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.

quibbling with my head

I miss my blog. I'm not sure what it's become. I know it's not the same, and I know that I enjoyed doing this at one time. I kinda don't lately.

Certainly it's changed as so much of my life has changed, but even while I write those words I have to admit to the places where I've not changed or made change.

And that sort of thought process nearly leads me into the sort of post I've written too much of lately, and the sad fact is that I've written so many bitching about myself and my tendencies posts that I've ended up deleting rather than post. I'm not getting anywhere with this nonsense, but I don't seem to stop it.

Perhaps I know the secret. Perhaps I need to go back and comb through the archives and find if I can remember what I used to write about that made me enjoy this damn thing called blogging.

Maybe I'm also too afraid to gay it up too much. I went and shared my location with more people than may be safe for my sanity. Mom and Dad, if you're reading this, I'm afraid I do mean you.

And that's why you sometimes don't hear from me for a week or more. I let this thing change too much, or maybe I let myself become too morose and depressive when writing. Maybe it's the whole fear of too many eyes. I've most definitely deleted too many craptastic posts that were just too full of woe is me.

But I do have an idea that I'm willing to play with, so if there's a new post showing up minutes after this one then I've done gone and done it as we might say down here in the south (or is that South?)

For now I'll just drop a nugget on you. The new boyfriend introduced me to Varla Jean Merman, and this song is just . . . It's called The Bearded Lady. Enjoy!

quickly now

Because I haven't posted in possibly ages I feel like I should at least check in. I almost posted a mile worth of update last night but decided I was sharing a bit more than I'm quite ready to.

Things are happening. My living situation still seems not to be going anywhere, but it's a problem needing resolution, and I've been forced to realize I've made too many excuses as to why I'm not doing more. I think tomorrow, since I'm off work, will be a great day, hopefully, to make some calls and maybe a visit or two.

The guy I mentioned recently is still cute and nice, but he and I aren't looking for the same thing. I think the incredulously pronounced, "Oh my god, you really are looking for a boyfriend," should have been clue enough, but the fact that I haven't texted him in two weeks and haven't heard from him is definitely the bright, neon sign pointing me away.

And in that same vein, I'm suddenly in a great place. There's a whole other guy with whom I find myself in the beginning of something. We do seem to be looking for something similar and get along great and have a lovely back story that got us where we are. I'm not sharing right now, though I'm not really superstitious, but I'm not willing to jinx it by discussing it. Weird of me, yeah?

And now I need to figure out what we're going to do about lunch and quick. I've renewed some of our library stuff, but everything else is due today. I have to be at work at four and have the kids to Momma's work so I can walk to my work in time. Unless it rains and runs us off, we'll spend the afternoon downtown.

That's what you get for now. I hope you can justifiably expect more posts soon.

begulba

I have 895 published posts. If this makes it through final editing, and very few do these days, I'll be a tiny step closer to a thousand.

I don't really think that means anything at all. It doesn't make my recent output less than suck, and it doesn't seem to have made anyone fall in love with me and want to take me away from all this.

What does it do? I can't say. It makes me feel like I can sometimes spit out something readable that isn't too cryptic or enigmatic. I can sometimes write things that make me smile when I reread them as opposed to the usual cringing and eye rolling I tend to do when faced with something I've produced.

It's late. The extra kid in the house is asleep on the sofa. I'll tell you her story one day, the family values that seem to have put her in a place better than her mother was/is able to provide, the stability she's been given, the love that surrounds her. But that's not for now.

It's late, and Momma is somewhere between work and here. I've got at least one more beer and a cigarette in my near future.

That wasn't even an update. You should feel cheated as a blog reader.

updatey

There's really nothing to post write now, but I find myself drawn to regardless.

Maybe it's just the laziness inherent in today, though most days are like this lately. I can only be so lazy, having to be at work at four. I have to close tonight and am curious currently about the weather.

There, a weather post. That's what we need.

Our local weather has been extremely odd this year, especially considering how far into summer we currently are. Our truly hot and humid days have been few and far between, and we've had more straight days of rain than ever since I moved here. We've been more worried about drought the last few years, though I don't know how we're doing currently I can't imagine we're doing bad in that regard. Today is cool and breezy and cloudy. We may or may not see rain which might directly effect the business I see tonight.

Either way it should be a fun night. Oh, maybe this is a post about my job.

From the front door of where I work I can see a new place, still under construction. There's a location of this business toward the western part of this town, and though I've never been I have heard nothing but good. I might end up out west soon talking to someone out west about an interest in a job on the square.

I don't entirely hate where I am, and there's potential, but a good portion of the current management could easily care enough to try harder, and it's sadly not something that should even be a try. I'm not going into it considering how I lost the last job, but I'd love this job but for a single horrible attitude so entrenched in this place that I doubt sometimes there's any getting rid of it.

And I guess I could say the same about me sometimes. I keep falling back into traps I keep setting for myself. Apparently recognizing them too late keeps being too late. Perhaps a complete change of direction . . .

Sure, maybe that's what the post is, annoying introspective post that makes you grit your teeth and want to scream at me, "Shit or get off the fucking pot already!!!"

Yeah . . .

no

unconnect

I spent some amount of time the last couple of nights severing connections. It's not as bad as it sounds as it was just the ending of some Facebook friendships.

When I got on the Fb I was totally doing it to connect with family who had also gotten on. Soon enough I started getting requests from and sending a couple to some old school friends. There were a couple of people on that list that I was never actually friends with, and there were even some that I can't say I even remember.

I wasn't expecting to be out on Fb, and I even mentioned that to a couple of people in the early days. But really it's just not worth it. I don't want to have to care what someone might think.

I'm sure these are all wonderful people, but I've come to realize I basically have nothing in common with them other than some amount of shared past, and that's really just not enough.

I suppose the clincher was yet another right wing, uber conservative sort of thing someone left laying around, and the option is ignore or bitch. It's not worth bitching when you will never convince people that there's even a chance there is another point of view. Some people can only accept their singular world view.

So now it's just family and actual friends or people with whom I would actually be friends, people with whom I could reasonably spend time and not have any issues.

backing down

There's every chance I mentioned with some amount of joy that I was finally going to be living elsewhere by now, and I sorta did for a minute.

I'll admit now that I saw issues that I ignored, and now that I stepped into the thick of it I'm having to back down, admit I was wrong.

It's mostly a kid issue. The only other place I currently have to live is just not good for the boys. There are a couple of different issues that aren't so much huge as much potentially huge and not worth putting them into or even around really.

The place is mostly safe, so that isn't the problem, and I'm certain all this sound cryptic and doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. I suppose that's pretty much where I'm going to leave you.

So now the fun part is talking to the person with whom I was nearly a roommate. We discussed going in that there was a chance this wouldn't work and that I could walk away. That doesn't make me feel any better about having to back out, and given my non confrontational nature it's even more difficult.

And that's where I am now. I suppose it's late enough that I should just kick the shoes and belt off, empty my pockets onto the coffee table and fall asleep to some Tattoo Highway.

Damn I'm ready for my next tattoo!

dollar a pop

So now both boys are losing teeth. I suppose over the last couple of years I sort of forgot that losing all one's baby teeth meant losing ALL the baby teeth. Yes, this includes the ones in the back that I don't see and don't make your cute little six year old that much cuter.

The Boy has recently started losing teeth and finding money under his pillow, and just yesterday Big Brother lost another. He has one more that he's sure is going to come out soon.

I forgot to have Big Brother straighten his bed today and noticed while tucking The Boy in. While adjusting his pillow back to where it usually goes I found his most recent tooth and slipped it back under his pillow. I was tucking him in when he checked to be sure it was still there.

We've never been big on pretending the Tooth Fairy was real, but we do like the idea of buying their teeth off them. It is sort of part of being an American child, though I imagine many people likely draw a line and stop at some point.

I took his tooth after asking him if it was okay. I know he knows better than believing in the ol TF, and he certainly knows where the money comes from that he's found under his pillow over the years. There was a certain feeling of killing off some magic upon essentially buying the tooth outright, but he's a dollar richer, so I doubt he really cares. He's that much closer to a mouth full of regular teeth and that Nintendo DS he's been saving for.

A dollar a pop? I'm glad we never set the bar any higher than we did. I can deal with that price.

Frankencar

For my Facebook friends this is likely a second reference to my Frankencar, but it's such a lovely story that I surely must share it with more of you. It's great fun. Also, I'm not telling the whole story at Fb because that's not what it's for.

Though I haven't bitched online nearly as much as in real life about it, I have mentioned a time or two that my driver's side window in my car hasn't been rolling up lately. Sadly, due to the lazy nature of myself as well as other issues I use as excuses this has been a problem that's been long in need of a solution. That solution happened today.

