Loose Threads

A. So I went to the convention on Sunday, having missed an entire day on Saturday, and all the get togethers on Friday. I regret nothing! I got the work finished on the audio series, and I had a good time on Sunday. I got to meet one of the other voices in podcasting that I'm fond of, and he really like dme too! He even left a message over at Geek Central saying that I was one of the highlights of his weekend! Which is NUTS. Because he was there for three whole days, he's in about a dozen of pics with other people (so he circulated well), he drank The Beer with many of his buddies. But he said putting face to messagers is always a treat for him.

So one day I will learn to stop selling myself short. You'd think I'd have done so by now, but it's still so surprising when I hear a sincere compliment from someone I myself admire.

I see myself going again next year. And this time, I'll go everyday and hang out at night. I can't say I'm bonded the way I am with the other guys, but it will be a nice getaway that I look forward to.

B. I haven't asked my DnD buddy for Irish Girl's number yet. I just can't get past the Terribles. (Those are the weapons that Worst Case Scenario Man uses against me.) I can't stop leaping ahead to the horrible conclusion of another attempt gone wrong. And if you think it's frustrating to read my utter cowardice, try being an utter coward.

C. That Man from my religious past has had a series of busy weekends that has prevented us from getting together and having my beans spilled all over him. But he has called me once to report this, and he still plans on me doing so. The good news is that now I'm redefined, and I don't have to tell him the thing I was going to tell him. His is a bridge that I don't think I'll have to burn now. I won't be giving him fantastic news of my continued religious success, but I also won't be heaping up challenge after challenge to he ability to cope with the changes in my life. The way I anticipate it now, I'll give him a lot of things to pray for, and maybe we'll weep together, and I'll get more hugs from him. But I'm not going back to our church. That's for sure.

I think that's all of them. Remind me if I've left something unsaid...

Geek Life

Fringes sent me this once. Thought it bore repeating before I continue.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

—Nelson Mandela

And this article by Ta-Nehisi Coates entitled, "Nerd culture and Black people--not an oxymoron"

Okay, now on to my topic. I'm currently in Pennsyvania. Reading, in fact. No, no... I'm not reading. The town is called Reading. Except it's not called "Reading." It's called "redding". Okay? Okay.

I drove here last night after I visited with my last client. Straight from NYC to Reading. Because what's happening this weekend is This Event. This event is sprung out of the heads of the boys who created the forum that I frequent, which I like to call Geek Central.

I like to listen to a lot of comic podcasts, but being the caveman that I am, I don't download them and enjoy via mp3 player. Rather I just listen to them through my work computer or at home, through my laptop. And naturally, I crush on the voices talking about comics, and their wives, and their well-adjusted lives despite being Chief High Nerds. So when this event loomed near, I thought, "Yes, I'd like to go." But I didn't have that, "I'm so TOTALLY going." vibe.

Then the opportunity came up to get one of my favorite podcasters to go with me. I cajoled and persuaded and prodded and backed off and reapproached. I bought my tickets and my hotel room. And at the last, my favorite podcaster said he wasn't going.

Well, bummer. And then I looked in the mirror and faced it. I wanted him to come because I have a mancrush on him. He's married, of course (my favorite kind!), and i just wanted to watch him navigate with his friends. I wanted to become his satellite for the weekend. And possibly, (and definitely not for the first time), he could tell I crushed on him and just decided I was too creepy to meet in person. He gave me a lot of circumstantial evidence as to why he couldn't make it, and he remains very friendly via traded Personal Messages and shared forum posts. So I haven't killed our web-relationship. I just feel like a freaky little stalker who needs his leash yanked every so often.

It worked out really fine the last time I did this, as this evidence shows;

We left away from the event bonded and friendly and even adoring of one another. I've spoken to a few of those fellas via phone and the rest through dozens of message posts since then.

But now here? Well, I came down because I still do know some folks who will be attending. I'm friends with a few, and I've mentioned them before. One is the really nice guy who I broke bread with at the pizza party and who shouted me out on a podcast, and two others are folks I've dined with in other places. So I have peeps to hang out with while I'm here, even if I don't meet my mancrush--like, ever.

So ... why am I blogging in my hotel room right now instead of going out and meeting new and wonderful geeks?

I guess because I feel like my freak flag is showing. Like I'm here on false pretenses. And I did miss a dose of my meds day before yesterday, so I'm probably back in my phobic head right now until the restarted dose kicks in.

So I just want to stay in the room and lounge. Pass everyone by until I feel better.

Isn't that silly? And just a very little bit sad?

Edited to add; It's just Me, Myself, and I

The Thing I Didn't Tell About...

