02.06.10
Son of RA
Feb 5th, 2010 – Detail from Cleopatra’s Needle description plaque in Central Park, NYC
12.04.09
Where The Wild Things Are
Quite unexpectedly this summer, I was asked by Father Tony of the Farmboyz if I wanted to participate in a NYC-focused version of the Bilerico website and whatever it would entail. I was blown-away by the vision he had for it and all the various people he was collecting to help participate. There was no small amount of head-scratching on my part about what I could actually contribute, especially since my blogging had moved decidedly off kilter and just all around less. Never the less, I whole-heartedly agreed and thanked him profusely figuring I’d figure out those pesky details about what I’d actually contribute some other time.
Then two things happened: I actually started blogging less which seems almost impossible without actually shutting down the blog and I took a large project at work that would have me in New Hampshire during the week and upstate at home during the weekends. Again, pesky details of how I would write about NYC when I actually wasn’t even here/there be damned…we’d figure it out.
Well, the Bilerico-NYC project hasn’t launched but Father Tony has put together Queer New York, a substitute blog place holder until the other comes to fruition. The invitation again to participate appeared via email this week and so that old cool blogging vibe has once again raised its head and put me into a spin. So I can be found around here, of course for the decidedly non-NYC types of things but I can also be found participating with some pretty amazing people over at Queer New York, singing the praises of the Hub of the Universe and all the weirdness it leaves in its wake.
Why I Love New York Tonight
I missed last night’s spontaneous rally at Times Square after the defeat of the Marriage Equality bill by the NY State Senate yesterday afternoon. When I heard more than a thousand people showed up to voice their outrage over the defeat my first thought was, “I’m not sure counting unaware tourists trying to get their theater groove on at TKTS necessarily constitutes a pro-gay marriage stance or organized outrage at the New York State Senate.” But whatever, I let it go.
The rest of the post can be read here.
08.05.09
From the files of “remember when…”
Now that it’s hot and humid and the dog days of August have set in….remember when I was back in Ohio in April this past year during some freak-ass snow storm? Yeah.
Also, apparently I had facial hair (and I’m assuming chest hair) which Jeff has since required I keep shorn.
06.20.09
Passing
I’ve spent the weekend thinking of friend who lost his mother to cancer this week and who is sitting at the funeral right now next to his partner and the rest of the family. His partner lost his mother several years ago to cancer also. When I think back now, I now have a spate of six years, really since my own mother died, where a friend has lost a parent each year and while I initially thought “how strange” to myself, now that I’ve really looked at it, I guess maybe it isn’t so much strange as just part of our lives as we’re getting older.
I don’t know if there is a right or expected time to start losing our parents. I would have said in my early to mid thirties that I would have expected people to start losing their grandparents. I lost two and have my very last grandmother still around and kicking which I know I’ve been lucky to be able to say and appreciate each conversation and time I spend with her. But now that I’m on the countdown to 40, I know I have to be more expecting of eventual life events. I was even telling Jeff the other day that on my run I was thinking about the next ten years of our lives together and how, statistically speaking, this will be the decade when things start breaking and falling off of us. I could realistically expect one of us to have a heart scare if not an outright cath and stent for a blocked artery. I think we’re now in the window for certain kinds of leukemia and more uncommon organ-based cancers. On the plus side, I feel more and more confident that I’m finally out of the woods for testicular cancer which I was at a higher risk for and had been expecting anytime after I turned 25, since I’m a black cloud kinda guy.
As I’m big on clich´s, “I guess if it’s not one thing it’s another” suits me just as well as anything else. Pithy, for sure, but true, none the less.
And yet my thought still go back to Jay and the passing of his Mom. This one a steep and quick decline from pancreatic cancer that took her so quick I’m still not sure anyone can make sense of it. Jeff’s dad was that way too…three weeks from diagnosis of lung cancer to being gone. In some ways, I can’t even fathom what it takes for someone to gird themselves to that kind of decline because unlike a sudden accident, I think people probably tell themselves and hold out for improvement or at least more time. I thought it was amazing to watch Jeff with his dad the day after the diagnosis go in and settle up the account, making sure his Dad knew exactly where he stood in Jeff’s life. Jeff had a clear idea that there was no time to wait, even with a long-term diagnosis and that days are lived as days. I was luckier, some would say, I had six months with my Mom before she passed away and five and a half of them were really good months and so, in my typical fashion, I stammered and hemmed-n-hawed over the months, dribbling out the same truing of accounts with her, never denying we had limited time but in some kind of denial that there would always be a tomorrow to say and do more.