Before I go further I'll share some of the joys of having a window that won't roll up. I've carried everything of value that generally lives in my car in an Army surplus gas mask bag. It's a great bag, and I actually have a female friend with an identical bag that she uses as a purse. It holds a number of cd's, the front to my stereo, the bandana I wear for work, my car phone charger, an extra lighter or two, my cigarette tobacco, a spare tshirt for post work drinking, sunglasses and some other something sometimes. It's a great bag that should also have been holding my auto registration, but as soon as I carry that to the courthouse I should be okay. Another joy is our mysteriously sodden spring and summer. It's rained most days for the past few months at least a little, and one day I even got to drive in a thunderstorm with pea size hail. The car is also very easy to spot with an orange bag over the window had I ever forgotten where I parked.

Pull-A-Part, as you may likely figure from the name, is basically a large junkyard. The cars are in sections and rows, a section for domestics and a section for imports, the rows all numbered. The place is automated which was certainly a help.

Step one upon entering PAP is to visit the computer and find the make and model of your car, and while you can't search by year it does list them by year. You can then print a list of each of those cars. Other info includes the row in which each car can be found as well as the date the car was brought in. It helps to know which year's parts will correspond with your car so that you can be sure the parts will work. I wasn't quite sure of this, but knowing I needed a power window switch and having looked at it a number of times I was hopeful I could figure it out.

I visited several cars, most of which had been visited before, and each one had already been stripped of the part that I needed. A final visit to the last Accord was nearly hopeful, but considering I'd seen ten or more stripped out doors already was endangering my ability to hope. This car was three years newer than my own and fairly different in terms of body shape as well as interior trim.

I approached the car and pulled the door open happy to find the door panel intact and holding the exact part I'd been searching for, though it was obviously going to not fit exactly as it should. I pulled the panel and had to remove six screws to get the switches off. There were also three metal clips that had to be pried off and sent flying. With a little elbow grease, a fair amount of swearing and generous bit of sweat I had this part off, a part I knew wouldn't fit exactly but hoped would work.

Eight and a half dollars later I was outside again, wandering happily-ish toward my car. I needed to move quickly to get home in time for Momma to leave for work, and I wasn't able to check the part at PAP, obeying the pleasant signs that suggested one should not repair cars in the parking lot. I had hope and Lily Allen blaring as I roared up and out of the driveway, onto the road and back home.

A quick bit of prying pulled my switches out of the door panel, and some squeezing and pulling got the wiring harnesses loose. I plugged the newer switches in, turned the key and perhaps giggled a little as my window finally worked again. The newer switches fit into the door panel while not actually fitting the door panel, but I'm quite certain that I don't care. My window rolls up.

imagine I'm doing this in a dress

What a day, gay pride in my little town. For me it was somewhat anticlimactic in so many ways, most of which I must accept the blame for.

I slept much later than I should have, and though I'm not going into it, I'm so tired of waking up in this living room on that sofa. That's almost at an end, which I'm sure I've been saying, but I totally mean it this time. What matters is the effect that has on my sleeping and the fact that I totally should have been up and ready to go.

We, myself and the boys, wandered out of the parking garage in time to see the tail end of the parade and wave at the float representing my own regular gay bar. I didn't put it to them like that and didn't actually mention that particular bit of info with them at all. They did meet the bartender that semi regularly feeds me High Life and almost met the local drag queens with whom I'm most familiar.

I also drank some beer when I shouldn't have and got a little pissy at the job from which I should have asked off for the night all things considered. But as the night progressed I came to accept my fate and deal well with the having to cook for people. I'm sure there were some amount of gays dining with us for pride.

I did get lucky enough during a smoke break to catch some of the drag show on the square which was so awesome to see happening there. I really don't know the beginning of the relevance of drag queens in gay male culture, and I will soon look into that. All I know is that I didn't used to think it was my thing, and really it's still not, but I've realized over the last couple of years that I can appreciate and enjoy it. Whether it's more proof that I'm gay or whether coming out has allowed me to accept a broader array of art forms is not the debate for this post, so we'll leave it at that, but it does beg yet another question. How does one explain to his children about drag? I'm not going to bother I think, opting instead for a wait and see approach, but the thought of it came up.

I did try to give them at least a cursory explanation as to where we were going as we left the house yesterday. It's the first time I've gone with the boys to pride, and I did want them to have some idea of what was coming, but the going about it without making it a big deal is the problem.

I just want the whole gay thing to fit seamlessly. I suppose that's what we're really going for in general as a people, to just be. I think we'll know we've arrived when Pride Day is to John Q. Public what that one Mexican holiday and that other Irish holiday are. I long for the day when douche bag frat boys spend June 27 downing rainbow jello shooters while wearing kiss-me-I'm-queer tshirts even though they aren't even a little gay.

Before this turns into a pride as new year's for gays post, which it almost did but for some timely editing, I'll try to figure out where I'm going to go to wrap it up.

It was a decent day, though I'd have preferred not to have to go to work at all that day. If I'd been able to work the day shift I'd have been happy, and things would have been cool. Things were cool, but the not gay wedding we catered, though I did a great job in my part of feeding them, sort of pissed me off. If you don't know why I won't bother you with the details. We'll just let it go.

And that't that. What will happen between now and next year's pride? I can only imagine, though it's fun to think of sometimes. Things are changing as I speak.

art shit somebody did

As happens in the area where I work I ran into a friend tonight. She was fliering for an art installation she's doing, and I realized as I talked to her something great about one of the new changes I haven't mentioned because I haven't been blogging regularly like a good blogger should.

Momma has moved back to her old job making sushi very close to where I work. She's close like we can walk to either restaurant in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette close. We discussed our schedules when she took the job and settled on three days a.m. and three days p.m. each so that we are still both off opposite each other for the kids but also in a way that's fair to each of us and the restaurants we work in.

The point of all the rambling above is that I now have Friday nights off work. I realized this upon seeing my friend's flier because it just happens to happen on the very next First Friday for my little town, our local downtown come see some art shit somebody did night.

And I haven't been off and able to go since sometime last year in that brief moment that I had a boyfriend, and we tried to go to First Friday, but he had to be a dick and make us so late that we couldn't actually visit any of the galleries really. We did make it to one, and then . . . I don't even know. The night ended somehow or other, but it wasn't the First Friday I'd envisioned.

So, yeah. I'm sorta happy about this.

oh no he . . . oh . . . he did

At some point you get to where you don't know what to think about the people you think you know. I refuse to give you too much information, but this is a comment left to a friend. This was left at the friend's Facebook page. This is a person who is sort of family and sort of friend but is also neither, more the mother of a friend who was related to some family with whom divorce makes us no longer family.

Does that make sense? I can't say if it will or doesn't, but given the shake up I'm working through I can't help but not bother.

Sit back and feel the dumb as the nonsense rolls over you. I really did just copy and paste some real person's jibber jabber, and keep in mind that I'm not arguing the point this person holds valid so much as questioning the round-the-bend assumptions and suggestions.

It's because vaccination is a religion, or a cult, if you like, and as such, involves irrationality. As Dr Herbert Shelton once pointed out:

"Belief in immunization is a form of delusional insanity."

When arguing with pro-vaxers, one therefore always needs to keep in mind that one is arguing with people who are insane, due to having been deluded into believing that vaccines prevent diseases.

Basically, they should be locked up for their own good, and for the sake of other people's safety. The way they're running around loose, at the moment, endangers everyone's sanity, health and well-being.

begin the dig

Edit number one of the night included a lot of drama that I'm trying to will myself from getting into too much. I've been accused of being dramatic lately, and I suppose it might sometimes seem that way. I don't see it that way. None of that is really the point.

I brought a couple of boxes in from the garage. They're sitting in the floor behind me. I had an idea that I was going to smoke a bowl, drink some beer and sit down in the floor and go through a couple of places where I have stuff I need to look at and sort through and pack or get rid of.

Then there are those other things and even more those different things. I think about the physical property I actually brought into a relationship that became Momma and me, and I think about the mass of accumulation that is thirteen years later.

What about the books? the cookbooks? the cd's? I can't find Rufus Want One, and I'm only listening to Rufus Want Two because only he is right right now and I can't find One. I'm not happy, but really, right this second, it's not my biggest concern.

What does it say that I feel a little bit guilty about feeling so happy at the prospect of moving out? I can't explain why I feel either way. It's a bit of a mental minefield if I start thinking too much about it, and given my disposal to dwell a bit much sometimes it's best left alone for now.

I do need to go, and I suddenly have a place to go. Some amount of getting-used-to is to be expected, but just knowing the weirdness to come, the getting-used-to I guess, but it's more such a huge step in a sense.

I guess that's really all I have to say. I brought a couple of boxes in. Momma brought them home about a month ago. They are not the usual tomato boxes we tend to salvage from work as recycling boxes, and the first time I saw them I wondered whether or not she was giving me a nudge, some boxes into which I could fit my stuff that needed to leave with me.

What of my salt and pepper shaker collection? my vinyl collection on which I'll soon have nothing to play those dear records I so seldom visit? Don't even mention pictures, the old kind on shiny paper. And the random objets de art? I so totally spelled that wrong, I'm sure, though without a huge heap of concern.

