July 11th!

Because, really, is it any different than the 5th?

So this has been a pretty hetero week for me. The female ta-ta, as a duo, are still some of the world's best looking sound. When pushed up, propped up, straining to float free, or in full jiggle--them thangs is fun to look at!!!

Then I introspect that if I were hetereo, the girls are all I'd look at when Johnny Jogger comes pounding by with no shirt on. So in this leg of the journey, I'm starting to realize that instead of clinging to my female attraction to define myself as hetereo, the truth is that the existence of my male attraction is as much if not moreso a defining trait too. Possibly it's a defining trait that cancels out the other? Maybe the breast attraction is just the residual of having been a baby and primitively desiring breasts because that's where survival was supposed to have come from. No breast-attraction, no life.

And I'm coming to realize stuff about my comicbook-loving geek nation now that I'm examining the depths and heights of my own homo-ness. Just because so many of my cyberfriends are married w/children, it doesn't mean they don't get the same kind of thrill that I do looking at a dude's physique.

After all, what FIRST attracted them to comicbooks? Definitely not the STORIES because that's not the first thing a young boy sees when he hovers toward the comicbook display. He sees colorful, spandex-clad muscles. In equally colorful speedos.






It's true.

And mostly on the comicbook page does a pair of bright red speedos look normalized and functional. A kid can look at Superman and not have any witnesses thinking "Why is that kid looking at male erotica?!?" But what if that's what it's been all along?

Well, to that I can add this; at Geek Central, my cyber buddies are the biggest same-sex flirters you'd ever want to meet! 90% of them are married and 85% of that bunch have kids. But they think nothing of telling a fellow dude poster that they're sexy, got a "purty mouth," etc.

Which brings me back to my idea of fluid sexuality. Which isn't just MY idea. You guys have agreed with me on this. And we know A LOT of homosexual folks have sexed and had children with hetereo-sex partners, before and after taking a homosexual identity. So my cyberbuddies who flirt with each other online (and over the podcasts) are most likely not 100% hetereo. And really, is ANYONE? But they might in fact be a lot less hetereo than the average dude, due to their (our) love for colorful, muscley, underwear-on-the-outside wearing heroes. And they still managed to snag a girl and make whoopie enough to produce babies.

I can't be mad at that. I only wish I could be one of them. With all my heart.

In other news, my Friday night D&D group has not been meeting for over a month now because the DM and his girlfriend (fellow player) has had a baby. She was looking pretty uncomfortable and all swole up for the last month before she popped and they live together so he's also doing the new dad thing instead of running off to us to run our game. So I'm a little bitter about that. All these otherwise hetereo geeks having dates and shtupping women and making babies, leaving me alone.

In similar news, the longterm geek squad (which includes Jester) wants to get together today, and I actually don't feel like it. I'm actually over my crush on Jester. In a major way. It seems he can't do any right anymore. All the strengths and compassion I thought he had seem well-hidden under his emotional aggression and resistance. All I imagine it will be when we get together is me fending off his negativity as we all conversate, joke, dine, watch movies, roleplay, or what have you.

And the biggest thing--I can't share my struggles with them. For being my friends for such a long time, they are the group I feel most the most uncomfortable "coming out" to. Which, again, my "coming out" isn't a major event any more to me. Giving this information out to my friends won't change what I do on a daily basis. I'm still petrified of The Deed and all it's permutations. I still want to be as hetereo as my other speedo-friendly, married, fathering geek buddies.

But what I want TODAY is to have fun with my friends, and I don't feel like that can happen anymore. So I don't really want to go meet up with them. I'd rather go to the gym, get my walk/jog on to Janet in Central Park, nap if I wanna, and produce more audio goodness!

We'll see how it goes.

Happy July!

July 5th!

Impossibly, I put a big chunk of work into the audio, took a nap, and then jumped on the D train and went to Coney Island for an afternoon romp! What I discover I like about Summer--all the sunlight with which to DO stuff!

Take a stroll with me!

Thinking Of Y'all All Day Yesterday

as I took these photos and movies.

Included in the sets are the following, but here I will comment especially;
I wonder if this guy is as mean as Jester? He was fairly smiley. And he was out here and sociable. Another plus.
Cool muscley legs, right? C'mon, tell me I'm not the only one thinks that muscle definition is cool...

This guy wasn't very defined, by he had beefy muscle and he seemed like a nice, open feller from his body language. Nice guys go a long way toward my crush factor.
Anyway, enjoy this and the others.

So I Almost Lasted A Week, Right...?

