Tonight (Explicit Language)

Tonight, right now possibly, a friend of mine is probably getting fucked by a porn producer and former porn star.  My friend is a porn star too, and because of what they film there are a couple of things that I can reasonably assume.  My friend is bottoming, the producer is topping, and they're fucking bareback.  Whether or not he's having a good time isn't something I can know, but I presume so.  They're in the producers NYC condo, which I presume is gorgeous.  That won't ever be my life.

Another friend of mine is on a date.  Not really sure what kind of date, but he's straight, so it may or may not include sex.  It's not something I think I'm particularly comfortable thinking about too much, so I'm not going to.  That won't be my life either.

A little while ago, maybe twenty minutes, I was in the bathroom after Ghostbusters and I ran into a guy that was one of my best friends about a decade ago.  It's one of the guys that I would probably hide a body with, not necessarily because who he is now but who he used to be to me.  My life is being alone.  Very, very alone.

Tonight, I'm hitting a level of depression that I haven't touched in a while.  I was thinking about who should get my stuff when I'm gone.

There are a couple of things I care about.  The books.  . . . uh . . . The books?  Lol.  My Ka-Bar?  Geez, not that much I guess.  The books mostly to Jeff, the rest of it to my brother, including the Ka-Bar, which was a gift from him in the first place.

I'm not to "second stage" yet.  I'm not planning on how I'm going to do it.  It's still a long way off.  But I'm thinking about the preparation that needs to go before the act, so that the things that I'm leaving behind aren't accidentally destroyed.

And so I'm also writing.  Because that's kind of the point of despair, when I feel like I should write.

I'm not a danger to myself tonight.  Thanks, I know that better than you do.  But this life isn't something that I enjoy, and I find it sick and twisted that the world expects so much pain out of me.

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.

Recent Thoughts From Online Chats

First, before I get into the rest of this post, I would like to point out that my absolutely hilarious little brother gave me permission to post a few of his communications from his travels and from his time in Iraq. I've created a whole separate little sub blog here:

Pocket Lint Communications

There are about 40 letters and other works up, and if he ever sends me more then I'll let you know when I update it.

Unlike me, he is brilliant and hilarious. If I could figure out how to get him to write a book, he'd make millions, or at least thousands. We joke about how both my father and I are aspiring writers, and since my brother isn't, he stands the best chance of being published and making a lot of money.

Okay, I've been having some long chats online recently, and I have some things that I want to share from them. The rest of this post is sort of not safe for the more sensitive members of my family. Just to warn you.

First, I discovered a bizarre series of videos on YouTube. They're the "behind the scenes" videos from an amateur gay porn studio. They're all safe for work, contain no sex or nudity, but it's sort of interesting to watch the guys laugh and joke around with each other.

Or just eat chips. There's one video that's just a porn star eating chips. Fifteen seconds of it. I think they're Lays, if that makes it funnier.

Yeah.

The general feeling of these clips reminds me of "America's Next Top Model" or "Make me a Super Model." There's lights, cameras, and the guys are taking direction. If you couldn't see what the pictures were being taken of, and the director wasn't offering explicit direction to the models, I sort of suspect that it would be hard to differentiate the amateur porn video from the high fashion photo shoot.

Anyway, I mentioned these videos to a straight friend online, and he had a few comments. First, I mentioned that the behind the scenes clips are funny, but the actual videos rarely are. For some, I said, reason gay folk rarely like comedy while watching hot guys going at it.

On the other hand, I do like to see some personality. Yeah, I would be attracted to them physically anyway, but seeing them laugh and joke makes them more than just a pretty face, or behind, or whatever.

After some discussion, I realized that I'd been incorrect in my original opinion that gay guys don't like comedy porn. Two of the big winners of GayVN awards recently have been comedies, "The Hole" a spoof of the horror movie the "The Ring" and "The Intern" which is a spoof of the "The Office" television show. There have even been straight comedy porns, although the only one that I can think of off the top of my head will probably get this blog listed as adult content if I mention the name.

After that, we talked about straight gay porn actors. He seemed surprised that I thought that many of the guys seen in the behind the scenes videos are probably straight. I pointed out that this particular studio (although it's certainly not unique in this regard) features a lot of presumably straight guys to appeal to a certain demographic of gay guys (that includes me, incidentally).

I pointed out that in some situations, even if these guys were actually gay, they'd have to pretend to be straight in order to maintain fan interest in them. After all, if they're gay, then watching them isn't nearly as titillating as it would be if they're really interested in women and just convinced to have sex in front of the camera for money. It sort of implies to all of the gay guys out there that all those hot straight guys would be gay, if the right circumstances came up. (Link is slightly NSFW, a few pages in.)

This creates an interesting paradox in which gay people have to pretend to be straight in order to do well in gay porn, essentially forcing them back into the closet. You'd think that this industry would be relatively gay friendly, but what does it say when stars in gay porn have to pretend to be straight to do well in the industry (or at least, in this part of it)?

My friend noticed that one of the photo shoots played on a fairly menial masculine theme: a painter on a ladder. He wanted to know if masculine themes were the norm in gay porn, and I responded that they are.

Mainstream gay porn actors are muscular straight-acting men. The stuff featuring stereotypically feminine, thin, or overweight guys is about as popular in gay porn as masculine, rail thin, and overweight women are in straight porn. It sells, it just doesn't sell the same way the mainstream stuff does.

Personally, I think this sort of skews the perspective on the gay community you get from porn more than it does even for straight porn. You get a serious distortion in physicality and body type in both, and also a serious distortion on how easy it is to have sex with a random stranger, but on the gay side you also get a serious distortion involving a sort of personal characterization. You won't see a lot of lisping men with floppy wrists in gay porn, even if the actors have lisps and floppy wrists in their normal, everyday, homo lives.

The problem is, I don't necessarily think that we need more effeminate men in porn. There isn't something that we can change on the production side that will suddenly change gay people's taste in porn. As Dan Savage often points out, we like what we like. Suppressing it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it more valuable as demand far outstrips supply.

My final thought about porn was this: there is never any truth in it. No model uses their real name, they're often filmed in ubiquitous rented houses and hotels, they use Viagra to induce erections, and the use makeup to minimize any skin problems, and they use men that are better looking than 99% of the population.

So, perhaps that's why I like to see a glimpse of the behind-the-scene truth to the movies. Seeing some sliver of truth to what glossy image is portrayed by the (other) camera is interesting, and strangely exciting by way of its unusual and forbidden nature. You aren't normally asked to connect with the stars, you're asked to objectify and fetishize them.

There's a link between this conversation and the next one, which has to do with self-image.

The stereotypical feminist, whether a real person or not, apparently argues against the internalization of societal values of beauty, especially when you find yourself looking bad by comparison. To accept that all women should be blond size 2s with size DD boobs can seriously impact a woman's self worth if you don't fit those measurements for beauty.

Thus, the argument is that pornography (and pop culture in general) promotes unrealistic views of women and should cease to do so. The problem with this is something that I mentioned in passing above about gay porn: when realistic people are utilized, the interest in the final product decreases. So, despite the best efforts of our theoretical feminists, selling sexuality through highly idealized body types continues to be mass produced and marketed. And it sells very well.

