Talk Thursday: Mea Culpa

Apologies are cyclical and transactional.  Action means reaction and a round of apologies.  Emotions get tossed like coins at a wishing well, wishing away the circumstances.  It’s when the coins are gone and the surface of the water quiets that the wronged is left with their time to heal and the apologist is left with promises to do better next time and those wishes have dried up and drifted away.

I had a boyfriend that swore to monogamy and ended up cheating three times because he wasn’t sure about us and had to ‘try out’ different guys.  At the time he was ‘the one’ for me, even though I knew, he knew, we all knew that we were not well matched, except in the bed department.  The bed department does not a relationship sustain, unfortunately, but that’s what we latched on to once, then twice, and three times a breakup.  Each time he screwed up (no pun intended), he’d confess his transgression and beg forgiveness and promise never to screw up again and then he’d have a big arrangement of flowers sent to me at work.  Stunning flowers.  Monstrously gorgeous flowers.  By the second set of tears and apologies, I hated the sight of them.  I was “done,” following the third episode, even though my co-workers loved the ambiance and observed that I ‘got more flowers than a dead person’s funeral.’  Each time felt like a funeral, and in a way that’s what each apology and new promise was – a little more of the relationship dying.  The mea cupla became the ritual acknowledgment of passing dreams.  I had said to him each time:  I was more sorry that I didn’t listen to myself better than him.

A decade later, now he’s still with the guy he cheated with the last time.  We talked about what worked and what didn’t work years ago and we both shared how wrong we were for each other (even though the bed department was so right – the bastard still knows exactly what turns me on).  Keeping in touch went from daily to weekly to eventually a few times a year.  When I look back at what he used to mean to me, I know I still see the man he could have been, which is the ruin of all relationships.  When we talk and he looks back, he sees the prior mea culpas I represented.

Our last conversation was a few weeks ago and saying goodbye was a pleasant sort of finality.  We’ve always gone through the ritual of goodbye but his other line rang for work and he had to go and with a soft click he was gone.  He texted me a few moments later and I read it and deleted and turned off my phone.  He was still sorry, and I was still glad I grew a pair and left him.  We were strangers trying to make sense of sorries from years ago, and I don’t want to pretend that we are any closer than we never were.

Balls Deep

(edit:   yeah – I changed my title of the post but did NOT change the start of the post, so if you’re scratchin’ your head, that’s my fault.  Bad Don.  Bad, bad.  Bad.  This was originally titled “Ping.”)

Not quite the sound of a pin drop, sorry, nor the sound of what happens before ‘pong’ (which always makes me think of “ding dong” and then I hear middle-school voices and the sing-song rhyme of:  “…plays ping pong with his ding dong”).  Yes, that’s how my mind works some days.  Random fragments.  I’m pinging myself in a post, a reminder that hey, you do have a blog, ya know.  Yes, I know.

I’m getting a little more organized.  Thoughts of birth and death, living and dying… always good motivators to take inventory and some self-stock.  Two weeks ago I stopped all caffeine, chocolate, carbonation, alcohol, and spicy foods.  I increased my work outs, which wasn’t too difficult since I went from nothing to everything-I-do-makes-me-breath-hard-and-sweat.  Discovery of muscles that I’d forgotten I had.  I don’t celebrate myself too much, but I’m gonna admit here that I like my biceps.  I’m stretching again and slowly relearning some yoga poses.  I come back to breathing, time and again.  Deep breathing.

I cleared off clutter on my desks – at home and at work.  I pulled out old magazines that I’d been meaning to read – I finished them and I threw them away.  The stack of filing I’d kept piling up I organized and filed away.  Stacks at work got put into folders, labeled and filed.  Those little pieces of paper with “important” phone numbers got put into contact information in Outlook.  I deleted over a thousand emails.

At night before bed I’ve been doing crossword puzzles or logic problems, the attempts of which usually frustrate the hell out of me.  Word games I’m fine with, but the order and structures of logic are challenging to me.  The “get it right” perfectionist part of me will take those logic problems and erase and start over until I figure it out.  In the last two weeks I’ve solved a few that had stumped me years before.

