Life Altering Truths

When my high school BFF and I fought over the same girl, it wasn’t out of jealousy of him, it was jealousy for him.  It wasn’t about the girl, it was about him wanting the girl and not me.  This is the same guy I boinked all summer.  Physical fighting scared me only to the extent of the damage I could do to someone.  When he hit me with a right hook to my left cheek, I hit him back and threw him into the lockers.  He picked himself up and looked at me and in that moment I knew he hated me.  The look hurt worse than hundreds of right hooks.  I never did figure out the wisdom in avoiding the straight guys.

My grandpa was a Mormon bigot that never accepted me and my adopted brother because we weren’t “true blood” (we pre-date Potter by decades).  Mother, the soft-spoken yet implacably obstinate and incredibly stubborn protector to us, taught me that elders are not always right, nor should they automatically be granted respect.  At a family picnic, Grandpa once hit me for something my cousins had done with his sanction.  I didn’t even think about it – I hit him back.  His face turned red and he raised his hand to strike me and he stopped and stared: my mom was standing behind me.  He pointed at me and bellowed that I was an evil child and how dare I hit him back and that he was going to punish me.  My mother calmly asked if he was also going to punish my cousins for doing the same thing?  His face went even more red and he stood there with fists clenched until he turned around and walked away.  She squeezed my shoulder and gathered my dad and brother and we left the party.  I learned that we can’t choose our family, but we can choose the people we care about.

Online experiences of the internets have changed the last few weeks.  A cousin went born-again apeshit on me on Facebook, taking various posts personally and saying I was “so negative” and why did I “have to be so prideful about being gay,” wherein I had to respond that my status updates, or Yahoo or Second Life profiles weren’t about her.  All my posts or profiles were meant to entertain, provoke, satirize, and stir things up, and failing that, they were simply mine to express or not – if she took things personally that was her business, not mine.  This evidently was not good enough and she sent a long email to me – she wanted the cousin she knew of her youth back – the young and adorkable and closeted best friend/cousin that wasn’t gay or certainly wasn’t out.  I learned that people will read what they want and make assumptions, no matter how clear or unclear one’s writing is.  I learned that “‘goodbyes” are a bluff I’m willing to call because I have no time to be someone she expects but doesn’t see.  I’ve also learned to use filters on Facebook.

Red Leaves

The redbud tree in the front yard is dropping leaves.  The heart-shaped leaves crinkle and fold and fall to the ground and when the wind blows they scatter across the yard.  The oak tree across the street shares its harvest with every neighbor in the court.  When we walk Midas through the neighborhood, we’ve noticed a few trees that have bright and deep red leaves, but the ones that fall to the ground don’t have the same luster.

It’s a calm before the storm.  Even as the wind blowing through the bay area lowers the temperature to ‘jackets required’ kind of weather, and even as the days shorten so that I’m leaving in darkness and soon-to-be coming home in darkness, I feel calm (I don’t want to jinx anything with the “p” word here).  By the time I’ve driven home each day my mind has already put work inside a box with a lid and put it out of my mind for the night.  I keep in touch via telephone, and I am comforted and glad that my family and friends are healthy and well, that there are celebrations and triumphs (marriages, divorces, house buying, moving, reconnections, custody attainment) despite extreme hardships (suicide, health issues, marriages, divorces, moving, custody conflicts).  Lastly, I am more at peace with my own body since giving up soda, paying attention to what and when I eat, and by working out consistently.  My endurance is back up and I’m doing double sets again.  I’ve dropped 6 pounds, which is halfway to my goal.

I look at the world through the cycles of nature and Fall has usually been the most difficult season for me.  Part of me feels that I should be stressed out or manic because I’m about to start graduate classes again.  Part of me struggles with sitting down to write and share while other parts nod and smile and say, “Keep it up.”  Part of me expects a certain amount of sadness with the changing season, but I just don’t have it in me.  I’m enjoying the falling leaves that are instant reminders of life’s harvest before the bleak winter that doesn’t look so stark white.  Life is good and sweet, which make for rather mundane posts.  I think calm is good now and then.

Along Came a Spider

Perhaps my dislike of spiders started when I was a wee lad because my mom’s hysteria over the tiniest of spiders was quite catching.  I can still hear the octaves through thirty-plus years.  Too bad You Tube wasn’t around there – the family could have made a lot of money.  I digress.