...Not blogging about my gayness?

But I do want to thank you guys for the concern about the possibility that Jester could do me some kind of serious harm. My first reaction was that Jester would never ... but then I realized, I thought I would never say something like "I'm gay" and mean it, either. And I've had enough team-ups with Worst Case Scenario Man to know not to discount any possibility. And I've have seen some personality alterings in ol' Jester that makes it seem possible that he could snap. A crime of passion. Very entertaining, but I wouldn't get to enjoy it. So eff that. Plus, Jester doesn't deserve to know this part about me. He's antagonistic about all aspects of my emotional life, so quite figuratively screw him.

What I'm concerned about is getting this weight off and making myself attractive again. To me. And someone who would like the Jason Statham type. Because I want to give as much as I ask for.

And yeah, I do think I'm going to ask for something in the next few years. I'm lonely and I feel crazy being alone. I still love the look of ladies' ta-tas,

but I've not been turned on enough to ever go after them in any heterosexual way. I've never been driven by "red-blooded" chest-beating, loins-throbbing, knuckle-dragging urges to get in that. And that's just one of a few nails in the coffin of my hopes to be hetero.

But right now I have my keyboard in my lap and my fat stomach is a hard pillow in the way of my wrists. It's big and fat and not washboardy or even flat, it makes bending down to put my socks on a chore, and it makes all my pants tight enough to cause pressure wounds under my navel from the pants' button.

I'm not going to attract the kind of guys I like if I don't look like them, methinks. Because we men are a superficial, shallow, and visual bunch. And even if I attract them, I'm way too vain for them to see me nekkid.

Ugh. Again I'm getting the willies. I hate this stuff. I hate sex. I hate the whole friggin idea of having a part of me that I can't control or get rid of without psychiatric intervention.

It is not fair.

Okay, moving on.

Yeah, so overeating.

I'm doing it because it's something I can have NOW, without initial guilt, and the gratification is immediate and fulfilling. Literally. But also, I find I've been doing it because I've had this extra money I've been saving up. So when the urge hits to swaller a cheeseburger from a diner instead of McDonald's, chomp chomp chomp. Or when I want a decadent dessert. Or when I want candy ice cream candy fruit smoothies candy potato chips candy. Or a steak. Or shrimp.

So since I have to pay my taxes anyway because of all the untaxed income from the therapist's gig, I might as well pay back my friend loans too. It will empty my savings, but they'll build up again just like they did the first time. And meanwhile, I won't be so free to pig out. I've got shelves and shelves of Nutrisystems, so I won't starve even if my savings DIDN'T replenish.

But I want my 34-inch waist back. It would go SO good with my broad shoulders and my stout chest. I mean, hey. I'm a good-looking guy, dammit! I want to be the best I can be! Even if it's not for a woman anymore (which y'all don't really care anyway. I've done my research. I know these things.)

Okay, so the coming-out process. I still don't want to do it. I don't want to be defined. I don't want to be labeled. I've never wanted that. EVER. And I still don't want my friends to re-categorize me. I don't want my co-workers ... ah. Fuggit. I can't control what people think. For better or ill. I can't although I desperately want to and have a personality tailor-made to. It's for nought.

You're going to like me because you just do, or you won't because you just don't. I can only control myself, and as my waistline proves, I can't even do that without some real effort.

So yeah.

So anyway.

How are y'all? Y'all some QUIET Bloggers out there, I swear!

I'll try to post pics or vids from the fireworks tonight. They're blasting off over the Hudson this year (where the plane went down) and I'm hoping they won't seem too miniature from the George Washington Bridge, because that's where I'm going to be.

Happy Fourth of July!

Independence day.

Mmph.

And What's More ...

... I'm now blogging from work in Jersey. I was supposed to come and find paperwork waiting for me to update in my e-mail Inbox but it's not here. And after the time and brainspace I spent to get down here, I don't even really care about the job or the missing paperwork at this moment.

Rather, I've been thinking about my yesterday--my day off and the time I spent with my Westchester friends. The night ended on a sour note due largely to the reaction I usually have to the behavior of the Grim Jester. He's an Alpha Male and a bully. I've said all that already. I've tried to adjust to that. But last night, in an innoculous and stupid boardgame, Jester got aggressive and just so ... creepy ... about winning. It seemed, all over again, that Jester just views me as an insignificant cog in the machine created to trump up his own importance and domination. And that nothing is more important than his ascendence, his dominance, his opinion, his way. All the way up to the part where he began to lose the game, we were having a great time. We were all enjoying the sport of dice rolling, strategizing, pretending to be world dominators. We were seeing the many layers of the game design and having fun projecting our thoughts onto the gameplay. "I own all of Africa now! Motherland, I've come home!" we could joke.