I just don't know. It's probably too late to start digging through those two cabinets tonight. I still have Facebook to check and my email and reader one more time. And I'm tired from being up early for work.

an answer to my last post

I hate that I feel I need someone. I want to be able to be me for a while, to figure out what I'm doing and what I want to be doing.

The idea of a relationship feels like a life raft, except that if I'd just try, I could swim to shore, though it might take some work.

Instead, I just seem to keep trying to find a boat to climb into, and I never even make it to shore.

I could have already been there, could already have found my way, but I just keep not.

p.s. the "boat to climb into" phrase is in no way intended as a sexual reference, though upon my edit reading I've made myself giggle a little.

p.p.s. even after reasoning it out and making actual sense of my mental nonsense I still want to be his boyfriend, even if just for a little while

The people that will read this won't get it, and the person who needs to see this won't, and he wouldn't necessarily get it if he did read it, but I have to say it.

I'm not being mean. I'm being confused, and you aren't helping. I almost think I know what I want, but when you call me on it I don't know what to say. If I say what I think I'm afraid it will drive you away, and I'm afraid to answer in terms that will tell you what I think you want to hear because it would be a lie.

Quit fucking with my head.

FUCK, are all boys like this? Are they ever just open and honest? Can I just get a straight answer? Can I give a straight answer? Can I just say what's on my mind without you rolling your eyes at me?

I just want to fucking cry sometimes because boys are stupid and don't tell me what they're really thinking.

FUCK!!!

an attempt

Because I like haiku and this poor version of one has been forming slowly in mind for a day or so . . .

shaggy white heads
the clover blooms throughout
the green grass lawn

quandary

Two sort of major events are taking place on the same night. One will require a few minutes travel, while the other over three hours. There is no way I can even imagine doing both short of winning the Powerball and renting a helicopter.

One of these is a derby bout, but it's not just any bout. It's Hard Knox's first WFTDA sanctioned bout, and it's kind of a big deal. I've been looking forward to it and even have a ticket, though I could easily pass it on to a deserving soul. I really want to be there for my team, cheering them on, smile plastered across my face as I see the league sporting their new WFTDA patches.

The second of these will take a drive to Nashville, and I've really wanted to make this drive for some time. One of my oldest and closest friends is having a birthday party that day. He's invited me as has his girlfriend who I've never even met in real life. She seems to have invited me without him knowing as she explained what a great surprise it would be.

The trip is really calling to me. I could go so far as to suggest that I almost feel I need to make this trip. I haven't seen this friend in too long, at least a couple of years. At the same time I know how big a deal this bout is too our league.

I guess I just don't know. I'm almost afraid that the main issue is finances because I'm just not making that much money, and I've blown too much the last couple of weeks hanging out with the guy I keep mentioning. Financially the trip will only involve gas money. I know that the friend and girlfriend will house and feed me. I'll have to make some token purchase as a birthday gift for the friend, though not because I'll have to so much as I'd want to.

I'm leaning toward the trip.

three shades

It happened on Friday night, sitting on the patio after work. I was hoping that a certain guy would text me and want to hang out, but I was also thinking it would be nice just to get some beer and go home and hang out with Momma.

Another friend came by to have a drink and hang out, and eventually a workmate finished closing the kitchen and joined us. A short time later another person came by though didn't quite join us so much as hang out on the square side of the patio to chat for a moment.

The workmate was the one non gay person there at this point. It's always nice to see the non gay person and recognize that they are the minority for once. This has some bearing on the point of the post as you will soon see.

A customer was leaving our patio about this time, and I noticed something as she pulled her sweater on. I commented to those around me that she was wearing three different shades of pink, and indeed she was. Her skirt, top and sweater, though all pink, were all obviously different shades.

The joiner, from his side of the fence commented, "That was gay." And I have to suppose that it was, my noticing her various versions on a single color theme.

Anyway, it's not much of a story, but now you know it, and you can carry it with you your whole life.

dudes and chicks

Any of my couple of readers that are friends with me on Facebook may have seen my profile lately and may have noticed a couple of quizzes that I took recently. They were both asking me how much I knew about men and women, two quizzes, one for each gender.

Do I have to preface the whole rest of what I'm saying by pointing out that I honestly do in fact know better than to rely in any way, shape or form with the results of a quiz at a social networking site? Do you perhaps please think I'm at least smart enough to get it?

I'll give you that the quizzes seemed to rely mostly on stereotypes. I get that. On some level though I do think that some basic stereotypes about gender differences have some bearing in the general neighborhood of truth, though given each individual person that claims one gender of the two is still only going to be somewhere on the spectrum that is gender differences. Think Venn diagram, people, with lots of circles. I get it.

I think that idea of gender spectrum is something that so many people fail to fully recognize, and I may have mentioned something along these lines in a past post even if vaguely. But none of that is quite the point, though it does have some bearing.

The only reason I'm sitting here now writing this is those two damn quizzes. And believe me when I tell you that I almost didn't bother because of the process. My computer and/or my internet connection and/or Facebook and/or anything else I might be leaving out seemed to conspire against me. The first time I tried to take the first quiz asking how well I knew men I kept getting sent back to home. The link to take the quiz didn't work.

I walked away from the Fb and had a beer and tucked some kids in bed. I lazed around a tiny bit and finally had nothing better to do. Dear ol' Fb was calling. This time I was able to go right to and then take the quiz. When I was completely done and leaving the end of the quiz page I saw a link to a different but related quiz asking me how well I knew women.

So on to the quiz results and the point of all this
How well do I know men? 25%
How well do I know women? 100%

Do I now need to point out that I didn't game the results? I didn't. I don't have time for that sort of thing. Okay, I'm blogging it now, so on some level I could have had time, but I'm not doing that. If I don't like a quiz result I just don't bother posting it. You can do that. I take the quiz and try to be honest, and if there's a reason to post the result then I do. I do also get that it's meant to be fun. I did also find out that Fb thinks I'm Frenchy from Grease, so please accept that I'm keeping this in the proper place in order of importance and accuracy as regards me and myself and my place in the world.

I'm really not going into the different ways my mind works to make a big deal out of something so pointless. I guess I do feel some need to point it out, that some nonsense social network site app tells me I must be a woman. It says something on some level regardless of how meaningless that is. Maybe it's just that nearly anything is enough to set my head off on a wild goose chase of nonsense considerations. Or maybe it says I might be a little bit gay.

That's all I know about the matter.

tiny balls

Given different circumstances my night could have turned out any number of ways. I'd gone to the gay bar to meet the guy I keep mentioning. We hung out for a bit, talked, laughed, discussed the drag queens.

He needed to get home, and I was getting texts from a friend wanting me to meet her for a drink. The guy and I left, walking to his car. We talked for another few minutes and admired the interior of a soon to be new restaurant that hasn't yet opened, though I'm not sure why. The inside certainly looked as if they were just closed for the night.

We finally parted ways but not before sharing a very brief kiss, a talk-to-you-soon sort of kiss. And then the car full of assholes ran a red light just behind us. They yelled something unintelligible at us, extended their middle fingers out of their windows and accelerated away.

It should have been more annoying that it was, maybe even a little hurtful that a car full of douche bags can't just leave people alone. I could easily see that the car was in fact full, four stupid heads bouncing around inside, but as they greeted us with their tiny little minds I realized that the stomp on the gas pedal really also indicated that their balls are also rather tiny.

Anyone can yell from a speeding car. Anyone can flip you off because they think they deserve to deride anyone they feel superior to.

Of course had they chosen to stop and do something more physical the guy and I could easily have made it back across the street to the bar which likely would have emptied somewhat in a cloud of fags and drag queens. And still nothing would have happened anymore than the tiny minds speeding off and away.

Yes, I know it can be dangerous out there and that I should be careful. I also know how fortunate I am that it's now and not years ago when I would have been even less safe. I get what has happened to too many gay people. But I also refuse to be intimidated.

a piece of goodness in my morning news

So, did you hear the one about the guy willing to fight the Taliban while wearing pink boxer shorts? Seriously. Go HERE.

Perhaps you don't know it, but all of the best shit I write comes when I'm a couple or so drinks into my evening. I'm sure that's the case less often than I think at this moment, but with the smell of the gay bar still on me and the whatnot in my head, right this second it feels like I'm at my best/worst like never before.

Every time I walk away from the guy that keeps messing with my head. I'm left wondering what exactly just happened, whether or not I said what I meant to say, whether or not I read him and got what he was trying to say.

A brief kiss, shouts from a passing car, and I'm home and not as alone as I feel right now. And I don't really feel as alone as the words suggest. But I just don't know.

Maybe that what I should get tattooed across my stomach in that undeniable and barely readable old English script, "I don't know." I seem to never know.

I don't think I should have tried any harder or pushed any more, but maybe I should have. Maybe I should have tried more, but I don't think so. At the same time I'm so seldom sure of myself in certain arenas while too sure of myself and full of my rightness in others.