Only a few years ago, back when I was in my first college, I can remember feeling bad about the kind of men that I was attracted to (Tall, blond, with the body of a greek god, see any Abercrombie and Fitch quarterly) because I thought that it was wrong of me to be attracted to someone purely due to their physical appearance. After all, that sort of attraction is very shallow, and I've always been told that it's the mind and personality that should matter most.

In a conversation with a gay friend he said something similar to this, about how his physical self-esteem was low and that he puts a greater premium on personality than on physical attraction.

Over the last few years, I've come to disagree with that. I don't think that it's fair to discount physical attraction.

Switching back to our feminists arguments, I agree that women shouldn't be held to the same physical standards as models, actresses, and porn stars, but I don't think that gutting the porn industry is the answer. Just like kids playing video games don't think that they're actually vital soldiers invading Normandy in 1945, men who watch porn understand that their enjoyment is based on a fictional and fantastic portrayal.

They don't necessarily loose interest in their wives and girlfriends after watching porn, you know.

Now, if they're exhorting those same women to put themselves through the pain of looking like that when they don't want to, that's a problem. In my book, it's just a form of emotional abuse, and that should be stopped. But there's a deep division between portrayal and demanding that women (and men) live up to the same standards as the most common porn shoot.

Thinking back about my three and a half relationships, none of the guys involved looked like porn stars. None of them had a six pack. All of them have been Hispanic or Latino. However, despite the fact my taste in porn runs to white men with six packs that never stopped me from being interested in the guys that I'm dating.

Yeah, real relationships are based on personality and connection and I can't deny that, but you shouldn't deny physical attraction just because it isn't based on the higher minded connection of personality.

I suspect that this is part of the puritan values left over from the foundation of the United States. There's a certain fear of physical, lustful attraction that I think is silly. It might not be the highest form of connection that you can reach with someone else, but as someone whose connections with other people tend to be on the tenuous side already, I don't think that the solace that a meaningless, shallow, lurid relationship can provide is without merit.

In fact, I'm not willing to discount any relationship or encounter that offers something, however small. Just because sex with someone offers a few fleeting moments of chemical induced happiness, it can still be a positive experience. It's when two people have differing understandings of what a particular act conveys that problems arise.

Of course, that's a separate conversation altogether.

Update: It turns out that a few of us had the same idea. Aside from Jesse Santana, the gay porn star who posted about not being a rent boy, Mason Wyler, one of my porn star crushes has a really interesting post that addresses some of the points made in the first part of this post.

A Happy Valentine's Day

So, yesterday was a very long, very complicated day which demands a very long , very complicated post followed by a movie review. I think I'm going to divide it into blocks of time, just so that it's easier for me to manage my thoughts about it.

First, I woke up in Albuquerque at my brother's house at 6:30 a.m. and went to a mediation with my lawyers over the whole broken neck thing.

7:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Mediation: So, I learned something today that I didn't know. The woman that ran the red light and hit me (and broke my neck) is a former Buddhist nun. She's been having horrible problems since the accident because she was absolutely devastated by what she's done. She told me that she had nightmares and wasn't able to drive for about a year after the accident.

She asked to be able to speak with me alone, to apologize, and I agreed. She was crying, and told me how upset that she'd been about disrupting my life, and basically broke down. I couldn't think of anything to say at first, but I finally told her that she had to promise me that that she would work at forgiving herself. I said "everything is going to work out," but I'd slipped into lawyer mode and I just couldn't come up with something comforting that didn't sound like admitting fault.

I can't hate her anymore though. I just can't. She suffered too.

And then there was that conversation that we had, alone in that room. Heaven help me if I ever forget that conversation. It made everything that happened at IIDB feel like a win.

I brought four books. Over the seven hours that I was there I probably could have finished two of them, but I only finished off Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven. It's odd because that's a book that I really hadn't heard anyone talk about, but I think that it's definitely one of her best works. I did manage to start Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives though, so I got some good horrors of the deep laughs from that.

And then, around 2:15, we finally settled. Yes, I covered my medical bills, and I'm glad it's over. Finally, finally, finally. I'm still worried that I made the wrong decision, even though my lawyers and my mother agree that it was the right one.

I didn't think it would be over, but it is.

Let me just point out how wrenching negotiating for this money was. I'm not a good negotiator, but the guy on the other side was just jerking us around. He was good, but the mediator wasn't really conveying what my lawyers wanted to convey from him. My lawyer was giving her cues about how to say x-y-z, but she was just ignoring him. The opposing (i.e. insurance) lawyer was jerking us around, and it probably would have been better for us if we'd allowed our numbers to do the talking instead of the mediator.

I think that the reason that I'm mostly worried/convinced that I made the wrong decision is because I feel that my side didn't negotiate well. When you're on the side that has the edge, you need to push the other side out of their comfort zone. They had one up card and one reserve card, and they played really conservatively, inch by inch, in a style that allowed them to walk away without a clear victory, but without the huge losses that the opposing lawyer was there to prevent.

Perhaps if I'd sent the mediator along with one of my shoes and instructions to hit it on the desk we would have done better.

Hindsight, you know? It'll kill you every time, and it was potentially enough money to change my life. I still hope that it will, even though it's a lot less that I think we could have played for.

2:30-5:00 Hanging out with Jeff and his roommate recovering and trying not to cry: His roommate is really cute, and he's good at Halo & Call of Duty 4 as well. He was totally beating down on both of those games. Yeah, I'm not much of a first person shooter person, but those games on the XBox 360 look amazing. During this time I recovered from some of the shock that I felt about finally having settled my case.

5:30-7:30 Dinner with Pam and Jeff at Flying Star: Pam drove down all the way from Colorado to come to Jumper, which is based on a book that Steven Gould, one of our instructors at Viable Paradise, wrote. I've been promoting the movie to almost everyone I meet, and I've been looking forward to it for a weeks.

The even more cool thing is that Steven lives in Albuquerque, so he was going to the opening night showing of the movie as well with a huge group of friends and acquaintances. To be able to say that you went to the movie with the guy that wrote the book is a fairly respectable bragging point, and both Pam and I jumped at the chance to represent at the premiere.

I knew that he and a slew of others were going to go to Tuscanos, a Brazilian restaurant, after the movie, but because of the Mediation I hadn't eaten anything of substance all day so I already knew that I wanted to eat prior to the movie. Thus, I ended up with a very good Cobb salad. Hooray.

Pam has kept in much closer contact with the other VPXI alumni, so it was nice to hear what's been going on. I thought that I missed a bit because I was sick, but there seemed to be a lot more that I had either forgotten or missed out on, and I have to wonder about the way my head works some times. Pam is basically the preeminent Anne McCaffrey fan in existence, which is something that I did not have the faintest clue about from Viable Paradise. I mean, I suspect that it was mentioned, but I had no idea of the awesome depths to which her fandom goes. By comparison, my deep commitment to some of my favorite authors is purely dabbling.

If I ever have a fan like her, I will know that I've made it.

7:30-9:00 Jumper: I liked it. I really honestly did, and that's not because I'm going to send Steve a link to the review blog when I post it.

9:00-11ish Dinner at Tuscanos: So, just before the movie started, I saw a gentleman with salt and pepper hair sitting down with his wife. I'm not very good with names and faces, and I'd already been confused once, so I decided that I very much needed to make sure that it was in fact S.M. Stirling that was sitting there in the theater. I went down to talk with Laura, sidled up to her, and in a near whisper I asked her if that was S.M. Stirling, and laughingly said "I've confused him with George R. R. Martin before."