Lastly, or maybe firstly, I carved out time for me to write.  Dreams, plans, and outlines… fine – any day, any week.  But since the writing workshop in Monterey this spring, I consciously put writing away and didn’t allow myself the time for pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.  I’m not the swiftest with figuring myself out, but it was another one of those slamming my head against the wall revelations to acknowledge that distractions are the same as saying conscious priorities.  Maybe in my older age I’m learning to embrace that which, historically, I’ve enjoyed running from.  Could be too that I’m over being coy with myself – I do like to write.  Skip the extended forplay that is an existential exercise in mental blue balls – it’s balls-deep fucking time to write.

After the Flood

“What religion or reason
Could drive a man to forsake his lover”
-from Erasure’s “A Little Respect

I left organized religion at an early age:  twelve.  Full disclosure here, my exit was motivated by the bishop who told me to “not come back” because I had been talking during the opening prayer, but I actively chose this wonderfully open-ended imperative as a gift.  My mother was horrified, of course, but by all the gods, I was free of Mormondom.  In my teens, I was already outside of institutions that called homosexuality sinful and wrong.  Like the conversations I had with my parents and family when I was eight (“why am I being baptised to wash away sin if I haven’t done anything yet?”), I asked myself as a young adult how my existence could be evil and wrong?  I looked like my peers.  I acted like my peers.  Frankly, I didn’t see the big deal about being attracted to another guy, and it felt quite natural, not wrong in any way, to be attracted to biceps, butts, and penii.  Sexuality wasn’t something I chose – it just was – like the color of my hazel-green eyes.  By the time I was in my twenties, my religion became my fellow man, with less focus on the peen and an appreciation for (and please pardon the slight pun) the total package of what it is to be a man who loves men.

Ten years ago, I left the social anomoly that is Utah.  Life behind the Zion Curtain is stifled by about 10-15 social years, and closer to 50 if you consider their perceptions of sexuality.  I was done with the returned missionaries, the closeted bishops and brethren, the ex-partners and their extended Mormon families that took great pains to include and exclude us at family gatherings.  As I snidely mentioned to K8 recently, I didn’t have to worry about being “temple worthy”:  the culture was rife with secrets and being secretive, and I had ample experiences helping the Mormon gods-in-training removing their sacred garments to love, man to man, skin to skin.  Naked, closeted, Mormon-man kind of sex.  I figured my “hate the sin” actions were approved and sanctioned, by proxy.  I had zero interest in baptizing the dead because I was fucking the very active and living.  I often wondered how their Sunday mornings went for them.  My own guilt was assuaged.

Here I am, years later, living in the Bay area with my life partner.  We were at the Berkeley Botanical gardens on Sunday morning with thirty other gay men, most of them couples.  We were all openly affectionate, holding hands or an arm across the shoulder of our partners.  It was Berkeley, so none of the families or garden attendees outside of our group even blinked at us.  Most nodded and smiled as we passed.  I remember holding Scott’s hand as we walked under maples, redwoods, cedars and trees from all over the world.  Our guide said several times that there were no accidents in nature (though he obviously never met my family).  I thought on those words when he showed rare cacti that had been cut down by a flood, but had grown back against all odds, somehow growing from the remains of the roots deep in the ground on a sheer slope.  After this battle of Proposition 8, we are not “cut down” or removed.  No.  We belong here as much as anyone else.  We are a part of nature, a part of all the gods’ plans, and we love on against all odds.

Within a canyon that is unique to all the world, containing thirty two acres of lush flora, I had a chance to let rage rest and think on the many blessings since election day.  Yes, blessings.  Gay rights are a now a national conversation.  Societies grow and change and progress when conversations extend beyond immediate communities.  Sexuality is no longer “in the closet” – that topic is out there, loud and clear.  A speaker at the SF rally said something to the effect that “the right wing teach that sexuality is a miracle.  But that miracle, like explaining popcorn, is less a mystery once you explain how it works.”  The social dark ages should have ended with the invention of the printing press – something Mormons should be VERY well versed in, since their founding Prophet was killed for ordering the destruction of printing presses that had or were about to reveal his adulterous activities.  Isn’t irony grand?