This being patient and slow that I've been doing feels right. This two weeks that I've been slowly chasing him, hoping he gets what I'm trying to say, it seems so right. I can't know. I don't trust crystal balls even were I to find one and see something in it. My gut says I'm okay, he's okay and we might well be. My brain does its usual and makes everything seem, not wrong, but not as right as one might want.

And I hope I'm not spinning my wheels. I hope I find traction.

On the other hand, maybe I should listen when he tells me I'm being too dramatic.

qotd

Time was still and far too fast.

from Mark Helprin's book Refiner's Fire.

minus one for overuse of the word

Things are always weird it seems. By things I don't know that I can say in a coherent way exactly what it is that I mean. My situation is weird. My head makes things seem weird. The lawnmower sounds weird as Big Brother pushes it around the back yard.

I'm tired of sleeping on the sofa, but even if I could sleep in the bed it just seems too weird. I don't want to sleep there, and I don't want to smell Momma or her boyfriend when I'm trying to get to sleep.

There's a guy I'm trying to see, and whatever is going on there, though nice, seems possibly weird. I like him, and I'm pretty sure he likes me, and we seem to be moving at a rather glacial pace toward whatever might be about to happen, and it's weird. Maybe just my ability to be so patient and my delight in this patience and the slowness are a bit weird, and it feels weird to be so okay with this.

I suppose a big part of the weirdness of feeling lately is some other feeling I'm having, this feeling like some sort of internal springs are slowly tightening. It's as if they are setting themselves for some sort of action. It's sort of like being blindfolded and led some unknown direction and knowing that at any minute I'll be told to jump, still blindfolded, totally unaware of direction or target or reason.

I want to sleep in a bed and not just once, but I want my own bed in my own place. Having managed to blow all the income tax return I'm starting over, but at least I'm starting. I have a couple hundred in my savings account that I've managed not to need to bail myself out right before payday, but the way I've been living I could easily find that gone too soon.

Alongside the coiled springs feeling is that old familiar trapped and stuck feeling. I wish that was the weird feeling, but it's like an old acquaintance, I know it whether I like it or not.

And it's cold here in my part of East TN today. Not a horrible teeth chattering cold, but a coolness that I'm just tired of. I want warmth, not a jacket.

I'm tired and tired of being tired. Part of this is just being so lazy that my body doesn't know how to do anything but stare at a computer, go to work and hold down my spot at the bar. I'm tired because I haven't been sleeping well, and I've been drinking a bit more than is good for me. I'm not eating worth shit.

And I'm not really acting to change any of this. I've said and thought that I was going to make changes, and then I've gone back to how I've been, how I've acted. I haven't made those changes, and I'm paying the price.

Later, I keep telling myself. I have time I keep saying.

on my way to work

So, I know where he works. I'm a semi regular there, and was just there yesterday for the awesome local milk we've been buying lately.

I'm so tempted to stop in, my excuse being to buy a tea, one of the best iced teas ever, while my real reason would of course be to see him for just a moment, to say hi, to see his beautiful eyes and smile.

But I'm not going to. I'll see him soon enough. Though I'm sure of that I don't actually know when, but I can wait.

like like maybe

Have you ever found yourself trying not to like a boy too much? I've only hung out with him a couple of times not counting that first night months ago when I met him, and that barely counts because that's the nature of things.

We've texted some and talked on the phone a bit and hung out over beers, and I can almost still feel the feel of his beard on my cheeks. And then there's his eyes and his laugh, and there's me trying not to like him too much.

Because I do like him. I like how plain ol' nice it is to just sit and talk to him. I like how little and how much we seem to have in common. I like when my phone makes a noise and I look and see his name.

And now I've said too much, but I want to give you the soundtrack for the evening. We're doing two different Faith No More songs, Just a Man and I Started a Joke. Check them both out, whether or not your a fan of this amazing band.

smooth criminal

Perhaps I've mentioned here, though I don't remember, but I'm having some minor car issues lately. My front, driver side window refuses to roll up. It will roll down, and it did actually roll up a couple of times last week, but no more. I have a big orange garbage bag that rides around and acts as my window when I have to park my car outside.

After work last night I met up with a nice and very attractive young man, and we went to a couple of bars and drank a couple of beers. I rode in his truck to one of the bars, and he drove me back to my car at the end of the night.

As he parked next to my car I noticed my doors were unlocked. Yes, even though it's useless to do so, I find myself locking the doors. It was parked in the garage nearest the square, and since it's inside basically I didn't bother to put my orange window up. It seems like that might make my issue more noticeable and more attractive to would be thieves.

I exited the truck of the nice and attractive guy to get into my car and noticed that the ash tray had been pulled out and dumped on the passenger seat. I should add that I've removed anything of value from the car, and I've even begun carrying a bag so that I can carry my cd's and my stereo front with me when the car is parked in public.

I should also point out that the ash tray was probably open and that I roll my own cigarettes. I'm guessing that someone noticed the open window and then noticed what looked like roaches, marijuana cigarette butts for those not down with drug lingo.

So they found nothing of value. I have to almost laugh a little, but at the same time there's also some amount of violation involved. Someone thinks it's okay to mess with my stuff and try to steal my stuff. I'm sure a working and rolled up window would have dissuaded them, but I don't know. Someone's car was apparently broken into near mine as there was glass on the ground.

And this is why we just can't have nice things. Some asshole is always on the lookout for your stuff. So, to the douchebag who got in my car, HAHA you prick! You got shit, motherfucker!

Oh, and the guy in the truck? He's nice, and he's cute, and he seems to like me. I think I seems to like him as well, and that's all the info you're getting right now.

in a good way

Last night wasn't horrid. I was on the line with the guy that bugs me, or should I say one of the guys that bugs me. And he didn't annoy the piss out of me last night.

The kid is in his very early twenties and is a college student who apparently doesn't need the money nearly as much as I do. He was an infant when I bussed my first table, a small child when I was scrubbing off the drive through lane, not even in middle school when I sliced open the two middle fingers on my left hand, leaving a scar that is still there.

I wouldn't hold any of this against him but for the attitude that he tends to have. He's tried to tell me how to cook things I've cooked thousands of. He caught me at a downtime, but I'm coming back, and I own that line when he's not there.

For reasons of seniority I tend to have to take the lesser role on the line, and to some extent that's undertandable, but no more. I'm going to take the captain's seat from him, and I'm going to show him how it works when it works right.

But none of that was even the point. I started out to discuss why last night was nice in the best possible way. It could well not have been, but I managed to save my share and have the end saved for me.

There's a guy that I met through a friend, a friend I don't see nearly often enough, and a guy that I thought was kind of cool the first time I met him. I've run into him here and there, and he's remembered me and greeted me, though it never really got past that point. I sent him a message after one of our random encounters and was probably too myself. He messaged me back in a nice way but was seeing someone. He recently sent me an IM on Facebook, and we talked for a nice long while. We seemed to have some cool things in common.

Last night at work went well. We had a nice flow of customers for graduation weekend, and we served them good food, at least mine was good, and they likely left fat and happy. I did my share of cleaning at the end of the night but didn't have to close. I'd hoped to get off work earlier than I did, but I did insist on doing more cleaning than the closer asked. It was already late enough I reasoned.

We have a great patio where I work, and I was happy to enjoy my first beer of the evening in the outdoors with some decent people to chat with. Half way through that beer I got a text from a number not in my phone book inviting me for a drink. I remembered having given the guy mentioned above my phone number, but I had no way to know that it was him till I asked.

I'd have been content last night to enjoy a beer or two on the patio and proceed homeward, but the text inviting me out for a drink and the guy won the night. I soon tossed my empty can into the recycling bin and was off for the gay bar.

And we sat and talked. I didn't drink a bunch and didn't get any. I had a nice conversation. It was nice, and in the best possible way.

And that's pretty much it.

book meme

A certain Ms. Contemplator did this meme, and it's been ages since anyone else in my little segment of my venn diagram of the blogosphere did one. It's almost like we all did all the good ones and then quit. If you're so inclined I suggest THIS song opened in another tab as your soundtrack for reading. It's Leonard Cohen, and you're welcome.

1. To mark your page you: use a bookmark, bend the page corner, leave the book open face down?
Only book marks ever! I even have favorite bookmarks. My top fave is actually a piece of brown paper that came wrapped around Momma's first and fanciest sushi knife.

2. Do you lend your books?
I hate to. I've lost too many books that way, and I'm probably a bit selfish with my books, but I love all my babies.

3. You find an interesting passage: you write in your book or NO WRITING IN BOOKS!
It's not that I'm against writing in books, though I am, and I don't do it.

4. Dust jackets - leave it on or take it off.
I take it off when I'm reading the book. It gets in the way, and it's too easy to tear it up. When I'm done reading the book I try to remember to put the dust jacket back on.

5. Hard cover, paperback, skip it and get the audio book?
I prefer hard covers because they last better, but really the book is the thing in the end. I don't do audio books, though I'm not against them, but really books are meant to be read and held and smelled. Audio is for music, and audio book listening is music listening time wasted.