Those with whom I’ve shared long-term relationships know that I have occassional incidents of talking in my sleep, or sometimes sitting up in bed and pointing at the ceiling or a far wall.  I’ve been known to wander and turn on and off lights.  When I was in elementary school, my parents would catch me as I ran down the hall towards the front door, screaming that I had to save my best friend – I never remembered any of those episodes.  One last thing, before I get back tgo spiders, is that camping as a child was not fun for everyone around me.  It seems that I had a penchant to turn myself around in my sleeping bag and punch and scream, trying to get out.  As far as was concerned, I slept like a rock since I don’t remember any of those episodes, either.  Spider dreams I do remember though.  Even now, I’ll wake up, or think I’ve woken up to find gossamer strands around the room and a spider climbing through webs.  I’ve gone so far as to turn on a light, sure that the spider and webs would be there, but there has never been anything there.

Scott was working on a computer in the garage and a black widow crawled out from the computer fan, fangs extended.  He screamed (“eek!”) and killed it.  I don’t like spiders, but I won’t kill them on purpose or unless they’re already injured.  I usually take them outside:  cup and envelope or piece of paper works really well.  By now I’m up to scores and scores saved, I’m sure.   (There’s an opportunity to bash Mormons and their practice of posthumous baptisms in there, somewhere.)

Near the front porch, tucked down near the base of the flowering sweet peas, is a black widow spider that made a network of webs.  The last week or so, when I take Midas out to do his business, I can see her sitting in the middle of her web.  Scott’s gone so far as to throw mosquitos and moths into the webbing and watch her bite then wrap her dinner.  I’ve watched Scott, but haven’t watched the gargantuan spider.  She’s stayed in her area, eating bugs and nasty mosquitos – she’s outside, I’m inside.

Today I was outside, working on low-flow sprinklers with Scott.  The weather was gorgeous.  I’ve been offline (away from computers) for several days and the meditative aspect of yardwork and planting and weeding has been calming and clearing.  While working on the sprinkler near the flowering sweet peas, the black widow spider made an appearance, landing within a few inches of Scott’s hand.  Another “eek!”  I went inside and got a cup and envelope.  My first attempt failed.  Scott caught her for me.  I took her out back in the far corner.  Maybe she’s in shock and maybe I’m a sentimental bastard, but she hadn’t moved for a good 30 minutes after I put her on the fence.  I hope she survived the move, and I hope she keeps spinning those webs.

Talk Thursday: Found

Funny how a grown man can become adrift in himself.  Lost.  Floating.  Feeling like I lost myself.  I wouldn’t say it was self-absorption, nor selfishness, nor even apathy to everything outside of myself.  It was more a creeping fog of perspective where I could hold on to certain things in the middle of a mental white-out.  Compound the impaired perspective with a passive “let’s ride this out” and there’s a double-dose of Donavan the silent spectator to his own life. Look, he’s going in circles!  How nice for him.  If only the circles meant something.  If only movement meant direction and intention.  If only oracles answered in statements, not more questions.  If only souls had better maps of our emotional landscapes.  If only the miserable bastard wrote it out instead of talking in his own head.  If only he didn’t run with scissors.  If only he shared his sandbox.  If only he weren’t so stubborn.  If only.

Maybe, despite the illusion of being wayward and absent, I found my voice again.  Maybe I found my voice to spite the illusion.  I can be petty that way.  Maybe I chose to be silent to see how long I could stand it.  Maybe I decided to change when my comfortable discomfort became painful.  Heaven knows we as humans don’t change without a motivation, and pain is one of life’s greatest teachers.  There’s a little S&M in all of nature.  God is a dominatrix and we don’t have to like it, but we do have to listen.  I must have liked the spankings because it takes me a while to figure out the bigger message to pay attention.  Maybe a rosy-pink ass isn’t a bad thing once in a while.

What made it through the haze?  Marriages.  Divorces.  Re-locations.  Conferences.  Aging.  A death.  Re-connections.  Introductions.  These are some of the things that kept me stubbornly tethered, though not necessarily grounded.  I don’t feel like I’ve been not-living, but I felt more alive last night, like the haze was fading.  Understand, I’d had vast amounts of painkillers and Valium, one massage, and lots of sleep since Saturday when a migraine started.  But last night at dinner with friends and having two cocktails on an empty stomach was sublime.  My buzz spanned the Bay area, and for much of the evening I could hear myself and certain characters in certain stories that are unwritten.  My mind was not on the play we saw after dinner.  My mind was everywhere and it was on fire.  I could hear myself again, and I wasn’t being a self-critical little bastard.  Bastard yes, but the inner critic was shutting the fuck up.

In San Francisco is the Grace Cathedral.  Outside is a stone and concrete labyrinth set in an open space near the courtyard.  Walking the labyrinth is living a metaphor.  The way we walk describes the way we live our life.  The way we are in the center is the way we examine what we have and what we know.  The way we leave the center and return is our intention or affirmation.  I remember and forget, cyclically, this memorable and powerful place.  How is it that I found what I never lost?  How is it that I keep losing the perspective in the first place?  How is it that the act of repetition (walk, drink, eat, sleep, etc) or doing something familiar can bring us back to ourselves?  One step forward.  Turn left or right.  Keep walking.  More turns.  Go to the center.  Return.  There I was the whole time.  And you were with me.