She looked at me and said, "You don't know George?" Then she looked up about four rows from where we were standing and says "Hey George! This is Ben, he'll meet you later!"

I'm not religious, but the best description that my generation uses to describe how I felt at that moment was: O.M.G. In all of the mindless valley girl splendor that phrase implies.

Absolutely extreme fandom alert. My copy of A Game of Thrones was left in Iraq with the marines by my little brother and I haven't yet replaced it, preventing me from rereading the series recently, but it's still the fantasy series at the moment.

After the show, I was trying to figure out the logistics of the situation. Jeff, Nick, and er . . . Nick's girlfriend (darn it, I'm doing really badly with names today) had driven up with me, but I had decided that I was now massively interested in staying for dinner. They volunteered to go back to school by bus, thus allowing me to indulge in a little bit of serial fan worship of a few of my favorite authors. Thank you all so much. I freaking owe you.

Pam and I wandered into Tuscanos. Since both of us had anticipated eating early, neither of us had really anticipated eating after the movie as well, and we weren't part of the 60 person reservation that Steven made at the restaurant. We mutually decided that we should hang around and see if there were any seats left before diving in.

At around this time I was standing near a table where it looked like Laura and Steve might sit, and a woman is looking up at us. She stands up from her seat and starts making conversation with us. I don't remember what the conversation started out as, but my first thought was that she was probably Laura's mother.

Then she introduced herself as Joan . . . Saberhagen.

No offense to Mr. Martin or Mr. Stirling, but of the local New Mexico authors, Fred Saberhagen is probably my favorite. I've got an entire little section of my shelf that contains all eightvolumes of The Lost Swords, The Complete Book of Swords, An Armory of Swords (merely edited by him), Merlin's Bones, and the "Saberhagen: My Best" collection of short stories. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of what he's written. He is awesome.

My eyes just absolutely lit up for a moment, and I pumped Joan Saberhagen's hand, and I gushed for just long enough that it suddenly hit me that he'd recently died.

Darn it.

Darn it, darn it, darn it.

I offered my condolences, but it must be hard to be put in a position where your connection to someone is your recently deceased husband. I can't even imagine. She looked sad for a moment, but she must have the will of a saint because it was only in her face for the briefest second.

I think it was Joan and Steve himself that suggested to us that it was eventually time to get seats, and that we should go for the seats that we wanted, and I did. The table next to George R. R. Martin was partially empty, and so I drew on my reserve of "You already regret one thing that you've done today, just suck it up and remember that if you don't do this you'll regret it tomorrow" motivation and asked George if we could pull the tables together.

Thus, it came to be that I sat across the table from George R. R. Martin for dinner at Tuscanos. I should have offered to pay, and if I wasn't worried that my debit card would be declined if I tried, I would have.

Next to George sat Pam, and between us was a hilarious friend of Steve's named Gary. On my other side was Parris, a gentleman whose name I immediately lost, and a gentleman whose name I think was Hank.

I, of course, made a complete fool of myself, which I do not for a moment regret. It was blissfully, painfully, embarrassingly funny, and I got to tell my "Are you George R. R. Martin?" "No, he's S. M. Stirling" story to George himself. Yes, I may not have made another meaningful comment for the rest of the night, but that little itsy-bitsy anecdote was worth it.

You have to take pleasure in the small things.

It's odd, I tried to listen to the conversation shooting around across the table for the rest of the evening, but the one thing that really caught my attention was when George said that he had always loved the insanely complicated rescue plans, and that one day he'd have to set up a huge one where one person dresses as the king, another as a knight, and then they swing into the feast on a rope.

This being George R. R. Martin though, he pointed out that everything would have to go wrong. I pseudo-countered, pointing out that if he was the writer, the author would expect everything to go pear shaped. It seems so obvious now, and I wish I'd come up with the obvious conclusion to that line of reasoning: If it was in one of his books, in order to subvert the reader expectations the intricate, complex, and convoluted rescue plan would have to succeed from top to bottom, and then go completely wrong once they thought they were safe.

The guy sitting between Pam and me, Gary, is unbelievably funny though. He was the most interesting dinner companion. He works with GPS systems, although I swear that we made it through dinner without touching on that subject once. It wasn't until later that I found that out.

A note about Tuscano's itself: They have cute waiters. Really cute waiters. With those pale blue eyes and short hair, and everything. Oh, and I find their premise interesting. They've got a salad bar (and it was a good one), but then the waiters traipse around the restaurant carrying kebabs of meat. Bacon wrapped veal, tri-tip steak with various glazes, roasted chicken, spicy sausages, and everything else. If you want some, you get a bit. It wasn't phenomenal, but it was still on the good side. Pam's chocolate hockey puck thing was excellent, for example, and I couldn't get enough of their spicy sausage.

At some point around 11 p.m. I realized that I'd missed a call from my mother. She told me that due to weather I was to "Stay with my brother" and two sentences later "drive right home so that you don't get caught in the storm." As of the time of this writing, a day later, there still ain't no storm, and I don't think she ever managed to fully clarify which of those two orders she actually wanted me to follow.

11ish to 12:30 Champagne at Steve and Laura's: Now, you have to understand that I'm not much of a champagne person. It think it tastes bad, but I think that about nearly everything with alcohol in it, and it apparently was a really expensive bottle of champagne, so I had half a glass, and it was the best that I've ever had, which means that I got it down and I managed to make it stay down.

Upon arrival at Steve and Laura's (and I used to live in the same part of town, actually), I realized that they have more books than I do. Way more books. Way, way more books. I mean, wowsers. I wish I had shelves like that.

We sat around, talked for a while. I told my story about the neck, and for the first time it was a story that is in the past tense. It is something that happened to me and is not still happening to me. It was a really happy evening for me.

I got to see the office, which I now know is famous. I don't get it, I thought I knew the author's online domains, but I was quite wrong about this one. Steve has a blog, and it will be going up on the side bar when I get a chance to move things around. (Note: Ta-dah!)

I did get some pictures though, by the machinations and manipulations of those around me. Two of me, one with George and one with Pam and Steve, are visible at Pam's blog here. There's also one involving the chocolate hockey puck taken of Pam by me.

12:30-2:00 a.m. Driving home: Yes, I finally did drive home, stopping to get gas and use the restroom. It wasn't the drowsiest that I've ever been on the way home, but it isn't an experiment that I'd likely repeat soon.

I just remembered something that I'd forgotten, so I'll mention it here: I was carrying around my (second) copy of Jumper, and got Steve to autograph it. He wrote something really awesome in it: "To [ST], who will write others as good." Awwwwww . . .

And that was my Valentine's day.

Travels

My brother's in La Paz, Bolivia, which historically is not as serene as the name implies. He's apparently sleeping down the street from the witches' market and asked if anyone needed anything. I mentioned that if he finds a potion of world domination below cost, he should snap it up and I'll pay him back for it.

I'm in the travelogue section of the book that I'm writing, and I came to a dead stop a few days back. I'm not particularly fond of travel scenes, and the whole book is driven by the travel that the main characters do, so suddenly its like I've used up every ounce of travel narrative that I have in me. I really want to just slip into sci-fi ship mode and imagine them teleporting from place to place except that I know that teleportation would absolutely ruin most of the plot of my book.

