even realize we'll be off and doing our own thing and moving forward. It'll keep being weird for a little while longer, but then it won't be weird anymore. One day we can make our own normalcy, whatever that ends up being.

waitin' for legalization blues

There's this funny thing that always makes me feel better.

I've always tended to be the sort of person that tends toward being perhaps a bit of a cynic in certain areas. I can well imagine that, lately at least, my truer nature has come across in some recent blog posts.

For whatever reason, perhaps some misfiring neurons or some underperforming protein builder, my feelings are just not as pretty as those of others, or maybe I grossly misunderstand how anxious so many other people are.

Of course I'm not constantly walking around under my very own storm, but I also like storms. I like gray, drizzly days. What I don't like is too much sun, partly because it's so damn bright. I don't hate it, but some days I just wish it didn't have to try so hard. Night time is the best, and of course dry and warm would certainly rule. A decent amount of cold and even some wet can be appreciated as well. But really none of this is at all what I started out to write, though it does seem to serve in some small way to attempt to explain what it is I'm saying. I mean, it's kind of Addams Family on some level.

There's an ongoing discovery that I make and have made and will likely continue to realize, but there is one thing that always helps, and when I've got the money and can find it my life is so much pleasanter. Beer sort of almost helps, but beer is its own thing and is better used for physical ailments than . . . mental? spiritual? . . . not sure, because I just don't know exactly what my problem is.

Momma has suggested that perhaps I need counseling. She's gone so far as to think there is some amount of chance I could be prescribed something to make me normal, but the very idea of buying pills to be like other people seems a little . . . um . . . I'm not sure, but in the words of a friend's three year old, "don't like it."

But there is something, a substance that makes it all go away. Okay, it doesn't do that at all, but it takes the edge off sometimes. It doesn't dull the pain or make me see things that aren't there. I've mentioned it here at the ol' deskfull a time or two.

It makes me easier to be around. It helps me crawl out of my own butt long enough to see the people around me. It helps me realize I don't have it so much worse than everyone else and reminds me we all have it mostly the same but in our own way.

I've figured out that I will never be happy-go-lucky or feel like my glass is half full or half empty because of anything I did. It will still sometimes be the universe after my ass yet again. There will often be those stabbing rays of sun in my eyes even when everyone else is enjoying a nice rain shower. And it's okay. If I take my meds like a good boy I'm better, and really, something I could easily grow with little trouble isn't quite meds. It's really that simple.

just not the way he meant it

From Moses at The Faithful Penguin we get a story that I should say up front I'm not the least bit interested in. It's about football, and I just don't really like football that much. None of that is the point, though, so my opinion there doesn't matter.

Really I'm only posting because I amuse myself, and leaving this as a comment felt a little creepy/douchey, so I'll just bring it home instead.

The post is about a football player being inducted into the hall of fame, and the player is quoted discussing his desire to sack quarterback Brett Favre. I don't know who Mr. Favre plays for, but I do live in the US, so I have in fact heard of him, and of course I've seen whatever product he does commercials for.

Back to the quote, the player who wants to sack Favre says, "I wouldn't try to hurt him, but I would like to lay him down softly a couple of times."

Yeah? Because I too would like to lay Brett down softly a couple of times.

a deal on beer

Another shift saw me washing dishes for the most part, and I still don't mind. We've had a busy couple of nights, and until I can spend time on a slow night getting onto the line, this is how it is. I'm off the next two nights, and I don't expect the next shifts I work to be too busy, so there's my learning the job.

Friday night was as I'd assumed it would be, lots of things going on downtown which translated to lot's of business for us. We didn't get out of the kitchen till after one o'clock, though some amount of that may have been my fault. I didn't realize the water I'd let escape dishland was of the volume it turned out to be, and I didn't realize the amount of squeegeeing and mopping it would take to end my night finally.

We got shift beers and walked down to the next bar and bought beers a couple of which went into my jacket pockets. We stopped at a third place on the way to our final destination, the current home of a coworker, a few hundred feet and a corner away.

The house was all my own as I came home. The boys were at Grandma's house, and Momma was at her boyfriend's, having spent her night seeing the band of a friend play their very first show.

Having the house to myself was oddly nice. I slept in the bed for a first time in a while. I was in a decent mood, probably because I'd actually gotten to do something other than run straight home after work. And I fell asleep soon after I went to bed! That's probably the most exciting part, not laying awake while my mind races through the stupidest things to think about.

Momma asked me to call tonight when I got off so that she, depending on what time it was, could decide her sleeping arrangement for tonight. Her boyfriend was in bed by the time I left work, so she wasn't getting out. Another friend had sent me an IM suggesting I come to his house. I was only there a short time, but it was still nice, out with grownups.

And that was my weekend for the most part. I think I like the job enough. I can enjoy working there. I like the kitchen people so far, though there's one guy I don't especially like just yet. He's already pissed me off, and I've only actually worked with him once.

I just realized, another odd work fact and some background. Learning the names of your kitchen coworkers is usually pretty easy, even for me, and I suck with names. Learning server's names is usually less easy. Given enough time on a normal line you will see the tickets with the servers names printed on them, and you'll start to recognize who goes with which name. I've only learned a few servers names so far, and I just realized that it's only the guys. And only one of them is even passably cute.

And that really was my weekend.

rehash hash

Too often lately this blog just seems like a place I come to vent and whine about how hard I've got it. I know that, compared to real problems, I don't really have it that bad, but it's also hard not to feel your own shit is so much worse than most people's. I'm not really covering any new ground here, and I'm certain I've said all of this before, probably a few times. If you find halfway through this post that you've read it all before then, by all means, click away. It's more for me anyway than for you, a little catharsis to go along with my morning (afternoon) coffee.

In my last post I mentioned feeling stuck. I've felt this way for years, as if I was never going to see anything but these same four walls closing in on me.

A little over four years ago Momma was offered a chance to move up at the sushi bar at which she worked. The owner was willing to give her a raise and to allow her to get overtime, but she would need to be available whatever hours she was needed, and to make it work I would have to stop working.

A year or two previously I'd lost what I consider to be the best job I've ever had as well as the best chance I've ever had to place myself in a position to maintain a high level of employment in the field I've fallen into, restaurants.

I was kitchen manager at a local pizza restaurant, a place I truly believed in and loved working for, a place I was willing to work hard to help grow better. The owners had built a small three store chain with our store and their first two stores in the Carolinas. They actually lived in North Carolina and had grown tired of dealing with our store, so they sold it to a local guy who owns way too many restaurants himself. Within a month of his takeover I was out, given a laundry list of bullshit reasons I was leaving, leaving me to believe that I just didn't fit in his future plans for the place.

Since losing that job I was back to the usual, working somewhere for a few months until either I or them grew tired of each other, and I'd move on to the next restaurant. Then Momma got her deal, so I quit working. The plan was supposed to involve me working with the boys' homeschooling and have more time to write, the thing I've always sort of felt I wanted to do but without ever actually doing.

Things were sort of smooth, or so they seemed to me, but they were never good for me. Momma took advantage of her freedom and began going out a lot more than I realized, and at some point I started to get the feeling that things were not what I thought in relation to the amount of time she spent away from the house. Over the next two years, the two people in her life that I had a feeling were more than friends turned out to be exactly what I thought.

Now to add a wrinkle we throw in the gay. I knew I was gay and wanted a good way out of this relationship, a way to finally be free to be gay. I almost wished that Momma would fuck up somehow and give me the opening I wanted, and eventually she did. I'd spent years pretending to be her loving straight husband, knowing that for me to come out would begin so much pain and hurt, and I just couldn't do it. I don't know to make her understand the hurt I still feel, hurt that I took on and hurt that I gave out.

And now, things should be better. I almost have the freedom I need, and she has all the freedom she needs and more. She has a place to live and a boyfriend and a good job. I have a sofa in her living room and a new job. I still don't reasonably have my freedom in a useful way, and I'm stuck. She still gets to go out and have fun and enjoy herself. I took a paper bag full of pennies to the grocery store to feed into the coin machine so that I could have a tiny bit of money in my pocket.

