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.

Erik Rhodes

Erik Rhodes was a gay porn star.  He was also unhappy, and by unhappy I mean depressed, much in the same way that I'm depressed.

There aren't very many similarities between us after the homosexuality and the depression.  Erik was gorgeous and he was gorgeous through hard work.  He worked out often, although he used steroids to bulk up.  He was, as I already mentioned, a gay porn star and unlike most of the time when people use that phrase he actually fit the "star" part.  He was, in the limited circles of gay porn fandom, really well known and did a lot of work for many years.  He also would go to events and parties that raised his profile beyond just porn.  He did drugs.  He drank.  He was an escort.  He liked music.  He was, apparently, very outgoing and could be funny and nice to almost anyone.  He was, for a porn star, a really excellent actor.

Erik died earlier this week of a heart attack at age 30, presumably of complications resulting from overuse of steroids.  He earned a NYT obituary which can be found here.

His real name was James.  If you don't mind, I'm going to continue calling him Erik, although I'd prefer if you don't forget that James is a real person and I'm sure his loss is devastating to people who actually knew him.  My sympathy goes out to them.

Erik was one of my favorite porn stars.  Not necessary because of his body type.  He was more muscular than I normally like.  I don't remember seeing him for the first time, nor do I remember how many times I saw him before he was recognizable to me.

But eventually he became recognizable and through the magic of the internet and the fact that I recognized him and his porn name, I eventually was linked to his blog where I learned about his exceedingly deep depression.  He put a lot of himself out there on that blog, and by reading there I was able to see some of the disconnect between media stars and their fans.  When you put yourself out there like Erik did, people that you've never met connect to you and they end up with feelings about you.  Good, bad, sexual, they build this one-sided relationship in their heads that makes it basically impossible for the media star to ever connect with.  You care about them, but they can't care about you. That star doesn't know you, and they'll never understand the emotional connection that you, the fan, had with them because they weren't there as it was built.

So, as I understand it, Erik was alone in his head.  Mostly.

I desired him.  He wasn't perfectly my type, but don't get me wrong, I thought he was hot even so.  I intellectually know that probably made actually getting to know him impossible but when I started reading his blog and found out that he was depressed my first instinct was to reach out to him.  To try to let him know that even if he couldn't see it, that there were people that cared about him.  I wanted to try to explain how impressed that I was by the work ethic demonstrated by his body.  How good I thought his life was and that if all he needed was people that cared for him that those people were there.  How I thought he was, in some sense, a role model for the people that couldn't understand that a gay guy might also be a masculine guy.

I remember offering to buy him lunch when I lived in New York City as well.  I left it as a comment on his blog.  I don't know if he ever saw that post or any of the few other comments that I left, but I was just one more creepy overly familiar voice on his website.  I would have ignored me too, probably.

But between reading his blog, living in the same city as he did for a while and seeing flashes of him at various events he switched over from someone that doesn't really exist in my world to someone that could exist in it.  I'll never meet the Pope, but I thought some day I could at least meet Erik.  Maybe give him a hug.

It's weird to think of Erik as dead.  It means that I won't ever get to meet him, that whatever that situation would have led to is impossible.

I assume that this is the way that some people feel when celebrities die.  That they've built this tree of possibility in their heads, and the person dies and the possibilities all die with them.  It leaves a gap.  Something that should be there but isn't anymore.

I don't think that Erik or James ever found happiness or even peace, which is sad but not unexpected.  People's lives don't usually get closure, and when you're 30 and seemingly in great health I don't thing most people try to provide that emotional "we care about you" that you get with a lingering illness.

Erik died last Thursday.  A week ago tomorrow, as I type this.  I don't think, when I first found out, that I could have realized exactly how much his death would affect me.

I was in the middle of typing that previous paragraph when I looked up his obituary to check what day he died.  I've linked it up above where I think it fits.  And then I read it.  Yeah, I already knew his name was James, but I didn't know that he was HIV positive.  I didn't know that he was still an escort.  I didn't remember that he was romantically linked to Mark Jacobs and I didn't know that he knew Jake Shears.  Does it make it better than I knew him so little and that he knew me not at all?

I don't know.

My thoughts go out to his family and especially his brother in what must be a difficult time for them.

Way Down in the Hole

Just got back from what should have been a pleasant excursion to Montreal. It was the first time that I'd ever been there, and we were attending the bachelor party of a friend.

Still, I find myself unusually depressed recently. Not even for any good reason, but rather because my natural state seems to be mid-level despair, and my slight deviations upward and downward are between tolerable and, well, the hole. And yes, I've been watching a lot of The Wire recently. Great show.

Getting back to that other thing, I have to say that most people seem to be able to live for the good moments. I don't. Can't. It would be nice, but so would having a million dollars.