More blessings?  The Mormon and Catholic churches tried to control the “moral” conversation and it exploded in their face.  Some of the byproduct of this explosion included an acute examination of their teachings, their business ownership, and their history.  By their fruits ye shall know them, indeed.  Our GLTBQ tribe withstood their flood and grew stronger for it.  We are united and have found our voices and we will not be stifled or trifled.  We’re here.  We’ve always been here.

Decade

Ten years ago this week, I changed my entire world. Work with me here – I like to frame my reality in milestones and major events. Maybe it’s a trait of the human condition. Maybe it’s a tactic to create meaning when nothing else makes sense. Maybe it’s a way for me to remember the bigger life events that tower over the day to day minutae.

Ten years ago, I left Utah and moved to California with everything I hadn’t given away (those 15 boxes of books still make me ache, especially the books from my childhood and complete sci-fi/fantasy series and the english/literature and…). I moved in with a friend and his partner, living with them for a year until they moved to San Mateo and I found a place on my own. Thirty years old, and I was living on my own terms in the great area of the Bay in northern California (the time I lived alone in Utah doesn’t count, because I was renting from my ex’s parents).

Over time, I replaced some of the books and furniture, but always liked the minimalist approach that I admired in a friend of mine who had been a priest in his younger days: simple but comfortable furniture, neatly organized library, clean computer desk space (a direct challenge to my inherent habit of stacks and piling). I started dating, sometimes going out with three or four guys at the same time (sometimes two dates on the same day/night). At one point I dated a couple, then several years later, a different couple. There were times when I was dating to exorcise the ghosts of lovers past, those pesky and impossible ideas of the one you thought you loved. Time heals all, from the emotionally raw and bleeding to the simple chaffing. If someone could figure out an emotional lubrication the world would be such a lovely place.

Here I am, ten years from my entrance into adulthood, and I find myself going back the very same week to the land from which I came. I did my time, I fell down often, I had my series of bumps and scrapes, and I had my too-frequent moments of “what the hell was I THINKING?” Where am I today in relation to where I was? Let me count the ways:

• I have a partner in every sense of the word whom I love and adore;
• I share a home that means comfort, safety, santuary, and rejuvenation;
• I work in a career that is meaningful, dynamic and exciting;
• I developed a sense of self that is unshakable (and often contrary and frustrating);
• I strive for balance in my physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual realms;
• I am blessed with incredible friends who live near (and sometimes way too far away);
• I love and I am loved.

I won’t be posting the next few days, unless of course I do (depending on the level of inebriation and wireless availability).  Hugs.

Talk Thursday: Shooting Stars

When I was eighteen, I met Richard at a gay and lesbian dance.  He was the DJ.  I was newly out and dating a guy (Todd) that I didn’t really like, but I’d assumed that gay guys stuck with whomever was available.  Richard was one of the first nice guys who showed me that gay guys didn’t have to settle, that people who were attracted to each other could develop a friendship, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Over the summer I stopped dating (doing) Todd and started going to more and more social activities and dances.  Richard had caught my eye (brilliant, witty, charming, endearingly geeky, and incredibly sexy), but he interested me too because we shared similar tastes in music.  Correction, we were both raving lunatics about the same bands.

When I first started going to the dances, I wanted to hang out by myself and watch people dance.  I felt incredibly awkward dancing and was content to hold a beverage and stand on the sidelines.  People would move on and off the dance floor and sometimes Richard would put on a 12 inch version of a song so he could go out and dance, too.  I got to not-dance only a few times because he’d come and ask me to dance.  His enthusiasm curbed any of my self-doubts about dancing.  His smile encouraged mine.  Other guys were trying to get either his or my attention, but we’d quickly return to dancing with each other.