She has been mostly understanding and extremely helpful, but at the same time she hasn't been as understanding as I would like, and her help is starting to feel like charity. Accepting her help feels like constantly having to admit my own failure when in fact I'm in the place I am because I ate shit for years, forced myself to accept a role that was entirely wrong for me in order to help her and save her from having to feel the hurt that I accepted was my own.

And I'm still waiting, and I know for a fact that I will likely be still here, still waiting, still frustrated for the next several months. It will be at least a month (the one with Christmas in it no less) until I even begin to get myself to a financially stable place. After catching up with some bills/debts I will then need another couple of months of saving money to attempt to find my own place to live, and that is a whole other scary, looming beast on my horizon, being on my own for the first time.

I've been patient. I've been patient with Momma and with circumstances and with feeling frustrated and depressed and anxious. I'm so fucking tired of being patient. I'm so tired of watching good happen for so many people while I sit patiently and wait for my turn to get what I need. And what do I see waiting for me? What does my near future hold in store? The knowledge that my only option is remaining patient, eating shit and taking all of this frustration onto myseself. Pretty much where I've been for years, doing pretty much exactly as I have for years.

the grind

Last night was lots of washing dishes. I watched one of the cooks as he prepared a couple of items, and I joined him on the line at one point and made some salads. I've picked up the few salads so far, or seem to have. It's pretty easy that way.

There was plenty of prep to do as I walked in the door, but it was mostly easy stuff. I started a couple of things that got taken over and took over a couple of things as I needed to. I washed lots of dishes.

Tonight is not only our town's Santa parade, but it's also First Friday and the new job is located well for the artsy thing that that is. I'm sure someone is playing at the theater, but I couldn't tell you. Plans call for tonight to be busy, so that'll be fun.

Oh yeah, I also feel stuck in this house, and I don't really feel like I can move forward if I can't get out of here. And I can't get out of here. I'm starting to feel like I've extended every courtesy and can't get a response I want, and I wouldn't be surprised if Momma said the same.

Like anything, I need to learn to enjoy the good and deal with the bad. I do finally have a job, though I won't see a check for a week. It'll be another two weeks before I see a full paycheck and it will be however many months of still being stuck in this house with little in the way of options.

and we're back

Just like that, the pendulum swings past that damned mid point, that place it kept not getting past.

As I put clean clothes over a body that needed a shower today, I heard my phone ringing. My phone was attached to the charger and was at the other end of the house, and I actually missed the same call twice in a short amount of time.

I rushed through the house, pulling jeans up, stuffing boxers down into place, my pant legs dragging because I hadn't even taken the time to roll them up. I missed the second call by seconds.

Checking my missed calls I find a number I don't recognize. I call them and the phone is answered by a business, a restaurant at which I've applied for a job. I explain that I'm returning a missed call and am asked to hold for (name withheld.) I talk to this person whose name I have no reason to associate with anyone given the nature of the call, though it's a name I have reason to assume could be put to a face, some face neither I nor Momma can even begin to imagine remembering, and then as we're talking he asks if I'm the person by my name married to a person by Momma's name.

As it turns out, I "interview" with a person to whom I once gave a job, a person I once "interviewed." I place the scare quotes for two different reasons. In the first instance of the use it is because the interview basically involved me showing up as who I am and being willing to accept the job. In the second case I use scare quotes because, when I interviewed and hired people, my interviews were . . . I don't know how to describe it.

I was reminded recently of an interview that ended up in my hiring the candidate. He is now somewhat kitchen manager of the pizza place at which I hired him. He remembers the interview as being mostly:

Me: You smoke?

Him: Yyyyeeaaahhh . . .?

Me: Good, 'cuz I need a cigarette. Let's go over here.

Followed by random bullshit conversation.

So, I now have a job. I make food. I washed a lot of dishes tonight, and I didn't mind it a bit. It's what I do. I'm actually happy to be there I'm pretty sure. And looking out our front door I can see people ice skating. When I went to get the trash cans I saw the Cute Ex sitting with a girl and a guy. Of course I'm sure it's the guy he dumped me for, but I barely cared.

While I barely cared I'm still irritated. Of course the initial pissiness is the whole he-totally-lied-to-me-oh-my-god-boys-suck sort of thing, nevermind the fact that I have no reason to believe either that the guy is or is not anything at all in relation to the person in the equation with whom I now have history (Cute Ex.) The second wave of aggravation was at my own inability to push this thing out of my head. I should write a song called The First Boyfriend Blues and make a mint on the gay country circuit, if there is such.

I also wiped out rounding a corner. The floor had just been mopped, and the tile doesn't belong in a kitchen. But I'll learn to take the corners slowly, and I'll remember to walk in the particular kitchen way that minimizes slipping to your doominess sort of falls, and all will be well.

ramen and saltines

Lately my moods have swung more wildly than a . . . okay, the swing is more like a . . . at least try to read through the whine to the good part, and try to accept that, by the end, I'm attempting to laugh at myself.

On one side of the pendulum swing is absolute bleah, anxiety, feelings of worthlessness and seeing the universe as one giant asshole constantly shitting on me and laughing maniacally the entire time. I don't know what is on the other extreme of the swing, because the pendulum never seems to swing all the way to the other side. It hits some midpoint of meh and comes back to the shitting on me part.

I know that this isn't the truth of the matter. I know that I'm just in a bad place right now, but nothing really seems to help. All around me it seems like everyone is partying and laughing and having a great time, and it's hard to remember that I'm not the only one with issues. Hell, it's hard to remember that my issues aren't even that seriously serious in the larger scheme of things.

But that's sort of the kind of person I am. I'm not a glass half empty kind of guy, though it would seem I am. I'm more of a "who the fuck has been drinking out of my glass?" kind of guy. I can find the negative in anything. If I won the lottery I'd likely find something to bitch about. That's the sort of person I am.

I do have an interview in a couple of days for a job I'm already assuming I will hate, but I refuse to see it that way. At least I refuse to act as though I see it that way. I'll walk in in nice clothes and a smile. It's not cooking, and that will be a huge step for me, not necessarily up or down so much as just a step.

So, having bitched quite enough, I should think of things that are good. My feet are cold, but my house is warm enough and dry enough and has food in it. I can wash my clothes even if I do wear them for three days straight because it just doesn't seem worth the effort to shower if all I'm going to do is sit on my ass until the next available day to search for a job I probably won't get. Momma keeps buying me beer, and honestly, if you knew me, you'd probably buy my silence with a twelve pack too, though it is of the High Life variety and not the micro brews I so richly deserve. The tobacco I've been buying is apparently not supposed to be as cheap as I've been paying, so I'm back to having to die slowly because of a slightly less enjoyable brand, so the fact that I got to smoke a higher quality for the wrong and lower price should be good for something. Momma gave me a pair of her underwear, and honestly they weren't very flattering on her at all, but they don't look bad on me, and they aren't as girly as you probably imagine, and add to this the gay thing, and I do look good in them. That and three quarters will turn the air compressor on at the gas station for what it's worth.

So I do have things that are good in my life. The kids are terrors, as kids are want to be, but I love them, and I'm working toward being cool with them. With any luck the beer I just spilled on the keyboard won't fuck it up any more than it already is, and since it doesn't seem to be already fucked up one can assume it isn't, but I think we all know how bad situations wait till we aren't looking, so I'm sure it's about to short circuit and send electricity coursing through my body.

Oh, and I went to the weekly gay men's meeting finally. It's a weekly thing at the local UU church, and I was one of the youngest people there. It was a nicely bland evening of not being the only gay person in the room. I plan to return the next time it happens, perhaps even becoming a regular if it seems to meet a need, though I'd rather meet my gay people in a less boring environment. Of course the gay bar sees me drunk and nervous, so I should probably just be cool with bland for now.

I think that may in fact be all I can come up with for tonight. I was worried that the poor ol' blog was suffering withdrawals because I haven't sent any bitch filled missives onto the internets lately. I wanted to post but had nothing to say, so I said it anyway, and now you've read it. I hope it didn't bring you down, and I hope you return for more. Better yet I hope I return for more and have something to say next time.

I like it when they touch

First be warned that this is not safe for kids, and depending on where you work it may also be unsafe there. And I doff my cap in thanks to Mike of Mike Says, because I'm totally stealing this from him. It's funny enough that it needs to be shared and shared again.

world AIDS day

Today is World AIDS Day, and if I'm the one introducing you to this then you should spend less time under your rock.