You know, most of the universe is a pretty boring place. There are these vast voids, not just between planets but between stars, nebulae, and galaxies. It's hard to imagine just the solid vastness involved in something like a galaxy, but for a moment try to imagine the gigantic emptiness between galaxy filaments.

So it feels really annoying that there are so many great places to visit here on Earth that I'm not getting to visit/live in. All I want to do at the moment is get out of NM and I can't. Arg.

Currently, the list of places that I want to visit (in no particular order) is:

• New York (to visit with Elliot, Jay, Jeremy, and possibly to connect with some of my humanist online friends)

• Washington D.C. (to see Reagan, Karen, and maybe even drop in on my old roommate Eric)

• San Francisco (check in on Matt and Iggy, and maybe even go to the Castro and a real gay bar)

• England (Travel up through the northern country to see how beautiful it is, and spend some time near London. I would have loved to have done that while Jeff and Steph are there, or even Jeremy, but that hasn't happened. They've got cute boys in Britain too.)

• Ireland (The magic country. It's going to come up in my books sooner or later, and I'd like to see it so that I'm not spouting completely random things)

• India (Now that's an exotic place to go, and it's a place that I've wanted to see for years. I'd love to visit the Taj Mahal, the Blue City, and all sorts of other temples all throughout India)

• Australia (Sydney, specifically. I've got some friends in the area that I could stay with for a few days, and I'd love to see the gold coast beaches)

• Miami and Key West (and maybe Fort Lauderdale as well. I didn't get to see as much of the area, and have as much fun as I would have liked).

Yeah, all these pictures are making me restless.

What's Happening

Yeah, I know I haven't updated recently, but then again, I know that those of you that read this aren't going to see it soon anyway.

What's been happening? In no particular order:

Well, I'm doing better. I'm mostly off of the neck brace now, but I'm still in physical therapy twice a week.

I'm worried about Viable Paradise. I don't really have the money to go, so it's going to be interesting paying off the debt that I'm going to have since I don't make enough money to cover my bills anyway.

The summer's beautiful. We've been getting some rain and some thunder storms, which are beautiful and stunning and everything that summer in NM typically is. Now that I'm thinking of leaving for good, I'm apparently going to miss this place something fierce.

The dogs are both getting very old. I'm worried about them. My dad's not doing too well either, and I'm worried about him too.

I have a crush on another cute internet boy. This one is straight, which fits right into my comfort zone. His name is Jamie Stroud, and he's a gymnast/martial artist from Cali. He's also a member of the Unification Church. Considering my interest in comparative religion, I find that awesomely cool, and I want to go ask him all sorts of questions about it.

Also, he's hotter than hell. *Cough* (<---Link removed due to brokenness, Feb 08)

I'm going to see Elliot in September when I go to Viable Paradise, which is going to be awesome. I'm going to finally bring him my "real" wedding present, which differs from the "from the heart" present that he already has.

Ah, right, I had a sort of mental breakdown about two weeks ago. I'm on prozac again, and I'm wondering about my mental health. I wish I didn't have problems. I wish I could be not-depressed like other people, so that I wouldn't have to be depressed about being depressed. Ah, the vicious circle.

There have been some interesting happenings on CF and IIDB. No promotion for me yet on IIDB, but they've allowed some non-Christian mods on CF for the first time. Raven got one of the positions and I'm rooting for her. Go Raven!

Oh, duh. I got the last Harry Potter book, and I saw the most recent movie. The movie was very good, the book was just good. Don't get me wrong, I liked the book, and I thought the ending was appropriate and in line with the entire theme of the series. However, the editing was poor. There were several internal contradictions that a careful editor should have fixed revisions ago.

(At this point, I'll warn you that there are spoilers in the next paragraph for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, although hopefully by the time its published you'll have read the book for yourself.)

Also, there's some interesting speculation on the religious nature of this last book. Yeah, there's the Calvary walk, the death, the resurrection, and even the crucifixion, but I still see lots of non-religious themes in the book. Some of the ones that strike me at this particular moment are Harry's reliance on his friends, the utter lack of betrayal that he suffered by someone close to him, and the fact that he lives through his "death" and goes on to live happily for a long time afterward.

Now that Rowling's done with the series, I hope she does the smart thing and allows others to expand on her intellectual property. Not me, per se, but I'm sure there are writers out there that will give their left nut to contribute to a series that will automatically guarantee that their works sells millions of copies.

All she'd have to do would be approve the plots, and let a new batch of writers take over. Even splitting the profits with the new writers, Rowling's sitting on a gold mine. Look at what Tolkien's son is doing with his father's old intellectual property (And Frank Herbert's son as well).

Some writers jealously guard their intellectual property, but sometimes they fail to recognize that sometimes letting it expand under their supervision but not their direct control can be just as effective.

Finally, there are frogs or toads croaking in the riverbed, which is not a usual sound for NM.

I think that's about it for now.

The Symphony House

Both times that I've driven out to M.'s house, I've had huge problems. The first time I drove out there I took a left at a place where I should have taken a right and ended up in the middle of a muddy field. I stopped, tried to back up and my little Toyota slipped into the ruts and I was very, very stuck.

I started walking . . . not back toward the road, but forward. I thought I could continue on to M.'s house by foot. It might have been a better plan if I hadn't been walking in the wrong direction.

I did finally manage to get a cell phone signal out, reached Christopher, M.'s dad, and he came and pushed me out of the rut with his own car. That's why I started the Moonlight Sonata, 3rd movement, so I could give it to them as thanks for getting me out of that horrific and life threateningly muddy situation.

This time, I drove up there in the afternoon. The sky was gray, but it didn't start raining until I was already on their road. I figured that I would be fine in my brother's 4 wheel drive jeep, so I continued on.

Nope.

I came to this place where there was a slight slope to the hill. I pressed on the brakes, intending to just slow down. Instead, the entire surface of the road turned into a mud slick. Later, Christopher told me that it's the clay that the entire area is made out of. The mud is much slicker than it is out near my house where it's tacky and sticks to everything.

So I was sliding down this very slight hill very slowly but completely out of control and it was deja vú back to my first snowstorm accident. I wasn't in control, but I wasn't going all that fast, so I'm sort of just sitting there as I slide off the road.

Crunch, right into the ditch. Into a bush.

So, I think to myself, this isn't so bad. I tried to get myself out of it . . . and well, didn't do a very good job.

I'm in the jeep, and now it's leaning to the right so strongly that I worry any more effort on my part is going to roll it, and there's a barbed wire fence just outside the passenger side window. I was so pissed off at myself for not managing to make it all the way to the house that I got out, locked the doors, and abandoned the stupid Jeep. Uhg.

Of course, now I'm walking in the rain wearing only my fleece jacket. First, I called M. and told him to come and pick me up (thank you, roaming coverage). I wasn't quite sure how much further it was, but I was out of the car so I decided to walk it. At least this time I knew which way to go.

That was a mistake because now that I'm out of the car it begins to rain harder. It was going in cycles, a few minutes of rain and then a few minutes of drizzle. When it was drizzling I would walk down the road toward his house but I kept having to stop and stand under the bushes at the side of the road when the drizzle turned to heavy rain.