Let’s swap my exhibitionism for my voyeurism and up the ante a little:  where do YOU go when you lose yourself?

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.

Go and Return

Take a week between an old job you should’ve left years before and then add a week’s vacation in which you choose to not travel too far from home.  Get a friend to check on your cat, put your dog at a great boarding place in Fairfield, then take your time driving because the journey is the destination.

Thoughts of your prior life come to you at different times:  when you are drying off from a shower, when you are staring out the window as you’re driving, when you reach for the salt shaker at a restaurant you’ve never been to before.  You don’t know what the future holds and you have no images or ideas of what it looks like.  You dream, you hope, you even pray for the sake of prayer.  You wish upon a star that blazes from prior ages and you let go of everything:  the sadness, the histories, the responsibilities.

The minutes turn into hours and days and those thoughts lessen and you feel your shoulders relax, you feel the tension in your neck melt.  You’re more aware of your body and you can feel where you’ve neglected yourself, but you’re surprised at how quickly you’re getting back into shape.  When you look at your partner, you see your happiness reflected in his smile.  Kiss him, wherever you are, and know that the only thing that matters is being WITH not WHERE.

The drive home will feel longer.  You will reach across the seat and hold his hand.  You’ll pick up your dog who will circle and half-howl and half-bark at the joy of seeing you.  Your cat will ignore you until she’s ready to be acknowledged.  You’ve returned to yourself, the same and completely different.

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.

Core of defiance

Day three in the interim job, and it feels like it’s already been a month or more.  We’ve begun the process of utilizing technology – which is painful to those who think that green-bar paper is required to balance accounts.  Most in the department like that I’m there and that I’m assisting and providing direction.  Two in particular hope I get something itchy and lethal, but maybe they’ve had their fill of people dying, since it happens that a co-worker did die at work yesterday, in his office.  He was 54 and leaves behind a wife and three boys, the eldest in his first year in college.  I was numb most of the day yesterday, up through the evening and dinner with Scott, and even up through about 4:00am this morning when I woke up from disturbing dreams of unfinished conversations with co-workers that will never get finished.

I have wondered before how I’ve made it this far since by all rights I should be dead – many times over.  I could have been aborted instead of being adopted, I was saved from drowning by my father in the Green River below the Flaming Gorge dam, I’ve had dozens of close calls on motorcycles, I’ve been in several car accidents, and I was on the edge of suicide years ago.  I’ve wondered at times why I am here when others have passed before me.  I’ve cursed God and forsworn Christianity and yet I wasn’t smitten dead and I wasn’t sent straight (or gaily) to Hell.

At the very bottom of the well of myself, I voiced a truth that sustained me through the bad times, particularly the time I almost took myself out of life’s equation:  I’m a defiant son of a bitch, and not only is that good enough, but it works incredibly well for me.  Some fuzzy-feeling faith isn’t going to bolster or supersede that knowledge.  I’m obstinate and contrary for no other reason than to be just that, and if I die tomorrow, I’d say the same thing up until the moment I couldn’t ‘cuz I’d be pushin’ up daisies.

This is the part where I put on Elton John’s “Circle of Life” and stew and grieve and hibernate a little more – and offline, I’ll love anyway and will call friends and family and hug Scott, Midas, Saturn and Slipper.  And torture gentle readers with the use of random run-on sentences that make as much sense as a Gay Mormon Republican attending BYU and concurrent counseling/electric-shock therapy sessions.

God damn, he was 54.

Hat Tip to Doug

Doug from Whisper in the Void wrote some powerful reflections about being gay, self acceptance and the cyclical process of coming out, in sections appropriately titled “acceptance,” “forgiveness,” “courage,” and “being out.” I’m going to write stream of consciousness and borrow his themes/sections, so this might get bumpy. Come along if you want to ride with me. (Note to TLC – I did not say “ride me.”)

Acceptance

Sexuality has always been a fluid realization. Attraction is/has been based on the individual that is usually male, but I’ve accepted and acknowledged and loved (but never slept with) the wonderful women in my life. I knew from an early age that I liked men and also knew this would be challenging: live life as myself or try to be someone else? The telling is easy, but the living it was hard at the time: I chose to be myself, and that road took me years to appreciate. I wasn’t always graceful, and in fact there were times when my own homophobia or heterophobia stopped me cold and ruined more than one relationship. If anything, it was stubbornness to never give up and the acceptance to the reality of myself that kept me going.