And so we’re here today. More sorrow and loss and now, rather than an aberration, it seems like maybe more of a right of passage for those of us getting a little bit older and moving from our young adult hood into whatever this next phase is (Early middle age? Certainly not!).
05.22.09
Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My
I’m on a conference call this morning and Jeff rushes in and is pointing outside. I get up, head still connected to my douchy headset and see Jeff pointing out the window at the bear who has lumbered out of the woods and over to our tree that has a bird-feeder in it. I’m wildly throwing things at Jeff like: the CAMERA and the VIDEO CAMERA. I believe, however, that Jeff is actually wanting me to “take care of it”.
It doesn’t take long for the bear to realize it’s being gawked at so it kind of lumbers on around our workshop and then Jeff hollers that it’s going for our trash we keep in there. He runs back into the kitchen and comes out banging two pots together which is about all the bear-instruction we’ve ever gotten living out here (other than ‘don’t approach it…it won’t be a friendly bear’) and I’m running after him, screaming “NOT THE CALPHALON POTS!!! DON’T BANG THOSE TOGETHER, YOU’LL SCRATCH THEM”.
So you know…it’s about priorities and safety at our place. Eventually the bear dropped the bag of trash it was going to start mauling and lumbered off into the woods. And now I have to order new Calphalon pots.
That's a bear
04.22.09
Running again
Dookie
As I’ve beaten this horse to death weeks ago to anyone who will give me three seconds, I’ve was easily arm-twisted into putting my name in the lottery for running the NYC Marathon this coming November. I’ve been running on and off now for just a year and had no desire to run a marathon at all…not with all the stories of scabbed over nipples, lost toe-nails, and the very real-not-an-urban-legend about marathoners pooping themselves during the actual race. I am clear that having to pull off to the side to puke is one thing I can accept but making a dookie mid-stride for me is a big ol’ un-un. Just sayin.
Anywho, I’m in full force training, gleaning tips and advice from better men than myself and trying to figure out how this is actually going to happen and how I’m going to divert/trick/talk myself through those miles when I want to quit which right now is about mile one, three, and five.
Additionally, because it was such a hit last year, I’ve taken out my new video cam with me on a run this morning. Nice to see nothing has changed…I’m still running the same hills and still so out of breath you’d think I had emphysema and an impending heart attack. On the other hand, I have some new running threads that I think work for me.
Please do enjoy: Early Morning April Run..with hills! (Quicktime, 15.5MB / 3.5 min / music: “Running Up That Hill (Street 45 edit)” by Levy 9)
03.18.09
It’s ivory this year
- Beau and Jeff, San Francisco – September 2008
Today is our anniversary. It is our tradition, about the only one we have, really, that we start our day together by reciting The Meeting and it goes something like this:
Jeff: “On this day, [insert number of years], there I was, attending Ms. Stephen Hayes’ pre-Black Party Party when in you walked, all fresh chicken. I walked over to Stephen and asked, ‘who’s that‘ to which he replied, ‘Oh her? She’s such a mess.”
“When we got to the Black Party, we spent the evening dancing together and every time one of my friends started getting up onto you, I tapped them on the shoulder and wagged my finger at them, letting them know you were mine.”
“When we got up to the backroom, it was dark and I was scared so I walked behind you and that’s when you put your hand on my crotch and had your way with me and we’ve been together ever since.”
Beau: “On this day, [insert number of years], I had just moved from St. Louis as a traveling nurse. I dropped my clothes off in Morristown that very day and drove into New York City to stay with a friend’s cousin who invited me to go to the Black Party as an welcome to NYC. He mentioned we’d be going to a friend’s pre-party so I was all nervous. I was so fresh and green I wore jeans and a blue-button up shirt because I had no style. We got to the pre-Black Party Party and as soon as I walked into the tiny apartment, some crazy, scary Filipino dressed in a pair of tight black silk underwear and wearing a long black overcoat came running over to me, flapping his coat like huge bat wings. I peed my pants right there. ”
Later on in the evening, I got stuck in a conversation with Michael Mitchell who was describing how he likes to spit on a trick’s chest during sex. I’d still not been able to speak a word since I arrived. ”
After we all cabbed over to the Black Party, we spent the evening dancing and all the men I’d met at the pre-Party were dancing around me being friendly. You finally asked if I wanted to go upstairs ‘to see what was going on‘. Upstairs it was very dark and I was scared so you stood behind me and pushed me forward into the masses of sweaty, undulating people. Then you reached around and grabbed my crotch. We’ve been together ever since.”