A car finally saw me and stopped, but he was going the wrong way. He talked with me for a few minutes while I told him about running the jeep off the road until another truck came by headed in the right direction. The first guy gestures to the second guy to stop so the second guy slams on the brakes. Wrong move. He slid right off the road the same way I had. Luckily, he was in a better place for sliding off the road; he gunned it and managed to make it out of the ditch.

He wasn't pissed at me though, and offered to give me a ride for a little while, which was nice. I got in the truck and he took me to where his road split from the road to M.'s house, and I started walking in the drizzle again.

And then, walking down the road toward me comes M. I tried to run to meet him, but my shoes had so much mud on them that I must have looked really silly.

Anyway, walking with him along was much better than walking alone. Christopher was waiting at the top of this horrific hill (I don't think I would have been able to make it up that in the rain, and I'm sort of glad I didn't make it that far) and he drove us the final section back to the house. At the hill was when I realized that I wouldn't be able to get the jeep out that night, and M. confirmed it. I was going to have to stay with them until the morning.

I don't think I described the house the last time I blogged about it but it is a thing of music. You walk through a little entrance hallway and come into the main room, which is twisted up like the end of a treble clef. On the white walls there are these musical marks, carved deep into the plaster during construction.

If you continue around the curve, there are also these amazing little windows, and the sections of glass are put together with musical symbols in these really amazing patterns. In the sunlight these windows throw rainbows out all around the curve of the house.

Anyway, M. and his father cooked dinner, which was this amazing pasta with fresh asparagus and . . . er, something that I'm now forgetting. Whatever it was, the food was simply delicious.

M. built a fire in the back, and we sat out there for hours, talking about stuff. His trip. Books. All sorts of things. It was really nice just to have someone with whom you can talk about anything.

They put me up in the bed near the piano, and I had a pretty good night's sleep. I woke up in the morning, and I let them do some work on the house (yeah, yeah, I know, I should have helped, but I burn like a tissue paper and then there's that neck thing too).

Finally M. drove me out and we looked at the jeep. Er, yeah, I really got it stuck in there. Some guy on his way out stopped to help us, but it was still nearly beyond the three of us. Eventually we had to tear the barbed wire fence apart to get it out. It was insane.

I'd left the drawing in the jeep over night, so I drove out and dropped it off with Christopher. He seemed to like it, for which I am very grateful.

When I drove up in the jeep though, Chris said, "You managed to get stuck in that?"

Yes, yes I did.

Well, third times the charm, right? Maybe next time I'll actually make it all the way there without mud intervening. At least he enjoyed the Moonlight Sonata, 3rd Movement.

Advertising

I don’t get it. Listening to rain on your roof is beautiful and musical at night, but when it’s just dripping on something and you’re trying to sleep it’s annoying.

I regret entitling that other post "Looking For Work," now, and really this episode ("Three Weeks of Pennies") should have been shortened down and maybe combined with that other episode, but in the end it didn’t feel right unless I explained that Alex isn’t a slacker. He’s not exactly competent either, but he’s not a slacker. And right now I want to provide context for the real story, which is imminent.

I missed a counseling session today, which sucks because I’ve been really down recently. Just depression kicking in, but it’s awful that neither of us thought about it.

I’ve been thinking recently about something one of my favorite teachers in high school once said. He said that he thought that I was special because I didn’t care what other people thought about me.

I wonder what he would say if he saw me today, going out of my head trying to provoke reactions from people?

I’m not a good troll. I mean, I can put a slew of effort into creating the persona of some 27 year old Christian Single Mother who got pregnant, found Jesus, and now believes that most organized Christian religions are secretly plotting to fund the anti-Christ so that they can bring about the end of the world. Oh, right, and she’s injured and the state is threatening to take Abby, her daughter away because she can’t take care of her.

When it comes time to go out and spread the Word though, I couldn’t get much out. And when I did, about how my brother was preaching that Christians were going to hell for violating Jesus’ command, I was so vague that no one responded.

And here I am, this is the real me, and I’m fairly explicit here, and I still can’t get a reaction even with a magnesium flare.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t advertise myself well. But I don’t have a decent camera, and I know better than post naked shots of myself online. Especially grainy ones.

It’s odd, people used to tell me that I was pretty, and by “people” I mean girls. I go to the club though, and people treat me like a lemur. An ugly lemur. Granted, the music deafened me, the smoke and the heat made me sick, and I don’t drink, but I would dance, but clubs are supposed to be about easy sex. Where the hell was the easy sex at the clubs in ABQ? All of the cute guys were with other cute guys, and the moderately cute guys were about “waiting” for something special. What was that? There is definitely something wrong with gay culture if we’ve already passed the no-strings sex mentality completely behind. Because I seem to have missed it.

And I’m easy.

That’s not a particularly flattering thing to say about myself, but it’s certainly very true. I threw myself at Gabriel not because I thought he was that good looking but because he seemed interested in him. It didn’t work out because I wasn’t interested in him, but that certainly didn’t seem to matter to me at first because he showed some interest in me.

So how do I advertise better? Pictures of me with my head photoshopped onto Mason Wyler’s body would be a good place to start, except that I don’t really look anything like him and I don’t necessarily like to lie about myself.

I can’t draw (real things, anyway) so I can’t become the next Penny-Arcade, Something*Positive, or PvP.

And I haven’t figured out how to advertise a blog. Back in the day Mike and Jeff both highly recommended “forksplit” to me. It’s the blog of a NYC half-Muslim arab/half-WASP advertising exec, and it’s brilliant. Some of the best writing on the internet. How did they find it? I can’t imagine. I can’t even get them to read my blog regularly, and here is this woman from New York City talking about how she likes to go clubbing with gay boys that they read whenever it’s updated.

Let’s talk about another friend: Alex (the real one, not one of my fictional ones) validated my existence the other day. By Buddha’s man tits, it was nice to get out of the house with someone other than my mother. Someone who volunteered to spend two hours on the road to prove that the person living in my room isn’t some zombie corpse raised by my mother.

Except now I’m worried that I offended him by disagreeing with him. I knew that we wouldn’t agree on everything, but I guess I was just bored and I posted a long thing on one of his blog entries (which I read religiously) that basically called his writing tripe. Which it isn’t, I just don’t agree with him, which is a completely different issue.

And now I’m talking about it in a blog instead of confronting him. That’s so passive aggressive and passé. But I’m doing it anyway because sometimes I guess I’m passive aggressive and passé. I need to change that.

Dude, you’re important to me. Yes, I have a crush on you, but dammit, it’s because you’re brilliant and a good friend. And besides, you’re straight. My crush proves that. Any disagreement with you is automatically null and void because of that. You could probably slap me around a little and I couldn’t really dislike you. (I apologize, abjectly and profusely, for any and all wrongs I have done you Alex, and I post it here in some sort of punishment for myself. If you ever need to remind me of that, you have it in writing.)

I don’t have a gimmick, I guess. I’m an aspiring writer, but who online isn’t an aspiring writer? Geez, even the waiters and bouncers with blogs have books that they’re trying to sell. I’m gay, but not in a porn-star or even a “Super! Thanks for asking!” way so I can’t play that up.

Even the writing is questionable, although I have to hold out hope for that. If I can’t write, there isn’t much chance of writing for a living, eh? I am taking Ashley’s advice, though, and part of that seems to be working, although I have no idea why Live Journal is so popular.