Now? I know who I am. I’ve seen my worst and I’ve seen bright flashes of my best. I’ve lived through horrible happenings, some of them of my own creation, but I survived.

Forgiveness

I don’t forgive easily. I remember when I’m lied to, when I’m betrayed, or when I’ve been intentionally hurt. In my younger days, it felt devastating to the point of wanting revenge. I was all over the Biblical concept of “an eye for an eye.” As I grew older and did my own share of hurting others, either intentionally or unintentionally and begging for forgiveness, I had to face the truth that I was a raving hypocrite. Sure – ask for forgiveness when I wouldn’t afford the same to someone else. Those lessons hit the hardest with the knowledge that I had hurt someone to the point of tears and extreme emotional pain. Until I could face what I had done to someone else, I wasn’t equipped to forgive. I didn’t know how to forgive someone until someone could show me what it’s like to be forgiven. I didn’t say I’m good at forgiving – I can do it, but it takes a lot of work and a lot of “letting go.” The stubborn parts of me want to hold onto hurt/anger, and forgiving someone/anyone will never be a reflexive thing for me.

Courage

If moving towards the things one fears is courage, then so be it, but that’s how I’ve always been (except for heights/falling – I don’t ever seek those fears or situation). Fear of rejection? I’ll talk to anyone. I know some people will like me, some people could care less, and others my very existence will scare the very hell out of them. I learned a long time ago that I can’t make anyone like me. I’m still learning to be my own best friend. Most days I like who I am, and when I forget, I know that friends will reflect back the strength, the contradictions, the surety of who I am. The hardest lesson? Learning and knowing and being… enough.

Being Out

I think the term “coming out” and “being out” are misleading. I believe sexuality is fluid. Attraction is the sphere of influence between oneself and another, which I liken to the concept of gravity. The pull of the moon makes waves, and the pull of someone we care about or want to care about can make us sing, cry, dance, fall, celebrate, or disappear. Being “out” is about knowing and being where you are in that orbit of attraction. Sometimes we’re pulled by heavenly bodies, sometimes we feel isolated and alone at the deep edge of space.  I think most of us have predictable orbits.  Some have orbits that are more quirky or random.  “Coming out” is space exploration of the self. That’s how I think of sexuality and “out.”  Roger that.

My friends and family are in diverse spheres. It is very difficult for me when orbits collide or interact. While many people know many intimate things about me, there are other groups of people who don’t, because I’ve chosen the level of intimacy or I’ve chosen to limit the things I want them to know. There were times in my life that I’d broadcast to any/all and didn’t censor myself or hold back, but I’ve found the last several years that I choose not to immediately stake my claim on sexuality. I’ve learned to hold some of the cards from the table, but I’m not doing so out of fear of rejection, I’m doing so out of a deliberate choice of expending energy. Frankly, I don’t want to put myself out there when the other party could care less. I want a give and take, not a take and take dialogue.

You can take off your seat belt now, because this ride ran out of gas and it’s bedtime.

Two Darks

Today, I led the two hour meeting, went over the project parameters, and got their agreement on implementation dates. Before the meeting started, I hit the men’s room and looked at myself in the mirror and made myself breath deeply until the hard edges left my eyes. In the meeting, the steering committee recommended a few minor changes. I made my case, I was flexible, and I was firm – and I was surprised my body didn’t betray me and I start getting electrical charges along my cheekbone or have muscle spasms (remnants of Bell’s Palsy). One individual expressed several compliments, but with him a compliment is the equivalent to a knife in the back. I took it at face value, which was simply a nice thing to hear. The one person I expected to be difficult was quiet, which is another clue that she’ll throw up serious road-blocks later – when there’s not an audience. My one outright supporter tried the “good cop/bad cop” routine, where he was the good cop, but I showed them how we could both be good cops and still get what we want. My boss has my back. I know I have her full support and I’m not floundering in the dark. She let me know, in so many words, that I have my own light.

Tonight after dinner, Midas and I went for a walk. A very brisk walk – we were almost running. I thought about going back for a flashlight, but we went forward on our usual route. He goes to the end of the long leash then pulls back until there’s no tension, or he falls behind until there’s almost the tension’s pull and he catches up again. There was a slight breeze, leaves falling onto the path. One stretch is almost a quarter mile and there are no lights – here I unleash Midas and let him roam, and he bounces and runs ahead and behind. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him. I love this dog, kissing him on the top of his head or hugging him, or breathing into his fur after I’ve given him a bath and dried him off. His favorite games are fetch and hide-and-seek. On Sunday we bought a glow-in-the-dark ball. He finds that or any other ball just fine – the phosphorescence is for us.