Perhaps one of the scariest aspects of AIDS today is the fact that we seem to have come to a place where we don't recognize it as the deadly disease that it is. Too many people are still dying of AIDS, but it just doesn't seem to be the looming danger we remember from years past.

I'm still unsure of my place in so many places, and whatever this thing called the gay community is is still so new to me. AIDS is not new, though I have to admit I barely remember those days in the '80's when we first heard about AIDS.

I remember it being this thing that we suddenly started hearing about, this thing for which there was no cure, that killed whoever it touched. Then suddenly it was a disease that gay men got, and suddenly it didn't seem that big a deal. It was understandable as something that "those people" got, were likely responsible for, probably they were deserving. Yes, that's how I was raised, and there is still some amount of that attitude in too many closed minds.

I can't really do this topic justice. It hasn't touched me like it has so many others, but it's a fear I live with. I truly believe that it's only a matter of time before it does touch me somehow.

I can't really do this topic justice, so I'm sending you to Doc's blog.

a talk with the wife

I totally hate having feelings all of the sudden. I don't all of the sudden hate it, but all of the sudden I have feelings, and I hate it

Momma and I finally got a chance to hang out and drink too much beer and talk. She's been so far up her boyfriend's ass lately that she and I haven't had a lot of time. And with my unemployment and boyfriend free status, I have had lots of time. I've also needed someone to talk to. We just never got our two way wristwatch radios synced.

Something else I'll admit. I don't have a lot of friends. I don't think I ever have, but lately it's really been fucking with me. I have a habit of being a douche bag, sort of a defensive wall kind of thing. I put people in their place before they have a chance to hurt me.

I need to tear that wall down. I need to let people in. There's a bit of a problem with that. I'm gay. Boys don't make sense to me, and most girls just don't see the friend I could be. I could be friends with boys, but I don't get what the hell they're talking about most of the time, and I just don't care what the score of the game was most of the time. Girls? Well, most of them have had enough of boys to last a lifetime, so why would they even imagine that a boy could be a friend?

Tomorrow needs to be the first day of the rest of my life. I have a lot of work that I need to do. Among the things Momma and I covered is that I don't really like myself very much, and that has led and continues to lead to any number of other issues.

We talked about all sorts of shit, and we were even able to get into her life a little bit. It was fun and nice and stuff, but I also realized I need to let go a little bit. It's part of my friend issue.

But . . .

First I need to work on my relationship with the boys. They need more attention than I've been willing to give them. I've felt like shit so much lately, and I've tended, to some extent, to take it out on them. Because I get so absolutely nothing in the way of what I need I end up cutting myself off from them, not giving them what they need. That's more a variation of the truth, but it gets to the core of the problem.

That's the place I've known I needed to start. That's the beginning of what I need to work on. That first step is the hardest, knowing that my ultimate goal is a complete change in the way I've been living and parenting. They are worth the effort, but can I pull my head out of my butt long enough to start doing right finally?

those fags

It's not what people say.

It isn't even a little bit what they do.

sometimes . . .

Some times, it's just as simple as knowing you are the only fag there.

You can see and feel a pressure that probably isn't even there. Everyone at the thing you're attending has been nothing but cool.

But they don't know that you're gay. You know, and some of the people you know there know. But not everyone does.

And you don't know who's cool and who's a douche, waiting for any reason at all to damn you or whatever. They don't know.

So why should they care?

Sometimes it's just that simple.

It's as simple as being the only fag there.

And knowing that you are the only fag there.

Sometimes it's just that simple.

And sometimes it hurts.

darkness on the face of the earth

I tried to find Willie Nelson's version of this song which he does on the album Teatro. It's a damn fine song, especially when you're feeling depressed and need songs like this to really drive the point home.

Don't listen to me, because I'm back in the dark hole that seems to be my default setting, but do listen to the song. The video isn't worth watching really unless you need a bunch of pictures of Hawkshaw Hawkins, so feel free to play the video and then open another window to do something else in while it plays.

want not need?

In an earlier blog post I mentioned the shindig from last night, the roller girl picture takin' calendar makin'.

As I also mentioned, it was Momma's idea that I go, get out of the house, see some friends, all of the above and more. Her boyfriend came to the house to pick her up as they had already planned to go, and then she was going home with him. I had the boys, and they are friends with the son of the person whose house we went to, and I'm friendly with the roller girls that have been around a while, though I don't really know the new ones.

Perhaps another blog post could be about the minus-the-derby I've been almost feeling. I'm no longer announcing, and the video I filmed for the big two day event three months ago still sits in the camera in my floor. I feel as if the video thing was just throwing me a bone so I'd feel better about having the announcing taken away since no one has bothered to even ask for it back. And now, with the whole not essentialy married to a roller girl I'm not nearly as involved, not even going to practices. It's kind of like this whole big thing was taken away, but I still don't know how to feel.

But I digress, and now I should figure out if there's a point to this post. Oh yeah, the hanging out.

So Momma was there, but she wasn't there with me. I was there, but I wasn't there with her. It still feels weird, and it's sort of a sign that I sort of need to make my own friends. She and I are still really close, and there's really only one other person that I'm even close to being as close to. There's one other person that I honestly feel I can be that open around.

Me being open about stuff is sort of a rare occurence. Cute Ex was just barely getting to the point where I was starting to feel like I might get comfortable enough with, and the majority of anything like really opening up I did with him involved him being bothered by something and me having to attempt to explain it without being as honest as I maybe should have. Even now, after all we've been through, I still am afraid to really be honest with Momma.

It's good, I think, that I can feel this not-with-her sort of thing when we are at the same place. It has to be, and it's part of my journey to being me, which is something else I'm realizing lately. I have to figure out how to be me without having someone. For too long I've basically judged myself by how I reflect off of Momma and then the Cute Ex. That line makes sense in my head, so I hope it conveys my meaning. I tend to define myself by who I'm with and need to get to the whole "I don't need a man to make me happy/feel complete."

Now the problem gets back to who am I? What do I want to be when I grow up? I'm sort of starting to feel like I'm running out of time. I'm not getting any younger, and being an unemployed line cook with an expertise in fryer and Ceaser salads isn't really paying the bills or helping me focus.

party girl?

Moses at his blog, The Faithful Penguin, believes that the Typealyzer is somewhat accurate in portraying him as a thinker. The Typealyzer claims to be able to take a peek into your blog and tell the type of blog it is.

Being a sucker for someone telling me they can use sciencey sounding words to tell me about me, and needing (hoping) to hear good things about myself from others, I thought it was at least worth a chance. Given that Moses seems like a smart guy, and since he claims the Typealyzer isn't completely bogus, I felt it was time to run the ol' Desk Full through the grading machine.

My type? ESFP-the performers, and according to the machine:

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

I suppose it's not entirely wrong. I honestly don't know if I can or should argue it much at all, but at the same time my life and brain in are in a period of what I'll call flux for lack of a better word. Without bringing up the whole closeted-and-married-then-accepting-of-gay story all over again beyond the reminder of where I'm coming from, I am currently learning a lot of stuff about me.

As a bit of proof of the constantly learning things part I'll relate a quick anecdote. Momma went last night to the home of a derby friend. They were taking some pictures and working on putting together a calendar to use as a fundraiser. I was a little down and mopey, so she suggested I come along and hang out. One of the jammers was getting ready for some pictures. She's tiny, very pretty, has what I'll call Asian features (white dad, Phillipine mom) has just a delightful sexy and girly figure. I found myself being maybe a little jealous, like maybe I wanted to be tiny and hot and have all the boys bumping into walls and tripping over themselves trying to stare at me. I'm not really sure where it came from, and I'm not bothered by it. It's something to ponder at least, and it's not something I think I've ever really thought of before.

So maybe I am at least partially a party girl. Maybe I do like pretty things. Hell, maybe I want to be pretty some times. Okay, maybe not pretty as such nor entirely not.

marryin' gays

Over the years, whenever I've discussed marriage equality, I've been more than willing to admit what I'm sure will happen once we are finally given that right. Perhaps you've read what I've written and seen my predictions come true.