But in a certain sense, I need the validation of response and interaction. This is certainly not the first time I’ve said it, but it’s certainly a reversal on my personal sense of “You don’t need anyone, dude.”

It feels awfully materialistic, to know that I want to make people respond, and I know that’s the right word, but I feel sort of like I’m treading into the area where Paris Hilton rules: being famous is having people want to respond to you. Do I want to be famous? Yeah, of course I do, but I think that I would settle for “acknowledged.”

Last thing, from out of nowhere: I haven’t heard from my little brother in more than a fortnight. That is very, very bad. My mom and I had the “talk” about what to do if two Marines in dress blues show up at the door. They’d probably come during the day when I’m home, and even if she was here, they would knock at my door first.

So, if it happens, I cry first, wait until I can talk without freaking out, and then tell her. I will try to remain calm while I am speaking to her, because she does not need me to be a wreck while she needs me.

And then I’d institute suicide watch procedures for her, which, of course, I haven’t told her about. Little to no alone time. Clean medicine bottles out of the cabinets and remove sharp objects from where she can find them.

He could be boycotting writing us because we haven’t paid enough attention (I haven’t written him yet), but probably not. The military might have blacked out communication because they do that sometimes, but probably not for this long.

It’s really starting to scare me.

Wreeling and Writhing

So, Ashley read the short story that I posted, Colony, and liked it so much she felt compelled to tell me, which is awesome. It's unreal when you realize that some has read and really liked something that you've written. In Ashley's honor, I'm going to do some work rewriting Colony and posting the second draft when I get a chance.

She also recommended that I join a couple of Live Journal communities, and I agreed, so instead of updating two blogs, I'm going to update three of them, the Myspace blog, the Live Journal blog and the main Worlds & Time blog on blogger. I've actually been thinking about this for a couple of days, so to me it isn't totally unexpected.

Ashley is also the person that originally came up with Lia. She had a record of the old original Lex blog, and she sent me a link. If you're interested in that sort of thing, you can see it here:

http://alexmercer.greatestjournal.com/

It's a lot shorter than I remember it, but I'm sure someday I'll look back at what I'm posting today and say to myself "Wow that's short." Especially if I continue trying to read Notes on a Geek Show.

Right, since I figured that no one really reads this blog anyway other than me, I suppose I forgot to mention this, but I put a little history into the links on MySpace and LiveJournal about Lex and Lia. Here's a little more.

Originally Lex and Lia were supposed to be part of a larger game of people, about twenty five or so, that wanted to do a sort of communal neo-vampire novel online. The community was based around the fictional city of San Maceideo, a sort of Gotham City in Southern New Mexico. Since we were new, we were the young, inexperienced characters while most of the characters were old and powerful.

However, nothing really happened in San Meceideo. The community was new, but it was so new that no one really could figure out their own stories. So between me and Lia, we only had a half dozen posts.

Still, I liked the character of Lex. His PB (this was my first encounter with this acronym, it means "played by" and it indicates the actor that your character looks like) was Kerr Smith, who is gorgeous, and he reminded me of Jonathan. Celia, incidentally, was Alexa Vega back when she was Spy Kids age. If you ever want to know what the characters look like, that's it.

He was also tormented, and he fit into his niche.

I knew I wanted to do a weekly serial, and Lex and Lia fit the bill. I did remove them from the fictional San Maceideo and put them into Las Vegas. I don't remember any of the other characters from the original universe, so I don't have worry much about stealing other people's characters.

That's where Lex and Lia come from.

Memories, Sweet Memories

I just put up the first two Lex and Lia posts that I wrote this morning. I was looking for the original posts that belonged to a separate, ancient blog, but I couldn't find them, so this is based on what I remember.

I'm sure Ashley remembers the Madrid scene, although I know this one is different. I remember the first one that I wrote being better, but obviously I can't remember it well enough to duplicate it. I do know that Alex wandered around longer, but I don't remember why that was.

Just in case anyone is wondering, Madrid really does have a Saloon, a Soda fountain, and a boxcar shop. Only the motel is fictional. It's an unusual place, and since I've been there it seems like the perfect place for vampires and other creatures of the night to visit during the middle of the night.

Also, as a reminder to myself, the date in the story December 21. The vamps are celebrating the Winter Solstice. That means Christmas is just around the corner for Lex and Lia. I'll have to remember that for next week.

What else is going on in my non-life. . . ?

Well, I finished the first Anita Blake book yesterday, and I finished the second one this morning. It's true, they're like fantasy mystery novels, and they're darned easy reading. I'm glad I picked up the whole set at that book fair. The whole "Voting rights for Vampires" thing is an interesting twist on the whole world of the undead. It's something that I wasn't expecting, and so it's a nice touch.

I also found a letter from a friend buried in an old email account yesterday. It's odd, I don't check my email like an addict, although I have an addictive personality. I tend to let my addresses multiply and then slowly wither and die under an inconceivable amount of spam. I love the gmail filter, which has so far proven 99% efficient.

The old letter was in my school account, which I access with Thunderbird from Mozilla. You'd think that it would be a decent program for email considering how good Firefox is, but at times it hangs and leaves my entire computer waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting. . . . Also, it doesn't have preset guidelines for spam, so everything gets through, which is sickening. Shouldn't it at least have some basic guidelines before "learning" from me? I don't have time to go through the 700+ emails in there now to train it.

Of course, there's my Yahoo account, which has 500+, but that's just because I have a few daily subscriptions. Still, I dread having to slog through that to find the things that I need.

Right, anyway, that old letter was from that friend that I was worried about because he's down South and I haven't heard from him. So, I at least know that as of a month ago he was okay and alive, which is great news.

My sabbatical is going okay as well. I'm obviously not yet doing the work on my novel that absolutely must get done, but I've been thinking about it, and I've been writing every day, which is a good sign. The reason that I'm avoiding it is because I have to do more rewriting, which is something that I hate. Yuck. This is the 5th draft on some of these chapters, and that is annoying as all get out. I'm just glad that I don't have to redo the whole book start to finish.

I also need to spend more time on art. I'm getting near completion of my first color work, and it's going to be a bitch to frame because it's such an odd size. Still, I think it looks just the way I wanted it to look. I'll post one of those blurry pictures of it from a distance when I'm done.

I want to do some more complex stuff after this, but it's going to hurt because complex means a whole lot of time. Also, my neck is only so-so. I think all of the reading that I've been doing has been hurting it, so I can't spend a lot of time trying to bend over a piece of paper.

Oh right, final thing. While I was looking through Tad William's previous interviews I found the blog "Pat's Fantasy Hotlist." If you're a fantasy buff like I am, this looks like a phenomenal blog. It's got interviews, releases, and it's also got contests where they send you books.

Yeah, it's like a fantasy or something.

Anyway, I added it to the Worlds & Time sidebar, along with the blog of a writer who I've never before heard of before, Hal Duncan, but who wrote this amazingly cool blog entry. I love the anger, the power, and the absolute righteousness of it. So he gets an automatic spot on the list. And I'm going to buy one of his books, when I get around to it.

Now, I think I should do some work. So once again, until next time, space cowboys.

Update: Yarg, the Myspace blog isn't working. I'll have to post this over there later. See, this is why I keep the blog in two places.