Basically the truth of the story lies somewhere in between, depending on who you talk to. I had just moved to NYC that very day and Jeff and I did meet at Ms. Stephen Hayes’ pre-Black Party Party and Stephen did call me a mess to Jeff although he’d never met me before and I’d never been to New York to be able to establish that kind of reputation (although that was the point and purpose of me coming to New York in the first place). Jorge, the animated Filipino, was wearing nothing but underwear and a big black overcoat and he did scare the piss out of me when I first walked into the pre-Party. We went to the Black Party as described and then details get foggy…Jeff and I have come to an agreement that he was standing behind me but who ever made the first move on the other is lost forever in the clammy, gropy, sweaty memory of whatever was happening in the dark, upper room that night.
When we finally walked out into the sunlight the following Sunday morning, Jeff, against his better judgment actually gave me his phone number to call sometime. I, being completely introverted and phone-phobic, had no intention of calling him but later that day, I thought that the least I could do after a fizzy night of dancing and hand-jobs would be to give him a call. My plan was to call while he was out on a date he’d said he’d be on that evening, thereby doing my friendly duty but avoid having to actually talk to him. Best made plans diverted! He was home when I called and put up with me hemming-n-hawing about how I’d just wanted to leave him a message about meeting him last night. Eventually we somehow made a date and then that was that.
Even though I was only in the area temporarily for work, we ended up dating (even while he was dating someone else for the first eight weeks we were seeing one another…I eventually found out I had the M, W, Saturday fuck schedule while Robert, the crucifix-loving other guy who Jeff’s friends liked better had T and Th.). When I re-upped my nursing contract for another three months to stick around, things got a little more serious, or at least they did to Jeff because I still had no intention of staying or settling down. I flirted with a long-term nursing engagement in Nowhere Alaska, keeping Jeff in the dark as to whether I was staying or going up until the last minute and ultimately ended up staying. We moved in together at six months as a way to save money since my housing stipend would pay his rent and soon enough, the months together turned into years.
We’re fourteen years in now. As I described it to friends on vacation a while back, “…very difficult years” which came out wrong in how it initially sounds but which is true, never the less. What I was trying to say is, relationships are difficult; personalities are personalities and compromise can be hard. Jeff and I never had one of those rocket-ship, exploding super-nova relationships, one with fire and so much incendiary inclinations when we’re together…it has always been a slow, steady climb that puts a better day ahead of the next one. Trust me when I say the ache when we’re apart, physically, emotionally, and mentally is very real and very deep. Each year, our anniversary cards read something to the effect of, “…another year together, each year better than the last” and that is true and that is the hallmark of our days together…we are together because each day is better than he last. We continue to grow and find our way with one another. Of course we know each other’s buttons and know how and when to press them but that’s all just noise, really. We make our way each day, trying to be kind and be better to one another, loving each other in the small ways that are significant to us and we’ve built a life on that very simple thing.
This past fall we went to California and got married. Not because either of us felt any overwhelming need or desire to be married; neither of us actually believe in it. We got married because we felt it was important to stand and be counted so that others, to whom marriage is important, might have the opportunity to do it some day. For us, it was a great weekend together with our friends and I got a little Folsom eye candy in the mix…it has also confused the whole ‘what is our anniversary’ question. While I’m more apt to remember our wedding date more so than our Domestic Registration date, for me The Anniversary will always be March 18th, 1995 when I walked into a stranger’s party where no one knew me and I didn’t know them and met Jeff, my lover, my friend, my partner, and now my husband all these many years later.
Happy Anniversary, babe. (See, it’s funny ’cause he doesn’t read the blog. 
)
UPDATE: Even though ivory is the traditional gift for 14 years together, Jeff decided to fully embrace our old, boring marriage schtick and bought us matching Snuggies® of which, I’m loathe to admit, we will actually use frequently and in good health….just not to some fuck-ass sports outing with other people like on the commercials. We have standards.
03.10.09
DC Wants Everyone Wearing a Rainbow Flag
I’m nothing if not a sucker. I can’t help it. Specifically, I’ve been lured into ridiculous comic story arcs through DC and Marvel for the last two years. I’m such a glutton for punishment and so desperate to know whats happening that I suffer through months and months of shitty story-telling and bad art just to keep up. At $3.99 a comic, that is a commitment. I just can’t give them up (for the most part…some titles were just TOO stinky even for me and I painfully dropped them, apparently no worse for wear).