So, that brings me to something that has been at the forefront of my mind recently. There's a list of five people:

1. My boyfriend
2. My mother
3. My father
4. My brother
5. Jeff

Those are the people that are keeping me alive, because those are the people that I would damage the most if I died. There are a few others that I love who aren't on that short list, however, I think they're strong enough to be sad but get over it. I'm looking at you, E and K.

These though, are the people that are so closely tied to me for some reason, that my death would disproportionately affect. These are the lives that remind me that, while I have nothing to live for personally, I need to smile and work for because they're looking to make sure that I do my daily rounds.

Strange though, that one of them is in a war zone, one of them is headed into a potential war zone. There's a strange inequity to life, that they're the ones that are putting themselves in harm's way while I sit here in Boston safe and sound.

It's unfair, is what it is.

However, I said I was unusually depressed right now, so I'll say what's on my mind: there are only five names. Just five. Two are living dangerously, two are getting older.

Only five names . . .

The End of Mac Fandom

or How Apple Screwed Me with a useless warantee extension.

There are so many ways that I could start this post:

I am having an absolutely miserable day . . .

So yesterday on the Red Line of the Boston T I got shoved at Park Street and fell into a bar. No worries about my stuff, my backpack is padded . . .

I'm a recent Mac buyer and a reluctant one at that but my friend Elliot has always been a huge Mac fan so when I bought my last computer I finally decided to switch . . .

All of these lead to the fact that the screen of my computer is now shattered.

I looked all over but even though I can find receipts for stamps from NYC, I couldn't find the receipt for my Macbook. I couldn't remember if I'd bought the three year extension but AppleCare is good for a year from purchase date though and I know that I bought my mac on October 29 of last year because I still have the email that they sent to me when I purchased it.

So I made an appointment for the Genius Bar for tech support (8:45pm @ the Boyston St. location) and crossed my fingers.

Carlos was my genius and he looked at the damage, scanned the serial number, looked at his screen and then started to apologize.

Apparently I did buy the extended plan, but it doesn't matter because it basically only covers manufacturing issues. So, what is the point for extending coverage for 3 years if it's only going to repair things that are going to be problems out of the box?

So, in order to get my screen fixed it'll cost $750 (to send away or $770 to have fixed in the store). A new laptop is only $450 more, at $1200 which I guess is their way of telling you that it really isn't worth it to replace a screen.

It doesn't matter much. I really can't afford either option at the moment. I'm jobless, out of work, unemployed, screwed.

So much for buying a newer, nicer computer after I finally have a job again. Now I guess I get to buy a replacement for this one and it's going to be a while before I get that dreamy Macbook Pro.

You know, I still feel misled about the extended coverage that apparently doesn't actually cover anything. I looked over the Apple Care and Apple Protection Plan that I apparently purchased for $350. It certain appears to cover repairs, and I guess I got suckered by that vague promise of "global repair coverage" because the fine print of it (warning, PDF) specifically excludes repairing any accidental damage. So much for "Peace of mind."

Of course, that wasn't the only thing that sucked today but it is the thing that is making me sit here about to cry. I'm at Ben's and for the first time in my life I just want to drink until I can't remember this day anymore.

I Want This

My dreams right now are pretty simple. Usually they're pretty fantastic and out there, I write science fiction and fantasy, after all, but for the last month they've been sort of realistic.

That only makes me feel worse when I can't achieve them.

I want a job. The job that I see at the moment is a daytime position, 9 to 5, M-F. I want it to pay for an apartment here in the city, food, and a gym membership. I want to be able to go out occasionally with my friends and visit the guy I'm sort of seeing.

That's it.

That's all I want right now.

Why Work for a Hotel?

The last few months of not having a job has been really . . . damaging, catastrophic, miserable? One of those. Perhaps all of them.

It's given me an awful lot of time to just sit around and think though, and I've come to the problematic conclusion that I really don't seem to want to do any of the things that I'm applying for.

There really isn't an alternative here. I haven't had a divine flash of inspiration about what I do want to do but I've come to realize that I'd probably be miserable in the things that I am applying for.

This is creepy because I've been working for hotels for years, ever since summer jobs in high schools and I've usually had a fairly good time with them. I work with people well, I'm usually very organized and I tend to contribute a lot.

I know, that sounds like a line off my resume. I'll have to attribute it to the dozens and dozens of applications that I've filled out in the past few months.

I have to try to remember why I went to work for hotels in the first place and right now I'm drawing a blank. Maybe because I always sort of glamorized hotels as an industry. You cater to the rich and the famous after all, you get to meet a lot of interesting people, you get to travel.