Stiletto's Suicide

It's odd. When I found out that Stiletto One committed suicide, I mailed A. on Myspace fishing for a response.

I found out around fivish, and I'm just now crying.

Obviously, somewhere in my head, I'm really fucked up by this because I'm not thinking straight.

I knew Stiletto mostly from the photo gallery thread at IIDB. I got involved with that when I was briefly a mod of The Lounge, and I've been going back ever since.

Stiletto was a cheerful guy. He liked to take pictures of himself, and so he was one of the few people at IIDB that I recognized by sight. He was a young Chinese kid who liked guns, swing and ballroom dancing. I was jealous of him because of the ballroom dancing thing, actually.

He always seemed happy in the pictures. In fact, none of the site staff had any idea that he was depressed. Even now, it seems impossible that he would be upset about anything. The one thing about him was that you couldn't get under his skin no matter what.

I've been watching the threads for hours now, and I think I've basically pieced together what happened. (See here.)

Yesterday, his roommate found a will. That was worrying so they started to look for him. They called around to places where they thought he might be. He'd just got a new handgun, so they called a shooting range but they didn't know where he was . . . or where his new pistol was.

He'd never seen the beach before. He and his best friend would talk about how sometime they should drive out and watch the sun rise over the ocean. He mentioned this to his roommate before he disappeared.

The girl that he was sort of seeing got in her car and drove out toward the nearest beach. She didn't know where he was, but she figured that she'd at least try the closest and most accessible beach.

While she was on her way, the beach patrol found Stiletto in his car overlooking the water. He'd shot himself in the head.

Stiletto One (or Stiletto Null)'s real name was Frank Chen, and he died yesterday on Carolina Beach, North Carolina. He was 21 years old.

I may have only have known you through some pictures and words exchanged on a message board, but I'm going to miss you Frank. It's bizarre thinking that there won't be any more random posts from you in the Lounge or black and white glamour pictures of you looking handsome or serious in the photo gallery.

Every time I see the "Magic Brownies?" option in a poll, I'm going to think of Stiletto.

I don't believe in an afterlife. I believe that this is the life that we have and I don't think we go on to a better place. Stiletto is gone. However, he's going to be missed by me and a lot of other people who didn't know how much he was hurting.

My condolences to his family and friends.

You need to be a member to see the IIDB threads, but if you're a member, you can click here for the notice of his death and here for the photo thread.

Update, Feb 13, 11 am. There's an article in his school paper, here.

Hygeine & Worry

If you're a family member you shouldn't read this if you want to hold onto your sanity.

Crap, I'm falling apart. Between the emergency dental appointment, the latest round of teeth problems, and my neck hurting I want to ask for more pain meds.

If I'd actually waited until March for my dentist's first open Thursday appointment, I think I would have died. I mean, my teeth hurt if I just blow air on them. That sucks.

I think I know why my neck hurts. I've put on some weight recently, so I feel pretty horrible about myself. It's not like I should be up and around, so most exercising is forbidden to me. With my neck hurting again, I shouldn't even be walking too much again.

I'm not supposed to look up and down, but when I woke up today I knew I had to feel better so I decided that I needed to feel good about myself. I took a long shower, shaved, and then gave myself a trim, down there.

I'm typically pretty hairy. I'm not a bear by any stretch of the imagination and the hair on my chest is sparse. But I've always been a bush down there. I've shaved a couple of times, enough to learn some of the tricks (siscors down to a certain level, trimmers for a couple of places but not the underside, and an actual razor for the underside).

I have to admit, I don't always take as good care of the hair as I should. I suppose if I actually dated I would think about it more often, but these days it's just usually just for me.

Here's a funny thing, I used to think that hair was pretty universal. You know the covers of Men's Health & Fitness? I always thought they were shaved. And Porn Stars too. And I'm sure a lot of them do. \_/ is not a natural formation, as far as I know. The idea that some guys were just mostly naturally hairless hadn't occured to me.

I remember when I saw J. with his shirt off for the first time, and with less than that later, and I realized that he was just naturally hairless. He certainly wasn't the kind of guy that would take the time to shave his chest (and everything else) and I even asked him about it. Genetics can be a miserable thing if you get the hairy end of the stick.

So I trimmed today. I didn't take too much time, and I didn't do a great job, but it makes me feel better. And I hurt my neck from all that craning and looking down. Between the shower, the shave, the trim, and the Murano underwear I feel pretty good.

I did get a cool new toy. An external hard drive that's about 6 times larger than my laptop. I got it because . . . uh . . . I've been doing a lot of writing recently. Yeah, that's the ticket. Anyway, it's a beautiful thing. I can't remember if I mentioned this, but about a week ago I tried to back up my writing to my flash drive and accidentally backed up from my flash drive to my hard drive, erasing all of the work that I've done for the last three months.

I haven't done a lot of work in the last three months, thankfully, but I did loose a couple of things. Twenty pages on one of my book specs. About five pages over various chapters. A huge trunk of the file where I keep some of the dreams that I can remember when I wake up. I had some great ones back when I was still on Oxycodone, but obviously those are all gone.

So, I'm keeping multiple copies of everything now.

What else is gong on . . . . Hmmm.

I'm worried about Mike and Alex. I haven't heard from Mike in a couple of months now. I know I missed him right as he was going to South America or Central America or somewhere but I since I don't know when he's coming back I get to be worried until I hear from him.

The last time I saw him, he still wasn't doing great. Crap, I hope he's okay.

You know, it's odd about Alex. I've met him a grand total of once, but he's a great guy. If you know Alex, and I know at least two of the people that read this blog do (one of them is Alex), you must know what an amazing individual he is. I mean, read his blogs some time. He's definitely a thinker, and we need more of him. Good thing he's a breeder, eh?

Still, he's been having some crises of late. I think it's okay if I mention them because he mentions them. He's going Jew (or back to Jew, I guess). That doesn't bother me, as long as he doesn't become Hassidic and start telling me that we can't talk. After all, between Elliot and Jeff and A. and J. and etc., etc., etc. I seem to spend an awful lot of time with them. The Jews tend to be a great people to hang out with, and nearly all the ones that I know can hold down their end of a deep conversation.

He's going to Israel though, and will probably join the army there. He was being recruited by the Navy Intelligence, so he'll probably do really well over there.

That scares me. There are a couple of reasons that I can think of (that I'm willing to admit to). The first is that I'd worry about him. I'm not neutral on Middle East Issues after living with Elliot, but I can't deny that it's dangerous.

The other big one is that sometimes I think that the military is what finally tore me and Matt apart. We never really got along when we were kids. He was outgoing, funny, and straight, and I was the opposite. I say that we made each other's lives hell, but mostly because I was so jealous of him.

And then he went to the military. There aren't many places that he can go where I can't follow, but that's one of them. Which sucks because I seriously considered the military. It was supposed to be my irrational outlet. My way to finally find some drive. It was a surprise to me when I found out that he joined the Marines, but there was also some jealousy because I thought it was my plan.

In the end, it finally was just impossible because I'm gay. I can't lie about it, and I would rather have not been thrown out.

Now I don't even know him. He came home from basic, and it hit me that even though we grew up in the same house, we don't even share the same history. I remember he finally told me that our phone number was (505) ***-DUDE. In all the years that our phone number has been the same, I'd never known that. All his friends knew, and somehow I didn't. It's just a phone number, but to me it illustrates how totally disconnected I am from him.

