Talk Thursday: Sense of Self

The career mechanics of resumes, cover letters, applications and interviews is, in my opinion, not nearly as rough as the process of introspection and internal evaluation.  Maybe I’m my own dominatrix because I tend to kick my ass.  My initial task is to get over the mindset where I doubt my actual skills.  If I didn’t chronicle past accomplishments, projects or successes, I would sit and stare at an application or job post and wonder why I’m bothering with jobs I obviously have NO chance of attaining - yeah - I have those fun kinds of talks with myself.  Once I get past the initial critical voice, I start being productive and organized.  Getting past that can take me a long time.  Sometimes that voice never quiets.  (This is the part where you get to wonder how many voices do I hear?…)

This process extends beyond “career.”  I start writing goals and dreams, which filters into my blog, which tweaks my moods a little bit towards the quiet and isolated, and in those quiet times I look back and remember who I was.  This part is important but obvious - remembering the important.  Specific times are benchmarks of where I was, emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially, intellectually.  I can place the positive next to the negative and see through the trials and mishaps of how I got to be where I am.  I revisit this from time to time.  Yesterday and two decades ago are the same in this space.

The outer part of this process are the people in my life who are important to me.  My friends and family share back with me who I was and who I am through love and memories.  I can depend on their honesty for the less-than-glorious days, laugh with them about the less-than-graceful debacles, and cry with them about the less-than-intelligent choices I survived.

I know the cycle and will do it again.  I know I’m done for now, because my beloved looks at me and sees a man who has wound himself tight through the years.  What he sees now is a man who’s flung himself into the unknown.  I’m not unraveling.  I’m unfurling.

Magical Underwear

A few days ago, Arizona Awakening was in town on another business trip.  Like the good gents that we are, we hosted him in one of the guest bedrooms.  I’d forewarned AZ that if the weather was nice we’d be swimming so he’d better bring a swimsuit, but he said he was bringing something better and that he’d surprise me.  When he told me, I thought he was jockin’ my strap but he was serious.

He got to our place in the afternoon, dressed to the 9’s in a nice business suit.  He unpacked and changed to casual clothes so we could go to dinner (bad hosts that we were, we planned on going OUT instead of cooking - this time).  Before we left, he brought out the surprise:  a pair of garments from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  I almost had a meltdown of spontaneous deviousness, but I maintained composure - I’ve been maintaining composure for DAYS now.

Understand, these are the first garments I’ve had in my very own possession.  My foray into Mormonism lasted up until the age of twelve.  My Jack Mormon parents wore them, so I grew up knowing what they were.  It was in my latter twenties when I had my most extensive experiences with garments, but not wearing them - it was in the context of removing or helping a few returned missionaries (and at least one married man) that I dated (or outright “did”) remove their garments.  In those moments the garments were just another layer of clothing before the prize of skin to skin.

I spoke with AZ on the phone.  I don’t feel guilty in any way in having the garments.  I don’t feel like I’m “stickin’ it” to Mormonism by posting my thoughts or a picture.  What I’m getting at is that I’m not sure I have any feelings about the garments other than a mild curiosity.  If Mormon underwear (and Mormon men) looked like THIS, then I’d be interested:

I know some guys have a thing for Mormon guys and garments.  I’m sorry, but I don’t have that fetish.  Besides, I already did my share of Mormon men.  (Yawn.)

I hope that AZ is not disappointed.  I thought I would post something scandalous and sacrilegious, like a picture of me holding the garments in front of my crotch.  Yeah, the LDS church would love a picture of a radical, partnered, gay man holding their (I have a hard time saying I own them) sacred and magical underwear (with Masonic symbols) in front of his wonger.  I admit it was a tempting image.  But.  No.

Not until I’m back to buff and svelte, anyway.

Bathroom Etiquette for Men

The following points should be kept in mind if you’re a man and you use a bathroom outside of your primary residence.

• Don’t use your cell phone in the bathroom.  I don’t care how skilled you think are in trying to piss and chat, and I really don’t need to see you try and zip and flush one-handed.  If you’re in a stall and talking, I pray to the toilet gods that your ass starts on fire from static electricity in your cell phone.

• If you’re standing at a urinal, look at the wall or watch where you’re pissing, but don’t be looking around at everyone else’s business like you’re at a science exhibit, ya stupid fucktard.  All you’re doing is reinforcing a gay stereotype that we’re interested in your microscopic schlong - we’re NOT. The only thing THIS gay man is interested in seeing is… your obituary.

• Don’t talk, particularly while in a stall.  If someone is in a stall and tries talking, exit the room quickly and turn off the light on the way out.  Let the jerk-off fumble their way out.  For extra points, call the main desk and tell them someone is in the bathroom having an epileptic fit.

• Aim.  Unless you have a neuro-muscular disorder or are prone to unintentional spasms, thou shalt not use a urinal - sit your ass down in a stall since you’re incapable of pissing in a receptacle that Helen Keller couldn’t miss.  Lay your dick in the god-damn-bowl if you can’t piss without missing.  Jeebus.