Well, I was dead wrong about that last one. The only people that travel are the sales staff: the people that understand running a hotel least. In fact, that seems to be where all of the things that could make our profession interesting go to die a miserable and painful death. Bonuses, incentives, vacation time and the ability to speak authoritatively about the hotel's occupancy.

The only people that I hate more than sales are those sad members of the HR department: may they burn in hell. This is partially an affect of my arrival and departure experience at all of the hotels that I've worked for, so I'm sure in this dry spell this is accentuated. However, where I can at least see the services provided to a hotel by a Sales staff (however small those services might be compared to their soul deadening costs to the hotel) I can't quite see the net positive benefit to the HR departments that I've seen run.

For people that are supposed to be finding the best and the brightest workers for the hotel they do their job amazingly poorly.

Right now I'm taking a fair slew of personality inventories (I've also just been informed that I've been showing too much empathy on them; apparently the hospitality industry is looking for people that won't care if you come to them with a problem) and they've been a complete waste of time.

I'm sure half the people that fill them out do what I used to do: put in the answers that they expect that you want instead of what they really feel and now you've already set the precedent of them lying to you during the interview process and you haven't even met them yet.

I suppose it does stand to reason that most people in HR departments do so poorly because don't really understand the jobs that they're filling. Managerial or front line, they have a very limited idea of what the job entails and what the qualifications should be.

I suppose that this leads me to suspect what my main problems will be if I ever am in charge of a hotel: I'm barely going to respect my Sales staff and any HR department working under me is going to find itself doing real work.

But I'm not there yet. I'm still looking for jobs at the bottom of the barrel. The sort where I smile politely and never say anything bad about a boss that I never see or can barely stand and try to convince people that the reason that I zone out is that I find most front desk work about as challenging as watching paint dry.

So I'm still looking for a job. Still looking and trying to convince myself that it's worth it.

Totally Weird Dream

I don't have a job yet and it's starting to affect me in strange ways. For example, I had this truly bizarre dream last night about looking for work.

I responded to a Craigslist ad and got an immediate response asking me if i could come to an interview right now. So I rushed out and down one of the avenues to meet the woman at her house.

She's explaining the job and it has two parts. The first part is walking her daughter to school in the morning, getting to her house at seven and then walking her four or five blocks to her school. And then the rest of it was walking down to where the mother worked, some sort of book museum with about four shelves of books (mostly children's books from what I remember of the covers).

The mother and her boss showed me around and it was a nice place. There were some tables where people could sit. It was airy and expansive, which I thought was very nice for NYC.

Then they sort of just gave me a piece of cloth, as though they wanted to see what I would do with it, and I started to dust the shelves and the desks. I remember the mother nodded as though I'd just passed a huge test. She looked relieved.

I asked when she wanted me to start and she said "Right now!" explaining that tomorrow I would need to start.

Then she asked me if I had any other questions. I pulled her to the side, not wanting to advertise my greed, and asked her about compensation. Yes, I used that word in the dream for some specific reason.

But her response was priceless. She scrunched up her face a bit and said, "Well, the Museum has an admission price of $15, and I figured that we could waive it for you."

So, walking your daughter to school and cleaning the museum and all she was prepared to give me was free admission?

In the dream, at this point, I thought to myself that I'd take the job if she would give me five bucks a day for it and immediately chastised myself for being so stupid. That was her answer though. "I'll give you $5 a day."

I didn't take the job. I just stood there, sort of expecting another offer, but maybe some realistic figure, but it never came. Instead, her boss wandered over and suggested to her that maybe she'd better make it clear that there was no pay in the next craigslist ad, and he suggested text: "Hard working Asian willing to work for nothing needed to work for . . ."

Right, that was the other thing. She'd made passing references to being Asian throughout the course of the dream, including in the original job description, except that neither she nor her daughter was Asian. And I wasn't Asian in the dream either, so I was assuming that she was just trying to fill in for someone else and until I heard the manager put that in as a condition for the next ad I hadn't realized that they were really looking only for Asians but were willing to settle for me.

So finally I said something like "I'm sorry we can't come to some arrangement," and then I woke up.

And you know what, even though in real life I'm desperate, I'm still glad that I didn't take that job in the dream.

I Need A Girlfriend

I went out to a bar called Barracuda today. Not in honor of Sarah Palin, but because it was the only place on a list of five clubs that I was planning on going to that I could actually find.

Still, I'm alone in my room now, typing on my computer because one of the only two people that acknowledged my presence tonight was one of those girls that likes to hang out with gay guys.

I know what the term is. I just don't feel like using it right now.

The other person was the coat check guy, so he doesn't count.

I wish I had someone like that, who I could call and take to a gay club that is willing to go but probably won't end up leaving with the guy that I like at the end of the night. Someone who will talk and listen and laugh at my stupid jokes.