If gay people are legally allowed to marry then Nazi tyrannosaurs will erupt out of the earth, and they will go an a rampage and destroy the earth and kill everyone with their deadly laser eyes.

Blogger Sean Braisted apparently disagrees. Go visit his blog, Nashville 21 to find out what he thinks will happen, then feel free to comment back here and tell me whose vision you find more likely.

hat tip to R. Neal at Knox Views for the intro to Mr. Braisted and his sadly mistaken

lifestyle?

There's a phrase that always bothers me when I hear or read it. It's a phrase, really a single word, that is often used to describe us gay people. It's belittling and demeaning to what it means to be gay.

"Gay lifestyle." It's a reduction of this thing that is me to a mere choice, as if I'm living in a way that can be reasonably and accurately compared to whether someone enjoys UT football to the extent that they purchase orange clothes and seriously debate the merits of Fulmer's resignation.

If asked I don't think I could accurately describe what I'd consider my lifestyle. I don't think I have ever fallen into what one might think of as normal, though I certainly do things and there are certainly aspects of my life that could be described as such. I'm in my mid thirties, have two children, live in the suburbs, own a car and a truck (though the truck probably deserves its own complaint riddled post) have a dog, etc.

All of this of course begs questions that I'm sure the majority of gay people ask themselves at some point. Is my gayness no more or less than a sexual issue? Studies have given us good reason to believe that sexuality and the brain and gender issues are more interwoven that one might previously have thought, though I imagine many gay people could have told you that without scientific studies.

I believe that being gay manifests itself in numerous ways, ways that I never realized before when I so actively denied my sexuality. I believe it's more than the fact that I find guys attractive if impossible to make sense of. I also believe it asserts itself in ways that are generally invisible even to me.

Being gay is not a lifestyle, whether or not there are ways of being and living that are more gay than not. Lifestyles are made up of choices we make, and being gay is not a choice that we make. The only choices I've ever made in regard to my sexuality is the choice many years ago to begin denying it and live in the closet and the choice more recently of exiting that closet and beginning to try to understand myself.

about little

Whenever I happen to notice the number of posts I've published since beginning the ol' Desk Full blog I wonder exactly how many of those are drafts. For whatever reason, Blogger counts unpublished drafts when it tells you how many posts you have. I've never known how many actual posts I've published because, before moments ago, I never bothered to find out.

Now I know. I clicked on the drafts button to learn that I had only five total, some from the beginning of 2006. After giving them all at least a cursory glance I've deleted all but one, and that one is about robots. I don't remember what exactly made me start that one, but it's the one I kept. Maybe in a day or two I'll check back in and thing about thinking about it.

This is a fairly pointless post. Of the 700+ things I've posted it's not really any more or less pointless than probably half of them. It is what it is though, and thankfully it's not whining about boy trouble. Don't despair though as I'm sure there's another one of those, if not many more, in the future.

like morton's salt?

And with this post Cute Boyfriend makes his exit from this blog, and I figure out what I do next. I won't go into the whole story, but it did involve a couple of different reasons and me wondering if one of those is the real reason or if there's something he's not saying.

Add to the list of issues I already have that it will be a while before I feel like I can trust anyone again. This relationship started so well, and even my kids were involved. I hate that they became friends with CB to the extent that they did, because his exit involves them as well. I won't let this happen again.

After everything seems to have settled down, after I call bullshit on the first of the reasons behind the break up I end up with, "You're a great guy, and a you're a great boyfriend, but I just don't feel that way about you."

Is that some sort of boy code for something else?

This has been a learning experience for me. I've learned that I kind of act like a girl when I'm finally being honest and that I'm okay with that. Even when I was pretending not to be gay I wasn't really a typical guy, and I'm sure Momma would say the same. Now that I'm out and letting myself be okay with being gay I'm realizing I'm a bit of a different person than the guy who inhabited my body for so many years.

I want to be mad at him or hate him, but all I can really do is hurt. I wonder if maybe there's some grand John Cusack like effort, some song or phrase that will make him realize he loves me.

I need to be me. That's something I've never done before. I hid in the closet for a long time to avoid hurting Momma as well as avoid whatever negativity I knew would be the result of admitting I'm gay. I'm not a martyr and am not trying to pretend my actions were noble, but keeping the hurt to myself is sort of a habit of mine.

So now I have to figure out where I go from here. I don't want to turn into a selfish asshole, but I kind of feel like that's the way I need to go. I've hurt too much and cried too much over the last year. I've worried that I'll never find anyone, that I'll never be good enough.

This post rambled around and wound up nowhere. That's sort of how I feel. I'm going to finish getting drunk, and I'll probably even cry again. I did have an interview today and may soon have a job. I certainly hope so because being broke AND rejected sucks a lot.

I'll promise to try not to devolve back into the whine-o-puss I was much too recently. The whole figuring out me thing needs to be the real goal. I still have his four gauge curved barbells, and I left four or five beers in his fridge. I doubt I'll see them again, and he's definitely not getting the earrings back.

Now where did I leave my overly large boombox?

what?

It's amazing what you can do when you're the national team as opposed to some schmuck team. Ninety of 20 should equal an easy win for the US in their upcoming World Cup qualifying match, and if this doesn't bring us a win, then I really just don't know what there is left to do.

You really should just click on the picture to get the full effect. Added to the things I suck at is knowing how to massage an image so that it's clearly viewable in the ol' blog. I'm sure one day I'll know, but right now it's enough that I was able to get a screen capture and then get it to save in a form I could actually post.

And this isn't nearly as sad as the fact that, while I write this, MTV is airing some sort of show involving a contest made up of the game Rock Band. What the hell ever happened to actually starting a rock band? Are we seriously so out of ideas that a video game is worth airing as competition? I guess once the sports networks show poker games then anything is worth showing. Did I mention I saw darts on tv recently? Yeah, it's true.

like a spring sort of

You lucky few who read this blog get to sit through yet another post where I bitch and piss and moan and whine and bitch. The option of course is to go ahead and click the next thing on your blog reader or just x out of the damn thing.

I think I mentioned my current joblessness. I'm still carrying a huge grudge for the douche that fired me for having had a bad day and voicing my opinion. No one at the most recent job ever had the balls to say anything to me, so basically I got fired by a coworker, a fellow line cook, and I have his third or even fourth hand story to explain to me why I don't have a job.

I've filled out more applications at more restaurants than I can even remember over the last couple of weeks. I'm down to about ten dollars in my bank account. I should obviously have stopped buying beer and cigarettes, though in the beginning I was sure I would have a job soon, so it wasn't really that big a deal. Now it's to the point where my stress and depression levels are so high that I don't dare quit cold turkey. I'm sure that sounds like an excuse, but if you are or have ever been a smoker or a decent drunk then I'm sure you can understand my issues.

I have a low grade headache that's been hanging around the base of my skull for days. I've been shitting erratically for days from the stress's effect on my stomach and my piss poor diet which is also thanks to the stomach effect. I feel so tightly wound that the least and stupidest little thing is bound to set me off. I'm at some kind of breaking point where I almost wish someone would give me a reason to explode. My knuckles are sore from punching walls and doors and cabinet doors and the steering wheel. My back hurts, a typical place for stress to build up, and for some odd reason there is a pain recurring randomly in my sternum. It feels like it's right in the bone.

I thought I had a lead on a job until I finally was able to pick up and drop off an application. I was told they were hiring as they'd just lost several cooks. The guy that took my application informed me that his hours had just been cut. Another lead was at a place not yet open. I've heard from one person that their bank just went out of business and from another person that they've spent all their investment money and still aren't ready to open.

Next week I begin by lowering my standards. I'm going to have to look at restaurants where I know just having to go in will depress me. I don't want to me a snob about it, but I know my skill level is higher than Cracker Barrel, yet that's probably the next place I go. And this is fucking with my self esteem. It's been low enough lately without circumstances stomping it lower, so I'm really going to look forward to this fun.

And there's a new gripe filled blog post. I'm really feeling like shit lately, a little worthless, even a bit friendless. I feel like I spend every night sitting on my ass waiting for the next day so I can repeat the cycle of driving around town, asking if people are hiring, can I have an application anyway sort of shit. I owe Momma for bills already, and now I'm going to have to go to her begging for help. She can't really afford it, and my soul can't afford to have to ask.