...so, on Labor Day, I got a surprising invite from one of my NYC DnD-playing buddies, who has been absent for weeks because he's learning the language of his new fiancee's homeland. This love stuff. Oi what it can make you do.

He invited me to a frisbee-throwing leisure event at Sheep's Meadow, which is this big lawn in Central Park where the sunbathers worship Sol for every ounce of carcinoma they can sacrifice. I've never been attracted in the least bit, except for all the gorgeous bodies awash in tanning lotion, which can number in the hundreds on a weekend. It's like Manhattan's equivalent of a beach.

So I met him first, and then these other people from other walks of his life. Two guys and a girl. The guys were endearingly average. Good senses of humor, pot bellies, non DnD players, NYC professionals living on the island, awkwardly still single, good $$ earners. Then comes the girl.

The girl is Irish. Like my friend who invited me. The girl has brunette hair and blue eyes. The girl has an Irish brogue. The girl is captivating to me. So there's the five of us on a blanket, awash in athletic men and women and I'm talking to the Irish Girl. Learning her profession and she's learning mine. And I distinctly feel an exclusivity going on. Out of the five people on this blanket, three of us guys are single, two of which are white and one of which is also Irish (only Americanized, third generational). But here we are, me and her, chatting up a storm.

The other two already know her, and so I see they didn't need to jump into the convo, but I still felt awkward, so I applied the brakes and addressed them as I had done before she arrived fashionably late. However, they went scarpering off to some event, leaving the party planner, me and the Irish Girl behind.

Cutting to the chase is that I enjoyed the Irish Girl. When, however, we three got up to leave I went utterly superficial. She was a bit taller than me. Slumped a bit. She walked like a rugby player. But then, as opposed to the greeting (a nice safe handshake) she hugged me goodbye. And when I said, "we have to get together another time!" she responded "Definitely!"

Well, before I blogged about it, I texted the party planner and asked him if Irish Girl was single. And he said yes, and did I detect a vibe? And I said I thought so, and was I being foolish? And he responding aren't we all, and how did I want to arrange this.

And I froze up. But I did tell him that I had to consult my advisors.

Yeah, that's you guys.

The Party Planner knows nothing of all this bisexuality going on up in here. With him and the other gang, I play a 12th level wizard with high stats in Strength, Dexerity, and constitution. That means he's a hunk. So I play him like one. Like a arrogant, powerful, exhibitionist wizard. I have him doing calisthenics in only a loincloth in the AMs when we travel. The DM has seen fit to pander to my posturing by having a longterm woman enter the campaign and allow my character to get shtupped on the regular (until he threw a massive spanner into the gears, as DMs are wont to do). But the point is, I roleplayed a very masculine guy, and entered the shoes of the kind of person I wanted to be, and had/have a great time doing it.

So the Party Planner has that kind of general impression of me (because I am a bit hunkish, if I do say so myself, and Party Planner said I have a great voice). And in the back of my mind, I think he may have even set up the meeting for the sake of his single Irish friend and I bit in, hook and line, with the sinker trailing closely along my flank as I try swimming for safer waters. So possibly this girl might have been sold a bill of goods fraudulently.

And my Tribe, I know what you're already going to say, and I love you for it.

But tell me anyway.

To date or not to date?

Back That Thang Up!

You betta WORK daddy-o!

In Praise Of Women

So here I am at work on a Sunday, with a laptop and a live wireless connection. So why on earth would I be working? I've made hours and hours of quality client contact today while trading blog I.M's with my tribesman Ned (I was sitting in the midst of my clients, watching Ratatouille while I was talking to you, Ned).

And now I've driven an hour to another site and doing my last client contact for the day. I have no midtown clients on the weekends, so tonight is mine. Woo hoo. To do what? Whatever it'll be, it'll be alone.

But here at this other site, a fetching little lady breezed through here a minute or so ago and wished me a happy holiday tomorrow. And was it the meds, or was it Ned, or was it my constantly regenerating intolerance for lonely that pressed me to ask her what she was going to do for her holiday.

There is such magic in the transaction between man and woman. Me plying and prodding into her life. Her responses, some coy, some not. Uncovering her interests layer by layer and discovering, like favorite chocolates, the things we have in common. She loves Manhattan, she said. She likes the area down by W. 11th. St. (That's the West Village and the Meat-Packing district, where I was a few avenues away from yesterday as I got my shrimp from "A Salt & Battery" and ate them in the park across from Magnolia's Bakery on Bleecker St.) And were I an average citizen of the Testosterone Brigade, I'd have totally said, "We should hang out sometime! I was just down there yesterday!" Gotten her number and placed it in my little black book.