The reason that I went out is because I just feel so alone here in New York. The irony is staggering; I'm in probably the most densely populated English speaking city and I'm alone. Well, I am.

I didn't stay long because I suddenly felt that it was futile. Well, that's not quite true; it wasn't sudden. I've felt that way for a solid week now.

It does feel futile. The people that I know are . . . well, not like me. I suddenly realize how completely stupid it was to think that I might be able to recreate the happy times in my life by moving back to the same city as Elliot or to a place with gay guys. I could barely talk to gay guys in New Mexico; talking to them here in NYC is going to be nearly impossible.

Of course, with this depression comes the mindnumbingly stupid behavior: I bought real meat today and ate it. I'm putting on weight again, and I don't have a gym membership. I spent money that I don't have buying books (The Watchmen, actually. It was amazingly good. I just finished it just before I started writing this entry).

What am I going to do with myself?

I don't know how I'm going to meet people. I can't meet people through friend one because he's Jewish and gay Jewish guys don't date the shiska equivalent guys. I can't meet people through friend two because he exists in an extremely superficial and wealthy world that doesn't contain people, only objects that move and speak. I don't seem to meet people by myself because I can't connect in clubs or just in quick random moments.

So that leaves work, and I'm having trouble finding a job again. Of course. Why would the universe gift me with good luck? The economy tanks just as I start searching for employment.

I will say that I am in a now confusing long distance pseudo relationship, which is making all this even worse because now I have someone that is theoretically there for me even though I'm alone nearly all the time. And I've lost a valuable vent toward looking for a relationship or even figuring out what the hell kind of relationship this long distance thing is.

The lesson here, of course, is that if you only have one person that you feel that you can trust to talk to about relationships, make sure that you don't go and inadvertantly start a relationship with that person.

He once suggested that I would regret having sex with him. Do I regret the sex? No. I regret the relationship. At the same time, I want to grab hold of the relationship so tightly that I can't let go and close my eyes and imagine that the rest of the universe has disapeared. Douglas Adams once suggested that the entire universe can be examined through the measurement of a slice of fairy cake. If I could, I'd make that guy my slice of fairy cake.

Of course, that has three significant drawbacks. First, as my first sorta relationship taught me, these things are like snowflakes and holding them too tightly will make them melt away so quickly. Second, it's not healthy to withdraw from the world. Third, I don't know that this relationship has a long future. I try to imagine pushing it out in the future, and I just don't see it.

Perhaps the relationship would be simpler without sex, if it was a girl instead of a guy. Or perhaps I just need both at the same time, without overlap. Or I need to find it one person at the same time.

Gym

I've been going to the gym for the last eight weeks. I started off three times a week, and now I'm up to six: twice with a personal trainer, twice on my own doing the training routine, and twice doing cardio. Occasionally my brother will train with me on a weekend too.

Oh, and I'm on a strict diet too: No red meat, no dairy products, no processed sweets or carbs (or as few as possible) and I have to eat ever two and a half to three hours.

Guess how much weight I've lost in eight weeks? Ten freaking pounds.

I felt great on Monday. Everyone has been telling me that I look great, "Hey, have you lost some weight," etc. I was actually feeling proud of myself.

Then I see myself in the big mirrors at the gym on Tuesday, and now I feel like crap. I still look like a pig.

So now I'm desperately trying to keep myself into this. I mean, I feel like crap, I'm hungry all of the time, and I'm not getting any results.

One of the trainers at the gym said that I have to try to stick to it, but that's getting harder and harder with every session.

The Strangest Dream

Okay, I had the weirdest dream last night.

I was in this house, and it wasn't my house or any of the houses that I've ever lived in. It was a traditional wood frame house, probably more like the house that Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbs) grew up in than the one that I grew up in. There were slanted roofs with shingles and big windows.

I don't remember how I ended up there, but I certainly remember that it felt like home to me.

And then the Tyrannosaurus Rex appeared.

I'm not kidding, there was a Tyrannosaurus Rex in my dream, and it was relatively friendly. True, it was a little chatty and I couldn't get it to shut up, but not unfriendly.

At least, until it got ticked at me. I think it was because I told it that it couldn't come inside. It seemed to think that this was an intentional slight, and so it got angry.

I ran into the house and it started attacking the house to get at me. I remember at one point it was in the backyard and it smashed through the large window to get at me. Throughout all of this though, I couldn't help but to remember that this wasn't some random and mindless dinosaur attack but a personal vendetta against me.

If only I hadn't ticked off that carnivorous thunder lizard.

The funny thing was that eventually I got tired of running around the house trying to avoid the Tyrannosaurus head smashing through the walls, gave up and let him catch me.