So when DC announced that it was going to start the penultimate Green Lantern story (a title I didn’t even follow, by the way) called “Blackest Night”, some kind of a ping went off in my head and I decided I needed to start following it. I started buying the Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corp. titles to get some background and now we’re into the full launch of the story line. Most people know something about Green Lantern so the idea behind this arc is that there are Lanterns of all different colors, all the colors of the rainbow in fact. The Reds, Oranges, and Yellows (which has been around through Sinestro, GL’s arch enemy) are all baddies and then the other colors are probably mostly good. This story then develops what I think are going to be called the Black Lanterns and they seem to be dead superheros brought back to life, so….zombie Lanterns.
From what I can tell, there hasn’t been this kind of subversive gay intrusion into the mainstream collective since Magic Earring Ken back in the 80’s. I mean, who was the genius that decided to expand the Lantern Corps into all the colors of the big, gay rainbow flag? Homo geniuses, I’m assuming. Comics by their nature are erotic and homo-erotic; idealized versions of impossibly muscled and chiseled men and women so thin-waisted and top heavy that no amount of double-sided tape could keep them from spilling out of their bustiers and toppling over…and of course they’re in heels (and if they’re not, they should be. I have standards I need met in my heroines and tall heels is most definitely one of them.) So we’re getting the Rainbow Lantern Corps out of all this…and I’m getting a new wardrobe.
None of this is totally essential to know and quite honestly, Jeff stopped listening to the explanation after the first sentence. All he wanted to know was whether there were more comics he was going to have to pick up for me in the city (“yes, for sure,” I smiled). But then a good friend got me turned on to Graphetti Graphics, a merchandising place that carries official DC t-shirts. A quick look around and all the sudden I’ve got a big box of Lantern t-shirts coming my way, one for each colored Lantern with their distinct insignias emblazoned on the front.
True confession: I love insignias…I love their symbolism and what they are suppose to represent. I hate the fucking Nazis but I recognize the fear and strength that was conveyed by the swastika and why it was on everything. One of the best parts of comics is the idea that everyone has their own insignia….the Batman’s bat silhouette, Superman’s big “S”, Wonder Woman’s stylized “W’s” over her rack…every hero and villain has one. I mourn my days that I don’t have a nickname and I don’t have an insignia to wear around and put on everything, including my clothing, dishes, car, cats, and stationary. Hell, even Martha Stewart has her own insignia that she uses with her branding machine.
So I made and received my order within the week, unannounced to Jeff until it arrived and I got a call saying, “What the HELL are these???” I was bummed to find out that in my rush to order, I’d neglected the Purple Lanterns shirt which might have been unconscious on my part. I hate their insignia and find them rather annoying. They fly around the universe promoting love in thick pinkish curtains of light and are also all women…women with tremendous comic bazooms all tethered together in two tea-bags and a piece of floss, but still. No man looks good in purple, I’m afraid. But I’m ordering the shirt none the less, just because I have to have the complete set.
I have to have the complete set because for no other reason, I am a Gemini which was pointed out to me today. I seek and must have symmetry in all things. If it’s a series of anything, I want it. I buy whole series of books that I never read because I can’t have just half a series on my shelves (hello, Wheel of Time). If I had more friends who would put up with it, I’d have us dressed in all sorts of sets for Halloween, like the four suits of a deck of cards, the twenty-one Major Arcana of the Tarot, The first five books of the Bible, the four seasons, the four elements, the seven colors of the rainbow, the four winds, the seven deadly sins, the seven heavenly virtues, and so forth and so on. Hell, I’d even get a group of us dressed up as Prime Numbers if I could figure out why they’re important and how to graphically represent them with more than just sticking big white numbers on black t-shirts. It’s almost obsessive/compulsive sickness, really. That fact that I’ve been able to keep it under wraps and under control for so long says a lot about my ability to suppress and deny my true nature. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that I was destined for these t-shirts. Now whether the actual story line blows or not, who can say. These days, I can’t keep all the story continuities straight without having Wikipedia opened beside me while I read the comics. Also, I bitch a lot about not understanding or actually following whats going on. Does everyone know that the original Flash, Barry Allen, has been dead since 1985? Of course he’s back now with some new Flash title but I can’t get into that….I have to give up somewhere and this is it. I’m spent…unless they come out with a bunch of rainbow-colored flashes and then I’m totally on board…and buying the t-shirts
Please to enjoy:
Rage of the Red Lanterns
The Avarice of the Orange Lanterns
The Yellow Lantern Insignal of the Sinestro Corps
The Green Lanterns, Powered by Will
Blue Lanterns powered by Hope
Indigo Lanterns powered by Compassion
Black Lanterns, The Rise of the Dead Heroes