But then Jester stood to lose to his longtime friend and suddenly none of us (me and the other player) mattered any more. It was between him and his rival only. We became only a means to his end, and when we dared to play our own turns as we saw fit, he grew sarcastic, angry, threatened to leave early--just very very childish in a very bullying and intolerant way. Such an ugly, ugly way to be.

And why does it keep taking me by surprise, every time he does it?

Well because I want more from him. I want him to be what I want. Which, for the length of my drive to work today, I realized what that is.

I want him to be the guy that I come out of the closet with.

Jester makes me think of the reasons why I think I am finally, unavoidably, irreverisbly gay. He's the guy that, when I like him--I REALLY like him. He's the guy who makes me think of him both in fond emotional ways and in gritty physical ways. And he's the guy that I want the most from in all my social circles. I want his attention, I want his protection, I want his approval, I want his acceptance, I want his affection, I want his trust, I want his strength, and I want his dependence.

I've harbored this knowledge for some time now, and I'm talking years. I've lit up like a Christmas tree when in drips and drabs he's given me bits of all those things I want in the preceding paragraph. And now I'm putting it in writing.

I want the guy. Just like any leading lady wants the leading man. Yeah, I'm gay. And I'm not just gay--I'm the bottom gay. The wife. The one who gets slapped, who does the crying, who pouts, who has mood swings. The feminine one. The emotional one.

I just am.

And I'm trying to learn to accept this because it hasn't changed in 30 years. I've always been this way. I've never been the jock--I've been the guy to hang out with the cheerleaders. And even though I've been trying to reframe and review what's been my motivators, my drives, my epistemological origins to being what I have been--I just still am this.

This is what I am.

And I need to stop hating it and hating myself for it.

And no, I do not ever have to do anything about it. And I'm not inclined to. I neither have to act on it or scrub it out of my soul. I don't have to seduce Jester (and face it, he'd be an extremely troublesome boyfriend. Just ask his dearly departed girlfriend who he could never do right by until her death last year. Or just ask his friends, among whom you can count on one hand. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just weighing the evidence. I'm trying to keep myself in check and keep myself from believing a lie about the man, or believeing a lie about my future with the man. For all I know, and there is real evidence to support that the man could be in his own self-loathing closet of homosexuality--God knows he protests against homosexuals enough, and often. But as a person, either straight or gay, he's a miserable human being most of the time. So who cares that he looks like Jason Statham?).

No, all I have to do is just BE. Just be myself--and be honest with it. And while doing so, leave it up to God to judge me. I just have to stop fearing Him and what He might think about me. In fact, start trusting that He knew all this about me for the past 44 years of my life, and STILL loves me. Because really ... everything I could have tried to do about it, I've done. You couldn't ask more of a man than what I've done to be straight, love straight, act straight, stay straight and scare straight. I've faced the condemnation of Hellfire & Brimstone itself. And still, this is what I am at the end.

I'm gay.

And that's all I want to say about that, really, for the rest of my life.

Let's see how that works out.

Not Fade Away

I know that title of this post is either a book or a song (maybe a title of an album? I'll Google it later). But I use it anyway because I want to wrestle with some fear and some concern.

It the shelf life of a blog two years? Or is that the expiration date on a blog relationship?

What I don't want to do is shut a door that doesn't ask to be shut. And I don't want to assume meanings that do not exist when things are silent.

But I do want to let people go if they don't want to be kept. (No I don't. I want to fight for them. I want to sit in the middle of the sidewalk and have a tantrum and not care who thinks it's strange. I want to give in to my abandonment issues and rage against the fear.)

But hugely, I don't want to burn out a relationship with my whining. I want to hold on and wait it out and see where it gets me. See if there's anything left to salvage on its own merits.

What I think I WILL do is count the merits of life. Yours and mine. And satisfy myself in that for now. And believe that nothing has changed. And that you guys are just real busy.

Scott is on vacation right now, enjoying his son. He's busy, productive and alive.

Grizz is growing her relationship with her fiance. She's navigating an unemployed life and preparing to work with the dreams she has, working on making them come true.

Ned is vital, alive, and stepping into his own life again after a months-long scare and hiatus from the social world. He's slaying dragons and bedding maidens and doing what comes naturally to a knight of the realm.