So he pulls me out through the wall, chews on me, but I don't get hurt. I expected it, but the sharp teeth simply don't connect with me for some inexplicable reason. Or perhaps, as it crushed my bones, I simply didn't feel what's going on with my body.

Finally he gets annoyed and one of my faceless compatriots uses a shrink ray to shrink the Tyrannosaurus down to the size of a large mouse. The Tyrannosaurus is shocked by this outcome for a bit, but then realizes that now he can come in the house and that everything's okay.

I opened the door for him, and the little dinosaur wanders into the sun room.

And that's about the point that I woke up.

To me, the oddest point of the whole dream was that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was never just destroying things mindlessly, like the one from Jurassic Park. He was personally upset with me. It isn't like I cavort with Tyrannosaurs Rexes on a regular basis, so I have no idea why my mind decided to make up a dinosaur with a personal grudge.

The Worst Thing That I've Ever Done

I know exactly what the worst thing that I've ever done is, and to this day it sort of haunts me.

I don't even know if I am going to let this post go through. This is beyond embarrassing, this is me being a bad person, being evil, and no one wants to let other people see how bad of a person they secretly are. This is one of those things that most people will hide to their dying day.

Here it is: I once told someone that they could count on me, and I gave her my phone number. Then, when she finally called me at 3 a.m., in a bad section of Albuquerque where her car had broken down, begging me to come pick her up, I told her that I was tired and I didn't go.

Geez. You don't know how hard that was to write. It looks so simple and innocuous on the screen now, but I kept pausing, hoping that if I did the words would go away, and what I did would go with them. I shouldn't have to write a story about how much I suck.

(Note: Even now, months after writing this, I want to go back and add some mitigating circumstances to it. I want to modify the language so that it doesn't sound as bad. I want to convince myself that the way I want to remember it is true, and not what I said above.)

Letting down a friend is something cartoonishly evil. That's something that a villain in a movie might do, not a real person. I don't know what I was thinking at the time. I can't justify what I did.

So, of course, now that I know what the worst thing that I've done in my life is, I can beat myself up with it when I want to. When I tell people that they can count on me, I get to dredge up this old memory of when someone couldn't count on me, and it tears me up inside.

I know my friend is okay. Or, at least, that she survived that night. She never trusted me again, and I can't blame her at all. Even the next day, I couldn't believe what I'd done to her, and if I was her, I don't think that I would have ever talked to me ever again.

I tell myself that I won't ever do that again, that if someone calls me and tells me that they need me, I'll go find them no matter what time it is or how tired I am, but I can't be sure. I flaked out once, perhaps I'll flake out again someday. I tell myself that I screwed up once, and that I learned from my mistake, and it won't happen again, but down in my stomach, my conscience is screaming up at me "HOW CAN YOU BE SURE? YOU LET SOMEONE DOWN ONCE, AND IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN."

Damn it to hell, I hope not. Please don't let me ever let someone down like that again.

So that is, by far, the worst think that I have ever done in my life.

So, what makes me write that? A porn star, of course. Some tabloid claimed that Marc Jacobs was sleeping with porn star Erik Rhodes, and Rhodes refuted that on his blog. Thus, through the general interconnectivity of the internet I find out that Erik Rhodes has a blog and I get a link to it.

(Link is Not Safe For Work or Family) Erik's blog is here. His real name is James.

After the naked picture of him, the first thing that I want to draw your attention to is the "About Me" section, which say (and I quote) "Erik Rhodes[,] Miserable Porn Star with nothing better to do with his spare time."

In one sentence that sums up his blog. Despite his looks, his popularity, his porn star status, he's miserable. He's desperately alone, he's a sex addict, and he's getting hounded by guys that don't know him but want to have sex with him.

I feel just awful for him, but I can't do anything, I couldn't offer to help without that little voice telling me "Even if he trusted you enough to talk to you, you're just going to let him down."

A Molasses Death

I'm having trouble updating this blog because sometimes I crave some sort of feedback, and obviously while all of these blog posts are still being written, no one is seeing them. When I click on the bookmark on my computer and look at my blog, all I get to see is the Happy Birthday post, and that's getting extremely old.

As I write this, Lex and Lia is only updated part way through "Partial Survival" and I still haven't finished it off. I wish I could update that part of the blog at least, considering that it's fiction, but obviously I can't do anything. Arg. (Note: there's a bit of a break in Lex and Lia's in this section of the blog, but they'll be back. March 2008)

Currently I'm binging on D&D, and I'll continue to be doing that until the 11th, when my focus will change abruptly to writing in anticipation of the upcoming VP workshop.