I really just want to crawl into bed and hope when I wake up everything is better, somehow magically something. The option feels like slamming my throat in a door, and that, sadly, doesn't seem like the worst idea I've ever had.

stand up

Very quickly, because I should already have taken a shower and be headed out to continue the job search.

Saturday, November 15 is a national day of protest for gay rights. In light of the passage of Prop 8 in California, which basically took away marriage rights for gay people in California, gay men and women and our non gay supporters in cities across the US are gathering to show solidarity and to demand that we be treated as equals.

That's really what this is all about, equality. We aren't asking for special rights nor are we asking for more than we deserve. We want the same as everyone else.

If you feel the same, whether or not you are gay, you are invited to attend this rally. We need all the support we can get, and we need to stand up and show everyone that we are no different from them. We are your brothers and sisters. We are parents. Quite simply we are human.

Please find time to join us at World's Fair Park at 1:30. Go HERE for more information about this local rally.

meme the food yo

Thanks to Meg of Get In, Hang On for the softball. I love easy memes, because it makes it so easy to come up with a post, and this is a fun one. It's all about food, baby, so here we go.

What's the last thing you ate?
I whipped up a couple packages of ramen noodles and added some leftover chicken and frozen peas. I can go a little crazy with ramen if I have a couple of extra minutes, or I can just make them plain, or I can land squarely in the middle as I did tonight.

What's your favorite cheese?
Cabot makes a really nice chipotle cheddar that's really nice, and in general I'd have to go with cheddar as a fave. I also like Manchego and really good Parmesan.

What's your favorite fish?
I don't like much fish at all, but I do like tuna. It's good and fun to play with. I can also do scallops usually, and I love calamari when it's done well, but it's so easy to fuck up if you don't know what you're doing.

What's your favorite fruit?
Probably my fave fruit is mango, but it has to be ripe enough, otherwise it's really not good at all.

When if ever did you start liking olives?
I'm up and down with olives. I tend to like them, but so many of them are new to me and can be a bit much. I'd say, if asked, my favorite is the basic Kalamata.

When, if ever, did you start liking beer?
I'm a bit of a lush, and I tend to go with beer almost exclusively. It was in Charlotte, NC somewhere around 12-13 years ago, that I started drinking better beers than the typical American stuff, though I tend when on a budget to stick with Miller High Life.

When, if ever, did you start liking shellfish?
I really only like scallops, and I've liked them since I first had them, but like anything, they really have to be cooked right, because they are so easy to ruin.

What was the best thing your parent/s used to make?
My mom's lasagna was my absolute favorite food growing up, though pretty much everything she cooked was good. Her biscuits began my lifelong love of them, but I tend to use Alton Brown's recipe these days. It's actually not that different from my mom's, and while Alton calls for half shortening and half butter I just use butter.

What's the native specialty of your hometown?
Atlanta, where I grew up, doesn't seem to have a native specialty that I can think of. If you want to go with my current home of Knoxville then I would have to guess something like mets and beans or a full house which is a tamale and chili dish. These were popularized in my town's early days, and they aren't as readily available now, but that may the closest we have to a native specialty. Anyone showing up from around these parts is more than willing to argue this point and give me something different to check on.

What's your comfort food?
Probably beer. It gives me comfort. Other than that I might go with biscuits.

What's your favorite kind of chocolate?
Dark, dark and dark.

How do you like your steak?
I like them just past rare, almost medium rare, and I think the only cut of meat worth eating as a steak is a ribeye with a nice bit of fat around the edge, the fat a little crispy from cooking.

How do you like your burger?
Medium rare to medium, mayo, mustard, ketchup, bacon, cheddar, tomato, onion, dill pickle slices, messy and dripping down my fingers.

How do you like your eggs?
Scrambled usually, but I also love them fried till the yolk is firm and the edge of the whites is brown and crispy, and I love boiled eggs as well, but the latter two tend to give some irritating gas.

How do you like your potatoes?
Cooked, all sorts of ways, fried, baked, mashed, roasted, stuffed . . .

How do you take your coffee?
Strong with maybe half a spoon full of sugar and just enough half and half to lighten it a wee bit.

How do you take your tea?
I'm southern, so I like it cold and just a little sweet.

What's your favorite mug?
My coffee mug was in the house when we moved in, is rather large and has two finger wholes for a handle. Beyond that I like a large glass mug full of a hoppy pale ale.

What's your cookie of choice?
Chocolate chip or oatmeal, raisin, walnut. It's a toss up. I'll also take walnuts in the chocolate chip if it's all the same to you.

What's your ideal breakfast?
usually coffee, but given the chance I'll load up on eggs and sausage and bacon and grits and biscuits with gravy. I won't argue with some ham. A nice scone is always nice if a bit simpler.

What's your ideal sandwich?
I love a Reuben, but I don't like crappy Swiss cheese, so I usually opt for whatever other cheese is available wherever I happen to be.

What's you ideal pizza (topping and base)?
Basic thin-ish crust with pepperoni and green olives or ham and pineapple.

What's your ideal pie (sweet or savory)?
Hands down a good pecan pie is perhaps the greatest food ever created. I'd kick a nun in the cunt for a good piece of pecan pie.

What's your ideal salad?
Okay, here's my southern coming out again, but I don't give a shit so long as there's ranch dressing. I can eat and enjoy all sorts of salads, and I do love vinaigrette if it's well made, but give me ranch if you want me to be really happy.

What food do you always like to have in the fridge?
beer, milk, butter, soy sauce, ranch, mustard,

What food do you always like to have in the freezer?
I don't use the freezer a whole lot honestly. It's always nice if there's some ice cream, but other than that the only thing that regularly goes into and out of my freezer are chicken parts. We always have some amount of chicken parts so that we can always be a very few hours away from having stock.

What food do you always like to have in the cupboard?
ramen, peanut butter, graham crackers, steel cut oats

What spices can you not live without?
oregano, thyme, kosher salt, paprika, chili pepper (not powder because I can make that) cumin, coriander, peppercorns

What sauces can you not live without?
soy, I like to have some fish sauce tucked away in the fridge as well and Sriracha

Where do you buy most of your food?
Food City

How often do you go food shopping?
every couple of days. We tend to decided at the last minute what's for dinner, so we are often running to the store for last minute things. We try to keep the pantry stocked to the point where we don't need more than the basic ingredients for any meal

What's the most you've spent on a single food item?
I don't buy really expensive stuff usually. What I have spent money on are things that are just hard to find in a small town such as lemon grass. We pay a decent little bit for coffee, and I've spent over ten dollars on a six pack of beer before. Other than that it was probably a turkey or some fish that Momma got for something.

What's the most expensive piece of kitchen equipment you own?
I'm not counting appliances, so it would probably be the Kitchen Aid stand mixer, though it was a gift from my parents. Most everything I have was either a gift or hand me down.

What's the last piece of kitchen equipment you bought?
Probably the hot air popcorn popper I got for Momma last Christmas

What piece of kitchen equipment could you not live without?
Probably my knife. I can make do with lots of stuff or without lots of stuff, but a good knife can do so many things, and there are so many things you can't really do without a knife.

How many times a week/month do you cook from raw ingredients?
Almost daily, though there are a few things we get for convenience sake.

What's the last thing you cooked from raw ingredients?
I made a sausage and mushroom frittata and biscuits. I finished the leftovers for lunch today.

What's your favorite thing to make for yourself?
biscuits or scones. I know I seem a little one track with the quick breads, but I do love them so.

What meats have you eaten other than cow, pig, chicken and turkey?
elk and lamb, didn't like the lamb really, and that may be about it

When's the last time you ate something that fell on the floor?
I have no qualms about eating things that fell on the floor, depending of course on the floor.