We went from dancing to exchanging phone numbers to dinners.  We talked about my university plans, we talked about what he had studied for his bachelor’s and master’s.  We always came back to music.  After dinner one night, he asked if I wanted to listen to music with him at his place.  I knew what was coming and I gladly accepted.  His townhouse was beautiful.  Part of me cringed at the differences in our age, the differences in our economic status, the differences in our age.  Age.  He was a good decade older than me, which seemed a huge number of unfathomable years to me.  His smile made my worries fade.

He put on the Communards and he fixed us both glasses of water.  We sat on the couch and he shyly asked if he could kiss me.  I kissed him in reply.  I remember our shirts coming off and we made out, horizontally, then vertically, while the album played from start to finish.  He got up and changed it to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” which was a favorite for both of us.  He took my hand and I followed him into his bedroom.  We kicked off our shoes and he kissed me while he undid and pushed down my pants.  I fumbled at his button fly and he pushed me onto the bed and took them off himself.

We’d been kissing and thrusting against each other for hours.  As he was going down on me and I was holding his head, the refrain to Frankie was playing loudly:  “shooting stars never stop.”  I wanted to laugh, to cry out.  I wanted to scream.  My orgasm was so powerful that I did see stars – for an infinity I felt I’d left my body and been blasted through the universe (there goes Mars, Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, even beyond Pluto).  To this day, there are certain songs I hear and I think of Richard and I smile.  Shooting stars, indeed.

Ever have an out-of-body orgasm?

Talk Thursday: Waves Like Thunder

**Talk Thursday is an informal group that communicate off line with a topic each week. The topic chooser rotates, and there’s an informal schedule whose turn it is, but I have so far not remembered without gentle prodding. Each person posts whatever comes to mind on their blog. My topic was 2 weeks ago, and from what I can tell only Cele has done a post. If anyone does want to participate, let me know and I’ll get you on the email list. Thanks. Here’s my belated entry.**

Fifteen plus years ago. His name was Andrew. I liked him, even though I had a boyfriend. I thought the presence of a relationship would be ward enough from a reciprocal interest, which was my first case of bad judgment with him. He became a good friend and the three of us often went out to dinner or to movies and spent a lot of time talking. I thought he was handsome and interesting and the way he smiled made my stomach tighten into quick breaths of rumbling anxiety. I did what I had always done when I was overwhelmed by my own thoughts and I tried to pretend I didn’t care. We all became very good friends and I was happy and also filled with dread.

One weekend he joined us at Snowbird where my boyfriend’s family had a timeshare. We took the tram to the top and hiked down. We were less than a mile from the lodge when we went off the trail to look at a waterfall. I was jumping along rocks and I twisted my foot and fell hard – yes, I was graceful back then, too. They supported me on the way back, me draping an arm over each of their shoulders, and I hopped along between them on one leg. We made slow progress. I remember his cologne and the faint smell of his sweat competed with my ankle that ached in time with the beat of my heart. Maybe guilt is clouding my thoughts. What I don’t recall, however, is how he ended up carrying me, piggyback, the rest of the way to the lodge, but he did. Granted, I probably weighed between 120-125 pounds at the time, while he was much taller and muscled, at nearly 175-180 pounds.

I felt the first rumbles of a storm in my soul. Maybe I’d already been hit by some sort of lightning. My mind was competing with my body. I was pressed against his back as he stepped carefully along the descending trail. The feel of him was electric. I remember my arms around his neck and the feel of his muscles. He was talking about the wildflowers and not at all out of breath from carrying me, but then we settled into an easy silence. The weight against him and the subtle friction of my midsection against his back gave me an erection. My face near his shoulder and ear, I asked him if he needed to stop and rest and he squeezed my thighs between his sides and his biceps. He looked at me with one eye and said “No, we’re almost there.”

On the walk to the lodge we moved from clouds and signs of rain to a full storm inside of us. I could feel it in the way he held me, in the way his skin felt against mine, in the way he looked at me and how I looked back at him. I could feel his heartbeat, waves like thunder against mine. I let it rain. I let the heavens howl against me, because back then I believed I deserved every mishap, every nightmare, every circumstance. Andrew chose to ignore friendships and conventions and propriety as well. We chose to ride the lightning, we tried to hold fire itself. We were quiet, I think, because we knew we were about to destroy our relationships with my boyfriend like a full-scale hurricane.