Elsewhere in my mind, this is what is going on:

I've finally figured out how to describe and create a reasonable sounding scientific basis for the events in my book series. Or at least, I think I have. Although most of the explanations won't appear until the second book it calms me to know that I have a general understanding of the why and hows of everything.

Also, President George W. Bush is both incompetent and a coward. Let me explain why.

I've noticed that he's often said that Democrats shouldn't criticize the war or his presidency because it "emboldens" the enemy. Further, he can't talk about military planning because that would hinder the mission of the troops.

That's stupid, and it proves how incompetent he is. If he was a good commander in chief (Re: War President) he should be able to tell everyone what he is planning on doing, and then do it. If his plans are so fragile that they can be upset by a few ill comments then obviously it's not a very good plan.

I'm not talking about specific troop movements, and the codes to our bombers, but the way to be an impressive and effective war president is to be able to provide the broad strokes of his plan without worrying that we'll "embolden the enemy." If the plan is to win, they're not going to feel particularly emboldened by us telling them how we're going to crush them.

He also can't face change. A real man would be able to stand up to his friends when they tell him something is wrong and, if necessary, fire them when they screw up and no longer can perform their job. (Yes, I know that Gonzales resigned, but the president should have publicly let him go for his involvement in the U.S. Attorney firings months ago.)

Were I ever the President of the United States and one of my cabinet members said "I don't know" or "I can't recall" as much as the former AG did while testifying in front of congress, I would consider that dereliction of duty and he would be dismissed immediately. Before he even got back from his office, probably, because I'd be watching it live from the Oval Office.

I've also been having these very strange obsessive day dreams over a guy that is very straight, and I can't seem to shake them. This is especially odd because I got over him a long time ago, and I can't figure out why I'm having such a massive resurgence of feelings for him. Still, when I think of him, I feel safe and happy, which is getting more and more odd considering that:

1. He's still not gay.
2. Even after the last time I actually saw him I didn't feel this way about him.
3. He never made me feel safe or happy when I knew him, so what changed?
4. I've actually dated men between my infantile crush on him and now.

So I've got to figure this out so that I can step away from it. It isn't good to feel this way about someone that doesn't return the feeling.

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.

I Am Really Uncomfortable

When, or more accurately if, you see this post, you can be sure that it wasn't written on the listed date. It will either have been moved forward or backward to mask where and when I am and who the other person involved is.

I met this guy at work, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. We didn't really get to know each other right away, but a few weeks ago I had an opportunity to spend some time with him outside of the normal course of my job and so I did. I've always been too quite and shy, and I'm always talking about how I need to get out more.

So I ended up going over to his house and we watched a movie. He was just so amazingly nice although I wasn't all that physically attracted to him at first. Still, last week I went back again and we played video games, watched another movie, and talked until 3 a.m. about the stuff that two gay guys talk about until 3 a.m.

The next day I was thinking about it, and I decided I like him. Maybe not enough for a serious relationship, but definitely enough for some fooling around. Cause, let's face it, I don't have nearly enough sex.

So I mention this to him the next time and he's sort of happy and strangely muted at the same time. I knew that he liked me, but his previous relationships were all long term committed relationships (the shortest that I knew of was 1 1/2 years), and I wasn't sure he was the kind of guy that would be up for fooling around outside of a dating relationship. He basically told me that he had to consider it.

Yesterday, I went over again. We watched another movie, we played some video games, and after that it was about midnight but I still didn't want to leave so we went out to eat, came back, and watched another movie, during the ending of which we started making out. Okay, this seemed to be a consent. He was interested, he was willing to fool around without a relationship, and great, I really wanted it to happen.

Then he pulls away from me and tells me that he's HIV positive.

My first reaction was just confusion. I couldn't figure out if I'd heard him correctly but when I played it over and over in my head that's what he said. Straight out and clearly. So then I couldn't figure out what my reaction should be. There's this gut reaction when you've been swapping spit with someone with a communicative incurable disease to just run, but I couldn't do that. He shouldn't have to deal with my irrational fear.

Besides, I know this disease and letting my fear get the best of me is pointless. If I could catch it from kissing him, which is highly unlikely anyway, then the damage it done. I'll get a test in a few weeks, and another at the 3 month mark when the antibodies would have shown up.

So, at this point I'm quickly weighing massive amounts of probabilities in my head. What factors influence seroconversion? Do I have any cuts in my mouth or on my skin? Does he? How much exposure have I had and is there anything that I can do to further limit my chances of transmission?

Somewhere, something deep inside my head calculated the risk of protected sex with him despite the fact that I knew he was HIV positive.

I didn't have sex with him though. Thankfully something in my head was working properly. I didn't run either, which would have been something that I would have beaten myself up over later. I mean, he told me, and that's something that I have to respect. I can't imagine how hard it is to admit that you're HIV positive to a guy you like.

