Another Extended Update On Me

So I finally did it. Tuesday I let my boss at work know that I'm only going to be in town for a few more weeks. After that I'm going to go to London and Ireland for a couple of weeks, and after that I'm going to going to move to New York.

Wow. New York. I'm going to make it happen this time. No more neck injuries.

Yeah, I've been terribly nervous about all of this. I was nervous about quitting right up until the point where I walked into my boss's office and the first thing out of his mouth was "Are you leaving us?" Uh . . . well, yeah. I'd had a whole little speech planned, starting with the line "I just want you to know that this is by far the best job that I've ever had" but that works too.

It is the best company that I've ever worked for though. I just want to make that clear. They've treated me great here and I feel bad for leaving them. It's just that I don't want to wait around for someone above me to die of old age in order to advance. That seems to be how it's normally done here and, while I love the fact that they can keep employees for that long, I need to find something more challenging.

So yeah, I've been thinking of doing some traveling before I move. I was torn between a gay cruise or Europe, and I've opted for the ga--, no wait, I'm going to Europe. I'll be in London for the third week of July, and I'll be in Ireland after that (although I'm still working on where in Ireland I'm going to be). While in London I'm going to hook up with an online friend who is going to be attending a conference there, and hopefully I'll also see Doctorow, so that he can sign my copy of Little Brother.

Heh. It's going to be a signed first edition. Awesome.

Other than that, I figure I'll just be bumming around London and Ireland. I'll be staying near the city center in London, hopefully within walking/Tube distance of most of the interesting things to see. If anyone has any suggestions of things that I absolutely must see, let me know.

My mom actually recommended County Cork, which is apparently where my family on her side of the family is from. Perhaps I'll stop by the Blarney Stone.

Gay Pride is coming up this weekend. I did mention that Pablo broke up with me at Pride, so I'm hoping to avoid that this year. As such, I doubt that I'll be taking a date with me. I'd rather take a straight friend (incidentally, thanks so much straight friend). At least I know he won't break up with me there.

Just like usual though, as soon as I have plans to leave a place I relax to the point where I actually have some fun.

In this case, his name is Harrison. Last weekend there was a Gay Pride train ride on Saturday and a pool party on Sunday. I had a nice time on the train so I decided to go to the pool party as well.

The pool party was sort of funny. First of all, it was empty when I got there about 2:30, even though it was supposed to start at 2pm. I know that there's straight time and "gay" time ("whenever you'd have a most fabulous entrance") but the fact that there seemed to be nobody there was annoying.

Second, all of the gay guys avoided the pool. Not quite like it was acid, because they would go over and dangle their feet in, but for two hours it seemed like I was the only person willing to get in the the water. Then there were a few dark clouds and some thunder and the gay guys realized that it was now or never (or maybe they all just had a death wish) and they swarmed the pool until it was like a concrete can of sardines.

Third, I met a guy, M., on the train, and he was nice, but the more I thought about it, the less attracted to him I realized that I was. He was at the pool party, and with encouragement from sympathetic lesbians I finally nerved up and apologize for not being interested in him.

I met Harrison at the pool party. He was older, but he was older in a really cute way. Short spiky blond hair, muscles without being Schwarzenegger about it, and a pair of really cute little swim briefs. He struck up a conversation with me and I thought, hey, at the end of the day he's not going to be interested in me, but I can enjoy his attention while it lasts.

Except then it lasted for a couple of hours, even after I bashfully got out of the pool and M. arrived and I had to tell him that I wasn't interested. About a half an hour before the end of the party, I asked him if he wanted to do dinner.

He said yes.

It's odd, the last person that I can remember saying yes to dinner was B. back in college and that was a fiasco. And now I've got another thing with Harrison tonight and so I've got knots in my stomach again.

Here are the two anecdotes about Harrison that I've added to my permanent repository of stories. First, at some point he asked me to guess his age, and suggested that I'd be off by ten years. So I took a long look at him, took a guess (39ish) and then revised that up by five years.

And I was still off by more than ten years. Wow. If only I'll look so good in my fifties.

Usually people older than I am is something that I have a problem with. I've never dated or just had sex with someone more than a few years older than myself. I think the largest difference prior to this would have been A. back in Miami, who was seven years my senior. Back when I worked for the gay B&B here in Santa Fe, I got a couple of offers, but that was back when I was eighteen/nineteen, and none of them were from guys that I was attracted too.

Harrison if nothing if not physically attractive and unlike Gabe, they psycho, he has some actual personality as well. For some reason, I just don't feel uncomfortable around him.

Second little anecdote: He invited me back to his place to watch television. I acquiesced, under the impression that this was a gesture similar to inviting someone back for coffee. HD setup, 5.1 surround, all of that, but eventually I realized that he wasn't making a pass at me. He was just really interested in watching television. Uh, okay. A friend said that it was a generational difference, but really, isn't that kind invitation universally understood as a come on in the gay world.

So, here's hoping that this thing tonight goes better, and I don't mistake an invitation to watch television as a pass.

This post is already running long, so I'll make a few final comments about books and then head out. It's funny, but I haven't felt as though there has been anything to write about for days, perhaps weeks, and yet when I sit down suddenly I'm pouring what easily must be a thousand words out.

(Note: My review of the "Rainbow Boys" books was getting long, so I've split it off to here.)

I just finished Where Late the Sweet Bird Sings by Wilhelm, and I liked it. It started off a bit slow, but by the time I got to the end I understood why it needed to do that to create the emotional impact of the second and third part.

Interestingly, this is the second sci-fi book that I can clearly recall that deals with multipart humans. The first was More Than Human by Sturgeon. Where I liked Wilhelm's book I despised Sturgeons.

It has something to do with the way that the multipart humans are depicted. In Sturgeon's book, there is the powerful "head" of the group, which leads through a combination of dispassionate manipulation and a desperate need from the other parts toward him. In Wilhelm's work, the various parts are just genetically identical clones that are raised in groups. One of them seems to have a dominant personality, but they treat their fellows as extensions of themselves, while Sturgeon's characters lacked that.

True, in Where Late the Sweet Bird Sings the multipart humans have problems which eventually lead to a schism and breakup of the Miriam group and they exploit the expelled member and treat her as a non-person curiosity, but separate from her parts she regains something of the individualistic experience that her human ancestors did. I can never imagine Sturgeon's twins ever gaining the same independence.

Both instances of multipart humans consider themselves to be, well, more than human. The next stage in evolution, as it were. However, despite the fact that Wilhelm's groups exploit, enslave, and degrade humanity more than Sturgeon does, her flawed characters were also the ones that I empathized with at the end of the story. Perhaps it's just a case of better writing.

That seems to basically cover what's been going on with me recently.