Shades is getting married in a few weeks to the man she found again--the man who found her again.

Tom is battling the tides of prejudice, managing the grief of loss, and stoking the fires of hope and happiness.

Everything and everybody is good and every other thing is illuminated.

The Summer awaits and the sorrows of last week are in the past, irreversible.

People we miss will be missed.

People we love will be lov'd.

And that's what's going on.

So, Yeah ... Oh, And One More Thing

I finally got that haircut.

So yeah, down to the convention I went with a fellow geek riding shotgun. It was the time I was looking for--fun, frolick, abdication of responsibilities, giving myself over to the pursuit of comicbooks with no apologies.

And there was a distinct lack of a certain something--fear. Yes I reunited with people I already knew, but I was able also to meet and bridge gaps with new people (See above pic!) Although I'm the All-New, All-Expanded Alan, I didn't think I was totally out of the running to be met, to be liked, or to be friended. And I've been med-less for more than a month now. So whatever that social anxiety thing was--I'm over it. Clearly something in me realized that there's just not enough life left to waste not doing and not saying what I need to do and say.

So, yeah.

Oh, and one more thing.

There's Ned.

I'm hoping this is a full length film, not limited by Flickr or any other agent, just so that you can get a flavor of the kind of time I spent with Ned. And there was a chance--a real good, GREAT chance that we were going to have The Lunch Of The Warrior Poet, and I was going to crystallize some words forever in his heart and in mine. Now, "The Lunch" we DID have;

... but "Of The Warrior Poet," not so much because as fate would have it, my fellow geeks found us as we were on the way to lunch. So CLOSE. And while I love my geek nation, Ned and me were about to transcend but my geeks forced me to stay earthbound. Ironic, seeing as how we're geeks and all.

In much more plain terms, Ned, I wanted to tell you at lunch how much you've meant to me these past years, and how much it meant to me to have you overcome whatever gremlins messed with you and me and just ... always everything else that gremlins tend to mess with ... and drive over an hour to hang out with me. I couldn't plan what to do to make it worth the trip, except just be myself, and I don't think I did that nearly enough. The Lunch would have been my moment, but my geeks descended on us. And as I accepted the lot cast for me, fighting the impulse to reject them and make them leave me alone with my Ned, I looked for a positive side to it. Which may have been adding another layer of safety for you, and provided another view of me through them ... but gosh. When am I ever going to have this chance again, you know? You are NED. After so long!

And really, what do I want? I guess I wanted more of the dialogue, only face to face. I wanted to watch the genius working behind the eyes. I wanted to be real. I wanted to peel. I wouldn't have minded crying a little bit. Or a lot. If I wanted anything else, I'm not aware enough of it.

I can tell y'all what I didn't want! Really really did NOT want a kiss. I wanted to talk about my sexuality but I did not want to ruin Ned's trip or violate his trust. I did NOT want Ned to regret the trip down to Charlotte. I didn't want him to regret the years and all the words we've traded. I didn't want to ruin a friendship. And I did not not not want him to leave.

But what did I get? I got a guy who DID make an hour-plus trip to meet me. I got a big hug. I got a sacrifice of his comfort possibly, and definitely a sacrifice of his time. I got the attention of someone dear.

And when Ned drove his mobile up College Ave away from lil' ol' me, I heard the typed words of a commenter a few years ago in my head. "It's okay to feel sad when you're leaving your friends. It's normal." (paraphrased. Eliel was that you? Did you say it aloud at some other time?) So I told myself "It's okay." And when I didn't race to rejoin my geek nation that afternoon, I told myself that was okay too. And when I stayed alone for a little while more and didn't go find them later that night for dinner, I let myself know that was okay too. Because I knew I resented them ever so slightly for crashing my opportunity to take my soul out for a spin with Ned. And I knew also that I wasn't in a rush to plunge back into fantasy and geekdom when I'd had such a brush with reality.

And I realized just now that besides the lunch, I had a chance to do all this realness with Ned at any other time, and didn't.

Hmm. Guess I still had a comfort zone of my own to chuck, and fears in another more subtle, but still limiting form, to overcome.

Yeah, maybe at a lunch alone I wouldn't have said much more than what I did say during the other times. I mean instead of a panel of talking heads, I could've taken Ned to a pair of cushioned seats and we could have soul-strolled.

And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's how it should have gone anyway. Maybe that made it better for Ned.

Anyway, I hope so. Actually, I hope I'm thinking it to death in typical me fashion and that everything was just fine.



Any anyway, thanks Ned. I love you, my friend.