We sat around and talked about it, about how it happened, how he found out about it, and what it meant to his life. The thing that he was most scarred of was infecting someone else, and I can understand that. After all, one of the worst "sins" that can be committed in my own little personal version of secular humanism is harming others.

Eventually I told him that we'd still be friends, that I was coming back next week to play more video games, and that I was happy that he'd told me. Then I went home, and spent three hours shaking in my chair, freaking out which trying to take my mind off what had happened. Even now, the day afterward, my chest is painfully tight and my stomach is churning.

I don't think that I'm infected. I don't think so, and I hope so. If I was religious, I'd even pray so. I can't convince my body of that though.

Update: I took a few weeks for my stomach to settle down. At this point, whether I have had sex with this guy depends on what your definition of "is" is. Yeah, you all know that reference.

Safe? Absolutely. As safe as I can possibly be, but eventually when it came down to it I decided that I like him more than I'm afraid of him. That sort of freaks me out, but it's an undeniable compulsion as well.

Update: I got my test results back. I'm negative, which is a relief, but my body still isn't catching up to my intellectual awareness. I've got a headache. Where I am with him, though, I don't know. I think he's terrified more of the fact that I'd be willing to see him when I know he's positive, and I'm not sure he wants to see me any more.

This is a tough one, but this is the end of the story.

Slow Starter

My little brother's jeep takes forever to start. You have to start it, and then it'll fail to turn over, so you let it sit a moment, and then do it again, and it will actually start then.

My writing is the same way.

The beginning of my book has always terrified me. I've started it maybe six times now, and all of them have sucked.

Once you get into it, people seem interested. Mike and Jeff can tell you about that. The world is there. The thought is there. However, I can't come up with a way to start the book off with explosive interesting action.

It's not like there isn't any action in the book. The end of the first chapter is pretty nice, actually, with blood and body counts, and heroism.

There's also a good ending. Perhaps it's a little more unrealistic, but I like it. It really allows me to show off the talents of one of my characters. The right people loose, and the wrong people semi-triumph.

But there's no hook. When I wrote the 3rd full draft of this, that was actually part of twist for me. It starts off in a normal world, and things progressively get stranger and stranger, and then suddenly one of the characters steps over a line in the sand and things are in a completely different world. I can't think of another way to do this book, and book two doesn't exist without book one.

The problem is, that makes a pathetic hook. Yeah, I got the hook contest results back (after all of that waiting I was in the very last section of hooks posted).

I agree with my reviewer, but she didn't give me anything to think about that I haven't already been wrestling with. Yes, I know that it seems safe because it's supposed to start in a safe place. Yes, I know that superheros are exciting. Thanks for that brilliant bit of wisdom. Yes, I know that I'm looking for something that the agent/publisher hasn't seen before. No, focusing on Sara or Randall doesn't seem to work because the conflict is with the people without powers in this book. I was already trying to think of a new way to do "superhero oppression," so that's not helpful.

I really only got two things: My female character isn't sympathetic and PTSD is a letdown.

I just want to scream at the screen. Yeah, I know that people don't have to like my hook, but I don't know what to do. Apparently I need to make Sara a nympho necromancer and Randall into Santa Claus. Then maybe I could get some notice.

My story is the story. It hurts because I love it. I've already had to change it so many times to make it into what I wanted, and now that it is getting to that point I know that it won't ever go anywhere. So now I'm facing changing it again and this time I've finally run out of ideas.

It's been nine years since I finished the high school edition of this. And there are more characters in this universe that live in my head than any other. So many people relying on me, and I let them down.

Aside from the real world: It's nice to be back at work incidentally, although my neck is exhausted. I dunno how I'm going to pull four days of this in a row. My trip home today was horrific though. I was in a hurry, and I hit traffic and then I had problems with the gas pump, and then forgot to buy what I promised I would go shopping for.

And then there's all that fun bad news about the hook contest. Yay.

If I have to do hotel work for the rest of my life though. I don't know if I can deal with that.

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.

Frustration

I don't get it.

I've been homebound for almost five months now. And I had the compass less than three months ago. I used it when I made Eliott's wedding present. It's not like I've moved anything. It should have been in the bag with my other drawing stuff or on my desk.

So where is it?

I mean, I've been looking for an hour, and neither it nor my smaller circle guide are anywhere to be found. It's not with my drawing stuff, it's not on my desk.

My neck has been craning since the first episode of Cops, and I'm forty-five minutes through CSI now. I can't look any more.

I'm so angry that I screamed out loud. How can this happen? How the hell did it leave my room if I barely can leave my room?