6. Do you shelve your books by subject, author, or size and color of the book spines?
Currently I shelve them by author and by suitability for children versus unsuitability for children. Of course shelving also involves shelves, so we won't go into the fact that none of the stacks of unshelved books are unshelved.

7. Buy it or borrow it from the library later?
I usually do the library thing because I'm broke, but if I had money just falling out of my ass you can believe I'd be boring the kids at the bookstore and hitting up some dot coms. I love having books. I love having entire book cases full of books in my house.

8. Do you put your name on your books - scribble your name in the cover, fancy bookplate, or stamp?
I don't even put the kids names in books they are given as gifts. I just don't write in them at all. It's not that I'm against it as such, but I kind of am.

9. Most of the books you own are rare and out of print books or recent publications?
I own books for a variety of reasons. I have random text books and books that were gifts. I have huge piles of books that were bought used so that we could give the boys a big pile of books for Christmas. I have some old and likely out of print books. I have some books that I'll never read and should just get rid of.

10. Page edges - deckled or straight?
Does deckling mean that uneven edges thing? or the sparkly gold thing? Either way I find it hard to do straight stuff, so I'd choose to think of the other kind as not deckled thank you very much.

11. How many books do you read at one time?
One, because more than that means I'm not giving the book its due. Also I'm easily confused.

12. Be honest, ever tear a page from a book?
no, I'd never deface one of my own books, and if I wanted a page bad enough I'd just steal the whole damn book, or buy it. Yeah, buy it! That's what I'd do.

If you choose to do the meme, let me know.

the fun, does it ever

I'm certainly not the first person to contend that with the solution to one problem comes the very next problem. Often the problem gives us a break, a pretend respite between issues, a lull that we can pretend to fall asleep because we feel so safe.

Just about a month ago my car was repaired and no longer leaks quarts of oil onto the ground. I tallied some of the figures of some of the purchases made during the leaking days and found that I spent just over three hundred dollars on oil to replace the leaked oil, an oil pan and gasket, replacing tools that I broke, and the actual repair job itself. Add in the couple of meals between me and the boys on the couple of days when it was so much easier to just eat somewhere, and the total climbs ever higher.

And then I had a few weeks to enjoy my car. Now I have a great big orange garbage bag for a window on my front, driver side door.

From the moment we bought this car this window was slow to roll up. It wasn't bad, but it was noticeably slower than the rest. It progressively got worse, and on cold days it worked even more slowly.

Now it doesn't work. It will roll down, and it's almost all the way down now, but it won't roll up. It won't even try, and it won't even make a noise that would indicate an attempt. It doesn't even make any clicking noises, though whether or not that matters is not something I can claim to know, but the absence of even clicking noises does seem indicative of something.

Oh, and the seat belt. The seat belt in the rear on the driver's side won't come out. That's historically been Big Brother's seat, but sadly he is forced to sit in the middle. I remember as a child that we wouldn't ever have known if a seat belt worked or not because we never used them. They were pretty much just those things we crammed down into the seat, and we only pulled them out to look for a lost quarter or pencil that had been eaten by the seat.

Oh, our modern world. I'm not against seat belts and do trust that they work to keep my family safer. I'm not sure about the air bags, and that's the reason neither of the boys can sit in the front. I'd be more than happy for Big Brother to sit up front with me and not have to worry about that back seat belt, but the safety device I'm not sure about can be deadly to a guy his size, so he's stuck in the middle of the back till I get the seat belt issue resolved.

And this has been a typically east TN rainy as hell spring, and today, my day off, my day for errands and whatnot, it's raining. It's been pretty much nonstop all day varying from downpour to drizzle and all points in between. I need to run these errands, and I'm sure I should just suck it up and go, but I don't want to get wet.

I'm not really sure what to do about the window. I can call my friend to bring her meter, and we could test things to narrow down the issue, and I'm sure in the end I'll end up replacing a motor or regulator or something else I don't understand. I could get estimates for just getting it fixed and not attempt a home repair at all, and this idea seems nice given the issues I had with my most recent repair attempt, but the cheap/broke part of me doesn't want to blow the money. The not-a-repair-type-person part of me doesn't even want to bother. I've taken the inside panel off the door and peered uselessly into the frame, and I don't even want to have to do that again.

So maybe I'll make some calls, and maybe I won't. Maybe I'll run my errands and have a soggy ass, and maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just feed the boys pizza and ramen so I can take a nap and not worry about anything.

is so much fun

Last night saw me have a couple of interesting encounters. The first you won't get to hear the story of, but the second is at least worthy of a post, though I can't truthfully say it shows me in the best light.

I suppose this morning is a more apt description of the timing as I'd been out fairly late. I had had a bit to drink in the night part and ended up at someone's house. This is a someone I know, so be happy knowing that it wasn't an anonymous hookup.

"Mr. Hull, I pulled you over for speeding, and the light that illuminates your license plate is out. Also your tags are expired. Can I see your license and registration?"

"uh . . ." makes digging for wallet sound as I dig for wallet. "Here's my license. My registration is at home because my window won't roll up, so I took everything out of my car."

"Have you been drinking tonight?"

"Earlier."

"Well you smell like a . . ." I forget what I smelled like, but all I actually smelled was ass and lube, and I wondered if he could smell it and wondered if he too recognized it as the smell of gay sex, but I digress.

He went back to his car for a minute while I tried not to be blinded by the lights. He returned and first asked me why I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. I pointed out that I had been when he pulled me over, and I didn't point out that he watched me take it off to get my wallet out of my back pocket.

I watched his finger go back and forth, trying to move my eyes, feeling as if my head were turning though I tried to keep it still. I was sort of fixated on a nearly healed cut on his finger. He tried to trick me after what seemed like ten minutes worth of over extending my eye muscles by suddenly going up, but I was game for his attempt. Next I did the ten steps of heel to toe walk, turned in a small space at the end, and walked back ten more heel to toe steps. My favorite was the lifting my foot six inches off the ground and counting, one-one thousand, two-one thousand, etc. I actually made it to about fifteen before my balance required I put my foot down, and I actually said something along the lines of, "Fourteen-one thousand, fifteen-one thousand, and eventually I have to put my foot down." I may have laughed a little on the inside where the officer couldn't see.

I sat for a minute waiting, and he finally came back again and explained my charges, one of which was no insurance. I didn't point out that he'd asked for registration and not insurance, but I did show him my insurance card, and he was nice enough to scribble that charge out.

So went my second field sobriety test. The first time was a few years back, and I did it with two pulled hamstrings, injuries incurred earlier that same day while playing soccer. I passed then too.

I can't claim this as the greatest story, but it is a story, and now I have better things to do. But do take a warning. Don't drink and drive, and not just because you might spill your drink.

If you want to hear a band called The Business sing about drinking and driving go HERE. It's actually a fun song.

fave song totally?

As kids we often have favorite things, songs or foods or whatever, and sometimes this carries into adulthood, though I do find as I'm older that I can less easily narrow down a group of anything into a single favorite.

The idea of a favorite song especially is difficult as there are just so many good songs out there. In addition when you deal with songs you realize that there are so many versions of good songs, and often the different versions are good for different reasons.

Our recent library trip found us picking up a two cd set of June Carter songs. She plays and sings with everyone from her sisters to Johnny Cash and so many more. One of the songs is a song that's come to be a personal favorite, Foggy Mountain Top or Some Foggy Mountain Top or Foggy Mountaintop, depending on where you read it.

I went poking around YouTube last night with this song in mind and found several versions. Each is good for different reasons though they are essentially the same. I don't know how many verses there are in the song as each version features different verses as well as slightly differing versions in wording. The boys sing about girls, while the girls sing about boys. It may not come as a surprise, but I like the versions sung about boys.

We'll start with a slightly more modern version, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner with some really nice electric guitar HERE. I do like this version, and beyond it being Dolly it is a great rollicking kind of thing.

Next we'll check out Bill Monroe and Doc Watson. If you know good music then you are familiar with these gentlemen. Listen HERE to their version, two masters of the musical form.

And finally the ladies that started all this, June Carter and her sisters HERE. If you aren't familiar with the Carter family that's a shame. Acquaint yourself as soon as is reasonable.

As always with the YouTube, I can't be held accountable for the quality of any of the videos. I found videos with good music, and really that's what we're here for, so play and enjoy.

Dear Perez Hilton . . .

. . . or whatever your real name is, please shut the fuck up already.

Really, I didn't want to blog about this, and I'm sure we've all heard the story enough times. Miss California, as part of the Miss America pageant for girls who can walk and look pretty at the same time, was asked by celebrity slander blogger Perez Hilton for her opinion on same sex marriage. Miss CA bumbled her way through an attempt at an answer and only managed to give us a new term "opposite marriage" to describe those unions of heterosexuals. The gist of it was she's unsupportive of marriage equality.