But I look at her, her soft eyes and concave teeth (yes, like the kind that has a natural almond-shaped space as though she'd been a late-age thumbsucker) and I avoid further conversation other than "have a great holdiay." When she asks the same of me, I stay non-committal. I do not volunteer a tenth of the same information to her as she did for me. I tell her my plans, which are to do nothing tomorrow. Not. A. Thing. Except I might to to the gym and run in Central Park. I'm still 10lbs. lighter than I was last month and I still have 20 to go. But I didn't tell her that. I didn't even tell her that I live on the island that she loves.

Because I think this precious lady co-worker of mine doesn't need a case like me all twined up in her heart. Ned's making me--no, not true--Ned's awakening the side of me that doesn't want to hurt my next partner. They see me, an assistant director of some charm with no wedding ring on, salt&pepper sideburns and vandyke, and they wonder if I'd make a good father for their kids. A good lover? A good friend? And the answer would be "Yes. I would."

But would they tolerate the fact that I also think some men are terrific? Why would anyone sane want to take on the challenge of finding out their partner's tolerance level while falling in love with them? Because when it's a matter of "You freak! How could you do this to me?!" screamed at glass-shattering decibels...well you get the point. I'd be a masochist and a sadist rolled into one.

Are there women who would actually dig that? Would they dig it the same way guys would dig having their chick singing "I Kissed A Girl, And I Liked It...!"?

I said I'd try it out on CraigList. I'm lax in doing so. But I do know this. I wouldn't want to live in a world without women.

I love women.

Anyone want to trade places?

Seas Would Rise When I Gave The Word

Coldplay is haunting me like the wishing-well ghost in the Gordon Lightfoot song.

Coldplay Lyrics
Viva La Vida Lyrics

Today MFTD got back to me after three days. I called his home on Saturday and left a message with his wife. I had been squirmy enough after posting the Coldplay video to get him on the line. Three days later he calls me. Well, I remembered Scott's advice in a comment when I last kvetched about MFTD's inaccessibility. Spilling all your tea in the lap of one person all the time (especially when you're not paid to receive it) gets to be tiring. This is paraphrased from Scott's original words, mind you. And I'm not at my literary best atm.

Wait, I tell a lie. He actually called yesterday and I didn't pick up. I was in session.

So when he called today, I determined not to spill the tea. However, I couldn't keep the convo breezy and superficial. I did try, I swear it. But he heard I was being false and he insisted I tell him. He knew I was sitting on top of something. It's like, I want to tell, but I don't want to drive these people out of my life with my monotonous, same-old song. The eyes rolling with "Oh here we go again".

But I did it. I spilled the tea. I told him how jealous I was of him and I itemized the bill.

Well, MFTD is a fixer. So, unbidden, he launched into therapy. But we went over everything that we've gone over before. I owe him money. He's not pressuring me to pay him back. I want to make more. Why am I not leaving New Jersey and saving $$$ on car ownership and commute costs? I want to be in a relationship where somebody loves me. Then why don't you?

Now my eyes were rolling.

But yeah, why don't I?

But see, MFTD knows. He just hasn't accepted it. Hell, I haven't accepted it. I don't want to. I've fought it all my life. It just feels like there's no point in fighting it because it's not going away.

I'm gay.

I mean, this isn't actual news, I'm guessing, because I've blogged as much--I just wouldn't end the sentences with it. Because too, I like breasts. Jiggly ones that double-mound in the center. Push-up bras are my friend.

But I lie if I didn't admit to myself that I really like guys. I mean, I admire so much about guys. Masculinity and strength. Their ability to go tough and stand like pillars for family, community, and nation. That in itself is not being gay. I know that. And no I've never had sex with one. And I don't particularly want to. For instance, I don't just not like the smell of booty, I'm disgusted by it. Gaggingly disgusted. I can't use a public restroom that's been bombed out by some exploded-colon victim. I'll circumnavigate like Jack Nicholson on a city street in "As Good As It Gets" to avoid the very shadow of careless dog turds.

Yet why do I think I'm gay?

Because I've been turned on by men since I was six. It was molestation, pure and simple, and a crime against me. But it was more than once and it's an appetite I have and have always had. Like K.D. Lang's Constant Craving.

And I don't KNOW if I'd have been gay without the molestation. But surely I wouldn't have been turned on at the age of six otherwise? Surely I'd have had a childhood without trying to rub myself into a stupor? Surely all the weekends that my mother worked wouldn't have been spent hunting down Mom's porn, isolating myself in the house instead of learning how to make friends, and then feverishly, guiltily teaching myself how to masturbate before I even knew how to ride a bike?