Right, and I promised one of those blurry pictures of my first colored work. Let's see if this works:

From Home

You see the circle there? It was drawn with a compass. Darn it! Darn it! Why can't I find the stupid compass anywhere!?!?!

Pain/Pain

I have this headache.

I've had worse headaches. This isn't a nail in my frontal lobe, but it's still painful. Like someone opened up my head and have fried up a little section with breading and a white wine glaze, and they're slowly cutting it away, relishing every little bite.

I can't write when I'm in pain . . .

Okay, maybe I can write about pain when I'm in pain, but I can't work on my book.

This morning I finally forced myself to sit down and started working again. And I was so proud of myself. I worked for hours on this, the fifth revision of my book, finally basing it around more of a mystery motif that I think will work better as a hook than the disaffected teenager angst that was driving the plot before.

Granted this means that he book is more formulaic, but it also means that it's dozens of times easier to write.

There may be a problem with it being way too short. Based on the outline that I wrote, if all of the chapters are about as long as revision four, it will only be about 100k words long. If I had to say guess, I would say that Michelle West's books are about 300k. So that's bad, on a certain level.

One thing on the side. Michelle West is the greatest writer ever. I'm re-reading Hunter's Death, and it's just unbelievably amazing.

The problem is that my outline sort of flows along. It makes a certain amount of sense to me, and I really can't come up with any more twists and turns along the way that wouldn't be horrendous departures from the plot.

It does cut off some of the philosophical stuff, which is the thing that I most regret. That teenage angst was important to me because I sort of liked the idea that the circumstances drove the situation against the will of the people involved.

It also means that there aren't as many chances to bemoan the characters' sad and discuss the idea that emotion forms the core of our identifiable personalities. Star Trek and other shows have played with the loss of memory, but there is so much more than could be damaged. What if those telepathic alien kidnappers could have taken away Picard's emotional maturity when they kidnapped him? What would have happened then?

Empaths are terrifying. My version of Deanna Troi would have been horrific and numbingly frightening. The Klingons and the Romulans would have run like little girls.

That's not to say that memories aren't important. There's a balance, and I don't think that gets a lot of play.

Aw . . . I just stood up and now the pain is worse. I'm thinking that it's getting to the power drill and salt phase. I think it's time for me to go.

Pain/pain/pain.

Update: It's the day after, and I still don't feel great, but I do remember what my original point was going to be. After all those hours of working on my book yesterday, I paused and when I looked at how much I'd written, I only had two pages. How very, very sad.

Here's what happened last night. I went to bed early, around ten thirty instead of my usual 1:30 to 2 am. I took two acetaminophen (can't take anything else because of the neck injury) but I still couldn't sleep. I happened to have one or two Hydrocodone left over from the first month of my injury, and finally I got back up and took one. Another half hour of blistering pain later, I suddenly found that I was in a state of mild euphoria and couldn't care less about the pain any more and I fell asleep.

Back when I was actually taking them everyday, I couldn't understand the lure of pain pills. I know that people can become addicted to them (Rush, I'm looking at you), but since then, I have to say, I get it.

It's odd, I've been on meds for depression back in the day, and they didn't seem to have any affect. They work so slowly that by the time you feel better you don't know why feel better.

But on these, you're happy and you know why.

You know what else? I'd be able to work out, too. It's not hard to run for an hour when the burning in your lungs barely registers as pain. Or to lift weights. Or to twist yourself into a knot on a yoga mat.

It's too bad they don't prescribe hydrocodone or oxycodone for depression.

The Problem With Publishing

So, I decided to check in at Making Light, the Nielsen Hayden blog I mentioned a few months back. I noticed that their link for Steven Brust (my current favorite writer) went to his Live Journal that I didn't notice when I was researching for my interview with him (I can't believe I missed it).

I skipped back, and he actually mentioned my interview with him, but right near it was this post, in which someone mentioned this post back at Making Light which had a link here.

All of this has to do with not giving up and not taking it personally. That's great advice, and if I could see through my tears, I'm sure I'd be totally psyched to try again.

I don't get it. Really the only thing that keeps me alive is my writing. So why haven't I finished my book since I broke my neck? Why does submitting drive me to such irrational pain. I understand that it wasn't personal. I know that I have trouble with the tease and beginning.

I also know that I have a fairly compelling story that could play fairly well off of a recent upsurge in character driven science fiction.

Yet, here I am. Absolutely crushed by the utter hopelessness of ever getting published. Why should I even bother?

And, can I bother? Can I force myself to actually even try to achieve my dream? I want to try, but with severe depression that isn't enough. I have the Writer's Market, and I've marked all the publishers and agents that accept sci-fi. I just can't put a stamp on the postage.

My neck, my teeth, and my stomach are killing me. I'm going to bed.

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.