So I think that I worry that when Alex goes away, I won't be able to connect with him any more. That he'll be as distant as Matt is.

I know how crazy that sounds. I mean, I don't even know him, but since I've been confined to my little room here, he's one of the few people that I seem connected to. I suppose I'm latching on because I don't have anyone else, and that doesn't bother me as much as I hope it bothers him.

Finally, I guess I'm worried that I'll never play D&D again. Why I connect Alex with D&D and not Jeff and Mike is inexplicable. If I had to guess it's because Alex was there at the game right as everything started to fall apart. R. moved away (I didn't know you for very long either but I still love you, R.). The main group had already fractured apart. Then I lost my job, and had to move home.

So Alex is a symbol of my problems with D&D. How that relates to him moving away I'm not quite sure, but somewhere in my twisted psyche it does. Crap. I need to move to New York. Somewhere in a city of 8 million people there must be enough people that play D&D for me to find some players. I bet even Miami Beach has people that play D&D, somewhere among the models and plastic surgeons.

It's too much to think about at the moment. I don't want to be worried. Aparently my last post spilled over into a rant in front of my Mom, so she went out and rented me so "gay movies" like The Kathy & Mo Show and Another Gay Movie, and I'm going to go watch them now.

And, just in case someone from New York is reading, I haven't figured out what I'm doing with this wedding present yet. I'll figure it out soon.

Weddings

As I start this, I’m several thousand feet above West Texas, on my way back from New York. I had a blissful time at the wedding, but it convinced me that some part of me must be a Jewish girl.

On Saturday, I spend some time with M. and her friends S. and A. in their apartment in a very, very Jewish section of the city. We basically just sat around and traded stories while M. tried on a few of the dresses that she’d picked up for the wedding and did a fashion show for us.

Actually, I thought she looked good in all of them, and I didn’t hesitate to tell her so, even though I had no idea how really attractive M. was until I saw her with her hair done for the wedding. Then, at the wedding proper, I spent most of my time with M. and Amy. As a fegala goyim, I felt like I had about as much place as M. and Amy in the men’s room, but it doesn’t change the fact that I seem to get along great with the tribal girls.

Like I said: some part of me is a Jewish girl.

This was my first orthodox wedding, but I haven’t been to many weddings so I don’t exactly know how much comparison I can bring to it. I went to one in Oregon when I stayed with my Grandmother on my father’s side. A cousin’s wedding in upstate NY, and another in central California. Oh, and Mike’s wedding in Albuquerque. So maybe five total, although I’ll parlay knowledge of various customs into knowledgeable sounding pronouncements whenever I have something to say.

The entire thing was very interesting, from the limo ride to the wedding in the morning, to the signing of the tsuba in the men’s room, and relative silence of the actual ceremony. Maybe I’m sensitive, but the lack of preaching was odd to me. Both of the religious Christian weddings used their time to evangelize to the gathered disciples. If it happened at this wedding, it must have been directly to the bride and groom when the microphones were turned off. I may not have felt out of place in the men’s room, and I certainly didn’t know the tunes or where I was supposed to go, but the ceremony itself didn’t make me feel bad to be a non-Jew. I spent more time thinking about Elliot and A.’s wedding than thinking through the theological justifications of twisting Pauline Christianity to fit a wedding, and that’s a good thing.

So, wow. I’d never been to a 500+ person wedding before. I’ve been to a big wedding before, but this was like being involved in something presidential. Some of the other groomsmen and I couldn’t help but to speculate what it cost to put it on, but I have no point of reference.

Oh, right, that’s another thing, I got to see Mark, Benjy and Julian again. I still don’t know if Julian was mad about the whole “You’re not my friend thing” from Miami (and if he is, I’m so sorry about it that I still remember it), but I was happy to see Mark and Benjy again, and meet the rest of Elliot’s inner circle. I had heard stories about them for years, and even now when I talk to Elliot, it helps me understand who he is to meet them. That and Bender is really cute, followed closely by Uri. Sorry Mark, I gotta love you, but you’re just not my type.

(Not that I would ever do anything along those lines. It would be like fooling around with an extended family member that I only see every couple of years.)

Incidentally, there do seem to be a lot of Jewish guys that are my type, without actually being, you know, “my type.” I’m sure one of the cute, successful Jewish boys at the wedding was (cough) my type of guy. Then again, there were some cute waiters too. Maybe that’s the whole “I’m not getting any” itch talking and not any kind of gaydar. Actually, Elliot’s always been more perceptive on that than I am, which drives me nuts. He doesn’t even need it.

On a slightly less shallow and creepy note, I don’t think that my toast sucked. I skipped this entire beginning section about how my Hebrew wasn’t that good (wink, wink) so please bear with me, but I also don’t think my weak kneed performance sounded careless either. And, no, I was never planning to actually tell any Miami stories. What could I say in front of all those distinguished guests (and Elliot’s rabbi)? That I was more worried about people thinking that you were gay than you were so I used to make sure to say we weren’t a couple? Or maybe about your favorite thing to do when running on the beach (“How many today?” “Fifty-four unique pairs.”)?

The only story that I could think of that would have been even vaguely appropriate would have been a slightly edited version of the Britney Spears story. Let’s see, it would have gone something like: You went to visit your Mom, Britney was a few beach chairs down. Your mom suggested asked why you didn’t go for you, and you say something to the effect of “She’s not nearly good enough for me.”

There’s be a laugh, and I’d get to create one of those great rejoinders about how you were right, and that I’m happy that you did finally find someone special enough in A.

At the time though, I couldn’t justify comparing A. to Britney. A. is simply to beautiful, respectable, and cultured (and that’s not exaggerated because she might be reading this). Drawing any comparison would have left a bad taste in my mouth, even with the quip at the end. Still, if you ever have a question, A., remember, this is the guy that refused to even pursue Britney Spears back when she was actually vaguely attractive. Elliot has always had impeccable taste.

Anyway, I wanted you to know that I put at least some actual thought into the toast. I just couldn’t get it out, and still manage the l’chaims. I think the reason I forgot the mental section was that I was saying “l’chaim, l’chaim, l’chaim” over and over to myself so I could pronounce it correctly. Or, at least that’s the story that I’ll stick to in the future if someone asks.

I overdid it dancing. I have some tests for my neck injury tomorrow, otherwise I would spend the next day (and probably week) in bed. But with hits like Dancing Queen and It’s Raining Men, how could I refuse?

Actually, I did get some nice slow dances with M. and A. With the broken neck, there we my speed, although I would have loved to try a few more of the faster dances. No one expects you to dance very well at weddings, and it’s a great time for me to make a total flailing idiot of myself without anyone being able to say anything.

I said something about getting up off my death bed to be there, and now after the fact, that still holds true. It was so nice to be doing something fun with real friends. It was by far the best thing that’s happened to me in the last three months.

So, the official wedding kitup is in my bag, and when I get home I plan on keeping it with the garter I caught at Mike’s wedding. I figure it’s a good way to keep my memories of good weddings all in one place.

Ah, right, one final point: flying sucks. You get there on time and they change the flights around on you. I’m not supposed to be doing wind sprints through secure areas with a broken neck.