And here's what I also know--I am anything BUT gay. "Gay." Now that is a laugh. This? What I am? Is not "gay." This is miserable. This is conflicted and self-loathing and arrested and stunted and phobic and trapped and destroyed. Is what this is.

Because I love the company of a good woman. I want the late night talks. I want the staring into the eyes. I want the handholding. The hugs. The spooning. The "squooch-squooch-squooch" of sex. The slow and the fast.

But that's just not all I want. I'm a wide open, burglarized home. Despoiled and unprotected. Ravaged and unattended. A panic to the owner upon discovery, and forevermore a constant disturbing reminder that someone unauthorized has been here.

All my chances for normal is gone. Gone before I ever had a chance. My whole life, done in one.

MFTD knows this already. I've told him, and we've been going round and round for a few years now. And now I'm telling you. And him and me, we're working on the theory that I'm not hardwired by biology to have sex with one gender and no other. I don't think anyone is. I know a gay man who had sex with a woman just to try it, and loved it, but prefers to be and stay gay. He, I believe, is actually the definition of "gay," he does what he does, loves who he loves, and accepts who he is.

So the treatment plan is to move forward pursuing what I actually want. Not what I crave. What I want.

and what I want is a do-over. I want my chance back--my chance to be normal. To be loved and to be able to return it. To make a woman happy the way I've never been able to do in 43 years. Any woman.

It isn't unreasonable, it's just impossible.

And the happier I see other guys be, the further away from me it seems. For all the pitfalls of the normal life, it is infinitely better than this life I'm living. This life that I have prayed to be redeemable. I've lost my perspective on how that can be possible. Maybe I'll get it back, someday. But right now?

I used to rule the world. Seas would rise when I gave the word. Now I wake up in the bed alone. Sweep the streets I used to own.

Sorry Ned, but you did ask.

I Used To Rule The World ...

I'm going to explain this in a few hours. The tag I put on this post and the tone of this song should clue you in as to what it will be about.

Buckle up...




... okay, I've calmed down a bit since I first posted so I'm sure I won't be as virulent as I could have been. And that's a good thing.

Here's the deal--

Today is one of the infrequent days my New York suburban friends play D&D in a New York suburb. This is where to find the oft spoken of Grim Jester. Well, there a member of this group who I usually pick up in my car and drive to the venue. This member is a recluse and has symptoms of social phobia and some schizophrenia. I haven't told him that when we sometimes decompress at the end of the night, talking for about an hour before he leaves the car and goes home. He really does want relationships, but he says he hates people. Yet he games with us, introduced to the group about four or five years ago by Grim Jester.

Well today, Grim Jester calls me to say he has an emergency and he can't make it, and he wants me to distribute the news to everyone else as he rushes off to save the world. He tells me to tell everyone that we should still play without him. And that suits because he's not running the game--our other friend is, the cop.

So I carry out the news. When I get to the friend who I drive to the games, he says he doesn't want to go if Grim Jester is not going.

I mean, come on. I'm the guy who drives him every game. We talk all the way there, and all the way back. I sit in the car and talk to him for 30mins to an hour after the ride, after five to six hours of gaming. The only thing the prevents me from going over his house when there's no gaming is because I don't want to do therapy when I'm not working.

But because Grim Jester's not going, this guy is just going to drop all of us?

Fine, I tell everyone else, and just let the game be canceled. Because now that two of us canceled, there's not really enough of us left to pick up where we left off.

Then half an hour later, Grim Jester calls me and says the emergency is over and he wants to play. So I tell him the game was canceled, telling him only that his friend canceled when he heard that Grim wasn't coming, so Grim gets all indignant and decides to call everyone else himself to Make Things Right Again.

Seconds later, Grim's Friend; My Passenger calls me back to say, "Grim's going! Can you still pick me up?"

And I'm like, "What?"

Now, I understand the dude has phobias and it takes a lot for him to want to attend the group. But evidently, it also takes Grim Jester. And I just couldn't help but think "Well what the hell am I, just a chauffeur?"

Then, of course, being me, and being recently aware of my loneliness, I hated Grim Jester. Grim is always the leader. He's the one with the muscular, lithe frame. With all the body hair. And the bare feet. And the ... whatever.

It doesn't matter. I don't hate him anymore. I am, in fact sitting here in the group, in New York suburbia, having transported Grim's Friend; My Passenger to the game (he's sitting right next to me). And I am getting over it. Being jealous takes a lot of energy, and this is my one day off a week.

So what I'm not liked as well as Grim Jester is by this guy who I give time, gas, and therapeutic attention to so he won't become an utter psychotic? So what that Grim Jester is really the glue that holds this group together? So what that we aren't really friends--but we're just Grim Jester's satellites? So what?

I'm still here. We still have "fun".

So what?

:-(