Mr. Hilton, the blogger famous for . . . uh . . . mmm . . . drawing on pictures of young media starlets? I think? decided to call Miss CA some less than nice names. The right leaning media picked up on it, and suddenly the mouthy douche blogger is the voice of gay America?

We have Joe Solmonese and Michelangelo Signorile and many more intelligent and thoughtful people who are willing and have been willing to speak for us in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. We have blogs like Good As You and Box Turtle Bulletin to give us gay related news stories and present our side in, you guessed it, an intelligent and thoughtful manner.

So, for all our sakes, Perez Hilton won't you please go back to whatever you were doing before? Go on The View and snark about barely adult girls in too little clothing, or maybe go on some celebrity "news" shows and badmouth boy bands. Honestly, I haven't thought as much about you in the couple of years I've known of you as I've been forced to in the past week, and I'm about sick of it.

Yes, I know I'm foul mouthed and say rude things, but I do it on my blog. If I was somehow on national television, I'd like to think I could better represent my people, and I'd damn well do my best to do it in a manner that is both intelligent and thoughtful. Wow, those two words again.

So, in closing, please, if you have any respect for equality and the idea of gays being seen as equal and deserving, please, Perez Hilton, shut the ever loving fuck up already. Please?

it's called a joke

I hope that a thousand years from now mankind is still so stupid and deluded that when they stumble across my blog they suddenly have a new reason to kill each other over vague attempts to decipher just what the fuck I was saying in that archaic twenty first century brogue that I spoke way back then.

It would fucking well serve us right with our damn thumbs and chairs and art.

did they all move away?

Of the gay guys I seem to meet in this town I have found that they seem to fit into one of two camps. The random gays are generally much younger than me, what I'll call college age. I might see them anywhere, and all too often my broken gaydar doesn't really help with giving me any actual knowledge as to their actual sexuality.

Next on the list would be the guys at the gay bar. I don't hate hanging out there, at least not until the one overly large, creepy guy keeps staring at me. He won't even talk any more than a grunted greeting, staring at me as if transfixed. There are the two bartenders with whom I'm now on a first name basis. They even know to get me a High Life when I come in, though one of them does often bring me just about any other Miller product, forgetting somehow that it's High Life I want.

But really the thing that stands out about the second group, much like the first, is the general age range, though here it's at the other end of the spectrum. These are the guys enough older than me that I'm again just not interested. These are the guys who've been out for years, who see me and think of me as very young. Often that's part of the point when they talk to me, because who doesn't want to sleep with a young man?

A lot of the copliments I might pay myself are things I can prove. I do make good biscuits, and I am a fairly decent cook. The crap that I write seems often to interest people, and I even laugh again at my jokes as I reread occasionaly. I'm a decent speller most of the time, and I can take a cut on the hand or a smack to the knee while working and endure the pain pretty well, sometimes. And apparently, though I never really realized before, I'm at least not unattractive. I've had more than a few guys point it out at the bar, and though it may all be in my head, I seem to be noticing girls checking me out lately.

The point of all of this really is that middle group that I can't seem to find. There are the older than me and younger than me gays that I spot or meet or have a drink next to, but the guys my age are nowhere to be found, and don't even get me started on gays into the sorts of things I'm into. I've mentioned it before, noting that Motorhead and homosexual males don't seem a pair one often finds. The sad but oddly uplifting songs of Mr. Leonard Cohen seem a perfect gay fit, but again I have to wonder in the gay man's world of dancable pop music where I and my love for the morose fit.

So did all the gay guys my age leave town? So many of the people I meet seem to be from somewhere else, and I sometimes get a feeling as if these guys are from towns so much smaller than this town, that this town must have seemed like the big city, the welcoming lights you see from you little farming community, that this place is so big and bright and welcoming they need never move on from here. The young gays are just now getting old enough to get out and get a taste, and perhaps many of them are just here for college, or they came to school and haven't quite managed to grow up enough yet to know to leave.

The guys my age must have tired of this town and its sometimes small town feel. They must have all moved on to bigger and better and less homo insensitive places. I'll admit to having met maybe two guys my age that seem even a little interesting, and both of them are attractive and seem likely to be cool in a way that I could enjoy hanging out with them. They are also both in relationships, which should make me feel that maybe there are at least a very few gays, but why I don't seem to meet them I can't fathom.

I do love this town, but I do sometimes yearn for a bigger place, a place with more people, a place I stand a chance of meeting someone. It's more than an age issue or a compatibility issue or a musical taste issue, but it's at least those three things, and it's more.

Of course, the chance I'll get to leave this town are nearly nonexistent, and my actual desire isn't necessarily to leave or to stay. As usual, what I really want is not something I can so easily tease out of the murky swirl of thoughts inside my head, that layer upon layer of ideas and possibility.

I'm sure there's great advice, unhelpful things one could say about being myself, being patient, work on being the person I want to be, take care of my own needs, don't rely on a guy for happiness or some such shit. I'm sure I'm doing those things to some extent. Whatever, I just want to meet these guys that I know have to still be here somewhere.

grrr!

In the last two weeks, two young boys, boys very near the age of Big Brother (my oldest son for any new readers) have committed suicide. These two children killed themselves because they were tired of being bullied and harassed.

They were tired of other kids being mean to them, and they had dealt with it so much that, at eleven years old, the only solution they could come up with was suicide.

What was the majority of the slander they dealt with? They were being called gay and were referred to as faggots. Were they faggots? Were they gay? Does it fucking matter when you are eleven years old?

How is this okay?

To anyone who thinks that homosexuality is a sin or is wrong, how can you possibly explain away the sort of bias that would drive an eleven year old child to kill himself? I don't care what you think at this point. I don't care what you think about me. I'm gay. I'm a faggot. Condemn me all you want. If your god really loved I think there's a good chance that he would take it a little easier on children who don't even know what sex is but are being damned anyway.

Read your fucking gospels already. Read your blessed are the meek. Read your blessed are the peacemakers, and then show me where the verse is that reads blessed are those that drive children to kill themselves.

Enough already.

P.S. if you don't know about the stories to which I refer at the beginning of this post then try using Google. Seriously, google the words "gay suicide" and see what you come up with. Hell, you don't even have to google it yourself. I made you a handy link. It's as easy as clicking.

omg is that guy still alive?

Somewhere behind me the television is on, muted so that I can listen to The Cure and Rufus Wainwright on YouTube. I never got into Joy Division, but HERE is The Cure doing the song of theirs that I did like.

I have flannel pajama pants and a dirty shirt, a sofa and a quilt awaiting me. On the t.v. is Richard Lewis, his same weird ass mullet like thing of a hair do and that creepy "stop laughing at me" overcoat. I don't know if it's a "classic" performance or something new. He looked old and raggedy when the '80's taught us that all stand up comedians are not created equal, and a sitcom does not a funny person make.

I'd for reals rather be here with you listening to sad and/or gay ass music. Speaking of which, and actually happy instead of sad, how about some Judy Garland HERE? Yeah, I thought about Rufus, but I went Judy.

If you wanna, go HERE to hear Sara Vaughan do yet another song I considered giving you the Rufus version of.

Do I sound fixated by a certain Mr. Wainwright? I'll admit he's hot, and some of us remember my swooning because of him. That was soooo long ago in blog history. Things are so different now, or are they so much? So much of my life feels back to normal while so much still feels in a state of turgid agitation.

Turgid agitation sucks donkey dick. But it's not so bad. What makes things better would be some more good music, and if you like Emmylou Harris and Dwight Yoakam then you will love THIS.

Know who else makes me swoon? A certain Leonard Cohen. We end with him doing a song I hear done live recently, but first, the guy that did the song we're going to hear Mr. Cohen doing. HERE is Chris Scruggs doing a different song, and HERE is Leonard Cohen doing the song that is the point of all this. It's just some music I like by artists I like.

It may seem odd to have thrown in Chris Scruggs above, but I saw him live recently, and he kind of makes me swoon a little(a lot) and he did the song I ended with. His version was much better, but since we can't find that on the YouTubes we'll just settle for the other version.

I hope you enjoyed this musical journey, and if you didn't then you just don't have any tast whatsoever. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do to help. I tried my best.

arguing with arguing

One of my brothers, on his blog, is discussing freedom of speech being used in arguments. His suggestion is that we too often do not allow the same freedom that we demand. Go HERE at Chris is Searching to read his point, then come back for mine. I almost commented last night when I saw this, but I was a little woozy and maybe somewhat goofy from the combined efforts of antihistamine and a couple of beers. I hate Tennessee allergies!

So, we've decided there are any number of arguments one could have, and we know that there must be at least two opinions in contradiction to each other. We've also pointed out that communication can only happen when both sides listen and attempt to understand. That may not have been verbatim from the post, but it's there.

So what do we do when we feel that there is no argument other than the one an opposing opinion tries to force? I'll continue using Chris's example of gay versus straight, because, in my opinion, there is no actual argument here. What there is of an argument involves not mere straight people but a religiously motivated point of view that refuses to accept the vast majority of points I and other gay people might make.