• Don’t leave a mess.  If the toilet seat and the floor looks like you just re-enacted Riverdance while pissing, then use your own shirt to wipe up your mess.  Your mom or spouse or significant other doesn’t work here - and they’d beat your ass to a bloody pulp if you pissed like that at home.  When you’re done cleaning your own mess, go find the janitor and confess your sins - be sure that your penance will be complete once you’ve chopped your own wood and you’ve been hung on a cross for a few days.

• Wash your hands.  You just touched your junk.  Are you really such a fucktard that I have to explain germs and hygiene to you?

This post came about because there’s a new employee that’s been pissing everywhere and it really makes me insane(r).  I have warned my boss to expect profane posters on the bathroom door and walls.  I told him today that it looked like the bathroom had been hit by a piss tsunami - he doesn’t understand that I’m serious and WILL publicly humiliate this arrogant and inconsiderate, fuckin’ fucktard.

Triple Dog Dared

Julz dared me to “post something” from an email I wrote her today. The first sentence started her dare - everything else was never uttered and never happened.

I had tears in my eyes, streaming down my cheekbones and my clean-shaven cheeks, falling into a pool of sparkling brilliance. I hadn’t laughed so hard in weeks, not since an old guy stood at my counter berating me and pointing at his erection that hadn’t subsided in three hours. This time I was laughing because my co-worker shared the unfortunate event of a night at the bar, tobasco-soaked peanuts, and her boyfriend’s changing moans to howling screams while giving him head and licking his balls. She knew the best brands for topical burns. I told her about the time I exchanged a roommate’s bottle of lube with the “extra hot” variety and we laughed again, holding our stomachs.

The tears melted into the fabric of my pants and I remembered the last time I cried. Yesterday. The woman in line for her high blood pressure collapsed and couldn’t be revived. One of the paramedics was her son. A fireman held him while he cried. We all cried. I thought about riding with them to the hospital, to help, to do something. My boss wanted to know when we could get back to counting pills. The main checker called him a douchebag on the loudspeaker.  Customers who’d seen and heard everything cheered.

The face of the paramedic has been with me since yesterday. His eyes. I don’t want to remember, but I don’t want to forget him either. I have no words for his loss.

**Your turn - take the last sentence and start your own short story/post, either on your blog or in these comments. You have been triple dog dared.**

Consumed

The channel in my brain is doing the “bad employment experiences,” 24/7. I dream about work schtuff in nightmare modes where I’m coding and programming solutions while navigating the social disgraces of co-workers who just happen to have the souls of serial killers. The parts that wake me up usually involve the powers that be that keep trying to lock me in the elevator that keeps going down down down - I know the doors will open up and all the lost finances (and taxpayer expenses) of the past half-century will come crawling at me and latch onto me and leech me dry. It’s bad when your choice of lunch dates consists of grabbing something “to go” with a boss’ boss’ boss who doubles as Hannibal Lecter, or with a new employee who exemplifies everything you hated about Mormonism, including the bad suits.

Round two with potential new (and better!) option is tomorrow morning, 8:00am. Wish me luck, since I’m running out of appendages and extremities to tie in a knot.

**update**  1.25 hour interview where we spent equal parts talking/listening.  My judgment could be wrong, but it seemed he was excited about the possibility of me working with him.  Peers, not boss/subordinate.  He’s forwarding his recommendation and notes from the interview to the two partners of the business.  I thought the time-line would be next week - oh no, he said, they move fast.  One of them will be calling me tomorrow or Thursday.  If that goes well, a portion of the conversation will be on how to break the news to my boss, since the main concern is that it be known that I approached them (officially) and that they are not actively (which means “passively” could be an option) trying to recruit me.

My mind’s mush, since I had a massage tonight and it was awesome and I had a late dinner and I’m thinking about having something with vodka and I really need to sit down with the two books that came in the mail today, but alas, the call of the blog is much stronger.  Onwards, to a post.

Talk Thursday: My Place

My Place on the Internet(s)

Start with a name,
one of my names,
and a place on the internets¹
I claim with an electric spike
for myself and you.

Throw down the words and images,
the gauntlets and white gloves,
the deliberations and indecisions
of how far I go or how far I haven’t.

Cast the ways, we’re castaways.
We’re travellers on the same road.
Heed the sign posts and mutterings
of maddened prophets.
Grab a magic marker
and make your own signs.
Label me².  Draw a line
from neck to navel and lower.
Label yourself and instruct
or detract a truth.
Frame the moment of each other
and hang us on a wall.

Glimpse never and always.
Feel familiar and otherworldly.
Unexpectedly expect.
Stubbornly relent.
Right?  Write.
Learn the pace of procrastination
up to the lightning steps of connection.

¹ A Bushism that I can’t stop using.

² Thanks to Seizui for the labels post and discussion.