What's the last time you ate something you picked in the wild?
um . . . perhaps never, though the church I grew up attending had pecan trees, and I may have eaten some of the pecans, but that's been nearly twenty years, give or take a couple years

Place the following cuisines in order of preference (greatest to least) Italian, sushi, French, Chinese, Indian, Thai:
Thai-absolutely love Thai food when I've had it
Indian-I'm putting second, but it's been years since the Sunday dinners at the Krishna temple
Chinese-I'm a sucker for soy sauce and what Chinese food I've had. I'm thinking my experience may be somewhat less than authentic, but it's really hard to know
Italian-cured meats and olives and roasted peppers and bread oh my
French-I think we're more used to a lot of French styles as their cuisine has so influenced western cuisine
sushi-texture issues and dislike of nori make it nearly impossible for me to enjoy sushi, but I want to love it because it may the single prettiest food

Place the following boozes in order of preference (greatest to least) whiskey, vodka, tequila, gin, brandy, rum:
Tequila-I love good tequila, chilled without the training wheels
Rum-mmmhhmm mojitos-spiced rum is also really good with sweet, iced tea
Gin-gin martini? yes please, though it has been too long. Gin makes me goofy
Vodka-is a giant meh for me because the whole point in distilling vodka is to make it as clear and flavorless as possible. At this point the only point is to get drunk, and I'm enough of a lush without insisting on it.
Brandy-really, I associate brandy with the smell it leaves on your breath, think bum asking for spare change in your personal space, and it's only not last because . . .
Whiskey-ick, gives me immediate heartburn. I don't mean some heartburn. I mean whiskey goes down, heartburn comes up, immediately.

Place the following flavors in order of preference (greatest to least) garlic, ginger, basil, aniseseed, lime:
Lime, ginger, garlic, basil, anise

Place the following fruits in order of preference (greatest to least) cherry, apple, orange, watermelon, pineapple:
Watermelon, apple, orange, cherry, pineapple

Bread and spread:
Have we covered this already? Biscuit with butter or apple butter or a mixture of mashed together butter and molasses

What's your fast food restaurant of choice and what do you usually order?
A) Chic-fil-a and I go with the chic-fil-a sandwich, waffle fries and sweet tea, or
B)Krystal where I tend to order the bacon-cheese Krystal, Krystal chik and fries, though their fries are only good when they're really hot and salty.

What are the three best dining out experiences you've ever had?
1. Probably Cha-Cha's which is sadly no longer open, and sadly, Momma and I were able to watch their demise as the food lost all relevance to the tapas bar that they were when they were good. The standout menu items were the calamari and the wild mushroom risotto
2. Brasserie(forgetting the whole name)-Christmas party for the sushi bar where Momma used to work. Standouts there were the escargot which I had for the first time and the calamari which they served with a tomato jam
3. Possibly, and this may be kind of gay, but the day I had to run errands and Cute Boyfriend went with me and took me for Mexican. Nothing really stood out other than getting to hang out with him and having most of the day to do the hanging out.

What's your choice of tipple at the end of a long day?
My new favorite beer would be Sweetwater Brewing Company's IPA, but at the end or the beginning or in the middle of any day, long or short, I'll generally be happy to enjoy a beer or two.

Favorite cookbook?
I still stand proudly by the Joy of Cooking. It's a great all around cookbook, especially if you know how and when to fix the recipes. Aside from that I love just reading any cookbook Julia Child wrote because I just love the voice she carries over into her writing, and I don't mean her actual voice voice.

Got any favorite food blogs?
Yes, David Lebovitz is probably the very top of my favorite list.

What's the next thing you'll eat?
If I can manage to get up in time tomorrow I plan to make some apricot scones, and given the state of my stressed out tummy, that needs to be the next time I eat, and I do need to be up in time to make scones, because Cute Boyfriend will be here and deserves them.

And I'm not tagging anyone. This damn meme didn't seem nearly so long when I was reading it at Meg's or at Frankie's. Go visit both those lovely ladies and see how they answered, then go back to your blog and play along. It's a true delight, and it's fun to see how others answer.

eureka

In a moment of clarity, driving past the mall on our western side of town today, I realized something. I may have figured out why so many people are so sincerely opposed to allowing gay people to marry, and it's both sad and understandable at the same time.

This sort of thing happens often in music and fashion. It happened somewhere in the '80's to the punks. It happened when The Cure's Just Like Heaven hit it big and again when Green Day released their album Dookie.

I remember time it happened to me, shortly after Nirvana's debut as a band with a hit song. I fell in love with it and was soon to purchase what I could of their earlier releases. I was into that kind of thing then, and I felt it went well with the Fastbacks and Mudhoney I was discovering.

Suddenly the music I felt was so much a part of me was huge and everywhere. Everyone had that same album and was wearing short sleeve shirts over long sleeve shirts. The flannels I'd grown up wearing were suddenly cool, and I was suddenly seen as one more person buying into this thing that someone decided to call grunge.

And I didn't like it. I was the cool one. I was the one that really liked it. This was my music and the damned usurpers didn't get it, only liked it because it was suddenly cool. All they were really doing was ruining what was once a great scene by making my fashion sense available at the mall.

Perhaps that's an unsaid reason for the anti-gay marriage revolt. We gays are diluting their thing. The straight people have been working on this marriage thing without us for so long that they feel some connection, that they are known by this thing. The goths wear black and the straights marry.

What if suddenly the gays start marrying each other? Before long it won't have the same value, the same street cred. It will be like anything else, and then everyone will start doing it. Before you know it Abercrombie and Fitch will start selling marriage at the mall and white boy vanilla rappers will write family friendly tunes about weddings. Soon enough it will become so passe' that, like random metal-ish riffs in a Food Network show about making Smarties candies, it will be safe and bland, will lose its power to shock.

Maybe it's not that, and I'm more than willing to admit that I could be wrong. There could be other reasons to keep us from marrying people we love, but I'd kind of like it to be my reason. Seriously, there really is only one other reason I can think of but would prefer it not be true. That reason is that they are just douche bags, and I don't want to imagine that all those people are just douche bags. It's better to think of them as Cure fans or late '70's punks. They don't want their scene watered down and usurped.

yes we did

It feels good to say the words:

President Obama

Know what else sounds good?

Democratic senate majority

don't be a douche

Apparently today is blog-what-other-people-blog-day at the ol' desk full. Yet another of my fave blogs has posted something worth sharing, this time a video. If you live under a rock or outside of the U.S. (is this another theme du jour?) then you may not know what California's Proposition 8 is all about. If this is true then very quickly, judges in CA decided that the state constitution makes it illegal to deny gay people the right to marry. Now a bunch of degenerates want to amend the constitution to deny us that right. Prop 8 is their attempt, and the following video explains what this is all about much more eloquently (another theme?) than I. Hat tip to Todd of Iced Tea and Sarcasm.

worth reading and sharing

Over on the left of the page you can see my shared items, stuff that came up in my reader that I felt was worth sharing with both of my readers. Just as I'm trying to write more I'm also trying to utilize the share function more.

As of this moment, the most recent addition is a blog post from a local, Larry Van Guilder. I can't say that I pick up the paper he writes for very often, but his blog is in my reader, so I do get to read his stuff when he posts.

THIS piece is not only worth reading but is also worth both sticking in my share thingy as well as linking directly to him in a blog post. It seems too many in our country don't seem to care what others think about themselves or us as a nation. I've long felt that, even worse than the Bushco legacy here in our country, the international ramifications of his two miserable terms may be the bigger evil. Go read the post I linked because he says it much more eloquently than I.

P.S. Check out THIS ONE as well.

can't fathom the depths

Anyone not aware that we are in the final days of a presidential election and who is not under two years old must be living somewhere far away or be somehow incapacitated both mentally and physically.

It's really that simple, so I'm certainly not breaking news when I point this out. We in the U.S. are in the twilight of a make or break election, a period when we get screwed by the "maverick" and the hockey mom or we see our nation finally elect outside the usual old, white man box. Yes, maverick gets square quotes because he so isn't. He's a bitter and nasty old man who we'll hopefully soon see the last of in the national spotlight.

Of course I'm not voting Obama because he's a black man, but it is historic that of the two major party candidates still left in the fight one of them is indeed black. This has never happened before, and even more insane is that, not only are we likely to finally elect our first black president but this is the first time a black person has actually been a viable candidate.

So close to electing Obama is historic, but what does it say that it's taken us this long to actually have this option? What does it say that no other black person has ever made it this far? What does it say about our nation that the only black people who I can remember running were also so unlikely to win? Who have we had in the past as options? Al Sharpton? Jesse Jackson? Alan Keyes? Okay, try to think of Alan Keyes as viable without pissing your pants from laughing.