And we did. Demolished, obliterated, swept away.

The years where I grew up and found myself are another story for another time.

Go ahead – what’s one of the dumbest things you’ve ever done in a relationship?

Now What

Angie brought up a great topic for last week’s Talk Thursday, which was “I got my wish! Now what?” Below are some of my thoughts on the topic, which I’m posting belatedly, but ya know… I’m posting. Deal.

What happens after the prince slays the dragon(s) and wins the kingdom? What happens when you get your wish, when you get the things or circumstances or person that you wanted, needed, craved or desired? What happens when you were willing to make a deal with god or God or the universe… and it came to be? I’ll leave the issue of manifestion (point A of wishing to point B of realization) for another day – but I will say that in that crystal moment of knowing what you want and speaking it clearly, the universe listens…

I believe that we as humans need conflict and disappointment. Struggles are essential. Friction serves as a motivator. Dissent is an opportunity to experience another view. Dissonance demonstrates the methods that are not harmonious. In the great words of the Eurythmics, peace is just a word. Happily ever after only happens in movies, and the moment the credits start rolling change has already happened, for better or for worse. Heroes grow old(er). Crowns become heavy. Hearts feel complacent. Self-actualization is like an orgasm – you know it when you’re experiencing it, and when it’s fading you wonder when you’ll experience it again.

Change is imminent, even within contentment.

I’m clapping if you’ve made it this far and are asking “what the HELL are you talking about?” Here: I’m confessing that I’m lazy, that I want an outer motivator to do my work for me so I don’t have to look inside and start prioritizing and recognizing the things that are important to me. I got MOST of my wishes in life (love, career, home, friends, family) and it’s time I took stock – check off the things I’ve done/received and keep adding new stuff, which of course is the biggest challenge: I don’t know what I want. What’s next? I want the answers without doing the work.

Agree? Disagree? Want to slap me yet?

This is the part when I want to delete everything, but I’ll post. I have no qualms sharing. I’m shameless that way.

Conference Thoughts

Day two at the conference in San Diego. 

Yesterday was a travel day from Oakland to San Diego.  The few times a year when I go to conferences, I don’t mind the time spent at airports.  I intentionally don’t pack a book or magazine so that I can browse what’s available at the airport.  This trip, I came across “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist.  I read the prologue in the bookstore and had to buy the book.  I re-read the passages on the plane, letting the words speak their rhythm and magic.  I didn’t care if the guy next to me could see the tears at the corners of my eyes.  I turned up the volume on my mp3 player and re-read the words again.  Every once in a while I would look out the windows at the clouds and I had the distinct impression that I was exactly where I was supposed to be in life.

***

The reception last night was at the hotel for the conference.  The entire company meets every two years to go over business policies and procedures, best practices, and networking.  Many of the folks are road warriors, doing on the road consulting across the country.  I had hoped to meet other folks with my software/vendor background, but quickly discovered that I’m it, I’m the resource.  I’ve been in this place before in my life, too.  The things I get to learn (and relearn) are supervisory skills, better project management, more diplomacy, more diplomacy, and more diplomacy.  Grace is in there somewhere.  And compassion.  And patience. 

***

Meeting people has been fantastic.  I love the company.  Everyone seems genuine and authentic.  What I came up against tonight was the sense of being alone in a sea of people.  Don’t get me wrong – I felt welcomed by everyone, but I wanted to be home.  I missed Scott.  I left dinner early and came back to the hotel.  The saving grace to the evening was listening to music, talking to Scott on the phone, chatting briefly with Eddie on Yahoo, and making myself write this post.

News Du Jour

It’s a good thing I’m not President of any country, because I would promote various policies that taxed or outright banned organized religions.  Some days I’m in the same boat as Jesse Ventura, who said that “…organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people’s business.”  Some days I’d like to see members of the American Taliban on a reality-tv show:  Christian Survivor.  Some days.  Some days I get annoyed when those same American Taliban somehow think non-Republicans don’t have values or spirituality in their lives.  I get REALLY annoyed and so-not-like Ghandi (or Buddha) when the American Taliban assume that gay men and women don’t have values or standards or ethics.  I’ll go one further:  I believe and don’t believe many things, and I don’t begrudge you one bit if you think/believe differently than I do.  The only distinction… don’t tell me what to believe.