Nibbles

My family often went camping and fishing during the summers. My first fishing pole was a Fisher Price version - I would have been about three. As I got older, I graduated to a “real” pole, one crafted with increasingly smaller pieces of bamboo past the handle that fit together in metal sockets. There was no reel, only a line of about twenty feet max and the rod. I was content to fling the line into the water and make overlapping rings in the waves with nothing on the hook. From time to time my father would call out to check for a nibble. I was standing on the edge of a lake when something did latch onto the hook and pulled, hard. The rod flew out of my hands and I cried out as the pole went into the lake, floating and bobbing along since it was mostly a wooden rod. My father, at my side, laughed and told me not to worry. He cast out with his line towards the rod, reeled in the line, and cast out again. By god, he had caught my pole with his line and he reeled it in. On the end of my line was a foot-long catfish. He looked quite proud of my feat of catching a fish without bait.

Scott does this one thing where he grabs my arm, neck or earlobe and nibbles four or five times. It catches me off guard and sends frenetic energy through my body; I’ll spastically grab him and hug him and bite him back, usually on his shoulder while he’s giggling the whole time. There is nothing like the mischievous light in my man’s eyes.

I was in a foul mood yesterday. I know that my work-attitude is the pits right now, and it’s not helpful when people tell me to chill and “just go to work and do your job” when the last thing I want to do is be there. If I was less responsible, I would have quit already and would be making lattés at Starbucks (foam or no foam?). On my way to work this morning, I decided to focus and “just do my job.” I wore headphones through most the day and I didn’t join in the reindeer games. I was surprised by a phone call from a prior client who wanted me to call their associate about an opportunity. There are some potential past/present client conflicts, but the job description has my name on it. I nibbled and I called. The hurry up and wait game begins again.

Turning Corners

Friday night we took the bikes out for a ride along Lime Ridge, through Concord, and back home. Thoughts that I knew what I didn’t want work-wise, and the ideas of what I do want rode alongside.

I’m on the mend. So much so that I stopped taking my prescription, since the side-effects felt worse than the original issue. No pain for five days now! I think sex and love does cure all. I didn’t want the pills - I do want better health - maybe it’s all about perspective and reframing.

On Saturday, Scott started work on the Chrysler 300’s dash and interior, making the surfaces shine with steel wool. I worked on domestic godly duties but I couldn’t get “stuff” from my current job out of my head. I opted for another bike ride even though it was almost sundown. Bike shorts, shirt, helmet, sunglasses, mp3 player, water - all set. I took off through the neighborhood, passing Lime Ridge, then headed down “the hill” towards Heather Farms - a leisurely 20-25 minute ride. As I rode, I knew quickly why the trails were not busy with other bikers - the gnat and bugs along the waterway as they eddied and swarmed in the golden air. I knew this recent lesson from work: I kept my mouth closed and kept going forward. I let myself think about words, writing and connections. The sun set as I made it to the park. On the way back and up “the hill”, I let dreams and a little hope guide me home.

Video: Let Me Think About It

The song is:  “Let Me Think About It“ by Ida Corr vs Fedde Le Grand

Insane.  The song makes me insane.  The kind of crazy where I want to be dancing until I can’t breath and my legs hurt and my throat burns from the vodka or tequila.  I love the bass beat, the vocals, the sexy women that remind me of that Robert Palmer video…  This is my first video linky link - I had to share the love.  I’m melting.  Melting, I say.  Oh - the topic is apropo for Talk Thursday - I may skip this week.

Review: Ravings

I first crossed paths with JulieAnn Henneman via her blog and she’d sent me an e-copy of her first published work, Always Listen to the Ravings of a Mad Woman. Her writing struck me as vivacious, dynamic, passionate, intense, fierce, but compassionate, which she is - in spades! Most recently, I’ve had the incredibly good fortune of reading her pre-published copy of the young-adult fiction, Princess of the Blood, but I’ll keep this post on the topic of Ravings (because I could over-extend myself and salivate, gloat, and hug myself with glee from the narrative poetry and I have to be careful about dehydration these days). Fine. Allow me one comparison of the writings: where Ravings is a heart-felt song, Princess is a symphony. Now… Ravings.

Set within the confines of the Zion curtain, Corinne navigates her life and marriage through a Mormon-filled past and present. Those in the Morridor will relate immediately to the arrogant displays of penishood and the bishoprick interviews. Lest the Faithful cry foul, there are characters who epitomize the very best that Mormonism has to offer, which is unconditional love expressed through the unlikely duo of sister missionaries. One of my favorite scenes was one of the sister missionary’s comments while leaving a strip club - I’ll not recap - just read it! If you find no humor there, then perhaps your sense of humor belongs elsewhere - like Saturday’s Warrior. (I’ll be at Saturday’s Voyeur.)

Ravings is a story about choices and personal responsibility in the realms of love, family, parenting, addiction, communication, and sexuality. What I liked most about Ravings is the way that JulieAnn humanizes each scene and each character. By the end of the book, there is both genuine sadness for the various losses and there is pride at the various triumphs and successes. The twists and turns of the story becomes part of your story, because you rode along the same path.

If the novel was a movie it would be NC-17 because of the few passages of graphic (and highly entertaining and heterosexually arousing) sex. If the novel was a mainstream magazine, it would feature a bitch slap of the Ensign back into the 1850s. As I mentioned earlier, if Ravings were a song of strength and self-realization, told in an authentic voice that is often visceral, somtimes hysterical and always honest.

Please don’t believe me. Find the truth and read it for yourself.