If we argue about sports teams then we can actually have some sort of argument. Perhaps my team has better attacking and a solid defense but tends to lose it in the midfield. Perhaps your team has a great midfield and a great front line, and perhaps they can serve balls into the box all day, but your attackers just aren't getting shots on goal.

Arguments as to which team is better or more likely to win are valid to a point. There are points on each side that one should consider. But getting back to Chris's example, what if I just can't accept that the arguments from the other side are valid? I can say that I don't believe biblical restrictions should apply when discussing civil law which isn't the same as reminding you that your team has drawn or lost as many games as they've won.

My argument as a gay person is that before and more importantly than my orientation is that I'm a human and a US citizen which should be all I need to demand equality. I should have the same rights and responsibilities under civil law as any other person. The only possible counter to this is going to be derived from a religious point of view that somehow wants to demand that everyone follow their pov/code/laws regardless of personal beliefs.

So, giving you your freedom of speech is one thing, but we also have to take into account the argument itself. I'm willing to allow you freedom of speech as well as freedom of thought, but if you are going to argue any point of view then we have to start from similar places.

I'd like to ask anyone willing to indulge in freedom of speech with me. I'd like to hear an argument that could be seen as gay versus straight that doesn't involve religious views or the Bible or any other text that any group considers as their sacred code. I want to hear from a civil point of view that involves us living here and now in 2009. I don't want "that's how we've always done it" or "god said it so it must be true." I don't want Leviticus, though if Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Payne mentioned gays I'd be interested.

an eleventh and a first

One more has passed, another anniversary of the day Momma and I got married. Little did either of us know what all we were in for even given the couple of years before that.

We didn't celebrate, though I did joke about it in passing. We actually both worked. I'm finally being given Saturday a.m. shifts and arrived this lovely morning at nine-ish and dove straight into the work. I quickly had the line set back up having put up so many of these items a mere ten hours earlier.

I opted not to do a prep list as I waited for the boss to come in. Whatever time I spent doing it would be wasted as he would just redo it anyway, so I began making bread. I know this has to be done, and I know it's one of the main things a day shift has to focus on here.

Meanwhile, later in the evening, I've agreed to help work a catering event, an event I was offered days earlier. After a barely frantic couple of texts, I had secured the services of a friend and her kid, a most lovely pair. There was most of a day wait in between the request for services and the actual agreement, a wait I felt each interminable moment of.

There was some amount of rushing around between the two halves of my working day, mostly to purchase frozen pizzas for the babysitter to feed the kids and of course home to shower and change. I rushed back downtown to pick up food then headed east to the event.

I missed the ceremony, and I don't know what the couple whose celebration I helped cater prefer to call it, but for all intents and purposes and as close as we can get right now a lesbian couple got married, and I fed them pasta. Did they know they had even more gay at their wedding/union/pairing/swearing thingy than they bargained for? Of the two male bartenders plying their trade I would bet that one of them is also gay. We have discussed my broken garday I'm sure, so I can never be too certain.

My night ended back at work, with the same person with whom I'd so recently been catering, bent over the triple sink scrubbing dishes. It so shouldn't have been our job, and I was two beers into my needing to go home, and I had my nice clothes on, and my shoes are still dirty, but thankfully the shadows are being nice right now, because I just looked, and it kind of feels better that I can't see it. But some of the dishes were ours from the event, even though we basically bailed the dishwasher out of his own self imposed dilemma.

I ended up making the agreed upon amount for my services as well as an extra tip that was half as much as what we knew we were making. I gave it all to the babysitter, especially considering the bad habit of coming home late again.

The evening ended with some perusal of the internets. It was its ever lame thing, the glow in the night that drags us to it, that constant drip of water that no amount of attention ever seems to stop, those internets.

And now it's a day later. I'm sore from toting food and dishes and from falling on slick tiles and hurting my hip. I'm tired just because I am. I'm just generally in a mood anyway lately, so there's always that.

whaddaya hidin'

According to Sean Braisted at Nashville for the 21st Century, Nashville's Metro Council has a bill that would require restaurants to post nutritional information for their food. As is to be expected, restuarants and their flunkies are fighting the bill, arguing that it would be too unwieldy and/or expensive and/or . . .

I've worked in restaurants for years and expect I will continue to do so, and I've considered this issue before. I don't really dwell on the idea, but I am sometimes surprised that more people don't seem interested in nutrition data in restaurants. Sure, if there's an actual need, allergies for example, they will ask appropriate questions, but people don't very often ask beyond that.

Fighting this sort of bill is a lose/lose situation for restaurants in my opinion. As restaurateurs we should have nothing to hide, and we should be willing to admit what we've done to your food. As people we should be willing to share the information because it's the right thing to do.

But there are considerations, things that should not give our representatives and lobbyists reason to fight the bill but should give us all a reason to work together. You don't want an extra fifteen feet of drive through signage, and you don't want to look for the walking fingers on the front of your suddenly book thick menu.

I would personally want the information available if I owned or managed a restaurant, but I don't know how I'd post it. How big would a menu need to be to contain all the info the customers should be privy to? How would you put that on a drive through menu? Would it be good enough to have this info available online, or could we just have printouts for customers?

So, I'm a cook, and Metro Council bill or not I'll tell you what I put in your food. Of course considering what the politicians from my end of the state cook up on a regular basis, nutrition info is only so important here in the east. We're more likely to get bills that ban things that make the menu sound gay or potentially gay.

omg five things that somethinged

Of the cars I've driven more than a few times, or semi regularly, over the years I'd have to say I probably owned as many as not. One of these cars was a certain green thing that certain friends or family might well remember.

Of the people I think of as friends there is really only one person I knew from this time with whom I'm still friends. I'm still related to most of the people I was related to then, but there are a shit ton more than then, but that isn't the point. I'm as friends with my relatives as I am, and the less said about that this moment the better, in a good way, seriously.

That one friend will remember this car, and there's a good chance that we were in it the first time I told someone that I thought I was gay. He was cool then, and he's cool today. Another guy I knew very briefly who gave me my first beginning to end, all the way blow job, the kind with no expectation at the moment of reciprocation, might also remember the car. So began my love of the blow job, but again, that's so not the point.

The point is the car, this particular thing that was in my family for a number of years. The last car my grandmother owned, the car I took over when she passed it on when she could no longer drive, the car that my oldest sister in law learned as a young adult to drive to work in, was a singular car in my mind. It boasted all the electrical amenities available in the very late seventies, was large and American made. There was an extra pillowy layer of cushion on top of the seat cushions that made it extra soft.

I hadn't thought of the dirty story from above for a number of years, but the damn Facebook did me in. Anyone there has seen the five cars quiz going around. If you know me there you may well have wasted some small amount of time looking at tiny pictures that fail to accurately represent what these cars truly represent for me. One could even imagine them as little time capsules of memories of times. This car certainly represents a certain time for me.

As mentioned a couple of fairly gay moments came to me in this car. What's gayer than coming out and sucking dick? And again, I hadn't really considered this car in a number of years till that damn Facebook quiz. I saw a friend had done it, and it looked cool. I've come close enough to owning the cars or had some share of ownership in them.

And then one of my brothers did the same quiz, and there among his five cars he's owned is the same car. The car in the picture is so far from the same color, but just seeing that shape and imaging that car, the nonsense and fun of being young, I was taken back in time to a moment so long ago. Such young, carefree days as only happen when we are too young to know better.

And years later, remembering this car, the trickle of ownership it saw for such a long time. Grandchildren rode in this car to eat at the cafeteria, then young gay man explores sexuality in a strip mall parking lot, while years later a young wife and mother goes about her day, all the above in style and luxury.

Don't get me started on the sofa in the garage that was left by a different grandparent in the house in which I currently reside. It was only recently that the sofa reached the garage, replaced by another sofa from my mother in law. Don't get me started on that sofa either.

can't take the mess

This house has been one of America's top ten biggest residential messes for what seems like months now. I'd take a picture, but that would be too depressing to show anyone.

I have made a start in making a dent in the mess.

Keep in mind that it's ninety percent toys, and I seriously doubt I had a hand in making this toy mess. I have now put up a few, mostly just retaping the bottom of the Cootie box and putting the Cootie parts back in it, and I also picked up all the Battleship pegs that had gotten dumped out of both the red and the blue game boards, or whatever you call them. Battlegrounds maybe?

My next offer of help came in the form of separating toys by type or end location, meaning putting all the Legos in a pile and all the Transformers in a pile and . . .

I've done this in both the playroom and living room. It all happened yesterday, and magically the piles are still mostly separate and distinct.

Now I just need to motivate two boys to finish the job. I won't mention their bedroom, but the floor is invisible beneath a sea of Legos and Littlest Pet Shop and Playmobile. I sound like a really crappy ad for all these toys right now.