Most days I find it amusing that Republicans assumed the mantle of piety and reverence for faith-based initiatives.  Today’s article that focused on Barrack Obama made me rethink and wonder.  No matter what happens this election year, the Republican’s glass house is shattering.

***

I’ve worked in the higher education arena for over sixteen years.  Back when I lived in Utah, I remember the feeling of smugness and “how is this news?” moment when I heard that Brigham Young University received the top ranking for schools that are “Stone Cold Sober.”  The Mormon bastion of useful knowledge (I say it like that because one of their higher mucky-mucks thinks that only SOME knowledge is useful – the rest is not “faith promoting”) received their eleventh consecutive honor and distinction this year.  I’d love to see the report for which campus has the highest incidences of anxiety medicine (Xanax, Valium, etc) prescription abuse.  Any guesses how B.Y.U. would do?

***

Change is coming.  Energy policy is not being created by villains such as Cheney and his Haliburton posse.  The oil industry’s star has risen, but they may be on the decline.  I hadn’t thought about agriculture and farmers affecting energy policies, but this article makes sense about their huge network and social support.  Sucks to be an oil exec that doesn’t know how much money they make, doesn’t it?

***

What’s new with YOU?

Two Wars

The salvos continue.  Predictably, the LDS/Mormon church will preach from their pulpits and pyramid-scheme social circles, decrying anything but “one man, one woman” laws relating to marriage.  Since Mitt Romney isn’t running around as Presidential hopeful, they’ve got to pull something to be in the newspaper.  Any newspaper.  Even when that newspaper ends up as lining in some bird cage.

Funny, I didn’t realize Mormons were the moral authority on marriage, considering their less-than-successful social constructs of polygamy.  Let’s not pretend there was anything divine about it:  Joseph Smith was fucking other men’s wives.  Convenient.  I love it when God’s got your back:  an endless supply of fuckdom.

Mormons can believe in any number of heavens.  They can ignore their racist history.  They can tell their members to wear whatever underwear is acceptable to their deity (who wore robes and never wore said underwear – ever).  They can call themselves a “family” religion and even believe it is.  But here’s where it rubs the wrong way (and there ain’t NOTHING that rubs the wrong way like when someone isn’t rubbing the way YOU like it):  Mormons don’t get to dictate the rights of civil unions to anyone. Threatened by gay marriage?  Fine – don’t marry a same-sex partner.  Pretty simple.

Religion has nothing to do with this trumped argument of morals.  The ruckus is all about religion clamoring to be important to a society who has discovered that they can think for themselves.  This is about religion relinquishing their grasp of attempted control of the masses.

Imagine that.  People being and doing good deeds… because they are.  Not because they’re told.  People loving because that’s what they do and are.

Hey Mormons.  Ready?  Set?  Love.

***

I’ve been a tad absent from the blogosphere.  I remember a conversation with TLC recently where he encouraged me to keep writing and I was nodding to myself on the phone and saying that writing was important to me… and then I didn’t post anything but pictures.  In my mind, in my dreams, I had things to say, but the space never manifested to the point of wanting to share those thoughts.

A week or so later I was chatting with Sacred and SML and I partly realized that I have been communicating with myself, but I was letting the dialog run its course.  I actually wondered if we as humans needed conflict to grow, if we needed some source of conflict to realize what we do have instead of focusing on what we didn’t.  Yes, I was actually feeling guilty for being so happy with how life is.  It has been years since I enjoyed going to work, since I felt so comfortable with my own body, since I felt so completely domestic that I wanted to melt into a puddle of bliss.

It’s not easy being a prima-donna drama queen.  I’m quite out of my realm with life and not having some self-imposed rebellion to quell.  Allow me to try something new:  embracing peace and joy in my life.