Why have we never seen a viable and sensible black candidate before? Where are the Andrew Youngs when we need them?

I don't know what this says about us. I doubt we are as far passed our racist past as we'd like to believe, but I'd also like to believe that Obama represents a huge step forward. I just hope he wins and then lives to show us the change he keeps promising.

This actually began life in my brain as I pondered what sort of person thinks McPalin is worth voting for. I can't fathom the idiocy that I feel it takes to think it's okay to vote for those two. I don't mean to offend, but I can't help but be offended when I realize how close this race is. I really can't accept that intelligent and thoughtful people look at Sarah Palin and are okay with voting for her. McCain? I just don't know. I really just don't know.

maybe about to freak out

There was a time, and I was a little proud of this, when I felt as if I could walk into any restaurant and fill out an application and walk away with a job. Things are suddenly not even close to like that.

I've spent two days filling out applications, and I decided today to take a break. Yesterday Cute Boyfriend hung out with the kids for a bit while I went job hunting. I dropped an application off at the awesome local used book store, and then I heard nothing. Of all the places I've applied this one would be the coolest to work.

Other than the three-ish years I wasn't a very good stay at home dad, I've pretty much done nothing but restaurant work for nearly twenty years. Okay, there was a stint as a security guard, and there were the random months of random jobs through a temp agency, and there was the drywall labor position where I sanded and carried out scrap and smoked pot in the back of the new unit and jumped in the bed of that one guy's truck to scram from the job site when OSHA showed up.

Suddenly, perhaps because of the financial climate, no one is hiring cooks. I haven't gone to every single restaurant I could, so perhaps there are jobs I'm distancing myself from, and really, I should swallow my pride and try, but I really don't want to work at Cracker Barrel or Waffle House or the steak house with the zillion item hot bar or any fast food ever. Also, I don't want to have to take out my ear rings, because I don't want my ears to shrink back to normal size.

The problem really is that I need money. I'm sitting on the last few dollars from my last paycheck, and I'm trying like hell not to even think about that because that makes me think about the place I've most recently been fired from, and the whole story about how/why I got fired just pisses me off.

It's all a bit depressing. I finally gave up for the day yesterday out of a depressed frustration. I should be able to find a job. I have experience and skills, but it's the same every place I've been to.

"Your application looks good. You have a lot of experience, but we're full up right now. If something comes up, and you know how restaurants are, we'll give you a call."

I do know how restaurants are. I wrote a report about this thing at the shitty business college I'm still paying off. Annual average turnover in restaurants is three hundred percent. That means that over the course of a year, the average restaurant hires and loses enough staff to fully staff itself three times over. That's fucked up to say the least, and I'm part of that, or was.

There's a local produce company, the kind that sells and delivers to restaurants, a place I'm familiar with, having used their services at a number of restaurants at which I've worked. They have a marquee on their sign that has read "now hiring drivers" for as long as I can remember. I've contemplated this, but I know the sort of hours required, think three in the morning start time. If Momma and I had our own cars, as opposed to sharing one, this job would be more likely, but as it is, there just isn't a reasonable way to even think about this one, though I do think if I could get used to the hours that I could actually enjoy doing this.

So I find myself still jobless, still searching, still unhappy with my lack of options and unhappy with those things that seem like options. I could start looking outside of the restaurant industry, but I really don't know what else I could do. I just don't feel like I know how to do anything else.

Maybe it's time to suck it up and just take whatever I can find. I'm really not so proud that I wouldn't take a good job if it showed up, but I need something I can be proud I'm doing and that pays the bills and helps me buy a new car and find a new place to live. The Powerball is up to fifty nine million. I have not invested in the luck machine in quite a while, and I know it's a bad sign when Powerball tickets start to seem like a not unwise purchase.

Yeah, that's a bad sign.

nothing

That's what I have to say here, nothing. For whatever reason I feel compelled to post something.

My current reading is Brisingr, the third book in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle. I had assumed that the cycle was a trilogy when I first began Eragon, the first book, and I don't really have any idea why I thought that, maybe because trilogies just seem like the way most people go. Regardless, I'm enjoying the book as much as the first two and would recomend it to anyone who enjoys books about young people and dragons tasked with saving the world from evil.

There's a cute boy laying on my sofa watching television, a cute boy that I've been seeing/dating/whatever for slightly more than two months. I understand that two months isn't generally that long an amount of time, but it's got to be worth a couple of years in gay time. I think I'll settle on Cute Boyfriend as his nickname for the blog. It's not my favorite, but I haven't figured out what my favorite is and haven't come up with anything better.

My ears are now stretched to a four gauge, and I could easily get twos in the holes, but I don't have any twos. Cute Boyfriend has a couple of zero gauge plugs that I've already threatened to steal, but I'm not sure if they'd go in yet. I think they might, but I'd spend the next few days in a tiny bit of discomfort while the ears got used to them.

The kids are in bed, Momma is gone to her boyfriend's house for the night and I'm fast running out of things to talk about here. Tomorrow I begin my newest job search. I'm starting at a local bookstore that I hope is hiring and hires me. It would certainly be a break from working in kitchens, a break I'm beginning to think I need. There was that three years of break I took, but somehow that doesn't seem to count.

And with that I do believe I'm done with this post. I'm sorry for the lack of substance here, but that's what you get tonight. Enjoy the fact that I'm forcing myself to post more often and am finally back from the annoying place I subjected you to too often recently.

who's bad?

I'm sitting here, headphones clamped tight, YouTube sharing a song with me. I may have bitched fairly recently about my inability to get YouTube to work on my computer because I was unable to download the newest version of the flash player. I've seen that damned tiny green puzzle piece much too often as of late.

I finally fixed the problem by upgrading the version of Ubuntu that I had and now have not only the newest version of Ubuntu but also a media player that allows me to do the musical thing I just said.

That means, as far as I'm concerned, that it's time to share. I haven't given you a video in much too long, so I will share something with you. It's a song that may or may not be about god, and being the good li'l agnostic I am I don't care.

With absolutely no more discussion by me I give you Black and Gold by Sam Sparro. Okay, there's a tiny bit of discussion because the video is actually not the video because Universal, being the corporate dipshits that they are would rather not share the music as much as they could. They have disabled embedding, so I'm forced to use something that's not the video. Honestly, the song is the thing I'm after, so the video can suck it as can Universal Moneygrubbing Group. I just want to share a song I like by an artist I'm growing to like as I hear more.

Hit the play button and minimize this window while you do something else. That's what I usually do, as videos are so seldom worth watching anyway.

need something to do?

We all know how much our homeschooled kids and friends love a good essay contest. I think many homeschoolers most love the essay contests in which they are not specifically mentioned as it allows them to feel put upon and gives them an excuse to boycott someone.

Never fear, because the essay contest I've just learned about is open to "home-school" kids even if the contest people don't know that we pretty much decided on homeschool as one word, not two and certainly not hyphenated. I may be wrong about that, but I do know what the consensus seems to be, and that's what I'm going with.

Hat tip to Good As You for noticing this one. High school age kids as well as college freshmen and sophomores may enter. The topic is the preservation of traditional families. Of course, when one sees the phrase "traditional family" one has to understand that what is meant is a very narrow view, a sort of fifties era Beaver Cleaver type family. We all know that those families exist, and often they live right next door to our own just as normal families.

I guess my own family is suddenly not real anymore. Momma and I, though we still share some expenses as well as a house and car, are no longer a valid family. I'd wager that we don't really even equal a family anymore. Perhaps eventually Momma will remarry and will then be okay again, but until I stop being gay, I'm probably not even a father anymore.

Anyway, having rambled and made less than no sense, HERE is a link to the contest page. The contest hosts are some group known as the Traditional Family Coalition. As mentioned, people who use words like "traditional" usually don't get that their tradition is a dream that never really existed, but they don't care. Their scriptural guide seems to tell them to lie when it furthers their agenda, so I'm sure I'm the one that's wrong.

thanks for that

The place I worked till recently is in the Old City, one of the oldest parts of our town, the place that was once known as the bowery, the place that was built on a swamp, the place that people from the west side of town think is full of whores and pickpockets and muggers and . . .