And it also just shows how we aren't hippy parents with primary colored, peaceful toys. We don't have large chunks of wood sitting around inviting imagination, and we don't have anything made out of foodstuffs that was both experiment and play. There's nothing wrong with any of that, but it's just not us. We have light sabers and toys that do unending battle with evil. We have monsters and pirates. We also have two naked Raggedy Andys, but that's neither here nor there.

Of course there is a pile for books, everyone from James Patterson to Richard Scarry to Bionicle instructions. I currently have a book pile in the bathroom, but we aren't worried about my tiny mess just now. It's the kids we're worried about.

And that's my day. I keep mentioning cleaning and how I've made it too easy, but we have as of yet failed to do any cleaning. I need to do one or two loads of laundry and put up some clothes I folded last night. I've emptied the dishwasher and need to reload it. I have beer cans to stomp for recycling and a few new ones to rinse. I also need a shower and to be at work by four. Maybe I'll remember to take my knife and sharpen it on the stone at work.

If nothing else gets done I'll definitely work. It's a Monday, and the weather report I checked last night indicated rain, and the sky outside looks as if it's promising a good dousing, but so far it isn't the one hundred percent chance of rain that NOAA suggested. That means I won't have a whole hell of a lot of work to do at work, but it is the one inescapable component of my day.

So, now my plan truly comes to fruition. I will now finish blogging and go find the boys. I'll share with them the news that I need a shower and remind them that video games are a good diversion for them while I'm in the shower. They will be offered the trade of picking up small piles of toys for video games. The older will take the bait quite readily, but the younger, still not able to quite put together the concept of future reward versus current dislike of work, may take some prodding.

And in the end the house will be less not clean. I'll be able to see more of the wretched carpet and will be reminded of the need to vaccuum. I'll put it off for a couple of days while the blanket of toys reforms throughout the house.

And then I've got my week planned.

not really parallels

Something came up in my reader in one of the blogs that I've only recently discovered, The Bygone Bureau. It has absolutely nothing to do with the German homeschool whatever, but it is about aspects of German education as seen by an American living in Germany and teaching.

If you aren't a homeschooler or into home education news then you may well have no idea why I even mention Germany and homeschooling together, but if you are aware of this particular not a news story then you can imagine I thought of it when I saw an article about Germany and education. I'm only aware of the story because as homeschoolers we can't help but at least know it exists as a story.

Unlike my usual m.o. I offer no opinion. I found the article interesting, but then this writer, Locke McKenzie and the particular blog The Rambling American were what coaxed me to look further at The Bygone Bureau in the first place.

driven to the brink

Via advocate.com today I read the story of an eleven year old boy committing suicide. According to his mother he was tired of being teased and bullied and called gay. The article doesn't tell us whether or not the child was or was not gay, but I don't really think it matters.

According to the mother she attempted to work with the school and tried to get them to stop the bullying, and according to her the school was entirely unresponsive.

And now for my anger.

1) what is so hard about not allowing school children to use discriminatory language? Are the kids also allowed to use racially based words to insult each other? Are they allowed to use religious based words to insult each other? When will it no longer be okay to use words that belittle based on an assumption of sexual orientation?

2) why would a parent continue to put their child in situations where they are terrorized in such a way? Why not stop sending the child to a place, even if it is school, where they are going to be antagonized and hurt on a daily basis?

I don't want to think about this story, because honestly I have enough on my mind. I can depress myself quite easily. And if I think about this poor little boy, this child so close in age to my oldest son, if I think about it I'm going to cry, and I'm going to be angry, and I'm going to wonder about the children who drove this child to take his own life. I'm going to wonder about the type of parents who raise children to treat others like this.

As long as there are people in this world willing to demonize me and other gay people then we are going to continue to see this sort of fallout. We are going to continue to see children taking their lives, and we are all poorer for having these hate mongering monsters still alive, still walking around, still screaming their homophobic epithets and claiming victim status when we demand they stop. The real victim is gone. He wrapped an extension cord around his neck and said, "no more." Why was this the only way to stop his hurt?

we have plenty in the freezer

In the distance, slowly approaching, I hear it, the ice cream van.

I hate the ice cream van. It's not just the obnoxious music or the even more annoying "HELLO" that sounds so full of attitude.

More than anything it's probably my cheapness coupled with my lack of funds. I get tired of telling the boys no. I want to buy them ice cream, and I'd love to buy the ice cream based novelties sold out of the annoying van. The boys some days want so much to get ice cream from the van.

But I hate the van. I hate hearing it blocks away and never knowing exactly where it is. I hate people marketing to my children, especially getting up in our faces pretty much in our home. Television commercials are one thing, providing fuel for a steady diet of "I want that." But they are commercials, and I think that, from a fairly young age, most of us grow immune to the near constant deluge and are able to shut out the ads.

Not so with the damned ice cream van. Even inside the house the sound worms its way in, and there it is "HELLO" amidst the horrors of music that could only be worse were it a midi file, though that may actually help, but given the two options it's sort of like the difference between wiping your ass with sand paper or just slapping it clean with the binder of a spiral notebook.

oh so tired

I did not sleep for shit last night. I didn't drink much, and I really don't want that to be the reason I couldn't sleep, but considering I spent the night in the bed of someone I don't actually know doesn't really sound like the greatest reason either.

After getting off work last night I carried my shift beer up the square to the pub only to decide that I wouldn't be spending any time there due to the horrid nature of the music. I went to the little honky tonk bar for a beer only to learn that there was no one there I wanted to hang out with. A quick beer there, and I left for the gay bar.

I didn't expect much there, not much more than a beer. I knew there was a really good chance that I'd run into the last two guys I let pick me up, and I did.

One of those two didn't see me at first, though I saw him. I wasn't actively avoiding him, and I'd be willing to spend more time with him, but I'm not sure what he's looking for any more than I can pinpoint exactly what it is I'm looking for. He gave me the old "did you lose my number?" routine which I served right back. His phone is no more one way than mine. Of course now I'm debating whether to text him and start our conversation up again. I'd kind of like to see him, but I just don't know. He had to have seen me leaving with the guy I left with, especially considering he was sitting next to me at the bar when I left.

One of the bartenders was off and hanging out. He's young, really hot, and dating someone. He approached me at one point to say Hi and that he had a friend he wanted to set me up with, a friend he claimed needed a boyfriend. I was open to meet someone.

And then suddenly there was someone else sitting next to me at the bar, a fairly young looking and fairly hot someone, a guy giving me this look and telling me that he thought I was hot. I can't say that I went there with the intent of hooking up with someone, but I have to admit that some amount of going to the gay bar involves some amount of at least willingness to hook up.

And I didn't sleep for shit. It's been a while since I had one of those doze for a minute wake for a minute nights, and last night was one of them. I'm not unhappy with any of what happened, but again, given my two options of why I didn't sleep, I can't say either of them make me proud. Either I'm a drunk or a slut, both labels I'm okay with wearing for the moment but not the place I want to be.

dear friend

I know that you think your boyfriend is hot. He does seem to have a nice enough body under his overalls, and believe me when I say I don't have anything against overalls.

Yes, the hillbilly mohawk is kind of cute(ish) on him as is the chinhawk(not really) and yes he is amazing on the pedal steel.

It's probably a very good thing that you are so attracted to him, and honestly, why else would you have initially gotten together were it not for a mutual sexual attraction? That's pretty much how we humans seem to find ourselves in these sorts of things.

I don't find your boyfriend unattractive, but really, do you need your gay friend to agree with your opinion of your boyfriend's hotness? Do I really have to tell you what you want to hear?

So, really, let it go already. I'm not going to pretend he's hot, so you can stop pretending to be so damn offended. We'll still be friends, and I'll still not want him, and that's okay. I've got enough issues with straight guys that I don't need yours added on.

Thanks!

allowed

"God is allowing me to go back to school." So reads a message from a "friend" posted on Facebook. Other friends have commented back, generally congratulating this person on their utter helplessness in the face of the absolutely mundane thing he has allowed god to do, a thing that millions of people do all on their own with no need to thank an interstellar being.

I'm amazed at this sort of thing, though I should be used to it, as it's the sort of mindset that I grew up with. It's as if we are just mindless automatons that can't think or do for ourselves without the guiding hand of space grandpa providing his willingness to allow.

I'll admit that I haven't made the best decisions in life, and I'm likely to make some bad decisions in the future. I let myself down much more often than I should, but I'm willing to admit this and own my mistakes. I don't need someone of questionable existence to accept all the blame or all the credit for what I do.

I guess I just don't get it. Of course these are the people who see an accidental pregnancy as the payment you must accept, along with the next eighteen years of child rearing, as a just punishment for a sexual indiscretion, so I think we can accept that their reason is often a bit skewed.

But seriously? God allowed you to get into school? And I bet he spoke in the ear of the person reviewing the different applications? Did he secretly rubber stamp the application when the office wasn't looking? Did he make the other applications illegible?

I'm ending up so far from any point I thought I was going to make and have ended up too close to crazy wing nut rant land. I can't think clearly when it comes to this sort of thing. I think I'll turn the rant off for now.