You get the picture.

I may be forgetting somewhere, but counting in my head I've come up with at least nine different restaurant/bars, though only one of them is my usual, my default, my watering hole. It's been a place that has been friendly to me over the years.

Rewind your calender to a mere few days ago when I was there, early in the evening, the only (and I do mean only) customer sitting at the bar. The place does decent business later at night, but I was there early. The only people besides me at the bar were the owner and the bartender.

I worked at this place for a couple of weeks before taking a better paying/more hours job at the place I worked till recently, and all of this really is part of the point. I really am going somewhere with this.

I quit this bar on decent terms, giving them a full two weeks notice, and the owner seemed pleased with my work. He and I, while not bosom buddies, have remained on fairly friendly terms. I stop when I see him, he stops, we chat for a moment, hail and farewell and all that shit.

So back to sitting solo at the bar, and I'm talking to the owner. He inquires about the job and how I like the place I left him for, and without giving it too much thought I give him my honest opinion.

-the place isn't being run well
-the owners don't really know what they are doing
-the son of one of the owners who does the day to day running of the business is a dumbass and doesn't quite pay attention to what he needs to be doing
-they neglect the many years of experience the kitchen staff has and choose to run the place poorly
-they won't be open a year from now
-the prices are much too high for the location
-they've priced themselves out of business
-they are resorting to some questionable specials in order to try to make money

That last one I will use as an example of what is so wrong with the place. Picture if you will a restaurant trying to be a slightly upscale version of a British pub. Now imagine if you will that they institute a "ladies night" to attempt to bring in business. Yeah, that kind of thing.

Apparently the ex-boss ran into my more new ex-boss at a city council meeting and, in front of any number of local bigwigs and wannabes, told him all that I said. New ex-boss decides to let me go, and he does it in a way in which one can certainly be proud. He took me off the schedule and then said absolutely nothing to me about it.

So how did I found out I'd been fired? After dropping Momma off at work this morning, as I was about to pull away from the place, I realized her phone had slipped out of her pocket. I turned the car off, walked inside to find her and decided to look at the schedule. I was not on it. I don't mean my name and schedule were crossed off, as usually happens when someone gets fired from a restaurant. They completely remade the schedule so that my name didn't even exist.

Several hours later an ex-coworker called to tell me that, indeed, I had been let go. It was then that I heard the story I just related. I was fired because one ex-boss ran his mouth and made a joke out of what I'd told him, me assuming some amount of something not unlike confidentiality. My new ex-boss was quite embarassed, or so I was told. In a rousing feat of standing up and being a man he had someone else do his dirty work and actually call me and speak to me personally.

The sad part, beyond that my newest ex-boss is what we often call a bitch, a friend with no reason to have to was the person to relay the news, a friend with enough issues of his own regarding this place, who has already been screwed over by my new ex-boss. Yeah, he had to start his day like that.

That's my story for the day. It isn't a pretty story, but, all things considered, what's one more weight piled onto me? I'm sure I can take more. I'm not broke enough.

And to the sorry ass that fired me, sorry Mr. N that your pride got hurt, but seriously, you have no more business running a restaurant than I have performing surgery.

quandary

This is something you may not know, but I sort of kind of hate my job. It should be a great place to work, and if it was the sort of place the owners intended it to be I would be proud and happy to work there.

The main problem in my humble opinion is that the owners are the sort of people who just shouldn't own a restaurant. The entirety of their experience in this industry is contained entirely in the few short months that they have been restaurateurs. Another way of looking at it is that they don't have a damn clue how to do this right, and they won't likely be open much longer.

As a quick aside, if you are familiar with Anthony Bourdain's books you may remember something he wrote about his own experiences with restaurant owners and his list of people who shouldn't own restaurants. My bosses should be on that list, and I'm sure they are at least somewhat represented.

Momma just texted me that I'm no longer scheduled to work tonight due to labor cost. This shouldn't be an issue because we should be busy enough in general, but we are not, so it is. My options now are to accept not working and the smaller check or to call a coworker and try to pick up a shift. Neither of those are really what I want. I don't want to have to work, but I'm already going to be missing one day on my check because I was sent home for being late.

I can see a bit of a pattern here, and I know from experience that I am within easy view of the end of my employment at this particular establishment. And this brings up another thought.

I feel and have felt as if cooking is pretty much all I know how to do. There have been other jobs in my short years working, but they were many years ago and not the sort of experience I could carry over into a new job. The depressing note here is that I feel more and more as if, though this is all I know how to do, I'm just not really that good at it. I'm not sure where this feeling comes from because I used to be different. I took great pride in my abilities, identified to a large extent as a cook. Add to all this the fact that I have so little to show for anything at my age, and it all starts to cloud over with a tinge of depression.

My life is changing so much and so randomly that sometimes I just don't know what to do. I don't know where to turn. I don't have a lot of confidence in myself right now. Don't get me started on my need for a car and a new place to live.

follow up

As I mentioned in my last post I have now come out to my family. There is one brother I have yet to hear from, but he is the brother whose first attempt bounced back to me. I found another email address for him, so hopefully he gets the news. I hate that any of them have to be the last to hear, but I suppose someone has to be.

I know that most of my brothers have gotten their email as all but the one have responded. I can't say I'm surprised by any of the reactions I got, and they were all at least slightly not unsupportive in a sense. They each did at least let me know that they still love me and that I can count on them should I need.

Given the nature of all of this, my homosexuality and their fairly right leaning christian beliefs, the responses were, as I've said, not really surprising. I've got a sister in law whose heart is breaking for us. I have two brothers who disagree with my "lifestyle" though I don't know that either of them used those words. One of the brothers has alerted me to the fact that I'll never be satisfied with fleshly pleasures and assured me that I know the truth or what I need to do or something along those lines. I'm sure what he means has everything to do with his religion and belief system.

While it's certainly a load off my shoulders to no longer have this secret, it isn't really making my life any easier in general. It isn't getting me a better job or a car or a place to live. It isn't going to make my hands any less stiff as the weather turns colder. It isn't going to put any food in my children's bellies. Maybe though the sun is a tiny bit brighter, the late blooming fall flowers a little more showy. Maybe it just seems that way because I've taken one more tiny progressive step toward finally being me. Now if I could just figure the rest of the me part out I'll be in good shape.

it's done

Part of me feels a little bad that I used email, but an even bigger part doesn't really quite care. Yes, I emailed my parents and then my brothers to come out to them.

Yes, I know. It does seem a little impersonal for this sort of thing. To them, I can only assume, this is sort of a big deal. This may be quite a blow. I've actually gotten some replies, and while none of them have yet been terribly supportive, they have at least extended their love and help.

And there's a big reason that I chose email. I have to admit that I don't know what any of them are really going to think, but having grown up in the religion most of them still believe I think I have some small reason to believe I can assume some small amount of which direction most of them might go with this.

My memory isn't quite good enough to remember exactly when it was that I first started to think there was some chance I might be gay. It wasn't too long after that before I really began to accept it. And then for whatever reasons I still can't quite figure out I began to pretend I wasn't gay and began the several years of misery that living in the closet is.

There's yet another reason I chose email, that I feel I've spent enough time, somewhere in the vicinity of twenty years, dealing with this. Even five minutes of negativity or even just simple disagreement is more than I'm willing to deal with.

I don't want to be rude to my family, regardless of their beliefs, regardless of how they now choose to view me. At the same time I'm not going to change because of anything they say. I'm not going to suddenly not be gay. I'm not going to let anyone make me feel bad about this, becaue I've already done that. I've already felt bad enough trying not to be gay, and now that I'm finally accepting it, I don't care if others do or don't, but I'm not going to let anyone add to the misery I've already inflicted on myself.

So that is what I did this weekend. It's done and out of the way. Hopefully no more emails bounce so that I don't have to resend the damn thing. I did save it as a draft just in case and because I didn't want to have to write yet another version. I've already written two different versions, one to send the parents and the second for the brothers. Just getting those two versions written was a giant pain in the ass of over editing as I'm a bit anal and am never happy with the first or even the second or third version of anything I do.

How was your weekend?